Wednesday, July 3, 2013

[Rant Repeat] Its the people that make religion or science good or bad.

(This is a repost of a rant I posted on Facebook a while back)


Religion and science are not separate entities. You can believe in a greater power without sacrificing knowledge, curiosity, common sense, and scholarship. Believing in a deity, deities, spiritual entities or what have you, does not make you a zealot, bigoted, or an idiot. It does not make you uneducated; it just makes you a believer in something greater than yourself.

Human have a long and wonderful history of good things religion does. But God forbid (ha ha) that we mention THOSE things. Why, that would be all terribly boring, wouldn't it? Let's mention wars, since the only thing ever that starts wars is religions. Nope, it's never greed or politically based. (If you're going to try to claim 'communism' as an organized religion, you'll need to visit a farm and get a sufficient amount of bull by-product. for just one example.) Hate is only driven by religion too, of course. It's never a quest for power by suppressing others or a distraction to keep power, or just the way of bigoted people.

Sure, it's easier to say "My god says that people who have wives who pluck chickens in the morning will be poisoned by his holiness," than it is "If you prepare the chicken in the morning and leave it without cooking or refrigeration until the afternoon you will get food poisoned" when you haven't even discovered the microscope yet, but that doesn't mean the deity (fictional, or not) is necessarily wrong. It's easy to say "My God says if you hop on one foot for an hour you will be a true follower and anyone who doesn't should be shot," because you want an excuse to get rid of the disabled. But, again, that would be the excuse. It's not the religion's fault.

Scientists aren't always honest. There are countless cases of fraud in the history of our people (Piltdown Man comes to mind.) Science is not always correct even in this modern day. (Google Archaeoraptor) Science doesn't mean there is no unifying force of humanity.

The hate, the nastiness, the close-minded asshattery, that's all humanity. You let them use excuses, they will. They'll do it in the name of conservatives, religion, science (I do recall something about a 'master race' that wasn't religious) or whatever they can get away with. So stop trying to blind yourself and blame it all on religion. Don't spread the falseness of 'well, the history of religion is all blood.' Tell that to a Buddhist.

Look at the guiding tenants of almost any religion such as the Ten Commandments. Eight out of ten right off the bat seems like pretty good ways to live your life. Morality can sure exist without religion, but religion doesn't hurt morality. How about compassion? I hear lots from people saying 'I don't need God to help my neighbour, I don't need a government to steal my money to do charity'.. but its real interesting come push to shove how many of them don't get off their thumbs. Even if you're not religious, you'll have to notice a lot of churches organize a lot of charitable events. Sure, organized charity can happen outside of religion, but that doesn't lessen the contribution of the religious.. and that's a fairly modern swing in the last forty years.

Let's talk education. Religion, pfft, they suppress knowledge, right? How many universities and colleges in North America alone were founded by a religion? In institutions over a hundred years old, ninety-two percent were. Harvard and Yale were both established by Christianity, for example.

You can have both in your life. So instead of spreading the negativity by posting with generalities of 'Religion bad, science good!' how about broadening your own mind instead of your attempt to supposedly broaden others? I'm not sure how your hate mongering is any different from the preaching you dislike. II don't care who or what's name you spread negativity in, I care you're spreading negativity. I don't care who or what's name you spread positivity in, I care you're spreading positivity. How about instead of focusing on the who or what, you focus on the effect?

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