How strongly do you agree or disagree?
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  How strongly do you agree or disagree?
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Poll
Question: "Religion poisons everything" scale 0-4 disagree 5 neutral 6-10 agree
#1
10 agree the most
 
#2
9 agree
 
#3
8 agree
 
#4
7 agree
 
#5
6 agree
 
#6
5 neutral
 
#7
4 disagree
 
#8
3 disagree
 
#9
2 disagree
 
#10
1 disagree
 
#11
0 strongly disagree
 
#12
write in or all other answers
 
#13
It depends on the religion
 
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Total Voters: 49

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Author Topic: How strongly do you agree or disagree?  (Read 6732 times)
°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« on: February 14, 2015, 08:52:23 PM »

I'd say about an 8 as far as theistic religion goes
The more strongly you disagree the lower the number
The more strongly you agree the higher the number
with 5 being undecided mixed feelings etc

You can change your vote as often as you change your mind
My beliefs are always changing so I will probably change my vote

you can also vote for 8 different options for those of you who can't make up their minds

I think religion can be good or bad, but I think people can be good without it and it often tends to cause mental problems, division and war, it could be a path to peace but peace would come more quickly if everyone gave up on religion. Religion can be used to comfort people, but so can drugs.

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DC Al Fine
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« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2015, 10:22:09 PM »

A remarkably bigoted and ignorant statement.
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« Reply #2 on: February 16, 2015, 12:43:42 PM »

A remarkably bigoted and ignorant statement.

Hardly a convincing argument for whatever it is that you believe. All emotion and no logic.
Not very tolerant either.
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2015, 12:48:26 PM »

Religions are by nature intolerant. Religion is the idea that what you believe is true and what everyone else believes is false. Religion is bad because it involves sectarianism. It causes wars.
The interfaith movement is an exception to all this, but the interfaith movement should be all inclusive, as much as possible. It is hard to include people who don't want to be included.

I am open minded as to religions that go against the sectarian trend of religions of the past.
I voted 8 because I have mixed feelings about the statement.
But, given all the evil committed in the name of God, I find a lot of truth in the statement.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #4 on: February 16, 2015, 12:53:05 PM »

0

Even though I tend to believe that religion is, on balance, a negative force in society, these sort of grand, absolute statements are inherently absurd and meaningless.
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bore
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« Reply #5 on: February 16, 2015, 01:06:31 PM »

A remarkably bigoted and ignorant statement.

Hardly a convincing argument for whatever it is that you believe. All emotion and no logic.
Not very tolerant either.

If we're going for logic here all that is needed is one counter example, from the entirety of human history, to prove this statement wrong. Given you yourself said "religion can be good" even you think religion poisons everything is false.
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« Reply #6 on: February 16, 2015, 01:21:16 PM »

0

Even though I tend to believe that religion is, on balance, a negative force in society, these sort of grand, absolute statements are inherently absurd and meaningless.

OK, that's a better way of looking at it.
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« Reply #7 on: February 16, 2015, 01:27:46 PM »
« Edited: February 16, 2015, 01:29:45 PM by Quadist »

A remarkably bigoted and ignorant statement.

Hardly a convincing argument for whatever it is that you believe. All emotion and no logic.
Not very tolerant either.

If we're going for logic here all that is needed is one counter example, from the entirety of human history, to prove this statement wrong. Given you yourself said "religion can be good" even you think religion poisons everything is false.

It depends what is meant by religion. A better statement would be that reason and logic are superior to blind faith.
That statement, of course, was based on the title of Hitchen's book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything"

You make a good argument; therefore I am changing my vote from choice 8 to "It depends on the religion".
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« Reply #8 on: February 16, 2015, 01:29:12 PM »

A remarkably bigoted and ignorant statement.

Hardly a convincing argument for whatever it is that you believe. All emotion and no logic.
Not very tolerant either.
In hindsight I take back what I said, given the responses.
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°Leprechaun
tmcusa2
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« Reply #9 on: February 16, 2015, 01:34:35 PM »

The idea of "God" is problematic. The word "God" implies a male and therefore human deity.
How can "God" be omnipresent and be limited to a human body?
In so far as religion involves this anthropomorphic concept of a male deity, a male "body",
then how does it make any sense?
If Jesus is "God" how could the baby Jesus be "God". How can a little infant be one and the same as the infinite all knowing all powerful all present all good "God"?
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DemPGH
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« Reply #10 on: February 16, 2015, 05:04:37 PM »

Religion has resulted in far too much violence and has given people too much of a vehicle into which they can pour their anger to get anything less than 8-10 from me. So I agree, understanding that it is a big general statement and all.
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Alcon
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« Reply #11 on: February 16, 2015, 09:04:36 PM »

I don't know how I could possibly vote anything besides 0 and 10 for a statement that asserts a total universal.  So, uh, zero?
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Associate Justice PiT
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« Reply #12 on: February 17, 2015, 04:18:10 AM »

     Sectarianism seems to have a special place in human existence. With or without religion, people have an amazing talent for defining an "us" to associate with and a "them" to spew bile towards. I don't think much of the idea that "religion poisons everything", because in its absence something else would just serve to divide people and pit them against each other.
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afleitch
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« Reply #13 on: February 17, 2015, 07:07:47 AM »

A hideously black and white question.

The best way for me to explain my position is this;

Secular ethics and how it informs itself as an alternative to religious moral tradition is a recent phenomenon in the west. The point at which it became acceptable socially, politically, ethically to say ‘I am not a religious’ or ‘religion does not inform my outlook’ and not be considered subversive is fairly recent.

The problem with organised religion is that it has entered a 'reactionary' phase. It reacts, rather than leads (which hasn't necessarily been the case in other periods of history) particularly in the west because secular/humanist ethics as a system are in the ascendancy (in terms of personal attachment and legal/political output) and as such, religion can be more prone to being, to put it simply; 'mean.'

Women's rights, sexual minority rights, children's rights etc have been generally secured in recent decades in spite of and not because of organised religion. There are exceptions of course (all hail Quakers) in all streams of religious thought just as there are exceptions within secular thought (those who are regressive) but in general the greatest protestations towards such change, and anti-patriarchal change comes from organised religion, which is the all to willing handmaiden of the patriarchy.
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politicus
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« Reply #14 on: February 17, 2015, 09:38:48 AM »

Depends on the religion/Disagree 2. Voted depends on the religion.

It is worth remembering that religion is also a positive force that can make people do good deeds, create solidarity and inspire people to create great art and architecture. So even viewed from a wholly secular POV religion is not necessarily a bad thing.

Also:

A hideously black and white question.
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OldDominion
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« Reply #15 on: February 21, 2015, 05:52:30 PM »

I voted 8 but that is taking everything in history and mashing it down into a number. It really depends on how far people take religion, which for most of the history of the world, has been in a negative context, esp Christianity and Islam.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #16 on: February 24, 2015, 04:54:22 PM »

Is there such a thing as an intellectual poison? I find the very notion repellent.

Many of the deepest thought projects ever undertaken have been analysis and interpretation of the various holy writs. I spent a year and a half attending weekly Talmud discussion classes and the level of thought into the most minute interplays between statements of Rabbis over the course of over half a millennium in shaping a legal code that honored all interpretations is a project that I have a huge amount of respect for...the idea of having the Shofar make a sound reminiscent of Sisera's mother upon hearing that her son had been killed forcing one to reflect on the grim realities of triumphalism at the moment of greatest national joy is a lesson that has really stuck with me.

There is room for pluralism and intellectual debate, back and forth, and exchange in religious communities to a degree one would be shocked to find in many other academic settings. The theological debates one finds in seminary courses even in the Evangelical Protestant Christian setting between Calvinist and Arminian theology regarding free will is deep-rooted, passionate, and the exact opposite of stifled. The desire to understand the universe and where it came from has a deep philosophical argument stretching back to Plato and the Old Testament in the Western Tradition (and this is without even bringing up the intellectual richness of the subcontinental and Chinese traditions). Calling that argument off now is the intellectual equivalent of stabbing one's own father on the grounds that he is not needed anymore.

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Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck
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« Reply #17 on: February 24, 2015, 05:05:26 PM »

10.  It undermines science and progress, perverts morality, and makes a virtue out of not thinking.  Just because one can study religious texts does not mean it's any less the authoritative musings of primitive humanity.

It's all filth.  Every bit of it.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #18 on: February 24, 2015, 05:16:46 PM »

10.  It undermines science and progress, perverts morality, and makes a virtue out of not thinking.  Just because one can study religious texts does not mean it's any less the authoritative musings of primitive humanity.

It's all filth.  Every bit of it.

Perhaps you're under the assumption that there is such a thing as progress, though the idea that somehow our fancier technological gadgets make us better or even different creatures than we were 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 years ago is baffling. Men and women are still men and women and the moral, intellectual, and philosophical questions we grapple with seldom change, and religion gives us continuity with our ancestors. When we speak the same words as they did and make the same motions, we transcend time itself in a way that the past-destroying scientific positivist juggernaut respects not and readily tramples. What is our most important duty as humans if not to empathize with, revere, and preserve the memories of those who came before us?

When society is busy trying to destroy historically-minded continuity with the past in every other way, from having us buy disposable goods that will not last a fraction as long as the appliances our ancestors purchased out of a greedy model of planned obsolescence to bulldozing houses that families lived in for generations for more gaudy copies of currently-fashionable architectural styles to encouraging families live on opposite ends of the country or even the world and lose their close bonds of support and even familiarity (when was the last time you saw your third cousins? Your second cousins? Even your first cousins?), we need to seek community and connection with the past in some way.

In many ways, Hockeydude's statement reminds me of the execrable doctrines of the Futurists, who advised constantly tearing down the old and replacing it with the new for little reason other than its novelty. It is repellent to me on every moral level when our most fundamental obligation to those who came before us is to keep their memory and their world alive and honor what they honored. The idea of stabbing our culture's father and throwing it on the funeral pyre to make way for "progress" is the most abhorrent and disgusting notion I've heard in a long time, and is a distinct threat to our cultural heritage.
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Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck
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« Reply #19 on: February 24, 2015, 05:22:45 PM »

10.  It undermines science and progress, perverts morality, and makes a virtue out of not thinking.  Just because one can study religious texts does not mean it's any less the authoritative musings of primitive humanity.

It's all filth.  Every bit of it.

Perhaps you're under the assumption that there is such a thing as progress, though the idea that somehow our fancier technological gadgets make us better or even different creatures than we were 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 years ago is baffling. Men and women are still men and women and the moral, intellectual, and philosophical questions we grapple with seldom change, and religion gives us continuity with our ancestors. When we speak the same words as they did and make the same motions, we transcend time itself in a way that the past-destroying scientific positivist juggernaut respects not and readily tramples. What is our most important duty as humans if not to empathize with, revere, and preserve the memories of those who came before us?

When society is busy trying to destroy historically-minded continuity with the past in every other way, from having us buy disposable goods that will not last a fraction as long as the appliances our ancestors purchased out of a greedy model of planned obsolescence to bulldozing houses that families lived in for generations for more gaudy copies of currently-fashionable architectural styles to encouraging families live on opposite ends of the country or even the world and lose their close bonds of support and even familiarity (when was the last time you saw your third cousins? Your second cousins? Even your first cousins?), we need to seek community and connection with the past in some way.

In many ways, Hockeydude's statement reminds me of the execrable doctrines of the Futurists, who advised constantly tearing down the old and replacing it with the new for little reason other than its novelty. It is repellent to me on every moral level when our most fundamental obligation to those who came before us is to keep their memory and their world alive and honor what they honored. The idea of stabbing our culture's father and throwing it on the funeral pyre to make way for "progress" is the most abhorrent and disgusting notion I've heard in a long time, and is a distinct threat to our cultural heritage.

I didn't choose to be here.  I feel no obligation towards anyone to be anything other than not harmful towards them.  I will oppose any and all things I find destructive and ignorant.
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afleitch
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« Reply #20 on: February 24, 2015, 05:24:26 PM »

Is there such a thing as an intellectual poison? I find the very notion repellent.

Many of the deepest thought projects ever undertaken have been analysis and interpretation of the various holy writs. I spent a year and a half attending weekly Talmud discussion classes and the level of thought into the most minute interplays between statements of Rabbis over the course of over half a millennium in shaping a legal code that honored all interpretations is a project that I have a huge amount of respect for...the idea of having the Shofar make a sound reminiscent of Sisera's mother upon hearing that her son had been killed forcing one to reflect on the grim realities of triumphalism at the moment of greatest national joy is a lesson that has really stuck with me.

There is room for pluralism and intellectual debate, back and forth, and exchange in religious communities to a degree one would be shocked to find in many other academic settings. The theological debates one finds in seminary courses even in the Evangelical Protestant Christian setting between Calvinist and Arminian theology regarding free will is deep-rooted, passionate, and the exact opposite of stifled. The desire to understand the universe and where it came from has a deep philosophical argument stretching back to Plato and the Old Testament in the Western Tradition (and this is without even bringing up the intellectual richness of the subcontinental and Chinese traditions). Calling that argument off now is the intellectual equivalent of stabbing one's own father on the grounds that he is not needed anymore.

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No one is doubting that; theology, like all ideology is very very adept at swaddling itself with intellectual garb and has certainly been the arena, and at one time was the exclusive arena, of intellectualism itself. However there are points when 'talking amongst oneself' that it does nothing but manufacture it's own credentials. I have read papers, screeds and screeds of papers that use every flourish to essentially dehumanise people. A pastor calling someone a f****t is nothing in comparison to screeds and screeds of 'research' and faux-intellectualism that would never dare use that word but clearly back it's sentiment.
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DemPGH
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« Reply #21 on: February 24, 2015, 05:34:34 PM »

The notion that there is no progress to me, understanding that there is a degree of subjectivity, is just a really empty type of apologist rhetoric for the horrific abuses of power and ignorance that reside in the past. 
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H. Ross Peron
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« Reply #22 on: February 26, 2015, 01:41:33 AM »

While I certainly disagree with the naive assumptions of automatic progress or that everything we do in the present is superior to the past (indeed I strongly believe in a role for tradition and the need for organic community), its absurd to say that there has been no progress in the course of human history, especially in the last few centuries. The average human life expectancy is at least double what it was but a relatively short time ago, while mothers in most parts of the world do not have to basically rely on a coin toss on whether their newborn will survive infancy. Incidences of diseases such as smallpox, bubonic plague, malaria, cholera, typhoid, and so forth have been far reduced, no longer sweeping through the land killing millions. Famines similarly, no longer are automatic harbingers of mass death in most of the world. Wars are both fewer in number and less bloodier when it occurs, while practices such as slavery have become unacceptable to civilized human beings. All that considered, I think its absurd to say that there has been no progress in human history.
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Türkisblau
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« Reply #23 on: February 26, 2015, 04:10:08 AM »

Why is this on a scale? It's either a yes or no with something like that.

0. Probably one of the most ignorant things I've heard in a while, but that's internet atheists for you.
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Mopsus
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« Reply #24 on: February 26, 2015, 12:58:48 PM »


That's fine, but whether you like it or not, you are fundamentally connected to a particular cultural tradition. Of course you have the freedom to reject this tradition in favor of your own contrived identity, but that doesn't mean that it's destructive or ignorant to embrace those aspects of one's self that one is incapable of altering anyway.
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