Taliban School Massacre, 120+ Dead, Mostly Children

[John Galt]

[spacemonkey]

[NAB]

[Libertarian602]

[eynon81]

[The Comrade]

how many times must i debunk the protestant work ethic on this website?

[Philly]

[exploited]

You see, you keep on trying to prove the worth of your religion by the actions of past Christians. I see this logic time and again from you: "Person A was religious (or at least claimed to be), Person A did this, therefore religion is responsible for it." It's bizarre.

But when I bring up what the Catholic Church did to consolidate power in the Middle Ages, or what the Protestants did to Catholics for so long after they ascended into power (not to mention gays, blacks, the handicapped, women and the mentally ill), all of a sudden that has nothing to do with their religion.

Basically, rich assholes have dominated this planet forever, and some of them forced everyone beneath them to be a particular religion - their religion. And now you want to say that because of this, all this good stuff happened... Would it otherwise have not? How certain of that are you and why?

[Philly]

I'm not advanced enough in "what if" thinking to speculate on what human history and the present day world would be like had there never been religion. It's almost like asking what if we were sentient squids who lived in the ocean instead of sentient apes who lived on land. History, from the very start, would be completely different in ways we couldn't make a solid projection of.

I've heard the philosophical argument against atheism that even though there are many different religions claiming to be the one truth, it would be far too improbable that so many different cultures all over the world, dating back to ancient times when they did not have contact with one another, all believed in some type of higher being just because people made it up in each of those places. It's an interesting point, though I'd lean more toward the idea that it was a natural reaction to becoming self aware.

[exploited]