[quote]forlife wrote:
A ideal society doesn’t need religion. In such a society people treat one another with mutual respect for the sake of the act itself, and for the positive outcomes it creates for society as a whole. They don’t need to believe in supernatural entities in order to do this. By grounding themselves in reality, they circumvent the inevitable god wars that have plagued humanity during our entire history of creating religions to explain what we don’t understand.
Then again, the ideal society is a dream rather than reality. Many actually do need religion in order to treat others with respect, and thus society benefits in that regard from religion.
Die Religion ist das Opium des Volkes.[/quote]
Actually, FL made the perfect post for you…These are the type of counters your are going to get so learn to pull apart the mistakes and find the points that actually don’t address what you are talking about but are used as little poison pills… Let’s examine shall we?
So first, understand your topic. You topic is that ‘Society needs religion’. You weren’t talking about how to make an ‘ideal society’ right? So right their this is off base. You weren’t talking about utopian society, you weren’t talking about the fact that everybody needs to be religious, but simply that the presenence of religion helps people help society. Not that it makes a ‘ideal society’.
Second sentence refers to mutual respect. I didn’t see anywhere where you said mutual respect is only brought about by religion or religious people. So he’s kind of arguing here against things you did not say or mean. It’s note worth to point that out in debate.
Next he mentions not needing a supernatural being to support the notion that you can have an ideal society without religious belief. Again, it’s not what you are discussing. Further, even if you were discussing that there is no evidence of a ideal cooperative society functioning with out belief in supernatural entities. So it’s a double whammy.
This next statement is particularly noteworthy in its presentation and the dagger he throws in. You know the little dig that intimates that relgious belief and hence people who hold those beliefs are stupid. But it’s very subtle. so lets look at what he did there.
Next he is intimating that religious people believe in a ‘God of gaps’ view of reality. In other words, if we do not have an explanation for a phenomenon observed or otherwise, we naturally assume it ‘must have been God’. So for instance, say you are in your kitchen in your house by yourself and a chair in inexplicably moves. FL is stating here, because you haven’t been able to determine a cause for this, if you are religious, you are going to necessarily believe that God came down from heaven and moved that chair. So if your religious you are necessarily an idiot. Forget the fact that said notions haven’t been practiced for thousands of years literally. We still believe God is the only thing that explains things we don’t have an explanation for. That was one dagger.
The second dagger is that war is a necessary side effect of religious belief. So if you are religious, then you are pro-war because of your region because there were religious wars in history. As I stated before, most wars in the history of the world were not religious in nature. Second, it’s unfair to say every seemingly religious war was a religious war, and that it was malicious and unjust. It’s intimating that religion begets evil despite the fact that such things are expressedly condemned by most faiths. Third its a poor view of history. It would be more fair to look at each war by why the war was fought, what was the goal and what actually happened.
There is a third dagger from the one statement. It’s simple and elegant in it’s expression. Religious people are not grounded in reality.
So in one sentence, he judged religious people to be stupid, deviod of reality and violent…Forget the fact that all of it is baseless, it still is off topic too.
Next he makes the claim that ideal society is ‘just a dream’, i.e. cannot be achieved after stating earlier how to achieve it. Then their is another dagger a forth that intimates that stupid people do need religion because if they didn’t have it, they would not be capable of treating people with mutual respect.
Then finishing off the tasty morsel with a quote from Karl Marx, of all people. Translated means that ‘Religion is the opiate of the people’
Of course, any religious person knows that’s a load of crap. Being religious is the hard road not the easy road. But again he is speaking to the stupidity of religious people that they are just unthinking robots who just do what they are told and don’t think about anything.
This post was perfect for your discussion. You may not realize it, but you do want this to turn in to a debate. Forlife’s post is a perfect example of what your opposition will argue. They will tell you religion and religious people are non-nonsensical, stupid and violent.
You job is to show that that line of reasoning is just an Ad hominem. Disdain for religion and religious people doesn’t make it wrong or not benificial to society. Further, that 'mutual respect' as FL mentions is likely void of hateful bigotry. So with in this ‘counter argument’ he disproved his own point. That having a lack of religion doesn’t beget mutual respect as he clearly shows he has no respect for religious people or religion.
He says some people (dumb people) need religion to have mutual respect, but he with having no religion has no respect for the religious. Does that mean he needs region then since he has no respect for religious people or religion?
What he did show clearly is not believing in God or being religious makes you more apt toward mutual respect, because he doesn’t have mutual respect, but only respect for non-religious people. Having respect only for those who think like you is NOT mutual…Just sayn’
