I met people on both sides that had either of those attitudes.
The “I’m always right because I have a PHD” is not uncommon, even on fields not covered by their education.
At the same time, I’ve met many religious people (Muslims, Hindus, Christians) that for them religion was a private, personal aspect that helped them deal with their lives.
As a kind of a routine, something done time and time again enough to clear up their minds from stress and give them an anchor when lost.
I’m not religious, but I believe in freedom and the pursuit of happiness, and I support anyone as long as it doesn’t interfere with other’s.
I agree, but I also fear religious people. Religion has time and time again interfered with people’s autonomy.
It still does to this day. Women in Oman, for example need a man (even if it is their son) to approve of her surgery. A woman needed surgery, but had no male relatives closeby to approve it for her. It was an emergency. Thankfully it was approved, but required a lawyer.
Christianity isn’t any better where I live.
Religion is fine on a personal level, but dangerous for everyone on a larger scale.
The problem with religion is it primes people for believing things just based on a trusted authority saying so. There’s no evidence in support of the existence of any supernatural entities whatsoever, and there’s no evidence to support the existence of a life after death, but people believe it anyway and religion holds their “faith” to be a virtue in and of itself. You could argue that that isn’t harmful by itself, but consider that many religious people believe things that the evidence of their own eyes proves impossible, and that any idea is fair game when you treat faith as a virtue. It doesn’t matter if people today only believed the “good” parts of religion, eventually someone will corrupt their blind faith and convince them of whatever they want, like that being gay is a sin worthy of death, that trans people are evil and shouldn’t be allowed to exist, that your pastor is totally a great guy and you should donate money to the church and totally trust him alone with your kids. The dangers of religion are in teaching people to stop thinking for themselves.
Religion really isn’t about knowledge and Science really isn’t about personal moral and motivation, which is probably why (from what I’ve observed from the handful of Christian Scientists I’ve known), it only ever works well when they’re kept apart and neither is used in the domain of the other - it’s perfectly possible to want to “discover the wonders of God’s creation” and “be a good, moral person” at the same time as practicing Science as long as one does not believe that the words of the Bible are literal and actual “knowledge” in the Scientific sense.
Those many “private, personal” benign religious people form a strong foundation upon which the crazies, cults, and conmen build their structures.
In my experience, these benign people are one tragedy away from metastasizing into the malignant religious type.
I have cousins who were benign-religious for most of their life, but after a death in the family they started following a new sect of christianity. Their children have never seen a doctor, nor a vaccine.
I agree people are entitled to their personal freedoms, but we would be much better off as a society if we could educate our way out of the cancer that is religion.
I met people on both sides that had either of those attitudes.
The “I’m always right because I have a PHD” is not uncommon, even on fields not covered by their education. At the same time, I’ve met many religious people (Muslims, Hindus, Christians) that for them religion was a private, personal aspect that helped them deal with their lives. As a kind of a routine, something done time and time again enough to clear up their minds from stress and give them an anchor when lost.
I’m not religious, but I believe in freedom and the pursuit of happiness, and I support anyone as long as it doesn’t interfere with other’s.
My God, a reasonable person talking about religion on lemmy
I agree, but I also fear religious people. Religion has time and time again interfered with people’s autonomy.
It still does to this day. Women in Oman, for example need a man (even if it is their son) to approve of her surgery. A woman needed surgery, but had no male relatives closeby to approve it for her. It was an emergency. Thankfully it was approved, but required a lawyer.
Christianity isn’t any better where I live.
Religion is fine on a personal level, but dangerous for everyone on a larger scale.
You seem to be conflating religion and culture with regards to Oman.
I see somebody downvoted you already, but I completely agree with you 💯
The problem with religion is it primes people for believing things just based on a trusted authority saying so. There’s no evidence in support of the existence of any supernatural entities whatsoever, and there’s no evidence to support the existence of a life after death, but people believe it anyway and religion holds their “faith” to be a virtue in and of itself. You could argue that that isn’t harmful by itself, but consider that many religious people believe things that the evidence of their own eyes proves impossible, and that any idea is fair game when you treat faith as a virtue. It doesn’t matter if people today only believed the “good” parts of religion, eventually someone will corrupt their blind faith and convince them of whatever they want, like that being gay is a sin worthy of death, that trans people are evil and shouldn’t be allowed to exist, that your pastor is totally a great guy and you should donate money to the church and totally trust him alone with your kids. The dangers of religion are in teaching people to stop thinking for themselves.
Religion really isn’t about knowledge and Science really isn’t about personal moral and motivation, which is probably why (from what I’ve observed from the handful of Christian Scientists I’ve known), it only ever works well when they’re kept apart and neither is used in the domain of the other - it’s perfectly possible to want to “discover the wonders of God’s creation” and “be a good, moral person” at the same time as practicing Science as long as one does not believe that the words of the Bible are literal and actual “knowledge” in the Scientific sense.
Those many “private, personal” benign religious people form a strong foundation upon which the crazies, cults, and conmen build their structures.
In my experience, these benign people are one tragedy away from metastasizing into the malignant religious type.
I have cousins who were benign-religious for most of their life, but after a death in the family they started following a new sect of christianity. Their children have never seen a doctor, nor a vaccine.
I agree people are entitled to their personal freedoms, but we would be much better off as a society if we could educate our way out of the cancer that is religion.
The ratios are the opposite though.