Allow Religious Debates.

[ZenitYerkes]

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

The difference is that Hitler isn't around anymore, but religion as an institution is still very much here.

Long time ago or not, but religions do not change, because the old scriptures and whatever holy texts they are based on do not change on their own either.

What? Doesn't change at all? Let's take for example Catholic church: Second Vatican Council, more than 2500 bishops from all over the world debating on what aspects of religion should be kept and which need to be renewed.

Scriptures may not change but it is how they interpret them what changes the institutions. Or are there still bonfires?

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

Well if something is a tradition, it doesn't necessarily make it a good thing.

We have to be able to communicate somehow, and since we have gone past the barking and grunting stage, we have come up with a little more sophisticated methods of communicating. Language is merely a tool, and the more universal the tool is, the more useful it is. If you have a certain type of screwdriver, and if majority of the screws in the world are that type, you'd be a pretty well equipped to handle screws.

Now languages go by the same logic, when the majority of people speak English, then they are pretty well equipped to handle most situations that require communication between various individuals.

And religion is harmful in a sense, that if you raise a child to believe that fairy tales are absolutely true, then the child will run into problems when confronted with controversies when real life doesn't mach up with the lessons of the stories. Now most people grow apart from their religious teaching and leave them at their fictional value, but some people never realize that they are not the truth, and thus we have our suicide bombers and other religious extremists. I'd say that there would be much less trouble if religions weren't around, but then again humanity has an infinite amount of capacity for destruction no matter what.

First. Anything -even regular education- shapes you in a way you don't consciously des¡re, but you go for it anyway because of social pressure ("everyone else do it, do it yourself as well"); because is the "mediocrity tax" you've got to pay to stay in a group.

Now, what's needed is not to remove education but teach people to question their education. You won't know why 2 and 2 are 4 until you try it out yourself, everything will be just something from the textbook until you know it's something real; the same can be applicable to physics, language and religion.

However not all people are intelligent neither curious, thus most of them just want to be part of a society and become "mass persons", people who is OK being just like "everyone else". And they won't make up their minds to "free" themselves, because it's too difficult and what they've got already works for what they expect and want.

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

But they all don't, and that's the problem. Because when you have a large base of something, you have to tolerate all aspects of it, even if most of it is harmless anyways. The casual basis of religions gives soil the extremist behavior, since one cannot criticize religious values, because then one would end up offending the harmless majority.

You can't force people to believe in what you believe. Not only religious people oppose to gay marriage, not only religious people dislike Jimi Hendrix.

Again, there's no need to criticize; but questioning is vital to make a change.

However, and unless you've got something better than the answers they've got; don't go around saying the world would be a safer and comfier place without religion. Everyone has their personal utopia and thinks the world would work better with it, including Muslims -everyone being Muslim-, Christians -everyone believing in Christ- or Atheists -a world without religion-; but none of them work in theory because you cannot suppress freedom of thought.

Tolerate the intolerant, question values and traditions and if you've got something better to offer, show it to them with respect and reasonableness.