[airspirit]

Who said that anyone here is purposefully bashing religion as a whole? Personally I think it is a crock, but does that make me want to bash it? Does that mean it has no merits? Absolutely not!

I have seen the comfort that religion can give during troubled times. It doesn't really matter what religion, even if it is a cult centered around cow-pie sculptures, it typically gives some measure of comfort. After all, most of the terror based religions have been removed from circulation within the last few hundred years, and now the main four are all centered around more of a comforting theme. When my mother was dying from cancer it was a great comfort to believe that things would get better for her. I'm happy that she had that ... but no amount of wishing can make fiction into fact.

What religion is based on is what psychofunk said: "Faith is the presence of action without the presence of reason or proof." Unfortunately, faith doesn't make fiction into fact regardless of what you believe. Please understand, I'm not trying to bash your beliefs or whatnot, and I'm happy that you found something to cling to as long as you're happy with it. But really, when all the chips are on the table and the last cards are turned over, faith really comes down to one thing: you want something to be true so much that you will blot out reason and proof to believe in something that contradicts both.

Every religious person should sit down and really think at least once in their life: why do I believe what I believe? Is it because so many others believe it that it has to be true (peer pressure)? Is it because you've believed so long that it has to be true, because if it wasn't you would have saw through it (time investment)? Is it because you want so desperately to believe that it is true (usually for selfish reasons like going to heaven, being with loved ones in an afterlife, healing through prayer, etc) that you force yourself to believe? Is it because the whole thing just sounds good? Is it because you need a reason why you should be a good individual (meaning of life considerations)? Is it a combination of these things?

Even though most everyone falls into one of those categories, the underlying reason typically comes out to this:

"I WANT to believe it is true, so I WILL believe it is true."

Regardless of the motivation behind it, faith really boils down to wishful thinking. Well, I guess I shouldn't categorize things so completely ... I suppose there really are people out there that believe that all of the scientific evidence really is the devil trying to trick us and that the earth (which was created in seven days, not the millions and billions of years indicated by scientific proof) has only existed for 6-10,000 years. The people that believe such crazyness in the face of fact are just a few more steps gone down the road of fanaticism, though their belief is founded on the same wishful thinking as others ... they just wish harder.

Oh, and before someone comes on here saying that "Evolution is just a theory, not a fact" like a fscking moron (I have no sympathy for this kind of lunacy, sorry!), let me give you another example: gravitational theory (you are being held down, right?). A theory is a set of guidelines and rules that a system will adhere to. Generally speaking, a theory is something that is generally believed and can be proven through experimentation (which evolution can be). Why is it not a law? Laws are more specific in nature. They typically come in the form of "if x then y" such as "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." Laws that encompass a broader scope are generally titled theories, such as relativity, gravity, evolution, atomic behavior, etc.

And before you say there is no proof of evolution, crack open an encyclopedia. Go down to your library and look at some archaeology books. National Geographic in particular has some progression charts of critters over a couple of million years that make wild changes, including human beings.

Really, the Darwin is dumb cos I said so argument gets old. Yeah, there have been further refinements of his idea since, but nothing ... NOTHING ... has refuted them in the slightest bit AT ALL except for religious belief.

What it comes down to is that once you decide what your wishful thinking will be focused on, any contradictory information is thrown out and refuted by either more wishful thinking or faith (oops ... same thing). Let me ask you this: if God came down to you right now and said that your faith was based on a lie, would you change your beliefs? Really, would you? Or would you still cling to your previous beliefs based on faith? What would it take for you to question what you believe?

For most faiths, the act of questioning your faith is the worst thing you can do. The reason for this is for peer reinforcement: if nobody can question their faith without being persecuted, then nobody will do it ... at least publicly. This causes less people to be affected, and the status quo can be kept. Religious organizations are really an interesting phenomenon when looked at from a psychological point of view, though it makes me a little sad to see how many people are locked in because they aren't allowed to truly try to discover what they really believe and what they really don't.