*chuckle*

Thanks for the condescending remark and the lecture. But there is no need...

And Nietzsche's comments were not the only ones I had in mind. The end of religious faith was predicted by Marx and by Shaw and by all the progressives who believed (assumed) that the inevitable progress that was part of their understanding of history would result in the destruction of religious belief. Progress as an inevitable process is obvioulsy dead, as the Victorians understood it.

Nietzsche should have claimed that God was dying, like I have, not that he was dead. But I guess lesser minds than my own plod along as best they can .

And I don't have a huge problem with the view of religion that you take in your post. I don't like it, and I think it's more harmful to both society and the individual than a more realistic view of the world, but I can be tollerant toward it.

But I wasn't responding to a post about how religion can help the individual find meaning and purpose.

I was responding to Euro-Chess' post about how you can't explain the motions of the Sun without relying on an appeal to a fairy tale character.

That kind of empirical view of religion I have no tollerance for.

It's the same kind of view that keeps little Muslim girls out of school, that prosecutes homosexuals here in the United States, and that continues to insist that one way of life is better than another simply because some jackass is able to find some convoluted defense of repression in a 2000 year old book written by people who were closer to the cave then they were to modernity.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

'Condescension" and "lecture" are in your perception, not in my intent.

From what I've read of Marx it appears to me that he was merely saying that the specific types of religion which -in his view- were byproducts of the economical circumstances he found, would dissolve when -in his view- these circumstances would necessarily disappear. I can't recall a single instance where Marx phrophetizes the death of religion in toto. If you know of such occurence in his works, I'd be interested to know where.

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"Say not, 'When I have free time I shall study'; for you may perhaps never have any free time"
Hillel the Elder

Can you name a single period in human history where religion and God(s) wasn't a part of mankind's culture? And please don't disappoint by pointing to Buddism's lack of a God, I still consider that to be a religion. If you cannot, then the evidence will not support your projection. Looking forward to your reply.

EC

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I sometimes post on OzChess as well, but mostly here

Not sure what you mean, even the Shaw of Iran had a Million dollar death bounty on that British journalist that wrote a book they didn’t like. Thousands die even in stampedes related to death chants to these freedoms that even here aren’t politically correct enough to defend.

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Only a liberal would know how hard it is to get a nicotine patch to stick to a monkey.

Sure I can name a time period.

The future. Fair enough?

Back when people lived in caves, or mud-brick huts, or navigated by starlight people didn't know any better than to assign magical properties to imaginary beings that controlled the world.

To them ascribing supernatural events to divine intervention was just as logical as ascribing them to plate techtonics, the rotation of the Earth around the Sun, or geothermal activity. But as time has passed and society has developed, science has also progressed and can now explain more and more of the natural phenomenon of our Universe. Religions still cling on where they can but they have nowhere near the control over people they once had. Most Americans claim to be part of a religion, but for most it's more tradition than any kind of real, unquestioning faith in supernatural creatures.

People don't need God to explain anything anymore, at least not in the developed world. Some people still use it as a hedge against death by buying into the pretend religious nonsense about eternal life, the soul, heaven, hell, and all that other mumbo-jumbo.

That'll soon pass. Every generation gets further and further from the myth.

In the developing world things are different. People don't have shit so they still rely on religion's "promise of a better future" schtick and consequently a lot more people are a lot more serious about religion as they have more of a vested interest in it. But the developing world is only developing in one direction - into the future.

The scientific and technological revolutions really only kicked off in the 18th and 19th centuries. Humanity has been around in its modern form for 200,000 years. Since before recorded history, going back as far as the oldest known cave paintings and neolithic "virgin" sculputures, humanity has shown a reliance on religion to a least some degree. It very likely that the pathology is much older than that.

So for at least 35,000 years but most likely much longer God had been meddling in man's affairs. In the last 350 years God has moved out of the palace, out of the statehouse, out of the courthouse, out of the classroom, and out of the central position it had occupied for mellenia.

Gods, and religions along with them, have seen their heyday and are on their way out. It isn't going to happen overnight, but I never suggested it would happen overnight.

I said it's going to take thousands of more years for it (religion/god) to be purged from all modern reference. Religion will still leave its imprint on our culture, for better or for worse, and it will still be studied and discussed - just like dinosaurs, the religion of the ancient Egyptians, and National Socialism are studied and discussed today - but it won't have any real signifigance to people.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

Can you name a single period in human history when racism and crime weren't parts of mankind's culture? Abortion has always happened, but I assume on the basis of your religion that you don't support it.

The fact that a culture without religion may never happened before is irrelevent. Do you reject every technological, medical or scientific breakthrough on the grounds it never happened before? Should we not ban torture on the grounds that every society we can see has used it?

An excellent post Soot! I disagree with much of what you had to say, and will dive further into your arguments later this week, but I thought you did a good job in presenting your position.

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I sometimes post on OzChess as well, but mostly here

Yes, when Adam and Eve lived racism wasn't an issue. You've made other interesting points as well, and I will get to them later this week.

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I sometimes post on OzChess as well, but mostly here