I think the reasons that school of thought gains traction are several: a number of religions on denominations focus on shaming humanity (i.e you're a sinner, this is sin, etc), others yet breed a culture of ignorance. Many others focus on draconian narrowness of thinking of living. And others yet are just batshit insane and or outright fucking stupid.
For what it's worth, I don't think most people who go around calling people sinners do so solely to shame others. A lot of the time, they're genuinely trying to get people to repent, as people won't seek forgiveness unless they believe they've done anything wrong. I won't defend the actions of everyone who has done this, as every case is different and in some cases, people start overstepping their boundaries, but people aren't always ill-intentioned.
I don't think religion is inherently bad, but it's not inherently good either. I would call it a benign tumor on society. Which, well, isn't exactly a good thing, even if it's not currently killing you.
I mean, what is it supposed to offer? Morality? People can be moral without religion, and religious people are often moral despite religion, in that they routinely discard older teachings that no longer seem appropriate. I mean, that's good, and plenty of religious people are very nice and progressive and all that, but they're not nice and progressive because of religion, they're just nice people fundamentally. I believe they would be just as nice without religion. Arguably this works the other way around too: evil people will be evil with or without religion, but perhaps it makes it easier for them to organize.
I guess what I'm saying is that it feels incredibly pointless to me. It's like believing in Santa Claus past a certain age: even it it makes you happy, it's a bit silly. As someone who was raised an atheist (as in, I never discussed religion at all until high school), it honestly shocked me that anyone actually takes this stuff seriously. I firmly believe that if no one was raised religious, religion would not spontaneously generate on its own in the modern world, because science has replaced most of the explanatory purpose it had in ancient cultures. Right now, it's just spreading because it can, a vestigial organ that no longer serves a purpose other than to be a potential site for infection.
Anyway, that's why I think religion is something that humanity could and perhaps should move past. It may not be actively harmful, but there's not much reason to keep it around either. However, I also recognize that a massive change like that isn't going to happen on its own, so religion might just be something we're stuck with from here on out. If we're talking about "why do some people believe that religion is holding humanity back" then I think not recognizing the tenacity of meaningless ideas is what causes people to think that religion will naturally go away as humanity advances.
edited 20th Oct '15 4:40:35 AM by Clarste
Well, I can't imagine religious thinking at all, so I attribute that to a difference in our upbringing. Frankly, I think that's the main point I had: religious people cannot imagine a world without religion. It infects everything they do and every thought they have, so they start to believe it's perfectly natural or even necessary. But I don't think it's natural, I think it's an accident of history that brought up generation after generation of mildly delusional people who think they need something they don't actually need.
I haven't done a survey or anything, but most discussion of atheism comes in the form of "rejecting" religion, which puts a very different spin on it and informs the attitudes of the speakers. Actually, reading a lot of atheist writings also strike me as incredibly weird because there's often a religious seed within their ideas that takes it into weird places. In that sense, religious thinking is corrupting atheism.
But unless I'm some sort of mutant, I just don't think a baby will naturally come up with the idea of spirituality.
edited 20th Oct '15 4:54:36 AM by Clarste
I wouldn't say that I'm opposed to religious beliefs per say (I have plenty of unverified, sometimes vaguely spiritual beliefs myself), so much as the ideas and ways of thinking that often go hand-in-hand with them.
The belief that some things will forever be beyond our understanding, or that we already have all the answers we need within a certain field, for example. Nothing halts progress as much as the belief that there is no progress to be had.
Not to mention the whole "faith" thing. Why is believing that things are true because you feel that they are, or because you really really want them to be, considered a virtue?
Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.The bottom line for me with regards to any belief has always been "Is it true?" Nothing I've seen so far has ever convinced me that any of the major tenets of a religion pass this test.
If anything, religion is holding religious beliefs back. An idea goes nowhere if you coddle it. The whole point of science is to throw ideas into a gladiatorial deathmatch. The strong survive, the weak perish. If a religious belief has any merit at all it will only grow stronger with scrutiny. Those that don't die with honour.
Why do some people believe that religion is holding humanity back?
Because people love to other ideas, people, and objects with the sole purpose of blaming things. Do not take it as a Golden Mean Fallacy, rather, that people will always prefer to look outwards than inwards when trying to find the source of a problem.
Likewise, some religious people will believe that science is holding humanity back.
Religious institutions however are severely outdated tho.
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothesThat's an interesting way to look at it.
Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.There's a few reasons. Anti-theistic types would largely say that religion is the "Opiate of the Masses", designed solely to justify *whatever you dislike here* (Marx hated religion as a tool to justify class inequality, Ayn Rand hated it as a tool to justify altruism). And, more recently, considered "anti-science".
Unfortunately, the idea of religion as anti-intellectual has been internalized somewhat in religious people themselves. As a result of this, anti-intellectuals have been drawn into religion.
Personally, I take an opposite viewpoint-spirituality as an aspect of intellectualism and religion as the driver of human progress.
Leviticus 19:34![]()
Some of my favorite crayon coloring books were there, you fiend!
edited 20th Oct '15 8:40:04 AM by Aszur
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothesThis. Atheism does not have to mean anti-theism. In fact, anti-theists can even be found among non-atheists. Meanwhile, there are theistic scientists; there's a school of thought that God or the gods set the Earth in motion so that we could explore and understand it, not for us to wallow in ignorance. If we weren't meant to have electricity, they wouldn't have put the lightning in the sky to inspire us. If we weren't meant to uncover the past, they would have decomposed the dinosaur bones before we got here. If we weren't meant to discover, there wouldn't be so much to discover. Etc.
The principle that religion is holding back progress comes from militant proponents of Science on the old, stupid conflict of Science vs. Religion, people who so fervently believe in atheism that they've turned it into a religion itself, people who - instead of not believing in anything - have a very devout belief in nothing and will fight tooth and nail to defend it.
edited 20th Oct '15 9:25:47 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I agree that religion has lost most of its explanatory purpose. However, I believe that there is another purpose religion serves for many people: the idea that, through religion, one can control the uncontrollable.
I'm afraid I've since lost the text, but during my study of Anthropology, I came across this very interesting research on superstition amongst professional baseball players. According to said research, baseball players would very often replicate behaviour and circumstances that occurred before a match that went well, and avoided behaviour and circumstances from before a match that went badly. However, said behaviour was often something along the lines of "pick up a piece of rubbish" or "comb hair three times over", which the players rationally knew could have no effect on the match at all.
Now, superstition is a thing that often occurs in humans, but the question this research tried to answer is why it seemed to pop up in baseball players so disproportionally often and extreme. The conclusion was something along the lines of "While there is definitely skill involved in the game of baseball, the players have very little real control over the outcome of the match, which is determined mostly by odds and numbers. The players instinctively seek out ways to control that which is not theirs to control." (not actually a quote. Like I said, I lost the text, and it's been five years)
They then cited an experiment done with pigeons, who were given food at completely random intervals. After a while, the pigeons would learn to display absolutely bonkers behaviour quirks like pecking at he floor three times, rub their head under their wing, and peck three more times again. All this without any interaction with humans that could respond to said behaviour, just a stone-cold machine that gave them food at random times.
(And I'm certain that many gamers have observed similar quirks in their fellows. A friend of mine, for example, refuses to roll more than one d20 at a time, because "dice superstition" as he'd say)
So what does this mean for this discussion? I'd say that we're probably looking at how religion first came to exist in the first place. Early humans had little control over their lives, and would live or die depending on things like the weather or the presence of hungry predators. So they naturally developed superstitions and rituals that had no real effect, but they believed it did because it worked before. These superstitions piled up, and, coupled with a need for answers to the questions of life, the universe, and everything (plus some old-fashioned fear of the great beyond, but this post is getting long as it is), religion was eventually formed.
Now, in modern times, we no longer have to consider supernatural forces when wondering what lightning is. That is true. But there will always be circumstances that are outside of our control, and superstitions will develop. Will these superstitions grow into a full-blown religion after the old religions are magically wiped out? Perhaps not, especially since there won't be many messiah figures in the age of "pics or it didn't happen". But then again, perhaps it just might. People are still scared of death, after all.
EDIT: wait, hold on, I just realised that this entire post is mostly off-topic. I just took some minor comment in another post and wrote this giant text without thinking on how relevant it was to the topic.
...well, I'm not going to delete it. I should really get some sleep, though. Sorry!
edited 20th Oct '15 10:11:49 AM by Kayeka
Similarly, concepts that aren't falsifiable such as predetermination would fall under the purview of philosophy and religion.
Leviticus 19:34

I can be guilty of that too though. My first encounter with a Christian was very loud and angry person going on and on about people burning in hell for misdemeanors.
Didn't believe much (at least I don't think I did), but that was my impression a decade and a half ago.
edited 19th Oct '15 3:57:13 PM by Stolen_Moment
Try imagining how far the universe extends! Keep thinking about it until you go insane.