Poll: Belief or lack of

[ryanatau]

I would say I am atheist level 1. Noting that there is a typo in the description it says

Atheist level 1: There is/never will be/ can't possibly be any type of God that impacts human existence. Religion is just a story and everything has a natural explanation.

"There is any type of God that impacts human existence" Which I think should say there is not.

I was going to rant about those people who said that they would believe anything with evidence because I think they are wrong (esp. Okieslims what is "real evidence?"). And I was going to rant about agnosticism. But I think that would derail the thread. I will say that I agree with Thanatos:

Ignorance has never stopped anybody from having an opinion :) Very few agnostics will say they truly don't know; most that I've met lean in one direction or the other.

[Walrus]

Atheist, in that I don’t believe in god/gods. Agnostic, in that I can’t prove god/gods don’t exist. Possibly Apatheist (don’t care), in that the idea of worrying about the existence or non-existence of something I don’t believe in sometimes strikes me as just a bit silly and should only really matter to those who believe. Religion however is another issue entirely, god/gods are absolutely harmless, religion kills people.

[ryanatau]

Lots of things kill people not just religion. Whenever this idea is stated, that we should get rid of religion because some people use it wrong, I think of James Madison in Federalist paper #10:

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

Its not an exact analogy but it still works. Just because some people use religion incorrectly does not mean that we should get rid of religion. We need to find ways so people do not use religion incorrectly. Besides, even if religion is destroyed people will use other ideologies in the same way. What we need to do is find out how to stop people from using ideas incorrectly not get rid of ideologies completely. I'm also reminded of those two South Park episodes with Richard Dawkins.

[Walrus]

I pretty much agree, but I don’t think it matters as to whether religion should be got rid of or not, the fact is it can’t be got rid of it. I don’t know what makes some people religious but I do know it is something that true believers will readily die for and it’s not going away.

What I feel needs to happen is for religion to become more moderate, liberal and tolerant, sanitised if you like; unfortunately because it is such a valuable tool for those of a tyrannical disposition, such an idea may be hard to implement.

[Gods_Mercenary]

Religion always becomes sanitized and liberalized in cycles. It's moderation or reactionism is a direct symptom of society. Take Catholicism, it took on the relatively liberal and advanced ideas of Roman civilisation, but as the empire fell apart, it soon found itself catering to illiterate barbarian warlords rather than educated roman warlords, and the religion understandably took a more fundamentalist turn. Then, as the Renaissance began to take hold, it opened up more while maintaining a corrupt power structure. Then, as the world, especially the religious one, seemed to fall into chaos, the conservative grip was strengthened, until finally we see the move towards the religion of today. Same goes for Islam, when times were good (the same time christianity wallowed in the Dark ages) Islam was a beacon of learning and philosophy, but when European powers began dismantling the Muslim world, we saw the turn to the radicalism of today. The point is, that if you want to fix religion, you have to fix society first.