" and we would all be better off if it never existed in the first place."


far from truth

with out some religion social norm would not exist in the current fashion

in some way or another religion has shaped every persons view on how they should act in society

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_masses

It's always out of context! When he said that he meant Religion gave poor people happiness and hope, and therefore was useful, as obviously a contented people was less likely to lead to crime.

And obviously I was indocrinated by 2 degree holding parents, one in Physics, and one in Human Biology. I hate it when people generalise and think "oh his parents are Christian, he must have been indocrinated", I'm sorry, but my parents most certainly weren't (their parents weren't Christian at the time), and I you can't do A-Levels in Further Maths and Physics and not question everything.

I have no problem with deism, it's illogical, but no more so than assuming everything always existed. I think it adds an extra layer of illogical by assuming something concious made it, but deism I don't find crazy.

It's the personifications of god that I find ridiculous. Listening to people talk it's hard to tell the difference between god and an abusive husband. The conversations go approximately the same as if you're talking to a dutiful wife married to a psychotic man. Always starts off with a defense of his actions.

He demanded the genocide of numerous nations, the slaughtering of women and children!

But they made him do it, he didn't want to, but they really forced him to commit genocide, and it was really for everybody's own good if he killed them all, you see he had to, and besides he's different now, he's alot better now, he doesn't do that anymore.

That's terrible, I'm going to give him a piece of my mind!

No,no,no, don't do that, please don't do that, he'll be angry. You don't want to make him angry, please don't make him angry, I think he's probably already mad at you, but he's very nice, so very loving, you don't know him like I do, he'll forgive you, I'm sure he'll forgive you, I'll ask him to forgive you, I'll ask him every night to forgive you, I sure hope he forgives you, and me to, I really hope he forgives me, I'm so bad, he tells me I'm bad, and I know it, and I ask and I ask and I ask for his forgiveness, and I'm sure he'll give it too me, he's soo loving, if only you knew him like I do, he does so much for me, every day, I just wish I wasn't so bad to him. But don't worry He'll forgive you....probably...and he'll forgive me, I hope, I know he will... but if he doesn't....he's going to kill us...he told me so, he told me he'd do terrible things to us if we make him angry, and we're so bad to him all the time, I'm trying to be good, but I'm just not, but I'm sure.....I'm sure he'll forgive me, and you to, I think he'll forgive you, I hope he'll forgive you...or..or..

Forgive me for what???

....not loving him.

aaaand.....scene

I mean bloody hell, what kind of insane maniac is this guy? If you ran into a woman talking like this you wouldn't go worship the guy for being so damn awesome, and hope he forgives you. But you run into millions of people talking like that, so what the hell, I'd better start loving the guy....or else.

See, that's the difference between religion and science. Science sets up parameters and predictions and if things don't meet those predictions they know they made a mistake. Science is "falsifiable" it can be disproven. Religion sets up the answer, an axiom that under no circumstances can be wrong, before hand and then sets out to explain why everything points to the answer being right, and if something does fit into the parameters or predictions then they set out to explain why the prediction or parameters are wrong (they have to be wrong, they already have their axiom to compare everything too) or how they actually if you look at it in the right way, still prove we're right. You're confusing the two here.

My example of rabbits in the pre-cambrian comes from actual biologists. When asked what would disprove evolution they some something like "Rabbit fossils in the pre-cambrian era". Something that completely contradicts what they know and predict. Evolution actually makes predictions and sets itself up for failure if they find something that would screw up the whole theory.

 When the science of genetics came about, the biologist community took a big nervous gulp and got to work because this was something that could make or break the theory of evolution. What if everything had wildly different genetic codes? What if their were no connections? What if each specie was a perfect, unique snowflake? What if genetics left no room for things to gradually change over time with each successful replication? But those things weren't true. They made predictions of what the genetic code should show, the predictions were right. All the things they predicted were related had highly similar genetic code, lots of organisms had genetic code left over from what they used to be but were no longer, there was a ton of junk DNA, they could predict which species came first, and you could tell which species came first by genetic code. And the way chromosones exchange with each generation showed exactly how evolution takes place.

If a descrepency is found, then a new prediction has to be made to account for the descrapancy. For instance Apes such as Gorilla's, chimpanzees, and orangutans have 24 pairs chromosones. Humans have 23. Now that doesn't make sense, you don't lose chromosones evolving from a closely related cousin. That could've been a big wrench in the common ancestory idea, it would've blown it out of the water. So a testable prediction was made, the chromosone pair containing the necessary genetic information had joined with another chromosone pair. Each chromosone pair have a distinct beginning/end point called "telomeres" and a middle point called "centromeres". If the two pairs joined at some time then there should be a chromosone pair that has telomeres in the middle, and there should be two of the "centromeres", like a genetic big mac as it were. Guess what the result was when they went looking for the chromosone pairs? They found exactly what they predicted. A chromosone pair with telomeres in the middle and two sets of centromeres. Do you know how ridiculously specific that prediction is? That's not a harlot riding a scarlet covered wild beast, that's damn specific and there's no chance of that being a coincedence.

They made predictions of what would appear in the fossil record, they too were proven right. The further back you go, the less complex life gets. Certain species evolved into other species, and came about at different points in the earth's history (as it turns out, fish and birds didn't pop up before land animals per genesis).

That's how science works, falsifiable predictions are made, and then proven or disproven.

Little things come up here and there, that leads back to the drawing board. But those are details, not game breaking things. If something came along that blew the frame work out of the water such as bird fossils predating all land animals such as genesis predicts, then that would signal that the theory of evolution was wrong. But as it stands it makes predictions and then it's villified. What you describe is the religious take on proof.

Are you saying God couldn't deliver presents to all the children in the world in 1 night?

The deal with religion is... and most people will agree.  A lot of it is just made up.  Creation stoires and all that shit.  Made up, Reveleations, made up, etc.

If it wasn't religion people twisted it would just be something else.  For example, most racism and sexist is justified by science.  The stuff that is done by twisting religion would get done by twisting something else, for example.

As for we'd be better off...  while athesits make 10% more.  It's not like if everyone became an atheist everyone would make 10% more.  That's just stupid.

HOWEVER, it has been shown that the religious donate more to charity then atheists.

So... it seems the opposite was true.

Of course that's just a correlation. 

It may just be that people who are generally more charitable are more attracted to religion.

While those who generally aren't more charitable are more likely to be atheists. (Not this isn't one of those OMG the world would collapse if there was no religion arguements. Just based off the scientific data.)

Something has to be proven first however before they change.  They wouldn't just assume something was wrong if rabbits apeared then.  Not most scientists anyway... they'd want a stone cold different reason.  So they don't lose their grant money.

You can tell this by the number of far disproven science expirments that are still going on.  Theroies that are all but disproving.

I've read and seen way too many scientists and studies going on to believe your way of thinking of scientists.

Scientists spend too much time and money to have their theories disproven... espiceally when it invalidates exactly what they got their degrees on.

They would just mark it down as an unexplained descrpency possibly caused by something else, and keep rolling.

Also... would the world really be better off if Religion never existed?

You can argue that it's "outlived it's usefullness". From an atheists view i can see that.

However i can't see how an atheist could argue religion never had a use.

Religion for a long time was the main driving force behind science... and has times saved science from being lost. (For example stuff saved from the fall of Rome.  Even more would of been lost without religion.)

It's only fairly recently that science has come into "conflcit" with religion.

Science existed well before any overbearing religion came to be. Archimedes found a way to calculate the volume of a sphere, and that requires limit. He was very close to discovering Calculus centuries before Newton was even born. Yes, religion saved some knowledge from the fall of Rome, but it's not like Rome was the last bastion of knwledge, Byzantium still existed well after the fall of Rome. Whatever little knowledge was saved does not redeem how much science was surpressed during the Medieval Ages.

Athiests tend to be more educated than religious people.  Not saying religious people are ignorant or anything, just that many athiests are college graduates and the more educated you are the more open you are to secular thought.

I do question the religious being more generous.  I am an athiest, but I volunteered at a Christian charity.  I'm not sure how these statistics work, but I dont recall ever being asked about religion.  I also trust some Christians charities more than others, such as the Christian Children fund which donates 80% of its donations while some others give 20-30%. 

Perhaps ahtiests just dont care about volunteering or giving charity to a religious foundation?  I know that I dont seek out a Athiest Childrens fund or Athiest food bank.  Perhaps athiests prefer to donate through taxes rather than charities?  I know athiests tend to be more liberal and like a bigger government, so maybe we just prefer to pay for these programs through taxes.

You weren't asked about your religion because you weren't part of any of the studies.

They would just track what people of different religous and political affiliations donate, and how much time and blood they give away as well.  They even have breakdowns for what money is given away to secular and nonsecular charities.

Also "Donate through taxes"?

Everyone "donates" through taxes.  The difference is... people who believe that the government should handle social issues are less likely to put extra money aside to give to the poor... despite the fact that they're the people who think they have too much money.

Why?  I don't know... conservative people probably feel like a lot of their tax money is wasted and feel the need to make up for it.

However an even stronger factor is religion.

A religious left wing liberal is a lot more likely to donate money then an Atheist conservative.