Btw just wanted to say that this is just my current conclusion/point of view and it might be or might not be the truth, you are in fact encouraged to question it and if I find the facts/arguments to stand up I´m willing to change my look on things…
Good to have some fresh input in this discussion, splajn. There’s much in your reply I would like to comment on but in this post I will just make one point (it’s late and all).
Let’s develop a simple command-and-obey model.
We have three different roles:
- The Ultimate Authority; 2. The interpreter and communicator of The Ultimate Authority; 3. The recipient.
It’s a functional input-output system that works this way:
2 interprets the contents of 1, establishing new contents.
3 takes over the contents communicated by 2.
In principle the contents of 2 can’t be predicted or determined by looking at 1 (because 2 has the authority to interpret/change the contents of 1). Now what’s effective about this system is that the contents of 3 can always be determined by looking at 2 – ‘course it’s the same.
Now this model is extracted from
and
So the description of 1 can be substituted with “God (the words of The Holy Bible)”, 2 with “priests (the interpreters and communicators of The Holy Bible), and 3 with “the believer (average religious person)”.
The religious contents expressed by the priest are merely transferredto the recipient (the believer) because it’s built into the whole phenomenon that the contents are not “questioned” in any way. So one is not allowed to add or subtract some. Moreover, the believer must take the contents to be rules and act according to them. Now what outcome can we expect from such a model?
If 2 preaches “Satan is among us and we must fight him everywhere we see him”, 3 will go out and look for (and make himself some) enemies. Now given that 2 really produces such rubbish, one could wish that the poor believer 3 didn’t automatically believed it (that the hierarchic relation between 2 and 3 was different, that 2 didn’t have supreme authority, that 3 started to think for himself assessing the reason in 2’s claims…). Therefore…
Yes, in this case it would be good if the relation between 2 and 3 was “insecure” or “unstable” leaving the possibility open that 3 would not simply reproduce the rubbish expressed by 2. But…
If my model representation of your argument so far is right, it’s not “an automatic consequence” that “bad things” will come out as the output of the system, it entirely depends on the contents of 2.
Thus if 2 preaches “love thy neighbour” 3 simply obeys, probably leading to astonishing good results. In this case it would in fact be a bad thing to insert an “unstable factor” (the ability to doubt 2) because it would open the possibility that “those GOOD THINGS (my substitution) might not have happened.”
The reason why you think it’s mostly bad things that comes out of the model seems to be that you use the commands “though shall belive. Though shall not question” [A] to define how the system functionally works and [B] the essential contents (bad ones) communicated and believed in the system.
But the “though shall belive. Though shall not question” is not primarily a prescription for action (in terms of what you do), but a prescription for how to deal with the beliefs on which to act.
So the “though shall belive. Though shall not question” that defines the relation between 2 and 3 must be accompanied with some kind of content – the subject or articles that one “shall believe” and “not question” – before anything comes out in the end.
So my point is that there seems to be something missing or something to be elaborated before your argument is a strong one. I’m sorry if I once again forget “the overall picture” – I’m just trying to figure out what is essentially bad about religion.
And what I take to be the conclusion of your argument – that “The increasing risc of bad things happening is an automatic consequence of anything which claims that you should not question their opinion/or follow them without asking any questions” – doesn’t seem to be well supported.
EDIT: Just wanna repeat my call for action (questions later 
): Let’s say no to this infernal lunacy and on-going warcrimes. Participate in a demonstration near you.
Hoy Auffe Was away from this topic for some time actually Glad it lived beyond our efforts 
It’s probably about the concept itself. Splajn might not be able to explain his ideas fully but it really looks like we’re speaking about the same thing.
I don’t know if I can actually try to illustrate “exactly” what’s “essentially” bad in any “classic religion”… but I hope you get an idea:
- you aren’t born with it. You are told about it.
- it “imposes” more (or “new”) rules instead of freeing from rules, imposing behaviours that, most of the times, are against our own nature.
That’s why he sais
where the point is “thinking for themselves”. Something that you definitely can’t REALLY do if you stick to religion.
To me looks quite reasonable. “Dogma” is for people who decided to disconnect their brain from reality.
Nobody likes to be “imposed” a behaviour instead of being “Explained” in his own behaviour… and religion does not “comes to explain how you feel” it does the opposite. It’s you who have to “study a long time” and “put a lot of efforts” in “being like religion wants me to be”. There is nothing natural and spontaneous in religion because our own biological nature (our instincts, which is the middle of our spontaneous behaviours) is depicted itself as something bad, evil, dangerous and socially dislikable…
I admit I wasn’t fully able to follow your logic… but to me it’s totally clear the reason for which you seem to depend so much on such kind of “hyper-math” explanations. As I’ve wrote some post before, I think that “your” logical convintions about your religion are consequences of your “inner need” of stating yourself as a believer. It means that you haven’t decided to be a believer BECAUSE you have done such mindworks… quite the opposite. Since you had to be a believer and you found yourself with this inner need, you have come to explain it to you in a wide fashion of rational-logical ways.
The more you complex, the more complex the “logical structure” you built to sustain such unusual “idea” in your “ideosphere”. If you were a much more simple person, like a child, you would have probably said something like “I believe in god because otherwise mom gets angry”… like it normally happens.
But you are the smart mind you are… so we face heavy “logic-rational” structures
Because religion can produce good things as well as bad, one could try to say the pluses and minuses balance themselves out–if we were dealing with hypothetical scenarios. The reality is that the only way humanity has promoted rules based religion, particularly the Bible based beliefs, is in a way that has more negative effects than positive effects on individual lives, the way business is done, and the overall picture.
I mean, if we want to bring into perspective good things that can come out of bad, look at the structure and willingness to do “the right thing” people who followed hitler had. Through all the horrible things hitler’s followers did, they had a tight sense of community and brotherhood. Does that make the neo-nazi movement something that is not inherantly bad? I don’t think so.
Now, another question might be–how can we view religion as being good or bad anyway, since right and wrong, good and bad are religious ways of approaching things in the first place–the truth is cause and effect. Religion has caused more wars than anything in history. If one thinks war is beneficial to society for some twisted reason other than population reduction, then they might be able to have some arguments in favor of promoting religion–but would they be worth listening to? 
Notice that the “hyper-math explanations”, the “logical rational structures” and those kinds of things were not developed to support a conclusion of this kind: “religion is essentially good” or “religion has some intrinsic value” etc. I’m not even trying to defend “religion”.
What I did with regard to your earlier post was pointing out what seems to be a flaw in your argument… or I found it curious that you promoted this inference:
(1) Religious as well as non-religious people are doing good things. Therefore: “religion” is not related to “good”.
But NOT this one:
(1a) Religious as well as non-religious people are doing BAD things. Therefore: “religion” is not related to “BAD things”.
I think we all must accept the premise of both of the arguments (Religious as well as non-religious people are doing good/bad things). But stating this tells us little, if anything, about how religion is “related” to good or bad things. If on the other hand non-religious people never do bad things, we could say that being religious is a necessary condition for doing bad things. Then you would have a strong case… but in any case… this can’t possibly be the case.
So I was trying to incline you to make up a better argument – or revise it.
The “inner need”…I’m not aware of all of my “inner needs” and of course “stating [myself] as a believer” could be one of them. So you would argue that I have been told that “religion must be true, now believe poor Uffe!” and since I’m having a hard time believing in obvious absurdities I put all my (insignificant, agreed) intellectual powers into rationalize this belief in every possible way…
Again, these are not “logical convictions” about “my religion”, first of all because I have none (religion), secondarily because the “logical convictions” were yours: by “developing” your argument I only tried to show that “logic” of the kind presented can’t be decisive when dealing with this issue (I think this is also true of splajn’s argument).
Your claim is that religion is “bad in all forms”. I take this to be a quite extreme position – and in fact also a dogmatic position. “Dogmatic” in the sense that the grand conclusion, establish once and for all, renders “actualities” insignificant… or in the sense that this conclusion tells you to interpret every actual religious practice in a way that support the conclusion, thereby in principle precluding the possibility of a counter-argument/counter-example. Let’s be open-minded.
It seems to me that I am the “moderate” in this discussion. If you asked me: “is religion MOSTLY responsible for bad things?”, I would answer “probably” or “that’s my impression too”…
My claim was/is that “religion is not bad in all forms”, that it can be “a good thing”, and that one can find historical (and probably everyday life) examples of religious people doing good things. Of course these “good things” that “religious people” have done/are doing do not necessarily have to be attributed to “religion itself”. But being the fair and impartial people we are, I think we in principle should be equally cautious in cases where the inference “religion → bad things” or “religion → good things” are possible to make. In other words the relation should not be established beforehand. We have to look closer at the “actual instances” and “other relevant factors” etc. before making our judgement.
Then, besides exposing the flaws in splajn’s argument with the help of the “command-and-obey model”, I wanted to show that the essential characteristics of religion that you have proposed are much too broad to capture what’s “specific religious”. In fact you, Parsec, have already looked at our topic in a larger picture a few posts ago:
Again I call for a more distinctions. It’s absurd (unreasonable and practical impossible) to take all practices that are “culture” and “tradition” and label them: “BAD!”
As splajn pointed out in his own terms there are certain problems with the “command-and-obey model”. In a system where a certain group of people (splajn’s believers) are not allowed “to question” commands by another group of people (splajn’s priests) the commands are likely to subordinate the powerless group to the needs of the powerful group. Besides that such a system in my opinion violates human nature and that it probably will result in bad things, I think it is just plain wrong… because I’m an equalitarian. But this is a model that describes how things work and one can find elements of this model in lots of different spheres of human life:
In politics, in socialization, in religion, in “culture”, in “tradition”…
So when things workthis way, we should be criticizing them because they inhibit “totalitarian” or “authoritarian” aspects. It seems useless to criticize the “sphere” (e.g. religion) in itself.
Another thing. The “you aren’t born with it. You are told about it.” applies to the spheres mentioned (and many more) – even in cases where these are structured in Just ways. If “you aren’t born with it. You are told about it.” is in itself bad… what’s left besides fantastic Utopian ideas (that we, for that matter, also not “born with”)? In general, but not always, it’s a nice idea to free oneself from rules. IF these rules are bad ones. Some are good.
This is certainly “bad religion”… and yes also an “essential part” of the Christian tradition. I agree we in general should be opposed to beliefs that depict humans as essentially bad. But religion does not have to be that way although it’s a “classic”.
My proposal: Given that “religion can produce good things as well as bad”, one should resist the temptation to put “anything religious” into one equation and instead by first approximation differentiate between those religious practices that produce good things and those that produce bad things.
The reason why these lunatics would certainly not be worth listening to, is that moral truisms, right and wrong etc. are more fundamental than religion and religious beliefs. If moral evaluations were “religious” we wouldn’t be having this discussion. 
Well, the right and wrong thing can be debated as well, actually. If one thinks about the way they would feel if someone did something to them, cause and effect rules out doing anything with negative connotations, unless, of course, the person enjoys making people feel awful so they can feel better about themselves temporarily (which can become an addiction if not realized and stopped via one’s own will), and that can always apply to Bible and non-bible-based religious people who believe in right and wrong, to those who have completely broken away from those types of thinking who don’t look at almost anything as right and wrong–things just are, there are the consequences to every action.
There are things that we or other people have similar debates can agree on, but whether they’re “wrong” or “right” may not necessarily be one of those things. I use those terms, as well as other people I know that think similarly, only because it seems to be a good slang to get a point across quickly. It’s like saying “american”. When we say it, we’re not referring to Canada, or South America, or Mexico, we’re just referring to the United States. I try to say “the states” instead of “America”, but I slip once in a while because it is so commonly used. When I say wrong or right, I refer to things that have negative or positive consequences for myself, or other people, or other animals or things, or the entire state of existing.
EDIT–Addition: “Right” and “Wrong” implies that every action is being judged by a power beyond our comprehension.
Hm. I see what you mean… and I think I have to be more “specific”.
We started this discussion with the U.S. and their “military” behaviour…
U.S. culture ranges from regular militia to obsessed home-grown soldiers ready to do “their part”, if you saw movies like “Bowling for Columbine” I guess I don’t have to explain more on this…
Now can one claim that this kind of weird “military approach” to life is “not entirely bad” just because other people out there are killing or shooting with guns? Can’t we say that this obsession for fighting, this culture of “fear” and this love for weapons is “Not necessarily bad”? And to the opposite side: can we say <<Well, the army can’t be entirely bad because there is a “civil” use of soldiers in emergency situations, earthquakes, fires, etc…>>? That’s what I’m talking about… what need to they have to dress green disruptive patterns and wear weapons to act on a fire? Volunteers do the very same without weapons… so “helping” it’s NOT “unique” to the army… “killing people” might not be “unique” to the army too… but it’s exactly what they train themselves for.
Well, I’m sorry if you misunderstood me… in no way I intend to mean that your intellectual powers are “insignificant”… this is an interesting thread and, as I said, I appreciate your point of view on things.
It doesn’t really matter how “powerfull” you intellectually are… “un-conscious” it simply mean" You don’t know it"…
Infact what “comes up” into your rational mind comes from the “unconscious” part of our mind… and we don’t really know how-why because that part is… un-conscious
It is, it is
I still have to see an “actuality” that goes against my “dogma”
Understand and agree… but honestly, before speaking, I had the chance of studying myself almost any religion on the face of the planet. I think that a FEW believers today have done a research as deep as the one I’ve done.
I -AM- open minded… and that’s why I didn’t stick to religion since the very beginning. That’s why I wanted to have a look to them all before making myself an idea… Keep in mind that christians, to name one, they think that “Those who don’t believe in god are all traitors and sons to judas”… and I’m not even baptized so I really am “a beast” for them and for sure I’ll grant myself hell. I apologize if I can’t help but seeing such people like a bunch of assholes… and no, I don’t think that stating this is a dogma…
Most classic examples of “religion” are mostly about “someone else” who have “found” what is the “best way” that’s the very same for each one.
It’s just “the way” you have to follow with not much of a discussion. It’s “like that”. In a practical way, “the way” to follow it almost always consists in deviating your own time-energy-focus on something that’s not “you”.
This is bad, Auffe… VERY bad. I don’t feel too dogmatic in stating that whoever sticks to dogmas has given up with the chance of thinking by himself.
I agree with this point of view… but I am 33 y.o. Auffe… and my judgement wasn’t established “beforehand”… I’d say the opposite.
Now my “daily” situation is kinda difficult to explain… let’s just say that I’m some sort of psychologist and have plenty (over hundreds) of “practical” examples at hand… from almost any religion.
Yes… I better explain myself here
In short: Tradition: something you have to follow here and now… but is not based on -YOU- and not based on -NOW- it is simply “told”. Whatever comes with “fixed rituals” and is not “knowledge”…
Long: Something I have been speculating for a long time it was “recently” recognized by others as well and eventually grown into a full science, with my great satisfaction.
It is called “Memetic”.
As I have been conceiving it, I think it is not fully developed yet… but you can already find interesting documentation around the net.
“Memetic” deals with the “Meme”… like a “Gene” is the brick for biological matter… the Meme is the “cultural transmission unit” and in a word is “what ideas are made of”. Now Memetic has finally come to a very interesting point for the whole humankind… and it’s about explaining something about ideas and the way the “live”… reproduce themselves… defend from attackers… and so on. Funny point in memetic is that it deals with ideas as they were “living beings”… with a full “self-conservative” instinct.
Under this point of view you can see that most of the “traditions” are indeed behaving like “parasites” on the ideo-sphere of the “host”… leeching the energy from the host with nothing in return except the “supposed” assumption that you have to “feel good” or “be happy” when following that… or that at least you “will be” happy… and, most of the times, that you will be “Not-OK” if you don’t stick to that.
One example of a form of culture-tradition with a precise functionality for those sticking to it… is “Language”… and… well… I don’t think we can find much more… if you see what I mean… and even entirely sticking to the “language” tradition is not entirely good… as language itself is continously evolving.
In short again: most of the human “traditions” are very ill attempts to see reality as something “not continously evolving”.
Have a look to “Pleasentville”, the movie…
I think we’re coming to a point here. Religion comes almost exclusively as a form of tradition… and there is no “biological” counterpart… not today.
In some situations you can find “spiritual” approach to things… like many shamans were used to think that the first airplanes flying over their heads where the “spirits” of some other shaman in his shamanic travel…
I think that “Spiritualism” is a “biological” tendence… as it developed quite everywhere… IMHO, since we all have an uncoscious mind, spiritualism can be seen as a primitive attempt at creating some sort of “psychology”: an attempt at explaining what happens in our “invisible” world.
As far as I have noticed… you need no rules if you do “understand”.
Do you “need” to be “told” not to kill anyone? I don’t feel like that… and It is not because I was “told” to. So you need to be told not to steal? I don’t feel that way… I like to obtain stuff with my efforts and if I have to steal something maybe I’m just not supposed to have that.
I don’t know what “moral” you’re thinking at, actually
As far as I have witnessed there is no “good” production from “religious practices”…(remember Venezuela) Religion itself promotes “its own idea of goodness” which, you guess, is VERY distant from a “human” and practical “good”.
“Be distant from what you really need”
“Pain is good and necessary”
“you instinct is inspired by satan”
“never -really- care about here-now, the real thing is there-after”
“sacrifice yourself in the name of others”
and so on…
- Capitalism is the new religion and Corporation CEO’s are it’s high priests.
Sorry, I haven’t followed your discussion in a while. Haven’t really got the time to catch up right now. 
Nice avatar, Kizzume, is that you?
Nice avatar, Parsec, that is certainly you… in all your mysterious glory.
Thanks for clarifying some points, Parsec!
Your military analogy gives a fine idea about what you mean (“religion’s main function is to make people feel bad about their own instincts etc.”), but I think it’s the wrong idea. Religion is a much more complex phenomenon. The simplest purpose of the military is to kill people, yes. It’s designed to carry out this function. But the purpose of religion… there’s so many, it depends on a lot of different things. Well, no need to tell this story again.
Oh, I didn’t think that. I was just quite impressed by your ability to psychoanalyse me and uncover the underlying motives of my input in this discussion under these circumstances where we haven’t even seen each other or talked to one another. When I openly state that I’m not religious I think it’s far fetched to interpret my critique of the conclusions “religion is automatic bad” or “religion is bad in all forms” as an “inner need to state myself as religious”… In fact if classic psychoanalysis were applied you would be the suspect of having “inner religious needs” since “resisting and denouncing X” is traditionally interpreted as a sign of “dependence on X and urging for X”.
Of course our differences in opinion have to do with the differences in the “empirical material” we rely on. My response: yes some (very orthodox) Christians think that way. But I know of a lot of Christians who focus entirely on the positive messages in Christianity, trashing the grand divides (saved – doomed etc.) and all the hell-talk and sin-talk and so on. I live in Denmark. A lot of church representatives here are essentially nothing more than soft humanists. And my guess is that none of them would agree with: “Those who don’t believe in god are all traitors and sons to judas” or “Be distant from what you really need” or “Pain is good and necessary” or “you instinct is inspired by satan”.
The Bible is a bowl of contradictions. It’s the most genocidal book I know of, but it also contains a core part of humanistic thought. It all depends on where one’s focus are and how one interpret the holy book.
Please don’t count me as one of them. Btw have you read “Karl Popper: Science: Conjectures and Refutations”?
I don’t get the point. Could you explain this again (maybe in shorter sentences 
)?
I don’t think so. Can you elaborate a little on this issue?
I don’t know if this is a proper response but…
Every serious moral discussion presupposes the principle of universality (such as “if it’s wrong for you, it’s wrong for me”) and that there in principle is one and only one answer to a moral question. (This answer can be a complex one, e.g. "the aspects A about X are good, the aspects B about X are bad)
Now at the outset of a given moral discussion we don’t know the conclusion/answer to our question. At this stage of the discussion the moral judgement is “beyond our comprehension” in the sense that we have not yet reached a mutually accepted/binding conclusion but nevertheless presuppose that such a conclusion in some sense exists (is it this presupposition that brings the transcendent “power” you talk about into being?). Without the tacit anticipation that consensus is the point of discussion most communication breaks down.
So it’s the goal of discourse that the formal basis for agreement should be transformed into an actual contentful agreement.
When such an agreement is reached (let’s say… “beating up one’s wife is bad”) we find out that in making our concluding moral assessment our “comprehension” was a necessary requisite and nothing beyond that.
The religious idea that only some kind of absolute power has the authority to make the judgements “right!” or “wrong!” makes most of our practices meaningless.
Therefore I think we should accept that morality is not “absolute” in a strict sense: a certain moral judgement is not valid once and for all. And it’s only human beings that are capable of making these judgements, not some strange creature.
On the other hand morality is not “relative” in strict sense either: a certain moral judgement demands to be univerally true:
If the action X is wrong given the circumstances A, B and C, at a certain time, a certain place - it follows that:
Action X is also wrong (given the circumstances A, B and C) at another time, another place.
But in principle it’s always an open question whether X is wrong/bad.
Now the culture-tradition thing.
I was in fact wondering whether you would include language in this big pool of evil. It’s another issue imho, first because culture presupposes language, secondly because “language” is not something you’re “told” in the same sense as “how to behave in the traffic” for instance. Compare these exchanges of words:
- Q: “How come you became a socialist?” A: “My parents told me to.”
- Q: “How come you speak Italian?” A: “My parents told me to.”
“2” just doesn’t seem to be a proper response.
If I understand you correctly the thing that distinguish “language” from “culture” is not “functionality”. The "self-conservative instinct” of “Memetic” you mention (could this thing be called the “structural features” or “underlying structures” of our beliefs?) seems to be a notion about functionality. This notion suggests that our beliefs should be understood in an evolutionary psychology perspective??? So the prevailing beliefs are the beliefs that have most evolutionary advantages. If so, the "self-conservative instinct” and maybe “an ability to propagate” are necessary features in the long run if certain beliefs are to survive.
Culture and Knowledge. Your division between “tradition, culture” and “Knowledge” (or “rules” and “understanding”) troubles me – the distinction seems too rigid and artificial. The idea that there’s some pure “culture-free” (self-evident?) knowledge is a fiction from my point of view. In some respects it sounds like classic existentialism with its ideas about “authenticity” and radical “freedom” that we tend to overcome by imposing dependence on conventions on ourselves.
I don’t know if it is something like that you have in mind but it seems implausible that we can enter a culture-free zone where some kind of universal and unhistorical “Knowledge” reigns… A few questions:
Is the distinction between “Memetic” based ideas and “Knowledge” drawn within the science of “Memetic”?
If “Memetic” is a science about the building blocks of ideas/beliefs why is “Knowledge” not subordinated to (the same principles as) cultural beliefs?
In fact this was one of the questions Nietzsche faced in his “genealogy”; the answer was that everything comes down to the “will to power”. So how can we distinguish between good cultural practices and bad ones? Nietzsche’s answer is that the more primitive (barbaric) expressions of the will to power is better than the more advanced cultivated ones which disguises their motivation behind some sort of humanistic façade.
Rules and understanding. For obvious reasons I don’t know the contents of your “understanding”. Let’s say you believe in this idea: “Try not to inflict physical pain on other human beings” (I hope you believe it). Now this is a “rule” like this one: “Don’t enjoy the pleasure of masturbation”. What distinguishes the two can not be that one has the form of a rule, the other not. It must be some other thing. Human beings are rule-governed creatures.
Meta-remarks.Take this discussion. We are individually defending certain claims. In “memetic terms” our role is to ensure that our particular ideas survive. You stick to the idea that religion is bad in all forms, I say it isn’t. So we are defending our claims. Judging from this description one could think that we are basically confrontational.
However, in pursuing our individual goals we try to provide some information that supports our respective claims in an assumed common perspective. So there’s an integrational function too (which I tried to say something about in my response to Kizzume).
I think you’re right in the sense that capitalism is a dogmatism that almost nobody seem to question. It’s today’s great belief system. The capitalist conception of human life is transmitted on television every day… and who cares?
… all in all you are right, we shouldn’t really go with this topic right here and with no “real” contact between us
I don’t want to take over the whole forum for this discussion we might well have on private emails… I know we both have good reasons to think what we think.
that’s crystal clear Auffe But no… I don’t really feel like urging for any kind of religion… to say it all, as you might notice from the beginning, I never really wanted to get into THIS kind of thread. This is a music forum, you know… and even if the OT taglines includes “your religion” among the topics I know this requires all another way to go to. I knew it was going to be a never ending discussion. What you perceived is my “fear”. Here I face a continous, endless stream of problematic people whose problems are almost always coming from the “religious” approach that many italians have.
If you are born in Italy you might well expect that your mother “teach” you to send “kisses” to the “picture of jesus” because otherwise “he becomes sad”.
Girls have a very bad and hard way of dealing with their body and their sexuality for the very same reason… and so on, people comes continously complaining about how impossible is to respect the christian ideals of “happy life” and “loving couple” and “marriage” and “family”… and they simply don’t understand that the problem itself is that they are not going as they feel… but as they “should” go.
Yes, you spoke about Denmark and danish christians… but don’t forget I live in Italy… (!)
Yes, I know and agree… but weird enough, any other “holy book” contains “humanistic thoughts” and not only “holy books”.
The bible is definitely not the book with the strongest/better humanistic approach, IMHO. To say it all, to me, it sounds like a mix between Isaac Asimov and tons of bullshits. To get something good out of the bible one has to discriminate SO much that one could well squeeze out more wisdom with less efforts from any “Psychology for geeks” book.
Take sexuality. It is not hard to conceive that today there is a “weird” way of living sex… those sticking to religion will probably avoid falling in a meaningless display of para-pornographic adultness, it’s agreed… but sticking to religion they will almost avoid ANY contact at all with sex… going as unhealthy as the opposite side… but untill religion just says “We have actually a wrong way to have sex” it sounds pretty damn right.
Yes I did… but I wasn’t too impressed with it.
Taking up things with too much of a “logic efforts” and I will challenge you to proove scientifically that it’s true that if I hit you in the face you feel pain
I never wanted to “prove” anything on my side… when I was a child I was known in my classroom as “the most christians of atheists” for my totally peacefull approach at this Time has changed things a lot… and against my hopes. Funny point is that “pressure” to be able to “prove” something is a typical “religious” behaviour. I can’t be willing to “prove” that there is no god… at least it’s “others” who have to “prove” that there is one.
Don’t be too ironic here I thought we were trying to understand each other …you want this italian guy to start being ironic and fooling with you?
you SURE?
It’s just written in a not-proper english… I perfectly dig the meaning.
In a certain way this is true… only they don’t have “Evolutionary advantages” toward mankind… but toward “their own existance”.
I wouldn’t claim that AIDS is good for our own evolution because it manages to spread well and follow its own functionality.
man… have you ever had sex?
I am quite sure you did… and by that you experienced a “cuture free” and “Rational-free” existencial position that lives inside of you regardless of your “Culture-tradition”.
But honestly… I don’t feel we’re getting nowhere like this 
I’m not using my rusty english in a proper way… you are not understanding what I mean because of that… and in the end comes quite impossible to speak about “what’s behind your rational mind” using a rational language and approach, I understand…
Yes - with an off topic forum in it. I think it’s a really good thing that we can discuss all sorts of… hm I just read the discription: “Discuss stuff not related to renoise here like religion or your favourite color etc 
”… Is “religion” added recently? OK, then on to a favourite color discussion 
Oh, the point of Popper’s thought is that in principle no “proof” can ever be obtained… or that the best “proof” is the lack of incompatible evidence.
…
I just got interested in “Memetics” and all…
Yes, then let it rest. Thank you for all the replies and sharing your (thought)provoking ideas with us!
LOL
Yes, it’s a very interesting field… I was so amazed, when I was a child, for not finding knowledge around me of such evidence. It took some time before this ideas were grown to be accepted into some kind of scientific approach.
Actually my only critic to it is that memetic describes “memetic systems” as something “you can’t resist” or that you can’t really “get rid of”… while as far as I’m concerned this is not true. Memetic systems behave so similar to living beings that they can “die” for lack of “food” just like any other “living being”.
The fact that “they” react with self-conservative initiatives it means that somehow they can actually “die”, if you see what I mean.
Yes… I simply call that “extreme relativism”…
There must be some good coming from this… in terms of scientific research… but honestly, I always find people sticking to it when they “hate” the idea of being “framed” with logic.
So it doesn’t really matter… they can even really hit you in your face and then when you get mad at them they can go like “are you sure I did what I did? can you prove it scientifically? Am I an illusion or am I real? And what is real? And is hitting you in your face really bad? Bad for who? What is pain? Are you sure everyone hates that? what is bad? and what is good?” and so on…