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Originally Posted by wig
How do you explain the Scandinavian countries?
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Don't understand the question.
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Originally Posted by wig
Once again, you're common wisdom is flat wrong.
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It is quite possible I'm wrong. However, religion is what it is for a reason. The masses WANT it. They NEED it. Otherwise it would not exist in the manner that it does not.
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Originally Posted by wig
Life is not meaningless to those who have no religion or religious beliefs. You make your own meaning through things like your family, your friends, your work, your hobbies, your community, etc.
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I do not follow a religion and life is full of meaning to me. I'm not arguing that. However, the people who NEED religion obviously need it. Take their God and purpose away and see where they stand. Many of them will be lost. Some people just need to believe in something other than themselves.
You can't debate "if it never existed in the first place" as that is not realistic. You can only debate "if all religion ended today." And if that happened, it probably wouldn't be pretty. At least not for some regions of the world.
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Originally Posted by wig
I don't know if it the best form of control or not, but I'll agree it is a good form of control. What about government and law?
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Government control isn't working out too well in the middle east right now, or if you look at history, it doesn't there either. Religion trumps all for control. As silly as it all is, for whatever reason the vast majority of humans believe in some form of it.
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Originally Posted by wig
As a possible evolutionary benefit (or by-product of one), and the fact that it appears universally in some fashion or another, I'm not sure I would characterize it as brilliant.
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Until it is no more, I have to consider it brilliant. How else can you control billions people?
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Originally Posted by AtlantisCash
Thats a failed arguement that brought up by the religious ones most of the time, Religions itself are reason to crime more than Atheism/Agnostisizm/Deism probabely do.
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I can't dispute the facts that more blood has been spilled in gods name than not, however, without it and in modern times, if word broke tomorrow that God does not exist and it could somehow be proven, there would be chaos. But maybe I'm wrong. I suppose it's also possible all the believers would say, "ha, I knew it!" and we could all finally live in peace. Could go either way I guess. But I am a firm believer that humans need some sort of higher power to make them feel life is not meaningless and it does not all end with the end of human form. I wish that were not true, but facts are facts and there are more who believe in something than do not.