You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: We Told You So
You need to provide evidence. Just because you believe religion is the problem doesn't make it so. heck it make my argument more correct since you base it on your blind belief.
correlation is not causation.
japan, vietnam, soviet union all atheist countries and did the same atrocities.
What evidence is more solid than the person doing something saying "I'm doing it because of X"? Is the fact that the terrorists in question are doing what they are doing in the name of Islam disputed?
I didn't say "the problem", I said "part of the problem". Do you find the evidence for than insufficient?
Or are you disputing my more general assertions about religion in the second part of my comment? If so, I agree that I didn't provide evidence for those here. It goes without saying that I wouldn't mind arguing the point, but I'm not sure we need to go on this tangent.
The "nothing" part was more rhetorical than a literal assertion and I agree that there is more than one way to control a population. Religion is one of the best tools, but there are certainly others too.
Religion is one of the many "gateways" a human can chose to express their pathos about something. Whatever the reason is (meaning in life, revenge, survival) is irrelevant. If religion was to go away tomorrow people would tunnel that passion into something else.
That is my general point. Again. History has demonstrated this plenty of times. It is not about religion or politics but something that stems from our nature. Group against group. This is how evolution works. This is how we got to remain the only humanoid species on the planet. We killed off all the rest.
Do you think all "gateways" have the same "throughput"? I think there are certainly differences to be made. "All are the same" is certainly a claim that requires significant evidence as we clearly have examples of less violent and more violent societies. This means that there must be factors that cause this differences, right? What people are passionate about would certainly make a difference.
I agree wholeheartedly with your general point about tribalism. This is one of our worst traits as humans and we are extremely susceptible to viewing the world in us-vs-them terms. Still, there are values and belief systems that alleviate the problem and ones that make it worse.
Of course, things are not black and white - the same thing might lead to different results for different people. If we take the example of religion, there are certainly people that view everybody outside their own religious group as the enemy, while others take a more positive message from the exact same religion and put in a lot of effort in treating others kindly and properly regardless of religion.
If we are talking about concrete evidence on the matter, western societies are certainly becoming more progressive and accepting while becoming less religious, so that correlation should be taken into account. Of course, as you mentioned, causation is really hard to isolate and this is especially true in terms of human behavior.
I would advice you to read the book "Germs, Guns & Steel" or watch the online documentary on youtube for free. It answers all of your questions with substantial evidence.
(especially about the west. We fucked the entire planet for centuries and then we decided to become the good guys).
I don't dispute that at all ;)