Religion or Human nature, which is root of all evil?

I did already. I asserted your claim was false. Now you have to prove it true.

This week in the deep OT philosophy corner we discuss which bowel movement is better for the human soul. Some claim quick is the way to colonial freedom or Long and hard is the product of spiritual awakening of the human soul. Man 4 straight months of 15 hour work days sure do take there toll. I have no idea whats going on. Ha Ha.

No what you did was play a 5year old kid who thinks its enough to just say "no it isent"

If you want to have the debate then you have to come up with a hell of a lot better argument, particular since i have no intention of going into a serious debate with someone who doesn't intend to do the same.

For someone talking so much about "debate" you don't seem to understand the very basic nature of one. I made an assertion disagreeing with the claim that evil exists (which the thread had assumed true). I do not have to prove that it does not exist. You disagreed with my assertion that it does not exist, saying that, in fact it does exist.

The concept of "burden of proof" lies with the person making the affirmative claim. I merely stated, in less words, that I do not accept that "evil" exists inherently as a "thing" or "being". I clarified by saying that it is merely a perspective that people place on the behaviours of others whose behaviour they disagree with or find appalling.

You claim that evil exists. You must prove that it does. This is debating 101. I do want to have a debate, I want to see your arguments in favour of your position. The mere fact you keep avoiding even coming up with even a basic rebuttal shows that either, 1) you don't have anything to counter my position, or, 2) you don't actually want to have a debate and just want to to bully me into submitting to your assertive might.

I will do nothing of the sort. Evil doesn't exist until you can prove that it does. The ball is in your court.

stupid sweeping states are the root of all evil

@indzman:

It's human failings such as greed. I used to blame religion for many of the world's woes, however, after being saved I found that, as with almost everything else, the media only shows the extremists who are screwing everything up and giving entire groups of people a bad name.

First i can make it clear that i am all in for a good debate but when a person uses as little argumentation as you did and simply states "Evil does not exist" its hard to know exactly how serious you were and i have no intention of being "burned" by some random forum users who have the mental maturity of a forest slug. So thanks for proving that you are not in that group and actually want to have a debate.

Also debate etiquette does not apply when its a one-liner argumentation, and thats debating 101.

Back on topic, do evil exist, well first of all i never said that evil is a thing or a being or anything physical. Evil is nothing more than a understanding of the human psyche and despite its religious origin its more fitting today to describe those humans who are incapable of either feeling any empathy or able to put it ahead of their own and who fall into the socio/psychopath category.

So if you take a normal empathic human being as "good" you have your "evil". So evil do indeed exist.

Human Nature

It's obvious that religion can't be the root of all evil as non-believers and non-practicing people have also committed evil acts.

Also many people have done a lot of good motivated by their religious beliefs, for example the Little Sisters of the Poor who take care of many elderly people here in the U.S.

Evil does not exist, only your perception.

The bible is a book of fiction, what does it matter what it says?

Human nature is the root for all humanity beliefs and actions rather if you want to label them "good" or "evil"...

It's a combination of the two.

Religion comes from the latin word 'religare' which simply means 'being connected'. Religion has a number of functions.For one , to give a meaning to life and death but also when your life is filled with misery knowing that it will be better in the afterlife, if you're doing the right thing.

It's also made to let people live together in a peacefull way and be prosperous. However, (and this is the way I see it) religion has a sort of manual (like the bible) which acts as a guidance to live in peace with the others and be prosperous. The problem is that those manuals are thousands years old and while there is still a lot of truth to them, there's also a lot of ways that simply don't work anymore today. It has been failing for a long time and it only gets worse lately, especially with globalization. There's a reason why people take so many pills like antidepressants, tranquilizers and antipsychotics. Who knows what's right anymore these days?

We need a new messenger of god to guide us, because the human flesh is weak and when there's no guidance there will always be sheep that derail. I have great respect for people who stand up and speak up to defend the right thing but there's no one that has all the answers and that is kinda sad.

The moment we can all relate to one messenger, is the moment we will all be saved.

I've gotta comment on this. While it's true that many aspects of religions are no longer relevant to modern life, I think it's a stretch to conclude that the prevalence of antidepressants, tranquilizers, and antipsychotics has anything to do with religion's ability to keep up with globalization.

For starters, there are also a shitload of atheists on those kinds of drugs. Religion or no religion, globalization is a relatively new thing and I'd put more stock in humans just being biologically opposed to it on a personal emotional level. That's not to say that globalization is a bad thing, but look at human history. For the vast majority of our existence, we've been living in relatively small societies. We're well-adapted for that, our brains have evolved to be comfortable with that. Then globalization happens in a relatively short period of time. That's gonna take some adapting to regardless of whether you're religious or an atheist. It might not be a case of religion having a hard time adapting to globalization, it might just be a case of HUMAN BEINGS having a hard time adapting to globalization.

But even that might be kind of a stretch. If you look at how frequently people use antidepressants, tranquilizers, and antipsychotics, that might simply be a reflection of how advanced modern medicine has gotten. Today we have far more advanced drugs being administered by highly trained doctors who are (often) far more qualified to do so in a safe manner. A lot of today's drugs didn't even exist a hundred years ago. Today, if you are suffering from some mental illness, you're far more likely to have access to the drugs that let you safely deal with your condition. Even 100 years ago we were throwing people into asylums and lots of people had no other options but to try to wash their troubles away with booze and opiates. Go back 1000 years and it was probably even worse. Does the common usage of tranquilizers, depressants, and antipsychotics mean that modern humans are getting more mentally ill, or does that merely mean that modern medicine is more equipped to treat illnesses that were always there?

Well, i don't see how you can talk about religion as something seperate from humans.

Atheists have become atheists because of the secularisation. Secularisation happened because of science and the fact that the foundations of religions are too old to be used in the modern era. If we would have a modern religion there would be a lot less atheists. As a matter of fact, a lot of atheists have a form of religion as well, like scientology or simply modern ethics. Religion is not the same as faith or worshipping a deity, like i said , in the strict sense of the word it means 'being connected'.

Your comparison with the old age of medicin isn't really correct. The psychotropic medicins I was talking about aren't meant for all those people. Only a small percentage is actually to depressed to go out of bed or so crazy they are disfunctional. Percentage wise, in the old ages, there weren't as many people in the asylum as you have people now that are on these medicins. The overall drug use is much higher nowadays as well.

Most people that use these kind of drugs nowadays simply don't need them, it's because everything has become so complex that people can't cope, especially if there's no proper guidance. It's the system that makes the people sick, not the faulty genes. The gene pool is too big and the percentage of users is too big to say that this is because of genetic defects.

If I would follow your reasoning , the genetic defects would have the same statistic properties as it would be a virus, and this is simply not possible. Most people that take this are perfectly healthy but they get mentally ill because there's no clear path to follow.

You can't separate religion from people.

No, but you can separate people from religion. You know, seeing as how not all people are religious. If people exhibit a trait, regardless of whether or not they are religious, then there's a good chance that it's a "people thing" rather than a "religion thing."

No such thing as "root of all evil", as evil is subjective. This thread is utter bs.

Yea, but they are one in the same. Religion manifests itself through people, so when they exhibit a trait that lies in accordance with religion, it's both a people and religion thing at the same time. They're inseparable.

Your adrenaline hormone it to blame.

all sin was cause by it

there is no such thing as evil just self interest and lack of empathy for others.

hell, half you fuckers want to suck ayn rands dick so how can this be hard to understand?

how is this a question? human nature the whole way.

"so when they exhibit a trait that lies in accordance with religion"

Which is a specific subset of "things that people do".

So no, they're not one and the same. Think of the saying, "all apples are fruits, but not all fruits are apples." Well, that's the situation that we're dealing with here. Draw a big circle and label it "fruits", then inside that circle draw a smaller circle and label it "apples". Are apples and fruits one and the same? No. All fruit traits apply to apples, but you can't legitimately say that apples and fruits are the same when certain apple traits don't apply to cucumbers.

In the same way, "people things" is a big circle and "religion things" is a smaller circle resting entirely within the bigger circle. Sure, all "religion things" embody characteristics of "people things", but not all "people things" embody characteristics of "religion things. "Religion things" is a subset of "people things", which means that they're not one and the same any more than apples and fruit.

Human nature of course, religion just pepertuates it.

Human nature. Humans can bend religion to their nature.

Human Nature of course.

Humans are fucked up creatures in general, so i think world would be fucked up even if we didnt have religions nor religion debates/fights. Atheist people are no better/worse compared to religious people. Of course it would make more sense for a bad person who knows hes bad to not to belive in god (it would make him feel worse prabably) however it doesnt mean he did those bad things out of disbelief or whatever. Religions caused a lot of wars, but, thoughts were used by people against people. So in the end its humans making this world better or worse, not thoughts

Are you guys debating over evil (bad things/ people in general) or evil as aspritiual creature that exists in almost any religion? I guess its the second one

So imo your debate is kind of meaningless since you cant prove its existence nor non-existence so anyone can say it exists or not , and they wouldnt be wrong, in any way. Why would you debate over it? lol

Like I said, you can't prove that a kettle isn't orbiting the sun. But seeing how we can't prove it does exist we assume it doesn't.