what the hell are you talking about?...


before Huxley people did not refer to themselves as "agnostic"

it is a meaningless term of phrase regarding spirituality as technically speaking each and every individual is agnostic to the absolute truth, if you want to express that you see your belief as a belief and not a knowledge then you say "I am an agnostic atheist"


..which is also unnecessary because everyone is agnostic.. unless you want to express that much that you are not that arrogant in the head about your beliefs.


Just read up on how agnostic came about in description of spiritual belief, it's not a matter of opinion. The definition is what it is

This post was edited by TCassa89 on Apr 22 2012 03:03am

Skinned & Tcassa, I didn't blame religion for those wars "neither of the world wars started because of or lack of religion", it was a reply to simpleforce´s silly attempt to blame secularism as the cause of the world wars.

Nazism and Communism are both pretty secular ideologies. I don't think that's representative of secularism, but it puts a damper on the perception of religions as especially violent entities.

This post was edited by bogie160 on Apr 22 2012 04:05am

Yes, the thing is that they were all commited in the name of Nazism/Communism and not in the name of Secularism, I looked into it before, quite a while ago though and iirc 90-97% of the germans during WWII were christians and in the meanwhile, the arguably most secularized country in the world has not been involved in any direct war since the early 18th century. So I could easily make a counter-argument similar to simpleforce´s which was the one i replied to that the wars was caused by lack of secularism and out of the industrialized countries today, it is the most religious one that keeps dropping bombs on other countries, but it's a pretty silly argument to make.

This post was edited by amatsukami on Apr 22 2012 04:17am

It squashes the idea entirely. I used to wrongly think religions were violent entities when I was younger.

This post was edited by Skinned on Apr 22 2012 11:32am

Any ideology in the hands of someone who wishes to do harm becomes that person's justification for doing that harm. Religions tend to be the more commonly used ideologies, but only because they're more prevalent.

Religions do not cause the wars but religion can make it worse, as bentherdonethat suggested. Because if they get triggered and inspirered by absolutist claims such as divinity there simply is no way to reason with such people and that makes them more persistent and dangerous. Could say that religion mixed with politics/war/motivation is like a murderer mixed with steroids.

religion is another tool used by tyrants to manipulate the people, the way Thomas Paine put it


"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit"


but let's not overlook the soviet union.. it goes to show a proper separation of religion and state goes both ways, the authority should not enforce or restrict any religion onto its people. Anti religion can easily be a tool for tyrants, so long as he convinces the people that his incentive is fighting something evil for the better good of the society...

This post was edited by TCassa89 on Apr 22 2012 12:46pm

deep

The Soviet Union formed a Cult of Personality where figures like Stalin were essentially worshiped as heroes and idols. It's similar to what North Korea had with Kim Jung-il. It's essentially an atheistic religion, but a religion nonetheless.