First off, The "watchmaker" argument ---->
Okay, anyways...
religious nuts from 1000 years ago would want to lock this thread.Religion is not debateable, keep the knowledge from the people, promote ignorance.
Yeah, well 1000 years ago, Catholicism was very similar to radical Islam.
It is easy to be critical about religion keeping people ignorant, committing atrocities, propagating superstition, and manipulating the masses. Every single one of these things has happened.
However, that says nothing about whether or whether not God exists. Religion is an entirely human creation, acting as an intermediary between Deity and man. Subjective experiences with God can lead to all sorts of crazy interpretations, philosophies, dogmas, and actions.
But deep down in the human heart, there is a Desire to commune with the Infinite. It is innate, whether or whether or not you think it is. How can it be innate? There are tons of people who don't believe. Even the atheist and the agnostic have at least asked themselves these important questions about God and Life, and have come to their own conclusion.
Some forms of religion promote ignorance. However, others including even Catholicism, ask their practitioners to go deeper in to Reality and experience it on a non-materialistic, an intuitive, inner, supernatural level.
Religion has been around since man first made cave drawings or tried to worship the sky, stars, animals or plants. We are the only primates, and animals on the planet, capable of thinking abstractly. Why hold in condemnation another's abstraction, or their Reality as they see it? Don't you have one yourself which you cling to?
The Catholic Church has accumulated some huge karmic challenges over its storied and controversial history, but I have confidence these things will work themselves out. From my personal experience, I have worked with Catholic Charities on the front lines of homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, crime, and prostitution infested areas. To describe the work they do as commendable, inspirational, and unselfishly Loving would not do justice to these wonderful souls.
If taking shots at them makes you feel better, go ahead, they can take it.
But I must ask.. What are
you doing for your fellow man, righteously indignant secular humanist?
As much as you want to intellectualize your patchwork materialistic morality, as a whole, you fall incredibly short of the religious.
Sure, you can claim religion "has done more harm," but if you want to blind yourself to its good, then perhaps you are the one steeped in "ignorance."
