The Discussion Corner

[NanTheDark]

God doesn't play dice with the world.

Why do I include that I'm not very sure.

Also Ven, I think there is a big difference between believing in God and expecting that God will solve all your problems while you do nothing. While I believe in God, I still try to do everything I can for the people around me, because I don't think God will just magically fix everything. That's not how it works at all.

The way I figure it, God can work through people. Inspire people to do good things for others. To help others.

And I think that's one of the good things of religion. While you don't need to believe in God to be a good person (shut up Xero ), it can help in some cases.

[Venexis]

There absolutely is a difference, yeah. The point I was trying to make though is that we don't need it; in fact, all throughout history it's been more of a hindrance than a benefit to anyone.

I admit I'm not as into the idea of god(s) in any form now as I was a little while ago, but that's just me. I'm not so arrogant to claim that there is no such thing, but I definitely do think that a world without any religion would be at least as far along as we are culturally and technologically. Perhaps even more so, since we wouldn't have been concerned with killing the godless heathens for most of recorded history.

It seems the key point here is how you define "beneficial". I naturally lean toward a world based on explanation over faith, so that comes across very clearly in my answer. I advocate doing good things because it makes the world a better place instead of to make a divine being happy, and the fact that there are many good atheists and anti-theists in the world means we're definitely capable of it.

TL;DR: The goals of religion may not be entirely bad, but they promote apathy toward understanding the reality of our place in the universe and within humankind. This is something I can't respect, as we would almost certainly still be human (exhibit human traits like compassion and mercy and love) even in a world totally devoid of religion.

I really enjoy these discussions.

[GrandPiano]

Although I find religion an interesting topic, I generally don't like to get too much in discussing it publicly, because of all the controversy around it.

However, I will say that I disagree with Ven's statement that this discussion has nothing to do with the effects of religion. The question of whether religion is beneficial or not has everything to do with its effects on us. How else do you define a religion to be beneficial or detrimental? If we depend on religion and rely on it to guide us through our future, that is one of its effects on us. Similarly, if religion causes wars, then you could probably use that to argue that religion is detrimental to humanity.

I, personally, am somewhat agnostic, but am leaning towards Christianity. For the most part, I don't let religion affect my life too much, but the way I see it, it has had its good and bad effects on us. Really, to say that religion promotes apathy towards understanding our place in the universe and having control over our own lives is overlooking the fact that there are many, many people who are religious and yet have as much desire to pursue their desires and make their own future as an atheist. Heck, there are probably plenty of religious cosmologists out there; I'm part-religious and I'm into it.

Whether religion is good or bad to humanity as a whole, I cannot say for sure. However, whether religion is good or bad for any one given individual depends on the person. It all depends on how religion affects one's life.

[Bogdan]

I used to be a quite religious guy, maybe even to the extreme point, but all I think now is that religion is giving blind hope to humans. Furthermore most of the so called religious people are just corrupted. Somebody says "God hates..." and some people (which btw when they call themselves sheeps, the name fits) listen just because "god, church and so".

In Romania problems are pretty big. We are forced to take religion class hours which are only ♥♥♥♥ the romanian orthodox church says. In most cases it lead to hostility from orthodox children for protestants (trust me, they are stereotyped, blamed and in some cases hated a lot around here), jews, muslims and so on. My brother told me something he heard at religion class when he was in second grade, he has a colleague who told in class that she had a "best friend"; one day she found out her friend was protestant and run away from her and tries to avoid her because she fears "not to be converted". Right now my brother is kind of what I was years ago so I try to teach him some things I learned from my mistakes, but religion breaking friendships? And more, taking pride you abandoned a friend just because of an improbable (or may be even impossible) "conversion"? It's quite sad.

Alright another thing. We have religion manuals which gives us "proof of God's existence".

• Acording to it, if humans created the concept of god, then he exists (that being a "proof").
  Not trying to be offensive, but if a random schizofrenic created the concept of, I don't know, big cat-shaped snake which breathes uranium then does it make it real by default?
• "Nothing in the universe can move alone, something or someone must be here to make them move and that someone is that all powerful and the ability to move himself alone."
  That was my attempt to translate another "proof" from my manual. So NOTHING can move alone, but somehow the one who moves it can move himself? I don't understand ♥♥♥♥ and to be honest I think that's the point of some "reasons, proofs" and other "teaching" from religion. You don't understand anything so you think it's wise and deep because your mind can't find out what it means so you think you are not "gifted" enough to understand it, in reality in may be some random, meaningless ♥♥♥♥.
• "God's existance can be proved by the laws of thermodynamics. First law says that quanitity of energy is constant, because it doesn't "loose", but it transforms. From the second law we find out that not all heat can produce movement, so a part of it is lost, so the quanity of energy for transformation decreases, making the Universe more and more chaotic. In time, the energy's transformation in heat will lead the universe to a thing called "thermal death", meaning all that had a beginning also has an end". From the first law, we find out the universe couldn't have created itself and from the second we learn that all that had a beginning had an end."
  Huh? I am really not a fan of physics, but I do believe some things around here are ♥♥♥♥, yes the energy is constant, yes heat is a form of energy, but it just doesn't make a link in my head between this and "god, universe and themal dead".

This is not ♥♥♥♥ I made up, here have two pages of that manual. It requires a translator as it's in romanian, but if you can make it work with google translate then good luck.

Now I'll tell you some things I heard in my class (doesn't always limit to religon class).
When I was about grade 7 or 8 or so, our religion class teacher (who happened to be a priest, which actually isn't uncommon as if you had a religion teacher and if it was not a priest then that would be "weird") told us about how are we going to be judged and how are "the poor souls from isolated tribes who never heard of Jesus" going to be saying <<Well if they never heard of Jesus or God, then they'll be judged with their own laws>>. I couldn't help but ask <<What about others? Muslims, hindus, buddhists and so on?>>, his answer was <<If they didn't believe in Jesus then they'll suffer the consquences>>. I found that ♥♥♥♥ and I asked <<That's not fair at all, if you were born, say a muslim and you were told by the parents that you have the best religion and all the others are lies, from childhood till adulthood then your mind was made and you can't just be judged for that>> again the dissapointing answer was <<If you heard of Jesus and you didn't take him in your hearth then you will be punished>> and that was the final anwer. Well what do you think? If I happen to have "bad luck" and be raised in another religion and just hear of "Jesus" and don't accept him by default then I am going straight to hell for being such an infidel person, no?

This happened this year, in german class. My one of my german class teachers is pretty weird, being obsessed with philosophy and other stuff like that and sometime has it's own weird concepts about the universe. I really don't always agree with her, but one day she decided to talk about religion, which she was pretty open and I agreed with almost any point she made.
<<I recognize all religions on the Earth, but don't have respect for any of them, any. I myself believe in a "God", but seriously all religions and their sects are just corrupted and full of ♥♥♥♥ (she speaks pretty explicit). I was raised as a protestant, baptized just because my parents wanted so, but I don't feel any respect for it, I just hate the church and didn't go to it in the last years at all. I am so stressed for christian's church disrepect to women (she has an obsession with respecting women, but I think she made a few good points around. Also next things may be based a bit more on orthodox church rather than a protestant one as when she moved to Romania (she is actually german) she had to learn a few things about the common stuff around). Sure let all the blame come on Eve for eating the apple, why not Adam aswell? He proved himself weak and pretty stupid too when ate the apple. Eve caused all the bad and the original sin for humans? I tought the snake did it, giving the apple to them. I'm just annoyed that women aren't allowed in the altar (at least here, they are not), because they were the sinners, but any man can enter there without any hesitation. Also why the hell women are not allowed in the church for 40 days after they give birth to a child (again happens here)? I think giving birth is something wonderful, not something to fill filthy for it, yet still we are kicked out for "purification"? What does that even mean, I think we are pure enough if we are the only ones who can give birth and continue the life of the species.>>
Okay some of the quote may have been altered due to my memory, but that's it in essence. While most of us agreed with her, there were three other girls (oh how ironically) that didn't share her point of view, that girls happen to be overly obsessed with religion (which I'd blame a bit the brainwashing, but whatever) saying that it was all Eve's fault for not having a power enough will to confront the snake and then women deserve the pain of birth for also tricking poor Adam in eating the apple and so on. None of these things were based on fact, their sources were "the church".
<<You know also what bothers me at church? They're style of painting people (same teacher, she reffers to bizantine style, where most of the muscles and so on are simply gone). I saw paintings at churches from Italy and the ones from the reinassance era were quite beautiful, of course there were people naked, but they were well painted, unlike one of our church, where I saw a naked woman, but with no muscles, no tits, nothing, she looked like just a few sticks with hair. Was that supposed to be a woman? That's so idiotic, how do you think you were born? With muscles, with meat, with everything, not just a bunch of sticks. If you don't want the meat to be shown at all then don't paint it naked, damn it.>>
Again one of those three girls to the resque <<In churches are only painted saints and as far as I know, saints are not supposed to have genital organs (she may have reffered to tits a bit, as no other "organs" were involved)>>. Huh? That a bit randomly thrown here and we started laugh (well except for her saying she was damn serious as she takes pride in reading religious books and spending vacantion to monasteries (which btw is kind of hypoctritic for her because she's kind of a ♥♥♥♥♥, but that's another story)). Uh, so if you become a saint, then you aren't allowed to have genital organs? Or aren't allowed to be pictured with some (or even with some muscles on)? I don't get it, here I share the teacher's view, if you don't picture it naturally, then don't paint it naked.

Last thing and I hope to finish here, the romanian Orthodox Church became a "state institution", meaning it earns money from the state for just...exising, not only from the people "donating" and the various priests who also have a second job, such as teachers and so on. Personally they are big pain because they are waiting precious money on simply building more "churches", when we already have a hell lot of them. If you just cross two streets there will be another church, litterary and they are no "other sects", they are all orthodox. Sure some of them may be historical, but there is no need to build others, right? Not all of them are on the map, but here I'll count them.
My city has 132 km², so in this area are:

• Two churches in my neighbourhood (ok, one used to be for protestant germans, but now it became orthodox, to make it "easier" for orthodox people
• Two churches in the center, not far from each other (if you are in the bus station, you are just in front of one, if you look at 180° you can see the other one, less than a few meters away)
• One church at about maximum 50 meters away from those two
• One monastery, just a few meters behind the previous church, not being affiliated one to another
• Another church at the corner of the street, not far from those two in the center
• A church, a few blocks away from the one before monastery, just in front of my school
• A church in the hospital's yard
• Another three of them, just after the hospital
• The cathedral which is being build for 20 years, not far away from the center (is that big, you can see it even from outside of the city)
• Another two churches in a neighbourhood not far from the "cathedral"
• Another in a neighbourhood just next to mine's (used to go there when was little)

Total: 16 (but I'm sure there are more)
Outside the city, there are lots of monasteries, build during the medieval era and they are not even that far, just a few kilometers away.
Now most of them were build before communist era, so I can't take full blame on them. What bothers me is the large as cathedral. Spoke to people around, spoke with a few of my teachers, most of their answer was that "We don't need a cathedral, we are doing fine without it and could have put the money on other things, rather than waiting them on just another church". That's a logical tought, no? Here, have my religion teacher's view "We need to represent the church and God everywhere, in every city. The cathedral is a must have".
For those wondering here are a few pictures. Second one, this one is another church from the city, is about either half either 1/3 from the cathedral, but is large enough.
And as it wasn't enough, they plan on building a bolshoi (from ru: big, well in this case very big) one in the capital, here is the project: click. According to sources, they want to make also some shelters in the yard, to serve as a "small hospital". Just ♥♥♥♥ damn it, build an actual bigger hospital, rather than a big large ♥♥♥ church.

Last words: sometime between 1859 - 1866, the then leader of Romania, Alexander John Cuza, confiscated the land of the churches (until then, the churches had a big slices of the country, probably more than normal citizens had). When confronted my religion teacher about the cathedral and how nobody thinks it will actually be useful, he said that back in those years, there was a contract that the state pays debts to church in order to keep the land of the country. No more pay, no more land (aka, the church takes everything back). Asked my history teachers (had two) and said the contract doesn't exist and that's a poor made excuse for the cathedral, googled it and got the same result.
Now politicians, use church as propaganda and also a way to waste our money. Have a look. Here you can see the "Roman Voda" National College in almost ruins and the not-so-bad-looking "Vasile the Great" Church.

TL;DR
I used to be quite religious, just listening and believing ♥♥♥♥ just because "god", but eventually I opened my eyes and so how corrupt the religion can be, not it in essence as people who are supposed to represent it. I myself am interested in mythology and others, but honestly I've lost several respect points for religion, especially romanian orthodox ones, mostly because of their "leaders". I don't want my money spent on fancy ♥♥♥ cathedrals when we have terrible looking schools (if they are out of interest, they will get no support), roads that look like the battlefield of a nuclear war, less efficient hospitals compared to outside and so on. Also the several teachings of the religion are simply wrong, fine tell the kids to believe in god, but don't scare them or lie to them or tell them ♥♥♥♥ only to believe it, it's not okay. Sorry if cursed a bit too much in the post, but that's what I feel when thinking about it.

[Oranjui]

Again, I think that's what everyone's trying to get at. Religion is a much, MUCH more personal thing than it's been taught as over the millennia. Individuals need to be allowed to develop their own beliefs, faiths, principles, whatever you want to call it (if we're getting into that now I should probably clear up that I'm an agnostic-atheist as of this post. I'm not going to vehemently deny the existence of omnipotent beings or whatever, and I'm not going to preach the concept to everyone I meet. I'm trying to learn more about the many different religions of the world from an academic standpoint, mostly so I can understand and talk about these things more confidently, debate them, that kind of thing. Sometimes I like to play with concepts and come up with half-serious ideas about this kind of thing). Exposure to belief systems of the world wouldn't hurt, but one should not be required to attend those church classes and things like that. Unfortunately these are ideas which are very hard to come to terms with for quite a large portion of the world (civilians and governments alike), always clinging to tradition. And somewhere along the way we found the idea of theocracy, which is frankly one of the most mind-bogglingly stupid things I've ever heard of. It's absolutely unfair for the masses to be forced to believe what authorities want them to believe. That's not even necessarily an issue concerning religion anymore (propaganda, hiding/destroying evidence, silencing activists/protesters, power mongering, etc) so I won't dive into that. I think society as a whole is beginning to wake up to this, but many world powers still disregard it and do whatever the hell they want.

A world without religion, particularly the kind Bog is talking about, is probably just some crazy utopianism that could never be achieved, at least now. If the very notion was to be swept from the planet, I'm sure it would contribute at least a little bit to things like world peace/a somewhat unified society, more effective spending/budgeting locally and globally, and my favourite, scientific development. That's just speculation, though. There are lots of other consequences (good and bad) that would likely result from that. On the other hand, if it had never developed at all through history, I can't imagine a world all that much different from what it is now. Perhaps we'd have progressed further. Maybe we would have lost a great deal of culture and art that we have today. Surely, we wouldn't have the silly taboos of the modern world... "cuss"/"swear" words, all of the discrimination, censorship. You know. Again, mostly just speculation. There's no way to tell for sure.


As a whole (probably going to be a little blunt here), religion is and has always been outright useless, even detrimental, at least from the standpoint of ethics and hypothetical conjecture. Final answer.

[NanTheDark]

I'm gonna write this the same way I write PMs sometimes...

I used to be a quite religious guy, maybe even to the extreme point, but all I think now is that religion is giving blind hope to humans. Furthermore most of the so called religious people are just corrupted. Somebody says "God hates..." and some people (which btw when they call themselves sheeps, the name fits) listen just because "god, church and so".

Sadly, there are a lot of cases like that... :/

In Romania problems are pretty big. We are forced to take religion class hours which are only ♥♥♥♥ the romanian orthodox church says. In most cases it lead to hostility from orthodox children for protestants (trust me, they are stereotyped, blamed and in some cases hated a lot around here), jews, muslims and so on. My brother told me something he heard at religion class when he was in second grade, he has a colleague who told in class that she had a "best friend"; one day she found out her friend was protestant and run away from her and tries to avoid her because she fears "not to be converted". Right now my brother is kind of what I was years ago so I try to teach him some things I learned from my mistakes, but religion breaking friendships? And more, taking pride you abandoned a friend just because of an improbable (or may be even impossible) "conversion"? It's quite sad.

Over here that doesn't really happen. I haven't really seen cases of people being isolated or whatever because of their religion.

Then again, nothing seems to ever happen over here...

Alright another thing. We have religion manuals which gives us "proof of God's existence".

Oh boi this is gonna be good.

Acording to it, if humans created the concept of god, then he exists (that being a "proof").
Not trying to be offensive, but if a random schizofrenic created the concept of, I don't know, big cat-shaped snake which breathes uranium then does it make it real by default?

That's one of the lousiest proofs I've ever heard of God's existence, I agree. xD

"Nothing in the universe can move alone, something or someone must be here to make them move and that someone is that all powerful and the ability to move himself alone."
That was my attempt to translate another "proof" from my manual. So NOTHING can move alone, but somehow the one who moves it can move himself? I don't understand ♥♥♥♥ and to be honest I think that's the point of some "reasons, proofs" and other "teaching" from religion. You don't understand anything so you think it's wise and deep because your mind can't find out what it means so you think you are not "gifted" enough to understand it, in reality in may be some random, meaningless ♥♥♥♥.

Newton's First Law of Motion states:
When viewed in an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force.

Ergo... it's theoretically possible for an always moving object to exist without being acted upon by external forces.

...if someone ever tells you that argument again, just yell at them NEWTON'S FIRST LAW OF MOTION :3 If my counter-argument sucks, please let me know, I'm not that great at Physics...

There's just so many better arguments that could be used...

"God's existance can be proved by the laws of thermodynamics. First law says that quaitity of energy is constant, because it doesn't "loose", but it transforms. From the second law we find out that not all heat can produce movement, so a part of it is lost, so the quanity of energy for transformation decreases, making the Universe more and more chaotic. In time, the energy's transformation in heat will lead the universe to a thing called "thermal death", meaning all that had a beginning also has an end". From the first law, we find out the universe couldn't have created itself and from the second we learn that all that had a beginning had an end."
Huh? I am really not a fan of physics, but I do believe some things around here are ♥♥♥♥, yes the energy is constant, yes heat is a form of energy, but it just doesn't make a link in my head between this and "god, universe and themal dead".

The [url]heat death of the universe[/url] is one of many suggested possible ultimate fates of the universe... and it's not really confirmed.

The fact that the world will end doesn't instantly scream God, if you ask me.

Now I'll tell you some things I heard in my class (doesn't always limit to religon class).
When I was about grade 7 or 8 or so, our religion class teacher (who happened to be a priest, which actually isn't uncommon as if you had a religion teacher and if it was not a priest then that would be "weird") told us about how are we going to be judged and how are "the poor souls from isolated tribes who never heard of Jesus" going to be saying <<Well if they never heard of Jesus or God, then they'll be judged with their own laws>>. I couldn't help but ask <<What about others? Muslims, hindus, buddhists and so on?>>, his answer was <<If they didn't believe in Jesus then they'll suffer the consquences>>. I found that ♥♥♥♥ and I asked <<That's not fair at all, if you were born, say a muslim and you were told by the parents that you have the best religion and all the others are lies, from childhood till adulthood then your mind was made and you can't just be judged for that>> again the dissapointing answer was <<If you heard of Jesus and you didn't take him in your hearth then you will be punished>> and that was the final anwer. Well what do you think? If I happen to have "bad luck" and be raised in another religion and just hear of "Jesus" and don't accept him by default then I am going straight to hell for being such an infidel person, no?

I once was arguing about this with Xero, and in fact I found it really unfair that non-christian people are condemned by default to hell just for not being christian. Because there's a lot of good people in this world (yeah you always hear about bad people on TV and whatnot but trust me, there is good people) who aren't christian, but still are good people. So I believe that all good people can earn salvation. I mean, love and friendship were pretty much the things Jesus preached. If you're nice to other people and do good things and whatnot, you're still doing what Jesus intended. Even if you don't know it. And the way I see it, that makes you deserve heaven.

...I'm the weirdest and laziest catholic you'll ever meet. I made a quick search now and apparently the Catholic Church's stance of this subject is that salvation is earned through faith AND work.

This happened this year, in german class. My one of my german class teachers is pretty weird, being obsessed with philosophy and other stuff like that and sometime has it's own weird concepts about the universe. I really don't always agree with her, but one day she decided to talk about religion, which she was pretty open and I agreed with almost any point she made.
<<I recognize all religions on the Earth, but don't have respect for any of them, any. I myself believe in a "God", but seriously all religions and their sects are just corrupted and full of ♥♥♥♥ (she speaks pretty explicit). I was raised as a protestant, baptized just because my parents wanted so, but I don't feel any respect for it, I just hate the church and didn't go to it in the last years at all. I am so stressed for christian's church disrepect to women (she has an obsession with respecting women, but I think she made a few good points around. Also next things may be based a bit more on orthodox church rather than a protestant one as when she moved to Romania (she is actually german) she had to learn a few things about the common stuff around). Sure let all the blame come on Eve for eating the apple, why not Adam aswell? He proved himself weak and pretty stupid too when ate the apple. Eve caused all the bad and the original sin for humans? I tought the snake did it, giving the apple to them. I'm just annoyed that women aren't allowed in the altar (at least here, they are not), because they were the sinners, but any man can enter there without any hesitation. Also why the hell women are not allowed in the church for 40 days after they give birth to a child (again happens here)? I think giving birth is something wonderful, not something to fill filthy for it, yet still we are kicked out for "purification"? What does that even mean, I think we are pure enough if we are the only ones who can give birth and continue the life of the species.>>
Okay some of the quote may have been altered due to my memory, but that's it in essence. While most of us agreed with her, there were three other girls (oh how ironically) that didn't share her point of view, that girls happen to be overly obsessed with religion (which I'd blame a bit the brainwashing, but whatever) saying that it was all Eve's fault for not having a power enough will to confront the snake and then women deserve the pain of birth for also tricking poor Adam in eating the apple and so on. None of these things were based on fact, their sources were "the church".
<<You know also what bothers me at church? They're style of painting people (same teacher, she reffers to bizantine style, where most of the muscles and so on are simply gone). I saw paintings at churches from Italy and the ones from the reinassance era were quite beautiful, of course there were people naked, but they were well painted, unlike one of our church, where I saw a naked woman, but with no muscles, no tits, nothing, she looked like just a few sticks with hair. Was that supposed to be a woman? That's so idiotic, how do you think you were born? With muscles, with meat, with everything, not just a bunch of sticks. If you don't want the meat to be shown at all then don't paint it naked, damn it.>>
Again one of those three girls to the resque <<In churches are only painted saints and as far as I know, saints are not supposed to have genital organs (she may have reffered to tits a bit, as no other "organs" were involved)>>. Huh? That a bit randomly thrown here and we started laugh (well except for her saying she was damn serious as she takes pride in reading religious books and spending vacantion to monasteries (which btw is kind of hypoctritic for her because she's kind of a ♥♥♥♥♥, but that's another story)). Uh, so if you become a saint, then you aren't allowed to have genital organs? Or aren't allowed to be pictured with some (or even with some muscles on)? I don't get it, here I share the teacher's view, if you don't picture it naturally, then don't paint it naked.

Saying that saints were pretty much sexless is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. THEY WERE HUMAN DAMMIT XD

Also, agree on the whole women thing. I'm all in for gender equality.

Besides reproductive functions, men and women work pretty much the same.

Last thing and I hope to finish here, the romanian Orthodox Church became a "state institution", meaning it earns money from the state for just...exising, not only from the people "donating" and the various priests who also have a second job, such as teachers and so on. Personally they are big pain because they are waiting precious money on simply building more "churches", when we already have a hell lot of them. If you just cross two streets there will be another church, litterary and they are no "other sects", they are all orthodox. Sure some of them may be historical, but there is no need to build others, right? Not all of them are on the map, but here I'll count them.
My city has 132 km², so in this area are:

• Two churches in my neighbourhood (ok, one used to be for protestant germans, but now it became orthodox, to make it "easier" for orthodox people
• Two churches in the center, not far from each other (if you are in the bus station, you are just in front of one, if you look at 180° you can see the other one, less than a few meters away)
• One church at about maximum 50 meters away from those two
• One monastery, just a few meters behind the previous church, not being affiliated one to another
• Another church at the corner of the street, not far from those two in the center
• A church, a few blocks away from the one before monastery, just in front of my school
• A church in the hospital's yard
• Another three of them, just after the hospital
• The cathedral which is being build for 20 years, not far away from the center (is that big, you can see it even from outside of the city)
• Another two churches in a neighbourhood not far from the "cathedral"
• Another in a neighbourhood just next to mine's (used to go there when was little)

Total: 16 (but I'm sure there are more)
Outside the city, there are lots of monasteries, build during the medieval era and they are not even that far, just a few kilometers away.
Now most of them were build before communist era, so I can't take full blame on them. What bothers me is the large as cathedral. Spoke to people around, spoke with a few of my teachers, most of their answer was that "We don't need a cathedral, we are doing fine without it and could have put the money on other things, rather than waiting them on just another church". That's a logical tought, no? Here, have my religion teacher's view "We need to represent the church and God everywhere, in every city. The cathedral is a must have".
For those wondering here are a few pictures. Second one, this one is another church from the city, is about either half either 1/3 from the cathedral, but is large enough.
And as it wasn't enough, they plan on building a bolshoi (from ru: big, well in this case very big) one in the capital, here is the project: click. According to sources, they want to make also some shelters in the yard, to serve as a "small hospital". Just ♥♥♥♥ damn it, build an actual bigger hospital, rather than a big large ♥♥♥ church.

God is everywhere. Lift a stone, there He is. Look up, there He is. Look down, there He is.

Why the heck do you need to make a humongous building just to praise God. You can do it anywhere.

Also your city has so many churches man xD I live in a mid-sized city, and I don't think we have that many xD (Especially not castle-looking churches like you do... we have a few fairly big churches I guess, that would be like... three. Or something)

TL;DR
I used to be quite religious, just listening and believing ♥♥♥♥ just because "god", but eventually I opened my eyes and so how corrupt the religion can be, not it in essence as people who are supposed to represent it. I myself am interested in mythology and others, but honestly I've lost several respect points for religion, especially romanian orthodox ones, mostly because of their "leaders". I don't want my money spent on fancy ♥♥♥ cathedrals when we have terrible looking schools (if they are out of interest, they will get no support), roads that look like the battlefield of a nuclear war, less efficient hospitals compared to outside and so on. Also the several teachings of the religion are simply wrong, fine tell the kids to believe in god, but don't scare them or lie to them or tell them ♥♥♥♥ only to believe it, it's not okay. Sorry if cursed a bit too much in the post, but that's what I feel when thinking about it.

I do agree with you.

I had to go to religion classes and whatnot in school, but awesomely enough my teachers have always been very open-minded, and often explain things from a history standpoint. We weren't really forced to believe in God, and I think it was even possible to just skip those classes, and if you didn't it was a pretty easy class, it's one of those classes that are like made to give you good scores xD Bonus points because in religion class they also taught us about other religions. We had to do works on buddhism, hinduism, jews, muslims, all that kinda thing. It's pretty open minded really. I don't know if it's like that in all schools that teach religion over here, but at least that's how it was like in my school.

Individuals need to be allowed to develop their own beliefs, faiths, principles, whatever you want to call it (if we're getting into that now I should probably clear up that I'm an agnostic-atheist as of this post. I'm not going to vehemently deny the existence of omnipotent beings or whatever, and I'm not going to preach the concept to everyone I meet. I'm trying to learn more about the many different religions of the world from an academic standpoint, mostly so I can understand and talk about these things more confidently, debate them, that kind of thing. Sometimes I like to play with concepts and come up with half-serious ideas about this kind of thing). Exposure to belief systems of the world wouldn't hurt, but one should not be required to attend those church classes and things like that. Unfortunately these are ideas which are very hard to come to terms with for quite a large portion of the world (civilians and governments alike), always clinging to tradition. And somewhere along the way we found the idea of theocracy, which is frankly one of the most mind-bogglingly stupid things I've ever heard of. It's absolutely unfair for the masses to be forced to believe what authorities want them to believe. That's not even necessarily an issue concerning religion anymore (propaganda, hiding/destroying evidence, silencing activists/protesters, power mongering, etc) so I won't dive into that. I think society as a whole is beginning to wake up to this, but many world powers still disregard it and do whatever the hell they want.

I do agree that people need to research things and learn, so they can make informed decisions.

Also, "that's not even necessarily an issue concerning religion anymore"... that's something I refered to in an earlier post. Sadly, religion can be used as propaganda, and to control to masses. And that sucks.

However, I don't think I'll agree with religion being useless and detrimental to humanity. I think that religion by itself isn't bad. It's people who abuse it.

[Bogdan]

A world without religion, particularly the kind Bog is talking about, is probably just some crazy utopianism that could never be achieved, at least now. If the very notion was to be swept from the planet, I'm sure it would contribute at least a little bit to things like world peace/a somewhat unified society, more effective spending/budgeting locally and globally, and my favourite, scientific development. That's just speculation, though. There are lots of other consequences (good and bad) that would likely result from that

Personally I like religion or mythology in general. I turned kind of irreligious with my full will because of my reasons. I don't really want a world without religion, to be honest I don't want religions to vanish like Greek or Egyptian ones did, they may be fascinating to see what human mind can develop. I just don't want your "God" to pickpocket us and by that I mean I don't money that could have been invested in bigger sallaries (trust me, it's kind of a problem here) or even better investiments such as education, health, protection and so on wasted on churches. The ratio of the city is about 1 orthodox church every 8 square kilometers. For a city of about 92 121 citizens, I think it's a pretty big ratio since surely not everyone is orthodox. There are catholics, protestants and even a few muslims and jews I saw on the streets, we don't need al that churches, even more when know there are monasteries not far from the city itself (A legend, in which most of us take pride in, says every time he won a battle with turks, Steve the Great, the leader of Moldavia would shoot an arrow and build a monastery where the arrow landed. Given the ammount of monasteries build just in my county, this may even be true).

Now regarding to your "individuals need to be allowed to develop their own beliefs" this is exactly our problem. Most of the people around like to act like actual "sheeps" that they don't even dare to do it. In fact same religion teacher, told us about "atheists, satanists and free-thinkers" and most of his disgust was pointed to free-thinkers saying <<they just mess the religion and manipulate it at their own will, they are misguided and hard to get back on the right way. It's easier to convice a satanist or atheist to be good(!) again rather than a free-thinker. We should stop this fashion that can destroy minds>>. I'm not kidding here, heard that with my own two ears. TBH he is full of ♥♥♥♥, but if he is a prietst, then it's his "job" to keep us believing, after all, where would our money go without him, no? There are 2014 years alone from the time "Jesus" (in between " because I still don't have actual proof that he may be the "saviour") came to earth and in those years, the New Testament alone could be alterned, let alone the old one.

One thing about church wasting our money is not only building churches, but keeping them "fed". Take a look at easter. Orthodox people celebrate it separated from any other christians. The thing that makes us special? The "holy flame" is supposed to start itself alone, automagically only in orthodox easter at the "Holy grave" in Jerusalem. Never heard about it at catholics and pretty sure they don't believe in this (can somebody confirm? thanks), but we are "special". Now to get the "holy flame with it's blessing" in country, priests go without any hesitation in Israel and are supposed to bring several candles with it in an aeroplane. Nice job, wasting fuel, time, money, vechicles for what, a flame we don't even know it is real? Please if it was real then at least the other sects would believe it too and maybe even jews, since they own the place with the "flame", but well, money makes the world go round. (If you don't believe the "bringing the holy flame" stuff, you can do a google search, not sure how much success you would have, but can bring a few romanian resources if you wish, again you would need to translate).

I don't want you, them or whoever to stop believing, I just don't want them to get my money, nor "teach" me what to believe and what to not, nor my (possible) future son(s) and/or daugher(s), don't want to tell me "if you don't believe/do X then you are going to hell". I don't want your God, nor heaven, nor hell nor anything from you. I want my life and full possesion of it, that includes mind, time and money.

[NanTheDark]

As a catholic I can confirm you that I had never heard of the whole Holy Fire idea before, and that it seems really weird. Suddenly, Easterolympics.

Also, according to Wikipedia (say whatever you like about Wikipedia, I still think it's reliable), only Orthodox Christians do it.

[Bogdan]

Also, according to Wikipedia (say whatever you like about Wikipedia, I still think it's reliable), only Orthodox Christians do it.

Correct. There was a lot of debate about this flame, most people (again, "sheeps") believe it to be real, yet if it was legit then wouldn't it drag a little more attention, at least from the locals who happen to be jewish? It's a whole bussiness here and unfortunately, some people are blind enough to accept it. Sure let's burn fuel, poluate the athmosphere, waste money and time just to bring some imported candles that are nothing but...candles? People will stop the flame after coming from the church eventually, so there is no need to do this at all. Now, not all the churches get the flame from important, yes the common ones may just use a match, yet bigger churches do wish to get the flame, that would be an easier trip for priest's family, no?

I don't want people to stop believing, if you think this is real then fine, but I am asking for a change. You do more good and I think "God" would appreciate it if you would be more modest and offer a legular flame started with a match or lighter if it's that important.

[Oranjui]

A world without religion, particularly the kind Bog is talking about, is probably just some crazy utopianism that could never be achieved, at least now. If the very notion was to be swept from the planet, I'm sure it would contribute at least a little bit to things like world peace/a somewhat unified society, more effective spending/budgeting locally and globally, and my favourite, scientific development. That's just speculation, though. There are lots of other consequences (good and bad) that would likely result from that

Personally I like religion or mythology in general. ... I don't really want a world without religion, to be honest I don't want religions to vanish like Greek or Egyptian ones did, they may be fascinating to see what human mind can develop.

Yeah :B That's what I meant when I said that it would really destroy a lot of culture and art to just get rid of it altogether. I don't particularly want that to happen, either.

I think that religion by itself isn't bad. It's people who abuse it.

This is really the general consensus here now I think. It doesn't really do justice to pat's original question, though, so I just chose a side based on how corrupted those who abused/abuse religion made/are making the world. If people never thought to abuse the concept, we would not have had any problems with religion throughout history, I don't think. Of course there would always be arguments over who's right and who's wrong, but I doubt any of these things would escalate into all out wars, since it wouldn't be regulated by any governments. I would have no problem if it could all be as casual as this.
...but the problem is, religion in and of itself is ultimately just another form of power that can be manipulated on any scale the wielder happens to choose (obviously I'm overstating it, religion is much more than that, but this is what it is seen as by the people who care only to misuse it). It's human nature; we all want to have some form of power over one another. Maybe you try to convert others to your own beliefs through one-on-one conversation, or maybe you realize that if you can get a large number of people to believe the same as you, you can begin to control and manipulate them with your new power. Hence churches, which eventually rise up to find a position in governments or empires throughout history. And it's then used as propaganda: "If you do/don't do X (which we don't/do want you to do), you'll go to hell and suffer forever" or whatever. Coming from these highly respected positions of power (king, emperor, pope, whatever), frightening numbers of people will be convinced very quickly (not trying to insult anyone by using that particular example, but that's really what it comes down to in a lot of cases). And then the government can change that however they want, add new rules, play with the interpretations, emphasize certain aspects over the others to subdue the public even further.
We're learning from our past mistakes, but that doesn't mean that humans aren't attracted to power like moths to a lamp anymore. It really does suck. There's corruption and power abuse everywhere, and we really can't do anything about it. Especially in the case of religion, which has evolved from the harmless, casual, helpful guidance it should be into the destructive, corrupt, brainwashing monster it is now. (To address the original question, perhaps this is the evolution [devolution?] of unorganized religion into organized religion?)

Which led me to conclude that religion, as society has molded it, is not very healthy for the world.


(I'm enjoying this thread a lot, please keep updating it. As long as we can agree to not continue dwelling on a discussion topic long after it's closed :p)