From: "CE" 

On Mar 28, 5:10 pm, "bramble"  wrote:

> Do you think my arguments are stupid?

Well, yes, quite frankly I do think they are stupid. I wouldn't have worded
it that way myself but since you asked I may as well make it as plain as
possible to you.

In countries many countries, Roman Catholicism is not a state religion, is
not promoted by society and is not a way to ingratiate oneself to the power
elites. And yet, even in those countries, there are people who believe in
Jesus Christ and the teachings of the faith as handed down by the Roman
Catholic church. To suggest that these people have been brainwashed and
tamed into believing a doctrine is just plain silly. The Catholic church is
not depriving these people of protein and sleep, forcing them to attend
services and so forth. They come to the church of their own free will and
it may surprise you to learn that some of these people are quite
intelligent.

You cite the example of muslim extremists as if this were the norm among
the followers of Islam and indeed of all faiths. It is not. Even a cursory
look at people of faith should be enough for you to realize that most
people of faith do not go out and kill themselves and others at the drop of
a hat.

> In another post I was talking about that great churches, spread over
> several nations, were political constructions.

Actually, no, the great churches are not political constructions. They were
not invented for political purposes. Several great religions have led
people to develop institutional frameworks for the perpetuation of the
faith. That, however, is not the same as a political construct since a form
of organization does not necessarily imply a political or business
orientation. Politicians and other leaders may attempt with various degrees
of success to cloak themselves with religion or use religious institutions
for political purposes. That has happened. This does not make the church a
political construct any more than the use of a business organizations by
political policy makers to acheive economic ends would make the business
organizations themselves political constructs.

>
> > Under the proposed sociological model, it
> > would be just as valid to claim atheists and agnostics are merely
> > following the dictates of a capitalistic elite in a secular society -
> > and not really the freethinkers they feel themselves to be.

> Atheist and agnostics are most times people that had been pissed off
> badly by the pastors of his own church, so they had the need to desert
> and flee his church.  So after a time of being pissed off,  "they
> start to look for reasons" and  "they look for
arguments" to oppose
> their fucking church leaders.

Atheists and agnostics deserve more credit than that. You're making it seem
as though these people were angry, started off with an agenda, and
eventually grasped at whatever rationalizations they could to bolster their
own prejudices against the religious establishments.

While I have no doubt that there are some very bitter and intellectually
shallow atheists out there - and why wouldn't there be when there are
people like that in just about every other group? - I would hope that most
atheists and agnostics arrived at their convictions by honestly examining
the evidence and thinking things over carefully.

>
> On the other hand, you can imagine also, that there is not any baby
> that is born plainly Evangelical, or Baptist, Mormon, Presbiterian,
> Catholic, Islamic, Hinduist, Shintoist, Leninist or Marxist.
> No any baby is born with a religious affiliation, is he?
>  It is the same with the language.  Not any baby is born with a
> predisposition to speak Chinese,  English, or Japanese.  Do you agree
> at least with this?  They have to learn to speak that way with the
> help of his parents.

Of course babies learn from their parents. They also learn with the help of
teachers, friends, books and other educational material. That's the way it
should be. Once they become adults or hit the age of reason, they can then
make their own choices in life. For many people, this means abandonning the
faith of their parents for another or to become atheists or agnostics. For
other people, it means leaving behind their country, their language and
their customs and making a new home and acquiring a new cultural identity.

People are free to make their own choices. That is one of the few truly
great things about being human: the ability to choose. With that freedom,
many people - indeed, most people - choose to believe. They find themselves
a place or group of people that reflects their own convictions and make
themselves at home there.

In your case, you seem to have found yourself a home among people who want
to look down on those who have religious beliefs and accuse us of being
mindless, brainwashed drones.

What I find amusing - albeit somewhat pathetic at the same time - is that
you do not seem to realize that the very processes you claim can lead
someone to being brainwashed into a faith may in fact be at work in you. If
constant exposure to a sanctionned point of view by the power elites can
brainwash someone into believing in religion, then it stands to reason that
the same kind of exposure could effectively convince these same people of
something else. Since we live in a society that is capitalistic and secular
and very keen on technological and scientific advances, it seems to me the
case could very well be made - using your own reasoning - to show that many
atheists may be so simply because they have similarly been brainwashed by
the power elites.

Now, I think that's unlikely to be the case. As I said, I give people,
including atheists and agnostics, more credit than that.

--- BBBS/LiI v4.01 Flag