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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Ryan McReynolds: [QB] [QUOTE]Originally posted by Raw Cadet: [qb]Perhaps I am being overly sensitive, but it just seems to me like you dismiss the whole Catholic/Christian education system as a vast conspiracy to keep kids ignorant.[/qb][/QUOTE] I'm not TSN, but I essentially agree with that idea. Religion as a whole [i]has[/i] to keep people--not only children--ignorant of certain things lest they realize that it's illogical. I'm not saying there is an actual cnspiracy, with people meeting in dark rooms and planning ways to hide the truth. It's merely a [i]tradition[/i] of ignorance, extending back millennia. Religions sprang up when we didn't have knowledge about the world and the universe and our origins, and that mystery is a [i]vital[/i] component. First religion explained the physical world... then some ape-man realized that he would [i]die[/i] and he had a hard time dealing with that reality. Eventually, the idea of life after death and the idea of beings controlling the physical worlds merged, got shaken up here and there, and out comes modern theology. We realized the world was round... religion resisted, but ultimately admitted the error when the evidence was insurmountable. We realized that Earth is not the center of the universe... religion resisted, but ultimately admitted the error when the evidence was insurmountable. We realized that we are part of the animal kingdom... religion mostly still resists, even if many of its adeherents have moved on. We're realizing even now in labs that mind is the brain's software and not a mysterious "soul," and we're realizing that there may not be a need for a "first cause" to the universe... but these, religion has already rejected out of hand because they have far more detrimental implications than what shape Earth is. After all, if we're products of a causeless natural world, what room is there for God? Religion prevents millions of people in Africa, and elsewhere, from protecting themselves from being ravaged by AIDS. Religion makes thousands of people afflicted with chronic illnesses spend their time and money on uneffective faith healing, when they could be spending it on treatment. Religion forces people to die horribly from painful afflictions rather than offer them the option of ending the pain. Religion prevents us from potentially curing dozens of horrible diseases with the knowledge that could be gained from cloning and stem cell research. And religion offers hope. Nobody, atheist or otherwise, can deny that. But at what cost? Imagine, just imagine, the achievements that mankind could have experienced if all of the hours spent in prayer and the money spent in tithe could be put towards science, or medicine, or even buying food for the hungry. Imagine where we'd be if countless scientists and doctors throughout history had been heralded as heroes instead of hated for their heresy. At what cost does religion provide hope? The cost is human progress. Give me a harsh reality over a pleasant fiction any day. <center>*</center> Whew, that was a little more exhaustive than I'd planned. ;) [/QB][/QUOTE]
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