If both parties achieved mental and physical maturity then what’s wrong.
Ask your grandmother at what she - or people her age - married at.
This is likely to get downvoted, I say this because mentioning downvotes in your posts/comments usually prevents them from being downvoted (a little psychological thing probably)
Then let’s talk facts and logic, why is an older person marrying a younger person bad? because you’re an educated Atheist/Agnostic (I guess), you must’ve questioned what you were taught at childhood, unlike those brainwashed and spoon fed Christians.
“Minimum age of marriage”, who came up with concept? it surely isn’t common sense since it only appeared less than a century ago, so what is it? Some may say that young marriage is a mere relic of the ancients, a result of their underdeveloped logic and science, and that our advanced logic is better and is infallible.
But wait, your people, just mere a century ago saw people 2 centuries a ago the exact same way, and so did those before them, so using our logic, we can deduct that our logic is illogical.
How about statistical data we can speculate, a mere century ago, how did the world look like? there was certainly very little employees, even Christians believed in their book, Javascript did not exist (alhamdulillah), young people were treated as adults, and people older than Israel who to this day live under bombing by your morally superior society were being born; How does something like the depression rate among their youth compare to today? It is reportedly much lower, so how did your generation fail? Surely with all that development of medicine and the like, your people should “logically” be much happier. Are you really strictly superior to the ancients?
“But statistics back then were biased and limited”, I see your point, unlike the “infallible” statistics of today, those statistics were surely awful, so let’s move to broader ideas.
At childhood, you were spoon fed many ideas, like “Slavery is unacceptable”, “The old marrying the young is awful”, and “Humans evolved from monkeys”. By using the fact that our logic is illogical, we can conclude that these aren’t concrete facts. How is slavery involved with almost every product in the average American household? how did the ancients grow up to be healthy adults? Again, ask your grandmother. How is there not, to this day, concrete evidence of humans evolving from anything but slightly taller humans?
How is slavery unacceptable in your eyes, yet you can’t live without it? Is the average McDonalds worker treated better that how Islam treats slaves?
How did the ancients grow up to be healthy individuals? Is insisting that you’re much better than the ancients truly your way of avoiding depression?
Why is anything that goes against the theory of someone named Darwin, of whose book you know nothing, and whose theory’s shortcomings you are ignoring, and whose teachings you were fed in school, and whose ways you never questioned, mere ancient fables?
But there stands, the teachings of Islam, Allah’s divine revelation to us, it never failed, for 14 centuries it stood unchanged, yet who reads it could never tell, that this book wasn’t written by a scholar of today, how could it so accurately describe today? how did our caliphate, only a mere century from today, stand strong? How didn’t we truly fail, until we forgot the words and called it a day?
//////////end
I got a little peotic at the end.
You guys just look at Christians and decide that religion is dumb.
I thought of finishing with some miracles like the 360 joints, the beating of alcoholics and adulterers, and camel milk+urine, but the article south_park_remark reply got too long.
I realize these miracles can be individually dismissed, it is not their individual traits that will persuade, it is their collected wight. It is the fact that the prophet, peace be upon him, never claimed anything that is wrong, unlike scientists of a mere decade ago, and that his medicines did nothing but heal, unlike scientists of a mere decade ago.
This is likely to get downvoted, I say this because mentioning downvotes in your posts/comments usually prevents them from being downvoted (a little psychological thing probably)
I look at religion and decided it’s silly…wish you’d stop putting words in my mouth. And you can stop defending slavery/pedophilia or whatever, I’m not having that convo with you troll
Here’s the problem with English: I can not use the word “you”, and still have people know whether I am talking to them, or to people like them in general. Some of my "you"s were plural, some were singular. I need some way of coping with this language.
You replied to only 1 paragraph of mine, and decided I am a troll just for suggesting pushing that slavery/“pedophilia” might not be bad, unlike what you were taught.
Although you’ve been lied to, it’s not the lies that’s the problem. As an adult, you can a lot of the times tell when the media is manipulating you, especially in the last past decade it’s gotten so obvious even a Boomer could see it. But what you don’t see is how when you were lied to (or told selective truths) as a child, you didn’t have the same BS-detector, and that allowed a lot of deep-seated impressions about the world to be formed. So a lot of people who don’t believe anything the media says now (rightly) are still mind-cucked. They accept the programming and differ on the details.
I will give you this hint. Basically all of your programmed emotional responses are your enemies. There was an old Moldbug blog post where he talked about even far after “awaking from his dogmatic slumber,” he still was surprised that if he saw a group of Nazi LARPers, he would reflexively have a pang of emotional stress, but if he saw Stalinist LARPers, he wouldn’t have the same kind of emotional reaction. I think everyone raised in the West has that same programmed reaction. You might know with your head that the communist death count is supposed to be higher and the suppression wider, but it doesn’t click because you weren’t made sensitive to it.
Edit: no, actually, English isn’t the problem, since I appended “guys” to my statement about looking at religion and deciding it’s silly, you should know that I wasn’t talking about you personally.
I think the biggest flaw is assuming you’re among the atheist/agnostic crowd, but even then, I appended that claim with “(I guess)” to indicate that I am indeed putting words in someone’s mouth. Maybe you’re among the Christian crowd, or maybe you’re a… Zionist Jew? Hindu?
For any passing people, the original reply isn’t edited, so I am safe from that side of accusations.
I see, English isn’t your first language. You made (and continue to make) false assumptions. The media has had no influence on my viewpoints on religion (Christianity in particular), my personal experiences are more than sufficient. My first comment was based on Mohammeds youngest wife and how it’s accepted/ignored by Muslims. We have (somewhat?) similar action in the US, there was a republican GOP member in New Hampshire that was pushing to keep legal marriage set at 16 rather than 18, described the 16 year-olds as “ripe”…super creepy
We have (somewhat?) similar action in the US, there was a republican GOP member in New Hampshire that was pushing to keep legal marriage set at 16 rather than 18, described the 16 year-olds as “ripe”…super creepy
I am pretty sure he’s an awful person just because he’s an American politician.
But you’re missing the point though, you still think of young marriage as an absolutely-no-questions-asked obscene thing, which is understandable, seeing that most western teenagers are brainwashed into thinking they’re kids, and are therefore immature and aren’t ready for marriage. (Which creates some other problems because that’s the natural age for marriage)
Where I live, we have 16-year-old men marrying 14-year-old women, and they have a child a year or two later, and they’re really fine, except for maybe being less educated that they could have otherwise been. Speed of maturity actually depends mainly on two factors: difficulty of life (maturity of the mind and body), and heat of the climate (sexual maturity), and considering how high both were at the time of prophet PbUH, marrying at 9 is absolutely normal.
In fact, I am sure there are many marriage-ready 9-year-old women at places like Uganda and the poor African nations.
Actually, the idea of setting a minimum age only came to us with the french when they decided to colonize us, so of course we won’t look positively at ideas brought by people who came to rape and pillage, and it still doesn’t seem so bright considering they’re still pillaging us implicitly through corrupt political affairs.
Isn’t it weird that some resource-rich nations are dead-poor, while something like London can look like science fiction, and that a system as inefficient as democracy continues to function, and that every citizen somehow has human rights, and that the electricity doesn’t get cut daily. To this day I have a hard time believing that flat asphalt roads exist, and that driving on them doesn’t feel like riding a roller coaster of some sort; NO IT MUST BE FICTION, I WON’T BELIEVE IT TILL I SEE IT WITH MY OWN EYES!!!
Note to Americans: you guys might say: “Oh, but our medical system is a scam and colleges cause students to drown in debt because we normalized the disgusting act of usury!”, it’s just because your government’s is spending a third-of-the-world’s-military-budget worth of money on bombing Iraq and Yemen and Palestine and Cuba and Afghanistan and some other things in the name of “War On Terrorism” against those they pillaged. (No wait they made it back when they built a dock in Gaza to steal all their oil, so your government actually has no excuse, it must be corruption/falling into usury)
On the topic of American wastage, I read an article long ago where Americans were concerned that a 2000$ houthi drone was usually dealt with using a 2m$ missile, so the Pentagon spokesman or something replied with what was essentially: “Don’t worry, Americans! the houthi’s “terrorism” is already causing much more economic harm, so that’s a negligible efficiency loss”, like, how is telling people that the situation is much worse than they imagine supposed to calm them down?
Edit: I forgot Russia, almost the only nation America has any right to actually fight.
I guess a part is that science seems to meticulously avoid the question “why do we live”, in a non-technical way, in a way that actually gives people a sense of meaning.
That and mental inertia, i.e. some things change very slowly.
For me, I just do. It’s just who I am and what I feel. I don’t really talk about it outside of my church friends, but I just believe. I don’t think the Bible is terribly accurate and regard it much as I do Arabian Nights, a book of fantastic stories based loosely on events. I also think it has much to offer in teaching you how to treat others and live your life as a good person, and that’s what I take away from it. I find Jesus honestly a touch creepy, but I never stop believing in a higher power of sorts.
Also I honestly have made the best friends I’ve ever made in my church life. Horrible homophobic Christians aside, there’s some really excellent people who genuinely love you and do good things to meet there.
Search Engine is a great podcast and that was a great interview. For me it didn’t really answer the question though, but I guess the answer is very individual.
Dante’s Inferno went into detail that was not biblical, but there’s enough in the bible that writing it off completely is cherry picking.
“They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
"And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
“And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
I had a friend whose dad was a pastor at a decently sized church. I never believed in religion and he was cool because he would actually listen to what I said rather than plugging his ears and yelling. (you know what I mean). I went to his church one Sunday to humor him and it was Ok. His dad was relating current events to the bible and it wasn’t total horseshit… UNTIL, they passed the plate thing around for donations. “Give your money to GOD” is what was said. I asked my friend what the hell does god need my money for? He made the earth in seven days, he can make his own damn money. My friend said the money goes to the church to put on events for the children and feeding the needy and honestly, good things. I said ok, then tell me to donate my money to the church to support this instead of god.
Many years later he has his own church and when they pass the plate around, he says donate to the church and explains where the money goes. I call it a little victory. Religion is still a load of crap though.
It is very difficult to accept mortality if you don’t believe in an afterlife. Religion brings comfort, and comfort improves mental health (at the cost of some delusion).
Not really. Altruism is ultimately self-serving whether an afterlife exists or not. People generally don’t want to spend their life being wronged by others or have their life taken altogether, so we have a pretty good incentive to not do those things.
I’m not religious at all. But in responding to your question OP: we don’t have to understand why people believe. Religion just isn’t for us, and that’s fine. Other people find it has value, and that’s fine too. The fact that religion has lasted this long with this many people is proof in itself that there’s some value people get out of it. We don’t have to get it to understand that.
All the comments here that explain religion solely as dumb or irrational are just as closed minded as the people they’re talking about.
On point, additionally religion has also effectively associated itself with spirituality. It’s also associated itself with caring for others, volunteering, community, togetherness and acceptance. Additionally it’s a great place to network and organize communities. Even if belief has faded, tradition is usually important with that group of people.
It’s only recently in the past century or so that serious spirituality in our culture has been able to detach itself from religion, sometimes forming new ones
It’s also a great path to getting people to do what you want. I was already an atheist when my father and I had a philosophical discussion regarding religion when I was an adolescent. He brought up this point early in the discussion. I only need to look around at all the bullshit laws getting passed that religious zealots vote for against their own interest to confirm that this is true.
The Southern Baptist Church just had their annual conference and decided that their position on Invitro Fertilization is against the procedure. How does that help anyone? It doesn’t.
It is just as easy to point to the ideas of the extreme members of the “new atheist” movement as evidence that they are a dangerous cult.
Using the Southern Baptist Church as your example of religion is not a very good argument. Implying that atheists are somehow more rational as a group is not really a great argument either.
By the way, I am an atheist. I do no consider my beliefs to be unassailable scientific conclusions though. I recognize that many of my beliefs and preferences lack the robust rational foundation I would like them to. I doubt I am the pinnacle of morality or ethics ( more than doubt - but I am not looking to trash my own reputation here ).
Voting against your own interests or scapegoating others for what you see as damage against yourself or even just plain old hate do not require religion. Humans have lots of ways at arriving at those and being manipulated into them.
Hard disagree. Religion has a measurable impact on people voting against the rights of minorities, and it deserves every bit of scrutiny it has coming its way.
It’s not like Bigfoot or flat earth. This shit is having serious consequences for others, physically and mentally.
Religion itself? Or man using religious dogma to justify the uglier natures of their internal belief systems and cherry-picking religious quotes to shoehorn their false righteousness into moral discussion? Religion is a powerful tool and it can be used to drum up donations for an orphanage, or leveraged and wielded by people who aren’t seeking to enlighten themselves at all apart from learning how to use religion to control people.
I agree with you. Using religion to manipulate people for political reasons is not really a religion problem. If you eradicate religion, there are many other levers to pull. In fact, manipulating religious groups these days also requires using these other weaknesses against people and then convincing them to ignore the conflict with their religious teachings.
Ahh yes, agreed. Like prosperity Jesus wanting you to be wealthy despite saying in the Bible “it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Or a year round favorite: “Love thy neighbor” (unless they’re people we don’t like, such as LGBT, immigrants, liberals etc. )
Both. Texts like the Bible tell you how to conduct slavery, endorses violence against men who have gay sex, and in no uncertain terms (and in many different ways) tells you women are worth a fraction of men and shouldn’t be trusted to preach.
Yet there are things that aren’t endorsed in the Bible are far too commonly preached by Christians. Like being against trans people, opposing abortion rights (in fact the Bible tells you how to induce an abortion and that you should do it if your wife cheats on you)… and like you said, some drum up donations for the express purpose of leveraging control over others, or to buy private jets, in spite of the life Jesus led and in spite of his teachings.
Do you find this post more scientific or more religious?
Because I will agree with you if we can agree that the position being taken here is driven by treating science as a religion ( one they poorly understand ).
The question itself isn’t scientific or religious. And nobody in this thread is conducting science, but the majority of us here definitely trust the scientific method over faith.
That’s not to say we take scientific claims as gospel like theists do with theistic claims. Science is about updating our understanding as new evidence is presented. Religion is about being handed the truth.
I mean… In my life I’ve gone from a (naive child that took my parents words for fact) theist, to agnostic atheist, all the way to whatever the fuck I am now. It’s all a matter of perspective.
You go deep enough into metaphysics you can trip yourself the fuck out.
Research shows that we have the innate (ie. without being externally influenced) belief that there is a higher power. So we are socialized/influenced into NOT believing in God.
Atheism and secularism are big now but this only started to be so in the recent hundred years.
Personally I find my religion logically making sense more than what atheistic ideologies bring forth and their misuse of science illiteracy.
The scripture is preserved and I had the chance to learn the original language which allows to assess it firsthand.
I’d be willing to bet humans also innately believe the earth is flat (in your day-to-day life it certainly doesn’t look like we’re on a spherical object hurling through space), but that doesn’t make it so.
That part of my reply was to show the that we are indoctrinated OUT of religion. Of course this does not forcibly make it true. Like for the shape of the Earth we must use our intellect and whatever is available to us to arrive to any conclusion.
It sounds like you are firmly entrenched in your religion. I’m glad you enjoy reading Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, but it turns out people tend to skew in one of two directions: those without a propensity for analytical thought tend to skew religious - for example, the children in the study you cite - and those who think critically reject religion. There’s even a paper on this.
If your religion brings you happiness and peace, more power to you. However, I would encourage you to rethink your ideas on logic and science illiteracy. Consider that it might actually be very difficult in a world & countless communities built around religion for someone to break away from that social norm, analyse religion objectively, and reject an idea that cannot be proven.
“The” Bible has been proven by Christian scholars that it was not preserved, so one should not take it as gospel.
I agree that it is hard to break away from what you have been socialized into, be it theism or atheism, both being a religion and a belief.
I honestly invite you to study the Quran objectively, which I did. I lived alone in a western society for the most part of my life and was obviously not subject to any social coersion. I distanced myself from what I was taught and decided to look at it from an external and critical point of view. And I discovered it to bee flawless.
You might be thinking my judgement was clouded or doubt my intellectual abilities :D all the same reason why I invite you to undergo the same experience of rethinking your ideas and to read the Quran for yourself. Hapiness and peace are byproducts and not the goal. The goal must be the search for the truth wherever that might be, even if we dislike it.
Apologies for my assumption of your holy book of choice. You realise the Qur’an is the “sequel” to the Bible, which was itself derivative of the Torah, which was based on more ancient myths, etc etc. All of them passed down verbally for generations before written, all of them changed to suit the storytellers’ needs, and all of them FAR from flawless. Historical and scientific inaccuracies aside, none of them are even internally consistent. I have difficulty believing you have applied objective, critical thought to any religious text.
The Torah is a collection of stories coming from an oral tradition or songs. The earliest manuscripts are the dead see scrolls dating one or two thousand years after Moises, peace be upon him. The Jewish don’t recognise thesemanuscripts attributed to heretics.
The Bible according to scholars is a collection of books from anonymous authors who used the names of disciples as pennames. There is no consensus amongst the different denominations regarding what books are part of “the” Bible. The earliest complete manuscript dates about 400 years after Jesus, peace be upon him, and shows differences with today’s text.
The Qur’an is proven to be preserved, even by western non-muslim orientalists. There are carbon dated manuscripts from the time of Muhammad, peace be upon him, and the book is mass memorised by millions letter by letter with a proven chain tracing back to Muhammad. It is not possible to change the text when millions know it cover to cover by heart. Even the understanding of the meaning is not open to interpretation because there are set rules and relied upon books from the disciples, again with a tracking chain, that tell us how it was explained by the prophet and understood at the time of revelation.
So this was an assessment of the text before delving into what it actually contains.
Now I assume you read the Torah and the Bible, which is why you know about the internal and external contradictions.
This is not the case for Qur’an even when it talks about various things from history to natural phenomena. I really encourage you to go past prejudice and critically study it yourself from reputable sources to actually know what it is and what it says.
The Clear Qur’an is a good English translation. Read it and if you have any question don’t hesitate.
I don’t have to read a religious text to know it’s not true, and though you may have been lucky enough to grow up untainted by society, these books have not. The issue with going to sources so entrenched in studying religious text is that they are already tainted by the need to keep the text alive. Should they cast any doubt at all their livelihood will vanish.
No religion has ever offered verifiable proof of any supernatural claim. Once they do I will pay attention.
I don’t have to read a religious text to know it’s not true
How can you give an opinion or hold a position on something you refuse to assess?
The issue with going to sources so entrenched in studying religious text is that they are already tainted by the need to keep the text alive
Here you are making assumptions about the sources maybe because of Christianity and Judaism. The sources like I said are the contemporary ones and there is no room for reinterpretation in the exegesis to twist it in a way or the other due to conflicts that arised later on.
No religion has ever offered verifiable proof of any supernatural claim
Same can be applied to atheism which is positing that God does not exist. I assume you hold that position. If so you are not consistent in your approach.
Should one not objectively scrutinize the claims of both sides before holding a position?
Atheism is the rejection of an assertion that there is a god or gods. If any theists were able to prove the existence of a god, an atheist would (hopefully) change their mind. Rejecting all gods until their existence can be proven is hardly inconsistent.
I reject as true books that say the X-Men exist. Those are first hand sources, but that does not mean the stories they contain are true, even though they are more morally consistent than most popular religious texts. I have not read the X-Men but that is no reason to assume they are true.
Extraordinary assertions such as a devine being existing require extraordinary proof. No religions have managed to provide more than heresay, anecdotal evidence, and assumption to support their claoms. Religious reasoning is as best motivated, and hardly consistent itself.
My opinion is based on how world religions are used by their followers and those in power. All I see is religion used as a tools to control, intimidate, otherise, and war with any group considered “not us” - no matter the religion. I have read summaries of the Bible, Quaran, and Book of Mormon. There is nothing of note in any of them. Any possible good advice or dictate has long since been rephrased, refined, and adopted by society. The beauty of a thing is in its utility, and the use I see religion put to buy those in power is ugly. I want nothing to do with poisonous dogma, and instead choose to try making life better for those around me by direct action. Not by wishing for a god to do so, or wasting this precious life gambling that their might be something better after it ends.
Also, confort for having a higher being supposedly take care of you like your parents did when you were a child. Anything to soothe the loss of infancy.