Definition
Whitewash: Concealment or palliation of flaws or failures.
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Does anyone ever get the feeling that religions today seem to have "flaws" to them, or perhaps a perspective that goes against history itself? I'm not trying to say religion is complete bs, but I feel as though the full truth has been manipulated or not told. Does anyone else feel this way?
I think the truth is in the Bible, but the mass media has done it's intended job in brain washing people to only see a popular perspective when reading the Bible. ( Later on I'll put up a VERY interesting perspective which I believe might very well be the truth, considering the well known facts of our past and present).
Finally a topic that has merit.
I'm not so cynical as to believe that people intentionally misrecorded or interpreted events (as they happened) in order justifying certain policy decisions, but most so-called "Biblical laws" have their roots from even earlier times when people lived short, dangerous, miserable lives and had to have as many kids as they could to ensure they'd survive disease and to "fight off the barbarians."
It boils down to this: people around the times when the current mainstream western religions were created (around 3,500 years ago for the Jews; 2,000 years ago for the Christians, Islam around 1,300 years ago) did not know about nor did practice the scientific method.
People today use the scientific method in order to discover the truth, or more accurately, to disprove the untrue. Scientifically speaking, you can never prove anything to be absolutely 100% true, only things to be 100% false.
People back then (and many still today) don't seek to explain things they don't understand through science. If something out of the ordinary happened that couldn't easily be attributed to a cause, [insert magical power--God, spirit of the forest, volcano troll, etc] would be blamed.
Think about how an ignorant first century human would view a total solar eclipse. Attribute it to a God? Surely such a magnificent event would be God's work. And people would gaze in horror and amazement--and find out shortly thereafter that "God blinded them" (because staring at the Sun, eclipse or not, burns out your retinas) as punishment.
There is no scientific or logical basis to believe in any deity, supernatural being, etc. Atheism is equally as logically unjustifiable. You can't
prove or disprove most religious assertions--just like we couldn't prove to VideoJinx in the previous thread that the government
isn't lying to him to try and poison him with fluoride for no reason. The question itself lacks
reason. Agnosticism, the realization and assertion that a God may or may not exist; and that you have no way of knowing, is really the only logical argument.
So how did the religions start? Good question. Like I said--I'm not cynical enough to believe that devious, intelligent people intentionally made things up in order to control those ignorant, superstitious peasants--let's think.
Maybe someone suffering from the same mental ailments we see today (dimensia, a brain tumor, etc) saw visions and insisted they were true. People are extremely gullible, even in
today's climate--willing to believe almost anything without proof, without examining the source.
You look at some of the most ignorant, backward places on this planet--parts of Africa, the middle-east--what do you see? People in religious authorities oppressing the people, or deluding them to the point where they do it to themselves.
The hardest thing to understand, in my opinion, are the people who claim to believe in something and do something totally contrarian to that belief, and claim it's actually
supported by it.
Like Christians passing judgment on others and trying to force people to follow Christian beliefs by legislatively banning contrary practices (in spite that Jesus himself taught
let he who is without sin cast the first stone and
judge not lest ye be judged. Rather than peacefully persuade people to live by example, you see the Repbulican Party of the US being taken over by religious zealots that want to
force you to live how they dictate.
An even more extreme example is how this warped, misconstrued version of Islam is being used today to justify mass murder, kidnapping/etc. Core Islam itself is about as peaceful as core Christianity is. But I can't remember the last time I met a humble, live-by-example Christian that exemplifies the teachings of
Christ. Because you're not supposed to realize that they are Christian, rather than just good people.
Bottom line: Religion is a left-over antiquity from a time when people sought to explain things they didn't understand with religion, superstition or magic, rather than explainable, scientific principles. The scientific method in its current form (the hypothetico-deductive model) didn't start to be used until the 20th century. And what have we seen since then?
Massive, UNPARALLELED progress in every field of pursuit a human can explore. We are living in a time of unbelievably quickly advancing technology as compared to the last 10,000 (or 100,000,000) years because of this fundamental change of philosophy: the search for
verifiable truth.
My personal kudos to anyone who read this. Any thoughts are welcome.
