Religion v. Torture
 

Pew Forum: The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate

Soon to be published in the 'Journal of Shit We Already Knew' :laugh:

It seems frequent churchgoers are more likely to agree that torture can be justified than those unaffiliated with an organized religion. Not surprisingly, the Republican base (WASP's) takes the crown.

I'm currently reading this book, "God is Not Great, how religion poisons everything" by Christopher Hitchens and when I read that article yesterday I was all, "And there's yet ANOTHER reason why religion sucks". Not surprising since you have to have a pretty skewed view of the world to believe in Santa/Jesus to begin with, but I just shake my head that they don't see the irony of their views. Wasn't their saviour tortured? Didn't he preach forgiveness, love they neighbour and turn the other cheek? Silly me for thinking that people who base their lives around a particular religion might actually follow it's tenets. That's the religious masses for you!

Hitler's Pope by John Cornwell is another good read to add. Catholics, of which I am one, are among the biggest hypocrites out there( I guess for this thread I will burn, oh well :cheeky4:). I was fortunate to visit the Museum of Crime and Punishment in DC last month and besides some of the really cool exhibits were all the religious " torture" devices of yore. Nothing beats the Spanish Inquisition to give new meaning to torture, waterboarding is cake compared to what these glorified bastards did. Iron Maiden wasn't just for heavy metal. ;)

I thought religion [I]was[I] torture. Wearing a tie on Sunday, sitting on a hard wooden bench with no air conditioning in summertime, listening to someone tell me that if I did any of the things I wanted to do I was going to burn in hell forever and then ask me for money, enduring endless readings from a book written by I don't know how many dead guys about 2000 years ago which may or may not have been accurately translated from the various languages it was originally written in by said dead guys who were retelling oral histories hundreds of years old because when the greatest event in the history of mankind actually occurred nobody bothered to write it down at the time and preserve the record.....oops, time to apply rant brake!:laugh:

Wow, you get benches at your church? Mine it's stand sit kneel sit stand kneel stand some more sit then follow out the door whilst your fellow parish folk talk about what the others are wearing. Now if they just played In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on the organ ala The Simpsons, I'd be a church goer again.

it is of little surprise to me, that those who would curtail every facet of their existence, due to their fear of an 'all seeing something', would condone the use of torture tactics upon those who they have been told to be fearful of.

the biggest concern that i think we should dwell upon in today's world, is that the underhand manipulation of people is no longer clandestine; it is out there in plain sight and STILL it is allowed to exist and to propogate.

truly, it is an exceptional feat.

what are you trying to infer? a consistency in warfare or in life? because as much as you would wish for it to be true, violent international conflict should not be 'necessary' to (allegedly) intellectual creatures.

on the contrary. what we are discussing might be in our 'nature', but is it hereditary or merely learned?

considering generational trends falling away from religious belief and the broader, popularisation and thus access to scientific study, what we seeing today is the very evolution of this 'human nature' away from the religiously threatened, into the scientifically enlightened.

this will only work to undermine the apathy and ignorance that allows warfare to flourish. no warfare = less torture thru the political manipulation of nations and the physical pain of individuals, and less the 'need' for religious distinction.

What we are experiencing is the evolution of evolution. No longer is evolution limited to random genetic mutations that happen to produce a competitive advantage in the physcial world...we now have the opportunity, at least in part, to direct our own evolution. Humanity's consciousness generates the capability to choose, or at least purposefully influence the path along which we develop...but nothing is guaranteed. Many of the traits that helped secure the species' success over the past 160,000 years or so may interfere with continued success in the future. Old habits are hard to break.

the idiocracy theory is an interesting one.....

i am not sure however, whether there is a genuine decline in human intelligence thru time.....

as we live in an age of information and thus education, enlightenment can be more widespread and accessible, and thus our expectations of what one should know are increased.

(the US president can no longer call for national faith in his wisdom, by way of weekly radio broadcasts anymore than a vicar can demand attendence on a sunday.)

a perceived failure to rise to such higher standards could suggest a decline in intellectual capacity in the majority; but if the overall standard reflects a net gain in residual cleverness, then we have a net increase in braininess and thus the theory is null.

in addition to this, we have VD, crime, poverty and good old war, working to reduce the effect morons have, in diluting our gene pool into complete stoopidity.

if the theory is true to any extent, the only manifestation will be in 'class / caste' based segregations...... which we already have.