Top predators and higher reasoning animals do, bears lions chimpanzees. Ant's have full fledged wars. Religion is just an organizational definition for economic war i.e. we want this land, we want to control who benefits from this commerce.
I wouldn't say there is zero evidence, particularly when it comes to values and morals. And we go through lives doing things without evidence.
I don't want to make this (another) Hitler thread. I'd just say I wouldn't put him on the hardcore athiest madmen list. I'd put him on the megalomaniacal secularist list. You don't have to be an atheist to operate in a secular way.
For most of the world's population, religion is indoctrinated from childhood by social groups. Few people believe in a particular sect because it make logical sense, they choose it because their parents, and community are that sect. The taboos of 'other' religions or marrying outside your own religion are to maintain the integrity of the group for self-defense, circular commerce and political power.
You will never know Hitler's real beliefs, he, like Ted Cruz now, only projected the image he wanted to be perceived. It was all calculated for political effect, religious enough to be accepted by religious groups, undefined enough to not be beholden to religious leaders.
Greed, groupthink, tradition and tribalism, not Islam or even religion more generally. There's more to it than simply 'it's religion!' as Bill Maher would suggest.
Right, I think religion is a vehicle for all those elements I mentioned and is oftentimes part of the problem.
Arguing about Hitler being religious or not always strikes me as a waste of time- his religiosity or lack thereof has about as much to do with the net goodness or badness of religion, or a-religionism, as it does with rectangular mustaches or being from Austria. Religion should stand or fall on its own merits - IMO it should fall because it's ludicrous on its face, regardless of any good or bad things you can correlate with it.
There is a lot of controversy about this... and he had no problem shipping Catholics to concerntration camps.
The only controversy over this is some Christian apologist a few decades back started claiming he was an atheist and it started catching on.
All that is the structure of a social set, we develop societies for the purposes of preserving and promoting our genetic information: people you trust, not to kill you or your offspring or take your food and women, people that will help you flourish in food production and commerce. Religion promotes a common set of morays for the society and can reinforce a hierarchical social structure. It has traditionally derived it's power by providing answers to the unanswerable questions (the fear of losing that power is why religions often opposes science)
Couldn't agree more. It's shameful when grown men believe in an obvious fairy tale. It's unfathomable.
They do when there are too many in each other territories and they cannot leave. Also there have been wars among chimps for a bigger territory.
I, Panda23, am not religious. I was brought up in an anglican household, sent to an anglican school, and just could never bring myself to believe whats written in the bible. Many of my friends are religious, and they are free to believe what they want, I respect their freedom to exercise that choice. I'm not some neckbeard who thumbs it in peoples faces how silly I think religion is, but what really infuriates me is when religious people claim, "how do you know whats right and wrong?" like I need some false supernatural being to tell me basically not to be a prick.
The fairy tale is God. Religion is not a fairy tale. And God and Religion, as intertwined as they can be, are not the same thing.
