Organised religion is a scam. Persuade me otherwise.

JGXdebatePRO

@lj123 This debate is not censoring thoughts, we are debating if it is a scam. People are free to believe in even a scam.

JGXdebatePRO

@lj123 Who, exactly? Einstein? Atheist. Hawking? Atheist. Who is this enigmatic "wise person" you have structured your brittle, delinquent debate on?

Happy_Killbot

As an atheist myself, and just to play devil's advocate here, I think the strongest argument here would be that we have to differentiate between between religions that are scams (i.e, Scientology, the LDS church, any of these new age cults) and religions that do serve a practical but abstract purpose.

You might think of a church a bit like a business, although in practice it is more than that.

Faith helps people calm down and gives them a sense of purpose and order in a world that is governed by chaos and unpredictability. The organisation of a religion becomes a way to formalize and further justify any given belief system, as well as provide centralization which aids in overall decision making and internal unity.

While some religions exploit this unity and centralization to do terrible things, this is not universal. Many smaller churches use the money they collect through donations to support the church then use the rest for public works such as providing for the poor. Thus not all organized religions are a scam.

JGXdebatePRO

lj123 said:

There is also no scientific evidence that there is no god so your points have no facts behind them 

@lj123 There is plenty of scientific evidence, as a matter of fact. The existence of god flies in the face of great scientist's discoveries. The premonition is blatantly ridiculous. Second, You have still got no reply for my previous point.

Happy_Killbot

@lj123 said:

There is also no scientific evidence that there is no god so your points have no facts behind them 

Shifting the burden of proof:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

JGXdebatePRO

@lj123 Have you got any proof that Alexander the great was not just an enraged serial killer?
Alexander the not so Great: History through Persian eyes ...www.bbc.co.uk › news › magazine-18803290

And is the remark "why are you teaming" really relevant to this debate?

JGXdebatePRO

lj123 said:

Yes I do, he saved Syrian royals

And slaughtered half of Persia.

Happy_Killbot

@JGXdebatePRO

But were the beliefs of Alexander the Great in any way a scam?

JGXdebatePRO

Well, this debate is not about the views of Alexander the great, it is about organised religion, so please stay on topic.

Happy_Killbot

@JGXdebatePRO Alexander the Great was a Hellenist, the religion of the Greeks. If your position is that all organized religion is a scam, then that position would apply to Hellenism.

So if I ask if the beliefs of Alexander the Great were a scam, and they are not, then that should be enough to persuade you correct?

JGXdebatePRO

Do you have any evidence for the fact that hellenism is not a scam?

Happy_Killbot

@JGXdebatePRO Why should I have to prove a negative?

MayCaesar

I do not think religion it is a scam; rather, it is a roleplay that has gone on for far too long. It is much like when people put on medieval-looking armor made of plastic, take plastic swords and start imitating medieval battles. Looks cool, can be healthy and fun, but probably detrimental to one's health when taken too seriously and literally.

Organised religion is exactly when it is taken too seriously and literally by a large number of people. When the individuals participating in a medieval battle imitation start believing that they are on the actual medieval battlefield and have to kill their opponents physically.

TKDB

@JGXdebatePRO

What kind of a scam?

Wire fraud, money laundering, embezzlement, swindling the seniors out of their money?

When all I've personally seen, are various parishioners giving offerings to the religious buildings of their choices?

So if organized religion is a scam, where's the Real World evidence to support, that very claim?

From maybe: NPR, CNN, MSNBC, WHRO, OAN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, or YouTube? 

I keep waiting for the FBI, the DA, and the local Law Enforcement to show up to a Religious Building in the United States, and then hear about it in the Nationwide news media, where a Religious Building was closed, or shutdown, for this very reason,

"Organised religion is a scam."

AlofRI

Organized religion is a course you take where you fail if you get the answers RIGHT! And you must succumb to a salesman selling an invisible product. Religion causes us to hate others we wouldn't normally hate … like Muslims, Jews, Mormons, atheists, etc.


"When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity, when MANY suffer from a delusion it's called …… religion."  Robert Persig 

RickeyD

Organized religion, theologically speaking, is man's attempt to find a right standing (righteousness) with a god or gods...religion is man-made and impotent as is the ideological "religions" of atheism and evolution; these all culminate in death of the body in Time and the "second death" of the resurrected body of corruption and soul in Hell (Revelation 20:11-15).

There is but ONE-Way for mankind to find purpose, meaning, understanding, wisdom, discernment, relevant to our purpose in Time and Eternity and that is by humbling one's self, repenting of sin, sincerely believing in your heart, confessing with your mouth that Jesus Christ is God-Messiah who died to pay your sin-debt and believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead for your justification leading to eternal life (Romans 10:9-10). Without Jesus as Lord to mediate your sin, mankind has no hope of life in God's Kingdom subsequent to the death of the body in Time because God's holiness and justice will NOT permit unrepentant sin to enter His Kingdom (Revelation 21:27).

xlJ_dolphin_473

JGXdebatePRO said:

lj123 said:

Yes I do, he saved Syrian royals

And slaughtered half of Persia.

You guys are totally missing the point. Even wise guys can believe in scams.

JGXdebatePRO

I know, I have already posted on that fact. @xIJ_dolphin_473

AlofRI

Religion: A belief system predicated on good works or good deeds...………. Like the Crusades, putting people in stocks, beheading the criminals that don't pay their dues to the church, burning evil (assumed), witches at the stake, a few lashes, here and there, for heresy …. all that "good" stuff!  

RickeyD

@AlofRI; @JGXdebatePRO; The Crusades were primarily carried-out by the Roman Catholic Church not Christians but with that said, the Crusades were a reasonable response to the enslavement and murder of Jews and Christians by the Islamic Caliphate which, in totality, butchered 270-million non-Muslims until stopped in 1924. In recent history, that same Caliphate has raised it viperous head once again and it is your demonic ideology of progressive-socialism that supports and affirms the wickedness of Islam. This is evil.

Mankind is an integral part of a cosmic struggle that manifest in Eternity; a struggle between good v. evil and is the causation for our existence and our creation but you, as an impotent atheist, straddle the fence and side with evil as you castrate yourself in your impotence and alliance with your father.

AlofRI

I believe you were touting "religions" that were so "good'!? Catholicism IS a religion. One that worships the same "god" you do! They worship "CHRIST". YOU may not consider them "Christians", I DO. If I was in India worshipping a sacred cow would you call me an atheist?? If I worshipped a Buddha I wouldn't be considered an atheist. 

Are you saying Catholics do NOT do the same "good stuff" you claim to do? I think most actually "blind people" know they do just as much good as you evangelicals. That makes them JUST AS GOOD AS YOU. Remember, it was NOT just the Catholics that burned people at the stake, or threw them in prison for not giving their "dues" to the church! Sent them to the guillotine for heresy! ALL religions do their share of good, yours is no better than anyone else's …. and can be JUST AS BAD! 

I, as an atheist, believe I actually have more "compassion" than YOU show here. I give to charities, even religious ones. I help the unfortunate where I can, I DO NOT tell people to "go to hell" if they don't believe as I do, like YOU do. 
I actually hope you have a safe day.   

xlJ_dolphin_473

JGXdebatePRO said:

I know, I have already posted on that fact. @xIJ_dolphin_473

We are not arguing about whether wise guys believed in religion, we are debating about whether organised religion is a scam. That is a fallacy from authority, but you are correct that Alexander-the-not-so-Great committed some atrocious actions during his time. 

JGXdebatePRO

There is a common misconception here. That religion has science on their side. But a new theory, proposed by a researcher at MIT and first reported in Quanta Magazine, proposes that when a group of atoms is exposed for a long time to a source of energy, it will restructure itself to dissipate more energy. The emergence of life might not be the luck of atoms arranging themselves in the right way, it says, but an inevitable event if the conditions are correct. This obviously proves that we have the facts on our side and the world was not structured meticulously by an omnipotent being.