Brainstorming verses: Think harder...!

[emballantine]

Originally posted by khaledx76
B. http://www.free-researchpapers.com/dbs/a12/awc16.shtml

After six weeks from the LMP the embryo's backbone has come together and there are two arteries that run down each side of it. The skin on the embryo is very thin and translucent. The placenta and the embryo are connected by the umbilical cord. The one large artery and two smaller veins run through the umbilical cord. Everything that the embryo needs will come through the umbilical cord. Fetal Development After about eight weeks from the LMP the tiny little embryo has every organ that it needs.

Not to nitpick...but if your going to quote research I think it would be wise to quote from a more realiable resource than "Free-ResearchPapers.com". These are not scientific studies, they are research papers given away for free on the internet for students to hand in to their professors. This is like quoting a biology students term paper.

[emballantine]

Originally posted by CreepingJesus
Current sites of religious conflict and civil unrest in the world...Every one of these conflicts is legitimised by religious belief!

While, I do believe surely that organized religion is quite possibly the root of evil, your list of religious conflicts brought up an interesting point to me. Every single conflict on that list involved at least one, if not more than one, judeo-christian religion.

At first I thought, maybe this is evidence that judeo-christian religions are really the problem. And as much as I would love to point my finger at them, this is a stretch of a logical deduction.

However, it does bring me back around to the question: (What I would define religion as includes atheism as much as any theism...at least in the case of CreepingJesus) Is religion really the problem? Or is it greed, love of money, or power that is the problem and religion is merely the getaway car (so to speak)?

In some respects, the question may be irrelevant. The person driving the get away car is just as guilty as the person holding the gun in my opinion.

The way you, CreepingJesus, would explain it, religion is simply a creation by mankind. I would definitely not argue with this. But it brings me to a moral dilemma. I would definitely argue that most (though perhaps not all) religions are corrupt, dehumanizing, greedy, power hungry, and manipulative, etc etc. Does this then mean that humans are inherently all of these things? Are humans, by nature, corrupt, evil, a cancer upon their own humanity? Or worse, are the majority of humans, by nature, just really that dumb as to follow the few humans who are corrupt and evil without ever questioning why?

I personally have to believe that humans by nature are good, which would then force me to believe that humans by nature are dumb or lazy? What a dark view of the world.

What is your view on the plight of humanity without religion? Can man really exist without religion? Are we inherently corrupt? Or are we inherently stupid? Or both? And if we are inherently either, there will always be a religious leader of some sort there to feed off our ignorance or our corruption. Is there an answer in your religious beliefs (or non-beliefs) for how to deal with these problems? On the reverse....maybe we are (as I would love to believe) inherently perfect (I use the word perfect loosely of course). Then where did these evil religions come from? Where did we go from a people who accepted surviving as the ultimate and divine action of humans to a people who felt that conquering and imposing ones religious beliefs on others was the ultimate and divine action? Could there not be peace loving and respectful religions that are not a cancer upon humanity? Unitarians Universalists? Native Americans? Native Africans? Some pagans? Buddhists?

I know this is a lot of questions. They are primarily aimed at CreepingJesus, but are open to anyone. Intelligent responses would be appreciated.