Quote Originally Posted by Polymirize
When did I say anything about religion?

And yeah, you're absolutely right about good scientists.

maybe you should read my posts and work with what they actually say rather than jump into your little tangents about what you want me to say.

You wouldn't want to be accused of religious zeal or anything.
"I guess I should mention that skepticism is a huge part of science."
"Except of course, when it comes to the rather painful task of self-evalutation."

You said that skepticism is not a big part of science when it comes to the task of self-evaluation. Well then, compared to what? Science means looking at the evidence and using logic to build suitable theories to explain them, and always leaving the theories open to rejection or modification when new evidence comes to light. If you're not doing that, you're not doing science. So what other ways of knowing about the world are there besides one based on evidence and logic, and how is possible that such an approach could ever be more self-evaluating than science?

A way of trying to understand the world that is not based on evidence and logic must therefore be based on something else. The only things I can think of are just believing what you're told and believing in something because it's comfortable to believe in it. And as far as I'm concerned, any system of beliefs like that is indistinguishable from religion.
Honestly, what's with you and religion? You're like rabid dog if you even suspect a person. It's like the red scare around you if some one drops the G word.
People are free to believe whatever they want, of course. But I think religion is a horrible idea and the world would be much better without it. When we teach our children that faith is good, that it is not only acceptable but praiseworthy to just accept things for which there is no evidence, we are damaging their abilities for critical thought.

God is a dangerous idea. To teach that there is a divine being that will enact justice is to teach that we don't have to do it here on earth. To teach that there is an eternal afterlife is to teach that earthly life is worthless. To teach that there is an absolute morality superior to humans that's woven into the universe is to teach that ethical behavior cannot be arrived at through reason and a respect for other people's happiness. It also teaches that once you know this absolute morality (all religions claim to know at least some of it), it's okay to impose those morals on others since they supposedly apply to everybody.

God is also a potentially lethal idea. What major theistic religion has not had its share of terrorists ready to spread the faith by any means necessary? There are thousands of different gods that humans have invented and believe in with absolute certainty, but there isn't a shred of evidence for any of them. Disputes between people as to the nature of God/the gods (and the nature of the absolute morality that applies to everybody) cannot be argued with logic or reason, so vehemently religious people often try out violence to resolve the confluct. As long as society thinks it's okay to teach children about the gods and their absolute moralities, there will always be people who take these ideas really really seriously and there will always be religious war and religious terrorism. That is why I am against God belief.

As Mikhail Bakunin so beautifully stated in God and the State:
God being everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is the slave. Incapable of finding justice, truth, and eternal life by his own effort, he can attain them only through a divine revelation. But whoever says revelation says revealers, messiahs, prophets, priests, and legislators inspired by God himself; and these, once recognized as the representatives of divinity on earth, as the holy instructors of humanity, chosen by God himself to direct it in the path of salvation, necessarily exercise absolute power.
...
A jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.