[jemmyw]

Well given religions are all different and only one could be true, it's more correct to say they're all a lie. One might be true. However, as old ones have died away and new ones will be created and the current ones evolve it's not even possible to say that any one religion is subjectively true to itself.

[barrysteve]

They have different beliefs, but it's all the same God.

You can't know enough in this lifetime to judge them to be objective or subjective lies. Just getting through the magisterium is more reading than one lifetime, let alone the other old judeo-christian 'usual suspects' faiths.

Replacing your category of God and religion with 'its all a lie' is very dangerous and distasteful to read.

[jemmyw]

The inside and outside perspective. (1) If you're religious and inside then it's so important to you, it makes no sense to casually dismiss the ideas that are ingrained in your life about the ideas of God and religion.

(2) If you're like me, on the outside and not religious, can you understand that I can shrug those off and call them a lie very easily, because they don't matter to me at all? From the outside it is like people getting upset that you've insulted something in Harry Potter books.

Face to face with people I'm more mindful and just don't talk about this kind of thing unless its with like minded people. On a technical forum like this, I'm not going to hold back with my real opinion though. You have a choice to read or not, and to consider (2). I do not wish to offend you by writing off your beliefs. But to an atheist who does not think about religion much at all, it is a bunch of nonsense.

[barrysteve]

Engaging in blunt conversation on here is valuable to me aswell. It can be difficult to summarize a topic like religion (so much to say) that I know exists, but isn't directly my faith. Protection from offense is not something I need in my faith, though I understand sensitivity to offense is common in American-focused websites.

You are free to say whatever you want and I love that freedom. I want it too.

I believe saying that God and religion is a lie, is something you can do as an atheist and be fine.

But if taken as a statement of truth about God and a foundational axiom, you can end up in nihilism and a 'bad place', speaking loosely, quickly.

In discussing porn and the way we all have to live together in society, I'm not willing to casually throw away the moral implications of porn and the moral logic of the conversation about porn.

Making porn a matter of faith, religion, atheism or belief is a policy mistake to begin with. If it has measurably damaging outcomes to our youth, the case should be much clearer about the boundary between freedom and delayed gratification.

My blunt(-ish) $0.02.

[ako]

If damaging outcome to our youth is your main concern we might want to start by censoring social media altogether. And alcohol, and not doing any sports, and eating fastfood, and being overweight…

But back to religion, I think religion opens the doors to a society that accepts lies as facts. It basically legalizes stating assumptions for facts, and making those assumptions have big impact on society. And thereby it states that it’s ok to do that on a larger scale, the way you see fox media spewing lies as facts, and how the way Trump talks is ok.

[barrysteve]

The black and white idea of censoring is beyond my want. We can talk about those things for sure,

- Alcohol displays the % alcohol content on the bottle and has age-verification for purchase in some countries/retailers. An equivalent for porn would in theory, be a plausible discussion.

- Hard contact sports are battling CTE brain trauma as we speak. It's worth trying to save our men from injuries that permanently degrade their ability to contribute to society. We are working on preventing the damage to our youth from the whole concept of sports. Broadly speaking, similar preventative idea could be plausible for teenagers-home-alone and in low-income neighbourhoods who need a help up (and off porn).

- Fast food has changed. Coke moved to Diet-Coke and then widespread acceptance of No-Sugar varieties. That is a huge change that could find a metaphorical analogy in porn. Moving the majority of teenage porn consumption from hard-core down to soft-core, would be a theoretically plausible conversation.

- Being overweight is less clear as the causes-and-effects are so numerous and can combine unhealthily, it is not easy to my mind, to make measurable and agreeable claims towards limiting it's downsides. You got me on this one.

Yeah it brings me to low to watch factual debate fly out the window. The freedom to say whatever you want, I love, but a government or official somewhere shouldn't be allowed to have no grain-of-truth at all, in his interpretative rhetoric. There should be a fact at the bottom somewhere.

[marak830]

Reading someone defending religion is distasteful to read, yet here we are.

Edit: I shouldn't have posted this as I was not adding to the conversation, just defending the GP's position. I'll leave it anyway though.

[barrysteve]

No, you're right. I was glib and mildly judgey. I made a mistake too.

[defrost]

It's certainly true that there are people today with deeply held spiritual beliefs with tens of thousands of years of continuity that don't revolve about a singular interventionalist monotheist God - which rather dents the claim that "but it's all the same God".

[barrysteve]

Yeah that theological argument is surmountable, from my eyes. I'm happy to have both ideas on as options, the monotheism one was left off the map.

The Indian and Japanese beliefs are particularly fascinating in the departure from monotheism. The Shinto practices and Hindu beliefs are something I have left inadequately studied so far.

[defrost]

Surmountable?

It's not exactly a game that you win, missionaries were just another group of colonisers bent on the destruction of other.

See, also: https://www.aboriginal-art-australia.com/aboriginal-art-libr...

and others.