@lightweight I absolutely agree with Environmentalism. "Go forth and multiply" could use a addendum now.

Big religions show what we can all agree to, but maybe their time has come. I think we are already seeing what happens when a society drops its religion: increased polarization, lack of trust and respect for one another, inability to even understand one another. I don't see how it ends, or rather I don't want to think about it.

@lightweight Everyone used to believe the same thing, but now we are free to choose. So we don't have the guarantee that everyone agrees that murder, stealing, or adultery is wrong. Either we all keep believing in those values, or we see the breakdown of society.

@lightweight I think we agree then: we don't want those 3 commandments broken. This would be our common ground. I'm calling it religion because they form the roots for Christianity and Islam.

@lightweight Yes, so on this common ground we can form a society. But if we want to improve it, we need to envision a better version of it, together. Common ideals that we can aim towards as a society. Do you see where I'm going?

@lightweight The Bible says the reason for faith is rightousness, acting strong, etc. I guess our society doesn't really require faith in God as such. I suppose you've got faith in something though?

@lightweight I agree, but I can't find any contradictions. Faith is the antidote to fear. I guess lots of childhood stories say the same thing.

@lightweight Contradictions *regarding faith*. There are certainly contractions elsewhere.

@lightweight I think I agree with you on the Bible, it's like a spin on life that makes it go down easy. We don't actually know if they are the answers, so why would you call the opposite spin truth? Is it not better to be happy?

@lightweight I understand, religion opens the door to lying to yourself, which means people are likely to ignore anything that isn't beneficial to them. If we all just accepted the facts we would be able to do something about the climate.

I am in favour of pushing Environmentalism into our common ground.

@lightweight What about this: trust the evidence when we have it, and apply religion to the parts of life that no evidence is possible. Questions like "what should my purpose be" cannot be answered by science. You need to choose some values in order to answer that. If you want to be the best person possible, you choose the best values. The Bible is an ongoing effort to collect these values of goodness.

@lightweight You claim to only trust science, yet you have found purpose, so I know you have a set of values. These are what I would call your religion. Those values aren't derived scientifically, they were handed down to you and you picked them up.

@lightweight lots of the Bible is fiction, but it's to convey a deeper meaning, like analogies.

Your personal philosophy needs to line up with others in order for them to think you are a good person. I believe you fight for the right cause. We can call it a shared philosophy instead of religion, but I'm saying that a not a few of our ideas came from the Christian west way of thinking.

@lightweight I disagree. A good portion of the Bible is dedicated to how Jesus responds to situations, Paul's writing to churches in immoral cities. King Solomon's proverbs are pretty awesome. Genesis has some deeply architypical stories.

If you read them like fact, you're going to miss the point.

@lightweight those earlier stories are even more interesting than the Bible. Although, they were probably simplified when copied to convey the meaning better, and a collection of stories put together is more powerful than each story by itself.

The clichés aren't interesting, but far from irrelevant. The stories aren't meant to entertain, they're definitions for happenings in everyday life: temptation, sin, sacrifice, resentment, leadership. They help us discuss them.

@lightweight Yes, I hate the control that had as well. It's a defilement of what is supposed to be good and true. It happens, no matter what religion. Socialism, Capitalism. A good question is how do we engineer a religion that is good and incorruptible?

@lightweight My definition for religion is more general than the traditional ones. Humans need to have meaning/values and will organise around them. It's not whether religion is good or bad, but a choice of which one (or "ones" - provided they are compatible).

@lightweight The Bible is really really old, copied from stories even older. The refinement of time those stories went through is much more insightful than one mind, and tell us more about what proporous societies valued as they grew to what we have today. If you need something extremely reliable, like a society, would you pick the newest tech, or the laggard tech?

@lightweight The Bible is showing its age and perhaps some passages could be retired. But I don't think the message is at odds with Science. Science tells us where we are, but doesn't provide any guidance as to how we should grow. Picture a tree, science can tell us where the tree is, but religion is the sun that guides its growth.

@lightweight Religion is related to what we value as a collective. If we drop the religion that got us here, I'm afraid that we have a long way to fall. How can we tell what we should value other than from the accumilated learning of the past?