You bring up a valid historical example PV but I understand what Colt was driving at in his post. If you look at the totality of human history for the past couple thousand years, you can attribute a lot more atrocities to those people who considered themselves "religious" than to those people who were atheists or agnostics.

Well, we tend to mix religion with healthy pragmatism- the latter by far occupies the much greater preponderance of our worldview and lifestyles. People still buy insurance and buckle their seatbelts, they know they can't always rely on the spirits to save them. They may revert to prayer in order to petition the favor of the gods and plead for their intervention during crises and in general they tend to cherry pick the tenants they can go along with, forsaking the other stuff. If it turns out all right, the gods were merciful, praise be to them. If not, well, we just gloss over that. Often times God in the Old Testament didn't seem to know what was going on. He shows up once in a while and was like, "Hey everyone, I just came by to see what you were doing, and-- WTF are you guys doing over there!? Why you little...!" Then God stopped intervening like this and we tend to live our lives as if the final payback has been reserved for the end- so yes, even our spiritual identity and mental outlook has changed from the old ways of God the micro-manager.

But the line between mental health and religious belief may be fine, especially in those rarer cases of people who commit to an itense interpretation and by their intense habits or preoccupations of thinking about going to Hell or provoking the gods all the time- it may be a form of obssessive compulsive disorder, or simply a profound and unshakable belief- is there a difference?

There are groups which re-enact the crucifixion of Jesus, actually nailing someone to the cross or taking a less grisly approach using straps and theatrical blood- at any rate the tired and true blood ritual simulation of the pagan guilt sacrifice: you sacrifice the blood of the innocent in exchange for a curse on your enemies, for a successful harvest, or just simply because it's that time again to let the gods know you know they're there. The coup de grace is the ritual eating of the flesh and drinking the blood of the god to possess his strength- they did this in the festival of the bacchic cult god Dionysus. There is a more subdued, more formal rite of this in Christianity. These acts in themselves may denote some attractive and primitive ecstacy- the ecstacy of destruction and redemption.

Something that I have often found interesting is that there is such an apparent effort by many non-religious, both scientific and not, paint believers as beyond the pale. These same people, even above religious believers, should recognize the natural 'primitive' motivations of spiritualism and it's deep binding to humans and commonality to our existence. Is not capacity secondary to instinct?

That's an old culture war- in the past, failure to show the proper reverence to the patron deity could mean a death sentence or some other sanction. For our purposes in the US, 'beyond the pale' means, "Yeah, you may be a relic, but unless your beliefs get into public policy or some such thing, you're off the hook." It's not so different fundamentally than devout religious people inferring some moral defect in secular society- Unitarians or some other non-denominational- kuhm by-ya-feel-good-Jesus-is-your-pal-mountain-retreat kind of church might be looked upon as jokes by fundamentalists.


Even believers squabble among themselves- Mitt Romney was a Mormon: not bloody likely. And the religious wars between sects all over the world have been among the most fierce of all wars.

I tend to reverse the idea that religious people are somehow less informed or less logical- logic is what they rely upon in the cognitive development of their ideas where they lack material proof. In other words, they use mental constructions and subtle and not so subtle logical reasoning to take the place of experiment and data, because they have more intellectual arguments than they do hard evidence. Often I might think they are less instinctive, as you put it, or perhaps missing certain sentiments, for example cruel militants who have no regard for empathy or the suffering of others, or other groups which tend to lock down and deny passion, and primitive impulses and lusts and desires, because they are base, animal, evil- they are too worldy, they are temptations from the 'higher' more removed plane of piety and spiritual contemplation. Then again, they may tell you to rape the world and procreate, so that is the flip side.

For there to be a Devil (Evil) then there must be a God (Good) too wouldn't you agree DevilM.

Can't have one without the other. Otherwise your forum name is hypocritical.

That opens a can of worms- it gives me goosebumps just thinking of it.

Evil and Good are perhaps too convenient for their own good; Nietzsche explained 'Evil' as simply a re-evaluation of morals. What was formally Good, he argued- the Homeric/Aristotle noble aristocratic ethics according strong character, passion, strength, ego become subverted and reversed by a jealous priest caste. The Old Testament is a record of the aristocracy- the principle characters are leaders and heads of tribes and heads of housholds.

The Devil is allegory: the driving, primitive life force which sees value in the here and now, in this life, in material pleasure, in carnal desires- the Left Hand Path. Jesus is the Right Hand Path- patience, self denial, humility, self sacrifice, obedience- worthy of a slave ethic, as fitting for what was at the time an obscure sect and a slave religion whose principle followers were the dregs, the rabble. Then again, Jesus later is subverted and becomes the symbol of power for the monarchs of Europe and later still the guiding light of the United States- guns and Jesus, Jesus the Crusader, Jesus the trickle down/supply sider.

I don't find the Bibilcal Devil all that evil per se in the sense that he doesn't do much other than tempt and persuade; God on the other hand crushes the world, inflicts famine and plague, commands obedience at the penalty of death and damnation, judges with no mercy- until he strings his own son up like a slab of meat. Yeah, just think what he'd do to me then.

Well there's always that big fire pit known as hell.

See us all there. Party! Beer's on you, dude.

Not me bud i won't be there.

Such pride of confidence you have- one of the deadly sins.