@Sat – I agree, it’s so done to death. Just play your music and have fun, nobody needs rants on religion, be it anti or pro. Like the old saying, two things kill a party – Politics and Religion. Just leave it alone and make good music. I don’t think Dolving is capable of either..

^same. yup, the ghost isn’t a total asshole. religion has a purpose for some, just not me. to each his own.

Yeah maaann .. its like cancer of … the heaaadd mann

I know one doesn’t need to be creative with adjectives, but his error is trying to shoehorn as many banal adjectives into his blog (some of which don’t even fit what he’s trying to describe) in order to make the article look prettier. It doesn’t work.

I think your comments are on point. And if we think about what what Dolving is saying, we can turn it backwards – For the sake of argument, lets accept that religion is a mental illness. If this is the case, then what does that say about mental illness? That the vast majority of humans in the present and throughout history have been sick in the head, or that mental illness is a social construct that fluctuates with the prevailing orthodoxy in vogue.

Despite the substantial problems with his method (and his idolaters) Michel Foucault’s ‘Birth Of The Clinic’ is a good expose of this.

The point is, so what if X condition is a mental illness. What does that actually mean we should do? Lock these people up, or just get on with our lives.

(I’m ignoring the fact that religious beliefs often determine the culture around them here.)

As to that last point, wrong. He said he DOES think everyone should think what he does, or that they’re mentally insane. Therefore, the guy himself is an arrogant prick who needs to learn to accept other people’s beliefs. I don’t care if he’s atheist or whatever. But just because someone believes in a higher power, be it a specific one or not, it doesn’t mean they’re insane. It means they don’t want to be damned to hell, and the religion they chose is the one they felt most comfortable with.

I mean, extremeists who are like WBC and the suicide bombers in Islam? Okay, yes, there is substantial reason to lock those people up. But not just because of a certain mindstate a person has. That’s infringing upon the right to think- in essence, even if he thinks religion is a control device, he’s doing the same thing a preacher does- telling his point of view, and trying to convince others to believe in it. So if he condemns anything like that as insane, then he himself should be locked up. No, he’s not channeling a divine entity, but he IS trying to control others and their beliefs in the same way a preacher would. Furthermore, he’s assuming something he himself has no possible idea of knowing- if there is or is not a God.

Looking at the universe, it is fundamental scientific and theoretical understanding in every mind that this existence had to come from somewhere. We have several theories. Christianity/Islam/Judaism are three divergent sects of the same basic religion with a single theory skewed a couple different ways. Therefore, their God has the most /probability/ to exist if we accept that the truth must be SOMEWHERE in one of ANY theories. Other religions also have similarities, but there are those, like Buddhism which have been taken from philosophies and turned into religions. (Siddhartha’s “middle path” doctrine actually says somewhere in the texts not to take his ideas too far and worship him- of course, human nature would have it that this happened anyway). There are also “purely” scientific (more accurately, purely mathematical) theories such as the Big Bang and String Theory (which is less a theory of everything, and more a theory of creation and our universe splitting into two universes- one of 4 dimensions, which we experience, and a second universe 100 billion billion times smaller than a proton which consists of 6 dimensions wrapped tightly into an almost cone-like structure which supposedly governs many of the forces we experience, and allows for the vibration of light through vacuum).

But neither of these truly explain where the Big Bang itself originated, which, as many scientists have concluded, means that there is no definite answer as to whom or what created this universe, and the acceptance of a God is not a scientific fault, nor a psychological, nor a pathological fault. Rather, the acceptance of a God is a fundamental human understanding which the “watch maker” clearly demonstrates.

Say there is a watch found on the ground. The human who picks it up understands that the pieces which make the intricate device work in a continuous, invariable pattern have all been assembled by at least one watch maker, if not more. Perhaps the watch was made in a factory, but even the factory had to have been made either by human (or another sentient being’s) hands, or simpler machines made by sentient hands. The watch did not come together all by itself, without reason. If you smashed the watch against the wall, and then smashed the pieces together, the watch would not magically reform, as atoms might on their microscopic level. Therefore, we can infer that the universe was not simple a “smashing” of atoms into a big bang that out of chaos, became order. That thinking is purely illogical. Something or someone had to orchestrate the creation of the universe.

The reason scientists avoid this, is because science focuses on that which can be experimentally proven, at the current moment, or hopefully sometime in the future if technology is not currently up to the task. (Such as the discovery of the neutrino, which was 70 years after it was first theorized by Wolfgang Pauli in the 1930′s.) Since the existence of a deity cannot be explicitly proven until he/she/it shows his/her/its-self, scientists have no real business trying to prove the existence of God, as it may just confuse and muddle their time and studies. Albert Einstein himself believed there was a God, as the mathematical structure of the universe is so beautiful (a term which means that there is mathematical symmetry, where certain sets of equations, when solved, become a simpler set of equations, and when all complied create a unified theory… String Theory aims to complete this goal, and so far has been largely successful… unfortunately, our mathematical capabilities are not up to par on solving the theory just yet) and since both in its geometric and quantum properties the supersymmetry remains with the universe, Einstein inferred that there is a subtle God, one vaguely similar to the God taught by Christianity.

Although the existence of God may be “subtle, but not cruel,” his lack of intervention is “enough” proof for some people to discard the idea of a God, and throw the idea into a rejection pile. But the purpose of science has much to do with a deity, as science is on a quest to find the answer to the universe- in its purpose and how it got where it is, and to explain how every aspect of it works in tandem.

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.” – Albert Einstein.

Therefore, to dismiss religion is a scientifically erroneous choice.

I agree with you on the Dawkins line. And considering that Dawkins is very weak at his philosophy of religion, that is bit of a smack down.

As for the Stalin thing, its a bit of a weak line, comparable to ‘Hitler was a vegetarian, you’re a vegetarian, therefore, you’re a hitler.’ Yes, Stalin was supposedly an atheist, but first and foremost he was Communist. Like any fundamentalist, he thought that he had found the Truth, and concluded that any human costs in support of that Truth were acceptable.

While bigotry may be the enemy, i’m more inclined to say it is the fundamental pursuit of Truth that is the enemy. Adam Curtis’ Documentary, ‘The Trap’ is a good exposition of this point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(television_documentary_series)

religion is a VERY relevant social issue. Islamic terrorism? the right of Israel to the land it settled on? abortion? gay marriage? religion is a part of almost EVERYTHING. it gives people guidelines how to live, it tells them where they came from, it tells them what their purpose is…. it attempts to explain our existence.

i just feel like you can’t blame people for wanting to put their thoughts about religion into song, however half-witted they may be. at the core, it’s a very deep issue; it’s about why we even exist.

There are plenty of people who are raised by non-religious families and go on to find and adopt a particular religion they like. As much as we enjoy touting science as the cure-all for religion, we also love to ignore the fact that there’s a HUGE amount of things we don’t know, and that when humans have come as far from us as we have from Neanderthals, there will still be questions that science can’t answer.

Science and religion don’t have to be mutually exclusive – sure, the major religions refuse to believe it, and the atheists refuse to believe it, but a fusion of the two actually tends to make very reality-based individuals who still understand that some things we just don’t understand, some things we’ll never understand, and that acknowledging the possibility (beyond agnosticism) that there is a higher order of intelligence that could very well be orchestrating, for lack of a better word, everything.

great analogy

Hmm, reading into this, are you saying that the Haunted, and their ilk, are simply emos?

Observe: ” “Rants” just turn out to be whinefests…”heh, relationships amirite?”

Replace ‘god sucks’ with ‘relationships suck’ and we’ve gone from antitheistic metal to emo in one fowl swoop.

Aaah, fuck it, i’m prepared to say that ALL metal is just emo with too much self importance.
Observe: Metallica are a foundational metal band: FACT
Some Kind Of Monster showed Metallica to be whiney and self-obsessed: FACT
Conclusion: All Metal is emo.

Discuss…

Yep. And we will be until 2012. When the world ends. Or so the Aztecs (or some fruity latin folks) and Hollywood said.

You don’t have to wait much longer.