Monopoly and the Turd Sandwich!

Thank you for debating this with me and not being stuck within the boring traditional debate mindset. Now let's do this. 1. Let's start with the first topic, religion. "Too bad they needed an Absolute Totalitarian Dictator to get there!"-Con Now this I will concede. Most popular religions with the exception of a few such as Buddhism gained their popularity though absolutely horrible means. That however does not reflect that religion is bad. The people who spread their religion through force and violence, they were pretty terrible people. I will concede that, however the religion is an idea. How people take and distort that idea does not necessarily mean the idea is wrong or bad unless it started out bad before it was corrupted. "Come on children! What you know for sure is that you die! No need to spend your entire life waiting for the next!"- Con Let's take this into perspective here. These people live their lives in the belief that when they die they will live in eternal bliss. Is that true? Maybe, but I don't think so. Now here's the question people almost never ask, but the question is so critically important: Does it matter? No, it doesn't. Whether it's true or not people having this belief will positively impact their lives. You have conceded this and it is yet to remain disproved. You then say that them believing this distracts them from real issues and it causes them to waste their time. Now think about this logically for a minute. If they were not spending their time worshiping their god, what would they be doing? Probably nothing too productive. So either way whether religion is there or not human nature to not do anything about a problem unless it's right in front of us still remains. " Its unhealthy to make up stories!"-Con It's human nature to make up stories. We make up stories and lie to ourselves for two main reasons. 1. To explain things. 2. To make things easier for us. ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk... ) If religion really the equivalent to "making up stories" what you need to do is prove that the religion itself is harmful. This does NOT include the actions of those who follow the religion if it does not reflect the religion. Now back to what I was saying before we make up stories and lie to ourselves all the time, whether it be consciously or subconsciously. This can be either a bad or a good thing depending on the case. For example one can raise their self confidence by lying to themselves (I swear I'm a good dancer), on the other hand someone can harm themselves by denying a death or a tragedy. There is no reasonable explanation for us having this besides it being an evolutionary mechanism, so logically it has to have some benefit. Anyways my point is you have to prove that THIS instance of lying to ourselves is bad, because not every instance is. My main point that is crucial to understand is that throughout history religion has been used as an excuse for terrible actions, but it has never been the whole reason, therefore you can not blame religion for the atrocities that have been made in it's name. Religion can be horrible, or it can be amazing. That's up to us. If we give up on it and reject it as a whole those who refuse to reject religion will become tense with us and it will create an us vs them mentality. Instead of simply rejecting religion as a whole and branding its followers as idiots we can work with it to better society. For a lot of your beliefs you bring up the radical religious believers, but for the most part in 1st world countries at least radical believers are falling more and more. A good amount of people who are believers don't really follow they're customs or rules but are kind of just like "Oh yeah, I think there's a god and if I believe in him when I die I will get rewarded". Is that really so harmful? Now for the next section, you agreeing with me is kind of a problem because we need something to debate about. So I'm going to ask the question who's model of viewing the world and model of discourse is more beneficial and will help the most for solving the problem. Let me open with a simple truth, people believe what they want to believe. There is nothing that we can do about that, because it is simply human nature. Now let's look at your model for debating and arguing. I think one word fairly sums it up. Pessimistic. With round one your world view simply states all of these problems and how horrible the world is. Your world view is not something people will want to accept, or rather want to believe. If they do not want to believe it, they will not. Another problem with your model for discourse is you give no way out of our issues. You do not give an outlet for change. If a large amount of people adopt your world view one of two things will happen. 1. There will be no outlet for change, consequently there will be no change. 2. People will disagree about how to create change destroying co-operation, which again results in no change. And that's all assuming people adopt your world view and believe it, which as I stated before people will only believe what they want to believe. On the other hand my world view is something a lot more people will be a lot more willing to adopt. When they start looking at the world as I do they will start seeing problems, and more importantly they will start seeing solutions to the problems. That is what we need to create change. We need problem solvers, and that's exactly what my world view provides. On a unrelated note I just realized people watching this debate will probably have no idea what we're talking about after watching the first round. Now the part we've both been waiting for. Hell yeah, let's start a revolution. What we need is to educate the general populations about how the world really works. Then we can teach these people how they can do a better job than what is already being done now. What we need is a bottom up approach to ensure that the people who get to the top have a strong foundation and with that we can truly produce change. Now lastly I'm going to be out of town for a good amount of time, so please try to respond as late as possible.