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Old 06-14-2009, 08:47 PM   #119
peter12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames Draft Watcher View Post
The website others have pointed to does an okay job at poking many holes in the religion portion. Should be enough for some serious doubt to be cast on that portion.

http://www.conspiracyscience.com/art...eist/part-one/

Most of the whole first part of that section of Zeigeist appears to be stolen from an "online essay" offered by an essay selling website

http://www.ukessays.com/essays/relig...ristianity.php

Interesting isn't it....
Not a particularly well written essay either. Christianity's celebration dates have been adopted from some pagan dates, I thought that was fairly widely known though. The rest just seems suspect to the max.

If someone is interested in reading why Christianity might be bad for life, for humanity, then they should read Friedrich Nietzsche who is in my opinion the most convincing and insightful writer on that subject.

"Twilight of the Idols" and "The Antichrist" both contain a lot of anti-Christian sentiment which is also to be found in almost any of Nietzsche's works.

Saw some Christopher Hitchens talks and he doesn't even hit up some of the most important points. Dawkins was a bit better in the interview I've seen of him and I've been meaning to read some Dawkins. Those guys are the most famous of the current anti-God polemicists.

But philosophers have been attacking religion and Christianity for well over 150 years now and a lot of their arguments outshine the crap known as "Zeitgeist". Being anti-God is hip these days, but that doesn't mean you have to settle for the worst formulated arguments against it that there are.

I took a course called the Critique of Christianity at University a couple years back and the books we read were...
Ludwig Feuerbach - "The Essence of Religion"
Karl Marx - "On the Jewish Question" and "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction"
Sigmund Freud - "The Future of an Illusion"
Friedrich Nietzsche - "The Antichrist" and "Twilight of the Idols"

Notably the 2nd Marx reading contains his oft-quoted line that "religion is the opium of the people." Which is funny since these little quotes that get remembered hardly do justice to the complicated ideas that accompany them.
Dude, philosophers have been questioning religion since Socrates. This isn't some new thing that moderns dreamed up. Besides, out of all those the Nietzche reading is the only worthwhile one, but I would go with Beyond Good and Evil.
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