Quote:
Originally Posted by cancer man
Atheists are the most ignorant people.
They still pray in a foxhole, before exams and the best is... they hope what they got for christmas is in that box.Hope is Religion.
I preach Humanity.Everybody prays.
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If hope is religion, then religion is hope. And if religion is simply hope, it's meaningless. Simply an expression that circumstances beyond our control come out in our favour. If you reduce it to those terms, then you have done a vast disservice to religion, removing any humanity from it. We're not the only creature to hope. Dogs hope. They are the most hopeful creatures there are. Your hope that you did well on your exams is functionally the same as my dog hoping I let him lick out the bottom of the peanut butter jar. Is my dog religious? Am I then his God? I suppose it's possible, but I don't see how anyone defending religion would want to make that connection.
I'm not knocking hope. Hope is an important survival instinct, handed down through the eons of evolution and a bestiary of distant ancestors. But religion merely co-opted hope and gave it a backstory, a narrative. Religion might suggest that hoping can lead to positive results; or it might preach an interventionist God who will intervene regardless of your hope, nonetheless giving justification to your hope. Different religions (and different interpretations of the same religion) have differing takes on this.
The most popular contemporary Christian take on hope isn't even scripture: 'He helps those who helps themselves' (often attributed to Ben Franklin, but who knows?). It's a sentiment that both increases the likelihood of your hope being rewarded by encouraging positive action, while ensuring God gets all of the credit but none of the blame. But functionally, the 'He helps those' mantra is the same as saying, 'no cosmic intervention is coming, so look to yourself'.