What religion are yall?

@jose1122 said in #30:

The less a people had contact with the christianity, the less it developed.

Correlation does not imply causation.

@YetAnotherPlayer said in #31:

Correlation does not imply causation.

Oh here he is.

This time you came with something else but personal offenses, you could have done that earlier, because now I just don't want to interact to you anymore, I'm sorry I'll pass.

@jose1122 said in #32:

Oh here he is.

This time you came with something else but personal offenses

I don't know what personal offenses you are talking about. The most offending thing I called you is 'hypocrite' in other thread, and that's just the natural consequence of legitimating the murdering of Ukrainians while saying at the same time that you feel bad for your personal friends from there. On the other hand, you literally called me "stupid animal" and "person without a shred of intelligence", which proves, one more time, your borderless hypocrisy and cynicism.

@jose1122

now I just don't want to interact to you anymore, I'm sorry I'll pass.

I'm not refuting you with the hope that you interact with me, let aside for changing your opinion, but to warn any casual reader of this post that (unsurprisingly) your argument is based on a well-known fallacy named 'the false cause', in which you incorrectly attribute the cause of Europe's development to the spread of christianity just because the period of time of both events overlapped to each other for a while (wasn't there knowledge development in the world before Christ? Archimedes? Plato? Pythagoras? Mesopotamia? Ancient Egypt?).

I'm itching to hear your brilliant explanation of why other Christian countries such as Haiti, Armenia or Zambia didn't happen to evolve as economic world powers in accordance to their high Christian population percentage (96%, 97.9% and 95.5%, respectively). You don't need to explain it to me, but to the readers who are noticing these blatant contradictions in your claims.

causation is correlation's bitch as correlation always holds dirt on causation while causation knows it will be impossible to prove correlation had anything to do with anything

what a pair

Please don't start religious arguments, cause I will joining, and nobody will be happy.

@ jose1122 said in #30:

Well you came with two possible reasons, I think they are logical but I don't actually think they should be the main ones
Fair enough. There obviously are other reasons - and the ones I proposed seem to be logical. Though I get that logical doesn't mean that they are the main reasons why a large portion of chess-players seem to be atheists, agnostics or "distanced from faith". For that matter, we have to realize though: A large portion of chess players seem to believe in something - for one, a lot of people here in this very thread seem to strongly associate with their nation. Maybe, lichess attracts more people, who are more likely than not to be atheists or "atheistic" - I for one believe in something, but I try to not force it onto someone (not even political beliefs!) and am actually very happy to meet with atheists in person - why? Well, aside from the narrow-minded (regardless of atheism or belief-ism), in my personal experience, most atheists ask questions and seem to be searching for the reasons - something I believe is a good and very human thing. Actually, the atheists I've met oftentimes knew way more about certain religions than people who subscribed to the aforementioned certain religion. But generally, this is more dependant on the person than their religion - there are some people who follow one religion by heart - know everything about it - and then there are people who follow a religion out of habit - those might not really care all too much, generally, it seems, the majority nowadays is of that type. It just so happens that the atheists I've met fall rather in category one than two.

The first you said people come from the USSR where religion was forbidden. Ok this is true but the soviet union citizens are all old now, the next generations grew up with religion, all the former soviet places developed the religion in these 30 years, there are only a few places where atheists are more in number then the religious so this can't explain the phenomenon properly.
You are right - I am not up-to-date with religion in the area, but I've heard about the resurgence of Orthodox Christianity? Anyway, I didn't even think of countries like poland, that had a big boom in catholicism. So that's on me. I guess I simply blacked out the "recent" developements of the world (crazy to think it's been 33 years...). I guess we see in europe of today the trend to move onwards from religion to a strong political stand - likewise in north america, however the developements there are not as harsh towards religion, as they've gotten the Bible-belt. But yeah, the secularization has definitely increased in many western countries.

And the argument of education is even worse to me, because religion brings development in terms of education and it's absense brings ignorance; the proof is the ascension of the Europe.
Yes, there is an argument to be had that religion increases scientific studies - however, we have to ask ourselves: Why? I would argue, that believers try to prove something or to get an answer concerning aspects of their faith, thus they are more likely to experiment to get to those answers: Or in short: I think, that people can be motivated by religion to find out about the world. However, I do believe that motivation can also arise without religion - as you are also likely searching for answers. History has shown, that religion, nationalism, you name it, can make ordinary people do the most horrible things - but it can also make people do the most heartwarming and philantrophic, human, things possible. I guess it's always a question, how it is instrumentalized.
The less a people had contact with the christianity, the less it developed.
No. A big no here. Look at the indus-valley civilization - or the indian region prior to any form of christianity coming there - hinduism, buddhism, jainism, etc. are all religions, that show just how developed they were - in our modern world, these religions are of great help to many people - not necessarily in the religion-context, but through their applications, yoga, meditation, their life-philosophy... Islam and Sikhism are also great examples: Sure, Muhammad mentions Jesus, but look at the golden period of Islam - you can say what you want, but during that period, there has been an accumulation of wisdom, scientific studies, centered in the Islamic world - and if I recall correctly, there was even freedom of religion for the conquered places, something "more developed" than later christian missionaries during the scramble of colonialization. Another example is Judaism before christianity - and why haven't we mentioned the ancient greeks, "the nation of wisdom", or the ancient romans, or the ancient egyptians or the ancient... - you see, christianity isn't necessary at all for developement, however, we have to ask ourselves on what basis we are judging developement in the first place.
So the educated people should be at least opened to the religion, at least because of their culture or to maintain their legacy of prosperity, but what I see is debauchery, infamy and mockery... I actually think it is the opposite, it's a false education, or miseducation, which makes people dumber by thinking they are or they know something.
I agree - people shouldn't close the door to their mind. This goes for atheism as well as religion - on "both sides" there are bigots, people who are just toxic and strive to argue, without actually discussing. This narrow-mindedness won't help - before you reject, at least listen and try your best to understand - that's what I am thinking. I also agree with you on the state of education - it seems, that neither then nor now useful stuff is taught in necessary school - the education system is - in my opinion - very flawed. And that's kinda ironic, as the education of especially young people is crucial - you can basically choose to help them or to force them, also there is the possibitly of brainwashing the people, however, I don't think that it goes down this deep in most countries. As to the culture aspect, I guess this is up to debate - but my point of view is, that there are always two sides to a coin - you have the tragedies, the wrongdoings, as well as the glory - you just need to balance it, or in case one side is far larger, embrace it, whatever it might be.

Look people, such threads can be a great starting point for a (friendly) discussion - without petty arguments, we are just exchanging thoughts. That's communication for ya!

@jose1122 said in #24:

You don't believe God but you think you're right and the religious ones are wrong. It's not about religion, you could just admit you hate God for some reason, or the idea of idolizing a true God if He exists.

But I am religous, I was brought up in the Church of England, I totally believe in the holy trinity and that God loves all. I love God with all my heart mind and soul. Now read my post again xxx

@george_mcgeorge said in #36:

History has shown, that religion, nationalism, you name it, can make ordinary people do the most horrible things - but it can also make people do the most heartwarming and philantrophic, human, things possible. I guess it's always a question, how it is instrumentalized.

Well, I agree with you that politics can bring great and horrible things, but in the case of religion, I can only agree if we talk about bad religions (and as bad religions I refer to anyone whose principles order something different than loving God and the neighbor as the main commandments. Well, I'm christian so this should be expected.)

I'll use the example of christianity. There never are and never were factions, terrorist groups, killers and stuff around the world massively killing infidels in the name of Christ or something like that, because the pillars of this faith are founded on love of neighbor, this is exactly the opposite: the christianity is the religion of the martyrs, the dead ones not the executioners, you won't find horrible things coming from a sane and conscious christian, it is contradictory.
The best the objectors can go is to talk about the historical distorcions about the holy inquisition, to assign burning witches to priests, what the heck. The inquisition was an advance in the legal field, creating among others the concept of inquiry, used still nowadays to investigate before condemning people, an attempt to save people not to kill, because the kings used to give themselves the right to condemn anyone anyhow and the church tried to use it's influence to stop abuses; all the "witches" burned were killed by soldiers of the local king not by priests, these ones were the ones the church could not save.

@george_mcgeorge said in #36:

No. A big no here. Look at the indus-valley civilization - or the indian region prior to any form of christianity coming there - hinduism, buddhism, jainism, etc. are all religions, that show just how developed they were - in our modern world, these religions are of great help to many people - not necessarily in the religion-context, but through their applications, yoga, meditation, their life-philosophy... Islam and Sikhism are also great examples: Sure, Muhammad mentions Jesus, but look at the golden period of Islam - you can say what you want, but during that period, there has been an accumulation of wisdom, scientific studies, centered in the Islamic world - and if I recall correctly, there was even freedom of religion for the conquered places, something "more developed" than later christian missionaries during the scramble of colonialization. Another example is Judaism before christianity - and why haven't we mentioned the ancient greeks, "the nation of wisdom", or the ancient romans, or the ancient egyptians or the ancient... - you see, christianity isn't necessary at all for developement, however, we have to ask ourselves on what basis we are judging developement in the first place.

Man I agree with you, maybe you didn't realize but your speech reinforces my speech.
Look, it is true that others nations and religions developed really amazing things, for example the numbers 0 to 9 were creation of the arabics, they also had possess of the greatest treasure from philosophy, the writings of Aristotle, where Europe would only know in the 13th century after Saint Tomas Aquinas, the greek alphabet has great influence on latin, astronomical advances, agrarian advances, a really huge amount of things; I personally make use of an ancient chinese marcial art called Tai Chi Chuan which is great for health.
But this is exactly the point, I mentioned the christianity because the maximum of development the human being could reach was when these great things reached the catholic europe, at least in most of the areas. Japan is an exemplum in contrarium, where I believe they managed to develop the most advanced system of ethics, but even them could only become a developed nation after interacting with europe.

@SOJB said in #37:

But I am religous, I was brought up in the Church of England, I totally believe in the holy trinity and that God loves all. I love God with all my heart mind and soul. Now read my post again xxx

Then I don't get your point xxx

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa

"One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did.""