The Awesome and Cool Poll Thread - Poll #131: Would you pay more taxes if it meant receiving a pension when you retire?

I'm a gargantuan (like mega mushroom Mario) procrastinator on schoolwork or anything else I'm too shitted to do, I failed a lot of homework assignments in high school because I'd push them back till 2 in the morning and then be too tired to bother. I think it's so pointless to have homework for that reason, after a day's work and being in a home environment with a ton of distractions I can't get school stuff done.

And I don't feel like that means I have poor work ethics, cause in contrast if I'm doing something I enjoy I can lock myself in a room and stay focused for 8 hours straight. I have no problem sitting down and reading 50 pages of some convoluted book pertaining to my politics/journalism stuff but I couldn't be assed enough to do the 5 pages of Algebra reading assignments.

I am bit of a procastinator for school work as well or any other obligation.
But I don't usually put off assignments for later and I don't really like to. Sometimes, I like to do everything very soon so I don't have to worry about it later. I am a kinda a "work-aholic"

But when there is a lot of busy things going on, I had to cancel the attempts at the assignments for later on or another day because of fatigue but still managed to get it all done when I could in the next day.

Almost, but not quite ( ) one week later.
Right, I'm gonna open up the floor again. Any new suggestions?

[color=#FF8000 said:

PluMGMK[/color]"]Any new suggestions?

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I thought of another cool poll suggestion!
Maybe this one can be about:

"Would the World be a better place if Religions didn't exist?"



I already suggested something(Are you afraid of the dark?)
Is having multiple poll topics suggested by same person prohibited?

Yeah, that sounds like a good topic to me!

Sounds like an interesting one!

As long as people stay open-minded about each others arguments, this can be very interesting.

Well, we do already have the religion thread, but people seem to want to go for this one so let's do it.

I think if I were to just give a yes or no answer, it would have to be yes.
While religion has done both good and bad I would argue that given the choice between having both many wars and many charities or having neither, then the latter is the better option. Of course it doesn't just boil down to charity and war, but they are the two most obvious of the objective positives/negatives of religion that I can think of.
I think while religion can be good for certain individuals to cope with certain things, preaching something unscientific to gain a following in something that can't be proven is ultimately not good. I would think that many people with strong religious beliefs couldn't imagine living without them, but when religious beliefs get in the way of learning and thus scientific progress then the trade off between personal gain and overall hindrance to others is not a balanced one.
My only real problem is the preaching of religion and how many times it is done in an almost deceptive way. Of course there's nothing wrong with believing in a religion and sharing those beliefs with others but the way children are raised religiously and therefore find it almost impossible to reject those beliefs later in life is pretty bad. That rejection of argument is also often what causes many of the conflicts between religions.
If everyone raised their children completely open-mindedly and forced neither religion or atheism onto them, I think it's pretty much certain that the vast majority of people would not grow up religious. I can't testify for that, but there are many arguments for the case and if it is true then I think it demonstrates how religion is as a whole not a force for good and thus is not a good basis to raise your children under.

Yes Religion preaches irrationally and doesn't value logic, and anyone who thinks religion has been a positive force in the world doesn't know their history. Wars, authoritarianism, torture, bigotry, these are all things every modern day religion has in it's history and all of them still do to different extends. Most people make this distinction between Christianity and other believes as they feel it's the one that actually teaches morals, but the vast majority of Christian history is cruel and awful.

And that's not entirely over of course, it was devout Christians who pushed for the Iraq war and calling for another with North Korea and they justify their actions through religion. Religious people make issues out of LGBT rights and whether women should get to choose what to do with their own bodies, and they spread dangerous ideas like "spiritual healing" where parents don't want to bring their kids to the hospital because they believe they can just pray to god - if I told you I'm not taking my kids to a doctor cause I think going "please get better" in my head will solve the issue you'd call me an abusive parent, but if it's religion there are people who'll actually defend and debate it.

Whatever a religious person's justification for all that is, god's "will" or "plan" has lead to objectively more damage than good for humanity. People learn to rationalise things better and to question more effectively without it, and I would argue not even coping is a good excuse for religious believes as deluding yourself into a believe is just intellectually weak. Children don't need religion to have morals, in fact there's plenty to suggest that a lack of religion can make them more compassionate and deal with real world problems and horrors more maturely. When a horrible accident happens you don't think it's god's plan somehow, you accept that terrible things can happen to innocent people and that erodes black and white, good vs evil thinking.

The believe that atheists can't have morals is a bigoted, factually false statement that you could only believe if you disregard every single study on the subject and brazenly continue to double down on "but it just is" thinking, a kind of insanity people would condemn in any other scenario but is treated with respect when religion is involved. Religion sucks its not good it makes you dumb tis stupid increase smart by 700 billion brainpoints without it!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree but I only really think these arguments apply to the mentalists. I know quite a few religious people and none of them are the kind of borderline extremists to have religiously based prejudices against homosexuals or resort to spiritual healing, in fact most of the time I forget they're religious because it never really makes a difference or comes up as a topic. So I don't actually think there's anything wrong with being religious, it's just the way it impacts others that matters, and at least in my experience the people who take religion too far are in the minority (considering I've never actually met anybody like that, and only seen them in the media).

Ambidextroid said:

I agree but I only really think these arguments apply to the mentalists.

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Yes, I did indeed spectacularly fail to make my point wow let me clarify: I think it only makes sense to conclude that, when from every perspective religion is contradictory and hypocritical, people who buy into religion are also more likely to buy into poor logic, irrational believes, and are less likely to pursue the truth and analyse claims to the extend necessary where they might be debunked.

In today's modern society where media is not unfamiliar with skewing facts and our politicians have a wide vocabulary of pleasant-sounding words that try to justify wars I feel religion helps enable all that. Like I said, black and white/good vs evil thinking, the willingness to block out those parts of religion which people don't like or want to know, choosing to cope through a false sense of security, I don't think it's good for anyone.

Of course most people aren't driven to extremism or bigotry by their believes (although to not do so actually contradicts the religion's own preaching) but I do think it keeps people from functioning as a rational, questioning public to the extend it could.

As we continue to move down the line of nonreligion spreading people will get a better grasp on this. Think about how we view fundamentalists in the Middle East today, and consider that there was once a point when Christianity was not so different. Obviously today's modern religion doesn't quite equate to terrorism, but I do feel in the future people will look back onto today's religion and point out obvious flaws that we struggle to realise today.

Ambidextroid said:

I know quite a few religious people and none of them are the kind of borderline extremists to have religiously based prejudices against homosexuals or resort to spiritual healing, in fact most of the time I forget they're religious because it never really makes a difference or comes up as a topic.

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Yahe I think I look at religion through a slightly skewed lens at times because I live in the Bible Belt where religion "going too far" is not all that uncommon, though there is clearly a huge divide in how younger, urban Christians think compared to the older, rural people.

In my opinion, The delusion of religion causes significant social dysfunction.
Higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with other rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult morality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

Religion is kinda harmful in some cases.
So "yes" is my answer.

I tend to tiptoe between being okay with harmless religion and being a straight up antitheist. In support of the former, I do know a number of people who believe in something, and it actually has no affect on their actions or outlook on life at all; they're virtually indistinguishable from atheists. On the other hand, despite being harmless, their beliefs are still stupid and make no sense, and I think coming up with nonsensical stupid shit for no reason is a bad idea no matter which way you look at it. You know, it's like learning false math in school. All of these people were obviously motivated by the concept of some pre-existing religion, and if they had never grown up in a partially-religious community, they likely would have never adopted their own esoteric religious beliefs. You create your positive associations at a young age, and if you've created positive associations with parents or other role models in your life who were religious, there's a much higher chance of you seeing the "good" in religion, at least, from your perspective.

It's not religion that's made these people into good people in reality. If religion had a part to play, it was simply an auxiliary effect - to echo what anaphasiia said in the religion thread - through performing deeds the bible deems good (that also converge with society's views on goodness), they've come to realise on their own that these are in fact good deeds. If that hasn't happened, then they are people motivated to do what we see as good through literally nothing other than the fear of eternal punishment religion offers.

I'm not interested in furiously debating with religious people, unless they have acquired legitimately harmful beliefs and they're still growing/learning. I'll always be open to sharing my arguments against religion if someone is interested in talking about them, but if they're happy and harmless, there's little point in trying to remove religion from their life. Teaching religion to your children on the other hand I think is downright despicable, again, for the same reason teaching anything else with zero founding or truth to it would be. If they end up believing in something silly, let them do it to themselves. Don't under any circumstances have a hand in it. Intellectual dishonesty is given far too much leeway when it comes to certain topics.

so, yeas. I'm curious to hear the opinions of the 50% who voted otherwise, because so far they've kept to themselves for some pecuuuuuuliar reason.

Had there be a "Maybe?" option in this poll i'd of gone for that other than no because it's hard to visualise religion doing anything more than eradicate any religion based violence. I don't believe people would stop being violent because of a lack of religion because regardless of such people would always fight for what they essentially believe to be morally right. I'm aware religion for some is a major contributor to this hence why I said i'd vote for a "maybe" earlier but otherwise as long as differing beliefs exist (And let's face it, those differ among even people of same religions yet alone those of non religions) I do not think the lack of religion would be that much of a game changer as it's made out to be.

Another note is that I do take a focus on the extremist side in the above namely because that was my main deciding factor of my vote and haven't really considered the part of people living daily with religion. In that sense I do consider those who are closed minded and super preachy about religion are indeed a big problem within society, but as a whole I tend to be very "let people do what they do provided they aren't hurting anyone in the process".

tl;dr : I think that there would be a better world if religion didn't hold such a firm grasp in how people view life but I voted no mostly because I took the question as "Would the world be ultimately good had there be no religion" to which I don't fully agree on that part.

I think that's both true and untrue. I think for example in the current ongoing genocide over in Myanmar where Buddhists are claiming that Muslims are stepping on their practices and believes (even though Buddhism isn't really a religion, right?), the underlying hatred for Muslims is more likely rooted in simply a fear of the unknown, a dislike of people who bring change in the culture, something people in third world countries are not educated enough about to be self-aware of.

So if religion didn't exist, would it eradicate the genocide? No I don't think so, but it might open up more opportunity for a resolution. Obviously religion is in this example functioning as a justification in the minds of the Buddhists for their irrational and intolerant believes, so taking that justification away might inspire them to think more critically about their ideas. Of course some Buddhists would simply decide they just don't like the Muslims changing their norms and continue the genocide anyway, but those who are genuinely indoctrinated to the idea that the genocide is a moral thing to do may learn to have more compassion for the Muslims.

However there are example where I think removing religion would just objectively improve conditions. Saudi Arabia would probably have some insane renaissance where they suddenly jump like eight centuries ahead if Islam wasn't there to justify their actions. Any regular person with even slightly liberal views would sound like an intellectual, but that's probably precisely why the monarchy over there likes to keep religion strongly enforced.

Didn't get to vote, but I would've chosen yes. I don't think it would've been much better, though. It'd remove one foolproof way to manipulate others and make it harder to find excuses to do shitty things, but people would've found replacement strategies or just do the shitty thing anyway, right?

It could affect a lot of people negatively by making it more difficult to cope with situations like death of someone close to them, but again there are alternative strategies to be adopted here, e.g. going through cognitive behavioral therapy or establishing a non-religious practice like mindfulness meditation.

Ray502 usually brings something like this when nothing happens in this thread for a long time. But... eh.. why not.

Indeed.
Anyway, for the fiftieth anniversary of Che Guevara's death, a €1 Irish postage stamp was issued depicting the iconic image of Guevara as rendered by an Irish artist. Good, bad or indifferent?
In the spirit of not being a total ostrich about these lengthy delays, polls will run for a week now, not three days.

I think it's great to celebrate all sorts of heroes from around the world, even the ones that go off the deep end at some point. Someone out there had the will to step forward and risk their life to change things for the good of millions, and it's ridiculous to me that there are people who will disregard all of their accomplishments because fighting tooth and nail, quite literally, for years can make you go mad. He reminded everyone that the people are the ones who own society.

To me, his stamp represents a legacy, and we need to appreciate that instead of censoring anything that doesn't completely agree with modern Western politics. I'm a bit tired of seeing countries exclusively advertise their own less-accomplished people anyway, especially in the British colonies where the Queen managed to get her face all over our money just because she was the daughter of the last Queen.