I don't.

Oh no... I agree with you that Yoga is religious based practice, however, I agree with Zebulor that you can use said practice to your advantage as a non-religious practice just for the pure physical aspect of it... It is your choice what you take away from the practice.

And it always come down to the choice...

There is no invisible dude..

That's all I was trying to get at.

Well yeah... everyone that studies yoga to become an instructor is taught its roots, Patanjali and the Yoga Sutras...

But as an atheist, it is a pure physical practice... That is my choice...

And with the same line of thought you can go to see a Shakespeare drama but you can not pretend that theater wasn't originally part of the religion.
I see what you mean. Even though I am very good at pretending.

In my cae it was more a mental practice, but even my instructor was far from anywhere close to religion.

1. You still did nothing about my arguments on meditation, even with plenty of opportunity to do so. Even if I conceded your yoga arguments, winning the meditation argument is enough to validate my point. Keep in mind, these arguments started because of the article, so they matter only as far as they relate to the article. Your inaction on my meditation leads my argument to stand, and since it seems to be a good, valid argument, it makes my point about the article even without yoga.

2. Look at the comments following yours. The religious roots aren't relevant here, because once again these arguments only matter as far as they relate to the article, and the article advertises religion as a way to do these practices with these good effects like "disciplined work" and suchlike. But if it can be shown that atheists can do practices with this kind of effects(whether yoga or meditation), then my point against the article is validated. And that is just what the comments referred to above seem to do.

3.Is it valid for Christians to do yoga, seeing as they would consider it idolatry or polytheism or infidelism or whatever they would call it?

I think that this was one of those arguments that was really about whether atheists are devoid of meaning in their lives, except meaning here was called "disciplined work, through failure, anxiety, and the redoubling of effort".

Meditation as defined by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras is a one of the paths that the spirit takes to reach higher consciousness. However, Yoga is more of a philosophy rather than a religion or religious practice. Which makes it flexible in interpretation by the end user.

Very much so... anyone from any religious background can practice Yoga because its philosophy is flexible enough to allow for various interpretations. As I stated before, it is the choice of the end user on what he/she takes away from the practice.

I have Christian friends, who like me, see their Yoga practice as nothing more than a physical practice. A way to discipline and condition the body to be fit and more efficient. Unless the end user is open to the teachings of Yoga, they will see it as nothing more than a physical practice.

Thing is, most of the people I see practice yoga are agnostic or atheist themselves or want to undertake the study of religions that call for Yoga as said practice. Occasionally, I do see a Christian who really is ignorant of what roots Yoga has and thus feels comfortable in just doing asana for physical practice or go to Bikram Yoga and do a lot of Vignasa which is just physical asana poses just to break a sweat and don't even touch on the philosophical aspects of yoga.

Why did I get downvoted? I don't think I said anything offensive.

Not sure, dude... I thought that we were having a very nice debate, IMO...

Learning to hate in the name of an ever loving God?

Interesting article from Dave Gorman.

Interesting indeed. I don't like those that promote hatred based on religion, and God certainly doesn't hate anyone.

I also don't like to see people condemn others, for various reasons, but mainly, because that isn't our place and we do not know the hearts of other, nor how their life will play out in the future. That the parents would let them do this is unfortunate, in my eyes. My feeling is that they probably were handing out Chick tracts, and we all know what sort of thing that is. *sigh*

Nice article. There was a moment I started thinking "wait, is he making and allegory of how churches recruit people?".

The problem with religion is that it's suposed to be something free, each person having his own personal beliefs. But since people with similar beliefs group themselves and subject to a bunch of spiritual leaders, the concept of religion extends beyond unverifiable explanations for the super-natural. And worse, it's bent by the interests of those leaders and the "church corporation".

We go for religious explanations in order to bring peace to our mind, due to its boundless search for logic crossing what is forever impossible for us to understand. We are sometimes reminded that we may be wrong, that Jesus may just be some ancient beardy guy, or that Allah prefers to be called Cindy, but we like the feeling of knowing it all, even if it's just an illusion.

The question to me is: when did our search for peace started to require the damnation of others? Was it maninpulation by the churches and its leaders? Or is it some ugly side of human nature, present in everyone?

The whole war to bring peace and security concept comes to my mind. The crusades had to do with it, perhaps. When have we become so insecure that we need to assure others are wrong so we can have peace with what we believe?

I had considered posting this on Facebook, but this is the type of pot-stirring which could make people (even family members) defriend me.

The Fort Hood massacre has gotten me thinking critically about religion again. In this argument the only people that I believe are on solid ground are the literal creationists, that God created the whole universe and all in it. The thrust of my thinking is this. For believers, what do you get out of your belief? Sure I understand that it fills a need, that it is a coping mechanism for uncertainty, and a catch-all for why things happen, but what do you REALLY get out of it? Many of the things I see people point to as benefits of belief are very selfish. Feelings of fulfillment, of a belonging to a like minded community, reassurance of "moral" convictions, a sense of "us" and "them". I do not deny that the human psyche, and possibly human soul has a yearning space that belief in God fills (and sometimes over fills). But again, this is of value to the individual believer. The way I see it, if even one evil, hurtful, vengeful, murderous act is done by a believer in the name of God, than this ONE act negates all possible good that could come from anyone's belief in God. The reason I feel that literal creationists have philosophical solid ground to stand on in this matter is that if God truly DID create everything, then this evil committed in his name is laid at his feet along with all the other good and evil in the universe. For those who believe in Science and God, and believe in a more circumspect and aware sense, I wonder how they resolve evil done in God's name with their personal gain and well being derived from faith.

"That's not my God who inspired such an act."

Just guessing.

"He wasn't a true believer."

Another gem.

"It's all part of Gods plan, who are we to question his way."

One I find particularly disturbing.

Just philosophically, blurmore, do you feel the same way about one evil act committed for the benefit of science outweighs all the good science can contribute?
Or that in one man's life, all the good they can do is outweighed by one evil act (regardless of the motivations/causes)?

Any collective view of anything, I think, is going to have good and bad. That applies to people, to institutions, to philosophies, to religion. Personally, I don't know that we should judge any of those things with a view of just one moment, one action.

I understand this line of thinking but I take issue with the word "benefit". Doing something for the benefit is not equal to doing something in the name of something. I always wondered how petty God must be to make a commandment against his people using his name as a swear. Then a Jewish friend enlightedend me to the original Hebrew translation of take which comes out more as "carry". I can understand how God would not want people to use his name to commit acts which were not incordance with his will. I don't think anyone has ever done anything as senseless and illogical as shoot 50 people for science. You could make a case for what the Nazi's did being along these lines, but even here Sciences was being deployed to reinforce ideology.

Ok, but then my point still stands. Any ideology/collective group of people with shared ideals, can have good and bad.

When a killer kills someone and then we find out the killer was an Eagle Scout, does that nullify all the good work of the Boy Scouts? I don't think so.

What if he did it in the name of the Boy Scouts?

Personally, no, I wouldn't blame the scouts for that... there are loose cannons in any organization.

However, if a bunch of scouts starting killing in that way, then yes, we'd have an established pattern... but even so, that wouldn't mean that scouts = killers.