PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
RULES
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
RULES
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
RULES
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
RULES
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
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Case in point, from current events:
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/HaitiEarthquake/ten-americans-haiti-charged-child-trafficking-pm-calls/story?id=9712436
Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.
Why Believe?
I wonder if they intended to sell the kids or if they just wanted to indoctrinate them in their f-ed up belief system. Either way, they knew they were kidnapping and that some of those kids had living parents. What a mess. You're right, though. Exactly what I was talking about.
Pretty much the basic teachings of modern day Christianity are far removed from the original. As much as I hate organized religion the dangerous part of it is the "organized" rather than the "religion." No atrocity of Christendom or any other religious state had any power granted to it outside of politics, and that through the masses. I could never understand militant atheism as being anything other than another side of the smallest coin. Most atheists are either ex Christians, having seen the poor example of false teachings and moral hypocrisy or politically frustrated.
Christianity, which Judaism led up to, is about acknowledging our sinful nature and trying to keep it at bay. Not pretending it doesn't exist or in this present system is revoked. The modern day Christian - self appointed moral police of the globe - are far removed from Jesus who was no part of the world. Issues like abortion and homosexuality are political issues outside the congregation and no business of the hypocrites.
I fully understand the point you are making here. Being a skeptic it is something that has bothered me for most of my adult life. I've always took pride in doing the right things. Yet no matter where I go it's always assumed I have no morals.
Actually had an interesting story from a friends family gathering. My friend is agnostic, and the religion topic came up with his heavily religious family. He explained one of his biggest pet peeves is people assuming he doesn't have any standards. His aunt said he understood that. Then two minutes later she says "It must be easy not having any morals".
His best response was "It must be easy having yours chose for you"
I will say in my experiences, its usually not the intelligent educated people willing to engage in a discussion who are guilty of these assumptions that all Christians are good and all non Christians are bad. It tends to be more a product of those who have never even questioned if they believe and are under educated when it comes to the subjects, but it is still one of the biggest things that bother me about religion. A good person is a good person regardless of religious affiliation.
I can't disagree with much of this statement. In pretty much any situation where people feel as strongly about things as they do religion you will usually have the issues. And those in power have often used religion as a way to manipulate the masses.
You have to take this both ways, everyone is an individual, there will be good and bad people on all sides of this debate.
You can add me into the ex christian atheists as well. However I converted at a younger age than most so I was never big into it anyways.
Another fine example of a label magically automatically making you good and moral.
http://www.news4jax.com/news/22553980/detail.html
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
In my opinion, this works in reverse.
If you are a religious person, particularly a Christian, you are bad by default.
The reason for this is that the system you are supporting is evil in and of itself. There is no getting around that fact. "Christianity" may appear benevolent at times, but history proves that the greater mass of Christian people are only too willing to serve as useful idiots in the manipulative schemes of evil people who understand how to wield power over masses. People who have already accepted the belief in God(s) and supernatural arrangements as a leap of faith are already gullible by own choice and design, and therefore susceptible to other virulant ideas as well. There is no lack of historical examples for how this mechanism works on a pragmatic level. When your attention is open towards being manipulated through fear and ignorance, you will be manipulated through fear and ignorance. Make no mistake about that. Where there is a weak spot in a species, nature always provides a predator.
So what, then, is good?
This is by and large a philosophical question of ethics, but it stands to reason to claim that all people are equipped with common sense. And common sense comes with common human decency - because we are social animals who are instinctively seeking the company of others. Only the people who abandon their common sense in favour of fairy tales - i.e. insanity - lose their common human decency as well, making them behave in antisocial and destructive ways (unless regulated and moderated by an external authority). Any psychiatrist can explain to you how this works.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
I don't think of people as "good" or "bad" and I don't think that I ever have. I don't recall having that sort of attitude before I became a believer in my mid 20's and I certainly don't think that becoming a believer changed me in a moral sense. My favorite verse in all of the Bible is Micah 6:8, which, in my favorite translation reads: "He has told you, O earthling man, what is good. And what is Jehovah asking back from you but to exercise justice and to love kindness and to be modest in walking with your God?" The Hebrew word there translated as modest means to be aware of your limitations. Maybe traditional Christians judge people in a societal context the same as a rich person will judge a poor person or a poor person will judge a rich person. I think that anyone who does that misses the Christian message. Jesus objected to being called good. (Mark 10:18)
Upon becoming a believer I became more aware of my limitations and the limitations of others was, though different than my own, from the same source. Sin. And sin is sin. Adolph Hitler who is perceived as a monster has the same sin as "Sister" Theresa who is perceived as a "saint," and theirs is the same as mine or anyone else's. I think that all people have good and bad in them.
It sounds to me like what you are saying is that there is this dividing line between the quixotic and the mundane; the religious and the irreligious and in a moral sense never the twain shall meet. A cultural divide. Them and us. The definition of "good" and "bad" is a stagnant pool or broken mirror between the two that allows each only to see the distorted reflection of themselves while unfairly exaggerating the flaws of the other by comparison. It's xenophobic, isn't it?
This is correct.
A "believer" has in effect sold their soul for an "explanation" which, if you look at it, really explains fuck all.
However, this isn't "xenophobic", this is to place the label of insanity where it rightly belongs.
There is a cure. But it is neither easy nor painless.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
The believer knows that their soul is not theirs to sell. (Ezekiel 18:4)
If I'm not mistaken first you diagnose those who believe differently from you as mentally ill and then offer the difficult and painful cure under the guise, not of xenophobia, but what? Medical science? Don't kill me with kindness, man, get it over with quick.
You are. Mistaken, that is. There is no God - and you are going to die. That's all.
I really can't be arsed to explain reality to every moron who comes crawling out from under your rocks of ignorance.
This is not about what you are able to "believe", this is about what you can know.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
I hear what you are saying and to a point I agree with you. A couple years ago I had a massive heart attack and quadruple bi-pass. I was dead. My younger brother was born dead with the umbilical cord around his neck and was revived and I don't think either one of us knows any more about death than you . . . which is nothing, mister, so some advice. Those who live under rocks of ignorance shouldn't crawl out and taunt thy neighbors rock or words to that effect.
Nobody notices all of these Bloom County references that pepper my sermons?! C'mon! "Boy Howdy," "unwashed heathen," "or words to that effect." No? Nothing? [sigh]
You have survey data to support this statement? Please provide the link to the data.
I may be an ex-Christian but what I consider to be false teaching is using a book of mythology to promote a reality that never was and could not be. The entire god belief thing of the God of Abe religions is founded on myths and legends that have commonality with all other myths and legends. Some are horrific stories, some are pretty fables, none have verification in the real world and I don't mean by that cities, towns, and places, I mean fantasy tales of creation, escape from Egypt, conquering Canaan, unified Israel, exploits of certain heros of the OT, the entire Jesus Believer movement that morfs into Christianity that rules the Roman Empire.
As to political frustration, that's an entire unrelated subject to religion and has not a thing to do with why I'm an Atheist.
____________________________________________________________
"I guess it's time to ask if you live under high voltage power transmission lines which have been shown to cause stimulation of the fantasy centers of the brain due to electromagnetic waves?" - Me
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks please. Cash and in small bills." - Robert A Heinlein.
Touches on the fundamental we're all talking a crock of shit to some degree. It is hard, however, when faced with no knowledge and no way of actually getting any, to listen to a group claim certainty. Both sides do this to some extent but theists have a way of plugging god into any empty socket that comes along instead of saying 'we don't know, we're trying to understand'. My position on mysteries is that they're not mysteries at all. We just haven't figured how they work yet.
Personally, I imagine death is a final event and the post life experience will be just like the pre-life experience. However, if Dr Ellie Arroway rides a worm hole to heaven and back, bringing me a report in her own fair hand, then I might believe. Alternatively god could walk through my door and say: "G'day, look I know you've been wondering about me for 40 years and I have been listening but I've had a lot on in another galaxy with an ant farm I'm getting started over there. I just wanted to let you know that I'm god and I am real". He could do a few miracles on the spot. I would shake his hand. Later we could watch some cricket and bond over a few beers around the BBQ.
The alternative to this scenario is having a real time relationship, including detailed and disappointingly one-sided conversations, with an imaginary god you have never met. A god who whether he exists or no, is, in the context of our reality, entirely a product of the human mind.
BTW, David, I'm in Sydney, Australia, and have no idea of Bloom County. What goes on over there?
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Mark 10:18
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.
Are you saying you don't believe Jesus is God? I thought this was sophistry on Jesus' part. He doesn't say he is good directly, but it is generally accepted that Jesus thought he was God.
Hitler and Mama Theresa the same. I can buy that. Not sure I would put a lot of people in their category though.
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
You know, I'm sort of short on cash this month so I can't afford to buy a propper one. Maybe next month, but suffice it to say your request is ample grounds for an ammendment on my part. It has been my own personal observation by having been an atheist for 25 years, knowing atheist all my life and having discussed with hundreds of them online that . . . what I said was true.
Stick around, I'm just getting started.
Is Jesus God? is my own work, and should answer your question regarding what I think about it. Jesus was a god, just as Moses was, the judges were. He wasn't God. If you take a look at my link let me know what you think and we can take it from there if you don't mind.
I think I'm starting to like the way you think, AE. Well said, as it were. Up to that last line, of course.
They don't have Bloom County "down under" as we American persons like to say? We had The Men At Work.