Joe Average doesn’t spend much time in Great Debates. One expects the level of intellect here to be a cut above.
As I explained in some detail, Czar (and some others) want it both ways. Religion is what Average Joe says it is, but natural selection and evolution are not.
Phooey.
He knew. If you search my posts, you will find where I have condemned religion consistently since I first began here. He is an old-timer. Like me.
Czar
Somehow, I doubt that.
Good thing I was skeptical. Those are your words, not mine. I said that the people Jesus spoke to (censured) are religious. I said nothing about everyone else.
Your tactic of misstating, and then attacking your own misstatement is beneath even you.
Nonsense.
My relation with God is not genitive. It is ablative.
That’s right. And you’ve done it because you enjoy it.
On the other hand, that’s where you could have taken your insult. One would think you would know that.
Exactly my point. Your usage of “Ghod” is intended to harm and insult. Your derision of my viewpoint is intended to harm and insult. Your dismissal of your own frivolity is intended to harm and insult. You’re masturbating to fantasies of pissing me off. Infantile. Sub-infantile.
I use the word “ghod” to refer to all possible gods, goddesses, godlings, half-gods and whatever god-aspects that various people can and do believe in.
I did not call you “religious” in a Pit thread because only you consider it to be an insulting term.
I do believe I understand some of the highly irregular definitions you give words, but not agreeing to those definitions does not make me ignorant. For direct insults in this thread, one has only to refer to your postings.
It seems that violence is very entrenched in the history of some religions, especially Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Therefore violence is easily accepted by many of the adherents of these religions. In an email discussion list to which I subscribe, a participant mentioned a similarity between the major religions involved in the Mid-East troubles. The writer said (in part)
Respondents to this message mentioned modern interpretations of the sacrifice of Isaac. Not to be daunted the original writer replied (in part)
The writer seems to me to have hit upon a very basic flaw in these religions. So maybe my original question should be are Christianity, Judaism and Islam fatally flawed?
I love you. You’re bellicose at times, but you’re not a bad guy. We all masturbate now and then. And hey, I’m a very easy target for the fantasy. It’s my lot in life. I apologize for calling you ignorant. I refuse to accept the label of religous. Peace.
See, I view the two (ignorance and indoctrination) as two sides of the same coin. Indoctrination can only succeed where there IS ignorance, I would argue. It relies on the indoctrinees not thinking critically. That some people find it exceedingly difficult to do so because they are trapped inside their indoctrination before they develop critical thinking skills is a crime. But I maintain the inability to overcome any “wall of religion” is a sign that an indoctrinated ignorance has overcome the light of reason. When people let other people tell them how to think, they are ultimately letting ignorance rule their lives, even IF there is a great deal of pressure to do just that. That this happens with religion is significant, but hardly damning of religion; it’s an indictment of people, not of a belief.
Hmm… There is an element of truth to this, no doubt. Of course, violence is very entrenched in history, period; it’s a part of human nature. The way people perceive violence has changed through the centuries, but I would note that such things as “thou shalt not kill” have been around for centuries as well. Christianity very much proclaims such things as turning the other cheek and what not. People struggle with this; I don’t turn the other cheek well myself. But to say that religions suggest violence as a solution is disingeneous. The religions listed above suggest violence is NOT a solution (if I understand Judaism and Islam correctly). People are violent anyway, and what I’m just not understanding is any statement that says that when people are violent, it’s the fault of religion and not of those people.
This is interesting. The suggested flaw seems to be that people are to put religion above morality, and that if Czar’s ghod commands people to go forth and slay, followers of ghod darn well better go forth and slay. My only response here is that if ghod tells me to go forth and slay, I’m telling him to do something that for me would be anatomically impossible. However, to address the actual question, I’m not sure that these religions are fatally flawed (I’ll have to give it some thought). Abraham is honored because he is willing to kill for God, but you’ll note that he never actually DOES. If it was a good thing to kill for God and God said “kill for me,” then we’d have a problem. But God doesn’t (not seriously, I mean). He wants people to put religion above moral concerns, but if the religion itself stresses a moral code that no one could live up to anyway, I’m not SURE that I see this as a problem.
[Josh 10:38] Then Joshua, with all Israel, turned back to Debir and assaulted it,
[Josh 10:39] and he took it with its king and all its towns; and they smote them with the edge of the
sword, and utterly destroyed every person in it; he left none remaining; as he had done to Hebron
and to Libnah and its king, so he did to Debir and to its king.
[Josh 10:40] So Joshua defeated the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland
and the slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as
the LORD God of Israel commanded.
I have to admit I kind of wonder about the “oh, just kidding” variant of the Abraham and Issac story. It sounds as if you are arguing that you should be willing to kill for God, but a special sort of willing that results in, well, not actually being willing to kill. Which doesn’t make sense.
For people whose lives are full of hardship, it offers hope.
For people who seek to manipulate others, it offers a cloak of righteousness.
For people of dubious morals, it offers a measuring stick against which they will be judged.
As your computer, as a car, as a weapon, as a piece of tree branch, mankind can use it for noble construction or horrible destruction. Don’t blame religion, blame the individuals who would use it and other means to justify their crimes.
Intolerance.
Intolerance of other people’s religion or lack thereof… well, that’s a different story.
Oof. Uhmm… God has a sense of humor and Joshua didn’t get the joke? nervous grin I dunno. Like I said, I haven’t given much thought to this story. Shows what you get when you don’t stop to think, huh? Obviously, God appears different in the OT than he does in the NT; I’ve always had trouble reconciling the two myself, and I’ll have to think about this a bit more. (Full disclosure: I am closer to a deist than anything else, and an unfortunately lapsed one at that, so my religious thinking can be appallingly fuzzy at times. I’m mostly objecting here to the blanket assertion that an idea or concept is inherently evil, not trying to be an apologist for a specific religion.)
No, I’m not arguing that you should be willing to kill for God, personally, because murder is wrong (I do not presume to speak for all religious people, mind you, and I assume that many extremists ARE willing to kill for God).
You see, it’s kind of a moot issue for me, because I can’t conceive of God asking me to go murder someone. If I thought I WAS being asked to do so, then I would have more than ample reason to stop following said god. I suppose I’m saying that I don’t let religion trump morality; an immoral faith is one I couldn’t follow. YMMV, but it’s this that I’m arguing for.
If a faith DOES advocate doing something as immoral as murder, then I would consider that faith to be evil, but it does not then follow that all faiths are evil. (I view faith as a largely personal thing, with each individual’s faith being unique.)
Don’t quite have the time to make a full response to the Abraham/God ordering murder idea. Let me direct you to a website about Soren Kierkegaard. He wrote a very good book called Fear and Trembling. In it, he addresses this problem and the website discusses and summarizes the book.
Truthfully, that has always bothered me too. That and the slaughtering of entire populations in the Old Testament.
But then you run across the book of Jonah (still in the Old Testament) and it’s really almost funny. Unfortunately, most people don’t make it past the fish part of the story.
Basically, it’s a story about a prophet who gets pissed with God. God tells him to go preach to a nation who has been killing his people. Jonah tells God to shove it and heads off the other direction. God sends the fish (you know this part) and he ends up at the door of the capital city of this nation he hates.
He preaches there against his will – you can almost hear him saying “God says he’s going to destroy you unless you repent! And I hope you don’t!!!”
The people do repent and God spares them. Jonah is even more furious with God:
The people who twist the Bible into justification for hate, killing and all the rest have managed to ignore verses like this and explain them away.
I don’t think it’s a case of them ignoring verses-it’s more a case of them picking the verses they wish to follow. The Bible is a large book of histories, fables, lore and rules written over a long period of time by a great number of people. IMHO, it never should have been gathered together in a single volume and presented as a singlar religion-there are far too many contradictions presented as to the nature of Man, Sin, History, and God. You may say that people that do not read the Bible as you do are not true Christians, and they may say the same of you. Unfortunately, the version of the Bible that has the important parts Hi-lighted in red seems to be missing from the library.