Realizing not all religions do that. Of course some say, think for yourself, seek the truth, with the implied {within acceptable limits} That’s part of my problem with most organized religion as well. I’m encouraged to see more open minded liberal believers than ever before.
There are several things I like about the Bahai. One is that they teach their traditions as* their traditions* rather than rigid truths.
Lately I’ve been seeing religion as part of the evolution of man’s emotion and consciousness. The structure provides some effectiveness as groups apply themselves to positive applications such as helping the poor. The down side is the collective mind set of embracing myth that comes with in group peer pressure.
I was thinking the other day about the attractiveness and the apparent need for people to believe a benevolent God is taking care of things. The heavenly Father figure. Someone whose approval we seek and who points and prepares the way for us. I suppose that’s a different thread.
I think you’ve missed my point. My point is that any Church is very up front and open about what the evidence for their beliefs is. It’s widely known. It’s in books. It’s on the internet. You could walk into a church building and ask the minister and he or she would tell you (assuming sufficient spare time). In other words, there is no difference between the evidence that each Church offers publicly and the evidence that they believe in privately. This makes the Church very different from your typical corporation, political party, or military
Now you may disagree with them about how convincing that evidence is, but the point is that Churches are very upfront about what evidence they offer.
Let’s take Christianity, for example. Of the two billion-odd people who choose to follow Christianity, none do it for wealth and none do it for power, as already established earlier in this thread. Your statement is factually wrong. You lose.
Let’s take Christianity for example. Of the two billion-odd people who follow Christianity, none use coercion, intimidation, or brainwashing, as already established in this thread. Your statement is factually wrong. You lose again.
I might fell sorry for you, but considering how often you show up in a thread, post some mindless insults, and then disappear, I imagine you’re used to losing by now.
In the case we’re discussing, the excellence of advice is not judged by what happens after death, but rather by what happens before death.
I’m afraid I can’t agree with that at all. If advice is “power”, it is a pretty weak power as compared to, say, the power to impose taxes, make laws, or take somebody’s job. As I said already, I believe that power of persuasion is the only good power since it doesn’t depend on force, but rather on voluntary acceptance. I’m puzzled by why so many people are afraid of it. (Especially since many of those people seem perfectly okay with power of law and gun.)
There are two things wrong with this argument. First, each churchgoer seeks to establish a relationship with God by multiple means of which the pastor’s message is only one, hence the pastor does not control the phrasing and interpretation of the message. The truth is the other way around. If the listener doesn’t like the message they’re hearing from the pastor, they can move to a different church.
Second, the pastor does not claim to be speaking on behalf of “God”–at least not most of the time; there may be a few instances where a preacher claims to be inspired by God. For the most part, they are doing exactly what I said: offering advice. The only claim to authority is their experience and their studies, which is the same as what all kinds of people claim all the time.
Really? It seems to me as though any advice which considers the afterlife in any way rather relies upon the afterlife. This could be my own personal bias, but it seems to me that the meaning of Jesus’ sacrifice is a rather important topic within Christianity; too, since the afterlife is predicated upon moral behaviour, I would have tended to assume that “being good” was a rather important topic, as well. It seems odd to me to consider the existence of or nature of the afterlife (and connected topics) to be entirely inconsequential to a minister’s advice.
Because the power of persuasion can control those other powers. I might have built up a great career for myself as a politician; you might have an excellent reputation as a legal maven; another might be an excellent soldier. Each of us, in our different ways, has power; but a persuasive person can control all three of us, all of our power put together.
Advice* is* the ability to impose taxes, make laws, or take somebody’s job - it all depends on who’s willing to listen. And i’m not “afraid” of it, i’m afraid of it in the wrong hands, as I would be the power of law or gun in the wrong hands.
Cite, please. I don’t believe i’d be willing to generalise to each churchgoer in such a way, but if you have the stats, i’m happy to take a look.
Again, cite. Every pastor is a smaller group than every churchgoer, but it’s still quite a diverse group, i’d imagine. What leads you to say this with such certainty?
I am afraid you are mistaken there - Protestant Christianity at least does not teach that the afterlife is predicated on moral behavior.
Persuasion is different from power. If I have power, I can compel obedience. If persuasion fails, there is no fallback.
I think the burden of proof is on you to show that the Church teaches that the message of the minister is the only path to follow in obedience to God, and that pastors always claim to be speaking with the voice of God.
You seem to be confusing ministers with Obama (cite, cite).
If it teaches that the afterlife is predicated on acceptance of Jesus as God, then such acceptance in turn requires and compels moral behaviour.
And if power fails, there is no fallback. Persuasion is simply one type of power; instead of control through the use of physical compulsion, or through reference to the law, arguments and words are used instead. If you can persuade, you can indeed compel obedience, by changing the mind of the other so that they desire to obey.
I don’t recall claiming that the message of the minister is the only path; simply that it is one.
I have a couple of cites from the Catechism, if that’s acceptable proof.
Not having read those cites before, or generally in the habit of confusing ministers and Obama, I don’t think I am. Has something I said lead you to think i’m confusing the two?
I thought unearned and unmerited grace had something to do with it (in some Christian theology), which leaves the door open for a lifetime of skulduggery and a heartfelt deathbed repentance.
Do you really assert that not one person who claims to follow Christianity has been in it for the wealth and power? Not even, say, any of the televangelists? Not even, say, Jim Bakker?
Errmmm… are you being ironic? Or hyperbolic, or something?
“In Christian churches, a minister is someone who is authorized by a church or religious organization to perform clergy functions such as teaching of beliefs; performing services such as weddings, baptisms or funerals; or otherwise providing spiritual guidance to the community.” - Wikipedia
Spiritual guidance…hm. Like as if people have a “spirit” something others might call a “soul”? Now why does a soul need to be guided in Christianity?
“Hell, in Christian beliefs, is a place or a state in which the souls of the unsaved will suffer the consequences of sin.” - Wikipedia
Sure, that has been true ever since the Catholics decided to allow the laity to read the Bible. (With the notable exception of Scientologists, of course.) What they don’t do is dispassionately evaluate the quality of the evidence. How many fundamentalist churches teach the latest in Biblical scholarship? How many admit that Moses did not write the first five books?
Most people who follow Christianity do it because their parents did it. I’d suspect there is a fair bit of brainwashing in Sunday school before they are old enough to resist and parental coercion to go to church.
But why do the parents believe? Because somewhat over 1,000 years ago a king got converted, for whatever reason, and his subjects became Christians or were put to death. Coercion enough for you?
This is a great thread. I’m enjoying this one. Great points by many.
LHoD, I like how you put this. It is an easy concept. Yes, by NOT looking at the evidence they are (maybe inadvertently) trying to deceive. If you’re working for a business that absolutely can not be sued for making a bad product until someone comes along and says, “No, we’ve discovered this,” the ignorance of not looking at said evidence tends to lead to deceit.
(Sorry, slight analogy coming…) If a preacher looks and examines at some counterpoint to the bible-- say, afterlife-- and decides Heaven really isn’t possible. He tells his congregation he feels Heaven isn’t real. He’s turning away the customers, angering them by basically saying, “What you believe isn’t right. What you tell your friends and family about faith isn’t true.”
Now what businessman wants that when he has a house, a few hundred people that look up to him and loads of blind respect? The blind respect he gets from his congreagations is returned to them by being blind to evidence.
You can if you have underlying motives but only pay attention to your conscious one - you can honeslty believe you’re doing something for one reason but actually you would not do it without the other, stealth reason. In other words, swimming the big river*.
This is not exactly right: you’re confusing levels here. If you unconsciously intend to do something, then your fraud is unconscious as well. If you consciously intend to do something, then your fraud is also conscious fraud. Be careful about equivocation here. You’re not describing someone who inadvertently tries to deceive, you’re describing someone who unconsciously tries to deceive. Two different things.
I find this idea of an unconscious attempt to deceive, as evidenced by a refusal to look at the evidence, to be a thoroughly useless idea anyway. It is virtually identical to saying, “you know I’m right, you just won’t admit it!” A religious person could level precisely the same charge at an atheist, with an equal amount of evidence for the charge, and the discussion goes nowhere.
If someone is clearly intending to deceive another party for personal gain or in order to injure the other party, that’s fraud. If someone claims something is true, and you are really convinced by the evidence that it’s not true and you conclude that they must just not be looking at the evidence out of some sort of unconscious fear of TEH TROOF, that’s not fraud.
