Sorry for the confusion. Let me clarify. In my view worshiping God means having great reverence for, and making a commitment to, the truth. As Jesus describes it it is it is to love and truth. Those are eternal qualities. That means seeking the truth above religious tradition and myth. Christianity has some beliefs that are built on tradition and myth such as the one I mentioned {God wrote the Bible}There are mountains of evidence that this is not true and yet people who say they worship God can’t seem to honestly look at the Bible. That’s one example. I believe the truth does set us free, but we don’t see the whole picture. That takes time and discipline.
Is that better?
The fact that some things cannot be proven conclusively doesn’t free people to believe whatever they wish against a preponderance of evidence. I’ve seen believers from different faiths cling to any lame illogical explanation to hold on to beliefs they should let go of. I suppose understand, but it’s hard to respect it.
It’s similar to someone being so patriotic that they are irrational and unrealistic about the flaws of this country. Or someone loving a child so much they are blind to their flaws. Jesus told us that tradition and the teachings of men should never come between us and the truth. Does that make sense to you?
I’m not a big fan of the popular concept of sin. For the sake of this conversation how will we define it? I might say that sin is whatever seperates us from God and each other. Since the essence of God is love and truth then anything contrary to those to principles might be considered sin. Do you agree?
Really? None of them? Don’t you know atheists who are honest? Kind? Compassionate? Don’t you know any atheists who have personal integrity, and courage? You need to have a wider social circle.
I don’t give a rats ass about what people give lip service to. You get a sense of what people really value when you spend a little time with them. It’s the essence of who they are and what their actions tell me they really care about that matters to me. I know wonderful people who are Christians, Atheists, Wiccans, etc. and I know jerks who go to church twice a week every week.
The Bible tells us that belief isn’t enough. It’s what you value. What is the foundation that your life is built upon. Not just in words but what is reflected in your actions. Anyone can go to church and sing praises to God and say praise Jesus. They might even mean it at the time. The test is what happens during the rest of the week. When opportunities present themselves and we are tested to see what kind of people we really are. What happens then?
I was speaking in terms of it’s net effect of course; no large movements have only good or bad effects. For example, I’ve heard that Nazi Germany had a very enlightened forestry policy; that doesn’t outweigh the negatives. The negatives of Christianity, and religion is general, outweigh the positives. In fact, I’ll be plain : even if I believed religion to be true, I’d still oppose believing it or following it. I find it morally corrupt, irrational, and philosophically disgusting. It also tends to warp people, making them irrational and amoral, or outright malignant.
Someone who was the source of the myth probably lived; he was either a religious fanatic, a fraud, or just crazy. He was certainly not perfect; I can’t see how that word can even apply to a person.
You have no proof; none exists. There is proof that matter comes out of nowhere; they are called virtual particles.
It is mankind that is made in the image of God, not one person. I think you know that. I think you also know that belief in God has made many people kinder, and compassionate. If you wish to flee from God’s punishment by believing God doesn’t exist, you are wasting breath. God will not harm you, God harms no one. You are like Don Q. jousting windmills. It is ok, you are safe.
I’m not afraid of a nonexistent god; I’m afraid of his murderous, tyrannical followers. I don’t believe religion makes people nicer; I believe some people are nice enough to overcome the morally crippling effect of religion.
We were not made in anyone’s image; we crawled out of the primordial ooze by our own efforts, not those of some power mad scum in the sky.
Even as net effect you’d have a hell of a job proving that. No way to measure it that I can see. I’d say your discription of how religion warps people is an exageration. What percentage of people in this country are religious? If the majority of them were as bad as you describe don’t you think we’d be a hell of a lot worse off than we are?
I have a question though. Concerning the net effect of science. If we give science credit for medicine saving lives and other advances, then doesn’t science have to take the blame for things like the Atomic bomb, Global warming, etc.?
What is the net effect of science?
The good done by religion is so little, and the damage so enormous I feel safe in judging it a net loss.
Yes most people here are religious; it’s probably not a coincidence America is so screwed up compared to other industrialized nations. Look across the world; the more strongly a region is religious, the more screwed up and miserable it is.
Science takes some blame, but less than religion because it a technique, not a belief system. Science doesn’t say what we should do; that is a subjective choice, and science is about objective reality.
Also : The benefits of science are enormous, and can be gained no other way. The benefit of religion are small, and can be gained in many other ways. We don’t need religion the promote a moral code ( even if it was good at it ), or promote unity, or charity ( as if it did ), or explain the world. Others things can do that as well or better, without the same destructive side effects.
Or you just want to. You can make this assertion all day but it seems ironic that you who asks for evidence from anyone who asserts any spiritual belief offhandedly make this one that you can’t prove.
And does religion get credit for all of America’s accomplishments too? Regardless, this has nothing to do wuth how extreme your statement was that religion tends to make people “amoral and malignant”
Care to prove that statement. Over 50% of the religious people in this country are amoral and malignant? Let’s see the evidence.
I think you contradict yourself. If science is about objective reality and religion is a belief system then you can’t compare the positive and negative elements as if they’re the same. The benefits of science and it drawbacks are about how we choose to use it. To heal or to kill. To solve problems or create them. I’d say religion is like that.
So you want yet another list of Bad Things Done In The Name Of Religion ? Very well, here’s some : Thirty Years War; Protestent/Catholic conflict in Ireland; the Inquisition; the Crusades; burkas; the Taliban; faith healing; the breakup and conflict between India and Pakistan; the suppression of ether for use in childbirth to punish women; the destruction of a wide range of native cultures; the Holocaust; 9-11; suppression of stem cell research; the war against abortion; suppression of evolution in schools; attempts to suppress research and education about drug resistence in diseases; witch hunts; the suppression of life extension research; suppression of geocentrism; and on and on…
You assume I admire America. I don’t, I just live here.
I said “it tends to”, not “does”. Evidence ? How about the outright terroristic anti-abortion movement, Catholic child molesting and the coverup, religiously motivated misogyny, hatred of the poor, antisemitism, the anti-gay crusade, the degradation of science education to please the religious, the anti-stem cell crusade, the religiously blessed massacre and persecution of the Native Americans and blacks, the election of Bush and his fellow Republican scum ? America is a rather twisted and nasty place in many ways.
Positive and negative are positive and negative; they compare just fine. Science does not prescribe behavior; it lets you make up your own mind. Religion tells you what to do; it deserves more blame.
Come to think of it isn’t God portrayed in Genesis as having created the heavens and the earth out of nothing?
On the other hand there is the question - Where did the virtual particles come from? Just like there is the question - Where did God come from?
The religious answer to the second question is that God didn’t come from anywhere, He always existed. But if anything always existed it might as well be virtual particles as to be God.
Virtual particles come from spacetime; they are manifestations of the Uncertainty Principle. Since there is no evidence gods exist, I can’t answer about divine origins.
I challenge the idea that the Holocaust arose from religious persecution. I believe that it was primarily ethnic. And of course there were others besides the Jews.
A drug’s ability to alter the mind’s perception of reality has lead a lot of people to question what might seem to some to be the obvious.
I would differ with you in saying that there may be some evidence for an afterlife, but certainly no proof of it. And yes, it’s all faith.
Don’t confuse the teachings (Christianity) with those who say they are practitioners (Christians). Although you may find an occasion verse with some strange suggestion that you “smite your enemy,” or kill someone, such passages are anomalies. The overall teachings of the Christ were about love, compassion, non-judgment and forgiveness.
Can the teachings be distorted and horrible things done under the name of Christianity? Your list answers that well. But that doesn’t mean that these Christians were practicing the teachings at the time anymore than some extremeists are today.
It does appear to me, though, that in order to select certain teachings “about love, compassion, non-judgment and forgiveness” from those telling the Disciples that towns that don’t accept them will be treated worse than Sodom and Gomorra (Matthew) you have to rely on pinciples from sources outside the New Testament.
Why would you accept a part and reject the other if you rely only on the Testament? The picture I get from the New Testament is that Jesus is portrayed as solicitous of those who follow Him and contemptuous and even hostile to those who don’t.
A : It always existed or B : It came from something else we don’t know. However, unlike a god, spacetime is simple, basic. A simple thing appearing from some primal chaos is far more logical than a god. When was the last time anyone say a superhuman being appear from nowhere ? The universe goes from simple to complex; not the other way around.
At this point there isn’t enough data; we can’t really know.
The nasty parts are just as valid as the nice ones. The people who commit atrocities and oppressions and foolishness are following the internal logic of Christianity much more than those who do nice things. After all, “tolerant” and “monotheism” don’t fit together well. Neither do “rational” and “revelation”.
That’s why I made the comment about “perverting it to a benevolent religion”. At it’s heart, Christianity is a exceedingly nasty thing, with a strong tendency to promote very bad behavior. People who try to make it do good are working against it’s nature.
Meaningless in proving your point. Just a list. Your claim is that the evil done by religion far outweighs the good. That means showing both sides not just the one that supports your assertion. For example. You mention the Holocaust. Was it mainly Christians that stopped Hitler? You mention supression of evolution in schools. Does religion get credit for being instrumental in establishing our educational sustem?
By your standards then every act of kindness by any person that professes to believe should be in the plus column. Every meal served by the salvation army. Every nickle given by a believer to a begger on the street. If the guy who developed penicilin happened to believe in God then that goes into the plus column right?
Religious belief has been so intertwined with the history of humanity in general that it seems like most major accomplishments and catastrophies might be traced to religion. You’ve thrown out Occums Razor a few times. He was religious so I guess that goes in the plus column for religion right?
I assume no such thing. I merely mentioned America’s accomplishments. We do have some don’t we?
To me* tends to * means more likely than not. That would mean that over 50% of all believers in this country would exhibit those awful traits you mentioned. Sometimes, or occasionaly, would be different. Does it count that believers will be instrumental in gaining rights for gays, just as they were in the civil rights movement and womens rights.
Ah… This might even be progress. So the pluses and minuses of science have to do with the choices people make and how they use it. Let’s see if that applies to religion. Hmmm Christ says love thy neighbor as thyself but people pervert that and then tell others that their perversion is the word of God so it would seem that the choice to pervert his teachings has something to do with it. Now we see different religious groups so we know that not all religious people choose the same thing. Some choose to use their religion for good. Others use it for evil purposes.
Eureka!! Der Trihs As unlikely as it sounds, you and I, who agree on very little, have discovered the crux of the problem. It isn’t science and it isn’t religion. It’s choice. That’s the problem. There seems to be inherent evil built into chooseing. The solution seems obvious. We just make sure people can only choose good things while still respecting their rights. Hmmmm…that may be trickier than I thought.
What I dont see is how you are saying that God wrote the Bible is a myth. A clear distinction I am noticing is the knowledge of a spirit or the lack of knowledge(or right out disbelief) of a spirit. It’s easiest to refer to our own spirit. I know there are some of the smartest people in the world who know(believe) there is a spirit. The hard thing is trying to describe or put it scientifically. When I touch something hot, I feel that its hot. In the same way I can feel my spirit. The problem is that it is not as easily explained.
Yes. I agree with you. Thats why I am here.
I dislike the connotations people have put on the word sin. Mostly extreme religious people using the word to further themselves. I agree with your definition of sin, yes.
You said exactly what I feel is a huge problem with “religion”. Relationship takes hard work. Religion is simply a set of rules that prevent you from hurting yourself or seperation from God. Relationship > Religion
I understand your argument. Religion can be a very terrible thing. I completely agree. The point you are failing to see is that you are talking about extremist. These people in no way reflect what Christ is about. We both know you are not being true to yourself. Loving one another is not anywhere near being “morally corrupt” and you know it. There is a huge wall blocking your view of christianity. Scientifically speaking I am sure you know what it means to discriminate people. You are making an assumption of other people based on a few peoples views(character). You have a logical point when you talk about some of the negative effects of relgion, but instead of keeping your arguments logical, you go on to say loving one another is morally corrupt. You very well know that your argument does not work in that respect.
This is just out right ludicrous. Do you honestly think that your argument works here? Christs nature is for the good of all humanity. For people who dont deserve to live (aka me). There is nothing that encourages bad behavior. It all encourages love, compassion, and forgiveness.
Not 100 percent sure if you were talking to me about how I said I dont know what I believe about the beginning and end of the Bible. Assuming thats what you are saying, the reason I said that is because I simply have not researched it enough.
I think you are forgetting just how thick-headed we can be. Christ came to save people who were about themselves and not for the creator and others (aka all of us). Truthfully speaking, looking at myself, I should have been considered worthless. If you willingly took the hit for everyone else (very well knowing that it was the most unjust thing you could do) and noone accepted you, would you be all thrilled? Of coarse not. The option to accept or reject is put out on the table. He is not forcing anyone.
