big up to my fellow t3d'ers raised Catholic The body of Christ, when I was a kid, was goldfish. I still believe that is why goldfish are so wonderfully delicious to this day.
The bible is probably the WORST thing to use as a moral compass. I would never use a nearly 2000 year old book that's got more logic holes and bigoted hate than it does sound evidence as something to base your life off of. YouTube - Putting faith in its place
I ready and study many religious texts. My studying is not based solely in Christianity where my roots are. There are a lot of holes in the Bible. The translation has been altered over the years and its meaning is further diluted with differing versions such as the NIV. I figured if I am living my life according to the following text, I am doing ok: Mark 12:29-31 It doesn't say love only other Christians, or people who aren't gay, or people who believe in God. Based on that I refuse to treat anyone any differently that I would treat myself. Okay, I'll get down from my soapbox now.
See, this is the opinion of someone who has never read the Bible. The whole bigotry and hate thing mostly comes from people like Pat Robertson and crazies with 2 first names.
Good, bad, or indifferent, it doesn't change one simple fact - the bible (and every other "holy" book) was written by the hands of mortal men. What proof is there that their words were divinely inspired? Maybe what I just wrote is the word of god. All I've got to do is say that it was and get suckers to believe me. The only difference between a cult and garden variety religions is the number of followers.
coleman, you are right. but, ive noticed a trend among the religious community where.. if say.. me, the differing opinion states that "so and so is a bigot and a hateful preacher on tv" and the christian says.. "well hes just preaching the wrong word, hes not right, you should join us at OUR church, we spread the correct word". This response goes for alot of other true observations about most christians.. okay, well do something about it. christians, etc talk so bad about these "corrupted" preachers, ministers, etc etc but noone seems to do anything about it. How come these soo called "correct christians" arent actually correcting the "corrupt" ones?? They all seem to just talk bad about each other but let em continue to do as they please. Its sad. Each one of these asshats think theyre the oh so rightful person.. lmao.
I read some of it last year just for pleasure. It's some pretty heavy reading what with the language differences. I got through most of Genesis and haven't really gone back. I can see the interest in it and how much is alluded to it in novels and whatnot. It's just not for me though.
The short answer to that would be.. how do you prove which way is more righteous when the ultimate answer to Christianity is itself unproveable. So, the whackos keep preaching because to shut them down would be hypocrisy. Not to mention that there are hundreds of millions of Christians so even the small minority groups can be gigantic.
Ha! So true. The baptists think they're the only folks who've got it right, and the pentecostals think they're the only folks who've got it right, etc. At my Mom's church I've heard them bash the catholics from the pulpit on many, many occasions. I just laugh, because what is "right" anyway? Any interpretation of a lie and fraud is going to be wrong from the get-go.
Imo it's like anything else. You can replace "correct christians" in that sentence with any number of different groups of people. Correct Republicans, correct journalists, correct police. It's not a phenomenon unique to religious groups. Correct in this case is just a relative term which depends on what we choose to believe. I agree though, it is sad... it's also just the way of the world. Those of us with with enough sense to see that there is always a chance of being wrong tend not to speak for anyone but ourselves and so fall quietly into the background.
I have read the Old and New Testament twice. It is an interesting read as long as you dont do it with the King James version
Only one thing to say about religeon: "Religeon is for those affraid to go to hell. Spirituality is for those that have already been there".
There's a quote that I like.. "Religion is considered by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful"
I think I spotted it in a book called "Idiot America".. I'm sure the author isn't the originator of it. A quick search with one part of the phrase got me the quote I was looking for. Just looked it up: the quote is from Seneca
Here's another good one: "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." Steven Weinberg
I like how every atheist uses that quote as if they hold some sort of moral high ground. It's a generalizing statement that further perpetuates the atheist-religious clash that will continue to exist so long as both sides blame each other for their troubles. Religion isn't the root of all evil. Atheists aren't soul-less zombies that have no real deep meaning in life. (I'm not christian, either. I just like playing devils advocate)
Coleman: I appreciate what you're doing, so I'll go along with you. So, you, the Christian, come to find someone who is an open atheist. Being Christian, you might say that morals come from the stories, which serve as moral teachings, in the bible. A lot of Christians belief that atheists are immoral heathens because of your biased belief in BIBLE = MORALS. You ask me how I can be a moral person without the bible. I would ask you: Would you still kill or rape someone if you hadn't heard of the bible? Morals don't come from a book with ancient texts that are the word of God. They come from society. If the society is advanced, the laws imposed are your moral guideline. The same book that says thou shall not kill also says stone someone who works on the day the lord rests, or to kill for mixed fabric clothing. Statistically, there are much fewer atheists in jail than Christians, per capita. Atheists are looked down on even harder than gay people or Muslims in this country, yet there are less in jail. Atheists not having morals is pretty laughable. An atheist's morals may differ from a Christians, but because we embrace who we are, we don't break our own morals nearly as much as Christians break theirs. So, getting back to your moral high ground subject, it's not so much that we think ourselves to be better, morally, than Christians, it's that we don't ground ourselves to unrealistic morals. If there's one to live by, it's do to others what you would want done to you. That's all there is to it. And, yes, I'm fully aware that the Christian base in this country is much larger than the Atheist base, and that gives us a lot of crazies to single out to make the religion look bad. It's not that the teachings of GOOD are bad, it's that believing in the imaginary can lead to crazy, irrational behavior.
I like how you use a generalizing statement to attack generalizing statements You know, just playing devils advocate Edit: Someone mentioned Deuteronomy earlier, and I just stumbled on this image:
as with the pic: Deuteronomy was written thousands of years ago in the middle east. When people use just a portion of the writings as a justification to the point they wish to make about any given subject, I feel like telling them to go back in time and they'd have a valid point. What I have noticed about the bible, and I'm sure that most all texts of spiritual basis are the same, is that you cannot pick and choose one little passage to justify anything. The whole is where the justification for belief come from. Another thing I have noticed, is that all religeons are really good until you add humans to the equation.
EXACTLY. That's all I want, a balance of power. It disturbs me how the religious freaks use their power, and that they have power at all. Freedom of religion has been perverted in this country, I vote for some secularism to balance this out a bit.
Modern societal morals, for the most part, come straight from the Bible. I don't think that people would inherently accept rape as a societal norm, but I think that with some rules that have real conviction behind them, it gave the people an incentive to uphold the law and stand up to chaos and disorder. With that said, I believe that the Bible wasn't written with the intent of being inflexible to time and human progress. It's a pipe dream to think that modern Christianity would think the same thing, but if an omnipotent God really set down some rules for all man to obey for all of time.. you'd think he'd leave space for some corrections. I do think that religion is going to take a very interesting turn for the better in the next decades. With the advance of modern science, philosophy and retreat from religion.. there has to be a change or it will die out. I think we will see Christianity, especially, becoming increasingly tolerant of progress and change as they continuously see their numbers in new believers fall. I think religion disappearing would be a terrible thing. No way. While I will agree that announcing yourself as an atheist in a room full of hardcore Christians is just as dangerous as a gay man in a harley davidson bar in Tennessee... there has never been the violence and persecution beset upon your group like homosexuals and Muslims in certain parts of America. How dare you point out my hypocrisy.
