28th March 2004, 2:04 PM
(This post was last modified: 28th March 2004, 2:09 PM by A Black Falcon.)
I had written a long post but lost it. So just a few points.
Darunia: Again, you overestimate humanity... getting rid of humanity would not open it to some higher purpose... yes reducing its influence would do good things, but it wouldn't lead to fundamental change.
Weltall: Religion has done great, great evil. What I'd call its greatest one isn't atrocities, though... it's its hatred of new ideas and change. Religion is against progress. Progress is, on the whole, a good thing. That doesn't make religion evil but it makes it a huge force against understanding and knowledge... those are not by any stretch of the imaginiation good things. The Renaissance? Sure arts flowered but religion was still strict... greatly limiting artistic expression, and cutting growing science as much as possible...
DJ, you seem to be trying to cling to a direct interpretation of the Bible -- its word is the word of God and is all true. Your insistence in not ruling out the 'the world was literally created in 6 days' thing (something I'd call idiocy, believing something that obviously false) proves that. So, how do you explain the contradictions in the Bible? They are EVERYWHERE, starting from around page two or three! I mean, there are two creation stories... :)
It cannot all be right. Like how we've since decided that slavery is wrong, but it's all over the Bible and not just as an evil.
Or how about God himself? You talk about repentance, but the Old Testament God seems to have very little interest in that! And that's when he was manifest... the New Testiment is just through Jesus. In the Old Testament where he speaks (and acts) he does a lot of punishment and precious little forgiveness... Oh, and this goes against your statement that he loves free will too... unless somehow the nature of God changed when Jesus came into existence? But if he's all powerful then he should have known the best course from the beginning you know... :)
Just showing how this can go around in circles. I find so much of it so arbitrary but it's that very fact that it does set down these absolutes (something the things we know as facts cannot do) is what makes it so attractive...
Oh yeah on a similar theme, belief is all well and fine but belief agaisnt proof is obstinate and only brings about bad things. Like not admitting that the Big Bang definitely happened and the clear trail of events we are tracking is what occurred and that evolution is how our species evolved. And you call yourself a liker of science! Sure scientists are often religious but your ideas here are just absurd for one who claims to like this stuff...
I mean, if you don't believe that the record we see is what happened what's stopping me from saying "the world was created exactly as it is (to the atom, which would set your thoughts in your brain as they are) one second ago" and having you unable to argue against it because you think God could have created the world from wholecloth 6000 years ago or something and us from mud? Of course no one could prove that statement wrong, but neither can anyone disprove the idea that God created us from nothing with the entire earth as it is (remember, the dinosaur bones are a temptation from God trying to pull us off the path that says that the world was created ~6000 years ago!)...
Oh yeah, and Marx was wrong about a whole lot of stuff, but he is absolutely right that religion is an opiate for the masses. It's hardly the only one, but it's a big one and has been for just about forever. I mean, it's a key part of keeping the population down in any society with unfairness! When the peasants are told by their priest -- the local voice of God -- that they were born in the station they deserve to be in and the only way to go to Heaven is to work hard and follow orders and do as your lords command, well, they listen and stay oppressed despite hardships because they want to go to Heaven... Nationalism works too (see Nazi Germany or Militarist Japan up to the end of WWII), but Religion is one of the best tried and true methods for getting people to do what you want.
How does that connect to what you said? As you might guess, religion keeps people doing things that can quite quickly reduce their lifespan (Banzai charges, the Crusades...)... as those examples show, religion when mixed with some kind of group identity -- nationalism, defending the Western world, and some 'other'... the Enemy. Utter evil, generally -- introduce any humanity in your enemy and you have more trouble killing them. But he CERTAIN that they are heathens doomed to die and burn in the fires forever, and tortures and massacre comes easy!
Darunia: Again, you overestimate humanity... getting rid of humanity would not open it to some higher purpose... yes reducing its influence would do good things, but it wouldn't lead to fundamental change.
Weltall: Religion has done great, great evil. What I'd call its greatest one isn't atrocities, though... it's its hatred of new ideas and change. Religion is against progress. Progress is, on the whole, a good thing. That doesn't make religion evil but it makes it a huge force against understanding and knowledge... those are not by any stretch of the imaginiation good things. The Renaissance? Sure arts flowered but religion was still strict... greatly limiting artistic expression, and cutting growing science as much as possible...
DJ, you seem to be trying to cling to a direct interpretation of the Bible -- its word is the word of God and is all true. Your insistence in not ruling out the 'the world was literally created in 6 days' thing (something I'd call idiocy, believing something that obviously false) proves that. So, how do you explain the contradictions in the Bible? They are EVERYWHERE, starting from around page two or three! I mean, there are two creation stories... :)
It cannot all be right. Like how we've since decided that slavery is wrong, but it's all over the Bible and not just as an evil.
Or how about God himself? You talk about repentance, but the Old Testament God seems to have very little interest in that! And that's when he was manifest... the New Testiment is just through Jesus. In the Old Testament where he speaks (and acts) he does a lot of punishment and precious little forgiveness... Oh, and this goes against your statement that he loves free will too... unless somehow the nature of God changed when Jesus came into existence? But if he's all powerful then he should have known the best course from the beginning you know... :)
Just showing how this can go around in circles. I find so much of it so arbitrary but it's that very fact that it does set down these absolutes (something the things we know as facts cannot do) is what makes it so attractive...
Oh yeah on a similar theme, belief is all well and fine but belief agaisnt proof is obstinate and only brings about bad things. Like not admitting that the Big Bang definitely happened and the clear trail of events we are tracking is what occurred and that evolution is how our species evolved. And you call yourself a liker of science! Sure scientists are often religious but your ideas here are just absurd for one who claims to like this stuff...
I mean, if you don't believe that the record we see is what happened what's stopping me from saying "the world was created exactly as it is (to the atom, which would set your thoughts in your brain as they are) one second ago" and having you unable to argue against it because you think God could have created the world from wholecloth 6000 years ago or something and us from mud? Of course no one could prove that statement wrong, but neither can anyone disprove the idea that God created us from nothing with the entire earth as it is (remember, the dinosaur bones are a temptation from God trying to pull us off the path that says that the world was created ~6000 years ago!)...
Oh yeah, and Marx was wrong about a whole lot of stuff, but he is absolutely right that religion is an opiate for the masses. It's hardly the only one, but it's a big one and has been for just about forever. I mean, it's a key part of keeping the population down in any society with unfairness! When the peasants are told by their priest -- the local voice of God -- that they were born in the station they deserve to be in and the only way to go to Heaven is to work hard and follow orders and do as your lords command, well, they listen and stay oppressed despite hardships because they want to go to Heaven... Nationalism works too (see Nazi Germany or Militarist Japan up to the end of WWII), but Religion is one of the best tried and true methods for getting people to do what you want.
How does that connect to what you said? As you might guess, religion keeps people doing things that can quite quickly reduce their lifespan (Banzai charges, the Crusades...)... as those examples show, religion when mixed with some kind of group identity -- nationalism, defending the Western world, and some 'other'... the Enemy. Utter evil, generally -- introduce any humanity in your enemy and you have more trouble killing them. But he CERTAIN that they are heathens doomed to die and burn in the fires forever, and tortures and massacre comes easy!