Nah... he will never beat meQuote:
Originally Posted by El Kabong
You would be the expert on arrogance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf
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Nah... he will never beat meQuote:
Originally Posted by El KabongYou would be the expert on arrogance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf
Power?Quote:
Originally Posted by El KabongAnd Mao & Stalin worshipped what? You would be the expert on arrogance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf
You made the argument that several smart people have been responsible for terrible things, whilst I made the basic observation that many people have used religion as a veil for their misdeeds and cruelty. There are notable world leaders, but that also extends down to ordinary people. Take for instance the centuries liong persecution of the Jews, or the religious divide in Northern Ireland, or the average American Christian loathing of Muslims today. Take religion out of the equation, and much of the hate has to be eradicated from the calculation too. It's not that simple, but religion is the main problem in many parts of the world, it simply doesn't act as a unifier or a solution, it is an inherent divide and ruler.
Your observation that several smart people have been responsible for terrible things was vague and therefore almost bereft of any meaning. You can quntify it far more by adding religion, or unregulated capitalism, or could have instead mentioned Mao or Stalin which you finally did above. Power is another corrupting element and so perhaps instead you could say that many world leaders have initiated terrible acts and the cause was immense arrogance and concentrations of power.
Your good friend Obama is a case in point. He told a truckload of porkies to get his job and has been locking up whistleblowers left, right, and centre. Continues to torture people in Guantanamo, assassinate's people on a weekly basis, has the greatest spying apparatus in world history, locks up truth revealing whistleblowers, does his best to bomb any nation based on made up evidence, etc etc. A very dangerous man with too much power and according to some he is either Christian or Muslim based on the direction of the wind. Incredibly dangerous.
Miles, I thought you were going on hiatus. Did you decide against it. When you look at the troubles in Ireland do you really think religion was at the root of it. Or the problems in the middle east. People don't need religion to hate each other.
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Nazi belt buckles.
"Gott mit uns" God is with us.
"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.." - Mein Kampf
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."
-Hitler Speech 1922
I should be and intend to be. At the very least this shall be my John Cage year.Quote:
Originally Posted by walrus
Religion and nationalism are the two things which can be used to drive people to do anything. After all, what can be more rewarding than to believe that you are doing it for your country or your God? Many global problems can be put down to these two things, though often you need a special leader to bring it to some special kind of fruition.
If the children of Northern Ireland went to integrated schools, the parents would stop indoctrinating them, and if the youth were free to intermarry, then the problems would largely go away in due course. It was and is the religious divide that is the obstacle, though obviously there was hundreds of years of political abuse largely perpetrated by the British and one shouldn't play that down. Take away religion though, and it is completely political, and then becomes nationalism.
Sometimes a leader can control the societal religious divides as Saddam did in Iraq. Admittedly it was largely by coercion and fear, but many Iraqi's today look back at Saddam's rule with a degree of fondness, as what is happening now is clearly a mess with thousands being killed every year, and goodness knows how many more being maimed and of course largely forgotten about once the initial headline is gone. The point I am making is that once the dictatorship is gone, religious differences then run amok.
Just look at the outrage and deaths over the cartoons of the prohet Mohammad, at the abortionists who get killed in America, at the lunatic US President who believed that "'they' hate us for our freedoms", at the Saudi's who will practice stoning. Religion either drives or is the excuse for a lot of terrible behaviour, that the world would clearly be better off without. America itself was founded on the banner of 'manifest destiny', again just using God as an excuse to carry out genocide and steal the land of ordinary people. This was still happening until very recent times.
Society improves despite religion and never because of it.
I know sometimes people think I am having a go at religion, but people are free to believe what they want to believe.
I think the only real benefit to be obtained from religion is a sense of comfort. 'Maybe I'm poor now, but in the next life, it won't be so bad'. I look at countries like the Phillipines, and I have no doubt Catholicism is a comfort to many people who live in abject poverty. Yet at the same time, the Catholic church is abusive with its stance on contraception. Instead of helping in that regard, it encourages further povert in that country. That is sick behaviour when it wouldn't be so hard to genuinely help the poor with a bit of commonsense.
Nothing that organised religion claims to do is anything that any human couldn't or doesn't do without religion. Most of us just get on with life doing the best we can. Few are doing anything truly terrible and if they are then society balances them. If one is walking around being 'good' because they are worrying about the permanent CCTV that is God, then they were likely never particularly good to begin with and that probably came from bad parenting.
Instead of encouraging poverty and saying it will be better in the land beyond, how about giving up that wealth and putting it all back into society? All that extravagance at Christmas makes the Pope seem like a middle age Monarch. If there was a Jesus, he was an odd man too. He supposedly said something along the lines of if you don't hate your parents, your children, your wife, yourself, then you cannot be my disciple. Now that really is a bit mean and most of us from todays perpective would say you are the definition of modern cult leader. A lot of myths about that man though and they are mostly myths.
P.S. My hiatus shall thus commence. :p
Sure the Sunni's do but I think the Kurds and Shias are happy they at least can fight back now and aren't getting gassed anymore. The Kurds are essentially autonomous and doing well. The Shia run most of the country minus Al Anbar. The three obviously haven't found a way to coexist w/o mass murder but do you really think the Shia/Kurds would give up their power to be back under the boot of Saddam and moderately more secure?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf
that is some funny shit. Shows he really wasn't a Christian, was that your point.Quote:
Originally Posted by killersheep
The Kurds just liberated Tall Hamis from Al Qaeda. Again.Quote:
Originally Posted by VictorCharlieSure the Sunni's do but I think the Kurds and Shias are happy they at least can fight back now and aren't getting gassed anymore. The Kurds are essentially autonomous and doing well. The Shia run most of the country minus Al Anbar. The three obviously haven't found a way to coexist w/o mass murder but do you really think the Shia/Kurds would give up their power to be back under the boot of Saddam and moderately more secure?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf
Hitler was a born Catholic, but was a political man. He constantly referenced God, but then would privately denounce Christianity too. When dealing with Hitler, you have to automatically assume mental conditions at play. It was God's destiny when he liked, at othertimes he would run Christianity into the ground.
Just your good old fashioned psycho in control of a very powerful country.
Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again."Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf
If you eat in McDonalds, it does not make you a big mac. God does not have grand-children, he only has children
P.S. you guys can say whatever. I believe that Adam, ... , Abraham, ..., Moses,..., David, Solomon, ..., and Jesus is my lineage. Bible is the histroy of my family. Amen
And you were born a what?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf
I was an abused child, who was free to make up his own mind concerning religious issues.Quote:
Originally Posted by El KabongAnd you were born a what?Quote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf
Miles, although I have not practiced my faith all my life I was raised Catholic. You have rallied against me a number of times saying I preach and twist the bible. I actually only bring it up in threads like this. I'm not big on preaching, maybe I should be but I realise it is not a strong point for me.
I have no issue with you not beleiving. What baffles me sometimes is your contempt and hostility towards faith. You speak against the closed mindedness of the religious but it appears you do the same with your beliefs. I find faith fascinating. I love reading theology. I would have to say faith wise I am still lacking but I always think it does bring a bit more sense to a place that doesn't make sense. So to reiterate, my issue is not with you not believing just your hostility towards those who do
miles just because you were abused doesn't mean you have to abuse us....let it go man, let it goQuote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf
No, you don't preach really and in truth, I don't really see any issues with moderate religious people, and by moderate, I mean those who accept evolution, accept the long haul view of the universe and the creation of earth, accept pragmatic abortion etc. I think some, if not many Christians and Muslims are of this type. Having reread Dawkins recently, he is very cynical of all religion, but I can tolerate it if it doesn't try to interfere with me. Having never been somewhere like the Bible belt, I have always been in relatively moderate circles and in truth have rarely ever known religious people. Perhaps I would be much more like Dawkins if I had actually ever come face to face with a creationist. I am sure my head would explode at the situation.Quote:
Originally Posted by walrus
I am hostile towards organised religion, as I believe it to be mostly made up of unsubstantiated hocus pocus, and along the way has gained enormous wealth. I am always cynical of such things. I find the Catholic churches historical attitude towards all kinds of things quite sick. Pope Pius 12th for instance refused to condemn the actions of Hitler, the churches historical loathing of the Jews, the opulence and yet encouragement of poor people to breed, the unhealthy interest in private sex lives, peodophilia scandals etc etc. It has often deviated far from any recognised moral line. And at its core, the story of Jesus, is one that I just don't believe to be true. I believe someone like him existed, but Son of God and all that magic stuff? Are we watching Peter Pan here?
For me personally the main reason I object to faith, is precisely because of that word: faith. It means to suspend logic and just believe, despite there really being nothing to back it up. There is no evidence of a God, certainly in the Biblical sense. Why do the matyrs get all the virgins, and what do they really feel about this? Is this consensual? So many dodgy weird things in religion and just a bunch of stuff in a few books. None of it can be backed up in any way. Science is constantly revising, but the Bible stays as it is always. Seemingly it is too perfect to alter, but surely the Old Testament could go for a start as God seems like a petulant teenager. It's no different to kids worshipping Justin Bieber. Juvenile and silly.
I was being ironic with the term abused, as to be abused in this context means to have been raised within a religious household.Quote:
Originally Posted by El Kabongmiles just because you were abused doesn't mean you have to abuse us....let it go man, let it goQuote:
Originally Posted by Gandalf