They're thinking........


Aloha, Mark

You smade a lot of false assumptions to make that conclusion, and really made my point for me.

 

The night is dark and full of terrors.

Behind the thin veneer of "love" which is the hook of certain religions is an absolute monstrosity of an idea, that can only be conceived by shamans bent on super-slavery of their fellowmen hanging like Damocle's sword of an eternally vengeful tyrant. It's the absolutely inhuman idea that all men are evil and incapable of goodness and they deserve unceasing unimaginable punishment which is exactly what the majority of humanity will get. And because "the few" will be suckling nectar and honey from the divine tits, they call this the good news. But I don't know what is more selfish than the tacit acquiescence with the eternal suffering of mankind because the chosen few will get to have invulnerable peace and much pleasant emotions.

There is nothing more dehumanizing or undermining of the very foundation of morality than the idea that a man's actions do not count for anything and add up to no good. That it doesn't matter what a man does or what he is like on the inside or in relation to his fellow man, the only thing that matters is what he "believes" or "submits" to.

And so I might feel the same, yet in reverse about the tactics that you readily employ today.
I am not inclined to believe them to be wise or good for you.
Even some fools take cover or protect themselves when they see trouble or danger coming.
This is a Biblical teaching.

No, he really nailed it.  Nobody does false humility like rabid theists.  I've never met a more judgemental group of people.

This. Kids aren't non-religious; they've just replaced God with The State.

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Stalin/lenin/mao is in the neighborhood of 100 million or so.

Muslim expansion into Asia is credited with around 60 million people killed.

The real legitimate Christian war for the simple sake of religion would be the inquisition with anywhere between 20,000 killed and around half a million.

Id say more so themselves than the state.

Religion is the devil, we need to banish that demon to the fiery depths of hell  

I have no desire to attack and insult atheists because of their beliefs/non-beliefs, but they continue to do so.. Yet it is people like me that you see as the most judgemental.



It is just not worth it to argue the issue any more.




 

You could argue that the communist state became a religion in itself. The dear leaders it's God figure through propaganda, the state is the church. Just look at North Korea and the diefication of it's leader. If this is the case then "religion" is the root of much mass killing.

Most people aren't that strong.  If they don't pray to a god of their own choosing, the state will provide one: itself.

IMHO any religion that calls for killing other people for any reason other than pure self defense... is a false religion.  yes, christanity and every other religion almost has used its teachings to claim god demands they go to war, etc. ... people who blindly believe anything they are told by their church / religion and never use their own brains to wonder if this is right or wrong, are pretty much mindless drones. especially when they can read their own religious materials themselves, and see where they are commanded to live and let live, and leave punishment up to god.

i myself, i believe in god.....but i dont necessarily believe in the people who are teaching his word, because man is corrupt.   such as the preachers who rake in millions, under the guise of helping the poor, etc.  if i had a preacher, or religious official calling for me to donate 1/2 my money... or to burn down my neighbors house.. because they believe differently than i do..or go out and kill gays, or kids having sex out of wedlock... well, it would be time to find a new church.. not grab a pitchfork and a torch, and go after my neighbors.

'
Who are you?

You are assuming I am an atheist.

Most atheists could give a rat's ass about people's faith unless:
1.The religion incites violence against those who dont believe
2. You try pitying them for not believing like you
3. You try preaching to convert

The problem is that those three tenants are usually interwoven in abrahamic based religions and are some of its core principles.

Good. With the churches funneling money towards illegal immigrants, gun control, and more free stuff for the lazy and worthless, they are just as much the enemy as the democrats.

 

More correctly, He will not compell you to spend Eternity with Him against your will.  Free will means free choices, even monumentally stupid and bad ones.



Feel free to express your displeasure to the Master Architect when you see Him.  As for me, I don't much care what a computer program or a song thinks about me as it's creator - I want it to do as I intend.



A Christian should NEVER try to force attendance in church or specific beliefs on ANYONE, except perhaps their minor children.  However, in a democracy, a Christain has JUST AS MUCH RIGHT  to express their desires of government at the ballot box and otherwise as any other member of the polity - even if those postitions are informed by their religion - do you disagree?  If that means you don't get your way, well then, that whole "democcracy" thing is a bitch when you get out-voted - isn't it?


They give it a wide birth because, if there is no God - then YOU are your own God, and the only person you really ahve to answer to.

IF you are right.  Good luck with that ....

Luther knew all about the Council of Nicea.  The Nicene Creed in one form or another has been a part of the regular Catholic Mass(and Lutheran after Luther) for almost 1800 years.

My tongue is going to start bleeding if I bite it any harder.

Nope/  Are you math challenged?  How long did people live before 1900, and what did they die of?  How many people are there?

All of religion, through all of history, cannot come CLOSE to the body count racked up by Communist and orther "stae as religion" governemnts, like nazis.  Neither the technology to kill so many peopel so fast, nor the numbers of people that Mother Nature didn't kill first, were available.

Not to mention the difficulty with the technology available of even FIELDING and army bigger than 15K, much less moving it around.

If that statement is accurate, then Luther would be incorrect.

You have been informed.  You can go ahead and drive around the spiritual baracades and into the high water if you choose.  After all, you are a self made man, reponsible for and to only yourself.

The results are on you.

It is one of those sad truths. I would rather be surrounded by people that truly believe than pretend.

Obama is a perfect example of what happens when people disregard humility and worship themselves.

What results would these be and can you prove these results scientifically?

Think of your house or apartment.  Do you let anyone in - if they are "good" (or good enough?)   Or do you restrict who can come in your crib based on their behavior and attitude, especially toward - YOU?

God's Creation - God's rules.  Feel free to tell Him, how unfair He is when you see HIm.

As for me, I have no doubt that the nature of man is evil.  Never saw a child that had to be TAUGHT to lie, TAUGHT to hit someone, TAUGHT to take something that isn't his.

All the teaching I have seen has been to PREVENT that kind of thing, and where that ISN'T taught turns into shitholes like Detroit, Baltimore, Ferguson, etc.


There is none good - no, not one.

Read the book of Matthew in the New Testament, King James Version. Jesus tells folks how to get to Heaven, it isn't very complicated at all, in fact, it's actually a very simple process.  

God Bless!

Nope.  Atheism is an official tenet of Communism, and was an occult position of the 3rd Reich.  Body count is way norht of 100 mil.

This thread went the predictable direction I thought it would.



These threads always end up a shitfest between people of faith, agnostics, atheists, and anti-thiests.  No one here is going to change the others minds. And no one is smarter or more intellectually superior to another based solely on religious/non-religious beliefs.  I wish these threads would get immediately put in the religion sub-forum so we don't have to see them week after week after week.





Here is a novel thought.....Believe whatever you want to believe.  Do not criticize me for my beliefs, and I won't criticize you for yours.

Clinical death is scientific isn't it?
So what happens after?
The Bible clearly states that some will not be able to preserve their own lives even after physical death.
Don't believe it.
So what.
You'll see either way..

I used to agree. Everyone just leave one another alone, and it will all work out fine. But with churches actively pushing gun control, assisting illegal aliens, and pushing for laws that are based in their belief system, they have become the enemy.

The nature of man is to survive and breed. To increase these chances we learned to work together and be social. Through these constructs certain rules developed to increase chances of the societies to survive. These basic rules got mixed in with beliefs because early human beings didnt know how to explain certain events or properties of the world. There is no evil involved. That is completely subjective to who defines evil. What better way for leaders to control uneducated, simple masses than using a figure that sees all, knows all, etc? No policing involved, people will police themselves and do what the leader will say or what he interprets the all seeing entity wants. Just look at this control in the dumbass masses of Islam in the Middle East.

 
No, it's not religion. It could be seen as a religion, but the context that everybody is using to describe religions is not the one that one would go "Gaming is my religion."


Religion requires worship. If you do not worship, you do not have a religion. This is why Buddhism isn't really considered a religion.

And they replaced traditional worship with state worship.  North Korea again example, every house must have a picture of dear leader to pledge to. This is akin to every Catholic or Christian household having a cross to pray infront of. The belief is that dear leader knows all, is the best, and is the savior of the country.  Sounds pretty familiar to me.

Good thing this doesn't sound at all like what I believe

Death is pretty observable. Your body decomposes. The Bible clearly states absolutely nothing scientific in this area. It was written 2000 years ago and proves nothing. If anything it shows that some people existed in the past and even that can be taken with a grain of salt because it is such an unreliable source due to all the mythology.

I am religious and you nailed it.  I added a little...

Therefore just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all men, because all sinned.
In fact, sin was in the world before the law, but sin is not charged to one's account when there is no law.

---Romans 5: 12-13
The Abundant Life

You've definitely given me something to think about.

Careful with that broad brush you paint churches with.



Just becasue it's a church does not mean they are religious.  I have left churches because they became more like a social club than a church, or became more about raising money for a new bigger building than preaching the gospel.  Heck my grandmother left her church of 30 years (ELCA) because they got away from preaching the Bible and got into the social justice route.



Do not equate churches with religion, because the two are not always associated with each other.



I'm a Christian (as is my whole familiy) and we all believe that (just touching the topics you discussed)

Gun control means following the fundamental rules of gun safety.

Illegal aliens need to be sent back to where they came from

There are already too many laws on the book as is (including some "based" on religion ex. no liquor sales before certian times on Sundays)

Sin caused all death? I thought it had to more to do with how we are made down to the genes, biology, chemistry,  etc? Thats it boys close down the researc labs, we just got to figure out how to cure sin. I mean they tried ridding sin durimg the black plague and it seemed successful enough.

 

The woman, Adam, the serpent or even God's for putting the tree there in the first place? Or why did god allow Satan in there period? Sounds like the game was rigged.

I'm a great believer in democracy.  However what a lot of people fail to consider is how their views or beliefs, as communicated,  are seen by others.  Empathy with opposing views should not be confused with sympathy.

Religion has a valid and valuable role in people's lives and it can maintain that roll without having to be imposed through Government.

A secular society with secular governance has long been the most desirable position of a modern society.  As such, those who try to impose religion or religious beliefs, or who use religion as a sole justification for a particular policy through Government will be likely to alienate people who might otherwise share a common political view.

In many ways, the more that people choose to explore a non-religious lifestyle or ask questions about the validity of religious claims they are being asked to consider, the more aggressively the hard-line religious types seem to fight back with arguments which fail to answer the questions.

You therefore end up with a politically and religiously disenfranchised group of people, who have asked perfectly reasonable questions about the things they are being asked to believe in, and the answer they receive varies from "believe or you will be judged" to quotes from scripture, and biblical references which, without the context of religious belief, have little or no meaning to the people asking this questions.

Speaking as an outsider looking in, this is part of the reason why a religiously fuelled GOP representation has been haemorrhaging support and is experiencing infighting and voter apathy.

I go back to my original point - you have stated that "He will not compell you to spend Eternity with Him against your will. Free will means free choices, even monumentally stupid and bad ones."   The question is, therefore, what happens if you live a virtuous life and are a non-believer in that life.  On passing, if they find themselves before God, then they will have good reason to believe because he is there in front of them.  Will they be challenged and discounted for not being a believer in life?

I remember my time in church from being a young child.  It always struck me as odd that those who eschewed the virtues of a religious belief included some of the most unpleasant, judgemental and downright nasty people I have ever met.  Yet they went to church, played a key role in church activities and were all sweetness and light for one day a week when they believed they were able to recharge their credibility in the eyes of God.

There was a family who moved onto our road, a lovely couple with two very young children, one of whom was disabled. They didn't attend church because they were atheists.   Throughout the week in our little village the most virtuous religious types would gossip about and abuse that poor family, giving them hell and making life difficult for them in the cruellest manners.  Yet not once did that family ever raise a voice, confront their abusers, or get embroiled in any form of altercation in the face of the abuse they received, even when the religious crowd implied that the daughter's disability was divine retribution a result of the family not cow-towing to the demands of the religious folks that were high rollers in the church.

We see the same kind of crap from charlatans like "Reverend" Al Sharpton and "Reverend" Jackson, both of whom are odious propagators of hatred and intolerance.

This was not something that all churchgoers where involved in, I must add.  Many of the congregation were normal decent people like my family who saw what was going on and tried to stop it, befriending the beleaguered family and welcoming them to the community.

This got me thinking as a child and still has me thinking to this day. What kind of God would accept someone who was a monumental shit for 6 days a week, then sought forgiveness for their behaviour in church on a sunday, only to go back out and be monumental shit again the following week.  

If all it takes to go to heaven or even stand before God when the day comes, is to be believer and accept God while their disgusting behaviour towards others is ignored then what does that say about the validity and virtues of that religion?  

Conversely, if someone is a non-believer, yet they live their lives with care and kindness, genuine humility and forgive those who would be cruel to them, then what kind of God would judge them only on whether they were believers or not, if they found to their surprise on passing, that they stood before God to be judged?

This is one of the biggest flaws in the religious premise that without belief you will be judged and found wanting.   Someone can be a complete shit and still get their day before God, but someone who lives a good life with all the correct virtues either will not qualify to stand before God, or be found wanting based solely on the fact that they didn't believe.

I can quite easily see what people might consider this and question the credibility of a religion that holds this as a core value.

Just to clarify.  I am not an atheist.   I was brought up in a moderate religious family, attended church and went on to marry a Catholic girl, an have children who go to a Catholic School. I firmly believe that religion has a valuable contribution to make to a lot of people's lives if that is what they choose, and that is a choice they should be free to make without being compelled or preyed upon to conform.

However I also see that the way religion is communicated to an ever more inquisitive and scientifically aware society is anachronistic, can appear oppressive and is highly dismissive of the very questions people want answering. If those questions were answered honestly with a perspective from the heart, and not from the regurgitation of scripture, or threats of eternal damnation for failing to conform, then the response might be seen as more positive.

In my experience, most atheists are more than capable of holding a meaningful discussion about the subject of religion than many give them credit for.

Perhaps a less prickly response from those who do hold religion dear might go a long way to opening up the dialogue.  Failure to do so will contribute to religion being the architect of its own demise.

Exactly.

When a false, self-described "gun owner group" proves it is actually an anti-gun group they get called out.  For good reason.

But then when some group calls itself Christian, and murderers people who they call heretics, they don't get called out.  They are an example of "Christians killing people for their God."

Do religious people (including falsely described "Christians") kill in the name of their religion?  Absolutely.  They have and do.

But true Christians have never killed for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Back in the day religious people weren't philosophers struggling with the silence of god, much less little bitches claiming it's a test to find faith, or that gods can't be tested.

They treated gods as real beings, as real as a rock bashing your skull in. So they tested them without qualms and slaughtered the side whose' gods didn't show unequivocal proof, as seen with the Baalite priests in Judeo-Christian religion. That was a scientific experiment right down to assuming the burden of proof (if you take it as written), with a rather more death for the disproved side of course.

Today not a Christian* in the world would do that, because internally, subconsciously, they've been seeing it not happen all their lives. Their excuses for not actually believing, their backchannel rationalizations for why their professions of faith are actually reall belief, are pre-prepped.

It's a long shot, but this dichotomy implies Julian Jaynes theory bicameral breakdown has some useful interpretive value. It certainly does for predicting behavior in the present day.

*Counter-evidence: modern Africans have no qualms following the full spectrum of their holy book, though admittedly executing homosexuals, burning witches, etc takes place in areas subsidized on condition of passing anti-homo laws, etc by coreligionists who can't practice those activities openly in their home countries.