Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
Not the christians I know.
True, some christians believe we came from apes but that doesn't mean its true.
Hi everybody,
I am writing this because I have a sincere concern about religion in general. This is not meant in a deprecative way, I'm simply curious about different perspectives of different people. In the end, the best way to grow as a person is to compare your conclusions with those of other people. So here it goes:
Looking back it seems the worst atrocities commited in history were always commited when people are convinced that their doings are completely and utterly right. On this basis their conviction usually gives them a feeling of superiority based on a variety of different factors from race to ideology to the belief in their own one true god/scripture and so on. Closely related is the notion that there is something called good and evil in the world. And as long as a person can claim to fight for the "good" side, there seem to be no limits in what dreadful deeds can be done to defend the good (of course this is an oversimplification yet look around what terrible things are done by "good people" to keep "evil" at bay). These thought patterns seem to be prevalent in many political ideologies e.g. facism and communism as well as any radical movement of the religious side.
From my point of view the whole basis of this can be boiled down to an even simpler paradigm which is "There is just one truth and I know exactely what it is". This is one of the most dangerous convictions a person can have especially if this truth is dictated by someone higher up in the system (be it a religious, spiritual or political leader). This is usually the case because any individual on its own will have a hard time reaching this conclusion without being told the "ultimate truth" and being reinforced by its peers. While this doesn't necessarily lead to catastrophy, it has huge potential of doing so. And as history shows it has done uncountable times in the past.
Being an atheist and being content with contemplating the various "truths" people have come up with around the world as well as my own personal version of it, I can't help but worrying about religion. It seems to me that there is a huge potential of misleading otherwise well meaning people to whatever end religious leaders deem correct. This is more relevant than ever because in the modern times we live in we have aquired an ability which before was only credited to god - the ability to end all live on this little planet. The conclusion comes to mind that if we as a species want to become a truly enlightend and peaceful civilisation - without wiping each other out in the process - one of the grand obstacles we have to overcome is religion. And just so that I am not misunderstood, I don't want to imply that the means for this could be violence because violence in general cannot be the path to any such goal.
I don't mean to offend anyone, I'm just genuinly interessted in what believers think of this idea - controversial as it is. Maybe there is even someone who could free me of such worries. I'm looking forward to an interessting discussion.
A little addendum for clarification: The hypothesis is that religion can be one potential slippery slope toward a monolithic mindset but by far not the only one. The point that there was also mass murder in the name of political ideology e.g. communism is not contradicting this, it's part of the hypothesis. The question is if this is true and if it would be resonable, in order to get rid of such mindsets as a civilisation, to - preventivly - get rid of religion as well?
Christian have admitted that Human are Animals, in the sense that a Human is a Cellular Carbon based life form, not that they have descended from apes.
God Bless
Plants are too.
http://creation.com/furry-little-humans
See secular humanism wants people to think they are animals to devalue humans. This is a social engineering feat.
The point which I am making is that even in Atheism there is a monolithic mindset. Even in Atheism is killing made for the purposes of more Atheism.
All of your critiques about theism can be said about Atheism. Do you agree?
Plants are too.
http://creation.com/furry-little-humans
See secular humanism wants people to think they are animals to devalue humans. This is a social engineering feat.
I would say Key was being too extensive in their analysis. Animals are more complex carbon based lifeforms than plants, particular in that unlike plants and fungi in particular, animals can clearly feel pain. Humans, like animals, can feel pain and have similar physical senses, albeit less than a cat or a dog's sense of smell or sight.
When a Christian, like Aquinas or even Augustine from what I remember, says we are animals, that is not to devalue them, it's only to reflect a relation we have to animals. We are like animals, we are not the same as animals.
And it would be counterproductive for a humanist in any sense, secular or otherwise, to devalue humans in comparing them to animals. Again, the comparison by even a secular humanist of humans to animals is not a matter of univocation or equivocation. We are analogous to animals in sharing many qualities, though obviously in this analogy we admit animals lack certain qualities humans do, like complex brain activity and the ability to make varied judgments, and more relevant nowadays, to multitask, lol.
\Sorry, I somehow missed your post. No, I don't agree for atheism is not a faith, it is the absence of faith.
Actually, theism is the most basic, simple, and primitive of all religions. One worships the ultimate source of wisdom and power in the universe and rewards and/or punishes oneself according to how well one fulfills the standards of the idealized image of divinity one has created of and for oneself out of whole cloth.
The faith of a theist is much stronger than that of any atheistin that it flies in the face of all reason, intuition, hard wiring, and common sense--in the very face of reality itself--and yet is desperately clung to and given life solely by ongoing perpetual CPR necessitated by a desperate need to remain in control of a life which has no real meaning or purpose beyond what the individual is able--through his faith in the god he designed after himself--to convince himself that it has.
This theistic religious faith can magically transform darkness into "light", ignorance into "understanding", egocentrism into "humanism",a hardened heart and closed mind into "conviction and devotion," and moral bankruptcy into "following divine mandate."
And it takes more faith than i could ever hope to muster!
Yes, it would be. The pertinent rule of thumb is: Either worship God or be god. It requires, perhaps, some soul-searching and honesty to see the personal application, but it is there for you--just as it was for me back in a day. As Bob Dylan rightly stated, "Ya got ta service somebody!."How you come to the conclusion that it means to give oneself these attributes is completely nebulous to me.
No--altered for lack of original thinking's sake.Altered for irony and reflection's sake
MY BROTHER,Who needs to hold anything themselves when everyone gives them the material they need? You seem to be missing the point. Like virtually anything someone says, you can invert the propositions slightly and they apply just as well to your own mindset, especially if it is so polarizing as yours is, seeming to have little to no compassion for any of the lost that you are called to minister to and yet you do nothing of the sort. It's counter productive and it alienates both parties more than necessary.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?