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JWeinCom said:
My counters follow, but you can skip everything and read the bolded italics if you like.
First of all keep your arguments straight buster, I never said that Hitler was an atheist, christian, buddist. etc.
Well, you jumped into a conversation about whether or not Hitler was an atheist, and I wasn't sure exactly who you were responding to. If I misunderstood you, my bad.
I said it does not matter. Because people, not the believes they subscribe to are responsible for their actions. To even "hint" at Christianity being a motive, is merely the same method of painting Atheism as "evil" that you were critizing others for. Isn't that a bit hypocritical? Why can't we just leave hitler out of this.
Uhhhh... we can't leave Hitler out of it, because the discussion that you came into was about whether or not Hitler was an atheism. And, the difference between than claiming Hitler is an atheist and he is a christian is that there is evidence he was a Christian. So, if someone tsaid Hitler was a Christian they are not just saying it because he is an evil person, they're saying it because he claimed to be a Christian and the Vatican led an annual birthday celebration for him.
It is an example. It is also more generalized then simply Christianity. Asking questions rather than making statements about something you don't understand.
That's a strawman argument. I can't defend an argument I never made.
I can, and he did not. Whether he asked for forgiveness, is between him and God, but I doubt it because, from what I've seen he lacked remorse, and saw Jews and really all non aryans as less than human.
Many people would disagree on what the requirements for being a Christian are. Considering that, and especially as you don't know Hitler's inner thoughts, I'm not sure how you can claim to know for sure. Not that I disagree with your point entirely. I think it's fairly well grounded in reason, but I don't think it could be demonstrated with certainty.
Thanks for asking. The Old testament is not thrown out, since it does have a purpose. But unless your Jewish(Torah) you do not follow it, because it is the Old Convanent. It chronicles the time before Jesus, and that is important but not with respect to lifestyle. The new testament is the new convanent that Christian's subscribe to because we believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Now rather than sacrificing animals and following the ten commandments, you simply ask for forgiveness through Christ and try to live like him.
Lets see what Jesus has to say about this...
17“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
So yeah... I have to disagree with you on that new covenant thing.
There is great disagreement within the religious community on what the old covenant vs new covenant entails. Many say it simply means no more animal sacrifices. I've never heard anyone say that it negates the ten commandments.
As for your criticism of the different seemingly contradictory Gods in the OT and NT, yes that is a legitamate complaint, and one that has often been studied by theologists. However, since the bible is a book of faith, and not a textbook, Christians beleive it is the word of God, is it a stretch to consider that either the writers, cause there are writers who did transcribe gods words, the bible didn't just appear on the mountain, or us as readers failed at comprehension because the human perspective is a limited scope. Undoubtedly, there are things that are outside the Human Scope, so could we logically assume that Humans would not fully understand God? And Christians don't try to understand God, loving him is the only req really.
Yes, that is a massive stretch considering the content of the old testament. When things like slavery, rape, and pillaging are clearly endorsed by god in the old testament, then I don't see how they can suddenly be not right. I don't see any context in which the story of God demanding a man sacrifice his son (and the man being willing to do it)to please god is anything but barbaric (even if god didn't have him actually do it).
I'll give one example to focus on.
…17"Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. 18"But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.19"And you, camp outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any person and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves, you and your captives, on the third day and on the seventh day.…
Moses is telling the Hebrews, under the authority of God, that he should kill all the midianite males, kill all the women who have had sex, and keep all of the virgins for themselves. Now, I don't know what Moses thought they should do with the virgins, but I'm guessing it wasn't very nice. God never chastised the Israelites for this, and he seemed to think it was worth retelling in the Bible. And, to the original point of my topic, tell me how this is anything but the one of the most hateful things to appear in any piece of literature.
Btw if there is some context I'm missing here, then let me know what it is, cause I find it hard to believe that this is anything but sickening in any context.
So how does Jesus coming and being killed do anything to change the fact that God is horribly immoral in the Old Testament? If god is eternal, omniscient, and unchanging, how can what he once declared moral be immoral?
When confronted with this glaring contradiction in Old Testament and New Testament god, why is your first reaction that humans are wrong and not the bible (if that's what you're arguing)? If something is so apparently contradictory, and contains such clearly immoral content, why wouldn't you entertain that the book itself is flawed?
And I can't see why it is a good idea to love (and presumably follow) a god you cannot understand. That would be blindly following, and following anything without questions is inherently dangerous.
Again, none of that "law" is required because of the New Covanent. The Messianic prophecies are only there to legitamize Christ, but Jews don't believe Christ is the messiah, even though those prophecies are still there. The ten commandments, popular as the might be aren't neccessarily tenants that Christians have to follow. The only reason they are so prevalent however is because they are a good approximation of Jesus's "Love Thy Neighboor". In that regard, the Ten Commandments are a shortcut to "Love Thy Neighboor".
In terms of logic.
"Love Thy Neighboor" > Ten Commandments, because it is the much stronger statement, covering a lot more range
at the same time
"Love Thy Neighboor" ~= Ten Commandments, because following the Ten commandments implies Loving thy neighboor
I'm not a scholar on Christianity, but I've never heard anyone say that the ten commandments no longer apply. Plus, Jesus seems to say that they still apply.
The danger of dogma applies to anything that people identity in, its not mutually exclusive to Christianity or Religion, as you've stated. So its not just the danger of religion. While the first part holds, the second part does not. That doesn't come from Christianity, that comes from abuse of power, it happens in ALL of those cases you listed previously in some form orthe other. Thus what follows is a result of human corruption leading to brainwashing.
Yes. The danger of dogma comes in many forms, and I am against all of them, whether it is blind nationalism, dogmatic religion, and so on. Christianity is not the source of abuse of power, but it is a powerful institution that can and often has been used to destructive ends.
Thats because religion is recognized as an authority, and thus using it to rationalize actions is an appeal to authority, regardless of whether or not the actual content makes such a suggestion, which I claimed in the OP, generally does not.
Yes. It sure is. And unfortunately, people have been so trained to believe in that authority that it holds a dangerous amount of sway.
Saying Religion is responsible because it was used to rationalize something is simply making a scapegoat of it, because people don't want to to address that those bizzare and destructive policies were made by fellow human beings.
That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm not blaming the religion itself. It's like if someone is attacking you with a weapon. The weapon is not responsible for their actions, but it would still be best to take the weapon away from them.
The policy that you mentioned is not rational at least from the health perspective, why not back it up with an authority not based in Logic? Its easy as pie, because if you are insecure in your own beleif, you will believe what someone with a stronger conviction says, and you dare not challenge it from the otherside cause, "how can god be wrong?"
Because people have been trained to believe religion without question. When people are trained from an early age not to question the church, then a logical argument doesn't work. Many people HAVE made the very logical argument that condoms do prevent aids, but how sure I am doesn't really matter here. What matters is that Catholicism is a tool that is being used to manipulate people in very dangerous ways and that's kind of a big problem.
And of course it's not just Africa. Churches employ enormous pressue to encourage abstinence only sex education programs which is why the US has one of the, if not the, highest teen pregnancy rate in the western world.
And, in case you think I'm way more wealthy than I am, keep in mind I do not have nearly the wealth of the catholic church who uses their wealth in their efforts to enforce such stupid policies. People living in poverty are really easy to manipulate.
People can, and do, fight these policies one by one, but it would be easier to simply attack the source of these backwards ideas.
The Bible actually states that Satan knows all of the scripture in the Bible and can quote them verbatim. Even trying to tempt Jesus by using his own faith to make him test God. The only way to combat this is to become more versed in the Bible and strengthen ones own conviction and understanding. Then if someone tells you that God said to do this, you can actually think. Unfortunately, that requires a lot of willpower, to overcome the rudimentary understanding you were given as a child, and think for yourself, but again that isn't exclusive to Christianity or Religion. That is the responsibility of the Parents, they determine what kind of person that child becomes.
If I'm reading your story correctly, then God is not telling people to think for themselves. He's telling them to study the Bible really closely. He's not saying "think for yourself on these issues, meditate on the, and come to your own conclusion based on reason", he's saying "read what I think really really carefully." He's telling them that if someone comes to them with a biblical challenge not to think logically about whether or not it's true, but to just be able to use other quotes from the bible. I'd hardly call that critical thinking.
If you are going to live according to the Bible, you should absolutely read it alot, and make sure you're interpretting it correctly. But before that, I have to ask why we should consider any interpretation of the Bible worthwhile. Even if we knew 100% that this is what the author meant, why should we give a shit until it is proven that the author him or herself is worth listening to? Does God encourage Jesus to question whether or not the Old Testament (the same one you seem to think doesn't matter at all) is right in the first place?
Going back to Hitler, if you have a perfect understanding of Mein Kampf, does that make the ideas in them good? I'm not saying the Bible is equivelant to Mein Kampf, but I'm saying that before worrying about the interpretation we need to wonder why ANY interpretation of this book should be valued.
False and true are logical statements on validity. The Bible is a book of Faith, so it cannot be taken for true or false and is not intended to be taken literally.
Why should religion be the one area of life where we do not ask for verification of validity? The Bible is based on facts that are either true or false. Jesus was the son of god, or he wasn't. Even if we can't say for certain whether or not this is true, there is a truth value that we can and should try to discover. This is just another way of saying not to question the bible. And if you're going to live your life based on a metaphor that's thousands of years old, you're building your house on shaky ground.
As for your second statement, you are again assuming that people are rational actors. People have been forcing their believes on others since the dawn of humanity, it predates religion, whether it is factually true or not is as it is in the case of religion, irrelevant. People also have motives for doing so typically to maintain power, or because they themselves believe it to be true to themselves.
Again, I don't claim that religion (organized) is the source all evil in the world or all manipulation. I am saying that it is a tool that can be used for manipulation, and unless there is a good reason to keep it around, then we should be rid of it.
Its not mutally exclusive to Religion, so removing it does nothing. It does not address the problem of it being inherent in Human nature, and thus removing it does nothing but antagonize the innocent.
There are many sources of corruption and manipulation. Does that mean that we shouldn't try to eliminate as many as possible? That's like saying "well, we can't cure aids, so let's not bother working on cancer. People are still going to get sick."
Is it strange to consider a scenario of an outside species considering the same about the human race in general? The fact that religion can and has been used as a scapegoat for evil, means that we should address that propensity in Humans as a species. Simply removing the Religion is moving the problem out of one's line of sight, It is still there.
We should absolutely address that in humans. One of the ways we address that is through encouraging critical thinking. A book that claims there is an objective truth laid down by a mighty being and that disagreeing with that truth is going to earn you an eternity in hell is not a way to encourage critical thought. A book that claims god chose a certain people as special and that they have rights over lesser group does not encourage critical thinking. Telling people that there is a special book whose truth we can't determine is not a path to critical thought. Telling people that there is a priest who is more qualified to interpret this magical book than they are is not a path to critical thought. Telling people that there are certain ideas we simply have to respect and that to question their adherents is wrong is not a path to critical thought.
What encourages critical thought is to say, "hey read this book. Look for outside evidence to confirm or deny it. Think about whether or not you agree with its opinions. If not, chuck in the trach heap."
Personally, I think the only effective way of addressing this is to distribute power so that corruption is stamped out. Unfortunately, this is much harder then simply blaming a scapegoat.
When fighting a disease, it is important to fight the disease itself. It is also important to treat the symptoms.
What Hitler and other failed dictators of the past never realized is to destroy a doctrine, you simply have to delegitamize it, and let it melt away. Vocal "Christians" spewing "hate fueled nonsense" are effectively digging there own graves, an inevitable result of outdated modes of teaching with the fast changing times, and the momentary catharis of those threatened by Christianity, experincing its slow suicide, are distracted from considering the possibility of the problem going beyond religion.
Hateful versions of Christianity is not a new thing. The fact that we now view these Christians as insane people is a sign that we are progressing in the right directions. There was a time though that questioning the dogma of the Church was punishable by death, and in Islam and other religions this is still the case.
Those "decent" christians you mentioned are left no choice but to try and attack the detractors and become "Vocal" themselves, speeding up the destruction, or silently sit by and watch it burn. With enough, strength in faith, one can call the Vocal out on their Bullcrap, but unfortunately, even if the numbers were even, which they are not, it would, for a long time, be fruitless. If the reason of empirical indisputable fact still isn't fully accepted, "Global Warming/Climate Change", what hope does calling out the Vocal based on a book of faith have of working at all?
The decent Christians are trying to adapt an ancient text to a world that has rapidly moved beyond it. You still haven't explained, what is the value of organized religion, and organized Christianity in particular? Why should anyone fight to protect it?
You claim that Christianity is not the only source of corruption, and that's true. But, what good does it do? If its potential to be used by email is more than its potential to be used for good, why keep it around?
And the reason we call out the vocal is because there are people who will hear the conversations. We might not be able to sway the minister preaching homosexuality is evil, but we might convince the 12 year old kid still forming his opinion. The fact that gay marraige is becoming increasingly legal shows the value in challenging hateful ideas.
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