That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Can I have that 3 minutes back please? I could have been masturbating or something.

Anywho the best way to end world hunger isn't to just dump money into Africa, IMO (from what I've learned in class) its to support them through programs like fair trade where the workers in Africa that pick cocoa/coffee beans get paid a fair wage for their work and can afford food and school, etc. All we're doing is making them dependent on foreign aid when we should be making them independent while still helping them out through programs like this.

I'm not taking anyone's rights. I'm not enforcing some militaristic protocol to divvy up the catholic churches swag, nor am I voting in some committee that will lead to the same, some kind of force is necessary in order to remove somebodies rights. I am merely agreeing that they have the ability to an enormous amount of good that would change the face of the planet, but prefer to have palaces and gold sceptors instead.


Furthermore, christianity doesn't preach asceticism necessarily but Jesus was repeatedly clear on his views of amassing wealth for ones self on earth. The short version of, he was against it. If anyone disagrees, and goes with the bizarre western "prosperity gospel" that televangelists are so fond of, that god wants you to be rich, I can go find the necessary scriptures. But if anybody is saying "jesus wants us to be rich" they are trying to get your wallet, or they had their wallet taken by somebody that told them the same thing and are eagerly waiting to be blessed with a new car.

There's lots of shit in the bible that's ridiculous and Christians don't care about. Most liberal religious believers just "pick and choose" like it was some sort of buffet.

Now which do you prefer? Conservative religious people who want to follow their ancient texts strictly and literally, or liberal ones that either adjust interpreations of the text or only follow some parts of the text in accordance to contemporary values?

Also, let's just say that the Catholics are hypocrites. Hypocrisy is something to condemn I guess, so let us check that off. But then what? We cannot criticize them for amassing wealth when the rest of industrial nation does that.

So go ahead and criticize them for hypocricy, if you wish, but don't criticize them for amassing wealth.

In practice, I greatly prefer the liberal religious. But as you said you have a choice of being completely fucking backwater nuts, or being intellectually dishonest by quote mining the bible to fit the modern moral and social zeitgeist. For the record, I'm an atheist.


And yes, my problem with the catholic church (at least the problem being discussed) is one of hypocrisy, not wealth. If you're going to say it's ok to be rich, fine. But if you're going to espouse the teachings of a man, and try to indoctrinate as many people with his book, the least you could do is make some appearance of taking what the guy said seriously.

So you're either giving an ultimatum of being either an Atheist or being a conservative and literal believer.

Also, you don't believe that there can be multiple and subjective interpretations of religious texts? Also do you just want religion to magically dissapear, or everyone to read the texts literally and go back to the dark ages? Either way is an unrealistic, idealistic, and unproductive wishful thinking.

I want all the pussy. Sign me up.

Why would I want to end world hunger? World hunger gets me a guaranteed one night a year of decent TV. Don't take that away from me, please, for the love of god.

Sounds harsh but my idea of ending the hunger in Afrika: get the white farmers back in the saddle.

We have all heard the stories of south-western Afrika where president Mugabe amongst others decided that the farmlands of white farmers should go to the original inhabitants of those lands.
Fine, I can relate to that. I also think that the Indians should get their land back.
But what is a shame is that the new owners muck it all up. They cut down forests because they can't keep the lands fertile. They hunt down animals because there isnt enough food. All issues that weren't there when the knowledgable white farmers still controlled the farms.

And I know there are teaching-programs but really, how effective will those be if the first thing the new house-owners start building a campfire in the living room?

Friend of mine did some research in Tanzania because small enterprises keep failing. The reason: No commitment whatsoever. Lazyness is more then a lifestyle and according to her working hard for money just isn't taught.

Sorry to derail in that last section but in these cases some "favourable racism" can benefit when it comes to feeding the hungry.

(and for the record, yes I donate money to doctors without borders and Unicef. I've also had some "exotic girlfriends".)

There is a difference between subjective interpretation, and cherry picking the desirable parts. For instance, there is no way to favorably intepret the repeated genocides, and extremely mysogynistic laws and culture of the ancient israelites in the old testament, while appearing sane by today's moral and sociel zeitgeist. William Craig (a christian apologist) tries, and he comes off as a cross between a callous asshole, and a complete moron to anybody that isn't already indoctrinated by his literal intepretation of scripture. So there is a choice, be a nutjob or cherry pick the nice parts of the bible and disown the nasty or insane bits for the very reason that they are nasty and insane by today's standard. I greatly prefer the intellectually dishonest ones that are willing to bend the bible to accept that gays are fine, accept basic tenets of geology, cosmology, and biology, without subjecting them to the litmus test of "does it agree with the bible", and think that we can all get along without the conversion or death of everyone that disagrees.

Now then, no I do not want Religion to magically disappear. One: that's highly unlikely and unreasonble, and two: I think that there are large portions of society that would not cope well psychologically or emotionally with that. I think the most productive course is to gradually stamp out religious fundementalism with reason and education. While I may think that religiously liberal interpretation of texts is intellectually dishonest, it's not harmful either. If a person wants to believe that a purple toad lives in the moon and showers the earth with happiness, that is a person's perogative. But if they are hellbent on making sure everybody else does as the purple toad commands, and want to try and get legislation passed based on what that purple toad is telling them, and tries to forcibly tell society what it can and can't do based on it's own Book of Toads, and insists that schools stop teaching evolution and start teaching toadolution, then there is a problem.

Like I said prior, the only reasonable and fair solution to this problem is to use free speech, and reason to gradually replace ancient, absurd, and harmful views. There are generations alive today that will never ever ever ever except that the earth is older than 6000 years, or that one species can evolve into a different species. No amount of reason, no mountain of evidence, will ever change their mind. Luckily, they will be replaced by future generations, generations that still have a chance to learn and throw off the shackles of dark ages thinking. Some of them too will still forever have their minds closed by religious dogma being passed down from parent to child. But like any meme, it can be reduced to an insignificant portion of the population through free speech, and reason. We have a black president now, when a century ago he would've been considered a sinful mixed breed sub-human doomed to below average intelligence and savage tendencies, little more than a housetrained dog. But people spoke up, people demonstrated how wrong that thinking was, and showed that black people are equal to white people, and said it enough that eventually the people that disagreed were such a small minority that it became taboo to claim otherwise.

The best course of action is always for reason to point out where the unreasonable are wrong, and let social zeitgeist move on.

It would be nice if they gave up some of their wealth to help out the poor. After all, that is one of Christianity's major tenants (which few seem to follow, and I've always had a big issue with that).

I think Esmoreit is on the right track in concerns to bringing people out of poverty: You can't just do it with bringing aid. Christian organizations & missionary efforts have understood this in East Asia where they established Christian schools to help train & educate the poor while spreading the gospel and providing aid to otherwise hostile nations.

At any rate, I don't think one could accuse the Catholic power structure to be one that gives freely to charity. If they really wanted to stamp out poverty, I think they probably could do a lot of things with their wealth. I know what my denomination has done with a minute fraction of the people & wealth.

Also, The_Vagabond, about your argument about Obama being considered sub-human in the 1800s: Do you think that would have been because of people's prejudice, or the actual religion? People tend to use anything they can find to justify bad behavior. I don't remember the Bible ever stating that you had to marry a person of the same color, or they were going to be sub-human. For in the same breath you could deride religion as causing some form of bigotry, you could easily as point to the most prominent abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, John Whittier, or Harriet Beecher Stowe as all being convicted Christians.