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Banned
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Religion in most cases is essentially just a control tool now, and has been for who knows how long. |
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#42 | |
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Banned
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#43 | ||||||
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You thought I was a GUY?!
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(Revelation 12:9) "....the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entre inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth..." (2 Corinthians 4:4) "....the god of this system of things (Satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine through." Quote:
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(Oh, and Rai's comic. I can answer the "Why is there evil/Why does God allow suffering" question, but whether you want to hear it or not, is up to you, because it is a bible discussion.) [Oh, and I don't do Christmas either, being that it is just another thing that was skewed through time. (Saturnalia)] Last edited by Cenright; 09-16-2006 at 01:57 PM.. |
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#44 |
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FFR Veteran
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I totally respect what you believe in Cen, and thats good that you are devoted to your religion.
I just don't see how people can be, lets see, so in love with a god, or whatever you believe in. Veiwing this from "my outside point" (meaning, non religious), the bible, most religous stories, etc.. seem more of children stories rather than the foundation of a religion. Also you must include the fact that, if events like that actually happened, your talking about a few thousand years of translating one document into another, rewritting, and so on. No two people think exactly alike, nor do they see the same event that occured. (that actually contradicts itself, if I say same, what am I basing same off of?). Our minds sometime's see what they only want to see, creating a false image stuck within ourselves where we think we actually are seeing something, when we actually aren't. I do believe that some occurences with a man in the past that people veiwed as "a god like figure" happened in the past, but sprung out as a hero's tale, something to have people look up to. Again, that is just what I believe. I honestly, really, have listened to many people brag about their religion, or beliefs, and have taken alot of information in, that I do like to think about. Yet, none of it makes sense in my head, so this is what I like to stick to. It just doesn't make sense to me, going into a church, and praying. In my perspective, someone who is doing that is basically going into some building, and talking to themselves in their mind. It's just that whole mind distortion again, making yourself see something that you want to see, and seeing it, clogging you from the actual perspective of reality. Your saying "words", words. Do you think words exist anywhere besides on this planet? Why would words have such power, it's a man made creation, just like time, something that was created several billion years after anything else existed. Time existed before time was made. We just associate numbers with it to interpret easier, so in a sense, just like I am typing right now, I am writing words we interpret words. Someone reads these words, they interpret these words, and then provide a meaning to it. If you think about it, if someone misread one, just one word in a sentence, it could totally change an entire meaning. Using this, I find it very hard that over "3000 years" or whatever, those EXACT words that this document contained, were transcribed perfectly. It's technically a giant game of telephone. I probably went off track here, but I am just stating what comes to mind. I actually think better at night, so I'll be back later. Last edited by scottish; 09-16-2006 at 03:43 PM.. |
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#45 | |
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Banned
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#46 |
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Yes
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See, you can't be mad at Cen, because he gives a no bs straight answer without any really annoying emotions. Thanks for contributing Cenright.
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#47 |
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Resident Penguin
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You know, for a long time (as an atheist) I missed the point of religion. I got caught up, as many here seem to have, in the details of what the religion teaches, the apparent absurdities or illogicalities in a given religion's depiction of, for example, the beginning of the universe or the beginning of mankind, or whatever.
What alot of you need to realize is that this is all relatively unimportant. Is it really that shocking that people can either be A)made to believe something or B)make themselves believe something? Sure, the close-mindedness might offend our sensibilities, but this in no way should be surprising, nor is it critical to understanding a given religion. What religion is really "about" or, rather, I should say what makes religions popular, is largely the sense of belonging. It's evolutionary. If you belong to a given group which shares your beliefs, then faced with threat there will be more people to aid you, and faced with hardship there will be more people to support you. And you're probably going to raise your offspring to believe the same beliefs, so that they too are protected by the group. In short, belonging to a group of people with similar beliefs is evolutionarily advantageous. (now of course, there's a competing force of individuality that always expresses itself [especially in times of high resource availability and lack of outside threat] and eventually leads to the splitting of groups once they become too large... but no need to get into that here). The danger of religion (and of all forms of groups... socio-economic groups, nations, races, hell even a high school clique) is outgroup bias. This is the tendency to view others who don't share the beliefs (or really any other characteristic) of the group as threatening to the group. This leads to conflict, squabble, and eventually can escalate all the way into war. So am I saying religion is the culprit of all wars? Well, it's probably responsible for a lot of the wars that have existed, but that doesn't mean the wars wouldn't have happened if religion didn't exist. Conflict will always exist when there's a scarcity of resources. So... religion evil? No, the evil aspects of human nature are evil, and humans tend to make up the membership of religions and pretty much every group. |
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#48 |
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Yes
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Talisman, I agree with you 100%.
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#49 |
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FFR Player
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lol jesus freaks itt
btw Laharl you are not a missionary sent from God, stop acting like one you pretentious twat |
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#50 |
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FFR Player
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I agree with most of you guys here. I dont know about you but as a kid it was hard for me to see this giant robed, bearded man sitting there watching over us. It didnt make sense, I always wanted to question it but was nervous that I would get in trouble for questioning religion. When I was always told; "God's always here and works in mysterious ways" or "God will fix everything" but the older I got I looked for clues to his existance and found nothing. And now with all this war and attacks going on, if "God" was infact real you would think he/she would have shown themselve by now to stop all this bs going on in the world.
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#51 | ||||||
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FFR Player
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This is exactly what I've been talking about this whole time. Name one. WWII? I suppose some could ARGUE that it was fought over religion, but the causes for WWII was basically Germany's feelings of being shafted after they lost WWI, which try as I might, I can't find anything to do with religion that started WWI either. Korea? Vietnam? Religion doesn't have anything to do either of those. The current conflict in Iraq? Despite the fact that Bush is an openly religious man, this war has nothing to do with religion. I suppose one could argue that it does because of the militaristic cult of Islam that decided to attack our country on our own shores, but then again, a cult is a cult is a cult and will believe what they will believe, proscribing religion as the reasons for their actions or not. So let's go back in time! Why did Rome conquer Greece? Didn't have anything to do with religion. Why did Rome fall to the barbarian hordes? Hm, didn't have anything to do with religion either. Let's skip forward to something people commonly use when talking about war and religion being inseperable: The Crusades. BUT! At that time, politics and religion were one and the same, and it was all centralized in one body. Corruption of power at it's finest. Those in charge wanted Israel. They used the faith of people to point them in the wrong direction, for political reasons. That is more of a sign why a single entity of control is evil, not religion in and of itself. Basically, I just proved you wrong. In case you didn't notice. Quote:
Which is why statistics have shown people from "traditional families" have longer life expectancies, do better in schools, and eventually make more money than those from broken homes. Oh, and crime? The majority of crime is from people that grew up without a father or a mother, depending. Traditional families are totally unhealthy. Quote:
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#52 | |
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FFR Player
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You've shown an ability to, basically, not care what another person believes. If you think they're illogical, you just shrug and continue on being sociable regardless (or at least I hope.) As I have said, go ahead and don't believe. I don't particularly care. The moment you come preaching to me how I'm stupid and illogical having spent my life in pursuit of a goal, I am gonna flip a wig. (And if this thread isn't proof enough, I'll probably go right back around do the same thing right back. =\) I suppose something I've been trying to get across is more or less, live and let live. I want people to stop riding me about my beliefs because they don't understand why I think the way I do. I understand why some people choose to be one religion over another or simply choose to not believe in God, and that is why if somebody demonstrates a well thought-out reason as to their own beliefs, I don't say anything to them. This whole group clique mentality at FFR is strangely reminisent of high school. There's a couple "big names", or rather, popular people, and in order to be popular, you agree with what they said. Free thought is discouraged. Proof of that is if a poor kid mentions in another thread he's Christian, people will jump down his throat about why they feel he's an ignorant chump, and if a guy says God doesn't exist, he gets a pat on the back from 15 other posters. |
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#53 | |
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Admiral in the Red Army
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regarding cults: The only difference between a cult and religion is social acceptance/amount of practicing members.
And actually, those who attacked us on September 11th were religious extremists, not cult members. That said, the attacks of 9/11 have absolutely no real connection with the war in Iraq. The government gave bogus reasons of "durr iraq aided terrorists" but then later stopped saying such things when they realized the people saw through it as bull****. Remember how halfway through it changed from "they helped terrorists and they have weapons of mass destruction" to "let's liberate Iraq because Sadam is evil." And if you don't think the war in Iraq had any connection to religion, then I feel sorry for your parents, teachers, mentors and anyone else who ever tried to teach you anything, because clearly, they failed. Quote:
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#54 | |
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FFR Player
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I think something many people are missing is the purpose of religion.
No, religion isn't about power or anything. It's only about explaining the unexplainable. It's not philosophy because it doesn't so much deal with purposes, but it deals with the bigger picture. It deals with the how and why. Now, here's the problem: much of what couldn't be explained before can be explained now with the ever-increasing knowledge of science. Taking the Judeo-Christian faiths, we have creationism, the shape of the earth, the spread of languages and all that stuff that used to be explained by the Genesis story and whatnot. Now we know better. The way I see it is when you start ripping down all these stories of, say, the bible, why believe the rest of it? Why would I believe in the bible when I know that Genesis is all wrong and when Exodus is all wrong and when Revelations is all wrong? Maybe it could be a metaphor. Sure. I'll give you that. But if that's the case, it's not really real and therefore just a philosophical guide. So I choose not to follow it. Especially because the morals in the bible suck. (Of course, this is up to debate. I'll give you that.) On another note--too much tolerance is not a good thing. I won't tolerate something I think is wrong. Even something I'd bet my eternal soul on. Neither should you in what you believe in. Difference is--only one of us can be right. I hope it's me. On a third note, I get the implication that everyone should let everyone else believe what they want because everyone else's belief is equally valid. I just get that feeling. That's wrong too, like above. Orthodox Jews believe that fleas (or is it ticks?) are made from sweat because it says so in of their god-sent texts. That's wrong, guys. Everyone knows that, but they MUST believe it otherwise they're cast out as heretics. So not everyone's belief is okay. Lastly, the idea that you have to be religious to be moral is poppy****. Morals just...are. They come from the question "what's the best choice?" "What has the lowest risk and highest gain?" The best thing for me (or anyone, it seems to me, but that's more of a philosophical debate) is to be moral--that's why I am.
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Last edited by BluE_MeaniE; 09-16-2006 at 11:35 PM.. |
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#55 | |
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Super Scooter Happy
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I watched clouds awobbly from the floor o' that kayak. Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds. |
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#56 | |
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FFR Player
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Oh, well, sure. No, I mean you should keep your mind open, but not open enough that your brains fall out.
Of course I'm open to the fact that I'm wrong. I just meant that modern super-tolerance is too much. Yes, that statement was way too broad. Sorry, thanks, sorry.
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Last edited by BluE_MeaniE; 09-16-2006 at 11:22 PM.. |
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#57 |
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FFR Player
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I won't call you racist. I won't call you anything. I'll just call you a moron. Sorry.
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#58 | |
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FFR Player
Join Date: Sep 2006
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#59 | |
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FFR Player
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#60 |
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Yes
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Laharl, you swear you can tell a lot about a person over an internet message board. These "two people I hurt." You've got to be ****ing kidding me. One I've never met, and the other I've met once. You liked both of them and you couldn't attain what I had, their affection. Alone, never. Pretentious, yeah I can be pretentious at times. But at least I'll never be pathetic like you. I've already accomplished a lot in life, and I have a lot more to do.
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