Simtropolis Religion Thread

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This is the kind of fundamentalist cant that clearly shows that Christ has been removed from Christmas.  Objectors to Starbuck's cup design simply show themselves as failed Christians as this attitude is not Christian at all. 

If Jesus Christ were alive today, he would be shocked by the abuses that have resulted in His name.  Most so-called Christian communities are nothing but cesspools of hate.  As for hating Jews, let's all remember that Jesus was a practising Jew.  This kind of hateful stuff just doesn't belong in the same paragraph with the name of Jesus.

Let's all put Christ back into Christ's Mass.

  Edited November 10, 2015 by A Nonny Moose  

[Meg 368]

and Jesus would probably be shocked that so many people think he looked like a European    Seriously, why would Jesus have looked like a European?

[Sabretooth78 808]

Hold on a second - people still go to Starbucks?

[Skimbo 304]

Hitler just used a already very advanced form of Anti-semitism which aready existed before he started his career as a politican. Nontheless this advanced form dates back to the religious root.

[raynev1 1,886]

@Sabretooth78  Heck yeah , where else can you buy a cup of coffee for over five bucks ? 

[Sabretooth78 808]

Ummmmmm....my house.  Yeah, my house.  Starting now, I sell cups of coffee for $7.  Hope you like Aldi brand.

[AkemiAzula 280]

I think really that business and religion should not mix as a principle - if that is - that said business is not exclusive and said business serves the general public.

Now if Joe Bible was to start a coffee house called Godly Joe's and was to authorise customers through membership (as in a club) this would/should be his right.

Whereas a shop open to the general scum (sorry, customers, I work in retail) should not operate with any religious or political bias as it is a public business not a private club or society.

However as 'Christmas' these days is about a fat bearded man from the North Pole and general decadent revelry... Much of the iconography of the celebration has become secularised.

 

[LexusInfernus 908]

Situation in the middle east: It's a nationalist-religious conflict now. Back then it was because of the introduction of Israel wich is caused by the holocaust whch again is caused by the hate against jews in mid-europe which again is caused because jews where richer than the average which has been caused by a christian rule that says christians are not allowed to borrow money for profit. At the end: Caused by religion-rule. Anti-Seimetism IS simply caused by religion. It's the roots of a problem that count, because without thoose, the problem would not have existed. Now the religious motives might be hollow but they're still there.

Yeah no, that kind of reductionist thinking is pointless and historically highly contentious. For one you are creating direct causal connections between a current conflict and things that happened a thousand years ago, and second, you are reducing it to just one issue that happened in the past. Also, saying that if A hadn't happened, B wouldn't have happened either is something historians abhor. Aside from it being pointless speculation, its very often also not true and in any case impossible to know. My old history teacher would always say 'what if Napoleon had a nuclear bomb' to demonstrate. Sure, its fun to speculate for a moment, but if you are serious about your history you recognize that A) Napoleon didn't have one, so the question is pointless, B) that had he had one, its impossible to know what would have happened, because he didn't have one and it never happened, C) Its absurd to think that changing one little thing would result in history changing significantly. In the case of Napoleon, a nuke might have won him Waterloo, but Waterloo was just a symptom of his real problem, namely that everyone in Europe wanted him gone and they would have succeeded eventually.  

The current religious motives in the Palestine Israel conflict aren't just hollow, they are non existent. Neither side is fighting the other because they disagree over what holy book is right, they are fighting over land and the right to exist as a nation and nothing more. 

And PLEASE don't tell me religion isn't a big reason for nasty conflicts or MASSIVE deny of human rights when I have to see writigs of prophets that see the principle "eye for eye" as a legitimate way to enforce "rights", see people who believe in other religions as "godless" and therefore to be converted to the propper believe immedeatly or killed, or simply put their god aboth others.

Meh, you are overstating the causal link between religion and any of those things. Far more often you'll find they only correlate, but as we all know, correlation is not the same as causality. First, the eye for an eye thing, well that is a moral dilemma, depending on who you ask that question will be answered differently. If you think an eye for an eye is immoral, well I agree, but keep in mind that morality differs on a person to person basis and that answer isn't necessarily caused by religion. Plenty of people happen to think being tough on crime is the best way to stop crime. 

The people that follow the 'convert or die' approach more often than not have no real interest in religion as religion but in religion as a community of people. The use of force against people who aren't part of their in group is often political in nature, they use this strategy as a way to establish political dominance in an area or to defend their dominance in said area. I suggest you read this very interesting book by Mary Kaldor 'New and Old Wars'. Its quite illuminating when it comes to understanding a lot of conflicts. 

Of course, there are some cases where religion really is the cause of the conflict. But I find such conflicts to be rather rare. 

 

Take this "innocent" book called "bible". You will find:

>religious intolerance
>Active orders for GENOCIDE following theese
>Active orders to FIGHT other countries that are "godless" ( WAR )
>Tolerance of CAPITAL punishments
>toleration of SLAVERY
>massive subjugation of women
>many, many morally or ethnically alarming rules and statements

Yes, what is your point? That the bible has some seriously questionable things in it? Sure, no one will deny that. But what does that matter if the people who read the book aren't inspired to repeat those things from the bible? There are over 2.2 billion Christians in the world and another 1.6 billion Muslims. Together they represent just over half of the world population. From those 3.8 billion people, how many are actively engaged in warfare? How many are actively engaged in warfare for religious reasons? Not that many no? If religion was really a vector for that much hatred, intolerance and warfare, why isn't a much larger part of the world population currently at war and why isn't warfare much more spread out throughout the globe? No, as a predictor or vector of violence, religion is a rather useless variable. Poverty, hunger, lack of political representation, high unemployment of young males, those are the real causes of violence and serve as much better predictors. 

So really, the bible can talk about murder and genocide and war as much as it wants, those parts aren't taken seriously by people. They are just stories, they are harmless. 

I see this and many other religious books as one main reason for many evils. If some powerful people used this for other profits - then it's at least as much the bible's fault that it doesn't forbid such actions but legitimates them. 

Oh, do you also see good old fairy tales as the source for many evils? I mean, have you read those original stories? Filled with murder, rape and all kinds of gruesome stuff. What about video games? Call of Duty, sold for profit entertainment in which you also straight up murder a lot of people and which in some cases actively glorifies war. Or all those other action movies, in which the hero causes millions of dollars in property damage, probably kills or hurts a lot of innocent by standers in his pursuit to get the villain, and gets the girl who he just knows for like 3 days. 

Honestly our entertainment is filled with violence and often glorifies it as well. But as any sensible person says whenever there is some morality crusader yelling that 'videogames cause violence', its just entertainment, its fiction, it are stories, its not real, no one copies the stuff they saw in games in real life. If thats true for games, and movies, and books, then surely the same applies to the bible. 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The secularization of Christmas begins with the gifts of the magi.  However you might try, you will find reasonable quantities of frankincense and myrrh are hard to come by these days, and as for gold, it has been priced out of most people's reach.  Yet these are the gifts of Christmas.

[Skimbo 304]

1:
 If someting happens it happens. And if A causes B, even if this spans for more than 1000 years then still: A caused B! You are now acting: What if C happened? Nice! So? C didn't happen and A caused B. Even if A isn't the only reason for B it's still there! It's A reason. That's all it needs to be to cause B. And if Napsi would have had a nuke - guess what! - he would have nuked something! Anything! Just to test it out. Or why do you think, US commited that mass murder in Japan? They just wanted to know how well a nuke works. They choose practiacally unharmed areas to do so. No military importance.

 

2:

I rather think you underestimate it. If people can use a "holy" "Godgiven" script to legitimate violence - they will. That's it. Because god says so. And everyone talking against it becomes a "heretic" and gets killed. Because god says so. LEGITIMATION is the point. So it's A reason. You can't deny that!

Legitimation in our modern times. That's like a rocket-launch test of the DPRK to show off it's power so the regime can legitimate itself in it's own rows. Legitimation back then was "following god's word". Which meant following all that rebarbative stuff in this one specific "godgiven" book.

 

3

All it takes is ONE fanatic. One is enough if he sits a the very wrong position. And this list shows just a few of the bad things "god" "Teaches" his "sheep". The bible is a book that sees violence as a legitimate way to shape the world and legitimates MURDER. And not just of one person but GENOCIDE. In a book that's sold more than 30 million times a year. That's disgusting!

 

4

Fairy tales: One big difference: the wolf doesn't kill little red riding hood because god tells him to. Goes for all the others as well.

YAY! The Videogames- argument! There's one mayor difference: CS:GO and all the others are VIRTUAL and don't tell you to harm people in REAL LIFE. Most of the "godgiven" books instead legitimate MURDER in REAL LIFE.

By the way. If you've saw some of my posts you might have found my opinion about hollywood's "action" somewhere in the forums. It's negative.

 

 

@ Nonny moose: Sorry for that discussion in here.
 

 

 

[MintberryCrunch 83]

Reminds of this clip:

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Cute.  Now hunt around on, maybe, You-tube or Netflix and see if you can find a video of Ahmal and the Night Visitors by Gian Carlo Menotti.  I've seen it in English, so I know it exists.

[LexusInfernus 908]

1:
 If someting happens it happens. And if A causes B, even if this spans for more than 1000 years then still: A caused B! You are now acting: What if C happened? Nice! So? C didn't happen and A caused B. Even if A isn't the only reason for B it's still there! It's A reason. That's all it needs to be to cause B. And if Napsi would have had a nuke - guess what! - he would have nuked something! Anything! Just to test it out. Or why do you think, US commited that mass murder in Japan? They just wanted to know how well a nuke works. They choose practiacally unharmed areas to do so. No military importance.

In this case you claim A leads to B without providing any kind of evidence. And the only way you got there in the first place was by reducing over a thousand years of history down to one single causal factor. What you did there is a mortal sin in academia. 

And sure, Napoleon would have nuked something. But would it have mattered to history? Would Napoleon win the war? Become Emperor of Europe until his natural death at some point? Would he avoid getting banished again? Probably not, because history doesn't revolve around singular events like that. It is about forces, economic, cultural and political. One weapon doesn't matter, one person doesn't matter, one reason doesn't matter. There are always more reasons and if you take away one reason, those other reasons will in almost all cases still ensure history goes the way it goes. The details would be different, but the overall picture would remain the same. Napoleon would still lose the war, even if he didn't have a nuke, WW1 would still have happened even if the Archduke was never assassinated, Hitler would still lose WW2 even if he hadn't bothered with Stalingrad, etc. So, removing religion from the entire historical equation would in most cases hardly make a difference. The majority of conflicts would still have happened, just their justification would be different. 

2:

I rather think you underestimate it. If people can use a "holy" "Godgiven" script to legitimate violence - they will. That's it. Because god says so. And everyone talking against it becomes a "heretic" and gets killed. Because god says so. LEGITIMATION is the point. So it's A reason. You can't deny that!

Legitimation in our modern times. That's like a rocket-launch test of the DPRK to show off it's power so the regime can legitimate itself in it's own rows. Legitimation back then was "following god's word". Which meant following all that rebarbative stuff in this one specific "godgiven" book.

People can use all sorts of things to legitimize their violence. Sports is an excellent example. Some people are quite willing to bash other peoples heads in because they like a different sports team than them and have the ridiculous notion that their sports team is better. Nations are another good example. A large group of conflicts has been fought over the notion that being born on one piece of real estate makes you magically a better person than if you were born on that other piece of real estate. And what about ideology? Millions of people have been butchered in the last century alone simply because they had differing ideas about the role of the state and the economy in a society. Hell, skin color has been used as an excuse for violence. Literally everything that allows people to create 'in' and 'out' groups is capable of legitimizing violence. Now if you want to be consistent here, it means you have to condemn every little thing that can create factions. However, I think you'll find that if you condemn all those things and were to remove all of it, you wouldn't be able to run a functioning society. 

As for legitimization of violence, do keep in mind that the need for government to legitimize their violence is only a very recent thing. Yeah, you need legitimization today because you need broad support throughout society. Its a result of our mass culture. But before mass culture was ever a thing, before governments gave everyone voting rights, the need for legitimization was far less. The further back you go in history, the smaller the group of people who need a legitimate reason for conflict becomes. So religion as legitimization for violence? Completely unnecessary in most cases. 

 

3

All it takes is ONE fanatic. One is enough if he sits a the very wrong position. And this list shows just a few of the bad things "god" "Teaches" his "sheep". The bible is a book that sees violence as a legitimate way to shape the world and legitimates MURDER. And not just of one person but GENOCIDE. In a book that's sold more than 30 million times a year. That's disgusting!

There aren't a lot of states that are founded on the idea that complete and utter pacifism is the only legitimate way to shape the world. And the few that have existed have all been wiped out by states that clearly disagreed. You could call it natural selection. Today, every state is founded on the principle that violence can be a legitimate way to shape the world. To what extend there are disagreements, but all states use violence or the threat of violence to uphold law and order. I mean, what do you think the police is? Its organized violence aimed at those who break the law. 

And nearly all states agree that there are cases where waging war becomes a legitimate activity. Either out of self defense or to contain a conflict and prevent it from spreading. Disgusting? Perhaps. But really, violence is natural. Nearly all species of animal also use violence. Whenever there is competition there is violence. Should we, as human beings contain violence as much as possible? Sure, but ironically that does require the use of violence. 

 

4

Fairy tales: One big difference: the wolf doesn't kill little red riding hood because god tells him to. Goes for all the others as well.

YAY! The Videogames- argument! There's one mayor difference: CS:GO and all the others are VIRTUAL and don't tell you to harm people in REAL LIFE. Most of the "godgiven" books instead legitimate MURDER in REAL LIFE.

By the way. If you've saw some of my posts you might have found my opinion about hollywood's "action" somewhere in the forums. It's negative.

Actually I'm pretty sure the bible says not to murder anyone. And I never certainly got the message from reading the bible that I should murder anyone or that its okay. I mean, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" does not read like a polite suggestion. If you think the bible says you should kill people and that its okay to kill people, well I can't help that, nor can the bible, nor can religion. The bible and religion are not responsible for how you interpret their message, just like CS:GO or any other violent video game is responsible for when some nutjob goes berserk and blames video games for his behavior. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Getting involved in causality with respect to religion is a mug’s game.  Religion relies on unproved, and unprovable statements of doctrine where lack of faith if often punishable by ostracism or worse.  In that regard, it is like mathematical systems that are based on a set of axioms which are considered "self evident".  Facts often do not enter into the picture at all, just a set of postulates.

Walls of text, a favourite for religious apologists, are no substitute for facts.

[Skimbo 304]

1
If A caused something that is directly linked to the existence of B, that's something called fact. As far as I know, facts are something scientists like. And I don't freaki'n care about Napoleon. Would U.S. have "won" the pacific war in WW2 without the Nukes? YES!.

2

Religious purposes, "Godgiven" words. That has had a little more weight than some stupid sports. And nearly every emperor in historic europ used some cind of "godgiven" in his/her wording. Something like the title "King by grace of god", used in some german speaking countries, for example.  Further on, the christian Church and it's rulers like the popes activeley supported several wars in gods name. (Like cruisades.....)

 

3

Penalties like a prison sense are something different than murder. (Not all states in this world got a justice system which is that far backward to accept death penalty like the ones of some american states) And don't forget many states finance military as a measure of defense only.

4

Samuel 15:3.

"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

(king james translation)

 

 

  Edited November 12, 2015 by Skimbo  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

References to the Old Testament are not very interesting considering the God of Wrath has been superseded by the God of Love according to the New Testament.  Digging up all those old myths is just infuriating when you consider what the Christian message really is.  Let the Jews have the Pentateuch, it is old hat if you accept the Christ.

[LexusInfernus 908]

1
If A caused something that is directly linked to the existence of B, that's something called fact. As far as I know, facts are something scientists like. And I don't freaki'n care about Napoleon. Would U.S. have "won" the pacific war in WW2 without the Nukes? YES!.

Well except even by your own admission, its not directly linked. Its indirectly linked at best, and it spans a period of more than a thousand years. No historian would accept your linkage. Furthermore, you haven't actually proven the indirect links either, you just assumed they were true. And again, if other factors are involved, and if we are talking about indirect linkages spanning a thousand years you can be damn sure there will be hundreds if not thousands of other factors involved as well, you need to account for them and put the role religion played into context between all those other factors. Thats what scientists like. 

And yes, the US would have won, which proves all the more that singular events and singular explanations have no place in history. Attributing the US victory over Japan solely on their use of nuclear weapons would be historically inaccurate to put it mildly. 

2

Religious purposes, "Godgiven" words. That has had a little more weight than some stupid sports. And nearly every emperor in historic europ used some cind of "godgiven" in his/her wording. Something like the title "King by grace of god", used in some german speaking countries, for example.  Further on, the christian Church and it's rulers like the popes activeley supported several wars in gods name. (Like cruisades.....)

Well, tell that to soccer hooligans who start a riot after the game is over with the hooligans associating with the other team. Clearly they are far more interested in fighting over sports than fighting over religion. 

And yes, the divine right of kings. Sure, they used religion to legitimize their rule, but really only against the church (claiming God sends you to rule the land works wonders against the church trying to muscle in on your land as well) and the nobles who financed the king. For the most part whoever was king mattered little to common citizens, especially given that for the longest time, it wasn't the king that ruled directly over them, but rather their nobles. 

Also, yes the church has used religion on some occasions to justify their war. The crusades are an interesting case as it involves the mobilization of the masses to a much greater degree than other wars from that period. But again, really as history shows, almost anything can be used as an excuse to go to war. And almost anything has been used as an excuse to go to war at some point in history. Religion is no exception, but it would be a massive overstatement when you claim its been used to legitimize wars more often than anything else. 

3

Penalties like a prison sense are something different than murder. (Not all states in this world got a justice system which is that far backward to accept death penalty like the ones of some american states) And don't forget many states finance military as a measure of defense only.

Yeah except the police in almost every country is allowed to use deadly force when its needed. Even if its a last resort and for defensive purposes only, the state has the right to use violence to ensure its rules are followed and its sovereignty protected, and the state will consider that use of violence legitimate.  

4

Samuel 15:3.

"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

(king james translation)

I completely fail to see how the order to kill people from a long gone ancient history tribe translates as that the bible says its okay to go out and murder people. Its pretty clear in who it says you can murder and those people don't exist anymore. Oh sure, it also says a bunch of stuff about stoning children and all that nonsense, but so far the only people who take all those rules still seriously are the people of that cult we just talked about and Atheists. And Atheists only take it seriously because it gives them an easy way to attack religion in a pseudo intellectual manner and attain the moral high ground. 

[Skimbo 304]

1

The link does not have to be approved, is has to be disaprooved. And if you say there are a thousand factors the chanche is very high that there are at least a few religion based ones.

2

Soccer fan riots ain't comparable to a planned war.

Divine right of kings has also been used to legitimate the king as the ruler towards the ordinary people.

The cruesades are one good example how to use religion to mobilize masses and therefor use it for war and cause endless deaths. But there are far more good examples.

3

Deadly force in means of self-defence. VERY IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE.

4

I don't care if it's old or new testimony. It's IN a holy script. That's enough. And yes I am an atheist. But I find at least some arguments. Find an argument against atheism!

 

  Edited November 12, 2015 by Skimbo  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Watch out for bandying about the words "holy script" unless you read all the ancient languages.  The current "script" has passed through so many hands with so many different agendas, I doubt you can trust a syllable of it.  Remember, all this stuff started out as shamanic explanations of the inexplicable.  As an example, I repeat the story of the snark:

Once upon a time there was a tribe that lived in the forest by hunting and fishing.  One day, one of their hunters was walking down a trail and came upon an animal with a massive head, huge clawed feet and a striped body.  The hunter didn't notice that this animal was rather old and mangy.  He walked up to it, hit is over the head with his club, whereupon the old tiger dropped dead at his feet.

The young hunter took the carcase of this beast back to the village because they had never seen one of these before, and took it to the village shaman to be identified.  The elder took a look at the beast and pronounced that this was a snark.  The word got around among the villagers that the way to kill a snark, and they are quite tasty, was to walk up to them hand hit them over the head with a club.

One day, another hunter came upon a snark in the woods, walked up to it and hit it over the head with his club.  Now this tiger was young and vigorous, so it resented this exceedingly and nearly tore the young hunter apart.  The hunter did escape eventually, and crawled back to the village.  He went to the hut of the shaman and related his experience.  After some thought, the shaman let it be known that in the forest were two kinds of beasts that looked the same, one was the tasty snark, but the other, which should be avoided at all costs, was a boojum.

And so it became known in the village that some snarks are boojums.

[LexusInfernus 908]

1

The link does not have to be approved, is has to be disaprooved. And if you say there are a thousand factors the chanche is very high that there are at least a few religion based ones.

2

Soccer fan riots ain't comparable to a planned war.

Divine right of kings has also been used to legitimate the king as the ruler towards the ordinary people.

The cruesades are one good example how to use religion to mobilize masses and therefor use it for war and cause endless deaths. But there are far more good examples.

3

Deadly force in means of self-defence. VERY IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE.

4

I don't care if it's old or new testimony. It's IN a holy script. That's enough. And yes I am an atheist. But I find at least some arguments. Find an argument against atheism!

 

1. No it doesn't work like that. You make the claim there is a link, the burden of proof is on you. 

2. Violence is violence, the only difference is the scale. War has a bigger scale because its organized by states, states have a lot more resources at their disposal and their capacity to organize is much greater. If you gave soccer hooligans access to the same resources, they would be starting a war as well. 

Again, I never disputed the fact you can abuse religion to help stir up violence. My point is that in the overall historical context, religion is just one of many things that can be abused for this purpose. If you think that makes religion evil, fine, but then I challenge you to be consistent in your logic and condemn everything that has this capacity as evil. And then we find there wouldn't be a lot of things left in this world that wouldn't be evil according to your logic. Of course, you can decide to ignore my challenge, but that would serve as proof of a major double standard. The choice is yours. 

3. No, not really, its the use of violence to shape the world, which you earlier denounced as disgusting. These are your exact words:

"The bible is a book that sees violence as a legitimate way to shape the world and legitimates MURDER. And not just of one person but GENOCIDE. In a book that's sold more than 30 million times a year. That's disgusting!"

Violence is violence, it doesn't become something different just because the motive is more noble in your view. In the end it still hurts or kills a human being. 

4. Why is it enough? Your point was that the bible supposedly legitimizes murder, you used that bit of text as proof, I merely pointed out that it does no such thing. I have yet to read in any history books about that time this and that leader quoted the Hebrew conflict against the Amalek's as the primary reason as to why they should go to war as well. 

And no, I will not come up with arguments against Atheism because its pointless. If you don't want to believe in God, thats fine, I don't care, best of luck to you. Believe what you want to believe, its none of my business. Though I do think its telling that your best defense for Atheism is that you can't think of any negative reason against it. 

[MintberryCrunch 83]

 

I completely fail to see how the order to kill people from a long gone ancient history tribe translates as that the bible says its okay to go out and murder people. Its pretty clear in who it says you can murder and those people don't exist anymore. Oh sure, it also says a bunch of stuff about stoning children and all that nonsense, but so far the only people who take all those rules still seriously are the people of that cult we just talked about and Atheists. And Atheists only take it seriously because it gives them an easy way to attack religion in a pseudo intellectual manner and attain the moral high ground. 

Well, it does show that whole-scale banning against "killing" is not in fact sanctioned by the Bible. There are numerous times where killing was considered lawful in the Bible, particularly in the historical accounts. "Thou shalt not kill" has an important asterisk next to it implying that it's only unlawful killing that's prohibited, i.e. "murder". But "lawful killing", whatever that may be, is perfectly okay. And if your killing is supported by the Almighty, then what is going to stop you? That is why opportunists like ISIS seize these lines; "Deus lo volt", they say, although it's probably in Arabic. 

There are similar stories in the Qur'an that anti-Islam folks will point at and claim that the Qur'an supports "violent jihad" and the killing of non-believers, but the stories occur in the same context as the Biblical stories. Now, I don't agree that the Bible gives a command to contemporary Christians to "go out and murder", not at all, but the Bible certainly does sanction killing in places and often the violence committed was indiscriminate genocide. 

Additionally, many of the religious claim to be "Biblical literalists", but literalism runs into issues when confronted with passages like Leviticus 20:13 that include clear directives to put people to death. Obviously, even people claiming to be Biblical literalists don't take these lines literally, otherwise they'd be doing what the line says and killing people. Of course the Bible also contains lines about proper treatment of slaves. If you ignore historical context, you're going to run into problems. Both theists and theists do this, of course. 

In fact, the justification for the Crusades was often Paul's line about "put on the armor of God". Naturally most people take it metaphorically. It is so interesting to see how scriptures can be manipulated to say just about anything one's agenda dictates. 

References to the Old Testament are not very interesting considering the God of Wrath has been superseded by the God of Love according to the New Testament.  Digging up all those old myths is just infuriating when you consider what the Christian message really is.  Let the Jews have the Pentateuch, it is old hat if you accept the Christ.

Yes, but it is also important that we don't forget the Old Testament and its messages:

Until Heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished’ (Matthew 5:18).

  Edited November 12, 2015 by MintberryCrunch  

[Skimbo 304]

1

If A is a reason that caused B then there's a link which prooves it. Otherwhise one could not say it hasbeen caused that way.
If the Hooligans riot shortly after their team lost it's most likeley that they riot because their team lost.

2

I know your point. And I can't find a proof that religion just played some minor important roll because it's always part of nearly every conflict.

3

It's not disgusting to use necessary force to put away thoose who cause violence. Still that's not calling out for more violence but a small scale attempt to reduce it. Usually against prople who used some sort of violence on someone elles before. 2nd it's a minor act of violence as it does not involve killing the targeted person. That's more legitimate than just using violence on a person who didn't do anything harmful (Like preying to another god, what the bible recommends).

4

I used this one bit of text because I can't copy the whole book into here.

You wanted proof for point 1. Show me a proof of a god. You won't find one. That's why I'm an atheist. You can't rely on things that don't exist. I don't care about positive or negative things around atheism.

 

 

 

  Edited November 12, 2015 by Skimbo  

[MintberryCrunch 83]

Skimbo, I wouldn't worry about the atheist vs. theist thing. No one here is going to convert anyone from atheism to theism or vice versa. It's a dead horse that doesn't need to be beaten. 

[Skimbo 304]

I just had to correct his wrong assumption about why I'm an atheist.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

@Skimbo: Are you really an atheist or just another rationalist?  Are you violently opposed to people of faith?  If so, you are really in a minority.

As you get older, I am sure you will become more tolerant.  You see the Bible has been interpreted not only by its translators, but also by people who wanted to "clarify" it.  All of these people had outside agendas, no matter what order they belonged to.  All "sacred" writing consists of answers that may not be questioned.  It doesn't matter which myth we are talking about here.  If you compare them, they are all really the same.

The arguments of the sacred vs. the profane have been hashed over for centuries now, and the results remain moot because new and inexperienced minds continue to join the arguments on both sides.  It just increases the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

[LexusInfernus 908]

1

If A is a reason that caused B then there's a link which prooves it. Otherwhise one could not say it hasbeen caused that way.
If the Hooligans riot shortly after their team lost it's most likeley that they riot because their team lost.

2

I know your point. And I can't find a proof that religion just played some minor important roll because it's always part of nearly every conflict.

3

It's not disgusting to use necessary force to put away thoose who cause violence. Still that's not calling out for more violence but a small scale attempt to reduce it. Usually against prople who used some sort of violence on someone elles before. 2nd it's a minor act of violence as it does not involve killing the targeted person. That's more legitimate than just using violence on a person who didn't do anything harmful (Like preying to another god, what the bible recommends).

4

I used this one bit of text because I can't copy the whole book into here.

You wanted proof for point 1. Show me a proof of a god. You won't find one. That's why I'm an atheist. You can't rely on things that don't exist. I don't care about positive or negative things around atheism.

1. Yes, if A causes B, you have found a link. However, you haven't proven at all that A causes B. You just said it was the case. You need prove before we can accept A causes B. Thats science. 

2. Do you know how many conflicts, just in Europe, there have been? All you have come up with so far are the Crusades. Yeah, there have been a few crusades and yeah you can argue religion played a role in there. Now what about those hundreds of other conflicts that raged in Europe all throughout the last 2000 years?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe here is a nice list of them. See how religion doesn't play much of a role in most of them? Nearly all of them are about power, wealth or territorial gain. And when the church plays a role in these conflicts its also nearly always for reasons of power and wealth, not because of some actually religious dispute.

3. Its the use of violence to shape the world which you called disgusting. But okay, now you admit that sometimes the use of violence can be legitimate and necessary. So then why give the bible a hard time for it? Its clearly not the fact that the bible suggests that sometimes violence is necessary that disgusts you, the real problem you have is with when the bible says violence is okay. In which case you overlook two important things. The first is historical context. The bible is old, so obviously these kind of things are based on outdated assumptions. The second is that sure, today we might consider the use of violence as suggested by the bible wrong, which is why no one follows the bibles suggested guidelines on when to use violence. And when there are groups that do call back to those biblical guidelines, we are universally disgusted by it. 

4. You used that one bit of text because of all the text in the bible the bits that talk about how you should be violent constitutes only a small part of it and wouldn't support your point. 

True, I can't prove that God is real, nor am I interested in proving such a thing, though you might want to read up on the 'the universe is a simulation' theory and its implications for the existence of a creator who build our universe. But I can, and have proven that religion, whether its correct about God or not, has been a mostly positive force in the history of humanity. As I said, its a community builder and it has inspired humanity to do great things. And without it, modern society as we know it would have been impossible. On top of that, I do respect one of the most successful ideas humanity has ever come up with. You know, evolution does not exclusively apply to organisms, it works for ideas as well. Successful ideas stick around, bad ideas get filtered out and replaced by better ideas. Religion has been around since the dawn of humanity and it will continue to stick around in some form for a while. And even if it gets replaced somewhere in the future, it will still be an idea that has been around for much longer than almost any other idea. 

 

  Edited November 13, 2015 by LexusInfernus  

[Skimbo 304]

@ nonny moose: I'm an atheist and I usually don't care if people believe in something. But I can get quite angry if somebody consequently underplays the role of some specific writings in the history and the violence they caused

 

@ Lexus

1 I found a reason for B being caused by A.

2 Nice you now link a list of conflicts. A list of people who have been murdered on religious purpose or at least whos murder has been tolerated and legitimated by religion (not just the bible) sadly doesn't exist. Maybe because it would contain millions and millions of names. By the way: Many of thoose conflicts in your list are linked to religion in one or the other way.

3A     IF the bible bases on outdated assumptions - why the hell don't they change it then? Modernize it? Rewrite it? Adopt human rights and tolerance towards other religions? Stop seeing women as a minor human made out of a men's rib? Maybe it's time for a third testimony that definitiveley declares the old two for no longer relevant? Why isn't the christian world able to declare thoose specific groups as no longer part of their society?

3B     I still don't see your point. A sort of violence that mostly acts like pressure to keep up law and order is something different than a writing calling to convert unwilling people who did nothing wrong or to call out for murder of the "godless"? You now try to argue about violence in general, I specifically attacked the violence in religion. For me theese are 2 pairs of shoes. Religion should be pacifist and argue against violence. A state that uses a sort of violence to enforce laws shouldn't be influenced by religion. Why do I stand on this point? I tell you. Many humans seek confidence and safetey in religion for various reasons. The religion now offers them a different view about the society. A view that's outdated, intolerant and doesn't argue against violence. This is a problem, most world reigions have and it evens the path for radical thoughts against other religions.  Theese can cause hate and hate causes violence. The reason for the radicalisation does not necessarily have to be because of the other person's religion, but religion is a part. For example: One cristian guy, looses his job and gets replaced by a indian guy, who seems to have a better qualification. This christian guy now doesn't say that he lost his  job to this person, no, he "Lost it to this stupid hindu" and continues "I Hate hindus because there was this one who stole my job". In this example, religion simply stands for a specific group of people who now - thanks to one bad experience - are generalized as bad in this person's mind. A similar example would be the musim radicalisation against christians in the middle east, because their countries got attacked by the christians (in form of the US and earlier in orm of the british etc. collonies). And here we see the same principle: Not just hate against U.S.A. but also against christians. The same also goes with jews, a conflict that started to radicalize when Israel was intreduced to it's modern day area - they primary hate Israel, which is associated with jews - which took their country. And that's why they really hate jews - it's the association with the state Israel which took their territory. You see? Religion does not necessarily have to be the cause of one bad thing. But as soon as it's associated with it, it becomes part of the conflict. And this association will cause more and more conflicts following the first one.

4 The smallest part is already too much. See point 3A for my thoughs about it.

5 One of many theories. One of many ideas. "Creator" ideas are rather popular because they find a easy explanation for things, Humans can't find a logic behind. By the way. Wasn't it the roman catholic church which called scientists hereitics and helped to kill or lock some of thoose away during the renainssance because they found out, some of the christian assumptions where wrong? (Like a Geocentric order in the sun system or the assumption, mother earth was flat like a pizza?)

 

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

@Skimbo:  How do you feel about speeches from the Papal balcony?  For example: "Deus vult."  Sure caused a lot of killing.

[LexusInfernus 908]

1 I found a reason for B being caused by A.

No, you haven't. You have a hypothesis, now you have to prove it. 

But why bother trying to proof that A caused B a thousand years later through a number of smaller steps in between. Again, using such a reductive argument to prove a point about history is a bad argument, you can't reduce a thousands years of history back to a singular cause. Its bad science, human society and human actions are far to complex for such arguments to work. 

2 Nice you now link a list of conflicts. A list of people who have been murdered on religious purpose or at least whos murder has been tolerated and legitimated by religion (not just the bible) sadly doesn't exist. Maybe because it would contain millions and millions of names. By the way: Many of thoose conflicts in your list are linked to religion in one or the other way.

I can assure you, compared to the list of people getting murdered for non religious purposes would be much larger. Also, no, most of those conflicts are not 'linked to religion' unless you mean its about religion because the actors involved were part of a religion. Like literally everyone in the Middle Ages. Again, that would be correlation, which isn't necessarily causation, and in these conflicts its definitely not.

3A     IF the bible bases on outdated assumptions - why the hell don't they change it then? Modernize it? Rewrite it? Adopt human rights and tolerance towards other religions? Stop seeing women as a minor human made out of a men's rib? Maybe it's time for a third testimony that definitiveley declares the old two for no longer relevant? Why isn't the christian world able to declare thoose specific groups as no longer part of their society?

Why would they? No one is acting on those outdated assumptions, people can decide perfectly well for themselves what stories of the bible to take as literal, which ones as metaphor and which ones as outdated as hell. 

Again, the only people taking the bible this literal are the crazy cultists and Atheists. Why would Christians need to update their book because some Atheists insist on taking the entire bible at face value? And even if you update the bible, crazy cultists will find a way to twist it into something strange and dangerous. That comes with being in a cult. 

3B     I still don't see your point. A sort of violence that mostly acts like pressure to keep up law and order is something different than a writing calling to convert unwilling people who did nothing wrong or to call out for murder of the "godless"? You now try to argue about violence in general, I specifically attacked the violence in religion. For me theese are 2 pairs of shoes. Religion should be pacifist and argue against violence. A state that uses a sort of violence to enforce laws shouldn't be influenced by religion. Why do I stand on this point? I tell you. Many humans seek confidence and safetey in religion for various reasons. The religion now offers them a different view about the society. A view that's outdated, intolerant and doesn't argue against violence.  

Okay Im going to split this bit in multiple parts.  

First, have you ever been to a church? I can tell you, most churches are all about peace and argue against violence. The only reason you argue this isn't the case is because you have cherry picked the parts of the bible that are violent. Actually, you know who else does this? Terrorists. They manage to take a book thats 99% about peace and pacifism, pick the 1% that isn't, then exclusively focus on that 1% and create a religion thats only about hate and violence. But is that representative of a religion? Are Muslim terrorists in any way 'mainstream' Muslims? No, they aren't. A Christian extremists like that in any way mainstream? No, they aren't. 

Again, if religion is all about violence and hate, then why aren't there more conflicts? Remember, the vast majority of the human race is religious in one way or another. If all religion does is promote violence, then why aren't conflicts a lot more widespread around the globe? Why aren't the wars not a lot more massive in scale? The answer is obvious, because religion doesn't do these things, it doesn't promote violence and it doesn't cause violence. You constantly mistake correlation for causation. What you see is a correlation between religion and violence. And that shouldn't surprise you because the vast majority of the human race is religious it means its statistically incredibly likely that in any given conflict one or more religious groups get involved. It doesn't mean they got involved because they are religious, it just means that they are religious and a conflict broke out in their country, which means they get involved whether they like it or not. 

The worst you can fault religion of is that its not incredibly effective at preventing or stopping a conflicts. But that should be no surprise, preaching love, tolerance and bliss in the afterlife are no cures for the social ills that do cause violence: high unemployment, no future perspective for young people, economic marginalization, authoritarian governments, corruption, etc.  

This is a problem, most world reigions have and it evens the path for radical thoughts against other religions.  Theese can cause hate and hate causes violence. The reason for the radicalisation does not necessarily have to be because of the other person's religion, but religion is a part. For example: One cristian guy, looses his job and gets replaced by a indian guy, who seems to have a better qualification. This christian guy now doesn't say that he lost his  job to this person, no, he "Lost it to this stupid hindu" and continues "I Hate hindus because there was this one who stole my job". In this example, religion simply stands for a specific group of people who now - thanks to one bad experience - are generalized as bad in this person's mind.

Yes, that is possible. Now take away religion, do you think that the guy will suddenly thing 'oh, I'm glad I lost my job to that better skilled person'? It will simply mean that the person thinks 'that stupid Indian guy, he took my job' or 'that stupid university educated guy, he took my job' or even 'that stupid women, she took my job'. The generalizations that follow are exactly the same, and actually if you look at whats happening in the real world, you'll notice that the first counter example is an example of racism, which is prevalent enough, the second example is one of anti-intellectualism which is also common enough in a lot of places and third is an example of misogyny and sexism, which quite frankly is rampant in almost every country on the planet. So, would taking religion away change anything? No it wouldn't, because human beings will have plenty of other reasons to hate someone who took their job and take that negative experience and generalize based on it. 

 

A similar example would be the musim radicalisation against christians in the middle east, because their countries got attacked by the christians (in form of the US and earlier in orm of the british etc. collonies). And here we see the same principle: Not just hate against U.S.A. but also against christians. The same also goes with jews, a conflict that started to radicalize when Israel was intreduced to it's modern day area - they primary hate Israel, which is associated with jews - which took their country. And that's why they really hate jews - it's the association with the state Israel which took their territory. You see? Religion does not necessarily have to be the cause of one bad thing. But as soon as it's associated with it, it becomes part of the conflict. And this association will cause more and more conflicts following the first one.

Your entire argument is based on the idea that the only reason people can hate other groups of people is because they are of a different religion. You are completely ignoring things like racism, classism, sexism, nationalism, historical grievances between two ethnic groups, etc. And this becomes more problematic as one or more of those things often intersects with religion. And as a result, when those things clash, religion clashes with it, or at least, so it would seem if you operate under the assumption that religion causes conflict and is a reason why conflict continues. 

That is not to say that you are entirely wrong. Religion can become a point of contention and some people do use it as an excuse. But even then, why bother taking those excuses at face value when they got nothing to do with the source of the problem or the internal logic that keeps a conflict going. 

4 The smallest part is already too much. See point 3A for my thoughs about it.

Only for you. Actual religious believers seem to have no problem deciding what parts of their holy book are obsolete. 

5 One of many theories. One of many ideas. "Creator" ideas are rather popular because they find a easy explanation for things, Humans can't find a logic behind. By the way. Wasn't it the roman catholic church which called scientists hereitics and helped to kill or lock some of thoose away during the renainssance because they found out, some of the christian assumptions where wrong? (Like a Geocentric order in the sun system or the assumption, mother earth was flat like a pizza?)

Yeah except that 'the universe is a simulation' theory is not exactly an 'easy explanation' for something. And it would require us to be able to build a working simulation of the universe. If we can do that, it simply becomes a logical consequence that the probability of our universe being created by another intelligence is infinite. 

And sure, at some points in history the church has tried to silence scientific progress. At other times the church was the only reason there even was scientific progress. The church does bad things and it does good things, because the church is run by people and people do bad things and they do good things. 

[Skimbo 304]

1 call it what you want. if I know A is a reasonn for B then I know it. Otherwhise I wouln't have found out.

2 I didn't say there only where religious conflicts, and I don't care which caused more deaths. Fact is: Religious stuff caused millions of deaths. Stop playing that down.

3A Why do we have to gender when writing textes? Why do video games and movies get age-ratings? Why shoudn't religious documents get such reviews too?

3B Yes, I had to visit churches sometimes and I've even been christened once (a long time ago). And as I told you in my last post: 1% is enough to give some idiots the "food" they need to go crazy. 1% is enough to ease legitimation for violent acts. But I actually think it's more than 1%.
Now you're starting with extremists - which are another expression of religious-motivated violence. Just interpretating theese 1% you mentioned. Why didn't they interpretate the other 99% if religion only preys for peace?

Again, if religion is all about violence and hate, then why aren't there more conflicts?

Seriously? You're asking that in a world full of war?

If all religion does is promote violence

I didn't say that religion does nothing but proclaiming war. I just said that it legitimates violence up to a specific point. Turning my words into your favor won't help you finish this argument.

And that shouldn't surprise you because the vast majority of the human race is religious it means its statistically incredibly likely that in any given conflict one or more religious groups get involved.

2 middle east examples:

Introduction of Israel > new state for the jews > religion motivated action. (+territorial motivation on palestine side)

Shiites and sunnites - both living  in rich lands, no obvious reason to fight each other, except for a religious problem: their endless argument who is allowed to be the religious leader. > religion motivated.

The worst you can fault religion of is that its not incredibly effective at preventing or stopping a conflicts.

Preying to your god before stealing someone's handbag and going for a shrive after that isn't quite effective. And I see no real help in case of social problems. Just tons of gold, marble and creepy artwork (statues&paints) in churches.

Yes, that is possible. Now take away religion

Religion is there and it's often associated with a specific group of people. And you can't deny that assocoiations which are negative lead to conflicts. The religion might just be a link but it's there.

Your entire argument is based on the idea that the only reason people can hate other groups of people is because they are of a different religion

Nope. I got the feeling you don't carefully read what I write. I said that an attacker is associated with a religion. This gets followed by associating all members of a religion with something specific one group of members of that specific religion did. which causes hate against another religion.

Actual religious believers seem to have no problem deciding what parts of their holy book are obsolete.

Not all it seems. See your lines about radicalist groups further up the page.

Yeah except that 'the universe is a simulation' theory is not exactly an 'easy explanation' for something

It says "Someone had to create this" At point 1 you want to see a proof. Is there a proof over here? I see the assumption that a god or other creature created the universe up to a specific point. This assumption is - in my eyes - nothing but a easy explanation for the cause of the big bang. - for which the real explanation still has to be found. But mother earth once was flat as a discus, was it?. Time will give us true knowledge.

And sure, at some points in history the church has tried to silence scientific progress.

Finally something we agree on!