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My New 10 Commandments For Religious People
15 years ago
It's not as if I'm subtle in my dislike of religion.
But this is not a fire 'n brimstone type of rant. This is me extending an olive branch. (And yes, I'm using Christianity references to be an ironic li'l bastard.) This is a list of ways that religious folks can opt out of my hatred if they choose to. These are ways for them to keep their faith without being jerks to other folks. If you can agree to all ten of these items, then you have my full blessing, whatever you choose to worship.
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1. There are two different kinds of faith. Good faith is when you have good reasons to be faithful. Like faith in yourself, or a trusted friend. Bad faith requires you to ignore reality. When someone tells you to believe something, and forbids you to question it, test it or doubt it, you are being scammed. Bad faith is the foundation upon which all extremism is built. If we don't erode this foundation, the suffering it leads to will always exist.
2. Your personal disgust towards something does not give you the right to take it away from someone who enjoys it. No human being should ever be jailed, executed or ostracized based purely on religious morals. If a crime causes no harm, it cannot be a crime.
3. Separation between church and state exists on paper, but unfortunately, not in reality. If churches want to politicize religion, they should have to pay their taxes like every other political organization.
4. Praying is the exact same thing as wishing. Wishing is okay, as long as you understand that the only way to get what you want is to actually go out and get it.
5. Your right to practice religion is never more important than other people's liberty, or other people's lives.
6. It is possible to read religious texts and appreciate them without considering them sacred or infallible. No man, or book, is ever 100% right about everything. Disagreement is natural, and can be constructive.
7. No one has a right to not be insulted, criticized or offended. This includes you. And me too. Getting mad at criticism is not helpful. Trying to learn from it is.
8. No one should ever be forced to belong to a religion, or be indoctrinated into it before they are mentally ready to understand it.
9. No one knows for sure what God truly believes. No one. When you say you know what God believes, you are really only saying what you believe. This can be extremely dangerous. Doubly so for anyone who tries to convince you that they're the only one who knows what God really thinks.
10. It is shameful to believe in a lie that gives more comfort than the truth. You must learn to accept reality as it is, rather than what you wish it were. Or what you think it should be. We cannot become better than what we are unless we are completely honest with ourselves first, and then with others. And if reality hurts, ignoring it will make it worse. Work instead to make it better.
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Incidentally, today's my birthday. I'm gonna go see Tron Legacy and probably pop a massive nerdboner. Happy New Year to everyone on FA and all over the world too. :)
But this is not a fire 'n brimstone type of rant. This is me extending an olive branch. (And yes, I'm using Christianity references to be an ironic li'l bastard.) This is a list of ways that religious folks can opt out of my hatred if they choose to. These are ways for them to keep their faith without being jerks to other folks. If you can agree to all ten of these items, then you have my full blessing, whatever you choose to worship.
~~~~~~~~~~
1. There are two different kinds of faith. Good faith is when you have good reasons to be faithful. Like faith in yourself, or a trusted friend. Bad faith requires you to ignore reality. When someone tells you to believe something, and forbids you to question it, test it or doubt it, you are being scammed. Bad faith is the foundation upon which all extremism is built. If we don't erode this foundation, the suffering it leads to will always exist.
2. Your personal disgust towards something does not give you the right to take it away from someone who enjoys it. No human being should ever be jailed, executed or ostracized based purely on religious morals. If a crime causes no harm, it cannot be a crime.
3. Separation between church and state exists on paper, but unfortunately, not in reality. If churches want to politicize religion, they should have to pay their taxes like every other political organization.
4. Praying is the exact same thing as wishing. Wishing is okay, as long as you understand that the only way to get what you want is to actually go out and get it.
5. Your right to practice religion is never more important than other people's liberty, or other people's lives.
6. It is possible to read religious texts and appreciate them without considering them sacred or infallible. No man, or book, is ever 100% right about everything. Disagreement is natural, and can be constructive.
7. No one has a right to not be insulted, criticized or offended. This includes you. And me too. Getting mad at criticism is not helpful. Trying to learn from it is.
8. No one should ever be forced to belong to a religion, or be indoctrinated into it before they are mentally ready to understand it.
9. No one knows for sure what God truly believes. No one. When you say you know what God believes, you are really only saying what you believe. This can be extremely dangerous. Doubly so for anyone who tries to convince you that they're the only one who knows what God really thinks.
10. It is shameful to believe in a lie that gives more comfort than the truth. You must learn to accept reality as it is, rather than what you wish it were. Or what you think it should be. We cannot become better than what we are unless we are completely honest with ourselves first, and then with others. And if reality hurts, ignoring it will make it worse. Work instead to make it better.
~~~~~~~~~~
Incidentally, today's my birthday. I'm gonna go see Tron Legacy and probably pop a massive nerdboner. Happy New Year to everyone on FA and all over the world too. :)
These are great "commandments" for anybody.
*hugs*
Very insightful foxie
Thanks! I try to live by 'em myself. Maybe I'll try to work up a list of general rules for life, but these were meant to be religioncentric.
And thanks for another year of being a real world Obvious Man!
And happy birthday, you big goofball. :3
It's unfortunate I can't type that like that snowman says it :P
I'm not sure I said that.
>Nice, though some of those are big things in the Bible.
Please, I'd love to see specific examples.
> 1. There are two different kinds of faith. Good faith is when you have good reasons to be faithful. Like faith in yourself, or a trusted friend. Bad faith requires you to ignore reality. When someone tells you to believe something, and forbids you to question it, test it or doubt it, you are being scammed. Bad faith is the foundation upon which all extremism is built. If we don't erode this foundation, the suffering it leads to will always exist.
I agree. The basis of all science is repeatability and testability. You can recreate any experiment done by anyone else. I find that religions that ask you to try it to see if it works for you tend to be more believable.
> 2. Your personal disgust towards something does not give you the right to take it away from someone who enjoys it. No human being should ever be jailed, executed or ostracized based purely on religious morals. If a crime causes no harm, it cannot be a crime.
Technically correct, just make sure you don't use this to interfere with commandment number one. If someone gets off on accepting an absurdity on faith, what's the problem? Since you're extending the olive branch, there isn't one.
>3. Separation between church and state exists on paper, but unfortunately, not in reality. If churches want to politicize religion, they should have to pay their taxes like every other political organization.
Win.
> 4. Praying is the exact same thing as wishing. Wishing is okay, as long as you understand that the only way to get what you want is to actually go out and get it.
Hmm... Technically correct. Certainly correct for the robotic chanted prayers you see in church. There is a use in creative visualization though. Knowing what you want and planning it out in your mind makes your attempts to go out and get it much better.
> 5. Your right to practice religion is never more important than other people's liberty, or other people's lives.
Win.
> 6. It is possible to read religious texts and appreciate them without considering them sacred or infallible. No man, or book, is ever 100% right about everything. Disagreement is natural, and can be constructive.
Win.
> 7. No one has a right to not be insulted, criticized or offended. This includes you. And me too. Getting mad at criticism is not helpful. Trying to learn from it is.
Win.
> 8. No one should ever be forced to belong to a religion, or be indoctrinated into it before they are mentally ready to understand it.
I wonder how many anti-cub porn people are perfectly happy to indoctrinate real children into religions?
> 9. No one knows for sure what God truly believes. No one. When you say you know what God believes, you are really only saying what you believe. This can be extremely dangerous. Doubly so for anyone who tries to convince you that they're the only one who knows what God really thinks.
"The greatest sign that you have created god in your own image is that he hates everyone you do."
> 10. It is shameful to believe in a lie that gives more comfort than the truth. You must learn to accept reality as it is, rather than what you wish it were. Or what you think it should be. We cannot become better than what we are unless we are completely honest with ourselves first, and then with others. And if reality hurts, ignoring it will make it worse. Work instead to make it better.
Hmm... Any lies you've given up?
I can be cool with someone believing something on faith if 1) they have the capacity to understand the issue and 2) if they're not trying to force me to believe it to. I have a few of my own pet beliefs (more like hopes, really) and I just don't talk about them much.
>Hmm... Technically correct. Certainly correct for the robotic chanted prayers you see in church. There is a use in creative visualization though. Knowing what you want and planning it out in your mind makes your attempts to go out and get it much better.
Good point. I'm not sure how, but I probably could have put something in there about using the placebo effect to your advantage. Believing with supreme confidence in something can indeed help you get it. I know from plenty of personal experience that fortune favors the bold. I suppose that's just the secular way to say that God helps those who help themselves.
>I wonder how many anti-cub porn people are perfectly happy to indoctrinate real children into religions?
I imagine the vast majority of anti-cub people don't even have children. I'm beginning to see that the most annoying kind of offended people are the ones offended on someone else's behalf.
>"The greatest sign that you have created god in your own image is that he hates everyone you do."
Nicely said!
>Hmm... Any lies you've given up?
Hard to say. A lot of my ideas have evolved slowly, so there's not been too many moments of, 'Oh! I've been completely wrong!" More like little tweaks and changes over time. Although a lot of my thoughts on gun control changed when I was presented with good arguments against what I'd thought before.
True enough. Nothing is worse than evil good.
> Hard to say. A lot of my ideas have evolved slowly, so there's not been too many moments of, 'Oh! I've been completely wrong!" More like little tweaks and changes over time. Although a lot of my thoughts on gun control changed when I was presented with good arguments against what I'd thought before.
Really? That would be of interest to me. Feel free to message them to me if you don't want to detract from this topic though.
Ooh, I like that phrase.
>Really? That would be of interest to me. Feel free to message them to me if you don't want to detract from this topic though.
Nothing too specific. Just the usual lefty 'guns are bad' beliefs, and coming to realize that, even though I'm still uncomfortable with the average American having a gun, I understand the founding fathers' idea that citizens should be armed to keep the government from taking their liberty. The police should NOT be the only people who have guns. Unfortunately, right now we're too goddamn lazy to defend our rights, even when they're openly being taken from us. But still, I agree with V; "Governments should be afraid of their people".
On the personal disgust note I keep trying to advocate that people understand that there are(in my opinion) 2 forms of morality - absolute and theoretical. For something to be truly wrong it has to fail both the in theory check as well as the check for if it causes harm in reality if done. There are a vast number of things which only fail a theoretical check that are perfectly fine with the absolute check. Too many people apply their personal opinion to absolute morality, which created flawed reasoning as personal opinion can only apply to theoretical morality.
Doug Stanhope put it best, in a bit where he askes, if you'd never heard of the Bible, and you walked into a bookstore and saw one on the shelf, would you read it and think, "Hey! I should live my entire life by this!!'?
>On the personal disgust note I keep trying to advocate that people understand that there are(in my opinion) 2 forms of morality - absolute and theoretical. For something to be truly wrong it has to fail both the in theory check as well as the check for if it causes harm in reality if done. There are a vast number of things which only fail a theoretical check that are perfectly fine with the absolute check. Too many people apply their personal opinion to absolute morality, which created flawed reasoning as personal opinion can only apply to theoretical morality.
That is a really nice way of putting it. I may use the idea of theoretical and absolute checks sometime. :)
2- why is it that people can't seem to grasp this? "if it doesn't hurt anyone[physically or mentally], its alright" is the very basis of the ethics we are taught to believe in as Americans (that whole life, liberty, pursuit of happiness spiel)... and yet the moral code most seem to belong to contradicts that (which, again, xtians... its funny, given that the bible itself preaches this very ethical code, to NOT screw over people for believing differently than you) wierd...
3- wholly agreed here... "pulpit politics" fuckin piss me off...
4- I agree with this, although I do believe in the power of prayer to an extent...but I am reminded of a story about a man who prayed every day for 20 years "God please let me win the lottery" ...trouble is, in all those years, not once did he buy a ticket... >.> I guess, it comes to the saying "God will only help those who help themselves" lol XD
5- RIGHT, EQUAL, but NEVER MORE... my right to believe what I want is NO MORE, NO LESS important than another's right to...
6- try telling that to the people who NEED to understand it...you'd think you killed their mom, dad, son, and dog... then pissed on their graves >.>
7- this confuses me, but I think I get the message... is it "you are not allowed to get pissed off at someone else disrespecting your beliefs?"
8- I believe in exposure, but yeah, indoctrination is wrong...I like what my brother did... when his son got about 8, he started exposing him to different religions and trying to explain how they all worked... and his plan is to let his son choose what he wants to believe as he gets older... ironically enough, the two of us were indoctrinated into Pentecostal churches... XD now he's an agnostic and I'm a fag
9- OH YES!!! this is like an orgasm in my brain...
10- this one is tricky, as it is difficult to be both realistic and faithful, sometimes...this is I suppose why they say religion is an opiate of the masses...
Thanks for sharing your thoughts :) Religion is always fun to talk about XD
You can get pissed off about it, but (A) it's not going to do any good, and (B) you can't demand that nobody ever disrespect your beliefs.
yeah... I agree... the way I see it...if you are willing to die for a belief, you fucking better be able to laugh at it...
That's treading a thin line. It's one thing to believe in things which contradict current science; like the 'aquatic ape' theory of human evolution, which is currently unpopular but has a lot of strong arguments going for it. Science is ever-changing, and scientists can be as resistant to change as any other humans.
On the other hand, it's not so okay to believe in things which science has already outright-disproven, or which is can never test. Science is literally the only method we have of finding out the truth. By that I mean the scientific method of testing a hypothesis and drawing conclusions based on the results. It's never a good idea to draw a conclusion and then go looking for anything that might support it.
What, specifically, do you believe that contradicts science? And how strongly do you believe it? That's very important too. Would you accept it if you were proven wrong? Research has shown that cultists will cling even harder to their beliefs when shown contradictory evidence.
>3- wholly agreed here... "pulpit politics" fuckin piss me off...
I absolutely love the bit in the Bible where Jesus unambiguously tells people that only jerks flaunt their religion publicly and that people should stay at home and pray in solitude. Humbleness is unfortunately not a virtue that modern evangelicals understand well.
>4- I agree with this, although I do believe in the power of prayer to an extent...but I am reminded of a story about a man who prayed every day for 20 years "God please let me win the lottery" ...trouble is, in all those years, not once did he buy a ticket... >.> I guess, it comes to the saying "God will only help those who help themselves" lol XD
I was just remarking that that phrase is basically the religious way of saying "fortune favors the bold". There is a real effect to doing things with supreme confidence. People should put effort into what they do and believe they will succeed. Believing you'll fail virtually guarantees you will.
>5- RIGHT, EQUAL, but NEVER MORE... my right to believe what I want is NO MORE, NO LESS important than another's right to...
I think I'd say that right to practice religion is a bit less important than rights to life and liberty, but yes, I will absolutely agree that absolutely everyone has an equal right to their own ideas. Beliefs should only be judged on their merits; not by how many people believe in them.
>6- try telling that to the people who NEED to understand it...you'd think you killed their mom, dad, son, and dog... then pissed on their graves >.>
It really saddens me how much people value certainty over correctness. People would rather have a quick, simple decisive answer than a complicated one that will actually work. I curse our brains for being wired this way.
>7- this confuses me, but I think I get the message... is it "you are not allowed to get pissed off at someone else disrespecting your beliefs?"
It's more like, 'People will always disagree with you. That's life. Getting upset over it will not ever make it stop'. I also want to get rid of the taboo on criticizing religious beliefs. It's not considered rude or immoral to discuss someone's political views or taste in movies; the same should be true for religious beliefs.
>8- I believe in exposure, but yeah, indoctrination is wrong...I like what my brother did... when his son got about 8, he started exposing him to different religions and trying to explain how they all worked... and his plan is to let his son choose what he wants to believe as he gets older... ironically enough, the two of us were indoctrinated into Pentecostal churches... XD now he's an agnostic and I'm a fag
Your brother is the gold standard then. :)
>9- OH YES!!! this is like an orgasm in my brain...
Glee! I love giving braingasms!
>10- this one is tricky, as it is difficult to be both realistic and faithful, sometimes...this is I suppose why they say religion is an opiate of the masses...
I guess the balance I strike is that I try not to believe in ANYTHING 100%. Ninety-nine is as far as I'll go. I always try to leave a tiny bit of room for doubt. And I frequently challenge my beliefs to make sure they hold up.
There's a difference between, "There's a better life beyond this one, so all I have to do is endure this wretched life and then things will be okay" and "I hope there is a better life beyond this one, but just in case, I'm going to do everything I can to make this life I have now as good as I can make it."
It's frighteningly easy for humans to believe the simple, easy solution. But imagine a set of train tracks. Each section of track is a thought, and each one leads to another. If you switch blindly to a wrong section, you'll start heading farther and farther away from where you want to be, and it'll become harder and harder to get back to where you were. Whereas if you look ahead to where each junction leads, you have a far better chance of choosing the junctions that will keep you on the path you want.
>Thanks for sharing your thoughts :) Religion is always fun to talk about XD
Thank YOU. More than agreement, I like getting thoughtful disagreement that leads to good discussion.
3> Emily Dickenson, I believe, was like that, became a recluse, taking her prayer and worship to her garden instead of a church... some people embrace the belief that worship is what you make it, and that baptism doesn't have to even be in front of people... I have said myself "worship and baptism are ideals... church can be you and God in your backyard garden...and you can baptize yourself in your own bathtub... its not a matter of someone else preaching as it happens, its a matter of if you sincerely believe" ...I can't remember where, but somewhere in the bible it actually says something to the effect of "if you believe it sincerely, then it is so, regardless of what anyone else says"...
4> yeah, if you think you'll fail, you probably will, unless you're Gomez Addams...but as you said, people have to be realistic. embrace and hope for success, but prepare for the possibility of failure...
5> Well, yeah, I would agree that ones right to be is far more important than their right to religion, but thats principle... in practice many people find happiness and enhance the quality of life through their religious beliefs (and some actually manage to do this without being dicks to other people...I know a christian mother who works at a station near my folks house that, before I moved away, would ask me how my boyfriend was doing whenever I came in...)
6> it is, I mean, its part of our human nature to seek out self superiority...and being proven wrong goes against that, so we resist it... and religious zealotry embraces this and plays it as "this feeling is God's will enforcing that you are right" ... its a shame...
7> heh, there are a few movies that do this... The Origin of Lying is a good movie that basically criticizes religion (it feels like christianity in particular)
10> what about "I believe there is a better life beyond this one...but this one is a gift, and I will do everything I can to make the best of what I am given, good or bad, and be the best person I can be...that way, regardless of what is waiting for me, I will leave behind something better when I'm gone..." Either way, I agree that one cannot blindly follow the tracks that are laid out before us... the sheep's path is folly, this is true. If you are going to move forward in life, the ultimate question to ask at each juncture is "does this make me a better person to go this way" and try to see the big picture... starting down a religious path is fine, but to veer so far to the right that you develop a dislike of other people for what they are or what they believe makes you a worse person... so before starting down that path one has to see this possibility and set that line of--- I will maintain to being a better person... strictly criticizing the choice that makes me a "better [religious term]" because at some point, that path will turn me into a zealot...
I guess the core of my beliefs are three things...
-God doesn't want puppets...he gave us free will, so he wants us to choose to believe in him, knowing full well the possibilities...
-Life is a gift, not to be wasted on petty things, so one should always strive to do the best for himself and be kind to others (to a practical extent...being kind to the guy trying to burglarize your house is a bit much, but some people have done that successfully 0.0 )
-friendship and love are more important than money and fame...
Good. I'd give up being an atheist in a heartbeat if someone showed me undeniable proof of God. The true root of science is to accept what the evidence shows, even if it's the last thing you want to be true.
>church can be you and God in your backyard garden...and you can baptize yourself in your own bathtub... its not a matter of someone else preaching as it happens, its a matter of if you sincerely believe" ...I can't remember where, but somewhere in the bible it actually says something to the effect of "if you believe it sincerely, then it is so, regardless of what anyone else says"...
See, I have zero problem with that and I wish that idea was more widespread. One of the things I dislike most about religion is when people use it to flaunt how much more moral they are than everyone else.
Particularly disgusting example: Kwame Kilpatrick committed basically every crime possible while he was mayor of Detroit, then when he got caught and prosecuted, he wouldn't shut up about how God would make everything allright for him. It was some of the most shameless hiding behind religion I've ever seen.
> yeah, if you think you'll fail, you probably will, unless you're Gomez Addams...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Wow, how bizarre is it that I got that!?
>I know a christian mother who works at a station near my folks house that, before I moved away, would ask me how my boyfriend was doing whenever I came in...
Things like that always make me shake my head in disbelief. Obviously, I'm very happy that she's able to understand that gays deserve kindness just like any other people. But in doing so, she is disobeying her religion. The Bible makes it clear that gays are sinners and must be killed. This is a command from Almighty God, man! By showing kindness to you, is she endangering her soul? By ignoring this part of the Bible, is she saying that her morality is superior to God's? And if so, why not leave the religion?
That question has always stuck with me; if moderate Christians have to ignore and disobey so much of what's in their religion's holy book, then why bother to stay with the religion at all? Why belong to a club if you're going to ignore a huge chunk of its rulebook?
> heh, there are a few movies that do this... The Origin of Lying is a good movie that basically criticizes religion (it feels like christianity in particular)
I was a little disappointed in that one. It had a lot of good ideas and funny parts, but it didn't go far enough. It didn't take it's ideas to their logical conclusions. I thought for sure that when he was describing how wonderful the afterlife was, it'd lead to scores of people all over the world committing suicide. And then the film turned into a romance near the end and got boring. :/
> what about "I believe there is a better life beyond this one...but this one is a gift, and I will do everything I can to make the best of what I am given, good or bad, and be the best person I can be...that way, regardless of what is waiting for me, I will leave behind something better when I'm gone..."
I love it. I don't give a fig what anyone believes about the next life so long as they don't ignore this one. :)
>-God doesn't want puppets...he gave us free will, so he wants us to choose to believe in him, knowing full well the possibilities...
That makes me wonder though; what does God think of someone who takes a look at the world, and decides to believe in God and hate him for what he's created?
>-Life is a gift, not to be wasted on petty things, so one should always strive to do the best for himself and be kind to others (to a practical extent...being kind to the guy trying to burglarize your house is a bit much, but some people have done that successfully 0.0 )
I heard about a case like that; where a guy escaped from jail and broke into a woman's house, and he ended up turning himself in because she was nice to him and made him pancakes.
>-friendship and love are more important than money and fame...
Well said. My own theory of the meaning of life is three things, in order of importance:
To learn
To do good
And to have fun.
I look at it like this... People are taught so fervently to believe that things like homosexuality are wrong, that nobody ever really cares to question it... the saddest part is that the most "damning evidence" its two parts of the bible that don't say its innately wrong... Leviticus 18:22 I believe, the laws God sets before the Jews... and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah... everything is ultimately based around those two things... for Leviticus, God doesn't SAY "homosexuality is wrong, don't do it" he simply says "do not as in the land of Egypt" and then talks about laying in bed with men as with women... the bible goes into vivid detail about all manner of adulteries, many of which were common practice in Egypt during the time of the Hebrew enslavement... and one common practice among men was for a husband to take male lovers into the bed he shared with his wife... the bible is very thorough, yet not often truly redundant in my observations...and yet, it doesn't really say anything about lesbians that I recall, yet it supposedly talks pretty sternly about fags... and this particular scripture is the flagship of their rabble...yet, all I can really see is a thing saying "this is another way you DONT cheat on your wife, because its what the Egyptians did" that people have twisted into a tool of hatred...as for Sodom and Gomorrah, people talk about how "oh it was a town of nothing but homosexuals..." which really baffles me...how such a successful and thriving (albeit seedy) place like that could be comprised of nearly nothing but homosexuals...I think it would be the only time in History, save for SF and Ft Lauderdale... anywho... If you look at reference scripture, it is always talking about "inhospitality and pride, greed and yadda yadda, these are the sins of sodom and gomorrah"...in fact, if you really look at what they did...the people that died there regularly violated 7 of the 10 commandments, and were practitioners of at least 5 of the 7 cardinal sins... surprisingly enough, "being a loving gay man in a committed relationship" isn't violating any commandments or cardinal sins from what I can tell... so God destroyed all those people, killed every last one in a rain of fire, for something that isn't even on the "big 10" list ??? and yet, in spite of the fact that buttsex wasn't their big thing, the term "Sodomite" is assumed by all today to mean "sexually immoral" (or gay)... I call shenanigans...
bottom line... that book is a ancient text that has been rewritten and re-interpreted more times than Bill Clinton's statement of "I have not had sexual relations with that woman" and the prime basis of modern christianity is a personal relationship with God, so I think that what you're saying about it "going against religion" should really be "it goes against what you're TOLD to believe"
I was a little disappointed in that one. It had a lot of good ideas and funny parts, but it didn't go far enough. It didn't take it's ideas to their logical conclusions. I thought for sure that when he was describing how wonderful the afterlife was, it'd lead to scores of people all over the world committing suicide. And then the film turned into a romance near the end and got boring. :/
I will agree, it did kinda puss out at the end...I woulda loved to have seen more "big man in the sky" speeches XD
"That makes me wonder though; what does God think of someone who takes a look at the world, and decides to believe in God and hate him for what he's created?"
I would think that God would feel that person's hatred was misguided... think of God as a manufacturer, and mankind as his products... its not God's fault if one of his products kills someone or hurts them because some self-aware entity decided they wanted to do it...God is Smith & Wesson, if one of his guns is used to kill someone, its not his fault... HOWEVER, The God I believe in is more about Mercy (the fire/brimstone thing just doesn't do for me, I mean, he didn't wipe out the Egyptians or the Romans for enslaving his chosen people, right? I'd think that'd be some "I'm gonna fuck you up" shit right there...), so I'm sure he would forgive that person's hatred, provided that they were a good decent person otherwise...
happy new year, lil late, but meh XD
I heard it was 'don't be like the Babylonians' instead of Egyptians, but the point still stands.
>and yet, in spite of the fact that buttsex wasn't their big thing, the term "Sodomite" is assumed by all today to mean "sexually immoral" (or gay)... I call shenanigans...
People also tend to forget that 'sodmy' means any sex that isn't missonary-position sex for the purpose of procreation. Married couples who give each other oral are... drumroll please... sodomites!
>bottom line... that book is a ancient text that has been rewritten and re-interpreted more times than Bill Clinton's statement of "I have not had sexual relations with that woman" and the prime basis of modern christianity is a personal relationship with God, so I think that what you're saying about it "going against religion" should really be "it goes against what you're TOLD to believe"
Good point. Still, I can't help but think that if anyone told me, for ANY reason, 'You have to hate this other group of people to be in our group' I'd be like, 'Then I don't need your group'.
>I would think that God would feel that person's hatred was misguided... think of God as a manufacturer, and mankind as his products... its not God's fault if one of his products kills someone or hurts them because some self-aware entity decided they wanted to do it...God is Smith & Wesson, if one of his guns is used to kill someone, its not his fault... HOWEVER, The God I believe in is more about Mercy (the fire/brimstone thing just doesn't do for me, I mean, he didn't wipe out the Egyptians or the Romans for enslaving his chosen people, right? I'd think that'd be some "I'm gonna fuck you up" shit right there...), so I'm sure he would forgive that person's hatred, provided that they were a good decent person otherwise...
If we keep the metaphor of God as a manufacturer, if I believed in him, my hatred would not be for what his products do, but because his products are *defective*. I think I turned my back permanently on religion the day it really sank in for me the fact that, all life on this planet exists in a constant state of competition. We literally must kill to stay alive. From bacteria to mammals, with barely any exceptions. This is a fundamentally cruel system. To me, it's unforgivable. I can't believe that a God who would create us like this is a loving God.
>happy new year, lil late, but meh XD
Likewise. I did have a happy one BTW. :)
As for the issue of "you have to hate this other group" I don't blame God for that, so much as I blame people's innate desire for superiority...obviously this is a big part of christianity, or rather, most forms of it seem to play on this... "you're a part of this group, so you're better than people who ARENT" and people naturally expand upon this by playing on the innate desire to eliminate or subjugate their "lesser" >.> its the same reason why people on forums will (or at least used to, whenever the net was still young) obsess about post counts/karma/titles/etc... and even on here, some people obsess about watch lists, faves, submissions, etc. they feel as though it makes them "better" than other artists/writers/etc who have only HALF of the watchers they do... face it, you can look at the furry fandom the same way you look at mankind...there are sects, cliques, races, etc, everywhere in every group that hate each other, or try to supersede each other... you have groups of furs that are as aggressively pro-cub/anti-cub as any other expressive group... there are furs so against some other furs ideas they would take a page from the SBC and start picketing against those furs and their ideas... Point is, hatred is not exclusively religious, and even looking deeper into the bible (and supposedly the Quran) it pretty much says "hating people for being different from you is WRONG"... >.> which is probably why I'm so cynical sometimes, people piss me off by being people...
defective? I suppose thats true... I find myself believing more and more that God isn't really perfect, or that his plan is less about making mankind than it was making existence and mankind just popping up in it...the short of it is "I think I believe God developed the rules, and then just gave existence a little push...and is now just watching, very occasionally making little nudges and pokes here and there...and maybe mankind was one of those little nudges"
Isn't that virtually the same as having no God at all then?
...and you turn yourself around?
Is that what it's all about? ;)
We are experiencing testicular difficulties. Please stand by.
Perfect!
Seriously, though, I've long believed that churches should be taxed as businesses. Religion clearly makes a profit, anyone who's seen a megachurch or millionaire televangilist knows that. If they're really a charitable organization they'll be able to write off their contributions like everyone else.
Also, happy belated birthday!
I like the idea of taxing them based on seating capacity. Little bitty neighborhood churches won't be bothered too much, and these big eyesore megachurches will either have to start paying money out the ass or demolish half their area. ;)
so easy to follow these ten commandments
is there any penalty for not following them?
Um... I write snarky journals about you, maybe? ;)