[quote=Iceman

Paul or Saul was a chosen vessel of God because of his intense persecution of God's people...I am guessing now to show such people as yourselves that no matter how much evil has been done a way back to Him was provided by the ransom of His sons life...

It is hard to kick against the cactus spikes no?

quote]


Yes ... and man-o-man were my feet tore up until I learned

Now it's not so hard to walk upright:sunny: :sunny:

Kids! Hey, kids! Remember that talk we had about baiting a few days ago? Those rules still apply.

In other words, keep this 'reasonable' discussion of religion 'resonable' or this thread will be on the fast track to topical heaven.

Thanks,
The Management

Hence why I asked for you guys (The Management) to remove this from my President Bush speech thread thankfully. :up:

Why is a person that looks forward to and believes Jesus will return and rid the world of all us "non-believers" (see: Mass killing? Rapture?) any better than a person who believes in killing people in order to get to a muslim version of heaven/paradise?

Fanaticism is fanaticism. :yep:

It's really too bad that people have to use the church, religion, God, Jesus, Allah, or whoever as an excuse to do the things that they do.

Just be a good person and treat all with respect and you'll go to heaven if there is one. :yep: :know:

I'm shocked that VON_CAPO hasn't found this thread yet! :D

-S

According to this theology, who is going to do the mass killing and under what circumstances?
These are binding commands and praiseworthy acts in Islam's eyes, conveyed both in Quranic verse and in Islamic law for Muslims to obey and carry out since Islam's inception 1400 years ago.

Where is there a theological equivalent elsewhere on the planet?

Thats my belief too.

"Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon."
- Benjamin Disraeli

Hehe...where to start.......from the old and new testament...

Ritual Human Sacrifice Portrayed as Moral:
(Judges 11:29-40 NLT)

God requesting that people be burnt alive:
(Joshua 7:15 NLT)

Burning of Priests of different religions:
(1 kings 13: 1-2 NLT) and (2 Kings 23:20-25 NLT)

Burning of villages that contain non-believers:
(Deuteronomy 13:13-19 NLT)

Forced marriages to rape victims:
(Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)

Rape & Infanticide by god:
(Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)

Rape aided by god:
(zecharial 14: 1-2 NAB)

Kill people who dont listen to priests:
(Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)

Kill Witches:
(Exodus 22:17 NAB)

Kill the gay:
(Leviticus 20:13 NAB)

Fortunetellers are no better off:
(Leviticus 20:27 NAB)

Kill children who hit their father:
(Exodus 21:15 NAB)

Kill children who swear at their father:
(Proverbs 20:20 NAB)

Kill for adultery:
(Leviticus 20:10 NLT)

Kill priest's daughters if they have sex:
(Leviticus 21:9 NAB)

I could copy and paste these all day.

http://www.evilbible.com/Evil%20Bible%20Quotes.htm

There is plenty for fundamentalists to enjoy in both the Islamic and Christian/Judaic texts.

Here, learn something. Rashi's commentary on verses 39-40:
So much for being portrayed as moral. Quite the contrary.

I'm sorry. My time is up for such novice claims. If you wish to delve into how Judaism has understood and taught scriptures since their origination, be my guest. Otherwise, your posts are as unenlightening as Von Capo's copy and pastes of similar ignorant articles.

...and your claims about Islamic texts are more than novice? :shifty:

You are avoiding the issue a little. Even a novice such as my self cam poke holes in any religious text. Altho not with 100% correctness as you point out.

I'm still curious how people claim great truths, let alone reason based on books of, at best, dubious origins and disputed historical accuracy. "Faith evidence for things not seen" my tail - that explains how "reasonable religion" is an oxymoron as someone rightly noted. It can't, by default, be reasonable as evidently the very center of it is trusting - blindly or otherwise - a version of the unverifiable, written by WHO?

I'm not actually an atheist per se, and far from a spiritually dead person. I think there are concepts of "god" that can be perfectly reasonable and can be verified through experience. But I protest the idea of religion as such, and I flatly reject any scripture as anything but books.

Unfortunately I've come to see what the mindset of these wonderful "seeing" people who found out the great truth and now are among the God's chosen. I've only two things to say to you: 1) try to keep the glory to yourself, will you? 2) Never. Ever. Try to call us blind, spiritually dead, degenerate... anything. (It's fortunate noone has tried to call me this to my face, as I guarantee you, they would immediately experience assault causing bodily harm. :doh:)

As far as I am concerned, everybody can believe what they want. But I am one of the people who believe man created god, not the other way around.

It's just sad that there are still people getting killed because of religion.

"Religion is the opium of the people" [Karl Marx]

That can be very dangerous. :down:

Faith in God can be a religion or it can be a personal experience ...

My experience has been a personal one from the ground up ... I had
no where left to go ... read my bio.

Take this scenerio for example:

You are part of a small tribe of people and one day the chief stands up and says we are all going to worship this tree in the image of God and anyone that does not worship this tree will have to flee the anger of the chief of this tribe.

You will be cast out of the village, you will not be allowed to marry any of the virgins of this village and you will not live within it's protected walls.

Now that is religion and that is not a personal experience with God

Not only has this scenerio been played out many times in history, it is also the scenerio depicted in the end times events of the Book of Revelations.

Now read the book of Daniel located here for your easy viewing pleasure:
http://www.amazingbible.org/

The man that owns that web page use to be an atheist ... If you dare, read his personal testimony.

Taking you as a cliffhanger only... :)

It’s both amusing and saddening for me that Buddha’s quote that does not attack anyone or any religion by name, and recommends to make your own experience, and recommends to base your faith on an empirical approach of testing things yourself instead of blindly believing something that was said and written by others and elder generations, is answered by people (who think believing is a virtue) is not countered by argument, but by simply referring to what Buddha recommended to avoid: what they offer is even more blindly believing in hear-say, cult, and miracles. Well, nobody can avoid one’s own limitations. Believing is not knowing. You can only desperately hope that what you believe is true – which in itself does not make it true, just because of your needs. You have no variables whatever that allow to evaluate the probability for that lucky event of having been right in your believing. You simply mimic what others do, and did. In other words: you simply take a gamble. And since you do that systematically, you call that systematic effort a religion.
That’s like calling to make a fortune in Monopoly “the real life”. And when you eventually become a rich man in reality and buy a lot of houses, that does not mean that Monopoly had anything to do with it.

I dealt with people who were strong believers, as a psychologist as well as later as a “freelance” meditation teacher, and believe me, I had quite some of them . And from a psychopathological perspective, all these people had one thing in common: they had a very rigid, hardened and compulsive character structure that did not allow them any flexibility in their extreme polarizing of the world in bad and good, right and wrong, God-pleasing and Satanic. They also showed a great willingness to commit violence if only it was used for the best of man according to their faith’s definition of what is the best of man. Disagreement with their faith always was considered a threat. Doubt questioned their convictions, if their convictions were true – how could it be that that is not obvious for everybody? So doubt was questioning their self-perception at a very basic level, it therefore was perceived a threat, and triggered aggression – all in the name of what is true and truly right and of light and good and some god’s true intentions. This was especially true for people being founded in Islam in general, and Christian fundamentalism or orthodoxy. In fact I consider the one to be of the same evil as the other, and throughout history I can’t see it having brought more good to mankind than evil, quite the opposite. The intellectual handicap already becomes obvious in the inability of these persons to understand that “atheistic” does not automatically mean “anti-religious”. It harms people and strips them of their potentials of being born as a human being, not as a one-cellular life-form. It’s the submissive life based on superstition and total obedience without ever having seen or wanting to see a solid evidence for the reality of such a god’s existence. But asking for the legitimacy of a superior’s ruling – isn’t that the most elemental and legitimate question of all when you are expected to accept a lower place in a hierarchy? It is the kind of life demanded by the old testament and the Quran: it’s not the human dignity Jesus and Buddha were talking of - and both were talking of the same things. Jesus broke with the old testament something almost all “fundamentalist” Christians oversee.

“Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” :) And when a women drowns when being put into a barrel and being thrown down the waterfalls, that is evidence enough that she was not a witch – nice to hear that she wasn’t a witch, really.

I also found that most people, not only in religious contexts, have a more or less obvious craving for being led, for authority, for rules to follow so that they can escape the burden of being responsible for their own life, for their decisions, for their actions. Some also want to serve a higher purpose, a higher cause – and often find their self-definition by defining themselves through that cause, instead by themselves. Such fanatics can become extremely dangerous, and have caused many havocs throughout history – all in the name of their gods. A very totalitarian and unforgiving mindset. Christian love for thy next usually is one of the first victims of such an obsession, often cloaked in lying kind words of faked tolerance.

Gizzmoe named this thread “reasonable religion” (in brief), referring to a phrase of mine.

Reason and spirituality are no adversaries for me. Both are mutually supportive, and of mutual necessity. Pick one and leave out the other, and you will do more bad then good.

Religion without reason - leads to superstition, medieval mindset, the rejection of man’s potentials, and leaving the burden of being responsible to some self-created deities and idols, most obvious in the belief that Jesus had died “for us, and “in our place”. It’s the world as seen by small child, filled with magic and wonder, laws and penalties, the realm of the revenging Vulcan God that is a narcissistic, egocentric tyrant who spits storm and thunder when man does not obey his arbitrary self-glorifying rules. Islam’s Allah, Judaism’s Jahwe (as I understand it and my knowledge on Judaism is limited) , the simplified Jesus and the archaic god of the old testament are the gds Nietzsche has killed, and Buddha and Jesus (if only you read the glad tidings carefully and not stick to word-believing only) have declared them obsolete and useless, too. Religion without reason is dominated by cult, by hierarchy, by priest’S interests, by ritual and ceremony, and it hides a vacuum behind a shining surface. That’s the simple reasons why the churches are empty. Many people feel that their questions will not find answers by this hollow cult. In other words, in religion without reason, man-made form dominates and replaces spiritual content. It is the childish - and at the same time time: selfish - expectation that the laws of nature and the structure of the universe continually is violated and distorted for your, if only you live by the rules and mumble the correct syllables. It is the rejection of the “sapiens”-part in the name “homo sapiens”.

Religion with reason - leads to accepting responsibility for your life, engagement for man, earth, life, altruism. You are in control of your life (or not), you make the decisions (or refuse to do so), and you face the consequences of it – there is no other authority you can blame, and put your case to in order to become privileged to be freed from your responsibility. “Do what you want”, but since you inevitably cause consequences be careful in what you want. That is true justice. Man does not want mercy, only if he is seeking shortcuts, is lazy, tries to avoid the responesbility. What man wants is justice.
It leads to see the differences between how you wish the world to be, and how it really is. It abandons blindly believing something, no matter how absurd it is, without empirically testing and experiencing it, and develop faith (in the meaning of trust) on the basis of your empirical experiences. Each one of us creates his own heaven and his own hell, his own interpreation of it - in THIS world.

You are free to believe what you want, if believing is what you want to spend your time with. But by that you also cause consequences, for yourself and for others. And the cosmic justice is that you can’t evade them, and your victims can’t as well, which is part of your burden. You will determine your future, your life, your world by your own thoughts and actions, and thoughts you rejected and actions you did not carry out. Neither Buddha nor Jesus is condemning you for that, or attacks what you call your faith. Their is no giant punisher in the sky. They simply tell you: you will not escape the consequences, and most people therefore will not reach the goals they are longing for, that is: freedom, and happiness, gained not at the cost of others. That is the simple truth, no matter if you call yourself – justified or not – a Christian, a reborn Christian, a Muhammedan, an Atheist, a Jew, a whatever. It simply does not matter. Jesus and Buddha’s teachings are beyond that level of name-calling, cult and earthly policy-making. They are no religion in themselves – they are the basis of true religion in general. That’s why true Christian teaching (basing on the Christ, not the church) and Buddhism, Zen and Christian Mystic, in the end are just two features of one and the same face.

In the end it comes down to this: some of the most happiest and kind people I met – were people who did not spend a single thought on religion, and religious laws, and Gods and idols. They serve their life a better service than any fanatical and disciplined “believer”, for conceptions have no power over them. Unfortunately, history tells that nevertheless they often become the victims of the oh so well-intended slaughter, missionising and enforced conversion of well-meaning believers. In this, fundamentalists of all religions are equal and of one and the same origin in thought. And I do not exclude many school of Buddhism from that, too. Here, too, cult has taken over spirituality, and turned them into “believers”. What said the Dalai Lama in 1993 in a TV interview that I saw on Christmas 1994 in German third TV channel? “The Tibetan GodKing/Dalai Lama is a worldly elected institution.” The absence of any reaction or reflection in Tibetan Vayrayana-communities was revealing. Besdie Rinzai and Soto Zen, I had tested Tibetan practice and lived in a Tibetan community for the better part of a year. End of 1994 I turned my back on them, and never regretted it since then. Simply believing just is not good enough for me, and never led me anywhere.

Interesting. No reference to the four gospels and especially to the tradition of Jesus' teachings. But the word "Christ" is where the term "Christianity" is deriving from. The rest of the bible - archaic superstition in the old testament, ursurpation of power and abusing Jesus for personal interests in the new testament (like Paul as discussed earlier).

An no, I do not think that Jesus worked mircacles or was a higher being. He just was wiser than many other human people.

Skybird, I'm very impressed. That's essentially what I'm gradually arriving at myself - I just don't have the age/experience behind me as yet.

That's my main issue with the religious types. They're ignoring the repercussions of being human. Preaching the laws of morals and coming up with complex codes, and yet ommitting the most basic laws of cause-and-effect, or rather diverting them into something they shouldn't be. I tend to see the whole idea of religious submission/salvation as an insult to humanity/existence. It presumes a universe that's essentially broken and bad, seeking another world, whereas I don't see any reason for it; this one is perfectly functional and, in its own merciless way, perfectly fair. If there's a judgement in this world that I fear, it's the judgement of probability. Unlike the arcanely baseless religious laws, that one is always right. :hmm:

Just to qualify my standpoint, I'm generally in agreement that real Christian and real Buddhist philosophies of life are essentially good and reasonable. Yes, please, subscribe me to a world where everyone is a True Christian! Couldn't think of anything better or anything more unlikely to actually occur.

Welcome to some of the fundament in Nietzschean thinking. It is often said that he was a nihilist, and that he "killed God." That is not true, and only illustrates lackiong understanding (although he made it easy at times to misunderstand him by his bitter sarcasm). What he did was killing wrong idols and false gods, and giving man back his dignity, and reason to live and try to make the world a better place and help people. So Nietzsche again, as I have shortened and quoted him in "What it's about":

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the beyond" - in nothingness - thenone has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct - henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life… Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path." – “One thing only is necessary"… That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf - it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. […]The "salvation of the soul" - in plain English: "the world revolves around me." … […] To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity ever perpetrated.

Hardkly the words of a nihilist - but the words of someone suffering from grwoing bitterness and aggressiveness for seing false idols taking over and killing anything in the world and human life that make it a worthwhile place for Nietzsche to live in - and stand up for it. A nihilist does not defend the world and does not try to imporve it - he rejects it. Nietzsche defended, and his "superman" (Übermensch) is the man that has left the traditional religious conceptions that he and me are criticising behind. He simply is beyond such coneptions of man and life and meanings. not more and not less Nietzsche's superman is meaning.

The term nevertheless of course was open for multiple distortions, perversions and abuses.