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.

Aha!

Actually, I've been hovering over Nietzsche for a while. I have "..Zarathustra" on the shelf now, but it's sitting there while I cautiously probe my way towards Nietzsche, largely through people whose opinions I respect (e.g. my father), in part out of concern that I might end up approaching him with too much enthusiasm. I think it's about time I start reading.

If my interpretation of "nihilism" in the Nietzschean sense is right, then I'm perfectly with Nietzsche on this one. It's probably my main belief that yes, nothing can really be accomplished on the level of existence. Whatever one does, on the universal level of things it is (or they are) equal to precisely nothing; in the end, whatever you do, you will never win against the laws of existence. The idea of "god", in my view, is as the principle (rather than a being) behind the order of everything. Gurdjieff had a nice (and, as usual, somewhat sarcastic) name for something like that - "Trogoautoegocrat" - the process by which everything in the universe is the way it is. On the other hand (again, this is my view), a lot can be accomplished in the realm of being, being in the sense of consciously living life, acting and reacting, making choices and accepting repercussions. For me, the proper way of being assumes goodwill. Between the impossibility of achieving anything in the former (existence), and the possibility of achieving something in the latter (being), I think there is enough reason to be humble, good-willing and reasonable. Which to some apparently requires the threat of divine punishment to get into their head - even in a backwards way.

:D:up:

Top Text SkyBird! Both wise and well written. Thankyou! :D

Perhaps you are putting the Buddha and Jesus a little too close together tho. There are big differences, which I am sure you are aware of. I find it a little difficult to find the similarities that you hint at.

I find Nietzsche lacking in many ways. Perhaps that's because I don't like his overly-powerful writing style or perhaps its just because I had to study him for far longer than I would have liked. ;)
Nietzsche was, however, a great leader for the thinkers that came after him. I think many of them do a better job in applying reason to religion.

When you mention "Buddha’s quote" which quote are you referring to?

Thanks again for a enjoyable read! :D

Reasonable Atheism in brief............
 

The burden of proof is on the atheist.

Please prove that you are correct and that God does not exist.

Dude you been watching to much tv "Sith" lol....Christ came to fufill the law not abolish it.Read the New testament again I think you missed something....

and CCIP....


What is so complex about the law of Love that Jesus taught?...

and you go on to say it presumes the universe is broken?....the universe is not broken the problem is man thought he could be come like "God" to know good and evil...well we know it now don''t we?

this is the Crux, the Fine point ...the main Theme in aLL Skybird's "Fundamental Christianity" examples, yet it alludes him..."JESUS CHRIST" is the only name in Heaven and Earth by with a man will enter into Heaven..not by deeds of his own or any thing he may do but by Grace and grace alone....

all sin is paid for in full by blood and body...

so here you go....a free ticket into paradise...no need to blow yourself up as a martyr...no need to try to keep 1001 Old Testament laws by which no man can accomplish ,no blessings from the virgin mary...or however much incense you burn and gongs you bong are gonna get you into heaven.....

The law of love is what Jesus Christ preached....you know why you think this law is so hard to keep...it is because of the sin at home in your body has you in chains and does not want to let you go ever....lest you confess your sin to God and accept His Son as your savior and your soul be Re-Born and then you can move forward in life in peace of mind and your works then can be found acceptable to God...

Love ....tough law.:up:

Wow Iceman! Ive never seen it like that before!
Your right! How else can anyone deny that Christ is the only way. After all, it was Christ him self that said that he is the only salvation from the path of sin AND the only way to find the path by which we can enter heaven!
All we need is to accept Christs love in our selves and to reject all the other false paths that are paths of sin.
Why can't Skybird and those like him see this? Why cant they open their eyes like you have opened mine?

I think they are scared to accept the lord JESUS CHRIST. They are scared because Jesus is all loving, but they can not love him.
They are scared to love the only one who can save them from the paths of sin they walk along. Instead of letting them selves Love Christ they have chained their minds with reason and they cower and hide behind rationality.


How much would Jesus have to do before they accept him?

Perhaps they want Jesus to come down to earth and show himself?
Perhaps they want him to show he is the son of god?
Perhaps they want him to show them the path to heaven and the consequences of sin?
Perhaps they want him to show his love for them?
Perhaps they want him to die for them?

HE HAS DONE ALL THESE THINGS

This is staring them in the face, but they still can't accept it. They even try and say it is wrong. You can not say love is wrong! You can not deny love! You can not deny Christ!
Deep inside they have to know this like we do.