Time to regulate Bible and samurai sword ownership

[Castout]

Originally Posted by Armistead

About 400 AD, the Romans realized they couldn't defeat the Christian movement, so rather than fight em, join them. Before this the church as a whole didn't believe in hell or torture. As the church and government joined they needed tools to control the masses, thus the tools of fear and guilt became common doctrine. Along comes men peod like Dante and whips hellfire and torture into doctrine. The church now backed by the government became agents of torture, after all, if God could torture for eternity, why not man in his name. Sadly torture in God's name became a mainstay until secular law put it aside in most parts of the world. I myself couldn't accept a God that would torture the mass of his creation for eternity. As bad as Hitler is, man has made God a worse monster.

Nothing can be worse that a man claiming God with a bible in one hand and a sword in the other, just ask the indians...

One thing I fear is all these that say they want God back in government. Could it be they want to bring back the fear and guilt tactics of the past.

I think some would if they could. This is what most atheist fear. I don't declare myself to be one, but I certainly understand their fear.

No no yes the Catholic church doctrine has shifted some aspect of the early church teaching that has its effect until today even in non Catholic denominations. But Heaven and hell teaching are there in the scriptures. Of course it's up to the person whether to believe the scriptures or not.

If you would like to know what changed, the bible never teaches immediate life after death nor does it teach immediate judgment after death. Well there's the story of the rich man and Lazarus but against that the whole other verses written by many different people. The bible is NOT perfect I've noted one obvious rather critical fault in it that may have been caused by unintentional mis-interpretation caused by a missing punctuation. But the will to correct it is not there as it's a convenient verse which back the now common Christian doctrine of immediate judgment after death and that of immediate life after death.

Truth is no one can represent Jesus but what is important is that God doesn't NEED anyone to represent him. As a Catholic I've seen lesser educated people who worship his religion than actually trying to grow his spirituality. Spirituality doesn't exist in rituals or long worded or even beautiful prayers but spirituality lies in the heart intention and action of the person. It's about a whole attitude towards the realization of God and what the realization brings to how he treats his fellow man.

Again because of man's fallibility religion or rather faith in God are abused from time to time resulting in fundamentalism and evil committed in the name of God.

What people need to realize is that many people who often call themselves belonging to certain religious group don't always know what is required of them from their holy book( or scriptures).

If the whole world turned into Christians that would only mean that hell would be populated with Christian sinners and so too with any other religions.

Religious people are not always spiritual people. Spiritual growth is a personal thing which doesn't depend on one's religion or his religious commitment!

Originally Posted by Penguin

Short answer: disrespect/animosity could root in 100's of years of oppression and persecution of atheists...

longer:
...........

so I am cool with you , your beliefes don't mind me, just don't try to take my freedom away!

...and atheism is not just another belief, it is the lack of belief

If atheist hated the history of persecution and oppression why would they take it on the people? It was probably the Catholic church who did those oppression and persecution.

I don't mind your atheism as well not even in the slightest. I'm not even going to try to convince you to convert you.

As for atheism being a belief well I have a perfectly good reason to saying that. Yes atheism is a lack of belief that is true but it is a belief of lack of belief. But the people who could understand this are the people who know God exists. So that would probably exclude many religious people(and no I don't hate religious people either, I'm simply telling a fact). In simple word a positive belief is confirmed when that belief is truly known to be true even on the personal level while a belief in the negative cannot be justified at all and can only be proven wrong when the contrary is known to that person even while only on the personal level.

Originally Posted by DarkFish

Well there you are doing exactly what you accuse atheists of: being less respectful towards differing belief systems. Towards my belief system (Germanic Paganism). Yet I don't give a damn. So why do you christians often do? TBH, I barely hear any atheists complaining about christians, while I quite often hear you christians complain about atheists.

And only few atheists hate religious people. At most, they hate the religion, not the people.

And with good reason. I hate your god. Yes, I hate him with a passion. For all that has been done in his name. For the way he screwed up the life of my people for centuries.

As the Frisian king Radboud once said, I'd rather spend eternity in hell with my friends, than in heaven with my enemies.
And like this king, I will not be a traitor to my people. A traitor to my belief. A traitor to what I feel is right. And if that costs me eternity in hell, so be it.

If your god chooses to judge people on their beliefs rather than on their deeds (and for what I know of the bible, he does), he's not worth being called a god. He'd just be another selfish megalomanic massmurderer. Hitler or Stalin, anyone?


Like the tolerance your god teaches? Don't you think it's slightly hypocritical that a christian like you accuses other "beliefs" of having no tolerance?

Unfortunately the aforementioned king Radboud was unsuccessful in his attempts to prevent christianism from infecting Frisia. But the Pagans combated christianism in a civil way. Nothing like the violence with which christians often attacked other beliefs.

You've suppressed people for ages. So if you christians feel attacked by atheists, it's only what you rightfully deserve.

Heilir Æsir! Heilar Asýnjur!

That's a lot assumptions you have about God. Or did those come from personal acquaintance with God? Just because some people believe God is this or that or just because you believe that God is this or that it doesn't make it true though it might be perceived true even by the whole world.

I also didn't mean I disrespect people who believe in other belief aside from monotheistic ones. I truly mean it when I said that I don't hate people with any other belief. Well maybe except satanism at least the real one.

Before you think that Christians desrve to be attacked you need to differentiate between
1. The religious body: the physical organizational church
2. The scriptures or the basic teaching. Much akin to the constitution of a state
3. The doctrines which supposedly is based on the scriptures but more actually made by the religious body claiming authority
4. The people who believe in the scriptures and or
5. The people who believe in the doctrines and or
6. The people who worship God and or
7. The people who worship their religion and or
8. People who have been mislead to commit violence in the name of God.

Generalization and labeling is the root of all misunderstanding.
Again I'd like to repeat that Religious people are not always spiritual people and that religion saves no one yes no one and

that personal spiritual growth is the rights of every man who wish for it and thus should be given freedom to pursue it in ways that he sees fit as long as he's not endangering other people.

To share my opinion majority of mankind are very much akin to a 2 year old when it comes to spirituality. Trying to teach majority of people of spirituality and God is like trying to teach a 2 year old to the concept of biology. Most 2 year old would just resent it and the attempt to teach him or her too.
But the catch is if our intellectual development comes at the price of our spiritual growth then you can guarantee that we will bring a lot of suffering to our fellow man and even end up annihilating each other. This is not an exaggeration. People will simply regress without spiritual growth and become dwarfed and selfish and in return bringing chaos which is an unsustainable level of existence. All that would happen simply because we don't understand ourselves thus we don't understand our fellow men and all that is because we don't put the effort to know God and to grow spiritually. Because we never bothered to look INSIDE for answers to our most crucial and fundamental questions. Because we convinced ourselves the answers to everything must have laid outside of us or in things that never held the answers in the first place or that it never occurred to us to even begin to look inside so that we know much but not ourselves. Don't you know so many evils IF NOT ALL thrive because of ignorance and selfishness and lack of knowledge? In another perspective we may be deserving all the suffering in this world and even responsible for them to a degree personally and wholly collectively!

yes we may be responsible for Hitler or for Stalin or for any other people that proved to be a monster in their time for many other people.