I cant possibly be angry at something I dont believe in - what does anger me is the way the church has abused its power by using well planned lies as a weapon of social control and frightening generations of children into near catatonic states of obedience..... etc.......
We dont claim that he does, its your claim so you need to prove it
see comment above
see comment above again
once more, see original point
Yes
Yes, we have been trying to tell you this for centuries
But if we exercise that choice to disbelieve we face a supposed eternity of hellfire and torment
How much longer are we expected to wait? Till the powers that be solve the population problem with big bombs from Iran just in time for the rapture perhaps?
I believe Brigham Young had the gift of the gab and the people he was gabbing at were already primed to believe the nonsense......
Thats why they get em while theyre young and fill their poor minds with crap before they are able to reason - thats reinforced by the fear aspect and in my opinion, is religions biggest evil - society is screwed because of it, fear of hell is obviously not working or there wouldnt be quite so many evil people in the world and ironically enough, amongst the most evil of the evil are the priestly child abusers..... wheres their fear of hell
Hi Ivory - its easier to know who you are speaking to if you hit the quote button so the other persons text shows up
It is down to the individual, yes of course but my way of seeing this is that it would be even easier if children were taught about 'all' religions (for the time being) and then allowed to choose which one they like for themselves. I reckon this hasnt been allowed so far because it threatens the power status which has held for so long.
Hiya J, I think its all really interesting and dont know enough of any of the theories yet to stop at any single explanation - just last week there was a breakthrough by scientists creating RNA in a lab
Some of it was opposing religion, some of it was social commentary but pared down to the minimum, I relish the quest for understanding humanity and believe we dont have all the answers, yet, but its easy to see how religious control held power for so long.
Explanations which pacified people in the past are no longer adequate since critical analysis became the norm and we are closer now than ever before to accepting that we simply 'are' and it is 'now' thats important if we are to move forward harmoniously - but memetics is taking care of that - and 'God did it' is a lazy, superstitious and wholly inadequate answer
The only thing we know for certain is that all of this exists and all interpretations so far are nothing more than theory because en masse and for generation after generation, we were taught superstition and fear of reason by people who abused their power to keep us enthralled and awaiting the rewards for our earthly toils in the mythical afterlife - which is evidenced by the disparities between the haves and have nots of the world....
Thats easy! I believe in evidence and replicability - I dont believe in magic or the use of fear - I believe religion is separationist and harmful to social cohesion...... I believe in cognitions not religious explanations - I believe in being a good person because it it the correct way to be, not because its going to earn me brownie points in the hereafter - I believe in the mind and not the soul and I believe in reason and logic and philosophical reasoning and that science (now that its free of the church) is gradually answering my relevant questions - I believe the recent upsurge of evangelism (in various faiths) is because they know that reason is triumphing in the world - I believe in memetics and fractals - I believe the shift is on towards a better human understanding of the energy that is our universal heritage - and I believe that religionistas and politicians are holding us all back from the unity which we all crave..........
If I could have found a way to keep believing I would have done but I simply couldnt sacrifice my mental integrity for the sake of things which simply didnt make sense.......
I was on a path of learning and understanding which differed from theirs but that didnt make me 'bad' in any way other than for them to try to understand my choices, they would have to do a bit of reading which challenged their beliefs and that was why they said I was bad and going against god and the church, they had the blindness that I often see, the fear of stepping out of their comfort zone of blindly believing and existing under the geas of their leaps of faith - Id chosen different, not evil.........
Thats the story of the early days and in the intervening years Ive studied the bible an awful lot more and none of it has done the slightest to convince me that god and the church are anything other than a means of social control........
Nobody knows what happens when we die and plagues now have rational explanations - studies show that prayer doesnt work and miracles are the invention of monks who were high on ergotamine (there was a mold problem on bread in the middle ages) - the bible is replete with contradiction because it was written by man...... I could go on but wont other than to say that I dont think 'blind faith' or 'leaps of faith' are anything to be proud about.
" Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? " Epicurus 341–270 B.C
I dont have faith FL, not in the sense that Christians mean. I dont need faith, I have knowledge(gnosis) I refer to myself as a gnostic atheist. Ive put more effort than most into my quest to find god, I was actually thinking of being a nun one time (I was only 9 though) but by my own choice I went to mass before school for ages and spent my money on prayer cards - I was totally sucked in by the whole thing, the choir sounded like angels on earth and I couldnt wait to be big enough to join in.
Then came the day that the doubts set in. I couldnt get an answer to my question and was told that sometimes when we cant understand something, we have to make a leap of faith - fair enough I though, if my dad said it then it had to be right so I put my question out of my mind and just believed anyway - for a while that worked but within about a year Id stopped going to morning mass and buying prayer cards and the whole thing was losing it magic simply because my questions werent getting answered and as much as Id tried, faith simply didnt cut the mustard.
Theres a whole lot of pomp and ceremony in the Catholic church over changing the body and blood of Christ (you never got to see the body bits by the way) into bits of bread and Id had my ration and got sat down again and had asked, have I really just eaten some god? That moment changed my life.
I never lost the fervor for trying to understand it all and as soon as I could I started getting my hands on books about religion other than those sanctioned by the church and at school. The I Ching and the Tao Te Ching were the first of them and there has never been any looking back since. I discovered what they refer to as 'the way of the superior man' (person) which taught me that there was a way to be good and whole and ethical and caring but from choice, not from fear or from expectations of rewards in the afterlife.
In 1976 I bought my first Dawkins book and started looking at genes and memes and natural selection stuff and of course started to compare all that to my experience of church and that was that.
Recognising the differences between rational inquiry and imposed dogma had set me free - my leap of faith dilemma was finally resolved - I didnt need faith to be a good person and the fact that my family thought I was the lost and wayward sheep was simply their problem not mine.
trish123 Forum Posts (13,724)
ha ha, I know, I usually just ignore his threads but this time I had to make a point 
RE: After 10 years, he contacts me
Congratulations!It seems, when it happens that the pain will never be gone doesnt it - but time does help the healing.