FAO: Stupid people.
Comments
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yeehaamcgee wrote:
Of course, I also think that maybe these good morals and principles may just be human nature, and do we really "need" religion to teach them to us?
I am of the opinion that we all have a moral compass. wether this is innate or learned through experience is a different discussion. But i think that God, Faith and principles are great but religion corrupts these things (in my opninion) by developing them into a set of rules and laws that must be obeyed for fear of damnation. This all detracts from the fact that God is different to each person. For some people 'God' might come in the form of science etc.
A lot of teachings are contradictory. How can a omni benevolent God possible spite people, how can there be eternal suffering in hell if God loves everybody? To me it is just power control.
P.S: i have no idea if anything i have just wrote makes any sense at all
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Its important in all of theis to remember that God and religeon arnt the same thing, people often look at me funny when i say i hate religeon, but i do. I love God, not the often Selfish, greedy, power hungry, hypocrytical and corrupt world of religeon.
Even though, we may technicaly be a "religeon" as JW's we dont have a clergy, are funded entirely by volentary contributions, and are totaly politicaly nuetral. We do our best to avoid the usual pit falls of religeon, we arnt perfect though, obviously.
Another intresting point is that we are actually a registered charity.....
And we dont go round telling people they will die, or burn in Hell (we dont belive in Hell at all), we only go round to help people understand the Bible, should they want to. This isnt always understood.I like bikes and stuff0 -
My kids go to a CofE school and are tought Christian Values, which are basically as Yeeha says, good morals and principles - the difference between right and wrong, I'm not religeous, but I still believe in the same values.
didn't really appreciate the Jehova's coming around on Christmas day though, but perfect time to recruite lonely people on there own at that time of year.
It's getting the right balance between religion and real life, whatever religion you are.. now these people are just plain, well unbelievable!!..
http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Burn-A-Koran-Day/134718123226530?v=wall0 -
yeehaamcgee wrote:
Of course, I also think that maybe these good morals and principles may just be human nature, and do we really "need" religion to teach them to us?
That's what I think. I'd like to think I'm a pretty decent person. But that's because I just think it's the right thing to. I'm not only good in order to get a reward, which isn't 'good' at all, it's actually pretty selfish.
If religion was the only moral arbiter then we wouldn't have the situation where religious people look at their holy books (I'm thinking old testament) and say "well obviously that doesn't actually apply now", or "it's just a metaphor". The fact we can look at at the OT and say "yeah, I don't think it's actually right to go around murdering people, or making sacrifices or raping people or stoning them to death or selling your daughters into slavery (or whatever deranged stuff they did in the dark ages)" means that we're using something else to judge religious morals.
So we agree with the 'religious morals' that line up with our inbuilt moral compass, but ignore the ones that now look savage and primitive. We couldn't do that if we needed religion to be 'good'.
So if you don't believe in it, it's often said that religion is important anyway because it gives you a sense of right and wrong. But if we judge the rights and wrongs of religion by some other inbuilt moral standards, what exactly is the purpose of it?
Not that anything 'needs' a purpose in order to exist, of course.0 -
joshtp wrote:
And we dont go round telling people they will die, or burn in Hell (we dont belive in Hell at all), we only go round to help people understand the Bible, should they want to.
But doesn't the bible itself say that?Matthew 18:9 wrote:And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.
Kind of suggests that there is a 'hell'. So does helping people to understand the bible, mean helping people fear hell.0 -
Haha! good one....bails87 wrote:joshtp wrote:
And we dont go round telling people they will die, or burn in Hell (we dont belive in Hell at all), we only go round to help people understand the Bible, should they want to.
But doesn't the bible itself say that?Matthew 18:9 wrote:And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.
Kind of suggests that there is a 'hell'. So does helping people to understand the bible, mean helping people fear hell.
This is a classic mis-translation, produced by many church backed translators to fit their doctrine of Hell that was originaly brought into the church to force people to hand over cash to be "saved from eternal damnation"
Its a miss-translation of the original greek "Gehena" which was the name of a giant garbage dump outside Jerusalem, The word was used to convey eternal destruction, or death, with no hope of return. but not eternal torment.I like bikes and stuff0 -
And right there is the convenience of all your religious information being held in an ancient book. ''Oh classic mistranslation''.
I seem to remember reading about how over a thousand years ago the bible was '' re-written'' to suit the means of some bloke.
Another problem I have with the bible is why some many chapters have been omitted. The nostic gospels spring to mind. It can just be chopped and changed to suit those teaching what they want to teach.0 -
yeah... i see what you mean... but the best you can do is get the Original or as close to the original scripts as posible, make sure they agree with any other scrips of the same passage, and then be very carfull to translate it correctly and produce a Bible that is as acurate as posible.
Its when people start copying and translating from copies that have alreday been translated and copied many times.... then mistakes crop up.I like bikes and stuff0 -
if you have a spare 45 mins watch this (from channel 4 a few weeks back)
and read the book if you have longer.
it's really quite interesting.
some terrifying people in it. the creepy american baptist preacher and the muslim convert.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4321574955310561251#0 -
I think something we are getting out now is that the Bible is falable.
It really isnt the word of god (if your religuos and believe these things) but the words of god translated by man, which meny have been small petty and greedy men to benefit there own ends.
This makes alot of it untrustworthy as a source for the basis of religion. just as an interested veiw. There may or may not be a god. But surely the way isnt through heavily corrupted and mistranslated material?0 -
joshtp wrote:Haha! good one....
Sorry, is that passage some kind of classic peice of "OMGZ religion is teh gheyz!!11!*&!!" 'evidence'? I genuinely didn't know, just found an online bible and searched for 'hell'.This is a classic mis-translation, produced by many church backed translators to fit their doctrine of Hell that was originaly brought into the church to force people to hand over cash to be "saved from eternal damnation"
Its a miss-translation of the original greek "Gehena" which was the name of a giant garbage dump outside Jerusalem, The word was used to convey eternal destruction, or death, with no hope of return. but not eternal torment.
This is more why I pointed it out. The mistranslation and changing of passages, accidental or otherwise, means that things take on new meanings. Again it wasn't aimed at you. And I've got to commend you again for keeping a level head and putting across your points clearly and calmly.0 -
psymon wrote:if you have a spare 45 mins watch this (from channel 4 a few weeks back)
and read the book if you have longer.
it's really quite interesting.
some terrifying people in it. the creepy american baptist preacher and the muslim convert.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4321574955310561251#
I have read the book, didnt realise there was a programme about it aswell. Legendary chap is Richard dawkins 0 -
alexj2233 wrote:psymon wrote:if you have a spare 45 mins watch this (from channel 4 a few weeks back)
and read the book if you have longer.
it's really quite interesting.
some terrifying people in it. the creepy american baptist preacher and the muslim convert.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4321574955310561251#
I have read the book, didnt realise there was a programme about it aswell. Legendary chap is Richard dawkins
im onto his next book on evolution.
he did a series of programmes for more four all very interesting.
i love dawkins as he isnt afraid to confront people and 1000x more articulate than i am in matters like these.0 -
bails87 wrote:joshtp wrote:Haha! good one....
Sorry, is that passage some kind of classic peice of "OMGZ religion is teh gheyz!!11!*&!!" 'evidence'? I genuinely didn't know, just found an online bible and searched for 'hell'.This is a classic mis-translation, produced by many church backed translators to fit their doctrine of Hell that was originaly brought into the church to force people to hand over cash to be "saved from eternal damnation"
Its a miss-translation of the original greek "Gehena" which was the name of a giant garbage dump outside Jerusalem, The word was used to convey eternal destruction, or death, with no hope of return. but not eternal torment.
This is more why I pointed it out. The mistranslation and changing of passages, accidental or otherwise, means that things take on new meanings. Again it wasn't aimed at you. And I've got to commend you again for keeping a level head and putting across your points clearly and calmly.
err, not really, but it is a pretty common one, and often quoted as evidence of hell, even though its blatently inacurate.
yeah, of cource, there has been alot of mis translation, and it has led to alot of wrong interpretation....
Why thankyou!
I like bikes and stuff0 -
There is alot of interesting things in the bible.
A classic is angels which were there to guard the ark, all being scary and terrifying. Then in the nativity gabrielle says do not be afraid (the idea being he is scary to behold) But go to any church and what images do you see?
Mans take in religon overtaking the historical veiw. I find religion to changeble to suit modern circumstances(and don't get me wrong i'm using the bible and christianity because its where i am most familiar). As always I'm for faith and belief in something (though i don't really share it) but religion is scary and the books that drive it are unconvincing to me.0 -
there definately is a hell and all of you godless heathens are headed right there.0
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I'd like to offer a few of my thoughts - not because I think I know any more than anybody else, but because I've been arguing/debating/reading/thinking/researching the subject since long before most of you were born! In fact since 1959 when the vicar at my confirmation class couldn't answer my questions about god and instructed me to have faith that what the church told me was true. That's when I turned away from christianity and went on my own lifelong search for 'The Truth'.
Since god (as in monotheism - meaning a single deity) was invented about 3,000 years ago, men have debated and argued it's existence. Professor Dawkins must surely be the cleverest and most determined in his efforts to prove it's non-existence. His efforts culminated in The God Delusion but he could still only prove the improbability of a god, which isn't the same thing.
The problem is that the only proving tool we have (in English) is the 26 letter alphabet and 10 numbers (including zero). There is a finite amount of ways that they can be re-arranged and none of them actually prove anything. It would be naive to think that we could adequately describe all the mysteries of the universe in 36 symbols, so why bother to try? Why not accept that there is a mystery and that mankind will never understand the whole of it.
The only satisfactory conclusion is that of yeehamcgee's. To be brave enough to say 'I don't know'. Because the bottom line is that none of us do know and none of us ever will.
Having said all that, I still reserve the right to my own opinion 8)Canyon XC 8.0 '11
Whyte 19 steel '100 -
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Wherever that came from is certainly a mis-translation at least, in one way.bails87 wrote:joshtp wrote:
And we dont go round telling people they will die, or burn in Hell (we dont belive in Hell at all), we only go round to help people understand the Bible, should they want to.
But doesn't the bible itself say that?Matthew 18:9 wrote:And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.
Until surprisingly recently (of course I'm not talking the sixties here ) Christianity's "hell" was a cold place. Which also brings about some irony in the phrase "when hell freezes over".
I can't remember when exactly it was "adapted" to fit the beliefs of people they were trying to convert, but I believe it was something to do with christianity in western Europe.0 -
I'm loving the drawings posted by Grondel
Are you drawing them yourself?0 -
yeehaamcgee wrote:Are you drawing them yourself?
Nah. Just part of a series that I saw online some time ago. Funny as HELL!
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yeehaamcgee wrote:I'm loving the drawings posted by Grondel
Are you drawing them yourself?
agreed.0 -
Yes. That gave me another thought. I might need some help on this theory :?psymon wrote:i like.
but i also like that science will never stop searching for the truth.
and, i believe one day find it.
It occurs to me that it's probably scientifically impossible to prove the non-existence of something? This leaves Prof. Dawkins and the atheists with an impossible task. Yet the other side could totally win the argument in one fell swoop. God could prove it's existence quite easily by appearing on prime time TV and performing some miracles. Or creating a new species or something irrefutable like that. I don't actually intend that to sound as trite as it does but to illustrate that proving the existence of something is reasonably easy.
It seems a bit curious somehow that the creationists haven't actually done so.Canyon XC 8.0 '11
Whyte 19 steel '100 -
This is a common criticism of religion (and quite a good one IMO). However, theists usually reply by stating that faith is central to their beliefs so if God were to show himself then faith or free will to choose a good/evil life is removed (to be fair, this isnt a bad counter criticism).0
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alexj2233 wrote:This is a common criticism of religion (and quite a good one IMO). However, theists usually reply by stating that faith is central to their beliefs so if God were to show himself then faith or free will to choose a good/evil life is removed (to be fair, this isnt a bad counter criticism).
thats pretty bloody convenient aint it?0 -
i'll bloody your convenient in a minute0
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You don't have a good bloody in you.
or.
You wouldn't know a good bloody if it smacked you in the face.
That is all.0 -
psymon wrote:alexj2233 wrote:This is a common criticism of religion (and quite a good one IMO). However, theists usually reply by stating that faith is central to their beliefs so if God were to show himself then faith or free will to choose a good/evil life is removed (to be fair, this isnt a bad counter criticism).
thats pretty bloody convenient aint it?
Oh yeah definetly, but trying to argue with religion is impossible, as soon as you find a criticism, the goalposts move to accomodate the criticism.0
