Religion and scuba

[Sonnylynnvick75]

Wow, I didn't expect this many replies over night. Thank you to those who have contributed positively vs. the "if youre looking for correlation I doubt you'll find it." I'm simply observing. For instance, (poses another question) does diving, reinforce your beliefs? or did diving change your beliefs?

I'll give an example:

a man once told me: "I'm a Christian. I'm not a baptist, a COC, a methodist, etc. I'm a Christian. I follow my God, I do not follow church, I do not follow a book, I do not follow a leader, I follow my God. I am accepting of people of all religions and I support them in the individual free thought regarding religion. Diving has personally helped me to secure my personal beliefs and helped me to grab a bigger picture of the earth other than just the world topside."

 

[agilis]

"I Follow my God"? Does this man mean the Biblical Jesus Christ as depicted in the four Gospels?

A nice trick if he can pull it off. "Give up all you have" -"If a man has two coats keep one and give the other to the poor"- "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven", and dozens of other examples of Jesus the primitive communist. Then there are the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount, and the example of the "Good Samaritan (Palestinian, really)". And the somewhat confusing injunction "Go not to the Gentiles"

I've seen very few people who come close to being a true Christian. The overwhelming majority are innocent unconscious frauds, adherents only to a name, their masquerade enabled by centuries of fast talking charlatans who have completely changed the message of Jesus into something unrecognizable, into a lie.

Know then thyself

presume not God to scan

The proper study of mankind

is man.

Alexander Pope (1734)

 

[Sonnylynnvick75]

I do believe he was referencing the biblical Jesus Christ while also noting that other people are free to worship whatever god they choose.

 

[dfx]

I do believe he was referencing the biblical Jesus Christ while also noting that other people are free to worship whatever god they choose.

Except that the bible explicitly forbids worshipping other gods.

 

[Sonnylynnvick75]

Except that the bible explicitly forbids worshipping other gods.

I'm just stating that specific persons beliefs that he shared with me. As I stated he also mentioned that he does not follow a book.

 

[dfx]

I'm just stating that specific persons beliefs that he shared with me. As I stated he also mentioned that he does not follow a book.

Well, that doesn't really work, does it? I mean, if someone believes that Jesus is god, or the son of god (or both), then that's from a book. People don't come up with that idea on their own. And they believe that part of the book, then why don't they believe all the other parts as well?

I don't expect you to defend this or anything, I'm just saying.

 

[drrich2]

This thread was doomed to tangents from the start. I see no indication Jesus was a communist; there's a difference between encouraging people to be giving vs. telling them the State owns all your stuff and will give away what it chooses without regard for your wishes.

As for religion causing evil, religion is what defines what is evil, assigns an inherent value to human life, and gives us a basis to condemn evil.

From a Godless perspective, where humans are basically a hyper-evolved troop of chimps, there is no endowment of inalienable rights by their Creator. Just as it's not 'wrong' for a hunting pack from a chimpanzee group to ambush and kill members of a rival chimp group, why would whites taking blacks for slaves to enrich themselves & advance their well-being be wrong? Or oppressing women? For one group within a species to compete against another is not called evil when it's wolves or hyaenas.

Rights, the value of human life, all these things become arbitrary systems devised by human communities, which promote health & longevity in large numbers (though perhaps compromise the species by blocking natural selection in some cases - hence the movie Idiocracy), but there is no 'higher moral truth' to them. Some people consider these truths to be grounded in a large consensus, I suspect, but pre-Civil war southern U.S. society, nazi society & a number of other examples show us a large society can devise value systems many of us now consider repugnant and wrong.

Not because they're bad for the species, or genetic fitness, but because many of us believe humans are 'special' and have a moral consciousness and grasp of some moral truth.

Then again, I suppose some probably think they're high-achieving self-deluded apes with delusions of grandeur.

Richard.

 

[redacted]

This thread was doomed to tangents from the start. I see no indication Jesus was a communist; there's a difference between encouraging people to be giving vs. telling them the State owns all your stuff and will give away what it chooses without regard for your wishes.

Yes, I think I see the difference:

 

[FinnMom]

I suspect if you could take any diver and put him in very promonged, nasty, numbingly scary situation, your religious % might nonetheless reach 80%.

 

[doctormike]

I see no indication Jesus was a communist

Maybe not, but he sure was a liberal!

This thread was doomed to tangents from the start

I think that was the point of the thread...

Now get to the part where Jesus threw the cave divers out of the temple!