Religion and scuba

[agilis]

I disagree. Jesus was not promoting communism, democracy, a republic, liberalism, conservatism or any of the things that have been mentioned. He was promoting his fathers kingdom, governed by his father a wise king. Those that follow Jesus' teachings will not be doing any of the things that give Christianity a bad name. Those that do those things are not in his kingdom, regardless of what they claim.

I disagree. I think He was promoting the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

Just kidding.

I think you miss the point. Jesus gave all sorts of directions, mandates and instructions called, in general, the teachings of Jesus. These teachings were anti-materialistic, they condemned greed and the acquisition of material wealth, instructed people to be peaceful, to love, to share, to forgive, to be humble, and to do all these things not because of some self-serving desire to enter the kingdom of heaven but because they accepted that unselfish love was the primary goal of their creator.

All of this is very clear in the four gospels. What preachers and politicians have said over the past two millenia is completely irrelevant. Organized religions are completely irrelevant, and most of these Bible-thumpers are decidedly unchristian. By their works ye shall know them.

My idea of a real Christian is someone who has studied the teachings of Jesus, and who attempts to the best of their ability to structure and restructure their life in accordance with those teachings. Obviously, there are no wealthy Christians. There are no arrogant Christians.There are no cruel Christians. There are no vindictive Christians. There are no selfish Christians. There are no authentic Christians who do not try to live a life that reflects the teachings of Jesus.

Doing so is a very difficult task. It runs counter to our animal instincts. I regard a someone who acknowledges their imperfections and their limitations but who tries mightily to do their best according to the teachings of Jesus as a true Christian.

There are damned few of them around.

 

[Freewillow]

By the way, athéist, I am not sure, so agnostic, definitivelly.

 

[dfx]

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Matthew 10:34

Jesus obviously was a warmonger!

Or perhaps he never existed.

 

[drrich2]

"The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don't want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don't want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you. You know what I mean?"

Dr. Mike, the quote you shared makes another point. It's an example that what from a religious perspective had been a matter or moral right & wrong, judged from an omniscient holy God, becoming from an atheistic perspective a matter of personal preference. He doesn't want to rape or murder. Much like I don't want to go deer hunting or take up tennis. But it he did want to, for some reason, & saw an opportunity to do so & get away with it, there'd be little stopping him.

A diminished Christian influence in society probably won't quickly generate legions of psychopaths, serial killers & sadists, but it may well legitimize sociopathy.

Richard.

 

[Freewillow]

For those that believe in the truth - or lack of truth - of what is written in the gospels, I suggest to read the last secret from José Rodrigues dos Santos. .

 

[dmoore19]

Yes,

Do you?

This thread is probably bound for the PUB anyway. It is rather off the path.

You do know the name of this forum, right?

 

[agilis]

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Matthew 10:34

Jesus obviously was a warmonger!

Or perhaps he never existed.

Jesus was only a man, and a poet. He often spoke in metaphor, for effect, and to awaken. Matthew also tells us that when Peter drew his sword against the Romans who had come to arrest him, Jesus had him desist and said " those who draw the sword will die by the sword".

 

[divad]

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.

That's just the old dilemna. Restated recursively.

 

[drrich2]

Jesus was only a man...

To a Christian, Jesus was & is the Christ, a part of the Trinity, himself God come in the human form to sacrifice himself as payment for our sins before holy God. Not a victim of the Jews or Romans.

I'm well aware saying so probably won't change any minds, but at least in my own small way, I assert that.

Richard.

P.S.: Someone mentioned Jesus having his disciples not go to the gentiles initially. The Gospel was preached 1st to the Jews, with whom God had a long-standing relationship.

 

[dfx]

Dr. Mike, the quote you shared makes another point. It's an example that what from a religious perspective had been a matter or moral right & wrong, judged from an omniscient holy God, becoming from an atheistic perspective a matter of personal preference. He doesn't want to rape or murder. Much like I don't want to go deer hunting or take up tennis. But it he did want to, for some reason, & saw an opportunity to do so & get away with it, there'd be little stopping him.

A diminished Christian influence in society probably won't quickly generate legions of psychopaths, serial killers & sadists, but it may well legitimize sociopathy.

Richard.

Here's a breakdown of the religious affiliation among the prison population. It clearly shows how your proposed relation between religion and morality is deeply rooted in reality. Or something.