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Religious Freedom

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Aurani

Wojjan wrote:

meanwhile: http://www.allout.org/en/actions/georgia
Let's go back to the middle ages when people like those burnt people who weren't by their "standards"... where is this world going

Hika
Religion is only partly pointless but I can tolerate it as long as I'm not forced to believe something I deem false in my own personal circumstances. It's only meant to be a belief system, not a way of life. That may be a bit hypocritical coming from me as I have partly adopted the Buddhist life style, but that is personally what I believe; there is no way for me to go against how my mother feels about things unless it is out of hand.
gurodoll_old
Saṃsāra, my mind it wanders a dark forest.
noneed
fuck religion
Wojjan
The thing about religious freedom topics in a place like this is that everyone is going to say the same thing, generally: "religion is okay etc etc, but it shouldn't impose itself on other people etc etc, my mind wanders in a dark forest etc etc"
Hika
my mind wanders in a dark forest
Aurani
All our minds wander in a dark forest
mathexpert

Wojjan wrote:

The thing about religious freedom topics in a place like this is that everyone is going to say the same thing, generally: "religion is okay etc etc, but it shouldn't impose itself on other people etc etc, my mind wanders in a dark forest etc etc"
Fine, I'll be a little controversial (to play a bit of devil's advocate) and say that religion is NOT okay, even if you keep it to yourself. Basically, unless you have solid evidence for your claims, anything that is not fact should not be believed and furthermore, can be potentially be dangerous. Simply going to church and representing the masses of people that the pope (or any religions leader) has managed to deceive is just continuing the destructive cycle that can lead to homophobia, lies, and manipulation. The number of people that become raised to believe that "fags should burn in hell" will increase if religion continues to grow; religions encourage and practically breed discrimination, and unless religion itself fundamentally changes this will never change.
gurodoll_old

Wojjan wrote:

The thing about religious freedom topics in a place like this is that everyone is going to say the same thing, generally: "religion is okay etc etc, but it shouldn't impose itself on other people etc etc, my mind wanders in a dark forest etc etc"

Hika wrote:

my mind wanders in a dark forest

Aurani wrote:

All our minds wander in a dark forest
<3
theowest
so much discussion going on already

Personally, I dislike religion. I can't help but get annoyed over it.
Vext_old
Oh dear, nothing good can come from this topic.
Zare
Religions exists because humans are stupid and need rules they can break to anger other humans to have an excuse to kill them <3

my mind wanders in a dark forest
Ephemeral

mathexpert9981 wrote:

words
you've made me pull out my debate stick :D

Basically, unless you have solid evidence for your claims, anything that is not fact should not be believed and furthermore, can be potentially be dangerous.
you do this thousands of time a day every time you look at pictures, even ones of people and things you've seen before and are intimately acquainted with. hundreds of millions of judgements are drawn by your subconscious every day, made with nothing but instinctual earnest. you are a machine that disseminates and coagulates seemingly arbitrary patterns into things that "mean" something - all at the behest of a part of your being that you cannot even control.

Simply going to church and representing the masses of people that the pope (or any religions leader) has managed to deceive is just continuing the destructive cycle that can lead to homophobia, lies, and manipulation.
strawman it up, baby. clearly since homophobia has been insinuated with religion in the past, that means that all religions (ESPECIALLY CHRISTIANITY SNARL) are homophobic and thus are bad. first step in critical thinking is really important: correlation is not equal to causation. this will take you far in life - embrace it, and you'll laugh at silly notions like the one you're putting forward instead of being ridiculed by them.

The number of people that become raised to believe that "fags should burn in hell" will increase if religion continues to grow; religions encourage and practically breed discrimination, and unless religion itself fundamentally changes this will never change.
imperative assertions with absolutely no basis. do you know what we call things like this? we call them prejudices. blanket assertions about discrimination in large society groups is nothing new and by far nothing specific to religions, even if the ethos of some may ardently encourage it. i invite you to actually sit down and read some literature on human group formation in social environments, and you'll see that a lot of things are the way they are fundamentally because of people, not because of the structures and the grouping they create.

personally, for me, religion is a significant part of my life. i am not a regular attender to religious services nor am i particularly pious or devout, but i was raised by parents whom were struggling to escape from the clutches of the jehovahs witnesses and as such, had a very 'neutral' aspect of Christianity taught to me from a very early age. i was taught the core teachings, jesus died for our sins, so on, so forth, with none of the secular associational stuff such as the trinity or any other debated aspects. my father simply sat me down and told me how he saw and felt the world, and how his faith was a massive part of that. my father is very scientifically oriented - his faith has never once interrupted that. he once worked as an industrial chemist and still kindles a deep love for science and chemistry in general despite not being able to work in it anymore due to health issues. i have overarching conversations with him about many different developments in my own field (psychology) and ones I dabble in for shits and giggles.

from all those conversations, and infact, everything i've ever learned, one key aspect stays with me. how immeasurably complex yet startlingly specific almost everything in this planet and perhaps universe is. there are links upon links upon links and then more links where you wouldn't even expect to find links. everything ties itself to everything else in ways that defy belief. the world's systems are so unbelievably convoluted and unspeakably complex to the degree that they self-regulate passively with no intervention required whatsoever.

asking me as an intellectual individual to believe that this all arose from absolutely nothing and is completely a product of chance and iteration is ridiculous - significantly less ridiculous than the idea that another divine or otherwise supernaturally powerful entity created and designed the foundations of the incredibly complex organic systems that underpin our planet and our species' survival in an otherwise toxic and unforgiving universe to our form of life.

believe what you like about religion. i don't really care and the fact that i don't care probably won't matter the tiniest bit to you, and that's great. rail on it for people being stupid and using its bounds as a means to achieve their own means, the same way people argue about governmental structures and how they are often abused for the benefit of the few at the expense of many. rail on it for being a product of opinions and ideals thousands of years old in a world decidedly different and foreign from our current one in every way. rail on it for promoting prejudice, slaughtering kittens and stealing candy from babies because you are too dense to see past group markers like mostly everybody else and are too happy to continue with your kneejerk reaction to everything pertinent religion because you too, like the religious fanatics, are too caught up in their prejudices which seem "internally" correct to sit down and actively contemplate and discuss a matter in depth.

tl;dr - correlation != causation, group affiliation != individual attribution
Bweh
I was going to say something but Eph did it better than me
Clawsmash
religion is shit
gurodoll_old
There is worth to be found in the various scriptures / texts, some are quite beautiful and thought provoking. On the other hand, such teachings that directly encourage segregation and discrimination of others really have no place in the present.

Zarerion wrote:

my mind wanders in a dark forest
I've set up a bank account, just 20% of your income and an eventual relocation to our new church is all that's required for you to find the answers you need, the glimmer of light in the forest, obscured by earthy ignorance.
Bweh
fuck anyone saying they're being oppressed. All agnostics, theists, deists, and atheists are hardly minorities. It pisses me off to see people insulting religion like this yet being too scared to come up to their parents, their peers, or whatever and saying it straight out.

Tanzklaue wrote:

religion is an outdated concept. it was important in older times, because without lies nobody would seek for the truth, but now it's really just an old concept that brings more evil than it brings good things. you could argue that religion brings us important ethics, but ethics are deeply implemented in our culture, so we won't lose them if religion vanishes.

tl;dr

IppE wrote:

Religions are all quite silly and pointless.
I find it to be a fundamental need, just like practicing arabesques is to the professional artist. While our culture retains certain ethics, it's still lacking things such as trust and love. Read Remembering, by Wendell Berry. It shows how our modern society's crumbled as far as how close people are with each other. As in, everyone's so shut in it's sad as hell.

Besides, I find that religious ideals are much better than the general populace's ideals, which tend to be bitter and cynical.

gurodoll wrote:

There is worth to be found in the various scriptures / texts, some are quite beautiful and thought provoking. On the other hand, such teachings that directly encourage segregation and discrimination of others really have no place in the present.
Throw me quotes, do it.

And if you link me to the skeptic's annotated Bible, you might as well go read the NET Bible (with notes), which already has every single note covered.
Oinari-sama
I don't care what religion others believe in as long as they don't intrude my way of life.

There are 2 things I hate the most about religion at the moment:

1) People interrupt an intelligent conversation with non-sense arguments like "earth only existed for a few thousand years," when the conversation wasn't even about religion.

2) Religious group come repeatedly knocking on my door bloody 8am Sunday morning, thinking that they're doing me a favour.
Kanye West

Ephemeral wrote:

mathexpert9981 wrote:

words
more words
I was also raised religious, and I still am religious, although I don't affiliate myself with any organized religion. I don't attend church or anything like that and I don't read any of those stupid outdated books, mainly because I don't want other people telling me what god should be and what I should think. Basically I think it's important to free yourself from these silly influences and believe what you want to believe.

And about that outdated point: I tend to agree with all organized religions today being outdated. Most of it just consists of people telling other people how to think, and I think that's why a lot of people don't like religion. However, I don't think theism in itself is outdated, it's only natural for humans to stipulate causes of our existence and how everything we know came about. That will never be outdated.
Bweh

Kanye West wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

more words
word festival
First of all, these aren't silly influences at all; they're all backed by generations of bright minds, from Boethius to C.S. Lewis. In fact, it'd be very close minded of you to ignore them. Many of "those stupid outdated books" make excellent points and even agree on several matters with each other. Several cultures around the world, from the Far East to the Iberian Peninsula have had their intellectuals, all making similar assertions: Socrates, Confucius, Christ, and Laozi among them. While they all disagree on the nature of God or how evil works, their ideas are still worth considering.

My point is that it's fine to believe what you want as long as you consider other ideas. For all you know you might be ignoring something you'd agree with.

I didn't become such a stubborn Catholic without having read Nietzsche or Dawkins a few times.
Cuddlebun

Wojjan wrote:

meanwhile: http://www.allout.org/en/actions/georgia
I'm concerned as to how I didn't know anything about this and I live in Georgia.



I was raised without religion so I never even knew about Christianity until we moved into the good ol' Bible Belt and kids seemed shocked that I didn't know who God was. Gotta say, I don't mind my upbringing. Though I'd rather have been sitting in church on Sundays rather than out in the hot sun weeding the fucking garden/yard/everything.



fuck weeds
Hika

Cuddlebun wrote:

Wojjan wrote:

meanwhile: http://www.allout.org/en/actions/georgia
I'm concerned as to how I didn't know anything about this and I live in Georgia.
I didn't even take this into consideration when I first heard it because I thought it was a joke. I didn't even notice a link; thank you for bringing this to my attention, Tode.
Well shit, even more of a reason to be angered about things like religion & homophobia.
mm201
*applauds Ephemeral*
Not that it did anything to prevent the steady trickle of troll posts.

Hika wrote:

religion & homophobia.
Not as much as I have reason to be angered at these two words being used in the same sentence. Sometimes I have to believe that right wingers are engaged in a perpetual smear campaign against religion.

I'll just say it. Homophobes are idiots. Young earth creationists are idiots. But they're not representative of Christians in general.
Religion doesn't start wars, people do, usually fighting over economic control of some region.
Religion isn't in opposition to science, it complements it, and must humbly step aside when science contradicts it.
Now carry on trolling and ignore everything I said.
Aurani

Vext wrote:

Oh dear, nothing good can come from this topic.
After reading everything,I have to agree with you on that one.
My mind wanders in a dark forest,all hail our savior and messiah gurodoll.
Bweh

Aurani wrote:

Vext wrote:

Oh dear, nothing good can come from this topic.
After reading everything,I have to agree with you on that one.
My mind wanders in a dark forest,all hail our savior and messiah gurodoll.
I disagree; I think this is the chosen thread.
Hika
Nah, I thought Datzuke had the best thread of all OT. Nothing can compare.
Hoverlegs
This is the worst thread I've ever read

my religon > your religion
Bweh

Hika wrote:

Nah, I thought Datzuke had the best thread of all OT. Nothing can compare.
No no, I mean this thread has awakened a primal urge in me to make quality posts rather than sink into depravity by posting a myriad of dancing lolis and shitposts. It has nothing to do with the quality of the thread per se.

However I agree. This thread is very bad.
awp
I got the impression from OP that the thread was supposed to be about that thing in Michigan or whatever where they're trying to pass a law that says "you're allowed to bully others as long as it's part of a strong religious or moral belief"



it's as dumb as it sounds
Aurani

mm201 wrote:

I'll just say it. Homophobes are idiots.
+1 on that one.

mm201 wrote:

Religion doesn't start wars, people do, usually fighting over economic control of some region.
Well I wish it was only that one..there's far,far more to that than simple "economic control".

Also,basically everything comes down to what Hoverlegs mentioned in a sarcastic manner,and no matter what we do that'll always stay the same..

Hoverlegs wrote:

my religon > your religion
Aeidxst
Religion was created with a good cause like preventing rape, murder, theft etc. I think. It was a positive idealistic system created to inspire harmlesss manners. Yet, like many things, this system too were abused by some people and became this mess. You can believe in a creator's existence if you would like. But you can never trust a book that touched by humans. There will be always some manipulation and exploitation. The sense of religion and the mind of overly-religious people is irrefutably unformed/unadvanced. We don't even need to discuss about their freedom.

But man, fuck that shit seriously. Smoke weed erryday instead. Mah mind 's gonna chill in da duck forest non-stop.

Suddenly my mind is a jungler assassin.
gurodoll_old



Heh.
Azure_Kite
Personally, I am all for other people to believe in what they want; Religions help form a certain general morality, where people generally think and act in similar manners. That being said, one could argue that laws do that, just the same, just without the general dissuasion using eternal damnation or not being to reach the afterlife/your second life/a good reincarnation.

I could go either way. I myself don't believe in any one God or religion, but at the same time I don't think there's anything wrong in someone believing in one. Life is a roller-coaster ride, and sometimes people would like the comfort of having something to hold on to. There are people that can take their belief systems a little too seriously, or that practice an extreme view of a religion, but they're really quite a minority.

As Eph said earlier, there are all sorts of crazy things in this universe, and everything is linked together in such a way that for any one person to say "Yes. That's definitely what happened" is quite absurd. Scientists and Theorists make new discoveries and connections every day, and I don't disclaim that, But until someone manages to go back through all the links, following the chain back up to the point where it all began, nobody can definitively declare that this is what happened. And time travel itself would be hard.
Bweh

mm201 wrote:

I'll just say it. Homophobes are idiots.
You're overgeneralizing, for one thing. For another, hold your tongue; it's not something I can help. It's well within my ability to not oppress, to support, and to treat LGBTs as I would any other human being, but I can't control the tiny ulcer growing in my stomach when they talk to me about their sexual tendencies.

mm201 wrote:

Religion doesn't start wars, people do, usually fighting over economic control of some region.
Well I wish it was only that one..there's far,far more to that than simple "economic control".
Provide examples.

The Middle East is about economic control, despite what they say.

Also,basically everything comes down to what Hoverlegs mentioned in a sarcastic manner,and no matter what we do that'll always stay the same..

Hoverlegs wrote:

my religon > your religion
Nope. Anyone that even bothers studying other religions can tell that each one has some truth to it. And if anyone ever asked why they believe what they do, they'd know that every religion is just about as valid as the next, the only difference being what you place your faith on.

C.S. Lewis alluded in Abolition of Man to something called the "Tao" (pronounced dao) or "The Way." He asserted that several cultures around the world, developed similar ethical values despite being mostly isolated from each other in time and space. All of these cultures, Chinese, Greek, Judaic, Celtic, and so on, managed to somewhat agree on something. " Do to others as you would have them do to you" is a very common one. Most, if not all religions have moral/ethical fundamentals such as these.

Of course, some religions have less arguments backing them than others, though at that point it'd be breaking into sects more than religions in the strict sense of the word. For example, the Orthodox Church has less arguments against it compared to the Catholic Church. Still, it mostly comes down to faith, which has to work on the assumption that "my religion = your religion", otherwise there'd be no doubt and therefore no faith. It was one of G.K. Chesterton's main points and personifies it in The Ball and the Cross; your belief is a big leap of faith when it comes down to it, whether you believe there's something out there or not.
Oinari-sama

Aeidxst wrote:

Religion was created with a good cause like preventing rape, murder, theft etc. I think. It was a positive idealistic system created to inspire harmlesss manners.
That's what I think a "good" believer should do with their respective religion too. But guess what? I've brought up that point when challenged by religious people on many occasions, but their answers are always along the line of "if you believe in the wrong god, then it is pointless no matter how many good deeds you do."

*gasp*

I'm not talking about some thieves/swindlers who cheats people everyday. Most of these hardcore religious zealots are ordinary people, some even have jobs in engineering and field of science (my colleagues for example). Here in Australia. Not some middle-age country. It scares me when I cross a bridge or get on an airplane thinking that it could be designed by one of these people.
Ephemeral
all voices and no ears, this thread
Aurani

Brian OA wrote:

mm201 wrote:

Religion doesn't start wars, people do, usually fighting over economic control of some region.
Well I wish it was only that one..there's far,far more to that than simple "economic control".

Brian OA wrote:

Provide examples.
The Middle East is about economic control, despite what they say.
To provide examples?
I basically live in a place that could be my example for you...Balkan,all major military powers pull the strings here.You cant just blindly tell me that it's all about economic control here.It dates back to the Austro-Hungarian empire, and now that the empire is no more,Germany,Britain,U.S.A. and Russia took that place.They are basically playing a big game of chess here.You can't tell me that all the major powers are giving their best to control this peninsula just because of its economic importance,because there is nothing here to prove that point.From that point of view it's not profitable at all.I myself don't know the true reason(only the ones who pull the strings do) why this patch of land they call "Balkans" is cursed,aside from the strategic position in Europe,but it clearly isn't because of its "economic importance".This is basically the simplest example I could've given to you,yet we can't discuss this further because we're just gonna go in circles here...the only thing I want to add is that religion is basically a mere tool that certain people who rule the world use to control the masses with relative ease.It's in the nature of a creature to hate or fear somebody or something just because it can't understand it,and since most of Earth's population consists of intellectually crippled people,you can only expect religion to be used to control them in more ways than just the economic one.
DaddyCoolVipper

Ephemeral wrote:

long words

Honestly, I think that you can't say Christianity isn't homophobic. If you only believe the "core beliefs" of the Bible, then that means you're just cherry-picking the parts that make sense, which to me just seems ridiculous. IMO, if you're a "Christian", you should believe all of the Bible since you believe is "God's word". If you don't think it's "God's word", then why do you trust the New Testament?



However, if you have your own beliefs like "I believe there is a deity/deities that created the Universe", then fair enough. As long as religions don't interfere with progress in science, human rights, and anything else, then they're fine.
mm201

Oinari-sama wrote:

but their answers are always along the line of "if you believe in the wrong god, then it is pointless no matter how many good deeds you do."
You've been talking to the wrong people then. Let me be the first Catholic to tell you that your good deeds matter more than what you believe.

DaddyCoolVipper wrote:

Honestly, I think that you can't say Christianity isn't homophobic. If you only believe the "core beliefs" of the Bible, then that means you're just cherry-picking the parts that make sense, which to me just seems ridiculous. IMO, if you're a "Christian", you should believe all of the Bible since you believe is "God's word". If you don't think it's "God's word", then why do you trust the New Testament?
This is a very awkward debate that inevitably centers around Leviticus 18. Most Christian denominations do not consider it binding.
Wikipedia comes to the rescue, namely a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas, in explaining why this is not cherry picking:
SPOILER
Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas explained that there are three types of biblical precepts: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. He holds that moral precepts are permanent, having held even before the Law was given, since they are part of the law of nature;[9] ceremonial precepts, which deal with forms of worshipping God and ritual cleanness; and judicial precepts (such as those in Exodus 21[10]) came into existence only with the Law of Moses,[11] and were only temporary. The ceremonial commands were "ordained to the Divine worship for that particular time and to the foreshadowing of Christ".[12] Accordingly, upon the coming of Christ they ceased to bind,[13] and to observe them now would, Aquinas thought, be equivalent to declaring falsely that Christ has not yet come, for Christians a mortal sin.[14]
[...]
Unlike the ceremonial and judicial precepts, moral commands continue to bind, and are summed up in the Ten Commandments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_ ... n_Catholic
Apex_old
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