OMG, Stairway to heaven is Satanic, Proof, Listen and read the lyrics

[germanos]

Originally posted by Son of David




The most obvious example is the case of the opening chapters of Genesis.

A literal interpretation would lead you to believe that God made light, separated the heavens and the seas, made trees and bushes and plants, made living creatures, made man, etc all on one day for each act.

snip

Atheism is simply a religion which denies God!

Answer me this please.

Genesis 1 describes the creation of the world in six days. Starting with the basics, then animals and to top it of: man and woman in one go.
With Genesis 2 it starts all over from scratch. Only now we begin with Adam, who is bored and gets animals to keep him occupied (he has to bloody name every-one of them!) and when his boredom is still unsatisfied, god grants him Eve from his rib.

[germanos]

BTW, has anybody listened to the Bible being played backwards ?

[Elok]

I tried, once, but all I heard was a lot of garbled noise that sounded like "suck it, Falwell." Whatever that's supposed to mean...

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Elok


Intensive introspection helps, as does theological study, talking things over with a priest...it varies. Ultimately, I'm not inclined to believe that what some people call "faith," ie memorizing the twelve titles of Jesus's first cousin and the virtues they are held to represent, matters anywhere near as much as sincerity and devotion to self-improvement. True faith is not the memorization of the trappings of a mythology. It works on a very different level.

This statement puzzles me a bit - please explain why you need a god/religion to self-improve ? (in case you refers to earlier discussions about ethichs/morale, please don't answer in details - that needs it's own thread )

But I'd rather not start the same old argument. I'm just saying that you have a tendency to automatically write up anyone religious as a stereotypical clay-painted tribal savage doing a rain dance and then stoning a man for having the Evil Eye. As a result, you fall into the same pharisaical attitude found in, uh, people like the one currently under discussion: at least I'm not one of THEM. You appear to be living in a dualistic mythology, Forces of Reason in eternal conflict with Primitives, ignoring any evidence that may contradict that theory (as when Stalin was reclassified as a "religious leader" because he fostered negative activities you normally associate with religious belief, despite being an atheist.).

Your description of how religious people acts is a little rough - religion organisations has actually refined their methods and rarely fall back to these - due to common self-improvement they doesn't really catch on anymore.

I'm a little confused - I don't think that I ever has said that religious people are primitive - there are lots of very intelligent people that are religious, though, I have difficulties in understanding this contradiction - guess that it primarily is a cultural problem.

About Stalin - well, he was actually treated as any other common prophet, but he probably rotates in his grave every time he is seen upon as a such.

The only thing you accomplish by it is to start multiple outraged discussions that go nowhere. Plus people who might otherwise be willing to talk things over become defensive on behalf of "religion" everywhere. Scientology is able to survive in part by painting itself as just another maligned faith, its enemies as anti-religious extremists. And people believe them, because in their experience hardcore atheists really don't distinguish between normal religions and sickos. They're all heirs to the Inquisition as far as you're concerned.

This is BS. Are you claming that because my pow may outrage people I should shut up ????

You seem to consider scientology to be a non-religion - why ? Is it because of the money ? Christianity has actually also been a money maschine and is it today - admitted they have stopped to sell "afladsbreve" (don't know the english word for those letters that freed you from a long visit in purgatory).

Since most religions are older than the inquisition I automatically would be in trouble if I thought that they were heirs to that, so I don't.

[Elok]

Originally posted by BlackCat
This statement puzzles me a bit - please explain why you need a god/religion to self-improve ? (in case you refers to earlier discussions about ethichs/morale, please don't answer in details - that needs it's own thread )

Yes, this refers back to our eternal discussion where we go in circles.

Your description of how religious people acts is a little rough - religion organisations has actually refined their methods and rarely fall back to these - due to common self-improvement they doesn't really catch on anymore.

My point is, we haven't "refined our methods," there are many different kinds of faiths, though most of them differ drastically from secular self-improvement methods.

I'm a little confused - I don't think that I ever has said that religious people are primitive - there are lots of very intelligent people that are religious, though, I have difficulties in understanding this contradiction - guess that it primarily is a cultural problem.

You do realize you sound just a liiiiittle condescending when you say that, right? As though believing in something would be a symptom of retardation.

About Stalin - well, he was actually treated as any other common prophet, but he probably rotates in his grave every time he is seen upon as a such.

I was referring to the time when I mentioned Stalin as an example of the abuse of secular ideologies and you got out of the argument by claiming he was a "religion" insofar as he brought out certain negative qualities (which you said you thought of as the very essence of religion).

This is BS. Are you claming that because my pow may outrage people I should shut up ????

You seem to consider scientology to be a non-religion - why ? Is it because of the money ? Christianity has actually also been a money maschine and is it today - admitted they have stopped to sell "afladsbreve" (don't know the english word for those letters that freed you from a long visit in purgatory).

I'm saying your Point of View, assuming you meant POV and you don't actually have Prisoners of War, is drastically oversimplified and amounts to an accidental strawman. Religions can start out benevolent and become corrupted (as in the Christian faith), or they can be started as a blatant grab for power and just get worse and worse as time goes on (like Scientology). The two are totally different, and you're not the first atheist I've met who just shrugs and says, "they're no different from all the other religions out there." Except they are. Normal religions don't bankrupt or literally enslave their members, or threaten to kill their critics.

I've gotten used to hysterical atheists who claim every time somebody crosses himself it's another nail in the coffin of the enlightenment, and so have a lot of other religious people. Plenty of us have been to religious services, or in religious communities, and know that they aren't all mindless drones. So it's like the boy who cried wolf; when people point to the horrific actions perpetrated by the CoS or other, similar organizations, it can be regarded as just more neurotic O'Hair types slandering an innocent group. Nobody even bothers to investigate the claims, because the same claims have been made a dozen times before (sometimes by the same critics) and found to be false. Scientology in particular is very good at using anti-hate speech groups as a shield. All because some bozos can't tell a church from a cult.

And BTW, my particular religion has never even believed in Purgatory, or the Treasury of Merit, or selling Indulgences. We've also never had a concept of "Holy War" to my knowledge. Don't assume that we all follow the same general pattern as the RCC.

Since most religions are older than the inquisition I automatically would be in trouble if I thought that they were heirs to that, so I don't.

Figure of speech. I meant you seem to think we're all in more or less the same boat. Alternately manipulative, superstitious, and cruel.

[Hueij]

Originally posted by germanos
BTW, has anybody listened to the Bible being played backwards ?

Nope, but I read the SMS version

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Elok


Yes, this refers back to our eternal discussion where we go in circles.

Then no further comments .

My point is, we haven't "refined our methods," there are many different kinds of faiths, though most of them differ drastically from secular self-improvement methods.

No ? Haven't cristianity shifted from burning people and other final solutions to more subtle ways such as banishing (not the right word) from society ? I gladly admit that it's not common - here noone cares much about peoples religious belief.

You do realize you sound just a liiiiittle condescending when you say that, right? As though believing in something would be a symptom of retardation.

didn't I say "there are lots of very intelligent people that are religious" ??? How do you connect that with retardation ? If I should connect religion with a state of mind, then I would call it a mild mental disease.

I was referring to the time when I mentioned Stalin as an example of the abuse of secular ideologies and you got out of the argument by claiming he was a "religion" insofar as he brought out certain negative qualities (which you said you thought of as the very essence of religion).

Well, "belivers" in stalin had a tendency to ignore facts and belive in what their "prophet" said - that actually doesn't differ much from "normal" religious behavior.

I'm saying your Point of View, assuming you meant POV and you don't actually have Prisoners of War, is drastically oversimplified and amounts to an accidental strawman. Religions can start out benevolent and become corrupted (as in the Christian faith), or they can be started as a blatant grab for power and just get worse and worse as time goes on (like Scientology). The two are totally different, and you're not the first atheist I've met who just shrugs and says, "they're no different from all the other religions out there." Except they are. Normal religions don't bankrupt or literally enslave their members, or threaten to kill their critics.

You got me - pov Though, please explain what a "normal" religion is. Are you saying that only "good" religions are true religions ? What if god actually is a mean SOB that prefers human sacrifices ?

I've gotten used to hysterical atheists who claim every time somebody crosses himself it's another nail in the coffin of the enlightenment, and so have a lot of other religious people. Plenty of us have been to religious services, or in religious communities, and know that they aren't all mindless drones. So it's like the boy who cried wolf; when people point to the horrific actions perpetrated by the CoS or other, similar organizations, it can be regarded as just more neurotic O'Hair types slandering an innocent group. Nobody even bothers to investigate the claims, because the same claims have been made a dozen times before (sometimes by the same critics) and found to be false. Scientology in particular is very good at using anti-hate speech groups as a shield. All because some bozos can't tell a church from a cult.

And BTW, my particular religion has never even believed in Purgatory, or the Treasury of Merit, or selling Indulgences. We've also never had a concept of "Holy War" to my knowledge. Don't assume that we all follow the same general pattern as the RCC.

Well, then it must be annoying to come across a nonhysterical atheist like me I really don't care if people are religious - thats their choice - but I for certain will continue to say that I think that religion doesn't make sense. I really don't think that just because a person is religous, she is into blowing up all others that doesn't have the same faith.

You use the word church - I assume that it's a generalisation since it mainly is christian groups that has such - others has mosques, temples etc.

Figure of speech. I meant you seem to think we're all in more or less the same boat. Alternately manipulative, superstitious, and cruel.

Well, no matter what religion, a common label is of course superstitious - since there are a lot of religions and all that belive in another is superstitious, then all religious people must be superstitious.

[Elok]

Hmm? I don't call, say, Hindus or Jews "superstitious," just "holders of a different opinion from my own." The word "superstitious," to me at least, implies blind ritualism, stupidity, magical thinking, and various other extremely insulting qualities. Cargo Cults, from what I've heard of them, might be fairly characterized as superstitious; they believe in a fairly explicit economic exchange, wherein if they just offer enough prayers and offerings to the American soldier who visited their Pacific island fifty years before, he will come back with candy bars and coca-cola for them.

Most any religion that's been around for more than a couple of years will have an enormous, comprehensive body of theological literature on all sorts of subjects. They also tend to have attached philosophies of living, moral codes, and so on, all following an internally consistent line of reasoning. Considerably more than a plain superstition.

Maybe I've been hasty, but you appear to have no appreciation of the immense complexity and variety of human faith. At the very least, you come across as aggressively contemptuous of all belief systems, even the ones you know nothing about. Is the Dalai Lama just "superstitious?" How about Fr. George Calciu, who was superstitious enough to spend about a decade getting tortured in a Romanian prison under their old Communist regime? These things can be way more complicated than I've seen you give them credit for.

WRT your other point, I use the word "religion" for a healthy, stable belief system that doesn't have a consistent track record of deliberate atrocities and human rights abuses within recent years. The RCC has some problems with boy-groping priests, but that doesn't appear to be intentional on the part of the hierarchy (indeed, it's an embarrassment to them and I'm sure they'd rather the whole thing went away), and they haven't burned people at the stake for centuries; so, I categorize them as a religion.

Whereas Scientology is what I call a "cult," because they've been doing all sorts of nasty things from the start and continue to do so with the obvious consent and supervision of their authorities: blackmail, destruction or theft of others' property, death threats, forced labor, coercion/kidnapping, practicing medicine without a license, tax evasion, fraud, various forms of espionage including a substantial conspiracy attempting to "wash" government files on them, barratry--and all of it based around a single, elaborate, gigantic confidence trick. Then there are other "New Religious Movements" like the Family (I think that was its name), which stick to good old sexual abuse of children and prostitution as a form of fundraising (explicitly endorsed by their doctrine--if you think Jack Chick tracts are creepy, you should see theirs). It's a matter of terminology, but I think the distinction is meaningful.

[Spiffor]

I wonder who is giving so much effort in this DL. In any case, it's fairly boring. Sounds just like the ordinary christian-zealot-bot, there's no specific Jewish twist to it

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Elok
Hmm? I don't call, say, Hindus or Jews "superstitious," just "holders of a different opinion from my own." The word "superstitious," to me at least, implies blind ritualism, stupidity, magical thinking, and various other extremely insulting qualities. Cargo Cults, from what I've heard of them, might be fairly characterized as superstitious; they believe in a fairly explicit economic exchange, wherein if they just offer enough prayers and offerings to the American soldier who visited their Pacific island fifty years before, he will come back with candy bars and coca-cola for them.

Well, you are a mellow version of a christian - any 19 century christian considered all other religions as superstitious

My definition of superstition is that you belive that reality doesn't count and a god can interfere / there is a higher power that has created this world.

You mention "extremely insulting qualities" together with "blind ritualism" - well, what about the "blood and flesh" ritual practiced by all christian varieties ?

CC's are some 70-80 years older than what you describe, but I guess that you are aware of it

Most any religion that's been around for more than a couple of years will have an enormous, comprehensive body of theological literature on all sorts of subjects. They also tend to have attached philosophies of living, moral codes, and so on, all following an internally consistent line of reasoning. Considerably more than a plain superstition.

Please tell me what supersticious religions that doesn't have the same. It may not be written, and they may not have famous philosophists thinking great thougths based upon it, but why belittering them for this ? Given time they could evolve.

Maybe I've been hasty, but you appear to have no appreciation of the immense complexity and variety of human faith. At the very least, you come across as aggressively contemptuous of all belief systems, even the ones you know nothing about. Is the Dalai Lama just "superstitious?" How about Fr. George Calciu, who was superstitious enough to spend about a decade getting tortured in a Romanian prison under their old Communist regime? These things can be way more complicated than I've seen you give them credit for.

I actually has a lot of respect for the philosophies that has evolved from the circumstances that religion at a certain time has allowed. Some are fun, such as debates about how many angles that can dance on the tip of a needle, others are vastly more serious. The latter has great impact on todays society and not only in religious questions.

When you say "immense complexity and variety of human faith", do you ever wonder how it came into existence and how it became so complex ? In my view, it's all man made meaning people of a certain faith has spend years on making up how their religion should be intepreted. As the base of "documentation" grows it of couse becomes easier. Oh, I actually don't think that they do it on purpose - such persons will usually be true belivers and think they have heard god speak to them.

WRT your other point, I use the word "religion" for a healthy, stable belief system that doesn't have a consistent track record of deliberate atrocities and human rights abuses within recent years. The RCC has some problems with boy-groping priests, but that doesn't appear to be intentional on the part of the hierarchy (indeed, it's an embarrassment to them and I'm sure they'd rather the whole thing went away), and they haven't burned people at the stake for centuries; so, I categorize them as a religion.

Whereas Scientology is what I call a "cult," because they've been doing all sorts of nasty things from the start and continue to do so with the obvious consent and supervision of their authorities: blackmail, destruction or theft of others' property, death threats, forced labor, coercion/kidnapping, practicing medicine without a license, tax evasion, fraud, various forms of espionage including a substantial conspiracy attempting to "wash" government files on them, barratry--and all of it based around a single, elaborate, gigantic confidence trick. Then there are other "New Religious Movements" like the Family (I think that was its name), which stick to good old sexual abuse of children and prostitution as a form of fundraising (explicitly endorsed by their doctrine--if you think Jack Chick tracts are creepy, you should see theirs). It's a matter of terminology, but I think the distinction is meaningful.

Well, then you have a problem. If you are a true beliver of a religion, how can you say that atrocitices committed by it isn't what that god want ? And how can you condemn a religion because it commits atrocities if the belivers of that faith think it's gods wish ? You are splitting godbelief up into good and bad beliefs and that really doesn't make sense if you belive in the existence of a god.

[Son of David]

This is one of those rare occasions when it's good to apply some wisdom from the NT, 'Cast not your pearls before swine.'

Ciao.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Son of David
This is one of those rare occasions when it's good to apply some wisdom from the NT, 'Cast not your pearls before swine.'

Ciao.

Yep, that is one of the better, but since you don't have any, it doesn't say much

[Elok]

So "superstition" is defined by you as "a belief in a higher power/creator deity?" If that's the case, the expression "most religions are based on superstition" is fairly duhhhh, isn't it? "Most religions are based on belief in a higher power"--except the word superstition has negative connotations that the longer phrase doesn't.

Maybe it means something different over there, but to everyone I know superstition generally refers to a kind of magical thinking. Don't break mirrors or walk under ladders leaning against a wall or you'll have bad luck. Making special finger signs will ward off evil spells, as will wearing amulets. Crap like that. Superstition is actually anti-religious, as it posits a pseudoscientific system with known (albeit sometimes nonsensical) limits and rules which will act predictably. Even the most scholastic religion typically has an element of embracing the mysterious and unknown on its own terms.

People in Elizabethan England believed that burying a bottle of urine with bent pins in it would redirect the flow of life energy or some crap like that and cause witches' magic to reflect back on themselves. That's a superstition--a fairly mechanical set of rules, with no particular moral or social significance. Prayer or meditation or whatever are not magic, just an attempt to contact some essence greater than, within, or outside oneself, sometimes not with an objective in mind other than the act itself. There is not supposed to be any expectation that it will ward off evil Juju spirits automatically. That would be magic, pseudoscience--in a word, superstition.

I guess you might make arguments for, say, making the sign of the cross to ward off demons, but that's a fairly minor aspect, and the sign of the cross has other purposes as well. And I certainly don't believe the Eucharist will cure cancer or anything. What benefits it may have is tricky to argue and depends on the denomination one belongs to.

Similar as they may seem (in that you find both of them ridiculous), the two are fundamentally different. I imagine some religions started as superstitions and grew from there, and some may have traces of superstitions which either stuck around or developed with the faith. Some religions may degrade into superstition entirely (I have my suspicions about certain branches of the Evangelicals in that regard, but that's another matter). Still, they remain distinct elements.

I wasn't making an argument that theology floated down from heaven or something. I'm aware that it's a human tradition. I was just responding to your use of "superstition" which implies rather different things to me than it does to you, apparently.

As for your last argument, are you familiar with the phrase "natural law?" Wait a minute, you said you didn't want to have this source of morality argument here, didn't you?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Son of David
This is one of those rare occasions when it's good to apply some wisdom from the NT, 'Cast not your pearls before swine.'

Ciao.

I have already warned them not to have a discussion with you...

[Son of David]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


I have already warned them not to have a discussion with you...

Oh really?