Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

John Paul II will return and take over the world

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #16
    You know that the point you make of the afterlife has very little to do with Christianity?
    Why be good and adher to all the tenants in the Bible if you ain't gonna be rewarded afterdeath? Isn't most of Christ structured around his divinity and the salvation found through him?




    Protestants kind of a meaningless term to make generalisations about Christianity though seen as it refers to all those versions of Christianity that isn't Roman Catholic or Orthodox which is a large amount of varying beliefs.


    The egypt connection is BS
    Most cultures had polytheistic religions at an early part in their development. I think that YHWH was the strongest and most important of the pantheon of Jewish gods who managed to become the monotheistic God.

    Also cultures who are in contact often share ideas.

    Comment


    • #17
      Flip nailed it. If I wasn't concerned about my soul, I'd be a thieving, pillaging, Katie bar the door, no good.
      Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
      "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
      He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by Flip McWho
        Why be good and adher to all the tenants in the Bible if you ain't gonna be rewarded afterdeath? Isn't most of Christ structured around his divinity and the salvation found through him?
        Because being good is good?

        The key to Christianity is the question of Evil and how to repair it. Not the carrot on the stick (which as was pointed out, exists in many religions as well as earlier ones).

        JM
        Jon Miller-
        I AM.CANADIAN
        GENERATION 35: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

        Comment


        • #19
          I'm not saying I belive the Egyptians invented sacrament, my point was a great deel of the basic structure shared by all the wester "Abrahamic" religions was invented in Egypt. They had the concept of the soul, the afterlife and judgment upon death. Its not hard to see that this is still at the core of western religion and everything after it has been rather minor embelishments on the core theam.

          I remember seeing a far more interesting explination of sacrament from a historical anthropologist. His theory was that all cultures would adopt a religion which matched their means of sustinance and social organization and that their would be theams that were indicative of hunter-gather societies and ones indicative of agrarian societies.

          In hunter-gather societies rituals take the form of offerings to the gods usualy food or articles of value that are destroyed inorder to "give" the items to the gods. The offering is esentialy a bride to bring good fortune, religions is esentialy a buisness like you scratch my back, I scratch your back exchange between mortal and god. This perfectly parrelels the social struture in which hunters obtain the food and exchange it for goods and services from the non-hunting members of society.

          Agrarian society on the otherhand will develop rituals which reflect the cycle of crop harvest and the plants themselves will be the gods. The people thus end up eating their gods and a birth-death-resurection theam gets going. The origination myths of many of the staple food stuffs tend to follow a pattern, initial the people lack food are unhappy and wish for relief, the god apears in human form to a person and ask the person to kill and bury them, the new food then grows from their grave, the people eat and our happy, the people replant the seeds to continue the cycle.

          Its a rather interesting theory and explains a provides a good framework for understanding a lot of rituals in polytheistic religions. Admitedly it gets a bit stretched when you apply it to monotheistic religions as you have to belive all these symbologies are sub-concious. It also begs the question, if this theory is correct what are the inevitable religious belifes of Industrial society going to be if any?
          Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks - those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. - Thus spoke Zarathustra, Fredrick Nietzsche

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by SlowwHand
            Flip nailed it. If I wasn't concerned about my soul, I'd be a thieving, pillaging, Katie bar the door, no good.
            I'm not concerned about my soul, and I'm nothing likef that
            "I have been reading up on the universe and have come to the conclusion that the universe is a good thing." -- Dissident
            "I never had the need to have a boner." -- Dissident
            "I have never cut off my penis when I was upset over a girl." -- Dis

            Comment


            • #21
              This thread was ment for laugh of protestants
              "I realise I hold the key to freedom,
              I cannot let my life be ruled by threads" The Web Frogs
              Middle East!

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by SlowwHand
                Flip nailed it. If I wasn't concerned about my soul, I'd be a thieving, pillaging, Katie bar the door, no good.
                I'm not concerned about my soul (there's no such thing, after all), but I'm not any of those things. I guess "fear of God" is not the reason for my being good.
                THEY!!111 OMG WTF LOL LET DA NOMADS AND TEH S3D3NTARY PEOPLA BOTH MAEK BITER AXP3REINCES
                AND TEH GRAAT SINS OF THERE [DOCTRINAL] INOVATIONS BQU3ATH3D SMAL
                AND!!1!11!!! LOL JUST IN CAES A DISPUTANT CALS U 2 DISPUT3 ABOUT THEYRE CLAMES
                DO NOT THAN DISPUT3 ON THEM 3XCAPT BY WAY OF AN 3XTARNAL DISPUTA!!!!11!! WTF

                Comment


                • #23
                  I just had this conversation with my housemates last night.

                  I am skeptical of the whole notion of "I'm an atheist, but I live a good moral life anyways".

                  If you don't believe in a soul or afterlife and believe that when you die your existance is simply stamped out, then why strive to be "good" at all? Why not do whatever you can to get every temporal pleasure and power you can? That seems to be the only purpose for life under such a worldview.

                  It seems to me the only valid atheist philosopher is Neitzsche. His idea of what is good is all about strength and power and being absolutely free to do whatever you want however you want to whoever you want. That other atheist philosopher, Marx, seems to be mostly a cover for Neitzschian ideals. A way to convince the masses to go along with communism so their leaders could pursue power.

                  Furthermore, if you don't believe in universal concepts of "good" then how do you define a "good life"? Is it 100% relative? If I say killing Jews and Gypsys is "good" because they are "inferior people" am I just as right as you are? If not, then you appeal to some notion of "good" that seems to exist beyond man made rules and norms.
                  Captain of Team Apolyton - ISDG 2012

                  When I was younger I thought curfews were silly, but now as the daughter of a young woman, I appreciate them. - Rah

                  Comment


                  • #24

                    If you don't believe in a soul or afterlife and believe that when you die your existance is simply stamped out, then why strive to be "good" at all? Why not do whatever you can to get every temporal pleasure and power you can? That seems to be the only purpose for life under such a worldview.


                    You're a moral midget.
                    12-17-10 Mohamed Bouazizi NEVER FORGET
                    Stadtluft Macht Frei
                    Killing it is the new killing it
                    Ultima Ratio Regum

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by OzzyKP
                      I am skeptical of the whole notion of "I'm an atheist, but I live a good moral life anyways".

                      If you don't believe in a soul or afterlife and believe that when you die your existance is simply stamped out, then why strive to be "good" at all? Why not do whatever you can to get every temporal pleasure and power you can? That seems to be the only purpose for life under such a worldview.
                      It doesn´t look to me that believing in an afterlife shields you from such things.
                      Look at the protestants in nowadays america (for example this one rotestant fundamentalist who oposed gay marriage but had gay sex himself)
                      Look at the misdeeds ofthe catholic church during the medieval ages (the inquisition, the crusades, the things the conquistadors and missionaries did in america)

                      And especially look at the thnings done by islam. For one the terrorists who believed they would do a god thing with flying the lanes into the WTC and Pentagon and that they would be rewarded with lots of virgins in their afterlife).
                      For the other the behavior in countries which have the sharia and where people who think themselves of moral and obeying the words of god do things which seem cruel in western society.
                      For example thing of the burning girls school in Saudi Arabia. The girls which wanted to flee from the fire were beat back into the building by the religion guards. Why? Because they were not proper attired (with headscarfs) to go out of the building. As a result most of these girls died in the fire.
                      The religious guards probably thought they would do a good thing to the girls, because they might loose their lifes, but at least they wouldn´t burn in hell in their afterlife.
                      To anyone not adhering to this religion (or believing in an afterlife) however, this thing must seem just cruel.

                      In a way people who don´t believe in an afterlife but just think that everyone has a right to live how he/she wants to do unless any other people are hurt would have made a more moral decision in the case with the fire at the school.

                      Belief in an afterlife is just a hollow shell which can be filled which whatever you might seem apropriate (especially if you are head of a church), and religious leaders could also make human sacrifices a necessity for all people to enter into an afterlife (just like it happened in many early religions).

                      In this way it isn´t different from Atheism. There might be atheists which could be called amoral, but others on the other hand might be more moral than people who believe in an afterlife.

                      I don´t think that believing in an afterlife is a necessity for moral behavior. The human species is a social ape, meaning that they have, just like other social animals, certain behaviors which are there for making living in a group easier.
                      Look at other social apes which probably don´t believe in an afterlife, for example Chimpazees Pan troglodytes), Bonobos (Pan paniscus), Gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and the like and you will see that, although there are ways in which individuals could abuse their social group for their own gain, this rarely happens (although they don´t have the beief in an afterlife as a hindrance for amoral behavior).

                      IMHO it´s the same thing with humans (Homo sapiens). There are certain mechanisms, neural pathways etc., which keep us from abusing the society for our own gain. For the one person they work well for the other not so well, no mater wether they believe in an afterlife or not.
                      Tamsin (Lost Girl): "I am the Harbinger of Death. I arrive on winds of blessed air. Air that you no longer deserve."
                      Tamsin (Lost Girl): "He has fallen in battle and I must take him to the Einherjar in Valhalla"

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Crusades weren't a misdeed. Catholic missionaries and catholic church actually protected Indians.
                        Inquisition - no religion likes apostates
                        "I realise I hold the key to freedom,
                        I cannot let my life be ruled by threads" The Web Frogs
                        Middle East!

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by SlowwHand
                          Flip nailed it. If I wasn't concerned about my soul, I'd be a thieving, pillaging, Katie bar the door, no good.
                          I'd wager you wouldn't be, actually. Considering that thousands of people like me (agnostic/atheist) don't run around thieving, pillaging, and/or otherwise acting like complete jerks, despite our non-belief.

                          You can be a moral person w/o being religious. It's just that you have to have some other basis for your morality, that's all. I don't act the way I do because I think God has told me to act that way and will punish me if I do not. I act the way I do because I think it's the way I and others should act - for the good of us all, here on Earth. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a brilliant idea, regardless of whether Jesus was or was not divine.

                          -Arrian

                          edit/ps: punishment exists in our society with or without God, because we have laws and a justice system to administer them. They aren't perfect, but then again I'd assert neither is "God's law" so all's fair

                          The basic point, to me, is that we can figure these things out for ourselves. As individuals (individual morality) and as a society (laws). Indeed, because since I don't believe in God, I view all morality as made up by humans.
                          Last edited by Arrian; November 3, 2006, 13:24.
                          grog want tank...Grog Want Tank... GROG WANT TANK!

                          The trick isn't to break some eggs to make an omelette, it's convincing the eggs to break themselves in order to aspire to omelettehood.

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by Heresson
                            Crusades weren't a misdeed.
                            grog want tank...Grog Want Tank... GROG WANT TANK!

                            The trick isn't to break some eggs to make an omelette, it's convincing the eggs to break themselves in order to aspire to omelettehood.

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              They were a misdeed - how?
                              "I realise I hold the key to freedom,
                              I cannot let my life be ruled by threads" The Web Frogs
                              Middle East!

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                My goodness, you're serious, aren't you?

                                -Arrian
                                grog want tank...Grog Want Tank... GROG WANT TANK!

                                The trick isn't to break some eggs to make an omelette, it's convincing the eggs to break themselves in order to aspire to omelettehood.

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X