Guest post from Gezza
The only way to cure Islam’s ills is to educate Muslims out of believing the Quran. To do that, you also have to educate the Jews out of believing the Torah & the Christians out of believing the Bible.
All of them derive their basis for belief from the first scribblings of unbelievable myth & bullshit in the Jewish Scriptures, & all are demonstrably false.
All of them, & all other supernatural religions, have become interwoven over centuries into the ethnic, cultural & national identities of scores of religious sects & diverse peoples throughout the globe. They have driven land grabs, wars and strife for eons. False beliefs taught to ignorant people of long bygone ages still lie at the very heart of most of the worst tensions & strife between nations & ethnic groups & cultures around the world today.
Of them all, Christianity, while influential in the development of the better aspects of Western civilisation, especially over the last century, has probably reduced the most in direct influence on Westerners, as secular morality has developed & improved on the limits of the so-called 10 commandments, & the Golden Rule. (Even the Golden Rule is reportedly actually quite common to many religions & societies around the globe, or at least between believers or members of the same group.)
Christians forget that making slaves of people from other nations is still sanctioned by God (& Jesus never countermanded Mosaic Law) in the Bible. It is time people looked at the Torah, the Bible and the Quran only as important historical Books.
The Bible played an undoubtedly important part in the development of Western Civilisation & law, but, when you put the pastor outside, clear your mind of the reinterpretations you’ve been fed by the priestly class, & simply read it plainly, end to end, it is instantly revealed, self-evidently, as merely a collection of 3rd 4th & 5th hand scribblings about historically unsupportable superstitions, myths, magic, & logical & scientific nonsense.
It is the story of a savage, jealous, vengeful, murderous, infanticidal, rape & slavery-condoning God who Christians still say – notwithstanding that he ordered and /or committed these heinous acts – MUST be good! Because he is God. And God is good. So he must have had a good reason for such horrific cruelty & immorality. This is just bizarre. Truly daft that anyone can try to rationalise it with pathetic defences about relative morality meaning it was good behaviour from Jaweh for those times, but it’s not now.
Modern, secular society Christians, as empathetic, intelligent, social, human beings whose ideas of morality have now gone well beyond the Bible’s, would NEVER willingly choose to do these horrible things to other people. With the blinkers of highly selective Christian teachings off – the Judeo-Christian God’s actions & commands are actually evil by today’s standards. Jaweh orders the Israelites to commit murder, genocide, rape, infanticide for heaven’s sake. If he came to earth today, he’d literally be in the dock for crimes against humanity!
The same, & new, maybe worse, errors, horrors, pointless, repressive, oppressive, conflicting, bloodthirsty, outdated regulations, bad science, teachings, & beliefs of superiority over others, dictated by a middle-aged Arab warlord, are set out in the Quran & Hadith that Muslims are forced by their theocratic rulers and family & social pressures to believe & take with them wherever they go.
I don’t hate these religions, per se, but I know beyond any reasonable doubt they are false & well out-of-date.
And I DO hate how the contortions & distortions of these ludicrous scripts can be twisted in the minds of gullible believers, who suspend their rationality, & listen when imams & pastors tell them these clusters of confused crap mean something totally different to what they actually say – really, only out of the instilled fear of everlasting torture if they don’t believe it, or the need of desperate or fearful people to call on some hoped-for divine universal power to help them deal with adversity in their daily lives, and give them vain hope of some vague glorious reward of everlasting life & happiness in a hereafter beyond their inevitable expiry date on this earth.
There is NO actual evidence of any such thing. You won’t be seeing your pet dog or the roast lamb you ate for lunch in Heaven either. (Well, I’m an agnostic really. I can’t absolutely guarantee that there is no more existence for our personalities beyond this earthly lifetime, but it’s such a remote possibility that the probability of our death being our complete end of existence would be well in excess of 99.99999%. And it’s an absolute certainty, in my opinion, that in the unlikely event I’m wrong, any existence beyond our earthly one would not be anything like what’s promised in any of these dreadful Holy Books.)
In my view, all children should be given a secular education. They should be taught, first, written language & mathematics, then logic & reasoning, & science, & then told to forget their preachers, & their parents’ beliefs, & be instructed to just read these Holy texts, without reinterpretation, from start to finish. If, by the end, they haven’t figured out:
“WTF? Who can seriously take this garbled rubbish recited to ancient sheep herders & camel drivers as divinely inspired instructions to humanity?”
they should then learn the history of the people who, it is claimed, wrote them, and of how they spread their religions, and warred over them.
That would, hopefully, be the end of the religions, & when their believing parents finally pass away, they could just bury them respectfully, & then just put their Holy Books on the shelves in the Great Myths & History sections of libraries, & focus on establishing or evolving the fairest & most tolerant sets of values, ethics & laws that fit their own ethnic cultures & customs, settle their border squabbles, & renew good relationships with other people & cultures who live in this world – without this bloody religious dogma continually overpowering their reason & humanity & pitting devout, deluded believers & their descendents forever against each other.
Value your separate customs of dress & hospitality, & languages, & other delineators of your cultural & national identities & borders. Live freely in the places your cultures now belong, or have belonged for centuries, & welcome visitors from different lands who respect your customs while there.
If you move to another place, adapt to their culture. If eventually, in the future, we can all meld together with common evolved values & customs & laws & behaviours, so that borders can effectively disappear, there is maybe hope for a true paradise on earth – but that is a long, long way away yet, in my view.
In the meantime, for heaven’s sake, please, read, THINK, & then throw out all the false Gods that tell you you are a special & favoured people, & that all the other gods & their deluded believers are wrong! Humanity MUST outgrow these mythical supernatural rulers if we are ever to evolve the kind of world we really want.
We need to learn to love & live the life we have to the full. It is the only one we have. We need to grow up & face this fact. It is time for us to put away these childish fairy & troll kings – & become better than them.
Your NZ 
Alan Wilkinson
/ 14th July 2018Yes. As a twelve year old I lay in bed several nights wondering how adults could be so stupid as to believe this stuff and how I was going to have to live my life amongst them. I’m happy that in this country at least ridiculous belief has waned substantially since then.
Griff
/ 14th July 201899.99999%.?
You are an atheist.
Agnostic is someone who believes that the odds of god/gods are a lot closer to 50%.
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018I’m an agnostic only in the sense that I cannot claim to absolutely know anything, So I can’t completely rule out some, as yet unknown, individual or collective creator of this universe, not my concept of God – although I can’t define or even conceive what such a possible prime moving cause might be. One day maybe theoretical physics & cosmology will finally tell our decscendents exactly why our universe is here, whether there are any others, & whether they’re part of some looped infinite process of creation that’s actually scientifically explicable & agreed by all
By some argued definitions & subcategories of atheism, agnosticism, deism or pandeism – or whatever – that I have watched argued by in religious debates between atheists & Christian preachers who cannot conceive of any other concept of God but their own Abrahamic version, I therefore fit into THEIR individual concept of agnostic. Others argue that I’m simply an atheist because I don’t believe in THEIR Christian god.
None of which I care to argue about Griff because it doesn’t really interest me & it’s not germane to the main point of my article. Thanks for your effort though. 👍🏼
PartisanZ
/ 14th July 2018There’s a life force that animates the universe … which, after realizing the ‘oneness’ of it, human beings have deified and called One ‘God’ … after worshiping numerous Gods for a very long time …
“The future … will not be without religion. But this religion will be on a higher plane than the religions of the present day …
The religion of the future will go further … So long as we endeavour to approach the divine with our too human thought, or even the words of our poor human speech, we are presumptuously applying our understanding to the incomprehensible, and attempting to measure the immeasurable …
The religion of the future will be reverential and humble meditation without images and without language, on the wonder of existence.” (Warner)
Grimm
/ 14th July 2018The religion of the future is already here. It’s called AGW. From the hypocritical high priests, to the conformity, to the burning of heretics at the stake, it has all the hallmarks.
Griff
/ 14th July 2018Actually you are the one who has the religion.
Science is based on evidence .
Your denial is based on your faith that science is wrong.
Grimm
/ 14th July 2018Right on cue.
Maybe I’ve become cynical on account of the nearly 3000 peer reviewed studies each year which don’t support AGW.
Maybe I’ve become cynical because your high priests are the ones living the life they are asking everyone else not to.
Maybe I’ve become cynical because none of the “scientific” models have been accurate.
Or, maybe it’s just because none of the predictions from “scientists” have come to pass.
Not sure what you base your dogmatic belief on.
Griff
/ 14th July 2018ROFL
Pure fuckwittery .
The following are scientific organizations that hold the position that Climate Change has been caused by human action:
Academia Chilena de Ciencias, Chile
Academia das Ciencias de Lisboa, Portugal
Academia de Ciencias de la República Dominicana
Academia de Ciencias Físicas, Matemáticas y Naturales de Venezuela
Academia de Ciencias Medicas, Fisicas y Naturales de Guatemala
Academia Mexicana de Ciencias,Mexico
Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Bolivia
Academia Nacional de Ciencias del Peru
Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal
Académie des Sciences, France
Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada
Academy of Athens
Academy of Science of Mozambique
Academy of Science of South Africa
Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS)
Academy of Sciences Malaysia
Academy of Sciences of Moldova
Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
Academy of Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, Egypt
Academy of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy
Africa Centre for Climate and Earth Systems Science
African Academy of Sciences
Albanian Academy of Sciences
Amazon Environmental Research Institute
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Anthropological Association
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association of State Climatologists (AASC)
American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians
American Astronomical Society
American Chemical Society
American College of Preventive Medicine
American Fisheries Society
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Institute of Physics
American Meteorological Society
American Physical Society
American Public Health Association
American Quaternary Association
American Society for Microbiology
American Society of Agronomy
American Society of Civil Engineers
American Society of Plant Biologists
American Statistical Association
Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
Australian Academy of Science
Australian Bureau of Meteorology
Australian Coral Reef Society
Australian Institute of Marine Science
Australian Institute of Physics
Australian Marine Sciences Association
Australian Medical Association
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Bangladesh Academy of Sciences
Botanical Society of America
Brazilian Academy of Sciences
British Antarctic Survey
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
California Academy of Sciences
Cameroon Academy of Sciences
Canadian Association of Physicists
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
Canadian Geophysical Union
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Society of Soil Science
Canadian Society of Zoologists
Caribbean Academy of Sciences views
Center for International Forestry Research
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) (Australia)
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences
Crop Science Society of America
Cuban Academy of Sciences
Delegation of the Finnish Academies of Science and Letters
Ecological Society of America
Ecological Society of Australia
Environmental Protection Agency
European Academy of Sciences and Arts
European Federation of Geologists
European Geosciences Union
European Physical Society
European Science Foundation
Federation of American Scientists
French Academy of Sciences
Geological Society of America
Geological Society of Australia
Geological Society of London
Georgian Academy of Sciences
German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina
Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences
Indian National Science Academy
Indonesian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management
Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology
Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand
Institution of Mechanical Engineers, UK
InterAcademy Council
International Alliance of Research Universities
International Arctic Science Committee
International Association for Great Lakes Research
International Council for Science
International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
International Research Institute for Climate and Society
International Union for Quaternary Research
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
International Union of Pure and Applied Physics
Islamic World Academy of Sciences
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Kenya National Academy of Sciences
Korean Academy of Science and Technology
Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts
l’Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal
Latin American Academy of Sciences
Latvian Academy of Sciences
Lithuanian Academy of Sciences
Madagascar National Academy of Arts, Letters, and Sciences
Mauritius Academy of Science and Technology
Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts
National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, Argentina
National Academy of Sciences of Armenia
National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic
National Academy of Sciences, Sri Lanka
National Academy of Sciences, United States of America
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Association of Geoscience Teachers
National Association of State Foresters
National Center for Atmospheric Research
National Council of Engineers Australia
National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, New Zealand
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Research Council
National Science Foundation
Natural England
Natural Environment Research Council, UK
Natural Science Collections Alliance
Network of African Science Academies
New York Academy of Sciences
Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences
Nigerian Academy of Sciences
Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters
Oklahoma Climatological Survey
Organization of Biological Field Stations
Pakistan Academy of Sciences
Palestine Academy for Science and Technology
Pew Center on Global Climate Change
Polish Academy of Sciences
Romanian Academy
Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium
Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain
Royal Astronomical Society, UK
Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters
Royal Irish Academy
Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research
Royal Scientific Society of Jordan
Royal Society of Canada
Royal Society of Chemistry, UK
Royal Society of the United Kingdom
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences
Science and Technology, Australia
Science Council of Japan
Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research
Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Slovak Academy of Sciences
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Society for Ecological Restoration International
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Society of American Foresters
Society of Biology (UK)
Society of Systematic Biologists
Soil Science Society of America
Sudan Academy of Sciences
Sudanese National Academy of Science
Tanzania Academy of Sciences
The Wildlife Society (international)
Turkish Academy of Sciences
Uganda National Academy of Sciences
Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole Research Center
World Association of Zoos and Aquariums
World Federation of Public Health Associations
World Forestry Congress
World Health Organization
World Meteorological Organization
Zambia Academy of Sciences
Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences
The following scientific organizations dispute the theory.
Grimm
/ 14th July 2018But I think what I’ve become most cynical about is that with all the hundreds of millions spent on talkfests, and the 190 countries signed up to Paris, none (well one, but you know, Trump) of them has made a meaningful change to C02 emissions. So from that we have to conclude that none of them really believe the doomsday scenarios either.
Griff
/ 14th July 2018More made up rubbish.
You really do have huge issues with reality .
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Greenhouse_gas_emission_statistics_-_emission_inventories
Greenhouse gas emissions in the EU down by 22 % between 1990 and 2016.
Grimm
/ 14th July 2018The eu data is made up of those in the eu emissions vtradi g system. So, most of the economy, isn’t. Transport, aviation just to name two big emitters to that aren’t.
Griff
/ 14th July 2018ROFL
Hello Grimme
Keep making up stuff.
Its really indicative of your intellectual ability .
.
.
.
In a look a toddler sort of way.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 14th July 2018When we know everything about our universe we will still know nothing about anything else. When we know everything about ourselves we will probably know nothing about any other form of intelligence.
Conspiratoor
/ 14th July 2018Why do most of us see the need to link God, faith and religion? Is it possible to have an encounter with the creator without being tied to a religion?
http://blog.godreports.com/2017/01/last-man-on-the-moon-became-convinced-of-gods-existence/
Griff
/ 14th July 2018Who created god then?
By your logic.
If god is so majestic some higher being must have made it.
Occums razor then rears up and demolishes your argument for gods.
Zedd
/ 14th July 2018‘Who created god then?’ sez Griff
Im guessing that is a question, for ‘God’ to ask ‘himself’ ??
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018No, it’s a question for whoever made God to answer, & if she doesn’t know, she needs to ask her parents, and if they don’t know, they need to ask theirs, and …
Zedd
/ 14th July 2018touche,, maybe ‘God’ is a figment of his own imagination ? (a bit like MrT) 😀
Zedd
/ 14th July 2018Im glad you got that off your chest Gezza..
I grew up agnostic, my parents did not ‘instill religion’ in us, but said have an open mind to the possibility. Having looked at; Judeo-christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Rastafarian, Zoroastrian & Buddhism (not actually a theist religion).. I came to the conclusion that most people at some some time in life, have a desire for ‘deeper understanding & purpose’.. rather than just; get up, go to work, come home & watch TV/read blogs etc, eat food & crap it out.. go to bed & start over the next day (plus whatever else you may do, to amuse yourself)
BUT unless ‘the day of the Lord’ actually comes ‘as a thief in the night’ (as the bible & qur’an claim).. chances are it will all remain speculation & debate !?
‘All praises in the name of the most HIGH… Jah RastafarI’
“Here endeth the lesson” 🙂 😀
Zedd
/ 14th July 2018btw; “Happy Sabbath”.. y’all 🙂
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018I’m thinking of sending it to The Pope, The Chief Rabbi in Jerusalem, & The Islamic Federation of NZ, for feedback.
I might add:
“PS: Get a REAL job!”
What do you think?
Kitty Catkin
/ 14th July 2018They will have heard all this before.Don’t waste time and embarrass yourself.
I have an atheist friend, and she doesn’t feel the need to disprove religion at length, as she doesn’t believe in it so there’s nothing to disprove in her view. A late neighbour didn’t believe in an afterlife, but didn’t try to convince those who did. To him, death was like switching a light off.
I wouldn’t try to convince the lovely, kind Mormon woman up the road or the equally lovely and kind Mormon family down the road that their views are wrong although I find aspects of Mormonism bizarre. It’s none of my business what they believe. They, and other Mormons I have known, are brilliant ads for their religion with their loving kindness. When D has been to this house, she hasn’t tried to tell us to get rid of the icons.
One Mormon woman we/I knew/know is passionately pro-life, and not only works in the cause (SPUC) takes in babies and has seldom been seen without one or two in a pram. She had 10 of her own and has, I believe, saved the lives of some who would have been aborted by taking them in herself. The house must be made of rubber, as there’s always room for one more.
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018Ok. I won’t add the PS.
Griff
/ 14th July 2018Meh.
I am a hard Atheist
Mostly, as with agw, I only react to others comments .
On KB there was heaps of religious nuts who tried to force their religion or used it for justification of their views so I often countered.
On here it seldom comes up so I dont push the issue .
In real life
Vive et alteros vivere permitte.
Kitty Catkin
/ 14th July 2018It vero.
Kitty Catkin
/ 14th July 2018Ita vero, typo.
This letter comes across as rather aggressive, confrontational and insulting, so is unlikely to convince anyone.
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018I wouldn’t try to convince the lovely, kind Mormon woman up the road or the equally lovely and kind Mormon family down the road that their views are wrong although I find aspects of Mormonism bizarre.
I’m much the same. Most modern day Chritians I know while deluded about this are nice, kind, people. Live and let live indeed. But when I think about why I don’t challenge or discuss their religion with them it’s because I’ve learned not to. Because it can deeply emotionally upset them & they don’t want to have anything more to do with you afterwards.
They can pull back, drop you out of their circle, you’re dangerous, you’re headed for hell, what if you doom their children to eternal damnation? Some can even turn positively toxic on you. Live & let live just is a social defense strategy sometimes, if one is honest with oneself.
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018This letter comes across as rather aggressive, confrontational and insulting, so is unlikely to convince anyone.
Hmm. Well, yes. Must admit’ when I saw PG had posted it, & it was popping up in the Recent Comments list as the ONLY THING ALL IN BIG RED CAPS, I thought : “Christ! Wish I hadn’t done that now. Looks like I’m shouting at them.”
Kitty Catkin
/ 14th July 2018Not all or even most Christians are rabid fundies any more than most members of any religion are,
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018They don’t have to be rabid fundies to freak out & cut you off. Just run of the mill Christians.
PartisanZ
/ 14th July 2018It’s the mystery and oneness of life we humans have named God …
A mystery, unknown and unknowable, can at best only be vaguely described or alluded to by our thought and language … The ‘oneness’, it would appear, can be experienced …
Personally I believe Jesus of Nazareth experienced it.
Long before him, animist religions maintained tribal identities …
Later, the cunning found out that the ignorant would worship the God(s) they created and thus developed power structures which are essentially political … Churches … ‘Religions’ …
The mystery, however, remains … and the oneness is there, just beyond the veil of our senses five … beyond understanding … “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” … but not beyond potentially experiencing …
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018Mystical & vaguely-defined “spiritual” experiences are commonplace. I’ve experienced such states during my life. I still get body/mind experiences I can describe as wairua, or spirituality out in the bush alone, or near natural bodies of water. In the bush alone, if I allow myself to just breathe in & imagine it, I can feel something like a life force all around me. If I want to. I’ve had similar experiences on drugs. During or immediately after great sex. Once in a psychotic episode. When in deep meditation. Caught up (once) in Christian group hysteria. The human mind can just conjure up the state, & one can be be told what it is, or can just notice that it can be done – if one chooses to experience it. There are scientific explanations for some.
Whether life needs an animating force to continue existing is another interesting debate for some. It just seems to be a logical requirement for animate organisms to some people. But it doesn’t need to be present.The chemical, electrical & physical reactions & processes associated with the gestation, growth & development & ultimate death of tired old living cells do a perfectly adequate job.
Abiogenensis as far as I know is still not sorted. What prompted that first self-replicating cell to divide & reproduce. We know to a high degree of certainty now how everything else animate evolved from that.
PartisanZ
/ 14th July 2018I get the feeling that asking the human race to give up religion or seeking the spiritual is a bit like asking us to give up eating …
Ask instead the human race to eat better food …
Pete George
/ 14th July 2018And to worship better religion.
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018Re first sentence, you’re probably right. New Age gurus & Messiahs can still recruit from even among educated skeptics those desperate for simple or complex answers to the things they can’t understand. Some people don’t seem able to live with “I don’t know the answer to that, but it doesn’t really matter.”
I’m curious. I’ve been happy to suspend belief & try all sorts of things & concepts out for myself in my lifetime before adding them to my list of things that just aren’t true, without experiencing a sense consequent of disappointment & desperate need to find another answer that is. Being a skeptic is a good thing in my view, as long as you’re prepared to test things you can’t automatically discount from experience. But I agree with Griff. Solid evidence is the best basis for belief.
PartisanZ
/ 14th July 2018Solid evidence of the mystery of life is a non sequitur …
You’ll be endlessly trapped in a material search for the immaterial … the intangible …
Gezza
/ 14th July 20181. I’m not trapped in a material search for anything. I look when I want to.
2. The immaterial is … immaterial.
3. The mystery of life is “I just don’t know” in poetic form. Which appeals to me, I’ll add.
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018And just to clarify, PZ, I’m using “solid” above in the dictionary sense of:
4. dependable; reliable.
“the defence is solid”
synonyms: well founded, well grounded, valid, sound, reasonable, logical, weighty, authoritative, convincing, cogent, plausible, credible, reliable
“a solid argument”
Griff
/ 14th July 2018Explaining Mystery is why we invented science.
Religion stops us asking why it just says goddidit.
It is not the answer that counts it is asking the right questions.
The more we know the more we know what we dont know.
“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
Immanuel Kant
42
Maggy Wassilieff
/ 14th July 2018What I have found interesting is that folks in communist countries who were free of religious shackles for decades leapt back into their churches’/ mosques’ arms as soon as they could.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 14th July 2018Yes, it is peculiar – unless perhaps you consider their government.
Corky
/ 14th July 2018Yes, skeptics believe it’s because people like to be lead by a benign parental force. Others believe they are cut off from some intangible being, and faith reconnects them.
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018Yep. And I’ll bet they still haven’t just opened & read their Bible from start to finish & thought about it. I’ll also bet most were taught to be Christians & remained as Christians under the radar througout the rule of the Communists, as has happened at various times & places throughout Christianity’s history. Some of our Catholic saints were martyrs for their faith who for whatever reason popped their heads up above the parapet at the wrong time & in the wrong place. Putin’s a Christian. It’s an eminently exploitable faith.
Many people have or develop a need or yearning to believe in a higher power at various points in their life & being a Christian in a parish is to also be part of a social & cultural club.
In most cases it’s harmless to hold silly beliefs. It’s when it’s not harmless that the problems with believing patent absurdities arise. When one allows one’s whole life & behaviour to be unquestioningly governed by the diktats of any authoritarian dictatorship or regime, be it political or religious, one can be manipulated by them far more easily.
I often wonder how many devout preachers are really non-believers, but just see their role as a comfortable living. Or who start out as believers & somewhere along the way they wake up – but now they’re trapped. Their wives, their parents, their friends – they haven’t & they’ll reject them. It’s easier just to carry on with the pretence. At least it’s harmless, right?
Griff
/ 14th July 2018Mother Teresa
https://www.theatheistcodex.com/codex/positions/priests-ministers-atheists/
Conspiratoor
/ 14th July 2018Mother Teresa’s in good company…
Jesus Christ – Matthew 27:46
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018Google Translate confidently informs me that’s Finnish, and that in Englsh it means:
Eli Eli lama sabachthani?
PartisanZ
/ 14th July 2018Here’s the Bible Gateway translation …
And along the way this SAYS IT ALL …
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+27%3A46&version=KJV
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018I know what it means. I looked it up. The above was just for c.
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018I know what it means. I looked it up. The above was just for c.
Gezza
/ 14th July 2018(Sorry. Above went in wrong place. Random occurrence of the WordPress Wilkinson Effect I reckon.)
David
/ 15th July 2018“Humanity MUST outgrow these mythical supernatural rulers if we are ever to evolve the kind of world we really want.”
Can I ask what evidence you have that this is the outcome that really occurs when religion is removed form the human condition? It just looks like a lot of believe and not actual underlying evidence to me.
Can I also ask how you know exactly what kind of world ‘we’ really want?
This whole thing comes across as just as much a fairy tale as the ‘troll stories’ you rail against. This is clearly your…church.
Gezza
/ 15th July 2018Can I ask what evidence you have that this is the outcome that really occurs when religion is removed form the human condition? It just looks like a lot of believe and not actual underlying evidence to me.
Sure. You just did.
Can I also ask how you know exactly what kind of world ‘we’ really want?
Sure. I want a world where, whatever the prevailing, social, legal, and economic system is, nobody believes things that are false (like how and when the universe and humans were created), & that they are superior in any way to others, or should rule over others, because their bs-ridden Holy Book tells them that. And where, unless they are mentally untreatable psychopaths, people treat each other with love and respect and don’t want to harm anyone.
What kind of world do you want?
This whole thing comes across as just as much a fairy tale as the ‘troll stories’ you rail against. This is clearly your…church.
I don’t have a church. Do you? And which is it?
Gezza
/ 15th July 2018Pink David?
Been a couple of hours at least.
What are you frightened of?