Paul G. Allen wrote:
On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 18:10 -0700, Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
Christian Seberino wrote:
On Mon, March 26, 2007 5:32 pm, kelsey hudson wrote:
And, the church's stance that birth control
being a sin is just plain retarded.
That is only the Catholic Church's stance. And even many Catholics don't
agree with that.
Then they are going to burn in Hell.
Sorry, you don't get to be Catholic When Convenient.
You don't get to be religious when convenient either, so what's with the
reference to burning in Hell?
Otherwise, it's just using religion as an post hoc justification for
whatever you feel like.
It is high time to start tearing off the cover of hypocrisy from religion.
Either adhere to *all* your beliefs, including the ones that make life
difficult, or take your sanctimony and stuff it.
Now, now. Calm down. Who are you to tell me (or Christian) to adhere to
all my beliefs (or his) when by what I've read in this thread you have a
misunderstanding of what those beliefs are? (Sorry if that sounded
harsh, but it caught me in such a way as to make me so.)
In fact, in following this thread, I've seen many posts by many people
that do not have an understanding of Christian teachings.
Exactly _which_ Christian teachings? Can you point me to one specific
Bible (last time I was in a Christian bookstore, there were dozens - all
different)?
It makes me
wonder how many have any understanding of Islam, Judaism, or any other
religions that are not practice by those talking about them. This points
to one cause of religious and other conflicts - they often arise from a
complete misunderstanding of the other side.
My observation is that most self-proclaimed Christians _I've_ met
(including in my own family - obviously) don't even have a basic
understanding of their own beliefs, let alone the accuracies of the
tenets of their own religion. Including an _accurate_ knowledge of its
history, based on empirical, verifiable data and research. In fact, it's
my considerable opinion that the basis of most religions extent today
(orthodox and otherwise) is just plain made up nonsense which has been,
as a result of centuries of both inadvertent and malicious corruption of
things written and said hundreds and thousands of years ago, become so
inconsistent and impractical (as in unpracticable) as to be a primary
cause, rather than a primary solution, to the Human specie's problems.
Given that virtually none of the original sources for any of these
teachings has existed for at least a thousand years, it's no wonder it's
easier and easier to espouse some personal belief and attribute it to
the god of choice. IOW, just make the shit up and say god said so.
In every belief system, there are fringes on both ends of the norm
(think politics with the left, moderate, right, center, etc.) Most of
what I've seen discussed in this thread regarding Christianity, God, The
Bible, etc. are results of views of the fringes of the basic
religion(s).
PGA
If there were only right, center, and left that would be refreshing.
However, it's not nearly that simple. There are literally thousands of
differentiations of belief systems in Christianity alone. Which one do I
choose? Each thinks the other is wrong, or at least not quite right. How
do I know? Of course, they all will say "It's in the Bible, read it for
yourself". But again, which Bible? And when I do read it, I find that it
doesn't contain what god said, but rather what someone
thought/claimed/believed/hallucinated god said. Even worse it's really
what someone thinks someone thought someone else thought someone said
they heard someone say god said. And they're ALL DEAD!
In any case, no one of that particular religious persuasion really wants
to know what _I_ think or believe. Because what I think didn't come from
their bible, and if if I say _I_ talked to god and it said what I said
was true, I'm some kind of nut case.
But then they have no trouble believing that a bunch of guys who lived
thousands of years ago talked to god - but they /weren't/ nut cases. But
then maybe I'm being to rational; and rationality is anathema to religion.
Religion has less to do with spiritual belief and more to do with the
social politicalization of spiritual beliefs in the form or rituals and
dogma for the purposes of controlling a population - for better or
worse. A religion is not a personal belief system. It is a political
system with a membership and a leadership. A herd of sheep with a
shepherd. The wolves are non-believers (i.e. those whose particular
spiritual beliefs are at odds with those of the shepherd). The
antithesis of what Jesus of Nazareth was apparently trying to teach.
How ironic.
[And yes, Paul and I have had these discussions before.]
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
--
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
