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God
May 12, 2006 5:03:34 GMT -4
Post by gwiz on May 12, 2006 5:03:34 GMT -4
Certainly he could have gotten far. Fear is an excellent motivator. "If I don't do what he says and help burn my neighbor then he'll accuse me and I'll be next." But that only works if those with the right religious belief are in the majority. If there are plenty of people prepared to say "You're mad, there are no witches", he gets laughed out of town.
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Jason
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God
May 12, 2006 11:03:03 GMT -4
Post by Jason on May 12, 2006 11:03:03 GMT -4
Yes, a climate would have to exist which would allow someone to use religion as an excuse for their actions. That's not a situation unique to religion.
My point is that I'm unconvinced that religious feelings were the primary motivation behind things like witch burnings, the crusades, the 9/11 attacks, and similar incidents. I therefore do not blame "religion" for them. I feel that such incidents had strong secular motivations and that religion was used in a hypocritical way to excuse immoral actions as moral.
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God
May 12, 2006 23:48:24 GMT -4
Post by Halcyon Dayz, FCD on May 12, 2006 23:48:24 GMT -4
So burning witches and heretics is immoral?
Then you can at least blame the religion for not pointing that out.
Maybe it would help if you explain how you define religion.
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Jason
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God
May 14, 2006 22:28:29 GMT -4
Post by Jason on May 14, 2006 22:28:29 GMT -4
To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, the reason we don't burn witches today is because we don't believe in witches, not because it would be immoral to burn them. If people really existed who had made pacts with the devil and gained magical powers thereby which they used to curse and destroy their neighbors and which could only be stopped by burning them, then of course it would be moral to do so.
"Religion" can have a number of different definitions depending on context. In this thread what I've usually meant by the term is "the body of all religious thought and the organizations that claim to be spokesmen for those doctrines." Everything from Islam to Hinduism to Catholicism to the Jehovah's Witnessess and Scientology.
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God
May 18, 2006 12:22:16 GMT -4
Post by Bill Thompson on May 18, 2006 12:22:16 GMT -4
I don't like the word 'atheist' as it usually implies some sort of militant viewpoint and that there is a set of beliefs of some kind involved. But surely this God stuff is all nonsense isn't it? Belief in The Bible is no more reasonable than belief in Ovid's Metamorphoses or Norse Sagas. (Or, indeed, to use the old analogies, Santa Claus, pixies or leprechauns.) This guy puts it pretty well (warning: quite long articles). He does get a bit militant and angry but his points are mostly valid. And the final few paragraphs of the second piece are quite beautiful. brentrasmussen.com/log/node/363brentrasmussen.com/log/node/364God is that which no greater can be thought. The Bible or the Quran has no more to do with this as any other inspired text.
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Jason
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God
May 18, 2006 15:15:05 GMT -4
Post by Jason on May 18, 2006 15:15:05 GMT -4
God is that which no greater can be thought. The Bible or the Quran has no more to do with this as any other inspired text. Thomas Aquinas? Do you mean the Bible and Qur'an are completely wrong about God?
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God
May 18, 2006 23:21:17 GMT -4
Post by Bill Thompson on May 18, 2006 23:21:17 GMT -4
God is that which no greater can be thought. The Bible or the Quran has no more to do with this as any other inspired text. Thomas Aquinas? Do you mean the Bible and Qur'an are completely wrong about God? I think as Ghandi would say "this is a bad question". This is also a subject that requires very precise words. In fact, the precision required goes beyond the capacity of the English language. And maybe this topic is better discussed over a beer or sushi where the words I type or say are not left online forever. This is because people's religion, like people's politics, change over time. Also lots and lots of what I type on the internet gets misread. Also, how I would answer this would require my knowing who you are to understand how to answer so you could understand in your terms. But then again, this written opinion is only worth the amount you spent to read it here now. How is that for a disclaimer? Now, I will PM you my answer.
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God
May 30, 2006 13:00:21 GMT -4
Post by Bill Thompson on May 30, 2006 13:00:21 GMT -4
A not to add further to the above statement, dogma are just lessons or concepts to help people at a particular time in history. The moral foundations of all religions seem the same to me. But what do I or you really know or can say for sure? After all, science implies we are all just apes. You might like or dislike this: From: www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/02/17/4031d9166ab57
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Jason
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God
May 30, 2006 13:36:02 GMT -4
Post by Jason on May 30, 2006 13:36:02 GMT -4
That is more or less one of Thomas Aquinas' arguments, and it is, unfortunately, logically flawed. If everything requires a cause, then what caused God? If God doesn't require a cause, then your original assumption that everything requires a cause is incorrect, as there is at least one thing that doesn't require a cause (God), and the argument collapses.
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God
May 30, 2006 18:04:23 GMT -4
Post by Bill Thompson on May 30, 2006 18:04:23 GMT -4
That is more or less one of Thomas Aquinas' arguments, and it is, unfortunately, logically flawed. If everything requires a cause, then what caused God? If God doesn't require a cause, then your original assumption that everything requires a cause is incorrect, as there is at least one thing that doesn't require a cause (God), and the argument collapses. God is untangable. Only in thinking that God is a physical, tangable object does your statement hold true. But it does not hold true. It is almost like saying "if everything comes from infinity... where does infinity come from?". I think you jumped into making this post without reading the whole link I had above. I am not debating dogma here. Just flat mathematics.
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Jason
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God
May 30, 2006 23:17:05 GMT -4
Post by Jason on May 30, 2006 23:17:05 GMT -4
Whether or not God is intagible is immaterial (if you'll pardon the pun) to the argument. The argument posits that everything requires a cause to exist, and then that God has no cause. It's a logical contradiction. Either everything requires a cause to exist and God had a cause, or not everything has to have a cause, as God is the exception to that assumption.
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God
Jul 24, 2006 6:28:21 GMT -4
Post by gwiz on Jul 24, 2006 6:28:21 GMT -4
Jason, I just had to add this to the discussion we were having about judging religions by the conduct of their members.
My mother-in-law died last week. She and my wife were very close. She wasn't a churchgoer, and her beliefs could probably best be described as Unitarian: strong faith in God, but doubting the divinity of Christ. The response of our local curate has been superb, several visits bringing much comfort to my wife, who is a more conventional Christian. We've also agreed hymns and readings for the funeral that are consistent with my mother-in-law's beliefs.
However, the reason we currently only have a curate, not a vicar, is a sorry story involving, as the song has it, whisky and wild, wild women.
To get to the relevance of all this to our earlier discussion, if you try to judge the church by the behaviour of the curate and the vicar, you get a conflicting picture, but if you consider that the church authorities relieved the vicar of his post, the picture is much clearer.
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Jason
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God
Jul 25, 2006 0:57:44 GMT -4
Post by Jason on Jul 25, 2006 0:57:44 GMT -4
Sounds like you're making my original case for me. Although you had a local leader who was not an outstanding example of Christian behavior your wife is still finding value in the doctrines and trappings surrounding a Christian funeral. You are judging the value of the religion by its philolsophy rather than its leaders.
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God
Jul 25, 2006 3:16:41 GMT -4
Post by gwiz on Jul 25, 2006 3:16:41 GMT -4
Thought I was arguing that the conduct of the leaders was a better standard by which to judge than the conduct of the followers, and in this case I was considering the authorities who sacked the vicar to be the leaders. Never mind.
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Jason
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God
Jul 25, 2006 11:52:56 GMT -4
Post by Jason on Jul 25, 2006 11:52:56 GMT -4
Well what do you know - it's an example that works both ways.
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