What Is "Sin" Anyway?

Doubtful, there's rarely a universal pit of crappy existence in pagan after worlds. There's the notion in several that you have to face a whole line of ancestors though. If fear of your post life granny being offended by your actions ain't enough to keep you on the straight and narrow, nothing is.

No Dan, it doesn't have to be bad if it's personal. Would you want a play by play of his sex life? Expression of faith is an intimate act for some of us.

Subjective truth... well, remember that one about the blind guys and the elephant? How about Obi Wan saying "What I told you was true...from a certain perspective."

No Dan, it doesn't have to be bad if it's personal. Would you want a play by play of his sex life? Expression of faith is an intimate act for some of us.

Subjective truth... well, remember that one about the blind guys and the elephant? How about Obi Wan saying "What I told you was true...from a certain perspective."

So?

Contrary to popular belief, the very thing that gives credibility to Biblical law is that it is not something "distinctly Christian." I cannot accept the kind of "arbitrary divine law" that basically says: "This is right or wrong simply because God says so." I think that is entirely backwards. It should be: "God says to do or not do this, because it is right or wrong."

There is almost nothing in Biblical law that is unique to Jews or Christians. The moral law (the New Testament makes it very plain that the ceremonial aspects of the law in the Old Testament have symbolic value but do not correspond to actual spiritual principles, and as a result also makes it clear that they are not binding to believers) is summed up in a principle that is common to most religions and most philosophies. If it wasn't I would find it suspect by the very fact that it went counter to what seemed "right."

On the other hand, many great Christian teachers have indeed summed up God's law in that way. Jesus himself did so, as did two of the greatest theologians to mark Christian history, Paul and Augustine. All agree that what counts the most is love, which is defined as not doing anything that hurts others but instead putting the well-being of others above our own.

You first.

I love atheists who whine and cry about religious people who refuse to keep it to themselves who then proceed to call names and try to force their unbelief on others.

Hypocrites.

Then why hang your hat on the Christian faith?

You like the cast of characters?

I like the adventures of Thor, but I don't worship him.

You like the message of the crucification/resurrection story?

I like the message of Spider-Man, I don't pretend he's real.

And yet you and the other atheists on this board have stated repeatedly that you'd prefer to see religion eliminated.

Guilty.


if you lived in a world where people were killing each other in the name of Santa, wouldn't you want to educate that mindset away?

Problem is, atheism isn't an answer when it comes to stopping the killing.... Atheists have been FAR more willing and efficient at mass killing for secular causes than anyone doing so in the name of their religion.

Oh, let's not get into the Stalin bullshit again.

Stalin was a dogmatic tyrannical fuck who cashed in the credulity chips of the Russian people as surely as any church.

Find me a modern Stalin in the reason based atheist camp, and then you might have something.

I really don't know how many times or ways I can say this, but I will just try to say it again and hope it fricking sticks for once.

The people out there killing each other...would probably kill each other even of there no religion in the entire world. People like that are power-hungry control freaks who are using religion as their excuse to justify their murders, rapes and tortures.

Look at the terrorists on 9-11. On a "holy mission"...where were they the night before? Drinking and buying whores. They don't give a shit about God...they want a paradigm of control and fear.

It's not religion you should hate...it's assholes.

Why not take away one of their excuses?


After religion, what have they got?
Racism, which is scientifically discredited, and statism, which is historically discredited.
There's other stuff, but they're all basically variations on and combinations of those two.

Knock those down after religion, they got nothing left but "I want poweerrr!! I want their resorsssessss!! hissss!!!".

And at that point, the gathered crowd would walk away in bored amusement.

I'm not giving up a single fucking iota of freedom, religious or otherwise, to prevent deranged fuckheads from blowing shit up and killing everyone. The way to deal with people like that is to identify them and shoot them in the fucking head, not subvert your own rights.

Who's talking about subversion of rights?

I'm just talking about spreading education.

the first problem with that is you're trying to reason with someone who's psychotic.

if they were to find another excuse, would you recommend we remove that too just so they don't have anything else to rationalize killing? do you really think it'll stop?

And as far as education, I like Dan Dennett's idea.

A comparative religions class.

You get a decent sampling of all the beliefs and customs of the world, and their differences and similarities.

It might at least open up the minds of kids from fundie households who have it beaten in theirs is the one true faith, and everyone else is an infidel.

And, in others, they'd see, "oh yeah, if there were one God, why would there be all these religions?", and be atheist.

You'd get less fundies either way.

Worth a try.

You do know that a great deal of religious people are very well educated, right?

What? You want to teach in schools that religion is a fairy tale? So much for seperation of church and state when it comes to trying to control people to think the way you want them to, right?

Well, the psychos we've got are too far gone, I'll admit.

Not what I'm proposing.

Nope, see my post above yours.

My school had a comparative religions class.

It didn't change anything. I still believe as I did before that class.

The problem is, you simply don't understand faith and think is simplistic and ignorant. Frankly, it is your view of it that is simplistic and ignorant..but that's okay. You have the right to feel the way you do...but so do I and I resent you wanting to interfere with and belittle it.

And if they refuse your brand of education?

It seems to me that the education and differing points of view are already out there for anyone who chooses to seek them. Maybe not for the inner rectum of every 3rd world country, but it seems like the ones who participate in attacks in western nations had access to a fair amount of secular, non-muslim education, to little or no effect.

Well, there you go, but you're not a repressed/repressive fundie.


I dunno, maybe I should accept the gloomy Henry Kissenger view of history, and roll over and except repressive fuckwads as inevitable, and human progress as a tidal force that takes one step forward, and then three backward.

But then, the enterprise of the human race would just amount to keeping meat alive, and I'd have no reason to get up in the morning.

So no, I can't rest my sanity on that rickety coffee table.
I gotta see it as a solvable problem or go mad.

Well, if God is truly on your side, then nothing I can do can interfere with, or belittle anything, and I'm just a doomed fool.

Then we're fucked as a species.

Then consider us fucked, I guess, because such things should always be a choice.

Wouldn't be any more "forced", than math or history.