Ye Religion Thread

[DaHanG]

Good quote, although it's a bit excessive to credit yourself with the authorship (or nobody).

 

[reaper]

Lots of oversimplification in these quotes (the butter and the poem about god).


 

[DaHanG]

I don't think the butter was meant to be taken seriously, and you're missing the author's intent of the poem if your complaint is oversimplification.

[deft]

Speaking of things overly simplified..Hi reaper.

[|iR|Focalor]

[deft]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9izVu_TtAE&feature=related

[quadz]

Ran across this image in the "funtarded.com" gallery:



...searched for the text, and found the actual forum thread where it originated:

http://premium.faithsite.com/showmsg.asp?fid=6&tid=22585&sid=&style=2

The rest of the thread is equally incredible.  (Her poor kids.)

[deft]

I personally find that e-prayers are most effective.

God bless,

deft

[|iR|Focalor]

LMAO, yeah, those are perfect examples of humans sunk up to their necks in the mire of hypocritical self-deceit. I did some hunting online once after finding out that one of my ex's had decided to find Jesus. She had joined one of those prayer messageboards like that and posted a request to pray for her Satanist boyfriend who had been blinded by the devil's lies. I found THAT highly comical since the reason I left the bitch was because of her own inability to tell the truth about things. Most of the fuckers imploring for God's divine intervention in their lives are the ones who fucked up their own lives and caused their own suffering. People are very rarely "innocent victims", they have done something foolish to put themselves in their current dilemma. Like I told my ex a few times when she started parroting the gospel in my ear, "It's YOUR Hell, YOU burn in it."

Something tells me these kids are better off with their father than the mother.

[QuakeDuke]

I do have to ask the question:

Why is it automatically assumed (at least the bulk of this thread seem to show it to be that way) that those who have a "Christian" religious faith preference have to be the dumbest, lowest, you fill in the blank___________  form of life ever? If even .0001% of the things said about Christians on this board  were said about ANY other faith OR non-faith (by Christians or not), the flames would be hotter than the hell most don't believe in.

Seriously, Why?

QD

[quadz]

Why is it automatically assumed (at least the bulk of this thread seem to show it to be that way) that those who have a "Christian" religious faith preference have to be the dumbest, lowest, you fill in the blank___________  form of life ever?

Speaking for myself, it's easier to deal with specific examples than generalities.  My parents, after all, are christian... and they're neither dumb nor low nor fill in the blank ________.

And we know that something like 15% of the world's top scientists claim to be religious, and presumably a significant proportion of those people are christian.  It seems safe to assume these are not stupid people either.

The posts on that message board link above, however....

Anyway, I'll say that if any of my prior posts appear to be making general statements about 'all' christians, then that would not be my intent--except perhaps if we're speaking broadly about whether faith-based belief in general is a positive or a negative...(?)

If even .0001% of the things said about Christians on this board  were said about ANY other faith OR non-faith (by Christians or not), the flames would be hotter than the hell most don't believe in.

I think some of that is geographical.  Where we live, christianity is the majority religion, thus receives most of the attention.

But on my TODO list for awhile now is to scan in and post some pages from Chapter 4 of Sam Harris' book, The End of Faith.  Chapter 4 is entitiled, The Problem With Islam.


Regards,

[|iR|Focalor]

I do have to ask the question:

Why is it automatically assumed (at least the bulk of this thread seem to show it to be that way) that those who have a "Christian" religious faith preference have to be the dumbest, lowest, you fill in the blank___________  form of life ever? If even .0001% of the things said about Christians on this board  were said about ANY other faith OR non-faith (by Christians or not), the flames would be hotter than the hell most don't believe in.

Seriously, Why?

QD

In MY opinion anyway, it is assumed that the "Christian" faith is by and large adopted by people who are less capable to grasp reality. While I know the importance of the suspension of disbelief when making a judgement, it is impossible for me to ignore the physical tangible evidence. I have found (particularly in online prayer request forums) that the majority of prayer requests are not for Timmy to be healed from his Leukemia, or for some lady's husband to recover from injuries sustained in a car accident. Instead, these people are asking others to pray for their husbands drinking problem, or to help them get out of debt, or... to help their husband stop being brainwashed by another religion and using the kids as a means of controlling the wife.

I'm certainly not saying that people who accept the term "Christian" are the dumbest or the lowest people. In fact, I've known a few Christians who I personally consider to be humans who are far more responsible, reasonable, and therefor more valuable to the earth than most atheists. Humans are like a big box of assorted gourmet chocolates, they may all look the same from a distance, but different ones have very different contents.

As I said, I was mainly taking a cheap shot at people who use these online prayer request boards. Most of the prayer requests I've ever seen are for things that are self-inflicted. Seems to me like they really aren't asking for divine intervention, they're just using it as a means to display their own martyrdom and/or misery like it's some kind of holier-than-thou pissing contest to see who can appear to be suffering the most.

[DaHanG]

I do have to ask the question:

Why is it automatically assumed (at least the bulk of this thread seem to show it to be that way) that those who have a "Christian" religious faith preference have to be the dumbest, lowest, you fill in the blank___________  form of life ever? If even .0001% of the things said about Christians on this board  were said about ANY other faith OR non-faith (by Christians or not), the flames would be hotter than the hell most don't believe in.

Seriously, Why?

QD

I'm curious if quadz's post about the woman and her kids enticed you to make the above post, or if you got the vibe that the people in this thread view Christianity as more irrational than Islam/Hindusim/Mormonism/Scientology/etc. (or Christians themselves as dumber).

It doesn't look like anybody is simply "out to get" the Christians or Christianity.

[QuakeDuke]

I do have to ask the question:

Why is it automatically assumed (at least the bulk of this thread seem to show it to be that way) that those who have a "Christian" religious faith preference have to be the dumbest, lowest, you fill in the blank___________  form of life ever? If even .0001% of the things said about Christians on this board  were said about ANY other faith OR non-faith (by Christians or not), the flames would be hotter than the hell most don't believe in.

Seriously, Why?

QD

I'm curious if quadz's post about the woman and her kids enticed you to make the above post, or if you got the vibe that the people in this thread view Christianity as more irrational than Islam/Hindusim/Mormonism/Scientology/etc. (or Christians themselves as dumber).

It doesn't look like anybody is simply "out to get" the Christians or Christianity.

Not at all, and I apologize if it seems my post is in response to his post - Quadz's post had nothing to do with the question.   I've known (still do) such people and I've always questioned based on Matthew 6:6 the motive of posting such things (the e-prayer type thing - not quadz's post) in the first place. It seems to me, regardless of whether they are Christian or not, seems to be just poor me attempt to get sympathy - an attitude that seems to cover a great part of humanity and is the butt of many jokes - and many ethnic groups  come to mind .

No, the reason I've asked the question is I've been following this thread even though I've only posted sporadically lately and I do believe however, if an astute programmer parsed the thread you would find for every positive statement made, there are many many more degenerating either the concept, statement, or person making the statement regarding Christianity.

It must be admitted, at least in the USA, you can say anything derogatory - using any kind of racial slur, etc that you want about Christians without much happening, but  make a derogatory remark about most any other religious belief and you can find yourself in jail charged with a hate crime. Why is that?


QD

[|iR|Focalor]

It must be admitted, at least in the USA, you can say anything derogatory - using any kind of racial slur, etc that you want about Christians without much happening, but  make a derogatory remark about most any other religious belief and you can find yourself in jail charged with a hate crime. Why is that?

I'm sure this goofy little image has something to do with that. I assume the person who created this image was just making a joke, however it does somewhat demonstrate one viewpoint.



There's many people who will say that more people have been killed in the name of God than in all of the wars ever fought. They're largely referring to the Crusades, the various Inquisitions, witch hunts, and other "holy wars". And I suppose if you look at it from that ENTIRELY skewed point of view, that would appear to be true. I think it's a bad idea to lump ALL of these different forms of "God" together, obviously it only helps to malign the idea of "God". These events were not connected and many of them were carried out by different forms of sects of schisms of systems, etc etc etc. It would make as much sense to blame all of the white people currently living in France for slavery in America in the 1800's. Now I'm certainly not going to say that I approve of all the killing that was ever done in the name of God (however one of those groups of people chose to personify him), but I don't approve of someone associating the different events with one another even MORE. Mohammed killed LOTS of people, and people are still killed in relation to his divine commands, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Jews being tortured and killed because they refuse to deny their religion, and it has nothing to do with pagans being slaughtered by the Catholic church to sanctify the land. And furthermore, it doesn't negate the fact that heathen peoples attacked the conquistadors who sought to bring salvation to them (whether it was in retaliation or unprovoked).

I think by and large a lot more people are laying aside their generational traditions of upholding the philosophies and edicts of Christianity and the Holy Bible. Many people feel slighted by it and animosity towards it for how they perceive it to be attempting to control them against their own will. More and more people are exploring other non-traditional religions and philosophies.

In a way, I think the attitude you're referring to could be compared to race in the US. For so long, whites were the top citizens, the gold standard. With the civil rights movement, whites are now scrutinized a LOT more for their actions that may be deemed "racist". At the smallest sign of intolerance, civil rights groups are ready and waiting to pounce on the offender and publicly crucify them. I think many people feel the same way about Christianity. They see what has happened in the past, are angered by it, and are so anxious to take a swing at it that they place it under a microscope just hoping to find something they can pin on it. Revenge is the prime mover, at least in my opinion.

I'm not sure if I worded that to where it'll make sense, hopefully you get the idea I'm trying to express.