When Is Enough Enough?

[johnnycakes]

Re: When Is Enough Enough?

Sorry Monk,
The religions that came out of the Middle East have been the perpetrators of too much killing and hate to justify the good they do.

And it doesn't seem that they are getting any more civilized or rational BUT then what can you expect from myths, legends, societal rules written up before the Renaissance before women came to be thought of as equals, that slavery was thought of as evil ?

These religions do not need rehab. They need to be gone.


As for the defense of the celibate clergy, they choose a perversion of human nature as a way of life. Celibacy is not a normal state for a human being. So even in that, the Church is not rational. It is wrong, unnatural, not a force for good.

If God created us as sexual beings what is the sense of suppressing the sexual drives that God created us with ? Isn't the Church saying that God's design was flawed, that man is not moral enough or bright enough to have both a spiritual life and a sexual life?

Sorry, I'm an atheist and i cannot see worshipping or believing in a supreme being an omniscient being that could screw up an intelligent design that badly.

I would think that believers would also have a higher opinion of God.

Then again, if God created us in His image, does that mean that he's as flawed as we are?

[rudemonk]

Re: When Is Enough Enough?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Sorry Monk,
The religions that came out of the Middle East have been the perpetrators of too much killing and hate to justify the good they do.
</div></div>

yes...but...to be frank, we have absolutely no way to quantify or measure these...what we have are actually just perceptions and some concrete facts and statistics but I don't think anyone can or ever did perform an exhaustive scientific study. how does one go about measuring and recording the 'good' that religions do? I don't see how it's possible actually. it could be as simple as giving someone a loaf of bread up to donating a kidney against throwing rocks at someone's head and every other atrocity conducted in the name of God. How do we even assign values, aside from the heinously obvious.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
I would think that believers would also have a higher opinion of God.

Then again, if God created us in His image, does that mean that he's as flawed as we are? </div></div>

I don't think there is any evidence to suggest we were 'created' beyond maybe just a push to kick things off, but logically due to the existence of evil, we can say that God is not omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent. IF such an Entity exists, he can not be all three.

That is why I suggest a recontextualization. he may be very powerful, very knowledgeable, and loving, hence worthy of reciprocity in those regards, but unable to end evil or cause an end to the Ouroboros...

People are free to believe what they wish, but those beliefs <span style="font-style: italic">should</span> be informed.

[johnnycakes]

Re: When Is Enough Enough?

Monk:
&quot;People are free to believe what they wish, but those beliefs should be informed.&quot;


I know where you're going with this. You want facts and empirical proof of religious claims when you know faith does not require but must disregard logic.


On the religions that have come out of the Middle East: It's back to the Hitchens' claim that while it is very easy to point out the horrors inflicted on people by those religions through their history, it is very difficult to say that absent these religions people would not have been moral enough to do what they did under church auspices: that we do not need God to make moral decisions as to things like &quot;Thou Shalt Not Kill&quot;, &quot;Thou shalt not steal or lie. Well of course we, as a race, soon learned that those things are not good things to do for the obvious reasons an we certainly did not need Mose to tell us those most obvious things.

So the good that the religions might have done would still have been by people of morals and conscience but the evil for which these religions bear full responsibility would not have occurred had these religions never been created.

IMO

[rudemonk]

Re: When Is Enough Enough?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: johnnycakes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
I know where you're going with this. You want facts and empirical proof of religious claims when you know faith does not require but must disregard logic.</div></div>

not necessarily, Buddhism for example, is based on logical observations, and many arguments have been made that early monastic, communal Christianity, was informed by that religion, or in my sect, as we refer to it, philosophy.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
On the religions that have come out of the Middle East: It's back to the Hitchens' claim that while it is very easy to point out the horrors inflicted on people by those religions through their history, it is very difficult to say that absent these religions people would not have been moral enough to do what they did under church auspices: that we do not need God to make moral decisions as to things like &quot;Thou Shalt Not Kill&quot;, &quot;Thou shalt not steal or lie. Well of course we, as a race, soon learned that those things are not good things to do for the obvious reasons an we certainly did not need Mose to tell us those most obvious things.

So the good that the religions might have done would still have been by people of morals and conscience but the evil for which these religions bear full responsibility would not have occurred had these religions never been created.

IMO </div></div>

yes of course, to deny that would be to deny all the good atheists do and have done- but that still does not make a person's religious beliefs any less responsible for their good deeds, just as one can not blame evil which non believers perpetrate on their non-belief. something instructs the person that doing good is good in and of itself. it's certainly possible to arrive at the golden rule on one's own, but that is a lot more rare. here i think we can grant the catholics a slight tip of the hat, so to speak, amongst Christian groups at least and maybe there are others, because they at least recognize a logical path to simply doing good is prevalent and recognizable through personal observation and cultivation, whether you name that God or not doesn't matter.

I just don't see how one can make the judgement, without establishing some kind of measurement and assignation of values, which also seems to me to be basically impossible to quantify.

I enjoy Hitchens, but I think that part of his overall argument is his weakest and most prone to fallacy, although I've yet to hear any of his debaters or critics lodge that criticism. Hopefully one day he will be well enough to return to the debate. I don't recall if Dawkins has ever used that tack.

[johnnycakes]

Re: When Is Enough Enough?

Monk,

Interestingly, In Clarke's &quot;Childhood's End&quot; time travel was made available to humanity by an alien race and humans went back in time to see the real Jesus, Moses , Mohammad all the miracles and all the visions of God etc.
In the book all religions went into rapid decline after they wer not able to corroborate any of the fairy tales found in the Bible, Koran etc.

Buddhism alone survived because it was not based on myths and legends but on humanity's relation to all things.

I also agree that Buddhism is a philosophy that is devoutly followed as others would follow their God-based religions .


As for Hitchens, Maybe I don't know enough about God and religion to see where Hitchens' logic is fallible but he seems so far and away more comfortable with his beliefs/non-belieffs than any of his often articulate opponents and wields his thoughts and language in an untouchable manner.

And Hitchens has the big advantage of being correct on so many points that have never before seemed to be addressed that his debate opponents are just totally disarmed. He is correct, he's got his subject totally researched, he's quick, he's very very articulate, he's funny and he makes killer points.

Were religions in anyway more valid than Hitchens portrays them (totally invalid), someone would have been able to best Hitchens in a debate at least on one point that he has made. He does seem to relish and seek out these debates (to be cynical , maybe to push book sales and like Kurzweil is (maybe) trying to find the flaws in his own beliefs and words.

But on second thought, I really believe that Hitchens KNOWS he's correct and just delights in slaying his debate opponents on a subject about which he feels so passionately.

He is righteously indignant in his opposition to organized religions, something and someone that the Church and governments throughout history have, throughout history killed because the Churches deny knowledge, punish dissent with death in this life and eternal Hell in the afterlife.

Hitchens stands for democracy and the free speech which will lead to the death of (totalitarian) religions.
IMO

[rudemonk]

Re: When Is Enough Enough?

well, not to disparage hitch, as I am a fan, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to skewer some of the more stretchy bits of religious claims, the whole concept of original sin and Jesus's coming to redeem us has enough holes in it to sail an oil tanker through them sideways, for example. usually I don't think he is put up against the best debaters and he usually dances rings around them. i'd love to see him ether someone like, say, kent hovind or the mouthbreather behind answers in genesis.

i'm just surprised that no serious apologist, setting aside fundamental or literalism, has brought up the point that measuring the good vs bad of religious people is not possible and that Hitch's argument, to be fair, is fallacious. It's at its heart an argument from authority and it shouldn't pass muster. It's impossible to conclude, unless Htchens has developed some means of measuring and collecting the data, which he has never to my knowledge presented.

He has stronger arguments in his tool chest.

I've been meaning to write him about it actually.

[johnnycakes]

Re: When Is Enough Enough?

Monk,
The points in religion/Theism that Hitchens attacks, vicarious redemption, original sin may be elementary to you and me and totally unrealistic but this business of having Christ tortured and killed for other people's sins is totally and blindly accepted by Roman Catholic and I guess all those who celebrate Easter and I have never before heard the concept of forced vicarious redemption challenged .

And if he rose from the dead, then he was not really dead (&quot;only MOSTLY dead&quot;: Miracle Max) and then did NOT die for other people's sins.

Fraud.

[rudemonk]

Re: When Is Enough Enough?

well I'll go you one further and say that Yashua himself never once mentioned Adam's sin as his raison.

you don't get that until Paul.

that put a puzzle on my neighborhood priests face.