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 #32 (permalink) Sun Dec 30, 2007 14:57 pm Do we need to believe in God to be happier? |
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| BuddhaGeo wrote: |
| Crimes committed by Atheists? Are you implying Hitler and Stalin? Lol, if you are, then it's pretty blatant you can't find anything to sum your theory up. |
Are you trying to say that Hitler and Stalin's regimes didn't imprison or kill anyone in the name of state atheism? Of course they did! Mao too! Even Gustav Husak!
| BuddhaGeo wrote: |
| Oh and remind me the last time, in the 21st century, that an Atheist killed someone in the name of "Atheism"? |
We're only seven years into the 20th century, so you're asking me about executions within the past seven years. I can give you examples of arrests in China over the past year. Some of them lead to executions, but it's hard to say how many, because those governments control information so strictly. Usually news of the executions doesn't come out until years later, often due to a regime change, or because refugees have escaped. Also, North Korea frequently arrests and executes religious people, but again, it's very hard to get all the details from that country, because people seldom get out. Another thing preventing us from having full information is that, while the people are being arrested and executed for violating official state atheism, the government creates trumped-up charges so as not to appear to the world to be violating human rights. They'll arrest the people for "operating an illegal business" or some other odd charge.
| BuddhaGeo wrote: |
| And stop thinking that only Christianity can spawn good morals. |
Stop putting words in my mouth! I never said that only Christianity can spawn good morals. I don't even believe it! You made that up!
I can say, though, that atheists have no real basis for their morality. They have to inherit their principles from the religious people who preceded them or surround them.
| BuddhaGeo wrote: |
| I've known a bunch of Buddhists that are even better than Christians. |
Well, who would disagree with that? I have met Buddhists like that, and I've also met Buddhists (and Christians) who are really rotten people, even by the measure of their own religion. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5334
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| #33 (permalink) Sun Dec 30, 2007 15:59 pm Do we need to believe in God to be happier? |
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I meant specific persons, not governmental regimes which can justify their killing by anything. Take for an example Bush, a Christian that wages useless war and the majority of the Republican Christians support him. I see no difference between him and North Korea.
And you know want to know where I inherited my morality from?
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BuddhaGeo
You can meet me at english-test.net
Joined: 21 Dec 2007
Posts: 67
Location: Tbilisi, Georgia
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Michauek
I'm here quite often ;-)
Joined: 29 Apr 2007
Posts: 164
Location: Poland
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| #35 (permalink) Sun Dec 30, 2007 22:32 pm Do we need to believe in God to be happier? |
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| BuddhaGeo wrote: |
| I meant specific persons, not governmental regimes which can justify their killing by anything. Take for an example Bush, a Christian that wages useless war and the majority of the Republican Christians support him. I see no difference between him and North Korea. |
Interesting. I know a lot of Iraqis rather well, and the majority of them don't think the war is useless. They think it's been tragic, but necessary. Also, the majority of the Democrats supported him at the time he sent the troops in. Now a lot of them make a big noise about not supporting him, but they still vote to continue the war. It's because if we pull out before the Muslim radicals are neutralized and the legitimate Iraqi government is running, there will be an even bigger bloodbath and they, the Democrats, will be blamed for it. Anyway, Bush was not acting as an individual, but as the president of the United States, and he didn't do it in the name of Christianity, but in order to neutralize one dictator who was financing and supporting terrorism. Plus, a lot of Muslim countries quietly support the policy, because they know that if Iraq falls to Al-Qaeda, they'll be next.
You don't need to try to correct me on that, because I've already heard all the slogans.
The fact that you can't distinguish between George W. Bush and the entire nation of North Korea shows that you don't inform yourself well, and that you haven't developed the ability to make clear moral distinctions.
It's even weirder that you think the atrocities in the Soviet Union, North Korea or China have been perpetrated by states, but that George W. Bush is acting as an autonomous individual.
| BuddhaGeo wrote: |
| And you know want to know where I inherited my morality from? |
I don't understand that sentence.
And there you go posting silly pictures meant to disparage religion. It only convinces me more that you believe in God deep down but are trying to shout the noise down. That kind of thing is only done by people who have religion in themselves and fear it. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5334
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| #36 (permalink) Sun Dec 30, 2007 23:47 pm Do we need to believe in God to be happier? |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| And from what do you derive your principles of how to treat people well? From some pleasure principle? More likely it's derived from the Christianity you were taught as a child. |
My moral education didn't come purely or even mainly from religion, it came from my parents, who never used faith to justify their conclusions. In general I learned that it was wrong to hurt or prejudge people. For all I know, they might have slipped in from Christianity somewhere along the line, but I'm not sure why those are exclusively Christian principles and as such why Christianity has anything to do with it. I feel guilty when I hurt someone's feelings or trip over the dog because I know I've caused someone or something pain and I wouldn't like someone to inflict the same on me. If anything, it's fear of retaliation, or cowardly altruism, at core.
I know plenty of Christians who have no qualms about breaking Christian teaching on - say - sexual promiscuity, because they're working with their own set of rules, regardless what their professed religion says. They're doing what seems right to them.
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| Your story is something like mine was when I was your age. Your remark about having made your decision at age 14 reminds me of when some greenie, feminist, union activist or whoever gets up in front of a crowd and gives some statement by a 4-year-old child she knows as "proof" that whatever her agenda is must be common sense. In situations like that, no one ever seems to question whether a tiny child's "wisdom" is reliable. |
I never said I made a decision at 14, I said I woke up from blind acceptance at 14. Later in my post, I also said I was keeping an open mind about religion, but for the past four years I've dropped the assumption that there is a God, because that assumption doesn't seem correct to me.
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| Someone who rejects religion at age 14, as I did, and you did, is rejecting the extremely simplified version of it that is taught to children and preadolescents. Reading the Bible doesn't enlighten a 14-year-old in that mindset, because he lacks the life experience to make sense out of a lot of it. Even an 18-year-old isn't smart enough to understand it the way a real adult does. As years wear on, and one understands more and more about human nature, people see things even in other types of literature that they weren't capable of seeing when they were teenagers. If you don't believe me, take some deep novel, like War and Peace, and read it once a decade for the rest of your life. Old people who do that will tell you it's like a different book every time. |
I'm not sure what you're saying here. On one hand, you say that I'm too young to understand religion and therefore too young to claim to be an atheist, but how can I agree with something you say it's impossible for me to understand in the first place? At what point in one's life does one become 'capable' of understanding religion? With respect, you have no idea what my life experience is and as such I find it incredibly arrogant for you to pooh-pooh my views as the rebellious spoutings of a naive teenager.
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| But later in your post you disparage it a bit maliciously. |
Really? When? It wasn't my intention.
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| Don't forget the gargantuan atrocities committed in the name of official atheism. |
Communist purges were never based solely on religious grounds, they targeted anyone who dissented from any part of the state's 'package' of ideals, economic, social, cultural or religious. Totalitarian governments have opposed religions because they represent a rival for state control of hearts and minds. That can't really be compared to conflicts based on religious differences, the purest examples of which are the Crusades and modern Muslim extremists. Most conflicts blamed on religion (e.g. Israel, Northern Ireland) have been political conflicts divided along religious lines.
People are always finding reasons to kill each other - over politics, cultural differences, and sometimes religion. That was my entire point.
| screenager wrote: |
| I disagree with many churches' black-and-white views on things like homosexuality or euthanasia, |
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| I don't see the mainline churches, including the Catholic church, as having such a "black-and-white" view about homosexuality and euthanasia. Their stand is, in fact, rather complicated and quite nuanced, but a 14- or 18-year-old relying mainly on the secular press would never detect this. |
Well yes, the secular press, religious websites, school chaplain and religious studies department. I learned about Catholic teachings and the scriptural basis and reasoning for them, and was unconvinced. Another nail in the coffin for the notion that I took my morals from my Christian education.
What can be more black and white? Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. It's condemned by Paul, who also said women had no right to ask questions in church, and it's condemned in Leviticus, who also said I should have a pair of turtledoves sacrificed every time I menstruate longer than usual. It almost seems to have more to do with Roman attitudes towards homosexuality - as sheer indulgence since it's not for procreation and as such the future greater glory of the state/church - than with God.
As for euthanasia, it overlooks the fact that medicine is often extending their natural life and as such doctors and family are already 'playing God'.
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I think you've got it backwards in a lot of cases. Many atheists think that everything is somehow accessible to science and the human mind, and they have an exaggerated view of how controllable things in life are. (That's why atheism so often goes hand in hand with socialism.) This gives them a false sense of security, because they think that one human mind, or a group of them, can make sense of almost anything one way or another.
People who move from atheism to religion have to take the huge leap of realizing that enormous numbers of things can never be known and can never be controlled, and that things go on around us that our perceptual abilities are not adequate to detect. |
What would you consider to be immune from scientific explanation? The latest proposal for a Grand Unified Theory in physics has the potential to explain the origin of the universe. With every passing day, developments in genetics and neuroscience increase our understanding of what it is to be human - how we stay healthy and why we behave the way we behave.
I have no illusions that modern science has unlocked all the secrets of the universe, but no do I see any reason to doubt that, given time, it could.
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| An educated, religiously mature adult is usually more comfortable with incomprehensible, random occurrences than most atheists are. |
Can you cite any examples?
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| But you don't have much information. |
Hence I don't presume to suggest that my views are perfect and complete, and hence I include the disclaimer. Do you expect me to apologise for being born so late? 
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| That Stendahl quote is stupid, because it assumes people don't develop. |
Not at all. Age is not always an indication of maturity, and maturity is not the same as intelligence. We rarely work out answers to the big questions on the spur of the moment, instead they develop with us. I take that line as a reference to the little things. It's a reminder to always think carefully, to trust your younger self as having done the best it could, and to remember that at no stage in your life are you perfect.
I said I liked the quote, not that I would encourage anyone to live by it. |
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Screenager
I'm new here and I like it ;-)
Joined: 20 Nov 2007
Posts: 11
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