are you serious??? i used to work for Federowitz concrete when they did the floor there. I spent like 2 months working there every day of the week BUSTING MY ASS hauling re-bar untill i shipped out to basic… i never got to see the finished product and prolly never will
That’s just not true, whether you have it in your mind or not. The author is obviously referring to Christians as monkeys. Which is fine with me.
Thats why I dont like catholics. The catholic church has been turned into a “who can buy their way into redemption” church.
Agree/disagree:
Do the scare tatics of “You better watch out, You better not cry, Better not pout, I’m telling you why” work to get kids to behave for the month of December, sure. But should issues of morality work on reward/punish basis?
IMO morality can be taught without religion. But, some parents are just worthless. And schools can’t even teach the three R’s, so I guess we can’t rely on them either. If only Mister Rogers was still around…
l o l
are you actually referring to roman catholic church or Protestant church like The Chapel?
as far as i know…roman catholic did that centuries ago during the “black era” when the pope issued certificates to “clean” your sin…for big $ of coarse. not anymore, i think…
protestant church…well…depends where you go…hehe. even now…
Originally Posted by RuBiCaNT
WTF!?!?! What does he want, ritual sacrifice or something??
It’s amazing how much money they can dump into this place and then preach the teachings of Jesus Christ who was all about helping the poor or those who could not help themselves… It’s a shame how much his word has gotten warped over the years.
I think he’s referring to Protestant church…some of em…NOT all…
Which was the exact point I was making. Yes, I would MUCH rather see parents teaching morality without religion, the way my family did for me. BUT, and this is a BIG but… too many parents aren’t doing it. In fact, they’re doing the exact opposite. They’re teaching their kids that they are never at fault, the world is owed to them, and they should do anything they need to as long as it makes them happy. When you combine that with kids who feel they have no one to answer for you get the east side, you get columbine, and you get kids dying because some other kid wanted their sneakers. If asked to choose between brainwashing them with the morals of the bible and doing nothing at all, I’d choose the bible every time. And I’m 100% atheist.
Well it’s official. You called yourself out. You’re a close minded religion bashing biased asshole. My Grandma used to tell me that it’s better to keep your mouth closed and let people think your a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
I really enjoy the irony of the word “teached” appearing in a paragraph explaining that you are above religion because you are more educated than religious zealots.
Here’s the way I see it being educated, a man of science, and a devout Roman Catholic:
I choose to see the church and religion as 2 separate entities. My religion is my faith in God and the basis of how I judge right and wrong for myself. The teachings of Christ are my moral foundation. The church is there to help me practice my faith and do what it reasonably can to help guide the masses that choose to look to the church for help with practicing their faith. I do not choose to believe everything that the church teaches, as it is by its unavoidable nature also a political vessel and must “stay with the times.” The church has evolved over thousands of years, so of course as mankind’s knowledge gains ground into the unknown what used to be faith can now be explained. There is a lot of conflicting history in my church. That’s fine. That’s inevitable when a single organization exists for thousands of years. There is not conflict in my religion. What Jesus taught 2000 years ago was to love your fellow man, remain humble, live for others, etc. He taught that God created the world. 2000 years ago he explained it in a way fathomable to people of that age. “God said let there be everything, and there was everything.” OK, fine. Easy for the average person to understand, still gets the idea across that there is a supreme being. Evolution, the big bang, etc would not have been understood and his moral message would not have gotten across. I believe that the church picks up where science leaves off. Maybe God did create man in the likeness of himself, but maybe he achieved it through evolution?
To me religion and the church are related, but not the same. Religion is my beliefs. Church is an organization.
Teached? Seperate?
Nice!
:tup: this is the best explaination of christianity I have heard in a long time.
I believe there is a being that created the very beginning of life on this planet and that can be seen in every day life when you look at the marvels that we as a society have created; things worked out a bit too perfect for coincidence even if the universe is infinitely large. Just as you said Jim, life on this planet started at the cellular level but it was coded in those cells to evolve over time and the result is what you see in the mirror every morning.
JayS has a great point too about morals w/o religion. I was not brought up with religion either but my parents instilled a set of values for me and those were reaffirmed in kindergarten and grammar school. Treat your fellow man as you would want to be treated is about as basic and clear as you can get. You don’t even have to go that far, as long as your behavior does not harm another person, you have succeeded in being a good person.
BikerFry, I think that you are the most rational/reasonable Christian I’ve ever encountered.
Did you mean that the religion (Christianity) picks up where science leaves off or did you mean that the Catholic church picks up where science leaves off?
I disagree too. Thats giving too much credit to someone who does nothing. If a guy does nothing in his life for anyone and can’t be counted on, doesn’t add anything to society, lives his life for only himself, but doesn’t harm another person and you give him the title of a good person, what do you call the person who does those things? The person who goes though life with their only goal being to not harm someone is in my mind a terrible person. There certainly isn’t anything GOOD about them.
BUT…I’m pretty much on the same page as bikerfry. Good post. :tup:
This is probably my favorite part:
- After the story, the moral of which was that Jesus wants you to obey the law, I looked around and realized there were no young children among the crowd. They were most likely being systematically frightened in a dank dungeon below the facility, I figured. I wandered in search of the dungeon’s trap door, finding something far worse: “King’s World.” Kid-tested and clergy-approved, King’s World is a brightly decorated mini-church for kids where the love of Christ is imagineered. It features a colorfully painted stage where the youngsters watch morality plays and sing verses like “I’m trading my shame, I’m trading my sorrows, for the lord.” As I peaked through the door of the theater space, I couldn’t help but wonder what these seemingly innocent toddlers had done to feel such sorrow and shame. They must’ve been real little bastards. I checked to make sure one of them hadn’t already made off with my wallet.
Guilt, guilt and more guilt. This is how these things work.
This is great too:
- After telling me how the bible was “the literal and unerring word of God,” and that “we are made in the image of God,” she couldn’t then tell me whether god had a navel; instead she backtracked and told me that part of the bible was “up for interpretation.”
Thank you. I take that as a huge compliment.
Hard to explain. I’ve retyped a couple of responses now. I guess I mean that religion gives us an explanation for everything. Science explains what can be proven. Thus, science will always be infringing further upon religion. I’m OK with that. To me, science is “how” and religion is “why.”
For example, the book of Genesis said that God is the supreme being that created the universe and he did it in 6 days and rested on the 7th. Science proved that the world took billions of years to develop. That’s cool. So we got the story wrong, so what? It was a great literal explanation once, and a nice fable (story with a message) now. I still believe that God is the supreme being, the driving force behind the creation of the world. I still believe that humans should follow God’s supposed lead and rest on the 7th day of the week. 
Science can be proven, faith by definition cannot. I know science, I believe in my faith.
I believe in the morality and underlying messages of the bible, I enjoy the stories, and I’m absolutely intrigued by the history of the Catholic Church. I want to read further on the objective history. I read somewhere that Jesus didn’t even call for Catholocism to be the one true religion and abolish all others and that attitude didn’t come about until the Council of Nicea 300 years later. That’d be interesting and kind of fits with Jesus’ message of love and tolerance. Maybe. :gotme: Even when I was twelve years old and reading the book Lost Horizon by James Hilton (the story of Shangra La), I was taken aback by the line spoken by the 300 year old Dalai Lama: “Just because one religion is believed to be completely true why should that mean that all others must be believed to be completely false?”
I have yet to see any legit proof that any religion is correct. To me, these gods that people speak of are completely fictional.
I also have not seen any proof of fairies existence either, hence I have a hard time believing in them. Does this make me closed minded?
Oh wait I found proof! The virgin mary grilled cheese sandwich!
Jeg actually makes a good point about the open minds of the people on this forum.
And for the vast majority of the people who believe in any religion, I don’t see anything that is SOOO wrong about their life styles. If anything, you will benefit from them being religious because its teachs people to be moral and do good things in life. I’ll take that over the vigilantes out there. I cannot defend the extreme religous people though because they can be scary. ON THE WHOLE, religion is a good thing.
Let me ask you all this question, do people’s beliefs in religion stymie the search for truth? What I mean is, we have religion to fill in the gaps about life, the after life and whether there is a supreme being or not, does religion hamper the search because religion fills that void of the unknown. I think certain sects of Christianity (mainly the born-again Christians) are more susceptible to this because they are more granular in historical evens, doubting carbon dating, etc…