"Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things, but it takes religion to get good people to do bad things." - Stephen Weinberg

Oh yeah Christianity teaches people to do all kinds of bad things.

Mark 12:31

31And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

There is a disclaimer in small print that says " love thy neighbor unless they are gay or atheist because they are going to hell and you should tell them so daily to try to scare them into stopping their bad behavior"

I can quote single verse too that totally flies in the face of hardcore Christian proselytizing.

A single verse:

John.12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

Yet often times we'll see hardcore religious zealots who love to spit in Jesus face on this one all the time.

They prefer to use Jesus as a hate machine and they do not allow these words of Jesus to STAND. Instead, they root through the dogma until they find one of its gazillions of contradicting verses to contradict these very words of Jesus.

No LOVE permitted. Only HATRED toward non-Christians will be tolerated by these hardcore fundamentalist Paper Popes.

There will always be hateful religious zealots that use the religion to spread hatred toward non-believers, unfortunately.

And those are either good people who are using religion to do bad things, or they are actually bad people who are simply abusing the religion and are fully aware of it.

It's hard to say for sure. Stephen Weinberg is actually giving people the benefit of the doubt when he assumes that they are basically good people and it's just the religion that is causing them to behave in hateful ways.

But he could be wrong. Maybe they truly are bad people to start with.

Wow, I go away for a couple of days and look at all of the interesting posts. One post stands out, and that is whether Jesus is the King of the Jews.

Here's the answer.

On the cross, the letters INRI were nailed, which stands for:

I (Jesus - in Latin, the "J" was an "I")
N (Nazarath)
R (Rex, Latin for King)
I (Jews, again, in Latin , the the "J" was an "I")

Now, there were some Jewish people who were offended at this, and they stated, "Do not put King of the Jews, but rather, "He said, "I am the King of the Jews."

To which Pilate replied, "What I have written, I have written."

Truth be told, Jesus is THE way, THE truth, and THE life. So, he is not just the King of the Jews, but of us all.

Hope this helps,
Shiki

I don't like Monarchies.

for balance, then, does it also take religion to make people do 'good' things,, as there cant be good without also bad?

I think in some cases this is correct. I met a preacher who confided in me that if he lost his faith or belief, that he would lose his moral compass and just do things that currently he does not do because he believes they are wrong.

I took that to mean that he would probably screw around on his wife, dance, drink and have a good time without guilt. I don't really think he would start killing and robbing people.

I think we have morals with or without religion. We know what is right and wrong where it counts if we are not mentally disturbed or insane.

Jesus wasn't here to judge the world. Jesus was here to save the world offering eternal life through his sacrifice for us all. There is no hatred my friend. I do not know why you take it so personal like you are being condemned. No one's condemning you nor judging you. I've said it many times before and I will say it again. I nor anyone else knows if you or anyone else will or will not make it to heaven. No one's being judged in our discussion. This is merely discussion.

When Jesus comes back the second time is when he will do the judging. But as the first time he was here, he was giving us the new covenant and fulfilling the old one.

I missed that post.

Two comments:

"There is a disclaimer in small print that says " love thy neighbor unless they are gay or atheist because they are going to hell and you should tell them so daily to try to scare them into stopping their bad behavior"

Not on this point. We're merely having a civil discussion here.

"Did you miss the post where a certain militant Christian claimed atheists 'don't think', insinuating they are easily-led fools?"

Again, this has nothing to do with this post. There are extreme "Christians" and extreme "atheists." All we're doing here is coming up with an open forum to discuss.

Hope this clarifies things,
Shiki

I don't know any extreme atheists. On the other hand I know a lot of extreme Christians.

Jeanniebean, in any group of people, you are going to have extremists. I'm sure others can vouch for this.

Perhaps. I just don't know any extreme atheists.

I have no fear of Jesus.

Luke.6:37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:

I judge no one, thus I will not be judged: I condemn no one, thus I will not be condemned: I forgive everyone, thus I shall be forgiven.

If there is any truth to these stories I have absolutely nothing to fear from Jesus.

There is nowhere in any of these teachings of Jesus where Jesus demands that anyone should bow down and worship religious zealots, or any orthodox dogmatic religion.

From my perspective, Jesus renounced the teachings of the Old Testament.

From my perspective, Jesus taught the moral and spiritual truths of Buddhism.

From my perspective, Jesus never mentioned the coming of any Saul or Paul to finish his work.

From my perspective, Jesus never even told anyone to make a hardcore orthodox religion out of his teachings.

So I see no value at all in your personal interpretations of this religion that you basically use to constantly accuse people that if they refuse to worship YOUR VIEWS and YOUR INTERPRETATIONS of who Jesus was and what he might have stood for, then they are refusing to worship and obey "Our Father".

I personally reject that entire view altogether and completely.

You keep demanding that your views represent TRUTH.

Well, clearly I disagree. I'm not about to worship YOUR VIEWS as truth.

I'm sorry if you find this to be offensive.

I personally find your arrogance on religious views to be extremely obnoxious.

I have no problem at all with Jesus or God. But I have grave problems with your views of Jesus and God.

Like Mahatma Gandhi once said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Truer words were never spoken, IMHO.

Truly.

People seldom read what you actually say.

I have met some extreme atheists, however, they are unlike extreme Christians.

Extreme atheists will usually keep their views to themselves unless someone is attempting to argue a different perspective to them. And even then they don't pass moral judgments on the other person. Although they might suggest that they are stupid.

Extreme Christians, on the other hand, go around looking for non-believers to argue with. They then proceed to try to shove their views down the throat of the other person as the absolutely TRUTH. When their views are rejected they pass moral judgments on the other person by accusing them of refusing to accept and obey the creator of all life.

And that is quite disgusting, IMHO.

Jesus fulfilled, completed, finished, finalized the prophecies of the old testament/old covenant between man and God. Jesus then gave us a new one.

No one finished Jesus' work. Jesus' has never finished. Jesus is still working miracles everyday. And what does Saul or Paul have to do with anything?

Jesus wasn't teaching a "religion". It wasn't ment to be put into a "religion". It is the laws our father in heaven has given us. It is only put in the "religion" category as to appease other people of different beliefs.

Getting back to the OP.

With all due respect where is there any sense in the following statement:



Unless a person has absolute knowledge that (a) God exists; and (b) He grades on a HUGE curve, then clearly their belief in this is based on blind faith. Or a belief in unverifiable ancient stories.

That kind of religious faith is necessarily an act of "blind faith".

The absolute truth is that these ancient Hebrew stories that the Christians believe on pure blind faith, not only can't be proven to be true, but neither can they be said to be consistent nor clear in what they are even attempting to say.

The proof of that is in the Christian religion itself, as well as the other Abrahamic religions that cannot be ignored. Even the Jews and Muslims worship parts of these ancient stories as the "Word of God" but either of them accept that Jesus was the sacrificial lamb of God to pay for the salvation of mankind.

And then on the Christian side of things we have a myriad of confusion and disagreement on precisely what these stories have to say. The Catholics have their views, and the protesting Protestants have a whole lot of varying opinions.

In short, not one that even worships these stories as the "Word of God" can agree on what they say.

When I was young my entire extended family were all devout Christians. Some of my uncles pastors. And they would often invite other pastors over for dinner. I sat back and watch these pastors of the very same protestant denomination have discussions about the bible and disagree between themselves on the precise meanings and interpreations of things. Obviously they would have these "arguments" in a peaceful polite way, but none-the-less they were not in agreement with the precise interpretaions of things.

I've given my own personal views, which the Christians hotly refuse to accept. And that is the Jesus was a Jewish Mahayana Buddhist who rejected the teachings of the Torah as the "verbatim" word of God, and instead he taught the moral wisdom and philosophy of Buddhism.

That is my honest evaluation based on decades of study and examination of the Biblical texts as well as the teachings and history of other religions as well.

As far as whether or not their exists a "God", we have no clue. No one does. IMHO, all humans are necessarily intellectually agnostic (i.e. without absolute knowledge) when it comes to the question of a "God" or a spiritual essence to life.

The only thing we can truly claim is to have FAITH, based on either intuitation, or sheer desire to believe in something other than a pure secular athesitc view of reality.

Perhaps that's not entirely "blind" faith, since many people give much credence to intuition.

However, it's a huge jump from mere intuition to the demand that the ancient Hebrews hold the verbatim word of God. A "verbatim" word that no two people can even agree when it comes time to interpret the meanings. Not even two people of the same religious sect will agree on everything.

So at the very best, we would all need to accept our own interpretations and views of things.

And my view (like the Jews) does not include an idea that Jesus was the sacrificial lamb of God. In fact, unlike the Jews I reject the Old Testament, and instead I embrace Jesus as a Mahayana Buddhist who rejected the Old Testament as the verbatim word of God himself.

So I'm at the "Other end of the rainbow" from the Jews. I accept Jesus, but not their God of Abraham!

As far as the question of "God" is concerned, perhaps that very word is worn-out. Maybe instead we should just ask, "Does life have a spiritual essence?"

I personally like that question much better. My answer to that question is two-fold:

From a purely scientific and intellectual point of view my answer is, "Yes it's plausible". Note that I'm not claiming that it's true, just that I believe that our current scientific understanding of reality leave plenty of room for a spiritual view of reality to be true.

From a purely intuitive point of view my answer is, "Yes, I do feel intuitively that there is something mystical going on. I have also always felt that I am eternal and there was never a time when I did not exist and there will never be a time when I will cease to exist".

That's an intuitive feeling that may or may not be true. In some ways I would prefer it is true, and in other ways the thought of just ceasing to exist at the end of life does have a peaceful aspect to it as well.

Thus in the end, I confess to being intellectually agnostic (which I hold we all necessarily must be unless we know something that most humans don't know).

And intuitively I do "feel" that there is an eternal spiritual essence to life. I truly "feel" this in the depths of my being.

But I'm also aware that the atheists who claim that this could just be nothing more than my own personal desire for this to be true could indeed be right. Which doesn't bother me.

I do not "fear" an atheistic existence, or an atheistic death. But I do feel that if this is the truth of reality it's a real shame.

But then I think it's a shame that the world is dog-eat-dog too, and that does appear to be the TRUTH of reality.

So maybe reality truly is a shame? Maybe that's just the way things are. Who knows? We won't know until we die, and if atheism is true, we'll NEVER KNOW. At that point we'd never know that we had even lived much less that we had died.

But should I FEAR a spiritual existence, or an angry judgmental God?

No, certainly not. If spirituality is the truth of reality I'm sure that I'll be just FINE.

Abracadabra writes:

"Unless a person has absolute knowledge that (a) God exists; and (b) He grades on a HUGE curve, then clearly their belief in this is based on blind faith. Or a belief in unverifiable ancient stories."

Not at all. In fact, blind faith is not really faith. Think about it.

From what I've seen, it tends to be the more religious people who can be angry and insulting when someone doesn't agree with them about religion and god.