Why bother with Religion?

[mmortal03]

And why do you care about the physical death of humans anyway, regardless of age? I thought you believed that it is the “will of God” when peoples’ physical lives terminate, and when they do they are better off anyway because they will spend eternity in Heaven?

You can’t play both sides of the coin here. Take what you have been told about our beliefs and build upon it. You really aren’t doing your part to develop a clear schema in your mind regarding Catholicism. You keep confusing (hopefully not purposefully) Fundamentalist Protestant beliefs with Catholic ones. Maybe it is the fault of our own society corrupting the differentiation between Catholic beliefs and other Christian denominations, but in certain cases we are clearly quite divergent from them.

When I personally didn’t understand the differences, I picked up books on the topic, and I definitely didn’t volunteer a mixed bag of my own accusatory perceptions until I had a better developed conceptualization of the basic boundaries of the discussion.

Didn’t God wipe out the entire planet in that little Noah’s Ark fairy tale?

You are doing your best to push people’s buttons, aren’t you? If you were legitimately trying to carry on a respectful conversation and ask serious questions, you wouldn’t throw in random topical questions with derisive and sarcastic undertones, and you would do your research on each first.

Ask the majority of males over 65 with prostate problems how “incredibly well” they think the human body was designed.

I am beginning to think you are a troll, considering your bait and switch tactics, and your obvious backpedaling once your sporadically sardonic comments are actually criticized by others here, such that your bantering can be continued.

I request that you rid your future comments of all this veiled mocking and just discuss the issues and ask your questions without introducing some kind of ulterior motive or hidden slant.

 

[Imagine23]

IF you believe in very literal interpretations of the Bible, yes. It was a nearly totally corrupt world that He wiped out. BTW there is geological evidence of the flood.

It appears you have a real problem distinguishing God from Satan. Evil exists in the world that is a fact. It does NOT however come from God. Suffering exists in the world and that is unfortunate, it does have its purpose. It does not have to make sense and it may not be immediately known to us why.

What you want to describe is Heaven (no suffering, no dying etc), that is not here yet. IF you wish to ever get there, you must first get through this world. You may not like the process and it may be a huge pain in the neck but that is our reality. Denying God’s existence doesn’t get you any closer and may in fact put that future in jeopardy.

IF Heaven is what you want, then there are minimal prerequistes to get there. P****ing off the Almighty is definitely NOT the way to get there.

I see, so God will kill corrupt people. Is he going to kill Tom DeLay?

So God is vengeful. If we piss him off we won’t get to Heaven. Interesting. Is Jesus the only one that forgives? Not God? Please clarify.

 

[Imagine23]

You can’t play both sides of the coin here. Take what you have been told about our beliefs and build upon it. You really aren’t doing your part to develop a clear schema in your mind regarding Catholicism. You keep confusing (hopefully not purposefully) Fundamentalist Protestant beliefs with Catholic ones. Maybe it is the fault of our own society corrupting the differentiation between Catholic beliefs and other Christian denominations, but in certain cases we are clearly quite divergent from them.

When I personally didn’t understand the differences, I picked up books on the topic, and I definitely didn’t volunteer a mixed bag of my own accusatory perceptions until I had a better developed conceptualization of the basic boundaries of the discussion.

You are doing your best to push people’s buttons, aren’t you? If you were legitimately trying to carry on a respectful conversation and ask serious questions, you wouldn’t throw in random topical questions with derisive and sarcastic undertones, and you would do your research on each first.

I am beginning to think you are a troll, considering your bait and switch tactics, and your obvious backpedaling once your sporadically sardonic comments are actually criticized by others here, such that your bantering can be continued.

I request that you rid your future comments of all this veiled mocking and just discuss the issues and ask your questions without introducing some kind of ulterior motive or hidden slant.

I’m the only consistent one on his thread. There’s no “bait and switch” on my part. If it seem like I’m jumping around it’s because I have to in order to respond to all the inconsistent arguments of others here: sometimes it’s God’s will, sometimes it’s human action, sometimes it’s Satan, sometimes we should interpret the bible literally (against gays), but sometimes we shouldn’t listen to the bible (when they talk about treatment of slaves and not allowing women to talk in church). It’s all very hard to follow.

 

[Imagine23]

imagine, still not answered.

Is your claim that at some point you became a human being? When was that?

I would say at birth. This doesn’t mean that I support third trimester abortions that are not necessary to save the mother’s life.

In fact, I think abortion is an unfortunate reality. Outlawing it will not stop it however. Just as outlawing narcotics does not stop their consumption, but rather just causes additional and more harmful side effects.

Whatever your belief regarding the stage at which a fetus becomes a “human”, it should not be hard for you to understand that a 150 cell blastocyst cannot feel pain or exhibit other human traits.

It does not have a developed nerve system, brain, etc.

 

[Em_in_FL]

Whatever your belief regarding the stage at which a fetus becomes a “human”, it should not be hard for you to understand that a 150 cell blastocyst cannot feel pain or exhibit other human traits.

It does not have a developed nerve system, brain, etc.

Neither would a brain-damaged 35-year-old, though…

 

[Valke2]

Why bother with religion? Because it provides a system that allows us to dwell on ultimate questions, even if we can’t agree on the ultimate answers.

 

[Imagine23]

Neither would a brain-damaged 35-year-old, though…

Actually that’s not true, anyone that is alive has a complex, functioning nervous system. Anyway, we’re not talking about a brain-damaged 35 year old, that’s a different conversation. Let us stay on topic please.

We are talking about a microscopic group of cells. Please re-read my question, think about it for a few minutes and then respond again.

 

[Imagine23]

Why bother with religion? Because it provides a system that allows us to dwell on ultimate questions, even if we can’t agree on the ultimate answers.

It’s a simplistic, untestable “system” which is basically have faith in unprovable stories which explain difficult questions, that way you don’t have to think for yourself.

 

[Em_in_FL]

Actually that’s not true, anyone that is alive has a complex, functioning nervous system. Anyway, we’re not talking about a brain-damaged 35 year old, that’s a different conversation. Let us stay on topic please.

We are talking about a microscopic group of cells. Please re-read my question, think about it for a few minutes and then respond again.

I am staying on topic.

Imagine23:

Whatever your belief regarding the stage at which a fetus becomes a “human”, it should not be hard for you to understand that a 150 cell blastocyst cannot feel pain or exhibit other human traits.

It does not have a developed nerve system, brain, etc.

You claim the “group of cells” is not human because it “cannot feel pain or exhibit other human traits”, and “doesn not have a developed nerve system, brain, etc.”…
(I’m trying to use your WHOLE quote… not just parts)

So is a paraplegic human?
What about someone with severe brain damage? Are they human?
What are these “other human traits” that you mention?

That IS the topic you’re discussing, correct?.. What makes someone “human”?

 

[TheGarg]

Thank you Mortal, that is precisely what I was seeking and have yet to hear. I’m all ears though if anyone can provide the type of arguments Mortal and I are looking for.

Mortal’s point about people “feeling” God is important. The mind is a very powerful thing. When we really want to believe something we are sometimes able to convince ourselves that it is true in spite of a lack of evidence to support it and a wealth of evidence against it.

I believe this is the phenomenon at work with believers of religious myth. Most people are frightened by the concept of death (I don’t exclude myself from this group) and the eternal finality of our existence. For this reason humans conjured up religious myths. Some people feel better believing that they will end up in some eternal paradise upon death.

Religious myths helped more primative civilizations explain other things which were beyond explanation at the time which is why people once believed in a “Sun God”. Hopefully we can someday get beyond the need to believe in an imaginary superpower.

fortunately you can’t prove any of this “non-religious myth” of yours. I would reread the first rebuttal to your post…soak it in…there are ideas in it you could study for years…

peace of the Lord be with everyone

 

[Imagine23]

fortunately you can’t prove any of this “non-religious myth” of yours.

What the hell does that mean?

 

[Imagine23]

I am staying on topic.

You claim the “group of cells” is not human because it “cannot feel pain or exhibit other human traits”, and “doesn not have a developed nerve system, brain, etc.”…
(I’m trying to use your WHOLE quote… not just parts)

So is a paraplegic human?
What about someone with severe brain damage? Are they human?
What are these “other human traits” that you mention?

That IS the topic you’re discussing, correct?.. What makes someone “human”?

Pay attention, I already responded to the brain damage question.

Yes, someone who is paralyzed is human.

What makes a blastocyst a living human whose death is morally reprehenisble? Having human DNA alone is not enough. A dead person has human DNA and I would think you wouldn’t object to the killing of a dead person if it had the potential to save living humans.

 

[porkscratchings]

It’s a simplistic, untestable “system” which is basically have faith in unprovable stories which explain difficult questions, that way you don’t have to think for yourself.

That’s true.

 

[Steven3]

Imagine23, I wish you had been with me and my parents years back by my Grandfathers side, at the time of his death.

He had not spoken in a week. His eyes had been shut for even longer. Seconds before his death, only my family and a nurse heard it. He opened both eyes, smiled and said in a quite voice, “I understand now”…he then passed away.

You must stop thinking in accordence to how the world thinks. Our CREATOR urges us to be more.

Last but not least…

I’d rather live my life thinking there was a God, die and find out there wasen’t, then to live my life thinking there is no God, die and find out there is.

 

[Neithan]

Imagine23:

It’s a simplistic, untestable “system” which is basically have faith in unprovable stories which explain difficult questions, that way you don’t have to think for yourself.

Simplistic? Please elaborate what and how you came to *that *conclusion.

Untestable? First explain what kind of test you are talking about, and whether/how that is relevant to the data under discussion.

History is a collection of ‘unproveable stories’; however, many/most of us still have faith in the events of history.

Please explain to me what you mean by ‘not having to think for yourself.’ Many skeptics use this phrase, but I’m not really sure what it means, particularly the qualifier “for yourself.”

You seem to connote that this is a bad thing not to think ‘for myself.’ Do scientists think only for themselves? If so, why do they publish their data and write articles in scholarly journals? Why do they construe hypotheses or base ideas on established theories and laws?
‘No man is an island’ they say, so how is it even possible to think totally ‘for yourself,’ and why would you want to, anyway?

The fact that you’re posting arguments on these forums in an attempt to win others to your way of thinking also seems to reveal a self-contradiction here.

Or do you mean that it is okay to think for others, as long as you first think just for yourself? If that’s the case, I submit that it is not possible to think totally for others and not for yourself first. One needs to understand an idea in some form in order to communicate it.

Imagine23:

What makes a blastocyst a living human whose death is morally reprehenisble? Having human DNA alone is not enough. A dead person has human DNA and I would think you wouldn’t object to the killing of a dead person if it had the potential to save living humans.

This is an ethical, and not a [specifically] religious question.
The principle is that the taking of human life, any innocent human life, by human agency, is bad.
Killing a human life is worse than causing suffering, in this view.

Personally, I find it baffling and immeasurably cruel that an atheist, who holds no belief in an existence beyond physical death, would find it worse to allow suffering than to snuff out innocent human lives entirely, especially so close to their beginnings.

 

[Mannyfit75]

Imagine,

I have read your posts and most of them are rather disrepectful and lack any charity. The thread started off well, but the more you try insult us by calling, Noah’s account on the flood, the resurrection, etc, as myths, you are better off to leave this thread.

You want to find truth about God, do your research on Christianity and Judaism. Find sources outside the Bible, like accounts of pagans’ account on Christians, and Josephus account on Jesus.

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

imagine23

What makes a blastocyst a living human whose death is morally reprehenisble? Having human DNA alone is not enough. A dead person has human DNA and I would think you wouldn’t object to the killing of a dead person if it had the potential to save living humans.

With reasoning like this, Christians should have no fear of atheism. It will, as it always has, intellectually implode upon itself.

 

[Sixtus]

unbelievable myths,

stem-cell research blocked because religious fanatics don’t want to “kill” a small group of cells.

While Catholics are sitting around debating thing like whether Mary ever sinned, atheists are thinking about how to save the planet.

There is MORE CERTAINTY that Jesus Christ existed than Queen Victoria. Do you believe she was a myth?

I can understand where you are coming from. It does rather beg belief that the ‘victim’ of crime should end up being executed as a criminal, but that is exactly what DID happen!

A developed human being is still only a group of cells. What is the difference between a large group and a small one? At what point do you say that it is a worthless group of cells and a life worthy of protection?

There are as many answers to this question as there are people answering it. The Catholic Church draws the line at conception since that is the answer found in scripture, ‘I knew you before I formed you in the womb’!

Aethiests saving the planet? Thats a laugh, they are the single largest group which is striving to destroy it! Aethiests killed more people in the 20th century than all who have been killed in all the previous wars [religious or otherwise] put together!

Had aethiestic communism had its way, humanity would by now, no longer exist. That is a proven fact. It aimed to kill the pope, infiltrate the Catholic Church en-masse and destroy it from within, then take on the rest of the known world.Ever heard of the secrets of Fatima?

 

[Eireann]

.

Catholics are concerned with the state and future of the soul. Atheists don’t care much about souls.

Catholics and science agree that life begins at conception. That clump of cells you refer to was one time you. What is the difference between then and now?

 

[Mr.Ex_Nihilo]

Ummm … hate to disappoint, but the Greeks didn’t abandon their old Gods for atheism and agnosticism. They replaced it with Christianity. As for religion impeding the progress of civilisation - Christianity gave the world the university system which did a brilliant job of organising, supporting, preserving and spreading learning in the Middle Ages and continues to do so today.

All significant hospitals and schools of the Middle Ages and for centuries afterwards, were religious institutes. No one but priests, monks and nuns had the necessary time or energy to devote to the arts of learning and healing.

Who but these same monks and nuns had the patience and dedication to spend the hours (months in fact) that were needed to laboriously make even one single good copy of a book? Their secular neighbours were struggling to survive off the land or fighting for their lives against barbarian invasion.

Monks did all these things as well, but ALSO cared enough about learning and knowledge to preserve it for posterity. And I’m not just talking about the Bible either. Where do you think the great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas got his incredible knowledge of Aristotle from if not for the religious scribes who preserved the best SECULAR learning of the Greeks and Romans as well as the religious.

How do you think culture, philosophy and ideas spread so easily from end to end of the Christian world if not for the fact that the Church, which was in every corner of it, had one common language - Latin - which funnily enough also became the language in which scientific and other works came to be transmitted as well. The two pretty much went hand in hand.

I know you’re going to spout Gallileo at me. And you’re right, that was a major stuffup. Is any organisation going to go through 2000 years without a single mistake? But the Catholic Church was also one of the earliest supporters of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Never had a real problem with his explanation of how humans physically came to be. Darwin’s theory of evolution, by the way, with its ideas of ‘survival of the fittest’ and so on, has caused more trouble in regard to relations between the different races and nations than most religious theories.

Funnily enough, in at least one particular area (race relations) most of the great reformers and agitators against African-American slavery, particularly in Britain, were inspired by strong religious faith and a belief that, as the Bible teaches, there is no distinction in God’s eyes between the races and no such thing as slave or freeman.

As for conflict - World War I and World War II were fights between good modern ‘scientific’ nations in the name of progress (ie control of colonies, natural resources and a position as industrial top dog). Nominally most of the participating nations on both sides were of the same Protestant (or at least Christian) faith, in reality they were then, as they are now, incredibly secular.

These two conflicts by themselves, let alone similar non-religious wars such as Vietnam, way outstrip any killing or violence ever done in the name of religion in scale and ferocity. Who ever in the name of religion obliterated cities in the way London, Dresden and Tokyo (not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki) were destroyed in WWII? So much for your ‘civilisation’.

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