Do you believe in god???
In the end, I think you are judging us very unfairly, and on very nonsensical grounds. We are told not judge other people in the way you do, so why should you judge us? Just give us the respect that is due, even if you disagree with us, and there need not be any malice or spite, which is for the good of us all.
How can they be bad if your God said to do them? Are you contradicting his word?
Let me rephrase what I said earlier, I respect you as a human being, but I don't have an electron of respect for your religion.
And you cannot respect a human being fully without respecting his/her beliefs, no matter what you may think. Sorry, that's just the way things are.
Then I guess I don't respect beliefs where the Bible, the actual book that says that their God is real and Jesus existed, has been modified and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Then I guess I don't respect beliefs where the Bible, the actual book that says that their God is real and Jesus existed, has been modified and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Tsk tsk. Are you actually criticising me of hypocrisy? Don't tell me that you haven't ever been hypocritical or is never going to be, everyone is going to be hypocritical at some point. Besides, as I've already told you, it's a good thing that the majority of Christendom is a little bit hypocritical, else this world could be a lot worse for people like you.
And you must remember that these are my viewpoints. There about as many ways to approach our faith as there are Christians, and you will almost certainly find some communities who follow almost every law and statement in their version of the bible, if that's what you're looking for.
But I see now that it is pointless to discuss with you, as you seem to not have entered this discussion with an open mind, but a closed one intent on turning away all arguments sent at your viewpoints' direction. A shame. I will cease to discuss with you now. May God bless you.
Yes, I am accusing you of hypocrisy. I never said I was never going to be or haven't ever been hypocritical, though.
I never said you couldn't have your viewpoints, I'm talking about MY viewpoints.
God either exists and doesn't care about me or doesn't exist and people like you are being scammed. I've tried long and hard to believe in God, but if he does exist, he's very set on me not believing in him. Especially with his sick game of giving my Asperger's.
i was born and baptized catholic and was in CCD until 6th grade but im now Agnostic Atheist i believe that religion was invented by weakminded NTs who didnt want to just die and have that be the end. so they created religon and said "this is true or we kill you, then you go to hell to be in eternal damnation." after awhile people started believing it and they felt that gave them the right to kill, die, and lie in the name of their religon even though lying and killing are supposed to be forbidden and 2 of the biggest sins along with judging, which the catholic church is especially good at. but religion is Human weakness at its finest. get billions of saps together tell them that they will go to heaven oh but you gotta "donate" to them and the more you donate the more righteous you are and the more likely you are to go to heaven oh wait i thought they believed that God will provide his faithful servants everything? well why would they need money if everything is provided? the catholic church alone in a multi billion dollar business and its churches are even tax exempt! wake up and you will see. religion has caused more death and destruction than ANY dictatorship EVER has. the crusades, the dark ages, the spanish inquisition, the 1000 years of scientific persecution that could have advanced humanity 1000 years.
"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth." - Thomas Jefferson
"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is."- Letter of Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
Source: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814.
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."
Source: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.
"The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy]."
Source: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, 1802.
"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and in-grafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man."
Source: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moor, 1800.
sorry for all the Thomas Jefferson quotes but he is my political idol
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WP Strident Atheist
If you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, have accepted him as your lord and savior, and are 100% proud of it, put this in your sig.
I cannot truly believe in God, I doubt/consider EVERYTHING, so I am literally incapable of being anything other than agnostic. However, I do think it is most likely and reasonable that God does not exist. Nevertheless, when I philosophise deeply about existence, evolution and reproduction, I get the feeling there is someone...something...up there...watching me...laughing...
GET OUT OF MY HEAD!! !!
<ahem>
Anyway, it would seem that Schopenhauer's 'will-to-life' is (a part of?) some great unconscious will that is determined to create perfection, and of a sort this could be 'God'.
Sorry for rambling a bit there, maybe I should post something in the Politics, Philosophy and Religion section about this...