Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

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Elomin Sha
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Elomin Sha » 13 Sep 2014, 15:50

There is meaning otherwise you would have killed yourself long ago but you haven't because suicide is considered a sin and so scriptures are supposed to give a meaning to who or what we are. We're special but not as much as we're meant to think. Take a look at black whole or one of those giant stars. we have our place. There's no reason for us to be here, a phenomenal amount of things that took us from spent nuclear waste in early stars to basic organisms to what we are now.

The meaning is what you get out of life and do to enrich yourself in what you have available to you now. Read a book, listen to a song, go somewhere nice. As far as we know, we have two shots at teeth but one shot on life.


Going by what you said we should not enjoy the works of Robin Williams - meaningless,
the enjoyment Gunpei Yokoi gave us with the Game Boy - Meaningless,
films Tony Scott made - meaningless,
Michael Jackson's music that spoke to many people - meaningless,
Mozart - meaningless,
Hune - meaningless,
Kant - meaningless,
H.G. Wells - meaningless,
Gene Roddenberry - meaningless,
suffragettes - meaningless,
Luther King Jr - meaningless... their lives were meaningless

It does matter because we are all responsible for myself and what I do to others and what ever effect I/you or anyone else has even the smallest spirals out onto others and how they will interact.Everyone's work above has inspired someone or other.
People like Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto and Shirow Masamune inspired me, when they die should that be forgotten, that would be meaningless.
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby AdmiralMemo » 13 Sep 2014, 16:05

Elomin Sha wrote:There is meaning otherwise you would have killed yourself long ago but you haven't because suicide is considered a sin
That is not true. The reason I haven't killed myself yet is due to the fact that I have a distinct and specific fear of death. If/when I come to terms with that, I may in fact commit suicide.
Elomin Sha wrote:films Tony Scott made - meaningless
...
Hune - meaningless
Specifically yes, meaningless, because I have no idea who they are, so they carry no meaning to me.
Elomin Sha wrote:It does matter because we are all responsible for myself and what I do to others and what ever effect I/you or anyone else has even the smallest spirals out onto others and how they will interact.Everyone's work above has inspired someone or other.
People like Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto and Shirow Masamune inspired me, when they die should that be forgotten, that would be meaningless.
First, I'm not saying they should be forgotten, but...

What about when you die... And then when the people inspired by you die, and then the people inspired by those people die, etc. etc. What happens when the last human dies?
Graham wrote:The point is: Nyeh nyeh nyeh. I'm an old man.
LRRcast wrote:Paul: That does not answer that question at all.
James: Who cares about that question? That's a good answer.

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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Elomin Sha » 13 Sep 2014, 16:23

Technically you shouldn't have a fear of death because of what is supposedly awaiting you if you believe in the afterlife.

Tony Scott is Ridley Scott's brother, made some good movies with Denzel Washington.
I meant Hume, he was as an important philosopher for Western Philosophy.

When the people who inspired me die, I remember them and my work reflects their indirect input.

What happens when I die, simple:

I
Do
Not
Know

That's up to those still alive.

Humans dying, we'll probably have evolved into something that isn't human by then.



I have just been informed about my use of suicide in a previous post could be misconstrued because of something I didn't know. Slight explanation:
The Bible infers that life is meaningless without Jesus and you need to be close to them. The closest way to do that is by meeting the Trinity in heaven. It would be logical that death is preferred but doing so would pretty much eradicate the congregation and tithes so (speculative) the sin of committing suicide was added so this doesn't happen.
This is why I used it, not saying it should be done.
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby AdmiralMemo » 13 Sep 2014, 16:50

Elomin Sha wrote:Technically you shouldn't have a fear of death because of what is supposedly awaiting you if you believe in the afterlife.
Yes, which is why I said in the Depression thread that it was irrational. However, it's still true, and even then, even if I get over my fear of it, there's still the rational part of fearing the experience of death, no matter what happens afterward.

In a sense, even if you believe in an afterlife, death is a significant transition, and becomes akin to birth or puberty or other various physical changes. Even if we know we'll come through it OK on the other side, it's still something frightening to go through. The key difference is that, with puberty and various other things, you can talk to people and they can say "Yeah, this is what happened, this is how I felt, and this is what I thought." So, you can know what to expect, with a fairly certain amount of accuracy, and prepare for it. Even if each case is specifically unique, there is a large amount of overlap. With death, that kind of thing impossible.
Elomin Sha wrote:Tony Scott is Ridley Scott's brother, made some good movies with Denzel Washington.
I meant Hume, he was as an important philosopher for Western Philosophy.
Still don't know who Hume is. I kind of know who Ridley Scott is. He made some movies of some sort, I think. I've seen a few Denzel Washington films, but not many. But still, either way, they don't carry much weight with me if I don't know who they are, and they can still be meaningless to me even if I do know who they are. People like Kim Cardassian and Snooky are practically meaningless to me, and I know who they are, and they're still alive. They'll mean even less to me when they're dead.
Elomin Sha wrote:What happens when I die, simple:

I
Do
Not
Know
But, doesn't that lack of knowledge frighten you? And if not, why not?
Elomin Sha wrote:Humans dying, we'll probably have evolved into something that isn't human by then.
That's not considering the possibility of us nuking ourselves into oblivion in this upcoming century or two. If that happens, what then?
Graham wrote:The point is: Nyeh nyeh nyeh. I'm an old man.
LRRcast wrote:Paul: That does not answer that question at all.
James: Who cares about that question? That's a good answer.

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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Matt » 13 Sep 2014, 17:13

AdmiralMemo wrote:But, doesn't that lack of knowledge frighten you? And if not, why not?


Why should it? There are lots of things I don't know, and I'm not afraid of those.

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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby AdmiralMemo » 13 Sep 2014, 17:27

Matt wrote:
AdmiralMemo wrote:But, doesn't that lack of knowledge frighten you? And if not, why not?
Why should it? There are lots of things I don't know, and I'm not afraid of those.
You don't have a burning desire to know ALL the things like I do?
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Tycherin » 13 Sep 2014, 17:36

AlexanderDitto wrote:If it's OK to say "Homosexuality is unacceptable because the Bible tells us so," then it must also be OK to say "Slavery is acceptable because the Bible tells us so." Both of these are "abstract precepts" provided by the Bible. There is little from the Bible that distinguishes these two positions (if anything, the first would be weaker than the second, because the first is only mentioned once or twice, while the second is reiterated a handful of times).

If you can distinguish between them, choose one and not the other (I don't think it's unreasonable of me to posit that MOST Christians would reject slavery as morally abhorrent), it means you have some other moral framework that you're using to evaluate whether beliefs or actions are right or wrong. In scenario, why not just use that moral framework? In which case, "because the Bible says so" provides no additional backing to your beliefs, since you've rejected some precepts from it already. You've undermined its authority as an foundation for distinguishing right from wrong.

I'm not at all saying every "abstract precept" (to continue using your phrase) in the Bible is without merit. Far from it! Many of its precepts are valuable. Many are not. What I'm saying is that it's not a sensible thing to base your morality on, to take as axiomatic truth.

The Bible also talks about loving your neighbor and leaving judgment of sinners up to God rather than taking it into your own hands. So ultimately, in the case of homosexuality, Christians have to make a decision of which part of the Bible to follow: the part that condemns it, or the part that advocates tolerance towards it.

How does one make that decision? Something else, something outside the literal text of the Bible. You identify that thing as a conscience, and I have no problem with that. I think the Christian argument, as AdmiralMemo said, is that the conscience is a gift from God, where non-religious explanations would argue it's present in all humans simply by nature. Regardless of the source, it's a system that helps us make moral decisions in the absence of complete information.

But the issue isn't with regard to making individual decisions, it's with individuals who want to impose their moral structures on other people. With the Christian who wants other people to condemn homosexuality like he does, with the feminist who wants other people to treat women equally, with the libertarian who wants other people to leave him alone. If you decide that slavery is wrong not because of the Bible but because of your conscience, how do you convince other people to agree with you? Then it's just a game of "Because I said so," because your conscience adds no more weight to your arguments than "Because the Bible says so" - or rather, it adds weight depending on how much the person you're talking to believes in the authority to which you're appealing.

Urgh, that got kinda off-track. My point is that the Bible is as good a basis for a moral system as other people believe it to be - just like a conscience, just like the categorical imperative, just like whatever nonsense Hume came up with.

AdmiralMemo wrote:But, doesn't that lack of knowledge frighten you? And if not, why not?

I spent the first eighteen years of my life living worried about the future. More recently, I've tried to let go of that and accept that whatever comes, I'll deal with it as best I can. Death, to me, is just more of that. There are enough things for me to learn right here right now, about myself, about the world, about the people around me, that I don't need to worry about the afterlife now. It's simple - perhaps naively so - but it works for me.
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Elomin Sha » 13 Sep 2014, 17:37

AdmiralMemo wrote:
Elomin Sha wrote:Technically you shouldn't have a fear of death because of what is supposedly awaiting you if you believe in the afterlife.
Yes, which is why I said in the Depression thread that it was irrational. However, it's still true, and even then, even if I get over my fear of it, there's still the rational part of fearing the experience of death, no matter what happens afterward.

I don't go into the depression thread much except when I want to complain about something.

AdmiralMemo wrote:In a sense, even if you believe in an afterlife, death is a significant transition, and becomes akin to birth or puberty or other various physical changes. Even if we know we'll come through it OK on the other side, it's still something frightening to go through. The key difference is that, with puberty and various other things, you can talk to people and they can say "Yeah, this is what happened, this is how I felt, and this is what I thought." So, you can know what to expect, with a fairly certain amount of accuracy, and prepare for it. Even if each case is specifically unique, there is a large amount of overlap. With death, that kind of thing impossible.


I was pretty much oblivious to my puberty. I knew it would happen and I just let it.
That kind of mentality didn't quite help me when my testicle swelled up to the size of my fist and they had to slice it open and turn it inside out. Meh, it wasn't being used anyway at the time and I was lazy.

AdmiralMemo wrote:
Elomin Sha wrote:Tony Scott is Ridley Scott's brother, made some good movies with Denzel Washington.
I meant Hume, he was as an important philosopher for Western Philosophy.
Still don't know who Hume is. I kind of know who Ridley Scott is. He made some movies of some sort, I think. I've seen a few Denzel Washington films, but not many. But still, either way, they don't carry much weight with me if I don't know who they are, and they can still be meaningless to me even if I do know who they are. People like Kim Cardassian and Snooky are practically meaningless to me, and I know who they are, and they're still alive. They'll mean even less to me when they're dead.


I think you're missing the point, probably my fault. Even if they don't carry any weight with you they've probably impacted your life with out knowing. Best one I can use at the moment is comedy, that's why we're here first, because of a comedic troupe. [i]*Waves*[i] Hi Graham and company. Monty Python inspired a lot of comedians that came after them, one is Eddie Izzard. I watched Izzard a lot as a kid and I didn't know of Python until much later and his relation to them. I was shocked when I found out Palin was a member of the group because I knew him as a respectful travel documentarian not for doing something silly. But Python was also inspired by Not the Nine o'Clock News and another show (which broke the fourth wall between skits - can't remember the name at the moment. Maybe Hancock Half Hour.
Every interaction has a knock on effect. We're all connected. Genghis Khan has is genetic make up in a vast population of the human population, the saucy devil.


AdmiralMemo wrote:But, doesn't that lack of knowledge frighten you? And if not, why not?

Lack of knowledge doesn't frighten me. Not to say not knowing what happens when I die doesn't scare me, I've had one or two mind breaks (usually at night) when I try to work out what happens to my memories and what I've done. I have no answer to that.

I can't know everything, anyone who pretends they do is arrogant. There's always going to be a point where you don't know is the only answer you can give.
There's not knowing and not having an answer.

Did life come from abiogenises or panspermia. I do not know - I have no answer. But there is some evidence for abiogensis from the Muller-Urey experiments, not fool-proof but created an idea of how life could have started.
I did not know that water bears existed until a few years ago or that the 'Fuck it, we'll do it live' Guy was Bill O'Rielly - not knowing.

Elomin Sha wrote:Humans dying, we'll probably have evolved into something that isn't human by then.
AdmiralMemo wrote:That's not considering the possibility of us nuking ourselves into oblivion in this upcoming century or two. If that happens, what then?


Life finds a way
I considered it but moved away because I think human kind are a lot better at treating others than we give each other credit for. Look back at medieval times at the way people were killed to now. While people are killed in horrible ways now, not in the same manner as back then. Using a massive band saw to saw a suspended man upside down from the groin down because they stayed alive until the belly was reached. Vlad the Impaler is another good example.
Some would say that is faith but that would be faith on how mature the human race has developed. It's going to take a long time until it is possibly weeded out but sometimes there is some bit of nature you cannot remove.

If we are wiped out by nukes, my stinky socks, a 1918 flu pandemic or gamma ray burst from a black hole it doesn't matter. It doesn't wipe out what came before. It still matters to what happened at that moment in time.


Death is something that happens and no matter how you prepare for it can happen at anytime. I'm going to stay with my grandparents tomorrow, they're both in the mid to late 80s and still very active. I know they haven't got much time left and that doesn't stop them enjoying themselves. My grandmother volunteers at St. Paul's Cathedral and some members of her group made Kate Middleton's wedding dress. My grandfather would meet a friend who had to go to a home to sit and talk and take him to a pub meal every Saturday. They're still making the most of it.
But I know they're going to die. I can say I'm prepared but when it happens, it could happen while I'm visiting, I will not be prepared.

There is a lot of unknowing to life and you shouldn't let what isn't known scare or intimidate you. I never thought I would ever have a girlfriend. She probably won't like me writing this and possibly embarrass her, but, Tapir12 is the closest person I've ever had to a girlfriend. We're very good friends and I've done what I can to help make her smile when she needed it.

The reason I got to know and befriend Tapir12 was due to the works Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto and Masamune Shirow.
Miyamto gave me my love of gaming
I played Metal Gear Solid that made me want to become a writer and merge it with gaming.
Masamnue made New Dominion Tank Police which led me to Ghost in the Shell and then onto the GITS 2nd Gig Series in University.
Using 2nd Gig series as a template I wrote about the psychology and philosophy of gaming in the media, politics and public eye. My lecturer said it was'bonkers' and it 'hit you like a Jack Russel Terrier bit down on your testicles and was swinging from them'. Best compliment I ever had for my earlu writing.
My research led me to discovering LRR's Mass Erect video being posted on gamepolitics.com
I watch more videos and join the forum.
I decide that I'd like to visit Canada and LRR (LRR made me sociable)
I meet up with Tapir, Kirky_girl, James, Ashley, Graham and Kathleen for a meal
We kept in touch and spent time together.

All interconnected, not meaningless and came from the unknown.

The not knowing is sometimes the best part because you can get hit with something you never thought you'd want or see. Life would be bland and boring if you knew everything.
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Matt » 13 Sep 2014, 17:57

AdmiralMemo wrote:
Matt wrote:
AdmiralMemo wrote:But, doesn't that lack of knowledge frighten you? And if not, why not?
Why should it? There are lots of things I don't know, and I'm not afraid of those.
You don't have a burning desire to know ALL the things like I do?


That's a question with a few responses:

-> does a desire for knowledge innately go hand in hand with a fear of the unknown?

-> is there a difference between curiosity and a need for answers?

-> how does one define what "knowledge" is in this context?

-> is there value in adopting a belief and calling it "knowledge" when confronted with something unknown (or unknowable?)

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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby AlexanderDitto » 13 Sep 2014, 20:31

AdmiralMemo wrote:
AlexanderDitto wrote:you must already have some idea of what distinguishes good from bad.
That, my friend, is a God-given gift called a "conscience."


That's a non-answer. People aren't born with a "conscience organ"; different cultures can have widely different opinions on what is considered wrong, or what crimes are worse than others. The basis for human morality comes from somewhere tangible, not magical.

Your "Slavery =/= racism" paragraph seems to have missed my point entirely. (There are indeed people who go beyond being just racist, who think they should be able to still own slaves, but they're not really material to my point.) My point was only that the Bible endorses slavery, while (most) modern Christians would say it's immoral.

You still have not addressed my central point:
-if you reject that slavery is ethical, you're selecting what you think is worthwhile from the Bible and rejecting what is objectionable.
-if you're selecting what you think is worthwhile from the Bible and rejecting what is objectionable, you already have moral criteria, which means the Bible is not the basis for your system of morality. Something else is.

The Bible may be a way for people to have passed down their moral code, but the fact that it's being revised in the present means it's not the basis of modern Christian morality.
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby AdmiralMemo » 13 Sep 2014, 23:36

Tycherin wrote:The Bible also talks about loving your neighbor and leaving judgment of sinners up to God rather than taking it into your own hands. So ultimately, in the case of homosexuality, Christians have to make a decision of which part of the Bible to follow: the part that condemns it, or the part that advocates tolerance towards it.
Why are you making that a binary choice? Love =/= tolerance, mind you. I don't judge sinners, but that doesn't mean I have to tolerate sin.
Elomin Sha wrote:Every interaction has a knock on effect. We're all connected. Genghis Khan has is genetic make up in a vast population of the human population, the saucy devil.
So, we're all connected. So what? That doesn't really mean anything.
Elomin Sha wrote:If we are wiped out by nukes, my stinky socks, a 1918 flu pandemic or gamma ray burst from a black hole it doesn't matter. It doesn't wipe out what came before. It still matters to what happened at that moment in time.
Why? Why does it matter? What lasting impact on the universe as a whole will what you do at any point in time make? Because I can see none, if this is all that there is.

What is the point of doing anything, be it good, evil, or neutral? If it's all meaningless in the end, then I see no reason to do anything other than care about the effect anything has on me, and the effect of my actions on my own well-being. I shouldn't care about other people, unless my actions cause those people to directly impact me, positively or negatively.
Elomin Sha wrote:All interconnected, not meaningless and came from the unknown.
2,000 years from now, when no one even knows you existed, what will any of that matter?
Matt wrote:does a desire for knowledge innately go hand in hand with a fear of the unknown?
When that unknown thing can directly impact me, yes. I don't know the square root of pi. However, that knowledge has yet to have any relevance that would impact me.

Contrast with the fact that there are some things I don't know about how some things work at my job. That information has a significant impact on me and I can worry about it at times.
Matt wrote:is there a difference between curiosity and a need for answers?
Yes, maybe... I'm not entirely sure what you're asking in this question.
Matt wrote:how does one define what "knowledge" is in this context?
I don't really know what you're asking here either. Knowledge, from what I can tell, is facts and logical extrapolations.
Matt wrote:is there value in adopting a belief and calling it "knowledge" when confronted with something unknown (or unknowable?)
If you're asking what I think you're asking, that's what faith is. Faith is a highly subjective thing, though, and one person's faith can be wildly different from another's, even when they have faith in the same thing.
AlexanderDitto wrote:if you reject that slavery is ethical, you're selecting what you think is worthwhile from the Bible and rejecting what is objectionable.
Welp, let's just have it out. I mentioned what I wanted.
AdmiralMemo wrote:(I was going to say more on this, but decided it might get wildly misinterpreted, so I deleted it.)
However, since you're forcing my hand here, I'm just going to say it and you all can ostracize me if you want.

I do not believe that the concept of slavery is unethical. I do feel that most, if not all, implementations of slavery that have been done over the millennia have been very flawed.

So there it is. Ban me, and make me a pariah. Cut off all human interaction with me so I can just go off and die alone. I probably deserve it, anyway. I'm probably the second-worst person since Hitler.
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Duckay » 13 Sep 2014, 23:54

AdmiralMemo wrote:I do not believe that the concept of slavery is unethical. I do feel that most, if not all, implementations of slavery that have been done over the millennia have been very flawed.


If you're going to say something like this, can you at least offer some kind of an explanation?

So, you honestly believe that it is not unethical to deprive certain people of human rights? Or are you defining slavery differently than I am? If you do believe that it's ethical to deprive people of human rights, what criteria would you use to ethically select those people?
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Avistew » 13 Sep 2014, 23:57

I can't speak for Matt, but if I understood his point, I believe what he's saying is that since faith, by definition, isn't knowledge (and you seem to agree with that in your previous post), you still don't know, so how does it fix your problem if your problem really was that you didn't know?
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby AdmiralMemo » 14 Sep 2014, 00:05

I would love to continue this right now, but it's 4 AM and I have to be up in 4 hours, so I need some sleep before I become less coherent than I already am. I'll pick this back up sometime after 2 PM tomorrow.
Graham wrote:The point is: Nyeh nyeh nyeh. I'm an old man.
LRRcast wrote:Paul: That does not answer that question at all.
James: Who cares about that question? That's a good answer.

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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Matt » 14 Sep 2014, 00:06

That was more or less what I was driving at, yeah, though from more angles than just the one you described.

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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Volafortis » 14 Sep 2014, 00:12

AdmiralMemo wrote:
Elomin Sha wrote:What happens when I die, simple:

I
Do
Not
Know
But, doesn't that lack of knowledge frighten you? And if not, why not?



My personal belief in what will occur after I die:
My body will decompose, the electrical synapses in my mind will cease to function, and there will be no more sense of my self. Death is the end.

I acknowledge that I can not know with any certainty whether or not there is an afterlife, just as you must certainly acknowledge that you can not know with any certainty whether or not there is one. I simply choose to believe what I feel seems the most logical, and that is that there is no god, and no afterlife. My entire sense of being comes from electrical responses in the brain, and when that ceases, I will cease.

Would I love to know, for certain, what the true answers to these questions are? You better believe I would, but I find it counterproductive to the pursuit of this knowledge to find any given "faith" and cling to it as an answer.

We know mankind is more than capable of writing great texts, the bible is far from the first book written by man. The most common example given would be the earliest versions of the epic of Gilgamesh, which date back to ancient Sumeria. Why should I, as someone who wants to pursue knowledge, simply accept an answer as given? I am an atheist, but should I be given any solid proof to support any religion, I would change my beliefs accordingly.

My issue with religion isn't a lack of desire to know what would happen, it's an unwillingness to stop looking for an answer just because someone told me they already had one.
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Merrymaker_Mortalis » 14 Sep 2014, 00:48

I feel out of my depth now.
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby JackSlack » 14 Sep 2014, 01:48

AdmiralMemo wrote:I do not believe that the concept of slavery is unethical. I do feel that most, if not all, implementations of slavery that have been done over the millennia have been very flawed.


I want to make this clear. I'm not foeing you for this. You're wrong, but being wrong is fine, and can lead to interesting discussions so long as you're honest and clear.

So there it is. Ban me, and make me a pariah. Cut off all human interaction with me so I can just go off and die alone. I probably deserve it, anyway. I'm probably the second-worst person since Hitler.


I'm foeing you for this. Because this is manipulative bullshit.

Welcome to my foe list.
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Tycherin
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Tycherin » 14 Sep 2014, 07:14

Merrymaker_Mortalis wrote:I feel out of my depth now.

When you're talking about life after death, there are three kinds of people: people who know they are out of their depth, people who don't realize they are out of their depth, and people who are lying.
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Mums
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Mums » 14 Sep 2014, 09:08

I've been talking to some people about religion now and when questioning big parts of the bible and that I find the abrahamic god to be down right evil and morally reprehensible. I get a response that the scripture is made by man and I shouldn't judge God by the basis of what man tells you about her/him. I guess that is a fair point, but I don't understand why you then would call yourself a christian/jew/muslim if you don't really believe in the foundational texts. Why put yourself in the same category as the people saying homosexuality is a sin if your god is a personal god not revealed by scripture?

Also, I don't get why homosexuals would call themselves christians or any other of those religions (my aim turns to christianity since besides secular christianity is the biggest religion in my country). I see that you can make a point that christian scripture allows for gays from societies standpoint today, but why join the group that has been calling you an abomination, sinful, evil, sick and what not for 2000 years?
Sit down. Get ready. Sit down again!

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Tycherin
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Tycherin » 14 Sep 2014, 09:58

Mums wrote:Also, I don't get why homosexuals would call themselves christians or any other of those religions (my aim turns to christianity since besides secular christianity is the biggest religion in my country). I see that you can make a point that christian scripture allows for gays from societies standpoint today, but why join the group that has been calling you an abomination, sinful, evil, sick and what not for 2000 years?

I submit that by this logic, basically all women should be atheists.
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Mums
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Mums » 14 Sep 2014, 10:08

Tycherin wrote:
Mums wrote:Also, I don't get why homosexuals would call themselves christians or any other of those religions (my aim turns to christianity since besides secular christianity is the biggest religion in my country). I see that you can make a point that christian scripture allows for gays from societies standpoint today, but why join the group that has been calling you an abomination, sinful, evil, sick and what not for 2000 years?

I submit that by this logic, basically all women should be atheists.


Personally I think all, not just women and gay, should be atheists, but that's another point.
Yes, I have a hard time understanding why someone would accept servility and join a group that through history have been nothing but toxic to them.

As another point, not joining Christianity or any other abrahamic religion does not mean atheist, so that's quite a false argument. I would have a better time understanding them if they said they were theists, that they believed in a personal god. But I can't see why adhering to Christianity would be something you would want.

Also, it was a question, I want to understand the reasoning behind it, because I can't understand it as it is right now.
Sit down. Get ready. Sit down again!

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Tycherin
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Tycherin » 14 Sep 2014, 10:40

You're right, I should have been more clear there: you're correct, there are alternatives to the Abrahamic religions (shocking!). However, they're not the only ones with problems like this. In many Buddhist traditions, for instance, women can't attain enlightenment. The goal of women in those traditions is to accumulate "good karma" (which is a ridiculous notion, but it works as a layman's understanding) so that one day they can be reborn as men. Buddhist monks, ideally, but specifically male Buddhist monks.

As for the question of why someone would participate in a group that's been historically hostile to them, usually it isn't a question of choice. The majority of people who are Christian (e.g.) are that way because they were raised that way - at least nowadays. Back in the Middle Ages conversion was often more... forceful. But in either case, it starts out as an external pressure, then eventually transitions into being a part of your life and your identity.

But that's not really an answer. Why would a gay person be Christian? I think it's a question of labeling. If you believe in the doctrine of many Christian groups, "gay" is not a thing that you are, it's a thing that you do. It's not that you are a gay person who chooses to be Christian, it's that you are a Christian who struggles with temptation to do gay things. The logic goes that the hatred is of the act, not of the person, much like alcoholism or adultery.

I should throw out a disclaimer that I think that logic is flawed at best, but that is the argument that's made.
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Merrymaker_Mortalis
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Merrymaker_Mortalis » 14 Sep 2014, 11:59

Tycherin wrote:
Merrymaker_Mortalis wrote:I feel out of my depth now.

When you're talking about life after death, there are three kinds of people: people who know they are out of their depth, people who don't realize they are out of their depth, and people who are lying.


It's difficult to follow and understand other people's thoughts and ideas when a large density of words are used.

In addition to words that are complex.

It's overwhelming and intimidating.
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Elomin Sha
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Re: Teach Me(et all) Your Religion!

Postby Elomin Sha » 14 Sep 2014, 12:09

AdmiralMemo wrote:I don't judge sinners, but that doesn't mean I have to tolerate sin.


Contradiction: You are judging them because you won't tolerate sin.
Sin is a man made construct. Sin doesn't exist.

AdmiralMemo wrote:
Elomin Sha wrote:Every interaction has a knock on effect. We're all connected. Genghis Khan has his genetic make up in a vast population of the human population, the saucy devil.
So, we're all connected. So what? That doesn't really mean anything.


I feel you're deliberately trying to ignore each of the replies I or anyone else has given. I have explained each time how everything everyone does has a knock on effect and you are simply ignoring what people say just to go "Oh woe is me."

AdmiralMemo wrote:
Elomin Sha wrote:If we are wiped out by nukes, my stinky socks, a 1918 flu pandemic or gamma ray burst from a black hole it doesn't matter. It doesn't wipe out what came before. It still matters to what happened at that moment in time.
Why? Why does it matter? What lasting impact on the universe as a whole will what you do at any point in time make? Because I can see none, if this is all that there is.


I gave you my answer multiple times. What is the answer you want, and I'll try and address that.

AdmiralMemo wrote:However, since you're forcing my hand here, I'm just going to say it and you all can ostracize me if you want. I do not believe that the concept of slavery is unethical. I do feel that most, if not all, implementations of slavery that have been done over the millennia have been very flawed.


What are you willing to be, the slave or the slave master? What's your definition of ethical slavery?
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