feck sake.
Religion, what's the point?
- Thread starter TheRedFlag
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Is he talking about the a-hole? 
Translation: “I’ve got nothing”
What absolute bullshit
It’s okay to admit that you have a God-shaped hole in your heart.
It’s okay to admit that you have a God-shaped hole in your heart.
It’s okay to admit that you have a God-shaped hole in your heart.
Sure. It’s also okay to engage people in good faith, rather than side-stepping questions and casting aspersions with regards to what lies behind other people’s motivations.
There’s one or two good sayings in the Bible... something about the speck in your brother’s eye? Might want to look it up.
It’s also okay to admit that you can’t answer the man’s question.
Well, it depends on which religion you are talking about. Not all are the same.
True, they're all pointless in their own way.
Not sure what relevance that quote has here...
I assume you’ve gone back to look at what was previously said?
What was the question?
Is this dude for real?Do I need to? You admitted yourself you don’t even remember what he asked you.
The quote is just an encouragement to take a look at yourself, rather than diagnosing strangers on a forum with a spiritual deficit.
This is some deity level wumming.
I'm in no way a practicing religious person, i.e. believing in the Bible wholeheartedly, praying regularly, going to church often or anything of that sort. In fact, I don't even remember the last time I went to church, most of the times I did was out of respect and some sort of obligation.
However, I was baptised as a child, my parents have passed the religion down to me and by learning the historical relevance and importance of it to my country and nation, I have deep and strong respect for it. It has allowed my people to survive in the darkest hours, preserving our culture, language, heritage, mind and enlightenment.
Religion has always been a tool for controlling and forming societies. But it's definitely not always a bad thing, as long as things aren't taken to extremes. I'm glad to have studied the historical development derived from religions, it has made me realise what is the real value in it and what are the shallow factors that associate with it.
I like the discussions in here, it gives a lot of perspective to how different people experience different religions as well, which is always interesting to me.
However, I was baptised as a child, my parents have passed the religion down to me and by learning the historical relevance and importance of it to my country and nation, I have deep and strong respect for it. It has allowed my people to survive in the darkest hours, preserving our culture, language, heritage, mind and enlightenment.
Religion has always been a tool for controlling and forming societies. But it's definitely not always a bad thing, as long as things aren't taken to extremes. I'm glad to have studied the historical development derived from religions, it has made me realise what is the real value in it and what are the shallow factors that associate with it.
I like the discussions in here, it gives a lot of perspective to how different people experience different religions as well, which is always interesting to me.
I think you’ve misunderstood the context of the quote. May I recommend re-reading the relevant passage?
Indeed. For some reason, I can always guarantee a response from you whenever I post anything concerning religion. Which suggests a God-shaped hole in your heart...
Uh, I’m pretty sure it’s (at least in part) Jesus admonishing people against hypocrisy and self-righteousness?
I don’t care to get into it, you’re trolling rather than responding to what’s put to you. I’m done fanning your pathetic flame.
The reason is that you post non-sequiturs and avoid answering questions with a series a condescending vagaries. Which suggests a cognitive reasoning shaped hole in your frontal lobe.
Discussion is healthy and should be encouraged. As you get older you tend to be able to look at an argument or difference of opinion from both sides and that is good.
Very much like you I was christened and confirmed in the CofE and tended to believe what I was told. And for some people that is still the case and good luck to them.
But I have always had an enquisitive mind and as an engineer wanted to understand how things worked and more importantly why.
And I have found pretty much all the answers to such questions through science.
I now have no real need for religious teaching or the church for that matter.
Science is much much more interesting than the bible and I continue to be fascinated by it and it's evolving discoveries.
Just because I'm a nice person, here is what you asked for, so that you can fill the question sized hole in your head.
How about you tell me context of those horrible, horrific passages.
Though why a god would even need his holy word to be read 'in context' is amazing to me. Surely he'd be plainly spoken and get it right the first time. An omnipotent god wouldn't need someone else to tell me how to really read the words that I'm reading.
Anyway, give me the context for these:
No. 1: St Paul’s advice about whether women are allowed to teach men in church:
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12)
No. 2: In this verse, Samuel, one of the early leaders of Israel, orders genocide against a neighbouring people:
“This is what the Lord Almighty says... ‘Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” (1 Samuel 15:3)
No. 3: A command of Moses:
“Do not allow a sorceress to live.” (Exodus 22:18)
No. 4: The ending of Psalm 137, a psalm which was made into a disco calypso hit by Boney M, is often omitted from readings in church:
“Happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us – he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” (Psalm 137:9)
No. 5: Another blood-curdling tale from the Book of Judges, where an Israelite man is trapped in a house by a hostile crowd, and sends out his concubine to placate them:
“So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight. When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, ‘Get up; let’s go.’ But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.” (Judges 19:25-28)
No. 6: St Paul condemns homosexuality in the opening chapter of the Book of Romans:
“In the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.” (Romans 1:27)
No. 7: In this story from the Book of Judges, an Israelite leader, Jephthah, makes a rash vow to God, which has to be carried out:
“And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, ‘If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt-offering.’ Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child; he had no son or daughter except her. When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, ‘Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.’” (Judges 11:30-1, 34-5)
No. 8: The Lord is speaking to Abraham in this story where God commands him to sacrifice his son:
‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt-offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.’ (Genesis 22:2)
No. 9: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22)
No. 10: “Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.” (1 Peter 2:18)
No. 11: God himself will kill tens of thousands if it pleases him: 1st Samuel 6:19 in the King James Version: “And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men (50,070)”. Kill 50 000 men for looking at something?
No. 12: You can kill a woman if she seizes a man's private parts without his permission: Deuteronomy 25:11-1: If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
No. 13: Perversity and human trafficking condoned: "Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse." (1 Peter 2:18)
No. 14: Sex slavery condoned: "When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again." Exodus 21: 7-8
No. 15: . Divorce akin to debauchery: "Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery." (Luke 16:18)
No. 16: Cannibalism: "And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son...." (II Kings 6:28-29)
No. 17: If your genitals have been damaged, stay out of church: "He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord."(Deuteronomy 23:1)
No. 18: Incest and getting drunk with dad is no problem if the world is running thin on suitable DNA donors: And the elder said to the younger Our father is old, and there is no man left on the earth, to come in unto us after the manner of the whole earth. Come, let us make him drunk with wine, and let us lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night: and the elder went in and lay with her father: but he perceived not neither when his daughter lay down, nor when she rose up. And the next day the elder said to the younger: Behold I lay last night with my father, let us make him drink wine also to night, and thou shalt lie with him, that we may save seed of our father. They made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in, and lay with him: and neither then did he perceive when she lay down, nor when she rose up. So the two daughters of Lot were with child by their father. Genesis 19:31-36]
No. 19: Looking at a woman with desire is akin to adultery: "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." (Matthew 5:28)
No. 20: But incestuous rape is cool: And when she had presented him the meat, he took hold of her, and said: Come lie with me, my sister. She answered him: Do not so, my brother, do not force me: for no such thing must be done in Israel. Do not thou this folly. [II Kings 13:8-12] But he would not hearken to her prayers, but being stronger overpowered her and lay with her. [II Kings 13:14]
No. 21: Pray in private, and if you do so in church, do so quietly: Matt 6:5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others."
No. 23: God smites women, children and often animals with equal gusto, he seems to equal evil and wrong doing by association, rather than by being guilty of the personal, individual act:
"Behold with a great plague will the LORD smite thy people and thy children, and thy wives, and all thy goods: And thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of the sickness day by day." (II Chronicles 21:14-15)
No. 24: . Rev 21: 8
"liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." Eternal damnation for lying? In South Africa murderers and rapists often get released for good behaviur, lying is politics.
This attitude of not properly investigating is fairly typical of your sort.
I’m sure he can stand up for himself. Posting on this thread always ends up with one person (me) having to respond to four or five simultaneously. Like a lion taking on a group of hyenas...
Don't project on other people.
Thanks for the list! I presume this has been copied off somewhere on the internet. Which of these bothers you the most? I haven’t the time to deal with them all, obviously, there are more interesting and fulfilling things to do in God’s kingdom.
I’m sure he can stand up for himself.
Answer the question he asked or stop posting in the thread.
Don’t be ridiculous. You expect me to respond to around 20 verses or stop posting?
My parents used to tell me religious stuff, but it never was forceful or on an extreme level - what my father made it known to me was the historical importance of our religion and basically what impact it had on our survival. I used to question a lot of things in life since a little kid so I never actually believed in the Bible or followed some sort of set of religious rules.
Our religion is Orthodox Christianity and it's kind of ironic how vital it was to my nation during extremely dark times, like the 500 year Ottoman rule after their conquest of our nation and also the period of the totalitarian soviet communism that was put upon us after WW2 due to the fact that we were left on the side of USSR. Religion was banned and prohibited by the communists but at times it wasn't as harshly enforced and people used it as a subtle method of protest, although a lot did get severely harsh punishments for stuff like that at the end of the day.
Religion is a crazy thing, it can be used for good intentions but also for very very bad ones.
I expect you to stop wumming and actually post something worthwhile or don't waste our time.
Stand up for myself from someone categorising me as of a "sort", that casually throws shit around. Without knowing shit about me.
I’m sure it can be interpreted a number of ways, and certainly saying you should stop criticising others and concern yourself more with living up to any standard you purport to hold. Or do you take a more literal read?
Wiki is no great source, obviously, but let’s quote part of the analysis section anyway:
The same point seems to be ubiquitous if I check people discussing the exegesis of this passage. I guess the main wrongness I would obviously have would be assuming you’re out to help with your obvious diversionary tactics.
I wish I hadn’t indulged you, yet again, but now I really am shutting up.
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How do people feel about non-monotheistic religions?
What you're describing is religion as a part of a cultural identity. It's one of the big pillars of identity along with race/tribe, nationality and language. Its importance is very big in that particular context. It's emblematic of the human need to both self-identify and belong. Trying to change who a person feels he is, tends to be met with huge resistance.
Doesn't really say much about the belief itself though. Generally, putting all the pillars under a microscope, they don't stand very well individually. But humans seem to need something to hold on to. If it's not gonna be that, it'll have to be something else.
Heavily multi-cultural states (like US) tend to focus very much on the national identity as the main pillar.
If you're gonna have imaginary friends, why stop at one?
I think i've experienced more supramundane phenemona than most religous people have in several life times. I'd say that if you're looking for the supernatural and go to your local church you are looking in the wrong places.
Correct. I'd start looking at my drug dealer first and foremost.
I am fascinated with some of the concepts you find in Hinduism and Buddhism, the yin and yang, suffering, loss of ego. Far more interesting glimpses into reality than what Islam and Christianity get into, as they seem more preoccupied with petty mundane issues, and the hereafter. I won’t speak for the heaps of other religions, and of course there’s nutty dogmatism in, say, Buddhism as well. I’m talking more about the (seemingly) shared foundations.
It's a great place to start tbh. Go for Ayahuasca.