<p>In fact, supportive of my last post, certainly one promoter of religion (Paul) stated, “When I was a child, I thought like a child, spoke like a child…Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things…” </p>
<p>The above you’ll probably recognize as part of the oft-quoted euology on the virtue of charity as the paramount sign of the love of God in the human heart and human action.</p>
<p>“But, yet to deny that there is a God, one would have to have faith that our incredible universe just happened on its own - where there was once nothing, suddenly the makings for the complete universe just appeared. That, to me, takes far more faith in something that can not be proven or even hypothesized.”</p>
<p>I can have experience of the Divine without any reference to the creation of the world whatsoever, about which I have no experience, and can merely speculate.)</p>
<p>(In fact, I do.)</p>
<p>
…and of the irreligious. </p>
<p>The sad fact is that even religious people are given a franchise in this democracy. They are not required to contravene what they believe when they vote, simply because their religion agrees with them. They will vote, as all do, what they believe to be best and right. This will often, according to the issue, coincide with their religious beliefs. </p>
<p>So in the end, all that any of us are forced to follow are the laws enacted in this democracy, not religious edicts. Sadly, not all will find them to be worthy—for too many reasons to enumerate—but that they have anything to do with religion is incidental if not completely irrelevant. Now one is forced to follow, as you say, religious ideals; they are merely forced to follow the laws that the majority believes to be prudent. You just have to take it like a man, or dad, as it may apply:)</p>
<p>The religion of the voter is of no consequence, their political opinions, on the other hand, most certainly are. </p>
<p>Perhaps an intellectual aristocracy would be preferred? </p>
<p>As WFB once brilliantly opined, I would rather be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston phone directory than the faulty of Harvard. Careful what you wish for, edad.</p>
<p>I myself find not a few of our laws distasteful. Who should I blame?</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Just because we can’t yet fathom how the universe began, or because we are locked into a very human temporal mindset, doesn’t mean that there is a superior being. One does not follow the other in my view. To me, it’s quite a huge, illogical leap.</p>
<p>Although I have not read this thread fully, I believe in God.</p>
<p>My quip regarding invisible friends was indeed imature and was intended to be so.
To me it is no greater leap to believe that the universe suddenly materialized from nothing, than to believe that an all-powerful God could suddenly materialize from nothing. Watching Planet Earth on TV recently I began to wonder how such beauty could have evolved from a mold a few million years ago. God or big-bang does it really matter? Perhaps they are the same?</p>
<p>The one thing I am sure of though is how much sorrow organized religions have caused, and continue to cause. </p>
<p>Again, watching TV I saw young orphans in Africa dying a terrible death due to AID’s only to be reminded of the Catholic church’s stand against condoms. </p>
<p>So much evil has been done in Gods name it makes belief very hard for me.</p>
<p>Post 83:
“take it like a man,” LOL.<br>
Or like a woman…</p>
<p>When I was about to be under-the-knife for both of my C-sections, boy did I have <em>faith</em> that my Ob-Gyn had passed surgery with flying colors, & that my anesthesiologist was similarly qualified. Oh, but wait: let me get down from the surgery table & go check out those medical degrees. Better call the professional schools to make sure I have eyewitnesses (proof) to the competence of these two. Wouldn’t want to trust anything that wasn’t previously subject to the human eye. And those diplomas hanging on the wall could be fraudulent, after all.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s O/T. But for a point. Amazing how many people fancy themselves to be quite the disciplined skeptics, but have not thought about the many more areas in their lives where daily faith is demanded, of some sort of another.</p>
<p>Also quite interesting to me that some of the most rigorous self-declared atheists go on and on with amusing stories about extraterrestial beings & all the supposed signals in the southwest deserts, etc.</p>
<p>Again, just pointing out these various inconsistencies, that’s all.:)</p>
<p>epiphany–</p>
<p>I agree with your above post. </p>
<p>But really, in the real world, it’s the religious fanatics who cause evil, not the fanatic atheists. How many examples can you give of an atheist who has caused great suffering? I mean like the Catholic church’s murderous head-in-the-sand attitude towards condoms in Africa?</p>
<p>Indeed, just recently, my H was deeply offended by a religious intrusion in his grief. He comes from a large family; a month ago one of his older brothers died. The funeral service had conventional religious trappings, though it was held in a funeral home–hymns were sung. That was fine. The brother (or his wife) weren’t at all religious, though–unless you call the bro’s devotion to his barstool at the Elks. Anyway, at the head of the church were 12 yellow roses bought by all the sibs–the brother particularly liked yellow roses. Well, the youngest brother, a born again “God bless you” Christian, got up to speak, and stated that 11 of the roses represented the 11 members of the family, and the 12th rose was God! </p>
<p>My H was furious. He’d helped pay for the frickin’ roses. As he said, “Maybe I thought the 12th rose represented Sirhan Sirhan, but I kept it to myself!” </p>
<p>That’s how the religious are often bullying and rude. The youngest brother knew very well that many of his sibs (including the one who died) were not religious. </p>
<p>How often have you been to an occasion when an atheist erupted with a spiel about his beliefs? </p>
<p>Would you Christians agree that the younger brother was out of line?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, each a deliberate atheist from officially atheist states where atheism was imposed on the people of their land …when they were not being slaughtered and imprisoned. Recall that this is within the lifetime of many now posting: the deliberate execution of millions in our life time. </p>
<p>
Innumerable. </p>
<p>Certainly substantially more often then I have had Christians or Muslims threatening me with hell; which, I should add has never happened to me. Atheist rants are SOP on campus; it’s a way of establishing their intellectual bona fides.</p>
<p>DP:
I do agree that Stalin, et al, were evil, and used the bigotry of nonreligion. </p>
<p>You didn’t answer–do you think that the younger brother was out of line?</p>
<p>Have you ever been to a formal occasion–not walking by a group on a campus–but something like a funeral, at which an nonbeliever “preached” his beliefs?</p>
<p>Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc are mere amateurs compared to the major religions. If I remember correctly wasn’t Hitler a Catholic?</p>
<p>Boojum: I believe Hitler was an Athiest</p>
<p>farawayplaces,</p>
<p>Not knowing the family dynamics it is hard to say if the younger brother was out of line, but it could very well be.</p>
<p>However, I think you should look a bit inward to see if you ever get out of line with your disbelief. All you have to do is look backward a few posts and you will see how you made mocking reference to beliefs that some people hold to the highest part of their being. Relating such spiritual beliefs to a “flying spaghetti monster” would certainly be viewed as being over the line to many believers. Yet, you seem to be only concerned about the offenses that you think are pointed in your direction.</p>
<p>
Examples. please?</p>
<p>In answer to your questions:</p>
<p>yes and yes.</p>
<p>F-A-P, people do dumb insensitive things. Often.</p>
<p>And as often as not they require nothing extraneous to themselves to do them. If it is not one thing it is another. </p>
<p>It has been said and repeated here that many bad things have been done in the name of religion, as if these very same people and their leaders would have been upstanding do-gooders without religion.</p>
<p>There is absolutely nothing that would suggest this. It is, in fact, ridiculous even to suggest it. </p>
<p>People, tend toward vice even while desiring goodness. That is why we have religions, economies and governments with laws…rather than a utopian anarchy. </p>
<p>I love Oscar Wilde’s quip in this regard:</p>
<p>“I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.”</p>
<p>I concur. .</p>
<p>Too many to list, try Dafur, the crusades, the holocaust and vitrually every european war of the last two thousand years.</p>
<p>Hitler was baptised and raised a Catholic.</p>
<p>Thank you Bay.</p>
<p>Hitler, to the best of knowledge, did nothing in the name of religion. </p>
<p>In fact he was extremely antagonistic towards organized religion. If you have evidence to the contrary please present it.</p>
<p>Stalin and Mao did their worst <em>as atheists</em> though I am pretty sure that Stalin was raised orthodox Christian. </p>
<p>So, by your reasoning, does it follow that Stalin killed 11 million people in the name of Christianity? Even though he himself was an adamant atheist installing an atheist utopia (how’d that all work out, anyhow?).</p>
<p>I guess it is not PC to view the Middle East conflicts, including the Iraq War, as an outcome of religious rivalries.</p>