Way to go Catholic Church :-(

Organized religion in nearly all it's forms, ( often could with nationalism) has been responsible for more needless death and misery through out history than any other cause. Have churches done good works, helped people? Of course, but even a casual reading of any of the major tomes of people "of the book", Old Testement, New Testement, The Koran, etc one discovers they are all rife with hatred and vilolence. anybody reqd the book of Deuteronomy lately? Anybody recall the history of the Spanish inquisition? Islamic extremists?

All come front he basic tenant that they worship the "one true God" and all others are heretics, and worthy of killing. When God is on your side, it is pretty hard to have a rational discussion about who is right and who might be wrong.

No thanks folks,

Icarus

PS. If you are interested in provocative, thought provoking read, I suggest, "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris. He is pretty through researching from the sacred texts, the blood curdling history and tenants of the faith(s)

Icarus

 

And to pre-empt those "What about Stalin and Mao? They were Atheists and killed millions and millions!" arguments:

They were "Atheists" in self-label only. In reality, they didn't want the populace to worship any god because they didn't want the competition. Seriously, they wanted people to worship THEM. So yeah, worship of any form, even if your holy book is a Little Red Book, means you're not an Atheist.

 

I didn't mean to imply that religion was the only cause of mayhem, just a large percentage. It is not an either or situation.

Icarus

PS. Stalin and Mao were short term phenoms relative to history. Others have engaged in organized killing for millenia. How long did the crusades go on? How long have Sikhs and Hindus had enmity? Jews and Christians? Protestant and Catholic? Christians and Mormons? Mormons and Native Americans? Spanish and Native Americans? I could go on, but I think you get the point.

 

Selective hypocrisy? Did you change your political affiliation after the Studds scandal? If so then good on you! :thumb:

 

A friend of mine in college had been planning to become a priest. I don't know exactly what the process is, but he apparently was well on his way to that status. When I met him he had dropped out of that program, stopped attending church, and was severely disenchanted with his religious experience. His biggest dilemma was "is man inherently evil?"


That was over 40 years ago, and I never did hear exactly what the church had done to so offend him. I have a good guess now.

 

Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. seemed to make up for lost time in the killing fields

If it's going to be suggested Stalin's cult of personality makes him and other leaders not a real atheist, then I'm going to suggest the Church abuses that led to The Reformation, The Inquisition, etc be discounted...i.e. if bad apples on the irreligious side can be discounted, so can the religious side. Can't have it both ways as much as the OP has tried to for the past 5+ years on this topic.

 

~

 

True, the folks who did the Inquisition et al were not Christian in the real sense of the word; however, they were the Catholic Church and so the Catholic Church is 100% to blame. Stalin and his goons weren't part of The Church of Atheism because there is no such thing. They were independent monsters.

You see the difference? Real Organized Organization vs. Self-labeled independent people. Big difference.

So, to summarize: Stalin being evil equals Stalin being evil, nothing more nor less. A priest being evil while having the blessings of the local bishop knowing he's being evil, in and of himself, would not mean squat. But if you repeat that for hundreds of priests and dozens of bishops, that means the whole institution is evil.

Atheism isn't an institution, so it can not be held accountable for actions of individual Atheists.

Catholicism is an institution, so it can.

 

What political affiliation? pray tell.

 

Steve,

I'm glad we can agree on bad actors - everybody has them.

During the French Revolution, there was an attempt to set up [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_supreme_being]Cult of the Supreme Being - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] ... deist, an anti-Christian reaction back then....deism was lumped with atheism at that time, although it would not today.

Karl Marx said religion was an opiate of the people....Communism institutionalized atheism, esp. before the 1980's....places of worship were shut down in the Soviet Union - religion persecuted until Gorbachev....same in China, Cambodia, N Korea, Albania, among others

Kind of a tangent

After his space flight, Khrushchev spotted Yuri Gagarin talking to an Orthodox bishop, then sought out Gagarin....

Khrushchev: Well, did you see God?
Gagarin: Yes, sir - I did
Khrushchev: Don't tell anybody

Meets a bishop

Bishop: Did you see God?
Gagarin: No sir, I did not - Don't tell anyone.

Khrushchev later claimed Gagarin (who observed Christmas and Easter) said he saw no God in orbit - no such record (ref: Yuri Gagarin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ... http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin )​

While there are some Christian Communists, they tend to be the minority, along with other Communists with faith.....in the early 20th century it was unlikely they believed in God.


When it comes to color, everybody is comfortable including black, white, shades of gray...technically those are not colors....we know people are talking about shades and don't get bent out of shape. These belief discussions DO get bent out of shape on the same concept - the various shades of the non-religious are so different as to not be treated as another belief - stuff like no atheistic institutions.

 

Does this mean you're comfortable, or not?

The part I'm not comfortable with is defining atheism as a belief system.

 

We all have beliefs.

 

I'll take that as a no, you're not comfortable with defining colours.

 

Burrito's signature pretty much sums this up for me.

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priestâ€

Denis Diderot

 

More folks the the U.S. died (not to mention maimed, raped, abused, etc) in the Civil war than all other wars we've been involved in. You could tie religion into it, and miss the whole thing. It's the COVER UP that makes it horrifically bad ... not the quantity of victims. With cover ups, you haven't even reached the point of acknowledgement ... much less learning from the mistake.

 

Then you should be very upset when black, white, shades of gray are treated as a color, even if they are the absence of a color. Add Belief and wikipedia.com, as they use the word belief. They choose that word because some have issue with the word faith.

Sorry you thought (or wished) my answer to be no.

It may be a different one, but everybody has a belief system.

The fact that some of the non-religious here have argued for years even on something as simple as this does not exactly put it in a good light as in providing peace of mind.

 

What is definitely ontopic on this thread is those abused by priests, and others outraged by it.

Beliefs (not necessarily religious) are often influenced by hurtful experiences. Some have left the Catholic Church over this.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps]Fred Phelps - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] has several children estranged...one of them Bio - Nate Phelps Official Website I can understand Nate's life choices and blame his Father for pushing him there.

If were are all honest, we all can recall a time someone or something has offended us so mightly we reject everything about them - everything. I have done that. There have been people in business settings I could not listen to after repeatedly being offensive....I'd be open to some of their points if it was from a different messenger.

At some point in the future, I might depict how politics at a workplace really soured my attitude towards the GOP....I had voted a straight ticket, then a couple of those elected officials found it expedient to miscast my workplace as an "Enemy of the Taxpayer" - complete rubbish. My subsequent voting record is.....complicated as there are few sensible conservatives around these days. While I've modified, I have not changed my politics wholesale.

There are some family members I could have "lost my religion" over my differences with them, but my conclusion is it's them - not religion that's messed up.

 

That is exactly Sister Prejean's thesis rejecting capital punishment - why do we judge a person based on the worst thing they have ever done?

The church has committed vile acts, and some churches continue to this very day to commit vile acts. But some of those same churches have also made positive contributions to the community at large. Does it make sense to discard the whole church? It makes sense to us to discard a whole human being, so why not discard the whole church?

Now, personally, I fully favor demolishing every molecule of the aspects of church that are superstitious, that squelch probing inquiry, that insist it "knows the truth", that gives false hope to the afflicted and the suffering and that acts against positive changes in the community (e.g. gay marriage). But if the building itself and the congregation were preserved and from the strength of its own sense of collective purpose continued to contribute positively to society, absent all the superstition and phantasm and discrimination, well, it'd be worth keeping.

Of course, there'd be no difference between it and any other secular organization out doing good works, but that wouldn't be any loss at all.

I agree with Sister Prejean: our scale of judgement is upside down, measuring the wrong thing. We should measure the good (and perhaps compare it to the bad), but measuring only the bad is like only bothering to light up the sewers and leaving the city dark.

 

You beieve that God does not exist, correct?

 

The one you're too embarrassed to acknowledge?