Non-religious doctors just as likely to care for poor

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Aug 1 2007, 11:58 AM) [snapback]488754[/snapback]</div>

Try to remember that christian doctrine considers earthly works irrelevant. "Heaven" is attainable only if you believe a sadistic jackass (worshipped by the religious as "god") arranged to have his "son" murdered as a sacrifice to himself so he could then "forgive" all humanity all its past and future transgressions. Believe that and you can commit genocide, be a serial killer, steal dimes from children's piggy banks, and even eat the wrong meat on the wrong day without a flicker of worry; a nice condo and freshly laundered wings await you in heaven.

Not a single "believer" has yet (that I've seen) denied that the most execrable monsters in history would be denied their place in heaven, with all its benefits, so long as at some point the monster sincerely came to believe "christ died so he could keep on sinning" (not their words, exactly, but the meaning's the same).

Absent that belief, the most ethical, compassionate, merciful, self-sacrificing, generous human being is doomed to eternal punishment.

And those who believe that nonsense can't understand why such idiotic crap doesn't get "respect." Although I suppose if they COULD understand why such obvious baloney doesn't get respect they'd recognize it for what it is and stop believing it themselves.

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Aug 1 2007, 12:48 PM) [snapback]488787[/snapback]</div>

:blink: Wow. I think that one blasted my hair back. :blink:
I think I'll duck out of the way of the counter fire.....

 

Burritos trollin again!
Any takers on yet another religious squabble?

Shouldn't you have just added this to the earlier thread about Christians donating more money than any other group? It was the same discussion, though started by a troller on the other side of the boat!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Aug 1 2007, 03:48 PM) [snapback]488787[/snapback]</div>

First off, God's the judge, not me. He might have a remedial program for non-believers for all I know, because I know he cares about all of his children.

But I'll be the one to say that monsters are going to hell "if they believe and keep on sinning" because if they are not changed by their belief then they do not believe.

Redemption is not a barcode stamped on your butt that gets you into heaven just because you once said, "I believe." If you believe, you are changed. You pursue discipleship. You seek God. He changes you.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(formerVWdriver @ Aug 1 2007, 05:58 PM) [snapback]488972[/snapback]</div>

All those hundreds (thousands?) of wayward priests I take it must not have been true believers.

The 9/11 hijackers sought "god" and flew headlong to the reward they truly believed awaited them.

Someone claiming to seek or follow "god" has zero credibility in my book - less than zero. You can't be a decent human being for decency's sake alone, you can't strive to make the world a better place for your having been in it on those merits alone, you waste time and energy trying to flatter some despotic ghost instead of getting out and enriching your life and the lives of others for the sheer sake of making life better, what use are you? You represent a considerable threat, the potential for apocalyptic harm, because NO ACT is too horrendous, too obscene to someone who thinks a ghost is talking to him. History's landscape is buried under the corpses that were made victim by the thought that what a demonic ghost wants supercedes the needs and wants of humanity.

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

Preface: I'm not a believer & I don't follow any faith or religion.

Mark, burritos ... is your beef with religion or with faith? The two are not the same thing. Religion implies that you have faith. Faith doesn't mean you subscribe to a religion.

If someone chooses to live life as a good & moral person because s/he believes s/he'll be rewarded for it, but doesn't try to convert anyone, what's it to you? Why should you give a fat rat's nice person whether someone believes or not? And who are you to judge their belief?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Aug 1 2007, 11:58 AM) [snapback]488754[/snapback]</div>

Physicians have a long history of serving, so the findings don't surprise me. There are plenty of people of good will that do good things without being Christian. We should acknowledge them.

But your premise is faulty; there is no single "christian" view of redemption, salvation and the fate of unbelievers. There are two main divisions, Calvinist and Arminian, and various melding of the two concepts. Most of the conservative Christians I think you are intending to engage are a mixture of the two, not quite truly Calvinist, but also not fully Arminian. I am mainly Calvinist in outlook, with one of the "five points" still undecided in my mind, but it does not get within a shout of Arminianism.

So, from a "reformed" or Calvinist perspective, the physicans who go to heaven will go to heaven because God choose it to be so, and those God has not chosen will not go to heaven, no matter the incantation they may or may not give at an altar call. Those that God chooses to be in heaven will be there, and I suspect many of us will be surprised at who God has chosen.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Proco @ Aug 1 2007, 07:06 PM) [snapback]489009[/snapback]</div>

When someone's belief leads them to commit indiscriminate murder, or mass murder, or otherwise harm society at large, it is our (not just my) moral obligation to judge and condemn such belief, exactly as we judge and condemn belief in male superiority, race superiority and other corrosive ideas that have made life miserable across history. Irrational, unethical religious belief at this moment is inhibiting stem cell medical research, inhibiting the fulfillment of loving human relationships in its opposition to gay marriage, inhibiting education in its attempts to deny evolutionary theory and insistence that a fairytale be indoctrinated as fact. Ardent religious belief drove four loaded airliners into buildings; ardent religious belief fuels the strife between Israel and the Arab Middle East; fanatic religious belief on ALL sides fuels the ongoing disaster in Iraq. And you have the obscene temerity to tell me that these beliefs are none of my business? They're everybody's business.

Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

This face of anger that burritos puts forth, I fear, if it has not already happened will soon express itself in physical violence towards the groups he so relentlessly attacks. This type of hatred festers within a person ruins lives and I for one feel sorry for him and others like him with similar hateful viewpoints.

BTW, thank you darwood for your reaction to my post which was in response to multiple instances of posters here attacking good people everywhere by attributing the bad acts of a few to the entire group. My challenge was given so that others could see that not all Christians were hateful people as is so commonly expressed and believed here on PC. It was also positive and factual in nature. If you look through the posts you will see where several posters replied with some institutions that have contributed much to society and I have not only acknowledged that contribution but congratulated that person for his/her find. I made it early in my career here on PC and may have done it differently today. I did push some buttons but overall I have no regrets. If you look through my posts when I do make mistakes or step over the line I have apologized and or expressed some type of explanation, publicly. I don’t recall seeing anything of a similar nature from anyone on this board. But your attempt at comparing burritos’ relentless hate filled attacks with that particular post of mine I regard as a <strike>knee</strike>-jerk reaction and the same caliber of trolling as you accuse others of perpetrating.


Wildkow

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Aug 1 2007, 03:48 PM) [snapback]488787[/snapback]</div>

Mark,

Why must you use terms as vile as 'sadistic jackass' to describe God? Would you do the same for any other belief? Would you mock in such terms the person who is into Zen? Buddha?

It does your discourse a dis service when you openly mock that of which you don't agree with.

As for me, I don't believe in that sort of sadistic jackass, but do believe in the message and man of Christ. And the rest is all screwed up by man. Heaven? Hell? Who knows? Who cares? It's about the here and now that matters. Weather we as people can live in harmony with all the rest. Respecting one another, and all that.

I don't believe in hell.
Or heaven. Have not been to either place, and until someone comes back with digital photos, or at the very least uploads a video to YouTube from either place, it's pointless to wonder about what may be as fictional as Narnia.

I don't know who will be in the afterlife, if anyone, so I have a relative peace that I will die at least trying to be nice here. And sorry if that offended you.

Rev. TJ, of the Church of Those Who Just Want To Live in Peace.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Aug 1 2007, 09:38 PM) [snapback]489048[/snapback]</div>

Group A committed an evil act. Group A believed X, therefore X is evil.

In logical terms, this is known as the fallacy of "Guilt by Association".

With respect, atheists are responsible for many human attrocities of their own. Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot were probably the most brutal murderers in human history and all were atheists. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake for me to say that atheism is the root of the world's crimes just as it's a mistake to say religion is the cause. In fact, by some accounts, 57% of suicide attackers come from secular groups!

So should I conclude that secularism is more evil than religious belief (57% vs. 43%)? No way! Humans as a group are screwed up. We're all in the same boat in those terms!

What Christianity offers is a way to acknowledge the mess we're in (Romans 3:23 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,"), seek forgiveness for it (Luke 23:34 "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."), and work for something better (Psalms 82:3-4 "Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.").

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Aug 1 2007, 11:38 PM) [snapback]489048[/snapback]</div>

Mark, what you're describing is the result of religious fanaticism, not garden-variety faith. We all have an obligation to stand up to that. However, if you view all people who follow a religion as fanatics, then you're just as guilty of the same kind of fanaticism. There are many people who just go about their business and don't try to push their religious views into government and our schools. When they cross that line, then I agree it's time to stop them in their tracks.

My father-in-law and one of my best friends from college are both Catholic. Both go to mass every week. However, my father-in-law is an unmitigated nice person who would start arguments and fights with the family as soon as they got in the car. Should I judge all Catholics by his behavior? Or should I look to my friend, Anne, who just goes about her business without pushing it on anyone?

Faith gives people a center and a safe place to fall when things aren't going well. Religion, on the other hand, is something completely different. It's the religious dogma that turns the faith into fanaticism. It's the priest who delivers a homily against evolution. It's the imam who calls for the death of the infidels. When you rail against religion & faith in general, you are attacking something they hold dear. Whether it's rational is irrelevant. Besides, neither extreme in the "god exists" argument can prove their point. There's no proof of the existence of (as George Carlin put it) "an invisible man in the sky". Nor is there proof of his/her/its non-existence.

Like I said before, I don't believe. But were I inclined to believe, I think I'd want to believe the way TJ does. He does his best to spread the word of what he believes (because he truly believes it's good news). But if you don't believe, that's fine.

Mike

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Boulder Bum @ Aug 2 2007, 04:50 AM) [snapback]489131[/snapback]</div>

Logical fallacy, I'm afraid.

Your three despots were also male, wore shoes, were less than 6 feet tall, and all born in the 20th century. Why invoke atheism, when you can blame sandals ??

Christians, on the other hand, have a 2000 year history of invoking their religion as justification for murder, torture, and suffering. Not all, by any means; but the difference is night and day.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(EricGo @ Aug 2 2007, 10:17 AM) [snapback]489310[/snapback]</div>

You missed my point. I said it's incorrect to blame atheism for the attrocities of mankind, but suggested that it's equally incorrect to blame religion.

My thesis is that there's something evil about humanity in general, regardless of religious belief or abscence thereof.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Aug 2 2007, 11:00 AM) [snapback]489342[/snapback]</div>

Strictly speaking, there were scores of religious people killed in Communist nations because of their faith.

Regardless, it seems clear to me that people can be guilty of psychopathy without belief in any God. Case in point, take this statement made by notorious serial killer/cannibal Jeffry Dahmer:

Around the world, people kill and war for a variety of reasons: greed, territory, race, and, yes, God.

It is my viewpoint, however, that if you remove belief in God, humanity would still have, and still cook up, a thousand different excuses to kill.

Furthering this line of reasoning, I'd be curious to see your thoughts on the following questions:

Would you concur that some of the bigger murders in history weren't religious at all?
If so, can we conclude that evil would and has existed on a large scale even without religion?

I have a few othere follow ups, but I'm curious to get your perspectives on this.

 

[]The First Law of Thermodynamics states " Energy can be neither created nor destroyed".
In the Begining, and there truly was a begining to physical existence, the universes were formed by what militaristic science termed the "Big Bang". Upon reflection (mostly mine), that Creative First Moment should be seen as instead as the First Orgasm for it was an expression of Love. After that First Expression of Love, came the physical universes and since there was no Home Depot or Lowe's available at the time, physical existence had to flow from the Creative Force. That still holds true today, however many billions of years ago that was. The Creative Force is All That Is, there is nothing else.


Organized religions are just the politics of spirituality