401–410 of 1001 posts
Now let's tax churches, like Frank Zappa suggested :)
Having the Church community while growing up was great. But the fact that admission to this community required total philosophical adherence is just bizarre. Frankly, growing up in the church left me with a broken moral code. It was only once I left it in my teens and had to work things out for myself that I feel like I could properly ground myself ethically. Having a moral system imposed on you can do that.
> Frankly, growing up in the church left me with a broken moral code. It was only once I left it in my teens and had to work things out for myself that I feel like I could properly ground myself ethically. Having a moral system imposed on you can do that. How did you derive your moral code yourself? Any action you take has side effects in the outside world, and so some minimal, common understanding of morality is nec…
Just because a very old book says that X, Y, or Z is sinful, doesn't mean those actions are immoral if there's no harm to anyone.
Whether this is good or bad depends on what the substitute is. Whatever it is, imo, intellectuals should be more involved in communities that cater to simpler folks. Otherwise, these often get co-opted by nefarious forces. See Qanon, Trumpism etc. Hopefully this is not people jumping to these.
But that IS intellectuals getting involved. QAnon is quite cleverly constructed. Just because it uses mechanisms similar to Nigerian email scams doesn't mean it's not intelligently constructed and administered. There are already intellectuals involved, they're just not pursuing disinterested goals.
In my opinion the main problem for religion right now is the failure to explain their arguments at the highest intellectual level, publicly, consistently. Once I was exposed to better theology and philosophy of Christianity I was blown away. Edward Feser’s ‘The Last Superstition’ helped open this up. I have no idea why the level of discourse is on average so primitive, I think church leaders have been systematically…
I grew up Protestant but have considered myself Agnostic for a while. However, lately I've been having the urge to dig into spirituality more, as I'm starting to suspect there can be something there, it's just that, except for a single sermon I sat in about people destroying natural rock formations that have been around for millions of years on a whim (yeah the pastor actually said millions of years), I haven't found…
Are you looking primarily for Christianity or spirituality in general?
Braving the Wilderness (I haven’t finished this one)
For addiction: Breathing Underwater
New Seeds of Contemplation
By reputation: any CS Lewis, Bertrand Russel, and more contemporary is David Bentley Hart
Catching the Big Fish by David Lynch
The Four Agreements
Basically that’s what I’m see in my kindle at the moment that is relevant.
edit: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is incredible I hear the Bhagavad Gita is great Start Where You Are by Pemma Chodron is great
This may be a very bad idea. But as (in the words of the at-present top comment) a fundamentalist adhering to scriptural literalism (aka a conservative Lutheran) [addendum: who does not hate everyone], I feel compelled to offer to answer questions anyone might have for me, so AMA. I don't really want to individually respond to everything throughout the rest of the comments, but I will begin by saying that most church…
> adhering to scriptural literalism What scripture? As Bart Ehrman has written in his books condensing scholarly tomes for the layman, there are many scriptures, and we don't have the originals. The Comma Johanneum being the clearest passage that there is a trinity is not found in the Greek until the 15th century. Mark thought to be the earliest gospel, it ends without a clear resurrection from the earliest manuscrip…
There's also some slight of hand being done by Erhman, the codex Vaticanus does not include the ending but the scribe has left space for it at the end of the chapter, showing that they had access to it and were debating putting it in... So you can say 'oldest manuscripts don't have it' but that isnt as conclusive as one might assume... This slight of hand is extremely common in Erhmans work.
As far as the woman taken in adultery, this passage is found in early manuscripts/lectuonaries but its position is being moved around d. Erhman is more committed to selling books and impressing undergrad baptists at UNC than be is with nuanced treatment of the facts...and his background as a low church protestant shines through all his work.... From an easterner perspective it's far less persuasive
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> You'll have a broken moral system imposed on you either way I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how moral systems work, one that is perpetuated by the church. In Christianity, there is a specific "source" of morality, one that's (supposedly) infallible and unquestionable. This leads to problems when the infallible-unquestionable source of morality endorses things like slavery [1]: if it's unquestionab…
> My mother (Christian) couldn't get around the idea that she had no right to impose her perceived morality on another I mean... you probably can't get around that idea either. Or do you believe that any and all of your rights can and should be taken away if a majority of the people agree you shouldn't have those rights anymore (even if the majority are religious nutjobs who decide you should not have a right to cons…
This is generally why I 'advocate' for atheism speficially, and street epistemology [1] generally: I want people to be able to effectively reason through their morals and beliefs, because I believe that will lead to a generally better society--or at the very least will make it easier for people to identify when they're arguing from different base assumptions.
My issue w.r.t. moral agency in religious folks is it's difficult to start having conversations around things like LGBT rights because their default stance is (paraphrased) "It doesn't matter what I think is 'right' or not, because I'm not the one who gets to say what is 'right' or not--that's God's job."
So before we can even get to the concept of "when (if ever) can you impose these moral beliefs on another" they're refusing to engage with the concept of a morality where that question matters.
To answer your specific question, no, I don't believe "any and all of [my] rights can and should be taken away if a majority of the people agree you shouldn't have those rights" because it doesn't align with my own moral perceptions: I don't think the majority is obviously correct. (For example, I am illegal in 71 countries and can be legally executed in 12. Perhaps not a strict majority, and I"m using laws as an indicator of moral policy, but certainly a lot of people--regardless, I do not agree with these things.)
That said, my perceptions __can be flawed__. I would hope that the tools I use to build them, and my willingness to discuss/argue/test them with others will prevent them from being egregiously wrong, but it is still possible that they would remain wrong. This makes it possible for me to correct my moral system where it is found lacking.
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What is a "good person?" And do you really think people who believe in God are just listening to "fairy tails (sic)" so they can be face the reality of death? Is that really the best portrayal of Christians you can come up with?
Christians base their belief system on a collection of stories from 2000+ years ago and the idea of a deity and other planes of existence (edit: “Heaven” and “Hell”) of which no proof exists. Please correct me if any of the above is inaccurate.
Some of the Catholic miracles sure seem pretty solid to me in terms of conveying God's will to us.
Like the one in Fatima, which was witnessed by thousands of people:
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What is a "good person?" And do you really think people who believe in God are just listening to "fairy tails (sic)" so they can be face the reality of death? Is that really the best portrayal of Christians you can come up with?
Christians base their belief system on a collection of stories from 2000+ years ago and the idea of a deity and other planes of existence (edit: “Heaven” and “Hell”) of which no proof exists. Please correct me if any of the above is inaccurate.
The most fundamental question is where everything came from. Even the Big Bang theory requires starting materials. The more generic -1 + 1 = 0 is neither useful nor has any mechanism for initialization.
Is little wonder that so many scientists tend toward simulationism. This is just god(s) with different trappings where unprovable metaphysics are studied through modern math and curves instead of ancient math and geometry.
It seems observational true that humans have an innate desire for god that is not seen in other species.
As a final note, the Bible teaches a final end of the wicked along with the final destruction of Satan along with the wicked (this was the proclamation at the beginning of the Bible telling them that if they sinned, they would cease to exist, through the major prophets like Isaiah’s woes against “the king of Tyre” to the New Testament talking of a final destruction of the wicked. The current tales of hell entered into Christian theology in the 3-400s when the mainstream denomination mixed in ideas from the pagan Roman religion. For this reason, you won’t find eternal torment for a few years of sin anywhere in the Bible.
Likewise, Heaven is simply the place where God resides (being called New Jerusalem). It is told that the city will descend to earth after judgment is complete. People don’t go to Heaven after death as some other plane of existence in the Biblical text. Instead, we see the archangel contending with Satan to raise Moses from the dead. Likewise, we see people raised from the dead when Jesus is raised. This would be unnecessary if they were already in Heaven. In fact, the whole Second Coming would be unnecessary if that were what was actually taught. Once again we see this idea entering from the same pagan sources at the same time.
Putting aside whatever people have told you and reading the book yourself, you’ll find something much different than the interpretations and sophistries people layer on top. This remains true whether you read as a believer or a non-believer (myself having experienced both at different times in my life).
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The world will be better off when we abolish freedom of belief? That doesn't sound like a world I'd want to live in.
When I say abolish big religion I mean the way it’s integrated so tightly in society. The war on drugs, abortion, non profit tax avoidance, so many fucked up things stem from the belief that my religion is better than yours and you need to believe what I believe. You can believe whatever the hell you want - but it’s not for you or society or anyone else to decide how I can live my life.
WoD wasn't started by religious authorities at all, but by (secular) technocrats. Whether the motivation was really public health or political persecution is disputed, but blaming the Church is just silly. Some quasi-religious justification was used, but that's just political strategy.
>non profit tax avoidance
All religions are guaranteed equivalent tax privileges in the United States Constitution, as Madison intended and the courts have affirmed.
Why would I assume there is some God anywhere anyway?