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Basically what it boils down to is the old "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" addage. If somebody/something tells me that I can have an eternity of peace and bliss just for serving them for a short (by comparison to eternity) time frame, that starts setting off alarm bells. Indentured servants fell into the same trap, and the various gods of these religion has indentured most of humanity through one religion or another.
Sounds a lot like some of the old gnostic sects belief that the god worshipped as the one-true was an evil being. He enslaved mankind outside of the Garden of Eden against the will of the creator (the good being).
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Sounds a lot like some of the old gnostic sects belief that the god worshipped as the one-true was an evil being. He enslaved mankind outside of the Garden of Eden against the will of the creator (the good being).Basically what it boils down to is the old "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" addage. If somebody/something tells me that I can have an eternity of peace and bliss just for serving them for a short (by comparison to eternity) time frame, that starts setting off alarm bells. Indentured servants fell into the same trap, and the various gods of these religion has indentured most of humanity through one religion or another.
Gnostics sound a lot like theistic satanists...
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Gnostics sound a lot like theistic satanists...Sounds a lot like some of the old gnostic sects belief that the god worshipped as the one-true was an evil being. He enslaved mankind outside of the Garden of Eden against the will of the creator (the good being).Basically what it boils down to is the old "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" addage. If somebody/something tells me that I can have an eternity of peace and bliss just for serving them for a short (by comparison to eternity) time frame, that starts setting off alarm bells. Indentured servants fell into the same trap, and the various gods of these religion has indentured most of humanity through one religion or another.
Well, those particular gnostics were into dualism pretty heavily.
Someone recently asked "Why" I was an atheist. I told them that I refuse to believe in a god who is the primary cause of conflict in the world, preaches racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance, and then sends me to hell because I’m ‘bad’ one. As someone raised in the overchristianized western culture I really can't see how that can be reconciled.
Having studied military history, I find that religion is more often used as an excuse than being the actual cause. It serves as a rally point and dehumanizes the opponent by making them different.
To quote the song One Tin Soldier, "Do it in the name of Heaven, You can justify it in the end."
I really wish there was some way to "reconcile" that, but negative experiences have a way to overshadow positive ones. I cannot change what other "Christians" have shown you. All that I ask is that you not think of us all the same way.
You seem like a good person. That is what is most important to me.
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I really wish there was some way to "reconcile" that, but negative experiences have a way to overshadow positive ones. I cannot change what other "Christians" have shown you. All that I ask is that you not think of us all the same way.You seem like a good person. That is what is most important to me.
Actions always speak louder than words, its unfortunate when you run across someone who doesn't act as they say you should.
Moff seems like a pretty nice guy, despite his incessant need to correct our grammar. :P
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I really wish there was some way to "reconcile" that, but negative experiences have a way to overshadow positive ones. I cannot change what other "Christians" have shown you. All that I ask is that you not think of us all the same way.You seem like a good person. That is what is most important to me.
'You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.' :)
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IMHO organized religions have done more harm than good in their long and sordid history.
I’m really trying hard to figure out how best to respond to this.
You are saying that most (all?) religions feel the need to “save” humanity by forcing everyone else into their special club.Then you are saying that you feel the best way to “save” humanity is by forcing everyone to abandon what they believe and join your little club.
The difference is staggering.
Religion has done much more than just war. But I guess that’s all you’re really going to be looking at. Viet Nam, Korea, World Wars I and II, Civil War, etc. You seem to be of the opinion that all war and hatred will suddenly cease if there wasn’t religion. I don’t see that. It’s just one excuse out of many other possibilities. But I guess that it makes you feel better to blame religion for anything bad.
Religion is also largely responsible for most education and science. Maybe that’s “bad” as well.
Regardless, I really don’t care what you believe. You’ve made you point very clear. However, I am not here to tell everyone (including you) just how “wrong” or “evil” or just how “bad” atheism is. I would hope and expect the same courtesy from you.
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I really wish there was some way to "reconcile" that, but negative experiences have a way to overshadow positive ones. I cannot change what other "Christians" have shown you. All that I ask is that you not think of us all the same way.You seem like a good person. That is what is most important to me.
Thank you. (Although I may have just blown that image.)
Jeremy Mcgillan has posted on other threads some of what he has been through and experienced. All I can say is that I'm embarassed to even be associated (remotely) with some of what he has experienced.
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'You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.' :)I really wish there was some way to "reconcile" that, but negative experiences have a way to overshadow positive ones. I cannot change what other "Christians" have shown you. All that I ask is that you not think of us all the same way.You seem like a good person. That is what is most important to me.
You seem a decent fellow. I'd hate to die.
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Well I suppose I can qualify my statement by presenting the story behind it. That is my basic life story and dealing with religion. If people so wish. But I will make this statement before hand that my experience in no way represents any group in it's entirety. It'll be a few minutes before the story is printed in full.
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IMHO organized religions have done more harm than good in their long and sordid history.I’m really trying hard to figure out how best to respond to this.
You are saying that most (all?) religions feel the need to “save” humanity by forcing everyone else into their special club.
Then you are saying that you feel the best way to “save” humanity is by forcing everyone to abandon what they believe and join your little club.
The difference is staggering.Religion has done much more than just war. But I guess that’s all you’re really going to be looking at. Viet Nam, Korea, World Wars I and II, Civil War, etc. You seem to be of the opinion that all war and hatred will suddenly cease if there wasn’t religion. I don’t see that. It’s just one excuse out of many other possibilities. But I guess that it makes you feel better to blame religion for anything bad.
Religion is also largely responsible for most education and science. Maybe that’s “bad” as well.
Regardless, I really don’t care what you believe. You’ve made you point very clear. However, I am not here to tell everyone (including you) just how “wrong” or “evil” or just how “bad” atheism is. I would hope and expect the same courtesy from you.
But, Moff, our little club has the medicine, the computers, the cars, the central heating. But apart from all that, what did science ever do for us?
On a slightly more serious point, I think most atheists would be happy if a lot of religious people would just stop trying to induct us into their little group and leave us alone. I'm sure most religious people feel the same way about other faiths (and quite afew about parts of their own faith). I grant you Richard Dawkins is the exception, but every group has it's own a!*$%##$ contingent and blaming atheism (or christianity) for the nutters who gravitate to them isn't fair.
I would also quibble your assertion that religion is responsible for science. Religious people have been, as have atheists and agnostics but the religion itself has often stood full square against new sceintific revolutions: Heliocentricism, Evolution (how can this still be controversial is beyond me), deep time, IVF. Some extremist nutcases are still protesting that plate tectonics is rubbish.
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On a slightly more serious point, I think most atheists would be happy if a lot of religious people would just stop trying to induct us into their little group and leave us alone. I'm sure most religious people feel the same way about other faiths (and quite afew about parts of their own faith). I grant you Richard Dawkins is the exception, but every group has it's own a~%~@!@~ contingent and blaming atheism (or christianity) for the nutters who gravitate to them isn't fair.
I'm trying to keep this thread away from "evangelism". Whether that is "evagelistic atheists" or "evagelistic christians". When people start saying that something or someone is "right" or "wrong" things tend to get less -- civil.
I don't know that much about early (very early?) scientists other than that many (most?) of them were religious in some fashion. So with that, I stand corrected. I just really hate hearing over and over again like a broken record that "religion has done far more harm than good over the years".
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Religion is also largely responsible for most education and science.
Its also been responsible for holding back education and science, usually under the threat of torture. The fault itself is not with religion, but with several of the individuals who were/are in charge of organized religion.
I don't think you can really blame religion for injustice directly, but rather I think many religions come down in unjust fashions based upon the controlling faction within the religion at any given time. This also happens in the profane/secular world.
People say the crusades were religious, for example. I think that is only part of the issue. For example (though this is a matter of possible interpretation, so don't quote me on this as my personal view) Europe has a burgeoning population of knights in the late 11th century, as the economy improved and borders were becoming more lasting there is less of a need for professional landed soldiers.
They fight each other to claim what little bits they can, especially in Italy. The Normans-in-Italy had just defeated him at the battle of Civitate... so to solve the strife the succeeding Pope sends them to fight someone else. This time, it was far away in the Levant. This has nothing to do with religion, its about secular authority.
However, the Crusades could be called religious as well. Alexius Comnenus' (Emperor of Byzantium) request for professional soldiers to help him recapture lost territory in Anatolia from the Turks was the perfect excuse to send a huge vanguard into the east to disrupt Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The Great Schism had just happened about a decade before hand, and it could be argued that Urban II was looking to bring the east back into the Catholic fold by having large Catholic armies standing to either side of Constantinople.
Anyway, my point is that things are always far more complex than people make them out to be.
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OK here goes
Since I was a child I was brought up very christian. My family was part of the United Pentecostal Church. When I say my whole family I mean me my brother, my parents, my grandparents, my 9 aunts and uncles (my mothers siblings), and my 17 cousins. All in the same little church in the countryside of rural New Brunswick. I remember sleeping under the pews when I was small, I remember the fire and brimstone preaching, I remember being constantly terrified that the apocalypse was soon to come upon us and I wouldn't get a chance to grow up because Jesus was coming any second. I was in church 3 services a week, indoctrinated as young as I can remember. I also remember the beatings. The sunday school teacher would take it upon himself if we said something out of line or misbehaved, or even questioned something that need not be questioned he would then take you outside behind the church and with an old leather belt beat you til you had bloody welts on your back and backside. This was a very commom occurence. I have some good memories of my childhood but most of the time I lived in paranoid fear of beatings and the end of the world. Next was my stepfather, a very pious man who really now that I look back probably couldn't care less about me. Most I remember of him is the smacks to the back of the head and him calling me a little no-it-all f$&~!&. But he was the pinnacle of holiness after all and the head of the household so I didn't get to question his motives.
Next came adolescence, around the age of 12 I became aware of my sexuality and it was the absolute wrong sexuality. I became very aware I was gay, I played sports with the other boys worked on my grandfathers farm, and excelled at school. But because all homosexuals go to hell, and plead and pray as I might I was still gay. I drifted into a deep depression. Became extremely suicidal, and I nearly succeeded on offing myself at the age of 16. The doctor told me if I had been 10 minutes later to the hospital that would have been it. I didn't dare tell anyone I was gay that would be social suicide, literally everyone I knew wouldturn their backs and I knew it. But after multiple suicide attempts and turning of the age of 17 I realized that if I didn't do something I would end up dead, and that if there was a god so hateful enough to send me to eternal torment for loving someone then f&%* him. I deserved better. I stood up one sunday night in the middle of church said what I needed to say that I was gay and I would not be returning to the church ever again. I left the church walked the 12 kilometers to my house snuck in at 5 am to a very angry stepfather with a belt in his hand. A fight ensued I punched the stupid bastard in his all to smug face I gathered my stuff headed out the door, stayed at a local hostile until I got my student welfare papers done up. I got my own apartment and finished high school. My last year of high school was hell I was spit on in the hallways, kicked out of football, and jumped twice after school and beaten. I was excommunicated from the family and the church. And I graduated with honors. I left that town and never looked back. I moved to NYC that following fall and started university. And thats where my personal experiences end.
I don't know that much about early (very early?) scientists other than that many (most?) of them were religious in some fashion.
That's a tough call. Let's look at it this way: Jason Bulmahn appears to be Caucasian. Does that make Pathfinder a fundamentally "white" game? Most of us would argue no; that his ethnicity has no bearing at all on the end product.
With science, it's more complicated than that. The problem is that the method used in science (looking for confirmation or rejection of predictions, based solely on physical evidence) is more or less the exact opposite of what most religions declare to be the "right" way to think.
In many cases, a scientist can be VERY religious (e.g., Francis Collins, former head of the human genome project and now head of NIH) and still produce excellent science, by thinking one way at one time, and another way at another time. Unfortunately, most people aren't that brilliant, and the two types of thought end up polluting each other (e.g., Michael Behe, witness for the defense in the Dover trial, who seems to have largely stopped doing actual science). Often, it's easier to just keep them totally separate (e.g., Dawkins, who seems to feel that he's one of the foremost experts on evolutionary biology exactly because he doesn't try to make his brain "think religiously," and so ruin his ability to science-think).
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IMHO organized religions have done more harm than good in their long and sordid history.I’m really trying hard to figure out how best to respond to this.
You are saying that most (all?) religions feel the need to “save” humanity by forcing everyone else into their special club.
Then you are saying that you feel the best way to “save” humanity is by forcing everyone to abandon what they believe and join your little club.
The difference is staggering.Religion has done much more than just war. But I guess that’s all you’re really going to be looking at. Viet Nam, Korea, World Wars I and II, Civil War, etc. You seem to be of the opinion that all war and hatred will suddenly cease if there wasn’t religion. I don’t see that. It’s just one excuse out of many other possibilities. But I guess that it makes you feel better to blame religion for anything bad.
Religion is also largely responsible for most education and science. Maybe that’s “bad” as well.
Regardless, I really don’t care what you believe. You’ve made you point very clear. However, I am not here to tell everyone (including you) just how “wrong” or “evil” or just how “bad” atheism is. I would hope and expect the same courtesy from you.
I do believe that the world would be better off without organized religion, but if I were to try and go out and convert everyone away from their beliefs that would make me no better (two wrongs don't make a right and all). That being said, I think I misstated what I meant...i believe that organized religion has passively stifled creativity and science for as long as it's been around. Scientific advancements could have started centuries earlier than they did if people didn't have a conveniently packaged false explanation for what's going on around them. Couple this with the fact that religion has a long history of actively stifling science and education and you have a very bad situation.
... and thats where my personal experiences end.
Some of that takes a lot more balls than most guys -- gay or straight -- ever even dream of having.
My hat's off to you.|
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I do believe that the world would be better off without organized religion, but if I were to try and go out and convert everyone away from their beliefs that would make me no better (two wrongs don't make a right and all). That being said, I think I misstated what I meant...i believe that organized religion has passively stifled creativity and science for as long as it's been around. Scientific advancements could have started centuries earlier than they did if people didn't have a conveniently packaged false explanation for what's going on around them. Couple this with the fact that religion has a long history of actively stifling science and education and you have a very bad situation.
Then you probably did misstate what you said since this isn't what you said at all. But even with that in mind, you are still attacking other religions.
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... lots ...Thanks for sharing. Remembering can't be easy for you. I also know that more has happened to you and your partner fairly recently. I don't blame you for your feelings and what you have lived through was wrong. And I wish you hadn't gone through that.
Whats happened lately to me and my husband I would like to hope was not religiosly motivated. I graduated from high school 8 years ago now, I have lived with major bitterness since then and only recently has it began to lift. I don't want to live my life bitter, and pissed off all the time, thats not the person I want to be. I want to look forward to the good things ahead. I mean my bitterness was so bad that in 2003 my stepfather died of lung cancer he wanted to talk to me before he died. I outright refused the last thing I remember saying ot the man is "You made my life a living hell and I hope you burn after you die". I just want to happy and, working in psychology has helped me do that. Including helping suicidal teenagers. But I do admit some of my feelings toward religion are still a bit raw.
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I don't know that much about early (very early?) scientists other than that many (most?) of them were religious in some fashion.That's a tough call. Let's look at it this way: Jason Bulmahn appears to be Caucasian. Does that make Pathfinder a fundamentally "white" game? Most of us would argue no; that his ethnicity has no bearing at all on the end product.
With science, it's more complicated than that. The problem is that the method used in science (looking for confirmation or rejection of predictions, based solely on physical evidence) is more or less the exact opposite of what most religions declare to be the "right" way to think.
I understand what you are saying. But I also think that who we are influences how we think or reason and so on. We might think that it has no bearing on the "end product", but someone else would do something different simply because they aren't Bulmahn. It could be because the other person is black, or from China, or from New York, or female, or 80 years old, or any number of other things. And while we might say that none of those things "has any bearing", it's really difficult to separate who a person is from what they do.
As you said, it's complicated.
But aside from that (and because I am extremely lazy right now), didn't the church long ago endorse science? Or am I confusing stories?
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Whats happened lately to me and my husband I would like to hope was not religiosly motivated.I thought it was. Maybe I just assumed it was. In any case, thanks again for sharing.
Your talking about the attack on Alex and the further litigation. As far as I know none of the assailants were more than a bunch of idiot small minded a%*&!%!s. No religious motivation has been brought forth. There were some rumours floating around at the time about it being religiously motivated, but none of the assailants even attended a regular religious ceremony. So I'm pretty sure it was just what appeared to be.
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But aside from that (and because I am extremely lazy right now), didn't the church long ago endorse science? Or am I confusing stories?
Its complicated :P
What was often promoted was knowledge that upheld the beliefs of the Medieval church... while conflicting science was often put under the yoke of "sorcery" and considered heretical. They, for instance, wouldn't allow the study of bodies that died from plague... doing so could get you excommunicated.
However, that same church also preserved ancient texts and learning to bring into the modern era. "Natural Science" was what was mostly preserved, but that was mostly philosophy. The ancients dabbled in all the intellectual realms(science, math, religion, philosophy, etc), much like thinkers during the Enlightenment.
That's not a bad distinction:
Religious science - let's study God's creation so that we can re-affirm our belief in God and the Scriptures.
Enlightenment science - let's study what's there and understand how it works, then let the chips fall where they may as far as what it means in the bigger picture.
However, that same church also preserved ancient texts and learning to bring into the modern era. "Natural Science" was what was mostly preserved, but that was mostly philosophy.
For a long time I held that as one of the few good deeds that Catholicism had ever accomplished in its long history. But it turns out not so much.
Christians Diligently Preserved Ancient Science (NOT!)[The Christians] preserved and copied an enormous amount of Greek mathematics, technical writings, and natural philosophy.Actually, no, they didn't. They copied only a tiny fraction of it, and that only barely, and much of it incorrectly. Nearly everything that survives only survives in one or a few manuscripts, widely scattered and poorly kept. We are lucky anything made it to the age of printing. By contrast, the Bible, and Christian writings about God and theology and other religious matters, were widely copied and preserved, thus demonstrating they had the means to do far better on science than they did, they just chose not to. Only a very few Christians thought it worth the bother, and for only a very few treatises. And Eastern Christianity did most of this, and yet in a thousand years made no advances in the sciences of any kind, instead the topic became antiquary and obscure, as fewer and fewer cared to even bother preserving it. By contrast, Western Christianity abandoned and lost almost everything very quickly, and had to recover the ancient scientific heritage from the East a thousand years later. But since even the East preserved so little, what the West inherited was hugely distorted and riddled with gaps.
Carrier's a historian of the science of Antiquity. The quote is a section of his lengthy discussion of the relationship between Dark Ages Christianity, science, and scientific progress. It's really good and I recommend the whole thing, but I'm a massive history dweeb so it's my idea of fun reading. He goes into particular cases, talks about palimpests, and discusses the content and nature of what was preserved by luck, since virtually no one in the monasteries and scriptoriums preserved it deliberately.
The Greeks and Romans were quite interested in practical science, if not as formalized and rigorous as we'd like. It wasn't all Plato speculating with his head rammed so far up his navel it came out the small of his back. But massive bodies of it were lost not to wars and carnage, but to centuries of indifference and disinterest.
stuff
Words fail.
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However, that same church also preserved ancient texts and learning to bring into the modern era. "Natural Science" was what was mostly preserved, but that was mostly philosophy.For a long time I held that as one of the few good deeds that Catholicism had ever accomplished in its long history. But it turns out not so much.
Christians Diligently Preserved Ancient Science (NOT!)[The Christians] preserved and copied an enormous amount of Greek mathematics, technical writings, and natural philosophy.Actually, no, they didn't. They copied only a tiny fraction of it, and that only barely, and much of it incorrectly. Nearly everything that survives only survives in one or a few manuscripts, widely scattered and poorly kept. We are lucky anything made it to the age of printing. By contrast, the Bible, and Christian writings about God and theology and other religious matters, were widely copied and preserved, thus demonstrating they had the means to do far better on science than they did, they just chose not to. Only a very few Christians thought it worth the bother, and for only a very few treatises. And Eastern Christianity did most of this, and yet in a thousand years made no advances in the sciences of any kind, instead the topic became antiquary and obscure, as fewer and fewer cared to even bother preserving it. By contrast, Western Christianity abandoned and lost almost everything very quickly, and had to recover the ancient scientific heritage from the East a thousand years later. But since even the East preserved so little, what the West inherited was hugely distorted and riddled with gaps.
I didn't mean to imply that they copied a lot of science for preservation. That was directed at what specifically they preserved, not how much.
You'll see things like Augustine, Plato, Aristotle and such come down in the west from preservation. EDIT: In hindsight... only *parts* of Aristotle in the west. Thomas Aquinas takes couldn't have come about without them.
I think the key thing to remember is that a good number of our modern versions of ancients texts actually come to us from Greek scholars fleeing the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, and later from Turkish scholars and diplomats interested in trading with western Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Its not a coincidence that the renaissance begins during the scholastic diaspora of the "Romans".
It's really good and I recommend the whole thing, but I'm a massive history dweeb so it's my idea of fun reading."Fun" reading for me is "Good Omens".
Douglas Adams struck me as desperately annoying when I read Hitchhiker's Guide. I was warned off Pratchett based on this by a friend who had read both. Funny novels have always been a hard sell. I think the only one I ever liked was Split Heirs and I haven't read that since high school. I doubt it holds up.
I think I've sort of gotten to the point where most fiction isn't as appealing as non-fiction, which probably means I'm old and gray and bitter before my time. (Crazy too!)
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It's really good and I recommend the whole thing, but I'm a massive history dweeb so it's my idea of fun reading."Fun" reading for me is "Good Omens".Douglas Adams struck me as desperately annoying when I read Hitchhiker's Guide. I was warned off Pratchett based on this by a friend who had read both. Funny novels have always been a hard sell. I think the only one I ever liked was Split Heirs and I haven't read that since high school. I doubt it holds up.
I think I've sort of gotten to the point where most fiction isn't as appealing as non-fiction, which probably means I'm old and gray and bitter before my time. (Crazy too!)
Start carrying a cane. It will help with the image.
Start carrying a cane. It will help with the image.
Get off my grass!
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@Samnell
It has been an interesting read over at Carrier's blog. It's interesting to see his digestion of those other authors, and he's right about a good deal of the western church in those regards too.
Not quite related, but it reminds me: I get a little annoyed when people ignore the "middle east" as a christian center, however. Despite islamic authority, eastern forms of christianity spent a great deal of time attempting to preserve their culture and history. It's often ignored in favor of strictly western takes on christianity.
It's not like France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and England had a monopoly on christianity... but it seems to be overlooked everywhere else by many modern religious scholars.
Ha! Aren't you still in your 20s?Start carrying a cane. It will help with the image.Get off my grass!
Until October. I'm going bald and appear to be getting grayish, though. Bad genes.
Hell, the muslims even kill each other over different sects of islamic religion.
I think of at least some of these as a case in point of what I'm trying to say. The two main sects of Islam have been at each others throat forever but the seeds of that conflict are much deeper. Stemming from the continual rise and fall of the Persians and their desires to expand into the Gulf and the near east. The real seeds to this conflict can be traced as far back as the Assyrians and the Babylonians at or near the dawn of time. Religion is just a trappings on top of a deeper more fundamental conflict of interest.
That is not to say that one might give religion a free pass. There are conflicts that stem very significantly from religion. The Israeli's are in the Middle East because of religion and from this their is obviously ongoing conflict.
Also there is probably a great deal of human suffering due to these trappings. If the enemy was not also a heretic and therefore fundamentally evil there might be a great deal more mercy shown during most conflicts.
But this is not universally true - the Mongolians are maybe histories most brutal conquerors and they were not particularly religious.
Gnostics sound a lot like theistic satanists...Sounds a lot like some of the old gnostic sects belief that the god worshipped as the one-true was an evil being. He enslaved mankind outside of the Garden of Eden against the will of the creator (the good being).Basically what it boils down to is the old "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" addage. If somebody/something tells me that I can have an eternity of peace and bliss just for serving them for a short (by comparison to eternity) time frame, that starts setting off alarm bells. Indentured servants fell into the same trap, and the various gods of these religion has indentured most of humanity through one religion or another.
Their beliefs were very diverse - their was no single gnostic sect but many sects with different beliefs.
Not quite related, but it reminds me: I get a little annoyed when people ignore the "middle east" as a christian center, however. Despite islamic authority, eastern forms of christianity spent a great deal of time attempting to preserve their culture and history. It's often ignored in favor of strictly western takes on christianity.
Yeah. Egypt was probably majority-Christian into the 1300s. The political spread of Islam didn't necessarily map to demographic spread, but it's often treated that way.
It's not like France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and England had a monopoly on christianity... but it seems to be overlooked everywhere else by many modern religious scholars.
I hear you. It's a bias and it's one we should at least be aware of, however complicated working against it may be.
Some of it's unavoidable. We're all a little bit ethnocentric. We could make the same objection about, for example, medieval history. Most of what anglophones know about is about Britain, then northern France, etc. Those are "us", in a very broad, culturally dominant sense. We look largely for our antecedents. When those aren't available, we look for the antecedents of the people who most loudly intruded into our historical memory from without. I strongly suspect that books for popular audiences about Japanese history tend to focus on the Tokugawa era and forward. I know I own a few that do, including one that takes considerable pains to try to correct itself on other fronts. We pick our topics based on what interests us, and what interests us the most is usually us. Aren't we fascinating? :)
But even leaving that aside, linguistic barriers tend to hedge us out. I'm sure there are many quality histories of Western intervention in the Russian Civil War, but how many of those are in English? There are certainly histories of Eastern Orthodoxy written in Greek or a Slavic language that aren't accessible to me, and probably aren't accessible to most religious scholars either. At least not most Western, anglophone religious scholars.
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Whats happened lately to me and my husband I would like to hope was not religiosly motivated. I graduated from high school 8 years ago now, I have lived with major bitterness since then and only recently has it began to lift. I don't want to live my life bitter, and pissed off all the time, thats not the person I want to be. I want to look forward to the good things ahead. I mean my bitterness was so bad that in 2003 my stepfather died of lung cancer he wanted to talk to me before he died. I outright refused the last thing I remember saying ot the man is "You made my life a living hell and I hope you burn after you die". I just want to happy and, working in psychology has helped me do that. Including helping suicidal teenagers. But I do admit some of my feelings toward religion are still a bit raw.... lots ...Thanks for sharing. Remembering can't be easy for you. I also know that more has happened to you and your partner fairly recently. I don't blame you for your feelings and what you have lived through was wrong. And I wish you hadn't gone through that.
Man, I can't begin to understand what you went through. You have an absolute right to despise organized religion. Jesus Christ came to the world to save us, and we replaced Him with a new set of Laws. The people you suffered under were a brood of vipers, the pharisees that Jesus condemned. Stiff-necked, arrogant and puffed up in their own pride. Do not let your heart hold on to bitterness if you are able, it will only hurt you more. Let it go, in the full knowledge that God loves you as you are. God made each one of us and loves us compassionately. For love is the only thing left when we meet with Christ. The Holy Spirit of God is your friend and comforter and the thoughts and ways of God are not our thoughts and ways. God can not be reduced to any fundamentalist formula. Pursue love and kindness and praise Him for your life, and be ready one day to help those who will need you in times to come.
In all my years walking with God he has never once been a tyrant and has always forgiven me. He has made me weep through his sheer compassion. The treasure in Heaven is made in the attitude of the heart, and I really believe that Hell is a place that people go because they refuse to enter Heaven because those they despised on Earth are walking in ahead of them. They could readily walk into the light but their pride and hatred prevents them from bending their knee and taking the humility of Grace. There are many who call themselves Christians who are walking the road of pride and hate.
Be of great joy, and I admire your candid reflections here on this thread, for it is not easy to talk openly about pain to strangers. In Christ their is no condemnation. Everyone of us is a sinner, not one of us is worthy of God. But it doesn't matter because He has made us worthy
Take heart, and you and your husband have both my blessings and my prayers.
Mark.
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Like I said before don't let this one church be a reflection on that entire organization. But I found what one would call spiritual peace in atheism. After the whole thing it took a few years for me to find it but I am at peace spiritually. I found that if I could defeat depression and my PTSD that developed from the situation (stupid I know but I did suffer from severe flashbacks and anxiety attacks for years after) I can quite likely recover from the residual bitterness. I like the adage time heals all wounds, despite it not being universally true.
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Like I said before don't let this one church be a reflection on that entire organization. But I found what one would call spiritual peace in atheism. After the whole thing it took a few years for me to find it but I am at peace spiritually. I found that if I could defeat depression and my PTSD that developed from the situation (stupid I know but I did suffer from severe flashbacks and anxiety attacks for years after) I can quite likely recover from the residual bitterness. I like the adage time heals all wounds, despite it not being universally true.
All wounds heal with time, never completely, but the pain lessens. I have suffered from clinical depression my entire life, and still get times when I just wish my life would end. I won't take my own life because of the hurt it would cause my loved ones. But there are times when I don't even want to face another day.
Unlike you I was lucky, I had a kind caring family. I am glad you have been able to find some inner peace. Kind regards. Mark
I found that if I could defeat depression and my PTSD that developed from the situation (stupid I know but I did suffer from severe flashbacks and anxiety attacks for years after) I can quite likely recover from the residual bitterness. I like the adage time heals all wounds, despite it not being universally true.
Not stupid at all. Our emotions are us, or a part of us anyway, but they're also our jailers.
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But, Moff, our little club has the medicine, the computers, the cars, the central heating. But apart from all that, what did science ever do for us?
On a slightly more serious point, I think most atheists would be happy if a lot of religious people would just stop trying to induct us into their little group and leave us alone. I'm sure most religious people feel the same way about other faiths (and quite afew about parts of their own faith). I grant you Richard Dawkins is the exception, but every group has it's own a~#%!#!! contingent and blaming atheism (or christianity) for the nutters who gravitate to them isn't fair.
I would also quibble your assertion that religion is responsible for science. Religious people have been, as have...
I think that we have become so indoctrinated with Holy Writ as compiled during the Council of Nicaea, that we have taken it out of context and used it to oppress people rather than help people. The Roman churches and the Protestant churches seemed to have codified Scripture to the degree that they truly believe they know the mind of God. Yet how could any of us know the mind of God. He says "My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways"
The Holy Spirit blows where He will, no-one knows where he comes from or where he goes to. I have found that a truer way for Christians to act is as Christ did. Christ turned the world on its head - he walked, talked and loved the downtrodden, the prostitutes, the tax collectors and all the people society during his time despised. He brought hope to those who had none, and he chided those who thought they were righteous in God's sight, and for that he was killed. If he came back today, as he did 2000 years ago, he would be killed again and who by? - the very people who claimed they were right - Christians. Not all, I admit, but those self-serving, self righteous hypocrites who abuse the poor and the needy, discriminate against people for being different, and use Scripture to bash people over the head, people who are not in their club. They have reduced Christ to a formula. Do A, B and C to get to Heaven like we do, or burn in Hell. The Almighty God, whose ways pass all understanding, has been reduced to a formula. It's utterly ridiculous.
We can only truly live as Christians by listening to God's Holy Spirit, for He is the one who enables us to emulate Christ, and that was why he was sent.
Some people say Religion has caused many wars. It has. I am not religious, because its definition is not relevant to my faith in God. I love God and I believe even when I do not see. But I have seen since what I had never expected to see!
I do not begin to pretend to know an iota of the mind of God. But what he has shown to me has been like drinking fresh water after walking through a parched desert. So I will persevere in love for God, for people and for myself. I will persevere when I fall into sin and fail. I refuse to hate, to hold grudges, but most of all I refuse to judge. I have read some wonderfully insightful things on this thread and I feel blessed to have found it and shared in the experiences of others.
I have no inclination to try and convert others to my beliefs, because each person must walk their own path. God converts, not man. But when Christians refuse to show kindness to their fellows they hinder everything that is right and good.
That is my take.
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What basis is there to accept the Christian record over the Koran or the teachings of Bhudda or the stories in the ancient Indian holy texts? Or for accepting that any of them are true at all?One obvious empirical approach would be to try one or more of these methods and see if they perform as advertised. Of course, Christianity and Islam pretty much require you to be dead to receive the fruits of your efforts, but the Buddha taught that you could become free of suffering in this life -- it would seem simple enough to try out his path and see if it works.
'Golf Clap'
I disagree but this thread is dangerous for me right now so I must lurk.
I think that we have become so indoctrinated with Holy Writ as compiled during the Council of Nicaea, that we have taken it out of context and used it to oppress people rather than help people. The Roman churches and the Protestant churches seemed to have codified Scripture to the degree that they truly believe they know the mind of God. Yet how could any of us know the mind of God. He says "My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways"
In the end though we could have not had Christianity spread and become the power it became until some group took it upon themselves to decide, once and for all, what Gods beliefs and values actually are.
I mean by the early 300's there must be two dozen significant Christian sects running around (and hundreds of tiny ones) and while they share many gospels there are a ton of gospels used in some sects that are not in use by other sects.
For an example of this (and one everyone is familiar with) is the Gospel of John. Many, maybe most, of the more Orthodox churches did not consider John Cannon but he's the best writer of the lot by a fair margin so he eventually makes the cut - but you read him last for a reason. Your supposed to get the 'true' story from the other three and then mine John for quotes.
Ultimately for Christianity to continue in a form useful to the state you need a cohesive version of Christianity, and one that helps to maintain the social order. Many of the Christian sects just did not do that or they had alternate ideas that where not wanted at the time. For example you'll sometimes hear woman using the claim that early Christians had women priestesses or women would participate in the service in some manner - true - but not any sect that became incorporated into the Orthodox Church. Many variants of what we now call Gnostic Christian sects did have women (though by no means where all of them inclusive of women). However now we are talking about elements of Christianity that were deemed wrong and suppressed since women on positions of power is not conductive toward the social order of the time.
Other sects might place to much emphasis on following God to the detriment of the material world or emphasize secret teachings or be dualistic and see the material world as a creation of evil or any of dozens of other viewpoints, many of which are fundamentally detrimental to the social order at a time when social order was high on the ageenda for those with political power.
Suppression itself proved a pretty difficult task to finalize. They were still burning large numbers of heretics a thousand years later where you'd get these mass outbreaks of heresy in one location or another. Usually if you look at the beliefs of the heretics involved you could actually trace that back to a non-Orthodox Christian Sect that was dominant in this area during the early era of Christianity.
Hence, eventually, some group had to come together and decide what God really believed and then the alternate versions needed to be stamped out. God needed to believe certain things important to the maintenance of the social order (already under strain during this period - hence Christianity is useful if it can be made to help prop it up). The 325 Council of Nicea was not the totality of that process but it was an important part.
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I hear you. It's a bias and it's one we should at least be aware of, however complicated working against it may be.Some of it's unavoidable. We're all a little bit ethnocentric.
I can agree to that pretty quickly from my own experience. I've talked with many people from the Balkans... if you ever talk to someone from the Balkan's avoid talking about Macedonia at all costs (modern one, hint hint)... and you get a different story about an event from each nationality and ethnicity there. Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek, Turks, Magyar, Vlach: they all have "their history".
Aren't we fascinating? :)
I am fascinating, thanks for noticing! :D
But even leaving that aside, linguistic barriers tend to hedge us out. I'm sure there are many quality histories of Western intervention in the Russian Civil War, but how many of those are in English? There are certainly histories of Eastern Orthodoxy written in Greek or a Slavic language that aren't accessible to me, and probably aren't accessible to most religious...
I am glad that so many texts are being translated into English today, its really made history on both sides more dynamic. You can start to see the real source of the disagreement between stories.
Greek history is a little different, many of the texts were preserved in Renaissance Italy and could be read by Philhellenes in the 18th and 19th centuries. Its been very accessible for a long time. Large parts of Russian history too. You are right, however. It is hard to find a text on the emergence of the Romanian (Vlach) identity that isn't written in Hungarian and full of Gibbonsesque racial attitudes, for example. Its even worse the farther east you go... it seems that the lands east of the Caspian are a land of sheer mystery to the west.
I can agree to that pretty quickly from my own experience. I've talked with many people from the Balkans... if you ever talk to someone from the Balkan's avoid talking about Macedonia at all costs (modern one, hint hint)... and you get a different story about an event from each nationality and ethnicity there. Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek, Turks, Magyar, Vlach: they all have "their history".
I can replicate the experience elsewhere on the map. *cough*Israel*cough* Not pretty. A friend's grandmother was full-blooded Croatian. Back in the 90s she used to accidentally teach him how to swear in the language while watching the news. Always when they talked about the Serbs. The past and then-present behavior of Croatians didn't come up. Eesh.
Greek history is a little different, many of the texts were preserved in Renaissance Italy and could be read by Philhellenes in the 18th and 19th centuries. Its been very accessible for a long time. Large parts of Russian history too. You are right, however. It is hard to find a text on the emergence of the Romanian (Vlach) identity that isn't written in Hungarian and full of Gibbonsesque racial attitudes, for example. Its even worse the farther east you go... it seems that the lands east of the Caspian are a land of sheer mystery to the west.
East of the Caspian, south of the Sahara. When I was a kid I had a historical atlas, a pretty bad one in fact, that had lines marking the areas known of and known to Europeans around 1450. I have no idea how they drew those lines, and I suspect neither did they, but they had a point. Given we're most fascinated by ourselves, the language barriers, the political difficulties, and everything else we have practical frontiers everywhere. I don't have any Greek or Latin, and not enough French to be intellectually useful, so mine are rather constraining even in Europe. It's frustrating. I enjoy American history too, but it's a small and bland field by comparison.