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Subject: Religion is bad? Author: Rational Man [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 18:07:15 12/29/01 Sat In reply to: WN 's message, "Bible Teaching and Religious Practice...All Hail God, Our Father In Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name (spitting)" on 11:28:18 12/29/01 Sat Sorry, while much of what you say is true, I don't buy into your implied conclusion. It's not logical to take the awful results of any religion that has been misapplied/misinterpreted and proclaim that religion, or a group of religions, are absurd. To adapt that position one has to ignore the fact that religion is good more often than not. Always has been ... even when the society it existed in perverted it. Proof of that is that religions moderated themselves, they didn't disappear entirely. They matured as the society they existed in did. The expression "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" comes to mind. Let's look at Islam, as an example. Does Islam provide more fodder for fanatics than some religions? Perhaps in some ways it does. But it's not Islam itself that causes this ... it's the percentage of nutcases that are living within it. People that are trying to "fit" their religion into the modern world aren't nutcases usually, even if they reject some aspects of the society they live in. It's the people that want the world to change to accommodate THEIR religion that represent the problem. Religion is the symptom. People are the problem. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[> [> Subject: Re: Religion is bad? Author: S [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 18:33:01 12/29/01 Sat Once, when I was about nine, I had to sit in the back of a church while a bunch of good Christian men argued about whether to kick my uncle out of the church for getting a divorce. My father was among them. It was very confusing to me. I was nine. I liked that uncle. I thought the woman who'd run off with another man sort of deserved a divorce. My brother was twenty at the time. He took me by the hand, led me outside and said, "Religion makes the world go round, but sometimes it takes us on a drunken spin."

[> [> [> Subject: Re: Religion is bad? Author: Rational Man [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 18:49:39 12/29/01 Sat You proved my point. It was the people, not the religion. At least your brother had the good sense to remove you from a place where a child did not belong.

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Religion is bad? Author: S [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 19:17:37 12/29/01 Sat >You proved my point. It was the people, not the >religion. At least your brother had the good sense to >remove you from a place where a child did not belong. Yes, it was the people, not the religion. I've seen an awful lot of emotional, even physical abuse done in the name of God in my time, so I don't have the best view of organized religion. But then again, it is the organized part I have a problem with, not the religion itself. Faith on a personal level is good. It gives people hope. It helps them through troubled times. It's when religion and political power get mixed together that all hell breaks loose. All of the major religions have at one point or another been used to con the masses into supporting a corrupt political regime. On the other hand, I've been reading creation stories from ancient cultures tonight, and I'm reminded that all religions started out with the same basic ingredients. Give people a sense of purpose. Give people a sense of belonging. And give people some rules to obey and some consequences if those rules are not obeyed. This was absolutely necessary to develop civilizations and even to assure the survival of the species. The warnings that show up at the earliest point in every culture on the planet are the ones about sex, drunkeness and violence. So is this what human nature boils down to--the lowest common denominator--get laid, get drunk, beat the shit of of someone? The Navajo, for example, have an astounding number of stories warning men not to boink someone else's wife. Imagine a world where we never had those rules. I think I'll just leave it at that.

[> [> Subject: Re: Religion is bad? Author: WN [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 19:07:19 12/29/01 Sat Consider this: Would you feel comfortable with any "thing" that frightened a small child? And I forgot about the above words in the initial message quoting the writer. Mark Twain. God never died. He never was. And if he was, I reject any maker who would increase the burdens of this dimension.

[> [> [> Subject: Re: Religion is bad? Author: Rational Man [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 19:15:59 12/29/01 Sat You need a good shrink. See if you can get a group rate and take S with ya. Bye bye board. It's an embarrassment to be associated with half of the recent posts. <-- not angry. Just not: 1. Trash 2. Ignorant 3. or a Victim

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Religion is bad? Author: S [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 20:53:08 12/29/01 Sat Because I agreed with the original point that religion is not necessarily bad, I forgot to add that I do believe the church I grew up in is bad. Though a few people like my parents are sincere in their practice of that particular brand of Christianity, for the most part the church itself is rotten to the core. It has done more harm than good. I know more people who became drug addicts because of the way they were treated in that church than I know people who've benefited from it. My brothers and sisters and I came out of it okay because we had each other. We hung tight. We loved each other. And we rose above the insiduous destruction of that religion. And say what you might about our attitudes, we're not just survivors, we're success stories. We all have responsible positions in society, and we all take those roles seriously. All three of my brothers own their own businesses and do very well for themselves. I joke about my sister living the Southern Belle life a lot, but she actually works very hard. She is involved in just about every charity in town. And she's raised her children to do the same. My sister's daughter went to a high school where they had two proms--one for white kids and one for black kids. She passed around a petition and organized a group of students to complain. They got it changed. The people who fought the hardest against it were the most 'religious' of the bunch. If that's what it takes to be considered trash around here, sign me up, please. I don't think faith is bad, but I do think blind faith is down right dangerous. I don't care what name the god of blind faith goes by, he/she/it is deadly, and we should all be angry that he/she/it still has such power in our world.

[> [> [> [> Subject: Re: Religion is bad? Author: WN [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 07:18:50 12/30/01 Sun >You need a good shrink. See if you can get a group >rate and take S with ya. > >Bye bye board. It's an embarrassment to be associated >with half of the recent posts. > ><-- not angry. Just not: > >1. Trash >2. Ignorant >3. or a Victim If you're not 1, 2 or 3, my man, what are ya? Complete without a problem or a care? I get along as well with "trash" as I do with upper crust. I prefer "trash" to stiff upper lips, however. Ah, ignorant. I love ignorance, especially in the presence of those who feel illuminated to all things knowledge. A victim...who isn't? What demons do we hide from ourselves? I apologize to you if you are embarassed to be associated with some of these posts. I've noticed throughout life that those things that embarass people the most are those things that they associate themselves closely to. A big mistake people make is thinking the State appointed psychiatrist is your friend. I know I'll miss you. Peace, bro.

[> [> Subject: Re: Religion is bad? Author: WN [ Edit | View ] Date Posted: 07:44:38 12/30/01 Sun >Religion is the symptom. People are the problem. Religion IS the problem. The people are her pawns.