Should religion be eliminated

[Karl Rand]

Duplicate post deleted.

 

[Taz]

Smart people have eliminated religions and have simply gone on a personal spiritual path. Simpletons still cling to the myths and folly.

You mean like God Lite. All the good and none of the accountability. Makes sense.

They are still accountable to a god if they believe one exists especially if they believe in heaven and hell.

If no God exists, then there is no accountability to God. Do you agree with this logic?

So their belief that God exists - in and of itself - does not make them accountable. Do you agree with this logic?

So maybe you are trying to say something else.

Why would one have to be accountable to god?

 

[Karl Rand]

You dismissed it using using rhetoric. There was no substance to your rebuttal.

[/QUOTE]
How does one refute so incoherent an abuse of the English language? I’m not going to even try.

 

[ding]

Hmmm... which one do you think is more far reaching in terms of numbers?

I imagine someone could argue that public education plays a role that's similar in scope to organized religion in the contemporary US, but I don't know, and in any case you're changing the subject. If you'd said that organized religion currently plays the single largest role in teaching social values then I would have agreed with you. Instead you said that only organized religion could play such a role, which is different.

Fair enough.

But the argument of many is that religion is bad. That just isn’t the case.

.

But there is only one organization whose mission it is to teach it.

But the argument of many is that religion is bad. That just isn’t the case.

View attachment 232365

whether acknowledged or not history speaks for itself, the two sides of religion and those in denial of responsibility ...

Some of those who are/were responsible are the very authors of so called holy books.

or revisionists....aka council of nicea .....~S~

I read your link. What was the revision?

 

[Karl Rand]

another example, one more to your liking - to work with ...
Look, I find it embarrasing that maybe someone will imagine I’m defending the KKK but that slogan may not have been placed there by the clan but have come as a permanent fixture in a hired hall. The ’sin’, if we can call it that, may lay with whoever rented or allowed the KKK to use their premises.
On the other hand the KKK members would all probably be horrified if they met the original Jesus and realised he wasn’t exactly white as the driven snow.

 

[ding]

another example, one more to your liking - to work with ...
Look, I find it embarrasing that maybe someone will imagine I’m defending the KKK but that slogan may not have been placed there by the clan but have come as a permanent fixture in a hired hall. The ’sin’, if we can call it that, may lay with whoever rented or allowed the KKK to use their premises.
On the other hand the KKK members would all probably be horrified if they met the original Jesus and realised he wasn’t exactly white as the driven snow.

I don't really understand what this has to do with anything we are discussing.

 

[ding]

BTW... the KKK was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party that was created to take back the state houses in the South after the Civil War. Just thought you guys should know in case you didn't know this history.

 

[ding]

Religion does what governments can’t, they teach civility.

So, the only two sources of civility are religion or the state?
A chilling set of alternatives.

No. There is only one organization that does that; organized religion.

Yes, we can learn civility from our family, friends and our experiences.

But there is only one organization whose mission it is to teach it.

True believers, such as your good self, never cease to amaze me with how their faith can blind them to the entire body of Western & Eastern philosophy.

We are spiritual beings who sense and perceive the world around us using all of our senses. Through our intuition we perceive a uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet which has two parts; an uneasiness and it's solution. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.

paraphrased from William James, Lecture XX, "Conclusions"

William James is talking gibberish with all the logic of an over-tossed word salad.

William James was a leading American psychologist and philosopher in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and had a major impact on the way we look at the mind, the body and the world.

What is it that you have accomplished that makes you qualified to say that he is talking gibberish with all the logic of an over-tossed word salad; especially since you did not enumerate your basis for believing that he was talking gibberish with all the logic of an over-tossed word salad. Surely if his logic is so flawed it would be easy for you to explain his errors, right?

https://www.biography.com/people/william-james-9352726

 

[sparky]

I imagine someone could argue that public education plays a role that's similar in scope to organized religion in the contemporary US, but I don't know, and in any case you're changing the subject. If you'd said that organized religion currently plays the single largest role in teaching social values then I would have agreed with you. Instead you said that only organized religion could play such a role, which is different.

Fair enough.

But the argument of many is that religion is bad. That just isn’t the case.

.

But there is only one organization whose mission it is to teach it.

But the argument of many is that religion is bad. That just isn’t the case.

View attachment 232365

whether acknowledged or not history speaks for itself, the two sides of religion and those in denial of responsibility ...

Some of those who are/were responsible are the very authors of so called holy books.

or revisionists....aka council of nicea .....~S~

I read your link. What was the revision?

A synopsis would be that the Romans got bored of feeding christians to the lions, and decided they'd assimilate them Ding ......they were the original borg you see.....

so they set up a series of councils starting in 325ad, passing judgement on , editing, politisizing the bible ,which translates to many books in hebrew, but a few less due to them

The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden - Wikipedia

 

[ding]

Fair enough.

But the argument of many is that religion is bad. That just isn’t the case.

.

But there is only one organization whose mission it is to teach it.

But the argument of many is that religion is bad. That just isn’t the case.

View attachment 232365

whether acknowledged or not history speaks for itself, the two sides of religion and those in denial of responsibility ...

Some of those who are/were responsible are the very authors of so called holy books.

or revisionists....aka council of nicea .....~S~

I read your link. What was the revision?

A synopsis would be that the Romans got bored of feeding christians to the lions, and decided they'd assimilate them Ding ......they were the original borg you see.....

so they set up a series of councils starting in 325ad, passing judgement on , editing, politisizing the bible ,which translates to many books in hebrew, but a few less due to them

The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden - Wikipedia

Let's stay on your original assertion, OK. I can come back to this later.

In the link you provided it does not point out any revision occurred at all. In fact it says...

The Council of Nicea did not invent the doctrine of the deity of Christ. Rather, the Council of Nicea affirmed the apostles’ teaching of who Christ is—the one true God and the Second Person of the Trinity, with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

So what was the revision you are talking about in your link?

What occurred at the Council of Nicea?

 

[sparky]

Let's stay on your original assertion, OK. I can come back to this later.

Ok then

do you agree religion and faith can be mutually exclusive ding?

~S~

 

[ding]

Fair enough.

But the argument of many is that religion is bad. That just isn’t the case.

.

But there is only one organization whose mission it is to teach it.

But the argument of many is that religion is bad. That just isn’t the case.

View attachment 232365

whether acknowledged or not history speaks for itself, the two sides of religion and those in denial of responsibility ...

Some of those who are/were responsible are the very authors of so called holy books.

or revisionists....aka council of nicea .....~S~

I read your link. What was the revision?

A synopsis would be that the Romans got bored of feeding christians to the lions, and decided they'd assimilate them Ding ......they were the original borg you see.....

so they set up a series of councils starting in 325ad, passing judgement on , editing, politisizing the bible ,which translates to many books in hebrew, but a few less due to them

The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden - Wikipedia

So coming back to your second link... your first link refutes there were any revisions.

The Council of Nicea did not invent the doctrine of the deity of Christ. Rather, the Council of Nicea affirmed the apostles’ teaching of who Christ is—the one true God and the Second Person of the Trinity, with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Do you have any specific revisions you would like to discuss?

 

[ding]

Let's stay on your original assertion, OK. I can come back to this later.

Ok then

do you agree religion and faith can be mutually exclusive ding?

~S~

With respect to a belief in a power greater than man, they are linked.

religion: a particular system of faith and worship.

faith: complete trust or confidence in someone or something.​

So I can have complete trust in something (faith) and practice a religion based upon a specific faith (dogma). So if you are asking me if faith and dogma can be mutually exclusive, yes. But not to the point that they are diametrically opposed on all points of dogma. Otherwise, it wouldn't be your religion at all. And I don't see anything wrong with that. Objective truth is discovered through a conflict and confusion process. Diversity of thought is critical to discovering objective truth.

 

[Karl Rand]

Let's stay on your original assertion, OK. I can come back to this later.

Ok then
do you agree religion and faith can be mutually exclusive ding?
~S~

With respect to a belief in a power greater than man, they are linked.

religion: a particular system of faith and worship.
faith: complete trust or confidence in someone or something.​

So I can have complete trust in something (faith) and practice a religion based upon a specific faith (dogma). So if you are asking me if faith and dogma can be mutually exclusive, yes. But not to the point that they are diametrically opposed on all points of dogma. Otherwise, it wouldn't be your religion at all. And I don't see anything wrong with that. Objective truth is discovered through a conflict and confusion process. Diversity of thought is critical to discovering objective truth.

Where to start? Maybe with ‘diversity of thought’ which to my mind is the exact opposite of dogma. Bishop john Shelby Spong comes to mind here when he tells us in The Sins of Scripture:- ‘’Most members of the church’s hierarchy regard the creeds as the source of the Church’s unity. However, the fact is that the exact opposite is the case. The creeds actually guarantee the disunity of the church and were consciously intended and designed to do just that. That is a strong statement, resisted by many on first hearing, but history reveals the the primary purpose of any creed is to determine who it is that does not qualify for membership.Creeds are designed to separate the true believers from the false believers. Because creeds set boundaries, they inevitably divide.'

 

[well named]

Re: church councils and revisionism

I don't have any issue with describing the patristic period as innovative, say, or pointing out that Greek and Latin Christianity went in many different directions from more Semitic Christian traditions (e.g. in Syria, or what is now Iraq). But it seems a bit wrong to me to say they were revisionist because it implies a set orthodoxy that I don't think really existed prior to that period. We probably know less than we'd like about early Christianity but we have plenty of evidence about the variety of beliefs and practices in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and lots of ideas which would later become heresies were widely popular. The pious idea of an orthodox tradition which can be traced back cleanly to some apostolic authority isn't really supported by much evidence.

Anyway, one of my favorite things about some of the patristic writers is just how often they seem unencumbered by tradition or even by the bounds of scripture. So for example Gregory Nazianzen discussing the meaning of the crucifixion, which he connects back to his trinitarian views about the divinity of the Spirit (Gregory was one of the three principle theologians of the Trinity), or Gregory of Nyssa discussing non-literal and innovative readings in his Homilies on the Song of Songs. They were pretty boldly creative, and within the context of Christianity in that period this was not disturbing to anyone. Sola Scriptura was a much later idea.

 

[ding]

Let's stay on your original assertion, OK. I can come back to this later.

Ok then
do you agree religion and faith can be mutually exclusive ding?
~S~

With respect to a belief in a power greater than man, they are linked.

religion: a particular system of faith and worship.
faith: complete trust or confidence in someone or something.​

So I can have complete trust in something (faith) and practice a religion based upon a specific faith (dogma). So if you are asking me if faith and dogma can be mutually exclusive, yes. But not to the point that they are diametrically opposed on all points of dogma. Otherwise, it wouldn't be your religion at all. And I don't see anything wrong with that. Objective truth is discovered through a conflict and confusion process. Diversity of thought is critical to discovering objective truth.

Where to start? Maybe with ‘diversity of thought’ which to my mind is the exact opposite of dogma. Bishop john Shelby Spong comes to mind here when he tells us in The Sins of Scripture:- ‘’Most members of the church’s hierarchy regard the creeds as the source of the Church’s unity. However, the fact is that the exact opposite is the case. The creeds actually guarantee the disunity of the church and were consciously intended and designed to do just that. That is a strong statement, resisted by many on first hearing, but history reveals the the primary purpose of any creed is to determine who it is that does not qualify for membership.Creeds are designed to separate the true believers from the false believers. Because creeds set boundaries, they inevitably divide.'

Well... I am speaking from experience. The Catholic Church takes certain positions that not all of its adherents agree with; abortion and birth control to name a few. So we can argue if those are dogmatic beliefs or not but I believe that is just splitting hairs. I would say that most Catholics agree with most of the Catechism on religious dogma, but probably not all.

Now if you want to talk about foundational beliefs, the Church moves much slower on those and only then when a certain belief is challenged. For instance the assumption of Mary, I think.

As for Bishop John Shelby Spong, he's an Episcopalian, and he is speaking about his church. One I do not have enough knowledge of to comment about their creed, but I do not believe their foundational beliefs are vastly different than most mainstream Christian denominations.

But if you really want to have a conversation on diversity, you first need to understand that it applies to much more than religion. It applies to all things. Whereas you may see this as a negative, it is without a doubt a positive and a strength. In fact without it there would be no progress and advancement.

 

[Karl Rand]

Re: church councils and revisionism

I don't have any issue with describing the patristic period as innovative, say, or pointing out that Greek and Latin Christianity went in many different directions from more Semitic Christian traditions (e.g. in Syria, or what is now Iraq). But it seems a bit wrong to me to say they were revisionist because it implies a set orthodoxy that I don't think really existed prior to that period. We probably know less than we'd like about early Christianity but we have plenty of evidence about the variety of beliefs and practices in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and lots of ideas which would later become heresies were widely popular. The pious idea of an orthodox tradition which can be traced back cleanly to some apostolic authority isn't really supported by much evidence.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

Anyway, one of my favourite things about some of the patristic writers is just how often they seem unencumbered by tradition or even by the bounds of scripture. So for example Gregory Nazianzen discussing the meaning of the crucifixion, which he connects back to his trinitarian views about the divinity of the Spirit (Gregory was one of the three principle theologians of the Trinity), or Gregory of Nyssa discussing non-literal and innovative readings in his Homilies on the Song of Songs. They were pretty boldly creative, and within the context of Christianity in that period this was not disturbing to anyone. Sola Scriptura was a much later idea.

I wonder what you mean here by ’The bounds of scripture’ surely that was already a moving target?

 

[ding]

Let's stay on your original assertion, OK. I can come back to this later.

Ok then
do you agree religion and faith can be mutually exclusive ding?
~S~

With respect to a belief in a power greater than man, they are linked.

religion: a particular system of faith and worship.
faith: complete trust or confidence in someone or something.​

So I can have complete trust in something (faith) and practice a religion based upon a specific faith (dogma). So if you are asking me if faith and dogma can be mutually exclusive, yes. But not to the point that they are diametrically opposed on all points of dogma. Otherwise, it wouldn't be your religion at all. And I don't see anything wrong with that. Objective truth is discovered through a conflict and confusion process. Diversity of thought is critical to discovering objective truth.

Where to start? Maybe with ‘diversity of thought’ which to my mind is the exact opposite of dogma. Bishop john Shelby Spong comes to mind here when he tells us in The Sins of Scripture:- ‘’Most members of the church’s hierarchy regard the creeds as the source of the Church’s unity. However, the fact is that the exact opposite is the case. The creeds actually guarantee the disunity of the church and were consciously intended and designed to do just that. That is a strong statement, resisted by many on first hearing, but history reveals the the primary purpose of any creed is to determine who it is that does not qualify for membership.Creeds are designed to separate the true believers from the false believers. Because creeds set boundaries, they inevitably divide.'

Yes, Creeds do set boundaries. It is a necessary condition for any organization. Unless of course you prize anarchy which is stupid. People who do not see eye to eye on the foundational aspects of a creed probably shouldn't belong to that organization. So there is nothing wrong with dividing. I wouldn't want to belong to any organization whose beliefs were diametrically opposed to mine and I am sure they wouldn't want me to belong.

It is slight differences which work in the equilibrium phase that progresses the next big leap or breakthrough in any dynamic system. Large differences don't fit the process of evolution.

 

[ding]

Re: church councils and revisionism

I don't have any issue with describing the patristic period as innovative, say, or pointing out that Greek and Latin Christianity went in many different directions from more Semitic Christian traditions (e.g. in Syria, or what is now Iraq). But it seems a bit wrong to me to say they were revisionist because it implies a set orthodoxy that I don't think really existed prior to that period. We probably know less than we'd like about early Christianity but we have plenty of evidence about the variety of beliefs and practices in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and lots of ideas which would later become heresies were widely popular. The pious idea of an orthodox tradition which can be traced back cleanly to some apostolic authority isn't really supported by much evidence.

Anyway, one of my favorite things about some of the patristic writers is just how often they seem unencumbered by tradition or even by the bounds of scripture. So for example Gregory Nazianzen discussing the meaning of the crucifixion, which he connects back to his trinitarian views about the divinity of the Spirit (Gregory was one of the three principle theologians of the Trinity), or Gregory of Nyssa discussing non-literal and innovative readings in his Homilies on the Song of Songs. They were pretty boldly creative, and within the context of Christianity in that period this was not disturbing to anyone. Sola Scriptura was a much later idea.

You can say the exact same thing about all religions. It is perfectly natural to diversify. Just look around at nature. Diversity is not only good it is necessary. There can be no advancement without it. So while some people see diversity of thought in religion as bad, the reality of it is that it is natural, necessary and good. Rather than being a sign of weakness it is a sign of strength.

 

[ding]

Re: church councils and revisionism

I don't have any issue with describing the patristic period as innovative, say, or pointing out that Greek and Latin Christianity went in many different directions from more Semitic Christian traditions (e.g. in Syria, or what is now Iraq). But it seems a bit wrong to me to say they were revisionist because it implies a set orthodoxy that I don't think really existed prior to that period. We probably know less than we'd like about early Christianity but we have plenty of evidence about the variety of beliefs and practices in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and lots of ideas which would later become heresies were widely popular. The pious idea of an orthodox tradition which can be traced back cleanly to some apostolic authority isn't really supported by much evidence.

Anyway, one of my favorite things about some of the patristic writers is just how often they seem unencumbered by tradition or even by the bounds of scripture. So for example Gregory Nazianzen discussing the meaning of the crucifixion, which he connects back to his trinitarian views about the divinity of the Spirit (Gregory was one of the three principle theologians of the Trinity), or Gregory of Nyssa discussing non-literal and innovative readings in his Homilies on the Song of Songs. They were pretty boldly creative, and within the context of Christianity in that period this was not disturbing to anyone. Sola Scriptura was a much later idea.

Let me ask you this question, do you believe that the early Christians believed in the Trinity and transubstantiation?