TonyR
The Legend Continues
Posts: 8,393
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Post by TonyR on Jan 19, 2018 11:56:22 GMT
You know, I'm in a battle with myself right now. Thinking about if I should believe in a God or not. One thing is, I am part of the LBTQ, and if there's a God, what does he think of me? You know, all these religious people tell me, that I need help and that I disrespect God and that I'll go to hell. So I'm like: "If that is what God thinks about me, then he's not my God. The other thing is, believing that there is someone who one day gives you a reason for everything he/she/it puts you through can be comforting. Believing that there's a reason for it. But then there's the logic. You know, I don't believe that life was created by a God. I believe in science, it makes more sense to me. If God is real, why did he let the Jews kill Jesus? Why didn't he stop them? I believe Jesus was real, but he couldn't heal people. He was a random Dude. I don't believe the Marry was a virgin crap. But I respect everyone's believe, I think everyone who claims to be a decent human being should. As long as you give me the same amount of respect. But most religious people judge me, because I am part of the LBTQ, while I respect them I never insulted them or their God. But they are fast to give me shit and judge me. So it is kinda hard to be nice. But I try my best, try to be the better person, you know? If they go low, I go higher! The problem with some of them is, they tend to think that they actually got the truth. When it's their version of the truth, just to put others down, to have controll over them. Often religion is for men to opress women, gays, trans people etc, one time some men wrote those books and made their rules and told them it was God who spoke through them. I can't be a part of a religion who's preaching "love" while they opress gays, women, trans people etc at the very same time. You can't have double standards when it comes to that. You can't say "I am all for equality, BUT...." There are not buts, ifs or exceptions. But religions do exactly that. The most harmless religious people I met told me: "YOu're a sinner, but I accept you." Wow, thanks. See, there's my problem with them. I never said: "You're a religious maniac, but I accept you." I would never say that. But I got treated like that way too often. And I'm tired of it. So, if there is a God, I hope he can forgive me if I deny him, I hope he can forgive me that I am not sure if I should believe in him or not. Great post man!
Religion to me is this. Treat everyone as you would want to be treated. Or if I wrote the bible, it would be one page.
Be fucking nice & tolerant.
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Post by funksoldier on Jan 19, 2018 12:51:50 GMT
You know, I'm in a battle with myself right now. Thinking about if I should believe in a God or not. One thing is, I am part of the LBTQ, and if there's a God, what does he think of me? You know, all these religious people tell me, that I need help and that I disrespect God and that I'll go to hell. So I'm like: "If that is what God thinks about me, then he's not my God. The other thing is, believing that there is someone who one day gives you a reason for everything he/she/it puts you through can be comforting. Believing that there's a reason for it. But then there's the logic. You know, I don't believe that life was created by a God. I believe in science, it makes more sense to me. If God is real, why did he let the Jews kill Jesus? Why didn't he stop them? I believe Jesus was real, but he couldn't heal people. He was a random Dude. I don't believe the Marry was a virgin crap. But I respect everyone's believe, I think everyone who claims to be a decent human being should. As long as you give me the same amount of respect. But most religious people judge me, because I am part of the LBTQ, while I respect them I never insulted them or their God. But they are fast to give me shit and judge me. So it is kinda hard to be nice. But I try my best, try to be the better person, you know? If they go low, I go higher! The problem with some of them is, they tend to think that they actually got the truth. When it's their version of the truth, just to put others down, to have controll over them. Often religion is for men to opress women, gays, trans people etc, one time some men wrote those books and made their rules and told them it was God who spoke through them. I can't be a part of a religion who's preaching "love" while they opress gays, women, trans people etc at the very same time. You can't have double standards when it comes to that. You can't say "I am all for equality, BUT...." There are not buts, ifs or exceptions. But religions do exactly that. The most harmless religious people I met told me: "YOu're a sinner, but I accept you." Wow, thanks. See, there's my problem with them. I never said: "You're a religious maniac, but I accept you." I would never say that. But I got treated like that way too often. And I'm tired of it. So, if there is a God, I hope he can forgive me if I deny him, I hope he can forgive me that I am not sure if I should believe in him or not. Great post man!
Religion to me is this. Treat everyone as you would want to be treated. Or if I wrote the bible, it would be one page.
Be fucking nice & tolerant.
Thanks! And I totally agree.
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Post by Snow White on Feb 10, 2018 3:03:20 GMT
Now Russell Brand interviewed Sam Harris and for what I'm reading on the comments, he talked over and interrupted Sam even more than he did on Prof. Brian Cox.
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Post by Snow White on Feb 11, 2018 3:02:50 GMT
FUCKING HELL, Brand tripped on his verbosity instead of letting Sam explaining his point of view! What a waste of time since Brand wasn't willing to engage in a discussion, using flowery vocabulary, multi-syllabic words not saying anything at the same time didn't make his arguments stronger.
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Post by respect77 on Feb 11, 2018 5:34:59 GMT
Faux intellectuals are so funny.
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Post by Liberian Girl on Feb 12, 2018 10:49:32 GMT
You know, I'm in a battle with myself right now. Thinking about if I should believe in a God or not. One thing is, I am part of the LBTQ, and if there's a God, what does he think of me? You know, all these religious people tell me, that I need help and that I disrespect God and that I'll go to hell. So I'm like: "If that is what God thinks about me, then he's not my God. The other thing is, believing that there is someone who one day gives you a reason for everything he/she/it puts you through can be comforting. Believing that there's a reason for it. But then there's the logic. You know, I don't believe that life was created by a God. I believe in science, it makes more sense to me. If God is real, why did he let the Jews kill Jesus? Why didn't he stop them? I believe Jesus was real, but he couldn't heal people. He was a random Dude. I don't believe the Marry was a virgin crap. But I respect everyone's believe, I think everyone who claims to be a decent human being should. As long as you give me the same amount of respect. But most religious people judge me, because I am part of the LBTQ, while I respect them I never insulted them or their God. But they are fast to give me shit and judge me. So it is kinda hard to be nice. But I try my best, try to be the better person, you know? If they go low, I go higher! The problem with some of them is, they tend to think that they actually got the truth. When it's their version of the truth, just to put others down, to have controll over them. Often religion is for men to opress women, gays, trans people etc, one time some men wrote those books and made their rules and told them it was God who spoke through them. I can't be a part of a religion who's preaching "love" while they opress gays, women, trans people etc at the very same time. You can't have double standards when it comes to that. You can't say "I am all for equality, BUT...." There are not buts, ifs or exceptions. But religions do exactly that. The most harmless religious people I met told me: "YOu're a sinner, but I accept you." Wow, thanks. See, there's my problem with them. I never said: "You're a religious maniac, but I accept you." I would never say that. But I got treated like that way too often. And I'm tired of it. So, if there is a God, I hope he can forgive me if I deny him, I hope he can forgive me that I am not sure if I should believe in him or not. While I definitely understand your thoughts here (and your reasons for feeling this way) I do want to comment on a couple of your points... You said that you didn't believe God created life, "because you believe in science." Science didn't create life, either. Science is just a multi layered system that tries to understand creation and how things work - it has no part in creation other than trying to observe it and dissect it to find answers to how this thing called life works. Now obviously I'm NOT saying that means you should believe in God... I more want to home in on the point that many say "I don't believe in God, I believe in Science" as if believing in science answers how life began (or had a hand in it at all). Even some very respected scientists admit that they can't fully answer how the world began, but they do have theories. I also wanted to pick up on your point about having a problem with religion because they preach love but oppress people etc. I actually agree that certain religions are hypocritical and don't practice what they preach. However I'd never personally look at flawed human beings acting like horrible idiots within religion as a reason to not believe in God, either. Unfortunately, humans can be completely hateful and discriminate, (which is so wrong!!) But this is more an issue about how humanity is messed up, NOT about the existence (or non-existence) of God. Him being real (or loving and good) isn't necessarily going to be reflected in human beings who attend church (sad but true). You asked why God "let Jews killed Jesus"... The answer (within the framework of accepted Christian belief) is that Jesus sacrificed himself as a "payment" the for Sin of humanity. Kinda like dying for those you love. This is based on the Old Testament tradition of slaughtering an animal to atone for Sin...so Jesus was viewed as a pure, ultimate sacrifice. Now I'm definitely not here to get into the rights and wrongs of Christian belief, I'm just answering you because you asked and this is what a Christian would typically reply. Anyway I enjoyed reading your post and have respect for your opinion, I just thought it'd be interesting to answer from the opposite end of the spectrum.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2018 2:21:01 GMT
I wouldn't be an atheist if I was not gay I guess. I have always been excited by religion being a Catholic (Baptised but not confirmed - I had to receive sacrament by crossing my arms recently). I believe in something above which excludes me from atheist, but I do not like the Dogma, I had Jewish Maori ancestors on my Dad's side and very Ctaholic on my Mom's and my stepfather was also a Roman Catholic but thats the way I went.
My Mum was very anti church as she went to a church school and was very much a product of the late 1960s love revolution and rejected the dogma, and raised us non religious but did baptise myself and my brother on her Mums (My Nana's) deathbed in 1977 when I was 1 and my brother was 3½. Mum got back into religion before she died and I was never a full believer but loved to study religion from a historical and theological point of view. Catholicisim and its mysteries have always fascinated me, but secretly I don't believe in dogma. I am also very interested in studying Judaism and Jewish laws as put down by the Torah - just has always fascinated and even Islam to a lesser extent, depsite all the negative aspects of Islam and the meida, I have always respected their respect of their customs and culture and the devotion they show.
Sorry if I intruded here guys, we have a Religion and we have an Atheist thread, but not Agnostic one - which is me - so maybe I should start one, I just felt safer here with you guys rather than the religious people.
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Post by respect77 on Mar 4, 2018 19:59:03 GMT
New Darkmatter2525 video.
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Post by respect77 on Mar 24, 2018 13:26:39 GMT
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Post by Snow White on Mar 25, 2018 1:34:17 GMT
Good for you European citizens but the irony of that poll. Many of those countries brought Catholicism and Protestantism to the Americas and Africa by force and nowadays their people believe less in deities than their former colonies. I just can hope one day the Americas follow Europe's decline of dogmatic belief in my lifetime. In the meantime, I don't see it happaning soon, the Catholic Church are losing sheeple every day but Evangelical Christianity is gaining ground instead.
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Post by respect77 on Mar 25, 2018 5:39:12 GMT
Here in Eastern Europe there is a weird ambivalence regarding religion. As you can see the Czech Republic is the least religious country even in the not too religious Europe and there are other Eastern European countries among the top few countries (Estonia, Hungary). But that doesn't mean religion isn't sneaking back to public life. I can mostly talk about Hungary and the processes here are actually pretty bad. The goverment pours a lot of tax payer money into churches and in exchange the churches support this awful neo-feudalist, populist, fascist autocracy that Viktor Orbán (prime minister) is building here. While not many are really religious here, but there are a lot who think that Christianity is an integral part of their cultural and national identity nevertheless. And the false perception that Christianity=good values is strong even in people who aren't really practicing Christians. So because of that churches do sneak back and gain more and more power in public life. Church schools get a LOT more tax payer money than non-church schools because the governemt deliberately strengthens the position of church schools (more money, better education) so that parents take their kids to church schools to get a good education even if they aren't religious. In those church schools then the kids get religious and ideological (nationalist, right wing) brainwashing. So the nationalists, right wing people do try to turn back time here, to go back to some feudalist system where they can control the masses through religion and some false idea of "national values". I don't know what the situation is in Mexico, but Eastern Europe is quickly falling prey to nationalist, autocratic ideologies and religious control. It's not good what is going on in the middle of Europe. Orbán openly considers Putin and Erdogan as his role models and 30 years after the fall of Communism and the Soviets leaving Hungary, he is selling out the country to Russia again. All that just to keep his power. He basically destroyed the liberal constitutional state by now. There will be general elections in two weeks, but it is totally unfair as the opposition doesn't get any coverage in the tax payer money funded state media - and in many rural areas only that media is available. Which is full of pro-government propaganda and never covers any issue that is bad for the government (eg. about the massive corruption going on in the government). If you have ever read Orwell's "1984", that's how it starts to feel like here. Down to the point that we have our own Emmanuel Goldstein in the form of Hungarian-born American billionaire, George Soros who is being demonized here by the governent on large posters all around the country. The irony is that Soros actually funded Orbán's own studies and party when he was younger. (Orbán started out as a radical liberal who was also anti-clerical when he was young. That changed to conservativism at the end of the 1990s and now he is basically a far-right/fascist populist. It is obvious to me by now that he never had any real principles. He just did and said whatever he thought could give him power.) Here is a recent Washington Post article about the Soros-campaign of the government. www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-hungarys-prime-minister-blames-george-soros-for-all-the-countrys-woes/2018/03/23/cb73ac16-26de-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html?utm_term=.7724e6cad183The only thing I disagree with in this article that it is his anti-authority stance that makes him tick. IMO that's being too nice to him. No. What makes him tick is being in power. At any price. Period. He has no principles, just an insatiable desire to be in power. How can someone who himself builds an autocratic state, be anti-authority? Only if that authority is not him. He realizes it is easy to stir up the darkest instincts in people in this corner of the world where people are full of frustrations and existential fears. Add to that there are a lot of people who are narrow-minded, uneducated and don't know anything about the world beyond the borders of their small village. That's mostly true of rural people and the older generation but they make up a large portion of the voting population. Easy targets for such a cynical propaganda. Urban areas and younger people are more enligthened and less prone to falling for the government propaganda, but they cannot balance out the big rural areas and the older people in terms of voting numbers. So it's easy to play that classic game of dictators here: giving people an enemy to hate for their problems (instead of the government who actually caused a lot of those problems) and posing as the protector from that enemy. It always works. The nazis knew it. The Communists knew it. Orbán knows it. I know I digress. But this is not independent from religion as most of the big churches here support Orbán. From Catholics to evangelicals. Which actually even goes against their own religion. As this government is socially insensitive, ignores the poorest people - eg. acts like homelessness and poverty doesn't exist here etc. Not to mention the stealing, corruption. There is a corruption scandal for every day now here. How is that Christ-like? Actually, the evangelical church I used to belong now sold out to the government as well, so the pastor said recently that corruption isn't a big deal, it can be "sorted out" later (sure, LOL). According to him the bigger deal is to stop migration and liberalism (ie. "horrible" things like gay marriage) from which the government will protect us so we need to vote for them. As if any migrant wants to stay in Hungary when even Hungarians flee to the West. Education and public health care is in shambles, the government steals our eyes out, they destroy the constitutional state, but sure the (non-existent) migrants and gay people are the problem. LOL. I am not surprised, though, that this church too now joined the pro-government bandwagon. These churches are mostly hypocrites who always cherry-pick the parts of the Bible that supports any current stance they want to have. And they always end up kissing the butt of the most abhorrent dictators for a financial support. Jesus would be proud.
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Post by Snow White on Apr 6, 2018 3:13:04 GMT
Wonderful reflexion by Sam Harris on death. It's ironic theists in general are more fatalistic than atheists, taking into account they believe in the afterlife. Some of us are trying to find ways to live this one life the best we can but they can't wait for theirs to end.
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Post by Snow White on Apr 12, 2018 0:49:10 GMT
My grandfather died on Monday night but it seems he didn't stipulate what he wanted for his funeral, I knew he was atheist but he's having religious services either way. Witnessing such impersonal wake, more an excuse to worship god and the virgin Mary knowing he didn't believe in any of it made me feel nauseated and made realize that I need to stipulate how I'd like to be remembered when I die. It seems there aren't secular funeral services here in Mexico, so I'll need to look up what humanist funerals done in the UK sre about. I know the attendants share poems, stories or anecdotes about the deceased, music that person used to enjoy is palyed as well but I don't know what else I'm missing.
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Post by respect77 on Apr 12, 2018 5:08:01 GMT
I am sorry for your loss.
When my grandparents die we will do a non-religious funeral for them too because they have never been religious. We never actually talked about it but they were once at a non-religious funeral and they remarked how much nicer and more genuine it was than a religious funeral, so it seems natural.
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Post by respect77 on Apr 18, 2018 18:34:39 GMT
The latest from Darkmatter2525
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