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Penelope, DWill and Robert Tulip about religious belief.

#44: Feb. - Mar. 2008 (Fiction)
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Penelope

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I think we are agreed, Frank, about the iniquities of Organised Religion.

I have been thinking about what you said some time ago - about what difference religion makes to me.....it has taken me until now to formulate a succinct reply:-

Given that we know that natural disasters, happen with monotonous regularity and that man-made disasters happen with more or less the same frequency.....(these man-made ones I find even more distressing btw), I feel that I cannot just live from day to day without regard to how I might cope with one of these disasters if it affected me personally.

For instance....I am at an age where old and loved friends and relations seem to be getting seriously ill or dying....with more and more frequency. Now, I am not foolish enough to petition 'God' and say, 'Please don't let my husband die before me'....or 'please don't let my children get ill'.....but without a spritual strengthening.....achieved by meditation. contemplation or prayer.....I would not be in any state to handle these disasters and keep my sanity. So I don't pray for the impossible...but I pray for the inner resources to cope with them. For wisdom....and enlightenment......which gives freedom from constant fear.

Some people must not feel the need to build up their inner resources - maybe they have gained that strength already.....I am just attempting to explain how it is for me.
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Frank 013
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Penelope
I think we are agreed, Frank, about the iniquities of Organized Religion.


Yes we do seem to have reached a consensus in that category.
Penelope
Now, I am not foolish enough to petition 'God' and say, 'Please don't let my husband die before me'....or 'please don't let my children get ill'.....but without a spiritual strengthening.....achieved by meditation. contemplation or prayer.....I would not be in any state to handle these disasters and keep my sanity. So I don't pray for the impossible...but I pray for the inner resources to cope with them. For wisdom....and enlightenment......which gives freedom from constant fear.

Some people must not feel the need to build up their inner resources - maybe they have gained that strength already.....I am just attempting to explain how it is for me.


Like I said before, I have no interest in denying you (or anybody for that matter) that right. If it truly helps you then that's great, more power to you.

My real problem lies with the obviously false dogma of religions and their attempt to push their agenda on everyone.

Of course I think I have made that relatively clear and we both seem to agree.

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Thanks to Robert Tulip for pointing out the relevance of the thread, after all. The sticking point I come to when blame is ascribed to beliefs for producing one sort of another of atrocity, is whether the beliefs are merely the convenient explanation, the one we can most readily identify. If those particlular beliefs were not there, another set might do as well to stand as the cause. What I'm suggesting is that, within the human heart of darkness is something as basic as a greed that will stop at nothing to satisfy itself, and needs no covering of religious belief to play itself out along a violent course (although a covering of religion provides a good disguise). In other words, if the particular religious beliefs are involved, they are secondary. I think this could be consistent with Conrad's theme. I don't think he means to indict Christian beliefs; his target must be wider than that.

Through all of history, humans have been, in the main, religious. Irreligion has a much shorter track record. As Penelope pointed out, it is not a stellar one, either, in terms of benevolence. If we make a correction by saying that ideological fanaticism is in fact the true cause, we are moving away from making religion the scapegoat. We all seem to need to be able to point to a particular villain. My skeptical view is that we probably can't.
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DWill
In other words, if the particular religious beliefs are involved, they are secondary. I think this could be consistent with Conrad's theme. I don't think he means to indict Christian beliefs; his target must be wider than that.
I might agree but I see little exterior motive besides the adherence to dogma for things like denying birth control to Catholic Africans, which causes thousands of deaths each year due to STDs, or denying gays the right to marry.

And even if the leaders of these religions are using the religion to mask other less than pious motives, it is the power that religion has over the general populace that allows them to abuse it in such a manner.

Let's use Hitler as an example... Hitler may, or may not have been a firm believer in a personal god. By all accounts he was, but I will allow some doubt because as a public figure he might have just been going through the motions for credibility.

Either way, Hitler used the religious belief of his people to manipulate their behavior allowing for some of the worst atrocities ever recorded to take place.

Religions encourage blind devotion in its followers; many religions have established a (false) reputation for a force of good, as long as the action taken is in the name of said god. Religions and their leaders claim to speak for their gods and claim to be enforcing the gods will; this lays the ground work for rampant abuse. Finally many religions claim that action taken in the gods name is rewarded in the afterlife.

To a believer this motivation can be far stronger than any earthly calling.

I will agree that secular forms of blind idealism can be abused in such a manner but few have the motivating power that religion has and none have had the staying power.

As far as the track record of secular government... currently on this planet the most civilized, crimeless, fair and free governments are the most secular ones.

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I was going back through this thread and I saw something that I missed...
Penelope
Vlad the Impaler - Atilla the Hun.....Genkis Khan......were not particularly religious!!!!!
I do not know much about the religious natures of Atilla or Genkis Khan, but I can assure you that Vlad was a strict Christian.
The fictional story of Bram Stoker's vampire, Dracula, derived from an actual historical man, Vlad the Impaler (also known as Vlad Tepes and Vlad Dracula).

Although Stoker's fictional Dracula has produced fear in the hearts of readers for a hundred years, the real Dracula proved far more dangerous, scarier and real.

Vlad Tepes got born sometime between 1430 and 1431 in a Transylvanian town called Schassburg (aka Sighisoara). Vlad did not live as a vampire; but far worse: as a Christian. Like his father, he joined the Order of the Dragon (Dracul), an ancient Christian society dedicated to fighting Turks and heretics. Vlad earned the name Tepes (TSEH-pesh) which means "Impaler" a reference to Vlad's favorite form of punishment.

In 1408 the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, created the Order of the Dragon. Its statutes required its members to defend the Cross and do battle against its enemies and infidels. Vlad II took the name Dracul and his son, Vlad III took the name Dracula (Son of Dracul).

On Easter Sunday of 1459, Vlad committed his first major act of revenge by arresting the Boyer families whom he held responsible for the death of his father and brother. He impaled the older ones outside the city walls and forced the rest to build what people now identify as Castle Dracula.

In addition to disloyal people and Turks, Vlad regularly impaled infidels, gypsies, lazy peasants and "impure" women. He would pound wooden stakes (like a stauros ) up through their torsos, lollipop style.

Vlad also skinned people alive, roasted them over red-hot coals and by one account from the mid 1400s, "stuck stakes in both breasts of mothers and thrust their babies onto them."

The fictional vampire, Count Dracula killed around 16 characters; the Christian Vlad Dracula killed over 20,000 actual living breathing people.

Consider also that Christianity claims that men lived over 900 years (Adam, Methuselah. etc.), the practice of the Eucharist (consuming bread and wine, the literal drinking of blood and eating the flesh of Christ), praying in front of a statue of a bleeding and dying man staked to lumber, the belief of the rise and resurrection from death, and the promise that, you too, will live eternal as long as you eat the flesh and drink the blood (see John 6:54), and you have all the elements of diabolic vampirism. I don't wish to unduly frighten anyone, but consider that anyone who passes you by as you walk the streets, might serve as a member among millions who visit dark churches every Sunday to receive their weekly fix of drinking Christ's blood in their ritual called communion. Now I don't for one moment believe in this sacrament, but if there occurred any truth to it, wouldn't we, by definition, have to consider them vampires?

For those of us who do not believe, Christianity and Vlad the Impaler represents horror filled examples of how religion can create fear, torture and death. As in that classic movie line, "Be afraid. Be very afraid."

nobeliefs.com/facts.htm#anchor237925
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Atilla's religion...

While it is true that Atilla was no Christian and paid little attention to traditional religious fan fair he did seem to be motivated by superstition.
Atilla was said to have found a sword of the war god Mars buried in the ground of a field, with which he was an invincible warrior. Atilla probably did find a sword of some dead warrior and believed it to be a sign that he was destined to rule the world.

hyperhistory.net
Once again we see a power hungry manic fueled by the thought that their destiny was ordained by some god or another.

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Frank - I stand corrected on the subject of Vlad.

Sigh......

I guess there are no depths to which the human race cannot sink....and yet there seems to be glass ceiling through which we cannot rise......
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It has been said that religion or not good people will always do good and evil people will always do evil, but for good people to do evil it takes religion.

As far as the glass ceiling goes... I wouldn't give up on humanity just yet, we are still learning and it is a long process hampered by many things, one of which is religion but that is certainly not our only hurtle, despite these setbacks progress has been made and I hope will continue.

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Frank 013 wrote:It has been said that religion or not good people will always do good and evil people will always do evil, but for good people to do evil it takes religion.

Frank, again, I disagree. You would also know Keynes comment that "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." My point here is that all good action is theory-laden, dependent on an idea. You can't assume that 'good people will always do good' without a coherent shared narrative which provides a reason to do good. That is what Paul meant by salvation by faith
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[quote]RT
You can't assume that 'good people will always do good' without a coherent shared narrative which provides a reason to do good. That is what Paul meant by salvation by faith
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