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A good study.

Let me give two thoughts.

The first is that humans are quite good at picking up abstract beliefs when we are young that go against logic and reason. I think that this predisposition stops as we grow in education and knowledge if not reinforced through the lies of religions in terms of the reality of miracles, magic and fantasy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm971ltF ... re=related

The second is that if religions are successful in indoctrination their sheep, then the condition becomes more entrenched and then becomes a mental disorder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNSe4Ff5 ... r_embedded

Regards
DL

   

Let me give two words. One of them is 'off'.

   

What if religion makes people think and question? What if religion is the spark that gets people interested in learning about their world? Charles Darwin, for example, credited the church with fueling his desire for knowledge, ultimately leading him to what was, IMHO, the greatest idea a man's ever had.

If you know your American history, Massachusetts was the most educated place on Earth in its colonial period. They instituted public education for religious purposes, but the spin-off effect was an educated society. This spread throughout the colonies and set America on a path of invention and innovation that's unmatched by any civilization in history.

   

The university system in Europe was founded and funded mainly by the Roman Church. The idea that the Church was anti intellectual is preposterous.

   

well i would concur they are not anti intellectual to claim that the church is not highly selective in which knowledge it chooses to accept is just plain silly.

Do you know when the catholic church actually accepted that the earth rotates around the sun? It took them until 1992 to officially apologize to Galileo and state he was correct in the rotation of the earth around the sun.

   

I'll arrange a meeting between you and the rock that cracked my windshield.

   

I would suggest that Evil is in fact the product of evolution....no other creature on his planet is capable of it except humans.

   

Yes, well Galileo was mostly wrong on that one, actually.

   

Religion is supposed to make us think for sure and I admit that reading scriptures is what helped me push my apotheosis; but have you not heard Christians say over and over that they are not to judge God?

That is not questioning. That is accepting on faith alone and idol worshipping.

Regards
DL

   

Tell that to Galileo as you contemplate the Inquisition.

Regards
DL

   

You see 20/20 on this.

Let me expand on your idea to see if I express it properly.

Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by whipping out their favorite "free will!", or “ it’s all man’s fault”.

That is "God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy."

But this simply avoids God's culpability as the author of Human Nature. Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.

If all sin by nature then, the sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not sin.


Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil is all human generated. Evil is our responsibility.

Much has been written to explain what I see as a natural part of evolution.

Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created.

Evil then is only human to human.
As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil at all times.

Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.

This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.

Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, we should all see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us.

There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.

Regards
DL

----------------------------

Ironically, I get some back up from the church on this issue.

Theistic evolution.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ProfMTH#g/c ... F680C1DBEB



Regards
DL

   

You're a Cake Eater and everyone knows The Cake is a lie

   

So everything you've posted leading up to this has just been a premable to your coming out? It seems pretty clear that you've just been building a soap-box to stand on so you can say "Hey, look at me! Look at me. I'm a _________". Do you have an actual point or is this all just a bunch of virtual attention whoring?

   

Evolution of morality, sure. (ie defining something as evil) Religion played the biggest part there. Evil is in the mind of the perpetrator, hence our concept of mens rea. We don't really know what goes on in the mind of an animal, but certainly watching a cat play with a mouse looks pretty evil. Cannibalism among chimps? We call war evil, but many animal species fight vicious wars for territory. We label ourselves evil because we hold ourselves to a higher standard, but maybe we're just kidding ourselves about how much choice we really have.

   

If you want to live, you have to compete for resources and the losers you create will think that evil was visited upon them.

We have no choice but to do evil to the perception of the loser.
The only option is to not compete and then we die.

Regards
DL

   

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