Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  Next

I'm not a moral relativist at all. I just try to see things in their proper context. And you are right that some on the right side of the aisle frown on such things (unless, of course, it's to their advantage).



And as part of that context we fall into the gray area of what is or is not a slave. The Jesuits, for instance, in their efforts to convert South American natives would build missions and rancherias and they saw the labors of the natives as a means to achieving conversion and the Jesuit priests would work every bit as hard as the natives because they saw such work as a spiritual pursuit.

When the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church came on the scene they came into conflict with the Jesuits because the orthodoxy saw the indians as slaves while the Jesuits saw them as people with souls who had been saved and were thus exempt from being enslaved.

A lot of Jesuits died protecting the natives from the bastards in the orthodoxy who saw an opportunity to enrich themselves by enslaving the natives.

I use this as an example to show that sometimes you do have to dig beneath the surface to see if someone really was a slave.

The California Missions, for instance, were accused by revisionists in thew 1990's of enslaving the natives and perpetrating a genocide against the natives. The truth was that the missions ended up saving a lot of natives from being enslaved by the Spanish and then the Mexican armies. There are several tribes in California whose very existence would have been ended absent the interventions of the priests who ran the missions.

So while the BS about enslaving people to save them may have flown with some people at a given time, it should not confuse the works of the religious folks who truly were about "The Lord's Work" and they truly did work to improve the lot of the people they served.

   

This is the most likely reason for the formation of the "Church of Free Thought"

   

Too many people have been killed on this planet in the name of religon. For what?! The status of being able to warship an invisible being? Find faith in yourslef and be compasionate to the others around you. You dont need a religon to do that. Cheers!

   

if the atheists are going to eliminate religions then what difference do they have to the early religions that eliminated everyone who's against their belief? Religion has been here long enough that if eliminated, it's impossible to think that everything will flow smoothly.

   

I don't think all religions or any should be destroyed but people should be free to do whatever they want without restrictions that religion dictates sometimes. Mankind was built on warship of something(s) and always will be.

   

The recent moment that I experienced when I came to the conclusion that the only path left open to me was to be an atheist was profoundly moving. I'd venture to say that it was like being born again, in the sense that the profound sense of philosophical and intellectual freedom that came from the denial of the vicious and fraudulent concept of "God" was almost overwhelming and, in a way, deeply terrifying.

My reasons for making this conclusion are many, but I'd have to say that the most obvious one was born out of the deep sense of shame that I feel for putting any faith whatsoever in the religious maniacs of the Christian West currently leading the most powerful nation in world history against the religious maniacs of Islam. This isn't a war that had to be, this is a war that is strictly designed to create the cataclysm that the eschatlogical nutcases in the West (and Israel) and the jihadist psychopath Islamofascists both equally want to have. They're impatient with waiting and they're both working towards creating an inferno that will force their God to come to Earth. Boiled down, they desire and need a mega-death scenario, they need their Inferno to be made into a reality on Earth, to happen in order for them to get God's attention. A God worthy of belief would not allow to happen what's going to happen. But it's going to happen anyway, and the only logical conclusion remaining is that there is no God at all.

I doubt that there can be much, if anything, done to prevent this crisis from eventually erupting. Atheism's moment will have to come after the apocalypse-minded have vented their spleen and left the rest of us with the clean-up work. There will not be any opportunity to avoid reaping what the human race has spent far too many years sowing. Hitchen's correctly calls the disposing of the need for religion as the entry of the human race into final adulthood. Like all childish things religion eventually will have to be left behind and forgotten. When the time comes, atheism (armed with logic, reason, and rationality) will be seen as the only option left to prevent a re-occurrance of the onrushing tragedy. It is unfortunate that the human mind is so small that it must experience the full force of said tragedy before it can discover new ways to prevent it from happening again.

PS: I am deeply disappointed by some of the recent comments of Dawkins regarding Jews and of Hitchens regarding the need for expanding the current failed war to Iran. This un-neccessarily gives ammunition to the religious to use against atheism. By mouthing off the sort of rancid idiocies that are usually only associated with the religious the atheist then becomes as awful and potentially dangerous as the religious. You can't promote the chimera of "democracy" in Iraq at the point of a gun and it's equally true that you can't promote the logic and rationality of atheism by talking and behaving as badly as the enemy usually does.

   

The good religion has done, is only partly true, look at all the trouble religion has caused. The real problem is fundamentalists of every stripe. If you don't believe there is someone johnny on the spot to try saving your soul. I don't think we should deny people the right to practice their faith any more than people should be forced to believe in Santa Clause. The problem with religion is that the stories that were used as stories or examples of how things should be, took on a truth of their own
The only problem I have with religion on the airwaves is that the stuff they preach cannot be proven by absolute fact.
Claiming your soul is saved merely by believing in the word, may be false advertising. If it can't be proven, by science, it can't be proven in my view.

   

As a pantheist, I have to say that not only is the concept of atheist bigotry entirely realistic, but also the fact that it is real makes me laugh out loud at how utterly stupid it is for not seeing the error it makes by existing.

   

Those 'somethings' were the Great Overlords of Zorlon and it wasn't a warship per se, but an armed scientific research vessel......well it had to be because at the the time we were being engineered in their quantum laboratories, the Zh'Oraki Entity still hadn't been pushed back through the Great Rift.

Even now, our lost brethern, who were sown across the stars, seek us out, in their rag tag fleet.

   

I might have a blond moment here, but wth are you saying here?

   

im an atheist but im kinda against the whole destroying religion thing. i mean do i think the world would be better without it? sure, but i am an atheist so of course i'd like for people to agree with me. most of my friends follow some religion so i dont hate it or anything. believe what ya want, it dont hurt me nun.

   

It's all because Tricks is god

   

But the only ones bowing to Tricks are the toilet bowl brushes.

   

Oooh so thats it, you brush after spending an evening talking to the great white god.

   

Yeah............................................ k

   

Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  Next