Never in the history of mankind has religion created a free and tolerant nation. Seemingly by definition, religious fervor and fundamentalism infuses men's lives with bigotry, insensitivity, and violence. By marrying politics and religion a society is only inviting disaster.
That friends, is why I am pissed of at Islam at the moment.
Anonymous
11:25:57 PM
19 comments:
Or rather, monotheism. It seems that people are more willing to fight for one God of one rather than one of many.
That's not to say there didn't used to be wars...people like the greeks just fougth them over land or possessions or ego rather than "for allah."
Then again, there are good atheists and there are good christians; there are good and bad people of every kind of belief. Religion isn't the problem, people are. Religion is just the tool being used. When a murderer kills someone, do you get mad at the pistol he used to do it?
religion is just an excuse. If people dont worship a god they would just worship money , power, etc.people doo terrible things in the name of religion but people do terrible things in the name of pretty much everything.
its not just an exscuse i dont think. they really beleive that they'll go to heaven if they blow us up. like really beleive it. b/c its what they think their religion tells them. so its what they do. but then they also hate us a lot. and their are also a lot of muslims that dont want to blow us up. so its really a mixture of everything.
Specifically, how could any religion think of people's lives as something so expendable? In normal human interaction, someone dissents against a held opinion and that starts a dialogue through which we improve society as a whole. We've been doing it ever since the elightenment and it's worked great. In Theocracies though someone dissents and it's automatic blasphemy and they get fatwahed and jihaded out of existance. When one side brings violence into the equation, the threat of death, the conversation stops completely. No wonder the Catholic Church (but to much a larger extent the middle east) has completely stagnated morally and in the last thousand years. If anything the middle east's governments are only getting more fundamentalist and insensitive to change.
So, what the hell do we do about it?
the catholic church is not morally stagnant...
the world keeps blaminging it for being too morally conservative and stuff. its not going to change just because you want to get divorced and have sex with your wife's best friend.
etc. etc.
I in fact like the catholic church for that reason, because while it is run by a more conservative bunch of people it is run by educated people with a set up political bureaucracy. Because it is run by a stratified power system with the pope at the top, the "official" catholic belief can change with the Pope's decions (ie inteliigent design is wrong, etc.). Many protestant churches (not including those such as episcapals) don't have a central leader to promote change, so barring strange happenings they stay more or less the same.
But have you noticed how Protestant churches (Southern Baptists aside) have strided confidently with the times, and the damn Catholics still think it's immoral to use condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS? How archaic can you get?
They want to prevent change because of the thought that God doesn't flip-flop. He's eternal and his morality is eternal, right? So the Church only happens to change their minds about things when it's particularlly convenient or absolutely necessary (see Counter Reformation) and tell people to shut the hell up the rest of the time. Stop being hypocrits and understand that morality changes over time, or at least choose one way or the other and stick with it.
My brother's hilarious sarcastic comment when someone said they don't go to church anymore about sums it up: "But if you don't go to Church how will you know when God changes his mind?!"
morality does not change over time.
and since the catholic chuch promotes abstinence for marriage...if everyone will just follow that no one would have AIDS.
too bad everyone still likes to have sex whenever they want and they still use condoms. and everyone is still getting AIDS.
and I wonder if you know what exactly about the Catholic Church changed during the Catholic Reformation.
dont talk about things you dont know about.
"and I wonder if you know what exactly about the Catholic Church changed during the Catholic Reformation."
Numerous abuses of the catholic church had to be changed in this period in response to rise of Luteranism and Calvanism on the continent and the creation of the Anglican Church. It wasn't done for the sake of the followers or for God, but merely because followers were being lost to these rival churches along with money and power. The sale of indulgences (tickets out of purgatory and into heaven that priests could supposedly provide) were discouraged among the clergy, the clergy were required to be educated unlike before where the ridiculous practices of simony and nepotism put anyone who felt like gaining more power in a dioceses despite their qualifications. Also, a Bishop could only be in charge of one area. Previous to this a single bishop could rule as many provinces as he wanted without paying a lick of attention to the followers in his region while still profiting from the madatory loot left in the collection plate.
This and plenty of other things got changed (at the council of Trent if you didn't know) but the sale of indulgences being the most important among them. What, one day preists had the power to turn gold into a speedy salvation and then the next day they didn't. Either they're lying then or they're lying now, but both times apparently God was on their side. Go figure.
The point is the Church does change their mind, morality does change, but not nearly enough to keep up with the times.
Oh and, BOOOYAAA! Don't talk about things you obviously know nothing about.
This would have been more effective, and indirectly more "booyaaa", if you had not written "booyaaa" at the end.
Oh well.
yea you're right.
did they change the ten commandments? did they change their stance on divorce, predestination and salvation by grace only...which is what was making them unpopular?
did they change what was said in the bible? (which is what the protestants did actually)
the church was corrupt and they changed it so it wasn't. corruption was never ok. never in the catechism of the catholic church during that time period did it say that corruption was ok. it was always wrong.
indulgences still exist in the catholic church today and so do bishops. and the land a bishop oversees isn't a matter of morality.
and just becuase a bishop or a pope for that matter does something wrong or immoral (which they all do because they're human) doesn't mean catholic church officially says what they do is ok. tell me when the catholic church said selling indulgences was ok. just because some bishops did it doesn't mean it was ok.
today bishops lie, priests sexually assault people. but the catholic church still isn't saying its ok.
the morality buddy, never changed.
wow this is the stupidest argument ever...
the post was about islam, not catholicism.
"did they change their stance on divorce, predestination and salvation by grace only"
Actually the Catholic church never believed in Predestination (that's calvanists) and their stance is that you can only reach heaven through a combination of faith -and- works, whereas Luther and his followers believed that you could get to heaven on faith alone. Just thought everyone should know.
"the morality buddy, never changed."
Well here's an example: What's the Catholic Church's stance on murder? One of the ten commandments right? But name a couple of situations when you'd feel perfectly justified in taking someone's life. What if you were drafted for military service for the next war and were told to kill terrorists? What if the only way to stop a man from killing your family was to kill him first?
How about if your pregnant wife had a complication that would kill both her and the child unless she gets an abortion. Do you follow the Church's hardline stance or has morality -changed- in your case? Interesting questions certainly. Think about it.
Obviously, the OP has never heard of Israel.
Or the Roman Empire.
^ Isreal was founded by the English out of pity. If anything it was centuries of religious bigotry, Hitler's Final Solution, the wealth of the major Jewish banking famalies, and England's early colonial ambition that founded the region. Also I think the OP was referring specifically to theocracies, and Isreal, while made originally as an independent Jewish state, has it's own very modern rules for the seperation of Church and State.
Also, the spread of the Roman empire actually had very little to do with religion as the conquerors were taking land for political and economic reasons rather than evangelical ones. The rulers allowed indigenous peoples to retain their original belief systems to prevent revolts and the Romans themselves picked up whatever religious traditions were in the vogue at the time, stealing from the Greeks, Egyptians, and anyone else with fun theological deities that they could add to the fold. The Romans religious tolerance and relatively secular leadership was actually one of the major reasons for the empire's spread.
But whatever version of history floats your boat I suppose...
Also I think the OP was referring specifically to theocracies, and Isreal, while made originally as an independent Jewish state, has it's own very modern rules for the seperation of Church and State.
Case and point. That is the example of a religious state becoming a free and tolerant nation.
As for the Roman empire, once again you prove my point. The Romans were very religoius people. Likewise, they generally treated their conquered subjects with respect, thus the free and tolerant nation.
^Just becasue people have a religion and happen to build a nation at the same time doesn't mean the two have anything to do with each other. Get your causality straight. In both cases religion took the back seat and was merely present, not a driving force.
The point is that when you build a nation or more specifically a government -based- on religious singularity and fundamentalism it will only end in a disaster.
"and since the catholic chuch promotes abstinence for marriage...if everyone will just follow that no one would have AIDS."
...Except that pooor first guy that got bitten by an HIV-positive monkey.
I've got an idea. When I become president of the world I'm going to promote (read: command) total abstinence for everyone. perpetually. I think that will solve many of today's problems, according to my enviro textbook. STD's are one of these problems.
Post a Comment