Religion is Evil!

DC85,Three comments:First, religion is to spirituality as engineering is to math. Use math to build a suicide bomb, and you have evil engineering. Use it to build a bridge, you have good engineering.Second, non-hypocritical biblical religion is limited to caring for widows and orphans, and correcting your own mistakes. At least, that's what is written in the bible as the only valid or non-evil religion. Obviously, all the other religions that claim to be based on the bible are hypocritical to start with. They move on to other evils from there.Third, throw spirituality away with false religion, and you have fallen into really nasty spiritual trap.Stephen[This message has been edited by Stephen ben Yeshua, 02-17-2004]

DC85,You say, I charge all humans, including you, to bear full responsibility for your humanity. It is evil to be inhuman to others. The actual term for this evil is ab-homination, usually shortened to abomination. If that is your choice is life, I despise you, hate you. Because your neglect of your duty, like a watchman who sleeps on their watch, lets evil in, that destroys us all. "All it takes for evil to triumph is for 'good' men to do nothing."I'd go after you myself, except that I am convinced that there is a just judge, with a really bad eternal prison at their disposal, who will see that you get your just desserts. If, of course, you have chosen to turn away from your humanity.Humanity, the distinctives of Homo sapiens, includes will power, being smart, socially interactive and responsible, use of language, amoung other interesting features.An agnostic, who simply doesn't know something, is responsible to learn. To ignore some source of knowledge is to be ignorant, which is disrespectable, even despicable. Anyone who is agnostic who is not applying themselves to learning, to dispelling their lack of knowledge, is below contempt.The most important thing to learn, for a human, is the rules for learning, for knowing. This subject, called applied epistemology (as opposed, definately, to historical epistemology), basically sets out certain rules for deciding how likely a given idea is to be true. It sets out the rules for using authority, art, science, and history to evaluate ideas. Agnostics who are not "epistemologically self-conscious," who do not have, because they choose not to learn, any clear rules in mind for learning new ideas, for changing their minds, are destructive to the life of the society in which they live.Now, some agnostics have been "stumbled" by their education or training, taught no or demonstrably bad applied epistemology. If they are pursuing the most respectable wise teacher they know personally, to correct this educational deficiency, good for them. I will lay down my life for them, and count it an honor to do so. But not if they decide that "it is my opinion, and it is very, very true." If they decide, in other words, that the current state of their knowledge or lack of knowledge is fine, that the ideas they believe in are so sure to be true that they needn't examine them, well, the sooner they are destroyed, the better. My job then is simply to expose this decision, so God can justly get rid of them, the way our farmers get rid of mad-cows or bird-flu chickens.Now, ideas about God are important. Most humans believe that higher, spiritual beings exist in our world. Someone agnostic about such ideas better be doing all they can to get an applied epistemology that allows them to evaluate these ideas, and better be applying that epistemology to making the most educated decision about it they can. Here's what is at stake.First, God Himself, if He is out there as described and believed, is perfect love. Disbelieving in Him will therefore cause Him perfect pain. If you have ever had someone you love turn away from and ignore (be ignorant of) you, you know what this means. Also, when a great, passionate lover is betrayed or ignored, life becomes miserable for their whole household. "When momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Again, the wrath of a passionate lover when their beloved is hurt by someone, is terrible. When someone ignorant of the great lover purposely or accidently harms, say, their beloved little child, expect trouble.Second, the rest of us need the believing prayers of everyone. Anyone not praying is leaving the rest of us open to evil, the worse kind of evil.Well, that's enough. If you are agnostic, get busy. Find a wise teacher that you know personally, and ask them to teach you applied epistemology, how you know whether or not a given idea is likely to be true. Or be contemptible by folks like me.Stephen

Crash, By acting on the assumption that He doesn't exist when in fact He might, acting in such a way that He, if He does in fact exist, is deeply pained. The arrogance of assuming that you are right on a debatable issue is no excuse for behavior that unjustly causes pain to Someone. Atheism is thus a hate-crime against God, as long as reasonable, well-intentioned respected persons (such as Tolkein, or CS Lewis, or Bonhoffer) argue that it is likely that He is really alive and present. They could be wrong or right, of course. But only someone who hates God would assume that they are wrong, and then engage in inconsiderate actions that would cause pain to God if they, and not you, are right.Stephen

S. Beat isn't how I would put it. I would ask them "how unlikely" and put their estimates into the mix. I do the best I can. But, as far as my study of the theology has gone, only the God Jehovah, with His Son, Yeshua, and Servant, the Holy Spirit, are gods that deserve love and consideration. The others are likely out to hurt me, and so I owe them no consideration. Respect, maybe. But, I'm still learning.S.

Gilgamesh, Actually, I recently watched a history channel holocaust film, that touched on the German people who were agnostic about what was happening to the Jews during WWII.Stephen

Phatboy,I tend to use "gods" as a generic term, and God to refer to the monotheisitic notion. The lower case applies to anyone who plays in the role of god. I agree that affirming the three-in-one notion is important. The standard for love.Stephen