Choosing a faith

Of course I am. What justification do you have for dreaming up anything outside our time amd space? It's a purpose that we know about. Again, what justification do you have for putting what we don't know ahead of what we do know? They'll have to cook us longer.

OK. Thanks Percy

It's not something people have actually said. I'm just saying that deflecting from something being another British imposition by saying that the concept originates in a Jewish text is just nonsense. I'm not excusing the church. Let me explain.The picture painted in the original post was of religion feeding on the poor. This was done by contrasting supposed squalor with the enormity of religious structures. I am saying there are several things wrong with this picture. In the main that the real exploitation was simply the British engine of colonialism. Now:(a) The post started off with the typical stuff of "Ireland has always been poor". As if it is was just something that passively occurred. This is something often said in things that downplay British involvement like "India has always been unruly".(b) The buildings mentioned were funded by wealthy British people in the main. Others were made by the Nemed (native nobility).Thus the entire image in the original post is essentially false. The poverty was not something that had always been the case and the listed buildings weren't involved with the exploitation.Then suddenly the discussion shifted to tithes, something which I had "forgotten" as opposed to simply not being part of the first post since most of those buildings were not funded by tithes.The tithes again are being seen in an artificial and historically false light by focusing on the literal truth of certain sentences, i.e. "well the church at some point literally ended up with some money from some poor yeah?"
This ignores that no other religious institution on the island attempted to do this. Not the Catholic church, not the Dutch churches, not the French churches. Only the British state church. This was simply the Anglican church acting as another instrument of British colonialism. I mean guess who was exempt from Tithes by law: English colonists. Guess who wasn't: Everybody else. Guess who paid the highest versions: Native Irish. But sure it's a Biblical concept, certainly not British. No, no of course not. The real bad guy here is religion, not British Imperialism.To be honest I don't think Tangle know anything about tithes in Ireland, he just jumped to it as something I had "forgotten" because the original post wasn't true. Because virtually every detail about the tithes shows them to be just another colonial imposition.Let me give you an analogy. If I went to America and said I had wandered around the South and seen the old olive fields and talked about us all being duped by the olive industry, that would be an odd slant to put on slavery in America. I mean yes literally the olive industry exploited people, but as one small part of a whole cultural complex. Not something to isolate on its own independently and decry. Doubly odd if I then started saying stuff like "Olives are a Levantine plant, not American" and started claiming that talking about slavery in general was a "rabbit" you weren't going to follow.

Just as a point of information, lest we forget and get diverted into Irish national causes and tea plantations. Tithing is an ancient religious construct not restricted to Ireland or Britain. It helped build the churches and cathedrals of Europe. Encyclopaedia Brittanica

quote:

---

tithe, (from Old English teogothian, “tenth”), a custom dating back to Old Testament times and adopted by the Christian church whereby lay people contributed a 10th of their income for religious purposes, often under ecclesiastical or legal obligation. The money (or its equivalent in crops, farm stock, etc.) was used to support the clergy, maintain churches, and assist the poor. Tithing was also a prime source of subsidy for the construction of many magnificent cathedrals in Europe.

​

Despite serious resistance, tithing became obligatory as Christianity spread across Europe. It was enjoined by ecclesiastical law from the 6th century and enforced in Europe by secular law from the 8th century. In England in the 10th century, payment was made obligatory under ecclesiastical penalties by Edmund I and under temporal penalties by Edgar. In the 11th century Pope Gregory VII, in an effort to control abuses, outlawed lay ownership of tithes.

​

During the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther approved in general of paying tithes to the temporal sovereign, and the imposition of tithes continued for the benefit of Protestant as well as Roman Catholic churches. Gradually, however, opposition grew. Tithes were repealed in France during the Revolution (1789), without compensation to tithe holders. Other countries abolished certain kinds of tithes and indemnified the holders. By 1887 the tithe had been brought to an end in Italy. It was abolished in Ireland at the disestablishment of the Anglican church in 1871, and it gradually died out in the Church of Scotland. In England in 1836, the tithe was commuted for a rent charge depending on the price of grain, and in 1936 the tithe rent charges were abolished. New methods of taxation were developed in those countries that provided financial support of the church out of government funds. Remnants of the tithing system do exist, however, in certain Protestant European countries. In Germany, for example, citizens must pay a church tax unless they formally renounce membership in a church.

---

tithe | almsgiving | Britannica

Well duh it's not restricted to Ireland and Britain! Taxation is also not restricted to Ireland and Britain, but the heavy food and money taxes that were imposed on us were a British colonial imposition. What the hell does it matter that the concept occurred elsewhere.Slavery was an ancient economic construct not restricted to America. Nothing interesting to say about slavery in the USA then, it's not purely American "lest we forget".

It matters because everything else you're introducing from British colonialism, to tea plantations, taxes and slavery has nothing to do with the discussion. The point I was trying to make in that original post was that the church in Ireland as elsewhere in Europe exploited the population by making them work on church land and property and taking 10% of their income or produce. All this predates British colonialism by hundreds of years.I was simply disgusted by the wealth of the religions in the middle of a poor part of the city that was much poorer before the slums were cleared. As a reminder, this is my post. It's not a pop at Ireland, it's my revulsion of a religious hypocrisy and exploitation.

But it's not that simple. Religion in general did not do this in Ireland. Only the British state church. Before the arrival of British power in Ireland the average Irish person did not pay anything to the church due to the separation of Brehon law and Canon law. It did not predate British colonialism by hundreds of years in Ireland. It predated elsewhere, but the place you mentioned was Ireland.Secondly the buildings you saw weren't actually funded in this way. Cork city's tithes were often drawn from Muskerry, Carberry and surrounding areas. The people there dodged the tithe in the majority of cases and nearly all the funding for these buildings came from Anglicans themselves. The Presbyterian church was funded by Presbyterians who had the money. None of what you saw is actually true. And what I'm saying is that this was not "the wealth of the religions". It's simply one religion, the British state religion, being wealthy as part of the British colonial class being wealthy. I'm saying that not knowing about Irish history means you're separating out Religion here as something particularly wealthy. There are several other disgustingly wealthy buildings in Cork and all around Ireland built on the backs of the poor. The vast vast majority not being religious.Let me make it clear. These buildings were spectacularly wealthy relative to their surroundings because the people who payed for them had cash to burn. They had cash to burn because they were landlords with virtually no oversight or legal control and could exploit local tenant farmers to their hearts content. The funding of these churches is inseparable from colonialism, it's not something that has "nothing to do with" their construction. With their colonial money the landlords built churches, fancy gardens, museums and several other things. You can't pull out the churches to make some isolated point about religion.The fact that tithes pre-existed elsewhere matters little considering the tithes were targetted at the native Irish, the colonists were exempt and these buildings weren't funded that way anyway.Separately to this I was also correcting the idea of Ireland "always being poor". One can correct a stereotype even if it's not directly what you were discussing. I don't think it's a pop at Ireland.Did religion exploit people? Yes.
Did it take enormous amounts of wealth from the poor? Yes.
Did it rob nations? Yes. See the Aztec and Mayan gold in the Vatican.But this is not what you saw in Ireland. A statement being true in other places and other times does not change this. Those buildings being impressive is just because they were funded by colonialists like several other places across the island, other religious buildings from the time and earlier are not in the same boat, so it's not about "religion".Your point in general is true of course, it's just that Ireland in the 18th and 19th century and before is a bad example.

Thank you, that was all I'm going for.

But there are only stories claiming eyewitnesses. Possibly as many as billions of people believe these stories true. If millions of people believing the world flat had no influence on the shape of the world, why would billions of people believing the Bible stories have any influence on their truth? There is an unwritten and sort of natural-law contract between the religious and secular aspects of the western world. The secular agrees to be respectful of all people's faiths and of their right to worship as they see fit, while the religious agree to observe restraint in their interactions with the secular. Claiming outside the house of worship that your religion is the one, right and true religion because the facts support it, and to jump with both feet into the political arena in matters concerning health, abortion, sex education, and LBGTQ matters, fractures that contract into little shards. And during WWII the Japanese had loyalty to the Emperor and the Germans had loyalty to Hitler and the Russians had love of motherland, while today we have racism and narcissism and xenophobia and misogyny, not to mention an apparent failure of education in democracy on a massive scale. Everything you can place on one side of the scales is easily overbalanced by things that belong on the other side. Russian missiles just struck civilian apartment buildings in Zaporizhzhia with 12 known dead at this time. If God exists, that's on him, too. He's got some 'splainin' to do.The argument, "Things would be worse without God," fails spectacularly. The countries faring the best are the most secular. There's something about a religious streak that hardens mens hearts into thinking, "We have to solve this problem like real men, with guns and bayonets." When it comes to which eyewitness to believe you may as well flip a coin, a coin with three sides where the third side says, "Neither!" The only reliable witness is evidence. What someone thinks they saw should carry very little weight.I was a witness in an assault years ago. The prosecutor presented me a photo lineup. I gave him percentages on the accuracy of my identifications. I graded my accuracy at around 10% for two of the perpetrators, and 90% for the other. By the time of the trial a couple months later I had begun to forget details, like the order in which events happened. I was called for the defense, interestingly enough. I think the prosecutor wanted people who could be certain in their identifications. His photo lineup also had flaws, which if he'd deigned to cross-examine me I would have noted. The perpetrator photos were obviously new, the other photos obviously old and used many times, cues which I refused to follow.By the way, the truth did will out. They were able to identify all the perpetrators without eyewitness identification and all went to jail, serving a year or two each. The victim suffered back pain for years. A selective reading of the Bible is definitely the right call, but it must be based upon evidence, not which parts you like and which parts you don't. Expanding the question a bit, why do I believe Socrates fictional and Plato real?But first let's deal with your question about which of my five senses I used to reach my conclusions. Did you already forget when I said history doesn't work that way? Did you think I believe we can only accept historical accounts as long as the eyewitnesses are alive and available to testify?No, of course not. What we know of history depends upon contemporary chroniclers, documentation and physical evidence. You know what history says of Solomon and David? That there's absolutely no sign of them during the period the Bible says they lived. No contemporary writings, no clay tablets or scrolls, no contemporary inscriptions, no sign of their great constructions.Socrates comes down to us as a convenient foil for the ironic stories Plato liked to tell, but there are also contemporaneous chroniclers who mention him, so many that it would be reasonable to consider him real if so many of the details about him weren't inconsistent and/or contradictory. I'm not a historian and can't pretend the ability to unravel it all, but it makes me doubt Socrates was real. Or perhaps he was a composite of several people.Plato, on the other hand, actually wrote books, and contemporaries wrote about him and his books. He ran a school. One of his students was Aristotle, for whom we also have a large cache of contemporary evidence.--Percy

I think I see your point, but did it ever occur to you that what we think is honed and formed through studying what others think, why they think it, how their conclusion carries into and throughout society, and what the political/sociological, and perhaps philosophical implications mean? My point is that I am developing my own answer over time and through experience. I will agree that confirmation bias, though very human, can itself be challenged in order to develop our own thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and/or worldviews.

You keep making the same mistake. You keep choosing all the "sweetness and light" qualities, and you do it in the face of people calling your attention, over and over, to the negative qualities, like retardation, brain damage, dementia, death, selfishness, narcissism, mercilessness, vengefulness, greed, hate, etc. You've got a blind spot as barren and large as the Atacama Desert. Why are you saying this yet again? You seem very intelligent. Why are you stuck on repeating your basic points and not moving the discussion forward?I contend that an invisible spaghetti monster is a much more reasonable answer. Let us compare the evidence for each. You first. You've said this exact same thing before and the answer hasn't changed. Your "life experiences and my observations" are evidence, meaning that you are wrong to characterize you conclusions as unevidenced. And when asked what your evidence is you talk of "consciousness, altruism," etc., while forgetting "death, selfishness," etc., which I already covered above, but which I had to cover again because you keep saying the same thing in different ways. Using different words to say the same thing does not turn an old point into a new point.At some point you have to jump off your self inflicted merry-go-round and start considering all the points people are raising. Ignoring them will only make people angry and frustrated, which I'm sure I would be right now were I not so busy and limited to about a post a day.--Percy

That's exactly why we want to know the current state of YOUR mind, not a jumble of the sources that you're assimilating. So tell us the current development.

Well it is hardly me that dreamed it up. As for the justification I don't have anything more to add than what I've already said numerous times. We purposely have children. My kids have greatly increased the quality of my life. The Biblical message is that God created out of love and that's a purpose we know about. A lot longer.

The flat earth believers believed based on what they observed as eye witnesses. It turns out that what they observed proved to be wrong.In the biblical case the eye witnesses observed an actual historical event, (not an observation on the nature of things), and in many cases suffered enormously even to death based on what they observed. You can't be serious. You're saying that a Christian shouldn't vote in accordance with what he/she believes is best for society, or promote his/her beliefs but a secularist can. Very strange form of democracy.) Your post also strongly implies that the secularists views are the right views which is a statement of belief or faith. That sounds to me like like the evolutionary "survival of the fittest" proposal is still alive and kicking in a world where we have the freedom to make those choices. Within all that there are those that continue to fight non-violently is support of peace and with humanitarian aid for those suffering. Hmm. I grew up in a world where the bulk of people went to church and I will agree that it wasn't always on the basis of a personal faith, but even if it was jsut for the social implications they went.It was far from a perfect world but there was an atmosphere where it was important to do the right thing. As a 6 and 7 year old I would take a bus into downtown Calgary and go to Eaton's Good Deed Radio Club" where we could watch kids perform on stage for a local radio station for 1/2 an hour and then watch cartoons with a theatre full of kids of the same age. All this without any parental involvement other that providing bus far and theatre money.At the same age I could get on my bike with a lunch made by mom and be told to be sure to be home in time for supper.Today that would be called child abuse.
In my years of school no one committed suicide. I was small, graduating from high school at 5 2 weighing 100 lbs. (I grew 7 inches later.) I never experienced bullying.Yes there were other problems and there are many things that are better today however there is not the individual respect for the other that there was then. We pass our social concerns on to government and largely wipe our hands of the social concerns on our society and complain about the government doing a miserable job of dealing with our social concerns.I would say that secularism is a massive failure. Some how I believe that if you had seen Jesus crucified and the later seen Him as resurrected you would remember. I can remember exactly where I was when Kennedy was shot and the same goes fro when Canada beat Russia in their hockey series in 1972. OK My opening post on this thread was about it not mattering what name you assign to a god that you reverence, but the nature of the god you reverence. As I said, I reverence the one that I see embodied by the nature of Jesus. My understanding of the Bible flows from that. Of course, I don't think that Plato didn't exist but it is still based on ancient authors. I Jesus we have the entire New Testament and we have numerous other authors that write about it as well.

I've covered this stuff already. I would happily include vengefulness, and hate into the examples I used. I would assert that selfishness, narcissism, mercilessness and greed are built into the system by evolution and what we see as the "survival of the fittest". As for the remainder I agree that it is a problem for Christianity. Firstly I believe on faith alone that these things that just happen in our entropic world. However, as humans were are called to do all that we can to minimize the suffering that exists in the world. Because you keep asking it and don't agree with my replies. OK I have the Bible, and the view that all that makes up our consciousness is simply neuron and chemical channels as Son Goku put it stretches belief. What have you got for the FSM? I have done my level best with 280 posts in this thread to answer all the points that I can on this thread. I don't have physical evidence other that books and those simply get rejected. Whatever if anything that exists beyond the material form our conclusions based on how we observe, interact with and experience the world we live in.