Against Progressive Pseudo-Religion

And the religious right does the same exact thing to those they don't like. There are no high horses here, both sides are down in the muck.

 

And yet, they are not. Which isn't to say that some republican folks seem to be willing to behave like democrats, because, obviously, that's been the case. Adam K who?? I understand how it makes being as fatuous as the left are palatable to the left to assume that they're simply the same. But, I cannot agree to that. There is a lot of daylight between the two.

 

No it isn't. That's just a tad arrogant, don't you think?

America's Christians need to stop assuming that they alone have the moral high ground. We are all just as entitled to our beliefs or lack thereof, and all are just as valid as Christianity. You can have your fairy tale, but others cannot? You are not the authority on right and wrong, or what can be listed on this forum.

 

You'll have to remind me again, which party is the one pushing for ANTI choice laws in regards to abortion.

Republicans have an intolerance of any choice (in regards to abortion) that is not in line with the choice Republicans want women to make.

 

My pleasure, and if you have kids make sure that they learn all that one day.

 

Total utter bullcrap. Thank you for your useless word salad. Plenty on the right push their religious ideology when it comes to some issues. To claim otherwise is dishonest.

 

People are hardwired to be afraid of the unknown.

For millennia it was a survival mechanism. I don't know what's behind that tree so I better be afraid of it. I don't know what that other guy is like so I better be afraid of him.

It led early humans to come up with explanations about things they didn't know to alleviate the anxiety that came with fear. Give it an explanation and now you are less afraid of it. Whether or not said explanation was true was less important than having the explanation itself.

 

In the late 60s, we left our traditional Catholic church for one in the hippie town right next to a university. The very first mass we attended, they had a trio up there with guitars and I will never forget them singing the beautiful Jesse Colin Young song, Get Together. My mom loved it and so did us kids. Our more traditional Catholic friends thought it was blasphemy. Here are the words to the first few verses, you tell me if these are blasphemous.

Love is but a song we sing
Fear's the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry
Though the bird is on the wing
And you may not know why

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

 

Remind me again which party was fighting for a Constitutional freaking Amendment to limit the choice of who one could marry?
Which party, right now, is behind the push to prevent children from accessing books that that RIGHT deems as "inappropriate"?

 

And religion explains everything, no need to think.

 

There's nothing wrong with that.

The Catholic Church I attended as a kid had a Saturday afternoon mass that featured a band much like the one you described, and I never heard anyone describe it as "blasphemous".

It's funny how times change. Now Catholics who enjoy the old traditional form of mass in Latin risk being targeted by the FBI:

 

I think Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham would have had something to say about that anti-religious nonsense.

 

Anti religion is only nonsense to believers. I've always preferred knowledge to belief, even when the facts are scary. I like not having all the answers. Life is more interesting when you pursue its endless, as-yet unanswered questions.

 

Intellectual laziness is nonsense to anyone who thinks.

I don’t know how this could have escaped a great thinker such as yourself, but the men I mentioned were some of the greatest minds in Western Civilization, along with Erasmus of Rotterdam and others, and all of them were Believers. Not only that, it was religion that got them to think, just as it inspired countless others to think going back to Classical Antiquity (and yes, the Ancient Greeks and Romans were very religious people),

That’s wonderful, and what do you think Aquinas and William were doing but engaging in the endless pursuit of knowledge and truth?

Perhaps, you’ve heard of William’s principle of parsimony, aka Ockham’s Razor? Certainly, that principle concerns Logic, but where did you think that and the Nominalism he is associated with came from? It came from his thinking about religion and how Aquinas and the Scholastics thought about religion, Christianity and Greek Rationalism.

So, no - religion does not provide all the answers and no it doesn’t relieve people of having to think. To the contrary, religion has inspired people to think about a host things they might not have otherwise been inclined to think about.

 

Quite so. And religin has brought much beauty into this world.

 

or the religious right that thinks everyone needs to believe in their God or their God is gonna punish us all, cause he is a jealous vengeful God

 

I have yet to meet a "Christian" who follows the teaching of Christ.
They've twisted it into a money-grubbing, neighbor-hating bunch of crap to justify their hatred
of anyone outside the little box of small-mindedness they have locked themselves into

No way I'm going to be lectured to by such creatures.

 

My apologies. I mistook you for someone capable of civil debate. I did not become an atheist through intellectual laziness, as you so rudely implied. I've studied details of a few popular religions, especially the Christian Bible.

Religion most certainly does supply all the answers to life, the universe, and everything (a nod to Douglas Adams) for all but a rare few. Otherwise, when discussing Christianity with Christians, why would I be so consistently attacked for my atheism?

All religions make the following claims:

- My church is the one true church.
- My faith is the one true faith.
- My god is the one true god.

They can't all be right. How would William of Ockham solve that? My guess is that, were he of this or the last century, he would say they are all wrong.

Big bang? Yes, they've been able to determine that much (yes, I've studied that, too). But what caused that singularly to exist? And what made it go kerblammo? IMHO, we will never know what is behind the existence of the universe, James Webb telescope or no. I'm entirely at peace with that.

 

Prove it.

 

yep, then we have the original middle eastern version of Christianity and the new American version of Christianity that Mormons created - all think theirs is the one

 

I think the big bang came from nothing.

 

Don't hold your breath.

 

You can't create matter without energy. Something was there at the beginning.

 

"You can't create matter without energy." That's as the universe is NOW, but if there was a time when there was literally NOTHING in existence the rules would have to be different.

 

Sorry but who are you to define how other people worship?