On Sun, 29 Oct 2006 17:43:51 -0900, "Dana" <raff242@yahoo.com> wrote:

They can follow their faith as written and do much evil and violence.

That can be said for any man made institution.

like college institutions,university institutions, medical
institutions, the red cross, banking institutions, manufacturing
institutions, trade association intitutions, like those?
I was talking about religious text.

The christian and islamic and judaic writings can all be used to
justify hatred and violence.

So can any other man made writing.

Like the humanist manifesto, buddhist writings, that stuff too?
Pointing the finger at others does not change the truth about
religious faith.

Look at Margaret Sanger and her writings, she was writing from an Atheist
viewpoint on murdering the retarded and the black people.

And mein kampf was written by a catholic wasn't it?

Trading potshots about crackpots is not really productive.

I assume you are basically defending
christianity, so tell me if you are not, but do you give literal
credence to the text of the bible?

The bible is written by man, and it reflects the thought of man at the
time
it was written, hence it shows that men even back then were using the
bible
to make themselves even more powerful to the masses. Just look at the KJV
for an example, telling you that the King gets his power from God. Now
that
is one crock of garbage.
So what you see is men using religion to advance their own goals, and
actually ignoring the true meaning of the religion.

The text is so poorly assembled and written it is just way too easy to
use it for evil.

It has such flaws and errors it is a pathetic book to
use to guide life, who gets to interpret it to make it a force for
only good and make that the dominant position? Ain't gonna happen.

It has convenienced a lot of righteous bastards over the ages and it
still does. It deserves to be tossed out permanently. Keep the good
stuff, the stuff that won't make history repeat...

Is it everyone's business that the history of christianity reveals
religiously guided genocide?

And again not just Christians.
And when people use religion for bad intent, they are themselves not
very
religious in the true sense, but using religion as a way to advance
their
power.

Agreed. Problem is that it is too easy to do, given fundie
individuals. The history of christianity has been the pursuit of power
and influence, and it still is

Which is why I tend to be against organized religion on mass scale like
the
RCC.
They seek power and wealth from the masses.

And they are not alone

. Also, who is to say what the true
sense is? That has been a moving target and often a lot of bad
interpretation has ensued over the centuries.

True enough, which is why I say religion should come from within the
individual, and that it should be based on how that individual thinks he
should be treated by others, and that he should use that as his basis on
how
he treats others.

it might work if the whole ancient myth thing was dropped.
I would agree, average people could make much better decisions about
right and wrong, how do you live well and help others live well, has
massive potential.

Yes you would still get evil people out of this, but most people would
rather be treated civily and humanely.

I could not have said it better.
and they would tend to treat others civily and humanely, that's key.

Christians were the main
persecuters, not the persecuted, for many centuries. They wiped out
all opposition they could, and they were good at it. Saying that it
was not just christians that performed genocide is not much of a
defense, guilty is guilty regardless of who else committed the same
crime.

Not really true. Again it was those in power that were doing the
persecution.

The ones in power were not the ones brandishing swords and drawing
blood.
The faithfull did that.

Your average joe was not the person doing this. Yes the averager joe was
guilty for not standing up to it, but they were just as in fear of the
powerful and rich back then as those being persecuted.

The average faithfull joe.

I see the same with the tv evangalists who take old peoples money,
these
guys are not very religious, but they are using religion to get rich of

the

backs of those people that fall for their scam.

Absolutely spot on.
Those guys are bad news.
Why is it that moderates don't shut them down?

Good question on why more moderates do not expose those guys for being the
hypocrites they are.
I guess you can say they are not bought down, for the same reasons the
white
collar criminal gets away with his crime.

I have to speculate on what you mean.
They don't want to rat out one of their own?
The bad guy looked just like me kinda thing?
Much money is involved?
If those religious guys look bad then all us religious guys will look
bad?
Man he almost got away with with it yeehaw!

Is it everyone's business that abrahamic religion is one of the focal
points of a massive violent conflict of peoples?

Care to expand, I have no idea what you are trying to imply.

The islamic/ christian/ jewish clash. There is some tense situation.
They are the three surviving(or main) abrahamic religions yes/no?

Ok , yes there are at least 3 surviving abrahamic religions.

Have you heard the phrase "death to USA" lately on the news?

Yep from radical islamists. And again as I do not know enough about Islam,
I
will say this is more from people using Islam as a way to attract more
people into hating American culture.

To tell you the truth I think the majority of them actually admire
much of our culture. The minority zealot can get a lot of backing, and
face it, the USA is a colossal fuckup over there. We are creating the
anti-americans faster than anyone could shoot them. Bad mojo.

I say we should take out the so called religious leaders who are preaching
such hatred towards American and western culture.
They are more the problem than your average Islamic joe.

Yes, I agree.
We should do it in our own backyard too.
It would be very good to stop being the collossal fuckups over there
too.

Moderates of the religions did not do the violence, like the twin
towers, but the moderates are supporting the same faiths, and that is
like tacit approval. Millions of "peacefull" muslims cheered that
event. Jockeying around the middle-east the opposite forces are doing
their best to set the scene for even bigger conflict. Like we have not
seen enough killing there already. A few nutbars want to hasten
armeggedon.

I agree that a lot of so called moderate moslems are letting the more
violent in their society get away with using violence, and not speaking
out
against them.

Everywhere......

And during the Spanish Inquisition and other Christian type persecutions,
your average Joe more than likely did not agree with the Church officials,
but was affraid of his own safety because of the power these people have.

Yes. This is analogous to here and now.
Now it is not being tortured on a midievel machine, it is more about
being called unpatriotic, or being ostracized for not being gung ho
for the go get'em crowd. The "with us or against us" attitude is
pushing a lot over a line they would prefer not to cross.

I think we are seeing the same going on with Islam, where the moderates
are
actually affraid of the more violent powerful ones, as they know that
those
people would kill them as soon as they would kill and infidel.

For them, ya I agree it is more life and death in the moment.

That is why I say it should be us who take out those powerful islamic hate
preachers, as we have the power to do so.

Remember, we have hate preachers here too.

Taking out theirs and not ours is not right.

It may be inevitable that it is about killing certain individuals, but
that is really pathetic that we all let it go that far. Really
pathetic.

There is more peaceful ways to try, they have not really been
explored.

It's partly secular politics too, and greed for resources, but isn't
it interesting how many lines are drawn using the three abrahamic
religions?
And we have the crusades in history, the muslims are still pissed over
that.

Well time to get over it, as no one here today had any part of that.

The fact is they have that kind of memory, and I agree, I don't want
to be paying for centuries ago, nor for the last generation even. It
is about here and now, the time to do the smarter thing is now.

Is it everyone's business that the progress of human health and
technology is opposed by religious fanatics?

Again, not the truth. You are painting with a very broad brush.

That's fine, and I am sure many christians appreciate scientific
progress. Looking back at history, faith has been in opposition to
scientific progress in the most eggregious manner many times. How many
centuries did it take for them to "forgive" Galileo?

But Galileo was actually showing that the Church via the earth was not the
center and power base of everything.
That would have ***** quite a few people.

but not justifiable anger. right is right, it's not might is right.

How about stem
cell research? There is a potential supply that is going to waste for
the last 20 years that could satisfy both sides of the issue, it is a
supply that is viable for research but is tossed away regularly, it
would never be a life. Fundies oppose it outright.

Fundies yes, but not all Christians are fundies, and not all oppose stem
cell research.

The ones that don't oppose it need to speak up fast and loud, lets not
miss a chance to improve life.

I would like to collect more to make the point, but it's 2:00 AM and I
need rest.

Quite a few people who have religion like myself, tend to think God
gave

us

the intelligence to find cures for our health problems.

But with ideological barriers sometimes, that is not right.

Sure it is, as God values life. And any thing we do to prolong life is a
good thing.

prolong and improve, splendid goals.

We have the intelligence, but not the smarts to use it well...
funky sentence I know, but I am leaving it in.....

Is it everyone's business that religiously based idiocy like
"abstinence only" positions are actually increasing death and misery

How does abstinece increase death and misery.

By forcing health clinics to abandon condoms to get funding, to use
abstinence as the primary method promoted or lose funding, things like
that. Abstinence works perfectly in theory, but terribly in practice.
There are health organisations that have lost their funding and no
longer help as many people, the rules for funding were ideologically
bent like I inferred. There are some that had successful programs
using prostitutes as the key to success, all the prostitutes were
convinced to use condoms all the time, and the numbers of infections
and abortions and deaths were coming down. They chose to reject the
fundie rules(condoms and prostitutes BAD) and lost their funding, so
now the numbers go up because they can not afford the supplies they
need.
I don't accept that the response is that prostitution is bad so
abandon those sinners type of thing, it is the real world, like you
reminded me.
The USA has put up too many barriers to abortion and does not make
things like condoms and needles available. The USA has more wealth and
power and potential than any other nation on earth, but has the worst
or near worst statistics of all western nations for things like teen
pregnancy and infant deaths. That is unconscionable.

Teaching Abstinence is teaching responsibiltity and birth control.

But they oppose the pill, they oppose condoms, they oppose abortion,
kinda raises the odds against success.

Mankind no longer needs large families,

Big agreement here!

hence we should be teaching
responsible birth control, with abstinence being only one of a handful
of
options for Birth Control.

Abstinence is actually a pretty poor tool, it is noble, but
ineffective. We have statistics that prove we teach it but we don't
learn it. When you convince a kid to pledge to abstain, they don't
have condoms, and when they fail to uphold their pledge (which most do
fail) they have sex without protection at much higher rates than if
they did not make that pledge.

The others being the pill, the morning after pill, and other means of

birth

control.

I am starting to think you are not quite the fundie minded type I
mostly object to.

Does "other means" mean abortion? If it does, than certainly I would
not think of your attitude as the target of my rant.