Why Can't People Leave Religious People Alone?

Page 3 of 4 [ 55 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4  Next

Misslizard
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Jun 2012
Age: 59
Gender: Female
Posts: 20,454
Location: Aux Arcs

18 Oct 2013, 6:37 pm

Image


_________________
I am the dust that dances in the light. - Rumi


91
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Oct 2010
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,063
Location: Australia

18 Oct 2013, 8:01 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:
You are forgetting the nutbags within the two major parties, Cory Bernardi and for that matter Tony Abbot come immediately to mind, then we have John Madigan in the senate. I am not sure of State politics but Fred Nile certainly wields far more influence than he should in NSW. Admittedly the list is not great but I think 1 is far to many in a preferential voting system. As we have just seen it is far to easy for small, supposedly insignificant parties to end up with the balance of power in the senate.


Cory Bernadi is mostly just an opportunist. When he went to far using the slippery slope argument about gay marriage he was rightfully pulled into line. His opposition to paying the baby bonus to women who terminated their pregnancies appropriate. Perhaps the standard I expect from a politician on the fringe is lower than it ought to be but I don't consider him to be a great threat. I don't know Madigan but I have friends in the DLP and the National Civic Council and I have a real preference for how they do business in comparison to the lobby groups in the US. If there is a place for someone like Lee Rhiannon in the Parliament, then there is a place for those guys. The minor parties in the last elections are a fascinating topic, its going to be interesting to see how they do come next July.


DentArthurDent wrote:
This statement can be taken two ways. I was disgusted to learn that Julia Gillard had given Cardinal Pell a courtesy call the night before she announced the Royal commission into child abuse.

Then of course we have the appalling Australian Schools Chaplaincy Program, kids need someone to talk to in private, someone to seek advice from, but why oh why must it be from someone affiliated to a religious organisation

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-20/high-court-upholds-chaplaincy-challenge/4081456 even thought the High Court has ruled against the program it is still in place.


Calls like the one made to Cardinal Pell was not unusual. All parties and major stakeholders are usually informed before announcing a Royal Commission. The Chaplaincy Program is something I support. I think you might be not be describing how it works accurately. The chaplains are paid for by the Churches and they are placed into schools as additional support, on top of secular resources. Although it has been a decade since I was in high school, my experience with chaplains was a very positive one. We had two secular teachers appointed as councillors and one chaplain, who was essentially there as something extra. There have been issues but mostly I consider the program a success. The program provides extra resources, that are not allowed to proselytise and the schools can both refuse or chose a secular option. One of my friends runs a program for bullying in Victorian schools, they go into the worst schools in the state and provide additional support.

You are correct that there was a High Court ruling on the subject. The program was not found to violate section 116 of the Constitution (in fact it was unanimously found not to). What the court took issue with was the manner in which it had been funded, which relates to Section 61 of our constitution and the executive spending powers. Once the issue with how the program was funded was addressed there was no issue with continuing. Keep in mind the majority of funding for the chaplaincy program comes from the states and a court ruling at the federal level on section 116 would most likely not bind the states. The chap is going to the High Court again but he is only challenging the funding model.

DentArthurDent wrote:
91 whislt I get your point Australia in comparison to many many countries is a very secular state, we still have major interferences by the religious lobby into our lives, the euthanasia bill in Tasmania was just voted down by MP's invoking religious beliefs and the Abbot government has said it will refer any law passed by the ACT regarding same sex marriage to the High Court.


I have to take some issue with that interpretation. The debate which occurred in the Tasmanian Parliament was extensive. Although 80% of people in Tasmania support the issue, it was opposed both on ethical grounds and on how the bill was written. Many of the rejected formulations of euthanasia bills have been rejected by parliaments because of deficiencies with the bills themselves. Having been defeated it will be reformulated by supporters and reintroduced. I personally have an ethical objection to it, as do many member of parliament but to categorise their opposition as simply being based on religious beliefs is not accurate. In my own case, I oppose it based on values I draw from religion but I expect myself to craft an argument in such a way that both reflects those values and presents a convincing argument. Now that the bill has been lost, Nitschke is out there saying it was the 'religious lobby' that stopped it's passing, which is a misrepresentation of what happened. Australian politicians are usually quite conservative when it comes to implementing social change and are easily scared off by doctors like Nitschke running around the state doing media conferences with 'deliverance machines'. All a conservative has to do to win the debate at that point is say 'look mate, I know your for this, but maybe lets take another look at this thing, take some time and not uncork that loon over there'. Honestly, the best thing the euthanasia campaigners can do is keep him far away from the debate because he legitimately scares decision makers.

As to the ACT desire to pass same sex marriage legislation, any bill passed by a state on the matter would violate the Constitution, which specifically refers marriage powers to the Federal Government.

I can respect that you are wary of religious interference but is it possible you are interpreting things through a lens?


_________________
Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.


MCalavera
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 15 Dec 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,442

18 Oct 2013, 11:55 pm

Moviefan2k4 wrote:
Our own perception of "goodness" is very different from God's. We measure ourselves in comparison to others, but He compares us to Himself. His standard is 100% perfection, and ever since the Fall, no one has measured up to that.


Indeed. I think killing babies or commanding others to kill them is not good. God believes otherwise. Who is right here?

Even if you believe that God has the authority on what is good or bad, I utterly reject his standards because I believe my moral standards are better than his.

So it doesn't matter if I don't measure up to his standards because I don't agree with them in the first place.

Also, it is a form of entrapment that God doesn't allow anyone to live up to his standards and then have them sentenced to hell because he rendered them incapable of being "good" according to his standards.

Quote:
The only way for humanity's trespasses against God to be undone is if someone besides any of us willingly shouldered that burden, by living a sinless life and dying in our place. Jesus wasn't born under the Eden curse, nor was He fathered by human passion or plan. He was God incarnate, with the same full nature as the Creator of all. People say that Jesus was just a "good moral teacher", but that description's an insult to the truth of His divinity.


Actually, Jesus was more an apocalypticist preacher whose words got twisted later on by the Gospel writers but whose traces can be somewhat identified in those same Gospels with a careful critical study.

Quote:
There's a number of problems with every other theory besides the Resurrection, and the core of them all is very simple: the Sanhedrin never denied Jesus' tomb was empty, nor did they ever produce His body. Christianity could've been squashed right away by parading Jesus' corpse around Jerusalem...but instead, the priests made up the ridiculous story about the Apostles stealing it while the guards were asleep.


Note that this is information you get from the Gospel writings themselves. We don't know exactly what happened to Jesus' body. This whole "Jesus' tomb was empty" could have easily been made up to account for another made up claim that he was resurrected.

Quote:
Why is that result so impossible? Well for one, the boulders that sealed Jewish tombs in the first century were huge, often rolled into place on carved stone tracks, which were then removed. It would take much more than twelve men to even budge one, let alone move it. Secondly, Caesar would've had those guards beheaded, the moment he learned of their failure. Thirdly, there's an obvious problem...how do you know what happened, if you were asleep at the time?


Read above. You're assuming they even occurred in the first place.

Quote:
Finally, the biggest one comes up: does anyone in their right mind ever knowingly allow themselves to be murdered, for something they know is a lie? That's what's wrong with the notion that the New Testament was fabricated.


You forgot about delusions. Many people have died for their delusions, Christians or not.



Max000
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Apr 2012
Age: 63
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,547

19 Oct 2013, 2:02 am

Knock knock.

Hi sorry to bother you at 8:00 on this beautiful Saturday morning. I'm an atheist. Can I talk to you about Atheism?

Oops, atheists don't do that do they?

Here is an idea. Keep your crappy religion to yourself, and maybe people will leave you alone. :thumright:



91
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Oct 2010
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,063
Location: Australia

19 Oct 2013, 2:19 am

Max000 wrote:
Knock knock.

Hi sorry to bother you at 8:00 on this beautiful Saturday morning. I'm an atheist. Can I talk to you about Atheism?

Oops, atheists don't do that do they?

Here is an idea. Keep your crappy religion to yourself, and maybe people will leave you alone. :thumright:


Knock knock Image


_________________
Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.


fibonaccispiral777
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 1 Sep 2013
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Posts: 441

19 Oct 2013, 4:18 am

91 wrote:
Max000 wrote:
Knock knock.

Hi sorry to bother you at 8:00 on this beautiful Saturday morning. I'm an atheist. Can I talk to you about Atheism?

Oops, atheists don't do that do they?

Here is an idea. Keep your crappy religion to yourself, and maybe people will leave you alone. :thumright:


Knock knock Image


Sorry, are you suggesting that atheism can lead to highly oppressive murderous political regimes?



Janissy
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 5 May 2009
Age: 57
Gender: Female
Posts: 6,450
Location: x

19 Oct 2013, 7:34 am

fibonaccispiral777 wrote:
Kurgan wrote:
Generally speaking, a religious person does not owe it to a non-religious person to justify their views. Personally, I find pseudointellectual internet atheists far more annoying than muslim fundamentalists.


Could you please clarify what you mean by pseudointellectual? I personally hate that word and do not understand what it means. On what basis can you decide who is an intellectual and who is pseudo-intellectual? Please give me an example of how that manifests in atheism. Oh come on! You find atheists more annoying that Muslim fundamentalists who believe in a literal holy war, the killing of people who abandon their religious and stoning women to death for committing adultery. I don't understand the logic there. I find it baffling.


The term pseudointellectual does get thrown around a lot and rarely defined. I have long been bothered by it too for this reason. I googled around a bit to see if I could find some sort of consensus of what people mean when they say pseudointellectual. Google showed me that most people just toss the word around without thinking through what they actually mean by it beyond "I disagree a whole lot and you sure are wordy".

However, there are some people who bothered to parse this out. Amongst the people who have bothered to think it through, there seems to be this rough consensus:

intellectual: somebody who is interested in the truth of a matter and uses intellect as a tool to explore that matter

pseudointellectual: somebody who is interested in being percieved as right and uses intellect as a tool to persuade others

By this measure, some atheists would be intellectuals and others would be pseudointellectuals. But the mere fact of being an atheist participating on an internet thread with religious people would not make somebody a pseudointellectual rather than an intellectual.

I suppose I could say I find atheist pseudointellectuals (as opposed to actual athiest intellectuals) more annoying than muslim fundamentalists insofar as I find muslim fundamentalists terrifying, which is a totally different feeling from mere annoyance.

By now the whole thread has moved on but I am a word nerd and always get caught up in side topics that involve semantic differences in words.

Guess I should read the rest of the thread.



91
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 Oct 2010
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,063
Location: Australia

19 Oct 2013, 7:59 am

fibonaccispiral777 wrote:
Sorry, are you suggesting that atheism can lead to highly oppressive murderous political regimes?


Not necessarily but certainly atheist in positions of power have used state power to attack religion and kill religious people.


_________________
Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.


AspE
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 31 Dec 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,114

22 Oct 2013, 6:09 pm

91 wrote:
fibonaccispiral777 wrote:
Sorry, are you suggesting that atheism can lead to highly oppressive murderous political regimes?


Not necessarily but certainly atheist in positions of power have used state power to attack religion and kill religious people.

So have people with beards.



DentArthurDent
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Jul 2008
Age: 59
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,884
Location: Victoria, Australia

23 Oct 2013, 2:27 am

AspE wrote:
91 wrote:
fibonaccispiral777 wrote:
Sorry, are you suggesting that atheism can lead to highly oppressive murderous political regimes?


Not necessarily but certainly atheist in positions of power have used state power to attack religion and kill religious people.

So have people with beards.


Nice


_________________
"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance anyday"
Douglas Adams

"Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand" Karl Marx