[PLUG-TALK] Religion is not bad...

Aaron ke7ezt at gmail.com
Thu Oct 29 21:02:24 UTC 2009


"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"

Epicurius (341-270 BC)

Being a religious person doesn't make you a good person and being an atheist
doesn't make you a bad person.  There are religious people that kill people
and there are atheists that wouldn't hurt a fly.  I think that people should
be able to believe whatever they want to do believe--I DO think the world
would be better off if everyone believed what they wanted and didn't try to
force or convert everyone else to those beliefs.  I'm honestly not concered
with if religion is bad or good, I'm more concerned that people can't just
believe what they want to believe without assuming that everyone else is
bad/horrible/evil for believing something else.

If you believe in god--great!  But you don't need to assume that people that
have different beliefs are bad or immoral.  The Bible says:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you
make, you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you
get. - Matthew 7:1-3

And I don't know where you get all of your information about history.  If
you are thinking that everything you are taught in school is fact you are
deeply mistaken.  There are several books on history you can read that will
give you a much deeper knowledge of what actually happened.  A lot of
history taught in schools is propaganda and not very accurate.

Religion is not the biggest evil in the world.  However if everyone accepted
that other people believe other things and be OK with that the world would
be a much, much better place.  The biggest "evil" in the world is lack of
love and compassion for all other human beings.  If everyone had that
regardless of what religion someone believed and accepted that other people
have the human right to choose the morality that works for them--humanity
might actually be able to make it into the next century and there would be a
lot less death and suffering by all.

IMV.

aaron at kalosaurusrex:~$
Discere docendo - To learn through teaching.
Libera Te Tutemet - You, free yourself.




On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 13:06, Michael Robinson <plug_1 at robinson-west.com>wrote:

> Religion is not the cause of anything bad.  There are extremist Muslims,
> extremist Christians, extremist etcetera's, but these people are outside
> of mainstream religion.  Religion did not cause the Holocaust of WWII.
> Religion does not block technological advancement.  Different people
> have been bashing religion in general saying it is bad without anything
> to back up their claim.  The Christian ethic is behind many of America's
> laws.  The motto In God We Trust is still on American money.
>
> As far as the middle ages and using them as an example to bash religion,
> these times are often misunderstood.  In the Spanish inquisition, all
> you had to do was repent to avoid execution.  The Crusades were bad news
> not because of religion but because of the rise of political power and
> political corruption at the time.  Kings in the middle ages had more
> power than the pope.  It didn't help that the military bodies in the
> middle ages tended to be made up of criminals.  The Abu Ghraib fiasco
> in the Iraq war happened because there were criminals in the U.S.
> military.  Hopefully, people who will resort to sexual humiliation
> of prisoners are no longer in the U.S. military.
>
> Other examples of where religion was not the problem involve the
> exploring of the New World.  The Conquistadors were brutal, but
> not for religious reasons.  Attempts were made to find out what
> was going on by the Spanish Queen, but these attempts had very
> little impact.  It is hard to control people who are far off
> when there is no technology like we have today.
>
> For people who believe in God, it has been shown scientifically
> that they generally benefit from that.
>
> Atheism would have us believe that the world is better off without
> God and without religion.  So too would the devil.
>
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