Try to follow me here....

[Dru]

try to follow a to the top of a page

[whirlwind]

i'm not religious, or at least try not to be,

i prefer spirtual awareness

[MervGriffin]

dear ,

 

Is that you ?

 

i can hold whatever opinions i want to.

 

No one is stopping you, Sparky!

 

i do not hate people only the way the guise their actions by using god.

 

Like Mother Theresa, for example, and countless other religiously-inspired humanitarians who have spent much of their lives helping others?

 

i just find it so laughable that people so much stock in fairy tails and then expect everyone to buy into those same stories.

 

Fairy tales to you, perhaps, but many find them insightful, inspirational and a force for the good, if not factual. Most of the best, most decent and most charitable and compassionate individuals I know have some sort of religious perspective that very positively shapes their life. By the way, you aren't required to buy into "those stories".

 

keep on truckin ole boy!

 

you mean like this?

 

or this?

[minx]

"joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all-that has been my religion" - John Burroughs.

 

merv- i think the crux of this issue for any of us who do not subscribe to a particular organized religion is that religion (the whole big thing not just christianity) is forced into our lives every single day. for those of you who are christian it would be the same has having to traditions of islam forced into the smallest parts of your world day after day after day after day after day. while there may be no egregious insult, there is a continuous afront to one's sensibility.

 

i simply do not understand why those of an organized religious persuasion feel the need to inflict their beliefs upon me and upon the rest of society. you keep your beliefs to yourself. quit telling my child he's going to hell if he doesn't believe. i'll keep mine to myself. i won't tell your children that the bible is wrong.

 

have a nice day

[Bug]

Do not confuse ALL Christians with the ones who try to force their brand on you. Having given it a great deal of time, energy, and academic study, as well as personal study, I doubt that the teachings of Jesus were meant to "force" anyone to do anything. The whole concept is focused on love and relationship to God and others regardless of their faith or anything else. That adds up to joyful unconditional acceptance as far as I can tell.

We have a whole new political-religious thing going on right now. It threatens all of us. Not just non-christians. Very scary stuff for sure. Dietrick Bonnhoffer (sp?) Has a theory of the five mandates. Church, family, friends, state, and marriage. they all naturally overlap a little bit but one should never overpower another. If that happens, it is time for some poor soul to exercise the "Ultima Ratio", and commit what would normally be a sin in order to bring the world back into balance.

He co-masterminded a nearly successful assassination attempt on Hitler. He was the last person executed by the Third Reich. He was a Catholic priest.

[minx]

Bug,

 

I think the general, underlying tenants of behaviour espoused by christianity are good thing and do not worry me in the least. this is true with every religion i've studied. the underlying principles are pretty sound way to live your life. it's the modern interpretations and actions of a given religions followers that worry me. b/c i live in the US, the christians worry me. if i lived someplace else i would probably worry about the effects of the major religion in that locale.

 

my underlying point is this: why do we need religion. each religion, at it's core, espouses a fundamental set of guidelines for living. all them seem to have a pretty good foundation. be nice to each other, don't steal, cheat, lie, kill etc. the fundamentals are all the same. why have so many? why have any for that matter. go on about living a good life and don't worry about your neighbor's beliefs eh?

[Bug]

And my point is, regardless of religious persuasion, or scientific beliefs or whatever, people are going to find a reason to blame other people for their misfortune. We are changing rapidly as a society and even as a global society. The institutions of religion, in their many facets, cannot keep up with the rate of change. This does not mean that everything we held true up to now was wrong. There is 10,000 years of human wisdom in the Old Testament. It is woven into the New Testament and the Quran in many ways. I am willing to have Muslims, Jews, Christians,all religions, and atheists have their fights so that we can preserve as much as possible of the wisdom that is stored in the books and in the personal experiences of practicing those modalities of wisdom. We will need everybody to contribute when we start a new structure. History suggests that the kind of change we are seeing does not continue indefinately. We do not want to give up on anything that might contribute to a solution just because it changes with less frequency and is being wrongly used as an excuse for cruelty. Change will come. Keep the tools for rebuilding handy. What you do with the tools is up to you.

[Dru]

 

Lama, lama, lama

[markinore]

It's impossible in the post-9/11 era to discuss the long-term effects of Christianity without discussing the Crusades. The Crusades began in the late 11th century. At that time, the Arab world had the highest level of scholarship and science, and Europe was the third world. The pope called upon the armies of Europe to attack and seize Jerusalem for no reason other than, well, it's a holy city to us and it's controlled by a bunch of heathens.

 

That unleashed a 200 year period of destruction, loss of life, and waste of treasure. Jerusalem was ultimately taken and lost by both sides about a half dozen times before the Europeans got the hell out until after World War I.

 

One interesting episode that perhaps foreshadowed more recent events: In one of the Crusades, when Richard the Lionhearted led his forces to the gates of Jersualem and was about to conquer the enemy, he suddenly stopped. He recognized that the problem was not taking the city, but devoting all of his army to holding it afterward. Naturally, this would have left England poorly defended and economically compromised. So he turned around and hauled ass back to merry old England.

 

But then Richard the Lionhearted was a smart guy, he wasn't a religious fanatic who believed he was guided by God, and he had better advisers than Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Perle.

[pzack]

It's impossible in the post-9/11 era to discuss the long-term effects of Christianity without discussing the Crusades. The Crusades began in the late 11th century.

Before the Crusades was the Islamic Conquests... Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Africa, Spain, Parts of France and the Byzantine empire were all attacked/conquered by the first series of Jihads.

 

 

When making historical arguments, keep things in historical context.

[markinore]

Before the Crusades was the Islamic Conquests... Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Africa, Spain, Parts of France and the Byzantine empire were all attacked/conquered by the first series of Jihads.

 

 

When making historical arguments, keep things in historical context.

 

You're absolutely correct about the Arab conquests. The big difference is that those were motivated primarily by the same things that motivated most conflicts in that period--a desire to obtain material wealth. The Crusades, in contrast, were motivated more by religious fervor, specifically Christian extremism. Certainly, other religions and their extremist adherents have committed other notable atrocities. I just thought in the context of the original post--the good or evil that Christianity has done--a brief acknowledgement of the historical importance of the Crusades is worthy of mention.

[pzack]

The First Jihad following the death of Mohammed wasn't motivated by religion???