I have seen the church (any church for that matter) not be able to address the most fundamental need of its flock namely that of mentally heath issues. We are treated as second class citizens across the board, so fuck them. Why should I belong to an organization that systematically discriminates against people with real needs?

I am talking about the membership here. I don't want want to belong to a bunch of assholes like that no matter how good it may sound.

 

I agree with that but I've also known congregations that had reach outs to the less fortunates & those disenfranchised due to health, etc.

 

But they are never fully accepted by the congregations because of the stigma attached to the mental health diagnosis

It took six people to die in Arizona recently to get the attention of Churches that something should be done. People had to die before it was taken serious. I knew this shit was going for over 30 years and never saw anyone do anything about this.

 

So God evidently thought that the status quo should be maintained, subject to a few rules and regulations -- that slaves are okay, as long as they're not members of your own tribe. Is that the morality you're defending? Or have Christians become more moral than their god, over the thousands of years since we last heard from him? Why didn't God just come forward and say that slavery is morally indefensible?

 

The belief in an omnipresent, omnipotent, superior being or beings has been around since the begining of recorded history. Common sense tells me that with that much belief over that length of time ,there has to be something to it. My personal experience proves to me that there is some sort of spirital power on this planet.
I believe that to be the God of the Bible.

 

It's the ultimate trump card for believers, I guess.

"It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail."
— Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation)

 

There is indeed something to it, but I doubt it is supernatural. You may find your answer in the psychology we humans have evolved to possess - that's not nearly as dramatic, or as emotionally fulfilling as the fill-in-the-gap solution you cling to . . . but it is likely closer to the truth (whatever that is ).

happy hunting!

 

According to Hoyle(the Bible), those of us that are fornicators, which on a porn site is extremely high, are going to hell if you believe this. I thought I'd state the obvious.

 

Paganism was the only religious belief for at least the first half of human civilization and continued to be the dominate belief until the last 2,000 years or so. Monotheists are the only ones that believe in omnipresence or omnipotence so if early humans somehow knew something we don't monotheists would still be wrong.

The fact that a lot of people believe something doesn't mean crap. Belief in god(s) is common because it provides an explanation to the otherwise complex questions in life, and people take comfort in having an answer they can rap their head around, doesn't matter if it is true.

 

ok, sorry. just had to chime in...

I'm hard pressed to think of ANY religions besides xtianity and judaism that believe in an omnipresent, omnipotent, superior being.

That was the whole reason for the existence of polytheism and why it was so widespread. There was just too much in the world for one god to be in charge of it all. There were sun gods, and sea gods, and air gods, and gods of weather, gods of seasons, gods of virgins, gods of love, gods of war... but I can't really think of any ancient civilizations off the top of my head that were naive enough to believe in ONE all powerful, all knowing superior being in charge of EVERYTHING.

Not saying there weren't any. But for all the religious and mythological studies I've done in my life, I'm drawing a blank.

And the rest of this is just a fun brain teaser:

The omnipotence paradox is a family of related paradoxes addressing the question of whether the existence of an omnipotent entity is logically possible. The paradox states that if a being can perform any action, then it should be able to create a task it is unable to perform, and hence, it cannot perform all actions. Yet, on the other hand, if it cannot create a task it is unable to perform, then there exists something it cannot do.

One version of the omnipotence paradox is the so-called paradox of the stone: "Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even that being could not lift it?" If so, then it seems that the being could cease to be omnipotent; if not, it seems that the being was not omnipotent to begin with.

 

Not for me I am not Religious at all as I believe that my Faith is all that is required.

But Christianity believes in Redemption through Honest & True Repenting and Faith.

That is not a paradox really. You must assume that if the being could make the rock heavy enough that it cannot be lifted, it then could increase its own power so that it could lift it again. It is after all Omnipotent.
Even better I have to ask why would it want to do such a thing, other than as a form of recreation.

 

I bow to your obvious knowledge of the subject,

Just out of my couriousity, How do you stand on the naivity of belief in politheism?

Where do you belief mankind gets its morality from.

And where did the concept of any god come from.

 

Sorry, but in fact it is not only a paradox, but it is one used quite often to demonstrate what a paradox is. If you've got an alternate definition for the word - for use in common language or in its strictest logical sense - I'd be very curious to know it.

 

Hold on now, I think I know how the argument can be refuted:

God was a magical genie who summoned the universe to first collide on itself and then expand. After that, planets were spun out of molten rock that cooled and began to drop into orbit around other bits of what used to be part of nothing. Now, here is where it gets tricky. Humans were formed by following the blueprint provided by nothing, and roamed the earth first as a couple named Adam and Eve, again given names influenced by nothing.

While there were two humans existing on the entire planet earth, there appeared to be animals or at least a snake and an enchanted tree....

It pains me to continue on that tangent.

 

I already told you where I think morality comes from.

The concept of gods I think came from our limited understanding of how things work in early times. Wouldn't it be logical to someone with no concept of hour our galaxy is structured, has never felt the earth "move" on a daily basis to assume that we stay still while everything else moves around us? But what makes it move? How would you answer that for a child when you have no idea yourself? Why not make up a story about a super human being who climbs in a chariot each morning and drags the sun across the sky? Doesn't that sound fun and adventurous? Then that kid grows up and having never heard a better explanation shares it with friends and their kids and so on and so forth until their entire tribe figures that's the most logical explanation at the time. And word spread person to person, generation to generation, a god for all sorts of crazy things no one has a better explanation for. If someone pulls the sun, then someone must be in charge of the moon right? And someone must be in charge of the stars too, right? But why just the sky? Who's in charge of the trees? That has to be someone else, right? And someone in charge of when it gets cold and when it gets warm, right? And so on and so forth until big elaborate stories about each god and why they do the things they do and that's why the earth works and boom you have your first polytheistic society.

As far as where I sand on it, I think that it was a means for early civilizations to explain things that had no explanation. They lacked our technology and abilities. I think in another few thousand years, they'll look back and wonder why xtians were so stupid as to think their god was real because by then science will have advanced even more. And there will either be new religions that have adapted to the new evidence or (a girl can hope) science will finally have squashed it without a doubt.

And frankly, if I had to pick a religion out of all the ones I've ever researched, not knowing which were still practiced, which were debunked, and having no scientific background, I'd probably be a greek mythologist. They had a god for everything. Absolutely everything. Their gods provided an explanation for everything that occurred from seasons to deaths. And most importantly their gods were FLAWED. It is far easier for me to believe a god that is flawed had a hand in creating and maintaining this incredibly imperfect world than it is for me to believe an all seeing, all knowing, all powerful being even farted in our general direction. The greek gods were petty, cruel, vindictive, horny, selfish, arrogant... but for all their flaws, they did a lot of good by mankind in general. Oh! and the Greeks got to SEE their gods. Not just take them on "faith". lol

What did the Omni-everything god do? He created a world, demanded worship and praise, brought his wrath down on it, then vanished without leaving any proof he ever existed, and no reassurance that he even gives a shit. Sounds pretty lame to me.


=========
Ed, that just calls us back to the beginning. If it can increase it's power so that it could lift it then it never really created a rock it couldn't lift in the first place and therefore can't complete the action.

 

Okay , I'll look back on that,

If you want to stop just let me know, I'll quit asking guestions.

If your willing?
Have you read/or studied the Bible?

 

Morality is an abstract - it doesn't actually exist except as a concept within the minds of human beings (as far as we know). The fact that it exists in us to conceive of such a thing is one of the hallmarks of our intellectual supremacy on this planet. I think you're putting the cart before the horse.

 

yes on both counts. I believed when I was a kid cause that's how I was raised. But at some point, like all kids do, I started asking questions. And the answers became less and less satisfactory the older and more intelligent I became. So I did more and more research... all the while being taught that you needed sources, facts, evidence to back claims in an argumentative thesis. And after being fed up with all arguments with religious authorities in my life resulting in an emphatic "BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS!" I realized it was all bullshit supported by ONE book that people were putting stock in for their own personal reasons but not because there was anything to back it up.

So I took this to my mom worried something was wrong with me. She told me it was normal to question and I should look into other religions and find one that suited me. Just because she believed in the xtian god was no reason for me to. And that if I decided Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam was for me then that was my choice to make. So I studied religions for a while and never did find anything that sparked any sort of "faith" for me. I did find generally they provide some guidelines to just be a good person. Be that "ridding the self of wants" or cherishing the earth and only taking that which you need or "and it harm none, do what ye will" it's all about just being a decent person which I already was. And I didn't see how praying or believing would change anything in my life.

I mean it's a simple game of logic. With ALL the religions in the world, they can't possibly ALL be right... especially when you consider monotheistic dieties. I mean it'd be one thing to look at something like the romans vs. the greeks and say ok they can both be right they just have different names for the gods. But both Shiva AND the xtian god can't both exist. So if one of you is right, the other is incredibly wrong. Any way you look at it, over half the world is wrong. And with odds like that, it's far more logical to assume everyone's wrong. Especially when none of them have any means of proving they're right.

 

I get what your saying. But My question was meant to infer a time line.

What I'm asking is not a matter of which come first, But rather how it got to or in mankind Where does it come from assuming it realy exists.

 

best two guesses, an inherent natural instinct for survival of the species. Without empathy (what I credit for MY morality) what would stop us from killing off everyone else and destroying the species? Not that mankind isn't doing a fine job of that even with our ethical codes.

Or, it's just a product of our intelligence. Increased brain mass resulting in not only the ability to feel what we feel but to relate to those feelings when we see others in similar situations.