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Christianity Really Sucks

skepticalbip said:
I strongly suspect he was a "Young Earth Creationist" (YEC) which is a very small, select, and extremist outlier group of Christians with many beliefs at odds with most Christians.
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YEC is not a small outlier group in the south. I even know engineers with graduate degrees who believe the universe is thousands of years old.
 
Do they still believe that all humans were Caucasians until God cursed Ham for sodomy of the heart and turned him Black? Or that dragons were dinosaurs but St George killed the last one? I went to an evangelical-run middle school for a year when I was a kid, and looking back on things now I'm shocked at some of the dangerous nonsense they were allowed to preach in the classroom. The rest of the Christian world got over this sort of thing almost a century ago, but evangelicals and their hardline Catholic allies seem unaware that human knowledge has left them behind in their century of choice (the 18th?)
 
Politesse said:
Do they still believe that all humans were Caucasians until God cursed Ham for sodomy of the heart and turned him Black? Or that dragons were dinosaurs but St George killed the last one? I went to an evangelical-run middle school for a year when I was a kid, and looking back on things now I'm shocked at some of the dangerous nonsense they were allowed to preach in the classroom. The rest of the Christian world got over this sort of thing almost a century ago, but evangelicals and their hardline Catholic allies seem unaware that human knowledge has left them behind in their century of choice (the 18th?)
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In a phrase, natural selection. Not everyone has the ability to think forensically and weigh evidence. Emotional fulfillment is likely important to every one of us and many of us obtain part of our emotional fulfillment by acquiring new scientific knowledge, but not all. In our world you are maybe a great accountant or linguist but your knowledge of astronomy, particle theory or scientific advancement is pretty much nil.

And we don't learn by osmosis. Learning takes time and interest and it's possible to live comfortably in today's world with pretty much zero scientific curiosity, knowledge or problem solving ability but still have access to all the bennies that scientific knowledge brings to society. I don't have to know about Charles Darwin or Maxwell's or how far it is to the nearest star to operate my cell phone or enjoy 5G technology.
 
skepticalbip said:
TomC said:
skepticalbip said:
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It was obvious that his trying to prove evolution to be false was driven by his Christian belief but there are a hell of a lot of different Christian beliefs. I strongly suspect he was a "Young Earth Creationist" (YEC) which is a very small, select, and extremist outlier group of Christians with many beliefs at odds with most Christians.
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I don’t think he is a YEC, because he accepts the big bang, claiming wrongly that it is evidence for a supernatural designer, and he accepts the Cambrian explosion, claiming wrongly that it disproves evolution.

The best I can glean from his largely incoherent posts is that he thinks every process in the universe is either utterly random or intentionally designed. That’s why he quoted Dawkins out of context, who of course affirmed that if evolution were an entirely random process the chances of complex life arising, or life arising at all, would be virtually nil.

But of course as I and other repeatedly pointed out to him, nature is full of processes that are neither random nor intelligently designed. Evolution via natural selection is one. Gravity is another. Snowflakes forming from rain when the temperature falls below freezing is yet another. Examples are legion.

This means, it seems, that he thinks every orderly process is intelligently designed. God picks mutations that lead to people. God touches falling water with his fingertip to make snowflakes. God is behind intelligent falling — He gently pushes his invisible finger down on objects to make them fall to the ground.

Going back to evolution, though, strangely enough, he talks on and on about deleterious mutations, and one must wonder, is his God a total fuck-up? Why would he create bad mutations?
 
lostone said:
JC1432 said:
Cheerful Charlie said:
All across this nation, right winged Christians are working nonstop to ban same sex marriage. Your ignorance is amazing.
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i am really sorry to tell you this and i am NOT trying to offend anyone, but homosexuality is NOT normal, God's intention for our body parts and relationships, and should not be accepted in society. we are a nation that is supposed to have morals. if not then chaos breaks out, and satan (100% sin) breaks out in full force of decadence. you see it now happening with our disrespectful, violent, immoral generation that has come up in society
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That is nothing more than your bigoted opinions. There is nothing evil about homosexuality. This is a diverse nation, and your religion and what you consider to be sin should not be used to make our laws.
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Very true. Reading JC’s post made me realize what a judge once told me decades ago: people give lip service to freedom. What they really want is order. According to JC we live in a violent immoral generation. Seriously is that their impression of society? Murder and violent crime rates are down. They’ve been going down the more our society has become more open and accepting of such things as homosexuality. It’s pathetic what these fundy preachers are selling to their flock. Utterly pathetic.
 
SLD said:
lostone said:
JC1432 said:
Cheerful Charlie said:
All across this nation, right winged Christians are working nonstop to ban same sex marriage. Your ignorance is amazing.
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i am really sorry to tell you this and i am NOT trying to offend anyone, but homosexuality is NOT normal, God's intention for our body parts and relationships, and should not be accepted in society. we are a nation that is supposed to have morals. if not then chaos breaks out, and satan (100% sin) breaks out in full force of decadence. you see it now happening with our disrespectful, violent, immoral generation that has come up in society
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That is nothing more than your bigoted opinions. There is nothing evil about homosexuality. This is a diverse nation, and your religion and what you consider to be sin should not be used to make our laws.
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Very true. Reading JC’s post made me realize what a judge once told me decades ago: people give lip service to freedom. What they really want is order. According to JC we live in a violent immoral generation. Seriously is that their impression of society? Murder and violent crime rates are down. They’ve been going down the more our society has become more open and accepting of such things as homosexuality. It’s pathetic what these fundy preachers are selling to their flock. Utterly pathetic.
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It’s worse than that. People want others to obey the authoritarian diktats by which they themselves live, because it boils their piss to think that others are free to do things that have been arbitrarily denied to them.

The idea of instead trying to break free themselves is completely alien to them.

If I, as a respected member of my church, am not allowed to have gay sex, then nor should anyone else be.
 
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TomC said:
blastula said:
That's true but those homophobe ideas are legitimately in their Bible. The more fundamentalist or traditional a sect is, the more homophobic it is.
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Which do you think happens more often?

BLM supporters loot stores.

Christians line up gays behind a firing squad.

One of these dumbasseries is a much bigger problem than the other. Which do you think it is?
Tom
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The harassment of gay youth because of Christian hate mongering results in young gay people having a very high suicide rate. Bleating about BLM or black crime rate does not excuse the murderous homophobia caused by Bible thumping preachers spreading hate.
 
They love it when their hate drives people to suicide. Their insane views of chastity also have driven even many heterosexual people who are too sexual for their comfort to suicide. Those preachers, based on what sources I have read, are driven by the bigotry of what their followers want to believe, or they would lose their following.

The same is true of the Republican party. The sheep are now leading the herd, and their leaders are afraid to confront them..

This is the peer pressure that forces everyone in small communities to bow down to it. It doesn't work quite as well in cities, which is why cities are liberal havens.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
Bleating about BLM or black crime rate does not excuse the murderous homophobia caused by Bible thumping preachers spreading hate.
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Who said anything about excusing homophobia?
Not me.

All I did was compare the damage done by BLM and Christian firing squads.
Tom
 
IE, changing the subject. Let's gabble about BLM instead of dealing with the issue of gay youth suicide and hate mongering religious homophobes. Hate kills.
 
There's data out there claiming that religious persons are less likely to fear death. I find that a strange claim. It would seem to me that if I didn't fear death I wouldn't be religious. Religion is the thing that says you're not really going to die, so you only need religion if you're afraid of death to begin with.

Religious people have told me that before they were born they didn't exist. I've corrected them by telling them they certainly did exist, they just didn't have an identity. Biological and chemical processes brought all those disparate formerly dead pieces together is all, even aside from the overwhelming amount of DNA accompanying their bodies that isn't human at all, most of which they could not "live" without.

There's also the idea of hell and torture among religious people, something they will endure for all their sins and transgressions, for not being perfect and obedient.

Yep, religion can definitely suck.
 
T.G.G. Moogly said:
Religious people have told me that before they were born they didn't exist
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I wonder how they square that with life beginning at conception :p

Not fearing death because you believe in heaven, is like not fearing sharks because you don't think sharks really exist.

It's a very different thing from lacking fear of something you know is real.

I fear various ways of dying; But I don't fear death itself, because I don't expect to experience it. My feeling about my eventual death is one of disappointment that I won't find out how it all pans out.

It's like when they cancel your favourite TV show halfway through a season.
 
bilby said:
I fear various ways of dying; But I don't fear death itself, because I don't expect to experience it. My feeling about my eventual death is one of disappointment that I won't find out how it all pans out.
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Lots of folks, particularly religious folk, may be guilty of equating death with dying. No thoughtful and informed person should fear death simply because we've all been dead before. Dying on the other hand can be uncomfortable and painful for the individual particularly and no thoughtful person could look forward to dying in that sense. It can be downright gruesome. Believers spin this into a cleansing ritual so they can move on to being happier ghosts. I suppose the fantasizing and pretending somehow lessens their level of fear.

We are at a point where no one should have to fear even dying. Dying can be emotionally painful but should no longer have to be physically painful. Again, believers are a bit masochistic in that they equate pain with something good. Maybe they've simply accepted pain as unavoidable and it's a bit of the Stockholm Syndrome operating. But I still find their behavior primitive and barbaric.
 
T.G.G. Moogly said:
bilby said:
I fear various ways of dying; But I don't fear death itself, because I don't expect to experience it. My feeling about my eventual death is one of disappointment that I won't find out how it all pans out.
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Lots of folks, particularly religious folk, may be guilty of equating death with dying. No thoughtful and informed person should fear death simply because we've all been dead before. Dying on the other hand can be uncomfortable and painful for the individual particularly and no thoughtful person could look forward to dying in that sense. It can be downright gruesome. Believers spin this into a cleansing ritual so they can move on to being happier ghosts. I suppose the fantasizing and pretending somehow lessens their level of fear.

We are at a point where no one should have to fear even dying. Dying can be emotionally painful but should no longer have to be physically painful. Again, believers are a bit masochistic in that they equate pain with something good. Maybe they've simply accepted pain as unavoidable and it's a bit of the Stockholm Syndrome operating. But I still find their behavior primitive and barbaric.
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Yeah, which would be fine if they kept it to themselves.

It's no longer illegal in my jurisdiction for a terminally ill person who wants to end their life to obtain medical assistance to do so in a painless manner; But there ate still a LOT of bureaucratic hoops to jump through if you want to fo that, and it only became legal last year, after a mass debate driven by religious ideologues, who were horrified by the very idea that other people might avoid pointless end-of-life suffering.
 
Christians are individuals, with a variety of unrealistic beliefs. Some say that they don't fear death, but based on my many. years of experience caring for older adults who were often nearing death, I discovered that plenty of them do fear death. If not, they would never choose aggressive end of life care.

My late father, an evangelical as well as a deeply disturbed man, told my mother that he was afraid that god would punish him for killing Japanese soldiers when he wa a Marine in WWII. The war fucked him up, probably as much or more than religion did. He was "saved" according to his religious ideology, but apparently he had some doubts about some of his beliefs. He didn't doubt there was a god, but he did doubt that his god was going to excuse his "sins" and send him right up to heaven. It was the circumstances of his life and genetics that made him a damaged man.

I support voluntary euthanasia, but the problem is, even in states where it's legal, it's not permitted if one has dementia. I think the fear is that family members might have the person euthanized well before they are ready, in order to receive an inheritance, or just to be rid of grandma. Maybe it would help if it was legal to put in writing that if you become confused and don't recognize friends and family, then it's time for euthanasia. Still, I can see how there could be legal issues with that, that have nothing to do with religion. Family members might disagree etc.

For example, my late mother in law was on dialysis for 4 years prior to having a rather severe stroke. She wanted to stop dialysis and die at home with hospice care, but my bro in law was against that at first. Her doctor also was also against letting her die. WTF! He finally gave in and allowed his mother to die the way she wanted. It took a little over week, but she was comfortable most of the time. I just wish my former sister in law hadn't pushed food and fluids on her. Dying while dehydrated in the most comfortable, peaceful way to go.
 
I wonder sometimes if I will have the self-awareness my grandfather had.

He knew when it was time to stop driving.

When I start failing basic metal functions tests as badly as that, I would hope to still be capable and clever enough to say goodbye and make it stick.
 
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