Metal Reviews

Actually, the Pope doesn't exactly live like Hugh Hefner either. He may have a certain amount of royalty, but that doesn't mean his life is exactly a cakewalk. Specifically, he needs to COMPLETELY give himself to God. Which means avoiding a lot of the things we do for fun.

Valefor, I think you need to distinguish between "religion" and "religious corruption." The Christian religion itself (ie. the philosophical aspect of it) isn't at an act of mind-control. It's a supernatural belief system and life philosophy. However, you have a lot of corrupt and power-hungry people who know that they can use it to get what they want. These aren't real "Christians" in my book. They're pretenders dressing like Christians to gain the public's trust.

Pastors and Priests usually don't make a lot of money. And priests, in particular, are required to live certain lifestyles (they can't marry, many of them rarely watch television, etc.) because they need to be completely committed to God. So don't think being a Priest or a Pastor is nearly as simple as preaching at church every Sunday, because it isn't.

And as for the church demanding money, some churches do this. But many don't. What a church service will usually do is have an "offering." A bag, cup, etc. will be passed around. And, if you wish, you can donate money to the church. But you're not required to and the pastor/priest won't give you a hard time if you don't. It should also be mentioned that many (actually, probably the majority of) volunteer groups and homeless/poverty drives are organized by churches and religious organizations.

Here's my overall opinion: Religion can bring out both the best and the worst in people. It can be used for the greatest good, but it can also be used for the most evil of evil. The better something is, the worse you can make it. And religion, in particular, is something so deep and profound that it's very easy to corrupt it and turn it into something completely destructive. And, particularly if you're a Christian, you need to keep a discerning eye out. Make sure you're going to a legitimate and spiritually sound church that actually preaches what Christ taught us (rather than preaching propaganda or scare-tactics), one where the clergy is truly committed to their work, etc.

I completely agree with this.



I would still argue that it makes a lot more sense to us just because we're so used to living in a world where monotheism is considered the most logical thing- Hindus, I'm sure, would feel differently. And I completely disagree that the Judeo-Christian creationist account is a lot less rigid and more open than the Greek (I don't know nearly as much about Egyptian religion so I can't speak there): Greek mythology and religion was incredibly open and non-rigid: Hesiod's Theogony is one of many, many Greek accounts of Greek creation, none of which were accepted by everybody (it is pretty anachronistic in general to speak of a unifying "Greek religion"). There were many different accounts of the world's creation and man's creation, told by philosophers, poets, Bacchic priests, and found in local legends- these were things that could be argued about. Whereas it seems to me at least that the Judeo-Christian account is pretty straightforward and leaves little room for interpretation.



Yep, its a very complicated process. I mean, as far as we know (I think), what we know of as the Old Testament was cobbled together from five or six different sources. It seems like a ridiculously hard document to analyze- but I do think that if we do analyze it, it has to be done from the perspective of those 1st millenium BC Jews, and I'm not too sure that it can be applied to our modern world anymore than the Iliad can. But hey, in the end, I don't know better than anyone else.



I think you're seriously misanalyzing the history of the Church here. First of all, Constantine did not make Christianity a state religion: It is not clear to what extent Constantine even understood the major concepts of Christianity, and to what extent he viewed it in light of traditional Roman religion, in that you might adopt one god especially as a benefactor (like Aurelian did with Sol Invictus), and in exchange he would grant you victories- in any case, Constantine did not make anything a state religion.

It also is quite weird to blame the institutionalization of Christianity for any deviation from Christ's message; imo, most work on the historical Jesus suggests that as of Paul and later on the Gospels, Christ's message was clearly transformed in ways he most likely would not have approved of- this includes fights between different sects of Christianity, Jew baiting, etc.. I also think you're being a bit too conspiracy theory: As if Christianity was adopted by the Roman emperors as part of an evil plot to control the world and subvert Christ's message! It just so happened that Constantine adopted the Christian god as a patron god; his son Constantius was more religious, and since he had power, was able to attempt to create an Arian empire. But the ancient world is the ancient world, and no Roman emperor ever had the resources or the ability to control the empire as a police state and enforce a religion.

Also, just to address something: I always hear that the NT is all about peace and love and puppies. That is a pretty big part of Christ's message in the Gospels, but I think that people like to willfully ignore stuff like:

“Do not think that I come to bring the peace upon earth: I came not to send peace but the sword. For I come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and the man’s enemies shall be they of his own household. He, who loves father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he, who loves son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me. And he, who does not take up his cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me” (Matt: 10: 34-38).

Not to mention all the times he quite clearly says: Its not enough to be a good person, you have to believe in me or else you're fucked.

That quote's always seemed very out of place, and I've never really heard any Christians attempt to explain it. Maybe I'm reading out of context or something.

You can't completely give yourself to god, and then live like a king.
The Vatican is rolling in wealth. The pope has his hand kissed by starstruck kneeling thralls.
Of course, the pope doesn't live like Hefner; Hefner is surrounded by buxom blondes.
Weall know that the preisthood favors young boys. (Sorry, I had to... maybe the Devil made me do it?)



It doesn't diminish the basic flaws inherent in a belief of an all powerful, all loving god, whose creation just happens to be pretty well fucked.
What kind of omniscient being would create the world we live in?



So, they have bought the story. Doesn't change anything in my view.



So, people need religion to make them charitable?
Charity and empathy for others is not exactly a monopoly held by religion, now is it?

.[/quote]

Hey, if religion works for you, more power to you.

Me, I don't need it and therefore reject it.

To me, it means that Jesus came not just to permanently better the way the world (superficially) functions by himself, but to also give us the tools (and by tools, I mean the freely usable strength and the faith) to better it. Historically, the sword has always been a symbol of strength. A symbol of fighting for justice and what's right. I think Jesus is metaphorically using "sword" in a similar context.

In response to Valefor, it's clear that you and I have very different perspectives on the world. And it would be impossible for me to address your concerns without getting into a philosophical debate and probably pissing you off further. So I'm just going to agree to disagree with you for now.

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of Roman dictators hated Christianity because they saw it as a threat to their dictatorships.



There's a lot of discussion over what Christ actually meant when he said, "The only way to Heaven is through me." Remember that we Christians believe the human Jesus to be God incarnated in human form (ie. the begotten son of God). So one could suggest that, by loving Jesus, you're basically loving God. The main way we show love for God is by showing love for other people (ie. our fellow brothers and sisters under God). So, by showing love for your parents and family, you're also showing love for God. Of course, when you factor in things like atheism/agnosticism and even non-Christian religions, the issue becomes more complicated. I'm not trying to offend anybody here btw. In fact, I'll say that I DON'T think it's impossible for an atheist to get to Heaven (in other words, I'm an Inclusivist).

I know you're an atheist, but let's suppose you did believe in God. If you love your family and parents, then isn't it also important to give thanks to the being that made their existence and your ability to love them possible (God)? It isn't your family that gave you the ability to love. It's God who gave you that ability. And so, when you love somebody, it's important to be thankful to God for giving you both such a wonderful gift and such wonderful people in your life.

See, this is what I was saying before. True Christians, followers of Christ, who listened to his message rather than the people who came after and turned him into a deity, don't exist. We 'unbelievers' find it rather condescending that you modern-day xtians think that 'atheists can get into heaven' - even though we don't believe in it. Isn't it enough to try and love your fellow man without bringing God into the equation? It all depends on your mindset, really - being a good person according to basic standards - no killing, stealing, raping, harming etc - doesn't depend on your belief in the divine.

Modern Christians are basically rubbish Buddhists, discuss.

I'm far from pissed off; a little tired, but actually I am in a great mood (so far).
Just because I say what I mean and mean what I say doesn't mean I am "pissed off".
I simply don't mince words and am not going to tip-toe around any given subject just because of a few delicate flowers.
As for a deep philosophical discussion:
Overanalyzing religion is a bit contradictory, innit?
Blindfaith and all that... and besides, say a farmer walks across the meadow. Spies a pile of horse shit, sends it to a lab for analysis.
Result? It's horse shit, regardless of how many parts this and how many parts that and how many hours used up talking about it.
Just an analogy, no offense.

It seems that it should go without saying that the things you mentioned above are wrong.
It's just common sense, and I certainly don't require a list of commandments telling me this.
And as for the original teachings of Christ:
Why does that even need to be made into a religion, in the first place?
All you need to know in life is basically, don't fuck others over, and if you don't like something being done to you, chances are pretty good others won't like it if you do it to them.
The Golden Rule, is all it is; it doesn't need a religion or leaders/followers, a book or any of that.

This thread basically seems to be Dawkins' arguments for atheism plus an apologetic Christian outlook on religion.

Studying Socrates lately makes me think that early Christians just distorted Plato to create a messiah for themselves.

If there's no God, then why should we act decently? No God=no moral law higher than our own, and if there's no moral law higher than our own to measure "right" and "wrong" by, then my morality is no more right than Hitler's was, and if there's no right and wrong, then why should any of us feel compelled to love our fellow man?

If that doesn't make sense, let me know and I'll try to explain it better...it's the most convincing argument for the existence of God, IMO, since it's the problem that plagued even the most adamant of atheists I.E. Sigmund Freud.

Also, the secret to being able to tolerate religion: don't take the Bible literally. It was written by humans and it has faults. Intelligent believers don't believe in the creation story, so don't make yourself look like an idiot by railing against it.

I think George Carlin pretty much sais it all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o

I believe ppl should be allowed to belief whatever they want to as long as they can keep to themselves... but it still annoys me greatly when I "speak" with other people about personal beliefs if they believe in crazy shit- because I always end up thinking to myself "how the fuck can they believe in this kind of bullshit?!?" - doesn't matter if it is God, crystals, astrology, ghosts, or ufos - normally i don't talk about my "belief", only with ppl with same opinions as myself, cuz I don't want to waste my time argueing with some nutcases who takes the bible literaly while ignoring any critisism or any logical sense.

... I think religion is a total waste of time and pointless in modern societies, but I can understand if ppl believe it has a cultural value, or the set of morals have value, even though those are derrives from personal interpretation. Hmm... That's another funny thing; eterpretation... other than that, I think religion is scary, or rather very religious fucktards - doesn't matter if they yell "allah" in every other sentence or believe anti-christ and jeus' second coming will happen within the next few years.
I don't like really boring lame geeky danish christians either, they are not fanatic in particular, they are just... very lame, and I don't believe in lameness, turning the other cheek, love your enemies etc, or sitting in the church singing about how much god loves you... ha ha ha... rather silly when you think about it.


bullshit vs bullshit (just for fun - check out the bullshit around 3rd minute - tihii)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMy7fPRoTAI

Eww stay away from Kant. When you claim that people who cut off women's clitorises follow the same moral law as I do then you are just flat out wrong.

Read Hume, where our moral pronouncements follows from the usefulness or the benefits which come from those moral actions. It is similar to Dawkins' evolutionary view on morality where what benefits life and the safety of the group becomes the social norm. Our morals can be universal because what is beneficial to one group's survival is very similar to another's, but not necessarily so which leads to some discrepancies on morality. Spartans murdered weak babies, we have modern abortions which some people are fine with which all arises due to the benefits which people see follow from that action.

I completely disagree in just about every way. First, because the divine command theory of morality is flawed. Either something is a moral rule because God commands it, in which case morality is meaningless because if God commanded us to kill it would be just as moral as the command not to kill (and to prove my point, there are commands in the bible telling us to kill people- the seed of Amalek in particular), or there is a morality beyond God and he just knows what it is- meaning that the morality is in a sense higher than God, which most monotheists would disagree with.

Secondly, there is an entire field of philosophy devoted to morality independent of religion, a.k.a. ethics, which inquires into right and wrong through rational and critical examination of moral beliefs. Next to no philosopher argues for ethical relativism or subjectivity anymore, the two theories you seem to suggest are the only alternatives to divine command morality. Most ethicists agree that there can be absolute moral rules necessary to the survival of any society, that there are moral rules that can be found in nearly all societies, and then there is the whole sub-branch of ethics called utilitarianism which states that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences.

And there can still just be plain old simple morality without God. I don't believe in God, yet I don't steal or murder or rape and pillage? Why? Partially because there are negative consequences for me if I do, but partially because through empathy, I know that it feels wrong to do so- I can say "its wrong for me to steal x, because if someone stole y from me I would not like it," So yep, I'm going to have to completely disagree with you heatseeker.



Well... kind of. I'll just say I agree because I don't need to bore you guys with a big historical block of text about the relations between Rome and Christianity. But I will say that the Roman princepes were not dictators, and if we're going to call them anything besides princepes, it would be emperor . Sorry, the roman history nerd in me had to.

I think you kind of missed my point. My point is that the existence of morality kind of proves the existence of some type of higher being. Not the Christian or Judeo God, which makes your whole "just because God said it doesn't mean it's right" thing null, which contradicts the whole idea of God in itself.

I honestly don't really understand what you're trying to say in your second paragraph. That morality can come from logic? Please explain this more...

And your last point might suffice for most people, but you're basically saying that stealing is wrong because you don't like it. But who are you to tell me that? Maybe I like stealing, and I'll do it all I want...how can you say that I'm wrong?

What Heatseeker suggested, at the very least, suggests the Deistic God. Which can easily be justified as long as you believe nature (ie. time and space) had some kind of beginning. That's probably why Deism is becoming increasingly popular among scientists (particularly Astronomers) - they can believe in God while still keeping it "science friendly" (I do admittedly have to agree with Dawkins about how Christian beliefs could be a problem in certain fields of science, not because of divine belief, but because of some of the moral convictions you'd have against hot topics like cloning). The only real way nature could've been created is for something greater than itself (ie. "supernature") to have created it. Otherwise, you basically have to believe that nature "just is" (ie. exists infinitely).

What I think is most important in "understanding God" is letting go of a lot of the childish notions of God you pick up as a kid. God is not an "invisible man with a white beard living in the clouds", the devil is not some "guy with horns living in a firey pit", etc. Rather God is simply the greatest and most absolute power in existence, who binds the universe together, established natural law (even if you're an Atheist, you can't deny that there's a certain intelligence in the way nature functions), created life (ie. us) in some way, gave us the ability to rationally think, etc. This basic description is in-tune to the kind of God Einstein (and earlier, Spinoza) believed in. I like to call what they (along with more recent figures like Antony Flew) believe(d) in the "Scientific God" since it's a more impersonal God that exists but is also "science-friendly" (ie. doesn't necessarily interfere with personal lives, or even give us an afterlife - so, in essence, it's Deism). The Christian God has the same underlying traits (establishing natural law, establishing rational thought, etc.), but is much more personal, so justification of Him is more difficult and at least partially left up to faith.

Now this doesn't necessarily "prove" God's existence. But, at the very least, it justifies the possibility. Because, any way you look at it, either God created nature or nature (including existence) is just one big accident.

I think part of Jesus' mission when he was here on this Earth was to dispel certain OT notions of God (this is also one way I could respond to Zad's concerns about the rather militant nature of the OT God). For example, his teaching "Love your neighbor, pray for your enemy" was probably deliberately in direct contrast with Moses teaching, "Love your neighbor, hate your enemy."

I agree with you that the Old Testament, particularly in today's world, is a very difficult document to analyze. Particularly because you have to somehow keep your analysis within the spirit of the time-period in which its events were taking place, which is very difficult if not almost impossible.

no no... and NO!

without repeating Brahm too much....


1st of all... morality isn't some kind devine intervention

2nd of all... morality differs from cultural to culture

3rd of all... whenever a person enters a relationship with other people in a society they also sign a social contract: They need to follow a set of rules in order to surstain society's existence and their own right to be a part of it. Negative actions such as murder, raping and stealing within a society has never benefitted anyone in a society and nobody ever liked to get exposed to any of them, thus isn't not okay. In old days you would either have been killed yourself, paid a dept to the family, and/or kicked out of the given society.
Morality derrives from feelings and a sense of justice. Without feelings we wouldn't be able to feel sorrow, and thus wouldn't care if one of your family was murdered. But without feelings and morality societies and mankind wouldn't exist in the first place; we simply wouldn't be able to survive, even animals living in groups have social contracts, despite being primitive.
Sure, as we advance in technology, and as society grow it may be too abstract to think of social contracts, cuz your neighbour have his own life and so does people living 50 km from you. But I think it is everyone's interest to be able to walk on the streets without getting killing and raped (in that order). And even though you might not care all that much for safety of other people in other countries, you still want to have some sort of contract with them to avoid war.

4th of all... people are able to feel some sort of empathy and sympathy towards other people, even though they are a traits that belongs to the female brain - a trait that derrives from the need to take care of babies and children.

And just because it may be desirable for God to exist (which it isn't, Biblical God, especially the OT one, is one of the most vile and hateful characters in literature) doesn't mean there is any basis for religious belief, or that religion has any sort of factual excuse. You could say that using the Bible as a moral guide makes a better person (even though I don't really see how it would), but that would be exactly the same thing as saying that the epic of Gilgamesh provides you with moral guidance, or the norse sagas, or Beowulf, or any other piece of ancient literature.
Are we discussing the credibility of religious beliefs or the social value of religious beliefs? In the case of the former, there is no rational reason to believe in any sort of religious story. Why should religion be awarded less skepticism or critical thinking than any other issue, like physics, or gastronomy, or economics? Is it the spiritual aspect? Well, spirituality is not uncompromisingly bonded to religion. Nor is morality.
In the case of the latter, while it is true that religion has caused a lot of good in the world, it has also caused inhuman amounts of suffering, which far outweigh the good. And is the good done in the name of religion only possible with religious belief? Unlike the bad, no. I propose to you the Hitchens challenge: "Name me one moral act done in the name of religion that could not have been done by an atheist". To mirror that, how many acts of senseless violence have been perpetraded and only made possible because of the executor's religious beliefs?

Frigid, EVERY intelligent theist questions his faith and his beliefs at some point. Every intelligent theist goes through some kind of religious dilemma sometimes. But if you naturally have faith (which many people do) and you personally believe you're a better person while having it than you would be if you didn't have it (note: I'm not saying this specifically in defense of Christianity itself - just in defense of basically whatever somebody religiously believes in), you should maintain it best you can. Rationality isn't completely universal. What one person may find completely rational, another person may find irrational (this is especially true when it comes to religion). Either you accept the historicity of the stories in The Bible or you don't (and if you don't, more power to you). But don't go around telling other people what to think. That just makes you every bit as bigoted and narrow-minded as these crazy fundies.

And as for that "Hitchens Challenge", of course there's technically no "moral act" a Christian can do that an atheist can't also do. Morality isn't simply about doing "good deeds" (you could easily just do "good deeds" for selfish reasons). It's also about what kind of general person you are.