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| Thread: Does Religion fall apart once you decide to pick and choose? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 · «PREV |
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privatehudson
Responsible
Legendary Hero
The Ultimate Badass
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posted January 14, 2003 11:14 AM |
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Perhaps, but which part of God's word? You could literally find a passage in your bible or the Jewish texts to support anything given loose interpretation. Want to kill homosexual people? Sure there's passages of the bible you could interpret for that! Want to kill philistines (people roughly corresponding geogrphically with modern day northern Israel or Lebanon) Sure! There's enough of the bible to interpret that also. And in that lies the problem, you cannot exactly say what god or those people meant in those writings, you are placing a common interpretation on someone else's work in the same way people have adopted Marx and Engels and turned it into the evils of Stalinism, others use the bible for evil. This is only possible because no-one is ever sure what your god or disciples could have meant and what context it could be used in.
If "We are informed by men but must weigh the words ourselves through careful study." Is this so different than someone who chooses their own morals guided by society? It still comes down to individual morality, god or not......
Stalin and Mao were madmen with no idea of what they meant, besides that you miss the point, both picked on religious groups not on any specific moral grounds but on an overall wish to eliminate opposition. If you look at the time around WWII, stalin was more than pleased to permit churches within the Kremlin and allow religious groups amongst their armed forces when he needed them. Both fought religion because religion was a powerful political influence within their country, their morals were secondary to this. Their morals was survival through elimination of any possible opponent, religion got in the way politically to these people.
And I'd hardly think you could claim Stalin was out to force the religious might (sarcasm note here) of nazi germany into non-belief, hitler had done a damn good job of that already 
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dArGOn
Famous Hero
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posted January 17, 2003 08:18 AM |
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Quote
“If "We are informed by men but must weigh the words ourselves through careful study." Is this so different than someone who chooses their own morals guided by society? It still comes down to individual morality, god or not......”
Good point. It can come very close to individual morality, but I think there are differences.
One Christians believe in divine revelation thus the Bible was not merely a human production. Two Christians believe in the leading of the Holy Spirit, thus if we seek Him diligently we can have divine understanding of what the text means. Three, Christians believe in a community, thus we should have our views discovered through community dialogue not just by our own interpretation. Fourth, we believe in individual salvation, thus the individual is responsible for weighing the thoughts of the community in accordance with their own understanding. Lastly the Bible does have certain absolutes that it is difficult to rationalize if you read the Bible carefully (i.e. hard to twist “love thy neighbor” ethic into “screw your neighbor and take his wife and car” ethic…hehe). I know many of these statements may sound “out there” to a non-Christian….so I guess in the end it comes down to faith.
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PsYkOtIc-Dra...
Known Hero
Master Thief
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posted January 17, 2003 03:46 PM |
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ha
GOD this thread is old  (Emphasizing on the GOD part hehe)
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Girls=Evil - Here let me show you -> Girl=My Time -> Time=Money -> Money=Root Of All Evil, Therefore -> Girls=Pure Evil
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