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[Hiiri]

Claiming that we cannot use the bible to argue against Christianity is just plain wrong and hypocritical.

Why? Have I used it in any arguments? At all?

You are free to use it if you wish, but make sure your arguments stay in relevant reality, because the way you are arguing now you only have points against a society that existed thousands of years ago.

Yes, that's exactly what it is. Shepherd superstition thousands of years ago... still people buy it all over the world...

And you really should start to argue for Christianity with Christian points, if you want to keep calling yourself a Christian. If not, then you should really rethink about your true beliefs.

Like in the issue of killing and abortions. You may get a bad score on karma when killing human. But it's weather very bad, bad, little bad, acceptable bad, is largely determine by the taboo in that society. And you get a way to climbing back up by collecting good score card (Do laugh, its a real practice in Taoism, a good-deed-bad-deed card, to record what you did). Also, it not decided by unchallenged written words, but different abbots in different temples. Its more like a voting system, enough people believes its degree of bad, and degree of good. And you can climb up the ladders faster or demoted, depend on the view of general public believes. Not a bad system for social structure stability.

Sounds a bit like how our scriptures are read; pick what you want to believe (and ignore the rest). Except, of course, there is no old tome to get justifications for bad deeds.

Edit:

You're right, the proper analogy is to the morality of ingesting poison to remove a ~MAGICAL TAPEWORM~ that could potentially one day become a ~BEAUTIFUL, SENTIENT BUTTERFLY~ from ones own intestines.

Lol, what? Eep, hand over the poison!

[Criptfeind]

Never called myself a Christian. Not arguing currently for or against Christianity.

Just pointing out that when you say religion fosters hate, although not completely wrong, you are wrong.

Also:

And you really should start to argue for Christianity with Christian points

What? Why would I do that? How about we start arguing with facts?

[counting]

Like in the issue of killing and abortions. You may get a bad score on karma when killing human. But it's weather very bad, bad, little bad, acceptable bad, is largely determine by the taboo in that society. And you get a way to climbing back up by collecting good score card (Do laugh, its a real practice in Taoism, a good-deed-bad-deed card, to record what you did). Also, it not decided by unchallenged written words, but different abbots in different temples. Its more like a voting system, enough people believes its degree of bad, and degree of good. And you can climb up the ladders faster or demoted, depend on the view of general public believes. Not a bad system for social structure stability.

Sounds a bit like how our scriptures are read; pick what you want to believe (and ignore the rest). Except, of course, there is no old tome to get justifications for bad deeds.

Society always changes over time, religions have to adapt. And its not what you choose to believe matters, its the judge and jury. But who make this new acceptance doctrines valid? By the hand of GOD? I think not. It's people doing the judgement as it always is. And if the right of choosing the jury is not open to generals, but always look inside the religion power structure. You get an uneven and unstable religion, so it has to give the public a say. Giving enough time to evolved with new generations enter the religion power structure, even queers can be fathers. Priests will giving "new preaches" to the followers. (Same stuff different angles.)

[Bohandas]

Like in the issue of killing and abortions. You may get a bad score on karma when killing human. But it's weather very bad, bad, little bad, acceptable bad, is largely determine by the taboo in that society. And you get a way to climbing back up by collecting good score card (Do laugh, its a real practice in Taoism, a good-deed-bad-deed card, to record what you did). Also, it not decided by unchallenged written words, but different abbots in different temples. Its more like a voting system, enough people believes its degree of bad, and degree of good. And you can climb up the ladders faster or demoted, depend on the view of general public believes. Not a bad system for social structure stability.

Sounds a bit like how our scriptures are read; pick what you want to believe (and ignore the rest). Except, of course, there is no old tome to get justifications for bad deeds.

Well, there is the Tao Te Ching, but that begins by explictly denying that it (or any other book, for that matter) is infallible.

[counting]

Like in the issue of killing and abortions. You may get a bad score on karma when killing human. But it's weather very bad, bad, little bad, acceptable bad, is largely determine by the taboo in that society. And you get a way to climbing back up by collecting good score card (Do laugh, its a real practice in Taoism, a good-deed-bad-deed card, to record what you did). Also, it not decided by unchallenged written words, but different abbots in different temples. Its more like a voting system, enough people believes its degree of bad, and degree of good. And you can climb up the ladders faster or demoted, depend on the view of general public believes. Not a bad system for social structure stability.

Sounds a bit like how our scriptures are read; pick what you want to believe (and ignore the rest). Except, of course, there is no old tome to get justifications for bad deeds.

Well, there is the Tao Te Ching, but that begins by explictly denying that it (or any other book, for that matter) is infallible.

Good thing about double negative. Always leave room. Structurally make a sense unable to be analyzed, like the statement : "this statement is wrong". Make your head scratch, and exactly what it is trying to do. Its not directly tell you what is meant, but indirectly guide you to where is should lead.

P.S Tao Te Ching 道德經, also not used as religious text first. Its philosophy books. But later adapted into Taoism, and people who read it not using to guild the moral in life, but rather spiritual one.

p.s.s. Don't ask me to translate it, its way too time consuming even for me , beside its not the exact words in it that matters, but rather an idea of what it is like.

[Bauglir]

I consider pain to always be preferable to death, especially if the question is posed given the assumption that there is no afterlife (If I find myself in Hell after I die, I will breathe a sigh of relief ( assuming that my mouth hasn't been stabbed shut with skewers or something like that, but even then I'll be thinking it)).

And the masturbation analogy; sperm contains millions of little babies in there. Thus it must be wrong to kill all of them, without even giving them a chance of fertilization and life. Just like a fetus.

Sperm are part of your body. They contain your genome. A fetus is not part of your body; It has its own unique genome. Masturbation would be more analogous to cutting yourself (which I have no problem with if that's what you wann do) than to abortion.

Actually, a sperm contains only a part of your genome, and the chromosomes it contains are always modified (by means of crossing over with its opposite number as a diploid), so that a sperm never contains a set of alleles on a chromosome that you can find on a chromosome in its originator. Given that genetic variation is defined by allele combinations (disregarding mutation, which is irrelevant here), I think the line is a lot murkier than you think.

If you want to argue about where a creature becomes truly independent, you aren't going to find a convenient dividing line anywhere, because our reproductive cycle was not set up with moral quandaries in mind (whether you think it was "set up" at all, is a whole other issue that I don't think we want to argue about right now).

[irmo]

Issues of...
... homosexuality (Because.. who knows?).
... inequality of women and slaves (Bible has a chapter on slaves. Women are not equal in any religious sense).
... pro-violence and death (Killing infidels. Capital punishment).
... abortion and stem cell research (Human well-being is secondary to God's will).
... advocating ignorance (Science and proper education is bad. Ignorance generates hate).
... teaching children that they will burn in hell (Child abuse).
... condemning sex & birth control (Overpopulation of the globe. STD's).
... generally opposing humanism in favor of the invisible king in the heavens.

There's a few for starters. Did you even have to ask?

So I'm a Christian, and:
- every priest of my faith that I've personally met has been either a woman or a gay man
- we're opposed to capital punishment* and (unnecessary) war**
- we generally see abortion as unfortunate but sometimes necessary, because human well-being is God's will
- more than half of the adults in my congregation have advanced degrees
- we teach children that God loves them and wants them to treat each other with kindness
- there is a book of erotic poetry in the Bible, which we occasionally read from in church
and,
- we believe that the invisible king in the heavens chose to be human.

Which is to say that we're very diverse, and you can't get an accurate picture of what Christians are like from any one source including the Bible, because we're very diverse in how we use the Bible, also.


* The core belief of our faith is that God was wrongly sentenced to death by the civil authorities. This does influence how some Christian traditions think about the death penalty.
** Opinions vary on whether war is ever necessary.

[lemon10]

-snip-

[/quote]That may be what you and the people you know believe, but that isn't representative of the christian church as a whole even today (and definitely not the church in the past), and some of the things are flat out wrong (eg. in many parts of the world women/gays can't be priests, they support laws banning abortion because they consider it murder).

[Bohandas]

they support laws banning abortion because they consider it murder).

You have misleadingly combined a non-theological issue with a theological one. It would be better stated as "They think abortion is murder. They support laws opposing abortion because (however hypocritical they may otherwise be on this subject) their religion says that murder is wrong."

Also, can you prove that it isn't?

[ECrownofFire]

Never called myself a Christian. Not arguing currently for or against Christianity.

Just pointing out that when you say religion fosters hate, although not completely wrong, you are wrong.

Ooh, here's an opportunity to link THIS again.

[G-Flex]

Issues of...
... homosexuality (Because.. who knows?).
... inequality of women and slaves (Bible has a chapter on slaves. Women are not equal in any religious sense).
... pro-violence and death (Killing infidels. Capital punishment).
... abortion and stem cell research (Human well-being is secondary to God's will).
... advocating ignorance (Science and proper education is bad. Ignorance generates hate).
... teaching children that they will burn in hell (Child abuse).
... condemning sex & birth control (Overpopulation of the globe. STD's).
... generally opposing humanism in favor of the invisible king in the heavens.

There's a few for starters. Did you even have to ask?

So I'm a Christian, and:
- every priest of my faith that I've personally met has been either a woman or a gay man
- we're opposed to capital punishment* and (unnecessary) war**
- we generally see abortion as unfortunate but sometimes necessary, because human well-being is God's will
- more than half of the adults in my congregation have advanced degrees
- we teach children that God loves them and wants them to treat each other with kindness
- there is a book of erotic poetry in the Bible, which we occasionally read from in church
and,
- we believe that the invisible king in the heavens chose to be human.

Which is to say that we're very diverse, and you can't get an accurate picture of what Christians are like from any one source including the Bible, because we're very diverse in how we use the Bible, also.


* The core belief of our faith is that God was wrongly sentenced to death by the civil authorities. This does influence how some Christian traditions think about the death penalty.
** Opinions vary on whether war is ever necessary.

I think the problem here is that some people like to lump "Christianity" into one big pile even though beliefs, especially about social issues, tend to vary wildly. Roman Catholicism is not the same as fundamentalist Protestantism is not the same as, say, some of the more liberal Christian ideologies (which you seem to subscribe to).

they support laws banning abortion because they consider it murder).

[...]
Also, can you prove that it isn't?

Prove that abortion isn't murder? That depends on where you draw the line at what is considered a human life with a right to, well, not be destroyed. From a secular point of view, it's pretty clear that a fertilized egg cell, blastocyst, or tiny embryo has no real qualities that should cause it to be considered a "human being" any more than a swab of your own cheek cells or a culture of cancer cells should be. On the other end of the spectrum, a viable human fetus of normal development shouldn't be treated much differently on either side of the birth canal (unless there are extenuating circumstances, such as the mother's safety being at risk if it's brought to term). The real question is where you draw the line in the middle.

[Glowcat]

they support laws banning abortion because they consider it murder).

You have misleadingly combined a non-theological issue with a theological one. It would be better stated as "They think abortion is murder. They support laws opposing abortion because (however hypocritical they may otherwise be on this subject) their religion says that murder is wrong."

Also, can you prove that it isn't?

More like they are against Abortion because they consider fetal life important enough to be a "person" due to either ideas of a soul or pure species bigotry. But anybody rational enough realizes that we determine status as people by sentience, not genetics. Rational people also recognize the significant harm that comes from preventing abortion to both freedom and prosperity.

[Bohandas]

they support laws banning abortion because they consider it murder).

[...]
Also, can you prove that it isn't?

Prove that abortion isn't murder? That depends on where you draw the line at what is considered a human life with a right to, well, not be destroyed. From a secular point of view, it's pretty clear that a fertilized egg cell, blastocyst, or tiny embryo has no real qualities that should cause it to be considered a "human being" any more than a swab of your own cheek cells or a culture of cancer cells should be. On the other end of the spectrum, a viable human fetus of normal development shouldn't be treated much differently on either side of the birth canal (unless there are extenuating circumstances, such as the mother's safety being at risk if it's brought to term). The real question is where you draw the line in the middle.

That depends on how secular you wanna get. From an extreme reductionist point of view there is little difference between a human embryo, a human fetus and a human adult (and for that matter, there also isn't much appreciable difference between a human being and any other animal)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That depends on how secular you wanna get. From an extreme reductionist point of view there is little difference between a human embryo, a human fetus and a human adult (and for that matter, there also isn't much appreciable difference between a human being and any other animal)

What does this have to do with secularism?

[Realmfighter]

That may be what you and the people you know believe, but that isn't representative of the christian church as a whole even today (and definitely not the church in the past), and some of the things are flat out wrong (eg. in many parts of the world women/gays can't be priests, they support laws banning abortion because they consider it murder).

The Fuck?

Sorry, Your not a Religious Stereotype, ergo your example is invalid?