I think my picture about the south means "OH...I KNOW....I...K-N-O-W!"Originally Posted by The Man
I would post but that might get me banned so here is a image.
A nuke is going off with the words smurf THE SOUTH written on it...oh yeah. The sun is out and there are birds in the distance with a beautiful blue sky and lush green grass...but the important part is smurf the south
Haha, that image would apply perfectly. Unfortunately, I think the censorship of the F-word would rather prevent it from being posted. ;_;
Wow, what this refers to is leviticus 18:22 (I think). The levies, or laws were made to set moral standards and set basic laws to guide the people. This book (leviticus) has a lot of strange, but very logical laws in it. Some are merley religous while others serve ver scientific and phatomable purposes that no one of that time, had much of a grasp on.
Anyways, that aside. Jesus tells us to love our enemies. Opression is not love, and therefore I see many churches in the wrong. I know its a majority that makes the mold, but I am not in that majority. Christains are to be kind to all. Serve the lord and your government at the same time. Those teachings are represeted when Jesus take a coin from a fish's mouth to pay his taxes.
Bipper
Point taken.Anything that reaches for atention, looses credibility in my book.
Yeah, that does seem to happen quite frequently.As an example, religion is being used to justify hate speech against gay people, and it is also being used to justify abstinence-only education. It isn’t that difficult to deduce from this that violence against gay people or teen pregnancies would be more common in areas with such religions.
It's not generally the catholics saying that. It's the same "born-again" blowhards that hate anyone who doesn't march lockstep with their veiws.I am Catholic and I have never heard a priest say that. They talk about forgiveness in the churches I have visited. This is not to say that there are not a few wack jobs in the bunch.(BTW, that would include catholics).
Leviticus was also disregarded by itself. It's a historical reference, not meant to be used except in that time. Kinda like a book about the holocaust isn't meant to encourage such crimes. Leviticus is a WARNING to never incur such things, not a law system to follow. Which it, itself, said. Much like Saddom and Ghamora (sp?).Wow, what this refers to is leviticus 18:22 (I think). The levies, or laws were made to set moral standards and set basic laws to guide the people. This book (leviticus) has a lot of strange, but very logical laws in it. Some are merley religous while others serve ver scientific and phatomable purposes that no one of that time, had much of a grasp on.
Leviticus is part of the bible, considered holy writings. It is just as important as many other parts of the bible. That is like saying that the corinthians were 'just letters'. They were put in the bible to stress points, and the leviticus were laws handed down by God.
Bipper
Leviticus were PUNISHING laws handed down for a people not good enough for him. So that they became more subservient or whatever to his liking. Similar to plagues and mass destruction that he used in other places. An object lesson to everyone else. They were repealed, too.
Punishing laws? They were straight out laws, that had punishments, that would warrent redmetion. Not exactly to make people subserviant, but better servants lol
Either way, the punishments may have been repealed, but to say that that makes the laws nix, would be incorrect.
Bipper
Cool... that means I can sell my daughters into slavery? And I have to burn living cows in my front lawn? Hmm... nice laws.
No, but that by no means implys that sexual immorality or not paying your workers is right. Selling your daughters to slavery was never a law, nor the latter.
If you want to continue this debate vie PM, lets do it there, instead pulling the thread from focus.
Come to America Shadow lol there will be tons of people that will gladly publish your work lol XD.
Post hoc, ergo proptor hoc.
.opt
Since when was my religion crap?How are the actions of Pat Robertson et al not examples of organized religion at work? They are organized, and they are directly related to religious beliefs. Even if they contradict the principles of the original founder of the religion, they are still acting on their religious beliefs, even if those beliefs have nothing to do with the teachings of the founder. I'm baffled by what you say here.
For the purposes of this study, people who claim to be Christians are Christians. You can debate their claims all you want, but the conclusion of this study is that areas that claim to be religious are on the whole less socially advanced than those that do not.
Well, seeing as religious groups are the ones most vehemently pushing abstinence-only agendas, it doesn’t seem to me to be surprising that religious areas have the highest incidences of teen pregnancy, as abstinence-only education simply doesn’t work.That is all fine and dandy, but I belive it has more to do with the adolecence of the situation. I do agree with Jebus here. I can see religon being pulled into this now, as per Jebus's post. Its like the old saying, you can't have good with out evil. It seems to work like a sperctrum. Somthing bad happens in a warzone, yeah it sucks. If somthing bad happens in a peaceful place, it is horrid in relation.
“It can.” It’s not saying it does. Do you have a problem with the implication that it’s a possibility? That’s what I’m getting from your post.Read it again, and see my first problem on this post. The one dealing with the sematincs of the article.
All the article does is repeat the study’s conclusions. How is that mouthy?Quite the opposite, I am merley look at the article, and not the study. The study may be fine; but the article is pretty mouthy if you will.
Evidently you never read sites like Free Republic, then. They’re out there, but due to the rather liberal attitude of most roleplaying games, you won’t find as many of them on, say, Final Fantasy sites.Yeah, science is realy noble in itself. In my mind, science and religon coexsist just fine. I am talking about athiest science, which is fine in most respects, but as far as thier aditude towards others goes, is downright rude and frustrating. The have a "You belive in GOD? Your a fool!" aditude. Granted, there are the overzealous christains, but I run into more overzealous athiests (mainly online) than I do christians.
And again, to pretty much everyone else who has posted, where does the article say that religion DOES cause these things? It just says that it’s a possibility. Evidently, some of you are not equipped to deal with that suggestion.
China is not a free society, which I consider to be a more important factor than its religiosity or lack thereof. And I believe the conclusion of this study was precisely that violence does not occur as frequently in less religious countries. Europe is less religious than America and seems to have less violence in pretty much every study I’ve ever observed. If you have contradicting statistics, I’d like to see links.
While I agree that access to wealth is a strong factor in things like this, and that power corrupts, I’d dispute your conclusion. As an example, religion is being used to justify hate speech against gay people, and it is also being used to justify abstinence-only education. It isn’t that difficult to deduce from this that violence against gay people or teen pregnancies would be more common in areas with such religions.It's about access to wealth. As they say: power corrupts. The creation of social strata of varying power. All religion does is get in the way of social change on occasions, which bogs down the evolution of a culture, but it doesn't contribute to amoral behavior. Except, appearantly, with Catholic Priests... but even that's a matter of "those with power vs. those without".
A lot of people in America actually do believe this crap quite literally. They honestly believe that they’ll only go to heaven if they vote for politicians who oppose gay rights and abortions. It’s not really that far removed from hijackers who think they’ll go to heaven for flying planes into the World Trade Center. The afterlife is a strong motivator in people’s behavior. I think you severely underestimate it.
Since when was comtributing to oyur community and society a bunch of crap?
I'm baptist and all the churches I went to realy don't bring politics into the church. They contribute to the community around them and if the preacher does say something political its probaly something like..
"The elections will be next week. I urge everyone who can vote. To get out there and vote. I don't care who oyu vote for. As long as you vote.. This goes strongly for our young folks in the church."
But maybe thats becuase I goto a predominately black church that doesn't waste there crappy time on politics int he church and do what they are to do. Yet these people are over looked. There are milllions of churches that don't speak out against atheist. Many churches that contributes a lot to society. Many churches who don't preach slander.. They never get media attention. Its already the baptist church that says the most radical bullthat gets media attention.
They only smurfing app0lying for 5% of basicly the christain population in the USA..
I'm sorry if oyur atheist and dealt with assholes that were christains. But oyu have to realise. Some people are just that... Assholes.
We don't allow for such remarks. See you in two weeks.
~Void
I mean there are atheist who are assholes, agnostics who are assholes oyu have people in every single group imaginable to mankind that aare just straight up bastards. There is no way you can say
"Religious people tend ot have the highest population full of asshole closed-minded freaks."
Because that generalization applies to all groups. Which is why this essay is jsut smurfing crud and was meant to attack christainity. Yes verbally attack I mean.
Last edited by lordblazer; 09-28-2005 at 01:14 AM.
Did I anywhere say that I think all people who practice religion are evil human beings? No. There are exceptions; I've acknowledged that.
Furthermore, "this crap" referred to people who take the bible literally. Good job taking my entire post out of context.
As pointed out three times already in this thread, this study does *not* say that religion is always the cause of these things. Just that it's possible.
Here are some observations from me because I like sticking my nose in it.
1) Darwinism and the Theory of Evolution are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Darwin had his own theories concerning the evolution of animals based on bird watching. While his studies did have some merit to the scientific community, there are also errors and outright guesses he made.
2) Under the right conditions, every scientific Law can be unproven. Even gravity. (Kepler's Law, specifically, is the most easily observed "broken" law of science).
3) Fundamentalists of any type are bad. Even fundamental atheists.
4) Where can I find the study? It'd be an interesting read, and I'd prefer to have the facts and judge them for myself than reading what this article-y guy is saying about them.
5) This is a poorly written article. That doesn't mean much to the topic at hand, but I just wanted to say that to boost myself. I'm a bigman.
Basically, I feel this is one of those studies that probably makes the numbers work for it, because they don't quote any numbers at all in the article itself. However, that could be because (as I already said), it's a poorly written article.
Oh, I forgot 6) The vast majority of the "red" states are also the poorer states in the nation. Lack of money = lack of education = increased likelihood of all the bad things this study talks about = lack of resources to get education = lack of money = loop de loop! What does that mean? Well, why are people religious? (Several people in this thread have already said it.) Why? Hope! God will make the bad stuff go away! Why? Because he promised! What I mean is, one explanation for this is the fact that some people grasp at straws. And sometimes religion is one of those straws.
Also, it was said earlier that there are, literally, hundreds of cultural and ethnic distinctions that have the potential to bring conflict.
Also, there are more Americans than most of the other countries listed. If you have more people, there are going to be more murders, more kids with babies, and look! More religious nuts!
Okay, so now that I've not made much sense, here's my real point. While it's certainly possible that religious involvement on a fundamentalist scale is capable of potentially affecting crime rates and other things, there are innumerable other factors (geography, wealth, enviornment, heredity, secular tradition etc, etc) that ALSO influence the "bad things" in the world, and to a much higher degree.
So, someone wants to tell me that the presence of religion is a problem in developed countries, developed countries like America? Not only that, but it's a problem worth my attention? Let's cure AIDS, Cancer, Heart Disease, poverty, child abuse, spousal abuse, animal abuse, depression, hunger, and plain old meanness in the United States before we start worrying about that. I cannot see how there can be a correlation between social ills and religion as clearly defined as it is between other factors that contribute to social ills.
And to finish, stop lumping human beings together. You can't say "ALL CONSERVATIVE CHRISTAINS THINK LIKE ERIC RUDOLPH", because that just isn't true. That's like me saying all Germans think like Hitler.
Oh, and before anyone starts with anything, I'm a rather liberal non-denominational "Christian" as in follower of Christ's teachings. I just keep an open mind.
EDIT: Also, this is a mini-rant directed at no one in particular, besides the mean people of the world. I repeat, this is directed at no one in this thread. This is based primarily off of the article, and the some
couple of science speak posts I saw.
EDIT2: Also, I like the word also.
Signature by rubah. I think.
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