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A Life Without Religion


Guyver

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38 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

Can you give us the definition then. According to Webster's dictionary it has 4 meanings.

If you just looked it up, why would you need me to give you the definition?  I accept the dictionary definition of religion without controversy.  I asked you specifically about your belief system, as you suggested I should.  

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@Guyver

Life without religion just means that you can create the point, purpose, and meaning to your finite existence. There doesn't need to be a religious or spiritual model of reality to look at life from. We're all farts in the wind. 

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2 hours ago, Will Due said:

What's interesting to me is that it's possible that those who think they're living with religion actually are not and that those who think they're living without religion actually are.

Goodness me you speak some *****.

Seriously Will 

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2 hours ago, Will Due said:

 

What's interesting to me is that it's possible that those who think they're living with religion actually are not and that those who think they're living without religion actually are.

 

 

Does this also apply to you?

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8 minutes ago, Nuclear Wessel said:

Does this also apply to you?

 

Of course.

 

 

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3 hours ago, papageorge1 said:

I’m thinking it’s no longer clear what the word ‘religion’ means  in its colloquial usage in the year 2021. 
 

I think I can apply the terms ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’ to myself. I am a follower of Advaita Vedanta Hindu philosophy and Theosophical/Spiritual stuff. I have no affiliation with any organization.

I think we need to just ask people what they believe and not ask if they have a life with/without religion.

I didn’t look it up, but in its most common usage, religion is a noun, it’s a thing where people share a common system of beliefs and practices, that may include any number of different observations, or celebrations of various events or people, as in Christianity or Islam.  Why are you reluctant to discuss your beliefs or religion?

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The question is:

What really; is religion?

 

 

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41 minutes ago, Xeno-Fish said:

@Guyver

Life without religion just means that you can create the point, purpose, and meaning to your finite existence. There doesn't need to be a religious or spiritual model of reality to look at life from. We're all farts in the wind. 

Ok….but if we were designed, then we’re special farts in the wind.  

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1 minute ago, Will Due said:

 

The question is:

What really; is religion?

 

 

Did you appreciate the definition I just gave?

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3 minutes ago, Guyver said:

Did you appreciate the definition I just gave?

 

Yeah

But is that really what religion is?

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Will Due said:

The question is:

What really; is religion?

Man made ideas.

A mental crutch.

A means for controlling people.

Total BS. 

That should cover most of it.

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Just now, psyche101 said:

Man made ideas.

A mental crutch.

A means for controlling people.

Total BS. 

That should cover most of it.

 

Exactly

Maybe believing and acting upon what you just said though is what religion really is.

A means of controlling yourself.

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Will Due said:

Exactly

Maybe believing and acting upon what you just said though is what religion really is.

A means of controlling yourself.

That's where the second bullet point comes into play.

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7 minutes ago, Will Due said:

 

Yeah

But is that really what religion is?

Why wouldn’t it be?  Do you have a different meaning for the concept that you would like us to consider?

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Just now, psyche101 said:

That's where the second bullet point comes into play.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best.  He’s obviously an intelligent fellow, so he must be able to communicate with more than one sentence or question……one would think.

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1 minute ago, Guyver said:

I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best.  He’s obviously an intelligent fellow, so he must be able to communicate with more than one sentence or question……one would think.

I wouldn't hold me breath. Fortune cookie speak is normally the reply.

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8 minutes ago, Will Due said:

 

Exactly

Maybe believing and acting upon what you just said though is what religion really is.

A means of controlling yourself.

 

 

Or, to put it more plainly, religion is a means of control.  It could be that the makers of the religion wish to control people, and perhaps people like to use religion as a means of self control.

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So maybe there’s good religion and bad religion.  If a person wishes to improve themselves and religion helps that, then that is a good thing.  But some religions like Christianity, teach people that there’s a loving God who made you but if you don’t behave or believe properly, or you fail to get saved by Jesus - that Loving God with throw you into a burning hell where you will suffer forever.

And so many Christians dislike atheists?  What I just said sounds literally crazy and it’s no wonder thinking people don’t accept it.  That makes no sense whatsoever.  God loves you, but he also wants to do the most ridiculous act of hatred ever invented upon you if you don’t cut the mustard.  

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If God is love by nature as the Bible claims and Christians believe, then he would be incapable of intentionally doing such heinous acts.  It just couldn’t happen.  It is a self contradicting proposition that does not compute, since words mean things and love and hate are considered opposites.

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I remember a time when I was on the worship team at Calvary Chapel - bass player - when I began to seriously question the idea that the Bible is Gods Word, you know infallible truth.  I discovered that the apostles were wrong about the end of the world and I had an entire page of scriptural proofs demonstrating this fact.  So, I went to the pastor and assistant pastor and told them I had something I needed to discuss.  I presented my case.  Pastor shrugged and said, “So they made mistakes?  They were people.”

And that was it.  Point not taken.  That same pastor who preaches that the Bible is Gods infallible word, just admitted it has mistakes in it.  Well guess what folks…..again, that does not logically compute.  If it has mistakes, it’s not infallible.  Hello?

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21 minutes ago, Guyver said:

If God is love by nature as the Bible claims and Christians believe, then he would be incapable of intentionally doing such heinous acts.  It just couldn’t happen.  It is a self contradicting proposition that does not compute, since words mean things and love and hate are considered opposites.

Actually in regards to the Bible it’s worse than that. God (Yahweh, a member of a polytheistic religion) starts out as a self-serving sky-daddy/mountain deity who eventually advocates to His “chosen people” for the premeditated genocide of indigenous peoples in order to give them their own country. THEN after a considerable amount of time He’s reworked, by His own people, into the oh-so-loving Creator we’ve come to know. Whether Jew or Christian it’s the height of arrogance and hubris IMO to start out as the perpetrator of atrocities but shift gears to wind up playing the eternal victim. 
 

cormac

Edited by cormac mac airt
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55 minutes ago, Guyver said:

Ok….but if we were designed

Whatever make you feel good or special.

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3 minutes ago, cormac mac airt said:

Actually in regards to the Bible it’s worse than that. God (Yahweh, a member of a polytheistic religion) starts out as a self-serving sky-daddy/mountain deity who eventually advocates to his “chosen people” for the premeditated genocide of indigenous peoples in order to give them their own country. THEN after a considerable amount of time he’s reworked, by his own people, into the oh-so-loving Creator we’ve come to know. Whether Jew or Christian it’s the height of arrogance and hubris IMO to start out as the perpetrator of atrocities but shift gears to wind up playing the eternal victim. 
 

cormac

Ok, but isn’t it actually worse than that?  Moses wrote of the world before the law, that is the one where God killed everything with a flood, but saved Noah, his family and two of each kind of land animal.  So, God made the entire universe (Book of Genesis) created this world to be inhabited by men, created Adam, then Eve as an afterthought or concession since Adam could not breed with any animal….then was displeased with the outcome, and with regret killed everyone but saved a few.

Again, this is just my own thinking, but how could a God powerful enough to create the universe be taken by surprise and be displeased over the outcome.  Am I to believe that Omnipotent and Omniscient God wouldn’t know what would happen if he put man in a garden?  It just doesn’t make sense to me unless God limited himself to not know the outcome beforehand, which also sounds crazy.  That would be like me saying to my golf partners, I’m too good for you, so I’m going to play with one hand.  I couldn’t even play golf with one hand and beat a child.  Anyway, I just don’t think it’s a believable story.  Even if God didn’t know the outcome and was so displeased that he had to kill everyone, why would he save Noah?  Did he think he was going to get a different result by letting the thing live that he needed to kill?  
 

I just don’t think a God, Heavenly Father - if there be one - could be so dumb.  He would have to be smarter than me and even I know that if you take the same thing you had before and do it again, the same result is going to happen.

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2 minutes ago, Xeno-Fish said:

Whatever make you feel good or special.

Religion.  When I was a lost sinner, some people told me that God loved me and that made me feel good.

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1 minute ago, Guyver said:

Ok, but isn’t it actually worse than that?  Moses wrote of the world before the law, that is the one where God killed everything with a flood, but saved Noah, his family and two of each kind of land animal.  So, God made the entire universe (Book of Genesis) created this world to be inhabited by men, created Adam, then Eve as an afterthought or concession since Adam could not breed with any animal….then was displeased with the outcome, and with regret killed everyone but saved a few.

Again, this is just my own thinking, but how could a God powerful enough to create the universe be taken by surprise and be displeased over the outcome.  Am I to believe that Omnipotent and Omniscient God wouldn’t know what would happen if he put man in a garden?  It just doesn’t make sense to me unless God limited himself to not know the outcome beforehand, which also sounds crazy.  That would be like me saying to my golf partners, I’m too good for you, so I’m going to play with one hand.  I couldn’t even play golf with one hand and beat a child.  Anyway, I just don’t think it’s a believable story.  Even if God didn’t know the outcome and was so displeased that he had to kill everyone, why would he save Noah?  Did he think he was going to get a different result by letting the thing live that he needed to kill?  
 

I just don’t think a God, Heavenly Father - if there be one - could be so dumb.  He would have to be smarter than me and even I know that if you take the same thing you had before and do it again, the same result is going to happen.

To your first paragraph, yes there’s no end to the depths of God’s unquestioned wrath. 
 

To your second paragraph, I’d say it has less to do with God, specifically, and more to do with the Israelites, who were originally Canaanite to begin with, trying to reconcile the two gods, Canaanite El and Midianite Yahweh, into what became the Bible’s God Yahweh. Some aspects were undoubtedly irreconcilable. 
 

cormac

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