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The Harm Done By Religion


Doug1066

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11 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

True, but it also comes down to perspective. Some are overly emotion, normal emotional, low emotion, or sociopaths. Plus a person might actually have to care what someone thinks to be emotionally hurt by another. 

My two cents is issues start when people tend to take things personal as a rule. I agree with Dee that not everything someone says is about us. And, everyone has a style of communication, we are not all the same. Some are more forthright then others. It is what adds color and flavor to humanity. Typically a somewhat confident person won’t defend or respond to something that has nothing to do with them anyway. And, for the times we are human and have down days conversations of clarity often resolve misunderstandings. 
 

Personally, no one has to like me or what I think and vice versa. I do not like everyone either. :PAnd, for the times something is intended for me I will deal with it then. 
 

I think a good rule of thumb is to work at not taking things personally. 

Edited by Sherapy
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4 hours ago, onlookerofmayhem said:

Larry never learned the difference between your, you're and yore.

Yore kiddin' me!

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1 hour ago, Hammerclaw said:

What is that, desert stoicism? Most people can't turn their feelings on and off like that. I certainly wouldn't want to. I've nurtured the capacity to accept and deal with that kind of pain. No pain, no gain and emotional endurance builds a strengthened psyche. To each their own, of course, but I never hide from the challenge.

I didn't say anything about turning feelings off.  I said we should not have expectations that require others to be in charge of our feelings.  Most of the time when someone gets their feelings hurt it is because they took something personal that was not meant to be personal.

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3 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

I didn't say anything about turning feelings off.  I said we should not have expectations that require others to be in charge of our feelings.  Most of the time when someone gets their feelings hurt it is because they took something personal that was not meant to be personal.

When someone gets in your face and is abusive and insulting, that's meant to be personal. It happened to me, many times in retail. I had very strong emotional responses and I don't repress my emotions, I just don't display them all the time. Also, when something is personally hurtful, it's going to hurt whether it was meant to hurt or not, just like someone accidentally stepping on your foot. Others can incite an emotional response and that makes them subject to our feelings, not in charge of them.

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10 hours ago, joc said:

Because the baby is a myth!  Virgins don't have babies.  Dead people don't come back to life.  With the Church the only doctrine is tithe, tithe, tithe  It's all about the money...and if you buy the false premise of thousands of years ago...that's...not smart...imo.

Well on this subject I must completely disagree with you Partner. Below is an example of a non-sex induced birth, that occurred approximately 6 years ago. The birth occurred in a home that was shared by a man and female cat, so how do you explain this??:blink:

 

04E1920A-F9BF-4F97-90D6-726E9AF9E84A-5252-000005576542A492.jpg

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5 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

When someone gets in your face and is abusive and insulting, that's meant to be personal. It happened to me, many times in retail. I had very strong emotional responses and I don't repress my emotions, I just don't display them all the time. Also, when something is personally hurtful, it's going to hurt whether it was meant to hurt or not, just like someone accidentally stepping on your foot. Others can incite an emotional response and that makes them subject to our feelings, not in charge of them.

So we are talking about different things.   I think bullying was mentioned in the conversation earlier.  That is what you experienced, of course you had strong emotional responses, that is anger, not getting your feelings hurt.   Maybe you don't understand the difference. Bullying is personal whether it is an adult throwing a tantrum and abusing a retail sales person or a football player giving a skinny nerd a swirly in the toilet.    And if you have strong painful emotion from someone's off hand remark then that is what we are talking about and that is up to you, since usually that kind of thing is not personal except when you make it personal.   Yes, we all have emotional ties to people but that isn't what we are talking about either.

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3 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

So we are talking about different things.   I think bullying was mentioned in the conversation earlier.  That is what you experienced, of course you had strong emotional responses, that is anger, not getting your feelings hurt.   Maybe you don't understand the difference. Bullying is personal whether it is an adult throwing a tantrum and abusing a retail sales person or a football player giving a skinny nerd a swirly in the toilet.    And if you have strong painful emotion from someone's off hand remark then that is what we are talking about and that is up to you, since usually that kind of thing is not personal except when you make it personal.   Yes, we all have emotional ties to people but that isn't what we are talking about either.

Who the hell do you think you are to tell someone else when their feelings are hurt and when they're not? Just how arrogant can you get, lady?

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5 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Who the hell do you think you are to tell someone else when their feelings are hurt and when they're not? Just how arrogant can you get, lady?

So when someone gets in your face and yells at you, you don't get angry?  How strange.

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Just now, Desertrat56 said:

So when someone gets in your face and yells at you, you don't get angry?  How strange.

I get very angry and it shows, but on a sales floor, one has to restrain oneself to remain gainfully employed. Some people delight in taking advantage of that. Thank God I'm retired!

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6 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

So when someone gets in your face and yells at you, you don't get angry?  How strange.

No one gets in my face. I'm either too scary or ugly looking for that. 

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5 hours ago, Sherapy said:

Will, is this from The big Blue Book? 

 

Yes.

 

Quote

In your own words, what is the point of the quote, in other words, what are you trying to say? 

 

Parables allow each person to interpret them in accordance with their own intellectual and spiritual endowments. Parables are used to the end that those who desire to know the truth may find it, while those who don't will hear, but fail to understand. Leaving them only more confounded.

Thanks for asking.

 

 

Edited by Will Due
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17 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

No one gets in my face. I'm either too scary or ugly looking for that. 

Usually when someone gets in my face they regret it, crazy people can be very scary, but you can't tell who is crazy until you go off on them inappropriately.   I never react like expected.   

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16 hours ago, jmccr8 said:

Hi Walker

EG one can not claim to believe that something exists and also claim that something does not exist, all one can claim is they have or do not have evidence (in the non-Walkerian dictionary)  and cannot affirm if a god exists or not. That does not mean we can not give a claim a satisfactory critic that any responsible claimant would be willing to substantiate with credible sources. You are not agnostic if you promote any religious-non-religious position and you consistently support Christian perspectives of which none of us are confused by your card shuffling skills but do encourage you not to give up on comedy maybe you can get a gig at Yuk-Yuks.:tu:

Correct 

One can

Know something exists.  (quite easy to establish with evidences) 

Know something doesn't exist (much harder to prove) 

Believe something exists 

Believe something does not exist 

 Deliberately  choose not to form a belief/nonbelief  on a question.

Very rarely a person may never have heard of a concept and have formed no idea about it. However as SOON as this concept  is introduced to themm their mind will  form one of the positions above. 

I said  i was agnostic on different issues  (using agnostic in it's wider sense ) 

My position on everything unknown /unknowable  is not to form a belief or a disbelief construct  about it but to wait until I know. 

I know "god" exists, so it is impossible /irrational  for me to either believe it exists or disbelieve it exists 

Likewise i cant believe I had a mother or disbelieve I had a mother.

I don't know if there is life on Mars, so I  don't form a belief position on the question (although I would like us to find at least evidence of pad life because of the scientific value of such a find )  

The things i promote here are evidence based 

I know I am correct, because the science and data proves my opinions to be correct  Or a the very least i know my opnion is arguable based on current sceince   Beceuse peole have difernt values the y might not reach the same conclusions from data 

Eg a person might still choose to smoke  despite data showing that 30% of smokers die from  smoking 

A person might choose  (for many valid reasons) a non religious/ non spiritual life, despite the data proving that this can add up to10 years of life and a healthier mind and body. .

 

 

 

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20 minutes ago, Will Due said:

 

Yes.

 

 

Parables allow each person to interpret them in accordance with their own intellectual and spiritual endowments. Parables are used to the end that those who desire to know the truth may find it, while those who don't will hear, but fail to understand. Leaving them only more confounded.

Thanks for asking.

 

 

Wouldn't it be simpler to say what you think the truth is, rather than beat around the bush like that? It's never worked for you.

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3 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Wouldn't it be simpler to say what you think the truth is, rather than beat around the bush like that? It's never worked for you.

 

The truth is that some desire to know the truth and some don't. That's why parables work the way they do.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Wouldn't it be simpler to say what you think the truth is, rather than beat around the bush like that? It's never worked for you.

That would require thinking. 

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14 hours ago, XenoFish said:

It would be better for you to spend some real time with your shadow. Instead of hiding behind your spiritual beliefs. If you don't spend time bringing the unconscious to conscious awareness, you'll never truly progress.

A dark night of the soul tends to pull all the horrible stuff about ourselves to the surface. The things we mask and hide through our varying belief. 

It is often a very ugly and depressing process. Especially when there is no way to hide from it.

I get the feeling you talk a good game, but you have many demons yet to face. Perhaps one day you'll start to become indifferent toward others. Realizing that there isn't one answer, no single truth. Maybe, just maybe, you will understand that religion and spirituality are just mask.

Considering it's been 10 years of forced self work and still much to go. I hope you find your true and honest path one day.

There will be so many illusions and delusions you will need to let go of. 

I do wish you luck, you might find yourself one day. 

Very revealing and brave post

yes we should all be able to access ad use our subconscious as we do our conscious mind 

If we can do this then we don't need to have either subconscious or conscious fears, anger, envy, spite, etc 

In other words there doesn't need to be, ANYWHERE in our minds   any darkness of any kind .

Have love strength  compassion joy etc in both parts of your mind and there is no room for darkness 

There is NO dark night of the soul for some people There is no ugliness in some people,

Some people have nothing horrible in any part of their mind  Part of living a happy life is to surround yourself with such people, and try to be one yourself 

Indifference to anything is a dead end, and a negative outcome.

Instead aim for love, joy, wonder, compassion ,empathy, and all those other positive traits of humanity 

Indifference is sometimes sought to ease a pain which should never exist in the first  place 

Use that understanding of mind to establish why you feel as you do  (go back to their origins in your experiences and your thoughts, from  your earliest experiences) and to alter those feelings (ALL of  these comments are generic I appreciate you don't value anything I contribute in this area,  but others might ) 

Like any human constructs, religion and faith can be masks, but they can also be an integrated part of a whole human being.

This varies from person to person  

it is like love.(some don't every really have it, or understand what human love truly is because  it was never taught/modelled /introduced to them, as a child  ) 

Some people fake it.

Some people  live it,  and it is the motivation for everything in their lives. 

Plus, you lack any personal experience with the force /power/entity which exists and interacts with some humans..

 That makes a big difference.

 You think its all false or fake. 

Others  KNOW that it is not necessarily so. 

 

Edited by Mr Walker
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10 hours ago, XenoFish said:

The thing to me is that if God is supposedly love. Then a thorough understand of what love (on all levels) is. The process of becoming god( a loving being) would be mostly internal. Love others as you would love yourself. I think most of the Christian teaching involve a inner to outer approach. Perhaps this is just me thinking about it in terms of mysticism. So too "connect" to God one would need to embody God's qualities. This is of course considering that God isn't a prick.

This is one of the most insightful posts I have read on UM.

it is absolutely correct .

 Of course that is just my opinion and you are free to disagree with me :) 

In my experience it goes one step further. 

You become a part of  "god," and a part of   "god"  becomes you 

You are one with "god," and through this, one with all the universe 

Thus, first you must love yourself, but in doing so you love all parts of yourself, which includes god and everything in the universe..

 (in practice this is limited by our human minds and bodies but basically the love determines how you think and behave)

  Unless you hate (some part of)   yourself or fear  (some part of )   yourself, then you cannot hate or fear others, because they ARE you  

 

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10 hours ago, Liquid Gardens said:

"Do you believe" on its own does usually (not always) compel/suggest a yes or no answer.

I offered yes-or-no answers to each of the questions when the suite of answers adequately described my state of belief. Had I been asked only Do you believe Paris is bigger than Boston? then my no would not, in my opinion, represent the state of my belief well enough to prevent foreseeable misunderstanding by some fair-minded listeners

If for some reason the questionner declined to ask me the complementary follow-up question (Do you believe Paris is no bigger than Boston?), then I might insist on modifying my no answer to the first question to reflect the true state of my beliefs.

Lawyers sometimes call that "yes or no with an explanation." The explanation might be that I lack enough information to form a meaningful or useful belief on the subject matter, which is the truth about my lack-of-beliefs in both the QoG scenario and Boston-Paris one.

If "yes or no with an explanation" is a permissible response (and a preferable response in my estimation, me being the one responsible for communicating the truth of the matter), then the question about belief may fairly be said not to compel either the answer yes, say no more or else the answer no, say no more.

10 hours ago, Liquid Gardens said:

I think the original question was not 'what' you believed technically, but 'do' you believe. 

But if the questionner were uninterested in what I believe, then what is their purpose in asking me anything about some subject if not to learn whether I believe something about the subject, and if so, what that belief is?

Edited by eight bits
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10 hours ago, Hammerclaw said:

He is a prick. According to Christian theology, God is the source of everything, good and evil. It makes sense, in a Universe completely God's creation. It's a hard concept for Bible thumpers to wrap their heads around. God created imperfection and evil, in a perfectly natural universe where the chips fall where they may. 

The average person doesn't believe, not really. It's like astrology, where, objectively, we don't believe in it, but subjectively we kind of like to think we do. It's only later in life we realize death and God are very profound concepts and the sometimes trite and pithy morality tales we're told about them hardly do them justice. The perspective of the Ancients on the topic, whose literature is our reference material, was, frankly, quite limited. 

Judeo-Christian meditation, at least in the classic sense, is a different beast from Buddhist meditation. Instead of emptying oneself, one embraces the concept of omnipresent deity to achieve a rapport with one's inner duality of flesh and spirit. The flesh may walk in the garden alone, but the spirit is never alone, ever. A good example of this sort of meditation is perfectly encapsulated in Psalm 63.                     

Psalm 63 KJV - O God, thou art my God; early will I - Bible Gateway

I dont  believe in creation but I see the myth in another way.

ie an attempt to explain the duality of man's nature and the existence of good and evil 

A god COULD have created  us ab robots without free will, but we know we are not like this.

Thus early writers had to use what was to explain creation.

How to explain the duality of man kind ?

Well basically, because we had a choice, and we made the "wrong choice"  Very early on the bible points out that, of the many inhabited planets and races only mankind was temtped and fell 

The new testament mirrors the old but emphasises that every individual continues to have a choice about how to think and to behave.  

and yes of course imperfection is required both for growth and change Only if we choose good canwe be good if a behaviour is forced upo us we cannot be good or bad

Your last point is wise, but id go further.

No human is ever truly alone,  neither in body nor in mind .

All of our being  is connected, mentally and physically, to the universe and "god" 

However, only a few of the writers acknowledged that god also was imperfect and able to learn, to grow and to change it's mind.

  Our separation is an illusion based on the fact that  from  birth we learn that we are individuals and separated from  the mind's and body's of others We keep seeking union of body and mind but few achieve it.

  In the past, it (connection of mind and body to god)  was more common, but materialism and individualism has widened the divide,  as it has also made us more selfish and entitled 

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2 hours ago, Will Due said:

 

Yes.

 

 

Parables allow each person to interpret them in accordance with their own intellectual and spiritual endowments. Parables are used to the end that those who desire to know the truth may find it, while those who don't will hear, but fail to understand. Leaving them only more confounded.

Thanks for asking.

 

 

Thanks for clarifying. 

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6 hours ago, Liquid Gardens said:

I understand what you are saying with the examples you provided, but overall no I don't think people 'choose' to get their feelings hurt any more than people choose to feel pain, people just choose how to respond to it by examining their expectations as you noted, etc.  Sure we're all 'responsible' for our own feelings but that doesn't mean then that the problem with bullying, kids or adults, is all on the bullied and their 'chosen feelings' for instance.  

True that buying should be stopped  (all forms of bullying) 

However non physical bullying only works if the recipient  is affected by it 

 You can choose not to be hurt, Choose to laugh at the ridiculousness of the comments. Choose to feel pity for the bully Chose understanding of their own fears, weaknesses, and  needs.  

No one is forced to feel a negative emotion.  Hence, for decades, as well as preventative programmes to prevent bullying, Australian schools have taught resilience to students, incorporating ways to strengthen a person and deflect, ignore, or positively respond to another's attempts to bully them 

Some people are so low in esteem that they feel hurt by comments not designed to hurt them, but to help them.   

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5 hours ago, Hammerclaw said:

What is that, desert stoicism? Most people can't turn their feelings on and off like that. I certainly wouldn't want to. I've nurtured the capacity to accept and deal with that kind of pain. No pain, no gain and emotional endurance builds a strengthened psyche. To each their own, of course, but I never hide from the challenge.

It does require training, unless you are raised to it as a child.  My siblings were raised never to be hurt by another's words   but also to try never to aim to hurt another 

  Again, resilience training and other psychological programmes are designed to do exactly that.

Not so much "turn off"  feelings, but desensitise them so the y don't hurt so much,  and don't cause you to react unsafely or irrationally  

Most humans need more self discipline and to think before acting or speaking.  

Stoicism is a good thing  to have a modicum of 

It is a Scottish  trait (or so were told)  A kind of endurance,  and  self  control/discipline of mind and body.  We called it dour, (pronounced dooor ) 

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1 hour ago, eight bits said:

Lawyers sometimes call that "yes or no with an explanation."

Actually I was thinking of the opposite situation, where a judge instructs a witness to limit their responses to yes/no upon request of the cross-examiner.  In such a situation where you've been instructed by a judge to limit your answer, what would be your answer to, 'Do you believe a god exists?'.  I understand your objections to just 'no', but to me it is clearly a far more accurate response than 'yes'; if you don't have a belief to know, well then you logically don't believe a god exists.

I think I was just trying to understand the logic behind this part, which is definitely just mainly semantics which is of course super-important:

Quote

Had you asked, Does any god exist? that's a well-posed yes-or-no question, and the responsive answers are yes, no, or else I lack enough relevant information to answer. Those are the responsive answers to any and every well-posed yes-or-no question.

Changing the question from one of fact to one of belief (= something to which I am a witness) doesn't compel that only yes or else no would be responsive answers.

Making clear that there is no compulsion just suggestion/implication by the word usage here, it seems to me that changing to 'Do you believe in God?' does more limit to yes/no answers, because of 'I don't know'.  Yes, they are both yes/no questions ultimately, but "I don't know" is a responsive question to does any God exists, a reasonable translation of 'does any god exist' is 'do you know if god exists'.  The belief question is more binary, you have the belief or you do not, all the distinctions that differentiate an agnostic from a hard atheist as far as I know never achieve escape velocity from the base lack of belief, by definition I think.  "I don't know" is simply one of the many specific reasons that people do not have a belief in God.  Is there a difference between 'Do you believe in God?' and 'Are you a theist?', aren't those largely interchangeable?  I think you'd definitely say no you are not a theist, but maybe that's because of additional implications carried in that word.

1 hour ago, eight bits said:

But if the questionner were uninterested in what I believe, then what is their purpose in asking me anything about some subject if not to learn whether I believe something about the subject, and if so, what that belief is?

I don't know in this case, a poll would be the most obvious example.  Don't get me wrong, there's certainly nothing wrong or unusual about providing additional qualification on this question.  I know we've talked about this before but historically and in some places currently, the distinction between the more discrete definition of atheism and agnosticism is of no difference to portions of theism that necessitated the existence of at least the first term at all.  That's why to some questionners 'I lack enough relevant information to answer' may be TMI (which isn't to suggest that I care much about the typical questionner who judges based on someone's response is to QoG).

As an aside, in the big-time religions are there any distinctions made at all between atheists and agnostics?  I don't know that they ever needed to go to that level at least historically, I'd think other religions were more their preoccupation given what I assume were their relative numbers, but just wondering if Purgatory 'theory' or even Dante ever made a distinction between the two.

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3 hours ago, Hammerclaw said:

When someone gets in your face and is abusive and insulting, that's meant to be personal. It happened to me, many times in retail. I had very strong emotional responses and I don't repress my emotions, I just don't display them all the time. Also, when something is personally hurtful, it's going to hurt whether it was meant to hurt or not, just like someone accidentally stepping on your foot. Others can incite an emotional response and that makes them subject to our feelings, not in charge of them.

I have  to  admit I sometimes cant help laughing at such people and their comments 

That doesn't help  defuse the situation but its how I  often respond  unless there is danger of physical conflict 

Otherwise I might adopt a calm professional voice ad ask them what their problem is and if they are seeking help for it 

I've known thousands of people  and I  know only a handful like that 

Very, very, few people throughput my adult  life have ever treated me poorly.  disrespected me, or tried to bully  me or put me down     

In general they have been people in power, and their personality reflects both why they sought power and how the y use it. 

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