Really? The idea of a deity is the worst invention ever?
Soviet scientists engineered an ebola/smallpox hybrid with a 13-day latent phase and 98% mortality. The US created blister agents that turn skin into a carpet of fluid-filled blisters the size of gumballs, later becoming malignant tumors. Governments all over the world have stockpiled enough nuclear munitions to blow the crust off of the goddamned earth, even after those weapons were used to kill over 120,000 people in the blink of an eye.
Say what you will about the evils done in the name of religion, but generally speaking, we've done a whole hell of a lot worse than imagining that there's a guy in sky who put us here.
On an individual level, bio-weapons are certainly more acutely bad than religion.
However, the pope is a freaking criminal against humanity for preaching intolerance and most of all the evils of birth control to an extremely receptive third world that suffers and dies rather than protect themselves. By the millions.
Yeah, no shit, but that's religion. If people just believed in the existence of a sky baker and didn't have some absurd belief system telling them to kill people and not use condoms and starve to death to get the sky cake, we wouldn't have this problem.
Nukes are the only thing keeping industrialized nations from invading each other. If we weren't constantly ready to kill everyone, we wouldn't have time to build any reactors.
Organized religion has its flaws. The actual holy books themselves usually don't cause too much harm, because if you follow them, all the rules telling you to be good to your neighbors and everyone around you and to not judge and stuff will keep you from harming anyone. It's when people put their own spin on things and decide to put qualifiers on the rules that we have a problem. "Don't judge people...unless they have an abortion." "Let he who is sinless cast the first stone...Except against gay people." That's when religion has problems, when they append these extra ideas onto what already is a system of teaching (subjectively) good morality.
The actual holy books themselves usually don't cause too much harm, because if you follow them, all the rules telling you to be good to your neighbors and everyone around you and to not judge and stuff will keep you from harming anyone.
"When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment." Exodus 21:7-11
"But if this charge is true (that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night), and evidence of the girls virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her fathers house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father's house. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst." Deuteronomy 22:20-21
Kay. Two things here. 1. Slavery in the Bible is misrepresented a lot. Slaves in the old days were indentured servants. Often they sold themselves (or their children) into slavery. There were rules with what you can and can't do with a slave. If you followed all the rules, it was basically like having a kid you paid for chores. Not comparable to American Slavery. 2. These systems existed without the Old Testament creating them. These were rules that were trying to say how to make the system as fair as possible, as well as to provide a way for people to atone for their sins. The idea was that every sin had to be punished by something equal to it. That is erased in the New Testament when Jesus provides an alternative method to being forgiven, saying that the old ways of atoning for sins is no longer necessary.
Basically, the rules of not killing people, Jesus befriending the prostitutes, etc., override anything else you can pick out of the Old Testament.
Kay. Two things here. 1. Slavery in the Bible is misrepresented a lot. Slaves in the old days were indentured servants. Often they sold themselves (or their children) into slavery. There were rules with what you can and can't do with a slave. If you followed all the rules, it was basically like having a kid you paid for chores. Not comparable to American Slavery. 2. These systems existed without the Old Testament creating them. These were rules that were trying to say how to make the system as fair as possible, as well as to provide a way for people to atone for their sins. The idea was that every sin had to be punished by something equal to it. That is erased in the New Testament when Jesus provides an alternative method to being forgiven, saying that the old ways of atoning for sins is no longer necessary.
Basically, the rules of not killing people, Jesus befriending the prostitutes, etc., override anything else you can pick out of the Old Testament.
Nice try though.
Nothing in the bible is historically accurate. Nice try, though.
Kay. Two things here. 1. Slavery in the Bible is misrepresented a lot. Slaves in the old days were indentured servants. Often they sold themselves (or their children) into slavery. There were rules with what you can and can't do with a slave. If you followed all the rules, it was basically like having a kid you paid for chores. Not comparable to American Slavery. 2. These systems existed without the Old Testament creating them. These were rules that were trying to say how to make the system as fair as possible, as well as to provide a way for people to atone for their sins. The idea was that every sin had to be punished by something equal to it. That is erased in the New Testament when Jesus provides an alternative method to being forgiven, saying that the old ways of atoning for sins is no longer necessary.
Basically, the rules of not killing people, Jesus befriending the prostitutes, etc., override anything else you can pick out of the Old Testament.
Nice try though.
Really, dude?
Matthew 5:17 "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Jesus straight approved of stoning non-virgin brides, and killing people for wearing a linen shirt and cotton pants, and killing gay people.
Nihilism under a thin layer of Christianity. I like the idea that there is a God, and have my own very particular beliefs and interpretations of the scriptures (God and Jesus are like John and Yoko: He used to be cruel and vindictive, but He found someone who showed him the ways of kindness and tolerance) but if I believed too much, I'd off myself to go hang out with Churchill and Twain and folks in Heaven; worst case senario I get sent to that special circle of hell reserved for suicidals and chill with Thompson and Cobain.
I'm somewhat of an atheist, but now and then I get some sort of feeling that their might be some sorter god-like being but far from real belief. I kinda figure that anything I would even consider is probably so far from any sort of Judeo-Christian God that I'd be atheist either way. Other than that I feel strongly about determinism and our lack of free will but I also think it doesn't matter because of the pseudo-freewill we live in. I like lots of different philosophical ideologies but I don't really adhere to any all that much.
Politically I'm somewhere in between Democrat and non-crazy libertarian but nothing more specific than that.
What drives me? I have experienced great things that people have created. And yes, a lot of them were video games. But they were still excellently crafted, and have changed my life. I want to provide that for someone else someday.
I'm probably some kind of death priest or something. I'm not so much driven as I just let myself flow, knowing that one way or another I'm going to end up in the same place nomatter what.
I'm driven by a desire to leave a lasting impression on the world, however that may come to be. And being comfortably wealthy wouldn't be bad to have either.
Comments
Soviet scientists engineered an ebola/smallpox hybrid with a 13-day latent phase and 98% mortality. The US created blister agents that turn skin into a carpet of fluid-filled blisters the size of gumballs, later becoming malignant tumors. Governments all over the world have stockpiled enough nuclear munitions to blow the crust off of the goddamned earth, even after those weapons were used to kill over 120,000 people in the blink of an eye.
Say what you will about the evils done in the name of religion, but generally speaking, we've done a whole hell of a lot worse than imagining that there's a guy in sky who put us here.
However, the pope is a freaking criminal against humanity for preaching intolerance and most of all the evils of birth control to an extremely receptive third world that suffers and dies rather than protect themselves. By the millions.
You can build reactors and not bombs, y'know?
"Don't judge people...unless they have an abortion."
"Let he who is sinless cast the first stone...Except against gay people."
That's when religion has problems, when they append these extra ideas onto what already is a system of teaching (subjectively) good morality.
"But if this charge is true (that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night), and evidence of the girls virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her fathers house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father's house. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst." Deuteronomy 22:20-21
1. Slavery in the Bible is misrepresented a lot. Slaves in the old days were indentured servants. Often they sold themselves (or their children) into slavery. There were rules with what you can and can't do with a slave. If you followed all the rules, it was basically like having a kid you paid for chores. Not comparable to American Slavery.
2. These systems existed without the Old Testament creating them. These were rules that were trying to say how to make the system as fair as possible, as well as to provide a way for people to atone for their sins. The idea was that every sin had to be punished by something equal to it. That is erased in the New Testament when Jesus provides an alternative method to being forgiven, saying that the old ways of atoning for sins is no longer necessary.
Basically, the rules of not killing people, Jesus befriending the prostitutes, etc., override anything else you can pick out of the Old Testament.
Nice try though.
Matthew 5:17 "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Jesus straight approved of stoning non-virgin brides, and killing people for wearing a linen shirt and cotton pants, and killing gay people.
Or you can read numerous other verses where he straight up tells the Pharisees that they aren't allowed to stone people because they sin too.
Working my way through the videos you posted, Scott Rubin.
Oh, but to be a sphere!
Politically I'm somewhere in between Democrat and non-crazy libertarian but nothing more specific than that.
I have experienced great things that people have created. And yes, a lot of them were video games. But they were still excellently crafted, and have changed my life. I want to provide that for someone else someday.
Its meta but it seems to work.