YAWN…
I was raised Catholic but with the whole anti abortion issue(I’m pro choice)and the priest molesting kids I had to denounce them.I’m in the law enforcement field and I’ve attended sex crimes seminars.The Catholic church for the last 20 years have spent millions and have sent accused priest’s to other countries to avoid investigation or prosecution.I attended a local church for a while but when they started ‘speaking in tongues’ I stopped.
Religion just divide’s people
The question of God’s existence should be conducted using the basic rules of logic.
And which assertion (existence/non-existence) is more plausible?
I find that the Christian/western philosophy (i.e the either/or system) holds more truth than any of the others including the Eastern both/and system.
Now I do not claim to be an expert in religion or philosophy I’m just stating what I’ve found in the course of my 34 years here on Earth.
Iscariot: “All great religions are basically the same…” I don’t think that is true. They may seem superficially but fundamentally they are quite different.
Johnny law: Abortion is argueably the taking of an innocent life.
Is it the preists you are having trouble with or the actual religion itself?
Khellendros: How so?
Can someone, especially the non-christioans, answer my two questions please?
What’s the matter Montrose? Are we using too many big words? 
Mage, head over to the Japan thread and quire Char-Dawg on the phallic worshipers.
I’ve seen some Buddhist texts with some pretty graphic illustrations.
Midget penis worshipers? How bout it 'Cake?
I always loved Black Elk & related Native American beliefs. Same with Taoism. Simple and eloquent.
The Midget Penis:
The “Midget Penis” is most often found attached directly to the groin area of young men who gather in great groups at the local Gym to talk, stare a Cardio Bunnies, punch each other in the arm in response to personal slags and to lift the occasional 25 pound Dumbbell in some weird, entirely unsafe manner while discussing the finer details of just HOW MUCH COOLER Justin Timberlake is now that he “got rid of those deadweight NSYNC Losers”.
Individual plumage varies greatly but Blonde/White frosting is most common as is a penchant for wearing $150.00 NBA Jerseys to give them that “from tha’ hood” look.
Recently Anthropologists have begun aggressive research on the cause of the “Midget Penis”, as recently as a few years ago, Rap music was being blamed for this and many other Teenage maladies, it has now been discovered that the 'Midget Penis" is actually the cause of RAP!
Desperate to display their budding Manhood these possessors of the “Midget Penis” struggle with simple daily chores like putting a Baseball cap on correctly and purchasing pants that fit. Fortunately for the Gene pool, it is anticipated that the SUPER-DUPER-HYPER-TURBO-BASSED stereo systems these Midget Penis owners have installed in their Honda Preludes will deteriorate their hearing to such a point that mating and reproducing will simply cease through the good grace and common sense of nature.
Super Hot-Ovulating Chick: “Hello, I saw you from across the bar, want to dance?”
Midget Penis Kid: “Thank you, these are nice pants!”
Super Hot-Ovulating Chick:“O.K, no dancing, how about we head over to that dark corner and I shove my tongue down your throat?”
Midget Penis Kid:“Jack Horner and Row, Row your boat…Um, I could hum a few bars…”
Super Hot-Ovulating Chick:“Stop playing hard to get, take me now!”
Midget Penis Kid:“Start mating lard forget, rake my cow”? What the fuck are you talking about?"
Super Hot-Ovulating Chick:*Stomps off and finds a T-Man…
Midget Penis Kid:“Boy, chicks sure are screwed up, maybe I should turn Gay?”
Anyway, needless to say, the “Midget Penis” gets very, very little worshiping.
Very little.
“I have nothing against little dogs that look like dust mops. I’m sure they make wonderful pets and companions. Even fierce watchdogs, should your home be invaded by midget burglars… If I owned one of the tiny fuzzy dogs, I would spray it with Endust and use it to clean under the beds… I’d tie it to a long stick and use it to wash the windows”
~ Mike Royko
A7:
Jesus was a real person historically. So, there are only three possibilities -either he was a liar, madman or the son of God.What do you say to that?
Jesus was a real person historically? How can you be sure? Could he just be the figment of the imagination of many good writers?
Should an individual called Jesus as you refer to, while not negating either of your possibilities, on top of that you could call him the equivalent of a Cult Leader in his times. Many other recent Saviors (Jim Jones, Rael, etc.) have applied the same formula and have their followers/dogma and sheep still come. The guy obviously needs to be a good puppet master and he must find pawns quickly if he wants to gain status and power.
One thing I don't understand is why they try so hard to get other people to believe in Christianity or THEIR VERSION of Christianity.Most people will say it’s so that the church will get more money but how does that benefit them personally?
(From: http://www.csj.org/studyindex/studyrecruit/study_influence.htm)
Social Proof
One means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct. We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see other performing it. The principle of social proof can be used to stimulate a person’s compliance with a request by informing the person that many other individuals (the more, the better, the more “famous” the better) are or have been complying with it. This weapon of influence provides us with a shortcut for determining how to behave, but, as the same time, makes one who uses the shortcut vulnerable to the attacks of profiteers who lie in wait along its path (introduction seminars or guest dinners, retreats to recruit cult members–provide the models of the behavior the group wants to produce in the new recruit) Social proof is most influential under two conditions:
uncertainty (when people are unsure, when the situation is ambiguous, they are more likely to attend to the actions of others and to accept those actions as correct);
similarity (people are more inclined to follow the lead of similar others) Recommendations on how to reduce our susceptibility to faulty social proof include a sensitivity to clearly counterfeit evidence of what similar others are doing and a recognition that the actions of similar others should not form the sole basis for our decisions.
(From A Potential Convert looks at the Art of Manipulation)
What needs to be looked at is how our behavior can be influenced by others, creating a false faith. We need to understand concepts like social proof, herd mentality, hypnosis, commitment and consistency, common sense and paradigms.
(…)
Cialdini explains, “If they could spread the Word, if they could inform the uninformed, if they could persuade the skeptics, and if, by so doing, they could win new converts, their threatened but treasured beliefs would become truer. The principal of social proof says so: The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct. The group’s assignment was clear; since the physical evidence could not be changed, the social evidence had to be. Convince and ye shall be convinced!”
(…)
Church is in one aspect a business, and it is the nature of a business to perpetuate itself or it will die. Churches live by recruiting new converts. Churches are run by men and men will always have a sin nature. Accountability is the key to maintaining a healthy church, assuming of course, that the doctrine is correct.
(…)
Faith is an activity of the Spirit that cannot be defined by the mind. Behavior is a product of thinking which is an activity of the mind. Too often the church departs from the words of God to follow the minds of men. Too often, we confuse our faith with our mental activity. Men exploit mental activity. The church is full of cows, cowards and crooks who choose to operate in the comfort zone of the shades of gray instead of standing in the black and white.
Zeppelin,
Abortion is definitly the taking of an innocent life,but it’s still the woman’s choice.Even if the little slut is too stupid to figure out that there is about 10 billion forms of birth control out there and abortion is not the answer…anyway…
My problem isn't the priest it's the religion...maybe both..but it's a religion that allows closeted homosexual males and pediphiles to hide behind the whole church's celebate
policy.They were going to commit these acts anyway but they thought ‘Hey,I’ll just be a (Catholic)priest and suppress
it.’…a ticking time bomb
Zeppelin,
“The question of God’s existence should be conducted using the basic rules of logic.
And which assertion (existence/non-existence) is more plausible?”
To try and look at it logically would require that we know everything about the universe and how it works. Since we don’t, how could we ever look at it logically? We know nothing.
Take care,
Neil
Let’s suppose you’re watching TV and see an ad for a car. Basically it’s telling you to buy this car or you won’t have beautiful women all over you. Or just toothpaste. Use our toothpaste or you’ll suffer the social stigmas of yellow teeth. You don’t believe any of this, do you?
Now here comes another con man with his pitch. “Buy my religion or you’ll suffer eternal damnation.” And people buy it! The beauty of this con is that you can never disprove it.
As for myself, I’ve decided I’m an Enthalpist, with a side of Taoist. I believe that there is some energy permeating the universe that brings order to all things. For physicists out there, an organizing energy is enthalpy as opposed entropy. Some people choose to call this organizing force “God”.
I choose to simply say that the organizing energy is beyond our understanding and truly ineffable. That’s it. No human properties. No worshipping. No smiting. No hell and damnation. No tithing. Just something that we are currently incapable of understanding.
Of course, you do need to truly respect this organizing energy. If you go out in a field during a lightning storm and wave a metal rod over your head, the universal organizing energy (UOE) will “smite” you as surely as a pissed off god. If you run your car into a brick wall at 110 miles per hour, the UOE will smite you as well, through the laws of physics.
On the other hand, the UOE has created an environment where life and self awareness thrives, so in one way, the universal organizing energy “loves” you. I guess I would say the universe exists to nurture life.
Just throw away the human trappings of “god” and I think you’ve got the basic idea.
Christian? Well, I think Jesus was a great man, but in my philosophy, we’re ALL sons and daughters of god/UOE.
Cool spin on it, Yorik!
What happens when an agnostic dyslexic gets insomnia?
He stays up all night wondering if there really is a dog. . .
STU
What happens when an atheist dies?
His tombstone reads “All dressed up and no place to go”
johnny law: Would you say the same thing if the child was out of the womb? Because that would be the taking of an innocent life and it would be the mothers choice, wouldn’t it?
So is it the religion or the politics of the religion that you are having trouble with?
NielG: Simply not true. You do not have to know everything to apply the basic rules of logic. You and I use logic and reason everyday even though we don’t know everything. That is one of the - if not the major - differences between humans and animals.
We know nothing? 2+2=4. That is an mathematical absolute. We know that things that are self-contradictory are false. For instance, the much touted statement that, everything is relative, is false because in saying that you are declaring an absolute. So we may not know everything but we do know some things.
ZEPPELIN: For instance, the much touted statement that, everything is relative, is false because in saying that you are declaring an absolute.
Man, however you turn it, humanity so far has led me to believe they absolutely need absolutes. They have a very hard time with uncertainty and believing that a) their life is a preprogrammed series of choices by outer forces (environments, memes, etc.) or b) that people`s lives are just helpless victims of causality or c) that whatever they call choice would actually be an illusion and being the results of neural networks auto-organizing themselves (or just plain automated learning curve processes connected through trial and error), commonly called the self-fulfilling prophecy.
(And that Merovingian guy in Matrix Reloaded has definitely sparked my curiosity on this concept. I hope Matrix Revelations will give more of an answer or added data on this tangent.)
Then again, you could call all these hypotheses certainties. Ever sentence, by ruling out other possibilities, is similar. The concept of defining words automatically rules out possibilities. Imagine sentences.
DanC: So what is it that you really believe and why? Be logical!
'Cake, interesting theory on the Midget Penis issue, and glad to see you have some support from one of Chicago’s finest writers (RIP).
I’m sure we have all witnessed such stupefying acts of wanker wizadry at the gym and/or clubs.
But did ya have to dis mista Timberlake? 
now back to the existential…
ZEPPELIN: I mention these as pathways of thinking and food for thought. Have not come yet with a unified theory. Still digging. Currently re-assessing all these things. For me, it gravitates towards science and logic, what can sustain the burden of proof and no-holds barred truth without falling into emotional stuff like faith and referring to external authorities instead of one’s own best judgment (a la Tao of Jeet Kune Do philosophy). More to come, still mining data.
I go away for the weekend and return to find that the Christian thread turned to Midget Penises. Damn. That’s a pretty good hijack. Or lojack, for the memberly challenged.