Topic: have you heard about...?

[alcoholandcoffeebeans]

Edit to add: Let's hear it for AACB for starting the thread. How about it everyone? AACB, take a bow for the people... 

can i curtsy? (sp?)  that's more fun

but, i'd like to compliment eveyone thus far that's contributed to the thread.
one of the most civil conversations about religion/faith/beliefs i've seen in a long time...

so here's to you guys as well 

This is way off the topic but....

that's the point of this thread.... ADD

[nab]

I think its futile to believe that your personal God argument can win any public discussion.  There's no use in getting worked up about it.

[alcoholandcoffeebeans]

I think its futile to believe that your personal God argument can win any public discussion.  There's no use in getting worked up about it.

right, but a lot of people dont' see it that way... sadly. 

p.s. maybe i knew this already, but i didn't remember that you were catholic.
i was raised that way, school and all....
but as of the past 7 years or so, i've had the hardest time with the church.
not just the local one (because we're in the south, it's not a very prevalent reliegion)
but the catholic church as a whole... i dunno...

oh well, kudos to you for sticking to your guns about it... 

[sunrisevt]

My wife was raised Catholic, in a VERY catholic town (Rutland, VT--Irish, Italian, & French Catholic neighborhoods & churches). Went to Mass at least once/week, twice many weeks. She quit virtually as soon as she got to college... at least as soon as she took a Women's Studies course. Her big sister was there, too--that probably helped...

Anyway, in more recent years (esp. since our time in Chapel Hill), she's softened on it a little. Not enough to go to Mass, raise the kid in the church, or even consider herself Catholic again, but she has seen the liberal side of the church, as compared to American mega-church evangelism. (After all, the Roman church has had to last 2000 years. That would require some flexibility.) It's still the sexism built in that bothers her, mostly. That and the reflexive guilt.

But what's more interesting is her mother's progression. Laura started giving her mom Ani DiFranco to listen to maybe 15 years ago, when her mom was in the threws of midlife, and she RAN with it. Kept going to Mass, but eventually... jump ahead to 2000, the civil union debate in VT, and her priest spent more than one whole sermon pontificating against it, calling queer people misguided, the bill evil... Not out & out hateful, but enought that my dutiful mother-in-law quit the church and hasn't gone back. This is a woman who was a Eucharistic minister, all sorts of volunteering for the priests, etc. Proud of her. Now she, my wife, and my sister-in-law do their own ritual every winter solstice.

[nab]

I think its futile to believe that your personal God argument can win any public discussion.  There's no use in getting worked up about it.

right, but a lot of people dont' see it that way... sadly. 

p.s. maybe i knew this already, but i didn't remember that you were catholic.
i was raised that way, school and all....
but as of the past 7 years or so, i've had the hardest time with the church.
not just the local one (because we're in the south, it's not a very prevalent reliegion)
but the catholic church as a whole... i dunno...

oh well, kudos to you for sticking to your guns about it... 

Its taken a long time and a lot of introspection.  Like I said, I would have considered myself an atheist at one time in my life.  What changed was part of the process of growing up; I started to realize that I wasn't in fact infalable.   Then I realized that this applied to my (and by extension everyone else's) ability to reason.  Then I  realized that faithful or atheist, everyone has to confront what we would call the God question.  So I had to confront it myself.

So I was a student of Buddhism for a while.  The main attraction was the process of meditation that helped me with my mental state quite a bit.  I tend to over-analyze things quite a bit and need constructive ways to shut down my mind at times.  The problem was that, in my heart I never really considered myself a Buddhist.

It was then I realized that Catholicism, the religion of my upbringing and schooling through high school, already had a built in meditation in the form of the rosary.  I also began to warm to the church by realizing that in a lot of respects (not all, I'm aware of some of the downfalls of the Church) the Catholic church was a lot more liberal than the rising fundamentalist churches in the nation.  They have had a strong tradition of supporting the poor and the downtrodden.  They are the first to stand up against unjust wars, and are in fact in opposition to the current war as much as they were to Vietnam.  I've found Catholics on the whole (at least where I'm at) to be a lot less judgmental concerning people who violate some church laws (such as homosexuality, a view I'm in opposition to the church with) than many other more radical Christian denominations.  There is also a strong tradition of intellectual integrity and scholastic learning in the church.  Although they were responsible for Galileo's demise, they eventually espoused his position through a discourse in reason.  The church has also espoused evolution as a mechanism of God's creation. 

I am just now starting to go back to church.  We'll see where it goes.


Long story, thanks for reading if you did.  Just had to get that off my chest I guess.  Just my story do with it what you will.   

[sunrisevt]

^^^ I read it and enjoyed it. While I'm not a person of faith, it's very easy for me to respect Catholics, or any faithful, like you. If all religious practitioners were as mindful and deliberate in their belief as you've described, nab, the world would be a better place.

[alcoholandcoffeebeans]

thanks for sharing that nab...
i read it as well...
and i can agree on lots of points, altho i've not explored other religions as routes.

i think what can open me up to the faith that i have is a group of 300 kids ranging from 6-18, plus counselors... sitting under a picnic pavillion in the rain, at 9.30 pm on a saturday night after group cookout night (where you and your co-counselor are so beat down from havnig to get 12 kids to work together on building a fire, preping/making dinner and cleaning it all up), sitting in what little lights we had under the pavillion, singing together. the kids weren't there because they all shared the same faith, very few did in fact but the camp was based around a presbyterian ideal; they were all there because they loved the outdoors and loved being with each other.... and singing was something they did beautifully.

damn.. i am a hippie sometimes 

[sunrisevt]

damn.. i am a hippie sometimes 

So was Jesus! Haven't you seen the pictures?!? 
Edit to add:
<--- 420!

[Marmar]

"Organized" Religion is no different than Organized Crime.....

The only purpose of organized religion is to control what YOU, the individual, believe....think....speak....and influence how your experience within the 5 sense reality is.

Instead of letting YOUR thoughts, intuition, and ideas flourish.....you get fed these "truths" and are taught to hold these virtues higher than anything else. We're all sinners.....we have to earn "his" redemption or we'll go to hell......the universe was created in HIS eyes......etc.....

BULLSHIT.

Just another effort by a certain group of people to exert their will on the population to dull the REAL GOD within EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US so they can control us into doing what THEY want us to do......so we see things the way THEY want us to....and so we believe what THEY want us to.....so we give our wealth (monetary AND spiritually) blindly to them for their doing.

If God is supposed to be about universal love, then why do THEY spread hate, and ignorance in HIS name?

It's all bullshit.....and it stinks......

PS: I'm not saying that everyone in organized religion is inherently bad. Many people who are involved are very good people.....it's just sad to see them being manipulated under the guise of "doing this for God" when in reality, they are doing it for the greed of the whole institution.

[willsteele]

Booyah!

[sunrisevt]

I have to respectfully disagree, mar-

And I write as an atheist, and one who sees a lot of harm being done in the name of religion. But I can't write off the entire enterprise of organized religion in the terms you used. So much good charitable work is done by churches. So many schools and libraries founded. And so many earnest people just trying to help their neighbors get by...

I absolutely agree that too often religion serves to close off thought and human connection; I also see uncritical adherence to liberal humanism doing the same thing, and plenty. And the comfy middle-class types who fall into that latter group are WAY less likely to volunteer and donate to charities--that's a fact.

[Marmar]

You are feeding my point exactly.....

So much good charitable work is done by churches. So many schools and libraries founded.

Hmmm.....Schools and libraries......So lets fund a school......great! Great way to entice someone into your belief system, and have some influence on the impressionable minds of young people......and I'll go off on schools here in a moment......but first....

Libraries? Think about this for a moment......So now we have places that store hard copies of our collective information affiliated with an organization that goes massively out of its way to force its dis-information on even more of the masses......When certain books are denied entry to a library because a "church group" or someone speaks up because it says something bad about god, the church, etc.....

Just more ways to control what we are allowed to think, read, say, believe.......etc.

Same thing goes for schools......you are taught what THEY want you to know. Period. The history we are taught, the "social studies", even the sciences......you are taught one version of reality all thru your life so you come out indoctrinated into THEIR beliefs and THEIR reality......all they want is for you to come out a good little consumer who doesn't question things in an unconventional manor....

God forbid they let someone who has a mind of their own and knows how to use it, like me, escape the system....and believe me, they tried their damnedest to stifle me.

And the comfy middle-class types who fall into that latter group are WAY less likely to volunteer and donate to charities--that's a fact.

Exactly....why do it if you have all the brainwashed sheeple already doing it "in the name of God"? Most of that said middle-class is brainwashed into thinking and believing this way.

For every good any church has ever done, you are bound to find at least 3 evils......so the ratio of good to evil with organized religion is 1:3.....

Religion's only purpose (in my eyes) is to create yet another way to divide the human consciousness and pit us against ourselves (keeping us busy fighting and killing each other) so they can exert their will and control over the rest of the population. England/Ireland? Over religion........Crusades?......How about English Colonial expansion into Africa?.....no more Shamen (our collective intelligence), convert to Christianity (what we TELL you is fact)!

To bring it to even more recent times......Huckabee and Romney......fighting over their religion, in a PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE WHERE IT HAS ABSOLUTELY NO BELONGING.

Just another way to divide and control......

[Bobafett]

Blind Faith rocks! 
Isn't this is all about percieved reality?  plato has already covered this (Allegory of the Cave, The Republic)

While i may not be the most faithful, i respect those who really do beleive and follow.  Any religion.   

It seems that this discussion began with christianity, and their uproar over a movie...I would (and do) get somewhat offended when someone talks shit about the Dead or Phish or fishing or cooking or anything that i have real passion for, without the offending party fully exploring said passion.  The hardest part of any insult recovery is keeping emotions separate from passion in order to explicate reasons for such devotion.

[willsteele]

1. With regards to schools....I hated the way we never really learned about the Native Americans.  They never told us anything. 

2.  With regards to religion.....I always felt that religions were created to explain things.  The Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, etc, etc, etc all had their own and they all explained, in their eyes, how everything came to be with one god or many gods.  And they beleived it.  And thats cool.  Beleive what you want to beleive.  I got no beef with you if you don't have a beef with me for not beleiving the same.   

3.  Blind Faith does indeed rock.....if we are talking about the Blind Faith that contained 2/3 of the greatest rock trio in history..not to mention Stevie Winwood.

[Bobafett]

3.  Blind Faith does indeed rock.....if we are talking about the Blind Faith that contained 2/3 of the greatest rock trio in history..not to mention Stevie Winwood.

Indeed, the exact faith i needed.