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Post by Canuovea on Feb 11, 2019 5:41:14 GMT
Depends on how much either care, which in a better world would be rarely and little.
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Post by wordweaver3 on Feb 11, 2019 5:43:45 GMT
If they didn't care their religious devotion would be highly suspect.
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Post by Canuovea on Feb 11, 2019 5:48:03 GMT
Religious devotion on that level is a plague on the world as it stands.
If it gets in the way of otherwise viable and appropriate relationships then to hell with it.
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Post by wordweaver3 on Feb 11, 2019 7:10:06 GMT
That's at the center of it.
Religions concern themselves less with this world and more about the next. Not all of them have a hell but most of them have some sort of heaven. If your spouse were to endanger that afterlife the relationship would be flawed from both a religious and practical standpoint. To give up eternal benefit for the very temporary now isn't logical. To do the same for your offspring is vicious.
I get from an agnostic or atheist standpoint it makes no sense. There is what we know and see and can define as real and what we don't know we simply haven't discovered yet. Religion is an abstract construct of man. We are bone and flesh and chemicals. We can only gain what we have in this life. When we die we simply cease to be.
For a lot of people that is completely unacceptable. They need there to be more. Religion offers more. Even better it offers absolute truths in a world where truth can be subjective. For the devoted it is correct and true and very much real. What other people know to be true is inconsequential. To willingly bring in conflicting truths into your life could be dangerous.
This sounds very close minded, and, quite frankly, it is. The devoted are on a path that they believe leads to heaven. Anything that strays them from that path is bad and endangers the promised eternal life. There's a very selfish motivation behind it all. That being said, there's a selfish motivation behind everything people do.
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Post by Canuovea on Feb 11, 2019 7:57:25 GMT
Oh I don't disagree. I know that they're like that sometimes.
But even religions tend to follow the morality of the times, its a matter of them becoming less intense now that morality has moved on past when the horrid things originated. To most reasonable people, nowadays, the idea of Hell is an immoral one. In which case they tend to dismiss it or not think about it. Most people who bother rely on the idea of God seem to do it for comfort, to feel better about themselves. Perhaps because of a fear of meaninglessness. The result is that there is not a whole bunch of joy to be had for the majority by feeling superior to others and laughing at the notion of watching sinners suffer for eternity (as was the case in the Middle Ages).
At least that has been my experience with people, generally speaking.
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Post by wordweaver3 on Feb 11, 2019 8:59:22 GMT
There are a lot of concepts that the church offered for very practical reasons. When Catholicism was young they had oversold the idea of heaven to large masses of oppressed or otherwise downtrodden people. In short order they found that many people were using it as an escape.
"Well, this life sucks. I'm a Catholic now so I'll go to heaven when I die. Here's some handy rope..."
Whoa, whoa, guys! Wait a second! "Thou shalt not kill" includes yourself. If you do that you won't go to heaven, you'll go to... um... Gehenna... em, no, that's too Jewie... Hell! Yes, you'll go to Hell! Where a guy named Stan... erm... Satan! Satan will burn you forever!
"Well, shit. That sounds awful. Guess I gotta suffer this life. Hey! Will my oppressors go to Hell?"
Sure... why not?
"Sweet."
The thing is that religions and governments are pretty much the same thing. You have dogma or you have laws. They both tell you how to live and take your money for the privilege. The difference is that now only the government can throw you in jail for ignoring dogma. The worst religions can do is excommunicate you (ignoring certain places in the world). It's all about controlling people.
I don't really have any problem with religions. There was a necessity for them in a time when government alone didn't have the clout to keep order. Nowadays government has far more potential for harm anyway. For people today, if they find it gives them some peace or some sort of meaning to their life, that's wonderful. Maybe they're right and everything will work out for them in the end.
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Post by Canuovea on Feb 11, 2019 9:40:13 GMT
If their life is better for it, then good for them.
But I've noticed a lot of the time it isn't, and that both makes me sad and a little angry.
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Post by Horsie on Feb 11, 2019 16:27:18 GMT
God knows I've actually met a few people who insist that the only way to earn God's love is to be completely, purposefully miserable in this life.
Though now that I think about it, I think that was their way of trying to explain why they pray so much and have so much faith in God, but nothing goes their way and they're so unhappy. That doesn't excuse trying to convince people to choose to live like that though.
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Post by wordweaver3 on Feb 11, 2019 17:44:31 GMT
It's hard to judge the quality of another person's life from the outside. A devoted person with a difficult life might consider their religion as the only stalwart and constant thing in their life. Giving it up has no real potential to improve their life anyway and takes away the promise of a better afterlife. It's like spending your whole life putting money into an insurance policy and right before you need it letting the policy lapse.
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Post by Horsie on Feb 11, 2019 18:37:01 GMT
Good point, though in one case I think buddy would've been better off, it seemed like half of his problems came from his faith; no one wanted anything to do with him because he constantly and aggressively tried to "save the soul" of everyone he met, even more so if they asked him to stop, and he'd lost a string of jobs before I worked with him because he kept doing dangerous, reckless things and damaging property and equipment, because he was convinced that God wouldn't let anything bad happen (despite all the evidence to the contrary).
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Post by StyxD on Feb 11, 2019 22:37:10 GMT
Personally I think the X number of prayers for Y sin(s) seems to me an attempt to make people view themselves and their actions a certain way (and definitely suppress doubts). To me it seems a vestige of penance that used to be a serious businesses (like, "make a pilgrimage to Rome walking on your knees"). Nowadays it's trivial, but it can't be too trivial, hence the repetition. Since it takes more time, it feels like it has more of a meaning. Rosary is probably similar. That's why it's so popular on political rallies. You can en masse say the same prayers over and over and it feels like it's totally accomplishing something. But I don't think it counts as mind altering. I mean, if you stretch the definition, you could say all prayer is meant to alter how someone things about their actions. "Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members." Not "required" really. At least not over here. And even "encouraged" seems wrong. Instead you're "encouraged" to convert them. That being said, I've seen plenty of literature telling women to not marry non-Christian men, but can't recall if that was Catholic. I suppose you're right. Separation is not really encouraged. Although in a society with a Catholic majority they sure make it sound like atheists are the ones pushing suspicious religious agenda on people. Then again, all Christian denominations do this in a degree. Saying that Christian women shouldn't marry non-Christian men isn't necessarily a religiously motivated thing. It's patriarchy 101 that men demand that women from their group (whether it's religion, nation, race, class, or whatever) only be available to them. In fact, Catholicism got a lot of mileage in converting women even if their husbands weren't too thrilled about Christian religion. It persists to this day in a fashion. That said, there's one hard requirement in Catholicism in this regard: when marrying a non-Catholic, the Catholic must swear that the children will be raised Catholic. I thought the Catholic Church frowned on speaking in tongues? That's one of those things, like prophets running around everywhere, that stopped centuries ago (because God knows it'd be a threat to the Church's power if someone claimed to have a direct line to God). That has to be a fringe thing, something some group of misguided Catholics picked up from the Pentecostals or one of these other "holy rolling" protestant churches. You'd be wrong on these accounts. The Church doesn't frown on speaking in tongues and other such practices. There are a surprising number of Catholic Holy-Spirit-themed organizations that practice such religiosity. They are just not empathized by the mainstream. In fact, Catholicism is almost like an anti-cult. They require bare minimum of spirituality and are more about hoarding secular power through identity politics. Also note that "prophecy" in Catholic theology is not about being a chosen messenger directly communicating with God (like prophets in Old Testament and Jesus himself) but just about receiving a vague message from God, Apocalypse-style. The Church is super cool with these, too. I mean, have you heard of Lourdes? If their life is better for it, then good for them. But I've noticed a lot of the time it isn't, and that both makes me sad and a little angry. I dunno. In my experience, materialist thinkers tend to misunderstand what makes people's lives better. No offence meant. From what I've seen, many people seem wholly uninterested in making their life better in any measurable sense, but they just want to feel superior to people who's materially better off than they are. Religion is just perfect for that. Or, you know, it's the reason why fascists will always trump socialists in the eyes of the very underclass the latter want to cater to. Reforming the economy to offer people better lives is boring and requires work, blaming Jews and immigrants while doing nothing is instant gratification for free. Good point, though in one case I think buddy would've been better off, it seemed like half of his problems came from his faith; no one wanted anything to do with him because he constantly and aggressively tried to "save the soul" of everyone he met, even more so if they asked him to stop, and he'd lost a string of jobs before I worked with him because he kept doing dangerous, reckless things and damaging property and equipment, because he was convinced that God wouldn't let anything bad happen (despite all the evidence to the contrary). But doesn't he seem… happy and carefree?
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Post by Horsie on Feb 11, 2019 23:55:30 GMT
No, he was pretty bummed that no one would let him save their souls, and no one wanted to be friends with him because all he did was try to save their souls, and he couldn't find a woman to marry because none of them would be perfect in the eyes of the Lord (i.e. weren't interested in living in a hut in the middle of nowhere), and because "God woudn't let anything bad happen" never seemed to cut it with the guys he nearly killed moving a girder with a beam (he kept his job, because our foreman didn't give a fuck and never wrote him up).
And also because I, an atheist who (the horror! The horror!) admitted he'd been to a Pride parade, kept correcting him when he fucked up quoting scripture at me.
Dude certainly wasn't carefree though, his strange interpretation of Christianity was that God basically hated all of us. Come the end times the only people who wouldn't be sent to hell were the people who were perfect in the eyes of the Lord, but it was impossible to be perfect in the eyes of the Lord, so we had to live a miserable existence, his plan was to buy some land in the middle of fucking nowhere, far from anyone else, and live there, away from all temptation and any human interaction, not so much because humanity is evil or bad, but because it'd be a miserable, unhappy existence, and that's what God expects.
After one of his unwanted explanation sessions lunch I asked him if, since God only let "perfect" people into heaven, and it was impossible to be perfect in the eyes of God, that meant everyone was going to hell, no matter how much they grovelled and whipped themselves and crawled around pleading in the mud. He told me that was true. I asked him why anyone would bother then, since it didn't make a bit of difference, and he couldn't come up with an answer other than "It's what God expects!".
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Post by Canuovea on Feb 11, 2019 23:58:59 GMT
...He was a Priest of the West and his god was The King In The West.
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Post by wordweaver3 on Feb 12, 2019 0:01:04 GMT
Well, that sounds miserable on all counts. If you can't get into heaven why even try?
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Post by Horsie on Feb 12, 2019 0:04:16 GMT
Exactly! That's what I asked him, and the best he could come up with was that God wanted us to at least try to please Him, even if it was impossible!
And he wondered why no one was too interested in what he had to say.
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