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  • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

    Originally posted by leswp1 View Post
    This made me laugh. Sometimes this thread is like watching a soap opera. Go away for a few weeks, come back and same old tired argument. I think pretty much all of the rest of us would agree being a Christian is not a requirement for doing good. Just because a person is good and Christian does not mean their Christianity is the reason they are good or doing good. I really don't get the obsession with having Christianity get all the credit for the good things in the world. Pretty sure Jesus wouldn't give a rat's a55 as long as the good is happening. (for the record I am a practicing Christian, not just nominally one)
    1) 100% of the articles posted here are cherry-picked negative towards Christians - a common atheist approach to paint all Christians as bad.

    2) When anyone/I try to show in response that Christians are also responsible for a lot of positive impact...you criticize them.

    3) And yes, Jesus would give a 'rat's a55' about attempts to make his entire following look terrible.
    Go Gophers!

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    • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

      Originally posted by 5mn_Major View Post
      1) 100% of the articles posted here are cherry-picked negative towards Christians - a common atheist approach to paint all Christians as bad.

      2) When anyone/I try to show in response that Christians are also responsible for a lot of positive impact...you criticize them.

      3) And yes, Jesus would give a 'rat's a55' about attempts to make his entire following look terrible.
      #1- balderdash.
      #2- no. I just don't buy into your need to label everything good as Christian or connected to Christianity as a motive.
      #3- ??? I haven't seen attempts to make the entire following of Christ look terrible. When you post your perception of this there are numerous posts trying to refute this view. It must be a terrible burden to see everything totally in black and white. And even if I bought into this view I still don't think Jesus would get tweaked about it. He wasn't worried about what other people thought about Him. That's why He called out the Pharisees and Sadducees for freaking about silly stuff. That's why He ate with tax collectors, hung out with people on the fringes and told people to get over themselves. Read Matthew.

      How did I get sucked into this again? The more things change the more they stay the same....back to lurking
      Last edited by leswp1; 04-12-2018, 07:27 PM.

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      • Originally posted by 5mn_Major View Post
        OK...on the same page regarding the general premise.

        So...setting aside the bad for a minute. Can you submit a candidate major group constituency that has, as a greater statistical membership percentage, done as much general compassionate works for greater society?
        You know what else Christians do at a higher rate than other religions? Win pro tennis and golf tournaments, score NFL touchdowns, ride Kentucky derby winners, chair the boards of Fortune 500 companies, commit mass murders, defraud investors. Get speeding tickets, and just about anything else you can think of that happens in our society. Does Christianity get the credit for those things, too?
        If you don't change the world today, how can it be any better tomorrow?

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        • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

          Originally posted by LynahFan View Post
          You know what else Christians do at a higher rate than other religions? Win pro tennis and golf tournaments, score NFL touchdowns, ride Kentucky derby winners, chair the boards of Fortune 500 companies, commit mass murders, defraud investors. Get speeding tickets, and just about anything else you can think of that happens in our society. Does Christianity get the credit for those things, too?
          Exactly. Christianity gets verbal credit for many things for which its not responsible. It is what it is.

          However there are exact specifics that are the core of what Jesus taught - i.e., aiding the poor, the less fortunate and those in need. To illustrate, specific faith events leading to Danny Thomas single handedly creating one of the top hospitals in the world for children in need. The Word... leading to faith...leading to societal outcomes that are directly tied back to both faith and the Word.
          Go Gophers!

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          • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

            So I'm going to take a different approach to this prior discussion...
            Go Gophers!

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            • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

              Originally posted by 5mn_Major View Post
              However there are exact specifics that are the core of what Jesus taught - i.e., aiding the poor, the less fortunate and those in need. To illustrate, specific faith events leading to Danny Thomas single handedly creating one of the top hospitals in the world for children in need. The Word... leading to faith...leading to outcomes that are directly tied back to both faith and the Word.
              Don't you think it's more likely that Danny Thomas was a good person who did good things, and Christianity happened to be the language through which he expressed his motivations for those things?

              Turn it around for the case of bad people who have done hateful things in the name of Christianity and I believe you will have no trouble seeing what I mean.

              I think religions and ideologies are arbitrary and hence they are not "true" in themselves, but their utility can be judged by whether people who subscribe to them do good things. I think the latter clause is your very point, so I believe you're tracking on this. So, for example, white supremacy does not seem to have resulted in an abundance of positive action.

              Religions, particularly monotheistic religions which like invasive species take over entire areas and push out all competitors, are hard to evaluate because of their dominance in a population. You can't evaluate the effect of x on a population when 90% of the population has x as its attribute. There's no control group.

              I don't think there's anything wrong in principle with the argument you're trying to make but I don't think you are going to find useful experimental conditions from which you can extract good data. There are too may confounding effects, not the least of which is social variables are almost never independent. You can read all about this in my new book, Sociology: Why It's All F-cked Up.
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              • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

                The American court system is typically considered the best systems for identifying the truth that we have. It relies on a prosecution delivering facts, evidence, and other forms of argument to make their case. But equally important is the defense. Defense is so important...that the system appoints one when there isn't one. Why? Because with only one side in a debate...the outcome is a sham. The same holds for concepts.

                10 years ago, I posted pretty heavily supporting serious gun control. I was mostly alone in this...me vs. ardent gun supporters. Through Sandy Hook and Zimmerman, I was trolled nonstop with some posters collecting information on me and wanting to meet me in person. The board has thankfully moved closer to the position I hold. So I don't post nearly as much there...the outcome is still critical, but my value add is less so.

                Here, I have no need to offer defense to individuals whose motivations are impossible to discern. But as nobody else is doing it, I will offer defense to faith and because I know it, Christianity. Just as in defense anywhere else, that will include the positive side of Christianity and it must include comparatives with alternatives. After all, every point of view deserves a second side.
                Go Gophers!

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                • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

                  Originally posted by Kepler View Post
                  Don't you think it's more likely that Danny Thomas was a good person who did good things, and Christianity happened to be the language through which he expressed his motivations for those things?
                  A good person would do good even without the fear of a magic bearded man in the sky.

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                  • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

                    Originally posted by 5mn_Major View Post
                    The American court system is typically considered the best systems for identifying the truth that we have. It relies on a prosecution delivering facts, evidence, and other forms of argument to make their case. But equally important is the defense. Defense is so important...that the system appoints one when there isn't one. Why? Because with only one side in a debate...the outcome is a sham. The same holds for concepts.

                    10 years ago, I posted pretty heavily supporting serious gun control. I was mostly alone in this...me vs. ardent gun supporters. Through Sandy Hook and Zimmerman, I was trolled nonstop with some posters collecting information on me and wanting to meet me in person. The board has thankfully moved closer to the position I hold. So I don't post nearly as much there...the outcome is still critical, but my value add is less so.

                    Here, I have no need to offer defense to individuals whose motivations are impossible to discern. But as nobody else is doing it, I will offer defense to faith and because I know it, Christianity. Just as in defense anywhere else, that will include the positive side of Christianity and it must include comparatives with alternatives. After all, every point of view deserves a second side.
                    Well said, 5mn.

                    Dont assume too much from people wanting to meet you in person, though. I've always wondered what a thinking gopher fan would look like.

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                    • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

                      Originally posted by BassAle View Post
                      A good person would do good even without the fear of a magic bearded man in the sky.
                      To his credit I don't think 5mn concentrates on either the bribery of heaven or the threat of hell. He is saying that Jesus' message of love is the wellspring of these good deeds, and that while there are plenty of other ways to arrive at those aims Christianity has proven itself to be a capacious and small c catholic purveyor of that message.

                      I think he may have it backwards -- that good people may self-select as Christian social activists. But even that would still speak well of Christianity. The problem with trying to draw conclusions about comparative populations is that Christianity dominates many of the geographical spaces it enters, so while all those good people are Christians... so are all the bad people. You may as well be an LA resident and cite that Lakers fans help little old ladies across the street. Yeah, they do, but that's because nearly everybody in LA is a Laker fan -- the pimps and the Republicans are also Lakers fans.
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                      • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

                        Originally posted by Kepler View Post
                        To his credit I don't think 5mn concentrates on either the bribery of heaven or the threat of hell. He is saying that Jesus' message of love is the wellspring of these good deeds, and that while there are plenty of other ways to arrive at those aims Christianity has proven itself to be a capacious and small c catholic purveyor of that message.

                        I think he may have it backwards -- that good people may self-select as Christian social activists. But even that would still speak well of Christianity. The problem with trying to draw conclusions about comparative populations is that Christianity dominates many of the geographical spaces it enters, so while all those good people are Christians... so are all the bad people. You may as well be an LA resident and cite that Lakers fans help little old ladies across the street. Yeah, they do, but that's because nearly everybody in LA is a Laker fan -- the pimps and the Republicans are also Lakers fans.
                        right, but I think we agree those people would find a way to be good even if they had never heard Jesus's Message.

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                        • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

                          Originally posted by BassAle View Post
                          right, but I think we agree those people would find a way to be good even if they had never heard Jesus's Message.
                          My point is they are already good. The Christian messages are mechanisms to translate their goodness into activity. In the US almost all of us are bombarded by Christian messages like cosmic radiation, all our lives. Good people found hospitals and bad people cut hospital funding and give the money to the rich. Both populations are Christians. So the idea that the Christianness of the population is a logical precursor to the goodness of the hospital gift (or the badness of the CPAC fondling) is wrong. The Christian messages are simply giving the already good people a way to connect their goodness to the world.

                          Analogy, with apologies to Spinoza:

                          (1) The World is a setting in which work needs to be done.

                          (2) People are self-aware power supply which have the power to consciously choice where their power is applied. Robots make these decisions based on their inaccessible programming which appears to be the result of their hardware specs, their initialization, and feedback with The World and other People.

                          (3) Institutions are passive machines that can perform work.

                          (4) Ideologies are bundles of passive wires which link any power supply to only certain machines. Without ideologies, no work is done by institutions in the world -- the machines lie dormant not connected to power supplies.

                          The Christianity ideology package has a wire called "love thy neighbor." This wire connects to the hospital machine. It also has a wire called "monotheism." This wire connects to the Inquisition machine. People choose to use wires based on characteristics they already have. Good people use medicine to help people; bad people use the Inquisition to torture people.

                          The Capitalism ideology has a wire called "maximize shareholder value." This connects to the Shoe Factory machine which produces shoes for people but also pollution that makes people sick. The Capitalism ideology also has wires called "wealth is proof of social utility" and "social utility equals ethical value." Bad people use those wires to run the factory night and day: rich people get the shoes and poor people get the pollution, and that's a win-win according to the people who use those wires. Good people still run the shoe factory because people need shoes, but they have a wire from the Socialism ideology called "people should not suffer for others' wealth" (note: there is an eerily similar wire in the Christianity package -- perhaps Socialism has Christian roots or vice versa?) which connects to another machine called the EPA which interacts with the shoe factory to limit pollution, and to another called Consumer Protection Bureau to ensure the shoes aren't dangerous. Also, good people use the Socialist wire "All people equally deserve basic necessities" to connect to the Bank machine to help the poor access the money to pay for shoes they could not otherwise afford. Bad people want to cut all those wires because they are preventing the Shoe Factory from running as fast as it can night and day, maximizing shareholder value, which is what they care about.

                          Note that the ideologies are a mix of many different wires, many with mutually exclusive or even contradictory ethical consequences (Moral Standards are themselves a whole suite of ideologies which partially overlap with these other ideologies). So the choices people make whether to accentuate the good or bad within an ideology pre-exist their contact with the ideology. The 2:7:1 Rule is the Queen of Nature.
                          Last edited by Kepler; 04-13-2018, 12:26 PM.
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                          • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

                            Originally posted by BassAle View Post
                            right, but I think we agree those people would find a way to be good even if they had never heard Jesus's Message.
                            That's an interesting question, I think.

                            My own view of the bible has always been that it's just a version of Aesop's fables. Basically a collection of stories with lessons or teachings, but rather than have a bunch of animals as the main characters, we've transferred them into ancestors of our own.

                            I think all of those are important. Whether you collect those lessons from Aesop, from the bible, from your parents, or otherwise, it's those lessons that likely play a large role in shaping the extent to which you do the "good deeds" referred to.

                            Without those lessons are humans naturally inclined to act charitably? Not so sure about that.
                            That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose.

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                            • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

                              Originally posted by Kepler View Post
                              Don't you think it's more likely that Danny Thomas was a good person who did good things, and Christianity happened to be the language through which he expressed his motivations for those things?
                              Talent often requires inspiration to maximize. Thomas is an example of a somewhat common outcome of inspiration coming to someone with extraordinary talent.

                              Many people seem to know that I once vowed to Saint Jude that I’d build a shrine in his name if he’d help me through a difficult time in my life. Yet the fascinating part of that story is how, when I failed to keep my part of the bargain, that saint resolutely refused to let me off the hook. My parents had come from Lebanon, a country where shrines dedicated to favorite patron saints are familiar sights. Often these shrines are simply statues, or little places where you can stop to meditate and pray. And, believe me, as one of nine kids in a very poor immigrant family, I was grateful for all the protection I could get! My mother did not hesitate to make her own spiritual vows. When my little brother Danny was a few months old, he was badly bitten by a rat that jumped into his crib. He screamed and went into convulsions. At the hospital the doctors told my mother that Danny was dying, but she wouldn’t accept that. She went to her knees in prayer, promising God that if her baby’s life were saved she’d beg alms for the poor for a year. Danny got well, and every day for 12 months my mother, herself one of the poorest of the poor, living in shabby, cramped quarters over a pool hall, went out and begged pennies from door to door. My mother’s faith in God was so strong that she could not possibly give in to fear or hopelessness. To her, despair was a tool of the devil—it was doubting God, and that was a sin. As each of us children was born, she turned us over to God and after that she would not let herself, or us, forget that we had Him to turn to.

                              I always had my heart set on being an entertainer, and during the seven years I spent at the burlesque theater I studied some of the best comedians in the business and grew all the more determined to be one too. In June 1940, a baby was on the way. I was making two dollars a night as an M.C. at a Detroit supper club called the Club Morocco. On Tuesday night a man came into the Club Morocco. He was celebrating something. His pockets were filled with little cards that he was handing out to people as he tried to tell them about an incredible thing that had just happened to him. His wife was in a hospital where she’d been facing an operation for a deadly cancer. All night long this man had knelt on the cold marble floor of the hospital and prayed the same prayer over and over again. When the sun came up in the morning the doctors called him in to report that, inexplicably, miraculously, his wife’s cancer had disappeared. “This is the prayer that did it,” he said, handing me one of the cards. It was the prayer to Saint Jude. All that night I thought about this man and his appeal to a saint whom I knew only slightly as “Patron of the Hopeless” or “The Forgotten Saint.” Though an apostle of Jesus, Jude was not one of the saints whom many Catholics turned to, probably because of his name, which was really Judas Thaddeus, far too similar to that of the hated Judas Iscariot.

                              The next day I went into a church to pray, and when I reached into my pocket for a coin, I found the card the man had given me. Then and there I felt moved to make my vow. I did not ask for anything specific llike money or fame, but I promised Saint Jude that if he would help me find some clear course for my life, I would build him a shrine. The day after the Club Morocco closed, I drove my old Buick down to Toledo and left Rosemarie with my parents while I took one last stab at looking for work in show business. Very quickly one little radio job led to another, and in a short time I was flourishing as a character actor. Then I tried my hand again as a stand-up entertainer. I opened before 18 customers in a converted automobile showroom called the 5100 Club; in a few months there were that many people waiting outside trying to get in. Success simply piled upon success.

                              And what happened to my vow to Saint Jude? Nothing. I was so busy that for two years I had forgotten about it. But Saint Jude had not. On the way home after a night at the 5100 Club, I used to go to the 5:00 a.m. mass at St. Clement’s Church. One morning I picked up a little pamphlet that lay beside me in the pew and, to my surprise, read about a novena—a nine-day period of devotion—about to be offered to none other than my old friend Saint Jude. Even more surprising was the information that there, on the south side of Chicago, was the first national shrine to Saint Jude. Chicago was Saint Jude’s town, too! He wanted me to know it. I did not forget Saint Jude again. I knew I had to do something about fulfilling my vow, but I couldn’t make up my mind what kind of a shrine I should build. Rosemarie suggested that I think about a statue, or perhaps a side altar, but somehow nothing seemed right to me. Time went by. I moved on to New York. My career progressed to movies and TV. Still I could not make up my mind.

                              And then came the dream. I dreamed one night about a little boy being injured in a car accident. He was rushed to the hospital, but for some reason the doctors were reluctant to treat him and the boy bled to death. The dream was so vivid, so horrifying, that it troubled me for days. But out of that dream came an idea, an idea born of a lifetime of experiences. I thought about the man who had prayed for his wife all night on the cold hospital floor. I thought of my infant brother Danny grabbing hold of life just when the doctors said he was dying, and slowly I began to see Saint Jude’s shrine as a hospital.

                              And what better way to honor the Patron Saint of the Hopeless than with a place where “dying” children, children with “incurable” diseases could come to be healed? That, of course, was the beginning of Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. Tennessee. It is the only institution on this earth dedicated solely to the conquest of catastrophic diseases. It is open to children of all faiths and races regardless of their parents’ ability to pay. No family ever pays for the services rendered there. They are free.

                              It took me ten years to raise the money to get the hospital started. I did it mainly through benefit performances, going all over the country raising money from Catholics and Protestants and Jews—and Muslims, too—and especially getting help from people of my own Lebanese heritage. I never went before one of those benefit audiences that I didn’t think about my mother going door to door begging pennies, for, in my own way, I was doing the same thing, for the same reason. Today when I look at the hospital that Saint Jude brought into being, when I see the hope that the Saint of the Hopeless has brought to thousands of parents and their youngsters, I am as certain as my mother was certain, that to right despair is to affirm our faith in God and in the love He has for all of us.

                              https://www.guideposts.org/faith-and...on-keeping-his
                              Last edited by 5mn_Major; 04-13-2018, 11:20 AM.
                              Go Gophers!

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                              • Re: Religion Thread: ...and suddenly, everyone's a theology scholar

                                Originally posted by SJHovey View Post
                                That's an interesting question, I think.

                                My own view of the bible has always been that it's just a version of Aesop's fables. Basically a collection of stories with lessons or teachings, but rather than have a bunch of animals as the main characters, we've transferred them into ancestors of our own.

                                I think all of those are important. Whether you collect those lessons from Aesop, from the bible, from your parents, or otherwise, it's those lessons that likely play a large role in shaping the extent to which you do the "good deeds" referred to.

                                Without those lessons are humans naturally inclined to act charitably? Not so sure about that.
                                There's really no way to separate people from their cultural milieu -- a person raised in a vat would, in some ways, not really be a person. Aristotle called man "the political being" but the etymologists think from his word choice there and elsewhere he really meant "the civic being," where civic connotes social connection. Indeed, Aristotle's time recognized the civitas as a pre-requistive condition for being human. There were human-like creatures outside the city, but they were, literally, "barbarous."

                                Note that a "city" in this time was a gathering of about 1000 families, so figure about 10k people -- a small college campus now.
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