Positive side of organised religion

[mbohu 77]

7 hours ago, RonD1120 said:

Salvation is not based on intellectual reasoning. It is based on surrender to God's plan.

Right. But any Muslim, Hindu, Jew or Catholic would say the exact same thing.

[turtlespeed 212]

1 hour ago, mbohu said:

Right. But any Muslim, Hindu, Jew or Catholic would say the exact same thing.

Don't forget wiccans, Universalists, Satanists, and Atheists.

[riggerrob 558]

and The difference between religion and science is that religion is frozen at some point (e.g. when a holy book is published) whereas science is constantly tested and challenged.

Religion is fine for busy people and generally provides good advice on how to get along with your neighbours, etc. However, most holy books were written hundreds or thousand of years ago in a much simpler society. Then the teachings are frozen and can only be challenged by heathens, infidels and other sorts of mal-odorous perverts.  For example, "go forth and multiply" made sense up until about 1970. After 1970 we realized that human population had grown to close to the maximum capacity of this planet. Since the 1960s, birth control has become available for millions of women allowing them to still have recreational sex with their husbands, but not be burdened by a dozen children.

This reminds me of a conversation after Thanksgiving dinner. We were sitting around chatting about the dozen children in a grandmother's family. One of my teenage, girl cousins, once-removed was horrified at the thought of one woman (my great grandmother) raising a dozen children! When I suggested "birth control" as an alternative, she was shocked!

Then we got into a discussion about infant mortality rates a century ago, etc.

I wondered if I had over-stepped the bounds of good taste, but my cousin told me to relax because his wife is an obstetrition who leaves textbooks laying around the house. We both agreed that teenagers should understand the basics of birth control and various methods of avoiding sexually-transmitted diseases. Some of those STDs did not exist when I was a teenager!

Which means that sex ed. textbooks - from my teenaged years - are obsolete. Anyone dogmatically following those old textbooks risks dying of recently-introduced STDs.

Unfortunately, several organized religions have dogmatically stuck with equating birth control with "though shalt not kill." Part of their motivation may be to increase the number of faithful by out-breeding other religions. That "revenge of the cradle" worked well in Quebec until the 1960s, then people realized that did not need to be burdened with a dozen children. Only recently has the Pope murmured something about birth control being okay.

OTOH Scientists constantly review and critique and questions each other. If a scientist wants any credibility, they need to publish articles, papers, thesis, etc. in peer-reviewed scientific journals and lecture about their findings at scientific conferences. What was gospel 50 years ago is scoffed at now.

For example, the whole concept of continental-drift (aka. plate-tectonics) was scoffed at until geologists collected massive amounts of seismic data starting in the 1950s. By the time my school started teaching geography (late 1960s) plate tectonics was accepted as fact because any elementary student could glance at a globe and quickly see how the Brazilian and African coasts meshed together so gracefully. 

 

Edited January 7, 2020 by riggerrob

[gowlerk 1,911]

19 minutes ago, turtlespeed said:

Don't forget wiccans, Universalists, Satanists, and Atheists.

As a atheist I do not believe in salvation. Or an afterlife. And I also would not capitalize atheist. FWIW

[jakee 1,254]

2 hours ago, turtlespeed said:

Don't forget wiccans, Universalists, Satanists, and Atheists.

But they would correctly be saying it about someone else's beliefs, not describing their own.

[SethInMI 145]

2 hours ago, riggerrob said:

For example, "go forth and multiply" made sense up until about 1970.

In "The Portable Atheist" the anthology edited by C. Hitchens, one author makes the snide remark that what God actually said was "go fuck yourselves" but it got re-worked into "be fruitful and multiply".

[mbohu 77]

2 hours ago, turtlespeed said:

Don't forget wiccans, Universalists, Satanists, and Atheists.

Well, I was referring to "surrender to God's plan", so I think it doesn't apply so much to Atheists and Satanists, maybe to Wiccan's, if you replace it with "The Great Mother's plan" or "nature's plan"? 

[JoeWeber 2,299]

6 hours ago, mbohu said:

Right. But any Muslim, Hindu, Jew or Catholic would say the exact same thing.

And you think I pointlessly engage? Do you think you moved the marker with Ron a single millimeter? Do you think if he heard the same statement a million times it might resonate? Ignore him or confront him, those are the alternatives. Sadly, both are equally effective.

[turtlespeed 212]

2 hours ago, mbohu said:

Well, I was referring to "surrender to God's plan", so I think it doesn't apply so much to Atheists and Satanists, maybe to Wiccan's, if you replace it with "The Great Mother's plan" or "nature's plan"? 

So was I, in a way, any religion involving Gods, or even the pristine lack of a god, requires one to surrender to that belief.  

[jakee 1,254]

4 hours ago, turtlespeed said:

So was I, in a way, any religion involving Gods, or even the pristine lack of a god, requires one to surrender to that belief.  

Lol what?

[RonD1120 58]

10 hours ago, JoeWeber said:

And you think I pointlessly engage? Do you think you moved the marker with Ron a single millimeter? Do you think if he heard the same statement a million times it might resonate? Ignore him or confront him, those are the alternatives. Sadly, both are equally effective.

No one can take away from me what God has given me. First experienced on 16 Mar 1981 and expanded in Apr 1983. Those experiences are part of my soul and have eternal existence.

The same sort of experience is available to anyone who seeks God.

Forget President Trump, forget abortion laws, forget gender-changing, forget all in the physical realm. Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

You are fighting for your limitations. So have I. If you win, you lose.

[wmw999 2,121]

I'd say it all depends on the degree of commitment to the religion or lack thereof. I know atheists who are very committed to their assertion that There is no God. That does take some commitment. Others are more of the "meh" variety.

And to someone who's not part of any community (whether it's Christian, Muslim, Baha'i, atheist, etc), everyone who's part of that community can look alike. Kind of like how people of one ethnicity have more trouble distinguishing small characteristics of other ethnicities -- they don't automatically look for what's significant within the community.

Wendy P.

[jakee 1,254]

54 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

I'd say it all depends on the degree of commitment to the religion or lack thereof. I know atheists who are very committed to their assertion that There is no God. That does take some commitment. Others are more of the "meh" variety.

What does that have to do with abandoning intellectual reasoning to gain salvation through surrender to (no) God?

 

No matter how dedicated the atheist you come across, can the above sentence ever make sense?

[gowlerk 1,911]

This has now gone off into a discussion of theology. Which was inevitable. The thread is supposed to be about "positive side of organized religion". Which would be a study of sociology, not beliefs.

[JoeWeber 2,299]

2 hours ago, RonD1120 said:

No one can take away from me what God has given me. First experienced on 16 Mar 1981 and expanded in Apr 1983. Those experiences are part of my soul and have eternal existence.

The same sort of experience is available to anyone who seeks God.

Forget President Trump, forget abortion laws, forget gender-changing, forget all in the physical realm. Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

You are fighting for your limitations. So have I. If you win, you lose.

How come he gypped you in 1981? That's not very omniscient of him.

[JoeWeber 2,299]

47 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

This has now gone off into a discussion of theology. Which was inevitable. The thread is supposed to be about "positive side of organized religion". Which would be a study of sociology, not beliefs.

Baloney. Otherwise the thread would be "the positive side of sociology". 

[turtlespeed 212]

1 hour ago, gowlerk said:

This has now gone off into a discussion of theology. Which was inevitable. The thread is supposed to be about "positive side of organized religion". Which would be a study of sociology, not beliefs.

I tried a few posts back . . .

[kallend 1,623]

6 hours ago, RonD1120 said:

No one can take away from me what God has given me. First experienced on 16 Mar 1981 and expanded in Apr 1983. Those experiences are part of my soul and have eternal existence.

 

I thought you once told us that chemicals were associated with those experiences.

[riggerrob 558]

Oh!

The "positive" side of organized religion.

Well, the Catholic Church did a lot of good things in Quebec until I was born. They ran orphanages, schools, universities, hospitals, charity for the poor, psychological counselling services, etc. That began centuries before Canada had a central government, much less gov't bureaucrats to administer all those programs.

If you go back a thousand years, you will find that Irish monks preserved thousands of ancient documents by copying them (laboriously by hand). See the book "How the Irish saved civilization" by Tom Cahill. In the majority of European villages only one or two men could read or write and it was usually the village's Catholic priest.

Monasteries and convents didn't just sit around and pray all day, rather they were economically self-supporting agricultural communities that sold grain, fruit, fish, cheese, wine books, etc. Many monasteries also provided lodging for travellers. Perhaps you have heard of the monastery at Grand Saint Bernard Pass in the Swiss alps?

Back during the Middle Ages, the Pope mediated between feuding Christian kingdoms to minimize bloodshed.

Catholic churches also provided most of the live entertainment, many centuries before electronic media.

I say this as a descendant of a long line of Protestant Christians. That is "Protestant" with a capital "P." My grandfather would cheerfully pass a Sunday afternoon regaling all the sins committed by the Roman Catholic Church. Too long-winded for my young ears, but we could not change our old grandfather's attitudes.

But my family are also Universalists who look for the good in all religions. And search for common values. Perhaps my grandfather was miffed at tiny amount of food shared by Roman Catholics: barely a stale wafer and a sip of wine!

[Rick 67]

one of the positive sides of organized religion

 

Monasteries started brewing beer as early as the 5th century and at its peak, over 600 monasteries in Europe were brewing their own beer. The monks followed a principle of being completely self-sufficient and also made it their duty to provide pilgrims and visitors with food and drink

[turtlespeed 212]

2 minutes ago, Rick said:

one of the positive sides of organized religion

 

Monasteries started brewing beer as early as the 5th century and at its peak, over 600 monasteries in Europe were brewing their own beer. The monks followed a principle of being completely self-sufficient and also made it their duty to provide pilgrims and visitors with food and drink

Does it count for or against organized religion that the monks also came up with champagne?

[Rick 67]

25 minutes ago, turtlespeed said:

Does it count for or against organized religion that the monks also came up with champagne?

Mimosas are good once in a while 

[RonD1120 58]

7 hours ago, kallend said:

I thought you once told us that chemicals were associated with those experiences.

I was a chronic alcoholic and admitted to myself and to God that I was lost and doomed. I asked Jesus for help.

[JoeWeber 2,299]

2 hours ago, RonD1120 said:

I was a chronic alcoholic and admitted to myself and to God that I was lost and doomed. I asked Jesus for help.

Were you in AA?

[RonD1120 58]

6 hours ago, JoeWeber said:

Were you in AA?

Yes and no. After the Lord guided me to work as a substance abuse counselor I supported the AA/NA for and with my clients.