Belief or disbelief: What are your reasons?

Religion should get all the respect we give to any idea, to be judged on it's merits. Dawkins and Hitchens do not teach that one should disrespect the people that hold those beliefs, that's a completely different story. They both have religious friends and relatives. Htichens' wife is a religious Jew.
 
Cris said:
ggazoo,
I strongly disagree. My position is entirely intellectual. I have experienced personal tragedies (deaths of close relations, a parent, and sister, for example). My intellectual position was not challenged by those. I.e. I can maintain a reasoned view that overrides my emotions.
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Your statement intrigues me. I ask this out of pure curiosity - and believe me when I say that I'm not trying to convert you because I don't think that's mine, or anyone else's role - but is the fact that you are letting your intellect override your emotions a possible reason why you can't connect with God?
 
My reasoning for "lack of faith" has very little to do with science to be quite honest. My point is quite simply lack of respect for any person or god that would do the things that god is quiet willing to take credit for.
1. i don't punish all my children for an act that only one committed.
2. if i had the power to stop starvation and all the other wrongs with the world i would certainly do so, even if it did mean losing against my enemy
3. i don't make rules for my family that i myself am incapable of upholding
4. i don't like the idea of vengeance
 
ggazoo said:
Your statement intrigues me. I ask this out of pure curiosity - and believe me when I say that I'm not trying to convert you because I don't think that's mine, or anyone else's role - but is the fact that you are letting your intellect override your emotions a possible reason why you can't connect with God?
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Is this a tacit admission that belief in god is an emotional response that doesn't genuinely make any sense?
 
ggazoo said:
The only way that we'll all be able to get along is to get sympathetically into one another's shoes. If you don't believe in God, you need to try to understand why anybody does, or we're not going to be able to work in a pluralistic society.
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So, if childhood indoctrination is the key to understanding, should we embrace it just so we can all get along? If morals are justified by challenging religious indoctrination as child abuse, do we challenge your religion and it's methods? How then do all get along if your religion is morally abusive?

When the new atheist books (Dawkins, Hitchens, and company) say that religion is bad, that's not a new thesis. What's new about those books is that they say respect for religion is bad.
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Childhood indoctrination = child abuse. To respect indoctrination is to respect the immoral and cruel.

If you counsel one section of your population to belittle and disdain the beliefs of another group of people - who's beliefs give them great joy and meaning if life - and do nothing to understand the other group - that's a recipe for social disaster. I've actually ignored replies on these boards just for that reason alone.
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No beliefs can give great joy and meaning of life if indoctrination and abuse are the core values.
 
spidergoat said:
Dawkins and Hitchens do not teach that one should disrespect the people that hold those beliefs, that's a completely different story. They both have religious friends and relatives.
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Hitchens:

Mommie Dearest
The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.


Dawkins:
Debating in London on the subject: "Are we better off without religion?", he said religion was like "a child with a dummy in its mouth. I do not think it a very dignified or respect-worthy posture for an adult to go around sucking a dummy for comfort."
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Htichens' wife is a religious Jew.
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I pity the poor woman.
 
S.A.M. said:
Hitchens:

Mommie Dearest
The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.
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Sam loves to be intellectually dishonest. It's her forte.

"Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions."
 
(Q) said:
Sam loves to be intellectually dishonest. It's her forte.

"Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions."
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Hitchens is not fit to lick the dust on MT's toes.
 
S.A.M. said:
Hitchens is not fit to lick the dust on MT's toes.
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From the same link:

"she (MT) was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit."
 
(Q) said:
From the same link:

"she (MT) was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit."
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Go to any hospice for lepers or terminally ill patients set up by Mother Teresa.

There are four in Bombay for orphans and AIDS patients who have no other means of support.

Asha Daan
Missionaries of Charity
Sankli Street
Byculla
Mumbai 400008
Karmayogi: Sister Yvoone, Superintendent
Tel: 23093591
Category: Children
Email: No
Notes: Asha Daan is run by the Missionaries of Charity (founded by the late Mother Teresa). It is a home for 300 abandoned, handicapped children, the destitute and people affected by AIDS (HIV positive). It has been set up on a 72,500 square feet plot of warehouses of Hindustan Lever Ltd. HLL also bears the capital and revenue expenses for maintenance, upkeep and security of the premises. Medical treatment, food facilities & accommodation for dying destitute and handicapped destitute children. Has four branches at Vile Parle, Santacruz, Byculla and New Bombay.
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People like Hitchens remind me of the Martin Luther King quote:

There are two types of men in this world. Those who would live together like brothers and those who would die together like fools.
 
S.A.M. said:
Go to any hospice for lepers or terminally ill patients set up by Mother Teresa.

There are four in Bombay for orphans and AIDS patients who have no other means of support.
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Are they being treated there? You might notice that she called her 'clinics' "Homes for the dying."
 
redwards said:
"Hospice" implies that she was administering some form of palliative care. Was she?
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Can you read? If so, look at the post describing the care she was giving.

Or visit a hospice yourself. They take volunteers.
 
S.A.M. said:
Can you read? If so, look at the post describing the care she was giving.

Or visit a hospice yourself. They take volunteers.
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I'm not talking about what her charity organization is doing now that she's been dead for a decade, I'm asking you did Mother Teresa advocate the alleviation of pain for dying patients at her 'hospices'?
 
redwards said:
I'm not talking about what her charity organization is doing now that she's been dead for a decade, I'm asking you did Mother Teresa advocate the alleviation of pain for dying patients at her 'hospices'?
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I think it was mostly S&M.

I believe they used the same methods of pain alleviation as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
S.A.M. said:
I think it was mostly S&M.

I believe they used the same methods of pain alleviation as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. :rolleyes::rolleyes:
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You're making a joke because you don't know, and you're presuming that what I'm implying is not true.

Look into it.
 
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