Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Exerpted from an article in the Christmas Day Washington Post about Catholic Relief Services--an organization that traces its origin to Saint Francis of Assisi in the 13th century--now working in Afghanistan:
Charity: The Christian cause that has the right to precedence over every other
- Thread starter Fraggle Rocker
- Start date
Typical Christian arrogance/hypocricy disguised as 'good cause' and 'humility'.
Thre is NOTHING that gives right to Christian precedence over any other religion.
There is NOTHING that makes Christianity anymore believable than any other religion. Anyone who thinks so is either deluded or arrogant or both.
Thre is NOTHING that gives right to Christian precedence over any other religion.
There is NOTHING that makes Christianity anymore believable than any other religion. Anyone who thinks so is either deluded or arrogant or both.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
So sorry, I obviously didn't do an accurate job of excerpting. He was not saying that Christianity is the good cause which has precedence over every other religions. He was saying that charity is the good cause which has precedence over all other Christian causes. Including, as he clearly indicated, the evangelism that drives us all nuts.
My apologies for the misunderstanding. Most of you have read enough of my posts to know that I'm no apologist for Christianity or any other Abrahamic religion.
Ok. Thanks for clearing that up. I did read the article, I guess I just misinterpreted it. Plus I'm kinda on a rampage against religion right now because I got banned for a week from my NFL team website for mentioning someone being a 'church girl' when countless other members are saying 'thank god' this and 'god bless' that. Double standards.
/rant & hijack
But yeah, now that you've 'splained it. I have to concur with him then.
Arch_Rival
Registered Senior Member
See, the problem with religion is good ideas get tagged with unacceptable ideas, then they get packaged as a whole. Just take a look at these two ideas.
1. do charity for people, care for your neighbour etc..... <- good idea
2. only 1 god, all other gods are false, etc... <- unacceptable idea to certain other religions
The unaceptable bad ideas get tagged with the good ideas and get spread as a package under the religion Christianity. This is why sometimes there are polar opposites, i.e. some people accept christianity as a whole, accepting the good ideas, but taking along the bad ideas, or people totally rejecting christianity, rejecting the bad ideas and the good ideas along with them.
Simply because in our minds we forget it is possible to separate the bad ideas from the good, then reject the bad ones and only accept the good ones.
Which brings us to another problem. How central are the bad ideas to the religion? Can the religion still be called that if all the bad ideas are taken away? Or put another way, are the good ideas exclusive only to that religion? Or can people carry out those good ideas without being part of that religion?
1. do charity for people, care for your neighbour etc..... <- good idea
2. only 1 god, all other gods are false, etc... <- unacceptable idea to certain other religions
The unaceptable bad ideas get tagged with the good ideas and get spread as a package under the religion Christianity. This is why sometimes there are polar opposites, i.e. some people accept christianity as a whole, accepting the good ideas, but taking along the bad ideas, or people totally rejecting christianity, rejecting the bad ideas and the good ideas along with them.
Simply because in our minds we forget it is possible to separate the bad ideas from the good, then reject the bad ones and only accept the good ones.
Which brings us to another problem. How central are the bad ideas to the religion? Can the religion still be called that if all the bad ideas are taken away? Or put another way, are the good ideas exclusive only to that religion? Or can people carry out those good ideas without being part of that religion?
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Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Most of the good ideas are widespread. Charity, the Ten Commandments, etc. I think you see them pop up in many religions.
But I suggest that the truly bad ideas in the Abrahamic religions, the ideas so bad that they actually make them bad religions, are unique to Abrahamism, or at least unique among the major world religions with enough followers to show up on an atlas.
"We are special!" That's a pretty Bad Idea. Of course many of the Stone Age religions stress the uniqueness of their people. You were born here, your people have always lived here, we are your gods and goddesses, you're part of this wonderful place. But Abrahamists aren't just unique, they're special. The Jews are so special that they alone have a Covenant with God! Of course that has worked out just terribly for them; being weak mortals they've never been able to live up to the agreement and keep the Covenant, so God keeps dumping crap on them, from the exile in Egypt to the Holocaust. But hey, any attention is better than no attention (the philosophy of the dog, if I'm not mistaken) and the fact that God keeps dumping that crap on them (see any recent newspaper headline) proves that they're special.
The Christians are just as special, they follow Jesus and the rest of us are dismissed as "heathens," even their fellow Abrahamists the Muslims. The Muslims feel the same way about Mohammed. The Jews, Christians and Muslims are not just unique, like all human beings are, they're special.
Which naturally leads to their next Bad Idea: "We're better than you!" Here's where Abrahamism parts company with many other major religions. It isn't just that their religion is better, and therefore they have an obligation to get in our faces and proselytize it... as if that weren't bad enough. Heck, the Buddhists have done that. But no, it's that they themselves are better than everyone else. We're dog shit on God's lawn and if we become too inconvenient they can just kill us. The Jews don't feel this way, to their credit. The Covenant is just for them, so Judaism cannot be proselytized to non-Jews, and since there's no way to give us the choice to become Jews, it would be unfair to punish us for making the wrong choice by killing us. Still, there's a suspicious amount of killing of non-Jews going on around the borders of the Holy Land these days.
We are special. We are better than you. Those are two absolutely rotten ideas, and they are central to the philosophy of Abraham.
Fraggle Rocker,
I don't think these qualities come from scriptoral religion. I think they come
from inflated egos. You will find this kind of arrogance and eliteism in human society, religious or not.
jan.
I don't think these qualities come from scriptoral religion. I think they come
from inflated egos. You will find this kind of arrogance and eliteism in human society, religious or not.
jan.
Jan,
What you fail to understand is that if god is so big on humility, then he's not going to allow his people to act like that. Likewise, if the Jews/Xians/Muslims were 'so favored' by god, then those three would have much better lives than non-believers, which isn't the case. You said it yourself, you'll find arrogance in religion or out of religion.
You made the statement in another thread that this religion 'makes sense to you'. I would LOVE to know how any of the abrahamic religions makes sense to you.
At best, god is sadistic for allowing his people to not only, 1.disagree to the point that a different religion entirely was created (both Xianity and Islam from Judiaism) AND, 2. within those religions, sometimes staunchly disagreeing denominations.
I was raised baptist. I was baptized in the 'name of Jesus' when I was a kid.
I went to a Pentecostal church when I was stationed in Okinawa. When I told them about my baptism, they were adamant to get me rebaptized because they said I needed to be baptized in the 'name of the father, son and holy ghost.' I eventually stopped going to that church, but my first thought about that was, 'who gives a shit? there is no difference. and if you people are going to 'split hairs' over some bullshit trivial difference like that, you guys have much bigger problems'.
I'll use an analogy here, metaphorical representations in parenthesis:
Let's say you (God) have two children (humanity) who are arguing about something, of which they are both wrong (Jews are right. No, Christians are right). You know the answer. Are you going to sit back on your ass and let them continue to bicker about who is right, or are you going to be the parent you should be and help them both understand the right answer?
Likewise, if those two bickering children of yours escalated into a physical confrontation (any war created by religion), are you as a parent going to sit back and let them beat the shit out of each other (like god does), or are you going to intervene and put a stop to it?
So the bottom line is, while god may have not caused the arrogance* of his followers, he allows it to continue unpunished, which IMO is just as evil as causing it to happen. If you disagree, do explain why.
*which has apparently enabled arrogant Christians to think their cause has the right to precendence over any other...yeah that makes a whole lot of sense, jan.
I think the Abrahamic religions take it one step further by adding that not only we are special and better than you, we are going to heaven and you will burn for an eternity.
And yet further: You are a blasphemer, hence we are justified to kill you.
And still further: Our religion will engulf the world, hence you ALL will join us or die.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Yes, Abrahamism feeds on our atavistic tribal instinct. At a point when we're desperately struggling to unite our entire species in one global community, the Christians, Muslims and Jews treat each other (and the rest of us) like rival tribes with whom they couldn't possibly be expected to share their hunting and gathering territory.
Be careful to recognize Judaism's one saving grace: it is not evangelical. They believe their ancestors made a Covenant with God which (only by Stone Age law but that's how religions work) their hapless descendants are obligated to uphold. Therefore it would be unfair to accept outsiders into the tribe and subject them to the same punishment that God dumps on the Jews for breaking the Covenant, from the Exile to the Holocaust.
mikenostic,
"Jews/Xians/Muslims" are nought but titles, they don't actually mean anything other than names to identify bodies. If I told you I was muslim, then you would respond to me as such without needing to know if i actually muslim.
The OP gives a good idea of what you term people "so favoured by god.
Now if those people were atheist they would still be favoured by god.
The question is; would atheists do what McGarry and his co-workers do, for the same reasons.
Mike, I also said I wasn't referring to any religious sect or sub-sect.
If all I had to go on was the Christian, Islamic, and Judaic institutions, I would be atheist.
I agree with you. To me, that is not what religion is about.
Obviously this conflict is more than bickering, and
it is more than just being about who is right. It would appear that the whole bible is more or less dealing with this conflict. I doubt it is as simple you would like to believe.
His followers aren't arrogant, if they are, then they cease to be his followers.
This can be understood by reading the OP.
A doctor is a doctor on two counts, one, he is academically qualified, two, he cares about healing the sick. If the doctor decides to murder his patients what happens, he is struck off, meaning he is no longer a doctor, despite being academically qualified. He could still practice his skill, he could still call himself a doctor, but he is not a part of the medical proffession, that which he strove for. He is now independant.
jan.
"Jews/Xians/Muslims" are nought but titles, they don't actually mean anything other than names to identify bodies. If I told you I was muslim, then you would respond to me as such without needing to know if i actually muslim.
The OP gives a good idea of what you term people "so favoured by god.
Now if those people were atheist they would still be favoured by god.
The question is; would atheists do what McGarry and his co-workers do, for the same reasons.
Mike, I also said I wasn't referring to any religious sect or sub-sect.
If all I had to go on was the Christian, Islamic, and Judaic institutions, I would be atheist.
I agree with you. To me, that is not what religion is about.
Obviously this conflict is more than bickering, and
it is more than just being about who is right. It would appear that the whole bible is more or less dealing with this conflict. I doubt it is as simple you would like to believe.
His followers aren't arrogant, if they are, then they cease to be his followers.
This can be understood by reading the OP.
A doctor is a doctor on two counts, one, he is academically qualified, two, he cares about healing the sick. If the doctor decides to murder his patients what happens, he is struck off, meaning he is no longer a doctor, despite being academically qualified. He could still practice his skill, he could still call himself a doctor, but he is not a part of the medical proffession, that which he strove for. He is now independant.
jan.
commonsense
Registered Member
Hmm... it occurrs to me that to subscribe to any religion is to abandon all rational and logical thinking and disconnect from our true heritage, to overwhelmingly fail ourselves as a species and to commit to texts that have been corrupted over centuries.
Is it such a horrible notion to accept ourselves as a sophisticated species that has evolved from apes? Animals that dream, emote, socialise and display forms of civilized behaviour... I am convicned that though we are a highly evolved species, we are all connected to something bigger, but something that is not anchored in any religious institute.
Is it such a horrible notion to accept ourselves as a sophisticated species that has evolved from apes? Animals that dream, emote, socialise and display forms of civilized behaviour... I am convicned that though we are a highly evolved species, we are all connected to something bigger, but something that is not anchored in any religious institute.
Fraggle Rocker,
The same sentiment can be seen through the modern atheist movement.
Apologies, commonsense, for using you first post like that, but it does present itself as an elitist and arrogant stament, even though you yourself may not be arrogant or elitist.
jan.
jan.
The same sentiment can be seen through the modern atheist movement.
commonsense said:
Apologies, commonsense, for using you first post like that, but it does present itself as an elitist and arrogant stament, even though you yourself may not be arrogant or elitist.
jan.
jan.
Thoughts on the problem
In the Abramic tradition, the selection of the Jews has a more mundane origin centered in a deep mix of tradition, mythology, and authority. Everyone petitioned the favor of the gods.
But with Christianity, the notion of the elect took on a different context. When orthodoxy won out over gnosticism, the supremacy came in the form of salvation: We are saved, everyone else is not. Over time, this idea infected much of the Christian worldview, mutating and evolving in response to the challenges of the times. Islam, reinterpreting salvation and God's kingdom, has stuttered and stumbled for centuries over the proposition that there is only one right way to live. Orthopraxy trumps orthodoxy in Islam, which alters tremendously the foundation of supremacy derived from salvation or redemption. The problem of orthopraxy is that anyone participating in the pillars of the faith is a Muslim, even the complete idiots. This idea has come around in Christian circles insofar as redemption now seems to revolve around a profession of belief. Thus, even the completely hypocritical idiots are now saved; nobody has to walk in the footsteps of a Muhammad or a Jesus. Some would say you can blow up schoolchildren and go to Heaven as a reward. Others say you can live in constant sin—although only certain "lifestyle" sins are covered by this—and go to Heaven anyway because you believe Jesus will save you. The difference between, say, Catholicism and fundamentalist evangelism is that the latter is a lot easier. I mean, as stupid as confession and penance seems to us, someone is still confessing to cheating on his wife, or lusting his daughter. That process may be either humbling or desensitizing, but it is a far different engagement of the faith than simply saying, "I believe in Jesus" and believing yourself cleansed of sin.
In the case of charity, we might observe that it is sad when one must be cajoled into decency and dignity by a promise of Heaven and a threat of Hell, but such belief among the faithful, while often apparent in the present, is a doctrinal error. It is easy enough to read Matthew and think we must do good things for other people in order to get into Heaven, but it is also spelled out plainly that it's not just about doing good things, but about not doing bad things. And we should do them because these things are the right things to do, or not because they are wrong. Impressing God should be about the last of a Christian's concern, and until that idea is brought once again to the fore of the faith, the problem you note will continue to plague Christianity.
With Islam, the wise voices need what wise voices have always needed: a political situation that empowers their argument. In a day when many moderate, and even wise, Muslim leaders are drowned out by the deathly bray of the extremists and the spectacular focus of the headlines, we see in particular relief the scars of history within the human endeavor.
(Q) said:
In the Abramic tradition, the selection of the Jews has a more mundane origin centered in a deep mix of tradition, mythology, and authority. Everyone petitioned the favor of the gods.
But with Christianity, the notion of the elect took on a different context. When orthodoxy won out over gnosticism, the supremacy came in the form of salvation: We are saved, everyone else is not. Over time, this idea infected much of the Christian worldview, mutating and evolving in response to the challenges of the times. Islam, reinterpreting salvation and God's kingdom, has stuttered and stumbled for centuries over the proposition that there is only one right way to live. Orthopraxy trumps orthodoxy in Islam, which alters tremendously the foundation of supremacy derived from salvation or redemption. The problem of orthopraxy is that anyone participating in the pillars of the faith is a Muslim, even the complete idiots. This idea has come around in Christian circles insofar as redemption now seems to revolve around a profession of belief. Thus, even the completely hypocritical idiots are now saved; nobody has to walk in the footsteps of a Muhammad or a Jesus. Some would say you can blow up schoolchildren and go to Heaven as a reward. Others say you can live in constant sin—although only certain "lifestyle" sins are covered by this—and go to Heaven anyway because you believe Jesus will save you. The difference between, say, Catholicism and fundamentalist evangelism is that the latter is a lot easier. I mean, as stupid as confession and penance seems to us, someone is still confessing to cheating on his wife, or lusting his daughter. That process may be either humbling or desensitizing, but it is a far different engagement of the faith than simply saying, "I believe in Jesus" and believing yourself cleansed of sin.
In the case of charity, we might observe that it is sad when one must be cajoled into decency and dignity by a promise of Heaven and a threat of Hell, but such belief among the faithful, while often apparent in the present, is a doctrinal error. It is easy enough to read Matthew and think we must do good things for other people in order to get into Heaven, but it is also spelled out plainly that it's not just about doing good things, but about not doing bad things. And we should do them because these things are the right things to do, or not because they are wrong. Impressing God should be about the last of a Christian's concern, and until that idea is brought once again to the fore of the faith, the problem you note will continue to plague Christianity.
With Islam, the wise voices need what wise voices have always needed: a political situation that empowers their argument. In a day when many moderate, and even wise, Muslim leaders are drowned out by the deathly bray of the extremists and the spectacular focus of the headlines, we see in particular relief the scars of history within the human endeavor.
Friggin' ridiculous, isn't it. I don't see the lack of evangelism a saving grace with Judaism, so to speak, as that condones it's divisiveness over mankind.
I suspect Islam is more along the lines of orthodoxy applied to practice since the practice is held to come from doctrine; Shahadah over The Five Pillars of Islam.
Actually, what you're seeing is that the atheist movement claims everyone is equally special in that we are all humans.
So a person who has abandoned all rational, and logical thinking (remember he said ALL), disconnecting themselves from their true heritage (human being), failing as a [human] species because they connect with scripture or some aspect of scripture, is regarded as equal?
Is such a being even human?
I suppose it's no different than the myth that Africans are a subspecies, not fully human, so do not have the rights granted to humans, which became popular in the non too distant past.
jan.
I've read your question a few times but am still confused.
We're all humans, Jan, despite the fact many are indoctrinated into cults that squeal superiority like some greased pig in a rodeo.