I don't know about other religions, but the Bible's violent commands are overriden by Jesus's. Christians follow the teachings of Christ, and his first command is to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. When the depth of the love is detailed, it would never include the Bible's violence. Aside from this, Jesus taught that much of the old testament's commands are not accurate enough and it is the intentions of the heart that matter most. Jesus rewrote all the commands that were given by Moses. And he set examples of things like stoning people to death as immoral.
What do religions base their behaviors on?
- Thread starter superluminal
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I don't know about other religions, but the Bible's violent commands are overriden by Jesus's. Christians follow the teachings of Christ, and his first command is to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. When the depth of the love is detailed, it would never include the Bible's violence. Aside from this, Jesus taught that much of the old testament's commands are not accurate enough and it is the intentions of the heart that matter most. Jesus rewrote all the commands that were given by Moses. And he set examples of things like stoning people to death as immoral.
No
I am questioning your inclusion of any narrative that has didactic elements (like scripture for example) in the category of "mythology" simply on the strength of Aesop's Fables
I was hoping for a citation of how such organization remain ideological neutral
For instance if we take a reference from your first link
we find several tentative notions that are jam packed with ulterior motives (IOW these terms require political language, or establishment under a political umbrella, in order to be rendered meaningful).
I point this out to illustrate how absurd it is to advocate that such acts can be undertaken without ulterior motives .... although one can talk of ulterior motives that don't measure to one's esteemed value system or whatever
No simply on the strength, of the lack of evidence for such things actually happening, there is no evidence to suggest that scripture is based on fact.
Thus it must be put in the realm of mythology. And please don't go off on your tangent here, about saintly people saying a thing is so, as they have no evidence either. it is simply myth it can be nothing else, no sensible person would consider it as being anything else.
Insisting that a country stops an army whilst they heal the sick and dying is not an ulterior motive. insisting that you make sure the same thing does not happen again, is not an ulterior motive, an ulterior motive is one from which you gain something.
The MSF goal is to help, they will do this regardless of whatever the country does any of the above, even if they would like that country to take better care of it's people. it's is not done for gain, it's done because they empathise with the sick and dying.
So in your mind because they earn a wage, doing what they do, that is deemed as an ulterior motive, If you wish to play silly buggers, find someone else.
Who said this"
"Don't assume that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill."
Matthew 5:17
The acts, or commandments of the OT are not immoral. The misuse of them and lack of mercy was His message. Interpretations at that time were being manipulated and misused. Jesus was clearing the confusion of that time. After all the same one who made that statement is the same one that ended the lives of thousands. You seem to not have a grasp on the connection between the Law and God's relationship towards man. There is a direct command in the OT and NT laws, but they are indirectly statements, or inferences that they all conform to the progress of Redemption. I mean do your really think that when Jesus said turn the other cheek He meant for you to be mugged and beaten without doing a thing? LoL Of course not. So if you see an old lady being beaten by a couple of criminals you are suppose to holler out "Hey lady, just take it, turn the other cheek?" I just believe that Jesus would have me intervene violently to protect myself and that lady. Think about it.
well this is slightly different and doesn't really require your disclosure about aesop's fables .... however ...once again, discussion of evidence and what constitutes it lies primely within professionals in the field ... and a quick and easy way to discredit any claim is to write off the said professionals from square one ... so in essence you are not really bringing any point to the fore except your own preconceived notions
:shrug:
never heard of PR, a prime tool of political clout?
and why is it exactly that you suspect their is a lack of empathy for religious organizations performing similar activities?
actually I don't rate accepting a wage as sufficient to rile my values on what constitutes a nefarious ulterior motive ... however if you do want to talk of silly buggers, you might want to turn your attention to the likes of Dawkins who advocate that all religious organizations that offer any sort of charity deserve to be black banned.
Oh! do come on man! if these so called professionals have no more evidence then me, then whether they are discussing it, is not going to make it become true. WOW!
You cant make a thing true simply by discussing it with learned persons, it has to have a basis in fact first to even get on the list. anything can be claimed with that sort of mentality, unf**king believable.
Yes, but it does not make a thing become true, only the gullible would accept such BS without testing/verifying it for themselves.lightg said:
Because they have an ulterior motive.lightg said:
That is because they have an ulterior motive, is there something hard for you to grasp there.lightg said:
The primary reason most religious missions/charities (like most religious anything) exist is to propagate their particular religion. I believe that there's a secondary reason they exist, that is as monuments to themselves and to convince others of their goodness and righteousness. They do not exist merely for relief or to alleviate any suffering of any needy person unless that needy person accepts their particular belief. A captive audience of victims, if you like. An example http://christianwatchindia.wordpres...ionaries-work-for-the-balkanisation-of-india/
Here's another http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=11055
[
err ... that's the point - they do have more evidence than you .. although perhaps its not apparent to you due to your poor fund of knowledge
are we talking about the perks on offer for an organization that becomes celebrated as the number one authority on who and what constitutes a benefactor/benefacted of charity or something else?
which is?
And this distinguishes itself from the ulterior motives of non-religious organizations in what manner?
On the contrary, what appears difficult for you to grasp is that they all have ulterior motives ... you simply label those motives that conflict your value system as "ulterior" in some derogatory sense that makes you blind to your own bias
as opposed to what?
A corporate image?
And besides that, if the world is drowning in a shoreless ocean of need for assistance, what the hell is the need for fools like Dawkins to try and lay down the law on what ethically constitutes a bonafide charity organization?
I mean for someone who labels "ulterior" motives as the root of all evil in charity dispensaries, why do you place the ulterior motive of Dawkins on a pedestal?
Seriously, the guy has a professional interest in science, not philosophy, what to speak of philanthropy.
lol
and this sense of self righteousness doesn't have a foothold in organizations that are not affiliated with any religion?
If you think so, the guys who organize their advertising campaigns for fund raising or social awareness would probably disagree.
(For the record, I think its more a natural consequence of their line of work. To think that an organization involved in philanthropy automatically becomes disqualified the moment it develops a public image as a benefactor is totally ridiculous)
[[/QUOTE]
smell the cheese (from more neutral news sources too)
first two off the ranks on google
here
and here
In short, your suggestions that charities would work off a cleaner slate if they weren't affiliated with any religious organization is just as absurd as the proposal that the world would have less violence if people weren't religious.
IOW the whole thing is just a charade for you to dress up your ulterior motives.
:shrug:
Interesting. So it seems that people want to base their religious behavior, no matter what religion they are, on their own interpretation of what the books say. You cannot say that you do not follow some form of teaching from some book. You've just rejected the 'official' interpretations. Right?
Ok. So a person who calls himself a christian follows some version of Jesus' teachings, and a muslim follows some form of what? Muhammad's teachings? And so on.
So all of you who follow your own interpretations are NOT part of any particular 'religion', correct? There are thousands of sects. If you don't buy the official line of any of these, then you are your own priest/rabbi/imam, etc...
Is this even in question?
Ok. So a person who calls himself a christian follows some version of Jesus' teachings, and a muslim follows some form of what? Muhammad's teachings? And so on.
So all of you who follow your own interpretations are NOT part of any particular 'religion', correct? There are thousands of sects. If you don't buy the official line of any of these, then you are your own priest/rabbi/imam, etc...
Is this even in question?
it is absolutely a question. in my case, the bible speaks of a relationship with god through christ, that is perpetuated by interaction with the holy spirit on a personal level. the holy spirit is said to be the counselor, and the interpreter, and this interpretation occurs on an individual basis.
i've said it before, that the spirit has imparted things to me, and interpretations to me, that as far as i am aware, are not widely known or accepted. my mother asked me to impart some of these interpretations, and the means by which they came about, to a religious person in our family several years ago, and within a few minutes he concluded that i must have been influenced demonically and was very alarmed. it was a knee jerk reaction because he was unfamiliar with what i was testifying to, and the interpretation i was given, and it scared him. he likes to think of himself as an authority on the matters of god see.
the thing is, this guy does know god, and has had a lot of trippy spiritual stuff happen to him to. he often receives messages from the spirit to impart to people and he has no idea what they mean, but they end up meaning something to the people they're meant for.
his reaction to what i testified to pissed me off. it was a tense moment. and in that tense moment he had a message for me. the message was "you've been warned". and i said "warned about what?" and he just repeated the message a second time. he had no idea what i had been warned about and the spirit didn't have anything else to say.
but i had been warned. i had been warned that the majority of religious people would not like, or be receptive to, my testimony.
funny huh?
Fancy that, eh.
I wonder why so many people, including myself, become so upset when someone claims to be a follower of religion or philosophy X, but doesn't quite seem to actually be/act like a follower of religion or philosophy X.
In fact, I'll post a thread on this.
That could be because of the way you present your testimony - to whom, when, with what words, for what reason.
In my opinion, you very much fit the descriptions here.
I don't know how to say this nicely, so I'll just say it: I think you are acting religiously naive. You don't seem to have much know-how how to get along with people who are nominally of the same convictions as yourself.
If you went to church, and communicated with a wide range of religious people, you would be pressured to learn those communications skills, and possibly have to face many of your lacks.
Or could it be I'm not gullible, and I don't just accepted what's told to me without questioning it.
Lol, A charade that has correlating evidence.lightg said:
Check out secular countries, in Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns and Society Without God by Phil Zuckerman.
http://www.atheistmedia.com/2008/10/phil-zuckerman-society-without-god.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kriguuKVJyw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eEojwlG4cU
and also the Human Development Report published by the UN, and the CIA world factbook.
Its not so much that questioning is a problem but when one insists on questioning while maintaining a strict aversion to the very tools that grant the answers
I'm not sure how all this is meant to offset the clear observation that individuals corrupt organizations in pursuit of their own individual aggrandizement (regardless whether it be openly a/religious) much like individuals are apt to take recourse to unnecessary violence (regardless whether they be openly a/religious)
:shrug:
What aversion is that.
The simply fact that they have no more evidence then anyone else is key. as they cannot bring to the table anything more, then they aren't any better than anyone else, now are they.
I willing to listen provided they have something, as yet I've not seen anything, even though I've had literally thousands try to posit there own brand of truth. All have been found wanting.
Because that is not what you said, it's printed above, but I'll quote it for you.
"In short, your suggestions that charities would work off a cleaner slate if they weren't affiliated with any religious organization is just as absurd as the proposal that the world would have less violence if people weren't religious.
IOW the whole thing is just a charade for you to dress up your ulterior motives."
No mention of individuals that corrupt organizations there, so no it has nothing to do with those sort of people.
Well more and more muslims are becoming true to the quran and are doing these things you mentioned, stoning, cutting off body parts including heads and killing infidels.
There seems to be more true muslims in the world now than true Christians, does not seem to be many Christians who love their enemies and are willing forgo personal defence and embrace non-resistance.
While true muslims and True Christians claim to follow the will of the God of Abraham their extreme differences clearly show that they cannot both be following the same Will.
I agree.
Christians who embrace justifiable war are bearing false witness to the Will of God and His wrath will be upon them
muslims who embrace peace and who preach islam as a religion of peace are bearing false witness to the source of the quran, whoever that was?
Well a lot of christians want to embrace Jesus as their Redeemer but they refuse to embrace Him as their Lord. They like the "being saved" part but they are too proud to accept His other teachings they find them too hard to stomach.
A lot of muslims want to live their lives without having to take part in jihad and enforcing the punishments and persecution they have been tasked with carrying out upon law breakers and non-muslims. All they want to do is enjoy the fruits of their ancestors jihads live a life without fear of dieing in war and carrying out the unpleasant acts of punishment their quran demands of them.
All Praise The Ancient Of Days
I disagree.
The Law reveals what sin is and establishes that the result of sin is death. Stoning Lawbreakers to death was not sin in the OT. It was followers of God carrying out His will that they stone to death those who committed the sin. Those sins still carry a death penalty but this one is far more terrible than stoning to death. It is eternal torment in the Lake of Fire.
So sin is still sin and the outcome of it still remains death/second death. The thing that has changed is that the job of judge and executioner has passed exclusively into the hands of God Himself.
All Praise The Ancient Of Days
at a guess, relegating all issues of knowability to the arena of empiricism
The simple fact is that you haven't even begun to establish premises that support this wonderful conclusion of yours
huh?
Practically any scripture you can point a finger at has heaps of normative descriptions (or ways you have to "be" in order to know something)
If you are only prepared to listen to things that compliment your world view, your so-called listening is of no value.
alternatively one can be stabilized on an unsatisfactory level of performance ... what to speak of religious issues, even simple issues of gross mechanics and science have gone past the so-called opened ears of many persons in history
eg - You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bon-fire under her deck... I have no time for such nonsense.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) , commenting on Fulton's Steamship
IOW rationalism or the application of logic is only of value after one has a sufficient knowledge base - simply saying "well it doesn't make sense to me" while maintaining a strict aversion to the very means that grants it knowable is a classic illustration of recalcitrance.
Don't forget
and this sense of self righteousness doesn't have a foothold in organizations that are not affiliated with any religion?
If you think so, the guys who organize their advertising campaigns for fund raising or social awareness would probably disagree.
(For the record, I think its more a natural consequence of their line of work. To think that an organization involved in philanthropy automatically becomes disqualified the moment it develops a public image as a benefactor is totally ridiculous)
plus the two links offered
That However would not be an aversion, That's just not accepting a fact/truth without experimentation and experience, which is in fact where the word empiricism actually derives from. Do you know what an aversion actually is. What you should be using instead is "non-acceptance". As without them or you establishing this so called know-ability as fact. It cannot be accept.
Been there done that brought the T-shirt. Nothing is accepted simply on face value, it has to be tried and tested, to establish whether it's valueless. unfortunately for your lol saintly persons, there is no way of establishing there "evidence" to be, the facts/truth, thus they are discarded.
As does any line in any non-factual book, do we accept all fiction as truth, do come on talk sense. every book has to have a modicum of truth in it to make it sound feasible. James bond is fictional but the places he travels to, and the people he works for "the Queen", are real.
No not my world view, what is real and factual. Else anything is possible, which is infantile.
Do you believe the IPU exists, or Winnie the Pooh, without evidence there is no chance they do, However there are plenty of normative descriptions of them. So by your reckoning they must exist.
Then it remains your burden to establish what your Saintly person are an authority on! and whether the knowledge they have is valuable, and their assertions are backed up by evidence. you've yet to do this and you've been here spouting off the same garbage for the past four years, as yet nobody has once accepted your garbage, doesn't that tell you something.
Relevance! you've gone of on a tangent here.
sure ... although I am starting to wonder whether you know what empiricism actually is
once again, facts establish themselves within a knowledge base ... I mean its not like Napoleon's assertion about fire under the decks of boats isn't factual
another fine foray into your conclusion minus the premises ....
Let me help you out here - perhaps you could lay it out on the table how there is "no way" (here's another hint - never use absolutes when trying to assert a negative in an argument) to evidence the claims of saintly persons (keeping in mind that there are literally tomes of scriptural commentaries detailing the exact nature of "how one has to be" in order to claim direct experience of the divine)
Strangely enough, so does any line in any factual book too ....
This says absolutely nothing about what processes you apply to deem something possessing only a modicum of truth ..... I mean one could just as easily write off the latest astronomical findings since they are just making a task of referring to a few givens (like the sun and a few planets) and piling in the gaps with fiction.
Its quite common for atheists to bandy about words like "real" and "factual" without explaining how they arrived at them.
no, because its clearly a creation of satire developed by atheists
no because he is clearly intended as a fictional by an author in the 1920's and later further developed by Walt Disney
I think you misunderstand my use of the word normative ... in fact I anticipated you would, that's why I followed it with - or ways you have to "be" in order to know something.
Perhaps you can indicate a few of the descriptions on how one has to be in order to know winnie the pooh as a fact.
On the contrary, its up to you to establish that your knowledge base is sufficient to contextualize the claims of saintly persons, otherwise you are just doing another Napoleon
once again, it all comes back to knowledge base ... after all, Napoleon didn't see any value or evidence
I am just trying to help you form a coherent argument
well we were talking about individual/collective self aggrandizement vs the set goals of a charity, and not charities connected to third world economies vs charities connected to first world economies, weren't we ??
This is what I meant by overriding sorry for the confusion. Clarifying is what I meant. There's a lot of "...you have heard X, but I say Y..." from Jesus concerning the laws that Moses and Pharisees wrote.
The overall effect was removing the action from the equation and instead looking at the intention of the action to judge.
As far as the commandments as immoral in light of the new testament, that is controversial. For instance, Jesus said, "Let whomever is without sin cast the first stone." Stoning was the appropriate action according to the law, but in that instant Jesus declared the action "immoral". No one is without sin, so one can do that anymore. Hence, it is not good form in an ethical sense directly, but is it immoral to throw the stone in light of what Jesus said, if you do have sin? It wasn't really a command he gave. It was a clarification that you may stone her if you are without sin. Notice Jesus did not stone her. So, technically the old testament laws still apply, but Jesus set powerful examples to the contrary. He grew the standards of morality and the quality of ethics contained in the Bible.