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nightgoat85 (5)
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Yes, I understand your point, which is why I always acknowledge I don't know what's out there or how everything works. I love the idea of deism, I just can't believe in the existence of a personal God, for reasons I've stated earlier. This has been a very good discussion. Cheers.
There's simply no point in getting into a philosophical debate on biblical intention, you've read it three times, I've read it once. I've just been told God is infallible, but if God changes his mind, perhaps he changed his mind on many things over the past few centuries and followers just didn't listen to the correct messengers. Which is the important lesson here. I cannot see religion from your perspective because the religion I was raised in was a fringe non-denominational group who do not believe in the trinity, but believe in the God family, who at this time is only God, with the Word taking human form as Jesus to send a message to the chosen flock to prepare to become join the God family, hence becoming Gods themselves, where they'll control Earth and eventually become God's teachers. Weird, right? That's how I ended up in my point of view.
I don't have much faith in humanity as a whole, but I have faith in individuals. I see people do amazing things almost every day. I do my part, you probably do your part and people see us, and they do theirs, and hopefully with every piece of progress made society will get better. I'll veer away from religion and slightly into politics here, I didn't vote for this President but I'm seeing things get better with him in office, and it's of no credit to him at all. Sunlight is the best sanitation. We're seeing evils face in the open, and as a result people are coming forward to do the right thing. We're seeing his culture crumble around him as all these sexual predators are exposed, Bill Cosby went down, Roger Ailles went down, Bill O'Reilly went down, Anthony Weiner went down, Harvey Weinstein went down, James Toback went down, there will be more, and it could potentially get really dark and shatter a lot of illusions we've held about this culture and its power structure. But out of that a better and safer culture will emerge, and it will be of no credit to religion.
The Tora is an extremely troubling book to a non-believer. It promotes war, murder, genocide, rape, incest, slavery, male genital mutilation, forced conversion. I'll say I have never met a Jewish person I haven't liked though. As for the constitution, it absolutely is based on Judeo Christian values to certain extents, but most of our research has concluded many of our founders were deists and and not ideologues. I do believe we can move past all of that though, and we are. Latest polls have shown that religiosity is going down and I'm ecstatic about that. I'm certainly not one of those naive utopian secularists that thinks all the worlds problems will be solved if we just stop believing in myths. I'm only speaking for the United States of America here, because it's the only place I call home. I believe that in this country, we can continue to move past religion and re-organize our priorities to the now and the future.
One of my best friends is one of those Anti-theists types, he refers to believers as Bible addicts, Koran addicts, he oddly leaves the Jewish faith alone and is a staunch supporter of the Netanyahu regime in Israel, which I feel is odd considering they've got the most violent text and Netanyahu is such a warmonger. Every time I challenge him he just bottles up and runs away, very similar to most fundamentalists I've debated. He will not acknowledge that his level of anti-theism is just as much an ideology as anything, so I totally get where you're coming from. I certainly believe in institutions, whereas a Catholics institution would be the doctrine set forth by the Vatican, mine is the US Constitution. It's fairly new and we get to amend it from time to time, and it allows us to debate these things but forbids us from trampling on each other. win/win
It's a complicated topic, and I think Atheists can be just as ignorant and irritating as theists. My stance is that all dogmatic mythology is flawed and dated. If you're a fundamentalist and have a literal belief in mythology, you are out of step with the 21st century and are pushing an authoritarian culture on the rest of us. As for what I call myself? It's difficult to say. I'm an agnostic in the sense that I strive to keep my mind open looking for spirituality in all this cruelty, and I acknowledge that I don't know what's out there or how everything works, but I'm an atheist in the sense that I have no personal God, and could never accept a personal God that is attached to a set of values that are out of step with the time I'm alive to experience.
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