Pope Calls For World Central Bank
I can admit that I can get carried away with throwing rocks at the throne, sometimes. It is easy to overlook the difficulty of governance and often absolute power. It is easy to criticize those in power for greed, arrogance, stupidity and sloth. After all, I don't have to make the decisions they do and do not carry the weight of those responsibilities. We all make mistakes and even in the worst of times, everyone from Wall Street to Washington and down to Main Street, deserves a break.
Everyone, but the Pope, that is...
Earlier this week, the Vatican called for the establishment of a "global public authority" and a "central world bank." This authority allegedly becoming necessary due to "the idolatry of the market" and rampant "neo-liberal thinking". How much space is really left on this idiotic bandwagon if the Pope is jumping aboard?
It is pretty damn funny when the only millennium old political power on the planet talks about the need for "a supranational authority" and "universal jurisdiction" to guide economic policy and decision making. You like big government and planned economics? It doesn't get much bigger than Pope.
An 18-page document from the Vatican's Justice and Peace department said the financial downturn had revealed behaviours like "selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale," adding that world economics needed an "ethic of solidarity" among rich and poor nations.
That's right, kids. Need a loan. Call Pope. Need to civilize savage. Call Pope. Pesky peasant won't move off fertile land. Call Pope. Little boy telling truth again. Call Pope. Global economy in trouble. Definitely... call Pope.
Consulting the Holy See on financial matters is much like asking a serial rapist to run a gynecology clinic. No matter what you hope for, getting fucked is the only possible outcome.
If there is one office or entity on the planet which should be barred from speaking on social and especially economic issues, it is the Vatican. As the world's largest land holder and promoter of some of history's greatest purges and violent conflicts I really cannot imagine a more hypocritical preacher of "equality" and "common good".
Clearly, a centralized global financial system has been in the works for a long time. I don't believe that it can ever actually happen, but it is clearly the preference of the few. "Our" own Federal Reserve system is a clear rung on the ladder to a United Nations Bank. Though this sort of story seems like a joke, rolling eyes and laughing is done at one's own peril.
Can anyone pose a logical argument for the establishment of a Central World Bank?
Between Saudi sheiks buying up British soccer teams and a Pope preaching global socialism I feel like I live in a world which is increasingly revolving around its own asshole. All the while it surreptitiously fucks itself in broad daylight and screams I'm not like that
Ha! Payback, as they say, is a bitch. I was going to do a post on this and you beat me to it.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/2KbX-06M19w
ya heard?
I vote for the Pope as the next CEO of Goldman. Better yet, treasury secretary.
I dont have aproblem with the vatican but they should stick to matters of religion
NO. Government is a broken system because it's run by imperfect people. It is one of the many broken aspects of human society. The good news is that the system of sovereign nations helps put checks and balances on governments and keeps them from getting too far out of control. If we move to a national currency, this could be a prelude to a single global government. Nobody wants that.
Methinks Emperor Palpatine is just trying to spook the Jack Chick crowd a bit. :D
Stop priest man-boy rape and then maybe I will give a shit. This is partially why I denounce the current state of Catholicism. There is a higher power, but he certainly doesn't care about forming global governments and if anything God is more likely to condemn the atrocities of the state than ask all the assholes to form under one universal power.
Oh, and the shit that would be started by one fixed global currency would be a disaster. Bretton Woods to the millionth magnitude.
It is believed the Vatican will establish a one world religion as prophesied in the Bible. Watch "The Lady Rides the Beast" by Dave Hunt.
Things are right in your face, you just have to do a little digging.
It is believed.........? "By Whom" is the missing, and critically important quantifier in your statement. For every Catholic that thinks the Vatican will establish Catholicism as the one true religion, I can find you 10 muslims that will insist the world will soon be entirely under the umbrella of Sharia law, and governed by Islamic clerics.
Just because some nutjobs in a shed somewhere decided their interpretation of a 2000 year old book was the right one, doesn't make it so.
Well if you have actually ever read the Bible you wouldn't be saying "some nut job......." Despite what you may have been taught by society which makes statements about it without ever reading it. The Bible was wrote over a period of 2800 years. Which was written by 40 different authors over that span in time and can be scientifically validated as in the Bible so far 1735 prophecies on over 600 different subject matters proven with secular sources. In addition there is no contradiction among the 40 authors who with God's will wrote 66 books to complete the Bible as a whole.
No other book throughout history is able to say the same claims. Islam, Hindu, Buddhist, Native American religions, Wiccan, etc do not have the validity like the Bible. Catholicism also doesnt follow the Bible too.
Myself being a researcher I'm willing to send you a thousand dollars if you can find a prophecy that was supposed to happen but hasn't yet? Now to keep the rift raft down if you fail to provide evidence you send me $500 otherwise I'd be getting a bunch of poorly thought out responses. The Bible can be proven like a science. Also just to start things off please don't mention Genesis 1 when Elimhem (Hebrew word for God in reference to father, son and Holy spirit) made the Earth because then I'm going to have to discuss Quantum Physics. The shit we were taught in school wasnt correct in regards to history. There's plenty of evidence that the big bang theory is bs. How can you have something that was created from nothing? Makes no sense.
Some of us more moderate (post-millenial/amillenial) protestants believe that most of this stuff probably happened thousands of years ago under the Emperor Nero and later with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The earthquake, moon turning red, and stars falling from the sky symbolizes the destruction of Pompeii; the four horsemen symbolize the economic and military destruction that would bring the empire to its knees. Of course, Christ's return is still in the future and may happen in the next hour or in 4.5 Billion years. That said, given that 2000 years have passed, it would be precipitous to assume he's probably coming back in our lifetimes.
Trust me, the Jack Chick/ fundygelical crowd is going to be in a total tizzy over this. I'm not concerned because I know this is a ridiculous idea and the Catholics are just like any other Christian denomination, but other folks (the Earthquake crowd) are going to be losing hair and claiming the end is near.
Where do we start with this? Yes, it's possible to prove God even with acausal processes from Aquinas's first order argument- pi and e had to come from somewhere. Even if they came from a set of infinite universes, somebody still had to pick the cardinality. I think it's fairly easy to embarass atheism (though not clockmaker Deism) with that although Christianity or any religion that requires faith will always be impossible to prove.Genesis being the literal word of God does not mean we should throw out the science textbooks and claim the earth was created as if it had been around for billions of years exactly 7000 years ago. There's a gazillion ways to read the first few chapters of Genesis, and in fact there are two creation stories in it. For all we know those events happened literally and man made his choice before pi and e were even pulled out of a hat. The main thing is that we had the opportunity to live in a perfect world but WE screwed it up.
The IMF is "exploring" the idea of a global central bank. Take a look. http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2010/041310.pdf and http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2011/010711.pdf and also http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2010/041310a.pdf
One world government
Also you will notice a lot of the symbols of Islam and Catholicism are the same. Why would that be the case?
A few thoughts on this, in no particular order:
I'm Catholic and I understand where the Pope is coming from. The financial crisis has caused so much suffering and pain in the world, while a very few benefit. That said he is not an economist and should not IMHO, say anything about the issue. I mean look at Islam, their sharia law against riba is killing modern banking in the MENA. Theologist =/= economists at any level.
Another Note: I wish I could buy an indulgence. I remember in AP Euro talking about how some people bought the super expensive ones that absolved them of their future sins and then proceeded to rob back their donation. lol
Dude, take a long weekend and fly to Rome. Enjoy the wine and pizza and Italian girls, then take a half hour to climb the Scala Sancta on your knees, thus gaining a plenary indulgence and rolling back the cosmic odometer, so to speak.
Best. Freebie. EVER.
In other news, Alex Jones is having a fucking conniption http://media.abovetopsecret.com/thumbs/0257a1038e235c47.jpg
ugh, troll. no amount of reading random shit proves any point you're trying to make. I know who the Ant-Christ is - you. Go away.
A number has to come from:
1.) Another equation that takes numbers as parameters. 2.) A random process, and since flat infinite distributions are impossible (the probability of generating a finite number is zero), that random process requires variables as parameters. 3.) It must be chosen by something that cannot be explained by science or causality.
You can then do an inductive proof by contradiction to show that if, at some point, numbers weren't chosen by something capable of picking numbers that science can't explain, we would not exist.
We call this being capable of picking numbers that define the universe that science cannot explain "God".
Whether God is a clockmaker who disappeared and left us alone or he is actively involved in the universe is something unproveable. I would assume the most rational view would be to assume he walked away afterwards. But it takes a lot more faith to believe you can get numbers, existence, or a framework for order not just out of chaos but non-existence and not even a concept of set cardinality than it does to say something rational or maybe much more complicated than that lies at the heart of the universe.
I definitely buy into the idea that there is something greater than us, something we are unlikely to ever understand, maybe something that created everything. Call it "God" if you like. I just don't associate that with established religion. Religions were created to control a superstitious population.
But back to the issue at hand: I disagree with your assertion, and thus your proof. As we understand the universe today, perhaps a number has to come from one of those three sources. If you agree that there exists some theoretical upper bound of knowledge (i.e. conceptually, it is possible to know "everything"), and that we are no where near that upper bound, then you have to conclude that even the foundation of everything you think you know is subject to change. Concluding that some being had to "pick" certain ratios and numbers, simply because you lack a better explanation is flawed.
I hate to say it itllc, but our understanding of earth's geological history largely depends on newtonian physics, E&M, and nuclear chemistry. It doesn't really depend on quantum physics and geologists were finding consistency in earth's geological history going back millions or billions of years before even Einstein came along. And Einsteinian physics can explain everything up to the first few hours after the Big Bang.
IMHO, the Big Bang is a pretty strong indication either of God's existence or, worst comes to worst, a larger system that God created. And if the earth really were only seven thousand years old, why would God mislead us by depositing all of these fossils showing a fairly consistent transition between ape and man? Why would Abraham's DNA have more in common with Neanderthals than modern humans?
Evolution and geological history are probably real. But it doesn't really threaten or change the core protestant orthodoxy. And too much arguing and fighting with the general public over Genesis and Leviticus distracts from the most salient story, which happens to lie in John.
Have you ever been to the mountains and see seashells? Noah's Ark would be the preemptive reason for that occurring. As for Dinosaurs see:
“Dinosaur” Names, Then and Now Name and date first written in the Bible Scientific Name (best estimate) and date the name appeared tanniyn (dragon) before 1400 BC dinosaur 1841 AD behemoth before 1400 BC brachiosaurus 1903 AD Leviathan before 1400 BC kronosaurus 1901 AD
Job 40:15-24
Behemoth has the following attributes according to Job 40:15-24
Also you need a concordance (Hebrew Bible) to help translate some of the words. Also you can refer to the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament) . Hope this helps
I take Genesis literally, including Noah. We see global flood stories in every major creation story from India to the stories of the Native Americans. But we only have geological evidence for a flood between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Noah is a heckuvalot more than a myth borrowed from Gilgamesh- the global flood story appears to be imprinted on the human psyche independently in several locations despite geological evidence, so I wonder if it happened before the big bang.
Sounds like it could just as easily be a Woolly Mammoth rather than a dinosaur. They went extinct only a few thousand years before Job was written.
Christians don't have time to argue with the scientists over geological history. There's too much more important stuff God needs us to do! The only reason there is still a debate over this is that a bunch of folks at Bible Colleges made the mistake of getting a Creation Science degree rather than something more practical. Now they are still trying to validate that decision in the face of overwhelming contradictory scientific evidence rather than just smile and treat it as a liberal arts degree.
At state schools, you meet a lot of Christian geology and biology professors who've made peace with evolution and the protestant orthodoxy. Jesus and God's character are the same whether the planet is 7000 years old or 4.5 billion.
No. Genesis said that God created man 7000 years ago if interpreted in the NEC format most of the fundamentalists propose. Why, then, did Genesis leave out that man has effectively evolved into another species over 5000 years? God didn't create "Man" 5000 years ago; he created something closer to Homo Erectus on a genetic basis.
Or maybe we can stop trying to interpret allegorical historical accounts and stop trying to guess at prophesies. Jesus is coming back someday. It might be today, it might be 4 billion years from now. It will probably happen before the Earth is subsumed when the Sun hits red giant phase.
Illini, you are making rational arguments with a relaxed manner. You clearly do not belong to this forum :P.
But you have to admit that there's a paradox for our finite minds here. You can't have infinite regression in a discrete world. A sequences of causes, orders, or time has to start somewhere. In order to get to something, something had to be there before it. Our finite minds can understand infinity on a discrete basis, and we can use a few tricks to try to understand it on a continuous basis, but we can't find the next real number above 2.
If the universe could create itself, that violates our NECESSARY assumption of a finite and discrete universe, and all of a sudden, the infinite and continuous processes that led to that are infinitely times more complicated than we are, again giving rise to this concept of God.
You can call God what you want. It could very well be the real number pi. It has more digits that we will ever be able to calculate and if you convert it to binary and then ascii, you'll probably find the NIV English translation of the Bible written in there character for character at the 2^500,000th digit. That number is a heckuvalot more complicated and contains a heckuvalot more information than us simple rational creatures could ever hope to contain.
The fact that God could be viewed in one dimension as a real number or another as something else doesn't preclude the fact that we can also view him as a rational being. It's the same deal as us being able to look at infinity in terms of ordinals, cardinals, and numerals, and indeed, a countably infinite other set of views. Taken that way, Deism, even theism, is merely another perfectly valid way to look at infinity- if you get it right.
Christianity is the most internally consistent religion I am aware of. Religion teaches that there's right and wrong- and consequences for that- and the nature of the world teaches us that stuff compounds with interest, and humans tend to do a lot more damage than good even when they are trying to follow the rules and play nice. Christianity is the only religion that explains how our screw-ups don't compound out to eternity with interest. Jesus paid the price for our sins, and as an infinite being himself, he can cover the cost. I can't prove it's THE correct view of infinity from the religious lens. But it's one of the only consistent ones, and there's a lot of things we can't prove but put faith in everyday. (I understand how other smart people can believe in other religions, but I am convinced mine is right just as others are convinced theirs' is right. Hopefully we can all live and let live as we disagree.)
So even if I'm wrong, the mere fact that there's stuff in the universe that we can't explain or fully understand that's a heckuvalot more complicated than we could ever hope to understand as finite creatures is proof of God's existence, because a real number with an infinite sequence of digits sure as heck looks like God to us if viewed from the correct perspective on infinity. Obviously it's not enough to make anyone a theist, but it sure makes it tough not to be a Deist to know that there's stuff in this universe that's infinite and would look like a lot like God if we took the right perspective of infinity to view it.
I'm trying to make everyone happy with this line of thought......
The point is that there's stuff right here in this universe that isn't just more infinitely complex than us, but it's SO infinitely complex that we can't even begin to understand the beginning of it. You could account for all of the quarks and their precise directions and states in our body using the first 10^500th digits in pi, still have enough room for every other human on the planet, and you wouldn't have even started getting anywhere with reaching the end of the numbers in the sequence.
Somewhere in that number is a consciousness infinitely more complicated than we are that happens to define our very existence.
Well, we can agree to disagree I suppose. All of the things you describe as necessary, are in-fact, only necessary in the context of our limited perception. More importantly, we are talking about a data set that is at most, comprised of what we have observed over the last ~600 years. Surely you can agree that there exists almost infinitely more than what we have observed in the Universe, and that 600 years out of an estimated 13.5 Billion is insufficient to draw such strong conclusions. I would say that's just another shining example of human arrogance - assuming we have it all figured out because we've observed what amounts to a blip on the radar, is akin to insisting that we are so special as to have been created in the image of some almighty being. One should always qualify these statements along the lines of "based on what we currently know, .....", as most scientists do by referring to these concepts as "theories".
Theories help us to explain the unexplainable, as we are currently able to see things. They are educated guesses. Take, for example, the recent potential discovery of particles traveling faster than the speed of light. According to conventional laws of physics, that isn't possible. Or at least, it's not possible to accelerate something beyond the speed of light, which then implies that such particles came into existence already traveling faster than light. Now, most scientists have concluded it was probably just an instrument error, but they all still allow for the possibility because they intrinsically accept that everything we know is subject to change. Such a discovery would fundamentally change how we view the universe, and force us to reevaluate a lot of our conclusions - conclusions that previously seemed sound, and had never violated our "laws" of nature...... until we observe a violation. This is a great example to counter your first conclusion, which is that things must occur in sequence, that cause and effect is consistent, that time had to start somewhere (and presumably end at some point). These are all premised on our current state of awareness. If this discovery turns out to have merit, one of the first things that would have to be addressed, is the concept of causality.
The point is, until such a time that we can claim to know everything, then no amount of "evidence" can purport to definitively prove anything, let alone the existence of God. You can't even definitively prove that you or I exist, even though that would seem to fly in the face of the fact that we are currently exchanging theological barbs over the interwebs :)
Why is it that every totalitarian, socialistic, communistic government, always tries to destroy religion? Why is it that liberals tend to be the biggest anti faith group out there?
Why is it that our fuhrer Obama tells people to stop "clinging to their guns and religion"?
Hmmmmmm
ANT, actually the Catholic Church was a destroyer of alternate religions, too. Your ancestors and their pointy hats kicked my ancestors out of Europe. They also killed a number of Atheists, Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, and scientists. My protestant ancestors did the same thing as you guys, so I guess we're not ones to talk either.
Thank God we've gotten past that in the past 200 years. Thank God we now teach Christ's teachings that his kingdom isn't of this world seriously. Hopefully rather than using religion to score political points, we can show communists and socialists an alternate model for voluntary sharing and social justice as demonstrated in Acts 2.
I think one of the largest successful collectives in the US is a Christian one located on the south side of Chicago. They own several apartment buildings, hold everything in common, and run a self-sufficient community. And it works.
I don't support attacking one religion over the other, but it seems to me that there is a huge backlash against anyone holding religious beliefs.
The pendulum swings both ways.
People yearn to believe. Humans have always worship one thing or another. When you destroy religion, you need to fill that vacuum with something else. Science my be the answer, but the state might also.
Leaders find religion to be threatening. Hence the original persecution of the Christians.
Well, what made Christianity so successful was that folks were literally walking off to Martyrdom singing hymns and songs of praise. Folks came along and said, "I want what the same joy this guy's got" and the religion spread throughout Turkey, Greece, and Italy. It offered a freedom of the soul and conscience that polytheism wasn't providing.
Eventually, Constantine, the Roman Emperor, converted to Christianity and, along with Diocletian, made it the state religion. Christ claimed that he wasn't here to set up a government (John 18:36), but for the next 1500 years- and even to just a few years ag with the Christian Right, folks ignored that. Persecutions of non-believers, "heretics" (including my ancestors persecuting the forerunners to modern-day Baptists), and "holy wars" between different religious factions executed by states but excused by religion followed.
Christianity is wholly separate from any concept of government. Government, economics, every system that has power over individuals has been controlled by the "prince of this world" (John 12:31) since the fall. I think Christians can work with most economics systems, although the least onerous has probably proven to be capitalism. If people control their own wealth, it's a lot tougher for the government to take away their rights.
I'd say that's a bit naive and idealistic to say that Christianity was successful because of a few smiling happy people inspiring the rest to follow along. Christianity spread because of centuries of religious wars. People were probably happy to convert to their new masters' religion, rather than being burned alive or spit like a pig as a warning to other "heretics" and non believers.
But Christianity was the predominant religion in the empire well before Constantine showed up. It spread among the slaves, the poor, some of the middle-class, and the folks out of power and eventually worked its way up the power chain to Constantine 300 years later. That's when the burnings and persecutions against non-Christians started. "Christians" were controlling the government and like all other previous religious rulers, were corrupted by that to an extent themselves.
Christ had no intention of a Christian government. He- along with Paul- gave instructions to folks in power like tax collectors and minor rulers and officials NOT to oppress people and collect no more than what they were required to send to Caesar. Governments, economic systems, cultural systems, and the other things that rule OVER people are the oppressors in life and Christ came with the message that you can't change people that way.
So the same religion that, like Communist Atheism, Islam, even Hinduism and many other religions that wound up controlling the government and oppressed people was also the same religion that gave birth (via Erasmus) to the modern-day tolerance and human rights that you claim is a secular or atheist invention.
Christianity, as well as ALL religions, had violent aspects to it.
http://www.forbes.com/2005/11/18/largest-charities-ratings_05charities_…
"The differences in charity between secular and religious people are dramatic. Religious people are 25 percentage points more likely than secularists to donate money (91 percent to 66 percent) and 23 points more likely to volunteer time (67 percent to 44 percent). And, consistent with the findings of other writers, these data show that practicing a religion is more important than the actual religion itself in predicting charitable behavior. For example, among those who attend worship services regularly, 92 percent of Protestants give charitably, compared with 91 percent of Catholics, 91 percent of Jews, and 89 percent from other religions."
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6577
For all the hate religion gets, religious people sure do a lot of good. Also, it amazes me the distaste religion gets.
http://www.bible-knowledge.com/10-commandments/
Don't kill, don't steal, honor your wife, be respectful of your parents, don't covet your neighbor, don't worship material things.
Study after study has show the importance of a two parent household. Not killing is pretty much supported. Donating to charity, respecting parents, all good things.
But OMG, being gay is a sin. The bible is evil. Kill religion.
The agenda of the left is to kill religion and increase the power of the state. Private charity is the enemy since it cannot be controlled. Government "charity" is simply a way to buy favor and control.
Believing in religion is a direct challenge to the state and government control. Religion has been and continues to be a building block of society. Only when you destroy it can the government completely control society.
Personally, I think you are seeing a full fledged assault on the foundation of America.
Not everyone on the left is a Marxist or an atheist/agnostic, and there are even a number of commie Christians out there. (Not all of them believe in redistribution by force.)
Freedom of religion is a pillar of libertarian democracy- one of the least oppressive systems of government and economics out there. And that includes the freedom to be a Muslim, a Hindu, or to have no religion.
I am not sure that religion in general is foundational to the country, since my personal belief is that most of them are wrong. However, one religion- along with a Deism and a few aspects of the Greco-Roman tradition- has been foundational to human rights and democracy in the West over the past 500 years. Erasmus laid the foundation for other Enlightenment Christians along with a few deists and atheists to claim that government's job is to defend individual rights, and that's the system we enjoy today.
Culturally, if you believe that we're here for a reason- it may not be one we can understand- that changes your worldview. Instead of working with Existentialism, post-modernism, moral relativism, and Neitzscheism, we're dealing with modernism. Modernism is the concept that truth and goodness exists- we might not agree completely on what it is- but we should try to do the right thing, and it ran the country during the middle third of this century, but had some holdouts in the business community until the early 80s.
The US has done a lot better as a whole and been a lot more stable as a country under modernism. It would be interesting to see what would happen if we returned a little more to that culture.
I am protestant lol.
I don't see how I am being like Pat. I am just a student of history. Totalitarian government try and either co-opt religion or destroy it. I am looking at religion from a moderate eye and the majority of things most religions profess are good things.
1.) "Christian" governments have been and can be totalitarian. When those governments are run by humans, they can be just as disastrous as any other totalitarian regime. 2.) The vast majority of liberals and socialists I've met aren't consciously totalitarian.
So when we make statements like "liberals aren't Christian and want to wipe them out", folks on the left hear things as an accusation rather than as a statement of fact regarding communist regimes in the last century that probably aren't going to make a comeback during our lifetimes. They've also been warned about a few nuts who believe in Dominionism and want to set up their own totalitarian state, and believe the Christian Right is a hodgepodge of Bush supporters, Tea Partiers,, Jack Chick fans, and folks who support a Levitican government.
There's a lot of different kinds of conservative/libertarian religious folks and the two aren't as correlated as you'd think. Many libertarians are atheist. Same with atheists/agnostics and liberalism, and there's a lot of Christian liberals out there too.
for the record, I'm not singling out Christianity. I only referenced that because that's been the focus in this thread. My views apply equally to any religions that claim a book to be the source of all truth. Books were written by men, on behalf of men.
As for how my world view ties to the political spectrum, I'm a big "fend for yourself" kind of guy. I dislike big government intervention, high taxes, lazy & stupid people, etc. I also don't care if you're gay, if you want an abortion, if you believe that your teddy bear give you religions inspiration, whatever. I don't care what you do, so long as it doesn't impact me. So, essentially, I'm conservative without the obvious contradictions that are anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, etc.
I don't support a religious government at all. I also don't think all liberals are anti religion. I DO think there is a growing and nasty element of the left that attacks Christianity.
You see it whenever a Presidential candidate talks about creationism vs. evolution.
But Atheism is just as guilty, djfiii. Communist Atheists in Russia, Cambodia, and China persecuted millions of religious folks of all stripes in the 20th century and employed some of the most calculated, deliberate, and brutal methods to wipe out alternate belief systems ever seen.
The only religion that hasn't killed hundreds of thousands of people over the past 3000 years is Deism. Maybe we should all practice that. Or, Christians could follow Christ's teachings and learn to love their neighbor as themselves, and be willing to dust off their sandals and peacefully let it drop when folks don't see eye to eye on religion.
I think that analogy is flawed. Atheism is simply the lack of subscription to an organized religion, so it's a stretch to use that as the fundamental driver of those groups you mentioned. I'd say it was Communism (an economic system) that was inconsistent with religious doctrine, so the Atheism was just incidental to those scenarios.
Either way, that doesn't really have anything to do with my point, which is that I still don't see how you make the leap from believing in God, to believing that the Bible is really a representation of God's words / will. Established institutions needed a way to maintain control over a growing populace. Religion served that purpose. As I've said, I accept the idea that no matter how far we push science, it may be that the ultimate conclusion is that "something" created all of this. That's well and good. But it seems just as likely in my mind that such a being could have initiated the universe with no specific regard to the fact that we might spring into existence. In fact, it seems the height of arrogance to assume otherwise.
Since we're forced to make assumptions, I personally find it to be far more likely that "God" snapped his fingers, started everything from nothing at the big bang, including the fundamental forces that fling matter all around the Universe, knowing full well that the nearly infinite number of combinations of this matter would result in something like us, but almost certainly things unlike us that are scattered elsewhere across the Universe. Gaseous matter swirls and condenses over millions of years, becomes a star, burns for billions of years, creates various elements, explodes as a super-nova scattering these elements far across the galaxy, which then combine with other elements to create everything from us, to things we can't even imagine. So, we are no more or less special than anything else in this Universe. We aren't made in God's image.
Maybe I'm wrong. But maybe, so are you. Jesus was a carpenter. Was he the son of God? I doubt it. Fortunately, we all get to find out soon enough.
Again, I don't know. But we were probably created to serve some purpose. It may be a very boring and unexciting purpose, but that which set the universe in motion may have very easily had us in mind along with all of the other atoms.
Well, again, we'll have to see. What I do know is that postmodernism has done a lot of damage to the world over the course of the 20th century. If we get back to Deism, this gets us back to this concept of Modernism that there's probably a right thing to do and it may very well matter and we ought to do it. We may not agree on what the right thing is, but the world is a much better place with a concept of God or some sort of higher power than it is without it.I do not think creationism should be taught in class since it is religious and religious teachings should not be in school. That being said, a little humility (as you mention) should be taught in school.
Most so called Atheists can't explain evolution or religion past the basics. When you are like that you are simply exchanging one blind faith for another.
Scientists may or may not be right, but the smugness is a turnoff for many people, so I'm echoing the call for a little temperance and humility.
....one has a clear utility advantage over the other, and in longer stretches of time, one theory will continue to be utilized while the other will fall into the dustbin of "ancient religions".I'm Roman Catholic and acknowledge this.
Here is the difference UFO.
Religion benefits a lot of people on a regular occasion. Church' bring people together, people benefit from Christian charity. People get married in churches and go to religious funerals.
How many people utilize science on a daily basis. I am not talking about benefit from it, but people who need to understand and believe in evolution and the big bang to do their job. Physicists, researchers, etc?
Much smaller than the majority of people who work in non science based fields.
Faith in man is wonderful until something goes wrong.
Example: when people freak out in the news and actually get votes because some dipshit town council in bumfuck, hicksville loses their shit over a manger in front of town hall. The symbolic merits aside, it's a means of controlling the conversation when there is no legitimate issue left to stand on. The day-to-day of most people, in most cases, is secular....using religion as a hot button issue to keep control of a conversation, political or otherwise, is a very repulsive trait IMO.
However, I do not appreciate open disrespect of religion either. Any large group of people that's been around for a while is going to have shortcomings, as evidenced by past involvement with lousy governments, war, sex scandals, etc. Religion, just like gut instinct, has been around long before the rational structures of humans and should be observed to some extent on those grounds alone. Science doesn't have an answer for everything yet, and even if it did, the creative part of our brain eventually will create it's own space to play....when shared, this is the basis of religion.
I've grown up in a Christian home my whole life, and I gotta say, there are really interesting posts in this thread. IlliniProgrammer, those are really insightful posts you've made.
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