Matthew 6:24
Jesus: "No one can serve two masters. If you try, you will wind up loving the first master and hating the second, or vice versa. People try to serve both God and money—but you can’t. You must choose one or the other."
Are you religious? If you are, do you still find time to go to church, and do you feel the need to reconcile your profession or lifestyle with your faith?
I'm not that religious anymore, just curious about WSO
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St Anthony of Lisbon/Padua, a Franciscan priest, since he was a famous preacher he was told to preach at the prestigious funeral of the top bank Ceo of the time in Tuscany. He said the CEO was in hell per the quote of Jesus saying "where your heart is there is your treasure", and in fact he told the people to do an autopsy on the body and they found that his heart was missing and instead it was found in the bank vault. So that's the religious perspective.
It's not about "money" per se, but about the focus of one's heart. Abraham was the wealthiest person in human history up to the time of his life and yet he's one of the most revered figures in the Bible. In fact, there was a parable about this, referred to as Abraham's bosom, in Luke. A rich man dies and goes to Hell and looks up and sees Abraham in Heaven with Lazarus. The rich man is informed that his fate is sealed, so he asks permission to warn his brothers, but is denied. Being wealthy, as this demonstrates, is not in itself a contradiction with living a faithful life. But wealth, for some people, can be a spiritual stumbling block.
Other examples of a faithful wealthy person would be David--a man after God's own heart--and Theophilus, a wealthy benefactor of the early church discussed in Acts.
Disclosure: I will not respond to anyone that attacks me or my faith. So if you don't agree with me, please be an adult about it.
It's extremely important to me. I don't feel the need to reconcile my faith with my work because the Bible is full of faithful Believers that were also incredibly wealthy.
The issue is putting money before God. My church actually preached this last week on the exact verse that you mentioned. There's nothing wrong with wanting to do well and get a promotion and there's also nothing wrong with wanting to make a lot of money. But for one to love God before money, one should be willing to give before anything else.
The Christian faith isn't about right and wrong, it's about understanding that there's a Heavenly Father that loves us and has defeated death to be with us. I, in response, am willing to give what I have.
Which were these guys and how do you ignore the bit about the eye of a needle? Was this metaphorical? if so my copy didn't have a * next to them to denote the metaphorical bits, so if you could help me out with that then that would be awesome, or maybe that bit's just wrong, again missing a *.
Read the Bible through, there were plenty of rich believers and even more contradictions. It's probably not the best policy to be taking moral lessons from a 2000 year old book based on a largely illiterate part of the desert. It endorses rape, stoning, slavery, objectification of women, and you can really only use it by cherry picking individual passages (that have usually been translated into much more favorable terms if you're reading King James or any other major version).
It's your faith, do what you want, but as someone who knows all too much about it and has read the bible through several times, it's not a great moral code. There are much better things to put stock in.
Scientifically, there's no such thing as god. If you want to learn more about having a sound moral founding as an atheist (or need some convincing), watch some Sam Harris videos on spirituality as an atheist. Or if you feel the need to not completely abandon religion, look into Buddhism.
"Eye of a needle" was a hole in the city wall. They were small openings and difficult--but no impossible--for camels to get through.
u mormon huh?
I'm on the Highway to Hell !!!
Also all earning of interest is completely illegal and so our whole entire economic system is wrong.
Not true. Interest is legal in the regular course of business. Charging excessive interest in the regular course of business or interest to a friend/neighbor in need was not legal.
Not true see below:
http://home.newadvent.org/summa/3078.htm
For example read these case studies of what kind of things are illegal even in b2b sales activity:
http://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/Emptio.htm
I would also like to preface what I am about to say with the same sentiment as BTOWN, I am not here to respond to attacks or engage in deep theological debate, most of all with people whose end goal is merely to find a way to prove you wrong by any means. With that established I would like to offer input and respond to OP's questions.
The verse quoted in the post does not necessarily pertain to money as an object. It is more a conversation about idolatry as BTOWN began to discuss. I'm not going to get into a big explanation on this, but I would note when studying these things it is helpful to do some research to determine historical and cultural context as well as analyze the original language.
It is helpful here to go back as far as verse 19 to put this into context and in doing so you can see that Jesus is not after money as an object, nor does he condemn those who have it, but rather He makes it a heart issue. What do you seek more than anything? What do you place the ultimate value in within your heart? This is meant to be a gut check. The point here is that you cannot pursue a created thing and The Creator equally because they are inherently unequal. And to a further extent, as seen in the earlier verses, the created thing will never bring fulfillment the way The Creator will because created things are fleeting.
This is all probably far more than necessary to answer your question, but I hope it is at the very least something to think about. For me, there truly is nothing of greater value or joy than my relationship with God.
I know you don't want to debate, but your premise is wrong. No one is looking to prove you wrong-- atheists ask for any evidence that you're right.
You can't disprove the existence of something; it's impossible. However, it's relatively easy to prove the existence of something that actually exists.
That's a fair statement. I shouldn't have used that phrase, my apologies. What I meant by it, and probably should have said was I don't want to engage in the sort of conversation where one party continues to retort in such a way with intent to make you trip up on yourself or back pedal. I picture a political debate where the actual root question is no longer being discussed but rather tangential topics seem to replace it that end up having no material bearing on the actual question.
I hope that doesn't come off as argumentative in itself, since I honestly have no desire for those situations. Happy to discuss, not to argue if that makes more sense.
^^Wrong again. The Gospel begins with the creation of the universe by an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster. On the first day, the Flying Spaghetti Monster separated the water from the heavens; on the second, because He could not tread water for long and had grown tired of flying, He created the land—complemented by a beer volcano. Satisfied, the Flying Spaghetti Monster overindulged in beer from the beer volcano and woke up hungover.
As a strong atheist, just let these people have their discussion without trolling them. There are plenty of threads to demonstrate religious people's stupidity; this is not one of them.
Flying spaghetti monster isn't funny. It's the poor man's version of Russell's teapot, even if dingdong08 likes using it so frequently.
This board is 90% atheist, why don't we talk about gpa rounding or something. ZZZZZ
Sorry, you're right. I'll try to keep my commentary on the internet more serious. Thanks, Dad.
Who can't get behind the FSM? I love pasta, talk like a pirate day rocks and I'm looking forward to a heaven full of beer volcanoes and stripper factories. And personally I find it humorous but that's beside the point.
Debating religion is one of the most useless things possible. It doesn't matter if I, or anyone, think someone's eternal soul is going suffer eternal damnation because they didn't follow all of the catechisms of the Catholic Church or because they ate pork, nor does it matter if I or anyone thinks it's foolish to follow a 2000 year old book's rules on how to live a moral life and end up in an eternal realm of milk and honey. Life can be a big enough bitch filled with incredible ups and downs and if it's a 2000 year old book that keeps you going, God bless. If it's an anthropomorphic pasta creature, happy pirate day. If it's science, establishing your life through existentialist based principals or posting pics to FB of your dog dressed in sailor outfits that gets you through the night, go for it. Don't try to impose your beliefs on others, don't hurt anyone and strive to be the best person you can be.
Would it be difficult to rectify a literal translation of every verse in the Bible, a book taking place over a ~1500 year timespan more than 2 millennia ago and revised for another thousand years, with accumulating wealth in the modern world? That's probably impossible but I don't think many people take an absolute literal interpretation of the Bible as a way they live life. Forget accumulating wealth, if you follow the Bible to a T I don't think you'd be able to do much at all and you'd quickly end up in prison for stoning people.
You forgot the "l" before the "d" in the title
God do not exist, that's what the church used to control the masses before politics & democracy was born
That may be true. But now we use indirect democracy and bureaucracy to control the masses. As Venezuela demonstrates, democracy isn't necessarily a superior system to [insert the system].
Can we not have dumbarse threadshitting comments with simplified high school views likely uninformed by history?
Belief in the supernatural long pre-dated organised religion. While supernatural beliefs were likely used as a coercive tool, it's very likely that use started in a family/tribal context and only scaled up to large scale organisation much later.
I'm an atheist. Obnoxious atheist who cling to simplified and ignorant explanations of religion frustrate me as much as (often more than) obnoxious Christians and other who cling to simplified supernatural explanations of the world.
In any case, as someone pointed out above, if you want to drop nuggets of stale wisdom that god doesn't exist etc, go start a thread specifically on that. Posting that stuff here is like going into WSO threads and railing against the evils of capitalism, regardless of the thread topic.
The fact that people still buy into organized religion is to me the most mind blowing thing on this planet. There are a lot of amazing things that my brain can't grasp, but the idea that people still preach from a 2000 year old book and use it as their moral compass is just too beyond my ability to comprehend.
I guess no one is going to heed my reply, lol.
Although I must say, It warms my heart to see fellow atheists passionately standing up for truth, logic, reason and rationality. SB to you guys.
Speaking strictly philosophically, I find the existence of a God-like entity a statistical likelihood.
I had a science background through my undergraduate studies, before choosing to enter finance. If you just take a step back and contemplate the absolutely mind-boggling laws that govern physics, chemistry, and biology, it's hard to write these phenomenoa off to some random "chance-creation".
The universe is far too large in scale beyond our comprehension, and far too intricately designed to have come from nothing. The complete body of scientific knowledge man has ever discovered is .0000000% of what is out there in the universe. I don't believe we'll ever make scientific progress in the orders of magnitude necessary to understand "God" or whatever it was that created something out of nothing. Mankind is rather primitive in that we lack true creativity and this is apparent when you consider truly creative minds come around to lay the blueprint for everyone else once every few hundred years -- Newton, Einstein.
In my opinion, the idea that there is no higher God out there is borne from either from man's arrogance or ignorance.
So then, who or what created this God-like entity? My guess is it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster in all of his noodley glory.
Flying Spaghetti Monster is to 2016 what American Psycho quotes were to 2009 on this board.
Philosophy =/= statistics
You cannot quantify a qualitative argument. It's also useful to point out that philosophy was used for analysis before man had the means to scientifically test something, and it explains why philosophy is no longer used to explain truths in our universe. Scientific reasoning is now used.
You can believe whatever you want as long as you're not hurting anyone else. Just don't try to draw up some bullshit argument for it. It's called "faith" for a reason.
I wish I had more bananas.
+1 for science.
Wait, what? Why can't I make a statement on philosophical grounds while invoking statistics? Philosophy and statistics are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, there is an entire curriculum, taught at the university level at several prominent academic institutions, called Philosophy of Statistics
In any event, I think you completely missed the point of my post.....or you just refuse to hear it.
This is wrong
By definition metaphysics is a study of reality outside of scientific reasoning, and usually outside of the physical realm. The word literally means beyond ("meta") physics
Ethics, another branch of philosophy, which deals with how people should live, has virtually nothing to do with scientific reasoning
arguing about this is about as pointless as asking if you can start a hedge fund with the $10k you got on your bar mitzvah. you're not going to get someone to convert to your view, and why should you care what others believe? respect different opinions, even if you disagree. you may think they're idiots, but hey, the world needs idiots.
atheist, mormon, polytheist, whatever you are, good for you. believe whatever you believe, don't be an asshole, and shut up about it. atheists, you're not going to convince people that there's not a God, despite how sure you are that you're right. believers, you're not going to convince the atheists, no matter how strong your faith is or how much you believe your scientific analysis (if you arrived at it that way). so don't waste your breath.
back to the original question: this thread proved that you can believe or be an atheist and still make it in finance, and just like exercise, family, or stimulants, it's all about time management. no matter what beliefs you have, however, you should keep them to yourself.
The better question is, what kind of returns are required in order to pay back Odin for protecting us from the frost giants?
I don't understand why on WSO people who work (or want to work) on Wall Street who believe in a god (in this case the Christian God) can't have a discussion about their moral values and how it relates to their career without a bunch of people jumping in and telling them how stupid they are for 1) believing in a god and 2) discussing it in the context of their careers.
Must everyone ascribe to a monolithic belief system? Must people act like they're in junior high school? If the topic isn't relevant to you then don't comment on it. Is that a difficult concept to comprehend?
Lmao. My original reply was my attempt to get people to leave you guys alone. The thing is, it's 2016 and religion is just so unbelievably ridiculous that people cannot help themselves. Elon Musk is trying to colonise Mars. Meanwhile, we still have people worshipping unintelligent bronze-age peasants and beheading each other. I honestly feel bad for you guys, though I cannot help but be thoroughly amused by this. Again, I really do feel bad, lol.
I'm probably America's biggest supporter of NASA. My passion is cosmology. I believe in an old earth and evolution. I support doubling federal research dollars. You don't know anything about us. It's amazingly ignorant to generalize about people of faith.
I believe in a creator, not religion. Whether or not said creator gives a damn about the morality of the individuals on this planet (lofty and arrogant when considering there is a whole universe) I have no idea, I just generally try not to be an asshole in life, I'll let you know how that turned out in the eyes of the creator when I'm dead (or not, who knows if there is an after-life as we define it).
https://vimeo.com/6674005
Favorite bible verse: Mark 11:24
You don't need to apologize for your personal life choices. Figure out what matters to you and try to temper yourself if/when you start to lose sight of the ball... That's life.
Kneel before the Almighty Dollar or feel the wrath of his absence.
I'm what you might call a devout Christian and I think one of the toughest things in more high-octane finance jobs (I'm talking S&T, buyside, commodity trading... but also IB/PE) is time. I can always make it to Church on Sundays but being active in my community during the week, getting enough time to read the Bible and pray are things that you really have to fight for.
As far as the money aspect goes, it's reassuring to know that it's more about the game than the money with the tricky thing being that being good at the game means making a lot of money. If you're not chasing big bonuses, are you really playing the game right? It has to be about the money to a degree, and you need to know when you're being taken advantage of as well.
Perhaps that implies some sort of cognitive dissonance but good luck finding someone who isn't guilty of that to some degree.
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