Ah yes, we're to the part where religion isn't stupid or destructive or counter-factual or allergic to science or entirely ****ing made up because hey, there are other really bad people, movements and sources of tragedy out there too.

How do you explain the curse of free money

None of them lasted 2000 years. That's the difference between a man and an institution-- the man dies someday.

Living by the Golden Rule is more or less all we need if you want to boil it down to the essence. If there's a diety that rewards or punishes us after our earthly life is over, one's Golden Rule performance should likely be a pretty good approximation of what one's fate will be.

DID YOU KNOW THAT DHS IS BUYING AMMO

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Riverman is exactly what I meant. That's way more annoying for me to listen to than some religious zealot.

I get where you're coming from, but institutions aren't impervious to being rendered obsolete either.

I mean, very much this. Like, I grew up with the notion that this was everyone's objective and the different religions were just a touch of flavour - cultural nuances, as I said. Certainly not meant to be divisive points of contention. Catholicism is very much interwoven with my Eastern European background, but I sincerely believe I'm basically following the same code as the majority of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, other Christians, etc.

ive found people even more annoying than riverman!

there are some in jeopardy thread arguing that LEONARD isn't awesome because there were scenarios with the other kids wagers where he could have lost in final jeopardy

nittery at its finest

Those thinking he coulda lost just don't get Leonard.

Remember when some people were all "Ray Horton isn't that bad when he's not posting jifs"

Good times

wat

i hardly begrudge people for religious beliefs and i hardly think i'm superior because i don't believe in it. i think the people who make it a point to say ad nauseum "LOL YOU THERE IS NO GOD AND I BELIEVE THERE IS NO GOD" are insufferable jackasses (yes, i realize i said HA HA RELIGION at some point in the last page)

it's just the extremes that people are willing to take to cause imposition and hardship on themselves and those around them in the name of god that drives me ****ing insane. my grandparents on my mom's side, extremely religious people. my grandmother, absurdly uneducated. can't read. mother of 9. my grandfather, who died almost 20 years ago from lung cancer, deeply conservative man. disapproved of my mom marrying my dad and subsequently hated my dad because he wasn't as religious as my grandfather. anyway, my grandparents were wealthy. don't remember how, i think they owned a lot of land back in their homeland, idk. on my grandfather's death bed, despite living his ENTIRE life following his religion, every moment without exception, was worried he might go to hell. soooooooo, he told my grandmother to liquidate everything they owned and give it to their ****ing church so they would pray for his soul and ensure he went to heaven. i mean, this was a substantial sum of money. and my grandmother, because she shared his concerns for whatever ****ing reason, obliged this.

just hard to take that seriously, really

In fairness to him, we don't really have any true "zealots" itt. I think most people would agree Karak and I are fairly representative of a rather tame and moderate stance in this discussion.

btw, cheers to everyone here who've helped construct a very mature environment; I know I'm in the minority here on 2p2 and that's cool but I'm happy to have discourse on this topic when it's respectful. I don't really do this often, tbh.

You're right, and that is exactly what is happening right now. Institutions that continue to hold onto ideas that are clearly out of date become increasingly irrelevant the longer they do so.

You're not. That's what makes it so absurd that people kill each other over these things.

I mean, I do feel like it's important to clarify that I don't want to **** on people's spiritual practices of communities of faith. My criticisms at the Church are at the ossified power structures that mostly exist to further their own power and wealth and to continue to preach socially regressive policy from their bejeweled thrones. Similar to the televangelist charlatans PHB mentioned. We'd all be better if people stopped listening to them as the ultimate authority of God's words.

Wrt to religIon, it's easy to see that people's schemas are derived based on experiences with extrinsic or intrinsic religiosity and conveniently thrown under the label of religion. Intrinsic religiosity is associated with a lot of good life outcomes and mostly great people. I imagine most of the bad religious folks who make us all mad are extrinsically religious people who are leveraging religion for personal gain.

This is almost certainly untrue. Religion is one of the few things that is universal across cultures, from native americans to africans to chinese or whatever. This implies, strongly, that religion was a massively positive cultural force in our early and pre-history.

Leave Geddy alone, he's a Flames fan. He needs god

If anything, that should be an indication that God has abandoned me.

Yes. And I feel like if people treated each other justly, and were good at the whole putting themselves in others' shoes, without all the messy religion details, it would improve the world greatly. That's how I went from Catholic to agnostic - basically deciding all faiths were basically saying the same thing, and without the ability to know, why mess with it, just try to live a good life.

But it all gets messed up with the whole "dude in the sky wants me to worship him and demonstrate my devotion to him" stuff that really mucks stuff up in a hurry. I eventually found it all pretty distasteful (and internally inconsistent) and finally more or less had the guts to admit to myself and others that no, I really didn't believe in a god.

That of course raises the issue Tuq originally discussed about "well, how does one have a moral framework without religion", and I was mega stoked to find that Dalai Lama book very eloquently and meticulously lay it out better than I could've ever done myself. The Lama is pretty awesome.

As a former Catholic I find it unfortunate that the Pope focuses on being the leader of the Church while the Lama basically tries to set an example for all of humankind. The Pope/Church could learn a lot from the Lama if they'd turn their focus to improving earth and away from saving souls/establishing narrow doctrine. The former will necessarily do much of the latter.

I agree with all of your words, Clark. However, I believe the agnostic, searching approach advocated by the Llama about "improving earth" would be very dangerous in the hands of those with certain world views and essentially useless for the large swath of humanity incapable or simply not desiring introspection/self-improvement.

For them, religion/devotion may be a necessary predicate to housing their predilections or providing larger meaning to their lives. I'm not saying they couldn't find it in other endeavors, but if belief adds value to their lives and provides social value in some circumstances why deny them it?

Hold Em 07 with more on point commentary.

on the jeopardy board (not a member) there are some angrily lamenting the triple miss of this question.

"Surprised that Hamlet was a triple stumper."

"Me too. There's no excuse for that whatsoever."

"I would have thought that "to be or not to be" was famous enough that it would be recognizable to the sort of bright students that make the finals of the Teen Tournament, without actually having to have Hamlet assigned in a course syllabus. I might give a pass to Nilai (ed. note: a freshman), but not the others."

um... get over yourselves?