Consequences

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This was sent to me via email. Tell me what you think.

 

*Yawn* The usual. It starts off very reasoned, but then degenerates into the typical "God should be everywhere" shpiel right about where Billy Graham is mentioned. God doesn't have to be everywhere to be in our lives; I, for one, would not like living in a theocracy.

And personally, I am offended every time someone asks the question "How could God let something like this happen?" Specifically, I am offended by the sheer stupidity of the question. God is not going to protect us from every tiny little difficulty we may encounter. And have they stopped to think that perhaps it was God calling some of the New Orleanians to Him because it was their time?

And for that matter, what makes people think that God should have anything to do with this in the first place? I believe it is a famous line in a Shakespearean play that goes: "The fault, my friends, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." I am constantly disgusted by the human prediliction of claiming anything good for our own, while blaming anything bad that happens on an outside source, particularly the divine. Own up to it. We screwed with Nature, she screwed back, and we were too damn lazy to prepare properly even though we knew what had to be done (with no offense meant to the citizens of New Orleans; they weren't the ones who screwed up and didn't deserve what happened to them). That's what caused this calamity, not the absent hand of God.

/rant

 

Fel, your third part took the words right out of my mouth.

The Bible says a lot of things that have been discarded because they have lost value with time. Because it has some erroneous material in it (such as passages regarding slaves...), we shouldn't listen to it at all. Sure, we can take some of its messages, but it not the only source that has said "thou shalt not kill," etc. Before the bible was widely accepted (or, rather, in places where they weren't christian and didn't use the bible), people didn't go around killing each other legally. Look at the ancient Romans and Greeks. Sure, they had their flaws, and they killed plenty of people, but in the same way we do now: through war. If a civilian killed someone else, they would be punished, no? Pre-bible people were not insane killing thieves.

 

I think people "laugh at the bible" now because the bible had been dictating their civilization in the past centuries. Many countries (here goes history lesson) have had goverments legitimized by god (aka the church). To use god to explain natural disasters is cheap, simple and lame (because it plays with people's feelings of guilt). There're other more reasonable explanations to why a big storm causes so much damage. Many cities (Buenos Aires...) are not designed to prevent floods. And poor people tend to build in lower areas, and their structure is crappy.
What else? I'm not an enviromentalist, but surely everybody knows our planet's getting warmer and warmer. Probably someone here can explain how it works. For this reason (ignorance), is that you will never hear a priest or whatever complaining about cars poisoning our atmosphere.
To complain about something you don't like and supposedly you don't care about is a resource many people use in television, movies, songs, etc. I don't like it. It's both giving it more publicity and it suggests that you don't have much to say either. Again, it proves you do care, in the end.
Last, why are children and teenagers always lost, always confused? I can't believe how the media underestimate teenagers and children. Most of the time, it's the parents fault. But no, you won't find self-criticism in these articles. I think they, like us, write to build their identities, to give themselves self confidence. That's why it's important to let everybody express themselves.

 

/claps for Felinoid.

Umm... Not really, if you're an atheist or agnostic. It would be somewhat bananas to waste a second on worrying about the opinions of a non-existent entity, no? Even assuming acceptance of God's existence, chain e-mails are known to piss people off more often than not, so sending them could be considered a violation of "love thy neighbour" and starting them an 8th deadly sin.

 

As a person of faith, I have to say that I agree with Felinoid. Joacqin said it best in the "Religion" thread:

Sometime things just happen, not for any particular reason. Why must there be someone or something to take the blame for every "bad" thing that happens to anyone? Maybe it's time we were all more like Harry Truman, willing to take the blame for ourselves.

As for kicking God out of public life - which God should we let back in? There are so many different beliefs in modern society that to placate all of them in the public school system would leave no time for teaching kids how to read or do science or math. I much prefer leaving the teaching of religious values - or not, as the case may be - up to individual families.

And what in the bloody hell does Dr. Spock have to do with anything? There are many, many means of discipline beyond spanking. He didn't advocate an undisciplined child, just that parents should find something more effective than hitting. And you know what? HE WAS RIGHT.

 

I don't believe that is Gods fault, that we have managed to screw up the planet.
We make our own future on the planet, and that is without any Gods intervention.
If there was God actively participating in this planet fortune then there would be two possibilities.
First we would be in a much better situation than now.
Second this planet is the place where hell will have its new offices.
heh i already see the sign
"Under construction. Sorry for the inconvenience. We build for the future"

 

I'm with Felinoid on this one. He started off with a good message of how people should be tolerant of other people's religion and so forth. However when he started hinting at the reason we're screwed up is because God isn't in schools he lost me. I don't want schools to be turned into Bible Camps where children at such a young age are force fed the Bible. What if the child is Muslim, Hindu, Bhudist or whatever? Here's a better one, what if the child is an athiest or agnostic? Oooh! New thread idea there.

I'm not religious, I don't follow some faith or another, yet I don't want to kill anybody, steal anything or hurt anyone.

Can't agree with you here though. Spanking is required to deliver the most easily understood lesson to any child: 'Do NOT do this!' that can always be understood even if the child can not talk yet. Teach a child to behave and every other lesson will be that much easier.

 

At this point I started going: 'Oh, what a crock of ****.':

From there is just spiraled downhill, from a nice, sensible ramble on how people should just mind their own business to 'Let's mind other people's business ... but in a different way!' Bleh.

And when I got to here:

I thought 'oh, one of these - yeah, I get them often ... more often than I get joke emails, actually'.


And spanking sucks. Am totally with Rally/this Spock guy on that.

 

You people who seem to be rushing to jump all over this message seem to be missing the point entirely. Though you are right, God was not responsible for the Hurricane, it was His teachings that inspired volunteers to come to the aid of those who had lost their homes and had no food or medicine. If you don't like that being taught, then maybe in 20 years down the road when another hurricane demolishes a large city, maybe the rest of the people will not help, but point and laugh at those stranded in the devastated regions. What, you don't like that Idea? I'm just advocating the opposite of what the bible says...

Further, the point is asking why people behave with no morality when society discourages any attempt to teach it or correct children when they start to stray. You rail against Christianity then complain when people truly behave in an opposite manner. I suggest that you take a long look at the messages that you are really sending.

And on the spanking issue, What's next? Incarceration is inhumane, and violent offenders shouldn't be sent to prison because it is mean tio lock them away? I feel much safer now...

 

Gnarf, there is more to the world than just Christianity vs. everyone else.

Chrisitans didn't invent the notion of being charitable, not killing, not cheating on your spouse, not stealing. These notions were around long before Jesus, and long before Moses and even long before Abraham.

Conversely, there are plenty of people who call themselves Christians who never turn the other cheek, never love their enemies, never donate their time or money to the needy, and seem to enjoy living by the sword (and, eventually, dying by it -- or maybe the poor family down the street is doing the actual dying by the sword while their kids go to university).

 

Really? So all volunteers for charitable organisations are inspired by God? Get off it. I'm charitable but I don't do it because God tells me to, I do it because it's a kind thing to help other people.

What does this mean? Yes, nobody likes it when somebody does some of the things that the Bible says we should not do (steal, kill, lie etc.) but people also don't like being forced to follow some 1700 year old dogma that depicts homosexuality as a sin or being demanded to follow a faith blindly or be damned to Hell for eternity.

 

You've probably been taught that by people who were Christian.

First off, you really don't understand faith at all. It is not followed blindly. You need to be watching for temptations and ways to do good or you're walking into trouble or simply wasting your time. Secondly, Chrristianity teaches that sex is sacred, and that pre-marital sex or homosexuality, rape, incest or beastiality desecrate this holy act. You see the reactions drawn by the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed for exactly the same thing...

 

This statement is absurd and I'm nearlly offended by it. Only Christian teaching promotes the helping of others? What complete and utter arrogance.

But faith IS blind. There is no 'proof' of God's existance, just a book. There are no modern miracles or divine intervention, no holy rapture or some such and inconsistancies in the holy book. On the second point, what is unholy is not the same as socially deviant. It's possible for something that is unholy to be good for the community and it is possible that something that is holy to be bad for the community. People don't WANT to follow the Bible, and frankly they shouldn't have to.

 

Ok, first off, how about a little history. You say that everyone knew not to do those things before Abraham, but guess what, many didn't. Sexual relations outside of the jews were pretty common, and marriage was more of a union of two families, a conveniance, than a union of two people. Adultry, rape, incest, and bestiality were pretty common in the middle east before Abraham. These are also the societies that sacrificed each of their first born by placing them on a red-hot statue of Molekc and letting them burn.

Second, you all criticize faith, but you all have it as well. I hate to see people talk about faith as if it only has to do with religion. Every time you sit in a chair without performing a careful review of its structural integrity, you do so on faith. Faith in the person that made it, faith in the person that bought it, faith in the materials it is made of. How many things can go wrong in your car between shutting it off and starting it up again? And yet everytime you turn that key, you fully expect it to start. You even get mad when it doesn't. You turned that key in faith, and some pretty misplaced faith, at that. How often has that faith been disproven, and yet you still have it. Faith is not blind, faith is trust, plain and simple. Every time you think 'faith', replace it with 'trust' and see if things don't make a little more sense.

Anyway, the main point of this was to comment on everyone that says, "Why did God let this happen?" and then go on kicking Him out of every part of their lives. It was also to show that, if you look at the history, maybe taking God out of society wasn't such a good thing after all. Social and family values have changed drastically in the past 50 years, and much of it wasn't good. Now I'm not talking about civil rights, or women in the work place, those things weren't done because we got rid of the Bible. I'm talking about the belief that its up to the schools to teach morality to our kids, denying them the authority and power to do so, and then wondering why the kids don't know right from wrong. If you teach your kids what is right and what is wrong, then more power to you, but if you are waiting for someone else to do so, don't complain when that someone is an action movie, or a sports star with a drug addiction, or a super model that weights 75 lb.

 

Yes, I'm sure it's 'faith' that something that happened 50,000 times before will happen again. That's the biggest load of in the last 10 hours of this thread, and that's saying something. You believe that the car will start because it has done so, quite observably, many times before, while God doesn't do anything observable. Having no proof and believing anyways is the true faith, and I'm surprised that you would sully the word by comparing it with such pedestrian things. For shame.

I'm also quite offended by the idea that only Christians can have good values to pass on. But unlike Abomination, I am offended by the simple stupidity/illogic of the thought. Here are some (rather obvious, IMO) questions with the assumption in mind:

Are Christians such horrible teachers that they cannot teach someone well enough to pass on the ideas to someone else?
If you can't teach such a basic thing that you have learned, have you really learned it?
What of those who have learned it completely? Could they not teach others despite their lack of Christian faith?

I should hope you can see now that even with the (faulty) assumption that Christianity was the source of all kindness ( ), you'd think 2000 years would be long enough for it to spread.

 

The first half is Ben Stein ( see the article here ), the second half appears to be someone's private rant they WANT to attribute to Ben Stein.

Here is the scoop from Scopes:

Ben Stein Christmas

The rest is garbage.

 

I thought so. Ben Stein is too smart to be spewing that kind of nonsense.

 

Really? I had no idea that we had written records from that time detailing that sort of thing. What are the sources? Come to think of it, about the only writings I'm aware of from that time period are those found in the Old Testament and the Torah. I must admit that I've never read the Torah, so I suppose there is a possibility that a passage exists listing statistics and percentages of the population that engaged in rape, incest, and bestiality. And of course setting babies on fire too. It's been a while since I've read any part of the Bible, and I haven't read the Old Testament in depth in about eight years. However, I think I would have remembered something as juicey as some of these potential statistics and percentages.

If I'm wrong, please post where these writings come from. I find it almost impossible to believe that they had people back then compiling those statistics. I also have a hard time believing that there were more people engaging in those actions back then than there are now, considering 2000 years ago there were only an estimated 200 million people on the planet, and today we are approaching 7 billion. I freely admit that I could be wrong in all these assumptions. However I think it is highly more likely that you just served up a huge plate of that you have absolutely no means of backing up.

 

@Fel:
Ok, maybe the chair was a bit far fetched, but the car is spot on. How many times has your car gone, "Vrr..rr...r..put" on you and you get upset, or at least surprised? Faith is the belief in something when there is no rational evidence that it WILL happen. Faith is often based on previous experiences. I'm sure we've all (or at least most of us) had cars break down on us, so we know it can happen, and yet we act and talk as though the car starting ere somehow guarented to us. As for the faithfulness of God, lets just say I've seen some miracles in my life (real ones) and the He's never let me down, so I'd say my faith in Him is well supported.
I didn't mean to say that Christianity was the ONLY source for moral rightness (though I do believe it is the best), but rather that it was the dominant one in America and it has yet to be adequately replaced.
There's also the little problem of people not wanting to do the right thing.

@T2Bruno:
Sorry about that, yea, only the first half was Stein. The email had color to show all that, I hadn't thought about the importance.

@Aldeth:
I suggest you study archaeology a little more. We have records from Mesopotamia dating back to Hamorabi's(sp) Code, which pre-dates Abraham. We have stories and legends from Babylon, Egypt, Assyria, Cannan, and a number of other areas that go back that far and pass such things off as commonplace. We know what Molekc worshipers did because they continued to do it for a long time. I'm not making this stuff up, I know at least a little of what I'm talking about. I'll admit, however, that I'm not an expert and if anyone wants to clerify these things that knows about them, please do. Just please don't criticise me just because you want to believe.