Religion change over time? Should we work together on it?

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ndf8th
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Religion change over time? Should we work together on it?

Post #1

Post by ndf8th »

Most religions change over time. They interpret their books
differently over time. What seemed impossible some hundreds
years ago is accepted by most religion now?

To not have slaves is just one example.

Now many atheists work for that religion should just go away
but other atheists find it likely that religion will stay so
them want to cooperate with Liberal and Progressive members
of Churches on issues like Secularization, separation of State
and religion and so on.

I maybe is a dreamer but I would even want that one set up
some kind of Project for the Future of Faith?

What kind of faith does "We" want to support for the future.
("We" here include all living in a local place. Working together)

I long for a very inclusive faith that accept atheists as part of the faith.

That is maybe a naive wish I have and many or most atheist don't
want to be included and many believers maybe don't want to include us?

So can we have a friendly sharing of thoughts about such ideas.
I don't want to debate or even discuss in a formal way at all.
More that we share what it would be like for us personally if such existed?

Suppose there existed a Project for the Future of Faith? locally
where you live and it said all are welcome. Would you go there and
share your views on what kind of faith changes you may want to happen?

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Re: Religion change over time? Should we work together on it

Post #2

Post by Divine Insight »

I think we should work toward respecting people for their faith. No matter what their faith might be (providing, of course, it doesn't include inciting harmful actions toward others).

It shouldn't matter whether a person believes in in of the many interpretations of the Abrahamic religions (or makes up their own personal version of it which has become a modern fad). Or whether they believe in one of the mystical spiritual philosophies. Or whether they worship a Moon Goddess and Sun God and believe in magic. Or if they believe in a pure secular world. Or any other belief, from Faery Lore to Santa Claus.

We should strive for "Freedom of Faith". Or "Freedom of Belief". In fact we shouldn't even call it "Freed of Religion", because all faiths are not even "religions", so calling it "Freedom of Religion" is a misnomer anyway.

The thing that makes religions such an important issue in today's world is not because people are desperate to believe in something, but rather because some of the most popular religions are highly proselytizing and evangelizing religions. They are based on a belief in a hateful "Jesus God". A God who hates to not be worshiped, and will supposedly seriously hurt people who refuse to believe in him.

It's no secret that these religion stem from the jealous God of Abraham of the ancient Hebrews, and the concept of proselyting and evangelizing are taken to extremes by religions like Christianity and Islam. They preach, proselytize and evangelize that their God hates non-believers and will be mean to them.

Jesus is said to be the great 'Savior", for example. But what does he promise to save people from? He'll save you from the wrath of a jealous hateful God. And if you fail to believe in Jesus, you'll be damned as well. So he's not only the Great Savior, but he doubles as the Great Condemner. Either accept Jesus as your savior or be damned.

And he's saving you from a supposedly hateful jealous God who is threatening to seriously hurt you potentially for the rest of eternity if you don't cower down to his demands (demands which of course the Church will dedicate to you) :roll:

This is the problem with religions today. They spread hatred, condemnation, and rejection, if you fail to climb on board.

That's not "Freedom of Religion". That's using a very specific religion as an excuse to emotionally terrorize anyone who refuses to cower down to it.

As I say earlier people should be free to believe whatever they want for themselves, but if their beliefs are used to harm others then they should chastised for this by the law. And emotional terrorism of threatening people with a belief in a hateful jealous God should be outlawed.

If a person wants to believe in a hateful jealous on a personal level more power to them. But it should be illegal for them to proselytize, evangelize, or terrorize anyone else with their nightmarish beliefs.

This is what causes so much anguish in the world.

In fact, I was just listening to an interview on NPR radio. I don't know who the fellow was that was being interviewed, but he was in a Muslim country and he was complaining about how Islam is used to terrorize people and demand that they either believe in the religion or be branded as heathens. He's screaming, "The Qur'an is just a book, written by men, it's not the word of any God and people need to get over this. People are blowing each other up and killing each other over this nonsense".

Whoever this guy was he recognizes that these religions are the cause of much anguish, and actual physical wars and people being killed and hurt because of these absurd beliefs. So it's far more than just personal beliefs.

We see the same type of thing in America when religious zealots use their hateful God as an excuse to hate same-gender couples, etc.

In short, anytime religion is used for hatred, or emotional terrorism it should be treated as a hate crime.

Religions should not be permitted to be used as an excuse for hate crimes.

That's what the problem is today with religions.

This is why atheists just want religions to go away altogether. Because they represent nothing more than ignorance, hatred, and an excuse to uphold extreme bigotries in the name of some imagined jealous God.

~~~~

For me personally, I would love to see truly loving and peaceful spiritual beliefs. But that's almost impossible as long a things like Christianity and Islam are competing to rule the world with hate.

Those hateful religions are going to ruin spiritual for everyone.

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Post #3

Post by ndf8th »

Thanks for sharing your thoughts
In short, anytime religion is used for hatred, or emotional terrorism it should be treated as a hate crime.

Religions should not be permitted to be used as an excuse for hate crimes.

That's what the problem is today with religions.

This is why atheists just want religions to go away altogether. Because they represent nothing more than ignorance, hatred, and an excuse to uphold extreme bigotries in the name of some imagined jealous God.

~~~~

For me personally, I would love to see truly loving and peaceful spiritual beliefs. But that's almost impossible as long a things like Christianity and Islam are competing to rule the world with hate.

Those hateful religions are going to ruin spiritual for everyone.


Yes I agree. That is why I hope we can cooperate to find ways to
regulate religions so they don't escalate this hatred.

Compare with traffic/road accidents. They regulate setting up speed limits
and rules about checking cars are up to standard that the driver is alert
and that they use safety measures like Safety Belt and the AirBags thing that
automatically try to protect you

We should Lobby for that religion should not split people and force people
to take sides.

The best would be to create a religion that was opposite of hate
but still attractive enough to convert all hating fundies into caring
friendly supporters of fair ways to get along together.

Yes I know it is a very naive thought/idea but that is one way to
do damage control. To out compete the strong religions with less
destructive versions.

Take slavery. Once very popular among a major religion close to home.
Now slavery is seen as bad behavior.

Take Wife battering that where once allowed among Christians.
In many countries now it is forbidden.

It is possible to lobby for reforms and re-interpretations of what is okay
and what is not okay.

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Post #4

Post by Divine Insight »

ndf8th wrote: We should Lobby for that religion should not split people and force people
to take sides.
I'm all for that.

At one time some members of the UN did suggest that an international law should be made against the proselyting of religions. The evidence that it causes civil tension, unrest, and even incites hostilities to the point of outright wars, is historically reveal daily.

So yes, I'd support any moment to eliminate divisive religions. As best I can see that would be mostly Christianity and Islam. Maybe Judaism too. But Christianity and Islam have certainly taken the "Jealous God" concept to the extreme. And that's the concept that causes so much division.

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Post #5

Post by ndf8th »

Fore a long time in my atheist practice I where
extremely hostile to religious believers of any kind
Say me 10 years old to me 40 years old?

Then at 40 having a relational crisis losing my GF
and realizing that I am not the atheist hero I thought
that I am. Sorry poor grammar. Anyway. My hatred
made me lose the only GF that ever really cared about me.

Hatred has to go. I had too much of it and still have.
But the bad things that religion does it is not easy to
stop hating them. Such I need to talk about.

To say no to their ways without hating the believer.

Science helps me a bit. I trust the science that suggest
that religion is a kind of byproduct or an adaptation of
ways of function like agency detection and cooperation
and to create Us vs The Enemy kind of thinking.

all of it where vital for survival. That does not defend organized
religion but it explains why we still are vulnerable to it
so we need ways to bypass or make these less exploited
and less abused.

It is like deception among trade and commerce. You should
not be allowed to trade or sell faked goods.

Some kind of regulation is needed.

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Post #6

Post by Divine Insight »

ndf8th wrote: Hatred has to go. I had too much of it and still have.
But the bad things that religion does it is not easy to
stop hating them. Such I need to talk about.

To say no to their ways without hating the believer.
I've never fallen into that trap. Don't hate the believers, it's not their fault, they are victims of a religion that is designed to be a very powerful brainwashing scam.

But at the same time there is no need to coddle them or encourage their beliefs. What I do is simply point out how hateful the religion itself is. Then they direct their hatred toward me. I leave all the hate up to them. Perhaps when they finally get tired of hating people like me for refusing to support the nonsense they'll come to their senses. ;)
ndf8th wrote: It is like deception among trade and commerce. You should
not be allowed to trade or sell faked goods.

Some kind of regulation is needed.
I agree, it's been going on unregulated for far too many centuries. And this is the very reason why so many people have fallen victim to these hateful religions. But the hatred belongs to the religion and the ancient male-chauvinistic society that created it.

I lived through the 60's and I watched while women protested against being discriminated against. They had huge protest demonstrations where they would burn their bras and stand there shouting their protest chants naked from the waist up. Men used to flock to their demonstrations just to watch.

I could never make any sense of that. What they should have been doing was burning their Bibles instead of their bras. All the male-chauvinism that they were protesting against comes straight from the Bible starting with Eve being created as an after-thought from a rib of Adam, and then being blamed as the one who fell from grace first taking Adam into sin with her. In fact, many people hold that Adam was a total saint and didn't fall from grace. They claim that Eve gave him the forbidden fruit without even telling him what it was thus demanding that Adam was completely innocent of the fall from grace altogether.

And the biblical have just treated women as cattle ever since. Daughters were bought and sold to men as wives just like livestock. If a man raped a woman, he had to marry her and pay her father 30 pieces of silver and she had no say in the matter at all. When women had babies they had to cleans themselves from the sin of having given birth, and if they had a female babies they had to cleanse themselves for twice as along. The Bible even places the value of a female slave at half as many sheckles as a male slave. Women were not permitted to speak out in public on any religious or political matters but were only permitted to speak to the husbands about it in private. And the Bible doesn't even mention how single women should be treated. It just assumes that they have all been either sold as wives or raped and married by the rapists. There is no provision for single women to even be a legitimate member of society.

These ancient Hebrews were like the Taliban of today, and this was all done as per instructions of the biblical God (or the God of the Qur'an which is based on the same basic fables)

And even in the New Testament Jesus comes along and says, "Until heaven and earth pass not on jot nor one tittle shall pass from law."

So why the Christians aren't still treating their women as badly as the Taliban is beyond me. I guess they don't like to obey their Jesus.

But look at how stupid the women were. They were burning their bras in protest against male-chauvinism when they should have been burning their bibles. What in the world do their bras have to do with male-chauvinism?

They couldn't even see that all this male-chauvinism comes directly from the bible.

Those same women probably went to church on Sunday after having burned their bras on Saturday night. :roll:

People can't even seem to see where all the ignorance is coming from. It comes straight from this ancient sick Hebrew male-chauvinistic culture. It never came from any God.

Why people can't see this is beyond me. Even modern day Christian renounce the behavior of the Taliban, but all the Taliban is doing is precisely what the biblical God commanded should be done.

So it's really weird that these people continue to cling to a religion that ultimately has God supporting things that they personally see as disgusting.

It's just truly unbelievable.

Like I say, they are victims of this ancient male-chauvinistic religion that was invented by a bunch of thugs who would today would be arrested on charges of wife and child abuse.

Try to sell your daughter today to some guy for 30 pieces of silver you'll be convicted as a criminal and everyone will view you as a sick demented person.

Yet these religious people think their God approved of this back in the biblical days. :roll:

And Jesus says, "Until heaven and earth pass not on jot nor one tittle shall pass from law."

So it's funny how things that this God used to condone are now seen as sick demented crimes, yet people still get up ever Sunday morning and go worship this immoral God.

It's just unbelievable.

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Post #7

Post by ndf8th »

Seems to only be us two that care?
And we maybe don't agree on details either :)

My take is embarrassingly naive just now.
I trust it is my lack of having talent for logic
and critical thinking.

Here is my very naive approach.
Take the Bible. read it from cover to cover. :)
Okay don't do that at all but read those that have done it
and they list that God change by time.
the god in the beginning of the txt differ
much from the god in the end of the Bible
and then look at Church history.

Slavery where once accepted even up to
1800 or so and even later and some say
slavery has only changed name and still exists
but the way religion treat slavery has changed.

Not long ago you could not start a religion without
the majority religion trying to use law to forbid you.

A lot of people fled Europe for the freedom in US
to start a religion there. Now many religions still
don't like it in Europe but they reluctantly allow it???????

So religions do change over time.

So my naive point is that we can step it up. Make it go faster.
We can start changing religions already now.


And like Ray Kurzweil and his prediction on hardware and software
changes in the future we can predict what will happen and try to work
for those changes now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil
his efforts to forecast future advances in technology,
and his interest in the concept of the technological singularity.
Now I am very critical to his enthusiastic forecast that the Singularity
will happen real soon. :) I just use him as example that some do predict
what can happen in future.

So we could guess what happen with religion in future and start promoting that now.


Crowd sourcing of money support. A lot of thing never get done because
they lack the money and they lack the people needed to do all the testing
for it to come to practical result. Crowd Sourcing is a way to get that support.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_sourcing
Crowdsourcing is a process that involves outsourcing tasks
to a distributed group of people. This process can occur
both online and offline. The difference between crowdsourcing
and ordinary outsourcing is that a task or problem is outsourced
to an undefined public rather than a specific body, such as paid employees.
Liberal Churches already have huge problem to pay for their old churches
so they go together over the barriers and cooperate with other believers
that are from other Christian faith and they try to get along despite disagreeing.

So that can be one trend to predict will happen. When atheism grows
and religion get less support they need to diversify and allow diversity
for to survive having less money to pay for the Churches.

We could escalate it by creating crowd sourced religions that compete
with old religions and these new religions should be more open to
atheist participation in them. That way we can get into control?

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