my random thoughts.

Purpose…

We all want it, atheist, believer, agnostic, deciever.

Life…

We all live it, christian, muslim, satanist, buddhist.

What seperates us is mere semantics. The agnostic struggling with the ineffable qualities of

god’s existance. The atheist wishing to remain seperate from spirituality, as it’s too… ineffable. The believers fighting and quarrelling amongst themselves claiming that their word is truly the inspired word of god. It’s all insipid, there is no point but to further seperate us from one another. Is the Christian really that different from the atheist? Do morals valued by the christian, have to exclusively belong to the christian? Vis a vie, must they only come from god?

Does reason trump belief?

People desire to belong to something. We are like sheeple, in that way. The non-believers flock together, attaching themselves to morals they may not 100% understand or agree with, the same way the believer flocks to his sheeple and does the same thing. The atheist thinks that he must counter christianity (in this country especially), simply because it is christian. No rhyme or reason needed. If it is an ideal held by christianity it is hopelessly outdated or worthless.

The Secularist (AKA Atheist) in Europe has taken this to the Nth degree and brought Muslims in, to challenge the christian faith… to empower their culture with “the wonders of multiculturalism.” They’ve sold themselves down the river without a paddle.

Multiculturalism by and large has failed in Europe. Muslims think of themselves in such a superior manner, that the only comparison is Adolf Hitler’s Germany. The superiority complex can be a problem within any group that involves itself in group think. The extent of that problem, depends on how compatible the groups ideals are with the world at large. If the group finds itself at odds with the world around it, there will be much violence and pain as a result. (Waco, Heavens gate, Muslims trying to integrate)

So what are we to do?

We must go back to logic. Reason must trump belief in all cases. Belief in a deity is fine, infact like masturbation it is a normal healthy part of being human. Like the hardcore religious person harms their physical and mental well-being by denying masturbation, the hardcore atheist harms their physical and mental well-being by denying god.

But, like the scientific reasons to disallow abortion, the sheeple flock together and confirm to themselves* that there cannot be a god… flying spaghetti monsters cannot exist therefore, god cannot exist. It’s this kind of backwards bad group think that keeps them at odds with the people that are their neighbors. People they could be “loving” (agape style.)

These people preach the golden rule, but only love themselves. They are the ultimate narcissistic-misanthropic-humanist. They are so in love with their own ideas that they place the value of them above all else. They preach tolerance only to be truly tolerant of those who espouse similiar ideals. They are the Harley riders of the intellectual world. They appreciate all motorcycles as long as it’s a Harley…

Case in point, How many “HOG”'s ride around with Honda crotch rockets? (vice versa, how many crotch rocketers ride around with HoGs?) How many “tolerant” people have friends that are complete polar opposites to themselves? How “open minded” are they really? Only open enough to listen to ideas that support their own beliefs? How many people (no matter what semantic they believe in) truly challenge their own “open-mindedness”?

I’m not advocating the erasure of religion, or atheism or anything.

I’m advocating a new level of tolerance and “open-mindedness.”

You can talk the talk.

Can you walk the walk?

EDIT: Fixed the formatting and added:

  • this could also be conform. People conform themselves to the group they belong to.

Scyth, I cannot help wondering how if any sort of sustained tolerant cooperation isn’t possible on an Internet board, it could possibly be expected in real life when the concerns become much more real.

Be honest and tell me which is the more attractive goal: prestige or equality? If it is prestige then a level of intolerance in defense of prestige is essential. Do you really believe two men will consider themselves as equal when chasing the same woman?

Lol! OMG, that was a hoot.
Not enough God & your souls turns blue, too much n your in for some brain-chemical imbalance issues.

god? Or the gods? Or the emotional complex about the higher levels of the unknown?

[size=75]Oh fuck dat.[/size] Intolerance of and for lies is the only way to go!
Oppose! Critisize! Do not tolerate!

The critics are like the immune system of the national average belief system, if they stop giving hell to the liers then pretty soon it’s the neo-darkages.

You’d spank your kids ass for lieing to you outright and tryin’ to control your life, n the same goes for god. Spank his ass! Find a belt or somethin’.

Your culture is dieing AMERICA.
Tolerance and “open mindedness” are not the answer.
Acceptance of evil doesn’t make it go away, it makes it flurish.
Stop the madness while you still can!

I can hate whatever I want to hate, and I like to hate things. Hate can be very good if a person is balanced with it. Guess why I get mad about false-religion? Can you guess? Same reason as a mother would get mad if she saw her kids smokin’ crack. Uright? The only reason why it makes me sick to see it is because I actually care.

“Tolerance” and “open-mindedness” – these can be overapplied and turn into a passive attitude about bad-bad shit. Is insanity okay? Is paranoid superstition okay? Is it?

N don’t take me seriously I’m just playing with you.

Cooperation can go fuck itself.

You put some wolves n sheep in the same cage and see what happens.

Communism failed; we aren’t one big happy family we are in compatition with eachother unless we form gangs.

If you want some sort of spiritual solution for humans the only way that’s gunnu really happen is with individuals having total independance and self-sufficiency.

They don’t have to come crying to each other sayin’:
“Oh please, love my neurotic decaying ass! I naturally go insane without others.”
N then they say:
“We don’t like you, tell someone who cares.”

But if people didn’t need eachother in the first place, hardly any problems would ever happen anymore.

the issue is really, truly opening your mind. Hang around people with different ideas. Different morals.

Realize that not everyone or every idea deserves equal treatment. If a group of people start trying to suggest they are the “la raza”, something must be done… what that is I"m not sure. It’s surely not tolerance though.

the ultimate question is, will the woman see them the same way? Most likely the woman loves them both equally and thinks of them both as friends.

What your talking about really is a different kind of love. There’s agape, then there’s the type of love that makes you envious of the time the person spends with others. If such a person broke your heart could you love them in the agape fashion?

It truly may be the ultimate form of nihilism…

or as I said:

They are the ultimate narcissistic-misanthropic-humanist.

Eh. We fight, struggle, and compete because we are alive. Is religion important? If so, then it’s only right and good that we should fight about it, die for it. If not, then something else will take it’s place.

We struggle to live, because we thrive to struggle… I’ve gone into this in other threads in greater depth, the reasons socialism ultimately fails, is because it bores the people… No matter what semantic you believe in, the journey of life needs to be difficult. If it’s not, your life is meaningless.

Not religion. Semantics. What makes your semantics better than my semantics.

You love your semantics, and rightly so. They are yours.

Is love over doing it?

No. We fight to die for those we love. Whether those we love are mere ideas, or people around us.

While life’s struggles are required (or the society will collapse), the struggle’s between us are not. I feel we intentionally put up words to seperate ourselves, instead of focusing on the words that make us the same.

Is war important?

On the other hand, what if a person let go of religion? What if they stopped wanting and expecting things from “God”? What if they knew that expectations lead to suffering?

“God” doesn’t need them, but often they feel as though they need “God”. From all that I have seen, people who really want “God” – they want “God’s” qualities somehow. These people want superiority to exist, they want a higher mind to watch over themselves and the world. If human government, freinds and society were to fill that need, “God” would nolonger be needed, but as humans cannot usually ever fill such a need, “God” replaces them.

“God” is a desire, an expecation.
Faith is extreme desire to believe in “God”.
People know that they need something or want something, but they can’t seem to really find it. Maybe they are searching in the wrong place?

Dan~

 Oh my, yes. Which is not to say that it's good. Every happy person must either be a warrior, or under the protection of warriors. 
Then they would achieve inner peace, calm, and be utterly un-interesting. The rest of the people on Earth who give a crap, get motivated, and in general [i]do things[/i] would go on to decide history for those who surrender to 'apathy' or 'Enlightenment' or whatever you want to call the above. 

Scythekain

I would agree with all that. If someone’s life is too easy, I think they tend to naturally push their boundaries until the reach a point where they are challenged. And if they don’t, they should.

In the end? In the final analysis? My semantics are better than yours because they are MY semantics. What other reason could there be? It’s simply too broad of a question to have a better answer- all I can say with absolute confidence is that if I don’t agree with you about something, it’s because I find something inferior in your position to mine. The very nature of diversity is supremecy and ego. I am not a Catholic because there is something wrong with Catholicism.

But we aren't the same. If we were, you could do away with 'we' and just say 'me'.  If your religious beliefs were better than mine, I would adopt them. I'd have to. Is some of the division on purpose, driven by a need to compete and to have enemies? It certainly is. I think that's a mistake not because competition and smiting enemies is bad, per se, but because there are plenty of valid enemies in the world without inventing paper tigers. 
 The only way Muslims and Christians (for example) can get along with no squabbling is if they let their faith die a little, and simply don't take it so seriously, or consider it as important as they used to.  For everybody, regardless of faith to get along, they would have to consider their differences in faiths, their faiths themselves, utterly unimportant.  I cannot say I see that as preferable to the state of the world today.

dan,

you seem really hellbent against religion.

yep.

and around, and around we go. There has to be a more substantial reason.

let me demonstrate with the example you provided.

You state that you are not catholic because, there is something wrong with catholicism… what?

Like you, catholics believe that jesus is god, and the son of god, holy trinity. Like you, they believe he died for your sins.

The differences between your belief and the belief of catholics, is really fundamentally nothing. If you had both of your beliefs on the microscope, and zoomed out, they would look exactly the same. It’s only when you start focusing on the details, that you see the differences.

You can think that your version of christ is correct and still respect the catholic version of belief, can you not?

really?

let’s again zoom out our microscope.

We’re both human.

We’re both male.

We both believe in god.

Are we really that different?

Am I talking about losing your “self” identity, to promote some new form of tolerance? of course not. Your differences make you, the similiarities make US. The us, is very important, especially moving forward in time. I would agree with you that warriors are necessary, as long as there are people that would do harm to others. People with such extreme dichotomies that they’ll never accept others.

At the same time, I believe it’s important to minimize that violence, by trying to get along with people that you normally wouldn’t. That doesn’t mean you have to like the person holding a gun to your head, if someone isn’t tolerant or loving towards you, it makes no sense to extend them the same courtesies, especially if your own or someone elses life is on the line.

I don’t know, I think that again, you have a case where the muslims have more in common than different. That doesn’t mean either group should give up their core beliefs, it just means they should be more willing to accept other beliefs, and let them live and let live.

people can hold differing beliefs, still be individuals and still be tolerant of others.

The greatest desire of the inhumanly-peutrid semitic believer is to steel nature using lies, claim it as their god’s “creation”, and then completely corrupt and destroy nature through their many slaves. This means using massive morality to control and destroy all life on earth.

The incomprehensible evil of the Jew – paints an image of humans being the highest life form on earth, and all stars in the sky were meant to help us see at night, and are not home to Jewless, superior races of beings.

This is the ultimate arrogant insantiy, but it is also mixed with slavery, in that you must give everything to god, though god doesn’t even need it! It’s like a poor man giving his 5 dollars to a billionair! It’s like a mortal man dieing for an imortal being that needs nothing! It is the ultimate evil on earth.

If science cannot destoy the evil Jew, the evil Jew will destroy humanity through culturally rotted madness!

“It is not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that is left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity.” ~Hitler.

Unlike the stupid Jews, Hitler knew that each star was a world – perhaps teaming with superior life forms.

The evil Semitics wish to steel and dominate all of nature on earth.
They claim to hold the secrets of eternal life, the “meaning of life on earth”, “the truth”, “the perfect way”, but in actuality, they stole EVERYTHING THAT THEY HAVE, AND ONLY LIE ABOUT NATURE!

Even if all of the temples and the churches were rooted out, the uttery-wicked Jewish-capitolism would still exist! The idea that humans are superior and of a higher priority then all other life on earth, and the idea that “morality” is the greatest good [morality being the complete domination of freewill] – they will still destroy nature and enslave eachother, even without the religion.

It is unimaginable, the depth of evil that the semitic fools have put into the nations of earth, and these are not the only races which have done so!

.

Which type of walk ?

.

.

Which type of warrior ?

.

Maybe Uccisore things that the meaning of life and the word-god have something to do with eachother, as if the meaning of humans on earth was to return to the genetic soup that the emerged from, and a baby crawls back into its own mother, so too – the “creation” destroys itself and gives everything back to its “Creator”.

And the word “warrior” should be replaced by the word “natural defences”, if we want to be accurate here. Are “police” “warriors”?

Discpline of Light

Many types. All types. My point is only that pacifism (physical, social, cultural, whatever) can only be a happy, healthy lifestyle as long as it either
1.) Is adopted universally, which will never happen, or
2.) Exists under the protection of people who are willing and able to fight for what the pacifist cherishes.

Scythekain

I believe there are more substantial reasons, but we can't talk about them without talking about particulars. Why is Mormonism better than Lutheranism? To get an answer, you'd need to listen to a Mormon telling you particular things about his particular beliefs. Why is Communism better than Capitialism? Because Communism is 'wicked awesome' in respect to A, B, and C, and Capitalism 'totally sucks' with respect to X, Y, and Z. 
 In other words, there is no 'big' answer for why people fight about religion, and there is no solution to the problem of people fighting about religion- because it's not actually a problem. In general, people ought to fight about it. Or so I believe. The devil is in the details- and one of the details is that I hope the advocates (warriors) for the more forthright, morally upstanding, less opressive religions win. Meditate on what it would mean for them to [i]win[/i]. It's a bitter pill to swallow, isn't it- the price of peace?

Based on what? The sheer numbers of people who have fought, argued, or even been killed for these differences is a HUGE point of evidence against you in this regard. Apparently, these differences are important, significant, to people. Are you saying they shouldn’t be? How could you judge that? Do you have an image in your mind of what the perfect person would and would not care about, and are comparing humanity to that? I’m honestly curious, because this impacts a lot that you and I have talked about- one of the key facets of liberalism is an attempt to completely rewire what things the common man considers as important.

Yes, and details matter. Details are where the rubber meets the road, and why people live or die. People don’t live in general.

Different enough to quarrel[i] this [/i]much, and similar enough to get along [i]this[/i] much. It is what it is. It's funny, you're trying to zoom out, and I'm trying to zoom in. Maybe the lesson here is how much the situation changes depending on which view you take. 
Of course I agree, and remember I follow a religion of peace (strange to hear a non-Muslim say that, isn't it? Hmm, what's the opposite of irony?). So in the [i]particulars[/i] I agree with you. The particulars are, I believe in peace, a brotherhood of man, and my enemies are people who either want to annihiliate me and mine through violence, or who want to annihiliate my ways as a part of their own quest for peace. When I try to meet you in talk of generalities, though, I have to confess that I'm just a member of one of the many warring ideologies out there competing for dominance. I think I belong to the right one, and so do all the people in all those other factions. It's all so very relative as long [i]as you don't look too close. [/i]

They can and they do. But it IS a surrender of values. Christianity and Islam both have elements built into their creeds that make the existence of non-believers either a tragedy (for Christians) or an abomination (for Muslims). Tolerance is, to an extent, a willingness to not take those elements very seriously.

Hi MB,

Sorry for the late reply … work again … :wink:

You seem to have made a valid point, namely, that Mankind has a problem. But what is the nature of that problem really? Is it that Mankind has missed some Cosmic-Being wandering around? Or is it that we have a sight disability, or perhaps a perception disability, a blind-spot that impairs our understanding of what purpose life can or should have? And if there is this disability, is it good or bad, intentional or unintentional?

It seems to me that our greatest problem is to rise above our animal status, and develop those mental and spiritual skills and abilities which are in us. It isn’t a case of rejecting our carnal side, but gaining a balance to the rest of us. There are factions that are carnal, intellectual or spiritual, and you would think that we had a choice. The fact is that we are all of these put together in body, mind and spirit.

Because we have a polar view of existence, we tend towards extremes. How often do we change views completely, from black to white, without comprehending that the truth is probably in-between. It is this polarity that also has us standing at different ends of the table, for or against, “with us or against us” on the battlefield. What we often fail to understand is that such behaviour opens the door to hypocrisy, because we are never just black or white, but change when our conditioning throws the switch.

If we could overcome this view, and understand that we only see things in part, we might utilise someone standing opposite us, not as an opponent, but as a different perspective. Instead of painting other views black as a contrast for our own, we might learn from the development of knowledge in this world, and see that it has always been a different perspective that has brought us further. Of course, this hasn’t always been the strength of religion, which is the reason why there has been dispute within creeds and denominations. But it has been power that has settled such dispute, not wisdom.

The fascinating thing about this struggle, is that this view has always been subjected to oppression and persecution. It has been a requirement of those in power always to play the game of opposites. Seldom has a leader displayed the unity within himself that gathers the diversity of humankind together for the common good. The epitome of this struggle for the western culture is the Jewish-Christian biblical tradition of Israel’s development. The Christian perspective is complementary, in that a young Jew stands up and walks in unity with “The One” of Israel, and is condemned by those in power, but is said by his followers to be the long awaited “anointed one” and that his “Way” is the path of redemption for all people.

“Morals” are really a set of unwritten rules for life in a community. Being concerned with the judgement of the goodness or badness of human action and character, they are more intuitive than legal and stem from experience rather than design. They are generally coloured by the religion of the people, but they are not identical. Morals are often the lessons or principles taught by mothers, and are contained in or taught by a fable, a story, or an event. However, the dominance of morals is often a sign that the unity that should be taught by religion has been lost, and that our perception is ruled by polarity.

Having said what I have above, you can see that the opposition between reason and belief is a portrayal of the polarity I have been speaking about. Reason belongs to intellect, as does belief belong to spirituality. They complement rather than oppose each other. On their own they are unbalanced and one-sided, which is the picture we get from fundamentalism of all kinds. Someone who fails to find balance within himself will fail to create balance, since he is bound to fall to the one side or the other.

I can’t generally agree with the picture you are painting. The real problem with what has happened in Europe is what I said above. Despite all good intentions, the “secularists” remain unbalanced themselves and cannot help those who have a fundamentalist background to overcome its polarity. Their attempts at “neutrality” are in reality another kind of extremism, even if they require radical social structures. However, your “challenge [of] the christian faith… to empower their culture with the wonders of multiculturalism” is a bit far fetched. It was simply economic factors that saw the Turks imported to Germany – however, that was just as one-sided as any other argument.

All of the examples of social conflict that you have named were again examples of unbalanced extremism. You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater when you generalise in this way. Conflicts only become violent as a result of fear and lack of respect. It is a primary lesson in psychology that teaches us that the violent are not strong but hiding an inner weakness. The victims of violence are in the same way not always the inwardly weak. We have to resort our impressions.

Reason does not stand above belief, but stands alongside. Reason is one side of the story and it may rank highly, but it doesn’t “trump” belief. It doesn’t help either, to say that another group of people are anything than people like us. If you want to advocate tolerance and open-mindedness you have to stop making sweeping statements about other people that interpret your observations. You can say what you have seen, but if you start saying that what you have seen is “the ultimate narcissistic-misanthropic-humanist” you begin to cast your verdict.

Shalom

Hi Scyth

Yes this was the argument against listening to the Jews, or in my case, the Armenians. They were obviously suspicious so what’s to be done with them? Surely not tolerance.

If that happens, it will be very insulting to the men and they will be forced to take action against her for the sake of justice.

I agree that romantic love is the dominant emotion and people die from it. For agape love to flourish, a person would have to be able to "know “another.” To do this would require first impartially knowing themselves as a point of reference. We normally don’t know how to do this which is why agape is so rare. Agape love is not tolerance which is mechanical reaction. Expressions of Agape love are primarily conscious actions. They are based on real knowledge, self knowledge, despite the nasty connotation this word seems to have acquired around here.

Actually it is the opposite. If Muslims and Christians did take their faith seriously they would automatically be tolerant from the common sense revealed through self knowledge advocated by their respective teachings.

The trouble is that there are too few Muslims or Christians to have any beneficial effect. Most are attached to some sort of man made sect that for reasons of power, adopted the name.

I believe it can happen , seems fairly obvious that bad parenting creates problem children , sort that out and you will get global peace , simple as that I think . And to be fair things on earth now are better than they have ever been , so there has been a lot of progress . And it need,nt stop here , at the end of the day who has the time for arguments and petty nonsense ? Is,nt being fair , kind and honest a much better way to be ?

let us all meditate on sending each other and the rest of the world our very best wishes

.

Actually – the biggest problem of humans is that they believe they are of a higher priority then nature. Nature and humanity should have equal priority. They aren’t extincting themselves, they are overpopulating.

The whole Jesus-peace-on-earth-communism-perfectionism idea flopped! War isn’t the real problem, environmentalism is the real problem!

I’m not trying to ignore you guys, just been pretty busy the last couple days…

get back to you soon!