You have zero access to “scientific research”. The only thing you “know” is merely whatever propaganda you selectively collect. Atheism murdered some 30-40 million people less than a century ago, yet you try to compare that to rumors concerning what Christians once did long ago.
… mindless.
Peer reviewed scientific research is such biased propaganda, I know…
Atheism never murder anyone as it is not concerned with morality, it doesn’t contain a moral dimension at all. It can not be blamed for bad deeds done by atheists or praised for good ones.
Theism often centers their morality around religious commandments from God (heteronomous morality), that’s why it’s rational to take into account theism when judging the morality of a theist, cause mostly their entire morality revolves around their belief in God. Possible exceptions would be people like Immanuel Kant who ascribed to autonomous morality, but even then it’s arguable whether God ultimately determined humans or not, aka whether autonomous morality translates to a kind of a heteronomous morality.
This thread : Idealize Eastern religions, demonize Abrahamic religions - discuss.
LOL
What is taught in church now is not what was taught a hundred years ago, let alone two thousand years ago. There is constant changing and adaptation.
Then there are the critics who claim that there is only one literal reading of the texts - the only one with truth value. Theists are not allowed to interpret and change with the times. 
Damned if you change and damned if you don’t change. 
B-but the bible is inspired by the CREATOR of the UNIVERSE! Surely what the bible says could not possibly be dismissed in favor of something a human has said 
. How are we supposed to believe Christians when they don’t believe their own holy book and try to distance themselves from certain parts of it as time passes and our knowledge advances?
Who has ever said that theists aren’t ALLOWED to interpret or that the literal reading is the only one? Interpret all you want, but by interpreting you are undermining all grounds for attempting an argument that the bible contains some relevant truths because that what is up to interpretation by definition contains no truth value and can’t be “true” or “false”.
I think that you keep repeating this because you want to treat a complex book as though it is a single logic statement.
Human communication is not that simple.
Atheris: Dogs are cats!
phyllo: No, they aren’t, gives reasons why
Atheris: feels stupid because his claim has been disproven Umm, haha, it was just metaphorical, ok?
What do you say next? Tell me, what would be your response if after you’ve disproven somebody’s claim they go ahead and say it was just metaphorical all along? Even though it was quite obviously taken literally… until it was disproven.
That’s not metaphorical or allegorical. It’s just stupid.
That’s another of your strange ideas… that you can say any nonsense and it qualifies as metaphor or allegory. Weird. 
So your answer would be almost identical to the one I give theists
Dogs are cats is categorically wrong just like many other things in the bible (most of the genesis story for one). Talk about being a hypocrite.
Guess you don’t know what ‘hypocrite’ means either.
I’m just going to stop wasting my time on you. You’re on ignore from now on.
Says there is a difference between false biblical facts and false fact I made up that makes it so the former can be up to interpretation while the latter can’t
Fails to point out such difference
Ignores me for successfully arguing my point
You just can’t win against theists… well, you can, but they never acknowledge it and just go back to the same ol same ol
What makes the qualities you cite ‘spiritual’ qualities? I can certainly see why you might personally prefer religions that don’t have an ‘us vs. them’ approach, and I can certainly see why ‘us vs. them’ is more agreeable to certain political ideologies than others…
But if a God created the world in basically the way the Abrahamic Religions describe, then it seems to me those religions are spiritually superior irrespective of anything else. If, for example, reincarnation isn’t real, then it seems to me Hindu is spiritually flawed irrespective of anything else.
Maybe we just live in a 'us vs them' kind of universe, and some folks don't like it, and so prefer to believe other things.
The bit about ‘immutability of holy texts’ shows an unfamiliarity with any theism outside of Evangelical American Protestantism of the 20th century, so I’ve not much to say on that.
I have to believe that we live in a universe that accounts for all the differing beliefs seeing as how there is such diversity in mankind. I can’t believe we live an us vs. them universe, though; simply because it’s only what people have made it out of paranoia and distrust. What if they’re all right and all wrong in that their philosophical ideas are correct and right, but not as standalone beliefs; they’re meant to be coincided with everything else for a complete answer and the us vs. them mentality actually prevents people from seeing it. I just think it’s a matter of people having to have something they know very little about to talk shit about. Vague subject matter such as ‘Abrahamic religions’ and yet if you had seen any of these belief infrastructures when they were brand new, you would not have talked shit about them, you would not have called them weak and fallible but strong and indomitable. Such is the passing of an era and we are made to continue on and to keep piecing it all together for those who actually care to learn.
No detail, just vague references to material you know very little about seeing as how most religions that exist in the modern age have been irrevocably changed by the modern age alone to coincide all other aspects of life within them. Realistically, it’s just a means for people to hate other people for doing the same things they do for their various groups and allegiances. It’s a political nightmare aside from government. And then you bring you guys into the mix and it’s like, really? as if it wasn’t bad enough already. Let’s attack and drag everything through the mud one step at a time instead of trying to see where you can go using it. Nothing saying you have to be a hardcore believer, but give it the effort and actually get to know what you’re putting down by getting involved with other people that believe these things and actually give it the fucking effort instead of going to church once, reading a small bit of the bible or visiting a wiccan group and going, damn these people are fucking idiots to believe these things. I mean, it just makes you look stupid, not them.
That sounds like an awful condition that would make it very hard to do philosophy in any meaningful way. Both because 'having to believe things' would make investigation impossible, and because a universe in which every ideology gets a trophy to keep anybody from feeling left out would make investigation pointless. Just believe whatever the hell you want- voodoo or Jedism or whatever- and the universe will take care of you, because the universe has 21st century Western sympathies and will respect your diversity? Speaking in terms of what we 'must' believe and what we prefer to believe: I think I'd rather just live in a universe where I can be wrong and know that there is something correct to discover out there, than be 'right' no matter how little effort I've put into discovering the truth. The kind of correctness that I would have to share with somebody who believes Tolkein is a prophet and he is a reincarnated elf is not the kind of correctness I am interested in. I'd rather just play video games and jerk off than do philosophy, if that's all philosophy has to offer.
What if all this 'diversity is a super big deal' stuff goes away in a few years as quickly as it arrived? Seems like sketchy ground to take as axiomatic in defining one's religious views.
What if not?
Actually, not really. The surprising thing is you don’t really have to believe the things, just the possibility of the things. it’s to say that things happen for a reason instead of being utterly random. There’s a theory I haven’t seen much discussed here called the chaos theory that states that even the flapping of a flag has a hidden meaning; they look for hidden meanings in the most inconsequential things, which sounds like a tiring thing to do. When it comes down to it, the basic underlying premise of most belief structures is to just live. Beyond the ‘believe this or else’ built into things and the ‘us vs. them’ is another world of just living where you account for these beliefs and those who carry them and actually pay attention to reality and see from that reality where these beliefs might have stemmed from personal experiences; but then you eventually reach a point where the results can no longer be reproduced because people try too hard to reproduce them through analytical thought processes and trying to nail them down, which is the premise behind what I said.
Another surprising part is that it becomes easier to work with the more knowledge you take in because in essence it’s just another juggling act that we deal with while living and we are expert jugglers when it comes to dealing with mental tasks. We have to be after a while if we wish to actually partake in life and the world around us and work around other people.
It’s not to say that every ideology gets a trophy as that would be silly. There are no trophies given; no medals awarded for advanced thought processes being delivered. There’s no glory to be gained and no reason to push forward your own knowledge except because you choose to, because it’s the gift of free will we find in a world bound by fate and self-fulfilling prophecies all around us. For me, it’s an on-going conversation in the back of my head and some times in the forefront. From chakras and third eyes to christs and antichrists to meditation and balance; I incorporate the best and discard the discrepancies that get so many people going on in hating the groups that bring forth these ideas. There is no real evolution of the texts and ideas and so people are continually stuck with decadent philosophies and wonder why we keep trodding the same paths of them and getting seeming nowhere with them individually. The more you incorporate into your mind; the more you open it; the easier it is to just keep going in life itself and not just in the belief of these things. It’s something I’ve mastered that I like to refer to as mental martial arts; wherein you develop fluidity of mind which leads to fluidity of body and actual martial arts which we learn on a daily basis without realizing it. Tying everything together can be a daunting task, but what of future generations that, as you describe, may get tired of the diversity and pretending that the differences between them are worth having wars over; worth losing friends over; worth stabbing people in the back just to get a momentary one-up.
The fact is that I would not be so silly; and neither would many other people; to believe that I could generate energy charges like in Dragon Ball Z or fly like in the Matrix or perform such tricks as Jedis do, for to assume that we can do such as such is ridiculous given the present nature of reality. What I’m saying is that such may be possible if we were to change the perceptions of our world and to let go of such binding ideas of the laws that we put in place for true nature and true reality cares little for the laws of men, if it cares for men at all as a species; which it must if we are to believe anything at all about these teachings, for why would we be taught methods that we can incorporate into our lives that help us deal with those lives as we transgress what seems like Hell on Earth with the promise of a savior and Heaven on Earth’ with the idea that through meditation; which we all do in one way or another; we can learn to manage more than just our bodies, we could soar the universe in our minds eyes and see things that we might never see in our short life spans.
What if immortality were possible and the only reason why people don’t live forever is all of the stress and anxiety and fighting. What if, by getting along together and learning these things that teach us how to do so instead of falling for the us vs. them mentality or the ‘we’re better than them and this is why’ stupidity we could free our selves from the only things that actually kill us, since even the toxins our factories produce are produced from naturally occuring developments. What if we kill our selves on such an epic scale in such an epic way as to realistically be the most tragic story ever told on a cosmic scale as people kill and are killed for no other reason than because they can not move past their own mental traumas, insecurities and insanities; can’t transgress the differences in ideologies to bring them together as they might have once been before a great divide occurred to tear them apart into all of the in-fighting we see today throughout every culture known to man. I tie history and psychology and the provable things into it all and it makes more and more sense and nobody can disprove it and if they could; even if we got everyone squared away and found our selves to still be mortal and to still die at the end of a lifespan, wouldn’t we at least experience world peace and deliver it to every generation that were to come after us in epic style?
That’s what I look at… no matter what you believe, we’re soon coming upon a time when there will be an epic showdown and a once-and-for-all struggle for dominance and I personally believe that peace will win out for eternity because eternity to the nth degree has to be worse than eternity and one stretch of eternity can be so vastly different; so what is eternity except the concept of a belief structure evolving over time and learning so many things; as has been evidenced throughout our cultural achievements and our evolution of intelligence, not to mention how we know the things we know; where our information and knowledge comes from in the back of our minds; how it develops, etc. Where do geniuses come from and how can everyone be a genius and an idiot in the same breath is the question you ask at last and isn’t that the cosmic balance? Isn’t that the answer to the question asked? The very act of finding a definitive answer to work with and to set the groundwork for future analysis in a field of study that would be vastly rewarding regardless of everything else that happened around us would set us free from the very things we seek to be free from and people would no longer wish to be craven and licentious monsters and they would care about each other as they do already when they finally find their groupings to settle down into to create the us vs. them mentalities.
And people who delve too deeply into beliefs instead of rolling with the flow of reality as it comes would look like fools trying to manipulate reality itself as they do while looking crazy after a while and having it said of them that they fell too far into drugs or researched the wrong things. What if the balance of life is to account for it all until it develops the deeper understanding that so many search in vain for; to let it come to you instead of chasing it.
And, off the record; Tolkien did a great job of recreating religion with his words. Here’s a question that Tolkien could never answer, though: what happens at the end when Melkor is finally released? All of Middle Earth is destroyed. And, what was so bad about Melkor to begin with that they had to lock him away to the point where he created so many shadow creatures to reach out to everyone else; all for introducing a darker section to the music the Valar created in the beginning with Illuvitar. They blamed him and were all like wtf, why are you introducing that, why do you have to put that in and perhaps it was just a part of his knowledge, a part of him that they hated him for and he really just wanted to be like them and to fit in with the crowd; maybe Illuvitar needed a devil to work with, but to what end result? What of Melkor’s love life, or the Wizards or the other Valar? What did they sacrifice to do what they did? The stories don’t speak of that and neither do religious works paint a picture of the angels and demons and what their ultimate goal is. In fact, if you read the silmarillion, the only God that knew what they were doing was Illuvitar, the rest made music with him to create everything; one made dwarves in private and what of Fourth Age Middle Earth with Aragorn in charge?
What of the politics between nations; the inevitable simmering down of conflict into a tolerable peace before Melkor was released, since no real evil existed in the world after the fall of Sauron; though there is still room enough for lesser evils to slip through every so often when societies let their guard down; the inevitable progression and evolution of that evil from direct fighting and conquest to the political manipulation such as wormtongue and the dissipation of magical energies as the wizards and elves leave middle earth in large and leave a bare minimum. What of the fifth age and the sixth?
And then there’s the Chronicles of Narnia and C.S. Lewis. Why is Narnia only truly create once those children bring the white witch there and why did Aslan not do more to understand enough about her to prevent the destruction of Narnia. The White witch being the main source of evil in THAT world; allowed by Aslan who obviously could have had the power to show her out and chose not to; allowed her to stay and do what she did and for what end? The same question to be asked of Illuvitar and Melkor, of God and the Devil. Even C.S. Lewis accounts for a multiple world theory. It’s a matter of asking where do these stories come from? These people don’t just create these stories… they’re just not that good. These stories come to them in their dreams and imaginations and they get caught up in the flow of reality as it flows out of them, just the same as I get caught up in the flow of reality as I bring forth my words to speak the ideas I speak; to write the poetry I write.
What is really prophecy and what is really learning lessons and what is really just a warning of what could happen if we refuse to learn something from it all? When there are so many common trends in our culture, isn’t it a fools errand to discount any of it as foolish?
As James rightly mentioned, they are superior for the simple reason that they had extra 2000 years, or at least 1500 for sure, to evolve. And, that applies both to religions and the audience they were addressing.
But, i would not use the term superior. I would like to use more evolved or more detailed instead.
There is nothing such in the Eastern religions, which was not known to Prophets of Abrahamic religions. The only difference is that their Prophets did not focus on those subtle details because the addressed audience was not competent enough to grasp that. Moses tried but that backfired and Jesus had to spend his entire life and attention to put the teachings of Moses into perceptive for common man. He had no time to address subtleties. Though, Muhammad tried to address both the issues, as much as he could afford, given the disturbed circumstances, in which he found himself.
Sufism is at par with Buddhism and Vedanta. But, most of the western intellectuals are not aware of this. Its knowledge is scattered and not compiled in a systemic way. Much of the Sufi work is not translated yet into English and English speaking world is not aware about that.
There is only one western scholar, who learned Arabian and Persian in person to go in the details of Islam and Sufism. His name is William C. Chittick. I am not aware of his present status but he was alive some years ago and was teaching Islam related subjects in some US university.
Prism, you need to read his works about Sufism to understand what it actually is and how far or less it goes in the comparison with Eastern religions.
Coming back to Eastern religions, there was an era in the Indian subcontinent, where the religions were scattered, believed in afterlife and magic (something similar to Shaman), and even used to bury their dead, instead of putting them into fire. These are called Pre-Vedic religions and they gave way to the Vedic era somewhere around 1500 BCE.
Vedic era is spread over roughly from 1500 BCE to almost the birth of the Christ. It is divided into two parts; first the revelation of the four Vedas and then their interpretations. Lust like the case of Abrahamic religions, Vedas were also misinterpreted and misused by the [u]Brahmans/u to keep folks under their control. But, its later half is more important and gave the birth to Upanishads, which are philosophical investigations of Vedas. This is what we call Vedanta. Vedanta means - What happened after the end of Vedas.This was also the timeline of the advent of Buddhism and Jainism.
These last 8-10 centuries before Christ, are considered the golden period of Hinduism or Classical Hinduism. But, Abrahamic religions did neither get the chance to go through that refinement nor they had any mature enough audience ready to be taught the details. On the other hand, Eastern religions had both that advantages. They hit the maturity before the Abrahamic religions actually got even started.
Prism, you cannot teach Einstein’s theory of curved spacetime to the primary students. Can you? You need at least a high school student. It was not the shortcoming of the teachers; they did not have the students competent enough to grasp the whole lesson. So, preachers had no option but to teach according to the capacity of the listeners.
with love,
sanjay
Secondly, there is one more very important issue which has not got the attention of the intellectuals yet. Abrahamic religions, especially Islam, are still in the evolving phase. They are far away from the maturity yet. Though, Christianity seems to be a gone case by now. The Church has been conceded the defeat a long ago. But, Islam is still fighting hard to find the way. It still has all the options open.
A western citizen may not able to realize but there is a lot of chopping and churning is going on within Muslims all over the world. It may have not surfaced yet but it is gaining momentum by each passing day. And, fortunately, this feeling is not only in the common Muslim but within the Umma( cleric community) as well. They are finding it hard to digest what some from within their community are doing in the name of Islam.
I am not sure whether they would be able to turn the tide of not, but there would such attempt for sure very soon. The circumstances seem to be the most favorable now than ever. The rates of crude oil are less than half now what it was just one year ago. This single factor is good enough to break the back bone of Islamic extremism as they all are funded by the Petro Dollars of rich Gulf countries.
All Islam needs right now is some wise leadership from within Islam, which have the courage to stand up against this madness. No outsider can do that. They can only help the cause. Such leadership must have Muslim face.
My guess is that Pakistan is the only country from where this can started. It has all the necessary ingredients to flourish any counter extremism movement. Iraq was the also such a country but at that time, the whole of west decided to support conservative Arab countries instead of a liberal one.
The difference between Islam and Christianity is that unlike most of the Christians, a majority of the Muslims have not lost thier faith in Islam. They may interpret it rightly or wrongly, but they still have faith. On the other hand, most of the Christians do not care about Christianity. This is even true for those who still consider themselves Christian.
My guess is that for about 2/3 of the Christian believers, Christianity has been come down to going to the Church to Sundays and lighting candles. It is merely a social practice now. The real faith is missing. But, things are not the same in the case of the majority of the Muslim believers. They have real faith in their hearts besides social practices.
Though, over the time, Hindus are also slowly following that very path of Christians.
With love,
sanjay
Noted your various points.
I dare say, there are substantially* no evil laden elements (potential or otherwise) in the holy texts of Buddhism nor Jainism. I dare not claim for Hinduism as it comprised on many sub-religions. Except for some potential areas of misinterpretations, Hinduism generally is OK and do not has notable inherent evil elements like those of the Abrahamic religions.
*minor disputable points.
When I compare the Abrahamic religions to the main Eastern Religions, the basis is the average best performance they are capable of.
To use an analogy from academic;
- The highest potential for the average Abrahamic believers is up to say primary level.
- The highest potential for the average Eastern religions is up to University Level.
Note I said, the potential for the average believers, this will exclude the mystics who are special class of people. This include Christian mysticism and Sufism. You will note the Sufis are regarded as apostates and infidels by mainstream Muslims. Note the recent bombing of Sufi shrines. IMO, the mystics of Christianity and Sufis should be regarded more to mysticism rather than belonging the their conventional religion. In this case, a Sufi is 90% mystic and 10% conventional Muslim, as is similar with a Christian mystics or a Buddhist mystic.
Btw, I am very familiar with Sufism.
Why I say the average Abrahamic religions potential is inferior to the Eastern religion is based on the parts of the brain they addressed in facing the existential dilemma.
The Abrahamic religion focus more on the reptilian and limbic [animal] part of the brain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain#Reptilian_complex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system
while the Eastern religion focus on the higher cortical brain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocortex
If you researched into the holy texts, the ethos and behaviors of Abrahamic believers and ER believers in general, you will notice the associations with the various parts of the human brain.
I will avoid the details as it can be tedious.
The point is,
because the Abrahamic religions focused on the lower and mid brain, the limit of its average can only reached a certain level, say X points, (exceptions of the mystics)
because the Eastern Religions focused on the higher complex brain, its max limit of it average will be extended beyond X, say X+3 points.
The other point is,
the Abrahamic religions work on the principle of the immutability of their holy texts (to edit God’s word would be a sin & blasphemous). As such, there is no likely possibility for any progress to be made from what is stated in the holy texts which focused on the lower and mid brain.
The Eastern Religions meanwhile are dynamic and flexible and believers can direct attention to the relevant parts of the brain to facilitate greater spiritual progress.
It is on this basis that the Abrahamic religions are relatively inferior to those of the Eastern Religions listed above.
Jainism existed in parallel with the Vedas (controversial point) and Buddhism emerged from Jainism in parallel with the Vedas.
I mentioned earlier, Buddhism is a paradigmatic shift in its central principles (anatman) from the atman of the Vedas.
The older Vedanta existed before Buddhism, but the later-Vedanta [renewed by Adi Shankara] emerged only after Buddhism was getting popular in India and subsequently this renewed-Vedanta pushed Buddhism out of India.
As I explained above, there is no room for the Abrahamic religions to evolve based on what is fixed in its holy texts and its immutability.
It is possible for Muslims themselves to evolve away from Islam towards Sufism which is mysticism and which is not Islam per-se.
It is possible for Christians themselves [not Christianity per se] to evolve, but they would be deviating from the central core of Christianity [the only way] and complementing their Christian beliefs with elements of Eastern religions (e.g. yoga, meditations, etc.) and secular practices.
What I foresee is, in the future, believers of all religions will veer toward and adopt a sort of generic human-spirituality that is centered on the development of the whole brain with real positive changes to the neurons in the brain. Then there will less religionists and the majority will be spiritualist-proper (not perverted shamanic, new-age or scam spiritualists)
Eugenics is deciding what will or will not be concerning the neurological structure of the casts and species. Atheism can’t avoid nihilism, in fact favors it.
Blind “progress” is annihilation and extinction.