(January 26, 2018 at 12:11 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(January 26, 2018 at 7:19 am)Aoi Magi Wrote: See the point I am trying to make is that religious ideals are not exactly the same as other ideals because with other ideals people are choosing the ideals of their own volition entirely, bad people are drawn to bad ideals and vice-versa, but with religious ideals, even good people can come under the influence of bad ideals quite easily because they have been conditioned to be "submissive to authority".
I would argue that a person still chooses to follow that religion "by their own volition". Contrary to what appears to be popular belief around here, us theists aren't mindless drones. If Christianity all of the sudden states that rape is good and that Jesus commands us to rape people in order to multiply, I would no longer be a Christian. But it doesn't. It states the opposite.
Good people can fall under a bad influence for any reason, bad religion only being one of them. And as i keep saying, it works the other way around too. A bad person can be influenced to do good because of good religion, or because of any other positive influene.
An annoying inconsistency I keep seeing here is the quickness to blame a person's religion for every bad act they commit. But when a religious person is influenced by their religion to do good , such as all the religious charities and church fundraisers for the needy, all of the sudden the argument becomes "Oh, well, their religion has nothing to do with them doing these good things." I've seen it multiple times. (Though I suppose I've also seen "They're only doing good things so they can win points for Heaven, that's it." Either way it's pretry unfair and extremely inconsistent)
No most people are brought into religion much before they can "choose". Let me ask you this, why do you choose to be a "catholic" instead of a "vaishnab"(a sect of vishnu worshippers in hinduism) or a sikh?
Yes, in this society rape is considered bad and our laws about it are not perfect, but how the old testament deals with rape is morally much worse. I mean do you think it is good to force someone to marry their rapist? Yes these days people can ignore these in the name of new testament because our society has evolved, but in the past people didn't just stop being christians due to these bad parts of christianity, rather they embraced it. Would you say every christian who believed the old testament was a bad person? Or was christianity a bad religion if not for the new testament?
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