Unconventional Religion

[genkaus]

Because being generous to the poor is suffering.

What are you babbling about?

"My belief is the only true belief. I am therefore better than everyone else because of my belief system." That's what caused the Crusades and the 9/11 bombing.
Not all atheists are like you. But to see statements like this coming from a member of a belief system that promises to bring us forward, corrupts a little part of atheism from the inside out. What happened to Christianity is happening in atheism, and in you.

"My beliefs are rational and logical, which is what makes them better than yours - though not everyone else's". The key difference here is that I don't try to impose my beliefs onto you by force. That's what caused the Crusades and 9/11 and that's why my belief system (which is not atheism, btw) would not get corrupted or end up like Christianity (which was corrupted from the beginning).

What you are saying is that Jesus preached the Holocaust.

Is that a question?

Because Jesus paused during his sermons to say 'metaphor', 'simile', 'allegory', 'hyperbole'.

He should have.

The Jews of the first century were used to Jesus' language. Many rabbis talked the same way. As time goes on, language changes, along with culture and environment. That's why the Bible needs to be spelled out in light of all these changes. If it isn't, we get Hitler.

That's a very poor excuse. Change in language has nothing to do with 'interpretation'. Language may have changed but the use of literary devices hasn't. A simple translation without alternate interpretation should suffice - if he was talking any sense then.

When I mentioned the kings who were saints, SUDDENLY being poor didn't matter as much any more.

Like you said, the point has always been suffering. Poverty is just one aspect of that.

Suffering is an integral element of life. It's what makes the world less than perfect. Jesus dealt with this issue by telling people to embrace morals in times of suffering and find hope. That suffering was nothing, a mere flu shot. The same with death.
As for some, judging by the way they talk about suffering and death, they can't tolerate it. They are inconveniences to the perfect life they are looking for in an imperfect world, so these people condemn them. But they have no control over their luck, and so they live in fear of things going wrong.
You talk about suffering the way one would about heads on sticks.

That's what is so disgusting about your religion - that it treats suffering an integral element of life. I threw up a little just reading about this. This is why suffering is an integral part of your religion.

You're right. I believe you are wrong:
Because you had three isolated Bible verses on doctrine and not practice, which tends to be metaphor-free.
Because the examples of "them not practicing what they preached" in the Bible are far too overwhelming. Jesus didn't put a Bible in our hands, it was compiled by Christians, who supposedly went against the teachings they wrote in their own book. After that, their books were reviewed and selected to be put in the Christian Bible by Christians. Jesus handled money. He wasn't caught hiding it, he gave it to Peter so he could pay the Temple tax in Matthew 17:27. The disciples had a treasury Judas was in charge of in John 12:6. This information was written down by the people who you say believed you couldn't get to heaven with money. So either Jesus and his disciples all went to hell, the Bible writers told stories of how Jesus contradicted himself and how what they believed was false, or, maybe, you got the doctrine of another religion wrong.
Finally, I can send down a rain of Bible verses telling you what the Bible thinks about money. Here's a preview: 75% of 'good' Bible characters owned possessions. Did none of them heed God's instructions in your three Bible verses?

That and yes.

Punishment for offense. Like attempted murder. No one died, and yet a penalty is paid, usually less than it would have been had the murder been successful.

Who's talking about just punishment? You know that there is a monetary value attached to life, right?

You run out of resources needlessly, the good thing being giving things to other people. You only have so much, and it should all be spent wisely.
Hmm, I sound like you. Maybe your 'rational morality' isn't as exclusive as you think. Maybe a Christian and an atheist can agree on something for once.

Why should you give it out at all?

As for the exclusivity of my rational morality - I never said it was exclusively mine. I consider it to be within every person to the extent they think rationally. Its the part of you telling you that these Christian morals are insane and you should dump them - change them to the extent they don't make you miserable.

Why are there poor atheists if Christianity is responsible for poverty?

Being an atheist does not automatically make you a rational person.

This is a personalized version of: "The difference between me and them is that I'm right and they're wrong."
However rational or faithful one may be is not an excuse for anyone to be a condescending ass.

Actually, that's a very good excuse for being condescending. The joy of being condescending is one of the reasons why I try so hard to be right in the first place.

Oh, great, now it's sarcasm. Atheism suddenly has a monopoly on logic. "No logic exists outside of my religion. If you do not share my particular belief, you can't possibly be logical. Atheism is a light to the world in a land of cavemen. The world is so lucky to have me and my fellow believers." I'll reserve my language to describing that as, 'supremacist'.

I wasn't being sarcastic- you need to justify your belief that you are a good person. Which means you need to show that you are acting according to a certain morality and justify that morality as well.

As for the rest of your comments - let's make one thing clear. I do not label my belief system as 'atheism'. Atheism is just one aspect of my personal philosophy - which I do not share with other atheists here. My views on logic and rationality as well as my morality derive from that not from atheism.

Oh, I'M the one offending YOUR person?

I'm not offended. I'm simply pointing out your overuse of that particular logical fallacy.

Your Christian-talk is actually quite relevant to the discussion; I said that Christianity was corrupted by its followers, and you are proof that the same thing is happening with atheism, sprinkled with different terminologies. The belief that you are right and everyone else is wrong is strong in you, just like it was in the Crusaders.

I feel like I'm repeating myself:
No, I'm not a follower of atheism.
No, atheism cannot be corrupted by my statements - its pretty hard to corrupt a single statement of "I don't believe in a god".
No, the same thing is not happening to atheism.
And no, the same thing is not happening with my belief system either because unlike the crusaders, I don't go about killing people for being wrong.

What does 'universal' mean to you? To me, it means that they go for all people. The word you are looking for is 'versatile', handy in all situations. For example:
"Does this man need a dollar? Yes. Now let's hand out quarters to everyone."

That sounds like a universal application - what you apply to one person, apply to all of them.

Yes, genekaus, I just spent my last three posts asserting that my belief is superior to yours.

And you are wrong.

Yes, when poor Christians get food donations, they don't eat them. They just send them back to the retailers.

How else are they going to practice self-sacrifice?

I'm not going to believe you just said that. Confirm these:
Rich people are better people than poor people.
You don't care about the poor.

Contextually yes - specifically referring to the rich who have earned their money.

And I only care about those poor whom I personally know. And the same goes for the rich as well.

The way I see it is this: the day I can happily live the life of a poor child in Paraguay, I will know that they don't need anything from me.

How is that relevant?

What exactly is "the right idea"?

The one that would actually make them rich, obviously.

That the poor were being oppressed at the hands of the rich?

That the only comment that comes to your mind?