Unconventional Religion

[Consilius]

What are you babbling about?

You said kings are canonized because of their suffering. Their "suffering" was their generosity to the poor.

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.

The Crusaders didn't ride into the Holy Land on horses with swords to go baptize Muslims. They attacked the city and slaughtered everyone inside it because they weren't Christians already.
Al-Quaida doesn't go door-to-door telling us about Allah. They kill you if you're not on their side. They don't have any 'message' for the rest of us to hear. They want to stand alone because everyone else is dead.

Is that a question?

"Good things don't need to be interpreted," you said.
The Holocaust, therefore, was a correct interpretation of Christianity. Christianity does not require interpretation, and the Nazis were right to have taken a section of the Bible and make it mean what they wanted it to mean.

By the way I believe the Nazis misinterpreted what Nietzsche actually meant in his writings, with catastrophic results.

This isn't about you, Justtristo. I'm quoting you to make a point.
The Nazis used writings from 40 years ago. Either they misinterpreted them or Friedrich Nietzsche advocated for the Holocaust.

He should have.

The crowd understood what he meant, and the recipients of the Gospels understood what they meant. The only problem is that a western society from 2000 years later didn't get it, and the apostles would have had no idea that this would be a problem.

That's a very poor excuse. Change in language has nothing to do with 'interpretation'.

It's not just language. It's a change in the way we talk to each other. First-century Jews would have understood that something as hard as passing a camel through the eye of a needle is a hyperbole and not necessarily that hard.
"I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." Therefore, Jesus was a glutton who went against Jewish food laws.

That's what is so disgusting about your religion - that it treats suffering an integral element of life.

So suffering is not one of the things we live with everyday? That I stubbed by toe? That I have to go to work in the morning? That spouses die? That the Taliban abuses women? It's there, and having a sponge bath thinking about a construction project isn't going to take it away.
The difference is that I realize it's there, and cope with it personally, helping others with it inter-personally. Some people can't, and so they fear it.

That and yes.

Great.

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

No monetary value can be truly attached to life, but the best we can do is establish a finite penalty for finite people.

Why should you give it out at all?

So society can develop together. No man is an island. Therefore, we should help our fellow human beings when we can.

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.

We're all rational people. Unless you're a Christian. Or a Muslim. Or a Jew. Or a Buddhist. In fact, if you have a religion, you can't possibly be a rational person. That narrows it down a little.

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.

And how has Christian society suffered from helping other people?

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

Whoa, I thought an atheist is someone who embraces rational morality due to his newfound freedom from divine tyranny.
And you just said that the poor are irrational people, while the rich are rational people.
Some Christians have a similar belief: happy people are good people, and sad people are bad people.

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.

You enjoy rubbing things in other people's faces.
Many Christians have a similar interest: "When you go to hell, I'll be looking down on you, and I'll say that I told you so."

I wasn't being sarcastic- you need to justify your belief that you are a good person.

I was referring to some Christians I see on the Internet. The ones atheists talk about. I'm not worth shit. And I don't tell other people I am otherwise, or how my religion has transformed me into a Gandhi.

Which means you need to show that you are acting according to a certain morality and justify that morality as well.

This is not a personal debate. I'm justifying the morality of myself and of many. I could be an drug dealer for all you know, and that wouldn't reduce the validity of anything I say.

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.

Fine. I'll stand here and criticize the Law of genekaus.

I'm simply pointing out your overuse of that particular logical fallacy.

And I'm pointing out how the law of genekaus, of which you are the only representative, sounds like a fundamentalist Christian who picked up 'The God Delusion'.
If you were to accept that you DID, in fact, sound like you were spreading irrational Chrisitian babble yourself, you would see that you are being as irrational as the people you are criticizing.

No, atheism cannot be corrupted by my statements - its pretty hard to corrupt a single statement of "I don't believe in a god".

As hard as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle? In that case, it is not impossible.
The law of genekaus, which I'm sure promises to be as progressive as atheism, seems to be moving in the wrong direction, which I can tell by your statements.

No, the same thing is not happening to atheism.

Only because you are not an atheist. Even if you were, you'd just be a WBC Christian in the eyes of everyone else—an embarrassment, not a corruption. I don't think I will ever find an atheist who says something like this.

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.

The distinction you are making is that you haven't gone outside and stabbed a theist. That was probably the same case with a few moderate Catholics in the years before the Crusades.
How many people have I, a Christian, killed? Therefore, my religion is perfect.

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

It means that everyone should follow the moral, and that everyone deserves to be at the receiving end. Universality ends with people. The circumstances under which someone should deserve the receiving end are defined.
Universal means having to do with every person.
Versatile means having to do with every situation.

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

And you are wrong.

So I DID tell you that my beliefs were superior to yours? Or claimed to have a monopoly on a virtue?

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?

By giving things to people who actually need them, and when they don't need them themselves.

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.

You just advocated for the class discrimination of the caste system, the Roman Empire, and medieval Europe,

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

And then walked into the ethics prehistoric tribalism with the them-us faction. Me and my loved ones. Me and my loved ones. Nobody else.

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?

Because that is when we should stop caring, not when the poor catch up to the middle class of 5000 years ago. That is what it means to be backwards in a so-called "progressive" society.

What exactly is "the right idea"?

The one that would actually make them rich, obviously.

It's not like the poor are suffering from a lack of opportunities or something. They're just stupid.
Because there aren't nursing mothers who clean floors for pennies. People who try and get nowhere. You are angry because Jesus said they could live through it. What do you suggest? Do nothing, of course!
Christians say that their conditions are good and help make them better. You say that they are bad and do let them become worse.

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

That the only comment that comes to your mind?

Oh, so he got that one right. Which one did the law of genekaus not agree with?