Unconventional Religion

[genkaus]

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

No, I said, people are canonized because either they underwent suffering or caused it. Many canonized kings would qualify for latter.

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.

And that is just one of the irrational characteristics of religion that I do not share.

"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.

I also said that Christianity was never 'good'. Which is why it needed to be 'interpreted'. The problem is, some interpretations made it a bit saner, other made it even crazier.

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.

Yeah, not buying it. Not buying he whole "everyone their understood what he meant". If they had, they'd have written it down clearly and then you wouldn't have to keep "interpreting".

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.

And how do you know it was a hyperbole and not a metaphor? One indicates difficulty, the other impossibility.

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.

Its not something one should cope with - its what one should try to eradicate from one's life. Teaching you to cope means giving it tacit acceptance - and that I find disgusting.

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

Except, it can be attached and has been attached.

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

I disagree. Giving it out without getting something back won't allow society to develop at all.

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.

Wrong. We are neither fully rational nor fully irrational. We are all rational to different extent in different aspects. Where one's worldview and morality are concerned, certain categories of atheists are more rational than Christians or Muslims etc.

And how has Christian society suffered from helping other people?

It hasn't because it never fully commits to practicing the Christian morals. The Christian society which most closely follows its morals would be the nuns, who live in suffering.

Whoa, I thought an atheist is someone who embraces rational morality due to his newfound freedom from divine tyranny.

No, that's just me.

And you just said that the poor are irrational people, while the rich are rational people.

No, I didn't.

Some Christians have a similar belief: happy people are good people, and sad people are bad people.

That doesn't sound in line with their morality, since it requires them to be miserable.

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."

But I get to look down at them right now. So, I win.

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.

I do not like the sound of a morality that tells you that you are not worth shit. FYI, I don't consider Gandhi to be the paragon of virtue everyone seems to think he is.

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.

Actually, you are not even justifying your morality. You are trying to justify the original Christian morality.

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

And which law would that be?

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.

I do not accept that I sound like an irrational Christian, because I give rational justification for my view.

As hard as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle? In that case, it is not impossible.

No, it is 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.

Prove it.

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.

I am an atheist, so you are wrong there. And your assumption that anyone else would find me embarrassing hasn't been justified either.

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.

But you are not following your biblical morality when you are not out killing people. Whereas, I am following my rational morality when I don't kill people.

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.

And there are a lot of people who qualify for the receiving end. Which means, you should keep giving out money until you become a qualified receiver.

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

Isn't that what you just said?

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

That isn't self-sacrifice. If you give away something you no longer need - what kind of sacrifice is that? I'm not being very sacrificial if I donate trash to charity. Sacrifice means you have to give up something despite your own need - something you still value.

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

Nope. That class discrimination was based on birth. This one is based on one's merit and ability.

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.

No, the ethics of tribalism saw everyone else as enemies. I see them as independent agents in their own right.

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.

And why "shouldn't" I stop caring right now? Rather, given that I've already stopped caring, why should I start caring?

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.

The bolded part indicates the kind of complacency about poverty that I find repulsive. They shouldn't accept it, they shouldn't try to get through it and they shouldn't regard it as good. Opportunities are not what is lacking here. Not everyone can expect overnight success stories, but as a general rule, enough opportunities are available to people to live a reasonably secure life. And no, this does not mean that its always their fault that they become poor - but not even trying to avert poverty, that would be their fault.

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

What do you think we are discussing here? And please try to spell my name correctly.