(April 26, 2010 at 3:06 pm)True Christian Wrote: I do not condemn non-believers or believers in other religions to an eternity in Hell, i just think they havnt had the luck i had, which is to see the beautiful message of the Christ.
I see atheists as people who are disillusioned view of religion and who do not know what or who to believe, so they just reject God altogether. I can understand easily how people can be disgusted by religion. Terrorism, discrimination, pedophilia. But all of those wrongs that religion has done...are not exclusive to religion, far from it. Most of the time, "religious" genocides have for goal to find a scapegoat to appease the population, nothing more.
What's more religion has undeniably done some good in the world. It has united nations, given people a set of moral values that are good for the well-being of society. For hundreds of years most of the education and medicine was practiced by the Church. Finally most organizations that help the poor sick or homeless are originally Christian.
I am not here to convert you all, just to remind you that religion is not as harmful as you seem to think.
Seem to have got in a bit late here.. That'll teach me for having a nap..
You had me all the way up to the part of your post that I quoted and then you started with those oh so familiar theistic presumptuous assertions.
Firstly, we do not have a disillusioned view of religion as you say, in fact I think most atheists have a pretty good view of what religion is about as we are not part of it and can see it from a beautifully detached perspective.
And why, because we are not like you, do you think that we don't know what to believe, that smacks of extreme arrogance to me. I know exactly what I want to believe and I happily go through life believing it.
And then there's that old chestnut that we 'reject God'. We do nothing of the sort. How can we reject that for which there is no evidence and that we simply don't accept exists. If we have indeed 'rejected God' as you state then I accuse you of rejecting Thor, Zeus, Odin, Apollo and the FSM.
And yes, we have seen this beautiful message of Christ but like all other messages in all other superstitious mythologies we choose to reject it because like all other messages there is no evidence that this character you call Christ (not Jesus) ever existed and it relies on the supernatural for its verisimilitude.
And what good has been done by religion in the world that would or could not have been done anyway by concerned, philanthropic and altruistic individuals? Compare that with a vile, horrendous and abhorrent acts done throughout the ages in the name of one tribes God or deity over another.
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