(September 22, 2014 at 10:45 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: If you really feel that way, why are you posting at all?
I don't agree with your views, that values like courage and wisdom are hidden in religion. Those values are found in people no matter their views.
You're arguing that we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Demonstrate you point.
Firstly, don't talk down to me. It's insulting and won't be tolerated. This is your only warning regarding that rudeness; you will be subject to it yourself if you repeat it with me.
Secondly, forgiveness -- both extending it and asking for it -- aren't exclusive to Christianity, or even the religious among us.
That too doesn't require a religious outlook to discover or accept.
Read your New Testament, hotshot:
34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se...thew+10:34
Your assumption that because I didn't agree with you that religion is required to hold those values, I must be ignorant of those values as espoused by the religious is arrogant and condescending. Perhaps if you come overcome your own foibles this conversation would actually be useful, but I'm not hopeful. Those who think they're bringing answers to the unwashed masses are rarely able to listen half as much as they talk.
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(September 18, 2014 at 10:43 pm)Celestine Wrote: Reflection, Sacrifice, Charity, Abstinence! Endurance, Compassion, Courage, Wisdom! All wasted! The message lost, what a tragedy! Misplaced by fools replaced by scum!
Sin, Forgiveness! What wonderful concepts if only implemented correctly!
Recitation of these virtues what the world would have become! Wasted on the veneration of deities when the veneration should be of these virtues!
You know now what religion is, this deformed beast of Baal, but you know not what it hides in its ruin!
This is the treasure more valuable than ivory, more valuable than an earth filled with gold! Yet you would forsake it? I think not!
Firstly I am not arguing
Secondly I was not talking down to you, I was assuming that everyone had at least a modest understanding of the New Testament. Those words were not meant to talk down to you but to express my notion (perhaps erroneously) that everyone knew about that part of the New Testament.
Thirdly I never said these require religion rather see my first post, I said the "recitation of these virtues" or their meditation, and then I go on to say that it is wasted on the veneration of gods. When we should be more focused on the virtues themselves.
Four your assumption that I had an assumption that you were somehow ignorant due to your disagreement is wrong. As I never once stated that, if you are confused when I said that it was forsaken, I mean the process of recitation, which almost no atheist holds (from what I've seen) after they lose their faith. Which is why I'm trying to make a secular version of this process, that we could regain the recitation and the frame of mind, something I believe at least, to be potentially beneficial to the improvement of willpower, and if done correctly a vast amount of other things like understanding, and acceptance.
