Does Religion make you nice?

[Bull Poopie]

I had to ask for my own curiousity, does religion make you nice? I guess if anyone wants to reply the article below is open to read :-D



http://www.slate.com/id/2203614/pagenum/all


Bull-Poopie

[Watson]

I'd say striving to be nice makes you nice. Doesn't matter what you do or where you go to worship/not worship(in the case of atheists.)

[Minimalist]

Religion makes most of them insufferable.

[fr0d0]

Religion makes most of them insufferable.

This is true!

[Bull Poopie]

I also agree with Minimalist. What I donot gather is why most christians put down atheist because of what we donot believe and not take the first step to look upon themselves. Half the people within the church today are hypocrites or theives. What I mean by theives is that they steal your freindship and when you make a decision to leave the church they shun you like you're the plague.


Bull-Poopie

[Watson]

I'm a Christian. I don't even go to church. And I would hope that I'm considered a rather nice fellow by my friends and family. But I do not attribute that to my religion, I attribute that to who I am as a person. I try to be nice to everybody. And I'm just one of millions who do so.

Kindness is not a matter of this belief system or that beleif system, this religion or that religion. It is a matter of personal achievement, and is usually acquired by those who seek it. Yes, there are those within the church who would lie, cheat, and steal. But they do not do so any more than the rest of the population does; we are all guilty of something.

The real conquest is overcoming that guilt and striving to be better. In my own personal experience, church-goers have been pleasant enough people; the chruch I went to as a child was full of kind people.

[Minimalist]

I also agree with Minimalist. What I donot gather is why most christians put down atheist because of what we donot believe and not take the first step to look upon themselves. Half the people within the church today are hypocrites or theives. What I mean by theives is that they steal your freindship and when you make a decision to leave the church they shun you like you're the plague.


Bull-Poopie

God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.
-- H L Mencken,

[Bull Poopie]

Then Watson you are a rare person. Eversense I left my church a while back no one has called me.( I am a plague now sense I am an atheist) They foundout off of facebook that I am an atheist and over half of them have deleted me from their account, they woun't talk to me. You know why? is because as us Atheist today we are sterotyped today among "most" christians/ religious people as evil,violent bastards that influence people into abandoning their religion for no purpose, because we all hate christians or people that believe in god and that is not so.


It really doesn't matter if it is that religion or this religion. Most christians aren't tolerent of us and label us without just cause. If I labled you then I apologize but today because of the unsteady events that christians have put within the media or within the churches to hate anyone that doesn't believe in god, then it is hard to say who can tolerate me and who can't and praticaly I don't give a poopie :-P but I will admit it is annoying.

Bull-Poopie

[Watson]

Just saying that most religious folk are nasty does not make it so, and is as broad a generalization as the idea that all atheists are bad people; there are bad and good among all kinds, and to say otherwise is ridiculous.

Where I come from, there are plenty of nice Christians, and the church I used to attend is even considering allowing gay clergy-members; this may seem a tad too late, but better late than never, right? One of the pastors there has been in the closet for years, and for the first time he has a chance to be open about himself on this issue.

I am not a rare person, BP, not in the slightest. Just because the chuch you attended was mostly dogmatic and offensive does not mean that all chruches are as such; nor that all religious people are as such. Kindness is personal, not religious.

[chatpilot]

@Bull Poopie I too was abandoned by my church and the many friends I had there when I left the ministry, I was warned about how hell was going to be so much worse for me than for others because I "knew God". This attitude amongst some of the churches is contradictory to scripture actually Matthew 9:10,13 make this quite clear. I think that most zealous or extreme religionists are the ones that are most guilty of this fact and I think they are the way they are because they take this scripture text literally: 14Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 2 Corinthians 6:14.

The rest of the chapter tells them to be separate from the rest of us, we are those that the bible refers to as those who walk in darkness. Just as darkness and light have nothing in common so do believers and unbelievers. This kind of thinking in my opinion makes Christians think that they are superior to everyone else, it is this mentality that is harmful and divisive in our society.

Regarding the subject matter I don't think your religious beliefs have anything to do with whether or not you are a nice person or not this is an issue about character and personality. I do think that those that are nice in religious circles do so out of hypocrisy in order to earn brownie points with God. Not all of them but some of them in my opinion fall into this category.