At 1/21/08 06:26 AM, ZeroAsALimit wrote:
At 1/21/08 06:12 AM, nukechicken wrote:
1. Christianity is based on fear.
Hardly. It's based on belief. Are you familiar with Hobbes? You should read what he wrote about Hell.
Throughout almost its entire time on Earth, the motor driving Christianity has been-in addition to the fear of death-fear of the devil and fear of hell. the existence of the devil and hell are cardinal doctrinal tenets of almost all Christian creeds, and many fundamentalist preachers still openly resort to terrorizing their followers with lurid, sadistic portraits of the suffering of nonbelievers after death. This is not an attempt to convince through logic and reason; it is not an attempt to appeal to the better nature of individuals; rather, it is an attempt to whip the flock into line through threats, through appeals to a base part of human nature-fear and cowardice
2. Christianity preys on the innocent.
3. Christianity is based on dishonesty.
4. Christianity is extremely egocentric.
No points, just rhetoric.
I make very good points What points Have you brought to the table None whatsoever.
5. Christianity breeds arrogance, a chosen-people mentality.
I thought the book of revelaitons states that only Jewish peoples are saved at the end.
Perhaps You missunderstand What I mean This is so obvious that it needs little elaboration. A brief look at religious terminology confirms it. Christians have often called themselves "God's people," "the chosen people," "the elect," "the righteous," etc., while nonbelievers have been labeled "heathens," "infidels," and "atheistic Communists" This sets up a two-tiered division of humanity, in which "God's people" feel superior to those who are not "God's people."
6. Christianity breeds authoritarianism.
Didn't you bring this up later?
No I didn't
7. Christianity is cruel.
You obviously know shit about it.
Given that the Bible nowhere condemns torture and sometimes prescribes shockingly cruel penalties (such as burning alive), and that Christians so wholeheartedly approved of self-torture, it's not surprising that they thought little of inflicting appallingly cruel treatment upon others. At the height of Christianity's power and influence, hundreds of thousands of "witches" were brutally tortured and burned alive under the auspices of ecclesiastical witch finders, and the Inquisition visited similarly cruel treatment upon those accused of heresy.
8. Christianity is anti-intellectual, anti-scientific.
No it isn't. Christianity has produced philosophers and the position of most Christians is that the big bang and evolution are, as it were, Gods' method of making us.
The cases of Copernicus and Galileo are particularly relevant here, because when the Catholic Church banned the Copernican theory (that the Earth revolves around the sun) and banned Galileo from teaching it, it did not consider the evidence for that theory: it was enough that it contradicted scripture. Given that the Copernican theory directly contradicted the Word of God, the Catholic hierarchy reasoned that it must be false.
Today, however, the conflict between religion and science is largely being played out in the area of public school biology education, with Christian fundamentalists demanding that their creation myth be taught in place of (or along with) the theory of evolution in the public schools. Their tactics rely heavily on public misunderstanding of scienceThey also attempt to take advantage of public ignorance of the nature of scientific theories. In popular use, "theory" is employed as a synonym for "hypothesis," "conjecture," or even "wild guess," that is, it signifies an idea with no special merit or backing. You might as Well Not believe in gravity and a large majority of science because Most of what science has to offer Are just theories on paper but have been Observed and Verified by countless scientists and researchers.
9. Christianity has a morbid, unhealthy preoccupation with sex.
I would say sex is the most important thing in the world. Offspring are needed.
Again You don't see what I'm getting at here. For centuries, Christianity has had an exceptionally unhealthy fixation on sex, to the exclusion of almost everything else (except power, money, and the infliction of cruelty). This stems from the numerous "thou shalt nots" relating to sex in the Bible. That the Ten Commandments contain a commandment forbidding the coveting of one's neighbor's wife, but do not even mention slavery, torture, or cruelty. One would think that "morality" consists solely of what one does in one's bedroom. The Catholic Church is the prime example here, with its moral pronouncements rarely going beyond the matters of birth control and abortion (and with its moral emphasis seemingly entirely on those matters). Also note that the official Catholic view of sex-that it's for the purpose of procreation only-reduces human sexual relations to those of brood animals
10. Christianity produces sexual misery.
"I am a pervert"
In addition to the misery produced by authoritarian Christian intrusions into the sex lives of non-Christians, Christianity produces great misery among its own adherents through its insistence that sex (except the very narrow variety it sanctions) is evil, against God's law. Christianity proscribes sex between unmarried people, sex outside of marriage, homosexual relations, bestiality,[3] and even "impure" sexual thoughts. Indulging in such things can and will, in the conventional Christian view, lead straight to hell. And While We're talking about sex What about those Pastors Who fucked little childrens That's something to be real prous to follow
11. Christianity has an exceedingly narrow, legalistic view of morality.
"I am a Liberal"
Your right I take great pride being called a Liberal because Reality has an extremely liberal bias.
12. Christianity encourages acceptance of real evils while focusing on imaginary evils.
"Christianity isn't real". That's not a point. Apart from that, I'd like you t define evil. I'll wager you find such great men as Hitler to be evil.
Stop twisting My words I never said Christianity isn't evil. I honestly am Indifferent to hitler. Yes so what If he killed 6 Million people I consider him no evil than
This guy
What What I mean by my point Being is that we spend soo much Time worring about imaginary evils like Gay Marrigae and Abortion. We forget about the real evils Like Povety. Disease famine Yah You hear about The genocide in darfur But who here really gives a shit I bet your glad your not one of the Hundreds Of thousands of people killed by the Janjuwee When all you can care about in playing Halo 3.(Not that Halo Because It is a great game)
13. Christianity depreciates the natural world.
This is at odds with your next point. The natural world is a rigid one of order.
Ugg you obviously lack the mental capacity to put 2 and 2 togehter. This focus on the afterlife often leads to a distinct lack of concern for the natural world, and sometimes to outright anti-ecological attitudes. Ronald Reagan's fundamentalist Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, went so far as to actively encourage the strip mining and clear cutting of the American West, reasoning that ecological damage didn't matter because the "rapture" was at hand.
This post is not over
