The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

Young people are lukewarm on the idea of free speech when it offends religion.

Gotta say, not down with blasphemy laws. (Nor with hate speech laws, but that's a different conversation.)

I love that Turks are the most okay with offending religion. So much for Muslims being the most offended.

The Turks are Okay with offending religion as long it isn't their religion.

edited 16th Feb '17 12:35:05 PM by AngelusNox

That article outlines actions by the gov't, not an opinion poll. Anyway, I think the other article got something wrong: they claim that less than half those polled agreed that people should be free to say things that are offensive to a religion, but the graph they display at the top of the page says otherwise- the mean is clearly above 50% agree.

edited 16th Feb '17 6:27:28 PM by DeMarquis

@The Handle: I'm tempted to say Televangelists trying to line their pockets?

That is... obvious?

I know, but where do they draw ideas from?

Goebbels, mainly. Not joking.

A huge amount of modern sales and marketing? Goebbels. <_< You can draw a direct line between Galton and Goebbels beyond sharing a G.

Look, brilliant minds with insight as to how the human condition functions don't have to be nice. In fact, most likely having antisocial personalities helps. -_-

edited 18th Feb '17 5:48:34 AM by Euodiachloris

It doesn't have to be a great intellectual tradition. Churches rely on donations, it wouldn't have taken long for a scammer to figure out that he can line his pockets by telling the audience to "plant seeds as an investment and God will make it grown and you'll be rewarded in wealth and blah blah blah. (Sorry had to throw up a little).
Plus US culture already implies that wealth is a measure of worthiness. It's no great stretch to imply that wealth = God's favor and one get get better favor by donating money.

That makes sense, but it's still kind of... jarring. I've spent years losing sleep over existential issues, and I don't think I'm exaggerating if I say that there are plenty of relatively common beliefs out there that would pretty much ruin my life if I shared them. Anything involving a classic Hell would be a ticket to depression and a mental breakdown, for example. (Granted, I would be convinced that I'm going there, which most current believers probably aren't, but still.)

"If you believe that the way you'll spend the rest of eternity can be influenced by your actions on Earth, how is this not the single most important thing in your life?"

Well, obviously it is, lots of people invest a tremendous amount of time thinking about this. But there is more than one way to approach it. You can go down the route of trying to obey all the "rules", presuming you can figure out what they are. Or you can focus on improving yourself, knowing that you will never be perfect but trusting that a good faith effort to become a better person is all that God really demands from you.

The truth is, unless you are committing some sort of serial crime, I don't understand why anyone fears hell. So many people hear that breaking some rule or other leads to eternal damnation, reason that no moral deity would be that unfair, and then...

...well then I guess they either become a fundamentalist or an atheist. I never became either one, I guess because I'm not afraid I'm ever going to hell. Or anyone else who isn't committing some sort of serial crimes.

Nobody asked my advice, but if they did I suppose I would say that your spiritual beliefs are supposed to make you feel better about yourself, and if they aren't, if they instead make you feel more anxious and afraid, then there is something wrong with those beliefs. Being a good person is a self-fulfilling prophesy- if you want to be one then you already are.

Seriously, fuck the Prosperity Gospel. It's a cancer in my country. Hell, it was arguably a factor in the 2008 mortgage crisis.

edited 18th Feb '17 6:46:08 PM by M84

I have never heard prosperity gospel so aptly described.
I think part of the point of the message to the Pharisees was that bending over to meet every law wasn't necessary.
The other was not to be a sanctimonious pest because people around you aren't perfectly following each and every law the exact same way you would.

Yup

Counterexample: Bojack Horseman. He is a terrible human being. While his conscience (and self-preservation) push him towards being a better person, he can never be relied on to do the right thing: at any time, his baser instincts and worse habits may have the better of him. He'll probably regret it after the fact, but that doesn't fix anything, does it?

edited 19th Feb '17 12:18:43 AM by TheHandle

Well, that depends on the details of your beliefs, doesn't it? You're making it sound like a conscious choice.

According to some faiths, I am, so if I believed in any of those...

And for me, Hell is kind of a catch-22 anyway. If I believe that anyone is going there, I'm going to directly oppose and attempt to fight it's creator, and in most belief systems that have a Hell in the first place, non-repentant Rage Against the Heavens rarely ends well for you.

You want people to engage in wishful thinking?

If I were to guess from what I heard him say in other occasions, and my own explorations of non-dualistic vedic traditions, De Marquis has a direct and personal experience of divinity that grounds his worldview. If I understand correctly, for him it's not wishful thinking: he knows God, and he knows he's Good, not as an axiom but as an empirical subjective experience. The God he knows wouldn't send anyone to eternal damnation, and wouldn't provide beliefs that cause distress instead of relief. Ergo, such beliefs must be wrong and disconnected from God. The scary teachings of organized religions are a Red Herring; if you focus on the Inner Light that is God-within-you, you will understand that nothing they say should have you worried.

I think. Can you confirm or nuance, DM?

edited 19th Feb '17 3:21:30 AM by TheHandle

I tried that. I didn't find any vengeful monotheistic God, but it still wasn't very pleasant. Claiming that one experience is more valid than another based only on how much we liked them (or didn't) seems biased. DeMarquis will have to speak for himself though.

@Handle: Why is everyone else so much better at expressing what I believe than I am?

Anyway, yeah, pretty much.

So... do you just think you have a better god-radar than me or something, then?

With all due respect, there is no other conclusion I can come to.

None at all? There just isn't even the slightest possibility that your own religious experiences might not be the real deal? I hate it, but part of me still envies that kind of certainty.

My experience tells me that God created the universe so They can toy with us like Seth in Toy Story 2, and that I am one of Their cruel jokes.

Its certainly possible, but am I really expected to discount my own subjective experience in favor of a hypothetical possibility? When there exists no possible empirical test?

Or, better yet, discount it for the teachings of you elders exclusively: