Christian tropers, join together!

Yeah, that was about the point where I started feeling awkward.

Not going to lie, I actually thought it was kind of neat. Maybe this is my Christian identity being a litle more detached from me than yours are, maybe it's because I'm not Catholic, but I thought a lot of the dresses were well designed and quite beautiful, if a little gaudy or out of place.

There's no way to make a mitre look stylish, I'm sorry.

Any one of you read RealClearReligion?

No, doesn't seem like my sort of thing, I don't really read religious news per se. I will read the more philosophical stuff sometimes.

Like The Humanist and The New Humanist?

No, like random theological stuff.

Hey guys, how's everyone doing? I haven't been here in a while, so I'm just checking up.

I read your discussion about gender. I think it pays to remember that sex and gender are now broadly agreed to be separate things. So while God the Father is not a male organism the way human men are, he's still a he.

Hmm, dare I ask thoughts about moral nihilism?

Oops, too late....

I read one paragraph of that and already I'm rolling my eyes.

Sounds like an excuse not to think too hard.

And why is that again?

"What if murder isn't wrong?" is the kind of question I don't think anyone can take seriously unless they're either an edgelord or completely divorced from the human condition.

Nihilism in general seems juvenile to me. It and atheism often go hand in hand, but even when I was an atheist, I definitely wasn't a nihilist.

"Moral" and "Nihilistic" seem like total opposites to me, so I have trouble believing that to be a belief with merit.

If you're going to dismiss something, it helps to at least know what it is you're dismissing.

It still sounds intellectually lazy at best.

"Is anything really 'right' or 'wrong'? What even determines that, anyway? Just because the Mainstream Media a bunch of people say it is?"

It comes off to me as yet another way people can sound smart without actually having to think.

There's this really pervasive idea that anything made by humans, from qualia to ethics to plastic, isn't real/natural and doesn't count. For example, a termite mound is natural, but the Empire State Building isn't, even though it's literally just a termite mound for humans, made of the same old earth stuff.

I think that's what ideologies like this moral nihilism are founded on. At its heart, the argument is "Choosing to kill or not to kill another person doesn't make a star explode, ergo it's not a legitimate phenomenon." Reals before feels and all that. But I see no reason to suspect that human ideas and the way they change the course of things are any less legitimate than any other phenomenon in nature.

Sorry to randomly drop in into this thread, but I think you're confusing "objectively true" with "legitimate/important" here.

I take my own values and morals very seriously, and sometimes get very emotional about them, but I'm also pretty convinced that they don't really exist outside my head.

I honestly don't see why it matters whether or not they exist "outside your head," and why that makes them less important.

Sorry for the double post, but what do you guys think of this? Apparently, there's been a lot of pushback from religious leaders (including conservative religious leaders) against Trump administration's policy of forcibly separating immigrant and asylum seekers' children from their families.

This is a good thing. People of faith speaking out and fighting tyranny. More often than not, organized religion is part of the problem in America.

edited 14th Jun '18 5:17:16 PM by ThriceCharming

I am going to respectfully disagree with that notion about organized religion.

Eh. On one hand, it's nice to hear more religious leaders coming out against the Trump Administration.

On the other hand...

I think faith/religion are ultimately good for humanity (in fact, we'd be unrecognizable without them), but religious ideas, especially Christian ideas, are often corrupted and turned into tools of oppression by American politicians. That can hardly be debated.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/february/samaritans-purse-vp-un-iom-refugees-state-dept-ken-isaacs.html

I would like to say that Evangelicals who actually work in the refugee and mission field will often be more against the more zero tolerance practices of this administration. Often times the evangelical leaders seem to be more empathetic than their base that seem to be more lured in by the harsh stances.

As for me, I come from a country where, I shit you not, nearly half of the total populations are Christians. Over 20 millions, that is. I'm so, so, so fed up with churches in my country. I feel that the major churches are all corrupt beyond redemption. If Jesus visits here, he's going to collapse from aneurysm and start his Temple Cleansing all over the land.

At first, I tried to pretend it wasn't that bad...until my family got roped into church politics over money. My mother was the accountant of the church, and she wanted to keep things frugal but the pastor didn't agree with her. So he pretty much drove us out of the church. My family members, with an exception to my little brother who recently came out of the atheist closet, are still devout Christians, but we just have study group/lunch meeting with close friends every Sunday morning.

tl:dr - Fuck the church as organization, at least where Protestantism is concerned.

@ dRoy

Where do you live?

Aren't you American or somewhere else?