Religion vs. Religion

[Freddy]

Ok I could go on for days about this but I'll start with my serving two masters reference:

 

This can been seen from both sides as ways to validate or invalidate the Christian Church, but I choose to see the historical relevance to today.

 

For the first few centuries of Christianity, Christians were persecuted. They were persecuted for many reasons but one of the greatest reasons that they were seen as trouble makers was because they refused military service and public office. Teachers like Tertullian and Origen taught Christians that they cannot serve two masters: Jesus and Ceasar. Therefore, they refused to kill or serve the government.

 

Then around the turn of the fourth century Constantine made Christianity the state religion. Well, up to this point Christians had the Romans be their army and police for them. The Church was given enormous power but with it came the inevitable reality that politics equals war and crime. During the destruction of Carthage in 425CE (I think) St. Augustine witnessed the destruction of His city. He then proposed the "Christian Just War Theory" which became the basis for the church being able to justify "war in the name of God" (Crusades).

 

Over centuries we finally got to where we are today in America: the separation of church and state, but in the Muslim world there are still schools of thought that teach and practice "Just War" in the name of God. Where we go to war to defend freedom, they go to war because they beleive it is God's will and they are justified by God to do so.

 

So to say this isn't an ever present global problem is a huge understatment. As far as the two masters thing goes, you have three choices: denounce violence and serve peace, embrace war for the sake of peace, or embrace war for the sake of God.

 

You can either go to war because you think God condones it (Holy War) or you can go to war as a solution to a problem and ask to be forgiven by a God who does not advocate Holy War.

Constantine did not make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. He elevated it to the level of the pagan Sol Inviticus cult that he continued to practice. Christianity was a way for Constantine to better organize the huge Roman Empire that had up to four co-emperors trying to keep order. It was not until 392 CE that Christianity became the state religion of the empire under Theodosious.

[Dyothelite]

Constantine did not make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. He elevated it to the level of the pagan Sol Inviticus cult that he continued to practice. Christianity was a way for Constantine to better organize the huge Roman Empire that had up to four co-emperors trying to keep order. It was not until 392 CE that Christianity became the state religion of the empire under Theodosious.

 

You are correct sir and I apologize for my error. He merely legalized it and brought it to the forefront.

 

I sometimes forget that the Ecumenical Councils didn't have real political influence until after the Council of Nicea. When he convened the First Ecumenical Council (Nicea) it wasn't really a political neccessity, but the later councils were more literallly "national security councils".

 

I made one other mistake it was during the destruction of Hippo by the Vandals in 430 CE when Augustine died.

[HydrogenBond]

Many people assume that religion causes wars. But another way to look at it is that men (mostly men), with their own personal agendas for wealth and/or power, use religion to manipulate people for the own personal gain. If you look at the terrorists organizations, only a few self serving individuals are using their spin on religion as a tool to manipulate others to do their bidding. They are also using technology, like guns, bombs, internet, etc., to serve their personal agendas. Is techology also suspect, since it is part of every war.

 

It is not the gun that is evil, it is the man firing the gun. The gun is a tool, like techonlogy or relgion, that can be used for good (hunting) or evil (killing). Religion can be used for peace or for persona gain.

[TheBigDog]

The original question of how to reconcile the fact that there are plenty religions out there claiming to be the One and Only Truth, have still not been answered. Believers are saying that they are being set up; rather, I see the question being dodged. Clearly, one must be right and the other wrong. There simply is no other way. And religion, to the best of my knowledge, isn't a democracy. The one with the most adherents won't necessarily be the right one, either.

 

So - any takers?

Yes, I'll take that. The answer is simple. You live at peace with one another. Right and wrong is irrelevant when it comes to religious beliefs. It is entirely a personal matter. And it is nobody else's business until it begins to bring harm to others for the sake of those beliefs. It is not the beliefs of men that bring harm, it is the actions of men.

 

The experience I have tells me that the vast majority of believers do not spend their days focused on the differences between themselves and those of other beliefs. Or plotting the overthrow of civilization to honor their chosen God(s) be it through conversion, war or any other means. They simply live their lives with some measure of adherence to the preachings of their chosen religion. Do they believe that those who do not believe as they do are doomed to hell or some other fate after death because of their poor choice of worship while on earth? Yes, and some of them get loud about it in an effort to convert others to their faith. And the debate can peacefully continue, even loudly, and for as long as it wants as far as I am concerned, as long as at the end of the day people sleep safely in their own beds secure in the knowledge that they are free from potential harm from those of different beliefs, and free to continue believing as they choose.

 

Many people I know who call themselves religious look at choosing a church like ordering a sandwich at a deli counter. They are literate, intelligent people who have accepted one faith or another, and have attended some sort of religious schooling, and have found a peace with their religion and their own values. And they go looking for a church that jibes with those beliefs so that while they maintain the tradition of going to church they don't feel conflicted between what is being preached at church and what is in their heart. If this is how they find peace and happiness for themselves then more power to them. Which one is right is not a concern of mine. And most such people have a mixture of faith and hope that they are right, and that by making the decisions that they have they will be rewarded. And while their belief may say that all others have made the wrong choice, that is not how believers treat all others on the planet. So they resolve the conflict by focusing on non-religion (sports, school, family, work, politics) or by focusing on the commonality of religious beliefs instead of the differences.

 

I have four sisters. All strong intelligent women. My mother was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household. My father was raised in some denomination of non-practicing Christian. I was raised mostly Jewish, but we never had a dominant faith in our house. We never went to church or temple, but we were never discouraged from going when invited to go along with friends of the family. Eventually my dad formed his own church - "The Freedom to Be Church" which preached that you were free to be whatever you wanted to be. At Thanksgiving we would have 30 or more people over, and several prayers would be said, giving each person who chose to an opportunity to show their thanks in their own way. But it was not just Thanksgiving, on any night of the week we might have ten people who just happened too drop in that night. From new aged healers, to Baptists, to Orthodox Jews, to Muslims. It was a crossroads of beliefs. But I don't recall ever having long talks about religion vs religion so much as talking about philosophy.

 

We had a bookshelf with everything from Jonathan Livingston Seagull, to The Bible, to the Necronomicon, to the Chariots of the Gods, to Plato. And as kids we were never discouraged from picking them up, reading them, and discussing them.

 

Sounds like it should all be cool right? Well, my sister Celestine moved from New Jersey to Arizona where she began attending college. And where she wanted to live out the American dream of being young and free. Well, after realizing that partying didn't provide for her the happiness and life satisfaction that it might look like she got involved with a church. And she soon got baptized as a Southern Baptist. Now, despite the way we were raised, this event drove a wedge into our family that took me quite by surprise. We were so open minded and so accepting of the beliefs of everyone we knew. But for a couple of my other sister, Celestine had been duped, was stupid, and had thrown her life away to lies. Under their normal guise of being good open minded and tolerant people lurked hate filled militant atheism. And it was ugly. Over the years Celestine and her husband left that church when they felt that it did not match their own Christian beliefs. They shared a house with another family where they started a home church. Friends would come over on Sundays, and they would take turns performing sermons and having open discussions of the Bible and life. During this time Celestine and I exchanged many letters about religion, and about the Bible as we each tried to learn from the other's beliefs.

 

Now believe it or not, one of the things that really irked one of my sister's was the term "God Bless You". Celestine loved to say it. And ended letters with it. And that one sister thought it was like poison to hear it. And used to rant and fight and go on about how rude and presumptive and stupid it was to say such a thing. I understood it differently, and would reply "Thank you, I love you too."

 

What I have always believed is that it is the threads of truth that exist in everything that are most important. And the key to getting along is recognizing those threads of truth, and accepting the rest of it as that which makes someone else's cloth whole. And as you weave the cloth of your own life, you try and make it from the truth that you have found. But that does not mean that everything in my cloth is necessarily true. For me, it is good enough that it fits the theme. The theme of joy, and of happiness, and of hope for possibilities where no logical hope can be found. And while I am not a religious man, that is my philosophy.

 

When a person reads a religious text they are not reading a fact book. The reader needs to decide what portions of the text are symbolic or figurative, and what parts are to be taken literally. And it is this interpretation process that leads to different sects of the same religion. The way I have always resolved this is to decide that when it comes to religion it is possible for there to be more than one truth. Think of truth not as boolean, but as a function. Where all the answers within a range are truth, and while each person may interpret their own answer as being the one truth, it does not matter. Maybe conviction in one's belief anywhere within the range of true is part of what is needed to make it true.

 

Don't kill in the name of religion. Don't harm in the name of religion. Don't blame religion for murder and death and war done in the name of religion. Those things are the acts of men who could just as well have done the same thing in the name of anything else. Hate is not bad. Doing harm to another is bad, regardless of the motivation. The dogma of some religions leads more easily to violence than others due to the language of the holy texts being interpreted. But for the sake of those billions of people who practice any religion and leave the world in a more peaceful state for doing to you cannot condemn all religion as being all bad. It leads to far more peace than it does to war in the grand scheme of humanity.

 

And that is all I have to say about religion versus religion.

 

Bill

[Southtown]

But for the sake of those billions of people who practice any religion and leave the world in a more peaceful state for doing to you cannot condemn all religion as being all bad. It leads to far more peace than it does to war in the grand scheme of humanity.

And you are a shining example, amigo.

[Buffy]

Many people assume that religion causes wars. But another way to look at it is that men (mostly men), with their own personal agendas for wealth and/or power, use religion to manipulate people for the own personal gain.

This is a perfectly valid argument on its own, and is yes, similar to the "guns don't kill, people do" argument. But both of these arguments suffer from the grey area in the middle: the availability of the weapon does change outcomes. Where does the religion end and the human manipulation start? More importantly, religion by its very nature--whether driven by good or evil intent--is empowered by amassing adherents, and thus is in fact much more powerful than a single handgun. Even in America, with the most liberal gun laws in the world, we agree as a society to restrict them because their lethality is dangerous.

 

The point here being that there may be things we can do--using the gun analogy as our example--to "make guns safer": We don't let felons own them, and we have laws that control distribution to expose people with nefarious intent before they take fatal actions. With religious conflicts, the solutions must span the world and be more creative since they will depend on education, accomodation and social agreements rather than "making laws." That in my mind just makes the search much more interesting!

 

I know that the intent of bringing up this distinction is supposed to remove any "fault" being placed on religion, but the point of this thread--in spite of the earlier posts--is *not* to place *blame*. Its to find solutions to the way religion *is used* for negative purposes. There are attributes of religions that make them particularly powerful in swaying people, and indeed, I think some of the discussion that has gone on shows that both ends of the spectrum agree that the *institutions* surrounding many religions are selfishly manipulative, but since they are the *official representatives* and have adherents that support that leadership, that trying to separate "the religion" from "the false interpretation" is a bit of a wild goose chase if you're solely concerned with trying to figure out what to do with the people who do *nothing* but *represent* their religion. This inability to adequately separate the two easily--except by sitting in judgment as people on both ends have tried to do here--just gets in the way of dealing with the practical issue at hand.

 

So to reiterate:

It is not the gun that is evil, it is the man firing the gun.

Quite frankly I don't care which any of you extremists think is evil: assigning "blame" is not the point. Its undeniable though that the *combination* of the two is dangerous: a bazooka sitting on the ground is not dangerous, and an unarmed sociopath is not dangerous, but put the two together and we are all in grave danger. In our society we put restrictions on the most dangerous weapons (bazookas, nukes, etc) and we restrict access to them (felons, the mentally ill). But we don't even try to see what actions we can take to make our world safer because we are so polarized and blinded by this sort of "religious debate."

 

So far, we've heard the extremist opinions, which are basically similar: we just wait until religion dies out or at least all religions except mine which is the only true one anyway. As I've said, that's fine to think that, its just that it leaves nothing to discuss: that means that those with this opinion are left with the option of either stopping or--as has been unfortunately been seen several times here--endlessly repeating the opinion.

 

This thread is for those that think that "abandoning all hope" is not as good an option as trying to do something that might help.

 

Of course I think that the reason that there has been such stridency here has as much to do with embarrasment about an opinion that these same people would never take when discussing other problems as it does with having strong religious or non-religious beliefs. Should we stop trying to cure the sick because they're just going to die? Should we stop trying to police crime infested neighborhoods because they will never get better? Should we stop educating stupid kids because they'll never learn? They're all pointless: you should just sit there quietly until you die. I doubt anyone here would agree that that's a good philosophy of life.

 

I guess I might have a strident opinion that solutions can be found and they should be considered. If you want to tell me I'm wasting my time that's fine, but please do it only once, and let those who actually have some solutions to propose do it without the threat hanging over their head that you all will rip their guts open if they dare to do so.

 

Is no vice, :singer:

Buffy

[Southtown]

The point here being that there may be things we can do--using the gun analogy as our example--to "make guns safer": We don't let felons own them, and we have laws that control distribution to expose people with nefarious intent before they take fatal actions. With religious conflicts, the solutions must span the world and be more creative since they will depend on education, accomodation and social agreements rather than "making laws." That in my mind just makes the search much more interesting!

Even if we bend the expression clause, how do we get around free speech and privacy?

 

Quite frankly I don't care which any of you extremists think is evil: assigning "blame" is not the point. Its undeniable though that the *combination* of the two is dangerous: a bazooka sitting on the ground is not dangerous, and an unarmed sociopath is not dangerous, but put the two together and we are all in grave danger. In our society we put restrictions on the most dangerous weapons (bazookas, nukes, etc) and we restrict access to them (felons, the mentally ill). But we don't even try to see what actions we can take to make our world safer because we are so polarized and blinded by this sort of "religious debate."

My view is that you can't control people. If kids start stabbing each other with pencils in school, and you replace them with touch screens, they will find another way. All we can do is adequately punish each offender, so that others will see that kind of behavior has consequences. But, we can't stop crime before it happens. The untimate end to that kind of thinking will lead to a government that resembles incarceration.

[cwes99_03]

Yes, I'll take that. The answer is simple. You live at peace with one another. Right and wrong is irrelevant when it comes to religious beliefs. It is entirely a personal matter. And it is nobody else's business until it begins to bring harm to others for the sake of those beliefs. It is not the beliefs of men that bring harm, it is the actions of men.

 

What I have always believed is that it is the threads of truth that exist in everything that are most important. And the key to getting along is recognizing those threads of truth, and accepting the rest of it as that which makes someone else's cloth whole. And as you weave the cloth of your own life, you try and make it from the truth that you have found. But that does not mean that everything in my cloth is necessarily true. For me, it is good enough that it fits the theme. The theme of joy, and of happiness, and of hope for possibilities where no logical hope can be found. And while I am not a religious man, that is my philosophy.

 

When a person reads a religious text they are not reading a fact book. The reader needs to decide what portions of the text are symbolic or figurative, and what parts are to be taken literally. And it is this interpretation process that leads to different sects of the same religion. The way I have always resolved this is to decide that when it comes to religion it is possible for there to be more than one truth. Think of truth not as boolean, but as a function. Where all the answers within a range are truth, and while each person may interpret their own answer as being the one truth, it does not matter. Maybe conviction in one's belief anywhere within the range of true is part of what is needed to make it true.

 

Don't kill in the name of religion. Don't harm in the name of religion. Don't blame religion for murder and death and war done in the name of religion. Those things are the acts of men who could just as well have done the same thing in the name of anything else. Hate is not bad. Doing harm to another is bad, regardless of the motivation. The dogma of some religions leads more easily to violence than others due to the language of the holy texts being interpreted. But for the sake of those billions of people who practice any religion and leave the world in a more peaceful state for doing to you cannot condemn all religion as being all bad. It leads to far more peace than it does to war in the grand scheme of humanity.

 

And that is all I have to say about religion versus religion.

 

Bill

 

While the experience was touching, and it explained your viewpoints, I'll just touch on these parts, TBD.

 

This is the perfect example of what I mean when I suggest a difference between religion and philosophy. When (if) we can separate the two, then we'd be able to discuss Buffy's questions. You even state that this is a personal philosophy, so I'm afraid it doesn't really answer the original question.

You solution to the question seems to be everyone has a right to their own interpretation (philosophy) of religion and no one should kill another person because of their interpretation. I agree that no one should kill (I leave it up to God to take action to put an end to everything he doesn't consider holy and true) but fall short of the no one should intervene in another's beliefs, which is partly how I interpreted your post.

 

Additionally, your post does not touch the hearts of men who do the killing in the name of religion. Likewise to blame the killing solely on the men and not the organization behind them is not going to bring an end to the wars and the strife. There are secret organizations around the world that orchestrate killings and wars to forward their agenda. There are also very public organizations that do the same thing. Some of them claim religion as their reason.

I've proposed removing that crutch, so people don't become outraged at the religions that don't participate in the violence. How do we remove it? By learning about the origin of the ideas and revealing them one by one as human philosophy.

Is this a simple task? Certainly not. Will some take that to mean that we one by one reveal all religious teachings to be human philosophy (some on this site have attempted and met a hard brick wall of faith that may be impenatrable.)? Yes, they will. I know my faith has been repeatedly tested by men who wish to show me that I have no reason to believe the way I do. Some very good men, very intelligent. All have failed so far.

So anyone else want to take a stab at how you fix the religion vs religion problem?

[cwes99_03]

Quite frankly I don't care which any of you extremists think is evil: assigning "blame" is not the point. Its undeniable though that the *combination* of the two is dangerous: a bazooka sitting on the ground is not dangerous, and an unarmed sociopath is not dangerous, but put the two together and we are all in grave danger. In our society we put restrictions on the most dangerous weapons (bazookas, nukes, etc) and we restrict access to them (felons, the mentally ill). But we don't even try to see what actions we can take to make our world safer because we are so polarized and blinded by this sort of "religious debate."

Which of you extremists? Wow, who needs a lite thump for that? Though, I'm going to be willing to be that was a typo and there's supposed to be some comma or other punctutation there.

 

Okay to the meat of my argument against this. A bazooka is just as dangerous in the hands of any madman as it is in the hands of a "religious" madman. It is also just as dangerous, or some would argue, more dangerous in the hands of a child who simply does not know how to use it. While a hand is required to fire it (even remotely) the bazooka is still the dangerous part.

 

Then as Southtown suggested, even if you take those most dangerous weapons away (not that you can), the worst will find new methods to attack. The only way to deal with it is to attempt to change their ideals. Some on this thread have already suggested this, but they realized that this is an idealic solution. It certainly can't be done in a few months or years. I've argued it can never be done by humans because we are all imperfect. It most certainly doesn't get resolved by violence, as violence usually causes violence, due to the human condition.

 

Edit: Who wrote that bolded stuff. I'm willing to believe that you didn't mean it the way it cam out is basically what I meant.

[Buffy]

Unfortunately, in the US, gun control is a religious issue! This makes the analogy a difficult one to use because some people do believe that sending all kids to school with bazookas is just fine. Please note though that this is not a majority opinion.

Even if we bend the expression clause, how do we get around free speech and privacy?

I mentioned this in the post you're replying to: in the US we are limited in our ability to pass laws because the Freedom of Expression clause is in fact much stronger than the right to bear arms. Internationally, we actually do do this with diplomacy, acting hostilly toward the theocracy in Iran and declaring individuals like Cat Stevens personna non grata.

 

As you will see in the gun-control debate, the tactics for claiming "nothing can be done" do seek to limit the range of options that can be considered. The most common one is that "the laws are wrong" which can be endlessly debated, but our country has agreed on significant restrictions on guns in spite of the 4th amendment.

 

More importantly though, the fact of the matter is that society learns to modify its practices: Set-piece meat grinding wars that were common through our history have disappeared for the most part because militaries have learned that they're inefficient uses of resources and result in rapid drops in public support. Riots that were commonly promoted by radicals in the 1960s have disappeared in western nations because they're counter-productive. These aren't legislated laws, they're the mass of society becoming aware of the downsides of certain actions, attitudes and tactics.

 

As a result, you have to be careful with concepts like this one that sound absolute, but when you think about it, don't really hold up to the historical record:

My view is that you can't control people. If kids start stabbing each other with pencils in school, and you replace them with touch screens, they will find another way. All we can do is adequately punish each offender, so that others will see that kind of behavior has consequences. But, we can't stop crime before it happens.

I'd of course point out that you're not addressing the argument above that our laws and history are proof that the power of a weapon is exactly correllated to the damage it can produce and we have agreed as a society in spite of protestations from the NRA, that it is in the public interest to limit access to bazookas.

 

More importantly though, you're discounting the effect of moral and societal norms that keep people in line *before* they act. Some of the examples in the previous paragraph point to significant changes in people's behavior caused by the fact that society does learn and inculcates its moral codes to motivate and control behavior by rewarding good as well as punishing the bad. The law only handles the latter, society handles the former. I realize that many strongly believe that carrots are pointless because men are inherently evil, but I'd point out that the Republican's Tax Strategy is a perfect example of carrots being incredibly effective (although not without unintended consequences).

 

Its fine if you want to have no faith in our ability as a society to modify people's behavior, but that's what we're (trying) to discuss here, and repeating it just interferes with that discussion. I just find it odd that the argument would be used in defense of religion, because its strong ability to motivate societally-beneficial behavior is what gives it a key *role* in creating these solutions. I agree with the notion that draconian government action restricting religion is not good (we can see that in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia), but its certainly a threat that should be motivating religious leaders to consider their strategies, tactics and even doctrine, and how they might make the world a better place (thus improving their true Karma), or at least better entrench their power (if they have more humanistic goals).

 

This last point is important to realize because we cannot we cannot know what is in the hearts of these religious leaders, and at the same time, similar tactics can work for both. Case in point while watching CNN this morning, Muqtada al-Sadr is causing endless grief in Iraq. He has millions of followers, he may be seeking power or seeking the best way to defend his followers from the Sunnis and do what the Koran tells him to do. We don't know. There may be actions that might lead him in different directions that might have more to do with the moral suasion of other Shi'a leaders who might say, action against apostates is less important that grinding endless civil war that leaves everyone dead. Maybe there are other ways. But we are talking about approaches that do impact doctrine, and are religious in nature, indeed point to Eccumenical solutions that the extremists disdain. This is something that society *can* do something about, and trying to stiffle the debate is in my mind actually immoral behavior.

 

Don't do things right,

Buffy

[Southtown]

Sure you can motivate people, nudge them in a general direction. But you can't make decisions for them. Talking reason only works with people who give a rip, and out of all the billions on earth, most are simply doing for themselves. Incentive would be more powerful than reason, whether positive or negative, but that is also only a nudge.

 

Hence the bazooka,

Southie

[Buffy]

Okay, we understand you have no faith in your fellow man, South... :naughty:

But you can't make decisions for them. Talking reason only works with people who give a rip, and out of all the billions on earth, most are simply doing for themselves. Incentive would be more powerful than reason, whether positive or negative, but that is also only a nudge...Hence the bazooka...

So here's the interesting thing that distinguishes Religions from guns: their primary impact is related to their role as social organizations: individuals or "cults" with broadly disdained belief systems are quickly either marginalized or if they cross certain lines, become targets for legal or military action to restrict them (e.g. restrictions on Indians from using peyote, or pagans that practice ritual sacrifice, or Talibs promoting terrorism). This marginalization or restriction is based on *popular* opinion, and is thus uncontroversial. The larger groups however are less simply dispatched, *but* they're the ones that have a strong interest in being *widely* accepted, and need to avoid alienating anyone who might be a convert. As a result PR plays a much bigger role, and in the Internet age, this might prove a significant new approach.

 

These issues are subtle, but are not so easily dismissed.

 

Nuanced,

Buffy

[ughaibu]

Religions and guns are completely different, so much so that the analogy doesn't make sense to me. Guns are material objects, religions are collections of concepts, the physical reality of guns is inanimate metal, the physical reality of religion is human beings. If all the people in the world disappear, so do all the religions, the guns do not, in this conjectured world of no people, inquisitive and dexterous animals will be able to kill themselves or others with guns, they will not be able to kill anything with religion. A gun is a tool, a religion is a state of mind.

[Buffy]

I agree ughaibu. I just wanted to show the few parallels, and of course show how different many of their other attributes are.

 

Analogies are extremely dangerous and useful things!

 

Enigmatically,

Buffy

[cwes99_03]

Okay, we understand you have no faith in your fellow man, South... :hihi:

So here's the interesting thing that distinguishes Religions from guns: their primary impact is related to their role as social organizations: individuals or "cults" with broadly disdained belief systems are quickly either marginalized or if they cross certain lines, become targets for legal or military action to restrict them (e.g. restrictions on Indians from using peyote, or pagans that practice ritual sacrifice, or Talibs promoting terrorism). This marginalization or restriction is based on *popular* opinion, and is thus uncontroversial. The larger groups however are less simply dispatched, *but* they're the ones that have a strong interest in being *widely* accepted, and need to avoid alienating anyone who might be a convert. As a result PR plays a much bigger role, and in the Internet age, this might prove a significant new approach.

 

These issues are subtle, but are not so easily dismissed.

 

Nuanced,

Buffy

 

I don't know if that was intended as a pun Buffy, but I snickered when I read that first line. I too do not have faith in my fellow man. I have faith solely in God, however, I trust some fellow men who likewise profess such knowledge based faith.

 

Buffy, you continually speak of the religious as if they are all extremists and all involved in the wars and killings you discuss.

 

Take your analogy to the full extent.

 

Religion and guns. Some guns are used to kill or murder people. Some religions are used to kill or murder people.

Some guns are used to protect people and their rights. Some religions protect people from bad things and protect the rights of all.

 

Enough said?

Some religions proclaim death to all who are not like them. Some governments (built on philosophy of men) that claim to be free from religion proclaim death to all who oppose their world views.

[InfiniteNow]

I too do not have faith in my fellow man. I have faith solely in God

This statement seems internally inconsistent, especially if God is responsible for the actions of humans.

[Buffy]

Buffy, you continually speak of the religious as if they are all extremists and all involved in the wars and killings you discuss.

That is your interpretation sir, and I do not know why you have it because its "not even wrong."

Some guns are used to protect people and their rights. Some religions protect people from bad things and protect the rights of all.

Exactly, which is why I keep saying that religion is a part of the solution. You obviously skipped that part, but I can see why if you misrepresent my attitude toward religion that you would also have to misrepresent the range of approaches that I have proposed.

I too do not have faith in my fellow man. I have faith solely in God, however, I trust some fellow men who likewise profess such knowledge based faith.

You might wish to consider how lack of faith in one's fellow man is received and reacted to in spite of the superiority of one's arguments. Its definitely a way to get people to disagree before even hearing those arguments. Misrepresenting people's statements in those arguments further exacerbates this problem, and dissuades people from believing anything else one may have to say too.

 

I do have faith in your ability to see ways to get along better with your fellow man, and that's why I continue to attempt to encourage you to contribute to this thread in useful ways.

 

Faith in your fellow man is a good thing. Distrust breeds distrust.

 

Nobody's god says hate your neighbor, :girl_hug:

Buffy