Religion: pros & cons pt1 (Religion)

by dhw, Friday, October 31, 2014, 19:22 (3676 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: As I said before, sometimes it is best to let the bible speak for itself...
Romans 1:18-32-DHW: I do not claim to be wise since I have no answers, but God so far as I know has not turned me into a rapist, a homosexual (this seems to have been an obsession among the law-givers), or a greedy, envious, murderous, deceitful, malicious, backbiting, haughty, untrustworthy, unloving, merciless candidate for the death penalty. You will of course read the text differently, but the implication that godlessness leads to sin is as obnoxious as my saying that religion leads to greed, paedophilia and war because bishops are rich, child abuse is rife in the Church, and different believers continue to wage war on each other. Human weakness is not the fault of godlessness or of religion. It's the way we are - or perhaps the way God made us.

TONY: And no one said that this condemnation applied to everyone, or even equally to everyone. Some of it will apply more to some people than to others. Perhaps, it is exactly what it said it is. That people turned away from all the teachings that are right there, the basics of love your neighbor. What I find interesting is that you SEE exactly all the things that it said would be, and we see them running rampant today, far worse than at any other point in history, and you STILL say it wrong because you don't feel it applies to you personally.-Ah, the subjectivity of interpretation! Yes, you read his text differently, and my own too. His makes it clear that if humans turn away from God, the result is the sinful chaos he describes. My point is that turning away from God does not make people into sinners. 1) Lots of godless people don't turn into...let me cherrypick as you have done....murderous, untrustworthy, unloving, merciless homosexual rapists, and 2) The reason for the rampant badness is human nature. Greed, paedophilia and war are also rampant among believers. You can argue that if everybody obeyed God's commandment to “love thy neighbour”, we'd have a happier world, but you don't have to believe in God to realize that!
 
TONY: I have, on occasion, been a back biter, a little haughty, occasionally greedy, and envious at times. [...] I am not saying I am a BAD person, but I definitely can see where I have made my mistakes, and I am cognizant enough of them not to deny them.-Me too. As I wrote in my earlier post: “Otherwise my own mistakes or thoughtless, selfish actions remain on my conscience, and that's my punishment.” More fool me, perhaps, but I don't think either you or I deserve to die for these “mistakes”, and I don't think belief or non-belief in God had anything to do with them. Human nature's the problem - that same old mixture of good and bad, as it evolved or as God made it.