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Germany Bans Scientology (pg. 8)
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
The arrogance of people who just assume they understand what "faith" is to a large group of people astounds and disgusts me at the same time. |
Well, I was a Christian for much longer than I've been an atheist, went from nominal believing and noncommital churchgoing through fundamentalism and liberal Christianity, so I happen to think that I have a pretty good understanding of the attractions of religion and what faith feels like from "the inside." One can hardly cover everything that "faith" is for every person in a two paragraph post, but then I never claimed to have done that. Just covering one aspect of it, a fairly prominent one since you can hardly miss that the religions that play mostly liberally with people's fears are the ones that tend to last the longest, be the most popular, and produce the highest percentage of fanatics. |
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| RJT |
Making blanket statements about faith is still absurd - especially about Christians. As with any group that has an agenda, it tends to only be the bat insane, loudmouth -faces who people seem to take as representative of the whole (be it in religion, politics, etc.) when in reality if you sat down with 300 different Christians from different walks of life I guarantee you almost every single one of them would have a different account of what "faith" actually means to them. Statements like the following:
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
"Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." - Proverbs 1:7
"Come, ye children, hearken to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD." - Psalms 34:11
Of course, most Christians will say something like, "It doesn't mean 'fear' in the usual sense of the word." But that is the basis of the religion. The natural fear of death and fear of purposelessness, plus an induced fear of hell. Take all the fears away and you just have a bunch of castle-in-the-air metaphysical beliefs and some comforting bedtime stories about heaven.
Which is why liberal Christianity tends to die out and turn into atheism. If all the beliefs and pageantry make no difference in the end, why bother with any of it? |
...display a relatively narrow definition of just what those passages, and what "fear of God" means to many theists (not only Christians), and perhaps more importantly takes a condescending tone towards the religious in general - which is a big reason many other atheists, agnostics, and religious individuals find atheists who make statements like the above every bit as irritating as the Westboro Baptist Church; it's all zealotry. In the majority of cases such statements really serve only as an indication of insecurity over ones own "beliefs" as opposed to some kind of "logical" argument against faith in which an entire belief system collapses without your narrow definition of fear. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
| Well, the fact that a belief system can be motivated by fear isn't an argument against it, I agree. The only relevant thing in an argument is whether the belief system has evidence in its favor. I happen to think that Christianity fares pretty poorly on that front as well. Maybe you disagree. |
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| RJT |
| I've probably posted this dozens of times on here, but what I believe is that any and all metaphysical beliefs rely on fundamental assumptions about how the universe works that can neither be proven nor dis-proven. I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd like to make the claim that, at some point, science will reveal to us everything there is to know about the universe - and I'm fine with that, when it happens maybe we'll have a fun conversation about it. To them I even say "good luck" - but to me they really aren't very different from those who strive to "know" about the universe through religion. |
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| Moral Hazard |
| ^^^ if you believe that the key motivator in Christianity is fear then I'm afraid you missed the message all together. |
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| Darkarbiter |
| quote: | Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On
Scientology is hardly about instilling fear into people though. Perhaps its intentions are what do not sit well with most. It's not a sort of subscription service - of course the church needs funds to function in society - and I'm not even commenting on whether it abuses this opportunity at this point - it's just that when you convince people that all they need in life is the church and their own sense of self-perfection, there's really no need for personal possessions, now is there?
To heal oneselfby means of a truth that is greater than anyone - this is the appeal. Leave fear and guilt to Christianity; it has an extensive history of such and seems to have exerted its influence into programming people to think that is exactly what every religion is about. Scientology offers people an opportunity to know the nature of their true selves much better. Does it actually follow up to this promise though? if I know. But it's not difficult to see why many would be attracted to such a concept. |
There has been varias people saying that they say you have to confess your secrets "to get it to work" and then they threaten revealing them if you leave.
Also the media threats... |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by Moral Hazard
^^^ if you believe that the key motivator in Christianity is fear then I'm afraid you missed the message all together. |
I'm afraid several sects around must have gotten it all wrong then :p
But, in spite of their 'noid views of Christianism, why do you say that? I'd love to hear your opinion about it :) |
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| tubularbills |
people, we're talking about those scientologists here.
and the fact that Germany is givin' 'em das boot! |
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| Moral Hazard |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
I'm afraid several sects around must have gotten it all wrong then :p
But, in spite of their 'noid views of Christianism, why do you say that? I'd love to hear your opinion about it :) |
Many people fail to grasp the message behind the New Testament, mainly because they simply look at the surface meaning without examining context.
When it comes to fear, specifically, there are a grand total of 162 verses in the New Testament dealing with hell/punishment for sinners. That's 162 out of 7957. It hardly seems that the main thrust of the church was to scare people into following Jesus' teachings given that approximately 2% of the text deals with punishment for sins. Contrast this with the continual theme of love and forgiveness that comprises the bulk of the Gospels and is reinforced through Paul's letters and it becomes pretty clear that the church's message is not "do as we say or burn in hell." Honestly, I find it difficult to believe that anyone could read the New Testament and think any different. It would be like reading Hamlet and thinking the point of it was to tell the reader not to trust their wife around other men. |
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| MrJiveBoJingles |
What I should have said was that the varieties of Christianity that don't use a big heaping dose of fear tend to fade into non-belief within a couple hundred years (as attested by the history of Unitarianism, Universalism, and other liberal types of Christianity).
;) |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
Making blanket statements about faith is still absurd - especially about Christians. As with any group that has an agenda, it tends to only be the bat insane, loudmouth -faces who people seem to take as representative of the whole (be it in religion, politics, etc.) when in reality if you sat down with 300 different Christians from different walks of life I guarantee you almost every single one of them would have a different account of what "faith" actually means to them. Statements like the following: |
how about
"faith is unsubstantiated nonsense" -am i being fair to all those of different types of faith? :toothless |
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| RJT |
Ah, but you well know I don't even bother getting into these sorts of talks with you m8.
:)
Stalemate's are no fun for anyone.
Edit: But just for the sake of answering your question - yes, I believe that statement is universally offensive enough for it to slide. :stongue:  |
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