And at least be able to look themselves in the mirror knowing they didn't fleece it off an audience of the elderly, lonely, and outcast who's "offerings" often consisted of a meaningful part of their current net worth, even if that was only $20.
Billy Graham
- Thread starter Wallet
- Start date
The world would be a much better place if all religions didn't exist. and everyone was just neutral, or simply acted good w/o being all weird and strange and unnecessarily complex with their lives and values and ideals.,
Not sure if you are aware, but "neutral" atheistic governments killed close to 80,000,000 people during the 20th century:
Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,00 people murdered
Jozef Stalin (USSR 1932-39 only) 15,000,000 people murdered
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000 people murdered
Kim II Sung (North Korea 1948-94) 1.6 million people murdered
Tito (Yugoslavia 1945-1987) 570,000 people murdered
Suharto (Communists 1967-66) 500,000 people murdered
Ante Pavelic (Croatia 1941-45) 359,000 people murdered
Ho Chi Min (Vietnam 1953-56) 200,000 people murdered
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20) 30,000 people murdered
The vast majority of those people weren't killed because they didn't share the leader's absence of religion (admittedly a small minority were in some cases). The vast majority of those killed under the name of a religion were killed specifically because they didn't share the leader's religion.
Your logic is the same as the following conversation:
Me: The world would be a much better place if racists didn't exist and everyone was just neutral, or simply acted good w/o being all weird and strange and unnecessarily complex with their lives and values and ideals.
You: Not sure if you're aware, but "non racist" governments killed close to X million people during the 20th century.
You see how the fact that non-racists also killed people does absolutely nothing to absolve the fact that racist killings are horrible and we'd all be better off without them? It's not only completely irrelevant, it's obscene to somehow excuse awful things done under the name of racism because the same awful things are also done absent racism. Just as it's obscene to somehow excuse evil done under the name of religion because that same type of evil is done by those without religion.
%%%
And in fairness, the Godhaters+ gunhaters gov like Mr Mao did much worse than that. WSJ published it last year ; Mr Mao decided the sparrows ate too much grain, declared war on them. having killed hundred of million sparrows, locusts + famine then killed 45-78 million Chicoms[1958-1962, Four Pests campaign.]
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil— that takes religion.
No one has been murdered in the name of atheism.Throughout history people have been and still are murdered in the name of religion.
In yet more fairness, Mr God is said to have done far worse than Mr Mao.
And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth:
Genesis 7 21
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Beware any religion in which the truth must die for it's existence.
Just let that sink in.
How is this not a red flag, except for theologically drunk minds?
Letting the dead bury the dead, i have much more important work to do than to comment on a personality, who, in deciding whether the bible was entirely true or not, demanded some sort of sign from the god of the bible.
Just let that sink in.
How is this not a red flag, except for theologically drunk minds?
Letting the dead bury the dead, i have much more important work to do than to comment on a personality, who, in deciding whether the bible was entirely true or not, demanded some sort of sign from the god of the bible.
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I object to the association between my post, and this crass demonstration of disrespect.
I dish out philosophy, not mindlessly mendacious, musically mortified, glorified sea shanties.
While i'm aware this is hell, and while i'm aware Christians have not yet escaped, and have no advantage over the legions of hell in terms of an ability of escape, i would rather abide with a nation of Christians for the same reason i would rather live near a colony of honey bees, compared to a colony of killer bees. I think you know what i mean by killer bees.
I have no fear of the god of the bible, and consider it to be illegitimate. But there is absolutely no need to go around demonstrating my fearlessness by throwing up insults into the sky in front of it's worshipers for clicks and giggles.
I also refuse the false dichotomy which says that the Christian version of god, and/or Jesus must be an all or nothing proposition where no other understanding is possible.
The whole thing with Christianity is it is up to it's neck in parables, unable (unwilling?) to interpret them according to reason, and so, like a millstone around it's neck, will take each believer down like quicksand.
I have nothing against Jesus, nothing against his attempts to teach something, and nothing against what i understand his teachings to be.
Graham follows Paul's perversions of the prime parables taught 20 years before going blind on the road to Damascus, only to maintain that blindness due to his traditional interpretations.
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IYO what are the prime parables