Comments on: Hair-Brained

By: Da King

Da King — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:19:44 +0000

At which point in the Rennaisance did Christianity go away, Rev ?

By: larry d.

larry d. — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:02:27 +0000

You need to update that World Book set, Reverend.

By: The Reverend

The Reverend — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:03:15 +0000

What, pray tell, would you call the 1000 years when man made little, if any, progress?

No, I meant Renaissance. Enlightenment came later.

"the activity, spirit, or time of the great revival of art, literature, and learning in Europe beginning in the 14th century and extending to the 17th century, marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world."

The "medieval" part……is in reference to the, you know, Dark Ages.

By: larry d.

larry d. — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:13:16 +0000

I think any competent historian would tell you that the term "Dark Ages" is in many ways a misnomer, Reverend. And I think by "Renaissance" you probably mean the "Enlightenment."

By: The Reverend

The Reverend — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:45:49 +0000

Fine. Take issue. The world would be a better place without religion. Christianity held the world in the Dark Ages for a long time…. superstition gained control of power. The secular Renaissance led the world to a place where secular social advances could be made. Christianity, for the most part has been on the wrong side of history on most social advances. That's still true today.

People who are religious are not who I'm calling poison. Supernaturalistic beliefs, guilt enslavement by religious authority figures, and a denial of full equal rights for all humans…are just some of the poison which exudes from the top down in religious groups.

By: Da King

Da King — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:27:43 +0000

Rev,
Do you remember Aussiemale from the old forum ? Roysoldboy e-mailed me a communication he had with Aussie the other day, and the topic was Christianity. Aussiemale pointed out that the most advanced civilizations in the world, the ones that grant the most human rights to their citizens (Europe, USA, Canada, Australia), ALL grew out of Christian beliefs. That's no coincidence, and it would be a historical denial to say that it was. That doesn't mean all Christians are perfect people, however, as Jerry just pointed out. Fault can be found with everyone, and Christians and Christian nations are included, but when you look at the larger picture, Christianity has been a positive force, relatively speaking. If you look at atheist nations, such as the USSR, China, Cuba, and North Korea, a much darker side of humanity is revealed. So I take issue with your statement that religion poisons everything.

By: Little Jerry

Little Jerry — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:17:17 +0000

Reverend,
I'm sure the world would be a better place if you wrote the laws. Nor would it be a better place if the Catholics, Protestants, or any religious Organization wrote the laws. The world has already had enough of religious Organizations making laws for everyone to follow. As you can see I am a Christian but I am not so stupid as to be blind to the facts about religious Organizations making the rules for everyone to live by. I don't think Jesus needs us Christians to make rules for others to follow. Everyone should live the life that the lord would have them live. Christians, and not only Christians, want people to be killed for their sins. What does turn to other cheek mean anyway. If someone kills your loved one, isn't your loved one in a better place? So why be so mad? Aren't the streets in heaven golden? I ask my fellow Christians, why hate the Reverend? The Reverend has no power over the Lord. As for us Christians, let our eyes be focused on the saving grace of our Lord. Let the Lord be the judge. As Jesus said "Do good to them that despitefully use you". Believe it or not the Lord is in control, our job is to show love, and kindness, we will be rejected, despised, hated, and killed, Our duty to the Lord for such a gospel is to show love. God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whosoever should believe in him should be saved from his wrath. Christians do not have any right showing wrath to anyone, because they can't save anyone, and therefore they have no right. Christians aren't any better then anyone else, they have never been better then anyone else ever. Christians are no better then murders, and child molesters, they are just forgiven, and shall be given a place heaven with their savior.

By: Da King

Da King — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:30:24 +0000

A lot of people were impressed by the teachings of Jesus, along with him turning water into wine, raising the dead, rising from the tomb, etc. Who are you to condemn them, when you don't have the first clue about the bigger truth I wrote about in my last comment ? To paraphrase Einstein, atheism isn't a belief. It's just the abscence of belief. It doesn't offer any explanations or demonstrable alternatives. In parlance you might relate to, atheists are "the party of no."

By: The Reverend

The Reverend — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:36:33 +0000

If yours was the prevailing religious explanation, it would all be fine. For fundamentalist Christian folks, taking creation seriously means taking a bunch of other divisive and bigoted "faith-based" teachings seriously. That's when the poison kicks in.

By: Da King

Da King — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:58:53 +0000

Rev says, "Science is the house bult on the rock."

Except our science didn't build the house (the universe). Something (or someone ?) else did. Science is the process of uncovering, explaining, and using what is already here. Science didn't put it here. Our science is driven by the curiosity and intellect of man. Science doesn't explain why we are curious, or why we have the intellect to make scientific inquiries, or why we sense a spiritual nature within ourselves along with the physical and mental.

To illustrate science – if a caveman somehow came upon a 20th century car engine that was transported back to his time, he'd be mystified as to what it was. If enough cavemen studied the engine for long enough, they would eventually figure out how to use it and duplicate it. That's science. But the cavemen would only have theories about how the engine got there in the first place. They wouldn't know for sure. Maybe they'd decide the Big Engine Bang created it randomly, and leave it at that, because, you know, it COULD have happened that way. Maybe the cavemen scientists would deride other cavemen who thought the engine was the product of, oh, say, some sort of intelligent design.

Now consider the earth and universe as an infinitely more complicated version of that engine, and we are the cavemen. There's too much we don't know. We only have opinions and theories. One of those theories is that creation implies a creator (God) of some kind, a higher power, because "random" is woefully inadequate to explain something as fascinatingly grandiose, complex, and interconnected as the universe. "Random" is woefully inadequate to explain our one little planet within that universe, or even one single human being on that one little planet. There's something more, there's a lot more, and just because we don't know exactly what it is doesn't preclude it's existence. That "something more" has been translated into God or gods by virtually every human culture. It's an acknowledgement of our own limitations, which are significant. We know we are only one tiny piece of the universal puzzle, no matter how arrogantly we want to pretend otherwise. In the universal sense, we are a flea on the back of a dog, a flea that doesn't even know there is a dog.