Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (2584)	10/25/2000 2:23:30 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

I'm not "anti-Catholic". I'm just pointing out that this is a church, based upon the military structure of the Romans, that has a history of repression. That's ironic. This continues with the virtual enslavement of 3rd World females to reproductive roles with a reprehensible policy on birth control. Most educated Catholics wink at the policy and ignore it. When a religion is central to a culture (like in Mexico) it is unconscionable to think that the Church has not changed its stance. I feel that organized religion (Jewish, Muslim, Fundamentalist, mainstream Protestant, and Catholic) has a lot to answer for. They are not very tolerant and usually when they have taken extreme positions, they've been wrong. Oh, yeah, I forgot - they apologized. You happened to be Catholic. However, if you were Muslim, I'd have similar questions and rebukes for you, but on different topics, like the toleration of killing of raped women, or female "circumcision" (mutilation is a better name). I think that Jefferson keeping slaves does lead on to wonder what kind of blindness allowed him to do this. You have to realize that while slave-holding was "normal" here, in most of Western Europe it wasn't. So, here we have an education, compassionate man who has a hole the size of a continent in his vision.

To: Ilaine who wrote (2584)	10/25/2000 2:39:02 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

. I don't blame Shinto or Buddhism for the Rape of Nanking, for example. Do you? This is different. These weren't orders from Shinto or Buddhists (I've NEVER heard of a Buddhist-led atrocity, can you name one?), this was a bunch of soldiers. The hierarchy of YOUR church is militaristic. In the past, it has advocated everything from bad public policy to human rights abuse to religious hegemony and repression. Neophites were prohibited from leaving the missions. I hike in the remote areas of the Bay Area and have found archeological testimony to the result of abuse laid upon natives of the Bay Area. If you left the mission (in 1800) you were hunted down and either beaten or killed, depending upon how many times you did it. The Catholic Church (yes I'm talking about the church again because it was THE dominant organized religion in California) was responsible for terrible atrocities and has gotten a free ride in this state. The State of California, IMO, is guilty of fraud teaching my kids the story of the missions in California. The tour they took of Mission San Jose was about as biased and polished as any piece of Nazi propaganda. So, if Jews have a religious-based policy that allows them to lay claim to land they had left generations before and impose their "repatriation" of Palestine under military force, is it anti-Semetic to say so? I don't think so. It is anti-aggressor based upon what I consider a work of fiction. The Torah, if historical, has lost more history than it remembers. High culture has existed in some form for 20,000 years. SO, where is the culture of people from 3000 years before the Hebrews were in Palestine.

To: Ilaine who wrote (2584)	10/25/2000 4:38:36 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

<< Blaming a religion for the errors of its members is short-sighted. >> It's perfectly reasonable to test the assertion, for example, that religious-inspired morality is the best, most reliable kind of morality by observing the behavior of those who identify themselves as morally informed by religion. If a particular religion claims for itself the distinction of embodying and teaching the best-of-the-best morality, a close look at the behavior of those who identify themselves as morally informed by that particular religion is appropriate. To the degree that a religion is its members, to that degree precisely, it is entirely appropriate to blame a religion for the errors of itself. If "a religion" means, to you, only some beliefs or items of dogma about the nature of man and about good and evil embodied not in "its members," but in written texts, it must be kept in mind that those texts have been subject to interpretation by "members" -- some of whom are actually infallible in matters of faith and morals -- and so, again, it would seem to be appropriate to scrutinize the liability to error of the "members," including liability to grievous error, and to at least ponder what relevance, if any, this "error" might have to conclusions one might draw about "the religion." In fact, I can't think of a way to judge any religion that doesn't involve scrutiny of some sort and to some degree of the behavior of its "members." The most ancient texts, all texts, were themselves written down by "members." To the degree that the moral "errors" made by members are soundly repudiated by other, or descendant, members, harsh judgment is fairly called "short sighted." Insofar as members' moral "errors" are minimized and obfuscated and denied and not apologized-for by other members, to that degree, and that degree only, it is appropriate to draw conclusions about the efficacy of the religion to teach human beings to distinguish good from evil.