In an age of neo-Liberal decadence and rootlessness, men will search for wisdom in traditional sources of masculine conservativism to gain a better understanding of our times. Traditionalism, or reactionary thinking , is only so because the world is actually moving towards one wrong direction. When brought up, it generally meets a great number of critics on every forum, who tend to attack it from different sides.
This article does not seek to refute the lies and fake charges of neo-liberals, feminists and white knights: many articles of counterattack have been written for that cause, and I’m sure that many more shall be published on Return of Kings.
An Intelligent Critique
In an age of crumbling values and desecrated traditions, faith remains one of the last strongholds of conservativism.
This piece is aimed at a more intellectual and insightful critique, which therefore deserves more attention and should not be disregarded. Among all the screeching rape-cries of feminists and sobbing wails of self-sacrifice omitted by white knights, one rational voice of true conservativism rings clear.
Oftentimes it will be stated that no scholar of intellectual merit should mix up the divine ideals of various world religions, or else one might end up with a bizarre concoction of castrated convictions, chosen by inexpertly hands (read: neo-liberal mixture of spiritual New Age rubbish).
Religions have a carefully constructed and delicately fashioned set of beliefs which have developed over hundreds or – more likely – thousands of years. The very tradition of age-long scholarly debates, theological dismantlement, and intellectual evolution which, together, make religious ideals a good subject to study in the first place, cannot be ignored or put aside. This is especially true today, when all principles and ethics are gleefully shit upon by shallow free-thinkers and fakers of intelligence worldwide.
How dare we compare the credos of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, without coming up with superficial conclusions that have little to no more worth than neo-liberal free-thinking? How dare we dabble in affairs of the divine without having gone through the difficult and exhausting processes of theological training that rabbis, priests, preachers and imams all pass?
How do we differ then from the self-titled experts on gender, ideologies and morals who seem to grow in numbers as fast as some sort of musty blight under a damp rock?
An Answer Based On Historical Tradition
Examining religious texts for masculine growth is no sacrilege.
The answer is, as it could be expected, multifaceted.
First of all, the belief that religions, out of some heavenly inspiration, had come to this word in one intact form and have remained the same for the past thousands of years – as noble and naïve as it is – is utterly mistaken. Take the Judeo-Christian culture which – to a certain extent – still serves as the foundation of Western civilization.
The very belief that the Eucharist actually does become the body and blood of Christ is an outcome of hundreds of years of theological debate. The passages of Scripture that seemingly leave no doubt about Jesus’ intentions regarding the Holy Communion have actually been altered in later translations to look that way. The earliest Greek versions could be interpreted in another way.
Then think of Arianism, a nontrinitarian movement which denied Jesus’ being of one substance with the Lord: the very concept of the Holy Trinity had sprung from the debate with, and fight against this sect.
Or let us take a look at Judaism: rabbinical Judaism was a 2nd century invention, aimed at maintaining Jewish religious ideals after Hadrian crushed the Bar Kochba revolt and the Roman military camp of Aelia Capitolina had been erected upon the ruins of the once magnificent city of Jerusalem.
Contemporary religious thinkers, whom we now consider to be thinkers of great scholarly capacity, had also been charged with mingling diverse religious standards. Saint Augustine and Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, two great Christian thinkers who had much influence over the development of Catholic tradition were originally considered dangerous reformers who could bring ruin upon the Church by mixing secular thoughts with their faith.
Baruch Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn were frowned upon by the Jewish community for introducing a seemingly secular approach towards Jewish faith.
The Right Reasons
Historical preachers and writers have also been accused of undermining tradition.
An intermingling of worldly and divine, or one religion and another for the right reasons does not necessarily lead to the deterioration of tradition and heavenly concepts. Seeking pick up advice from Paul the Apostle, martial arts tips from ha’Ba’al Shem Tov, or guidance on political organization from the Sufi Mystic Yunus Emre is no sacrilege.
In fact, the faithful have been doing it for hundreds and thousands of years: religions had the dual purpose of granting a glimpse into the glorious galleries of God and providing practical advice on the daily grind. Analyzing various religious traditions for the sake of a masculine growth of character constitutes no profanity.
Read More: 8 Films With Masculine Virtue
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3137769/Imam-s-daughter-cleared-murdering-boyfriend-threatened-send-revenge-porn-family-broke-him.html
just want to throw this one out there. Religion aside female manipulation is universal and foolish betas should be aware ant not be a pawn to take the fall for her….The woman is a cold blooded manipulative whore in this story.
i wonder whether she actually didn’t think he would do anything or whether she calculated it, to later weep. which would be quite a performance.
“She rekindled her relationship with teenage sweetheart Chowdhury when he came out of prison in February last year.” LOL!
the court system needs game bad man, bet she used her “strict patriarchal culture” as fear to fool the brits to get off. If she was devout she wouldnt be dating or dressed like that. Shes a british girl but a poorr muslim girl when she needs help
So, basically, you think you know better than 2000 years of Church History, hundreds of Saints, the Assembled Bishops, and thousands of writings by the Church Fathers, all on agreement on basic doctrines such as the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the Canonical nature of Sacred Tradition?
EDIT: I mean, the point of the article is good, but that’s just an aside. You can’t pick and choose what you want from the Church. You either accept it as a whole, or you pack up and leave.
the saints of yesterday are the manosphere bloggers of today. eat that, chesus.
“o, basically, you think you know better than 2000 years of Church
History, hundreds of Saints, the Assembled Bishops, and thousands of
writings by the Church Fathers, all on agreement on basic doctrines such
as the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the Canonical
nature of Sacred Tradition?”
Which Church? The one where one bishop declared himself above all Church Councils and Church Tradition and secular rulers? Or the one where all bishops continued to be equals (only some “first among equals,” a primacy of honor like the bishop of Rome used to enjoy), the priests continued to get married, etc?
“EDIT: I mean, the point of the article is good, but that’s just an aside. You can’t pick and choose what you want from the Church. You either accept it as a whole, or you pack up and leave.”
That pretty much applies to all religion, the traditional is the authentic, French metaphysicist René Guénon observed.
A line of thinking that influenced Fr. Seraphim Rose.
http://oodegr.co/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm
You and I serve the same Church, my friend 😉
As I understand it, the Orthodox Church ordains married men as priests, but nowhere and at no time has the Church granted that priests may marry if they were ordained first.
Because after the marriage is consummated, the game and hanky panky stage is long passed and the pattern sex with wife is normalized and standard. But a priest ordained first, on the other hand, would have to put on his pick up duds and get his swag to snag that girl in the pews. It would interrupt his clerical regimen to stop and focus on the girl, respond to her only and accelerate at critical times and kino while holding the flags or candles or organizng his notes and bookmarks behind the pew. It takes total focus and concentration to bag a good one but that part has to be done and over with by the time he’s delivering mass to his members.
The fact that you deny Jesus Christ for who he truly was puts this whole article in perspective for me. The bible is littered with masculine virtue and the truth on how to live a holy life.
truth does not have respect for time, status or effort.
if something is the truth, it is so. if it is not, 2000 years of studies mean nothing. “great” names mean nothing.
i do think there are good tips in the bible, but let’s face it, science in the last century alone made such great leaps. consider neurology. quantum theory, psychology.
i think that the bible may have good tips and i plan to read it, but i speculate that many truths could be formulated more precisely today without the need of faith.
without the knowledge of neuroscience, behaviorism etc, it is perfectly understandable even for the greatest mind to make assumptions about something divine.
human progress is not linear. it may seem “sad” that a smart well educated kid today can possibly make more clever connections than a whole university hundreds of years ago, but life is not fair.
that said, human “progress” can go awry. yes, we can.
I encourage you to begin with the four gospels of the New Testament. If, for the sake of argument, God doesn’t exist and all the miraculous events of the Bible were made up, Jesus was still a man of profound wisdom and compassion.
i was advised to read the proverbs first. i’ll put the four gospels on my list.
frankly, i don’t think there’s any way around accepting that there is something “divine” about life. when i say that, i mean that it is simply so … improbable that life is just here and works so fabulously. all the physical laws, chemistry, how everything works together. i don’t mean intelligent design, but the mere fact of existence itself is ponderable.
that doesn’t mean however, to me, that there is any form of spirituality to be found beyond the realm of the material world, however you define it.
the first man to find magnets could have declared them sacred and left it at that. or he could have analyzed magnetic behavior and used it for his purposes. just consider the indignation people may have felt about it if they had considered magnetism sacred.
but in the end, who is to say it is not? but i also find it plausible to say then, that rationality and my mind is sacred. and that every thought i can have i also sacred, therefore every consideration i take to improve my life – for the simple reason of being able to exist – is sacred, too.
yes, i know. by my definition, everything is sacred and thus the word loses it’s meaning. (un)fortunately, that’s my intent.
Religion, and living by a strict moral code, is THE greatest asset a man can have in fighting the holy war against feminism.
Love it or hate it, religion provides answers you just simply cannot find anywhere else. It is the foundation of a traditional conservative successful family unit and it is the reason why our species overall have been as successful as we are.
No matter what your religion, make sure you always tolerate the beliefs of others, especially if those beliefs go against your beliefs.
Some say that this day in age in our technologically advanced society, religion is irrelevant.
Wrong.
Religion is more important today that it ever has been in all of history. The foundations of our society are falling apart and it is only religion, “the moral glue”, that can save our society and patriarchy.
There is much to gain from the wisdom of religion. Ignore it at your own peril.
i am convinced that much of our problems today are caused by the downfall of religion. i don’t think that a return to it in it’s traditional form is the answer.
there are too many conflicts between what i believe the bible to say and my more modern rational convictions.
religion worked because people had faith, yes. that was a great motivator to glue people together with morals they otherwise would have no reason to obey.
now we are left with a pitiful husk of what may once have been called “morals”. it’s only anymore used to say “what i want is my human right.”
i think a convincing movement today would need to incorporate all we know about life now. christianity is clearly superior in some of it’s traditional family aspects, but fairly outdated in others, i conjecture.
Many philosophies impart wisdom and discipline without the requested belief in an imaginary friend and I doubt a 2000 vampire cult aka Christianity has much value in the modern world.
Because there were not successful family units before religion? Religion impedes the progress of man by bogging us down with credulity and fear. Try again.
And what exactly, is “progress”? Do you think the West is socially “progressing”? Have you thought about the long-term, asymptotic social consequences of this “progress”?
Cave-man style governance doesn’t work on a large scale, and that’s where institutions of religion and politics eventually came in, to lay foundations for morality and ethics.
Let me give you an analogy: think of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It regulates the financial markets.
Thanks to the idiot Greenspan, laws were loosened and deregulated under the premise that the “markets can regulate themselves” and look what that led to: extreme risk taking and a collapse of the American economy.
Thanks to Progressivism, liberalism, socialism, Marxism, communism, feminism, etc., basically deregulation of morality and ethics, the same thing is happening to society as a whole, and it will also eventually lead to a meltdown and collapse in the next 40-50 years if not sooner.
It’s easy to blame religion when you look at things in historical hindsight.
Compare the condition of society today from 50 years ago. The absence of religion eventually led to declining morals and ethics, then individualism and a godless state (which is where we are right now), which will eventually lead us to societal collapse.
Tolerance toward other religions is prohibited by many religions. That’s why this article is ultimately meaningless
Finally I am seeing awesome comments on this site!
It’s easy to sing the praises of religion while living in a time when you enjoy the benefits of philosophy, technology and science. I wish I’d have a time machine to send all these modern religious zealots back to when there was only religion and superstition, and that they get sick and the treatment is prayers and a magic soup.
It’s ironic that you intend to fight ginocracy with religion. While almost exclusively men have promoted rationalism, religion has always been the domain of women. Even when they’re treated like shit, there are always more women in religious temples than men, because the subjectivity, sensualism, consensus and blind faith that are staples of religion agree with the female mind. That’s why, given enough time, feminism and religious zealots end up agreeing.
The issue is not whether answers are provided (answers are a dime a dozen and you can make up a million others if you want) but whether those answers are valid.
“While almost exclusively men have promoted rationalism, religion has always been the domain of women.”
Here, you are factually completely wrong. Religious institutions have always been almost completely male-exclusive domains in history and for most religions, they still are today.
Sure there is greater overall membership of women in religious institutions, but the leadership has and still is almost always completely male.
There’s no other example in all of history of an institution (other than the military) that’s been as pro-Patriarchy.
The entire premise of your argument is flawed.
“It’s easy to sing the praises of religion while living in a time when you enjoy the benefits of philosophy, technology and science.”
I don’t just sing the praises of religion, I actually live by it. You think science and technology (as basic as they were) and philosophy weren’t around 500 years ago?
Science and technology might be in some conflict with Judo-Christian derived religions, but they aren’t in conflict with most Eastern religions.
“It’s ironic that you intend to fight ginocracy with religion.”
Where’s the irony there? What force do you propose to fight against feminism? Rationalism on it’s own won’t work, because almost all normal people are driven by pride, vanity and ego. They only care about short-term self-interest, they couldn’t care less about the well-being of society as a whole.
“That’s why, given enough time, feminism and religious zealots end up agreeing.”
Couldn’t disagree with you more. Feminazis and religious zealots are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
Respectfully, I think you lack understanding of both feminism and religion.
No, you make a very superficial analysis.
I’ll say it again:
Men create, organize and lead religions. Men dominate astrology and all the “alternative” fields, psychology, the fashion and beauty industry and the entertainment media that is supposed to cater women.
Yet all these are the domains of women.
Who leads isn’t what defines whose domain a subject is. It’s whom the subject appeals to. So it’s not only that women make up most of the religious membership or that women are often the most “devoted” members i.e. the ones that consistently attend the services and observe the rituals. It’s that many features of religion appeal to the female mind: subjectivity, consensus, blind faith, sensualism, formality, unquestionable authority, truth that is truth for its own sake, prideful ignorance, self-righteousness, resignation, stagnancy, social control, promotion of a follower mindset, the utter comfort of letting go and having an external party decide for you… what’s not to like? Religion even speaks Womenese: words like “sinful”, “heretic” and “blasphemous” belong in the same group as “offensive”, “inappropriate”, “ignorant” and “unacceptable”.
But it’s men who question authority and consensus, seek objectivity and demand arguments and logic. Not many women in the skeptic camp, neither at the top nor in the rank and file.
This supposed epic clash between the holy forces of religion and the evil forces of science and technology, both with equally strong cases and fighting on equal footing for the hearts of the people, only exists in the heads of the religious. Truth is, science and technology aren’t much concerned with religion or the hearts of the people.
“Feminazis and religious zealots are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.”
Again, a superficial analysis. It’s not so anymore since the advent of 3rd wave feminism, which is a political manifestation of the true nature of women. So both groups come from radically different angles but for all practical purposes take the same position on key issues such as free speech, porn, prostitution, “bro/lad culture”, male singleness, child support and alimony. We’ll see them agreeing even more because they view the female in a similar way: as a helpless little flower who must be protected and provided for, shielded from all hardship and relieved of all responsibility and accountability. The main difference is who’s supposed to carry the female burden: for religious zealots it’s your average simp and for feminists it’s the State.
“Men create, organize and lead religions.”
Men create, organize and lead virtually everything. That’s because there are men who are much more willing to take risk, compared to women. Here’s the corollary of the previous statement: there are also much more men who are NOT willing to take risk, compared to women who are NOT willing to take risk.
Here are some more examples: there are also more men that are extremely rich compared to women, but there are also more men that are dead poor compared to women. There are more men that are extremely tall, compared to women, but there are also more men that are extremely short, compared to women. There are more men that are extremely intelligent compared to women, but there are more men that are as dumb as rocks, compared to women.
Variations in male populations are much higher compared to female populations. Statistically speaking, this means that tail ends in a normal distribution is much higher in any male population compared to women, whose populations are much more concentrated in the center for male and female biological and psychological makeup.
Now, if you already knew this, you would realize that most of your previous reply doesn’t add up.
“So it’s not only that women make up most of the religious membership or that women are often the most “devoted” members i.e. the ones that consistently attend the services and observe the rituals.”
Your observation here is unequivocally and categorically false.
You think there are more women that are more devoted and hardcore dedicated to their religion compared to men? Think again. There are much more men who fit the above description compared to women. You think there’s more female zealots compared to men? The corollary of this statement is that there are also more men who don’t fit the above description, and those are the rebels you speak of. There might be greater women membership overall, but the degree of their dedication is overall nowhere near compared to men. Just because there is more female membership, that doesn’t make it a female domain by simple majority.
“It’s that many features of religion appeal to the female mind: subjectivity, consensus, blind faith, sensualism, formality, unquestionable authority, truth that is truth for its own sake, prideful ignorance, self-righteousness, resignation, stagnancy, social control, promotion of a follower mindset, the utter comfort of letting go and having an external party decide for you.”
You give a range of behavior that supposedly only women are prone to but men are supposedly infallible. Believe it or not, there are FAR more men who adhere to much of the above behavior compared to women. Again, it goes back to distributions as I’ve explained above.
True religions are concerned with truth, and as much as you’d like to believe, not about appealing to a specific group to control and manipulate them. That’s politics. Now politics and religion are intertwined, but that’s a whole separate topic. This is more of an issue with Western religions as opposed to Eastern dharmic religions. Now whether manipulating populations is right or not depends wholly on intent.
“But it’s men who question authority and consensus, seek objectivity and demand arguments and logic. Not many women in the skeptic camp, neither at the top nor in the rank and file.”
There’s also fewer women (and more men) in the true believers camp as you’d like to believe, and more men (and fewer women) in the skeptics camp as you’ve correctly explained above.
“Who leads isn’t what defines whose domain a subject is. It’s whom the subject appeals to.”
And science and religion both are concerned with truth (in different ways), and truth appeals to men, not women as you incorrectly believe.
“This supposed epic clash between the holy forces of religion and the evil forces of science and technology, both with equally strong cases and fighting on equal footing for the hearts of the people, only exists in the heads of the religious. Truth is, science and technology aren’t much concerned with religion or the hearts of the people.”
My initial post was concerned with religion as a good moral force and had nothing to do with science. You’ve twisted this discussion into an argument between science vs. religion. Science had no relevance to my original post. As I’ve already told you, religion and science are not in conflict at all in many Eastern religions, but they are with some Western religions in my last post. Obviously science and technology aren’t concerned with religion or winning people’s hearts, where did I ever suggest they were? The clash is between feminism and religion, not science and religion. You’re making all kinds of statements irrelevant to the discussion.
“It’s not so anymore since the advent of 3rd wave feminism, which is a political manifestation of the true nature of women. So both groups come from radically different angles but for all practical purposes take the same position on key issues such as free speech, porn, prostitution, “bro/lad culture”, male singleness, child support and alimony.”
Both groups do take similar positions on many issues, but so do many other groups. But they also differ on many other positions as well. Agreeing on some issues doesn’t mean the two camps are holding hands with each other. Feminists would like nothing more than to exterminate religion as it restricts their behaviour and it’s really the only thing that can defeat them. Science and rationalism in themselves cannot defeat feminism, in fact, they helped indirectly (and I suppose accidentally) create feminism to begin with. Feminists aren’t rational to begin with. Likewise, religious people would like nothing more than to get rid of feminism for once and for all, as it destabilizes the function of society and gives women a free pass on wrong moral behavior.
You’re correct that they do so from totally different angles. Religious people are against porn, prostitution, etc. from position of wellbeing of societal interest, whereas feminists are to protect their own self-interest.
“… they view the female in a similar way: as a helpless little flower who must be protected and provided for, shielded from all hardship and relieved of all responsibility and accountability.”
Absolutely not. Rights come with responsibilities: responsibilities to self, responsibilities to family, responsibilities to society, responsibilities to religion and responsibilities to God. This is what the feminist twits don’t understand, and religious people will always look down on them.
Not all religions are the same and honestly, if you were to stop blindly hating religion for a moment and do some research on many religions from around the world, you would learn much and recognize it for the good moral force that it is and has been throughout history.
Anyways, to each, their own and all the best to you.
I’m not about to depart after seeing so many misconceptions in a single post.
This is dead wrong. Women are risk-averse. There is simply no scenario where there are more women willing to take a risk than men.
If we go by your premise above, the implication of your rich/poor example is that it has to do with there being more loser men than loser women. But the reason there are more poor men than poor women has nothing to do with the ability of women at all. It has to do with the value of pussy and the status of womanhood in society. Your tall/short and intelligent/dumb examples are even worse. What’s next? “There are more men that are extremely strong, compared to women, but there are also more men who are extremely weak”. Now try with fast/slow or rational/emotional. Do you even see the absurdity? Your examples are way off the mark because you misunderstand the scope of variability. It’s intended to explain differences in IQ between males and females. It’s not supposed to explain every difference between the sexes. It hurts my eyes to see the concept of variability so blatantly misused.
No, I don’t. Check your reading comprehension and notice the quotation marks. I said:
women are often the most “devoted” members i.e. the ones that consistently attend the services and observe the rituals.
That is, women are the members who are most committed to the form of religion, rather than the content. More men kill and die for religion. More men make huge sacrifices for religion. More men choose to live in loneliness and contemplation for religion. But more women attend the services and more women celebrate the holidays. More women eat the host, sing the chants and burn the incense sticks. And here’s the great thing: it is form what makes religions, not content. Did Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Mohammed or Confucius found religions? No, they just came up with a set of ideas i.e. the content. You can grasp the content without a religion. But then people after them built organizations, traditions and rituals i.e. the form, and these eventually became Christianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Confucianism. As religions start piling up more and more form, they become less meaningful but at the same time more women flock to them (because form appeals to the female need for empty formality), until it reaches a point when those who are still committed to content, the “radicals” or “fundamentalists” (mostly men), get pushed to the fringes or kicked out. And thus is how religion is bound to become the domain of women.
First, religion is concerned with truth on the surface, but is actually concerned with authority and consensus. “truth” is either what comes from the ones whose authority the followers recognize or that upon which more followers agree (that’s why beliefs that prove too controversial or disruptive often get ignored or discarded in order to maintain cohesion). Again, this appeals to the female mind, because for females “truth” is either what their closest circle agrees upon or what the perceived most influential female in their group says. Second, and even more important, science is not concerned with truth. Science is concerned with probability, which can be understood as a measure of how valid an interpretation (theory) is. I think you mean philosophy.
No, it was you who brought up the word “conflict”. Anyway, don’t think the other party’s role in a discussion is limited to replying point-by-point to what you say.
I never said Feminism and religion hold hands with each other. I said they end up agreeing on their positions –for or against on key issues. On many issues, the positions held by Feminists and religious people lead to the same outcomes in practice. That’s all that matters to me. So if religious people or Feminists get their way, the resulting world would look very similar from the perspective of the issues that affect bachelor men like me. In both worlds, we’d be expected to self-censor our language and behavior; it’d be far more difficult to get sex because we’d be required to offer some kind of long-term commitment to one woman; we’d be frowned upon for not getting hitched, as if a man’s life had no meaning without a wife; we’d be shamed for seeking sex with different young women; we’d be expected to put all our work and resources at the feet of a woman even after we’re no longer together (look up alimony, it was started by religious people); we’d be forced to carry the burden of an unwanted child; we’d be expected to demand no responsibility or accountability from women (radical Muslim women are basically regarded as oversized children; in fact, a deeper exam of Islam reveals that it might be paradise for females, and maybe that’s why so many Western “career women” are converting to Islam). Sure, they have opposite positions on many issues, like abortion and female promiscuity, but those don’t directly affect us. We for the most part don’t want to get involved with what a woman does with an unwanted pregnancy or care whom she sleeps with after we fuck. My point is, Feminism and religion seek to exterminate each other on the surface, just like Communism and Fascism. But the worlds that result from Communism and Fascism are pretty similar in those areas that directly affect us.
The Red Pill is a product of rationalism. The whole Red pill system of ideas was the result of looking at women through a rational lens, discarding all notions of religious compassion, piety or appropriateness and the roles of men and women according to tradition and religion. So you can’t say rationalism is not effective to fight Feminism, when it’s been our main weapon so far. The skeptic camp has been lambasting Feminism for many years now. Even scientists are starting to push against Feminism because it’s trying to introduce subjectivity to science and put research at the service of social causes. Meanwhile, religion raises men to be simps and slaves to female needs. And don’t think for a moment that Feminists are skeptics. Feminists do have spiritual beliefs, although they often ascribe to almost unrecognizable, extremely “light” versions of mainstream religions (while seeking to overturn male authority within them) or ancient spiritual traditions that elevate the female principle over the male.
“This is dead wrong. Women are risk-averse. There is simply no scenario where there are more women willing to take a risk than men.
If we go by your premise above, the implication of your rich/poor example is that it has to do with there being more loser men than loser women. But the reason there are more poor men than poor women has nothing to do with the ability of women at all. It has to do with the value of pussy and the status of womanhood in society. Your tall/short and intelligent/dumb examples are even worse. What’s next? “There are more men that are extremely strong, compared to women, but there are also more men who are extremely weak”.”
You obviously don’t understand relative and absolute variance, or mathematical variance in general.
Wealth/height/intelligence/strength and many of biological and psychological features are in FACT normally distributed between the sexes with the greater variance in male populations compared to female populations. This means that extremes at BOTH ends are higher in male populations compared to female populations. If you don’t believe me, open a biology textbook. Hence, that means there are in FACT more men that are filthy rich (billionaires)/super tall (basketball players)/intelligent (geniuses)/strong (olympic power lifters) compared to women but there are also more men that are dead poor/dwarves/retarded/weak (numerically in numbers) compared to women. The spread of these features in male populations is much higher compared to women, at both extremes. This doesn’t mean, for example, that overall, the weakest guys are weaker than the weakest women or that the shorter guys are shorter than the shortest women, it just simply means that there are more of them numerically compared to women.
This is a very simple concept that you misunderstood and you continued to build on your misunderstanding in the paragraph. You obviously have NO IDEA what you’re talking about.
You said, “There is simply no scenario where there are more women willing to take a risk than men.”
This is false. In life itself, there are far more male monks, recluses, hermits, etc., people who’ve renounced and removed all variance out of their lives (basically, people living their lives risk-free), compared to women. You surmise that the variance in wealth between the sexes is due to the “relative value of pussy”. I’m not arguing the reason why the variance exists in the case with wealth and the other examples given above. Wealth/height/intelligence/strength, regardless of the underlying reasons why, are normally distributed between the sexes and fit the normal distribution: this is indisputable. The other examples you give aren’t clearly defined. You’ve confused yourself with (or more likely are completely unaware of) absolute and relative variance between the two sexes.
The fact that you don’t understand and accept this scientific fact and you think the examples I gave were absurd proves you have absolutely no understanding of statistical variance and you’ve never opened a biology or statistics textbook.
“Your examples are way off the mark because you misunderstand the scope of variability. It’s intended to explain differences in IQ between males and females. It’s not supposed to explain every difference between the sexes.”
You say I’ve misunderstood variability when in fact, you’re the one who doesn’t understand mathematical concept of statistical variance in the first place, which has NOTHING (directly) to do with measuring IQ disparity of the sexes as you mention. Variance is a statistical measure of spread of data in a population. Google “variance” and read the Wikipedia article. Variance IS in fact used to explain many biological and psychological differences (obviously not all) between the sexes, like some of the examples given above. This also includes extreme devotion to religion and science.
The “form” and “content” you speak of is just a convenient dichotomy you’ve constructed to fit your narrative, without looking at religion in its totality. It’s as ridiculous as saying that, using your logic, more women prefer practical laboratory science compared to abstract theoretical science (the ritualistic “form” and abstract “content”, respectively) compared to men, and hence, women are more devoted to science and therefore, science is a female domain. You can create definitions of “form” and “content” that fit your narrative to support your claims however you want. Do you realize how stupid your whole “form” and “content” argument is?
“No, it was you who brought up the word “conflict”.”
Actually, if you read my post, I mention, “Science and technology might be in some conflict with Judo-Christian derived religions, but they aren’t in conflict with most Eastern religions.” My point was that religion and science can peacefully co-exist in many cases. You obviously disagree. In the next post, you mention: “This supposed epic clash between the holy forces of religion and the evil forces of science and technology, both with equally strong cases and fighting on equal footing for the hearts of the people, only exists in the heads of the religious. Truth is, science and technology aren’t much concerned with religion or the hearts of the people.” This paragraph has nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is why I called it out. You paraphrase my mentioning of “conflict” in your next post, but without actually understanding the context in which I said it in the first place.
For illustrative purposes, let’s say the scientific example of the religious zealot who sacrifices his life for his beliefs, would be a scientist who sacrifices his entire life to prove a theory or make a discovery and get a Nobel Prize at the end. In both cases, it is men who far outnumber women and hence, men are far more devoted to their respective fields compared to women.
Regardless of what you think, science and religion ARE male domains and religion CAN be used as a good moral force against feminism.
Tomorrow, affirmative action laws will guarantee that more women than men are enrolled in STEM courses in university. What will you do then? By your logic, these will by default become female domains, since there will be more of them practicing the more practical and rote (“the easy shit”) aspects of science (compared to men) and avoiding all the theoretical abstract foundations (which they’re less capable of). This is irrespective of women’s overall collective contribution and willingness to sacrifice their personal lives to discover the next scientific breakthrough (which they’re not as willing to do).
My belief is that science will continue to be a male domain since all breakthroughs and “shit that actually matters” will come from men. The same is true for religion.
The rest of your post is just your (highly ideologically misguided) opinion on religion, which you’re entitled to, and Red Pill dogma.
Read my words carefully, you might even learn something.
You fail to grasp nuances in words. You confuse and distort meanings. You deal in absolutes and you put them where they’re not supposed to be. You re-word my points and then try to use them as opposing arguments. Just look at a sentence like this: “In life itself, there are far more male monks, recluses, hermits, etc., people who’ve renounced and removed all variance out of their lives (basically, people living their lives risk-free)”. It’s a trainwreck! First, in religions where both males and females are allowed to become monks (this is the kind of small detail that must be accounted for but you skip over), females outnumber males; second, living in seclusion is not about risk avoidance (you fail to differentiate between actions and motivations); third, even if more men lived in seclusion it wouldn’t amount to men being more risk-averse than women (your reasoning doesn’t follow). So you come from faulty premises and then infer even faultier conclusions. I simply don’t have the time.
The form/content dynamic is very clear. I’m truly amazed that anyone would confuse it with the theory/practice and easy/hard dynamics. Content is definition, form is appearance. A proper example of content/form in science is this: content is what science is about, both theory and practice; form is the appearance typically associated with science. For males, a scientist is someone who does science i.e. conceives theories and does research, even if they walk around in spandex, flip-flops and a clown wig and speak gangsta; for females, a scientist is someone who has a long academic title with lots of initials, wears a lab coat and has verbose speech, even if it’s all fake and gibberish; anything outside this accepted form is “inappropriate”. That’s why the female mind questions the “scientist-ness” of a scientist who wears a shirt printed with half-naked women; it doesn’t matter if the guy has just made a great achievement for science. In the same fashion, content in religion is what religion is based upon: worship, doctrines, guilt management, contemplation, communion, proselytism (for some), etcetera; form is the appearance typically associated with religion: liturgy, empty rituals and ceremonies, mindless repetition, holidays, beautifully decorated temples, specific clothing, group activities and relations, etcetera. You can have content without the institution of religion but in order to have the institution of religion you must have form, and it is women who prefer form over content.
Science IS a male domain -and will remain so as long as it’s free from external pressure- because the fundamental principles of science are incompatible with the female mind. Religion -the institution (yet another word for you to misunderstand)- IS and has been for a long time a female domain because its principles appeal to the female mind. Now that women are being granted the same positions of authority as men in religious organizations, they’re finally on the fast lane to full, overt, unmistakeable feminization.
Let your posts lay for future readers as a testament of your lack of reading comprehension.
You have far more to learn yourself before you can start asking others to learn from you.
“You fail to grasp nuances in words. You confuse and distort meanings. You deal in absolutes and you put them where they’re not supposed to be. You re-word my points and then try to use them as opposing arguments. Just look at a sentence like this: “In life itself, there are far more male monks, recluses, hermits, etc., people who’ve renounced and removed all variance out of their lives (basically, people living their lives risk-free)”. It’s a trainwreck! First, in religions where both males and females are allowed to become monks (this is the kind of small detail that must be accounted for but you skip over), females outnumber males; second, living in seclusion is not about risk avoidance (you fail to differentiate between actions and motivations); third, even if more men lived in seclusion it wouldn’t amount to men being more risk-averse than women (your reasoning doesn’t follow). So you come from faulty premises and then infer even faultier conclusions. I simply don’t have the time.”
Actually, I understand clearly what you’re saying. The problem is, actually, the limitation of your understanding.
Actions/motivations are irrelevant to this discussion as we’re talking about variance: we’re not concerned with underlying reasons why certain distributions exist when talking about it; something I’ve told you previously but you still don’t understand. We’re simply comparing the distribution of characteristics of populations between the two sexes.
The example of renouncing life and living a low risk life is perfectly valid. The actions and motivations (you seem to think in dichotomies) are irrelevant. Why someone would want to live a low risk life or what would motivate them doesn’t matter when we’re talking about variance; these are philosophical and not empirical questions.
You make absolute, blanket statements: you first claimed there was no example where women as a whole take more risk than men and I gave you an extreme (but real-life) counterexample which you now, out of desperation, claim is spurious.
You then claim that living as a recluse, hermit, celibate is not about risk avoidance. This may be true, as it is a lifestyle choice, but that’s irrelevant. Some may choose such a lifestyle because they think it’s cool, others might because they want to live in harmony with nature. Regardless of the reason “why”, the level of personal risk in their day to day lives is definitely lower overall compared to a normal, secular person living in a large metropolitan city, for example. Again, you’re getting into the underlying reasoning as to why they would choose that lifestyle (the “motivation”) but that doesn’t matter. For example, fact is, someone living as a celibate, all else being equal, is living a much lower risk life compared to someone who’s being a player and living a promiscuous lifestyle (much higher probability of getting STDs). The fact that you can’t see that, all else being equal, celibacy and lower risk of getting STDs, and hence, overall lower risk in life are linked shows that your grasp of logic is weak. Similarly, for other factors as well, such as simple diet, having lower overall stress due to no financial burden in life, etc. lowers many risk factors and the overall risk factor of their lives and these are directly linked.
You surmised that there are more female monks compared to male monks, this is completely false: for example, in Bhuddism, the amount of fully ordained male monks, Bhikkhus, far surpasses the amount of fully ordained female monks, Bhikkhunis. I just did a quick Google search “buddhist number of male monks vs female monks” (second link) to confirm this. In the particular case of monks, there may be some difficulties for women, but overall, the amount of men living a lower-risk lifetstyle (priests, monks, reclusive, hermits, celibates, other religious and low risk lifestyle choices) far exceeds women, as explained by variance of the sexes which proves my point of variance being much higher in male populations compared to female populations at both extremes.
Finally, becoming a male Buddhist monk is much more restrictive and difficult than a female monk. Male monks have much more vows to keep compared to their female counterparts. Female monks take much more limited vows and the vows are much more informal. Hence, not only is becoming a male monk much more difficult, but there are actually more of them compared to women. Hence, the statement, “There are fewer female monks compared to male monks, and overall, their lives have (slightly) more risk (due to less restrictive and more informal vows) compared to the extreme virtually no risk lives of male monks (due to much more restrictive and formal vows)” is fully valid and correct. In fact, this is also true for many other monastic orders as well.
The fact that you can’t understand this example is simply a limitation of your understanding.
Here’s a much simpler example: walk into any casino. All of the slot machines (lowest statistical chance of winning anything) are mostly occupied by women with fewer men. The addicts, who always stay until the end, are almost all women. Hence, in this part of the casino setting, not only are there more women (greater numbers) than men taking financial risk, but the women are taking more financial risk (by playing and staying longer) than the men as well!
So your blanket statement, “There is simply no scenario where there are more women willing to take a risk than men.” is completely false. Life isn’t as black and white as you make it out to be.
Again, the “action/motivation” or the reasons why this is true may be interesting, but irrelevant. Statistically, there just are simply more male monks than female monks. There are also more women gamblers at the slot machines than males. Why is this the case? Why do more men choose to live as monks/celibates/hermits etc.? Why do more women choose to play slot machines? I don’t know, and to be honest, I don’t care either. However, biological variance helps explain the extremes.
You’re just grasping at straws and making up lies as you’re going along.
Variance is something you’ve clearly never heard of prior to this discussion. You obviously didn’t know that it is used to describe distributions of biological and psychological characteristics between the two sexes. You built up an entire post arguing about something you had neither heard of nor understood (exposing yourself as troll who abrasively argues about things he has no idea about, rather than actually bothering to do any research) and were corrected by me, and now you continue to argue on something that you yet still don’t understand which is why there’s no sense in me wasting time trying to explain something to someone when you’ve proven you’re not capable of understanding.
You obviously have no understanding of basic biology or mathematics. Without understanding what you’re talking about, you make assertions that make no sense, then claim that I don’t understand the nuances of what you’re trying to say when I correct you. You also make up half-truths and complete lies as you go along just to support your false claims which I then have to waste time to correct.
Here’s something else you don’t understand: Domain and it’s ownership (i.e. who that domain belongs to).
You talk about a domain “appealing” to a certain sex to determine belonging of that domain without even understanding how domain ownership is determined. According to you, a domain belongs to whomever something “appeals” to the most. This is false and fundamental to your entire inability to understand why religion, science, politics, business, military, etc. are male domains. A domain belongs to whomever actually controls that domain, whether it be an institution/discipline like religion, or territory, like a state or nation and not who certain aspects of it “appeals” to, as you proclaim.
This vital distinction is the reason why your whole argument, that religion is a female domain, is nonsense.
Let me give you an extreme but simple example that illustrates the point. Suppose there is a male cult leader (e.g. Jim Jones) who recruits 1,000 females whom are 100% dedicated to him and do only as he says. He asks them to do the most feminine of all tasks (cleaning, cooking, sewing, etc.) on an island all the time and to recruit more females and gives them all amenities and luxuries they could have ever dream of. He also promises they will go to paradise as long as they do exactly as he says. After his initial recruitment and instructions, he stays silent and disappears but promises to return one day. Now, many other thousands of women will also want to join this cult since it “appeals” so much to them. They are being given everything they could have ever imaged (shoes! clothes! unlimited shopping money! etc.). Since the island “appeals” to women only (and no men) and only women end up joining it and do feminine things and there are now over 5,000 women and just one man, Jim Jones. According to you, this island is a female domain. This is false: it is male domain, specifically, Jim Jones’ domain. He re-emerges one day, and with just one command, he orders them all to commit suicide and they all happily oblige since they’re all brainwashed and they genuinely believe they’re going to paradise due to their extreme belief in him. He is ultimately in complete control of all of them, and hence the domain belongs to him and he is in complete ownership of that domain. Just because the island nation setup “appeals” to women and the entire island consists of women only and they are doing only feminine things, doesn’t make it a female domain simply via “appeal”.
Ownership (“belonging”) of domain is ultimately about control, not “appeal” as you wrongly believe. The fact that a certain aspects of a topic as complex as religion appeals more to women whereas other aspects appeal more to men, doesn’t automatically make it a female domain, as according to you.
This is a fundamental fallacy in your logic.
Domain control is determined by leadership (as I alluded in my first reply to you), and leadership in religion, science, politics, business, military, etc. is almost exclusively male. Some industries or organizations have disproportionately very high amount of female leadership, managers, board executives, etc. such as fashion, beauty, girl scouts, etc. and these we call female domains as females have extraordinary influence on how these institutions run, perhaps even more than the men, but they are exceptions and not the norm.
You clearly don’t understand domain, variance and basic biology. Actually, you have very limited understanding of what you’re talking about.
If I were to analyze and dissect all of your posts, I’d end up writing a textbook. However, at this point, you’ve already proven to whoever reads these posts of your lack of understanding of the basics of so many concepts on so many levels that it just isn’t worth my time.
“The form/content dynamic is very clear. I’m truly amazed that anyone would confuse it with the theory/practice and easy/hard dynamics. Content is definition, form is appearance. A proper example of content/form in science is this: content is what science is about, both theory and practice; form is the appearance typically associated with science. For males, a scientist is someone who does science i.e. conceives theories and does research, even if they walk around in spandex, flip-flops and a clown wig and speak gangsta; for females, a scientist is someone who has a long academic title with lots of initials, wears a lab coat and has verbose speech, even if it’s all fake and gibberish; anything outside this accepted form is “inappropriate”.”
You missed the whole point of that paragraph: to actually help your false dichotomy, I gave women even more credit that you did by letting ALL of them specialize in practical science (which, by the way, can also often very repetitively “ritualistic”, superficial and many times even pointless) and the men in theoretical science (which they already naturally do). My point was that even in this biased scenario that heavily favors women to a large degree, all major breakthroughs still come from men. You failed to understand this.
Almost all men and women, who are NOT IN the field of science (99%), would also accept a person wearing a lab coat as a scientist with a long academic title with verbose speech. Suppose a scientist dressed like a clown and a fool dressed in a lab coat were interview by 100 men and women. The scientist says “I am a scientist”, and the fool spews some random gibberish with a straight face. Almost all men and women would take the fool for a scientist and the scientist for a clown. It is just the stereotype of what a scientist should look like in our society and anyone who’s not in the field won’t be able to tell the difference. Normal men out of the field are not able to discern perception from reality as lucidly as you seem to believe.
Now, men and women IN the field of science will look at things differently. In this case, most men will dismiss the fool for what he actually is, and believe the clown when he says, “I’m a scientist” but there still will be some who will accept the fool’s superficial looks. Many women will also dismiss the fool for what he is (believe it or not, they’re not all actually that dumb), but less than the amount of men that dismissed him. Fewer will accept the clown as a genuine scientist than the men. However, the disparity is not as large as you make it sound like it would be.
This disparity exists solely because merit in science (a completely logically driven male space) has absolutely nothing to do with what someone looks like, but the validity of the person’s logic and reason when researching scientific ideas. Women, however, due to their biological makeup, put heavy emphasis on how one looks simply because looks are very important to them on a biological level for mating purposes, and hence they are handicapped when separating the genuine scientist from the fool. This is a biological hack, and there’s nothing they can do about it. The entirety of their mating value is almost solely derived from the way they look, which is why they put so much emphasis on their (and other people’s) looks, which causes even the most logical of women scientists to make illogical decisions in unusual circumstances.
Here’s another biological hack, but one that works against men: Suppose you’re a dead poor young man, 22 years old, hormones at maximum production level, looking to save your life. You meet two women: one woman is a PhD, super successful, well connected in society, etc. but looks as ugly (like 6/10). Another woman is an illogical idiot, dead poor, but looks like a hot supermodel like Kate Upton (10/10). The first promises to accept your marriage proposal 100%, mate with you and promises you a luxurious life. The second, gives you only a 50% chance to accept your marriage proposal and mate with you. Who will almost all men, even given their dire personal circumstances, want to mate with? Obviously Kate Upton, simply because men are biologically hardwired to mate with the most beautiful looking girl possible. Almost all (99%) normal, healthy men (I’m excluding gay men) will all act illogically in this case. Can you blame them for that? No! It’s just the way men are programmed by nature. Heck, even a brilliant scientist, like Einstein, had numerous affairs (out of wedlock) throughout his lifetime and acted illogically under unusual circumstances.
Biology and animal instincts can cloud the judgement of both men and women in particularly difficult and confusing scenarios.
Logical decision making does not necessarily extend to other male domains, such as business which requires far less logic than science for one to be successful. In fact, many wealthy people are very stupid and dumb; they just hire smart people to do the thinking for them. People have expectations of one’s appearance and behavior based on what one’s looks. People also make judgments of one’s ability solely on how they look.
Men are not infallible to stereotyping and making wrong decisions.
Here is an example: A group of male business owners in 3-piece Armani suits and ties with spiky hair won’t give 10 minutes of their time to a brilliant male computer programmer if he’s dressed in a tie-die t-shirt and hasn’t taken a shower in a week because he’ll come across as someone “not presenting themselves professionally” and not fitting into the group of men in suits and ties at the board room table and hence, won’t be taken seriously. If the programmer starts talking in abstract gibberish explaining his brilliant idea, no one will understand what he’s saying and he will be kicked out. He simply doesn’t look like one of them and doesn’t speak the same language and will be dismissed as a fool. Their stereotyping leads them to make a wrong, illogical decision.
You seem to be stuck to the idea that men only exclusively care for “content” and women only exclusively care for “form”. “Form” and “content” are fluidic and are neither binary nor exclusive to men and women. Who built the Empire State building, Great Wall of China, every modern skyscraper, etc? Men, and they built them for other men, not women and none of these examples are remotely related to religion. Don’t you think any of those men cared for “form” on a grandiose scale, a scale far larger than any woman could ever think of?
“Religion -the institution (yet another word for you to misunderstand)- IS and has been for a long time a female domain because its principles appeal to the female mind.”
Keep telling that to yourself. Repeating a lie over and over again, unfortunately, doesn’t make it true.
Fortunately, anyone who reads these posts whoever had any inkling of a doubt will correctly conclude that religion is a male domain as I’ve proven with my logically consistent and coherent arguments throughout all my posts.
Variance correctly explains why more men have a greater degree of devotion to their religion compared to women when the institution faces a serious and imminent challenge. Also, the leadership and key decision makers, and therefore complete control, of all religious institutions almost exclusively and firmly lies with men. Hence, religion overall, is a male domain, and always has been since the dawn of time.
The underlying composition of the two sexes (being somewhat evenly distributed, given statistical tolerance) in the various aspects of the institution, is unrelated to who the institution ultimately belongs to. It’s multidimensional aspects appeal to both sexes in different ways. Each respective sex contributes to the institution in the best way they can and in many ways their contribution overlaps, given the strengths and weaknesses of their inherent biology, interests, etc.
Your poetry and dichotomies, the only way you seem to be able to think, on the other hand, don’t prove anything.
You are a highly ideologically misguided individual and your obviously blind hatred for religion and women prevents you from seeing simple truths in the world around you.
Your complete lack of understanding on many vital statistical and biological principles, arguing without understanding what you’re talking about, poorly defined definitions which you yourself don’t even understand, creating straw-man arguments, thinking in dichotomies and ramblings prove beyond any doubt that you think you’re a lot smarter than you actually are, but you’ve been exposed for being a troll and a fool before the whole world.
EDIT: Simpler examples and explanations included.
perfect answer.
Don’t, she’ll cry rape!
she’ll be right. no one’ll care.
I’ve often thought that atheism and feminism are symptoms of the same spiritual rot. After all, there are atheists who work to tear down religious tradition with the same glee as feminists who undermine the masculinity of our civilization. Many atheists are arrogant and narcissistic, just like feminists and other SJWs.
i think those atheists are angry about hypocrisy and blind faith and probably strongly disappointed in the world.
go with the times and update the religion, make it – for god’s sake – not easier to digest, but easier to not have one’s mind go up in a hell of cognitive dissonance in view of modern understandings.
thus they end up rejecting everything christianity stands for while it is only details that are problematic. everyone is born a narcissist with black-white thinking, after all.
e.g. objectivism does an acceptable job of pointing out the importance of morals without giving up reason.
it should not be impossible to make people understand the importance of classical virtues when reason is used instead of faith. the manosphere is proof of it, but it is not a coherent piece of work.
i know, i am speculating and should read the damn book.
The book is a heavy read. Not only is the Old Testament quite difficult to ponder, you can see the fallacy in a literal interpretation. The book makes reference to many men living well into the mid hundreds of years and stories of fantastic feats which clearly never happened. The Old Testament is a didatic book.
Most “atheists” are in the West are not true atheists. They’re only leftists using atheism as an instrument against religion and tradition. Any skepticism they hold comes second
In China most people are de facto atheists, but don’t go around touting it because we care so little for religion even opposing it feels like a waste of time
You are right. They are not true atheist. They are simply anti-christians. A true atheist will treat Paganism and Islam with as much scorn and ridicule as they would Christianity. But usually you just see them attacking Christianity and then making apologies to the towel heads. Those are the leftist.
Probably because most Atheists in the west were former Christians and understand it well.
With 75% of the US population believing in the imaginary friend for adults aka GOD sometimes it is difficult to take them seriously especially when they are preaching hellfire in face.
Going to Roman Catholic school cured me of a belief in God. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the good aspects of Christianity as a basic method to approach life.
Christianity only really becomes a problem when people attempt to force their beliefs on other people. This is when it becomes a force for evil rather than good.
I am a Christian, and a Priest-in-training, and I agree with you. From what I have seen, one of the greatest things to ever harm the faith was the rise of the Catholic church and it’s downfall. The entire point of being a believer in Christ is that it is completely voluntary and done on a personal level. But with power and influence come corruption, and many churches are now more interested in the trappings of ceremony and religion than they are in actual faith and souls.
The catholic church is a man-made institution, like all faiths, and therefore susceptible to the same weaknesses as men. To promote the teachings of Christ and strive to become better persons through prayer and devotion to G-d is the puropse of the Church to guide. Some lose their way.
*Of note. Most of the pedophiles seem to be most active in public schools, but I haven’t see much media attention brought to that fact.
“The entire point of being a believer in Christ is that it is completely voluntary”
Christ Didn’t Force anyone to do anything they didn’t want, he simply Gave the Word and left it up to the Person to decide, Christ did not use the Sword to Spread his Message.
Uh, yeah. Public schools are where most lesbian child molesters operate. But it’s almost like it’s hushed up on purpose. In Indiana in the early 1980’s there was a high-profile murder case involving teenage lesbians. During the investigation it came out that a wide ranging group of adult females (teachers included) were recruiting many, many teenage girls. Which is pedophilia. They even had a code word, the “NFL.” (National Federation of Lesbians) but the investigation of the adults was dropped as the case went on. If there were an organized group of men sexing up boys people would be going to prison. (where they belong.)
Do you live in the East or the West?
Correct Terry. In particular they like to use evolutionary biology as a vehicle to attack Christianity – but how they shy away from the totality of those implications! Survival of the fittest is not a concept they are comfortable with.
or they say they are part of it only to try and change and influence it like “islamic feminism” for example which tries for liberal western rights like that of swedes which would essientally lead to degenenercy and dying fertilitys which would suck in a poor country since no one wants to immigrate there and puts a burden on the few young people like in japan but much worse since they are poor
I’d say I’m an agnostic, I’d never call myself an atheist due to the fact that that wouldn’t be categorically correct, but also because atheists are rabid, intolerant, angry people who aim to hurt those who differ from them. It’s pathetic, the left preaches tolerance while destroying the life of anyone who thinks differently. Made a donation to an org that stands up for traditional marriage ten fucking years ago, you’re fired. I find that much can be learned from religion and 2000+ years of wisdom doesn’t just mean jack shit.
Really well agnostics are wishy washy mangina simps that lack the strength of conviction to believe one way or the other and honestly I respect believers more then fence sitting agnostics, at least believers even if their wrong have the courage stand for something, but all kidding aside:
Atheist / Theist = belief.
Agnostic / Gnostic = knowledge aka ( weak and strong )
So your telling me you just don’t know and have no belief one way or the other?
Believing that some things are unknowable is still a belief in a sense. One can keep running in endless circles with definitions 🙂
The correct term to classify him (as well as me) is weak atheist: a person who does not believe in god. A strong atheist is someone who believes god does not exist.
I say an atheist is only an atheist if he/she can prove that there is no god, rather than just take the position that believers and the faithful have not proven the existence of God.
Having been raised in Christianity, I say that the faithful have no faith if they cannot defend against the obvious lack of evidence of their god-man and his teachings, much less provide proof of the almighty God(s) deity(ies). If apologists can’t handle the real evidence of history, literature, and geography, then they have no real faith, but only irrational hope in a unseen, unproven, extra-natrual and supernatural force.
My reading list at the moment (beyond the Bible)…
The term “Atheism” signifies a lack of understanding as to what religion really is. Also, atheism signifies faith in Science, which in itself is what religion is thought to be by atheists: “faith”. Atheism is paradoxical, truly lacking reason.
atheist have convictions in science, based on evidence, not faith. Faith is belief without (or with very little) evidence
Atheists like to believe that, but their convictions are based on theories that are not yet been disproven. Besides atheists tend to murder alot of people when they get in power.
“Convictions” are values. Core values that any group or individual uses to center their existence and everyday actions is religion. Sorry, Johnny Boy, you are religious.
“Evidence”? Read up on Epistemology.
This is false empirically. Okay, most of what you believe isn’t based on evidence you personally have seen. Nor is it based on the “science”. For example are you in favor of trans rights? Do you know any studies on trans to see whether it is mental illness or not? My guess is that you don’t even know one study. But yet, it’s SCIENCE! Not faith. Actually no, it’s faith, not science.
Most of what you believe is not scientifically correct and if you closely scrutinized you would have to change probably 90% of your other views. Atheism is a rejection of tradition while still maintaining the popular positions of progressiveness and liberalism (of which their is little, if any, valid scientific evidence). This is not always the case, I am an atheist, and I do not hold to that. But more often then not that is the case, case in point look at popular atheist writers and youtubers. Almost all liberal, hold onto egalitarianism for dear life, and hold popular opinions.
Read Francis Bacon and Dostoevsky. Without reading & understanding the prose and fiction of either you will mistake the “tool” that Modern Science is for “God”.
Robert Frost also provides illustrations of Modern man striving beyond Science. However, if you really want travel to the bottom of the rabbit hole, read some Rene Guenon.
“atheist have convictions in science”
Your average atheist wouldn’t be able to pass a basic biology test. It’s fine if you want to be an atheist but don’t go around acting like you’re a scientific scholar just because you don’t believe in Christianity.
Science is not concerned with “trans rights” because neither “gender” nor “rights” are scientific concepts.
“mental illness” is not a scientific concept either. At the bottom of “mental illness” lies a notion of “normal”, as in “normal behavior” versus “abnormal behavior”. “normal” is not a scientific concept.
You seem to believe that everything that is called a “study” is scientific, that these “studies” are valid as long as they apply the scientific method and that there can be scientific evidence for everything, including “progressiveness” and “liberalism”. Actually, science has a very limited scope.
If you were an Atheist you’d know that Atheism does not imply a rejection of tradition.
No, this is not true at all. I base my Catholic Faith on a very solid body of evidence – so solid, that I think it takes more faith to be an atheist. In my experience with atheists, they are not so much “convinced of science,” as they are intellectual narcissists who enjoy thinking of themselves as smarter than other people. In our times, scientasticness is the gold standard of “smart,” so that is the identity they choose for themselves.
I used to be an atheist; my father is an atheist. My father got very cross with me one day when, after three hours of debate, I succeeded in proving to him that he based his beliefs on the same ground as Bible-thumpers: a vague conviction that his beliefs were true, without any real, philosophical substantiation of his beliefs from first principles. He couldn’t even give a justification for his moral views, besides “well, it’s just obvious!” He prides himself on being a scientist (a geologist) and a science-loving kind of guy. The fact that, for him, this means sneering at his intellectual equals (or betters) and obsessing about global warming, says all that needs to be said about the average atheist’s “convictions in science.”
“Normal” is precisely a scientific (or, more accurately, a mathematical) concept. Mental illness is certainly a scientific concept. It means we know how healthy brains normally function, and can identify deficiencies or problems. Only a relativistic fool would say that those suffering from Mental Retardation, Alzheimers or Cerebral Palsy are not suffering from an abnormal illness.
I gladly concede, however, that many “scientists” are so driven by agenda, that I would hate to fall in their clutches, suffering them to declare me “mentally ill” as they proceed to “normalize” my brain by the power of “science.”
C’mon, Cui, I know you can grasp nuances in words, I know you know “normal” isn’t a concept exclusive of Mathematics and I know you know we’re talking “normal” in a general sense.
Alzheimer, Cerebral Palsy and most of the “traditional” forms of retardation aren’t mental illnesses. They’re biological in nature. Biologists, geneticists and medical doctors are much more suited to identify, diagnose and treat them than “mental health professionals”. In these fields, the criterion for what is “normal” and what is “abnormal” is deeply rooted in biology, therefore in science. As you say, we know how a brain normally works so we can say when a brain is working abnormally. And that’s how organic diseases come to be.
The problem is, most “mental illnesses” have little to do with the brain or any organ. They have to do with the “mind”, the “personality” and the “behavior”, and those aren’t scientific concepts. As of today, they can’t be observed or experimented upon. They aren’t even falsifiable. They’re actually philosophical abstractions.
So how do mental illnesses come to be? By comparison with the notion of “normal”. If a child is gloomier than is considered normal, he has depression. If he likes to play more than is considered normal, he has hyperactivity. If he ‘s more impulsive than is considered normal, he has BPD. If his imagination is more vivid than is considered normal, he might have schizophrenia! Consider Little Johnny: he pays no attention in class. But look, Little Johnny can spend hours and even skip meals watching TV or playing videogames! He certainly has no deficit of attention, does he? But since the “normal” thing is to pay attention in class, Little Johnny is slapped with ADHD. But what is this “normal”? It’s a social convention. That’s why homosexuality was a mental illness one day and the next it wasn’t, with no explanation whatsoever. That’s why the psycho-cult can keep pulling diagnostics out of their asses until everything we do is a symptom of mental illness. Things are so screwed up that now psycho-priests can literally vote mental illnesses into existence.
So, sorry but you aren’t blaming this one on science.
Well, I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said here, and I hope the content of my prior reply indicated that I was sympathetic to this view all along.
That said, I do think “normal” exists on the topic of sex, and I am wary of attempts to throw it out. It is a matter of science that sex is clearly a reproductive, binary-gendered mechanism in man, and that one’s chromosomes tell us exactly what sex one really is. Obviously Leftists pull stuff out of their asses all the time, especially in “soft sciences” (and I agree that mental issues are often “soft science” issues); your post gave the impression that there was no scientific basis in regarding anything related to sexuality as “normal” or “healthy,” whereas I feel strongly that there is. And in fact, I feel that the reason why homosexuality, etc., was de-stigmatized overnight, is not so much because the science on the topic is soft, as because Leftists are willing to lie and distort and prevaricate on any topic, at will. Furthermore, I do think there are disorders of the personality… but it would not therefore follow that I approve of Leftist methods or goals in addressing them, nor that I would agree with Leftist opinions about what are, and are not, disorders. To me, there is clearly something wrong with the narcissist, the sociopath, the homosexual, the gambling addict, etc. In these cases, I think the answer is more philosophical and theological, more a matter of virtue, than strictly scientific and medical.
We agree indeed. However, let me make some clarifications.
Notice that I didn’t say “sex” isn’t a scientific concept, I said
“gender isn’t. “gender” as currently understood is a concept the
Leftist psycho-cult pulled out of their asses very recently, as it used to be limited to grammar. It has to deal with social conventions and expectations and is thus not scientific. In any case, we must be cautious not to appropriate the vocabulary of our enemies.
Now, there’s of course a concept of “normal” in science but it’s not
the same “normal” that the psycho-cult uses. When a psycho-shaman
says “Little Johnny’s behavior isn’t normal”, that’s closer to people saying “liking video games at 30 isn’t normal” or “eating your ice cream with ketchup isn’t normal” than to a scientist saying “these conditions are abnormal” or “this fetus has abnormal development”.
I’m not discarding “normal” in the general sense either. I think it’s
a critically important concept. I’m only saying it’s not scientific. And there lies the source of so many misunderstandings and bitterness between supporters of science and supporters of faith: “not scientific” doesn’t mean “worthless”. Science is incredibly useful and accurate but it has a very limited scope. It has nothing to say about what is moral or immoral. It has nothing to say about how to lead a happy life. That’s why, as you say, people with personal issues would do much better to seek relief in philosophy or faith than in the so-called soft sciences. I’m an Atheist, and when people ask me whether they should see a therapist to get relationship or parenting counseling or just because they need to take a weight off their shoulders, I say if you can’t deal with it yourself, then talk to family, talk to friends or go to church. I see churches have a better track record in getting people out of antisocial lifestyles and addiction than psychologists and psychiatrists. Don’t go to a therapist because you believe it’s “scientific” and therefore more reliable somehow. It’s a scam. Science isn’t concerned with your personal issues because it’s not in its nature to be and so far it has offered no way to deal with them. So from the viewpoint of science, the advice most psychologists provide for a hundred bucks an hour isn’t any more legitimate than what a barman provides for free.
I do agree with you, assuming that by “science” we mean the “empirical” model of science that has been standard since the so-called Enlightenment. Certainly, for that, gender and prejudicial notions of the “normal” behavior, are not proper topics. I belong to an older school, in which “science” means merely what the Latin term means – scientia, knowledge – and embraces the sum total of what can be known from reason, or from faith consistent with reason. In that sense of the term, I think that concepts of moral truth, health, normality, etc., are valid and discoverable.
And I certainly agree about getting better advice/help from a bartender, friend or priest. I used to work at a local bookstore, and the owner encouraged her husband to go to a psychiatrist because he was depressed. Within two months, he had decided that he was really a woman and left his wife and their (still young) children. She had developed a sense of humour about it, since it had been years in the past, so I asked her whether the fee was at least reasonable. That got a rather dry and knowing laugh. It really chaps my ass that these shrinks feel not only entitled to ruin peoples’ lives with their abysmal counsels, but also to charge top dollar for the experience.
Science is the complete opposite of faith. This is pretty fundamental mate.
Science is a propositional language and technological language, nothing more. Me, and other independent thinkers refuse to succumb to the determinisms of self-serving institutions. Modern Science is not as simple as 2+2=4. I suggest you read some Plato, Aristotle, and most important Francis Bacon. Bacon, out of all of the great minds knew how to trick the many with “Science”.
I’ve read all of those. I am not the many.
Atheism is just a philosophical position to the question “is there a god?”; it’s not concerned with religion at all. There are a lot of questions to address further down the road before religion even enters the picture.
Science is by definition the opposite of faith.
This paradox of yours is nonsense.
Not a #,
How do you know what you know? What is evidence? I am not being a smart ass. Please, explain. This is where “Philosophy” begins and wisdom ends.
Mike
Really? And how do you know what you know? What is god? How do you know that there is a god? What is faith? Why is faith a better method of acquiring knowledge than science? Please, you explain first. You’ve spouted a series of statements and now you throw a bunch of questions, but no arguments yet. So you haven’t even started to argue your own position and you’re already demanding explanations from the other party.
I trust you’ll have an easy time dealing with those questions, since you seem to believe that wisdom already has the answers.
You have to distinguish between a rational rejection of the existence of God and someone who uses this fact to excuse unethical behaviour.
I should clarify that I think of atheism as a rejection of any divine mystery. Certainly plenty of people don’t believe in the Judeo-Christian God, but they still believe in some greater divine thing beyond our existence and comprehension. Such a beliefs promote humility. Regardless of your wealth, power, or knowledge, there is something fundamentally beyond yourself that governs you and the rest of the universe.
Atheism is not believing in any divine mystery. If there is no divine mystery, then there is nothing fundamentally beyond our comprehension, and all that exists must be knowable by human beings. Of course, some things (such as how many planets there are in the Andromeda galaxy) are unknowable because of practical considerations, such as the limitations of current technology. However, atheists, by virtue of disbelieving in a divine mystery, believe that human beings have the innate capacity to understand everything, even if they lack the practical means of investigating it. This promotes pride, arrogance, and narcissism.
Actually we know for a fact there is a limit to human understanding. I can’t explain it but the essential capacity of data that the human brain can hold has been determined. It’s analogous to the light speed limit.
The atheists that I described would hold out hope that genetic engineering and computer technology people could someday comprehend it. Again, the divine mystery is intrinsically inaccessible to humans.
Many human capacities that we are known to actually possess promote pride, arrogance and narcissism. So your argument has no bearing on whether or not humans have the capacity to understand everything.
My argument was not about whether or not humans have the ability to understand everything. Rather, I argue that the belief that humans have the ability to understand everything, this promotes pride, arrogance, and narcissism.
Religious men founded the United States and its system of government that allows for the organic and unplanned (not understood) forces of society to shapes the country. Atheist Marxists created the totalitarian state.
Not every atheist has a rational mind.
if a belief is true, your perceptions regarding its utilty are irrelevant. The truth is the truth
I’m not sure if your having trouble understanding my comment, or just trolling. My argument has nothing to do with the truth value of atheism as I described it. Rather, it is about the utility of atheism, how atheism can affect the character of its adherents.
Atheism does not imply a belief that human beings can understand everything. Atheism is only concerned with the issue of god.
Religious people are way more arrogant and narcissistic than Atheists will ever be.
We can talk about knowledge both in terms of degree and kind. Mathematics is one kind of knowledge. Perceptual knowledge (what’s it like to experience human sensations) is another kind of knowledge. We can expand any one kind of knowledge to a greater degree by doing things like mathematics or tasting something new.
The central question is, what if there are other kinds of knowledge you don’t know about? After all, animals don’t just have a poor knowledge of math. Rather, they have no awareness that such a thing as math even exists. There could be other kinds of knowledge that we are unaware of.
Atheists believe that we are aware of basically all kinds of knowledge, and that we need only develop each kind to a greater degree. If the atheist believed there were other kinds of knowledge he was unaware of, this would allow for the possibility of divine knowledge (pertaining to divine things). If he believed this, he would be an agnostic, not an atheist,
Also, yes, religious people can be dicks too. Dickery knows no race or creed.
Mathematics is not a very good example.
In order to be relevant to this discussion, all these kinds of knowledge you mention must at least make a claim that they let us know things that exist, because it wouldn’t help your case a single bit if we could know divine things through a kind of knowledge that lets us know things that don’t exist. Mathematics has never claimed that it lets us know things that exist. It’s made clear that numbers, operators, equations and stuff don’t exist. In that sense, Mathematics is hardly a kind of knowledge but more like a tool: it provides us with ways of reasoning that help us understand things in reality; just like allegories help us understand moral issues that affect our actions in reality but there is no hare and tortoise racing each other.
Atheism does not affirm that we are aware of all kinds of knowledge. But what good is it to us if divine things are knowable through a kind of knowledge that we’re not aware of? So atheism is aware of other kinds of knowledge (in fact, atheism can be proposed in every kind of knowledge that includes god amongst the things it claims to know) but It simply rejects some, like faith, and favors some, like reason and more recently science. Atheists generally agree that the case for divine knowledge through reason is weak, and through science it’s practically impossible.
It’s more than merely being a dick. It’s about religious people who happily knock on your door whenever they feel like shoving their beliefs down your throat but get atheist teachers fired for teaching science; it’s about religious people who have countless tv channels, radio stations and publications but protest and boycott a campaign to put atheist ads on buses; it’s about religious people outlawing other ways of life whenever they can get away with it.
Firstly, to put the matter more simply, a lot of atheists are closed-minded, believing that there is no possibility of God existing. (If someone believed there is a possibility that God exists, he’d be an agnostic). The atheist believes he already knows all there is to know about the subject (that it’s all mumbo-jumbo). In contrast, religious people might have their mind made-up about the existence of God, but they don’t believe they already know everything about the subject. Religious folks pray, meditate, read sacred texts, and discuss their faith with others in an effort to continuously better know God. In this sense, religious people are much more open-minded about God than atheists. This is so critical because religion is concerned with all the “big questions” like what is the meaning of life? where did we come from? what is the nature of human beings? the world? what is this life good for? A prideful, close-minded attitude about such matters will profoundly impact in a negative way how someone lives his life.
Secondly, I agree that it knowledge we’re never aware of would be useless. However, many religious traditions from around the world treat religious knowledge as something people are capable of perceiving, but only if they open themselves up to seeing it. (This is the meaning of religious references to people having eyes that see and ears that hear, but being unwilling or unable to see and hear (spiritual things)).
Lastly, I encourage you to contemplate the nature of mathematics. You say that it doesn’t exist, but that’s only when you limit yourself to a materialist paradigm. Basic mathematics might appear to be merely abstractions we make about the material world; however, much of mathematics is discovered by mathematicians and then later applied to real-world situations later. Mathematical truth is not invented, but discovered, meaning that it already exists before mathematicians figure it out.
Reflect upon this: Mathematical truth exists, but is entirely non-physical. It has no fixed location in space, and yet it affects everything all over. In this sense, it is both everywhere and nowhere. Furthermore, it does not change over time. It is non-contingent, meaning that mathematical truth does not depend upon some external (previous) event or conditions to make it. This also means that it cannot be unmade by any external event. Because of this, mathematical truth is eternal, existing from the beginning that has no beginning, and lasting until the end that has no end. If the whole universe was destroyed, 2+2 would still equal 4.
I think it’s actually the opposite. Religious people by definition are closed-minded about god because religion is by definition closed-minded. Religion claims to have the truth about god and many other things. It has no place for questions because it already knows the answers. It has no place for doubt. So religious people might not believe that they already know everything there is to know about god, but they’re pretty sure about what they believe they know. There’s still plenty of room to discuss issues where your religion did not issue a clear-cut opinion, but you can’t discuss those where it did. For example, if you follow a Trinitarian religion you can certainly discuss with others as much as you want, but the moment you suggest god is not a trinity you’ve walked outside of that religion. The discussion is in fact not a discussion at all, as it’s constricted by doctrine, and “better know god” is defined beforehand, as there are things that you’re not allowed to know about god.
So if religion teaches the existence of god and you doubt the existence of god, you’re not religious anymore. There are of course religions that don’t have a concept of absolute truth, including some Eastern religions like Buddhism or some Western secular religions like Satanism, but they also don’t believe in a relevant concept of god so they don’t help your position.
Atheists, on the other hand, would be willing to accept the existence of god if satisfactory evidence is provided. Of course, there are some who wouldn’t because they “follow” atheism by faith, not by reason. However, even if god exists, there’s still a very long string of questions separating the atheist and the religious person.
The rules of Mathematics are not the rules of reality. Mathematics is based upon symbols and conventions that we give meaning to. You can use mathematics to devise models that don‘t reflect reality and they’re mathematically valid as long as they’re internally consistent and coherent. You could take a newborn, isolate him in some sort of “Matrix”-like chamber that prevents him from experiencing the exterior and teach him nothing but pure Mathematics, separated from any practical use. At age 20, he’d be very knowledgeable in Mathematics but he probably wouldn’t know a damn thing about reality. And if his mathematic instruction is limited to one of those “unreal” mathematic models, he wouldn’t even know what kind of universe to expect when he leaves the chamber. You say that “if the whole universe was destroyed, 2+2 would still equal 4”. I think that’s going a little too far. How do we know whether “2+2=4” is a truth by itself or dependent on the properties of our universe? If our universe operated in a different way or we moved to a different universe, would “2+2=4” still make sense? Anyway, this is a big debate and I believe it surpasses the scope of this discussion. I’ll just come forward and say I’m on the side of invention.
Suppose you are an ant that lives on a the surface of a 2-dimensional sphere, confined to 2-dimensional movement.
Suppose another ant, out of nowhere, postulates the existence of a third dimension.
What would you accept as valid evidence or proof, within your 2-dimensional perception of reality, of the possibility of a third dimension, a higher reality?
Would you think the other ant is illogical/insane just because he postulates that something could exist beyond explanation in your 2-dimensional ant universe?
If so, why? If not, why not?
You say “religious people by definition are closed-minded.” This is a stereotype that certainly some religious people fit, but many do not. Every religion has its own theological tradition that has evolved over time (i.e. changed).
You have misread my comments about mathematics, and you should re-read them (this sounds sarcastic, but I don’t mean it to be). I never said that mathematics encompasses reality. Clearly no amount of mathematical calculations can tell you what a banana tastes like.
Yes, mathematics uses symbols and conventions that humans create, but these symbols and conventions are used to express mathematical truth that already exists. (You can do the same mathematical calculations with Arabic or Roman numerals, you can use a base-ten or a base-two system, etc). Newton created the conventions of calculus in order to advance his work in physics; i.e. he developed a system to describe what was already there.
As to your last point, this goes back to the the non-contingency of mathematical truth. No set of conditions need to exist to allow math to exist. (In contrast, humanity’s existence is contingent upon the earth forming, the sun existing, gravity being not too strong or not too weak, etc). No property of space, time, matter, energy, forces, strings, branes, physical constants, or anything else allow or disallow, create or destroy, mathematical truth. Take the aforementioned things away, and 2+2 still equals 4.
I’ve actually heard this example before, and I’d do the same as I do as a man now.
The implication is that providing evidence of a 3rd dimension would be impossible or irrelevant, either because such evidence cannot be presented in a 2-dimensional reality or because a 2-dimensional being is ill-equipped to perceive, let alone comprehend it. The underlying suggestion is that evidence is insufficient to prove or disprove the existence of god so demands for evidence are useless in the end. Ah, but the thing is that your ant is only postulating! Big difference, because that’s not what religious people do. They affirm. If your ant chooses to affirm the existence of the 3rd dimension, the fact remains that it can’t prove it. So it’d certainly be illogical for your ant to believe and even more illogical to expect others to believe as well. You might say calling believers “illogical” is arrogant and insulting but they renounced logic the moment they chose to believe in something they have no evidence for and there’s no other way to call that behavior.
I don’t really get why being called “illogical” is an issue for religious people. Religions used to uphold faith and took pride in rejecting logic and reason. This trend to insert them in religious doctrine is bad for both sides. I have much more respect for someone who says “I believe what the Bible says: God created the world literally in six days and only with his words” than for someone who says “well, you have to interpret: God created a unicellular organism and then evolution happened over the course of six thousand years…”. Both are illogical, but the latter lacks intellectual integrity.
Some skeptics might accept the possibility that the divine exists but that’s still way far from shaping our lives around a possibility. We won’t make decisions based on what we deem to be the teachings of a possibility; we won’t go to a designated place to worship a possibility; we won’t give our time and resources to sustain the organization of a possibility; we won’t try to push laws to make others live by what we believe is the will of a possibility; we won’t die or kill in the name of a possibility. I don’t see how that position would need any defense at all.
Remember that you brought up the word “closed-minded”. Anyway, it’s not a stereotype. Forget the negative connotations for a moment.
As I said, religious people are closed-minded by definition. They have to be because every religion has a core set of beliefs that cannot be changed.
You say theological tradition changes. Yes, it has changed a lot. But it only does so for the lower level issues, where a clear-cut opinion hasn’t been provided. At the highest level religions only change with enormous prejudice to their identity. That’s why they much more often either split or disappear rather than change.
For example, women weren’t supposed to speak up in church. That has changed. Granted, it was mostly by social pressure, but the point is that it could change with no noticeable loss of identity because it doesn’t define the religion. There was ample room for debate. But when Martin Luther challenged the authority of the Pope, the Catholic church couldn’t change this core belief without becoming a whole different religion, so they split.
Do you think Christians can evolve to the point where they can use the Quran as if it were the Bible? Can Muslims to the point where they’re allowed to pray to Virgin Mary? Can Jews to the point where they can observe Sunday instead of Sabbath? Can Hindus to the point where they can ditch reincarnation? If they did evolve those things, would they still be the same religion?
As for Mathematics, I understand your point, I just reject it. I already gave my position and now you’re starting to repeat your position but rephrased. Our positions are complete opposites and we probably won’t advance that discussion so let’s agree to disagree on that.
Belief in a higher dimension (“God”) is definitely beyond logic.
The affirmation “there is a higher dimension” is illogical since it cannot be proven by our ant due to limitations of perception in the 2-dimensional ant universe. Conversely, the statement “there ISN’T a higher dimension” is also equally illogical since it also cannot be proven.
As a matter of fact, any affirmative statement, which can neither be proven nor disproven, is illogical.
The only logically “correct” position, as far as “God” is concerned, is agnosticism.
Interestingly, various scientific models in theoretical physics (e.g. M-theory, string theory, etc.) make use of higher dimensions beyond our perception (e.g. 11 dimensions, 10 dimensions, etc.) to help explain various phenomena (black holes, quantum entanglement, etc.) we observe in our 3-dimensional world.
Could this be evidence of “God”? Possibly. Possibly not.
Basically, they’re taking a leap of faith that these extra dimensions actually exist.
Belief/non-belief in “God” is a personal choice in the end and neither side can force their belief on the other.
Every day, I thank whoever or whatever created our universe for our existence.
Personally, I believe that the universe is infinite-dimensional and will never be fully understood by human beings.
In the end, it’s really just a matter of faith/non-faith.
I think women see religion as an obstacle to their instant gratification. They don’t like being told they can’t do something. The women I’ve met who were really into religion only used it as a cover to get what they wanted; like to hide what they were really doing in private, or to move up a social ladder to have power over other women.
I feel like this usage:
“In an age of neo-Liberal decadence”
runs the risk of being confusing. “Neoliberalism” is a often used as a term of derision by cultural marxists when referring to what they consider the ravages contemporary “capitalism.”
indeed, i was also confused about the use of that word.
Yes. I started reading and I was like: “WTF, a religious marxist on ROK?”
Belief in the Eucharist being the body and blood of Christ did not come out of hundreds of years of debates. The Councils invented nothing, simply acknowledged the traditional belief.
A secular parallel would be you saying that gravity magically appeared only when Isaac Newton “discovered” it. It was obviously there all along, just not fully described and explicated.
come think of it. it’s fascinating how much his stupid question changed our world: “why does the apple fall?”
i always laughed with contempt at it’s simplicity. yet today i see that great questions are always simple.
Development doesn’t mean change. The concept of the Eucharist was always there, but things did change. Doctrine developed through controversy. Arianism led to the development of trinitarian theology (even though you could say that it was essentially what was already believed).
Regarding the subject of the thread. I am a Catholic with a strong leaning toward the Orthodox Church. But at the same time I do have a respect for some Buddhist ideas. The samurai culture and bushido is pretty interesting.
“I am a Catholic with a strong leaning toward the Orthodox Church.”
You’re not alone. I thought JPII clamped down the jesuits and the liberation theology crowd, but apparently not enough. If Pope Francis wants to use the Church as a vehicle for socialism, and from what he has been saying lately it seems just that, then I am out.
Well, hold on a minute. I am a former Orthodox monk, who is now Catholic. I will tell you that, after extensive study, I came to the conclusion that there is no doubt the Catholic Faith is the True Faith. The current situation is so bad, because most Catholics are not well catechized and do not understand the Faith. The Church has clearly taught that there can be such a thing as an antipope (and has recognized some historical antipopes); an antipope is a man who appears or claims to be the pope, but it is clear, sometimes in hindsight, that he was not for one reason or another. The Church also clearly teaches that, though the Fathers and Doctors imagined it was highly unlikely, it was at least possible that a valid pontiff could embrace an heresy, and would thereby excommunicate himself and become an anti-pope. We are living in horrible times, and the sense of the Faith amongst the laity is so weak that, even though all the popes since Paul VI have strayed from the Faith, the Catholic laity either do not care what their duty is, do not know what their duty is, or are too afraid to do their duty. And that goes double for the clergy. But the only possible explanation for our current situation is apostate popes, at least some of whom probably must be considered antipopes.
There is no chance the Orthodox are theologically in the right, though their cultural isolation (from modernism, etc.) has allowed many of their customs to remain intact, giving a strong impression of vigour. As one who has spent a decade in the Orthodox Church, I can promise you that it is only that: an appearance.
Especially, studying the Council of Florence, one realizes that the Orthodox have no criterion for ultimate dogmatic authority. They came to the Council with the understanding that it was to be Ecumenical. The Emperor attended as well, which modern-day Orthodox say is required for such Councils (absurdly). In any case, at this Council, which they agreed was Ecumenical, they re-united with Rome and professed the Catholic Faith. Years later, they repudiated it; now, they claim that one only knows which Councils are truly Ecumenical when, after long years, you can in hindsight see which were accepted by “all the faithful.” No Council, of course, was accepted by “all the faithful.” Many Arians rejected Nicaea; there was a huge split with the Monophysites at Chalcedon; do these widespread rejections nullify those Councils?
No, the Catholic Faith is the Faith; the disastrous changes in recent times are not because the Catholic Faith has changed, but because the recent popes have not believed It (and have thus probably been self-excommunicated, though a private person is in no position to definitively judge their intentions); we are living in a crisis, which was in any event foretold by the apparitions of our Lady at La Salette, Fatima and Akita, not to mention the Bible – which warned of a Great Apostasy in the latter days (it began with the Protestants, whose humanist movement has now infiltrated even the Church). Look especially into the message of Fatima and the outrageous activity of Rome in trying to explain it all away, to get some idea of what we’re going through. I recommend Socci’s book, “The Fourth Secret of Fatima,” to learn about the whole event. Also excellent, is Romano Armerio’s “Iota Unum,” and a much easier book called “Catechism of the Crisis.”
“even though all the popes since Paul VI have strayed from the Faith”
Hello Brother, I always eagerly await your comments but I must take issue with this statement. It find it unfair as some of our greatest Popes have come since that time.
Pope Paul VI seems solid to me. His Humanae Vitae was one of the most needed documents in modern times. He did well to try to reign in the rebellious Jesuits. As far as I know all of the documents issued were dogmatically sound. The issue lay with interpreting said documents in “the spirit of Vatican II”, which is a dangerously elusive term. This, more so than anything else, led to most of the changes damaging the Church. I also remember reading that Pope Paul desperately tried to fix some of the wounds dealt to the Church under his Pontificate, but it simply became impossible in the whirlwind which was taking the Catholic world over at the time.
(Allow me to skip John Paul I)
John Paul II is, in my book, an absolute saint. He consecrated Russia to Our Lady as was required in Fatima. He fought a long battle not only with Communism (many claim his actions as contributory in the collapse of the USSR) but also Social Marxism and Aggressive Secularism. Was it not JP II which fixed the enemy as the “civilization of death”? John Paul also launched the New Evangelisation which ignited the hearts of a large chunk of otherwise lukewarm youth. His books, such as “Memory and Identity” are an absolute treasure of Christian wisdom. Also, a large number of miracles have been attributed to his intercession after his death.
I also do not see any error in the actions of Benedict XVI. He took on the gargantuan task of restoring the Mass to a more acceptable rite, something which was done despite huge opposition, often from a clueless laity. His work was cut short, but perhaps that is another discussion for another time.
Ah, Pope Francis. The Radical. The Pope who will finally “understand” the “needs” of the masses. A liberal Pope. Well, what have we seen so far? An uncompromising condemnation of homosexuality. A reaffirmation of the traditional family. No deviation from doctrine. The “Joy of the Gospel”, truly welcome guidance. I, for one, see can see no wrong in him.
I am by no means a Church expert and would very much welcome a reply. God Bless!
Care Balduuine,
Your post certainly deserves a reply. I am preparing for a road trip to Florida, and am far, far too busy to write it now. If I forget to reply buy July 10th, get my attention. You can even reply again to this message and it’ll show up on my Disqus notices. You deserve a reply and I will get one to you, when I can, if you help me remember!
Once a pontiff embraces heresy he is no longer a pontiff and is ipso facto excommunicated from The Church. We have probably not had a valid Pope since Gregory XVI in the 1800’s. The Gates of Hell (heresy) can never prevail against the Catholic Church. It’s doctrine of Faith and Morals and Dogmas can never be compromised and will be the same forever. The so called “Catholic Church” today is NOT The Catholic Church but its buildings have been usurped by pretenders and fakers and have fooled many into thinking it is the Catholic Church. the True Catholic Church still exists though but it is a very small remnant and is hidden. This whole rotten apple of apostasy and heresy goes back a long way. Please do further studies on this. Try looking into immaculata-one.com (some things he says are a little suspicious, he almost sounds like he preaches rebaptism in a couple of his points which is heresy, a conditional baptism is ok but not rebaptism) and MHFM (these guys are heretics too but they have a lot of truth just be careful looking into their stuff.)
Thanks for the reply. I will look into the recommended texts.
I have many contacts of those of the orthodox faith and a few have told me that the think the catholic and orthodox Chruch will become one again. What do you think?
It is difficult to know. My personal belief is that, after the coming crisis, we will see all the folk who claim to follow Jesus in one way or another, coming back into the fold shepherded by the successor of St. Peter. Current talk of reunion is usually based on meaningless “dialogue” and Ecumenism; even if a reunion resulted from this, it would be a false union based on sweeping differences under the rug.
At present, it is doubtful whether the Catholic Church has a valid pope. There is a de facto schism in the Catholic Church, and one could easily say that the vast majority of those who identify as Catholics either do not know the faith in its fullness (as is the case with many conservative and well-meaning, but ultimately modernized Catholics), or deliberately reject it (as is the case with many, many dissidents and liberals within the Church). At present, there is a mere semblance of Catholic authority in the Vatican, so the Orthodox would do little to improve their lot by reuniting with Francis and all the silliness he represents. How can the Orthodox approve of people using new rites, new theology, new canon law, new morals? This is utterly abominable to both the Catholic and Orthodox faiths, and is itself the strongest indicator that the “new church” is not Catholic. It is a usurper and will not stand much longer. The sad fact is that most Orthodox are more Catholic than the “catholics!”
My hope is that Russia will actually convert (to the authentic, Catholic Faith), take her place amongst the great Catholic churches of the Byzantine Rite, march on Rome and execute all the apostates and modernists, appointing a solid Catholic as bishop of Rome and Universal Pope. And sure, why not, the new pope can proclaim the Czar to be the Holy Roman Emperor.
A guy can dream, can’t he? Humanly speaking, our situation seems impossible. There will be no reunions until the crisis of faith comes to a climax and the polite façade drops. Then there will be serious troubles, but that climate, though materially worse, may be spiritually fruitful for the West in important ways. Then, and only then, will a true reunion on genuinely Catholic grounds be possible. I don’t mean to sound so gloomy, but those who are not deeply rooted in the traditional Catholic Faith, the heart and soul of Western Civilization, are missing out on the full understanding of the real depth and extent of the current crisis in the West: we live in a time where the heresy known as Modernism has set itself up as a doppelganger and usurper in formerly healthy Western institutions (including the Vatican), using the churches, schools and media that once benefitted civilization as weapons against it. Western Civilization is in her period of Babylonian captivity. There are no secular answers or fixes to the problem, which is not primarily political, but spiritual. Repentance is our only hope.
Thanks again for your input.
MURICA!!!
http://cache.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/06/fat.jpg
MURICA!!!
http://www.returnofkings.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Extremely-Fat-Woman.jpg
[quote]How dare we compare the credos of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, without coming up with superficial conclusions that have little to no more worth than neo-liberal free-thinking? How dare we dabble in affairs of the divine without having gone through the difficult and exhausting processes of theological training that rabbis, priests, preachers and imams all pass?[/quote]
HOly fuck you just reminded me of something when I first started college, It was lib art class of academic writing and the teacher was a kinda feminazi,short hair big glasses and said few leftist things.
Heres what happened.
Its a liberal college with many foreign students around the world and she wanted them to talk about “silly” superstitious or backward cultural practices(typically anything conservative or things with women).
Even though I was kinda liberal espically at the time I didnt like this.
The guy from china brought up his or the woman from iran talked about her country with the shia regime and it was such self loathing rebelion of their tradions to act western. And everyone nodding along to get a good mark and teacher piles on to tear them apart on it and make them feel its stupid.
At the time I didnt think anything of it I just saw them as white western wannabes…This coming from westernized born and raised guy.
But this is like with white liberals they chew up their western traditional culture and pick marxism and get foreigners to do it. And these guys do the same, they hate on their own people, call em backward,mysoginst,primitive,phobic,etc all in favor to be “enlighten” by western liberalism as well and go on to shame their old countrymen and culture. Its like white liberals are playing a game with the ethnics by saying be proud of your heritage but hate your culture and they convert them to marxism or feminism. They are frigging uncle toms now. They play multiculturalism to convert as many tribes as they can to their system.
Then they go on treat their own like read necks and go we arent like those backward bunch we are the typical (insert racial identity) and you should follow our narcisstic ways.
white liberal shames white conservatives and say foreign culture is more enlightened.
(newly indoctrinated)ethnic liberal shames ethnic conservatives and say western culture is more enlightened and promoting their liberal values.
and that enlighten value is socialism,marxism and feminism…basically they all look up to sweden and its nordic model.
Really feels like a conspiracy for world domination by gays and feminists.
Excellent post
Most “liberal” minorities betray their own ethnic and cultural heritage the moment they start shilling for western humanist values. Whether you live in the West or in the old country, nobody should do this. Just because western liberalism “sounds more compassionate” does not mean it’s wise or rational
totally agree.
I remember back in the day they use to call em coconuts,bananas or apples basically colored on the outside and white on the inside. All for trying to be an urban yuppie.
Its a part of the sjw case that the manosphere should discuss and learn how their culture operates and thinks. Otherwise these ethnic sjws will get support(which they do) from conservative westerners and buy their bs…that they too are finding bigotry. And as of late been seeing quite a few indian and muslim sjws and even saw 2 asian girls thats in on it.
be it western or eastern culture we should not throw each other under the bus when our local sjws attack us like “least its not afghanistan” or “we aint murican crazy” etc. The patriarchy does more.
for example Indian government is feeding the poor and bring internet access to rural people. Indian social justice feminists use poor people as a mascot to get laws passed that improve life for rich and middle class girls (like lately over half of reported rapes were found to be false), which was said by a poor village woman.
this liberal western values are just short term feel good crap over long term gain.
Not a religious man, but at this point I’ll take some down-home religious bigotry to balance out the equalism anyday
When there’s not a strong tradition of organized religion in a society, people fill the vacuum and begin worshiping even weirder things: LGBTs, feminism, Yoga, body ‘art’, hedonism, etc.
I don’t believe in the divine, but I do believe the architects of Christianity (esp Germanic Christianity) were fucking geniuses. They most likely saw a decadent society we see today and devised a strong belief system that not only met spiritual needs but shaped the culture and imposed a moral foundation aimed at keeping families and communities together.
When you talk about the evils of SJWs, feminism, weak betas, single mommy ghettos and female hypergamy, traditional Christianity was designed to address all of these things. What turns people off, myself included, is how far most churches have fallen into feminism, SJWism. They’re terrified to be politically incorrect or even judgmental now for fear of being called “bigoted”.
Eventually Christianity will need to be reinvented or something entirely new will take its place because right now most churches are simply hangout hugzones for feminists and betas.
My family is Catholic and I rebelled hard against them as a teenager. They just couldn’t force me to believe in supernatural ideas without any logical reasoning.
But my attitude towards religion has since changed. If people need icons and shared symbols to relate to each other and maintain some kind of social order than so be it. Not everybody in society is meant to be Socrates.
If I force little Timmy to go to church even though he doesn’t want to and provide no logical explanation as to why he should other than “because I said so”, then it will make him understand the importance religion plays in his life and he will want to go when he’s older.
– parent logic
May I suggest reading the likes of Chesterton, Cardinal Newman (even CS Lewis), Belloc, St. Augustine? I was once an atheist who looked down on religion as irrational. Prolonged study has led me to see that it is really the most rational, most human, most noble thing.
To be sure, not all religion is equal. Your average Bible-thumper is an idiot and knows nothing of even Christian history and theology, let alone anything broader. Who can doubt that there is an immense amount of flim-flammery masquerading as religion? But the full and nuanced Catholic Faith, as it is believed by an educated gentleman, is a complete and flawless system of beauty and reason.
Interesting, thanks for the references.
I don’t know it well enough as a system to judge but I found a lot of religious ppl I’ve known slip into believing superstition and other random stuff.
I prefer to take the scientific approach to things but I’m open to ideas. I recognize that religious institutions evolved over time to maintain hope and structure in people’s lives so I wouldn’t say that there is no wisdom or value in it.
Well, indeed, as I said: I agree with you that many religious people, especially nowadays, take what they like (mostly emotional fodder) from religion, and leave the rest (wisdom, discipline). It does tend to make the Church look less vigorous and wise than she really is.
Welcome back brother Cui!
No, it’s not.
Well, that’s a compelling argument.
Thanks, my friend. I never realized I would be missed when I gave up the ‘net (for all intents and purposes) during Lent!
Really? And where’s your argument?
“the full and nuanced Catholic Faith, as it is believed by an educated
gentleman, is a complete and flawless system of beauty and reason” is not an argument, it’s just a statement.
So I reply to a statement with another statement.
Well, my friend, I was just sharing a word with Clark Kent; we’ve spoken before in Disqus and I’ve often enjoyed reading his posts – and hopefully, vice-versa. I wasn’t attempting to give an argument, just friendly encouragement to look deeper into the question, to someone who had reason (from past interaction) to believe my opinion may have some merit.
Your comment, on the other hand, contented itself with gainsaying me flatly. It just seemed a bit sparse – almost a waste of time, even. Cui bono?
Your past with Clark is no care of mine. This is an open forum and we don’t need an invitation to interject.
I happen to wholly disagree with your comment I replied to. I think Catholic Faith is the opposite of what you say. But I will provide arguments after you provide arguments, of course. Otherwise let us be satisfied with regarding the conversation as a mere exchange of statements.
You don’t need my permission to interject, nor did I say so. I said that your barely expressed sentiment of disagreement was a waste of time, unless you had more to say. As a former atheist and bitter enemy of the Catholic Church myself, I feel fairly confident in the appraisal I came to have of her through years of extensive reading and reflecting. If you want to get into all of that, we can. And in fact, my first message to you was designed to elicit a more substantive statement, something that could be engaged. I assume you were interested in that because it is otherwise hard to understand the purpose of what you wrote – a curt disavowal that has no effect on anyone’s opinion.
I’m also waiting for something to be engaged. One argument, at least, but you seem to believe that a statement like “the Catholic church is great” is an argument in itself. It’s not. That’s the point. In order for it to be an argument, you must provide reasons for your statement, as in “the Catholic Church is great because this and that”. But you expect that I provide arguments against your statement before you do for. Well, don’t try to shift the burden of proof onto me.
Expressing disagreement is never a waste of time; it’s actually how discussions start. It’s a pity that in all your years of extensive reading and reflecting you haven’t stumbled across this basic fact of discussions.
Forgive me for my pointless bickering and my offensiveness in the prior exchange. God go with you and save you.
As we look at religious traditions for advice, one thing I always think of is the saying that “God helps those who help themselves.” If we want to end these modern trends, let’s go out and organize, sign petitions, etc. Here is one good petition. It is to end sex fetishism in Children’s tv shows (there is already a Nickelodeon show produced by a man who is bragging about putting these fetish themes into his shows):
https://www.change.org/p/nickelodeon-viacom-keep-sex-fetishism-out-of-children-s-television
Please click on it and in less than a minute you help build up a petition to look out for our kids. What will the feminists say if we are the ones standing up for children’s health and rights? All of the people in the middle won’t know what to do when they realize we actually care about kids and the hardcore feminists are the ones who hate children.
Fundamentalist/conservative religion is the first thing the Left (in all of its forms) attacks. In Russia, they destroyed as many churches as they could, in Spain- they murdered THOUSANDS of priests/nuns, in Cuba – they outlawed ALL public displays of religion, in Eastern Europe- religious dissidents were sent to re-education —- the list goes on forever. The Left wants a monopoly over official truth.
They will have to answer to Lord Jesus one day, for all of their hatred towards the righteousness of the faithful. Atheism is based upon hate, not love.
Bold and Determined, 7 Reasons Modern Western Men are Effete Weaklings
“Christianity turned it’s back on men – For men 30 years of age and under, especially on the internet, atheism is the religion of choice. Young women are still usually believers because the church still treats women well. More often that not the young men who turn to atheism are the smart ones but they are blind to the real reason they have chosen atheism. All atheists will say it’s because it’s “logical” or it’s “science” or it’s so “obvious”. What they have yet to put together is the Christian Church turned it’s back on Men in favor of “grrrl power” and sealed it’s own doom. Christianity worships women as “the better half” and those that can do no wrong and condemns men for “not raising children properly, not taking care of family properly, not manning up, not getting married” etc. You can go to any Christian church on Mothers Day and they will praise all that is woman, go to a Christian Church on Fathers Day and you will get a lecture about how Men have screwed up and how they should act better. How many times do you think a Man will continue to go to that church before he A) Quits or B) Believes it and turns into an effete weakling doing the bidding of every woman he meets.
Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world by number of conversions each year. That means former Christians are turning to Islam. And I will tell you why: Islam has respect for men. It’s as simple as that. You may even be shocked to learn that more women convert to Islam than men. Women need respect for men just as men do. Wherever there are self-respecting men, women will be there lining up. Western Christianity built that great country of ours but it turned it’s back on the people it needs the most and it will die because of that unless it changes it’s misandrous ways. If the Christian Church started valuing and respecting men, men would start respecting themselves again and they would go back to the church in waves and they would start acting like men again. The Church used to be a place a man could go to find a good woman, now it’s a place he can go to hear about what a piece of shit he is. No thanks.”
Scary as hell, but I’m afraid it’s all too true..
Religion is man’s attempt to make meaning out life and the world around him. That’s what all of them have in common – regardless of the symbols/myths. The Left wants to destroy “meaning” and make the subject omnipotent/self-justifed, hence their hatred for objectivity, values, truth-seeking.
Jesus is Lord! Who wishes to join me in praising his name?
Criterion DVDs just came out with a re-issue of Federico Fellini’s “Satyricon” – which, as it turns out, is a masterful allegory of modern decadence. I’ve seen it several times since it came out in 1969 and it gets more true to life each time.
http://i.4cdn.org/b/1435214281818.jpg
check it out, basically every jezebel, elitedaily huffpost or any other 10 things feel good article.
‘Praise the Lord Jesus! Will yo’ best friend’s sistah be givin’ up some’a that good fortune foh da Lord?’
Pure BS, belief imaginary friend is not the solution for men because your just substituting one delusional ideology ( liberalism ) for another ( Christianity ).
if anything many of tenants of this 2000 year old vampire cult aka Christianity is antithesis masculinity and quotes such as turn the other cheek come to mind not to mention plenty of insane sayings in the bible, yep a really great role model.
The authors romanticized view on Christianity distorts actual reality of what Religions like Christianity are actually about something many atheists know all to well.
Atheism is lack of belief in the supernatural and many philosophies have an atheistic component: Objectivism and Secular Humanism are two that come to mind in addition to accepting the scientific method as a core value many atheists are more likely to accept “red pill” truths more readily then most.
“Studying” is not the same as “accepting “. Similarly, “examining” is not the same as accepting. I am not a Christian but not so completely silly as to be an atheist.
Know your enemies and know yourself; in times of war prepare for peace and in times peace prepare for war.
Why study the bible at all if you just pick over it like a buffet and its not literal. You miss the whole point of the Old Testament and the new. The whole bible is about Jesus christ genesis to revelation, it is about how you me and the guy next to you where created in his image to serve him. And when we break his laws blood must be payed and it was his blood for yours and all you must do is accepts it. If you want change put faith in him, not Oprah because she will just tell you to buy her book and pray to whoever, not the doctor he will just prescribe you some drugs that cost X dollars. Not the imam he will tell you that you must kill the infidel or die trying if your Catholic you better get that last rite before you die, you had better hope the priest isn’t stuck in traffic. No salvation is believing on Jesus Christ that he died for you to pay for your sins, but you must humble yourself and accept it admit you cannot save your self. But my words fall on deaf ears, people think they control there life’s . I was thinking the other day about most people’s favorite philosopher mr nietzsche he wrote God was dead, but he lost his mind, how does one find it. Do you maintain it, and that other famous atheist who got throat cancer like out the blue.
Herein lies the problem with religion that is interpreted too literally. Someome takes it upon themselves to claim their religion is the absolute truth above all others and that it must be followed according to a specific formula to avoid some unfavorable outcome. It MUST be an all-or-nothing scenario. And it’s really tiresome.
Religion is a tool that forges societies of decent people. It is a moral compass that guides us in how we can make those societies withstand the test of time. There is knowledge and wisdom to be found in nearly every religion around the world today. That we should examine each of them and apply those aspects they teach that benefit ourselves and our communities is a virtuous endeavor that should be pursued vigorously.
Unfortunately its people such as yourself who wield religion as a tool of intolerance and ignorance that effectively drives people away from any benefits your faith might have to offer. You piously condemn those who don’t follow your particular interpretation of faith, but are careful to display the required humility by praying to your god for those “lost souls” who don’t call their god by the same name as you call yours.
Yet your religion is no more valid or invalid than many others. Not yours, or theirs can claim exclusivity in providing knowledge and wisdom. Your religion is no better equipped to answer all the questions than any other. And you also fail to recognize one rather important aspect of your own Christian religion. It had a beginning, and that beginning wasn’t when the universe was formed. There have been many gods, deities, spirits, and assorted higher powers that came before your god, with followers who believed no less earnestly than you in their religious convictions. There will be many more that follow, long after your god is resigned to myth and obscurity.
But if mine isn’t more valid and applicable then why should I follow it at all. Therein lies your problem your a whore of the mind. Instead of finding the truth you think the truth is everywhere, or you believe every religion has some truth in it. Well if that’s the case the Muslims have a point for chopping people’s heads off and Kabbalistic Jews do with pedophelia. Why did Jesus say I am the way the truth and the life no man cometh to the father but by me. If God himself came down today and said if you want to live step to the right, how would you interpret that, is that figurative or litteral. You can’t get it because your caught up on yourself and your intellect you basically want me to shut up and go sit down. But why regard you at all your just a man like me. Tell me the secrets of the universe, you dont have an original thought in your head. Why would any one follow a religion if they didnt believe it could fix there problems. When you go to the store for a part for your car you expect confidence from the salesman, will this fix my car sir, yes it will. Maybe won’t cut it ,neither will try and see, you want 100% garuntee or your money back. I’m telling you 100% or your money back and Your telling me I’m lying or I’m running a game how sir?
While most of your reply is not much more than an amalgamation of run on sentences that do you no credit in making a legible counter, I am able to determine that you’re still on the “all” side of the all-or-nothing bandwagon. So if you’ll permit this “whore of the mind” to take you up on this concept, I’d like to ask you a few questions. Since you only see absolutes in terms of your religion, I’m sure your response will be just full of sound advice.
Exodus 21:7 sanctions the selling of a mans daughter into slavery. I have a friend who’s in some financial trouble and could use some extra cash. What do you think a fair price should be for his daughter?
I am required by my employer to participate in a 24 hour on call rotation. Sometimes I’ll get called in to work on a Sunday. Exodus 35:2 causes a problem for me, though, as it states that I should be put to death for working on the Sabbath. Should I quit my job or just shoot myself in the head when they call me on a Sunday?
Lastly, I could really use some help around the house. I had planned on buying some slaves from Canada as sanctioned in Leviticus 25:44 but when I inquired as to where I might find some, the locals gave me the stink eye. Where do you suggest I buy my slaves from?
Since you have said yourself that one must accept every part of your religion in its entirety without question, I assume you’ll have some good answers. Of course, it would be disappointing to see you respond with something along the lines of religious interpretation and how these things shouldn’t be taken literally. That would be cherry picking after all, which by your standards is a huge no-no.
Lastly, I never said I had all the answers to the universe. I am also quite comfortable not having them. I do agree that religious sanctioned decapitations and pedophile behavior are despicable, but these are examples of what happens when religion is used as a tool for ignorance and hate. But since your own religion approves of slavery, isn’t your accusations against Muslims and Kabbalistic Jews a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?
Yes the bible does approve of slavery. And being a black man I am still not ashamed. I actually think of slavery as a better alternative to say locking a man up for thirty yearsfor selling Cocaine. The slavery of the bible has distinct rules which I would note did not back up the slavery of the Deep South which I am sure you are alluding to. Such as if you knock out your slaves tooth you have to let him go for his tooths sake, and a limit on how long you could hold a slave for.
The slavery I’m alluding to is ALL slavery. That you would try to suggest different “brands” of slavery exist and that your particular religon’s brand is somehow “better” speaks volumes on how truly fucked in the head you are. I’m also pretty sure that the slaves that were in the deep South weren’t saying to themselves “You know, Biblical slavery would be so much better than this Southern slavery we’re dealing with now. At least it had a good dental plan!” And if you truly are black, which I highly doubt, most other black folks would probably disagree with you. I’m sure you probably only claim to be black because on planet Fucked where you hail from, suggesting that a “better” type of slavery exists sounds better if people think it’s a black man saying it.
All I can say at this point is that yours is a cautionary tale of the supreme arrogance and stupidity that arise out of seeing the world through the clouded lens of religious absolutes.
You assume slavery has been abolished and doesn’t exist any more. I would say it does it has been improved and is more invasive. You assume your free and so do simple minded black people, what man gives can be taken away. The Chinese or Muslims could invade tommorow or our own government could take our liberty. What then we would all be under someone’s thumb as you are now. Your freedom is a myth, you have a job now but could you quit now then what are you. All your options are is to find another or maybe retire and outside circumstances could take that from you. So the bible provides guidelines for everything. That you assume are outdated. And of course according to you I must follow the PC black interpretation of everything. Because if I don’t I’m not really black. I say slavery is a role needed in society and it still exist, it is why the us government has so many prisons and we are allowing a huge flow of illegals to fill all the low paying but needed positions. And they have no rights, but I thought slavery was abolished.
Good Lord. Another article ruined by bad research.
The Eucharist IS Christ’s body, and most, if not ALL the early Churches, Catholic and Orthodox, agree on it. No mainstream Church questioned the Eucharist until the Protestants showed up WAAAAAY later on. Your evidence for it is shaky, if it even exists, because the actual Greek Christians, Catholic and Orthodox alike, believe in Transubstantiation. Jesus Himself was condemned as a cannibal by the public and HALF HIS DISCIPLES DESERTED because He refused to explain it away as an allegory. Might be because IT ISN’T.
As for Arianism, it was a minority opinion that sprung up LONG after the Apostles were gone. In fact, it was more of a compromise to those who cannot accept Jesus as God, and Arius, the priest who promoted the doctrine, not only was condemned at the Council of Nicaea by the majority of the Church leaders, but also got a knuckled sandwich from Santa Claus. His religion came into prominence amongst the barbarians in the border, while the view of Christ’s Divinity was accepted in the Empire proper. In fact, whenever barbarians like the Franks, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths try to fit in with their conquered Roman populace, they convert to Catholicism.
I am not religious, and I am certainly not a leftist. I can understand the value of using fairy tales to instill morals into children, but when adults start interpreting their holy books as the literal word of God it’s taking it too far. When a church starts asking for donations it becomes straight up bullshit. Throughout the ages religion has been used as THE tool to control the masses, it was basically the old version of PC. Today a prominent scientist can have his career ruined by saying there’s evidence that a certain gender or race might be more prone to a certain behavior, a few hundred years ago a person would be burned at the stake for suggesting that the earth might be older than 5000 years. It’s all about money and control, that’s all. Catholicism is a fine example of a group taking an existing religion and twisting it into something completely different from its original form for their own benefit. Again, I have absolutely no problem with telling STORIES to children, to help them understand the difference between right and wrong, but any grown person who truly believes that Noah was 800 years old, and built a boat large enough to hold two of every animal on earth is just as fucked in the head as any feminist or transgender. Let’s not forget there are politicians in the United States senate that go on TV and say they believe this kind of thing, and fight to have creationism taught in schools. These people have doctorate degrees from prestigious universities and are in charge of running a country. Science can not explain everything, but it does a very good job of explaining how dinosaur bones that are millions of years old are not just gods way of testing our faith. I get the point of this article, and can agree with a lot of it, western society is turning to shit and maybe it does need something to pull it all back together, I just wish it didn’t have to be a greedy church scaring people into coughing up their hard earned money with threats of eternal hellfire. For the record, it’s not just Christianity that I am against, it’s any religion that uses its power for for financial gain. I spend a lot of time in asia and have seen plenty of poor people giving their last bit of cash to the Buddhist temple hoping to change their bad luck. I’ve also seen perfectly good food rotting in the sun beside a shrine while children dig through the garbage for old rice, all while monks are using temple money to pay hookers. It’s not the “less is more” religion that all the hippy backpackers like to think it is. Its very much about social status and showing ones wealth. I don’t like the direction society is heading any more than you people do, but religion is not going to fix it, never has in the past either.
Tradition dictates we should take up the ancient religions of our ancestors. Odin’s wisdom in Havamal is supreme for a man to follow.
I’m an atheist and I dislike all religions equally. To think there is a divine being who *cares* who we sleep with, what we say and watches our every move is as silly as believing in the easter bunny. And to tell a young child they will go to hell if they don’t follow a set of rules, is nothing short of verbal abuse. I got my morals from my upbringing and common sense; not from tradition or a book.
Mentioning feminism and atheism in the same sentence makes no sense to me either.
I’m a huge fan of this site and red-pill thinking in general. I find it odd though, how a group who has cut through all of the traditional bullshit ways of thinking and mastered the art of picking up women with real-world strategies that actually work, preach so much value in hocus-pocus religion.
I’m an atheist, but feminism and atheism are connected. Marx said “The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.”. The absence of religion is in the core of marxism and feminism derives from it. While atheism is not a bad thing, it’s necessary for marxism to take over, because religion is the gatekeeper of morality and family values for most people. Unfortunately, they get lost without it. Moreover, we can learn from religion as we can learn from any fictional work (if you see it like that).
Yes, by all means.
Study religions to discover that all religions are nothing but a form of madness.
Can you substantiate your claims about editions of the Biblical text as regards the Eucharist? It obviously would not matter one way or the other, since the Apostles obviously never taught that the Bible was the sole rule of faith in any case. But still, I have never heard such a claim.
Curious to me, is that you assert it was changed in “later translations.” I often hear this accusation from people who know little about the Bible. You do know that we have no need of “translations,” that we still have the original Greek? The sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel contains the clearest teaching on the Eucharist. We have three Greek manuscripts of his Gospel from the second century; we have twelve more manuscripts from the third century. These texts all agree in every important way. There really is no serious doubt about the original text of the New Testament.
I agree, no you cannot discount the teachings and wisdom of the greats. Yes their training was rigerous but that aside, modern theological seminaries aren’t producing the same greatness and have morphed to resemble the common liberal arts degree mills in academia. They produce the mcpreachers to administer the big mcchurches of today. Neither the prophet Mohammed or Joseph Smith had the intention of starting a church or founding a religion per se. Their followers in their fanatacism made religion out of their prophet’s lucid testaments. Same with Christ. His disciples and their landlords crafted the actual dogma and made the physical churches and temples for the herds of followers. From the source unadulterated testaments and witness is worth preserving.
The first time I laid eyes upon ROK, I thought: hey, a site that doesn’t go along with the current feminazi values that are shoved down your throat through the MSM. But then, I kept reading it and it turns out to be just another Tea Party based hideaway for the ‘thanks, Obama’ nutters.
Too bad, it could have been so good.
Obama thanks you.
For all of you wondering how Islam and modernity can coexist, watch how the Turks handle a “gay pride” parade in Istanbul. Whatever their faults, Turks are sold folks.
http://news.yahoo.com/riot-police-teargas-water-cannon-stop-istanbul-gay-150820462.html
One important thing about religion and society is that it’s meant to teach women altruism. Which they don’t seem born with. People in a society agree to get along, and women don’t seem to be genetically wired that way. And it makes sense that feminists and their SJW’s fight religion any way they can- because they don’t want something out there in people’s faces that show them in a bad light.
“The very belief that the Eucharist actually does become the body and
blood of Christ is an outcome of hundreds of years of theological
debate. The passages of Scripture that seemingly leave no doubt about
Jesus’ intentions regarding the Holy Communion have actually been
altered in later translations to look that way. The earliest Greek
versions could be interpreted in another way”
Could I have links to this please? Thanks
Religion is like unrefined grain. Much effort is required to separate the wheat from the chaff, because most of it is chaff.
I don’t know how many people out there realise this, but Buddhism is not a religion.
whatever you religious people are fooling yourself! get out of here with this ridiculous penis cutting cult nonsense. get a life