Church losing its grip...

BuffyBot

Because I believe that religion has a detrimental effect on society and that it promotes ignorance, hatred and piety.

Hardly all it does though, is it?

If to take people's faith away, you better have something superior to replace it with, and quickly, because otherwise you will end up with chaos.

Manach

Well, I find day-time TV has a pretty mind-numbing opiate effect on me.

mrhankey88

Because I believe that religion has a detrimental effect on society and that it promotes ignorance, hatred and piety. If I could remove religion from the face of the earth, I would in an instant.

And who says the devil is not working his evil on this earth. You will certainly go to hell. Your evil words should be banned and you should be publicly named and shamed.

Zillah

mrhankey88 wrote:

And who says the devil is not working his evil on this earth. You will certainly go to hell. Your evil words should be banned and you should be publicly named and shamed.

Are you just trolling? Most of your posts seem to be randomn pro catholic hateful drivel.


And I say the Devil isn't working his evil on this earth. I am.


EDIT: Typo

mrhankey88

Are you just trolling? Most of your posts seem to be randomn pro catholic hateful drivel.

Im trying to defend my counrty against traitors like you who wants it's destruction.
Are you from Ireland? Are your parents Irish? Are you catholic?

ArthurDent

mrhankey88 wrote:

Im trying to defend my counrty against traitors like you who wants it's destruction.
Are you from Ireland? Are your parents Irish? Are you catholic?

so let me get this straight - only those who are irish, of irish decent and catholic are entitled to an opinion? How very broad minded of you....

Zombrex

mrhankey88 wrote:

Im trying to defend my counrty against traitors like you who wants it's destruction.

You might want to look up the definition of the word "traitor"

Man I hope you are trolling :rolleyes:

Zombrex

mrhankey88 wrote:

Your evil words should be banned and you should be publicly named and shamed.

Careful ... your heart seems so full of Christian love you might have heart failure :rolleyes:

RainyDay

Just to get back on topic - it's not just a question of religious instruction within the school. School admissions policies are a huge issue in Dublin where (typically) supply of school places outstrips demand.

Schools with a religious ethos are able to enshrine religious discrimination by setting an admissions policy which prioritises certain religions (and effectively bans those of non-mainstream or no religion.

This really concerns me, and I do believe that there is scope for a constitutional case to overturn this.

The Corinthian

Gurgle wrote:

Apparently the number of Catholic secondary schools is on its way down, and imo it can't happen fast enough.

So Ireland is finally becoming an independant country, as the church loses its deepest foothold in Irish society ?

While I certainly support the separation of Church and State, I do think it’s probably time we grow up and stop playing Guelphs and Ghibellines because whatever harm the Roman Catholic Church may have committed, it’s also done great good and certainly cannot be blamed for all of Ireland’s ills either (as increasingly seems to be the fashion).

As a child growing up in Catholic Ireland I specifically remember being repeatedly told how the perpetually backward economy was as a result of 800 years of British oppression. Actually, most of Ireland’s problems were apparently as a result of 800 years of British oppression. By the late eighties people weren’t swallowing this one any more.

Then suddenly it dawned on us that all our ills were all the fault of the Roman Catholic Church, all along. Go figure - how we could have gotten it wrong all that time.

I wonder whom we’ll blame next? Not ourselves is my bet.

ferdi

The Corinthian wrote:

While I certainly support the separation of Church and State, I do think it’s probably time we grow up and stop playing Guelphs and Ghibellines because whatever harm the Roman Catholic Church may have committed, it’s also done great good and certainly cannot be blamed for all of Ireland’s ills either (as increasingly seems to be the fashion).

As a child growing up in Catholic Ireland I specifically remember being repeatedly told how the perpetually backward economy was as a result of 800 years of British oppression. Actually, most of Ireland’s problems were apparently as a result of 800 years of British oppression. By the late eighties people weren’t swallowing this one any more.

Then suddenly it dawned on us that all our ills were all the fault of the Roman Catholic Church, all along. Go figure - how we could have gotten it wrong all that time.

I wonder whom we’ll blame next? Not ourselves is my bet.

post of the year tbh

solas

corinthian wrote:

As a child growing up in Catholic Ireland....

I was thinking the same thoughts.

elvenscout742

I think a bad economy is something that is rarely enough blamed on the Church, especially with the way the economy's been going of late. Having been born around the birth of the Celtic Tiger, I can't really remember anyone complaining about a bad economy, though.

Sleepy

Of course I don't believe that relgion is responsible for all evils (though many have been in their collective names), just that it's nothing more than self-delusion and I don't think that lying to oneself can ever have positive outcomings. Every chuch or religeous monument I see repulses me because I can't help but look at it without seeing the opportunity cost of it's being built and maintained in terms of the unnecessarily dead.

Sleepy

BuffyBot wrote:

If to take people's faith away, you better have something superior to replace it with, and quickly, because otherwise you will end up with chaos.

What kind of chaos? I don't get what you're saying at all...

BuffyBot

If to take people's faith away, you better have something superior to replace it with, and quickly, because otherwise you will end up with chaos.

Why do you think so many people follow the various religions? Because they give them a belief structure, and a moral framework to follow.

If you hypothetically removed those tomorrow (most importantly the second aspect), you would end up with a world in chaos.

BlitzKrieg

society tends to be built by the alternative method. Us vs them. You define yourself by what your not and what you have and what THEY dont.

We define ourselves as democratic, free, logical, civilised. We are not Terrorists, fanatics, oppressed and so on.

We are Irish not American and vice versa

More then any other force religion allowed this binding within a nation.

We are Catholics NOT Muslims, Jews etc.

the effect is a form of social structure. Faith has always been considered a binding force in religous soiciety.

Removing this is believed to hcause a breakdown on social order and the binding that is the centre of most nation states breaks and the nation could fall apart.

alot of this is theory though, because its not a common event.

solas

Salaam alaikom!

Sleepy

Makes no sense to me tbh. I don't see why religion is needed to have a moral framework or belief structure. As an agnostic I have both.

To answer your question, I believe that people follow religions because they're either stupid, delusional or afraid. None of which are a good reason to follow something imho. Most followers of a religion are born into it. Children accept what their parents tell them without question and by the teenage years when they no longer do, they've already been indoctrinated into whichever faith their parents followed. There are, of course, a large number that throw off beliefs based in this stage when they become old enough to think for themselves.

At this stage, people choose to believe. Either because they're too stupid to question what they've been taught since childhood or because they'd rather ignore common sense than accept that afterlives, deities and magic, while comfortingly easy answers to presently unanswerable questions, are completely unfounded and irrational beliefs.
[/off-topic]

Unless someone can present a decent argument as to why any single religion should have a say in the running of anything other than their own organisation in any country (and I don't think that Vatican City can be counted as a proper country), I can't see the point of continuing this thread.

solas

Agnostic:
1.
1. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
2. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.
2. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.

sleepy wrote:

To answer your question, I believe that people follow religions because they're either stupid, delusional or afraid.
Either because they're too stupid to question what they've been taught since childhood or because they'd rather ignore common sense than accept that afterlives, deities and magic,
I don't see why religion is needed to have a moral framework or belief structure. As an agnostic I have both.

Yes, your wonderful moral framework just shines through your postings.
how can you reconcile these two points? As an agnostic is neither comitted to believing or not believing, yet you profess to the latter. That means your athiest.

many people choose to follow religions for the spiritual aspects they present.

Unless someone can present a decent argument as to why any single religion should have a say in the running of anything other than their own organisation in any country

I don't think anyone here would like to see any religion as anything other than a spiritual guide, the Church does not "run" Ireland, nor America or any other country, you get to vote for your leader and his moral conduct is based on his own life experience.

That has to be the most insulting and ignorant post I've read on the subject so far, whereas most people here can seperate the organisation from people, it seems you are quite content to attack the people and not the organisation.
Yes, I'm sure the world would be a better place if people like you were running it sleepy.

BuffyBot

Makes no sense to me tbh. I don't see why religion is needed to have a moral framework or belief structure. As an agnostic I have both.

You do, and that's great - bully for you. A lot of people though have their faith as their moral framework or belief structure. So if you removed that, what have they got left?

To answer your question, I believe that people follow religions because they're either stupid, delusional or afraid.

And I'm sure they would say some of same things about you. It's amazing that someone who claims that religion is the cause of so many bad things in the world can be just as intolerant as some religious zealots - seeing any irony here?

Zombrex

solas wrote:

I don't think anyone here would like to see any religion as anything other than a spiritual guide, the Church does not "run" Ireland, nor America or any other country, you get to vote for your leader and his moral conduct is based on his own life experience.

Don't be so naive Solas.

Religious leaders have always instructed the followers of that religion how to behave, including how to vote in elections, and as such politicans have always courted and made promises to the religious leaders that can deliever the most votes. These promises are in the interests of the religious groups not necessarilarly the wishes of the actual people of the country or area. It leads to corruption and hypocracy. Look at the AIDS crisis in Africa. The various Christian Right groups in American pretty much decide the election every 4 years. Hell, even poor old Jimmy Carter came out as "born again" to win the election, and then was set upon by the Bible belt groups because he was not keeping his promises to be right wing with relation to religion.

All a religious leader has to do is say something is evil or sin full and they can control the populations views on them. All they have to do is question the moral weight of a political candidate to seriously harm his reputation, or say that someone is a moral person to seriously boast their reputation.

The Corinthian

Sleepy wrote:

Makes no sense to me tbh. I don't see why religion is needed to have a moral framework or belief structure. As an agnostic I have both.

One word - dogma. What differentiates the moral code imposed upon Society by religion and the individualistic approach is exactly that.

Of course, what is wrong with following your own moral code? We could agree upon some nice basic principle such as “do unless your actions harm another person”, but that’s where human nature starts to kick in. In economic science, the first axiom of utility is that consumers seek to maximise what they have - i.e. all other things being equal, we’ll take as much as we can. The same happens in morality, as long as our moral code justifies an action (or inaction) we’ll happily go along and so if we can interpret our moral code to justify what we want to do (or not do), then all the better: Must the harm be direct or does indirect harm count? Is a little bit of harm excusable? And what is a person anyway? You’d be surprised how easy it is to morally justify anything.

And this still assumes that every individual can agree upon some nice basic principle in the first place - which is as likely as herding cats. Otherwise, everyone could have his or her own, potentially radically differing, version of morality.

Religion, on the other hand, is not that flexible. Be it Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or whatever it amends itself far more slowly and is far less open to interpretation than some fuzzy personal view, on the basis that it’s origins are divine - and you can’t argue with God at the end of the day, after all. As such it gives us is a more stable, if conservative, moral framework - which ultimately is nothing more than the rules that Society requires to allow us to cohabit peaceably.

And that’s why religion is needed, regardless of whether you believe in the mumbo-jumbo.

The Corinthian

Wicknight wrote:

All a religious leader has to do is say something is evil or sin full and they can control the populations views on them. All they have to do is question the moral weight of a political candidate to seriously harm his reputation, or say that someone is a moral person to seriously boast their reputation.

That’s a bit simplistic. Religious groups certainly have influence in Society, but so do lots of other groups and interested parties, be they big business, mafia, specific ethnic groups or whatever. While I wouldn’t underestimate the influence of religion, I wouldn’t overestimate it either.

Hell, even poor old Jimmy Carter came out as "born again" to win the election, and then was set upon by the Bible belt groups because he was not keeping his promises to be right wing with relation to religion.

And practically every US president in the last fifty years has also claimed Irish roots, but I don’t see you or anyone else claiming that the Irish run America

solas

Don't be so naive Solas.

I'm not being naieve, I'm being realistic. Corrupt organisations are the result of corrupt people. I do not believe Religions are corrupt, only people. I could say the same for the American Government. As an institution it is neccessary, but not corrupt, it only becomes so when those who operate it become corrupt and abuse the power granted to them.

Look at the AIDS crisis in Africa.

There are many other crisis in Africa which should be spotlighted too.

Zombrex

solas wrote:

I'm not being naieve, I'm being realistic. Corrupt organisations are the result of corrupt people. I do not believe Religions are corrupt, only people.

But what are western religions except for people. Leaders and followers, that is what defines western religion.

solas wrote:

it only becomes so when those who operate it become corrupt and abuse the power granted to them.

Exactly, except it is part of western religion that people follow their leaders and do not question them even if they abuse the power granted to them.

Put it another way, can your local priest be completely wrong? can the Pope be completely wrong? can Jesus be completely wrong?

solas wrote:

There are many other crisis in Africa which should be spotlighted too.

Are there many other crisis in Africa that are going to kill 1 in 8 people in the next 10 years that is being made worse by the teachings of the Catholic Church?

The Corinthian

Wicknight wrote:

But what are western religions except for people. Leaders and followers, that is what defines western religion.

Overly simplistic so as to fit your argument - religions are complex beasts, be they Western or otherwise. They include traditions, ritual, philosophy, history and temporal power or wealth; all of which temper the behaviour of those religions.

Exactly, except it is part of western religion that people follow their leaders and do not question them even if they abuse the power granted to them.

If the Dali Lama were to abuse his position, what would happen?

Put it another way, can your local priest be completely wrong? can the Pope be completely wrong? can Jesus be completely wrong?

Can Buddha, Allah or Yawveh be completely wrong? The Easter Bunny has been know to screw up upon occasion though.

Are there many other crisis in Africa that are going to kill 1 in 8 people in the next 10 years that is being made worse by the teachings of the Catholic Church?

And if the Roman Catholic Church reversed it’s position on condoms and people continue to die, who are you going to blame then? TBH, as an analysis for why the HIV problem in Africa is so rife, Roman Catholic Church is a rather convenient whipping boy. No pun intended.

solas

wicknight wrote:

But what are western religions except for people. Leaders and followers, that is what defines western religion.

religion: A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
In Christianity followers look to the spiritual teachings of Jesus.

Exactly, except it is part of western religion that people follow their leaders and do not question them even if they abuse the power granted to them.

I think thats just hype, when you were growing up and people went to mass on sunday, do you not remember people bitching about whichever particular priest at any given time? People are not stupid, they take the basics and work with that and most christians would undoubtedly place Jesus teachings over any religious leader (the Pope)

Put it another way, can your local priest be completely wrong? can the Pope be completely wrong? can Jesus be completely wrong?

Yes, Yes and..well, do you remember the story when Jesus went into the temple and turned over the tables of the money changers and yada yada?
Jesus was wandering around doing his thing when he came to a place called bethany, he was sorta hungry so he went and found a "fig tree" but it didn't bear any "fruit" ( the fig tree is an analogy of the jewish church) so he cursed the fig tree and said, may no one ever eat your fruit again.
Then he went to the temple and turned over the tables and got rightly pisseded off with the people there, he said they had turned the church into a "den of theives" which sort of upset the current teachers and priests. But the people knew he was right, he was proclaiming that the church was corrupt and believed that people should not look to them for instruction. When he left the church the discples noticed that the fig tree Jesus had cursed had died and withered, and Jesus said "have faith in God".
I don't know if you will catch the drift of the story, but the parable could as easily reflect the current state of the church. Those who follow the teachings of Jesus, understand that faith is not something that is bought or sold, he did not put his faith in the church leaders at the time. There could be a lesson in that somewhere.
but sure..he could have been wrong.

Are there many other crisis in Africa that are going to kill 1 in 8 people in the next 10 years that is being made worse by the teachings of the Catholic Church?

well..I dunno, how many people did the 1984 famine kill or the war in rawanda?
Why don't we blame the scientists who haven't found a cure for aids?

Zombrex

The Corinthian wrote:

Overly simplistic so as to fit your argument - religions are complex beasts, be they Western or otherwise. They include traditions, ritual, philosophy, history and temporal power or wealth; all of which temper the behaviour of those religions.

Yes, and nearlly all western religions I can think of include the idea of teachers (priest, Popes, Iatolas (sp?) etc) and followers. Are you denying that?

The Corinthian wrote:

If the Dali Lama were to abuse his position, what would happen?

I am not saying that eastern religions are any better or worse. I am talking about western religions because that is what we have experience with (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).

The Corinthian wrote:

Can Buddha, Allah or Yawveh be completely wrong? The Easter Bunny has been know to screw up upon occasion though.

Is that a yes or no?

The Corinthian wrote:

And if the Roman Catholic Church reversed it’s position on condoms and people continue to die, who are you going to blame then?

It is not about blaming people, it is about saving lives. If the RCC reversed its position I would think "thank god, this might save some lives"

Zombrex

solas wrote:

In Christianity followers look to the spiritual teachings of Jesus.

In certain Protestant religions they look solely to the teachings of Jesus as described in the bible. The vast majority of Christians look to teachings of wisemen (priests, popes, etc) who explain the bible to them. Catholics weren't even supposed to read the bible up till about 150 years ago when it because acceptable.

solas wrote:

People are not stupid, they take the basics and work with that and most christians would undoubtedly place Jesus teachings over any religious leader (the Pope)

Solas you seem to have a rather unique philosphy of christianity, that seems very personal and not relient on teaching from any external source other than the Bible. I would imagine you are Lutherian, definitly Protestant. But the Christianity you speak of is not the Christianity that the vast majority of people in the world follow. I wish they did, but the simple fact is that it isn't

solas wrote:

well..I dunno, how many people did the 1984 famine kill or the war in rawanda?

Not 1/8 of the entire population of the continent. Some areas of Africa 1/2 people are HIV positive

solas wrote:

Why don't we blame the scientists who haven't found a cure for aids?

Because those scientists aren't telling the people that using contracption to protect yourself is sinful.