Stephen Hawking dead at 76

I'm not a religious person but saying it's bullshit it's stupid. It's obvious you cannot prove any of it, religion is about faith mostly and you cant condem a person for having faith.

Wrong. Judaism and islam were pretty pacific (and we are forgeting hinduism and budaism). It was the romans who always wanted to be the most powerfull who began to use catholism to wage war on everything. And muslims began to radicalize their religion long after its creation. At the beggining it was all about peace and thats why it expanded so much in the mideast.

Also i think the conflicts that are assumed to be caused by religion are just political. I dont think any jihadist actually believe they are going to heaven if they do a suicide bombing. They are just in a political and territory war.

 

Sure, it might be for those in charge, do you think every day people who choose to believe are in it for the power? no they're in it for the piece of mind it can bring.

A lot of your description of why Catholicism is bad seems to relate a lot to the dark ages? I don't particularly understand why you think a completely different world is relevant to a discussion on how it impacts modern society. People are smarter now & it's pretty unlikely you'll see any kind of event like the crusades again, since it's all political beliefs that people seem to be willing to kill for these days (which is just as ****ed up as the crusades were)

Unfortunately extremists are still a thing, & that's always going to be a problem with anything that people can base their way of life off of, where people are going to feel like refuting their belief is to refute their way of life which can lead to some pretty horrible events. But a good start to eliminating that is to not mistreat people because of their beliefs, be they catholic, muslims or even nordic (mostly a jest, though theres still some out there) I don't give money to any sort of church, likewise for majority of other people i know who follow a religion

Well stop looking at it as which 1 is right/none are right, & people are taken advantage of, sure there are people who go to deep, donating all their money to a church & the lot. But for the most part a lot of people are a lot happier because of the purpose in life they feel they're given due to religion.

Something extra to note, Atheists these days seem to incite more hate than any other religious person i know, this isn't to say all atheists are incapable of accepting others or are bad people/whatever. It's just that hating other people due to their beliefs & values is a trait that exists well beyond religion & it's unfair to blame a natural human characteristic on religion.

 

Well the pacifistic religions like budhisim is definitely among my favorite religions largely harmless, with some decent general philosophy that I largely agree with but none of It's teaching requires the believe in Buddha or karma, and are just good general rules to life.

As for my quoted statement I don't know a ton about the originator of buddhism so I cannot speak to what their motivations may of been, you may be right this could be an exception to most and lack the typical motivating factors in the creation of a religion, I wouldn't be surprised as I was generalizing

I really cannot fit Islam into the pacifist religion along side Buddhism, at least not at the face value of their scriptures

Edit ----
A question to themacca, I'll assume you've seen the matrix.

No wrong answer to the following question as I can agree with the reasoning of both answers.

Is it better to live happily in ignorance of the real world as a battery inside the matrix, or live in the real world struggling to survive.

 

Have you even looked at their scriptures? The Quran says nothing about war and conquer. It's says things just like the bible about how to live respecting others and stuff. Like i said it was long after its creation that the jihadist used it as an excuse to wage war. And they could do it because the Quran was in classic Arabic and the language was dying so it was really hard to translate meaning they could translate however they wanted.

Im not even religious but i dont like people shitting on Islam. You gotta hate the fanatics brain deads not the religion itself.

 

I have seen the matrix yes, & i think yes it would be live in the real world rather than a controlled simulation of life.

I don't however believe that choosing religion is the equivelant to the blue pill (or the red pill whichever is which). My life is not dulled or controlled by any means because of my own religious beliefs.

Please understand that for me (and a lot of others), we don't feel that we've gimped our lifestyle or whatever, we live in a way reflecting that our lives truly mean something. All of our decisions & eventually we're rewarded because of the way we lived, & i feel thats the same for all those i care about who have died. Personally if i woke up 1 day thinking my life was just existing because a random scientific anomaly happenned millions of years ago & thats all, no purpose no reason I'd find it very difficult to accept some of the Bane Shift life throws at me sometimes & i'd probably be well past rotting in the ground already.


For further clarification as well, in case there are any assumptions. I do not believe in

• Universe revolves around earth
  
• Earth is the only planet with life
  
• God just decided we exist & we do, evolution did actually happen
• Flat earth
  
  

 

I have looked into the Quran, read i'd say about a quarter of it plus various random scriptures that got thrown at me, plus mine was an English translation so something could be lost in translation.

keep in mind I DO NOT think the generalist practitioner of Islam is the same as a Jihadist, I just don't think Islam is a pacifistic religion.

Islam promotes peaces among it's own practitioners, but is very vocal in it's scriptures about non-followers and the not so kind opinions on them an how to treat them, now the general defense to that is you need to be a priest to under stand the scriptures properly....well not much I can say to that so I stopped bothering to question it further.

 

ah the meaning of life, that is the age old questions, everyone must find their own answers to that one.

to me the thought that life has culminated in my temporary existence is quite a divine thing in itself, in a vast universe with nearly infinite numbers of combinations of planets, at least one combination inevitably resulted in a scenario capable of sustaining life, and as such here we are, and with that billions upon billions of seemingly random events has resulted in my existence on this planet for a temporary amount of time to enjoy the fruits of our luck in the universe the odds are incredible to get this specific outcome, though like flipping a coin a million times, regardless of the odds to reach the particular result you will still end up with a reasonable outcome.

my existence is my own, my goals my own, my purpose decided by me, my actions responsible only to me to be judged by my peers as all would expect, I hide behind no deity and lay no claim to being superior to any other person on this planet as we are all equals as far as two people can be equals anyway, my life is undefined and is what I make of it, if I see a problem i won't wait for god to fix it I will fix it myself.

Life does suck at times, an it's great at others, our place in the universe is challenging, it's damn challenging at times, an thus we should be proud of our ancestors for getting us this far and we should do our part to continue it, humans are every problem on this planet, and they are every soloution, they destroy and they create, we are an amazing existence that have struggled their way up from the mud to get here, and should not let anyone tell us otherwise....or you know a magic wizard did it i guess...

death is an interesting subject for me though, I think logically with my position I should be most afraid of death, I mean that's that really, curtain falls and my life ends, but believing there is nothing gives me an odd peace about it, I mean I'm sad that I won't get to continue finding out what is next for this world like a story i'll never be able to finish but the actual part about death doesn't bother me, I've lived my life without regrets I would change nothing in my life and when my life ends well i'll go knowing I did what I wanted with my life, I never had any misconceptions about living forever so my time spent has been doing exactly what I wanted to be doing and improving the lives of those around me and to me that's the most any of us can do, true hell will be facing those last moments with time wasted and numerous regrets.

 

I call it bullshit, you call it faith same difference

Yes I can.
a lot of these people filled with bullshit condemn others for not having bullshit.
It seems like you are wrong a lot.

 

You are free to believe anything you want, just dont call bullshit on someone else believings. I mean you can do it but that just makes you the same as those fanatic brain deads

 

bullshit.

 

what IS your opinion of the treatment of the muslim minority in Myanmar, the discrimination against followers of sects of buddhism other than the main one, and the sexual abuse of young children by monks in monastaries?

largely harmless?

 

Nope but if i had to pick one religion to rule the world it would be Buddhism, I'm aware that all religions are bad, just of them all Buddhism seems the least harmful.

I mean if you exclude the crazies like scientologists who just want your money, most talking about legitimate religions

 

you should pick zoroastrianism as it will likely extinguish itself within a century or two.
or if you can take historical sects pick one of the christian ones that didn't have sex.

 

The no sex part is why I wouldn't pick any Christian sect, I'm assuming I'd need to live in that world and given full power Christians have proven to suck all the fun out of the world.

 

There are many fake christians who spouse falsehoods or read the bible incorrectly, mostly by lying to themselves. I believe you are refering to those.

That being said, true christianity is correct. Religious people do not represent God. Niether does the pope. God is represented in this world solely by the Holy spirit.

 

hey man, bullshit.

 

I didn't said that. I said the complete opposite: No person or group of people represent God. Only the holy spirit represents God.

Also, Christianity is the foundation of our freedoms.

 

Define your made up crap or I am going to asume the holy spirit is what your fellow crazy people call "the good feeling humans get when they get worked up about something in a group"

In which case that is EXACTLY what you said.

as in your nutterbruthers are going:
"I feel good when I PRAIZE THE LAWD in a group that must be TEH HOLY GHAST! ( representing and also being somehow god) showing me my religious ideas are right Oh LAWD!"
while on the other side of the planet people are having the same good feels when they go to communist rallies or burn a witch or whatever you want

so this ghost thing you insist is a real thing is doing a Firking awfull job.
or
it's bullshit.

 

think you're talking about a divine encounters or other moments where people are "touched by god", which have been proven to be easily reproducible and simulated, faith healers use a similar practice in their con work.

I believe he's talking about the concept of the holy trinity, it's been awhile since my religion school days but at it's core they believe it's a splinter of god, similar to jesus as the son, to get an exact definition of it is tough though as the various sects don't really agree on it.

as has been proven with faith healers and the like it's all a matter of lieing to yourself till you believe you've had a divine encounter, it's easiest to perform in large groups like churches or sermons, where most of the people involved come pre-convinced and are trying to find any hint of god, much like hypnosis the willingness of the participants is what's required for it to work.

 

then how does this bullshit you explained ( thank you calisk) represent god?
because now it seems like it doesn't actually represent anything.
which might be a step forward.
but that is still making it ...