Hevusa, when are you going to make things right with yours?

The first century Christians were full communists. The Church functioned as a socialist state easily for its first 500 years until the Chalcedon split made it a bit more difficult for effective administrative management. I agree with you that religion should not be focused so heavily on the after-life or the next one, rather religion is supposed to be about clearing out the baggage, fears, angers, and hostilities about this life in the present. Life presents a lot of unforseen circumstances of the dice roll, and people's feelings get hurt and scars run deep. True religion is better than Freud at dealing with these issues, and teaching people to learn to live within the limits and parameters of this reality, and learn to accept humility and the fact that life is at many levels completely outside of our control.
Also, you mentioned charity, you were aware that to this day, even in the post-religious/post-modern era, religious charities still are the single largest sources of aid and assistance across the world and even across America. Could they be doing better? Of course, but lets not discredit the good they are providing for millions of people.

I wouldn't say that a belief in God is an indication of a lesser intelligence. I know some very intelligent Christians. I suppose i just wish they'd apply it to something a bit more useful, that's all.

I already have. Maybe it is time you stopped running...

I agree completely, that is why I, like Paul, like to ask Christians the big questions, but as it was mentioned before, the rightist political movements are fleecing religion in order to subject the masses, much like the early Protestant movements of Europe, which cared not about the theological debates, but honestly about skirting the tithes and taxes of the land-owning Church. Protestant preachers and political leaders generally wanted to replace the political and legal authority of the Church in order to subject the masses to their own levies, and has our society full of murder, rape, and war benefited any from their attempts?
Christians need to up their game, but then again so do we all.

You might not, but a scientific study does...

lulzy.

I had a flashback to Luke Skywalker leaving Degobah too soon.

That's philanthropy, the decision made by those who have to provide for those who have not and is no substitute for working towards a situation where there is no need for one group to rely upon another to survive. You ask what they could be doing better? Directly campaign against a system that causes poverty to begin with, rather than try and make life better for those stuck in it.

Well said.

Yeah, and the statistics may or may not speak for themselves. I'm dubious about ideas of intelligence being this quantifiable entity that we're able to gauge with an IQ test or some other experiment. The thing is, once we start pulling the whole religion versus science thing we end up with an irreconcilable mess that only ultimately serves to gratify both sides. that's why i prefer to equate religion with the (equally unquantifiable) field of philosophy: as a way in which we might try and understand the world we live in.

But if we are going to take scientific evidence as any kind of barometer then surely we'd need to know the nature of the religious society in which those questioned lived. A position of disbelief to someone in Utah may simply be a sign that they go against an orthodoxy, which could be considered a sign of intelligence. But then it could be said that a person who lives in Minnesota who supports the Chicago Bears exhibits similar qualities and I doubt whether many people would argue that Bears fans are inherently more intelligent than Vikings ones.

Ding, ding, ding, ding!!! Very well said.
In those "non-theist" countries I mentioned with free health care and free education it is not even necessary for churches to help.

this may take an 8th Ecumenical Council, perhaps they can hold it somewhere neutral to the issue like Greenbay ;)

damn...i don't feel like reading 3 (more) pages...but it's probably hevusa sounding more like a twat.

wtf. wasn't this not suppose to turn into a religion debate.

The answer is YES! dont bother

Defending a lie is hard on the "believers" it seems. It must suck to have your logical mind understand that your "belief" might be complete fantasy/bullshit.

Reminder: "God" and "The Flying Spaghetti Monster" are on the same level of reality. If you think otherwise you are not an honest person.

yer "God" isn't the same as their God.

You really have a thing for that spagetti monster could'nt you have been more creative with it?

NOW LEAVE THE THREAD

im not debating now cause my ass is goin home

May my imaginary god bless you Hevusa and take the hate from your heart

i GIVE you the utter orgasmic pleasure of HAVING THE LAST WORD

That doesn't really matter now, does it? That is the whole point in naming it the flying spaghetti monster. Man, no wonder this is hard...

It doesn't matter if you define "God" like traditional religious texts on earth. It doesn't matter if you define "God" as "energy" or the whole damn universe and everything in it itself, or anything in between. It is all fucking hearsay. "God" could just as easily be something like the damn flying spaghetti monster or not exist at all. 0% objective information can be given about "God" no matter how you define it.

http://www.venganza.org/

The best part about ignoring someone is I just get to decide what I think they said. I can insert whatever bullocks I imagine hevusa saying in.