Religious Fundamentalism, the biggest lie of our time

Pearl Jam and toast

dkst0426 wrote:

Yes, because we all know that teenagers worshipping is right up there on the list next to public rioting and vandalism.

Out of the all the sweeping generalizations that tend to be made in topics like these, that has to be one of the sweepingest I've read yet.

yes it is sweeping, but understand what that looks like to non-christians.

It looks like a cult.

angelica

NCfan wrote:

... the most dangerous are the ones who reject the world.

Are you so sure that the world you see is what you see? Do you know what that world is outside your opinion of it? Are you sure your own inner "beliefs" don't already have you putting your "faith" in an illusion?



""We do not see the 'space of the world', we live our field of vision projected by incoming connections from all over the brain. Since reality and its cognition are a mode of operation of the nervous system as a closed neural network, perception and illusion are indistinguishable. There is no independently existing objective reality. The world everyone sees is not THE world but A world which we bring forth with others."
- Excerpted from a lecture by Umberto Maturana, biologist


"The world of time and space is a projection."
- Robert Monroe in Omni, October '93


"There is always a triple correspondence -
(a) a mental image, which is in our minds and not in the external world
(b) some kind of counterpart in the external world, which is of inscrutable nature
c) a set of pointer readings, which exact science can study and connect with other pointer readings."
"To put the conclusion crudely - the stuff of the world is mind-stuff."
- Sir Arthur Eddington, astrophysicist, famous for his work regarding the theory of relativity.


"...The past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present."
- John A. Wheeler, theoretical physicist, currently a professor emeritus of Princeton University in New Jersey.


"Cyril Hinshelwood, a Nobel Laureate in physical chemistry has suggested that a more appropriate name for the particles (of elementary physics) might be 'manifestations'."
- Lyall Watson,renowned biologist and author


"...We ourselves can bring into existence only very small-scale properties like the spin of the electron. Might it require intelligent beings 'more conscious' than ourselves to bring into existence the electrons and other particles?"
Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle

"There is no world at large - only a description of the world which we have learned to visualize and take for granted." We live in a bubble, the bubble of our perception "and what we witness on its round walls is our own reflection."
- Don Juan [from Carlos Castenada]

angelica

Pearl Jam and toast wrote:

yes it is sweeping, but understand what that looks like to non-christians.

It looks like a cult.

What you see is not necessarily the truth. People are responsible for their actions, not your interpretation. You are responsible for your interpretation or any biases you hold.

Pearl Jam and toast

angelica wrote:

What you see is not necessarily the truth. People are responsible for their actions, not your interpretation. You are responsible for your interpretation or any biases you hold.

Yep.

But you have to understand the other side as much as that side needs to understand you.

Imagine how ridiculous it would look if you were an atheist.

NCfan

angelica wrote:

Are you so sure that the world you see is what you see? Do you know what that world is outside your opinion of it? Are you sure your own inner "beliefs" don't already have you putting your "faith" in an illusion?



""We do not see the 'space of the world', we live our field of vision projected by incoming connections from all over the brain. Since reality and its cognition are a mode of operation of the nervous system as a closed neural network, perception and illusion are indistinguishable. There is no independently existing objective reality. The world everyone sees is not THE world but A world which we bring forth with others."
- Excerpted from a lecture by Umberto Maturana, biologist


"The world of time and space is a projection."
- Robert Monroe in Omni, October '93


"There is always a triple correspondence -
(a) a mental image, which is in our minds and not in the external world
(b) some kind of counterpart in the external world, which is of inscrutable nature
c) a set of pointer readings, which exact science can study and connect with other pointer readings."
"To put the conclusion crudely - the stuff of the world is mind-stuff."
- Sir Arthur Eddington, astrophysicist, famous for his work regarding the theory of relativity.


"...The past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present."
- John A. Wheeler, theoretical physicist, currently a professor emeritus of Princeton University in New Jersey.


"Cyril Hinshelwood, a Nobel Laureate in physical chemistry has suggested that a more appropriate name for the particles (of elementary physics) might be 'manifestations'."
- Lyall Watson,renowned biologist and author


"...We ourselves can bring into existence only very small-scale properties like the spin of the electron. Might it require intelligent beings 'more conscious' than ourselves to bring into existence the electrons and other particles?"
Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle

"There is no world at large - only a description of the world which we have learned to visualize and take for granted." We live in a bubble, the bubble of our perception "and what we witness on its round walls is our own reflection."
- Don Juan [from Carlos Castenada]

No I'm not so sure. But that is all the more reason to follow the creed "to each his own" and not force a religious belief on others. Who really knows what is right in that respect? That is why it's called "faith".

dkst0426

Pearl Jam and toast wrote:

yes it is sweeping, but understand what that looks like to non-christians.

It looks like a cult.

A lot of things look strange and undesirable to us upon viewing. How much would one care to find it about it? The amount of knowledge and understanding is in inverse proportion to the type of generalizations that get made.

Pearl Jam and toast

dkst0426 wrote:

A lot of things look strange and undesirable to us upon viewing. How much would one care to find it about it? The amount of knowledge and understanding is in inverse proportion to the type of generalizations that get made.

I know what you're saying.

Cmon, you know how it is if you do indeed live in my state

I'm pretty experienced with Christianity.. even went to a church day care for a few summers when i was smaller where they had a service with us every day.

But it honestly seems like a cult to me sometimes. Just a very popular one.

But anyway, i was just clarifying what I thought that guy meant.

dkst0426

NCfan wrote:

There is a lot I could write on this, but I will just some it up like this...

I admire people with very strong faith. Understand that the younger you are, the easier it is to sustain a strong faith.

But with a strong faith comes the challenge to understand that the world is larger than religion. And so religious people must work to fit their views/actions into society, not the other way around.

This is something that young and strongly religious people are ignorant about - and in some cases shielded from. It's with age that the world truly starts to collide with your faith.

Some people outright reject their religion when this happens, others learn to balance the two - but the most dangerous are the ones who reject the world.

That's what they said about Jesus, too, and that's whom I've chosen to put my faith in as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult. I appreciate your thoughts on faith, but as you would challenge a faithful Christian to understand that the world is larger than their religion, I as a Christian likewise challenge you to understand that what we believe in asks us to look at the world outside our church doors and respond by being IN the world, not OF it.

inmytree

dkst0426 wrote:

That's what they said about Jesus, too, and that's whom I've chosen to put my faith in as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult. I appreciate your thoughts on faith, but as you would challenge a faithful Christian to understand that the world is larger than their religion, I as a Christian likewise challenge you to understand that what we believe in asks us to look at the world outside our church doors and respond by being IN the world, not OF it.

good for you...if it makes you happy, great...but don't be upset when I don't subscribe to what you are selling...

NCfan

dkst0426 wrote:

That's what they said about Jesus, too, and that's whom I've chosen to put my faith in as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult. I appreciate your thoughts on faith, but as you would challenge a faithful Christian to understand that the world is larger than their religion, I as a Christian likewise challenge you to understand that what we believe in asks us to look at the world outside our church doors and respond by being IN the world, not OF it.

I guess it might surprise you that I am a Christian, how about a doubting Christian... but I am well aware, as I was raised in a strict Southern Baptist church in rural North Carolina.

I don't understand the distinction you are trying to make saying "being IN the world, not of it."

dkst0426

inmytree wrote:

good for you...if it makes you happy, great...but don't be upset when I don't subscribe to what you are selling...

1. It makes me more than happy.
2. Likewise, don't be upset if Christians don't subscribe to why you're rejecting what we live (not "sell").

dkst0426

NCfan wrote:

I don't understand the distinction you are trying to make saying "being IN the world, not of it."

We live as part of this world. That's a physical fact and a given. How we are called to be different as Christians is to make choices and live a life that runs counter to what the world places a pedestal on. An example would be socioeconomic status, or wealth, or fame.

inmytree

dkst0426 wrote:

1. It makes me more than happy.
2. Likewise, don't be upset if Christians don't subscribe to why you're rejecting what we live (not "sell").

1. all the better...I'm serious...
2. It doesn't matter to me what Christians think about my "rejecting" of anything...I don't really care, you live your life, I live mine...and we can all be happy...right....?

surferdude

Cosmo wrote:

I don't know if Fundamentalist relegious beliefs are the problem... like, if someone wants to live their life according to the exact tennents set forth in a holy book... I'm cool with that.
It's when HIS fundamentalist beliefs are interpreted to MY life... that's when I have a problem with it. If his beliefs call for my behaviour to fit his approval or if his beliefs call for my destruction... then, yeah, he's going to be in trouble because I'm not going down without a fight.

I don't often see where any fundamentalist tries to compel any one to live like them, at least in North America. There may be a lot of finger pointing and telling but no compelling of action.

I think we have problems with how our beliefs should and do shape our governments. We all want our governments to some extent reflect our views. Currently there seems to be a lot respect for a clash in ideaology when one of the ideaology's is based o religious belief or tenets.

angelica

Pearl Jam and toast wrote:

Yep.

But you have to understand the other side as much as that side needs to understand you.

I do try to understand the "other side" rather than judge them based on how things look. Judging without asking questions, and without listening to the answers to the question is about judging based on bias and one's own imagination.

If you think the behaviour in question looks cult-like, that tells me about you and how you think and what you think, not about what the other person is doing in their faith.

angelica

NCfan wrote:

No I'm not so sure. But that is all the more reason to follow the creed "to each his own" and not force a religious belief on others. Who really knows what is right in that respect? That is why it's called "faith".

Oh, of course. I'm all for respect for one another's beliefs.

I merely challenge the concept of it being dangerous losing touch with "the world". I say we all see the world based on our own beliefs and what the majority agrees to, and not on what is really there.

angelica

surferdude wrote:

I don't often see where any fundamentalist tries to compel any one to live like them, at least in North America. There may be a lot of finger pointing and telling but no compelling of action.

I think we have problems with how our beliefs should and do shape our governments. We all want our governments to some extent reflect our views. Currently there seems to be a lot respect for a clash in ideaology when one of the ideaology's is based o religious belief or tenets.

I agree.

Cosmo

Now, it isn't too often that NCFan and i agree here... but, i think a lot of attacks on him here is because his views on Fundamentalist Christians. It's the word 'Christians' that got him in trouble because a lot of Christians get all wound up and offended when they hear the word 'Christian' used in a negative light. I believe he is speaking in Fundamentalist terms... and trying to equate it to the Christian religion that most of us are familiar with.
I believe he is talking about the Christians you see on T.V., on those Sunday morning evangilist television programs that are always asking for money. You should only be offended if you ARE one of these, 'Say Yeeeeaaah-ah!' Christians. The ones that can be pursuaded to believe that a 90 foot tall Jesus threatened Oral Roberts with death, if he didn't raise 10 Million Dollars by a certain amount of time. Or you must feel compassion, or at least an understanding for the fundamentalist Christians in the order of the Ku Klux Klan. They are Christians too, you know?
And yeah... I agree with him here... I think those people are a little loose in the head. I don't think Jesus would ever threaten a guy for ransom... and I'm pretty sure he was 6'1" max. Probably more like 5' 9". People this easily pursuaded can be ordered to do all kinds of crazy shit... from shooting doctors to drinking the poison Kool-Aid to sweeping through Germany, exterminating the Jewish scourge. I can see why he finds them scary... the potential for creepiness is there.
The Christian faith, like all other religions, is riddled with splinter groups of fundamentalists and puritan lunatics. You would think that the majority of good Christians would try to distance themselves from these fringe religions, instead of coming to their defense. Same as you would think that the moderate Muslims would reject the fundamentalist Muslims that go around blowing up people. But, I guess, if you are willing to accept even the fringe elements of your Christian faith, you MUST then understand why moderate Muslims do not condem the acts of their radical wings.
I know NCFan can speak for himself... I just thought I toss him a lttle hand here.