de-conversion technique

[Medicine*Woman]

surenderer: This discussion seems to have turned to religion and homosexuality so let me ask you this.....If there was no religion are you then telling me that homosexuals would be accepted as normal into society? that seems to be niauve (sp) thinking because everyone knows that its human nature to dislike anything different than yourself.....thats been the root cause of racism, sexism etc.....not religion......religion is just an excuse used to promote immature ideas.If there wasnt any religion those bent on promoting these ideas would find another excuse :m:
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M*W: I believe that christianity has promoted disparity in the world. In the pagan world before christianity, everything had its own place in society. Diversity was welcomed and honored. Christianity propagated hatred and bias, and we are still suffering because of its influence. Fortunately, christianity is dying worldwide, and diversity is becoming more accepted, as I believe it should. Human beings would probably still have had some innate differences in each other, but I believe they would have been more acceptable than the horrors we've had because of christianity -- the holocaust, the witch burnings, the inquisition, not to mention all the other evils that came out of christianity. We are all interconnected together as one body and one soul (energy), but it is christianity that has taught us to be devisive.

 

[Michael]

This discussion seems to have turned to religion and homosexuality so let me ask you this.....If there was no religion are you then telling me that homosexuals would be accepted as normal into society?

It really depends on the society
- Ancient Greeks considered homosexuality to be the highest form love
- Alexander the Great promoted homosexuality and was himself a homosexual
- Many native American Tribes accepted homosexuality as normal, but they weren’t allowed to be warriors
- I’ve been told that homosexuality is quite acceptable in KSA, albeit behind closed doors.
- It was certainly acceptable to the Samurai of Japan.

that seems to be niauve (sp) thinking because everyone knows that its human nature to dislike anything different than yourself.....thats been the root cause of racism, sexism etc.....not religion......religion is just an excuse used to promote immature ideas.If there wasnt any religion those bent on promoting these ideas would find another excuse :m:

Now this goes to human nature – It is human nature to find oneself attracted to people that look like similar; however, at the same time we are repulsed by people that smell like ourselves.
In this way we are attracted to other people that have similar genes to ours and thereby multiply these genes – and this is exactly what the genes “want” but will resist having incest because of the similar scent.

I do agree, if there is no religion or is a religion people will always rationalize why they think this or that is morally correct. And that may or may not be OK. I mean it is up to individual societies to determine how they want to conduct themselves amongst one another. The nice thing about this is it can change as the society itself changes – and is really perfectly natural.

However, when it gets put in a book and that book is unfortunately taken as the words right out of a Gods mouth - then these “ideals” are promoted for as long as the religion is promoted, which may be a long time, and whomever is the craziest schizophrenic is usually a “prophet” from God (as they seem to be attuned to the voice of the Gods – [it‘s true I see them talking to God all the time downtown]) and so even weirder shite gets put into these Books Of God and passed down for millennia.

 

[Silas]

surenderer: This discussion seems to have turned to religion and homosexuality so let me ask you this.....If there was no religion are you then telling me that homosexuals would be accepted as normal into society? that seems to be niauve (sp) thinking because everyone knows that its human nature to dislike anything different than yourself.....thats been the root cause of racism, sexism etc.....not religion......religion is just an excuse used to promote immature ideas.If there wasnt any religion those bent on promoting these ideas would find another excuse :m:
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M*W: I believe that christianity has promoted disparity in the world. In the pagan world before christianity, everything had its own place in society. Diversity was welcomed and honored. Christianity propagated hatred and bias, and we are still suffering because of its influence. Fortunately, christianity is dying worldwide, and diversity is becoming more accepted, as I believe it should. Human beings would probably still have had some innate differences in each other, but I believe they would have been more acceptable than the horrors we've had because of christianity -- the holocaust, the witch burnings, the inquisition, not to mention all the other evils that came out of christianity. We are all interconnected together as one body and one soul (energy), but it is christianity that has taught us to be devisive.

I have to say, M*W that your first statement is nonsense. In pagan times xenophobia was absolutely the norm, as it still is today in many ways if you consider the general attitude against Islam in the West these days. Jesus may have been no great shakes as a Messiah, but, assuming he did exist and that he did say at least some of the things attributed to him, then he was a philosopher of outstanding originality. His extension of the concept "love your neighbour" to include everybody that you did not personally know was an astonishing departure from the norm. I will absolutely not deny all the crimes that have been committed in Christianity's name, but it seems evident to me that the enlightened all-inclusive attitudes that you and I are used to is, in our part of the world, down to the influence of Christianity - because of the ideas which it has engendered and fostered, while not necessarily holding to them entirely itself. Our concepts of equality are very far from the default way of thinking (just watch kids at play if you don't believe me) and I believe they have an underpinning of ideas that only became possible at all thanks to Christianity. It's very easy to knock Christianity for all the bad that has happened (much of it would have in any case), but to claim there was no good that resulted ignores an enormous swathe of socio- and psycho-history.

 

[Joeman]

Jesus may have been no great shakes as a Messiah, but, assuming he did exist and that he did say at least some of the things attributed to him, then he was a philosopher of outstanding originality. His extension of the concept "love your neighbour" to include everybody that you did not personally know was an astonishing departure from the norm.

Nothing Jesus said is actually philosophically original. Loving your neighbor was one of a law from the Torah. Love God and neighbor were already commandments written in Torah. He just said those are his two favorite ones.

I will absolutely not deny all the crimes that have been committed in hristianity's name, but it seems evident to me that the enlightened all-inclusive attitudes that you and I are used to is, in our part of the world, down to the influence of Christianity - because of the ideas which it has engendered and fostered, while not necessarily holding to them entirely itself. Our concepts of equality are very far from the default way of thinking (just watch kids at play if you don't believe me) and I believe they have an underpinning of ideas that only became possible at all thanks to Christianity.

There is nothing inclusive or fair about Christianity. Christians offers great diversity only in conformity. You have to believe the same thing they do and think the same way they do. If you don't believe the thing they do, they are extremely exclusive.

It's very easy to knock Christianity for all the bad that has happened (much of it would have in any case), but to claim there was no good that resulted ignores an enormous swathe of socio- and psycho-history.

Everything good thing that Christianity try to accomplish has an agenda - to convert everyone else.

 

[Godless]

Deprograming a theist?.

Now that seems like a noble task, but almost damn near imposible to attain. I've not convinced my own mother yet; she became a deist instead of a full fled Catholic because of me, I've showed her and spoken to her of the atrocities commited by the Catholic church, I've yet to convince her that a supernatural deity is unlikely to exist, and at her age, I let her be.

My sister on the other hand is still a church going Catholic, I've engaged her very lightly, though I don't see the point of arguing.

The deprograming has to be volitional, they have to have doubt, so in esence you could show the discrepacies of the bible, but you also have to lead them to other literature in philosophy, I didn't become an atheist overnight. I began to doubt religious rhetoric after a preacher made a false claim; "That one could catch the AIDS virus from sitting on a toilet seat, after an infected person had sat on it". By that time I had no computer, it was before the internet was available, however the Surgent General of US, concluded the only ways to catch the virus was intrevenously or sexually mixing bloods. Thus I concluded that the preacher had no idea what the hell he was talking about. That began "doubt".

After two years of much turmoil, and philosphic personal studies, hystory of religious atrocities, I began to call myself an atheist. But I had the volition to learn, an open mind to new ideas, and a quest for truth. However with most theist; You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Godless.

 

[Joeman]

I don't expect to deconvert anyone over night. All I try to do is to lay the "seed", and some day they might decide to water the seed themselves.

Christian fundies are more fanatically, but actually I think they are easier to deprogram than a liberal. All you have to do is to show them that God didn't write the bible. A lot of Chrisitan fundies say they will no longer believe if they see just one contradition in the bible. In that case I get really excited and lick my chops. Liberals don't see the bible as the word of God in the first place, and they only believe in their experience or communion with God. That makes things more difficult. In order to deprogram a liberal, you have to convince them that their communion experience are all delusions.

Liberals are less of a threat by far because they don't convert others and most of them believe in the seperation of church and state and vote for liberal candidates.

 

[Silas]

Nothing Jesus said is actually philosophically original. Loving your neighbor was one of a law from the Torah. Love God and neighbor were already commandments written in Torah. He just said those are his two favorite ones.

You can hardly hold up Judaism as a paragon of inclusivity! And you can hardly deny that if the world has been influenced by Jewish ideas, this is entirely due to Christianity.

There is nothing inclusive or fair about Christianity. Christians offers great diversity only in conformity. You have to believe the same thing they do and think the same way they do. If you don't believe the thing they do, they are extremely exclusive.

Again, I wasn't really talking about modern day Christians, or at least American Christians, and I wasn't talking about Christianity as a valid way to worship an putative Supreme Being. I was simply talking about the concepts of sisterly love and universalism which proselytising Christianity implanted as a seed idea more effectively than any other philosophical system has ever done, giving rise in the second half of the 20th Century and the opening of the 21st to what we in the West are pleased to call our liberal society. The fact that the liberal anti-xenophobic, anti-homophobic anti-disablementphobic society has finally arrived in recent decades is, of course not remotely due to Christianity, which has in the last two centuries contributed principally to the retention of those bad traits - on that I would agree with you entirely. But I stand by my assertion that we even have concepts of inclusivity and equality is due primarily to the influence of Christianity on our culture. Without the influence of the West those concepts would still be entirely unknown in the Middle East, in Africa and in the Orient, which is why we're not going to ever be successful in trying to inculcate a democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan.

(Before you correct me on those last points, prior to the 20th Century neither China nor Japan ever acted, internally or externally, as if Buddhism had inculcated ideas of equality between human beings - they both retained feudal systems far longer than we did.)