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Faith in the value of the way of caring. Don't conflate faith and religion.
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Originally Posted by Matadora
The way of caring is a personal choice...it has nothing to do with faith.
Either you cultivate love and compassion for yourself and others, or you don't.
Sitting around having faith does not automatically cultivate the above traits for yourself or others.
It takes a lot of mental work.
Why would you cultivate caring and love if you didn't have faith that doing so had value? It can seem counter-intuitive to show love towards others, including those who are being unloving. But if you have faith that, ultimately, loving others has the power and potential to positively transform both the giver and the receiver, you're willing to put in the work.
I know it sounds woo woo to you guys who want to attribute it to these man created gods.
We are born with these traits...which are not only unique to humans.
The man created gods that I have read about especially the Christian created god are not about love. Only about control and conditions.
The Christian God as presented in the Bible has got to be the most unpleasant characters in ALL FICTION writings…this fictitious God is Jealous and proud of it. Petty, vindictive unjust, unforgiving, racist and an ethnic cleanser urging his people on to acts of genocide.
This man created god is not about love at all.
I don't believe in a God that is contained in a book, or in a religion. A God that is within all of us, on the other hand, makes sense in my view.
Why would you cultivate caring and love if you didn't have faith that doing so had value? It can seem counter-intuitive to show love towards others, including those who are being unloving. But if you have faith that, ultimately, loving others has the power and potential to positively transform both the giver and the receiver, you're willing to put in the work.
Common sense tells me that cultivating love and compassion has value for myself and others.
It's plain and simple common sense to me.
Has nothing to do with faith.
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Originally Posted by Pleroo
I don't believe in a God that is contained in a book, or in a religion.
Neither do I.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pleroo
A God that is within all of us, on the other hand, makes sense in my view.
I would never attribute love and compassion as being a god that is within me....these are simply innate traits that we were born with.
I would never attribute love and compassion as being a god that is within me....these are simply innate traits that we were born with.
I don't have a problem with that. I simply believe that the "innate trait" that we are born with is, in some way, connected to the consciousness of the God who is love.
the book has enormous moral lessons on humility fidelity and purity well worth reading.
LOL there is so much garbage and darkness in the Bible, it is not worth anyone's time reading it.
Why read that when you can find tons of modern day books as well as reflecting on the history of the world if you need moral lessons. There are many good books that are not filled with such horrid and disgusting stories as found in the Bible. No thanks I have no desire to permeate my consciousness with such vile nasty stories.
Amazing to me that anyone would need moral lessons. It's simple common sense.
Religion cannot in any way be the answer to the question of moral truth.
The simple fact that all the scriptures were written by people, who by virtue of their placement on planet earth, had little to no access to scientific knowledge or even common sense. They lived during a time that their world view would be considered today to be very narrow and unworldly. These people knew nothing of the facts that are now relevant in today’s world in the 21 Century. They knew nothing about the origins of life, the relationship between the mind and brain, they did not even know that mental illness actually existed in humans. They knew nothing about DNA or viruses. Nothing about computation, technology or even electricity. None of this is in scripture. They had no idea why people became sick and died.
Our worldview today is vastly different than it was 4 centuries ago. In stripping ecclesiastical authority of its credibility on factual matters, in turn casts doubts on its claims to certitude in matters of morality which is great for women equality, gay equality, abolishing slavery etc.
It does away with all the stupid myths that are permeated by various religions.
The worldview that guides the moral and spiritual values of an educated society today is the worldview given to us by science vs. Iron Age Iron Age peasants who didn’t know that the Earth orbited the Sun…therefore it’s natural that science is inconstant with those claims that were based on ignorance.
Humans have the ability to make the world a better place by getting rid of the vile, awful, immoral, works like the Bible.
Are you referring to showing love to people who commit harm to others...such has Hitler?
Then in this case you rely on faith to love him?
Is this what you are saying?
We all have harm done to us along the way, and we all do harm to others. Hitler is certainly an extreme case of that, but I was thinking of the average Joe/Jane.
I'm not sure what you mean by "relying on faith". When loving others is counter-intuitive to my instincts for self-preservation (particularly in an emotional sense), then having faith that making the effort to love them will have value for all concerned, helps me. Is that what you meant?
Fair enough, you're touting the opinions of an obsessive Mormon-hater. Still, it's good to know it isn't your words. But why even quote the Mormon obsessed part of his rant? Clearly you have a very high opinion of a man who is hopelessly blinded by religious bigotry.
It just seemed very odd. The OP said they are skeptical of the Bible. A healthy amount of skepticism about the absolute purity of the Bible is commonplace in the Christian world today. It is common among many very traditionalist sects, just as it is common among newer less orthodox sects. The issue of textual inaccuracy (or the lack thereof) of the Bible is an issue debated through the whole of Christianity. So it seemed very irregular for one of the first respondents to say/quote, "Yes, Mormonism is false and contradictory because ..." The OP wasn't bringing up Mormonism. You bringing Mormons into the discussion for no apparent reason comes across as somebody with an overpowering need to bash their religion at even the barest of opportunities. Leaving the Mormon-focused parts out what you decided to quote would have made a huge difference there.
There is a great deal of difference between stating Scripture is "reliable," and stating that it is inerrant and infallible. Inerrant meaning without error of any kind, and infallible meaning it can't contain any wrong spiritual teaching.
Neither Wallace nor his most famous opponent, Bart Ehrman, promise inerrancy, and even Wallace has a totally differing view of "infalliblity" than do fundamentalists.
Here is a take from a "christian" reviewer on a relatively new book entitled Bart D. Ehrman and Daniel B. Wallace in Dialogue: The Reliability of the New Testament (I quote from the "favorable" review of Wallace):
Quote:
Wallace does an excellent job at defending the reliability of the New Testament to Ehrman. He does an apt job of addressing Ehrman while first pointing out their areas of agreement. They agree that 1. The handwritten copies of the NT contain a lot of differences. 2. The vast bulk of those differences affect virtually nothing. 3. They agree that what they think the wording of the original text was almost all the time.4. Agree on several well-known or controversial passages (e.g. Mark 16:9-20; Jn. 7:53-8:11; 1 Jn. 5:7; Mk. 1:41) 5. They agree that orthodox scribes occasionally changed the NT text to bring it more into conformity to their own views.
Wallace further points out in reference to Ehrman's views on textual criticism, "But one thing is clear: Bart sees in the textual variants something more pernicious, more sinister, more conspiratorial and therefore more controlled than I do (p. 29)." Therefore as Wallace points out, Ehrman concludes that the message of whole books has been corrupted in the hands of the scribes and the church. The text was corrupted and conformed to the scribes own notion of orthodoxy.
In reference to Ehrman's analysis of the field of textual criticism, Wallace points out how what Ehrman's is accurate overall. He notes though, "The only problem is, this is the right analysis, but the wrong religion (p. 37)." (aside--Wallace apparently disagrees with Ehrman's religion or lack thereof, rather than his analysis)
Wallace further addressed the issue of all the variants among the manuscripts and in his discussion points out the different categories that they are broken into. Textual critics can most of the time easily detect where the scribal errors are in the manuscripts. Wallace points out how less than 1 percent of the differences are "both meaningful and viable (p. 41)."
Since Wallace points out he agrees with Ehrman's assessment of between 300,000 and 400,000 errors, then just 1/2 of one percent equals a minimum of 1500 potentially serious additions or subtractions---that's out of a total of just under 185,000 words in the NT.
So while I, personally, agree that the percentage of meaningful errors may be small--they are not so insignificant as to be ignored.
And translation errors are on TOP of textual errors--all impacting the ability of anyone to be 100% certain of the meaning of any substantive part of the NT.
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