UK readers?

[WantonWitch]

You're asking me how something weird happened? Just because its my head and my thoughts, it doesn't mean I can make any more sense from it than you can.

Good morning Plas Not taking over the world today ??

 

[Plasmacaster]

Good morning Plas Not taking over the world today ??

nope. taking over the garden.

Already my hands are sore and have a few nettle stings on them. Mind you I finally planted the three new conifers around the second pond.

 

[Plasmacaster]

In the bible doesn't it say something along the lines of 'Thou shalt not worship graven images'? These being things that draw worship away from God.

So why is it that Catholics worship a woman who gave birth to Jesus?

 

[zukethecuke]

In the bible doesn't it say something along the lines of 'Thou shalt not worship graven images'? These being things that draw worship away from God.

So why is it that Catholics worship a woman who gave birth to Jesus?

We (yes, we) don't. Venerate, love, praise, admire. But not worship. A common misunderstanding.

 

[Plasmacaster]

We (yes, we) don't. Venerate, love, praise, admire. But not worship. A common misunderstanding.

OK. But it certainly does seem to be a common misunderstanding. I have a lot of problems with religion in general, but Catholocism more than most. So if its any consolation you've cleared up one of the big points that are stopping me converting.

There's still the problem I have with the moral control that I believe any organised religion puts over its members. Still, that's my opinion and Im not going to claim that its any better than yours.

I always find it difficult to talk about my opinions of religion without offending people.

 

[Plasmacaster]

On a seperate point, UK people will no doubt have seen the newest Comfort advert about the motercyclist being hit and covered by the Comfort fabric softener.

The thing is, its the female character that manages to get him soaked and yet she says 'Oh no Darren, He's gonna knock the stuffing out of you!'

I think its a duty of an individual to look after the people they care about, what I REALLY dislike is that she just automatically assumes that even though its her fault, he's the one who will get the punishment. What happened to equal rights?

 

[WantonWitch]

OK. But it certainly does seem to be a common misunderstanding. I have a lot of problems with religion in general, but Catholocism more than most. So if its any consolation you've cleared up one of the big points that are stopping me converting.

There's still the problem I have with the moral control that I believe any organised religion puts over its members. Still, that's my opinion and Im not going to claim that its any better than yours.

I always find it difficult to talk about my opinions of religion without offending people.

Mornin' Plas


Try thinking of religion as a set of morals. It's basically what they all do at the heart of it, teach you how to live your life in a way which causes the least amount of pain and stress to other people, at least that's the way it's supposed to work.

 

[Plasmacaster]

Mornin' Plas


Try thinking of religion as a set of morals. It's basically what they all do at the heart of it, teach you how to live your life in a way which causes the least amount of pain and stress to other people, at least that's the way it's supposed to work.

Let me clarify first, I believe that Religion should be a seperate entity to a belief in your chosen deity(s). Religion is what is built by man around the faith that the majority of the human race have in their deity, it is a man-made entity and therefore is fallable. Fallability includes the religion taking money, waging war or just bothering people who would rather be left alone in the name of their god. But don't get me wrong, if you believe in a god then that's OK with me, its Religion i have a problem with.

WW, in my opinion religion exists as a way of removing freedom. It takes away the freedom of finding and believing in your own moral values and makes you accept a pre-defined view of right and wrong. Some people are fine with giving up that freedom, I'm not. I want to be able to choose what is moral or what isn't for myself.

But don't get me started on religion. The whole idea of it just annoys me and before anyone asks, I don't know if I believe in god because as far as I can remember i've never met him/her/it. I'm willing to accept the possibility but I'm also willing to accept the possibility that he/she/it doesn't and I believe its more important to stick to your principles than to play it safe and worship all gods (just in case)

 

[WantonWitch]

I never said Religion was a good thing, it's the cause of more wars, death and heartache than anything else as far as I'm concerned.

It is supposed to set a moral standard in a way which most people can understand, more of a how to live your life, but if you just came along and said to people " I've decided things are going to be like this in the future" you'd get laughed at and ignored, so the person who wrote down the bible said " God said..........."

I'm not a religious person at all to be honest, I was brought up C of E, when I was 12 I read the bible and decided there were just too many inconsistencies for it to make sense. If I'm wrong and I get to meet a God/Goddess when I die then I'll apologise, but then again, if there is a God/Goddess, stands to reason they knew I was a non believer when they created me lol.

 

[Plasmacaster]

I never said Religion was a good thing, it's the cause of more wars, death and heartache than anything else as far as I'm concerned.

It is supposed to set a moral standard in a way which most people can understand, more of a how to live your life, but if you just came along and said to people " I've decided things are going to be like this in the future" you'd get laughed at and ignored, so the person who wrote down the bible said " God said..........."

I'm not a religious person at all to be honest, I was brought up C of E, when I was 12 I read the bible and decided there were just too many inconsistencies for it to make sense. If I'm wrong and I get to meet a God/Goddess when I die then I'll apologise, but then again, if there is a God/Goddess, stands to reason they knew I was a non believer when they created me lol.

I went to a C of E primary school, that was about all that I was influenced by religion and i'm glad my parents didn't push any religion onto me. When I was going through my education i learned a lot about all the different types of religions and it let me make up my own mind about them rather than being expected to follow a religion.

Even if you decide to believe in a religion, I think its immoral to indoctrinate that person from a young age. Countries like India, China or America where Religion is expected of an individual are taking away the freedom of choice by not allowing them to grow up without religious influence.

 

[zukethecuke]

Let me clarify first, I believe that Religion should be a seperate entity to a belief in your chosen deity(s). Religion is what is built by man around the faith that the majority of the human race have in their deity, it is a man-made entity and therefore is fallable. Fallability includes the religion taking money, waging war or just bothering people who would rather be left alone in the name of their god. But don't get me wrong, if you believe in a god then that's OK with me, its Religion i have a problem with.

WW, in my opinion religion exists as a way of removing freedom. It takes away the freedom of finding and believing in your own moral values and makes you accept a pre-defined view of right and wrong. Some people are fine with giving up that freedom, I'm not. I want to be able to choose what is moral or what isn't for myself.

But don't get me started on religion. The whole idea of it just annoys me and before anyone asks, I don't know if I believe in god because as far as I can remember i've never met him/her/it. I'm willing to accept the possibility but I'm also willing to accept the possibility that he/she/it doesn't and I believe its more important to stick to your principles than to play it safe and worship all gods (just in case)

Plas,

Hmm. Where to start?

Let's assume, first, that the existence of a Creator is an open question, and won't be answered here, one way or the other.

Let us further assume that 'right' and 'wrong' do exist. You could also call them 'good' and 'evil' or 'moral' and 'immoral'. Some will say they don't exist, but you pretty clearly think they do -- you just don't want someone else telling you what to put in which category.

Knowing what is right and what is wrong can be difficult at times. We might all agree that smothering a small child in her crib would be wrong -- but going to that child's great-grandmother, old and in pain and near death, and giving her a fatal dose of morphine would probably bring out differences in opinion. Matters involving sex -- near and dear to the hearts and other vital organs of those of us who populate Literotica -- have even more grey areas and differences of opinion. How do we decide what to do? We weigh the pros and cons of the situation at hand, of course. But how do we know which are the pros and which are the cons? And how much weight to give each? Sexual pleasure is a good thing -- but it may cause emotional distress to others. If I am presented with an opportunity for sexual pleasure for myself which would cause emotional pain for my wife, what do I do? In such a case, I'm hardly an impartial judge. What does my conscience tell me?

'Conscience' is a label applied to a person's internalized moral values. Simple, basic values are used to build up more complex rules of behavior. 'Life is good' and 'suffering is bad' and 'dignity is good' and 'hate is bad' are fairly basic, but need to be balanced against one another to build up complex concepts such as the right to use force in self-defence and 'death with dignity' for the aged. The basic this-is-good-that-is-bad rules seem to be universal; Methodists in Manchester and Animists in Australia tend to agree that 'life is good' and 'hate is bad'. These very basic rules are what is sometimes called 'Natural Law', because they seem to be born into all human beings. Disagreements creep in when building up the more complex rules -- some would apply the 'life is good' rule to everyone, while others say 'life is good' is true for my family, my tribe, my nation, but I'm not so sure about those other guys. Millions of nice, loving, Christian Germans and Poles and others aided, or at least acquiesced, in the killing of millions of Jews; millions of Americans practiced slavery for two centuries; Turks killed millions of Armenians in the early 20th century; examples can be multiplied. They did so not because their consciences said 'It's alright to kill people,' but because their consciences said 'It's wrong to kill people -- but these Jews/Blacks/Armenians aren't really people.' Their consciences failed to apply their own basic beliefs to the case of others. The most frightening thing about these genocides is that they were not committed by monsters, but by people just like us. Can we trust our own consciences?

Catholic teaching calls on the individual to follow his or her conscience -- but also makes the individual responsible for having a 'well-formed conscience'. A well-formed conscience is one that does not permit the sort of 'but these aren't really people' loopholes. And the Catholic Church, like other religious institutions, believes it has a role in forming the conscience, in teaching the most basic values and in showing how to apply those values to more complex situations. If you've ever broken up a fight between three-year-olds you know that some teaching is necessary. And of course you will teach these children what you yourself believe -- how could you do otherwise? The Catholic Church is much like you -- it teaches what it believes. And human experience is transmissable; I don't have to witness slavery first-hand to learn that it is wrong, I can learn that from others who themselves learned it from others who witnessed it first-hand. Therein lies the greatness of religious institutions -- by accumulating the experience, the I-learned-it-the-hard-way-so-you-don't-have-to knowledge of right and wrong, these institutions pass on wisdom acquired over generations to those of us who otherwise would have none. And teaching ought to begin when learning begins. You don't wait until a child is grown to begin teaching reading and writing and arithmetic -- or if you do, you find it's too late to teach much. Why should you wait to teach what is even more important -- distinguishing right from wrong and good from evil?

 

[Plasmacaster]

OK, I did say that I didn't really want to get onto this topic, this is because I have really strong beliefs about religion. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Our lives are formed by our surroundings. (this is fact but the meaning I am taking is neither the nature nor nurture road) We learn what we are told and we learn from example. Morality is something that changes depending on where and how you are brought up. For example, in Christianity suicide is a sin. In the samurai culture of japan suicide could be a good thing in as much as it could redeem honour, it could prove loyalty etc... (I'm not saying suicide is good by the way, its just an example)

From the very moment we are born we are tought certain things that influence our behaviour. Boys wear trousers, girls wear skirts. Boys play with cars, girls play with dolls. That sort of thing.

This is one example of an ideological state apparatus (ISA), a structure of common belief that helps to create the most functional control of individuals (not suggesting that there is one overwhelming force doing this, its just common belief such as 'suicide is wrong') Each aspect of our lives is controlled in order to allow us the belief of freedom but actually to greatly remove our choices. The government decides how to react to other countries over things like trade, economic cooperation, warfare etc... the police govern the control of citizens and Law creates the belief of fairness (not all laws are fair, for example if a man is aquitted of being a murderer and he subsequently confesses that he actually killed the people he is being tried for, he will recieve no punishment because a man cannot be tried for the same crime twice), Religion takes the active control of the moral outlook of the populace deciding what is best for the civilisation at large, what moral choices would be most appropriate for humans living in densely packed areas.

Freedom is an illusion that we create in order to make our existence more bearable when in reality our decisions are altered by the ISAs of our society. You shouldn't steal, its illegal. You shouldn't kill, its immoral. I'm not saying that killing or stealing is right (how can I? I've developed a very christian-influenced set of morals) but you should understand that it is outside influence which causes us to believe that this is the right course of action. So then to claim that something is right or something is wrong can only be based on your moral up-bringing. If you were born into a family that believed completely that killing and stealing was morally a good thing then that is what you would believe. Its naive to believe that everyone has the same consideration for human life, I have no doubt that when the germans were sending the jews to the gas chambers there were some who felt that they were not human, that they had lost their humanity somehow, but I would wager a good deal more that there were men and women there who laughed as they watched these humans work and starve or be murdered because they enjoyed it or because they didn't care whether they were human or not.

And while we're on the subject let me just point out that there is a lot of bullshit about the superiority of humans. Humans are just another animal, one that has an out of control population and an inflated sense of self importance. No human life is any more important or any less important than that of a dog or a cow. All life is sacred and its only through self justification that any form of action can be made.

For example, we kill cows for meat. What if (this is a hypothetical situation i might add) we suddenly discovered that all that we believed about cows being a lower order animal (one without self awareness or greater intelligence) were incorrect and they were actually as well developed as humans? Will it suddenly become immoral to eat cows, therefore making everyone who has eaten cow in the entire history of the world a sinner? Or would we justify it by saying that 'I don't believe it' or that 'I've always eaten beef, so why should I stop now?'

just because some people have the belief that something is immoral it doesn't automatically read that all other humans share the same belief. Any claim that something is universally moral or immoral is like saying that all tall people wear glasses, its a generalisation that doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

Why should you believe that something like slavery is wrong? We ride horses don't we? How is the life of a human superior to that of an animal? are you denying that a horse is a living creature able to feel pain?

Reality is an image constructed by grey, there is no black and white, there is no good or evil. What may be good to you might be evil to another. The most logical course of action in a world where this is true is to show all possibilities and let you pick your own path, whether you choose to go down the path of co-habitation, following the laws and moral codes of society or whether you choose to take the road of crime and anarchy, those choices can never be called anything other than a choice and using an adjective like good or evil is accepting that you have no real understanding of the world.

A mouse is eaten by a cat, is the mouse evil? to the mouse certainly, to the cat of course not.

Religion ignores all the shades of grey in the world and enforces a set of rules that it believes are most appropriate for your life. These rules are then punishable by the belief in 'hell'. You WILL go to church or you will go to hell, you WILL NOT kill or you shall burn forever.

What is even more outragous is that these moral codes are created not by some all-powerful creator but by human beings. Human beings who can be as corrupt as any other. There were popes who spent all their time drinking and fucking, we are always hearing about the newest priest who touched up the choir boy or said mass while drunk senseless. How do these people have ANY right whatsoever to tell you what is right or wrong? How can you justify letting another person limit your actions because they belief you must follow a code such as this?

How are you living your own life if you let someone tell you what is right or wrong, or tell you what you should be doing with your life?

 

[Plasmacaster]

Warned you.

 

[Plasmacaster]

Yay! I killed the thread!

 

[Pengy]

Holy Cow

I turn my back for a minute, and you all go philosophical!

I say we all worship the Holy Cow....all bow down and worship his holiness.

Mooooooooooo

http://www.mothercow.org/bull/barnyard/holy-cow.jpg​

 

[WantonWitch]

Warned you.

Lmao !! Sorry Plas, I got called away, I was going to come back, honest

 

[WantonWitch]

Holy Cow

I turn my back for a minute, and you all go philosophical!

I say we all worship the Holy Cow....all bow down and worship his holiness.

Mooooooooooo

http://www.mothercow.org/bull/barnyard/holy-cow.jpg​

Afternoon Pengy


Waves at Holy Cow

 

[Pengy]

Afternoon Pengy


Waves at Holy Cow

Hello Witchie how goes it?

Only a wave for his holiness, not even a curtsey?

 

[WantonWitch]

Hello Witchie how goes it?

Only a wave for his holiness, not even a curtsey?

It goes good Pengy

I'm not religious I'm afraid, a wave is enough

 

[Plasmacaster]

Holy Cow

I turn my back for a minute, and you all go philosophical!

I say we all worship the Holy Cow....all bow down and worship his holiness.

Mooooooooooo

http://www.mothercow.org/bull/barnyard/holy-cow.jpg​

Worshipping a cow? What a load of bull.

OK, not funny

 

[Pengy]

Worshipping a cow? What a load of bull.

OK, not funny

LOL, not funny at all!

How ya doin Plas?

Hope i've fixed the thread for ya.

 

[Plasmacaster]

LOL, not funny at all!

How ya doin Plas?

Hope i've fixed the thread for ya.

I'm pretty good thanks. I did warn people not to get onto the topic of religion though :-S Wonder what Zuke'll say when he reads that post.

Thanks for fixing the thread I thought I'd killed it off for good when no-one posted until this morning.

 

[Pengy]

I'm sure he feels everyone has their own opinions, but i think he's one of those who loves the debate. I'm partial to it myself on occasion, just depends if i can be bothered to type that much.

 

[Plasmacaster]

lol, fair do's mate. I did spend longer writing that post than I intended to.

Still I think I put my points across.

 

[Nemasis Enforcer]

Hi everyone,

Sorry been away again was hectic here, all sorts comming and going didn't get a moment to myself it seemed, lol

Hope you are all enjoying yourselfs and havinging fun!!