Would the World be Better off Without Religion?

@Leadfoot,

You see, I do as I know best, and that, IS constrained to a number of factors.
None of which I have chosen to be. What I am was given to me by nature not chosen. If you understood what REASON actually means you wouldn't think for a minute there are gratuitous choices...

For every action there is a cause and from it a natural and necessary reaction.
...nothing more...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

You poor robot you

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Thanks for sharing; we can all learn from this video.
Continue the dialogue.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

I can legitimately criticize Westboro et al because they have free will and freely made their choices.

How do you do that when you say they don't and are just reacting to cause and effect?

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

I can legitimately criticize Westboro et al because they have free will and freely made their choices.

How do you do that when you say they don't and are just reacting to cause and effect?

Are you certain that you understand the will of God better than others?

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

I can legitimately criticize Westboro et al because they have free will and freely made their choices.

How do you do that when you say they don't and are just reacting to cause and effect?

Quite the opposite....you don't seem to understand the cornerstone of the video at all...precisely because people are context and genes you shall not cast a stone but rather dialogue. None of the debating invalidates the argument against free will. If possible those with knowledge and information should educate those without it. The outcome is fated but trying to feed a computing machine information, so that the right output develops when it can, is surely not wrong ? Why would you think such a thing ???
Your argument resembles the outlandish idea of not installing, proper, good, adequate, software on a computer because it is not free...obviously the better the software the better the computing will be.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

I can legitimately criticize Westboro et al because they have free will and freely made their choices.

How much free will does someone brought up in a cult have? Or a young vulnerable person lured into joining a cult for that matter. What about the Manchurian Candidate? I don't think that film was about free will, quite the opposite.

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@reasoning logic,

Quote:

Leadfoot Quote:
"I can legitimately criticize Westboro et al because they have free will and freely made their choices.

How do you do that when you say they don't and are just reacting to cause and effect? "

Are you certain that you understand the will of God better than others?

The subject was our free will, not God's.

But I guess you are hinting at the myth that we are told not to judge others.
That is from a misinterpretation of the verse that goes "Judge not lest ye be judged."
You can't make any sense of that, given that if you believe the book, you believe that we all WILL be judged whether we judge others or not.

The meaning in context is this: Do not judge others by a standard that you yourself do not want to be judged by. In other words, don't be hypocritical in your judgements.

When Paul was confronted with the idea that we should never judge our brothers he said:
"Know ye not that you shall judge Angels?" In other words, don't be silly, your judgement is important, take it seriously.

But if I'm wrong about your intimations and you are just asking me man to man if I think I understand the will of God better than the folks at Westboro, the answer is - Yes, I think I do.

And I'm not being hypocritical in that. If I am wrong about God's opinion of 'Westboro', I'm willing to take the consequences. I wouldn't want to live in that world anyway.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

I didn't say that a dialog was not appropriate. But to have a meaningful dialog you have to have a position from which to have one.

The people who engaged the girl in the video certainly had one. They held it patiently and with genuine care for who they were talking to and she responded. Obviously not all of them do or did. Same 'inputs', different outcomes. You would no doubt attribute that to 'other inputs'. For me it ultimately comes down to - Free will

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@izzythepush,

Quote:

How much free will does someone brought up in a cult have?

Thanks for the perfect argument and counter example from Fil.

Did YOU watch the video izzy? That girl WAS brought up in that cult from day one. She was picketing with the group even before she could read the signs she carried. And yet she used her free will and left it.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Quote:
How much free will does someone brought up in a cult have?

Thanks for the perfect argument and counter example from Fil.

Did YOU watch the video izzy? That girl WAS brought up in that cult from day one. She was picketing with the group even before she could read the signs she carried. And yet she used her free will and left it.

...yeah keep calling "free will" to reasoning skills when they are in place and a little internet interaction meaningless input cause "Freeeeedom" its the cooler concept !!! Since you are fated to not understand what REASON from Ratio, Order, actually means I forgive ya poor old stubborn chap. You don't have any choice indeed to do otherwise other than ranting the same old status quo for moral high ground over your neighbour. How convenient for your ego eh...
"Justicialism" instead of Justice is your motto and a much more appealing meal for the soul...

...if only you nice boy scouts would indeed go to heaven as fast as possible to let the sane people back alone...oh one can wish...

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@Leadfoot,

No I didn't watch the video, but it isn't just free will that causes someone to leave a group like that. It takes an enormous amount of courage as well as a desire to look outside your comfort zone for answers. The consequences of being cut off from family members and everything you know can be very severe indeed. It's the same reason people stay with abusive partners. Just citing free will seems incredibly simplistic.

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@izzythepush,

My family didn't cut me off because I left the "church."

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@izzythepush,

I only cited free will because it's Fil's particular obsession in the current discussion. It's not my hang-up.

Yeah, courage and the desire/curiosity to look outside your comfort zones are important things that humans possess. They don't fit neatly into Fil's mechanistic view of human nature either. But he will find a way to shoehorn them in I'm sure.

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@Leadfoot,

I'm not getting into another bloody argument with Fil.

Fair enough, I know what he's like.

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@izzythepush,

You know nothing of me except what your prejudice and imagination inevitably lead you to conclude. You have quite a talent to either change the topic, muddle the subject, or try easy pot shots when the real ammunition fails you. Your observations on most subjects are either self-evident clichés that no one needs lecturing on or straight wrong for lack of grasp on the topics. Your arrogance is also off the charts.

Post Scriptum - Waiting for the "cleaning department" to sanitize the area to dead boredom...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

There's your posts, and that's more than enough. Why do you think I said I don't want to get into another argument? The triumph of experience over hope.

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@izzythepush,

There is a difference between matters of fact and subjective analysis...have a nice day mate ! Wink

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

I only cited free will because it's Fil's particular obsession in the current discussion. It's not my hang-up.

Yeah, courage and the desire/curiosity to look outside your comfort zones are important things that humans possess. They don't fit neatly into Fil's mechanistic view of human nature either. But he will find a way to shoehorn them in I'm sure.

Free will is a cornerstone of religious Morality!
if you can't concede that and rather confound the causal reader by blaming it on my "obsession" the "sin" is upon your conscience, or better put, on the lack of clarity you would have needed to not jump the gun on an inconvenient fellow forumite...

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Would the World be Better off Without Religion?

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