Two questions of faith

Jakob — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:59:48 +0000

This isn’t really related to what we normally write about here, it should probabaly be more aptly described as shitspeak on my part, but I would like to pose a set of questions about beliefs, in the hope that someone would like to share their thoughts. Ideally someone who is conventionally (as in subscribing to a certain denomination) religious, though I doubt that amongst our 0 readers I will find anyone with that background.

I myself am an atheist, I suppose, in the sense that I do not subscribe to any belief unless I’ve been thoroughly convinced of it being correct. I’m also a quite “protected” from other views since most of my friends are either agnostics, atheists or apatheists and most of them probably share my ideals in other walks of life as well. So it’s hard to know what other people think when I’m type to stick to my kind. I think isolated people are poor people, and if someone reading this would like to enrich and enlighten me with their views (I reserve the right to agree or disagree though), then that’s exactly what I’m bargaining for.

First of all, I would like to know if it’s possible to be an atheist, and at the same time a good person. Does the faith itself have any bearing on whether a person is good or not? Should someone who performs good deeds be denied rewards in the afterlife due to not having the correct faith? Is it more important to believe than to be good? Is the exact denomination important, or is it more a question of having faith in general? Not a quickly answerred question, perhaps, but I find the topic quite interesting.

Second of all, I would like to know if God is conscious of our actions, and cares about them? I’ve heard religious people talk about having the sense of God always accompanying them, being there for them. I would absolutely love getting a deeper understanding of that, as I suppose that is what separates a person with religious faith and not. I guess the questions can be – provocatively – posited as such: Is God (or whatever we shall call the entity we’re talking about here) relevant?

Religious extremists against political debate of euthanasia

Rainer — Fri, 12 May 2006 07:50:41 +0000

Britain is debating today in the House of Lords of the right for euthanasia. Not surpricingly the religious side, anglican and catholic churches, have formed an alliance not just against the right to end one’s life but even the debate. Something which I think is preposterous. The Guardians columnist Polly Toynbee suspected that the debate of “right to die with dignity” will be so popular that it would actually raise proper conversation, being a popular cause, of the subject and only by killing the original debate the religious side can keep it down.
While I keep reading more and more of the power and means of religious people I see no alternatives but to abolish and ban the whole church and everything relating to such in all it’s forms. If the only contribution for the debate they have is trying to stop it, they have already lost their right to participate to modern world.
These organizations get away with many things a normal company or organization would be sued for. A bishop can “just” choose not to have any female priests in his diodese, a priest can choose not to marry couples of same gender or can keep a mass which would be concidered as a hate mongering speech and all this is accepted on the fact that “they are the god’s will” and this is church. If I would run a company and would ask, for example, the religion or sexual preferences of the job applicant and by that information would choose the job applicants I would be sued for discrimination. For some odd reason same rules won’t apply to church of any kind. If I setup a private club, it may have certain requirements for membership but they can not be discriminating. On the other hand, if I get status of religion to my club I can practice any kind of discrimination and it will actually be accepted. Why? Why do we have different rules for organization that just claims to be based on spirituality? I find spirituality in a club which is dedicated for sauna, bratwurst, whiskey and silence, should it get a status of religion and the members be allowed to preach of the people not loving bratwurst and sauercraut are heretics and should be abolished? No, this is right only reserved for the ones with church status.
The scary part is that this kind of institution not just tries, but affects on the political delicions by lobbying directly the weak minds open for eternal life or indirectly with the help of unscrupulous politicans who keep their position only with the help of church with who they are living in symbiosis. These people slow down or even stop the progress of society by claiming the new ways to be heretic, un-divine or, as naive as it can sound, “not as god intended”.
If the modern society is willing to keep churches as a part of it, they have to be stripped off the discriminating priviledges and we have to start to treat them as any private or semi-private clubs with no connections to the goverment’s or state’s affairs.

“Religion is one of those social institutions which are dependent upon the material and economic realities in a given society. It has no independent history but is instead the creature of productive forces. The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.”
- – Karl Marx

update @ 12:50: “Right to die” bill has split the house of commons.

LIME » Religion

Two questions of faith

Religious extremists against political debate of euthanasia