I find that a lot of mainstream religions contradict themselves somehow. On the one hand it's all love and compassion and understanding, but then the same religion will tell you to burn heretics, homosexuality is an abomination, slavery is acceptable and women are to be avoided during 'that time of the month'.

Surely then, religious doctrine has to change with the attitudes of an ever-changing and modernizing society in order to stay relevant, and although some people do change with the times, they then are alienated from steadfast traditionalists/fundamentalists/fanatics.

I've been looking into Satan worship, and i've got to admit, a lot of it makes sense. Not as a religion but just a collection of ideas - which is essentially just a philosophy without the hard and fast line of THOU SHALT OBEY OR ELSE attached to the subtext.

Maybe those religions are serving the needs of those people at that given time.

No it is not solely to please and pay tribute to your creator. Have you ever tried to Ask God which Religion is right?

There are levels of doctrine. Practices can change, as can some doctrines depending on how they were formulated. Doctrines that came from conjectures of the saints, yeah, those will change every once in a while (though with cause and explanation). The only thing that is set in stone is Dogma and the Nicene Creed.


The problem is that Satanism doesn't have a functioning moral theory. It's modeled heavily after Nietzsche's nihilism, and in nihilism, there are no such things as moral imperatives. If the altruistic deed doesn't facilitate your best interesting, there's no reason to do it. You'd be irrational TO do it.

I worship the sun & pray to Joe Pesci

well try chaos magick, it is about change and strengthening the individual.

I didn't say "solely". Prayer has two general purposes but I didn't mention the second because it's irrelevant to the practice of religion in the organized form and only applies to the individual. Either you pray because the book told you it'll make God happy, you worship him because Religion in its organized form tells you he wants to be worshipped and how to do so...

Or you pray to make yourself feel better about something. And this includes the way people most often pray, asking God for favors, "please let this happen", "please grant me the strength", etc.

It sounds a bit like you're referring to the second, with your "serve the needs of the people" comment, that prayer is for comfort and self-assurance (...and sometimes selfish wish-making). But if you believe that the purpose of prayer is to comfort the person doing the praying, then why did you defend dogma when I said that religion would be better if people could let go of it and stop assigning meaning to the rules and traditions that no longer apply to modern society?

Why advocate adherence to strict organization and doctrine rather than encourage more individuals to exercise some free thought and decide for their self which parts of their religion are useful to them, which parts they believe to be true or false? What's the point of any man in a civilized country in the 21st century quoting a rulebook that says homosexuality is a sin when the same chapter tells you, like, it's okay to sell your daughter into slavery AND how many goats she's worth? That right there is a justification for a whole lot of bigotry that could be avoided entirely by admitting "Y'know what? These are not God's rules, they're rules from ancient men who lived in the Middle East and they don't apply to us so we should feel free to ignore them."
Religion functions best when used for rough guidelines and philosophy. Anything stricter than that is where problems start. It's like Chris Rock's character says in the movie Dogma, "Humanity took a good idea and, like it always does, built a belief structure around it. I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier."

Most theologians (if not all by this point) agree that no one has to abide by the Mosaic/Levitican laws. They were meant for the Levites. As for their moral validity, that depends on what the goal of the laws were. If the goal was to establish universal moral precepts, yeah, they're pretty fucked up. However, most educated Christians would say they were meant to establish order within Ancient Middle-Eastern institutions and guide the Hebrews down a specific path in history.

As for homosexuality, the reason for prohibiting it will change between denominations. I agree that the scriptural argument isn't terribly strong.

It was just one example. The overarching point remains the same. Religion works better the less organized it is.

Most definitely.

I've never seen the type of hypocrisy and horrible bloodshed found in Christianity in Wicca or Hinduism. It's quite sad to see, considering that there are good-natured and genuinely devout Christians, but they're eclipsed by the majority's mess.

That's because American media doesn't care about dead Christians. Christians get beaten to death all the time in India, often by mobs, but sometimes by police officials. Christian houses of prayer get attacked pretty regularly too.

Then there's the caste system, which has been one of the greatest oppressors of the lower class in history. And it's not like we just now discovered how messed up it is either. The earliest criticisms of the Caste System go all the way back to Buddha.



EDIT: I guess I would have know what you mean by "mess," but the majority of Christians (from my experience) are pretty civil.

By mess I mean all of the oppression, bloodshed, and outlashing done by Christians in the name of their faith throughout history.

It has placed a bad light on the religion, making even the civil and decent ones that exist look like full-on bigots. It is very sad to see, imo. I am not religiou, byt I do have a great respect for the teachings of Jesus and feel they can do good, much like Confucious.

Well, that's the nature of institutions. When something becomes big enough, corruptions will form. That goes for everything, yet why do we treat Christianity differently? Why don't we blame atheism for the mass murders of Mao Zedong and Stalin, or Nietzschism for Hitler's holocaust? The answer is because it's fallacious reasoning. Bad Christians do not prove Christianity is bad.

Think of it this way. If you build a birdhouse, you're going to get insects in it. If you build a treehouse, you're gonna get rats in it. If you build a mansion, you're going to get thieves in it. Despite all the bad things associated with the church, there has not been a larger ministry of charity in the course of history than the one of Christianity. The amount of good the Church has done is almost beyond measure.

Let's not forget religious persecution back in previous centuries. For example the Spanish Inquisition, where thousands of people where killed because they were not Christian.

Or how Millions of artifacts where destroyed by the Europeans in the new world in named of "religion" because the natives didn't woship the right religion...

This is true.

When it all comes down to it, I consider myself an open-minded Christian. I might be from the South, but I in no way put myself in the category with the religious southern nut-jobs. I was taught by my parents not to judge people on their skin color, their way of life, or the Gods they don't or do believe in.

That's true. There were many terrible things done in the name of the Church. However, to say world history would have been better without the Church is incredibly short-sighted. In pre-modern history, Christians were the strongest aids of not just the poor but the sick. Without the safeguard of modern medicine, tending to the sick was terrifying business, and Christians did it repeatedly, and did it far outside their own borders.

Also, it bears saying that the death toll of the crusades and inquisition combined doesn't add up to ONE of the great secular slaughters of the 20th century.


Are you referencing the icons and art destroyed during the reformations?

Yeah, that was bad, but again, it doesn't measure up to the good the church has done. If you want to talk about art and culture, the monks were the preservers of ancient writings after the barbarians were wrecked Europe. The only reason you're able to read Horace today is because a monk decided to write his poetry down over 1,200 years ago. As matter of fact, the reason modern Europe even looks the way it does is because the monks educated the barbarians... after the barbarians burned down all their shit.

There's so much more, but I'm trying to keep my posts short these days.

This is not really a fair comparison. The size of the population of Europe was vastly different for those two events. If we look at a percentage of the population at each point in history, we'll get a more accurate reading.

Besides, the point still stands. Religious persecution is unjustifiable, yet it's been happening all throughout history. This is what makes it so difficult for me to believe that: a) the good outweighs the bad, b) people find comfort in religion, & c) god is as benevolent as all these religions say (if there even is one).

Honestly, I didn't intend to post this much in this thread. My goal was to state my religious beliefs and leave, but if people are going to keep making jabs at Christianity...


Calculate the proportions, and the death tolls still don't measure up. Also, the number of people slaughtered in the crusades spans over centuries. How many more people would have died in holocaust if it had lasted four centuries?


Agreed. Religious persecution is absolutely intolerable. However, it must be studied objectively and in proper context.


Well, I can write thousands of words and more about why the good outweighs the bad, but the historical texts have vindicated the Church's mass benevolence. Those who want to read them may read them.

This isn't just limited to charity though. The church did wonders for the sciences, but people don't remember that all the Renaissance scientists were trained by Jesuits. They only remember Galileo's house arrest.


Christianity, when done right, is not all that comfortable. It involves going to 3rd world countries and feeding/educating complete strangers. It does bring people peace, but why is that so suspicious? The atheist find's comfort in atheism because it means s/he is not going to hell. Both are opiums for different people.


That's a fair comment, but the answer is complicated. It's an intellectual task that involves way more than people think.

Hey Mr Meanie pants 3:<

I'm not atheist because I can feel like I'm not going to hell!

I'm atheist cuz I never found a strong belief in any religion!

The hell part is unimportant to me.

Mr Meanie pants 3:<

That was my point. Afterlife incentives are not motivations for Christians any more or less than punishment incentives are motivations for atheists.


So when other people imply the majority of Christians are hypocrites and that my religion is littered with contradictions, you think that's all cool, but if I decide to defend my creed, then I'm an asshole?

There's a clear double standard here. It's frustrating because there is actually a small base of Christians who visit MKO, but because they don't feel comfortable intellectually debating the merits of their faith, they get shit on for free.

I honestly believe that history facts have been, at some point, rewritten to fit someone's (not an individual but a group of people) perspective. It's almost impossible for it to have remained untouched for so much time.

I also believe that the true answer lies in death, we can choose to believe everything we want while we're still alive, but what comes after death is not decided by us, maybe there's an afterlife, maybe not, we can't know for sure until we're dead.

Humans give themselves too much importance. Religion is focused on the human nature, but it's oblivious to the rest of the universe. A god that created a whole universe wouldn't put all its focus on less than 0.000000...001% part of it. Our actions here in this world hold no importance to the universe. We are no more important than an insect in such a vast place. We don't know how a being that created everything would think. And I highly doubt the ultimate fight between good and evil would be held in such an insignificant place like our world.

What I meant to say that the opium argument swings both directions. Actually, it swings every direction. There's no motive in the world you can't rationalize down to some sort of incentive.

But motives aren't observable or measurable. I can observe my own motives, but that's it. Ultimately, they don't prove anything. that's all I was getting at.

EDIT: I did write more below about the fly analogy, but maybe it's best I take a small break from this thread. This stuff can be exhausting.

Tried church. Hated it. Did that whole bread and wine thing. Hated it. Found out about Metal music aka "The Devils Music" and started worshipping and believing in that. Threw my 2 cents in. Please do carry on.

If you believe that your God is the one true God you must feel incredibly lucky to have been born in a country or into a family that worships that God, Given that religious persuasion is almost entirely an issue of Geography.

Cultures invent Gods, it seems part of human nature. I'd go as far as to say that this is a fact given that "official" gods number in the thousands (I believe its around 2800). To be honest I think its almost Arrogant to assume that your God is the only God, given that you only disbelieve in 1 less God that I do.

I don't have problem with people believing in God, no. But when these people are the ones that control Laws and Schools I think there's an Issue. The church should stay out of Politics.