Going Godless: Secularism Makes People More Ethical

I think you hit the nail in the head for both religious and atheists.

Anyone who is loud and overly outspoken will be seen as self righteous, mean and hypocritical.

There's a fair number of people on both sides of the debate who alienate people.

I take your path generally, I have no use for religion, and I don't really get along with the hard core atheists who will preach about as much as the pastor during a church sermon.

Even in our family, my wife and I both agree religion has done a fair amount of good in the world, but has also been the principal reason many wars are started as well. We let our kids make up their minds as to what they want to do. If they want to believe in God, or some other supreme being we won't try to talk them out of it.

Religion, or the lack there of needs to be each person's choice.

 

I agree!

(character minimum)

 

Sometimes. I'm not much of a church-goer as I don't need someone else to define my relationship with God for me.

 

LOL, I have to learn to breath and re-read posts before responding. My response was knee-jerk. I apologize.

 

It's impossible to have much of a relationship with God without going to Church. The New Covenant applies to the corporate church. We are not an island and we can't do this alone. Consider this:

Matthew 5
23 Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you,
24 leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

Our relationship with God depends on our relationship with each other. The two cannot be separated.

Hebrews 10:25
not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

Do not forsake the assembling of the saints.

 

Your logic implies that all believers are really just (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s who are too afraid of their god to act like (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s.

I suppose such jaded opinions on humanity does fit into the Christian concept that we're all sinners.

 

Actually, the only ones who need fear the judgement of God are those who trusted in their own "ethics" based on the wares of depraved humanism. Only through Christ is there complete forgiveness of sin and redemption. Only through Christ can true righteousness and piety be attained. Those in Christ do not fear God's wrath.

 

Exactly how I feel.

 

Christ traveled to India to study Buddhism under some of the original Bodhisattva and excelled at it...attained enlightenment even. He then traveled back home and applied his learnings to Judaism. He was the first, and probably only, really powerful Judeo-Buddhist monk, so to speak, and is now a divine Bodhisatva himself.

I like him a lot.

 

erm....link?

 

I have heard that and that also some of his disciples returned there after his death. I consider myself spiritual but not religious. Rather than fighting about which is the true religion, we should look at the commonalities of all religions and a universal truth may be found. Many, many stories of the Bible have an older counterpart. Those counterparts are not limited to other monotheistic beliefs, either, but are sometimes found in polytheistic religions.

Lately I have been re-visiting the idea of ancient astronauts being the basis of religion. The Vimanas of Vedic literature are compelling when taken in with all the other evidence around the planet of ancient monuments and some ancient tech devices that have survived (the Antikythera Mechanism, the Baghdad Battery). Also, renditions of 'airplanes' in ancient gold artifacts. Oh, there are so many others. We clearly are a race with amnesia, but there are clues. Here's a link with UFO's in Renaissance artwork. http://lithiumdreamer.tripod.com/ufoart.html

There is a truth that we have not yet found or will not yet accept. None of that displaces my belief in a supreme being, but it does make me wonder what we're missing out on, as far as knowledge of our past goes. Maybe these mysteries of the past have nothing to do with 'God' at all, but much of what we call 'religion' does.

I'm not in the deep end of the pool about this, but do wonder. In the meantime, I just try to remember the Golden Rule and live my life accordingly.

 

most of the none believers I know are miserable.They became non-believers because they ask themselves "if there really was a God,why would he allow so and so to happen to me?".Im not saying at all that all non- believers think this,but that has been the answer Ive gotten alot.

 

That's the interpretation of the Catholic Church to force the masses into following them. It's like many follow the 7 Deadly Sins when they are not in the Bible nor are the 7 levels of Hell. I don't need someone else to tell me how to know God.

Plus the Gospel of Matthew does say "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them".

 

What relationship does an ant have with the ant farm owner? The gap between a supposed God and a human is greater. Why should an omnipresent omniscient alien even notice a hairless ape on a nondescript planet in a mediocre solar system on the fringe of one of a billion galaxies?

 

It's not only to know God although some bible study in chruch in helps i think. It is for moral support.

 

The vast majority of atheists I've met and discussed the matter with have never been Christians and never did believe in god.

 

Do you gather regularly with 2 or 3 believers? People who claim that they don't need church are really fooling themselves. Their spiritual lives are in a state of decay. The early Christians met weekly as they were taught by the apostles as they were taught by Christ. So no, your ridiculous notion that the Catholic Church made this up is summarily dismissed.

 

It's a good question. And yet God treasures this planet above all creation. For God so loved this world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever should believe in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. Such a tiny planet half way down the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy. So insignificant. So indescript. Yet.....

God loves us.

 

take away religion and we will just find something else to (*)(*)(*)(*)(*) about. its human nature.

 

Sure do. I don't get why someone else has to explain to you your relationship with Christ. The policies of the Catholic Church doesn't mean its universally accepted dogma among all Christians.

 

It might be considerably more accurate to say that more and more people are going "churchless" than "Godless". Many organized religion denominations have become less popular since about the 1960's, and yet the number of people who profess a belief in God remains quite high....

 

The Catholic Church never claims to be the source of your faith or relationship with Christ (by the way, I'm glad you cleared that up). But when we become Christian we are at once baptized into Christ and into His Church. The two cannot be separated.

 

Your opinion on the matter.

 

I think that the majority of those who feel it necessary to label themselves 'atheist' are simply negative fundamentalists and therefore know nothing whatever about Christianity. Both gangs are obsessed with an imaginary relationship with an imagined being, whereas serious 'religious' people have always been interested rather in how we shall behave towards one another. I thought it important that my children should know about Christianity from inside, and one of my daughters argued the vicar's son into leaving the confimation class with her! So it goes! Why should we go round with signs saying we believe the earth is not flat? I'n not an 'atheist', just a normal human being unbothered with such obsessions. 'God' is a concept that - at least in the US - seems to be used for business reasons: anyone who really believed in such a thing and acted as the fundamentalists do would know he/she was certainly (*)(*)(*)(*)ed ( what about 'consigned to Hell then?) surely?

 

Oh, yeah. Pick on me.

Why don't you ask St. Mike for a link?