Weep for the state of humanity.

[bladespark]

I just had somebody tell me, in all seriousness that a non-Christian is incapable of showing love or charity.

*cries*

The full debate can be found here if anybody cares to look.

My desire to focus only on the positive is already being undermined.

Comments

[rabbitsystem.livejournal.com]

*headdesk* Yeah, cause if you watch people you'll discover that they are all heartless and utterly selfish. Except for us, of course. We're speshul.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Christians don't have any monopolies on human behavior, good or bad. I'd like to think that Christianity as a whole tends a bit more towards the good, since we're supposed to be striving to be more like Christ. But thinking that only a Christian can show pure love is just... gah. *growlmutter*

[euphoriel.livejournal.com]

I suppose that would leave out everyone who lived before Christianity then, too. Including, well, him. ;)

[rigger.livejournal.com]

*reads...reads again...facepalms* This reminds me of a little one liner of wisdom: "Don't ever confuse faith with the faithful."

The sad thing is that anyone can get their heads shoved so far up their asses that they have to pipe in air through the navel. I don't care if you're christian, muslim, jewish, a scientist, republican, democrat, or just plain fed up.

Remember kiddies, fanatacisim for any cause is a bad thing.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

There's such a total lack of understanding there! Even if you narrow it down to just the "love of Christ" "agape" love she's talking about, it still isn't restricted to Christianity. Christ was NOT the first person to die in self-sacrifice! Giving totally of one's self for the sake of others may be fairly rare, but Christians have no monopoly on it.

[malakim2099.livejournal.com]

Didn't Jesus say "Forgive the trolls, for they know not what they do?"

Sheesh. People like that seem to confuse our Savior for the guy in my handy little Avatar. HE likes blind obedience.

[wtftastic.livejournal.com]

Shes part of the reason I left that community; shes so self righteous and she seems to believe that she has a monopoly on the Bible.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

She's really starting to really rub me the wrong way. Every thing I post on there gets her sanctimonious, self-righteous, self-assured preaching at me. But I refuse to back down. She is the only one on her side, that I've seen. Everybody else who responded to my post actually had something useful and positive to say.

[kainhighwind-dr.livejournal.com]

Wow, so even Christians forcefully preach to Christians, eh?? I miss out on so much being a heathen...

Yeah, her kind of attitude (understandably) gets my ire up too, as one of the essentially non-believer types she condemns in her statements. But again, you know what? She doesn't matter to my life. Speaking as a non-Christian, I will continue to do what I believe to be good and loving and charitable, and fate will have (or even not have) in store for me whatever it will, regardless of her beliefs. And if that means going to hell and damnation for not being a true Christian, well... so be it! *throws up hands and cackles in reckless and happy abandon!* I'll just have made many folks very happy through the course of my life, I guess. But oh no, how terrible!! I should be wasting my time worrying that what I do is not really love, instead of spreading it around! 0_0 Bad infidel, BAD!! *smack smack*

Ha-ha, her argument is lost on me...

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

It's a little frustrating, because her points are sort of... almost right. I mean, she's right about "agape" being a very specific and particular shading of the word "love," which English is lacking in. But it's NOT reserved for Christians.

[kainhighwind-dr.livejournal.com]

*nods* Yeah, I got that part. I suppose I shouldn't be quite so arrogant in that case. ;) But I agree with you; I don't think the concept is exactly beyond a lot of cultures throughout history.

[kainhighwind-dr.livejournal.com]

By the way, you argued with her with the patience of a Saint really. *G*

And you are my favourite kind of Christian. ^_^ I definitely took your testimony (heh, never knew what one was before) as intended... a desire to share the possibility of complete happiness with those who may need it. I like the no-pressure sales approach. *G* Explains your business tactics too! ;D

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

A pressured customer is a customer who changes his mind and wants a refund halfway through. *grins* Same thing can go for religion too.

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

Eugh. 9_9 People like that are part of the reason I'm no longer Christian.

[silveradept]

Eeee. My danger sense tingles. The urge to flail my arms and try to protect Will Robinson is great.

It sounds more like they were trying to make the point that agape, which is apparently the important love, is not possible without acceptance of G-d in the form of Jesus, and that deeds done not in the name of G-d by one who has received him are worthless. I don't believe either assertion to be true, certainly, but if that's what they were aiming for, then non-Christians are capable of love and charity, just not the proper, G-d-given kind.

Which, now that I think a bit more about it, would make G-d a bit of an arse for withholding the capacity to have great love and charity only to those people who follow him. Would be far better and more effective of him to make it so that everyone could have the love and provide enough messengers for everyone to hear about the great being that provided it.

Anyway, the poster there is more than a bit full of themselves and echoes a familiar refrain to me. I think that kind of stuff would fail the "WWJS?" test.

[moltare.livejournal.com]

(Was sufficiently irritated that I tried to post this, but the community's flocked)

"An unbeliever doing good works is meaningless."

I invite you to have the common courtesy to realise that religious-derived morality is valid but not the only guiding light in this world; to do good deeds is worthy whether those good deeds are done out of personal moral obligations or out of fear of the Big Beard in the Sky.

Pascal's Wager is valid enough, but to claim that a good deed means nothing to an infinitely loving God simply because it is not executed specifically in his name seems to denote a pettiness I for one would hope not to see in a supreme being.

Probably C.S.Lewis said it best, indirectly though it was: "When you performed a good deed in the name of Tash, you were performing it for me; when he performed evil in my name it is by Tash his deed was accepted."

Scream universalism at me if you will - the idea of an ultimately good God hinging everything on the picayunity of a human name-concept grates in all the wrong ways.

Doing good is good, Christian or not, and if you believe in a final weighing of the balance by a loving God (Christian or otherwise) it only makes sense to believe that good deeds will not go unrewarded and evil unpunished.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

I wanted to say something like that myself, but after all that arguing, (and after MANY other arguments with this nutjob,) I finally gave up. Talking to her is, indeed, like talking to a brick wall, and nothing one could say will ever convince her that non Christians are just as human and valuable as she is.

[kyoshyu.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's demeaning to brick walls.

Briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!

[thalass.livejournal.com]

She definately tripped up with that. Crikey... You show much more restraint than I am capable of, you know. Even though your frustration is readable, I would have been screaming nasty words and flinging the metaphorical poo around in a short while. :P

As others have said, it is people like that one who make me more certain of my own choices. Praise Eris! Where's the rum? :P



Idly: Why can evolution not be a part of Yaweh's divine plan? I know the books say otherwise, but could it not be that the creator of the universe (Be it Yaweh, Zeus, Eris, FSM, whatever) just pushed "play" and is observing? Maybe intervening when it deems it necessary. Perhaps whoever built the universe (or pushed play, or sneezed, or whatever) wanted to see the whole process from the beginning, rather than setting up a scenario fully-built and running it for a few thousand years. Perhaps the gods made the universe this way and it is their Will?

I'm not questioning yours or anyone's choice to belive the Books, I'm just asking why the Church's way (the church being made up of fallible humans) is the only way, and the books can't be changed when humans discover more of the Creator's universe? Maybe that's how Christian scientists (that is, scientists who are christian, not christians who make up things like ID and such) think when they do their research: they're discovering more of what the Creator put there for them... Now that is a form of christianity I could encourage. hee

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

The Books, as you put them, are guides to spirituality, to self, to God, to relations with one's fellow men. Not to anything else, really. I believe them, but I don't take them as an authority on things they were never meant to be an authority on. I mean... the Bible doesn't tell me how to sew, or how to draw. Those are things I learn in other ways.

And... if you want a form of Christianity that has science and study as tenets... maybe you could read something for me? I'm working on a bit of a manifesto of sorts, an attempt to relate God and Science in a way that works, rather than in a way that twists them both and tries to fit them in backwards.

argh!

[aazhie.livejournal.com]

i so agree, the bible doesn't teach you hwo the whole world works, just how god works. the parts that people use to claim that god hastes fags or WHATEVER the person's agenda like evolution, abortion, aninmals rights, anything can be interpreted out of the bible.

I could become a "christian" who kills my own children and brings about famine and suffering and justify with a bunch of bible verses, but would god or jesus or buddah or whoever is a god caring person be able to respect that? of course not!

And I also agree that that smarmy little chica would have a hard time doing unto others and treating most anyone with respect the way jesus would have wanted her to. People with her mindset make me sick, and it is sad because she made me happy i don't officially practice a specific religion so i don't have to talk to people like her... I really wish she would shut up and listen to what god has to say, not just adore the sound of her own voice.

i love how she told tyou she was better than you becuase she was "older and wiser" yet wasn't it jesus who said from the mouths of babes, or the quotea bout children leading us to salvation, etc??? jeez, i would love to smack her a good one if I thought it might wake her up to the real meaning of religion... :P

and yes, you are a bloody saint to put up with that... *hugs* you definately rock, but you can spend your time better making fursuits, at least the sewing gets you something nice in the end

[thalass.livejournal.com]

I could certainly have a crack :P Sure thing.

[pet-tiger.livejournal.com]

I like to believe that something as complex as evolution is just more proof that there is a higher power out there. I mean, I don't believe it was random chance that led it to happen, you know?

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

Evolution is manifestly non-complex. Indeed, it's one of the simplest concepts there is. (It only gets complex because there are lots of entities involved, not by virtue of the principle.) So, I am uncertain as to how to parse your statement.

[thalass.livejournal.com]

I find that idea facinating. There was an article about a computer scientist with an idea that a few short lines of code, repeated endlessly (and, presumably, at a high frequency/refresh rate/whatever) could produce the kind of apparant complexity that we see in the world around us.

Hell, you may have been the one who linked it.

Interestink

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

You may be talking about Steven Wolfram, who likes to go on and on about this. Indeed, he has argued that, considering the exponential growth of computing power, it would probably be more cost effective for SETI to put its money into simulating virtual worlds and aliens, than in trying to detect "real" ones.

[rigger.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah to respond to this question along with everyone else. I'm a firm believer that if one believes in an all-knowing and omnipotent god that by definition one cannot comprehend everything that god does. Therefore, scientific knowledge comes along when we're ready for it or when we as a society need a little kick in the pants.

And hey, look at it this way too. If you're a god would you give away all your secrets and techniques in the first go when you don't even know if your creations can handle it?

lol

[aazhie.livejournal.com]

nice point, wouldn't our heads explode if we knew all that at once?

*ker-splode*

[kyoshyu.livejournal.com]

wtf

[sarahsmiles.livejournal.com]

that was an unloving and uncharitable thing so say, so that person must be a non-christian... or worse, a heretic!

there can be no positive when you deal with an evangelical religion that dams everyone else to hell.

[doran-eirok.livejournal.com]

Rrgh. I'll just add my voice to everyone else's here too, to say that I'm completely with you on this and that you're my kind of Christian. Faith and Science are separate things that work to fill two different voids in our understanding of the universe. Neither is meant to try and explain the other, and attempting it feels to me like a bit of an insult to, and gross misunderstanding of, both. And if one feels like science is being a threat to their faith then maybe it's their faith and not the science that they should be looking at more closely and critically.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

Bwahahahaha.

I actually find her position to be exactly what I think of when I think of "American" Christianity, only moreso. Basically, I find that the evangelicals I meet here are particularly insistent on the factual literal interpretation of the Bible to the detriment of actually thinking about it. To the point of denying the Earth goes around the Sun at points or that HIV causes AIDS. It's just crazy.

I'm not Christian, but one my Christian friends from Greece notes that the Bible is foremost a spiritual and moral guide and NOT a historical textbook nor a science one. It fills that massive gap that science can't touch, it doesn't replace science. Maybe a little more emphasis should be placed on the "Honor thy mother and father" or on the whole concept of turning the other cheek (seriously, Mr Bush, seriously) and giving to charity rather than on trying to prove that dinosaurs were destroyed during the Great Flood or that carbon dating doesn't work.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

As a non-Christian, I declare that i must redeem this person bys howing the world and act of love and charity that cannot be denied.


Now, where did I leave my axe?

What? Axe murdering this person would be chairtable!