I see what you are saying, and I agree for the most part. Blind individualism can lead to bad results too.

Loving yourself and thinking and acting for yourself is something, but there is something to be said for self-sacrifice in the interest of others as well. Giving up some time to help people around you over your own interests isn't bad. I don't think individualism is bad, but social consciousness is important too.

I don't think any major religion is anti individualist, the emphasis most often is on the individual, although that is often mistranslated by many denominations and practicioners.

I wasn't replying to you, I was replying to someone else! Soapbars specifically.

PWND DAT N00B!!?!!11oen

Not really, Chabib thought I was talking to him when I was talking to someone else.

So your better than me now for having more posts than me?

i didnt become intolerant because i watched a documentary. i watched a documentary, i thought it was good and recommended it to you. i became intolerant for other reasons, personal experiences with religious people... and its not that i am intolerant to the point where i would hurt anybody, but just to the point wherei think religion is stupid and i certainly wouldnt want to have a religious girlfriend anymore :) and i am certainly not for extending any religious rights


oh, let me put it more diplomaticaly... unreasonable would be the right word. there is just no well demonstrated reason to believe in god... there is no well demonstrated reason to believe the myths in so called holly books are true. they have been proved wrong in as many times they could have possibly been.

believing in god is like if your parents never told you the santa clause doesn't exist, you would still believe in it... but ok, in some phylosophical sense it is reasonable to believe in the possibility of the existence of god (believing in possibility is not believing - i believe in the possibility), but believing in religion? its the stupidest (pardon, the most unreasonable) think there can be, it doesnt belong in 21th century in my opinion. its the most obvious thing how religion comes into existence.

ive created a monster!

Check this out as well...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9t8LkfRkIDk&search=south%20park%20episode% 20scientology

:D

I saw that south park, it is funny.


I think it is fine for you to think the belief in God is unreasonable, but that others who believe in God are unreasonable? It is a little more than not being told Santa doesn't exist, come on, give people some credit. Everyone knows in their heart that Santa doesn't exist. Every young child finds hidden presents before Christmas and know somethings up.

Believing in god is confronting ignorant christians everyday that completely misinterpret the bible and yet somehow still believing. About being confronted by athiest ideas and somehow still believing. I have barely gone to church my whole life, and I have not agreed with any one church. I wasn't brainwashed.

You believe in the possibility of God, I believe in the possibility of no God. In the possibility that the universe had came into formation from a small piece of mass that came ex nihilo and without cause, everything is possible, including God. I chose God because I feel I have some small fraction of awareness of God. I'm not a person who prays very often, but when I've been on the brink of death I do. I know Jesus existed as a historical figure, and I believe his teachings were the closest to my concept of God. I'm not saying other religions are wrong. There is a great possibility that God's contact with mankind extends beyond the bible and into other religions.

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl3...artes-god.html
some Descartes, I don't think he was really unreasonable.

I refuse to believe that everyone who has ever seen or experienced the supernatural was lying or mistaken (I think many people are mistaken though.)

I'm sorry, but I think it is completely unreasonable to call religion the source of all evil and to call everyone who is religious in the least unreasonable.

If every black person I met was the stereotypical image of a black person, would it be fine for me to stereotype all black people?

Post Script:

I forgot to mention, the idea that humans have progressed so much from their dawn to the 21st century that they should be beyond X is utterly ridiculous. The human world has always been chaotic and it will never progress to utopia of any kind. Humankind will not change until our own eventual extinction. There is nothing that makes the 21st century special. That is as stupid as the old saying "Hello, it is the 90's!" Like the 90's are any more advanced than any other time. Technology and the advancement of thinking does not mean we are any better than the romans or the greeks, because we are not. We are not even past gladiatorial combat. Although we don't watch real fights to the death, it is glorified in our modern entertainment. Humans are carnal beings, nothing has changed.

I think--let me say it again, I think--that most religions, if viewed from their purest perspectives encourage individuality. Buddhism, Catholicism, each and every one of them, place the responsibility for both one's temporary and one's eternal lives in the hands of the individual. The Orthodox institutions claim to show you how to do that, and to follow the path that they lay out, one has to--to a certain degree and for a certain amount of time--submit to the authority of said institution. I've done lots of reading from the Bible, the Bhagvad Gita, the Pali Canon, etc. and that's the general impression I get from all of them. Maybe I'm just finding what I'm looking for, though, without it actually being there.

it would be more individualistic to assert and shape your own form of spirituality without being led to believe that you must adhere to someone else's established guidelines or suggestions as to what exactly spirituality might mean within the context of some codex that someone who isn't you has penned.

one does not need religion to be either spiritual or generous.

Buddhism and Christianity both put the self as something to be suppressed for the greater good, for enlightenment, whatever.
I don't see how you can say that any religion (save perhaps La Vey-style Satanism) can put the individual first. Religion DEPENDS on herd mentality to perpetuate itself.

exactly. i love la vey. what a fucking hilarious guy.

I don't think people realize how funny he was.

if he'd called that book, "how to get fucked while not getting screwed" instead of "the satanic bible," it would have been a best seller.

I don't believe in God , even if I've received a catholic education..it's my "decision"(horrible word) in anyway, it's inconceivable a god characterized by human qualities ( according to me), a god who punishes his creatures or exalts them...

I simply disagree. I think perhaps the people who look outside of themselves for validation find religion as a safe bet, and that's where the herd mentality comes in. I don't think that because you believe in Nirvana, Moksha, Salvation, whatever, and that because you follow roughly in the same footsteps as others who've come before you that you are giving away any bit of yr individuality.

If you're a Buddhist, you'd better. Getting away from the self is a big deal there.

safe bets bore me.

pardon the question. salvation... *from what*???

Butt sex.