Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

A lot of Socialism is about a belief in the power of collective action, shared resource and people’s co-operative nature. Capitalism emphasises people’s competitive and individualistic/selfish nature. Both systems are advocated by their proponents as a route to happiness and propsperity for all. The truth is that people are both naturally cooperative and naturally competitive and that the best systems of organising ourselves (societies....) are those that attempt to harness both of these natural proclivities for maximum collective gain. Free markets do demonstrably result in innovation that benefits us all in the right circumstances. Collecting resources on the basis of ability to contribute and distributing on the basis of need works better in other areas. The problems generally arise when people get ideologically tied to one over the other. Trying to apply market ideology to things like health and education, which are better provided collectively and cooperatively, is as misguided as attempts to have state run car manufacturers of the Soviet kind.Anyway - In general the teachings of Christ do more emphasise notions of cooperatism. I’d expect Christ to advocate education, health, access to justice, the rule of law etc. to all equally or on the basis of need. Rather than ability to pay.I guess in Faith’s view anything called socialism just means evil government dictating what everyone does. But I’d argue a more Scandinavian model where collective resource is used to provide everyone in society with basic standards in key areas (health, education, transport etc.) that ultimately makes the whole economy more productive and the people happier. I think Christ would be a Scandinavian Socialist.....

I’ve been reading this thread and I think it’s worth reiterating the main point here. Rapture was predicted by Faith in a way that is very clearly testable. It either happens or it doesn’t. That testable claim was proved to be entirely wrong, as pretty much everyone here knew it would be.Result - Faith is now more convinced than ever in the veracity of her beliefs.That is the believer’s reaction to demonstrable failure. Increased belief. Now bear in mind that most religious claims are designed to be untestable in any way and that this sort of cock-on-the-block proclamation is relatively rare and it’s clear that for people like Faith there is absolutely nothing that could ever cause her to properly question the things she holds dear. She’s in a loop of conviction with absolutely no way out.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Of course. But if you can be so demonstrably wrong about ‘when’ why does that not cause you any reason to doubt the veracity of the whole thing? The ‘evidence’ you cited for the ‘when’ is of the same type you rely on for knowing any of this will ever occur.It’s all about how you determine fact from fiction. And to anyone remotely objective the idea that your method of determining fact from fiction has failed so spectacularly would cause one to at least consider the other conclusions made on the same basis.But you are now more convinced of your overall conclusion than the ever. It’s just bizarre.

Let us know when the next rapture date is....

It won’t happen. Try, if possible, to enjoy your life safe in the knowledge that this won’t be something any of us need to concern ourselves preparing for or worrying about in any way. Free yourself.

Can you not understand why most of us here think this is madness?If you or I go round killing babies to punish adulterous parents we’d be rightly condemned for an act of evil against an innocent and defenceless child.But if God does an identical thing for an identical reason it’s ‘just’ and ‘good’ simply because you define it to be so.And that’s the morality you espouse....Never mind delusional. It’s sick and dangerous frankly.

I’m not going to shoot you. I’m simply going to point out how dangerous the God-definitional morality you espouse is.Absolutely any atrocity, no matter how horrific or immoral, can be justified by the believer as ‘good’ and ‘just’ as long as they genuinely believe it is God’s will.

quote:

---

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

---

- Steven WeinbergYou exemplify why this is true.

I'm not accusing you personally of evil acts. I didnt say you personally were killing babies in God's name. I'm pointing out that defining an act, no matter how atrocious, as 'good and 'just on the basis of being God's will is a dangerous, delusional path to evil.You talk about people flying planes into buildings. They had exactly that mindset. They believed their actions justified as God's will. They believed their murderous acts to be 'Good' and 'just' on the same basis that you proclaim murderous acts in the bible to be good and just.

Reading your posts it comes across as if you think there is a binary choice here.It’s either some robotic Spock like existence where logic, reason, and reality restricts and dictates. Or it’s that one accepts irrational belief as part of the human condition and simply embraces it. Then, on the basis that we all have beliefs of one sort or another, you conclude that the former position is ultimately unrealistic and the latter means that your religious beliefs are as justified as any other beliefs (e.g. a belief in Capitalism as a political/economic system)Is that fair?Because I would argue there is a whole spectrum of justification for beliefs ranging from hard science at one end to Faith style evidence denying rapture predicting nonsense at the other. A belief in a political ideology will, for most people, be based on a combination of real life and very material personal experience and upbringing + their education and knowledge of history and the wider world. That’s a woollier basis than hard science but considerably more concrete than notions of personally experiencing godly entities, the sort of experience I have seen you cite as justifying religious belief.

My point was that it’s not binary. I have political beliefs based on a woollier grounding than my belief that the Earth orbits the Sun but far more grounded than notions of supernatural entities.I’m not doubting your pesonal conviction.

But can you see why political beliefs (to use your own example) are generally more grounded than theistic ones?Can you honestly not see the difference between a lifetime’s experience at the sharp end of a capitalist economy (for example) that might shape one’s political stance and ‘subjective experiences’ relating to God that shape your theistic beliefs**Can you be more specific here - visions? voices? feelings? what? And that’s exactly my point. Most people don’t base their political beliefs on the sort of hard science that a Geiger counter might provide. But that doesn’t mean theistic beliefs and political beliefs are equally baseless in terms of material evidence.Can you see that?

If God required that you kill someone would you do it? Would you act as the instrument of God’s will if he commanded it?He has past form on this..

quote:

---

Samuel 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

​

NUMBERS 21:3 The Lord gave the Canaanites over to Israel, who "completely destroyed them and their towns."

​

NUMBERS 31:17-18 God commanded Moses to kill all of the male Midianite children and "kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."

---

I am intrigued just how far a true believer would take this idea that whatever God commands be just and good by definition. Would you actually kill if commanded to by God?

So if God commanded you to would you kill those who have committed a terrible sin against God’s people and who deserve punishment would you do it?

I am delighted to hear it. I think it’s a good thing you would ignore such commands.But what if those biblical folk who were commanded to kill the Amalekites had drawn the same conclusion and ignored God’s command? Would they have been justified in their refusal?

In my view anyone perceiving commands from a God is far more likely to be suffering some form of psychosis than actually receiving commands from god.But the likes of Faith and Phat etc. Seem to think that they do have subjective experiences of God and that people have communed with God and received instructions from him, so I wondered what they’d make of God apparently instructing them to kill people.Faiths answer seems to be that God used to do that in Old Testament times but doesn’t since the New Testament came into being (the exact cutover date for God’s change of tack is unclear to me) so she’d ignore it as psychosis. Which I find slightly ironic but reassuring that some sort of sanity has prevailed despite the rather tortured justification for it.