bcspace wrote: If there is no one true religion/philosophy then God does not exist.
LOL That you think this follows, shows how thoroughly mormonized you are.
Your conflatiion of religion with philosophy is also weird.
Even if there were a true philosophy, it does not follow that it would be an actual organization rather than just a set of true beliefs. Further, even if an organization or a "church" is what God had in mind (which I would doubt), it still wouldn't mean it had to be one of the current world religions.
But to reiterate my main point, the idea that the existence of God implies that there must be a true church is just a Mormon prejudice.
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
SteelHead wrote:For the majority of the time from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance Western Europe was an armpit of ignorance, superstition, plague, and tyranny.
It wasn't until the influence of the Moorish invaders and their tradition for medicine, math, universities, libraries and such sparked the Renaissance that the influence of the western world started to grow for the improvement of the condition of mankind.
For about 1000 years the western christian culture was more of an impediment than a help.
The Moors didn't spark the Renaissance or it would have happened in the 700s when Muslim power in Spain was at it's height before the Reconquista began to be successful. The Renaissance was more likely sparked by the influx of knowledge and wealth from the eastern half of the Mediterranean during the Crusades to the Western half of Europe. The flow of wealth from the western half of the remnants of the Roman Empire to the eastern Byzantines was one of the catalysts of the dark age in Western Europe.
Whatever appears to be against the Book of Mormon is going to be overturned at some time in the future. So we can be pretty open minded.-charity 3/7/07
MASH quotes I peeked in the back [of the Bible] Frank, the Devil did it. I avoid church religiously. This isn't one of my sermons, I expect you to listen.
Aristotle Smith wrote:Why did you not pick North Africa? This was the bread basket of the Roman Empire, even up until late antiquity, surely it was still a going concern in the caliphate? No, the Muslim invasions in North Africa brought the entire region to ruin. The world of late antiquity vanished more completely here than in any other region of the former Roman Empire, a real dark ages. But why is this not considered a dark age when pre-Renaissance Europe is? Simple, Petrarch and other Renaissance polemicists didn't give a crap about this region and so had no reason to polemicize against it.
North Africa was invaded numerous times between the respective conquests by the Romans and Muslims. The Vandals and Byzantines conquered North Africa before the Muslims got there which had to have taken it's toll collectively along with Muslim and Berber warring in the area.
Whatever appears to be against the Book of Mormon is going to be overturned at some time in the future. So we can be pretty open minded.-charity 3/7/07
MASH quotes I peeked in the back [of the Bible] Frank, the Devil did it. I avoid church religiously. This isn't one of my sermons, I expect you to listen.
madeleine wrote: I suppose if you want to ignore Christian culture, from which scientists and universities arose....schools, orphanages, hospitals, government.
Secular humanism hasn't improved the world. Having been at one time a secular humanist, I think it has failed pretty miserably, and to be blunt, is a form of totalitarianism.
Secular humanism seems to be the first force since the rise of complex governments that has been successful in reducing the amount of violence on this planet. Christianity has its virtues, but I wouldn't speak of it as the "best hope for the human race."
Yes, the 20th century was so peaceful.
Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction -Pope Benedict XVI
The article never names the document it is referring to. Quoting what the media says about Pope Benedict XVI has no value. I haven't seen them get anything right.
Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction -Pope Benedict XVI
The Soviets were overtly atheistic. The Nazis were not Christian, although some hijacked Christianity. Those two account for a substantial percentage of the violent death toll of the 20th century.
Huckelberry said: I see the order and harmony to be the very image of God which smiles upon us each morning as we awake.
Wars make headlines, but there are fewer conflicts today, and they typically don’t kill as many people. Many scholars have made that point, most notably Joshua S. Goldstein in his recent book “Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide.” Goldstein also argues that it’s a myth that civilians are more likely to die in modern wars.
Look also at homicide rates, which are now far lower than in previous centuries. The murder rate in Britain seems to have fallen by more than 90 percent since the 14th century.
Then there are the myriad forms of violence that were once the banal backdrop of daily life. One game in feudal Europe involved men competing to head-butt to death a cat that had been nailed alive to a post. One reason this was considered so entertaining: the possibility that it would claw out a competitor’s eye.
Think of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. One academic study found that modern children’s television programs have 4.8 violent scenes per hour, compared with nursery rhymes with 52.2.
The decline in brutality is true of other cultures as well. When I learned Chinese, I was startled to encounter ideographs like the one of a knife next to a nose: pronounced “yi,” it means “cutting off a nose as punishment.” That’s one Chinese character that students no longer study.
Pinker’s book rang true to me partly because I often report on genocide and human rights abuses. I was aghast that Darfur didn’t prompt more of an international response from Western governments, but I was awed by the way American university students protested on behalf of a people who lived half a world away.
That reflects a larger truth: There is global consensus today that slaughtering civilians is an outrage. Governments may still engage in mass atrocities, but now they hire lobbyists and public relations firms to sanitize the mess.
In contrast, until modern times, genocide was simply a way of waging war. The Bible repeatedly describes God as masterminding genocide (“thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth” — Deuteronomy 20:16), and European-Americans saw nothing offensive about exterminating Native Americans. One of my heroes, Theodore Roosevelt, later a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, was unapologetic: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely in the case of the tenth.”
The pace of moral progress has accelerated in the last few decades. Pinker notes that on issues such as civil rights, the role of women, equality for gays, beating of children and treatment of animals, “the attitudes of conservatives have followed the trajectory of liberals, with the result that today’s conservatives are more liberal than yesterday’s liberals.”
The reasons for these advances are complex but may have to do with the rise of education, the decline of chauvinism and a growing willingness to put ourselves in the shoes (increasingly, even hooves) of others.
Granted, the world still faces brutality and cruelty. That’s what I write about the rest of the year! But let’s pause for a moment to acknowledge remarkable progress and give thanks for the human capacity for compassion and moral growth.
No doubt the internet is full of criticisms of Pinker's book. But he does not seem to be completely devoid of evidence to support his thesis.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
The Soviets were overtly atheistic. The Nazis were not Christian, although some hijacked Christianity. Those two account for a substantial percentage of the violent death toll of the 20th century.
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge Mao Tse Tung
Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction -Pope Benedict XVI
That reference was an interesting addition to the discussion. I made a comment above about war be awful in its ongoing continuance. I do not want to hide the possiblity that humans have become more humane, civilized,and morally committed than our past societies were. I reject completely the belief that the world is decaying or going morally bankrupt. I think there has clearly been serious improvment, but the currents of change are complicated. As a Christian believer I think Christian faith has contributed to improvement. I do not at all think that Christianity is the only positive source. I think criticism of Christian policies and culture based upon an emphasis on idividual value and rights has contibuted as well.
Governments have become more stable, a condition encouraging productive industry and trade. The wealth that is produced creates opportunity for education research and discovery. Social stabilty creates opportunities for art entertainment and a chance to enjoy time with friends. Why would people want to persue blood bashing pillage and death when there are better things to be found?
i suppose the cause and effect could be seen in reverse as well. Increased opportunity for productive industry and trade increases the value of having a stable government.
Stable governments are not always easy to come by my amateur history studies tell me.