It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
-George Orwell
The argument is: if there is really an omnipotent, loving god, why is there so much senseless cruelty in our world? Not violence of man against man, but nature against man.
God that made world with horrible birth defects, flesh eating bacteria, malaria, hurricanes and volcanoes must be a cruel god.
Shh, you deserve it, someone else did something wrong so you need to be punished and repent. Don't be so childish
( The actual hilarious part of christianity and inherent sin is that if anyone on earth treats members of a group badly because of a thing one guy did, we call that man a racist bigot )
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
I'm inclined to believe in a higher entity, but not necessarily one that is even remotely as active as some would suggest. I'd consider myself lightly religious in saying sure, I believe that there should be a root catalyst to existence, and for me, 'God' serves to be my representation of that catalyst, as well as any hope of an existence beyond being a fleshy meatbag that is spewed out only to wither and die after a certain amount of time.
One can be logical and hold a belief in something more. What I don't believe is that modern concepts are in any way pure representations of divine words. The amount of revisions across history, the capacity of certain humans to hoodwink hundreds, thousands, millions of individuals through propaganda and belief, and the fact that a human and human's interpretation/editing/'translating' has always stood right next to things taken as divine canon is what makes me disinclined to take any religion that I'm aware of as the reality. I logically dismiss them due to doubts regarding their validity after such a long period of time, historically speaking, and the fact nobody here can conclusively say what happened exactly over a thousand years ago, let alone longer.
With great power, comes great chonky dragons to feed enemies of the state. --Targaryens?
Spoiler for wait what dragons?:
Well formulated like that, I can give some credit to this point. It's one of the things that bothers me as well.
Hurricanes and volcanoes couldl be seen as preparatory trails for larger events such as having to sustain a siege for an enemy army for example, but flesh eating bacteria and malaria appears kinda senseless.
But yes that's one of the best points that can be done against the benevolency of a Higher Being.
Bizarrely enough, as Dr. Legend pointed out, such events tend to -increase-, not decrease, faith in the supernatural. For polytheists, plenty of deities associated with vulanoes. In Hinduism, earthquakes and tsunamis tend to act as a remember for Karma and Divine punishment, rather than a point of the Higher being not caring about the people here.
In older societes, it tended to increase pressure for the existance of a clerical/shamanic class associated with the king, or even a theocracy in replacement of monarchy.
So I can recognize this as a weak spot for the nature of a loving God, but not as a weak spot for the existance of the supernatural.
But it still depends. Both birth and death are mysteries of nature, we don't really know what happens to the souls of people who die in such scenarios.
Last edited by fkizz; December 28, 2017 at 06:35 PM.
It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
-George Orwell
Volcanoes and disease and things like that tended to increase belief in the supernatural because people couldn't explain how fire could possibly jump out of the tip of a mountain.
Now we know why, and it's not some god of industry and blacksmiths working on his latest set of armor
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
God has given us two pictures, two perspectives, of what life could be like by what happened at the fall of man. The garden was the perfect example of all things being at one with God whereas the second picture is how things turned out because of Adam's fatal error. Oh you can blame God for all you want but it doesn't change anything as the curse remains. The great news is that God has given everyone a way out of their portion of the curse but unless that person can accept that he or she is cursed nothing is going to change their lives. God sent His Son into the world to make it possible and all one has to do is accept their own guilt crying out for salvation genuinely and He will surely keep His promise to save you. He's not looking for goodie two shoes, leaving that to all the false religions, just an acknowledgement of guilt and sorrow regardless of what you have done. One day the picture that the garden made is going to become reality whilst all the rest is gone other than that place which no-one in their right mind would want to spend the rest of eternity in. So, which would you like?
We still haven't empirically seen the inside of the Earth. There may be a game changer discovery (or not). Don't open the champaign bottle before the achievment.
The whole point of Scientific method is that it's open to updates. But all the folk who use it against existance of religion treat scientific method-knowledge as some sort of "Final Destination Knowledge".. the whole point is that the whole theory can be reviewed or even discarded if enough empirical data pushes otherwise.
For example by old physics standards, of early XX century, V2 Rockets should be impossible. Well V2 rockets did in fact, work, and the principles of it were applied to space race by US, so it was time to discard the old scientific assertions and replace them with new ones.
Using scientific knowledge as some sort of "Final Knowledge" is extremely self-refuting.
As for the rest, Volcanos are seen as deities or places of deities because the suffering they can cause, while at same time causing prosperity (much higher fertility in volcano areas)
In some countries Volanoes are still seen as deities/containing deities, such as Polytheistic Shintoism from Japan, which has a bigger Economy than every Western country except US.
Also ahead in "technologically backwards" things such as robotics and artificial intelligence.
So that forced correlation of development/belief seems to be suffering to confirmation bias.
Last edited by fkizz; December 29, 2017 at 07:15 PM.
It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.
-George Orwell