But I do want to dispute your statement that you know people who have "found" religion (though I didn't realize that it was lost) and it made them better people. So if they didn't "find" religion, they would never have become better people?
~Shy Guy
That's an unanswerable question in the definitive sense. Perhaps they woulda found another way to become mature, moral, caring people but if religion, as silly as it is, was their chosen road to personal salvation and the adoption of a viable moral code then who is Spud to judge it as wrong.
After leaving the Catholic church Spud always kinda looked at Organised Religion as morality with the training wheels still on. People who need the carrot and stick of a perceived Heaven and Hell in order to stick to the straight and narrow path of morality have found a type of inner peace but one based on a type of dependence on an outside source, a support group if you will.
Religon is a rubber crutch, in other words, one that offers a type of support but which ya look kinda funny using, in Spud's ever mirthful opinion.
As far as Tak's comment about God being "perfect: never lied, never sinned, never cheated, never unjust or unkind", etc. That is the most laughable joke I have read in a long time.
Yeah, Tak's commentary rarely makes much sense and often makes nonsense.
"Never cheated" yet he made another man's WIFE pregnant with his Son, Jesus. Sounds like a cheater to me.
Joeseph is the patron Saint of cuckolded husbands around the globe fer that very reason.
Spud has this joke.
"The Immaculate Conception refers to the fact that nobody had to sleep on the wet spot."
Same for Sodom and Gomorrah
How about Lot offering up his daughters to the angry mob to rape?
And this is the Good Guy in the story?
Yeesh!
The Bible is full of contradiction and amorality.
The God of the old testament, Yaweh or Elohim depending on which set of scribes yer reading, was a jealous, angry, violent shithead who did many dumb things.
That sed, the essential message of Christianity and Judaism that of the neccessity of society adopting a moral code seems not too outdated a concept by Spud's lights.
Believing in God is not neccessary to believing in Good but it certainly seems to help some people, although, admitttedly, it seems to be counter productive in others.
Rejecting the dEvil is not as important as rejecting Evil.
If one needs religon to reject evil and embrace good by callnig them Devil and God then so be it. It's still better than having no appreciable moral code at all.
Spud's biggest problem with religion is it's seeming inability to evolve.
That and asswipes who are so simple minded they insist on interpreting a book of analogies and symbolism with dead pan earnest literalism.
People that dumb, quite frankly, scare the shiat outta Spud.
Particularily when you realise how many of them hold political office in the US.
Be Well.
