Religions are like crypto's: they both are build on thin air, and the followers trust them unconditionally and blindly. No questions asked. To me the ultimate would be a crypto church. All money collected would be anonymous crypto's. Two scams together in one business model.
English is my first language, which is why i sought further clarification with your use of those terms. A lot of sin lurks behind vague terminology. I googled synonyms: Similar to religion: faith belief divinity worship creed teaching doctrine theology sect cult religious group faith community church denomination body following persuasion Similar to intolerant: bigoted narrow-minded small-minded parochial provincial insular blinkered illiberal inflexible dogmatic rigid uncompromising unforgiving unsympathetic prejudiced biased partial partisan one-sided sectarian discriminatory unfair There are many children born "Christian" in countries that mainly practice Islam, or pride themselves on being Islamic. What if you were born to Christian parents (i argue there is no such thing as a Christian, but i digress) in a predominant Islamic country? Would you stand in solidarity with "people of the book" versus atheists everywhere? Would you argue that atheists everywhere are more intolerant of your religion than those born into the Islamic religion? (I argue that Islam is the child of Judaism and it's black sheep of the family: Judeo-Christianity, but i digress. ) Would you keep quiet, and target atheists everywhere instead? If you are in the US, you are arguably in an atheistic governmental system. How would you compare your treatment to those Christians in Pakistan? Which of the following statements is more true: 1) "Atheistic intolerance towards any religion is usually mean spirited and has a superiority complex aspect to it." 2) "Islamic intolerance towards any other religion is usually mean spirited and has a superiority complex aspect to it." 3) "Judeo-Christian intolerance towards any other sect of their own religion is usually mean spirited and has a superiority complex aspect to it." Here, Harris Sultan, a premier atheistic YouTuber, defends a man born Christian in Pakistan, and therefore a second class citizen. When he began to point out the issues, he had to become a refugee, and fled to South Korea, where his three or five year Visa is about to expire in 24 hours, after which he will be deported back to Pakistan to face almost certainly torture and execution, and may too include his family which will also be deported. This is the time for Christians in Korea and the U.S. to collaborate (there is a huge population of US influenced Christians in South Korea) to save this man's life. Have they been unaware of this man's situation? Nevertheless, it looks like a single atheist in Australia is raising the alarm.
"A lot of sin lurks". Yes, sin lurks all over the planet in every crevice of humanity. Without any moral compass humanity would be still acting like it did 10,000 years ago. (Murder, rape, ect) And now you probably want me to define the word "sin". So with all of what you wrote above, do you think all religion should be abolished/outlawed and replaced with atheism all over the globe? Are there any studies saying mankind would be better off without religion? Do you think humanity would of been better off if religion had never existed at all?
A lot of sin lurks behinds the very vague term "sin". That's why a long time ago i made a definitive pronouncement on what sin actually is, or rather, isn't. S.I.N.s are seriously insane notions about Christ. If Christ is the truth, then sin is all that is not true. What is not true has no actual existence, if the only existence (life) that exists is Christ. Therefore, sin, being all that is not true, does not exist. However, there appears to be a domain ruled by imagination, which proposes all that is not true, about Christ. It's always about Christ, because that is the original existence (life). Therefore, anything proposed about Christ that is not true must be anti-Christ. This would comprise the entire domain of imagination. Man is a manifestation of the domain of imagination, made as an "image", which is what imagination produces as it's "work". This is the reason sin lurks in every crevice of mankind. However, if your definition of sin does not also include mankind itself (including the catalyst that conceived of mankind), then your use of the term condones, promulgates, and maintains systematic sin and it's manifestations. Compare, then, my very clear definition (transparency) to so many vague definitions of sin, which only serves to perpetuate it's effects. Murder and rape are graphical effects of what imagination does to reality. Imagination and reality are mutually exclusive attitudes, and stated explicitly, one must "die" for the other to "live". As such, imagination is anti-reality. As a product of imagination, man is definitely anti-reality. Not just a product (idol) however. Man is a participant in the imaginative process with his ideological ancestry linking back to prehistoric (before time) times, when man was "conceived" within the imaginative process. That is, that which conceives of man, and mankind itself, are inextricably intertwined and consensually involved at deep levels of mind-space. Man is complicit in his own manufacture. Conceived, "in sin", man remains the embodiment of sin. Since everything man does is sin (birthing, eating, breathing, growing, changing, dying), man is a "slave of sin". There is no way to expunge sin, and keep the man, since everything man does (eating, breathing, growing, changing, dying) is anti-reality. In reality, there is no such thing as eating, breathing, growing, changing and dying. If reality is the truth, then man goes against the truth, by his very "existence", or so it seems. If reality is Christ, then man's very "existence" (or so it seems) goes against Christ. Truth is the first casualty (death) of the imaginative process. The imaginative process is like a war on the truth, with full intent to kill it. As such, man exists upon it's murder of Christ, as that which is true and real. However, it is not Christ which is harmed by the imaginative process, but rather all that is imagined, including man. Man's war upon man is an extrapolation of man's war upon the truth/Christ. It is man which is harmed in this war. But not just man. All that imagination proposes, it also destroys. Thus, even whole galaxies will eventually collide and destroy each other, and the stars will burn out, destroying everything that erroneously and superstitiously depended upon their "light". So no, man does not have a moral compass, so long as he represents what is "more" than the truth/Christ/reality. Morals, or lack thereof, are intrinsically linked to the concept of more. Man's entire existence is to gain more than truth/Christ/reality. In the process of gaining more, man loses his "soul", which is intrinsically linked to truth/Christ/reality. Man's very "existence" (life) so-called, begins with the "murder" of Christ. Well, the US is kind of like a study, because it was largely fueled by people escaping religious intolerance in the "old world", mainly England. At the time, England was suffering under the wide pendulum swings of royal religion ever since Henry the Eighth started his own brand of Christianity, and began shuttering monasteries and confiscating their relative wealth for his own purse. Each time one of his successors, even his own children, took the throne, they would end up imposing either the old, or the new religion upon their subjects, enacting intolerance as a matter of law. A group escaped to the Netherlands, and from there became "pilgrims" to the new world. Eventually, the new world became a decent example of religious tolerance, by excluding religion from official governmental functionality. In keeping with this tolerance, i would not seek to pass any laws that treated any one group un-equally, either with favoritism, or with malice. Nor would i advocate any private, non-governmental agencies to use force or violence to expunge any religious groups. I would however, recommend that religious groups with active edicts towards force and violence be themselves profiled, and prevented from acting upon their violent tendencies. Along these lines, Harris Sultan recently put a Christian in his place, who called his show to express willingness to use force and violence against Islamic mosques and/or their occupants. True, mosques represent a kind of army boot camp for extremists to carry forth the violent tendencies of their religion. But bomb explosions are not how i would recommend their dismantling. Nor would Harris Sultan, an avowed atheist. Thus, you are safer in an atheistic governmental system, than in any other. The US is a good "study" of that. Or it was. Now Australia is a good study of that, or at least it was. Pakistan is a study of a religious state, over emphasizing favored/unfavored classes. Technically, man IS a kind of religion, no matter what he believes. Not one man actually believes anything that is actually true, at least not without intervention. Man operates entirely upon faith, including atheists. Man does not posses, not initially, any sort of knowledge that is actually in-line with truth/Christ/reality. This includes atheists. Instead, man has substitute "knowledge" so-called, and suffers from his assumptions. Man has to do an about face, a 180 degree turn, to believe anything that is actually true about truth/Christ/reality. Technically, mankind does not exist. Yes, it would have been better if mankind did not participate in the imaginative process, which is where all pain and suffering arises from. There is no punishment for this. Imagination is it's own worst punishment. Sin has it's own karma police. It's own dungeons. It's own dragons. It's own pitchforks. Yes, it would have been better never to have been "born" so-to-speak, because nothing man has ever gained by this seeking of more has yielded anything of actual value. Generally speaking, truth/Christ/reality does not force itself upon the manifestations of imagination (including mankind). Instead, it stands at the door and knocks, politely. Even though it is polite, the gates of hell (Christ knocks on the doors of hell) will not prevail in shutting out the truth/Christ/reality. Is Christ "intolerant" to knock, and keep knocking on the door, waiting to be invited in to have "supper"? Some of us, including atheists, stand at the door and mock. You can definitely hear us knocking/mocking. Are we intolerant? Just be glad we do not appeal to force and violence, including the force of deception. Why knock? Why mock? Because the religions inside the gates of hell are painful to one another, and delay the re-union of truth/Christ/reality with it's Self.
As an addendum to what i wrote before: I have often wondered what religion, if any, functions as a prep-school for the understanding, and acceptance, of the assertions about Christ that i am forwarding through broadcast distribution. I decided that weary agnosticism is the best prep-school for the understandings that i advocate. Jesus did not say, come to me ye who are Jews. He said 'come to me ye who are weary'. Agnosticism is an admission that one does not know. This too is a prime preparation for actual knowledge. That is, before one can be gnostic, one must admit agnosticism. Atheism, like most religions, has the problem of "knowing" what it thinks it "knows" as "knowledge". Only to find out later that science is the observance of that which faith has wrought, and that the observer influences the manifestation of the faith-based world around him, able to change waves to particles, and back again. Participating, in secret. Something as simple as 2+2=4 is still not knowledge. It is the observance of the persistency (relative longevity) of faith-based phenomenon. In knowledge, there is not more than one thing that exists. Therefore there is no addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. So yes, it's probable that religions (clubs that confuse faith with knowledge) slow down mankind's destiny to dissolve itself in favor of truth/Christ/reality. It's possible, for example, that a prostitute could be "closer to the kingdom of heaven" than a priest of a popular religion. This might be because a prostitute is not intimidated by popular edicts about what man knows to be right or wrong. This might open the mind (the door) to invite in actual knowledge from a source (truth/Christ/reality) that is not popular with mankind. Indeed, i would be at risk for execution by bigots in most any other century, or any other country than modern US. Here, i feel some relative freedom to think and speak far off the broad beaten path of faith worshipping religions, and to follow a much narrower path that does not care what people think of me. Possibly, if this is characteristic of atheists, they are closer to salvation than Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus. I myself came by way of 12 years of agnosticism, after a 12 year stint as one of two brands of Judeo-Christianity. During those 12 years i felt there was something wrong with Christianity, but did not know what, or how to articulate what was the problem. I explored "New Thought", and various other perspectives that i now think of as magic (The Secret, The Law of Attraction). I felt something was wrong there too, but could not explain what. Instead i kept an open mind for additional, new information, especially in regards to Jesus. It's out there if you are seeking. So four types that have a better chance at salvation: 1.)Seekers 2.) Those who admit they do not know 3.) Those who are weary of the status quo, and/or popular paths 4.) Those who are not influenced by popularity contests, numbers (billions of Muslims), celebrity, or moral police (priests and preachers) who are gate-keeping the broad paths...or anyone relying on authority by association. In theory, Judeo Christians are willing to prove they don't care what anyone else thinks by espousing some pretty ridiculous characterizations about Jesus and what is Good. They don't care it sounds like gibberish to atheists. It would be better if they expressed this otherwise positive attitude to espouse information about Jesus and Good that are wholesome and psychologically healing, instead of utterly ridiculous. I would guestimate that most atheists are expressing annoyance at the shear depth of ridiculous rhetoric, and not about Jesus or Good itSelf. I am skeptical that anyone comes to the understanding i broadcast by way directly from any of the Abrahamic religions. Might need to become a prostitute first. Jesus put it this way: "You [may] need to be born again", meaning, you might need to go through numerous more incarnations, maybe even one as a hermaphrodite, to finally reach the weariness factor needed to open one's mind to dine with the truth. Just beware any religion that relies upon the death of truth for it's salvation. Better to admit just how ridiculous this not only sounds, but actually is. Better to rely on the continuity of truth (the unchanging nature of truth) for salvation.
Just speak with members of Scientology or Mormons... or Muslims. EDIT: should say TRY to speak as many are maybe afraid to speak.