You confuse evidence with emotion. Its all in your head. That little voice you feel is emotions based on superstition.
I really do not think that religion matters at all for modern day conservatives, there is a lot of issues that conservatives seem to be holding on to for no apparent reason, Gay marriage is a huge one, conservatives seem to hold on to the fact that they dont want to allow gay marriage in public debate, but id be willing to bet if you ever got an honest response 8 out of 10 of them would say they really dont give a shit.
I think z10 is confusing "teaching" with "lecturing." He may have had too many lectures from his parents or his school teachers. He certainly had never heard of the phrase "teaching by examples."
It is still to far way to really get an understanding where each candidtate rests in the spectrum. They are still jocking for position. I just hope they do not start 5 steps back when it really matters because they were talking about morals and not solutions for major problems. I understand that there has been major corruption on the right. People do not trust them now, and talking about how moral they are acually makes them look more guilty.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 1- Lets assume they bushed their agenda long time ago. But at least they allowed science and new evidence to take place and this country kept going a head until it became the strongest and richest nation. 2- Where I came from: I am a Palestinian. My people had the most to suffer from religion in the past 3000 years. ever since Abraham came up with his religion and our land never rested and never will. sons of abraham blood is covering our landscape. 3- However Islam still had some good impact and changes to the region. Arabs where nomads for the most part and never before had a strong state or a noticeable civilization (Except the one in Yemen and the pre arab Iraqis-babalonians), Islam came and changed all of that in short time and built a civilization that ended the roman and Persian empire swiftly. Science and knowledge prospered in the region and the islamic world became the center of invention, science, music and all goods. until good muslims, with good intentions, thinking they are serving God, Islam, and humanity bushed their agenda and stopped progress by insisting on literal adherance to quran, and mohamad teaching as concluded by the most famous four islamic scholars. The science became religion science, else is a waste of time and not god rewarding. Now this is the same thing happening to america today, it dose not happen overnight, slowly. The religious groups are gaining ground and pushing religious judgment on what we do and what we can't do, stem cell research is vetoed by our president, grants to science projects reduced, grants to public radio reduced, government agencies that monitor people life created,....., it has been going on for a while but with Bush people are waking up. I can go on and on for examples of how the religious agenda is now mending our politics. 4- To think that things can happen in other cultures and not in America, is so naive and dangerous thinking. All Countries, empires, and civilization vanish. and they vanish for a reason. And their is a start to the first mile in the 1000 mile vanishing journey. Let us not allow this to happen. Religion interfering politics may be (in my opinion) a first step toward the vanishing of this country. (freedom of any morals is as dangouras as well, but where to draw the line and say this is moral and this is not?It is healthy to keep debating this but fatal to use religion to tell us what is right and what is wrong)
No little voices. No imaginations. Soberness and a firm grasp of reality required, and also a sober observation of reality. When man slows down a little and gives himself a chance to see reality, and not dwell in his own head, he becomes pleasantly surprised to realise that there is so much more that he had not noticed before.
Science, progress and freedom of thought are not incompatible with Christianity. Any religion that restricts a persons freedom to do whatever he wants, including leave the religion, should be re-examined. The purpose of religion is to serve man, not man to serve religion. Freedom is mans greatest right, and anything that wishes to control his personal freedom by force is wrong. God and Abraham are not to blame for what personal choices people make. BTW, that entire region Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia (parts), Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morroco, Algeria was once Christian. They were forced by the sword to change their religion, or face annihilation. Religious values in the west are not incompatible with what most decent people want, religious or non-religious. It is wrong to kill another human being, I'm sure most people will agree with that. Most people, religious or non-religious, want their children to be exposed to good values, and to be compassionate, honest, thoughtful, kind, helpful, non-violent, merciful, forgiving, trustworthy, loyal, long suffering, un-selfish, tolerant. Which of these desires do you believe is going to lead to the downfall of any country. It is rather that lack of these qualities that is a reason for concern. The line is drawn when any institution or religion or government restricts your freedom of movement, speech, choice, action. If communism was so great, why did they have to force people to stay in their country, when everyone wanted to leave because they were unhappy. Itâs still happening in Cuba today.
Why deplore it? If a fear of God and punishment for doing wrong...actually keeps people from doing wrong, why on earth would you be against that? You would then be deploring something that benefits society... So some people claim to be God fearing, and they are not, and that is all too common. So? Why deplore the phrase then, just understand that many people don't follow through on what they publicly claim to believe. It would be no different than someone who is calling themselves rational, who is not actually rational, but rather rationalizes their wrong behavior as a product of reason... I see this all the time, the the so called "rationalists" or the "objectivists" claim to be so reasoned, when in fact they are just as much if not more emotional in their reactions as the next guy, but they are skilled in rationalizing away their behavior, and often skillful enough with the use of language to convince the untrained eye that they are truly rational.
Someone can try to teach by example, but if the person watching them doesn't follow their example, it demonstrates that what people decide to do is not a product of teaching by others... No, I don't confuse your lecturing style with learning. Teachers, at their best just share their life experience and their understanding, and if the person who is listening can then decide to make it their own, it becomes their own at that point and then rises to the level of knowledge. Knowledge, that actually changes behavior, is not the product of teaching, but of learning and making thoughtful responsible decisions independently, inside one's own mind. A robot could be programmed for "moral behavior" but human beings can easily, and often do reject their childhood programming. That's what makes us human, the right to choose for ourselves. Knowledge in the books stays in the books, knowledge of a teacher remains in the teacher, a student learns on their own by deciding whether to accept or reject what they hear, read and see, and then it becomes their own knowledge if the accept it into their own being, and make it real for themselves because they understand, not because they can robotic-ally repeat information. You continually confuse information with knowledge, which is evidence in most of your condescending posts... A dictionary, an encyclopedia, a computer with all the data in the world...all have no knowledge, just information. Information is not knowledge, it is simply information. We live in an information age, but clearly not a knowledge age... If you don't know the difference between information and knowledge, I would not be surprised at all...
Religion is a human construct, and like all things man-made, they are filled with errors and prone to fail. Some more-so than others. "God Bless America" and a constant reassurance that they are protecting our unalienable Rights endowed by our Creator, is the most preaching I want to hear from a politician. Stalin was an atheist, he slaughtered 30-40 million of his countrymen. I suspect that most leaders ruled not by a 'higher-power', but by the ridiculous notion they are the highest form of intelligence, treated their peasant-citizens similiarly. I don't quite understand the sport of ridiculing people's beliefs. It's not like anyone truly understands a god damn thing.