Posts tagged: religion
More so a Haiti reference, but let’s just face the inevitable future of Japan’s “disaster relief care packages”
Or even worse, pray for them. Yeah, helpful. Thanks.
Halfway relevant:
Most Japanese people do not exclusively identify themselves as adherents of a single religion; rather, they incorporate elements of various religions in a syncretic fashion known as shinbutsu shūgō. Shinbutsu shūgō officially ended with the Shinto and Buddhism Separation Order of 1886, but continues in practice. Shinto and Japanese Buddhism are therefore best understood not as two completely separate and competing faiths, but rather as a single, rather complex religious system.
Japan grants full religious freedom, allowing minority religions such as Christianity, Islam and Sikhism to be practiced. Figures that state 84% to 96% of Japanese adhere to Shinto and Buddhism are not based on self-identification but come primarily from birth records, following a longstanding practice of officially associating a family line with a local Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine. About 70% of Japanese profess no religious membership, according to Johnstone (1993:323), 84% of the Japanese claim no personal religion. And according to Demerath (2001:138), 64% do not believe in God, and 55% do not believe in Buddha. Japanese streets are decorated on Tanabata, Obon and Christmas.
Wikipedia/Christianity in Japan:
Christianity is a minority religion in Japan, with less than 1% and possibly less than one-half of one percent of the Japanese population claiming Christian belief or affiliation. Nearly all known traditional denominations of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodox Christianity are represented in Japan today, with no restrictions on evangelism.
lol christians
So I was doing some google-fu on the topic of brain hemispheres and conscious/subconscious minds, and stumbled upon this gem:
thebereancall.org: Do You Have A Subconscious Mind?
Some brilliant quotes (the talkers are two relatively old men) (I’m lol’ing too hard to be outraged by the stupid):
“The realm of our thoughts is a non physical, the non physical part of the human makeup. So it’s not to be confused with the brain, we’ve talked about that before, which is a physical organ within the body. And since the mind has no physical properties, it’s beyond the scrutiny of science, right?”
”/—/ two parts to the mind? I don’t know how you could come up with that idea. You might say—we won’t get back into this, Tom, but that’s left brain, right brain, broccoli brain, you remember?” (broccoli brain!!!!!)
“Tom: Sure, but there is no scientific basis for it, that the hemispheres of the brain, both hemispheres work in coordination with one another.
Dave: So this is actually a seduction from Satan, the idea of it.”
“As we said, as I said earlier, there’s no scientific basis for an unconscious or subconscious, all right. Even if there were such an area, there’s no way anybody could prove it. So, Dave, although Freud, he’s a medical doctor, Jung, a psychiatrist, a medical doctor, he would say: Well, these guys are scientists, you know, they’ve got medical degrees. But all of this stuff is just out of their speculation. You know I’ve heard some even more than suggest Freud got these ideas— He was a user of cocaine for depression and really recommended that drug to his colleagues for their patients. So they came up with these ideas, these speculations based on their own perversions, based on their own situations in their own lives.”
“And Tom, as you say, who could prove it? You can’t even get to the unconscious, the subconscious. This is not a scientific theory, and not only can’t you prove it, you can’t prove that it’s not true. This is one of the reasons why they say, belief in God, and you can’t call that a scientific theory, it’s not falsifiable, oh okay. So, the atheists admit, well we can’t prove God exists but you guys can’t prove He doesn’t exist. So now we’ve got something that’s not scientifically subject to examination, therefore it cannot be a scientific theory, but that doesn’t bother us. Belief in God…it’s not a scientific theory for us, we have many proofs for the existence of God, from the Word of God and in many other ways.”
“So, it really trashes the Bible. The Bible promises, He’s given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. We don’t need some help from Freud or Jung whose lives were basket cases.”
oh, god…
If you value the ideal of unconditional love, you won’t find it in the practice of religion. Real compassion doesn’t arise from believing in God, from practicing various rituals, or from studying the concept of karma. Compassion can only result from conscious choice, and this requires the freedom to choose without the threat of punishment or the promise of reward. If you’re obedient to your faith, it’s a safe bet that compassion is absent from your life. You probably don’t even know what real compassion feels like.
—Steve Pavlina, 10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion
trolololol. ESTONIA’S NEARLY AS WHITE AS THE OCEAN, I WON’T BLAME YOU IF YOU CAN’T EVEN SEE IT ON THE MAP. It’s right there, under the panther’s feet. I mean, to the South of Finland.
I wish everyone could experience God the way I have. It saddens me to see how angrily people reject the idea of God. They (some) become distressed and offended if anyone even mentions God. Like my Philosophy teacher has said, “If God wasn’t anything or as unimportant as you say God is, why is it causing such a reaction in you? Nothing can’t cause something. It’s obviously a big deal or possibly something you struggle with.”
I’m almost certain my Philosophy teacher isn’t religious, at all. I agree with him, though. I don’t believe in rejecting something you’re ignorant of. This is why I’m in the process of learning different religions and getting in touch with the higher power I am certain exists. How can you reject Jesus if you have not read and understood the Bible to the best of your capabilities? How can you reject Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam without ever having read the holy books or learned the history?
I mean, you can if you want to. But is it right is what I’m asking.
I shouldn’t be talking.
So there’s this fun 23-day thingymabob that a lot of people are doing, where each day you have to explain what you think about a certain controversial topic. I think this is great; if people tagged their posts, I’d read them. I’d do it myself too but I’m not inclined to believe without reason that anyone is interested in my stupid opinions. ^__^ (Plus, if I answered everything truthfully, I’d lose all my followers. ^__^)
BUT ANYWAY, the first question is whether or not you believe in God (+what religion you follow, if any). This is NOT THE SAME as whether or not you think the Bible is stupid. I swear, most non-Christians in the Western culture only seem to think of “God” in this way. “Do you believe in God?” “No, I’ve realized/always known that the Bible doesn’t make sense/Jesus didn’t exist/didn’t do the things the Bible claims,” etc. … I don’t even… Are you that narrow-minded that you can only think of “God” as presented in the religion that you so surely dismiss?
It’s a very loaded and empty word (simultaneously); I think the first question should read “How do you define “God”/”god”?” and/or whether or not you’re a materialist or something else.
It’s really a philosophical question, so if you’re asking this from someone who hasn’t bothered to really think about these things (or is afraid to) (and therefore [when asked] conforms to a pre-created concept of reality, whether it’s atheism or a view of a specific religion) — then you’re really just asking them to dig a hole for themselves. Whether they answer yes or no, they’re wrong.
This is what I ~believe. :) (I.e. this stems from my “belief” that there is no yes or no answer [and I’m not an agnostic, to the contrary even]. If you’re a pure materialist or a fundamentalist by your own choice then of course you’d disagree.)
A comment on Creationism in the Classroom, the saddest video I’ve seen all day.
friendlyatheist is still going? I GUESS YOU’LL NEVER RUN OUT OF LAME JOKES, HUH. :D
Richard Dawkins: If Science Worked Like Religion
(A clip from ‘Richard Dawkins Lecture at UC Berkeley’)
A++
Richard Dawkins on Real Time with Bill Maher
“…and there are, at least half of America who think the world was created by a man in a cloud in six days who then needed to rest — I love that — he’s so powerful, he created the universe, but then he’s pooped. How can we have the same brain?”
“I’m sorry to say we don’t have the same brain. One of the main principles of the Darwinian theory is plenty of variation for natural selection to work on. And there’s sure enough variation in brain power, all the way from Einstein on the one end to Sarah Palin on the other.”
/—/
“Europe is becoming Amercianized, first they got the food, now they got the stupidity.”
