I think it is hilarious and absurd that some religious groups are stating that GOD brought the hurricane to the South. LOL! Specifically, GOD brought these wet winds of destruction to New Orleans because that is where "the gays" gather and there are no less than 10 abortion clinics. One religious group went so far as to say that if you look at the radar images of the hurricane, it is in the distinct shape of a fetus; therefore being PROOF that it was sent to destroy New Orleans for being sinners. LOL! Oh my sides hurt...
Then there is the other side of this absuridity: those who survived the hurricane who are praising this very same GOD for their survival and hearing His Voice tell them what to do to help others; the very same GOD who could have, by logical definition, prevented all of the death and destruction in the first place! Or even more logically, they ignore that this very same GOD CREATED the destruction and suffering. Hello!
Now, it has always bewildered me as to how religious groups can so selectively condemn people, and equally as bewildering to me is how religious people can so selectively CREDIT their GOD for the "good" while in the midst of enormous suffering, completely ignoring the fact that that very suffering COULD have been prevented by this same doting, loving omni-force.
In light of all of this, I felt inclined to toss out some great quotes to help balance out the lack of intelligence among the many who attribute the best and worst of life to some kind of invisible, illogical, random, tyrannical, abusive, manic-depressive GOD.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
-Napoleon Bonaparte
"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
-Steven Weinberg
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
-Bertrand Russell
To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
-Isaac Asimov
Men have ascribed to God imperfections that they would deplore in themselves.
-W. Somerset Maugham
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-Galileo Galilei
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
-George Bernard Shaw
When someone tells me that “the Almighty told me to do this,” I want to see the transcript.
-Fred Reed
The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."
-Abraham Lincoln
Speaking of absurdities, I hope to write about some of the more commonly accepted "truths" that are NOT truths, but theories with no evidence. Recently, I have become quite surprised at how many intelligent people unquestioningly accept well-known theories, despite the complete lack of evidence. Theories, in and of themselves, are not invalid just because they lack evidence, BUT a theory is a theory, NOT a fact or truth.
I think it would be interesting to list common theories that have become accepted, unquestioned facts, but in reality are as unfounded and as unsupported as any other seemingly fantastical idea.
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5 comments:
LOVE your quotes... hope you don't mind if I use one or two sometime!
There are no FACTS about GOD. By definition, GOD is unknowable except through (currently?) unmeasurable contact with the human soul. You can't quantify a spiritual experience with FACTS, though this does not invalidate the TRUTH of any particular experience.
Anything presented as FACT about religion is actually DOGMA - "An authoritative principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true." Unfortunately (in my opinion) many people want/need an authority outside themselves to define their relationship with and experience of the unknown/unmeasurable.
Outside of the religious/spiritual arena, there are even more theories masquerading as fact... hell, the theory of relativity - encompassing all we accept about matter, gravity, time, etc. - is a just a THEORY! It is a theory that hasn't been disproven over a long period of time(though string theory and quantum physics are generating some interesting questions and challenges to it), but it can't be proven, either. The very nature of a theory is that it can only be DISPROVEN - it can't actually be proved true. The hallmark of a GOOD theory is that it has been repeatedly tested and can be used to make predictions about the phenomenon it relates to.
All standing-on-the-soapbox aside, there are a lot of other terrible theories out there that many accept as fact. I can't wait to see the responses! Here's mine - how about "trickle-down economics"? Of all the hare-brained ideas...
BRILLIANT! Great entry!
It's such a wonderful thing to see someone actually understand the point of a Theory and how it stands as a weak or a strong theory, but not as FACT or TRUTH.
YAY!
Someone paid attention in school!
XOX
troy
"You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." Anne Lamott
OMG! Jane, that's a good one! LOL!
"Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?" --Sylvia Plath, "Mystic".
I love the quotations, especially the Lamott that Jane included. Brilliant.
I am a jew, and would consider myself convinved of divinity but not the characterizations men have made of it. Jews argue with G-d, and disagree with him openly.
Anyone insipid enough to believe that they see a fetus in the "Accu-weather forcast" is probably the same vapid schmo who sees Jesus on a piece of french toast or the virgin mary appearing from a vat of sour cream.
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