04 Jun '16 08:33>
"[T]he difficulty is not so much to escape death; the real difficulty is to escape from doing wrong, which is far more fleet of foot."
So said Socrates after he had been condemned to death.
Why is it that many of the Christians in this community talk so much about ideology, about "salvation", about the "afterlife", about "damnation", about "the Trinity", about technical, theoretical details, about texts analyzed as if it's an exercise in forensics, about competing imaginings of things never witnessed by human beings...
...and talk much less about the practical impact of their Christian beliefs on how they live their lives, how they navigate right and wrong, how their beliefs affect their interactions with others and their families and their relationships with people who have different beliefs, and their political stances, and a myriad of other everyday human issues and dilemmas?.
Isn't it odd that, broadly speaking, believers here - for all their religious beliefs and claims about 'moral authority' - seem no more or less moral than the non-believers, whilst giving no reason to believe that their beliefs have any practical influence on whether they live their lives as good people doing things right or as bad people doing things wrong?
There's a lot of talk here from believers that is, for all attempts and purposes, about "escaping" death and the hypotheses and ideology attendant thereto, but not so much talk about "escaping" wrong here on earth in this lifetime.
So said Socrates after he had been condemned to death.
Why is it that many of the Christians in this community talk so much about ideology, about "salvation", about the "afterlife", about "damnation", about "the Trinity", about technical, theoretical details, about texts analyzed as if it's an exercise in forensics, about competing imaginings of things never witnessed by human beings...
...and talk much less about the practical impact of their Christian beliefs on how they live their lives, how they navigate right and wrong, how their beliefs affect their interactions with others and their families and their relationships with people who have different beliefs, and their political stances, and a myriad of other everyday human issues and dilemmas?.
Isn't it odd that, broadly speaking, believers here - for all their religious beliefs and claims about 'moral authority' - seem no more or less moral than the non-believers, whilst giving no reason to believe that their beliefs have any practical influence on whether they live their lives as good people doing things right or as bad people doing things wrong?
There's a lot of talk here from believers that is, for all attempts and purposes, about "escaping" death and the hypotheses and ideology attendant thereto, but not so much talk about "escaping" wrong here on earth in this lifetime.