Same decks everywhere

General Discussion
67

If you were portuguese (or in case you do read in portuguese) I would invite you to read my blog. We would be great friends and have fantastic conversations. We would also take any opportunity to derail threads in the Hearthstone forums into interesting discussions about society, philosophy and, who knows, even card games. :slight_smile:

68

Ha ha me and my friends have conversations like these all the time…they either get really deep…or really surreal :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
69

yes. it is not as much about the deck is it about the one wielding it

1 Like
70

The question here is whether religion itself is really at fault here. If you look at the scriptures or the basic rules of most current religions, you’ll find that most (if not all) of them share a very simple principle: show love to every other person you meet (in appropriate measures ofc). That message of love is often twisted and corrupted by the powerful people, either secular rulers or the upper end of the religious hierarchy. At that point, religion is used to create a “we vs them”-mentality that justifies doing things that go against the scriptures (such as crusades, beheadings, witch burnings, …). So I ask again, is the religion at fault or are the (religious) leaders at fault?

Historically speaking (I can only speak for christianity here), the idea of hell or eternal punishment was not created in order to keep the christians in line, but was meant to give an explanation for their current situation in the Roman empire. They were the ones leading “a good life”, but were persecuted as criminals by the Romans, without seeing any sign of divine intervention on their behalf. As such, the idea of a post-mortem punishment arose as a way of righting the wrongs of the earthly world: while the Romans got to lord it over the christians and persecute them, they would face their judgement in the afterlife. The christians had a crappy life on earth, but would earn eternal bliss after their demise. That way, the abuse they suffered from the Romans was more bearable for the christians.
Only when christianity gets the upper hand in Europe, the idea of hell turns into a way of controlling (and milking) the people: preachers put a large emphasis on sinning and the punishments of hell. Luckily, there’s a good way to ensure your place in heaven: do as the Church tells you and pay them enough. Again, we can ask the question: is the religion itself at fault or are the leaders of the church the problem?

Write bilingual blogs. Problem solved.

71

As someone that read the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Quran, I can tell you that the leaders are at fault because of how they wrote the books. Of the dozens of books you referred to as “the rules” only 4 of them openly speak about loving “the other”. The rest is full of “us vs them”.

On one hand, you are right, religion itself is not to blame, in fact there are extremely peaceful religions. On the other hand your view of the loving nature of rules is extremely skewed. I could go on, but I feel this is not the right place.

To be blunt… that would be too much work, also, google translate should be fine. :slight_smile:

1 Like
72

The main problem is that in some cases, things got added at later dates (like Apocalyps). As for the Old Testament, yes, it contains some beautiful sections of “censored the rest of the world” or about the idea that only the jews are the “chosen people”. Early christianity generally ignored the OT. Can’t speak for the Quran, still planning on reading it.

Just to be sure we’re on the same page here: when talking about loving people in the context of religion, I think about the “love thy neighbour”-kind of love, about being kind towards “the other”. If you reduce the religions to one central rule, you will often end up with a rule about love.

Or I’m just a hippy… Changes name to Hippybear.

73

I would love the new hippybear

74

Ironfur Grizzly with a rainbow sweater and a hippy afro.

MAKE IT HAPPEN BLIZZARD!

1 Like
75

@Philybear: we are in the same page. I think that the only thing we are in disagreement is that you see “love thy neighbour” as a good thing. I don’t, given the tribalistic nature of such love.

If you read Old and New testaments, I would surely advise you to read the Quran. I found it surprising to be honest.

1 Like
76

depends on the definition of neighbor. If you zoom out enough, every creature on the planet is your neighbor because essentially we’re all in the same boat (on that scale).

and the further you zoom in, the smaller the scale, the smaller the neighbor group.

granted, I don’t know how different religions define neighbor, but I tend to use the largest scale possible and I don’t think that anyone has a monopoly on that concept anyway.

77

Yay , a reason for me to link my favourite video again of our place in the universe !

let it sink in , you mortals !

2 Likes
78

Since civilization, and thus, organised religion began religion has been, and always will be, about the ‘Holy Trinity’…….power, money and control. While the first two are, admittedly, more recent symptoms of the leaders of the church, religion has always been about control. You can take any religion in the world and, when you get down to the bare bones of it, religion is simply a case of somebody else telling you how you should live your life…nothing more, nothing less. I’m not saying the way they tell you you should life your life is either right or wrong, that’s incidental, but all religions are nothing more than an instruction to the masses that THIS is the way you should live your life, most of which do result in some kind of intangible post-life punishment if you don’t…it’s all about control.

79

Sure, but you’ll have to ignore the book where that is written. I really want to be considerate of the argument that you are trying to make. However that argument is secular and when applied to scriptures turns out to be basic apologetic. “Your neighbour”, in the context where it’s written (Leviticus) means “your people”, hence, God’s Chosen People. The same book also explains what you can do to those who are not “your neighbours”, namely, slavery.

So, yeah, I agree with you. But the book and people who strictly follow it don’t.

80

I agree with that when it comes to religious institutions, but I disagree when it comes to the level of individuals.

while the institutions is the “what happens once you’ve entered organized religion?”, I see the individual level as the “why do I believe in the first place?”

and in my opinion that latter level is exactly about the opposite of control. it’s about giving away control of certain aspects of life in an attempt to give away responsibility over it.

for example you’re giving away the responsibility of protecting yourself because god will always do that for you.

you’re giving away the responsibility for your misfortunes because if something happens, it was god’s will and there wasn’t anything you could have done to prevent it.

you’re giving away the need to deal with death. for example it causes me a lot of discomfort thinking about what happens when I die. simply vanishing scares me a lot. I wouldn’t have to deal with that if I was religious because then I’d ‘know’ what’ll happen.

all in all I think religion can save certain people a great deal of fear and pain (this is one side of it).

however, there are different kinds of fear and pain, that affect different people in different ways. some can deal well with a certain fear, others can’t. and for certain versions of it, religion offers relief. not everyone struggles with those versions, so not everyone needs that kind of relief.

I am aware that I’ve just outlined only one aspect of religiosity. I know that there are other reasons why people believe and that there are other sides of religion (positive and negative). but what I’ve described is my opinion of the core concept of individual religious belief.

81

And I wholeheartedly do. I believe that everything that is said or written, is subject to interpretation. I hate that on the level of definitions, but I love it on the level of concepts.

So the phrase “Love thy neighbor” does have a creator, but in my opinion it does not have an owner. It’s like kids in a sandbox. The kindergarten built the sandbox, but every kid builds whatever she wants in it.

If I’m a kid in there and the principal says to me “your castle doesn’t have a roof, you’ve built it wrong”, I tell him that this is how I think a sand castle looks like.

While I don’t think any of our opinions about roofs here is wrong, I think it is very wrong to state “I created it, so I get to decide how you interpret it”.

[I’m obviously not saying that this is what you meant. It’s just my explanation as to why I don’t care about singular meanings of concepts.]

So to sum up: I agree with you if you’re talking about the original meaning of the phrase. but I wasn’t.

1 Like
82

This kinda ties in with what I’m saying: religion itself, the belief in the contents of a scripture, is not at fault. The problem lies with the organisation that inevitably gets formed around the religion and tries to tell its folowers what to do or avoid.

This is pretty much what can be observed throughout history as well: a lot of polytheistic systems have deities with similar attributes or powers, simply because of that reason. The people who still believed heavily in the supernatural saw inexplicable things (such as lightning) and attempted to explain it. Their first explanations dealt with the divine, later on followed by philosophical and even scientific explanations.

Later on, when monotheistic religions start appearing, they generally focus on another thing you mention: they promise a good life after your death. The fear of death is then often replaced by the joy of going to a better place.

This is my biggest issue with organised religion nowadays. Instead of letting people create their own view on the messages in a scripture, organised religion simply tells people “how it is”, often coupled with a bunch of things that are never mentioned in said scripture or focusing on less relevant items. I mean, the entire islam is split into two factions, because long ago they couldn’t agree on who was the successor of Mohammed. Christians have fought over the silliest questions as well, simply because they felt the need to tell people “this is what you need to believe”.

83

I think this ties together with a conservative attitude. while I don’t think religion and conservatism automatically go hand in hand (the dalai lama is a prime example of the contrary), to me it seems that this is a strong tendency nevertheless.

and conservatism definitely needs to tell people how to live in order to survive because social ideas tend to get outdated and be replaced by new ones.

but on a smaller scale, conservation of power is probably a big factor as well. so letting people create their own view of the scripture might be pretty dangerous from that viewpoint.

one small argument in defense of the century-old religious fights: the far-reaching tolerance and equality that’s become standard in many societies is pretty new. when we’re talking about say the medieval times, our tolerance would probably be a totally alien concept to those dudes.

84

Siperos is the onlyonehere calling anybody moron and that’s the thing seperating intelligent people from your kind of uneducated dillitants.

You have to call other’s with names, because you feel the need to prove to yourself that you are superior to other people, but you arent, so sorry :slight_smile:

your skill and only skill still is copy-paste and that does not make you intelligent.

85

And it continues after two days of peace , but here we go !

:crazy_face: :popcorn:

1 Like
86

Something about pots and kettles…

4 Likes