Do you love ILF and it's members? heh...members.

[ShaunNecro]

Anything with penis in it gets my vote. Hail Satan and such.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6DAg2kX4X0[/youtube]

[alexa.]

Do I need to dig up the ILF is a Hipspter TGP thread???

I love each and everyone of you even when I don't... That's power of Power Crystals...

what is the best crystal for doom?

labradorite.

[Eivind August]

Let people believe whatever they want as long as they don't impose it on others.

i don't believe that though. if 95% of the world believed something pretty fucking stupid the 5% would suffer that stupidity, and it DOES end up shaping real laws in real countries, and it DOES end up influencing who are voted the leaders of our world.

I thought "as long as they don't impose it on others" kinda cleared those problems away from the arguement, though? Point being shaping laws based on belief is imposing. I kinda see your point that if the majority believes something stupid democracy can be a bitch for the small group disagreeing, but isn't that only fair?

Anyway, my initial point was that what other people believe shouldn't affect you as long as they don't impose. We're all wrong about something anyway.

[Doctor X]

there are a 1000 different religions, subdivided into a 1000 different splinter groups .... each one of them says that it is the truth and the only truth, and that all the others are wrong and will burn in hell ... if someone can just let me know which one is correct, then i'll happily join!

life is very confusing and chaotic and i understand people's need to believe in something, a meaning to life, a purpose, THE TRUTH, and if it makes you happy and brings you some peace, some positive connection with others, then who could argue with that?
if you want to believe in a certain god, or fairies or unicorns, or the klon, then that's your choice.
if its like having different taste in music or liking spicy food then there is no harm in it, and its your own life to live.

but obviously the problem comes with having a strict set of rules which must be obeyed.
untouchable, unquestionable rules, and then organising into groups, believers must dominate and unbelievers must be suppressed and destroyed.

for the past 100 years in 'the west' where i live, there has been so much social progress towards personal freedom, thought, expression, justice, equality.
for the most part the mainstream religion has become milder, more tolerant, people have more ability to just express religious beliefs as personal/communal rituals in a mostly positive way, and are nice caring people.
but we cant assume that this is a natural progression and will always be.
an extremely large (and the most rapidly growing) part of the world is a festering cauldron of fundamentalist religious hatred and murder, and unfortunately there doesnt seem to be any end in sight.

[Doctor X]

in order to post anything here, you have to literally SUBMIT TO ILF

[Eivind August]

Agreed, but we had the same problems a hundred years ago. The problem isn't the beliefs themselves, but the leaders who impose them on an uneducated, largely poor populace. Living standards are improving in most part of the world, and as life gets easier, strict laws get antiquated.

Progress is the key, but as you say, it can be hard to believe in change - it takes time, and meanwhile people are suffering. I have hope though, as stagnation doesn't seem to be in our nature.

[Eivind August]

If we all hold hands and think of penis, change may come sooner than we think.

[Doctor X]

... or hold penis and think of hands

[Disarm D'arcy]

Ok. This thread has established Eivind has brains. We can all agree on that.

[Eivind August]

Only when I'm drunk, baby.

[alexa.]

I feel every religion is just an offset of one god and his many faces, so like, it's basically a set of rituals and rules that apparently make your face of god happy. Well, good for you, I don't care how you worship god, just do it, have fun wit hit, be it Hail Jesus or Hare Krishna, it's the same in my eyes. There is no correct path, god is manyfold anyway. Even a bad path will lead you to god, eventually.

The thing where we start discussing (generalizing) how some religious members/religions are bad, weird, etc, becomes a problem exactly as you shine your attention on it. The more attention you give to something the more power you give to the subject. I bet the militant groups in Africa and Middle East wouldn't have any sway over the population if there wasn't such a fuss and fear-agenda around it. Now they grew into a problem. The terrorist stuff in the rest of the world is pretty subsided, for various reasons; but the root is attention. No reason to do terrorist attacks if it won't give you a lot of attention, wouldn't you agree?

What I am trying to say is that your attention to things defines your life, and who you are eventually. If someone has a problem, he has a problem only with himself; since he cannot control the outer world, he can only appear to control it.

[Doctor X]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df3blZzXTL0[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2y_kI_-x1Q[/youtube]

[alexa.]

I thought "as long as they don't impose it on others" kinda cleared those problems away from the arguement, though? Point being shaping laws based on belief is imposing.

i get that, my point being it's unavoidable when a large enough amount of people believe in something it's going to dictate the way we live. if you TRULY believe something and you're in a position of power that's going to show in one way or another.

point being it will impose, in the end.

Not true. Someone may say "Heil Hitler" a thousand times, but that's far from making him a nazi.
People in Croatia were still hardcore Christians, even if they publicly had to display atheism during the Yugoslav Communism times.
If anything, the suppression even strengthened their resolve. Again, attention to the non-atheists made them more powerful.

There are so many examples in the world for this I won't even go into it right now.

[AxAxSxS]

[Joe Gress]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhrBDcQq2DM[/youtube]