Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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Yeah it's largely controling twaddle. Telling someone they'll reap their rewards in heaven if they do everything you say in this life is taking the piss really :)
 

What I find interesting though is that at the limit of our knowledge the universe is possibly holographic and resides on a 2 dimensional membrane and beyond that is so much more amazingness we don't know. I keep an open mind about wether any of that unknown has manifested itself on earth and if experienced by us how it was interpreted (angels, gods) If I was alive 10,000 years ago my theory would be that if you travel far enough to the east you'll find the volcano where the sun rises from the ground and to the west where it returns and judging by eye how big the sun is and how far away it is  you can estimate how far you have to travel to find the volcano's and each new sun looks about 20 acres across. Anyway traveling to find these places is not a waste of time because I can see each new sun rise from the firey earth and then return every single day with my own eyes.

Something I like to point out in this situation is that it isn't moral if one is doing something because of reward or punishment.  If a person engages in a behavior because of the promise of a reward or avoids a behavior out of fear of punishment, morality isn't an issue, it is simply a business decision.  This entire question posed by christians is faulty from the start.

I don't really think it's necessary to make a counter-argument at  all. From the state of the world and looking at it's rich variety of people and cultures, it's very evident that christian people have no better ethics or good hearts than people of any other faith, or of those who claim to not believe at all. Simple as that. Ask them to prove otherwise and they will fail.

There are faiths that have nothing to do with Christianity and profess no belief in a supreme being, and yet are arguably far more compassionate in their teachings. Buddhism predates Christianity by 500 years, yet Buddhists try to live by a strict moral code that calls for unconditional love, universal compassion, and ultimate salvation (in the Buddhist sense) for EVERYONE, not just for an "elect". Unitarian Universalism and Reform Judaism are also faiths that teach, as I understand them, that there is no such thing as hell and that human beings are basically good. I would personally argue that the Christian teachings of Original Sin and eternal torture have led to centuries of misery, cruelty, blood vengeance, and callousness. If God really kills and tortures as the Bible teaches, he's worse than any human monster that ever lived---and a supremely poor example of how to conduct one's own life.

Brilliant post Edgerman. I think I may be completely inlove with your mind. 
Re:Budhism
...it's a shame buddhism still considers women as lesser than men and not able to acheive enlightenment in their lifetime because of their gender. 

Sexism unfortunately is not confined to one faith or era, and it's certainly and sadly been found in Buddhism. But I don't think that what you say is predominantly true of modern Buddhism. There have been many modern Buddhist women teachers, such as Pema Chodron, Cheri Huber, and the late Ayya Khema, who are both feminist and Buddhist, and who would never have chosen Buddhism if it were an inherently sexist faith. In Taiwan, the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist temple and monastery has 1,200 nuns versus 300 male monks, and the heads of the order are women. These women would not be wasting their time and years of meditation on a tradition that excluded them. The link below leads to a page of talks and writings by women teachers of Theravada Buddhism:
http://www.enabling.org/ia/vipassana/womenAuthors.html

Thank you, Liandra, for the reply to this last post. I know that lately I have shifted focus quite a bit from sexuality to (yuck, politics!), but, I have because politics, and especially the sort of crazy politics that's currently going on here in the U.S. demands it. Ever since I came across the story of Martin Niemoller's painful experience in Nazi Germany (having to do with being worried about the direction Germany was going, but not speaking up until there was no one left to speak up for him), I have felt that none of us can be complaicent. Silence is a form of assent, in otherwords. Secularism is under determined attack here in America, with an entire industry in rewriting history so that it will accord with the lies the theocrats want the rest of us to believe!
Europe is facing a lot challenges, too, but this one is significant, and could spill over into politics across the Pond. Indeed, it already is! Sex is much more fun to talk about, but for now, well--- I'll get back to that, eventually.
Edgerman58

Li I hope this actually happens 

kbmead you are giving all that's good about you to something that claims a monopoly on goodness. It's modern Christians who are twistiing the bible to meet their own ends. Paradoxically by doing that your rendering those parts of the bible you don't like obselete simp;y because they are. They were never written by Jesus and by ditching them your getting much closer to his/her original spirit. Whether he existed or not who ever wrote his words was enlightened. I tend to think he existed and was a humanist who would've been killed instantly had he questioned for a second any part of the Jewish faith, so was forced to include it. But when he talks about it he's very Tony Blairite in his inclusion of something his own morality rejects entirely. His assertioon is that people who have positively afirmed to be good don't need a law telling them not to kill because in situations where ther is no law and they're free to kill with impunity they won't and don't want to. It's a really good message but it's not unique to Jesus and it has absolutely no divine connection with some god that caused a devestating tsunami that killed thousand of innocent people. again the existence of such a god runs contrary to the entire spirit of jesus work, which is nature is cruel but we don't have to be.