Does religious tolerance constitute passive support?

It's been mentioned elsewhere (admittedly only by a retard, but hey, a broken clock is right 730 times a year!) that one cannot support Christianity if one does not believe in Jesus and God and so on, and that anyone who does so is confused. This is a facetious and moronic position that has been shown to be impossible to justify.

However, I do wonder what sensible people think about the issue of passive support. Are people condoning the bad parts of Christianity purely by refusing to ignore the good parts?

I suppose the argument comes down to whether someone is free to ally themselves with a religion while still being selective over their beliefs. No-one needs to be a Christian to hold beliefs that are congruent with some (or all) Christian beliefs, but I'm wondering if anyone thinks it actually does any harm to do so.

PS please only respond to the trolls' posts if they're relevant, and stop the second that they become retarded. I've nothing against them when they're actually prepared to contribute but I can't be doing with yet another thread degenerating into the same old mulch as all the others.

 

Oh, I see, so it's not your fault when you tard up threads; I, in fact, force you to do so. Nothing worse than a passive aggressive troll, FedUp. Consider yourself on Ignore.

 

Eeek ... please don't put me on Ignore ...

Passive, I understand. Support, I understand. Please explain Passive Support to me.

One does not have to believe in Jesus, or God, or Shiva, or Buddha, or Ganesh (the Hindu Elephant Diety), or whatever diety one's religion happens to support to understand, realize and practice morality. Morality has one goal ... not harming other beings. Every individual has one purpose in mind from the moment of exiting the womb to the moment of exiting the realm they appeared in ... to be happy. They will do anything at all to make them happy, and to keep them happy. Even at the expense of other beings happiness. Even to the point of taking their life. Taking others posessions. Lying to get what they want to make them happy. Engaging in the one thing that gives them momentary and excrutiating pleasure, sex with someone elses wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend ... hey, I like your wife, give her to me, et. al.

Sometimes this happiness means altering ones mental perceptions which has conditioned consequences on their feelings as well, and while in this state harm other beings. Sometimes, just thinking a thing is as bad as actually doing it. I believe this is a Christian presumption as well ...

I don't agree with some religions tenents or teachings but only to the point where an individual is not given the opportunity to examine the teachings for validity or truth. I don't agree that the original teachings of the one called Jesus were meant to disuade others from realizing the truth of his teachings by believing exclusively in his teachings without question. I don't agree that Jesus would have or was capable of condoning "blind faith." One of his teachings was on "faith, without works, is dead" (J2:26). This does not condone "blind" faith. Buddha never wanted anyone to just believe in his teachings. His teachings don't mean anything to anyone unless they apply the methods of his teachings to self discovery. Truth is a self-realized, self-actualized result of discovery. No blind faith there.

As a consequence to Buddha's teachings, an individual is free to choose whatever they wish to choose. The result will always be in response equal to the action performed, i.e., evil action evil response, virtuous action virtuous response. They quite literally become the choices they make. That one of the reasons why one is never expected to follow the teachings of Buddha. If one follows his teachings with expectations, his teachings turn into their own idea of how his teachings should have been and not what he really said or meant. One expects to wake up in the morning, true, but this is craving existence, clinging to existence. One who becomes a realized being to the point of Enlightenment never even expects to wake up in the morning, never expects to find the next days meal, never expects to take the next breath. They are not bound by conventional thinking, nor are they bound by their own perception of reality.

It is from these teachings that my ideas are shaped into not perpetuating hatred or ill-will toward any being or their mode of practice as long as those practices do not harm other beings, either mentally, physically, or verbally.

In this way I will support whomever is having harm directed toward them by trying what I can do to disuade the one perpetuating the harm. I will not support them to the point of becoming riotous, or of recriprocating harm, however.

Is this what you mean by Passive Support?

Why wouldn't anyone want to ally themselves with others of another religious belief? Friendship is precious. Good friends are hard to find. But still, considering that all things change, Anicca, even friends can become enemies. "Love your enemies. Do good to them which hate you and persecute you." How many cheeks do you have anyway? two? four? or as many slaps as there are to go around. Violence breeds violence. Anger breeds anger. Hatred breeds hatred. Likewise with Loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equinimity. Same teachings, different teachers, different words.

Even the teachings of a teacher are him using words to describe his perception of reality, but in a way you can understand it and apply self discovery.

Christianity doesn't teach anti- anything. Christianity is only a word that encompasses the practitioners of the teachings of Jesus. Pink is only a word that encompasses the colors white and red.

People are the choices they make, whether with tendencies leaning toward hatred and violence or love and compassion, tollerance or intollerance ...

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Passive support would be the idea that, by not actively or vocally opposing something, you are therefore in favour of it, or at the very least allowing it to happen.

Marcus Brigstocke has argued, for example, that while most Christians aren't violent delusional lunatics, those who are would be nothing without the power base that moderate Christians provide - that if all Christians distanced themselves from these people, or if they abandoned organised religion altogether, popes and presidents would be seen as little more than weirdos with imaginary friends.

I'm not convinced that that works though.

 

Got a little chuckle out of that, but I see what you mean now.

I've seen the very same thing in a Lao Buddhist society, more to the point the Sangha, where one of the members was really a placed Communist spy and everyone knew it but allowed him to stay ... get into if more if I can remember my train of thought, but I gotta go for chanting and cant be late ...

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Hehe, well, I don't know if it's especially meant to be that overt. It's more that people either don't see it as anything to do with them, or don't see that it does any harm, or whatever else.

 

A child will not learn to walk by sitting. You have to initiate action.

You present something attractive in front of them and make them reach for it. They crawl at first. Then they stand by hanging on to something. Then they take a few steps solo. After a few crash and burn sessions, the brain learns the balance skills needed to perform the task.

Then they're mobile and a danger to themselves. Vulerable. And open to suggestions. This is also the state of religious believers. Programmable. And a power to be reckoned with when en masse.

People have to learn at their own pace. The only way people can drop religion is to be presented with something superior to it. Direct perception.

Unless this is taught, it's a skill that most people never aqquire.

They are caught up in the world of unrestrained creationalism. They are intoxicated by this power and repeat the same sensations over and over.

You know who you are.


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Well this kinda ties into something I've been thinking lately, in the "Is God Still Dead?" thread, for example. Seems like religion is getting better at selling itself to people, while atheism/anti-theism (?) doesn't see why it should have to.

 

I'm officially done with deciding who is right and wrong. it doesn't matter, and it isn't my place anyways.

we are all both right and wrong.

 

I consider myself a Christian because I think Jesus was a good hippie. He preached peace, understanding and unconditional love,especially for the dregs and outcasts of society and losers like me. He also challenged the religious Establsihment of his day, which is essentially the same as the religious Establshment of our own time. I'm painfully aware that the so-called Christian religious Establshment today and its followers come most readily to mind when people hear the word "Christian." even though these folks are 180 degrees the opposite of Jesus,are the spiritual descendants of the Pharisees and Saduccees He opposed, and would be quick to call the cops if he entered one of their churches. What to do? Am I obliged to renounce the role model and teachings that I've committed my life to because others have corrupted them? Jesus didn't call himself a Chrsitian, so maybe I could call myself something else, (Jesusian?). Or maybe I could do what I've been doing--using the teachings and example of Jesus to expose, challenge and denounce these hypocritical phonies who've hijacked my religion. That, to me, sounds like a better plan.