Scoring Religions

[Jester]

The application of science is engineering. The application of religion is morality.

"A thing is the sum its deeds. Colors are the deeds of light."
-Goethe

[sea_dragon]

If there is a loving God, he would not condemn or hate people because God is about love, not fear and hatred. To me, God does not care what you wear, what and when you eat or where and when you worship. God instead cares how righteous, progressive, true to principles of the teaching, and how good you are. If you fear God, then you do not know God. Why would a God of goodness demand sacrifice, praise, worship or demand those of his worshippers under threat of punishment and torture? Think about it. How can this be a God of friendship and love? A God that condemns, commands, punishes and tortures is not truly a god at all, but a predator looking for someone to prey upon.

In order for God to be truly God, he has to be devoid of fear, hatred, desire, the urge to dominate, the need to have control over other living things and the expression of dominance over others. Thus, God must be good through a relationship of friendship and love. Any other conception of God is just blatantly and utterly man-made, the creation of sick power-hungry individuals. Basically that is a God made in man's image, a fallible, human-like deity, not God as a superior being as the creator and represents all that is good in the world.

[Moretorque]

The application of science is engineering. The application of religion is morality.

"A thing is the sum its deeds. Colors are the deeds of light."
-Goethe

Science is religion, our rulers know this. They use religion to control the idiots.

[MarcosZeitola]

I am not a member of any organized religion but I married into a Catholic family. My children are as a result being raised mostly Catholic. Except for bullshit like celibacy, priests and nuns or any of that. I'm not allowing that sort of stuff in my household as I don't want to lose my children to a life of chastity like that.

I'm pretty liberal myself but some aspects and traditions of religion I am okay with. Others I am quite heavily opposed to. In the end, I'll let my family decide for themselves. But it's really not for me I think.

To each there own, I say. And religious folk on average, have been quite enjoyable to befriend and hang out with so I got no beef with them. There are various religious people I admire deeply.

[Jester]

The application of science is engineering. The application of religion is morality.

"A thing is the sum its deeds. Colors are the deeds of light."
-Goethe

Science is religion, our rulers know this. They use religion to control the idiots.

My Dad was a scientist who came to science via being an engineer first. Very down-to-earth for a mathematician. He created new mathematical techniques to solve problems that arose in the real world.

Many mathematicians around him pursued areas that had little or no real-world application. Theory for its own sake.

Anyway, my applied-mathematician Dad sneered at PhD's in Education, social sciences, etc. His lip curled when he spoke about them, calling their work "pseudo-science". (i.e., fake science).

So what I would say, is that PSEUDO-science is a religion that the elites use. The beautiful thing about it, from their POV, is that since it's "made from whole cloth" (i.e. tailor-made to order), they can get it to deliver whatever happens to be the "meme" of the moment

"Studies show that..."
"I read that..."
"Scientists believe that..."
"Research now shows that..."

etc.

[Jester]

I am not a member of any organized religion but I married into a Catholic family. My children are as a result being raised mostly Catholic. Except for bullshit like celibacy, priests and nuns or any of that. I'm not allowing that sort of stuff in my household as I don't want to lose my children to a life of chastity like that.

I'm pretty liberal myself but some aspects and traditions of religion I am okay with. Others I am quite heavily opposed to. In the end, I'll let my family decide for themselves. But it's really not for me I think.

To each there own, I say. And religious folk on average, have been quite enjoyable to befriend and hang out with so I got no beef with them. There are various religious people I admire deeply.

I agree with you on celibacy, that's something for a very few people, it spread in the Dark Age because it fit in well with late pagan Greek philosophy (the life of the mind is good) and also with Middle Eastern dualism (flesh is evil). It also spread because life sucked so much that people were too poor to have children (compare PUA's, MGTOW, and women with cats today).

Just so you know, the early Church "fathers" DID keep the wildly sexual and explicit "Song of Solomon" in the Bible, and Jesus Himself got belly-laughs from a mixed audience with His hilarious off-color Parable of the Ten Virgins.

Sex and religion aside, though, here's the larger point. (A point you made, but I want to expand on it.) In order to meet FSchmidt's test of a worthy, socially useful religion to belong to, the religion has to support the father's authority in the home.

You do INDEED have the right and the duty to decide what comes into your home.

And that's something to look for in a religion, a denomination, and a congregation as well.

This is why some churches don't have "youth groups" and "youth ministers".
It's the FATHER who needs to be in charge, IMO.

This is why some people prefer family camping with the YMCA over Boy Scouts. (Family camping, BTW, is in the Bible. Boy Scouts is not.)

So I would sum up by saying that one criteria here, an essential one, is that the congregation needs to put families first. Not youth camp, or missionaries, or foreign missions, raising up young men to go to seminary, or planting satellite congregations, etc. All those things are OK, just not as the main focus of life.

"As for ME AND MINE, we will serve the Lord." ME AND MINE.

[fschmidt]

How would you score religions that you know on a scale of -10 to +10? A negative score means that you would prefer being isolated to joining that religious community, and a positive score means that you would prefer joining that religious community to being isolated. Here are my scores from lowest to highest:

Reform Judaism -10
Modern Protestantism -8
Atheism -7
Islam -5
Catholicism -2
Orthodox Judaism +1
Odinism (pagan) +2
Orthodox Christianity +3
Karaite Judaism +5

It's time for me to update this list.

Reform Judaism -10
Modern Protestantism -9
Catholicism -8
Atheism -7
Islam -5
Orthodox Judaism 0
Odinism (pagan) +2
Karaite Judaism +3
Orthodox Christianity +5
Biblic Judaism +10

[Moretorque]

Who cares, there all a bunch of bull sh it.