The Church orders Wives to Submit to their Husbands

[denuseri]

Why yes some amazingly there are some individuals who do try to take advantage of other people in the world.

And yes sometimes, the people who are doing that try to twist the tennents of a paticular faith, or philosophy, or even laws of a paticular country, or science, to suit their own means in accomplishing such crimes against their fellow men.

But when one catagorically pigenholes everyone who adheres to any given religious faith as eaither a trickster or "poor abused victum" or uses any excuse to take the words of one man out of context; one puts oneself into the same sophist camp on the side of the same side of the same coin as the zealots who say your going to hell cuz your an aethiest pig consumed by satan and trying to tear gods followers down, or your a deluded victum of the evils of the world.

Perhaps the pot shouldn't be calling the kettle black after all if it wishes to make its point.

Not all the members of any given clergy are out to pull the wool over anyones eyes.

[MMI]

What I haven't yet worked out, Thorne, and we can see den struggling with it too, is how you can, on one hand, say there's no way you can prove religions are false, yet on the other hand you call ministers of religion charlatans, and worse. You profess tolerance, yet want to be free of it.

Patronisingly, you say that people should be allowed to believe in whatever they believe in, but you condemn their leaders as utter frauds. Now the Buddha, Abraham, Zoroaster, Jesus and Mohammed might have each thought it a jolly clever ruse to make their followers think of them as divine, or divinely appointed, or in some other way connected to the greatest truth, so that people would follow them and do their bidding, or bring them food as they sat day-dreaming under the shade of a tree, but I think it is presumptuous of you to suggest that all religious leaders thereafter are knowingly colluding in the decption. Does not one of them have any faith? Not Calvin, or Luther? Not one of the popes or the rabbis or immans?

I think you are too sweeping.

[Thorne]

What I haven't yet worked out, Thorne, and we can see den struggling with it too, is how you can, on one hand, say there's no way you can prove religions are false, yet on the other hand you call ministers of religion charlatans, and worse. You profess tolerance, yet want to be free of it.

While it may be impossible to prove a religion false, it is possible to show when a religion is built on inconsistencies and contradictions, which is true of the three Abrahamic religions, since they are based on one of the most contradictory and inconsistent books ever written.

And both you and denuseri seem too imply that I am painting ALL religious leaders with the same brush, when I have not. Nor am I claiming, as denuseri states, saying that "everyone who adheres to any given religious faith as eaither a trickster or 'poor abused victum'". I am quite sure that many religious leaders are devout in their faith. And so too are many of their congregation, I'm sure. I may believe they are wrong, but I don't denigrate them for that. It is those who take advantage of that faith, who tell their followers what they must believe, which movies they must no watch, which books they must not read, or, as in this case, how they must behave in their personal lives.

And I will also take to task those who abuse science or any other undertakings for the sole purpose of either cheating or controlling other people. This is not the thread to do that, though. I've been accused of hijacking threads in the past, and I'm trying not to do so here.

So yes, I do agree that this vicar has the right to speak about the church's tenets. And if the church wishes women to be silent in church, that is well within their rights. I think they are wrong, and I've said so, but it's their church. Those who don't like it can leave.

I don't think the church, or any religious organization, should be permitted to control people's personal lives outside of the church. They are basically saying that the law, which protects the free speech and other rights of women, must be set aside in favor of their religious beliefs. This, in my opinion, is absolutely wrong.

As an example, what would you say if a preacher, at any level, claimed that his congregation must not allow blacks into their homes, or must not allow Muslims into their places of business. Would you claim he was right to say such a thing, using religion as his excuse? What if he said that all homosexuals were demons who should be destroyed on sight? Such things have gone on throughout history, and regardless of what religious leaders may say, these things are WRONG! And we as intelligent, thinking people have to make sure such things don't continue to go on. We have to draw the lines and hold these leaders to modern ethics and morals, not those of some bronze-age shepherds.