 |
 |
Who are happier -- Christians or Atheists?
| January 17th, 2015 at 5:10:36 PM permalink | |
| Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25011 |
This is why I now like Nareed, this is a very smart statement. The Church does indeed try and portray everything that makes living worthwhile as being bad. Especially sex, pride, ambition, enjoyment, and all the other things we look forward too. The 7 Deadly Sins are really the 7 reasons to keep living. Lust. Wanting things and getting them. Gluttony. Casino buffets. Greed. As Alec Baldwin said in the movie, greed is good. Sloth. Why recliners and couches were invented. Wrath. Gotta blow off steam, it's good for us. Envy. It keeps us working on improving ourselves. Pride. In a job well done. In an accomplishment. Love it. If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |
| January 17th, 2015 at 9:48:50 PM permalink | |
| FrGamble Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 67 Posts: 7596 |
This is probably one of the biggest lies the modern culture of today tries to force feed us. God brings only goodness, peace, and true lasting joy into peoples lives. I can't tell you how disturbing your list extoling the vices of the deadly sins is to someone who sees these things literally destroy people and families just about every day.
Lust is treating another person as an object or a thing so you can get them, hit that, and use them for your own pleasure.
Nothing wrong with a buffet, but there is something wrong with having one just for yourself - that is gluttony. It leads to poor health, pain, and discomfort.
Greed is destructive and overcomes people with the desire for something so much that we lose our reason. Watch the new Hobbit movie and pay attention to "Dragon Sickness".
If you live in a recliner or on the couch it leads to an unhappy life.
You do have to blow off steam, wrath is doing this in an unhealthy way that turns out to not be good for you. We all need to release stress and deal with our anger. Wrath is just doing this without control.
If the only reason you are working to improve yourself is because you are envious of another person you are heading down a one way road of misery.
There is joy in a job well done and in an accomplishment. Pride perverts these accomplishments and makes you think you did it all on your own without anyone's help. Pride isolates you, limits your ability to do a good job, and hinders the true joy of an accomplishment which is celebrating with everyone who made it possible. The goalie of the hockey team doesn't celebrate alone, but with the whole team. “It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures.” ( |
| January 18th, 2015 at 10:53:29 AM permalink | |
| Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25011 |
Here we go, the Church spin. That's just one form of lust, there are many others. Anything you have an eagerness or enthusiasm for can also be lust. A lust for life.
Sure there is, buffets appeal to the gluttony in people. Eat all you want, eat as much as you can, is the very definition of the word.
Excessive greed is destructive, but there are many forms of constructive greed that are good for you and society.
Sloth means laziness, and recliners and couches certainly breed that. 'Couch potato' wasn't in the vocabulary 40 years ago. We have a fat lazy society now.
C'mon. Being envious of somebody who has a trim waistline is a good motivator to lose weight. Envying somebody in a nice house gets people off the couch and out their working. Envy can be a very good thing.
Pride is the best motivator of all. Pride in your work, pride in your country, pride for your children. If you don't tell your family you're proud of them sometimes, you're missing giving them something that brightens their day immeasurably. Pride in your sports team, in the city you live in, that you can afford to drive a nice car. Pride makes you always want to do better, to keep on keeping on. Anybody who tells you that you shouldn't be proud is a person jealous of what you've done and who you are. Don't you think she should be proud of this performance? If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |
| January 18th, 2015 at 4:17:00 PM permalink | |
| FrGamble Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 67 Posts: 7596 | You have stumbled upon a very real truth that sin is a perversion or abuse of a good. Gluttony for example. It is good to eat food, but when you abuse that good and eat a whole buffet to yourself that is gluttony and obviously bad for you. We use the deadly sins usually as words that denote when we have perverted a good. Lust is a perverted sense of love, wrath is a perverted sense of justice, etc., etc. This is common sense and I am sure you agree with this. When you mention pride we run into a linguistic problem, that is all. Yes we should be happy about our accomplishments and proud of them. However, when we lose control of that pride and begin to think we are the all time greatest and no one is better than me and I did this all by myself and no one helped me - then we run into the deadly sin of Pride. I imagine we can all recognize when pride moves from a good and healthy sense of accomplishment to a Lance Armstrong deadly sin of pride phenomenon. I love Susan Boyle on many levels and I think it is interesting that you use her example. She should indeed be proud of her great gift of signing. However, what happened to her when the wheels of the modern media started to extol her and make her feel that she was the greatest ever. It led to serious mental and emotional difficulties for her. There is simply no way to get around the fact that sin exists and that it is an abuse or perversion of the good. It is losing control and allowing our selfishness to attempt to take a good to an extreme without the guidance of reason. There is also no way to deny that these sins are truly deadly. “It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures.” ( |
| January 18th, 2015 at 4:52:36 PM permalink | |
| Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25011 |
No, now you've entered the arena of paranoid delusions and left pride far behind. Everything is destructive if you carry it to the extreme. The deadly sins have no caveats attached to them. I told you the story of the 8 year old Catholic boy who was concerned about his sins and the nuns told even that was a sin, 'prideful worrying'. One must assume that all versions of the deadly sins are bad to the Church are are to be avoided at all costs. Nothing in life is that cut and dried, all you do is create a bunch of neurotic people when you lay all this crap on them. If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |
| January 18th, 2015 at 5:37:52 PM permalink | |
| FrGamble Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 67 Posts: 7596 | All the deadly sins are indeed bad because they are defined as perverting a good to the extreme. I don't know why you seem to want to make this complicated out of a phobia of agreeing with me on anything. Let's agree that anything taken to the extreme is destructive. Religion and the morality it proposes is an effort to bring moderation and reason to our good and healthy desires. This is why you and Nareed are so wrong when you say that religion has come to take joy away from life. Religion exists to preserve true and lasting joy and help us avoid the selfish tendency to allow our passions to overcome our reason and carry something to the extreme - leading to the deadly sins and misery. “It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures.” ( |
| January 18th, 2015 at 7:06:22 PM permalink | |
| Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25011 |
It's because so many religious people seem miserable, that's the reason. And non religious seem happier. All the rules of religion and all the guilt seems to suck whatever joy people might have right out of their lives. What they do is what you're doing, they TALK about joy all the time, like talking about it is having it. It's not. If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |
| January 18th, 2015 at 11:59:19 PM permalink | |
| FrGamble Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 67 Posts: 7596 | Maybe it's where we live or maybe it's how we are looking at things because I find the exact opposite experience. Also about those rules, they help to make joy possible. Imagine if you will a football game where there are no rules and no referees. That would be horrible and no fun for anyone. The rules of religion make possible true joy. “It is with the smallest brushes that the artist paints the most exquisitely beautiful pictures.” ( |
| January 19th, 2015 at 7:02:39 AM permalink | |
| Nareed Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 346 Posts: 12545 |
I said it explained much, like all the evil wrought by Christians over millennia.
I agree. But then why is there the threat of eternal damnation in Hell? BTW I'm a bit off and will be for a few days yet, I expect. I caught a really, really bad cold which just has me beat. So don't expect my usual lengthy replies. Donald Trump is a one-term LOSER |
| January 19th, 2015 at 11:08:35 AM permalink | |
| Evenbob Member since: Oct 24, 2012 Threads: 146 Posts: 25011 |
You're seeing what you want to see, of that I have no doubt, and shutting out the rest. When I was hanging out with the young Christians when I was young, I saw this all the time. They constantly talked about how happy and full of joy they were, but they were really miserable. It was kind of schizoid and weird, they sent very mixed messages. During meetings they were joyful, raising their arms in praise of the lord, smiling and singing their lungs out. But in private they were full of anxiety and doubts about what to do, or what to think. It was like the meeting was a group therapy session for screwed up people. I find Christians in general aren't any happier or full of joy than anybody else, if anything they are less so. I have zero doubt you see it differently, just like the happy husband who see's a happy wife because that's what he wants to see. When in fact she's miserable. If you take a risk, you may lose. If you never take a risk, you will always lose. |