Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Troll_Bait]

I don't want to hijack this thread, so I've started another thread called "Evangelising in the Classroom?"

[fiveeagles]

[Troll_Bait]

[Satori]

[tomato]

■ Religion can create feelings of depression.

I used to belong to a mental health discussion group. There were two members of the group who claimed to hear the voice of God telling them that they were destined for Hell.

We had the dangdest time trying to talk sense into those two people.

■ Religion can lead to bigotry.

If you prefer not to take the path of my melancholy associates, here is another option open for you: Announce that God is on your side and everyone opposed to you is in league with Satan.

Obviously, Hitler is history's best-known practitioner of this technique. Pat Robertson is the current media's best-known practitioner. I am sure you have known others.

■ Religion can lead to foolish decisions.

Oral Roberts tried to start a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The marketing experts tried to convince him that there was not enough room for another hospital, but he would not listen. After all, God told him otherwise, and he intended to listen to the voice of God.

Oral Roberts opened the hospital, but he had to close it down soon afterward for lack of business. Apparently, the marketing experts were right.

■ Religion can lead to rationalizations and euphemisms.

Religion makes impossible demands on all of us. How, then, can you cope when you fall short of those demands? Just concoct a little word play. Such a game may lead you away from true introspection, but it could also help fool your co-parishioners.

Do you drool over dirty pictures? Don't call it "lust," call it "aesthetic enjoyment." Are you angry with someone? Don't call it "hatred," call it "righteous indignation."

■ Religion preaches honesty but practices dishonesty.

In Sunday School, I learned about Nero feeding Christians to the lions, but I learned somewhere else about the Christians burning down the library in Alexandria.

I learned in church about the Puritans getting mistreated in England, but I learned somewhere else that they gave the same treatment to to other religious groups in America. I learned in church that "God is love," but I learned somewhere else that the Bible says that God loved Jacob and hated Esau.

■ Religion undermines independent thought.

If a person who is taught to believe without understanding in church, that person might carry that blind obedience elsewhere. "An adjective modifies a noun" because the teacher says so. "A equals pi r square" because the teacher says so.

■ Religion puts emotion over reason.

There is any number of reasons why a person might answer an altar call--to release an emotional high created by the preaching and the singing, to gain the approval of a boyfriend or girlfriend, to yield to group pressure, or seek a solution for a personal problem.

Yet when a person answers an altar call, the co-parishioners rejoice that the person has been "saved."

■ Religion has escape clauses built in.

You say you prayed for a Mercedes Benz and didn't get one? Then either:

1. you didn't pray hard enough
2. it wasn't God's will for you to get a Mercedes Benz

If you try to convince me that prayer doesn't work, I am all prepared for any kind of evidence. I will only repeat the two escape clauses which you just saw.

Another favorite escape clause is "Those aren't true Christians." You can remind me of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem witch hunt, the Protestants and Catholics fighting in Ireland, or any other event which is embarrassing to Christians. But that won't do a bit of good, because this one escape clause fits all of them.

■ Religion is ineffective in transcending those very animal instincts which they say don't exist.

Churches hold pitch-in dinners and call it "fellowship." That's no different from 외국인's hanging out in Western bars.

Jehovah's Witnesses call themselves "sheep" and everyone else "goats." That's no different from 외국인's posting snotty remarks about Koreans on ESL Cafe.

[DanielInKorea]

[joyfulgirl]

i'm an athiest. we're here 'cause bits of cells connect and make us, we die and our cells die. then the worms eat us. it's all pretty natural. we're not more special than goats er ducks er whatever..

i can appreciate why people need to believe in a 'higher power.'...it can be very comforting. and even make perfect sense sometimes, when many things don't. live and let live, i say. as long as, ya know, you don't go around hurting each other...ummm

spritual people i can understand better than the 'christians' i've met recently in korea. geez, they haven't been nice people at all. it's an easy label to wear and means nothing, it seems. many of my 'non christian' friends have been far more 'christian.'

[fiveeagles]

[fiveeagles]

[anjucat]

Holy kerschnickedy, i love these snarky religious threads!

I really have nothing useful to add at this point, except to say: keep it up, people! You're doing a fine job thus far...

[Troll_Bait]

[seoulunitarian]

[laogaiguk]

[Troll_Bait]

[Yo!Chingo]

Religion is such a personal thing that many people feel positively uncomfortable discussing it. Generally I'm one of those people because the second you say agnostic people almost gasp and look at you as if you're going straight to Hell b/c you're a non believer! I had that happen to me last week when my husband visited his former kindergarden teacher and she asked my religion.
I've always felt that religion has been the single most deadly concept ever created. It has caused innumerable wars and billions of deaths over the centuries, and for what? My god's better than your god!?!
I believe that there is a god and like many others on this board have said, he/she is just too damn busy to worry about the likes of me and if I don't go to church every Sunday. I'm kind to old people and animals, give to the needy, and have never killed anyone. I keep my nose out of other people's business (generally ), am brutally honest, and work hard.
I think that if there is a Heaven I'm going there not b/c I dressed up to go to church on Sunday's and socialize, but b/c of the life I've lived. If that's not enough, then I'm not sure if Heaven is the right place for me anyway.