Thread: knowledge corrupts

Lets add some steam to this thread

Originally posted by compjinx
You leave the people's comments and ideas with your own comment that seriously underminds any respect they had had for you. Or maybe that's what you want.....

I respect him more for taking a stand agains the religious BS.

Originally posted by compjinx
Did you have some sort of bad experiance in the past that led you to resent Christians and God?

Just have a hard time with narrow minded people

"Well, knowledge can corrupt. Easy example: if you know the cheat of a game, will you use it ? If so, you have been corrupted by the knowledge. No Knowledge, no cheat, no corruption."

But, if you knew how to kill a person would you do it? It's not the knowledge that corrupts persay, but the evilness inside a person who CHOOSES to put that knowledge to use. We have free will, we have the knolwedge to do good or evil, it all depends on which one we pick that determains our outcome.

Paul said this of the war inside us: " I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me." (Romans 7:15-17)

Lots of "I do," but it makes sence when read over a few times.

There are things we all struggle with every day, to invite that freind over when I know I should, but I don't want to. Do I sneak that pecon pie even though it took my wife forever to bake it?

My paster said it this way, it is like two dogs fighting, ( I invision two large pit bulls at eachother's throats, tearing flesh and ripping fur) and the one we feed is the one that wins(Here I picture mself throwing one of the dogs steak whenever I choose to do a good thing, or an evil thing). The fight is the spirit against the flesh, the good against the evil...which one will win in the end?

Originally posted by compjinx

Did you have some sort of bad experiance in the past that led you to resent Christians and God?

Reading the news the last month it sems like there is alot of young people having bad experience with the christian leaders

"Why is this?

Are you a bigot?

Did you have some sort of bad experiance in the past that led you to resent Christians and God?"


If i answered your questions whilst you would get answers, I would hijack the thread.

Suffice to say that i have had no "bad experiences" with Christians or any other religion, other than the news.

No, you have to train to become a London taxi driver.

"Clyde, this doesn't mean that religion advocates ignorance, it is just a description of an event"

But, uh, religion does advocate ignorance...

But, uh, religion does advocate ignorance...

Obviously you have not been through 4 or more years of theology or any classes related to the field. You are judging the entire field of theology from a select few 'church goers' who prob don't care too much about theology but who are just everyday Christians. They go to church on Sunday and then go to work through the week.

Judging a field or area of knowledge as ignorant before you know anything about it is..well...ignorant. Just as there are people who are content to turn on a computer, use it, play it, and then turn it off - there are also people who are content to learn just enough about theology to apply it to their everyday lives and then leave it at that.

But there are also those who study theology day in and day out, who research ancient literature/texts and use hermenuetics to translate, differentiate and substantiate different texts. It is not an easy field and the classes that I took were equivalent in difficulty to advanced calculus. To be a good theologian you must have an excellent knowledge of hermenuetics; ancient languages, customs, literature, cultures, events, people, governments, etc.,etc. Personally for me, I chose to stop at the 4-year mark. But I had many professors who were walking cerebellums who forgot more about these things than I've ever known. Some of my professors helped in writing some of the newer translations (like we need another one) of the Bible and were really just geniuses when it came to this stuff.

But you are prob not gonna find this in your average everyday local church member. In fact, I find that most church members are extremely ignorant about their faith and their beliefs which is a very sad thing. Because of this ignorance they often make very poor decisions based purely on emotion and not logic. They often judge and tend to 'write-off' other people when this is clearly not in accordance with what they believe and hold true. Ignorance is a huge problem in the church and it is becoming a larger problem. It just seems that no matter what the topic today, people are unwilling to learn and really investigate or critically think through anything. This is where most people's perception of the church comes from and sadly it is not a true representation of what it is all about. Incidentally, the Catholic denomination is not the sum total of the church. Most judge the church based on this denomination but rarely go any deeper. Religion is a huge field with millions of different facets, just like computer science. It is very sad that the most-prominenet people in the field have obviously forgotten all about leadership and tend to think that they are above the system. This casts a very bad light on the whole thing but remember that there are very hard working, very knowledeable, very logical, and very moral ministers, theologians, and church historians out there.

Just as you don't want people to judge you based on others or even based on your own mistakes, please don't judge an entire church or area of knowledge such as theology based upon very bad mistakes and bad examples. This would be the equivalent of judging the whole of computer science as evil because of the growing problem of computer hackers.

So yes most church members are very ignorant and I don't mean this in a demeaning way - it's just that they lack the proper education and knowledge about religion. I would blame this on their local church since it is their job to teach this. Sadly most of these resort to either extremely boring services, or services and classes based purely on emotion with absolutely no biblical or hermeneutical backing. Every field has its bad examples and it is impossible to weed them all out. Just dont get into the practice of writing something off because of them. Do you totally quit programming computers because some programmers are just downright ignorant about code? Of course not. So why do the same about any field of knowledge, especially if you know nothing about it yourself?

It seems that most of us here absolutely love knowledge which is awesome in my book. I do have a four year degree in the field of religion but also am pursuing a masters in comp sci. So trust me when I say that the field of religion is not about ignorance nor does it advocate it.