Comments by "June VanDerMark" (@junevandermark952) on "Shawn Ryan Clips"
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There was a reason that all right-fighting theologians taught their followers the mantra ... "keep thy faith."
From the book “Smith’s Bible Dictionary
Bible
There are at least thirty six different authors, who wrote in three continents, in many countries, in three languages, and from every possible human standpoint. Among these authors were kings, farmers, mechanics, scientific men, lawyers, generals, fishermen, ministers and priests, a tax-collector, a doctor, some rich, some poor, some city bred, some country born—thus touching all the experiences of men—extending over 1500 years.
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@divulgedspirit As were all people in all religions ... I also was raised to believe that the universe was created by a judge-mental god ... or ... judge-mental gods.
At age 70, I changed my system of belief to the more sensible scientific theory that the universe and electricity always existed ... no creator ... no plan ... and that suffering of all life ... is natural.
I'm now 85 years of age ... and trust that if I do my best to be as kind to others as each situation allows ... I can't DO better than my best.
Thankfully … now that hundreds of members of clergy of various religions are leaving their religious indoctrinations behind ... as being nothing other than misleading information … there is hope for everyone.
From the book ... Apostle to Apostate: The Story of the Clergy Project … authors … Catherine Dunphy, Richard Dawkins
When you are reared to think of your faith and its leaders as infallible, dissent can be an unsettling thing. This is particularly true for clergy, who have devoted their lives to the subject of faith. I therefore especially hope that this story reaches those clergy who have yet to articulate their doubts.
As they struggle through this process, I am thankful that they can look to the Clergy Project as an example of community and humanism as an example of good. As former clergy who have left churches of every denomination, synagogues, mosques, convents, monasteries, and theological institutions, we stand as examples of the reasonableness of doubt and its thoughtful conclusions. I cannot help but think that we offer a compelling voice for why science and secularism do a better job than religion and superstition of answering the so-called ultimate questions.
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@divulgedspirit Pertaining to suicide ... it definitely "matters" what we believe.
Many members of clergy also committed suicide ... in the belief that they would never be able to pass God's judgment that would allow them entrance to heaven.
Example … from the book by Georges Minois … History of Suicide … Voluntary Death in Western Culture … Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane.
Spring 1721 Julien Deshoux attended the Lenten preaching cycle during a mission at Saulniere, in the barony of Chateaugiron. The preachers’ depictions of hell drove him insane: “He fell into madness,” his parish priest declared, “because of the fright the preaching caused him.” He killed himself.
Spirituality, shared with physical suicide a rejection of the world, of personal life, and of individual conscience; a desire to merge with the great all that some call nothingness and others call God; and a total effacement of self.
Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-57), a disciple of Condren, went through a grave moral crisis during which he stopped eating and saw himself as already dead: “I did not know how to eat: I was almost losing the habit of it, and seems to me that I was giving food as if to a dead body.” Considering himself lost, Olier compared himself to Judas and imagined himself already in hell: “When people spoke of God I conceived of nothing but an annoying, rigorous, and very cruel being….I took pleasure in the thought of hell, and the description of it pleased me as of the place destined for me”.
For a period of five years, Father Jean Rigoleuc thought himself damned too. Jean-Hoseph Surin, a Jesuit (1600 – 1663) suffered from bouts of madness and suicide neuroticism: he wrote, and he even seriously attempted suicide by throwing himself out a window.
1418 When his wife fell ill, Pierre le Vachier, a retired butcher from Sarcelles who had been ruined by the civil war and had lost two of his children, not only was left destitute but also felt totally abandoned. He “went to hang himself from a tree, where he died and strangled himself.” The chronicle adds that he was obviously “tempted by the enemy [the devil].” Although it took a variety of forms, the spirituality of annihilation inspired quazi-suicidal attitudes throughout the seventeenth century.
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