Comments by "Lepi Doptera" (@lepidoptera9337) on "ESOTERICA" channel.

Spinoza couldn't afford to be a hard atheist. The people of his time didn't look gently on those folks and he wasn't rich enough not to care. Free choice of religion didn't exist in Spinoza's world, yet. To look at it any other way is to be completely blind to historical reality.
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It's a fairytale. In a fairytale the characters can be anything and one can easily break the original storyline and restart the universe as many times as one likes. Marvel and DC Comics didn't even invent that one. The bible has several fits and restarts. ;-)
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@sadib100 Because a winning position leads to atheism. If you don't have to worry about tomorrow, then you don't need a sky-pixie. ;-)
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@sadib100 Yes, almost everybody in the Roman Empire was a loser. Unless you had Roman citizenship and money you were in a really bad place. Why do you think Christianity took off like a rocket? Because it gave completely desperate people hope that the next life would be better than this. Religion thrives when people are desperate. It fades away when they are doing well. Religion needs misery.
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@sadib100 Because they were smarter. For one thing it avoids theodicy completely. It's also better to have many specialists rather than one generalist. You don't want your plumber to also be your brain surgeon, do you? ;-)
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@sadib100 Why? Do you need a 4 inch drain installed? ;-)
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Used car(t) salesman and priest/preacher are well respected ancient job descriptions... for those who don't feel any shame. ;-)
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@CocoTheDiamond People with normal childhood development and socialization feel shame about lying. That's the reason why lying is a sin according to the bible. It is estimated that half of all Catholic priests are atheists, but after passing through seminary they have nowhere else to go. Knowing how to lie to the congregation about theological matters is not exactly a useful item on ones resume for most jobs. So they stick to the Church career, feeling miserably most of their lives. Protestants have solved the shame problem by pretending that Jesus loves them and that they will be rewarded for lying for Jesus. That's is a very silly coping mechanism, but just like the concept of "family" works for Mafia members, the concept of being "saved" pulls them through, anyway. At the end of the day all of these are very sick psychological traits. I don't think you will have to wait very long for a holy war. Iran is close to getting the bomb, Israel has it already and Saudi Arabia just started building the facilities. Between that and the North Korean, Russian and now Chinese Imperial Cults we are looking at a really unhappy 21st century. :-)
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The Inquisition didn't exist for Newton as a real threat, but he would have certainly lost his position and livelihood. Spinoza was certainly under a more severe threat still. Exactly right.
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Because the Jewish folks were a lot of things, but they weren't winners. One can hardly argue that Judaism came out of a winning position.
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