Fall short of what?
In the words of Hitch, we used to be poly-theists then we moved to monotheism. Weâre getting closer to the truth all the time 
In the states alone, there are over 30,000 different flavours of christianity. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus as the catholics say / believe.
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Thank you for the question. If Vishnu does turn up tomorrow, I will let you know.
As for Jesus, he did show up.
Thatâs good stuff, lol.
I will go over context so we donât miss why I said this.
Irreligious and atheist people on here, such as you, several others too, have shared how the church, and some Christian people, have committed atrocities, crimes, and such, throughout history. I do not disagree with that, for the record.
In response I said that so have the atheists, secular humanists, irreligious people, and so on. You objected to the example of Stalin, who killed anywhere from 9-20 million. You tried to claim he was more of a Jesus fella, but that doesnât ring true. Still, letâs forget Stalin for a moment.
Instead, let us consider todayâs Chinese government. Secular. Irreligious. Officially atheist. Now let me add a few other words. Uighurs. Concentration camps. Ethnic cleansing. Genocide.
This is a secular, atheist government systematically destroying a religious Muslim group. Not ancient history in less enlightened times either. This is today.
I donât understand why it is difficult to grasp that irreligious, secular, atheist people are also responsible for wrongdoing, both on a small scale and an industrial scale. That simple premise seems difficult for you and some others to swallow, and I suspect some of the confirmation bias I am being accused of.
To break the sort of fruitless discussion we were having, I said that I see obvious culpability on all sides, and I used a shorthand Biblical phrase that says all have sinned.
This word was met with objection and offence, by you and Klopptimist, I think. So then I tried to update the language, as I appreciate that the notion of sin has largely been lost, so thatâs when I said that all of us have fallen short.
Now the question.
Fallen short of what?
I used it in the sense that all of us have sinned. OK, word not acceptable to you. So then all of us have fallen short. Fallen short of what?
I will attempt an answer, but this isnât the final word on it!
Fallen short of where we want to be. Fallen short of where we had hoped to be. Maybe fallen short in our thoughts. A lot of people spend too much time thinking about shit, and it drags them down. Or maybe we have fallen short in our words. I said I would do something and I didnât do it. Or I intentionally lied to make myself more and someone else less, perhaps. Or I was a real shit to my wife, and in an argument I said words that wounded.
Or perhaps it wasnât in thought or word that I fell short, but instead I fell short in deed. I did something I should not have done. Filled in my time sheet. Said I was there when I knocked off early. Fudged my expense report. Rounded up the mileage. Cheated on my wife. Overworked and missed too much of my kids growing up. Could be anything!
Whatever the moral code or ethic we each aspire to, my simple contention is that all of us have fallen short. We have all missed the mark. And we are all in the same boat on that.
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You know exactly what I mean. An answer this side of pointless would be nice. Thanks. Or (as I suspect) can you not entertain the thought?
Itâs not the word, itâs the accusation that we all sin. Us included.
Think about it like this. You obviously have a thing abut sin. Itâs a common thing with religious people, particularly JWs. Now if the religion can sell you the idea that youâre a sinner and only through their particular brand of Jesus can you be saved, good business model, no?
Always look for the ÂŁÂŁÂŁÂŁ or $$$$ in your case.
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Interestingly thatâs a myth.
Its one of those things that has been perpetrated in movies/songs/books but its not actually true.
Its like how people today believe Vikings wore helmets with horns on them, or how all those bugs bunny cartoons that convinced me bulls hate red, or various movies that say we only use 10% of brain. To bring it back to religion the perception that the bible says adam and eve ate an apple.
It was known and widely accepted the earth was round from about 250bc. Fictional writers in the 1850s (Washington Irving) are largely to blame for creating this myth that in the past people believed the world was flat.
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This whole sin thing is just a form of social control. Yes, all humans do bad stuff at some point in their lives, but equally they also do good things. Why not concentrate on that? Why not say we are all born with goodness in our hearts instead of born with sin. As for the idea that we all have to die because Adam and Eve ate the apple, that God, the all knowing, put in front of them, knowing, presumably, that theyâd succumb to temptation. Thatâs just perverse.
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I donât especially have a thing about sin at all. You might be arguing against a caricature you have of religion, and religious people, rather than the person present.
I never accused anyone of anything, save trying to find common ground in an effort to try break out of a fruitless conversation that was starting to sound like he said she said.
Essentially I was saying that we are all in the same boat in that we all fall short. That might lead to small consequences on a personal level, or it might lead to something larger. The point is, Iâm saying we all fall short. Itâs part of the human condition, whether a person is religious, atheist, gay, straight or Australian.
I give up.
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Itâs a good thought, cheers. Much more positive. We do have goodness in our hearts too, for sure.
You have not one scrap of evidence for that.
I canât keep saying the same thing over and over again for you to ignore. Iâve addressed this point three times now and you, and Iâd say strategically, keep just ignoring it.
Where you find so called secular genocidal regimes, you find a quasi-religious attitude to the regime, where an imaginary God has been replaced by devotional faith in a person or people.
Thatâs the case with Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, the Kim Jungs, and the Emperor Hirohito.
Youâve tried saying that Stalin âtried to eradicate religion from Russiaâ and that Hitler was an Atheist. Both 100% categorically untrue, which you wonât acknowledge.
This is why talking to you here is profoundly frustrating. We can have this conversation, enjoy this conversation, and god help us even maybe find some common ground. But thatâs not going to work if your strategy with points you find tricky is to leave it for a few days and then just raise exactly the same point when you hope everyone has forgotten.
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No I didnât. You said he eradicated religion from Russia. He didnât. He restablished the Russian Orthodox Church ffs.
What I said about Stalin was that he demanded the kind of devotional faith in his leadership usually reserved for gods. And he understood that if he wanted to tighten his grip on power, he needed the underpinning of a state church.
Iâve no problem with Stalin being an atheist. He probably was, despite his religious acts.
So letâs go with this. The aim is to reach our potential as a species. Is that, bearing in mind every advance which has made your life better than your ancestors has been a result of secular progress, more likely with a society based in secular/scientific/evidential values, or religious/faith based ones?
To pick out an example, you have raised the issue of crime. So whatâs the best approach to reducing crime?
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Blaming it on being inherently sinful, and praying to lord jesus to help us.
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trying to understand the reasons why people commit crime, the role of poverty and inequality, the neuroscientific and psychological basis for criminal urges, the role of parenting, responses to external pressure etc
I agree with @Klopptimist when he says follow the money. The Catholic Church used to sell indulgences for crying out loud.
The religion you follow was designed by people for their own benefit many years after the era that Jesus is supposed to have lived. The designed as control and extortion. Itâs a scam and it always has been.
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Amen brother.
He can only help us if he exists thoughâŠ
Back to post #1 with you all untill you prove or disprove his existence.
For Gods sakeâŠ
In Hinduism, Vishnu does exactly that. He turns up regularly, in form of avatars, who when identified, are then revered as a godly incarnation.
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Then forgive my naivety. A deity arrives who isnât the god of the bible, does some kick ass magical stuff, tells us heâs (canât shake that christian indoctrination) the only one. In the face of that, how can a person still believe in the existence of the Abrahamic god and Jesus being his son?