Religion: the root of corruption?

[brategamete]

pwede mo apil.

My religion teaches me not be corrupt. Because my religion brings me to be like God, who is not corrupt.

[brategamete]

People who are in the wrong religion are corrupt.

People who dont have religion are corrupt.

People who dont believe and follow their God are corrupt.

People who dont believe God and dont believe that all good conduct and ethics come from Him are corrupt.

[acpatagnan]

So you really want evidences that people in the government believe and fear God. That is so easy. Just simply asked then and they will tell you. Observe their activities: they go the churches, they pray, they even preach God's teachings. The Philippines is a religious society. Filipinos are superstitiously religious whether you accept that fact or not.

My whole point is this: corruption start in the mind. Believing something without any solid proof is corruption at that start. This will lead you to other activities with that kind of mind set. And it really shows in politics, in ethics, in philosophy the very root of it all.

[agta]

You are driving the issue out either intentionally or out of ignorance. The issue, to repeat, is your claim that "the people in government are religious and God-fearing".

Do not change that issue. It is different from saying ""people in the government believe and fear God"."

The acts you described in your post immediately preceding do not guarantee that a person performing them is indeed religious and God-fearing. They are external acts which may or may not indicate that the person is religious and God-fearing.

Therefore, what you called easy, you failed to do.

[Jeff]

Dear ACPatagan, remember me? Still you are what you are hehehe walang ka dala dala. You know what? You are really challenging God for a fist fight. Man and God is incomparable. As I said to you before, we are not product of cosmic accident we are God's creation. Now if our Government is corrupt there is no doubt about it, it's no longer big deal because every country every leaders are no not blameless, if we have no God in our heart we are corrupt.

So you really want evidences that people in the government believe and fear God. That is so easy. Just simply asked then and they will tell you. Observe their activities: they go the churches, they pray, they even preach God's teachings. The Philippines is a religious society. Filipinos are superstitiously religious whether you accept that fact or not.

My whole point is this: corruption start in the mind. Believing something without any solid proof is corruption at that start. This will lead you to other activities with that kind of mind set. And it really shows in politics, in ethics, in philosophy the very root of it all.

[Jeff]

"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power."

[acpatagnan]

Dear ACPatagan, remember me? Still you are what you are hehehe walang ka dala dala. You know what? You are really challenging God for a fist fight. Man and God is incomparable. As I said to you before, we are not product of cosmic accident we are God's creation. Now if our Government is corrupt there is no doubt about it, it's no longer big deal because every country every leaders are no not blameless, if we have no God in our heart we are corrupt.

Yeah, I won't forget you. Nothing has change about me. I am not for any physical fist fight. I am here for a discussion. Nothing to be scared of (dala dala). Because reality and reason is on my side. Challenging God? Come on be realistic. There is no such being you call God. It's just human imagination and fantasy. You know it is only evading facts or evidences: that all people in the government are God believers. They have faith in God. But still there is corruption in the government. What makes it so? Simple: Believing on something without any basis in reality is arbitrary and causes the mind to be corrupted, irrational. Irrationality leads to corruption.

[agta]

You know it is only evading facts or evidences: that all people in the government are God believers. They have faith in God. But still there is corruption in the government. What makes it so? Simple: Believing on something without any basis in reality is arbitrary and causes the mind to be corrupted, irrational. Irrationality leads to corruption.

One of the errors that you are committing is your failure to see the difference between two different things. Such kind of erroneous process of thinking makes you jump from one point to nowhere at your destruction.

For example: Now you insist that people in government are "God believers", and by that, in your view, they all have faith in God. And since you see that government is corrupt, you then made the conclusion that it is faith in God that makes people corrupt.

You see the magic in your logic? Such conclusion of yours is clearly wrong, because, for one: TRUE FAITH, as clearly shown in post#2, is not compatible with CORRUPTION. Therefore, where there is corruption, rational men does not talk of presence of FAITH therein.

But you seem to be carried not by correct reason but by what you want to believe. You want to believe that faith and corruption are "marriageable", and in fact you imagine them "married" already to each other. Why do you want to do this impossible feat? You want that faith and corruption should "marry" each other because you have no other way to destroy true FAITH. Therefore, you forced yourself to believe in the incredible, in your hope that by so doing you would appear credible.

[acpatagnan]

No it is not jumping. It is related. It is interconnected. It is not impossible to show connection between faith and corruption.

The starting point is this: Faith is believing on something without any evidence or proof to show. Knowledge start in our senses or sense perception then process it to form abstraction with the use of language. The word for example "chair" represent the actual chair. Higher abstraction or concepts like marriage, justice, economics etc can be traced backed to sense perception. But the word "God" as an abstraction or concept cannot be traced backed to sense perception. That is why I call it a "floating abstraction" no connection to the real world. From that point, faith is just believing without any connection to the actual world and this leads to corruption of the mind. The process of knowledge is cut off or corrupted at the root. With that mental set up it can be carried along with the knowledge of morality or ethics. Why is it that they asked bribe, steal money from government fund, "palakasan" and other forms of corruption and at the same time declare (if asked) that they believe in God?

The only proof you can find from those "God believers" are their statement and actions. There is no other.

Yes, it is not impossible to connect the concept of faith (epistemology) with the concept of corruption (ethics).

[agta]

You accused them of having faith when they have none! That is one basic error that you committed here. It simply shows that you do not have a correct understanding of what is faith. Besides, you an atheist, have no right teaching others what is faith. For faith, in its correct meaning, is not compatible with corruption. Therefore, when we find corruption in any man, we can be sure that faith is still lacking in him, even if he should shout to the world that he believes in God, much less if he declares to the world that there is no God.