Enlightened_One said:
Socialism's biggest flaw is the fact that it needs perfect people for it to work. Socialism would be easily undermined by greed and other human shortcomings.
agreed wholeheartedly. thats why pretty much all communist states have failed - Russia the biggest loser of all. China is moving away from communism ever so gradually, moreso in an economical sense (e.g. privatising government owned companies and industries like telecommunications). politically, it is still 'communistic' in a way, but its good to hear that at least local villagers in remote areas get to vote and discuss in meetings dedicated to planning their future and village. the smell of democracy is there. Damn Google. Why did u have to compromise your integrity for more money when you launched google.cn?
Ah well...what can u do...greed is human nature.
anyway, back on topic...
i think inherently religions are intolerant of each other. think about it. its pretty obvious that most of the threads in this sub-forum revolves around muslims and christians, and the conflict they always seem to have between them. think about the crusades. now that goes back a LONG LONG time ago. all for the possession of a single city, jerusalem. and i thought jerusalem allowed jewish, muslim AND christian prilgrims in their holy city at the time.
and now, we have the gulf war, almost a predecessor to the crusades. of course muslims have no choice but to flght back to try and reclaim back their lands.
church and state do not go well together. the church wants people to follow their "THE" religion and condone others, while the state (in our democratic system) they aim to allow religious freedom.
and many people raised the point that religion is good because it teaches morals and guidelines and and all these goody goody things.
my question is: do you necessarily need 'religion' to have a sense of morals or ethics?
i think the crux lies with this:
who has the responsiblity to govern people's lives? i say the state - ie its health, education, transport, defence, welfare etc...systems - has that ultimate authority AND responsibility, not the church or any other religious sect. this may not be true a few hundred years ago, but now, it is different. religion has lost its intended 'purpose' somehow, although its core purpose of following a certain diety remains. and that has kinda cracked society as such as well.
i bring your attention to hillsong. they are a fanatical financial machine. loud speakers, large LCD TVs, christian rock bands, the whole lot. a bunch of fanatical, over-the-top evangelists. the scary thing is they actually "PERSUADE" you to give donations to their cause - to buy more stuff - more houses, larger cars...
...isnt religion suppose to push away and ignore material possessions and embrace spiritual attointment, in order to reach out and better follow their diety?
i'll leave it at that, i'll bound to add more fuel to the fire.