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Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

You may claim that this is the purpose of religion, but religious texts have MANY more things to say than this message. For example, where in all of your nice description does the prohibition against eating pork but not beef fit in? Where does the prohibition against same-sex love fit into the universal compassion? Where does the stoning of jews who don't observe the Sabbath fit in?

And these are just some of the major laws of Judaism and Christianity that I'm most familiar with. Similar prohibitions and encouragements can be found in a leach and every religious practice on Earth, and they have literally 0 to do with universal love. So why believe that religion is all about universal love when religious practices insist on so many other things?

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You forgot the part where some woman's husband dies and God wants his brother to knock her up asap but when he pulls out and cums on the floor God strikes him down immediately. His pull out game was so good that God himself was furious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onan

Not everything written down and claimed to be from God is, indeed, from God. Unreputable people have managed to insert themselves into "holy" works for ages upon ages now, and, if not in the works themselves, then certainly in our understanding of them.

That is why everything is weighed against love. And the vast majority of human beings -- especially so-called religious authorities -- utterly fail in that regard. Selfishness for money and power corrupt most everyone, and religion is rife for abuse by the unscrupulous.

Also, God's rules vary over the eons for different cultures and epochs.

For some time my personal moral philosophy has been:

  Help people help themselves. 
  Then help those who can't.

More recently, I've been dabbling with:

  Just listen.

(I'm not a very good disciple of my own rules. Baby steps.)

Thanks for sharing your views. I'm going to chew on it for a while.

I can respect this line of thinking. You do you buddy and I hope you have an excellent night.

> where in all of your nice description does the prohibition against eating pork but not beef fit in?

I love rotisserie chicken, and tandoori chicken even more. You know why none of us eat rotisserie vulture? Because they're scavengers, and we should only eat scavengers if we're starving. Look up pigs in wikipedia and you'll learn that they are absolute scavengers who love to eat poop (learned that from comedian Daniel Tosh, who has a pet pig).

God's laws are always for our happiness. We are not to commit adultery because of disease and trust and love and the fact that jealously gets people killed, or at least causes strife and misery.

> Where does the prohibition against same-sex love fit into the universal compassion?

I understand that to be the result of human persecution of gay folks since time immemorial. I don't agree with persecuting gay folks, myself, and understand that we rightfully can do nothing against what people do in the privacy of their own home, not that I would intrude on another person's relationship anyway.

Certain sexual practices are certainly bad for our physical well-being, so God says we shouldn't do it, but only for our happiness.

Whom we choose for our best friend is a person's business, but that's just my reading of how love works for me. And I have found that gay folks are the least of our problems, except for Peter Thiel, but he's just a power-hungry asshole.

> and they have literally 0 to do with universal love. So why believe that religion is all about universal love when religious practices insist on so many other things?

What those supposed 'authorities' are doing is truly sad and WRONG, but we are free to be as hyprocritical as we wish, to be as willfully ignorant as we wish. A Jewish person can choose to be a Nazi, and anyone can choose to be an asshole.

That has nothing to do with what we SHOULD do, though, my friend.

You are bang-on correct: the vast majority of the world's understanding of religion is nothing less than fucked-up. And God is not happy with it, but It gave us this free will to be whatever we want, and so it is.

And, believe me, trying to explain love to the willfully ignorant, self-righteous, prideful, lying oppressors is walking uphill. But, I wouldn't trade it for the world. We are only responsible for our own ideals, attitudes, and behaviors.

We love you. I feel your pain, but love will help you transcend it, even if we can't transcend others' hateful idiocy; they have to choose to do that for themself.

Namaste.

Chickens are notorious poop eaters as well.

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