A
Anonymous
Guest
A couple of things that waggle my bemusement-nerve are the assumptions that criminal behaviour today is more prevalent than in the past, and the assumption that people who profess a 'respectable belief system' (e.g. Xtianity, Islam, Buddhism, or Science) must be, at least, well-intentioned.
How many on the board share that view? I suspect a lot of you do, but I'd like to quantify it. In case I'm wrong.
(On the record, I connect the assumption of greater modern criminality with the assumption that religious people are basically good because of my kid sister's Church. Her fellow believers are -apparently- predominantly ex-cons, saved by 'The Love Of Christ™' from a life of crime. Fair enough. If that's what it takes to give them the strength to stop ringing cars or housebreaking, good luck to them. But it seems to go hand-in-hand with a (to my mind bizarre) belief that all religious people are prevented from criminal behaviour by their beliefs, and seemingly welded to that belief is the notion that today's crime levels are higher than at any time in history. This conviction is prompted, so far as I can see, by both their own experience (of being lawbreakers and mixing with other lawbreakers and subsequently breaking from that life) and the notion that a society that is largely secular in nature CANNOT AVOID being more criminal because so many people lack Christ's Love in their lives to keep them on the straight-and-narrow.)
How many on the board share that view? I suspect a lot of you do, but I'd like to quantify it. In case I'm wrong.
(On the record, I connect the assumption of greater modern criminality with the assumption that religious people are basically good because of my kid sister's Church. Her fellow believers are -apparently- predominantly ex-cons, saved by 'The Love Of Christ™' from a life of crime. Fair enough. If that's what it takes to give them the strength to stop ringing cars or housebreaking, good luck to them. But it seems to go hand-in-hand with a (to my mind bizarre) belief that all religious people are prevented from criminal behaviour by their beliefs, and seemingly welded to that belief is the notion that today's crime levels are higher than at any time in history. This conviction is prompted, so far as I can see, by both their own experience (of being lawbreakers and mixing with other lawbreakers and subsequently breaking from that life) and the notion that a society that is largely secular in nature CANNOT AVOID being more criminal because so many people lack Christ's Love in their lives to keep them on the straight-and-narrow.)