Health and Religion

[BADecker]

almost all religions disapprove smoking, alcohol, drugs and etc. isnt it a care about health ? almost all religions postulate careness about health as body and mental.

They also approve rape, slavery and murder so I don't know where you are going with this.

Rather, it's your misunderstanding and intentional desire to misapply what religious books say that says, "They also approve rape, slavery and murder... ."

There should be no misunderstanding in a so called ''holly book'' If god truly intended a book to be the only way to know he exists he would have done a better job.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear.  Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished.  If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

Is there really anything misunderstood in those verses?

There is a lot of misunderstanding in science, all over the place. Yet we continue to examine science because clearing up the misunderstanding gives us many modern-miracle inventions that we are happy with.

One of the greatest misunderstandings of science is, science misunderstands how great the religious writings are. Science seems to want to downplay the religious writings, rather than find the scientific advantages in religion that science doesn't understand.

You seem to be talking a bit hypocritically. You acknowledge science. Yet you only want it in certain areas. Think of the great knowledge you would find if you would apply scientific examination to religious writings! After all, as has been scientifically shown already, and as Coincube shows throughout this thread, people gain a lot of good health through religion. Let's continue to scientifically find out why, so we can apply health advantages in greater quantity, quality, and detail, so we can be happier, still.

[CryptoConduct]

Many religions teach physical and mental practices to impove them. So health and religion are interconnected things

[BADecker]

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear.  Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

Slaves and slavery exist all over the world, right now, as it has been for thousands of years. Are you against life and health for a slave? Are you against making a slave's life better?

You can't stop slavery. You might want to, but practically, you can't.

What is next best, since you can't stop slavery? Give the slave the best advice for making a good life for himself. After all, a slave owner who is treated well by his slaves, will generally treat them better than he would treat a rebellious slave.

You seem to forget that Saint Paul also said to the slaves, "But if you can gain your freedom, do so."

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished.  If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

In Exodus times, slavery was the common thing. God was, in general, telling those people to treat their slaves right. Without the punishment for the slave-owner, things would have been a lot worse. Read the whole Bible regarding slavery. You are missing a lot when you don't look at how God was giving freedom to all people, to the slave, and to those voluntarily making slaves of themselves by contract... according to the things He ordained.



I used to think that you had a little bit of brain in there. But you are beginning to show that there isn't really very much. Your hate of me and religion is going to destroy you, unless you turn from such hatred.

[Astargath]

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear.  Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

Slaves and slavery exist all over the world, right now, as it has been for thousands of years. Are you against life and health for a slave? Are you against making a slave's life better?

You can't stop slavery. You might want to, but practically, you can't.

What is next best, since you can't stop slavery? Give the slave the best advice for making a good life for himself. After all, a slave owner who is treated well by his slaves, will generally treat them better than he would treat a rebellious slave.

You seem to forget that Saint Paul also said to the slaves, "But if you can gain your freedom, do so."

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished.  If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

In Exodus times, slavery was the common thing. God was, in general, telling those people to treat their slaves right. Without the punishment for the slave-owner, things would have been a lot worse. Read the whole Bible regarding slavery. You are missing a lot when you don't look at how God was giving freedom to all people, to the slave, and to those voluntarily making slaves of themselves by contract... according to the things He ordained.



I used to think that you had a little bit of brain in there. But you are beginning to show that there isn't really very much. Your hate of me and religion is going to destroy you, unless you turn from such hatred.

Where to even start... First of all, are you saying god cannot do something? Are you implying that god himself cannot stop slavery? If he can, why not just do it? Why leave arbitrary rules for slaves?

Second. Slavery is almost gone, in Spain, where I live, we have no slaves so it is definitely not even close to impossible to get rid of slavery and considering we are talking about a god, it seems a very easy task to solve.

Third ''telling those people to treat their slaves right'' Being able to beat your slaves almost to the death with no punishment isn't really teaching people to treat their slaves right, is it?

You are extremely deluded, ugh... You religious nutjobs would go to any extent to defend your bible... Even defending slavery, disgusting human being.

[CoinCube]

Where to even start... First of all, are you saying god cannot do something? Are you implying that god himself cannot stop slavery? If he can, why not just do it? Why leave arbitrary rules for slaves?

Second. Slavery is almost gone, in Spain, where I live, we have no slaves so it is definitely not even close to impossible to get rid of slavery and considering we are talking about a god, it seems a very easy task to solve.

Third ''telling those people to treat their slaves right'' Being able to beat your slaves almost to the death with no punishment isn't really teaching people to treat their slaves right, is it?

You are extremely deluded, ugh... You religious nutjobs would go to any extent to defend your bible... Even defending slavery, disgusting human being.

You are virtue signaling here Astargath. BadDecker in no way defended slavery. He simply pointed out the reality of human evil. Slavery is an evil we inflict on ourselves. How do you eliminate an evil that is voluntarily and freely chosen. There are only three ways.

1) You exterminatiate the evil which in this case would involve extermination of the human species.

2) You remove the freedom of the evil parties essentially making them slaves to your will which is morally problematic when the goal is to eliminate slavery.

3) You teach people to behave better. If the students are especially slow the process of change may take a very long time.

On Slavery
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm

Let's start simple:

Take an agrarian society surrounded by hostile nations. Go in there and forcefully abolish slavery. The result? War, bloodshed, hatred, prejudice, poverty and eventually, a return to slavery until the underlying conditions change. Which is pretty much what happened in the American South when the semi-industrialized North imposed their laws upon the agrarian South. And in Texas when Mexico attempted to abolish slavery among the Anglophones there.
Not a good idea. Better idea: Place humane restrictions upon the institution of indentured servitude. Yes, it's still ugly, but in the meantime, you'll teach people compassion and kindness. Educate. Make workshops. Go white-water rafting together. (Hey, why didn't Abe Lincoln think of white-water rafting?) Eventually, things change and slavery becomes an anachronism for such a society.

Which is pretty much what happened to Jewish society. Note this: At a time when Romans had literally thousands of slaves per citizen, even the wealthiest Jews held very modest numbers of servants. And those servants, the Talmud tells us, were treated better by their masters than foreign kings would treat their own subjects.
Torah teaches us how to run a libertarian society--through education and participation. Elsewhere in the world, emperors and aristocracy knew only how to govern a mass of people through oppression. Look what happened to Rome.

Getting Real Change

So you can see where I'm getting to with the slavery thing. If G d would simply and explicitly declare all the rules, precisely as He wants His world to look and what we need to do about it, the Torah would never become real to us. No matter how much we would do and how good we would be, we would remain aliens to the process.
So, too, with slavery (and there are many other examples): In the beginning, the world starts off as a place where oppressing others is a no-qualms, perfectly acceptable practice. It's not just the practice Torah needs to deal with, it's the attitude. So Torah involves us in arriving at that attitude. To the point that we will say, "Even though the Torah lets us, we don't do things that way."

Which means that we've really learnt something. And now, we can teach it to others. Because those things you're just told, those you cannot teach. You can only teach that which you have discovered on your own.
History bears this out.

[BADecker]

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear.  Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

Slaves and slavery exist all over the world, right now, as it has been for thousands of years. Are you against life and health for a slave? Are you against making a slave's life better?

You can't stop slavery. You might want to, but practically, you can't.

What is next best, since you can't stop slavery? Give the slave the best advice for making a good life for himself. After all, a slave owner who is treated well by his slaves, will generally treat them better than he would treat a rebellious slave.

You seem to forget that Saint Paul also said to the slaves, "But if you can gain your freedom, do so."

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished.  If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

In Exodus times, slavery was the common thing. God was, in general, telling those people to treat their slaves right. Without the punishment for the slave-owner, things would have been a lot worse. Read the whole Bible regarding slavery. You are missing a lot when you don't look at how God was giving freedom to all people, to the slave, and to those voluntarily making slaves of themselves by contract... according to the things He ordained.



I used to think that you had a little bit of brain in there. But you are beginning to show that there isn't really very much. Your hate of me and religion is going to destroy you, unless you turn from such hatred.

Where to even start... First of all, are you saying god cannot do something?

The fact that God can do anything doesn't have anything to do with the way He decides to do it, or what He decides to do.

Are you implying that god himself cannot stop slavery?

How can I imply this in the face of the fact that God IS stopping slavery?

If he can, why not just do it?

God is doing it.

Why leave arbitrary rules for slaves?

God is love for all people. The way He is stopping slavery allows people to live in freedom, which allows them to become slaves if they want as some people do want, and allows the slave-owners to show love for their slaves, and allows all people to show love for God. But if you don't even understand that God exists, how can you expect to understand the why's and how's of anything that He does?

Second. Slavery is almost gone, in Spain, where I live, we have no slaves so it is definitely not even close to impossible to get rid of slavery and considering we are talking about a god, it seems a very easy task to solve.

Actually, slavery is NOT almost gone in Spain. After all, if Spain wanted freedom for the people, they would allow Catalonia to secede. As it is, the Spanish Government would lose the tax money that the Catalonia people pay. It's slavery, even though it might be limited slavery.

Third ''telling those people to treat their slaves right'' Being able to beat your slaves almost to the death with no punishment isn't really teaching people to treat their slaves right, is it?

But how do you remove slavery from a world full of people, who entirely agree with owning slaves, and with the right to become a slave (indentured servant) if they want, without taking their freedom away from them? Everyone agreed with slavery, especially with the fact that some forms of slavery benefited many people. It was inbred among the people back when God's slavery words were penned.

Today, Morocco, Western Sahara, and Mozambique have laws against slavery that they don't enforce. Some slaves and masters in those regions understand slavery as a way of life. You can talk freedom to those people until you are blue in the face, and they just don't understand. THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM.

God's idea is to work with people for salvation for the soul. If He has to work with slavery to get the slavers to treat the slaves better, and to do it with salvation in mind, and to do it with as much freedom in mind as possible, how in the world else is there to go about it? You simply aren't looking at the practicality of it.

Furthermore, do you think that the USA is free? Everybody talks about freedom in the USA. But few people want real freedom. If they did, they would own a whole lot more guns, and they would force the US Government to uphold the 2nd Amendment completely. Watch this freedom video and listen to the words real good. This is what the whole free world is about. You simply don't know the concepts that you are talking about.

Freedom Speech Easy Rider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc11mJGre10

You are extremely deluded, ugh... You religious nutjobs would go to any extent to defend your bible... Even defending slavery, disgusting human being.

Actually, it is your religion of limited freedom, and the religions of people like you that is deluded. Wake up and see that you haven't really understood what is going on in the world and life, and that true freedom has to do with working with the way things are, rather than against them.

[Astargath]

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear.  Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

Slaves and slavery exist all over the world, right now, as it has been for thousands of years. Are you against life and health for a slave? Are you against making a slave's life better?

You can't stop slavery. You might want to, but practically, you can't.

What is next best, since you can't stop slavery? Give the slave the best advice for making a good life for himself. After all, a slave owner who is treated well by his slaves, will generally treat them better than he would treat a rebellious slave.

You seem to forget that Saint Paul also said to the slaves, "But if you can gain your freedom, do so."

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished.  If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)

In Exodus times, slavery was the common thing. God was, in general, telling those people to treat their slaves right. Without the punishment for the slave-owner, things would have been a lot worse. Read the whole Bible regarding slavery. You are missing a lot when you don't look at how God was giving freedom to all people, to the slave, and to those voluntarily making slaves of themselves by contract... according to the things He ordained.



I used to think that you had a little bit of brain in there. But you are beginning to show that there isn't really very much. Your hate of me and religion is going to destroy you, unless you turn from such hatred.

Where to even start... First of all, are you saying god cannot do something?

The fact that God can do anything doesn't have anything to do with the way He decides to do it, or what He decides to do.

Are you implying that god himself cannot stop slavery?

How can I imply this in the face of the fact that God IS stopping slavery?

If he can, why not just do it?

God is doing it.

Why leave arbitrary rules for slaves?

God is love for all people. The way He is stopping slavery allows people to live in freedom, which allows them to become slaves if they want as some people do want, and allows the slave-owners to show love for their slaves, and allows all people to show love for God. But if you don't even understand that God exists, how can you expect to understand the why's and how's of anything that He does?

Second. Slavery is almost gone, in Spain, where I live, we have no slaves so it is definitely not even close to impossible to get rid of slavery and considering we are talking about a god, it seems a very easy task to solve.

Actually, slavery is NOT almost gone in Spain. After all, if Spain wanted freedom for the people, they would allow Catalonia to secede. As it is, the Spanish Government would lose the tax money that the Catalonia people pay. It's slavery, even though it might be limited slavery.

Third ''telling those people to treat their slaves right'' Being able to beat your slaves almost to the death with no punishment isn't really teaching people to treat their slaves right, is it?

But how do you remove slavery from a world full of people, who entirely agree with owning slaves, and with the right to become a slave (indentured servant) if they want, without taking their freedom away from them? Everyone agreed with slavery, especially with the fact that some forms of slavery benefited many people. It was inbred among the people back when God's slavery words were penned.

Today, Morocco, Western Sahara, and Mozambique have laws against slavery that they don't enforce. Some slaves and masters in those regions understand slavery as a way of life. You can talk freedom to those people until you are blue in the face, and they just don't understand. THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM.

God's idea is to work with people for salvation for the soul. If He has to work with slavery to get the slavers to treat the slaves better, and to do it with salvation in mind, and to do it with as much freedom in mind as possible, how in the world else is there to go about it? You simply aren't looking at the practicality of it.

Furthermore, do you think that the USA is free? Everybody talks about freedom in the USA. But few people want real freedom. If they did, they would own a whole lot more guns, and they would force the US Government to uphold the 2nd Amendment completely. Watch this freedom video and listen to the words real good. This is what the whole free world is about. You simply don't know the concepts that you are talking about.

Freedom Speech Easy Rider

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc11mJGre10

You are extremely deluded, ugh... You religious nutjobs would go to any extent to defend your bible... Even defending slavery, disgusting human being.

Actually, it is your religion of limited freedom, and the religions of people like you that is deluded. Wake up and see that you haven't really understood what is going on in the world and life, and that true freedom has to do with working with the way things are, rather than against them.

It's quite easy, just like he is taking our freedom away when he makes arbitrary rules like ''do not work on the sabbath'' he could make a rational rule, for once to say ''slavery is wrong'' .

I would be a better god than your god. I can think of 10 different solutions for slavery and yet your all knowing god couldn't.

[Astargath]

Where to even start... First of all, are you saying god cannot do something? Are you implying that god himself cannot stop slavery? If he can, why not just do it? Why leave arbitrary rules for slaves?

Second. Slavery is almost gone, in Spain, where I live, we have no slaves so it is definitely not even close to impossible to get rid of slavery and considering we are talking about a god, it seems a very easy task to solve.

Third ''telling those people to treat their slaves right'' Being able to beat your slaves almost to the death with no punishment isn't really teaching people to treat their slaves right, is it?

You are extremely deluded, ugh... You religious nutjobs would go to any extent to defend your bible... Even defending slavery, disgusting human being.

You are virtue signaling here Astargath. BadDecker in no way defended slavery. He simply pointed out the reality of human evil. Slavery is an evil we inflict on ourselves. How do you eliminate an evil that is voluntarily and freely chosen. There are only three ways.

1) You exterminatiate the evil which in this case would involve extermination of the human species.

2) You remove the freedom of the evil parties essentially making them slaves to your will which is morally problematic when the goal is to eliminate slavery.

3) You teach people to behave better. If the students are especially slow the process of change may take a very long time.

On Slavery
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm

Let's start simple:

Take an agrarian society surrounded by hostile nations. Go in there and forcefully abolish slavery. The result? War, bloodshed, hatred, prejudice, poverty and eventually, a return to slavery until the underlying conditions change. Which is pretty much what happened in the American South when the semi-industrialized North imposed their laws upon the agrarian South. And in Texas when Mexico attempted to abolish slavery among the Anglophones there.
Not a good idea. Better idea: Place humane restrictions upon the institution of indentured servitude. Yes, it's still ugly, but in the meantime, you'll teach people compassion and kindness. Educate. Make workshops. Go white-water rafting together. (Hey, why didn't Abe Lincoln think of white-water rafting?) Eventually, things change and slavery becomes an anachronism for such a society.

Which is pretty much what happened to Jewish society. Note this: At a time when Romans had literally thousands of slaves per citizen, even the wealthiest Jews held very modest numbers of servants. And those servants, the Talmud tells us, were treated better by their masters than foreign kings would treat their own subjects.
Torah teaches us how to run a libertarian society--through education and participation. Elsewhere in the world, emperors and aristocracy knew only how to govern a mass of people through oppression. Look what happened to Rome.

Getting Real Change

So you can see where I'm getting to with the slavery thing. If G d would simply and explicitly declare all the rules, precisely as He wants His world to look and what we need to do about it, the Torah would never become real to us. No matter how much we would do and how good we would be, we would remain aliens to the process.
So, too, with slavery (and there are many other examples): In the beginning, the world starts off as a place where oppressing others is a no-qualms, perfectly acceptable practice. It's not just the practice Torah needs to deal with, it's the attitude. So Torah involves us in arriving at that attitude. To the point that we will say, "Even though the Torah lets us, we don't do things that way."

Which means that we've really learnt something. And now, we can teach it to others. Because those things you're just told, those you cannot teach. You can only teach that which you have discovered on your own.
History bears this out.

1. Ehm didn't god already kill everyone with the flood? Not to mention all the plagues and other methods he used to kill people. How come that was totally ok but when it comes to stopping slavery it isn't?

2. Doesn't god remove your freedom when he makes arbitrary rules? ''Do not work on the sabbath'' Isn't that taking my freedom away?

3. Teaching people to beat their slaves with no punishment isn't exactly teaching people to behave better.

[Terriblethingss]

Religion is useful. It kills enormous numbers of healthy people. Without religion the world would be even more over-populated.

[Gabbass]

believe that religion cares about the followers. so it cares about health. all religion say: dont smoke, dont drink, dont take drugs. isn't it careing

[GamingBro]

Depends on religion but mostly they always cares about their followers health because it's potential money. Religion is the best form of business of all times.

[CoinCube]

1. Ehm didn't god already kill everyone with the flood? Not to mention all the plagues and other methods he used to kill people. How come that was totally ok but when it comes to stopping slavery it isn't?

2. Doesn't god remove your freedom when he makes arbitrary rules? ''Do not work on the sabbath'' Isn't that taking my freedom away?

3. Teaching people to beat their slaves with no punishment isn't exactly teaching people to behave better.

Deep topics here Astargath and I may not be the best one to address them. I will share some very general thoughts, however, in the hopes that they will be useful.

1) God and the flood. Let's operate for a moment from the premise that the destruction outlined in the bible is true either in a literal or a metaphorical sense. What could justify causing such suffering? One possibility is that such things are necessary to maintain freedom via preventing or delaying the emergence of successful totalitarianism. Bruce Charlton discussed this in one of his recent blog posts.  

Successful totalitarianism would be the end of the world - literally
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/

I have previously described the currently well-advanced totalitarian/ transhumanist agenda - in particular that it has a spiritual goal: the goal that as many people as possible will choose self-damnation because they will have come to embrace an inversion of values (the reversal of virtue and sin, beauty and ugliness, truth and lies etc).

If this is ever achieved - if The System gets to a point where it can engineer damnation by rendering free agency ineffectual: then that will be the end of the world.

I mean, that would be a point at which God would bring to an end the 'experiment' of human life on earth. That is what our loving Heavenly Father would surely do - because to have his children born into the certainty of damnation would be an evil that could be avoided by ending the world.

I don't know whether it is, in fact, possible to engineer damnation - perhaps it is not. Perhaps it is just a foolish dream of the forces of evil, and they are wasting their time in trying to achieve it. (I incline to this interpretation myself.)

But if it is possible, then it will not be allowed.

Which implies that at present, since the world continues, it is not possible to engineer damnation - and that we are wholly responsible for our choices.

And that, as a society, we have firmly and decisively chosen evil over Good: specifically, have chosen to assume the incoherent nihilism of materialism over the reality of the divine.

2) The "arbitrary rules" are freely chosen or rejected. Accepting the rules may appear to limit personal freedom but I would challenge this view and push you to look deeply into how you are defining freedom. If you are talking about overall freedom for everybody then a strong argument can be made that the "arbitrary rules" actually maximize freedom and rejecting them makes everyone less free. I made that argument in the linked post below.

See: Freedom and God

3) Regarding slavery I shared my thoughts immediately up thread. I believe the arguments were sound and do not have much more to add. To understand the relationship of religion and slavery I recommend not focusing on individual sentences of a religious text possibly taken out of context but instead look at the broader picture and attempt to answer the following in a non superficial and honest manner.

In a world where slavery was a perfectly acceptable practice for all of human history what was the fundamental agent of change that allowed us to largely abolish it?

[BADecker]

^^^ In addition, look through the laws in the first 5 books of the Bible. The law was that people should release their slaves in every seventh year. Also, debts (a form of slavery) were to be cancelled in the same year. Since God was against people kidnapping other people, and making slaves of them, how would there ever be any slaves after the first 7 years after the law was set in place? Slavery was voluntarily servitude, where it benefited both the slave and the master. But to keep the master from an unfair advantage over a voluntary slave, the 7th year required the slaves to be released.

[Innocant]

Religion is powerful, because this is where you believe you beliefs in life. You pray to god to have a meaningful life and have a good health for you to work everyday and find money to support you family needs and wants. Also health is wealth to everyone.

[stephylarde]

Religious belief impacts human health in a variety of ways, from blood pressure to psychological well-being.
Surveys regularly show that roughly 90 percent of Peoples say they believe in God or some higher power and 50 percent say religion is very important to them.

[Astargath]

1. Ehm didn't god already kill everyone with the flood? Not to mention all the plagues and other methods he used to kill people. How come that was totally ok but when it comes to stopping slavery it isn't?

2. Doesn't god remove your freedom when he makes arbitrary rules? ''Do not work on the sabbath'' Isn't that taking my freedom away?

3. Teaching people to beat their slaves with no punishment isn't exactly teaching people to behave better.

Deep topics here Astargath and I may not be the best one to address them. I will share some very general thoughts, however, in the hopes that they will be useful.

1) God and the flood. Let's operate for a moment from the premise that the destruction outlined in the bible is true either in a literal or a metaphorical sense. What could justify causing such suffering? One possibility is that such things are necessary to maintain freedom via preventing or delaying the emergence of successful totalitarianism. Bruce Charlton discussed this in one of his recent blog posts.  

Successful totalitarianism would be the end of the world - literally
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/

I have previously described the currently well-advanced totalitarian/ transhumanist agenda - in particular that it has a spiritual goal: the goal that as many people as possible will choose self-damnation because they will have come to embrace an inversion of values (the reversal of virtue and sin, beauty and ugliness, truth and lies etc).

If this is ever achieved - if The System gets to a point where it can engineer damnation by rendering free agency ineffectual: then that will be the end of the world.

I mean, that would be a point at which God would bring to an end the 'experiment' of human life on earth. That is what our loving Heavenly Father would surely do - because to have his children born into the certainty of damnation would be an evil that could be avoided by ending the world.

I don't know whether it is, in fact, possible to engineer damnation - perhaps it is not. Perhaps it is just a foolish dream of the forces of evil, and they are wasting their time in trying to achieve it. (I incline to this interpretation myself.)

But if it is possible, then it will not be allowed.

Which implies that at present, since the world continues, it is not possible to engineer damnation - and that we are wholly responsible for our choices.

And that, as a society, we have firmly and decisively chosen evil over Good: specifically, have chosen to assume the incoherent nihilism of materialism over the reality of the divine.

2) The "arbitrary rules" are freely chosen or rejected. Accepting the rules may appear to limit personal freedom but I would challenge this view and push you to look deeply into how you are defining freedom. If you are talking about overall freedom for everybody then a strong argument can be made that the "arbitrary rules" actually maximize freedom and rejecting them makes everyone less free. I made that argument in the linked post below.

See: Freedom and God

3) Regarding slavery I shared my thoughts immediately up thread. I believe the arguments were sound and do not have much more to add. To understand the relationship of religion and slavery I recommend not focusing on individual sentences of a religious text possibly taken out of context but instead look at the broader picture and attempt to answer the following in a non superficial and honest manner.

In a world where slavery was a perfectly acceptable practice for all of human history what was the fundamental agent of change that allowed us to largely abolish it?

1. ''One possibility is that such things are necessary to maintain freedom'' Certainly God would find a better way to do so... Besides what's the point of maintaining ''freedom'' if you are just going to get randomly killed by god anyways?

2. ''The "arbitrary rules" are freely chosen or rejected'' Not freely, you go to hell to get tortured forever if you reject them, that's not freedom. If I point a gun at you and tell you to give me your wallet or I shoot you, sure you have 2 options but you wouldn't consider that freedom, would you?

[covfefe_]

Religion were a collective documentation that supplemented constitution, law, moral teachings and included health teachings.
It always suggests us to have balanced diet, have healthy habits and forbids excessive use of unhealthy substances.

[kencot02]

Islam as a perfect and complete religion. Has established principles in guarding the balance of the human body. Among the ways Islam maintains health by maintaining hygiene and implementing syariat wudlu and bathing routinely for every Muslim

[Bythebass]

Religion just divide people because of thier own spiritual beliefs. I have my religion but sometimes I dont agree on everything that my preachers say because its against my onw personal will.

[Astargath]

Islam as a perfect and complete religion. Has established principles in guarding the balance of the human body. Among the ways Islam maintains health by maintaining hygiene and implementing syariat wudlu and bathing routinely for every Muslim

Stoning people to death is far from perfect.