Comments on: All career issues are religious issues. Maybe.

By: Lorena

Lorena — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 03:08:50 +0000

Here comes the atheist …!

Maybe Judaism is good in that respect. Christianity doesn't encourage personal responsibility. Christianity says that all your sins are forgiven no matter what you do. It is undeserved forgiveness, therefore deeds don't count.
In short: Christianity doesn't help.

By: Diane Warren

Diane Warren — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:17:00 +0000

‘Religion is the best preparation for a career.’” – TRUE and in my mind
solid preparation for the ups (gratitude) and the downs (guidance,
faith, hope) we all experience in business. In fact I find myself
leaping to the Lord’s Prayer before many meetings, especially if I am
nervous! It’s a comfort to me and puts the relevance and importance of
the meeting in place. Right?

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 10:57:57 +0000

Beat me to it.

Beautiful, Penelope. Thank you.

From my experience, Mass is the only place where I see people unanimously consciously striving to be better, kinder people. And my atheist friends are the bitterest bigots that I know.

That's my experience.

By: lado

lado — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 07:02:55 +0000

Can I just tell you I love you?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 06:39:31 +0000

If the office politics where you have worked have revolved around (and rewarded) "being nice", you sure have worked in places different to those dozens of environments where I have worked.

In my experience, office politics is often about being unfair, playing favorites, discriminating, cheating, stealing others' ideas, and so on.

Being nice just makes you a target of the evil people (I know, because I am a genuinely nice person and I don't do it for any reward, but I'm often a target of the political set).

However, I am not a pushover, and usually the political people end up hoisting themselves by their own petard, unless they are so good at it that they become CEOs with millionaire salaries.

It is not a coincidence that the psychopaths in society (estimated at 4%, 4 out of every 100) end up disproportionately filling our jails (the ones who aren't very smart or who are unlucky) and our boardrooms (the ones who are smart and/or lucky).

By: mysticaltyger

mysticaltyger — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:14:41 +0000

Religion is merely a vehicle for hate, not the foundation of it. If religion were to go away, people would just find another vehicle.

By: mysticaltyger

mysticaltyger — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:11:16 +0000

Too many sweeping generalizations here. You're still stuck at being angry at Christian Fundamentalism.

Just to name one over generalization in your post…. There are lots of intelligent people, including scientists, who don't believe in anthropogenic global warming. John Stossel (just look up his segment on scientists who don't believe in global warming in youtube) and David Icke come to mind. There are politics in science as well as religion, 'ya know.

By: Umkhonto Labour

Umkhonto Labour — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:21:43 +0000

A comprehensive and well thought out post, Penelope! I am the bad christian in my family, and have long since learned to worship outside of the confines of a church which requires military style compliance from it's flock. To have a higher source of power to draw energy and inspiration from is something that really helps us humans trough the dark and lonely times. It is just the way we are, and the name we give to that source, and how we choose to relate to it, is our won story. At the end of the day there is a myriad of ways to but one truth.

By: mysticaltyger

mysticaltyger — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:21:49 +0000

Thank you, Penelope. Great post!!!

By: EllenSka

EllenSka — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:03:05 +0000

Oh, poor humanist fundamentalist Rob! Can't see the trees for the forest!

You sure make a lot of assumptions about my religion. For instance, that I believe in some 2000-year-old dead wiseguy. That I'm anti-science. That I believe a bunch of dogmatic crap. Who are you talking to, really? It isn't me, and you didn't even take the time to look up Unitarian Universalism before you indulged in your tirade of ignorant assumptions. Or do you think it's my Zen Buddhist side that believes in the miracle power of some old teacher?

I do know there's something "greater than myself." It's called the Milky Way. And that just one local example.

Your deeply fundamentalist belief in Science doesn't help me answer FOR MYSELF the meaning of my life. My answers don't help YOU either. But it doesn't mean anybody needs to go suck on eggs.