any1 of you believing in any other religions then islam catholic or christian?
If, then what kind of. I mean some old religions and such
If, then what kind of. I mean some old religions and such
Another religions
Catholic is Christian, just so you know.
Is not 2000 years old enough for you? Just wondering...
There's always the good ole' Flying Spagetti Monster to believe in...
http://www.venganza.org/
It's a joke, but it was created to prove a point, the fact that Catholisism and their beliefs of intelligent design are just as crazy as believing in a flying invisible mass of spagetti :X
This actually made CNN news a while back ;D
Just thought I'd share that
http://www.venganza.org/
It's a joke, but it was created to prove a point, the fact that Catholisism and their beliefs of intelligent design are just as crazy as believing in a flying invisible mass of spagetti :X
This actually made CNN news a while back ;D
Just thought I'd share that
| OtakuBoi wrote: |
| There's always the good ole' Flying Spagetti Monster to believe in...
http://www.venganza.org/ It's a joke, but it was created to prove a point, the fact that Catholisism and their beliefs of intelligent design are just as crazy as believing in a flying invisible mass of spagetti :X This actually made CNN news a while back ;D Just thought I'd share that |
But at least it is plausible, at least there is evidence, at least we have the Bible. If you don't believe me, do some searches on the internet.
The bible makes reference to such things as gravity, innumerable stars (the people of that time counted around 3000 stars), and dinosaurs... long before the modern findings.
Yes, but according to different historians and researches, the bible hasn't remained unchanged... As it's converted from language to language, things get thrown in, books get added, things altered...
| Soulfire wrote: |
| The bible makes reference to such things as gravity, innumerable stars (the people of that time counted around 3000 stars), and dinosaurs... long before the modern findings. |
Oldest Aryan text "Rig Veda" written 2500 yrs. before birth of christ also make reference of those things. It does not prove that what "Rig Veda" say is all true.
But it proves that these things were far earlier known than birth of christ. Christ must have studied eastern books.
Any ancient religions? I mean there were many religions like the egyptians but just wondering if any more....
Soul fire,
I must have missed the bit on dinosaurs. Were they on day 5 or 6?
Michael
I must have missed the bit on dinosaurs. Were they on day 5 or 6?
Michael
| Michael Wilson wrote: |
| Soul fire,
I must have missed the bit on dinosaurs. Were they on day 5 or 6? Michael |
Read Genesis and Job.
| OtakuBoi wrote: |
| Yes, but according to different historians and researches, the bible hasn't remained unchanged... As it's converted from language to language, things get thrown in, books get added, things altered... |
Yes, but people think different things. It is a sin to mistranslate scripture, I'm sure people who were followers of God would not modify it. And according to yet more historians and reasearchers, it has remained virtually unchanged.
ok, another issue I have...
The bible was written by Jesus's followers right? And they were mere mortals that sin just as we do...
They could have written anything they wanted in those books, couldn't they? It could have been corrupted at the root :X
The bible was written by Jesus's followers right? And they were mere mortals that sin just as we do...
They could have written anything they wanted in those books, couldn't they? It could have been corrupted at the root :X
| OtakuBoi wrote: |
| ok, another issue I have...
The bible was written by Jesus's followers right? And they were mere mortals that sin just as we do... They could have written anything they wanted in those books, couldn't they? It could have been corrupted at the root :X |
| Soulfire wrote: |
| But at least it is plausible, at least there is evidence, at least we have the Bible. If you don't believe me, do some searches on the internet. |
No.
Has anyone ever found the garden of Eden?
No.
There's no evidence that anything in the Bible actually occoured.
| Marston wrote: |
| How the hell is the Bible plausible? There's no evidence - has anyone found Jesus' skeleton? |
Sure there is. Jesus got fossilised. That's why people say they "stand on the rock of Jesus Christ". He got fossilised and turned into rock.
| Quote: |
| There's no evidence that anything in the Bible actually occoured. |
Some things in the OT happened pretty much the way they were written, some things happened, but they're exaggerated or distorted, and some things are just pure made up fiction. Most of the NT is pure fiction.
| Quote: |
| Sure there is. Jesus got fossilised. That's why people say they "stand on the rock of Jesus Christ". He got fossilised and turned into rock. |
wait wait.. I thought Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, hung around for a while, then rose into the air and went back to heaven...?
| OtakuBoi wrote: |
| I thought Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, hung around for a while, then rose into the air and went back to heaven...? |
If he went up to heaven, he must have come back down again. Otherwise, how could people stand on "Christ the solid rock"? He must have got fossilised, because apart from seeing the Medusa with your naked eyes, I don't know any other way for a person to turn into rock, and I think the head of Medusa was destroyed before Jesus was born, so he couldn't have seen her.
i am a pagan. the old european religion before christianity. thousands years older than that.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: | ||
If he went up to heaven, he must have come back down again. Otherwise, how could people stand on "Christ the solid rock"? He must have got fossilised, because apart from seeing the Medusa with your naked eyes, I don't know any other way for a person to turn into rock, and I think the head of Medusa was destroyed before Jesus was born, so he couldn't have seen her. |
Okay, I'm going to get serious here and explain what "Jesus the Solid Rock" is all about.
It refers to the fact that Jesus should be our foundation. His example should be the foundation in the way we live our life.
Have you ever built a house? If a house is built on a weak foundation, it won't stand. If you build a house on a strong, stable foundation, it will. That's what we mean when we say we are standing on the Solid Rock.
| livilou wrote: |
|
It refers to the fact that Jesus should be our foundation. His example should be the foundation in the way we live our life. |
Why should be Jesus our foundation? There is no reason for that. His (if he ever existed) philosophy is bad. I do not like it. I prefer different foundations.
| OtakuBoi wrote: |
| ok, another issue I have...
The bible was written by Jesus's followers right? And they were mere mortals that sin just as we do... They could have written anything they wanted in those books, couldn't they? It could have been corrupted at the root :X |
Nope, they couldn't have, because they were under the influence of God at the time of writing them. It's similar to speaking in tongues.
And as to the "Nothing ever came true" that's pretty naive to say. There are three prophecies about Babylon, Israel, and Egypt that stand out to me. Take a look below:
Three Prophecies - Three Destinies
- Babylon, that great power in the Middle East, was to lose its empire and its magnificent capital city was to become a site of desolate ruins, shunned by man and beast. And so it came to pass.
- Egypt , also a great empire , was to remain a recognisable kingdom. The Egyptians were to continue to inhabit their own land. But they would be constantly dominated by other powers, remaining "a lowly kingdom". And so they have been.
- The fate of Israel was not to be like either of these. Scattered from their own land into other countries, and suffering severe persecutions and constant contempt, they were to return to the very land from which they were scattered, and to establish themselves there once again.
Let us note carefully the following facts:
1) The prophecies concerning these nations were uttered about 2500 years ago.
2) Their truth has been demonstrated in history right up to the present day.
3) The three cases quoted concern three different powers with three entirely different fates. One was to disappear into oblivion; the second was to remain, but be subject to other nations; the third was to be destroyed, its people expelled and scattered all over the earth, and yet eventually to be restored in the original land.
4) These are not "political forecasts" of clever political observers, but accurate predictions.
Certainly no man could've predicted those.
| OtakuBoi wrote: |
| wait wait.. I thought Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, hung around for a while, then rose into the air and went back to heaven...? |
Soulfire,
The Bible was written by ignorant, nasty, bronze-age peasants, and it shows. And there are NO prophecies in the Bible that ever came true. What's Jesus gonna do if someone mocks him, eh? Spin in his grave? I hope you don't expect that if you use this place to preach Christian nonsense, everyone will listen politely and make no comment, because it won't be like that.
The Bible was written by ignorant, nasty, bronze-age peasants, and it shows. And there are NO prophecies in the Bible that ever came true. What's Jesus gonna do if someone mocks him, eh? Spin in his grave? I hope you don't expect that if you use this place to preach Christian nonsense, everyone will listen politely and make no comment, because it won't be like that.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| Soulfire,
The Bible was written by ignorant, nasty, bronze-age peasants, and it shows. And there are NO prophecies in the Bible that ever came true. What's Jesus gonna do if someone mocks him, eh? Spin in his grave? I hope you don't expect that if you use this place to preach Christian nonsense, everyone will listen politely and make no comment, because it won't be like that. |
What gives you the authority to determine who has written the Bible, and if you actually read the Bible, you would see the prophecies that have come true. Don't be ignorant, just because you don't believe in it does not mean it isn't happening or doesn't exist. Why are you so harsh? If this is what atheism is, no wonder our world is in terrible disarray.
Who ever said I was preaching? I am putting forth evidence and displaying my beliefs, in the same way (but much more respectfully) that you are displaying your clear and deep-rooted hatred for either me, or Christianity. So who are you upset with? Me? God? Why exactly are you so miserable and mad?
What did I ever do to you?
And I'm sorry you feel this way. Religion isn't meant to be a hostile thing.
God bless,
Soulfire
| Soulfire wrote: |
| What gives you the authority to determine who has written the Bible |
Common sense.
| Quote: |
| and if you actually read the Bible, you would see the prophecies that have come true. |
I have read enough of the Bible to know that it is boring rubbish written by ignorant, hateful bronze age peasants. There are no prophecies in the Bible that I know of that make a clear and unambiguous prediction about something that later came true, and were definitely written before the event that was supposedly predicted. For instance, the prediction that Babylon would fall was written long after the fall of Babylon, as far as anyone knows, since the earliest text of "Isaiah" dates from the first century BC.
| Quote: |
| Don't be ignorant, just because you don't believe in it does not mean it isn't happening or doesn't exist. Why are you so harsh? If this is what atheism is, no wonder our world is in terrible disarray. |
Devoutly religious people are major contributors to the disarray of the world today.
| Quote: |
| Who ever said I was preaching? |
I did. You write with a preachy tone, and assert as fact things that are (at the very least) highly doubtful.
| Quote: |
| I am putting forth evidence and displaying my beliefs, in the same way (but much more respectfully) that you are displaying your clear and deep-rooted hatred for either me, or Christianity. So who are you upset with? Me? God? Why exactly are you so miserable and mad? |
Very funny. You are asserting things as evidence that are not evidence at all ("they were under the influence of God" -- is that evidence?) and accusing people of naivety, lack of wisdom, and in the above quote, hatred.
I don't hate you. I just think you follow a silly primitive religion and you are sadly misguided. It does annoy me a bit that people with ideas as silly as yours actually think themselves superior to those who allow themselves to be guided by common sense.
| Quote: |
| And I'm sorry you feel this way. Religion isn't meant to be a hostile thing. |
Religion isn't meant to be a hostile thing, generally, but unfortunately, it very often is a hostile thing, and in the case of the monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) that tendency to hostility is built in. It comes as part of the package. Which is why, since the foundation of those religions, they have been embroiled almost constantly in religious wars and persecutions in varying degrees of violence.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| Common sense. |
| Quote: |
| I have read enough of the Bible to know that it is boring rubbish written by ignorant, hateful bronze age peasants. There are no prophecies in the Bible that I know of that make a clear and unambiguous prediction about something that later came true, and were definitely written before the event that was supposedly predicted. For instance, the prediction that Babylon would fall was written long after the fall of Babylon, as far as anyone knows, since the earliest text of "Isaiah" dates from the first century BC. |
You know that for fact eh? I highly doubt it, but I can't change your opinion. How do you know it was written after the fall of Babylon. And what about Egypt and Israel? Both of those prophecies were fulfilled as well.
| Quote: |
| Devoutly religious people are major contributors to the disarray of the world today. |
Not Christians, and "devoutly religious" is a pretty broad area. I am devoutly religious, and don't contribute at all to the disarray of the world today. The disarray of the world today is due to lack of faith in God, and people taking their own paths, and it has become a huge pig pen of slop and nothingness. There's nothing in this world for me.
| Quote: |
| I did. You write with a preachy tone, and assert as fact things that are (at the very least) highly doubtful. |
And you just know my tone over the internet? I find that unlikely. They are fact according to me (and billions of other people), and even the "facts" that you would accept because of the findings of science are often disputed, just as we could be disputing the facts that you say are non-existent.
| Quote: |
| Very funny. You are asserting things as evidence that are not evidence at all ("they were under the influence of God" -- is that evidence?) and accusing people of naivety, lack of wisdom, and in the above quote, hatred.
I don't hate you. I just think you follow a silly primitive religion and you are sadly misguided. It does annoy me a bit that people with ideas as silly as yours actually think themselves superior to those who allow themselves to be guided by common sense. |
I've seen people under the influence of God, and witnessed first-hand the power of God. Your words could've been more polite, to put it lightly, if you were simply trying to accuse me of "naivety, lack of wisdom, and hatred." Turns out I'm not any of the three.
| Quote: |
| Religion isn't meant to be a hostile thing, generally, but unfortunately, it very often is a hostile thing, and in the case of the monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) that tendency to hostility is built in. It comes as part of the package. Which is why, since the foundation of those religions, they have been embroiled almost constantly in religious wars and persecutions in varying degrees of violence. |
Nobody needs religion, but we all need God and Jesus. Sure there are examples of Christian violence, but those people are fighting under a false banner of Christianity. And I'm sure you can find many more examples of violence from non-religious people/groups.
Christianity and Judiasm have mended some bridges, and (radical) Islam refuses to respect the "proclaimation of peace" that Christianity and Judiasm would like to place forth.
To each his own. Accept God, or reject God, both decisions have consequences, and everyone has to face those consequences.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: | ||
Common sense. |
Common sense is actually not common.
It is an article of faith to believe in the bible and its divine inspiration, but it also takes a kind of faith to insist that it was written by bronze age peasants. The truth is that we don't know who wrote what parts of the bible, or how they were inspired, so it is a leap of faith both to say it was written by people who lived and travelled with God incarnate and to say it was written by ignorant mystics.
Fact is, whoever wrote many of the books of the bible - assuming each book had a single inspired author and is not an interpolation of many authors and ideas - was a freaking genius. You can come to this conclusion by either considering the revolutionary aspect of the ideas at the time they were written, or by considering how the depth and the intelligence of many of the concepts presented is valid even today. The richness of the allegory and the literary style are striking. Personally, I find many of the parables extremely morally and philosophically complex - some of them even more so than standard Christian interpretation normally accepts (my favourite example of this is the parable of the prodigal son - the standard interpretation of that parable leaves off the most fascinating and complex part of the parable, in my opinion).
Does that mean the bible was written (indirectly) by God? Not necessarily, maybe just really smart bronze age peasants. But hey, it's possible, and there's certainly no proof either way. The default logical position is to assume the most parsimonious theory that fits the evidence, starting with a complete null assumption, but logical does not equal true. Applying rigid logic is necessary for the scientific process, but not for determining truth. It is quite possible to arrive at the truth by other means, including faith.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| There are no prophecies in the Bible that I know of that make a clear and unambiguous prediction about something that later came true, and were definitely written before the event that was supposedly predicted. For instance, the prediction that Babylon would fall was written long after the fall of Babylon, as far as anyone knows, since the earliest text of "Isaiah" dates from the first century BC. |
There is a problem with your logic.
For a moment, assume the bible was divinely inspired and the prophesies presented are correct. Now, imagine you're God, and you want to prophesy - for example - 9/11 in the bible. You have two options. You can say to your scribe, "on September 11th, 2001 in New York City in America, two planes piloted by Islamic extremists will slam into the World Trade Center", or you can say "at the dawn of the third age, the twin icons of progress will be struck down by arrows of the followers of the false prophet".
Now, the second one is vague. Very vague. It could be interpreted many different ways. So the first one is better, right?
Maybe not. First, consider the practical problems. The dating system was not in use then - although it could have been specified by an old dating system. Ancient Hebrew and Greek had no words for "planes", "America" or even "Islam". There would also have been no way to unambiguously describe "New York City" (although, I suppose you could have said "big apple"), "America" or "the World Trade Center".
And that's just the practical problems. Now consider the philosophical problems. If the prediction was clear enough that it could be pre-interpreted, then why couldn't the event be stopped? Foreknowlege of an event affects the event, unless you believe in absolute determinism, which contradicts the bible's assertion of human free will.
Further, if the event was clearly predicted and it happened, did it happen because it was going to happen anyway, or because it was predicted and someone acted out the prediction just to make the bible more true? If the prediction was clear, the bible could be accused of causing the disaster.
So you see? There is no way to make a clear prediction. The best you can do is to make a vague reference that can be interpreted after the fact. Thus the vagueness and the interpretive nature of the prophecies in the bible (or anywhere), are an inevitable consequence of the fact that they are prophecies.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| Devoutly religious people are major contributors to the disarray of the world today. |
Personally, I would have blamed immoral politicians and the ignorant, malleable "us vs. them" mob-mentality of most of the world. But to each their own.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| I just think you follow a silly primitive religion and you are sadly misguided. It does annoy me a bit that people with ideas as silly as yours actually think themselves superior to those who allow themselves to be guided by common sense. |
As I said before, common sense is not common. That is, it is not shared amongst everyone. You are guided by your flavour of common sense, Soulfire by his or hers, and me by mine. To assert yours is the one true "common" sense and everyone else should conform to it is just as ignorant and bigoted as to assert that your religion is the one true religion and all others should conform to it.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| Religion isn't meant to be a hostile thing, generally, but unfortunately, it very often is a hostile thing, and in the case of the monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) that tendency to hostility is built in. It comes as part of the package. Which is why, since the foundation of those religions, they have been embroiled almost constantly in religious wars and persecutions in varying degrees of violence. |
You are right, religion has been the source of much strife in the past. I don't particularly believe the "no true Scotsman" argument that Soulfire presents (that only "false" Christians spread hate and violence), but to each his or her own.
The thing is, we're all working to fix that now, we're all trying to (as Soulfire put it) mend the bridges. I believe that the problem isn't religion itself, but the improper exercise and application of religious beliefs, cause by ignorance and parochialism. There is room in virtually all religions for people who believe in other religions - all that is required is a more tolerant interpretation to become widespread. And that is the trend, so why act now to eliminate religion while it's trying to mend itself?
There is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We haven't yet come to the point where religion is so fundamentally flawed an idea that it should be abolished completely. Yes, it needs work, but what doesn't? And certainly, all of the major religions are trying to grow and adapt to the new global age. I say give them the chance.
| Indi wrote: |
|
It is an article of faith to believe in the bible and its divine inspiration, but it also takes a kind of faith to insist that it was written by bronze age peasants. |
Be serious. If something is written on a piece of papyrus or tree-bark, carbon-dated to a couple of thousand years ago, and stored in a terracotta vase in a cave somewhere in the Middle East, it doesn't take a leap of faith to conclude that it was written two thousand or so years ago by someone in the Middle East. On the other hand, the claim that anything (new or old) was written by divine inspiration always takes a huge leap of faith. Especially if what is written only reflects the knowledge that people had at the time of writing, and contains nothing clearly miraculous. For instance, God presumably knew about germs, antibiotics, analgesics, and immunosuppressants thousands of years ago, but human beings didn't. Why didn't God tell his "inspired" writers to write about those things, so that many people could be saved from unnecessary illness and pain, instead of letting them labour for centuries under the illusion that illness is caused by demons? God presumably knew about plate tectonics, so why didn't he explain this to his "inspired" writers, instead of letting people go on believing that earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions were expressions of God's wrath? He failed to correct misbeliefs that any reasonable God would wish to correct, and said nothing that a primitive bronze age peasant wouldn't know.
| Quote: |
| The truth is that we don't know who wrote what parts of the bible, or how they were inspired, so it is a leap of faith both to say it was written by people who lived and travelled with God incarnate and to say it was written by ignorant mystics. |
We don't know the exact people who wrote the Bible, but we do know roughly when and where they lived, and what kind of science and technology they had at that time. They were pretty ignorant compared to modern people, and the Bible reflects that ignorance.
| Quote: |
| Fact is, whoever wrote many of the books of the bible - assuming each book had a single inspired author and is not an interpolation of many authors and ideas - was a freaking genius. |
That's a massive assumption that you're making, which goes contrary to the evidence accepted by most Bible scholars. Serious Bible scholars all seem to agree that many of the books of the Bible had multiple authors, and were cobbled together by editors long after they were originally written. As for the idea that the books are works of genius, I beg to differ. They are mostly boring rubbish, badly written and poorly edited. The best story, in dramatic terms, is the Gospel, and that's not really great literature. The rest of the stories vary from mediocre to dire. Made into Holywood movies, most of those stories would flop. Compared to the mythology of Ancient Greece or India, Bible mythology is boring and lacks vividness and drama, and most of its heroes are unattractive.
| Quote: |
| You can come to this conclusion by either considering the revolutionary aspect of the ideas at the time they were written, or by considering how the depth and the intelligence of many of the concepts presented is valid even today. |
No, there is no great intelligence in the Bible. If you read Plato or Confucius, and then read any part of the Bible, it is a huge come-down -- a definite move from wisdom to relative stupidity.
| Quote: |
| The richness of the allegory and the literary style are striking. |
Long, tedious lists of lineages. Long, even more tedious lists of silly rules. Long, tedious explanations explanations of why this king was good, and was therefore rewarded with great wealth, or that king was bad, and was therefore punished with defeat in war. Blood-thirsty and nasty stories that valorize hatred and intolerance. Tedious praises to a non-existent deity. More tedious praises to corrupt and violent chieftains. Long hateful passages of invective against foreign kings and neighbouring people. Long passages describing apparently mushroom-induced hallucinations. The Bible is mostly boring, and, as literature, not very good. I can't speak of the literary style, because I've only ever read it in translation, but I can speak of the structure and content, and I'm not impressed.
| Quote: |
| Personally, I find many of the parables extremely morally and philosophically complex - some of them even more so than standard Christian interpretation normally accepts (my favourite example of this is the parable of the prodigal son - the standard interpretation of that parable leaves off the most fascinating and complex part of the parable, in my opinion). |
The parables are, for the most part, shallow, and hateful and banal, and suggest that Jesus was not a very nice man.
| Quote: |
| Does that mean the bible was written (indirectly) by God? Not necessarily, maybe just really smart bronze age peasants. |
Smart compared to who? Their Babylonian, Phoenician, Greek, and Egyptian neighbours? The more remote, but also very smart Persians, Indians and Chinese? I think not.
| Quote: |
| But hey, it's possible, and there's certainly no proof either way. |
It is possible that the Bible, or the Koran, or the Book of Mormon, or any purportedly religious book was divinely inspired -- it's just hugely improbable, and takes a leap of faith to believe. I prefer not to take leaps of faith if I don't have to.
| Quote: |
| For a moment, assume the bible was divinely inspired and the prophesies presented are correct. Now, imagine you're God, and you want to prophesy - for example - 9/11 in the bible. You have two options. You can say to your scribe, "on September 11th, 2001 in New York City in America, two planes piloted by Islamic extremists will slam into the World Trade Center", or you can say "at the dawn of the third age, the twin icons of progress will be struck down by arrows of the followers of the false prophet".
Now, the second one is vague. Very vague. It could be interpreted many different ways. So the first one is better, right? Maybe not. First, consider the practical problems. The dating system was not in use then - although it could have been specified by an old dating system. Ancient Hebrew and Greek had no words for "planes", "America" or even "Islam". There would also have been no way to unambiguously describe "New York City" (although, I suppose you could have said "big apple"), "America" or "the World Trade Center". |
None of those supposed practical problems is real. It would be easy to say something like "In X years from today, a large metal object weighing X talents will fly into a tower X cubits high, on an island X furlongs west and north of here".
| Quote: |
| And that's just the practical problems. Now consider the philosophical problems. If the prediction was clear enough that it could be pre-interpreted, then why couldn't the event be stopped? Foreknowlege of an event affects the event, unless you believe in absolute determinism, which contradicts the bible's assertion of human free will. |
That's irrelevant. God could easily choose to predict events that human beings would be unable to stop. For instance, he could have predicted the Indian ocean tsunami, or the eruption of Krakatoa, or an event in the sky, such as a distant supernova, or the arrival of a meteorite at a particular place or time. There are no such predicitions in the Bible that have been verified. If there were even one such, it would be good evidence that there was something special about the Bible and it ought to be taken seriously. The failure of the Bible to contain any such mechanism of verification indicates strongly that it's claim to be divinely inspired is humbug of the same kind to which similar claims regarding all "prophecies" and "oracles" and "seers" apparently belong.
| Quote: |
| If the prediction was clear, the bible could be accused of causing the disaster. |
That woudl be silly. God is the supposed cause of all natural disasters whether they're predicted or not. Predicting one would only save lives. However, if predicting disasters still somehow puts God in a bad light, why not predict a good thing? Why not predict, e.g., that huge underground water resources will be discovered in Ethiopia, ending famine in that region forever?
| Quote: |
| So you see? There is no way to make a clear prediction. The best you can do is to make a vague reference that can be interpreted after the fact. |
So, you see, that whole thing about verifiable prophecy not being possible is nonsense.
| Quote: | ||
Personally, I would have blamed immoral politicians and the ignorant, malleable "us vs. them" mob-mentality of most of the world. But to each their own. |
The "us v. them" mentality is built into the core of Abrahamic religion. According to Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the world is divided into "us" (believers) and "them" (unbelievers, or the heathen), and according to scripture, it is okay to enslave unbelievers or wage war against them even to the extent of attempting to wipe them out. Other religions, in general, are not like that. Hindus and Buddhists don't care what deities their neighbours worship. To followers of Abrahamic religions, any dissent or "false belief", or, worst of all, "apostasy" is a great affront, potentially meriting punishment by death, and believers are encouraged to destroy their neighbours' "idols". Such ideas are not conducive to peace and harmony in the world.
| Quote: |
| The thing is, we're all working to fix that now, we're all trying to (as Soulfire put it) mend the bridges. I believe that the problem isn't religion itself, but the improper exercise and application of religious beliefs, cause by ignorance and parochialism. There is room in virtually all religions for people who believe in other religions - all that is required is a more tolerant interpretation to become widespread. And that is the trend, so why act now to eliminate religion while it's trying to mend itself? |
There is no "proper" application of religious belief, since religion is nothing more or less than organized superstition. The best that can be achieved is that religions learn humility, and stop trying to impose themselves on everyone around, but a spread of tolerant interpretations cannot be guaranteed to be perfect. Some religions (such as Islam, Judaism and Christianity) are inherently intolerant, as messages preaching intolerance are part of their founding texts. I'm not interested in acting to eliminate religion. I'm perfectly happy to tolerate religious practice as a harmless quirk, but when religious people start their envangelizing and jihadizing nonsense (which is arrogant and rude at the very least, and potentially much worse than that), I will fight back.
| Quote: |
| There is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We haven't yet come to the point where religion is so fundamentally flawed an idea that it should be abolished completely. |
There is no baby in the bathwater. Religion has no intrinsic value. I don't mind if it continues as a personal quirk of those who choose to follow it, but it doesn't get any respect from me, because it doesn't deserve any.
| Quote: |
| And certainly, all of the major religions are trying to grow and adapt to the new global age. I say give them the chance. |
They will all die out eventually. They are clearly wrong, and as education spreads, so religious belief will weaken until it no longer exists in any significant form.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: | ||
Be serious. If something is written on a piece of papyrus or tree-bark, carbon-dated to a couple of thousand years ago, and stored in a terracotta vase in a cave somewhere in the Middle East, it doesn't take a leap of faith to conclude that it was written two thousand or so years ago by someone in the Middle East. |
I didn't say it took a leap of faith to believe it was written thousands of years ago by someone in the middle east. I said it took a leap of faith to believe it was written by bronze age peasants.
There is a world of difference. Even people who tout the divine inspiration of the bible say it was written by people thousands of years ago in the middle east. The extra step they take is by saying it was divinely inspired. Your extra step is saying it was not divinely inspired and was the fabrication of the writers alone - or at best a collection of sayings of the time. Maybe that was the case, maybe it wasn't. To assert it was is a declaration of faith that it was the case, because you have no proof.
Anytime you claim a positive (assuming you want to work using the laws of logic), you have to provide proof. The person who claims the text was divinely inspired should provide proof of that claim or admit that it is a leap of faith. The person who claims the text was written by ignorant bronze age peasants similarly has to provide proof of that claim, or admit that it is a leap of faith. How do you know it wasn't written by bronze age nobility? Or copper age peasants with slight alterations made over time to account for history (such as in the book of Daniel)? You don't. No one does. So believing it was written by bronze age peasants requires faith.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| For instance, God presumably knew about germs, antibiotics, analgesics, and immunosuppressants thousands of years ago, but human beings didn't. Why didn't God tell his "inspired" writers to write about those things, so that many people could be saved from unnecessary illness and pain, instead of letting them labour for centuries under the illusion that illness is caused by demons? God presumably knew about plate tectonics, so why didn't he explain this to his "inspired" writers, instead of letting people go on believing that earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions were expressions of God's wrath? He failed to correct misbeliefs that any reasonable God would wish to correct, and said nothing that a primitive bronze age peasant wouldn't know. |
You're being disingenious here, and I hope it's not deliberate. Again, assume the bible was divinely inspired by a living god. The bible (and the torah and quran) all have specific purposes. They are not science texts, they are designed to describe the character and philosophy of some god or another, and the expected behaviours and beliefs of people who wish to please that god. Further, they are designed to make that belief plausible and accessible across as wide a span of time as possible.
Let's say you're God, and you're writing the bible thousands of years ago. What benefit would there be to putting foreknowledge in there that is currently unaccessible to contemporary readers? None at all. Either it will go completely over the heads of the people of the time, or it will be dismissed as gibberish. Either way, the writings would have been a hard sell back in those days if it was too far obtuse, completely contradictory to the current worldview, or just plain nonsense. And frankly, the point of the bible is to sell God. Adding coded information that won't be understood for thousands of years doesn't help anyone for thousands of years. On the other hand, using the current worldview makes the bible accessible to contemporary readers, and future readers can always refer back to the old worldview to understand the theology - you can look back but not ahead.
Another problem with your argument is the extreme arrogance it demonstrates. You argue because the bible doesn't demonstrate understanding of current scientific knowledge, it is lacking. The logical response is why do you think it should demonstrate current scientific knowledge? Plate tectonics was only conceived in the early 1900's. Talking about plates moving around would have baffled 1900 years (at least, assuming we're talking about the New Testament - possibly close to 4000 years if we're talking about the old) of people. For what gains? To convince you and other people now? What, you don't think the billions of people that lived before Alfred Wegener deserve proof too? (And, ultimately, it would have been irrelevant to the theology. If God exists, God damn well does cause the earth to move, and volcanoes to erupt, directly or indirectly.)
And I have to take it a step further and stress the now part. We believe plate tectonics is the correct theory today. We didn't before the early 1900's, and it's possible that a new and better theory could be defined tomorrow. Then what? The reference to plate tectonics would now be an anachronism, invalidating its evidence as divine inspiration. You are operating on an implicit assumption that what you know today is truth. That is unjustified arrogance.
Let me give you two practical examples. First, imagine we were having this conversation 1000 years ago over a pint of mead in some tavern. You would be insisting the bible was not written by God because it did not describe the four humours: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. Or the four elements of mater: fire, water, earth and air. Everyone (in that day) knew that to be the way of the world. The fact that God never mentioned any of it is evidence that he didn't know about any of it. Surely you can see what's wrong with this scenario. If God had described the four humours, it may have convinced them then, but we would be laughing at the ignorance of it now. Now, imagine that we were having this conversation 1000 years in the future. You would be similarly claiming that the fact that the bible doesn't mention anything about subspace or Dyson spheres or wormhole travel or the protoculture matrix. And therein lies the rub. Maybe the bible does contain coded information about future technologies - but we are just currently too ignorant to recognize them.
Assuming that the bible should confirm your current worldview is both arrogant and ignorant. It is arrogant because it implies that you somehow rate of higher importance than the billions who came before you with previous worldviews. It is ignorant because it assumes that your worldview is truth and will not one day be supplanted by a new one. The only logical way to stay current across all generations of human knowledge is to use the lowest common denominator - current knowledge at the time of writing - because future generations, while they may have more evolved worldviews, will always understand the old ones.
Furthermore, as I hinted at above, none of it is essentially untrue. Viruses and bacteria could conceivably have been referred to as little demons in ancient Greek or Hebrew. There was certainly no contemporary term for them. And not everyone who comes into contact with a virus or bacteria gets sick. Sometimes their immune system protects them, sometimes it doesn't. Maybe angels and demons really are manipulating quantum probabilities on a level we can't yet detect or understand to determine what infects whom and what doesn't. It requires faith to believe that, but it also requires faith to assert it's not true.
And of course, if God exists, he most certainly does cause earthquakes and volcanoes.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| We don't know the exact people who wrote the Bible, but we do know roughly when and where they lived, and what kind of science and technology they had at that time. They were pretty ignorant compared to modern people, and the Bible reflects that ignorance. |
If you don't know the exact people who wrote the bible, and you can only roughly place the time and date of their writing, how can you assert with such conviction that it was bronze age peasants and not call it faith?
| BruceTheDauber wrote: | ||
That's a massive assumption that you're making, which goes contrary to the evidence accepted by most Bible scholars. Serious Bible scholars all seem to agree that many of the books of the Bible had multiple authors, and were cobbled together by editors long after they were originally written. |
*shrug* Makes no real difference to the conclusion. If it was multiple authors, then there were lots of little geniuses. And certainly the people who selected the items for inclusion made very interesting and clever selections.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| As for the idea that the books are works of genius, I beg to differ. They are mostly boring rubbish, badly written and poorly edited. The best story, in dramatic terms, is the Gospel, and that's not really great literature. The rest of the stories vary from mediocre to dire. Made into Holywood movies, most of those stories would flop. Compared to the mythology of Ancient Greece or India, Bible mythology is boring and lacks vividness and drama, and most of its heroes are unattractive. |
The problem is that your view of the bible is narrow, and dictated by your contemporary environment, which was heavily influenced by Hellenic philosophy, which also influenced the bible. The writings and philosophies of other cultures strike you as fascinating because they're novel. To someone who grew up in Chinese or Indian culture, the philosophy of the bible would be foreign and novel, and this fascinating by virtue of it's novelty. And of course to say that the literary aspect of the bible is lacking in comparison to current literary standards is absurd, given that current literature has been so heavily influenced by the bible, and has obviously evolved in complexity over thousands of years.
But *shrug* just because you're not impressed that doesn't mean that it's not good reading. I don't believe any of it is divine - or even true - but I think it's got some amazingly complex philosophy in there, and interesting allegory. (I personally find the parts that try to resolve the inevitable contradictions fascinating.)
Actually, the Jesus story is widely believed to be based on ancient Greek myth, and Hellenistic philosophy. In particular, the cult of Mithras is believed to have heavily influenced Christianity.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| It is possible that the Bible, or the Koran, or the Book of Mormon, or any purportedly religious book was divinely inspired -- it's just hugely improbable, and takes a leap of faith to believe. I prefer not to take leaps of faith if I don't have to. |
*shrug* To each his own. But that's your personal choice, not a "common sense" position to take. You admit as much yourself, but your usage of the phrase "I prefer". Suggesting that people who have chosen another way to think is ignorant is bigoted, and ignorant in itself.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| None of those supposed practical problems is real. It would be easy to say something like "In X years from today, a large metal object weighing X talents will fly into a tower X cubits high, on an island X furlongs west and north of here". |
And what would that accomplish? To convince you that the bible is true? What about the billions that came before? They not worth it in your opinion?
And what if it was written like that and happened? Was it in spite of the warning or because of it? By predicting the event, did the writing cause it (in which case, the prediction's value as evidence of God is null and void)?
Further, you're demonstrating arrogance again. Why would you assume that God would be interested in prophesying anything of relevance to you today? He prophesied stuff in ancient times for the purpose of establishing the religion. Mission accomplished. Now, what, he has to do a miracle a week to keep people's interest up?
Events of interest to you are probably of little consequence in God's master plan. It may be that your idea earth-shaking events, like the world wars, and natural events like the recent tsumani and so on are of no real interest to God. His motives for prophecies may be solely for the purpose of establishing his theology (in which case, there's been no need for a prophesized event for thousands of years), and signalling the end times (in which case, it can be argued that it isn't quite around the corner yet).
| BruceTheDauber wrote: | ||
That woudl be silly. God is the supposed cause of all natural disasters whether they're predicted or not. |
I didn't say God, I said the bible. If someone read of an event in the bible, then caused it, it would invalidate that prediction being evidence of God. Even if the bible were written by ignorant bronze age peasants, such a thing could conceivably happen given a sufficiently zealous person. If someone read the bible, and caused the disaster, it wasn't a prediction, it was a blueprint. In such a case, the bible and Christianity could arguably be called a source of evil, which is kind of contrary to its stated purpose.
As for predicting natural disasters... to what end? The bible has been around for two thousand years. What natural disasters have occured in that time that are so integral to the master plan that they warrant a prediction? Predicting one a thousand years ago would have no relevance today. Predicting one today would have no relevance a thousand years ago.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| However, if predicting disasters still somehow puts God in a bad light, why not predict a good thing? Why not predict, e.g., that huge underground water resources will be discovered in Ethiopia, ending famine in that region forever? |
Same argument. To what end? Predicting an event a thousand years ago would have no relevance today. Predicting one today would have no relevance a thousand years ago.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| So, you see, that whole thing about verifiable prophecy not being possible is nonsense. |
Useful verifiable prophecy of natural events could be possible. It would still be impossible to predict any human-influenced event without contention. But what would be the point? Which events to predict? Which ones are relevant, if any?
To save lives? Why would God care? It's our souls he's interested in saving.
To convince more unbelievers? A line has to be drawn somewhere. God can only do so much to convince doubters. Even after verifiable miracles, there would still be doubters (random chance and all that). Should God then try to convince them? Or should the line be drawn there? And if there, why not before? Who are you to decide where God should draw that line?
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| The "us v. them" mentality is built into the core of Abrahamic religion. |
"Us vs. them" is built into the core of the human psyche. Hinduism may not include it, but Indians sure have a problem with Pakistanis and Blacks (among others). It is hardly unique to Abrahamic religions.
| BruceTheDauber wrote: |
| There is no "proper" application of religious belief, since religion is nothing more or less than organized superstition. The best that can be achieved is that religions learn humility, and stop trying to impose themselves on everyone around, but a spread of tolerant interpretations cannot be guaranteed to be perfect. Some religions (such as Islam, Judaism and Christianity) are inherently intolerant, as messages preaching intolerance are part of their founding texts. I'm not interested in acting to eliminate religion. I'm perfectly happy to tolerate religious practice as a harmless quirk, but when religious people start their envangelizing and jihadizing nonsense (which is arrogant and rude at the very least, and potentially much worse than that), I will fight back. |
It has no intrinsic value, it's clearly wrong, it will be stamped out by education, etc. etc. These are your words. Now who is proselytizing? Tolerance is a two way street. You demand religion be tolerant of your beliefs, but you don't seem willing to do the same for religion.
If any religion is inherently intolerant, they will have to change. It's that simple. They're working on it. Perhaps the tolerant thing to do would be to stop calling them stupid and misguided and let them find a way to make religion work in the new age. That, of course, assumes you are interested in being tolerant.
| Indi wrote: |
| I didn't say it took a leap of faith to believe it was written thousands of years ago by someone in the middle east. I said it took a leap of faith to believe it was written by bronze age peasants. |
Scholarly opinion has it that a lot of the stories in the Bible date back to the Bronze Age, and were passed down orally until they were eventually written down a few hundred years later, at the end of the Iron Age. There are good reasons to believe this. It does not take a "leap of faith", but simply an open-minded consideration of the evidence. Even if we take it that the Bible was entirely written by members of a priestly caste at the end of the Iron Age, it was still written by people who were a lot more ignorant than we are today, and who grew up in a peasant society.
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| Your extra step is saying it was not divinely inspired and was the fabrication of the writers alone - or at best a collection of sayings of the time. Maybe that was the case, maybe it wasn't. To assert it was is a declaration of faith that it was the case, because you have no proof. |
When there is zero evidence that X is the case, saying that X is not the case does not entail a "leap of faith". Saying that the Bible is not inspired by God does not entail a leap of faith because there is zero evidence (beyond the bald assertions of believers) that God did inspire the Bible.
There is no equal amount of "faith" in the two propositions (a) "God inspired the Bible", and (b) "God did not inspire the Bible". One requires you to accept something highly improbable for which there is zero evidence, while the other merely involves the very reasonable (based on probability) assumption that "zero evidence for X means that X is not the case".
Exactly the same applies to this very post. If I claimed that this post I am writing now is inspired by God, you could choose to believe me, or to disbelieve me. To believe me, you'd have to take a leap of faith, because it would involve believing something improbable for which there is zero evidence (beyond my mere assertion of its truth), whereas to disbelieve me would not involve a leap of faith, because you'd simply be going along with what seemed probable given the evidence available to you.
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| You're being disingenious here, and I hope it's not deliberate. |
I am not being disingenuous, and your claim that I am is unreasonable.
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| Again, assume the bible was divinely inspired by a living god. The bible (and the torah and quran) all have specific purposes. |
According to Christians, the purpose of the Bible is to reveal God's will to people, and to guide them to the right faith and action. If the Bible fails to convince people that it describes God's will, then it fails in its purpose. Therefore, the Bible ought to do what it can to convince people of its divine source. One sure way to do this would be for the Bible to contain verifiable assertions that no human being, at the time of its being written down, could know. These could include statements about future events (such as the times and places of hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, the arrival of meteorites, distant supernovae, and so on), or statements of facts about nature that were unknown to the people given the task of writing the text down (such as descriptions of hitherto unknown species, mathematical formulae, surprising scientific facts, and so on).
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| They are not science texts, they are designed to describe the character and philosophy of some god or another, and the expected behaviours and beliefs of people who wish to please that god. Further, they are designed to make that belief plausible and accessible across as wide a span of time as possible. |
Exactly. As such, they should confirm their bona fides. Failure to confirm their bona fides means they will fail to make themselves plausible and accessible across as wide a span of time as possible. It becomes very hard for many people to believe the Bible when what it says about the world conforms to primitive ideas that have been overturned by science. Therefore, the Bible, if it wishes to remain convincing throughout time, should describe the world in a way that will never be overturned by science.
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| Let's say you're God, and you're writing the bible thousands of years ago. What benefit would there be to putting foreknowledge in there that is currently unaccessible to contemporary readers? None at all. |
There would be huge benefit. First of all, there's stuff they need to know for their own good, which they don't know, and which I can tell them. For instance, I can tell them how to avoid disease, by explaining how it is carried by germs, or I can tell them to relocate their city in order to avoid some approaching natural disaster. Second, by telling them things they don't know, I prove my bona fides, and convince people who are reasonably skeptical.
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| Either it will go completely over the heads of the people of the time, or it will be dismissed as gibberish. |
That's silly. You're talking pure, unadulterated nonsense. School science books today are addressed to people who don't know any science. If you told a child some nonsensical story about how the earth rests on the back of a giant tortoise, and the sun is a disk that flies above it, they can accept the idea, and if you told them that it is a spheroid that orbits the sun, they can accept that idea, too. The same applies to the people of the ancient Levant.
Let me remind you that Greek and Indian philosophers (apparently without divine inspiration) thought up the idea of atoms in the 5th and 6th centuries BC, before most of the Bible was written down. The Greeks also figured out that the world was a spherical or spheroidal, and even measured its approximate size. Now, if ancient people in Greece could understand such ideas, God could certainly have explained such ideas to ancient people in the nearby Levant.
But no. The Bible is full of rubbish about how the Earth rests on pillars, with water underneath it, and has corners, and how the sky is a dome with a layer of water, and the stars are in that dome above the water.
Why did God talk bollocks like that to his prophets? To deliberately mislead them? To ensure that in future, people with more knowledge about how the world really is would tend to regard the Bible with skepticism?
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| Either way, the writings would have been a hard sell back in those days if it was too far obtuse, completely contradictory to the current worldview, or just plain nonsense. |
It was a hard sell anyway. The only reason it prevailed was because of the threats of death and other dire horrors hanging over all apostates and unbelievers.
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| And frankly, the point of the bible is to sell God. |
Exactly. And failing to put verifiable prophecies or accurate but hitherto unknown facts in the Bible means that it fails to sell God as well as it could.
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| Adding coded information that won't be understood for thousands of years |
The information would be understood immediately. If God had explained how to make and use penicillin, for instance, it would not take thousands of years for people to figure out the explanation, or to benefit from it. Peasants in the Arab desert used penicillin to heal wounds before modern medical science worked out what it was.
| Quote: |
| Another problem with your argument is the extreme arrogance it demonstrates. You argue because the bible doesn't demonstrate understanding of current scientific knowledge, it is lacking. The logical response is why do you think it should demonstrate current scientific knowledge? Plate tectonics was only conceived in the early 1900's. Talking about plates moving around would have baffled 1900 years (at least, assuming we're talking about the New Testament - possibly close to 4000 years if we're talking about the old) of people. |
Again, you are talking nonsense. Plate tectonics could be explained to the people of any historical period, because it can be described without any reference to prior science. The way it is explained to children today would be good enough to enable a person from 500 BC to understand it. If it appeared in the Bible, people would accept it as fact. If it later came to be confirmed by empirical observation, that would strengthen people's faith in the Bible.
Instead, we have the opposite effect. Every major scientific discovery in geology, astronomy, biology seems to conflict with the Bible, and in previous times, the Church tried to suppress scientific discoveries for that reason, while today, millions of people think the Bible is nonsense, precisely because it conflicts with science.
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| For what gains? To convince you and other people now? What, you don't think the billions of people that lived before Alfred Wegener deserve proof too? |
Well, if it convinced people now, that would be a bonus. More people have lived in the 20th and 21st centuries than lived in the entire period from when the Bible was first written up to the 19th century.
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| (And, ultimately, it would have been irrelevant to the theology. If God exists, God damn well does cause the earth to move, and volcanoes to erupt, directly or indirectly.) |
It is relevant to the credibility of the Bible. If the Bible cannot show that it is special in some way that other texts claiming divine or supernatural inspiration are not, then it does not deserve to be taken seriously as a divine text.
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| And I have to take it a step further and stress the now part. We believe plate tectonics is the correct theory today. We didn't before the early 1900's, and it's possible that a new and better theory could be defined tomorrow. Then what? |
You are missing the point completely. Whatever description God uses in the Bible, it ought to be one that cannot be torn down or made to look dubious by science, ever. If it happens that plate tectonics is correct, then God ought to describe the world in a fashion conformant with plate tectonics. If plate tectonics is wrong, and is destined in future to be replaced by theory X, then God ought to describe the world in conformance with theory X. If his description of the world conflicts with what people have believed hitherto, he should also describe, or at least give useful hints to, means of verifying that his description of the world is correct. I say "ought" on the assumption that God's purpose in writing the Bible includes convincing as many people as possible that the Bible is a true message from him.
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| Let me give you two practical examples. First, imagine we were having this conversation 1000 years ago over a pint of mead in some tavern. You would be insisting the bible was not written by God because it did not describe the four humours: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm. Or the four elements of mater: fire, water, earth and air. |
That would have been a lot more than 100 years ago (those ideas date back to the 5th century BC, before most of the Bible was written, and lasted until the Renaissance), but never mind. The argument you are making shows that you have missed the point. The Bible should describe the world in a fashion that is correct and verifiable, if it wants to be convincing to all ages as the infallible word of God.
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| If God had described the four humours, it may have convinced them then, but we would be laughing at the ignorance of it now. |
Exactly. If God describes the world in accordance with any incorrect theory of the world, then he undermines his credibility as soon as that description of the world is found to be incorrect. The Bible describes the world in accordance with incorrect, primitive ideas, and so undermines its own credibility. There is no reason for God to do such a thing, unless he wants not to be believed.
| Quote: |
| Now, imagine that we were having this conversation 1000 years in the future. You would be similarly claiming that the fact that the bible doesn't mention anything about subspace or Dyson spheres or wormhole travel or the protoculture matrix. And therein lies the rub. Maybe the bible does contain coded information about future technologies - but we are just currently too ignorant to recognize them. |
Throughout history, the Bible has not been demonstrated to contain any knowledge unavailable to the people who wrote the Bible in the first place, either hidden in code, or stated plainly. It does not contain any materials science, biology, physics, astronomy, or anything else that people in the ancient near east did not know. There's no reason that to believe that it contains any hidden science that people will discover centuries from now. You are just piling one leap of faith on top of another, if you say that it does, or even that it is likely to.
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| Assuming that the bible should confirm your current worldview is both arrogant and ignorant. |
That's not what I assume, so you're not calling me arrogant or ignorant. You have simply missed the point. To be convincing, the Bible should be true in all details, and never verifiably false. It should also contain verifiable facts about the world that were not independently knowable at the time to the people who wrote it. It should also anticipate and explain future important discoveries that would tend to undermine its credibility. It fails on all those points. It contains assertions that are verifiably false (e.g., descriptions of the world as resting on pillars and having corners). It fails to anticipate and explain the discovery of fossils, or the fact that geology and astronomy suggest that the world is billions of years old. Any future discoveries we might make that might tend to undermine the Bible should also be anticipated and explained. There's no sign of that, so far. It does not make any verified predictions that its human authors could not have guessed at. It totally fails to prove its bona fides.
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| It is arrogant because it implies that you somehow rate of higher importance than the billions who came before you with previous worldviews. |
Sheer statistics indicate that the billions who are alive now are more important, by weight of numbers, than the few million who were alive at the time the Bible was written. If the purpose of the Bible is to convince as many people as possible, it should prioritise today's people, rather than the people of primitive times, when the population was a thousandth of what it is now.
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| It is ignorant because it assumes that your worldview is truth and will not one day be supplanted by a new one. |
Wrong, nonsense, and missing the point.
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| The only logical way to stay current across all generations of human knowledge is to use the lowest common denominator - current knowledge at the time of writing - because future generations, while they may have more evolved worldviews, will always understand the old ones. |
Absolutely wrong. The only way to stay current across all generations of human knowledge is to use the lowest common denominator - EMPIRICALLY VERIFIABLE TRUTH.
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| Furthermore, as I hinted at above, none of it is essentially untrue. Viruses and bacteria could conceivably have been referred to as little demons in ancient Greek or Hebrew. |
Again, you are talking pure nonsense. Viruses and bacteria are tiny, unintelligent organisms that merely eat, reproduce and die. They are not demons, because demons are invisible, intelligent beings, that have purpose and know what they're doing.
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| There was certainly no contemporary term for them. |
There was no term for them when they were discovered and first described, yet the description was understood. How come? Because there doesn't need to be a pre-existing term for a phenomenon that is new to experience for us to understand a description of the thing. All that needs to be said is that viruses and bacteria are tiny creatures, much smaller than insects, that live and breed in, and feed off, substances like spittle, excreta, rotting matter, etc., and when they enter the body of a human being, animal, or plant, they can cause disease. All that is easily translatable into any ancient language known, and does not refer to any concepts a person from ancient times could not understand. Not only that, but there are low-tech ways of verifying the account, by cultivating some germs in jars, and feeding infected material to animals, and observing that those fed infected material sicken, while those fed uninfected material remain healthy.
| Quote: |
| And not everyone who comes into contact with a virus or bacteria gets sick. Sometimes their immune system protects them, sometimes it doesn't. Maybe angels and demons really are manipulating quantum probabilities on a level we can't yet detect or understand to determine what infects whom and what doesn't. It requires faith to believe that, but it also requires faith to assert it's not true. |
Again, you are talking nonsense.
First, you are again misusing the phrase "leap of faith". To believe in your angels and demons requires a leap of faith, because there is no evidence for them. To believe the angels and demons don't exist does not require a leap of faith; rather, it requires a simple inductive step: observation reveals no evidence for them, therefore they don't exist. If I rummage in my pockets for thirty seconds, and find no change there, concluding that there is no change in my pockets does not involve a leap of faith; it involves simple induction.
Second, God could choose to explain the factors affect the likelihood of our sickening in response to exposure to pathogens (genetics, nutritional health, the amount of pathogen, random chance, etc., or perhaps even angels and demons) if he wished. If he did not, it would not matter. Merely by explaining the existence and nature of germs, he would have proved that he is privy to verifiable knowledge that was hitherto unknown by humanity, and thereby proved that the Bible deserves to be taken seriously. His failure to explain germs casts doubt on the credibility of the Bible as a divine text. Why not tell people about them, since it would save a lot of suffering, as well as confirming the inspired nature of the text? Neither you, nor anyone ever, has come up with a credible reason why.
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| And of course, if God exists, he most certainly does cause earthquakes and volcanoes. |
Irrelevant, and not necessarily true (it is quite possible that God exits, but does not micromanage the world's geology).
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| If you don't know the exact people who wrote the bible, and you can only roughly place the time and date of their writing, how can you assert with such conviction that it was bronze age peasants and not call it faith? |
Because several Bible stories date from the Bronze Age (up to about 1200 BC in the Near East), and because the area where the Bible was written was a peasant society right up to a couple of centuries BC.
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| If it was multiple authors, then there were lots of little geniuses. |
Lots of little geniuses who wrote bad stories badly, and produced ZERO scientific achievements. You have a very low standard for calling someone a genius.
The only ancient book from the culture that produced the Bible that contains any scientific curiosity is the Book of Enoch, and of course, it is not part of the Bible.
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| And certainly the people who selected the items for inclusion made very interesting and clever selections. |
No, they didn't. Most of the Bible consists of tedious stuff that nobody except religious fanatics bothers to read, because it is neither clever nor interesting. Most of the rest is dull historical stuff (somewhat unreliable, of course), that is of interest mainly to archaeologist. Out of the entire bulk of the Bible, maybe 10% at maximum contains stories that are at all interesting as such, or verse that seems at all poetic. And I'm not talking about great stories or verse, just stories and verse that are even moderately interesting. Nor is there any intelligent philosophising to speak of.
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| The problem is that your view of the bible is narrow, and dictated by your contemporary environment, which was heavily influenced by Hellenic philosophy, which also influenced the bible. The writings and philosophies of other cultures strike you as fascinating because they're novel. To someone who grew up in Chinese or Indian culture, the philosophy of the bible would be foreign and novel, and this fascinating by virtue of it's novelty. |
Is that so? Well, if that were the case, I would find Plato to be less intelligent and interesting than the Bible, being as it is more Hellenic, and therefore less exotic. The Bible is a deeply stupid book compared to, say, Plato's work, or Aristotle's. Nobody studies the Bible for philosophical insights, except totally ignorant individuals who have never read anything else of significance.
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| And of course to say that the literary aspect of the bible is lacking in comparison to current literary standards is absurd, given that current literature has been so heavily influenced by the bible, and has obviously evolved in complexity over thousands of years. |
But I compared the Bible with other ancient texts. Compared to Ovid, the storytelling in the Bible is utter shite. Read Ovid or Homer or Euripides, and tell me that's not good storytelling. Read anything in the Bible. Only a liar would say the Bible matches up to their standard.
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| Actually, the Jesus story is widely believed to be based on ancient Greek myth, and Hellenistic philosophy. In particular, the cult of Mithras is believed to have heavily influenced Christianity. |
Yes, that's probably why the Gospel is a more interesting narrative than the other stories in the Bible. It was influenced by Hellenic culture, and the Hellenes were streets ahead of the ancient Jews in philosophy and literature.
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And what would that accomplish? To convince you that the bible is true? What about the billions that came before? They not worth it in your opinion? |
Yes, it would convince people that the Bible is true, as for the people who cam before, other predicitons would convince them that the Bible is true. God could include one prediction in the Bible for every few generations. A list of the dates of major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions from 500 BC to 2000 AD would be sufficient (if the predicted events actually happened at the specified times) to convince everyone from that date to this that the Bible is the true word of God. It would save a lot of lives, too. Would that be too difficult for God to do? No. Why didn't he do it, then?
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| And what if it was written like that and happened? Was it in spite of the warning or because of it? By predicting the event, did the writing cause it (in which case, the prediction's value as evidence of God is null and void)? |
You have reverted to talking nonsense. It is 100% irrelevant what the implications of such a prediction coming true are for questions like predestination, free will, and so on. The only point of relevance is that it would in fact have been possible (contrary to your claim) for the Bible to contain clear, precise and verifiable predictions about the distant future. The Bible does not contain any such predictions, and you cannot fall back on the excuse that it would be impossible to make such predictions, because I have proved that that excuse is invalid.
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| Further, you're demonstrating arrogance again. Why would you assume that God would be interested in prophesying anything of relevance to you today? |
I am not demonstrating arrogance, but you are demonstrating silliness. God is presumably interested in all human souls equally. That's certainly what conventional Christianity claims. Bearing that in mind, he should be interested in convincing the people of all historical periods, and all nations, that the Bible is his true word. One good way to do this is to provide predictions that can be verified in every age, by the people of every nation. Therefore, he his interest is served if he gives predictions that people can verify today, as well as predictions that the people of 1000 AD, 500 AD and 1 AD and 500 BC can verify. His (presumed) purpose is undermined if the people of any age are unable to verify the bona fides of his supposedly true word, the Bible.
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| He prophesied stuff in ancient times for the purpose of establishing the religion. Mission accomplished. Now, what, he has to do a miracle a week to keep people's interest up? |
There is no evidence that he ever prophesied anything that was ever verified, beyond the bald, unsupported assertions made by believers. There is not one single unambiguously verified prophesy in the Bible. Not one. There are lots of fraudulent prophecies in the world, issued by "seers" and "oracles" of various kinds. They avoid being caught out by being vague, or by lying that they said something before it happened, when in fact they didn't. If the Bible does the same thing, the most reasonable assumption is that the Bible is fraudulent just like all the other seers and oracles.
If he did a miracle a week, would it be any skin off his nose? He's supposedly omnipotent, so it wouldn't tire him out. Why not do it, if it will save souls? It he's too busy, or just too goddamned lazy to do a miracle a week, one really spectacular miracle every couple of decades would be more than enough.
If he appeared in the sky once a century, making himself visible to thousands of people at once, there would scarcely be a single person on Earth who didn't believe in him. Would that be too difficult for him?
How about if he created a copy of the Bible etched in platinum, or in some metal alloy so far unknown to human science, and buried it underground,
inside a dinosaur fossil, and gave someone a vision so they could go and find it? That would be trivially easy for an omnipotent being to do, but it would be so convincing, the whole world would convert to Christianity within a week of the day its discovery was reported on the news.
The absence of any such miraculous confirmation of God or the Bible suggests very strongly that the Bible's claim to be the true word of God is fraudulent. Perhaps the God of the Bible doesn't exist, or he doesn't really want people to believe in him or follow him. One way or another, the basic claim of Christianity that the Bible is God's true and infallible word, addressed to the whole world for all time is, because of the lack of miraculous confirmation, extremely implausible.
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| Events of interest to you are probably of little consequence in God's master plan. It may be that your idea earth-shaking events, like the world wars, and natural events like the recent tsumani and so on are of no real interest to God. |
If God has no interest in events that cause millions of violent or unexpected deaths, and cause many others to change or lose their religion, then he is not the God that Christians say he is, and the Bible is a fraud. But predicting such events is in any case nothing to do with whether those events are of interest to him, but merely a way of providing corroboration of the Bible's claim to be divinely inspired.
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| His motives for prophecies may be solely for the purpose of establishing his theology (in which case, there's been no need for a prophesized event for thousands of years), and signalling the end times (in which case, it can be argued that it isn't quite around the corner yet). |
The fact that 70% of the world's population has not been converted to Christianity suggests that God has failed to establish his theology. There is definitely a need for more convincing corroboration, if the Bible is true.
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| If someone read of an event in the bible, then caused it, it would invalidate that prediction being evidence of God. |
That would not apply to events that human beings are unable to control, such as earthquakes, meteorites, celestial events, and so on.
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| As for predicting natural disasters... to what end? |
To the end of establishing the Bible's bona fides, so people are inclined to believe it, rather than doubt it.
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| The bible has been around for two thousand years. What natural disasters have occured in that time that are so integral to the master plan that they warrant a prediction? |
It is totally irrelevant whether the natural events figure in God's plan (whatever the hell that might be). All that matters is that the events are predicted and can be verified. Every verified prediction of an event beyond human control confirms the supernatural origin of the Bible, by providing external corroboration.
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| Predicting one a thousand years ago would have no relevance today. Predicting one today would have no relevance a thousand years ago. |
That fact is of absolutely no consequence. If there were a hundred predictions in the Bible, one for each 20 year period from 1 AD to the present decade, then the crossing off of each confirmed prediction would establish for each generation of humanity that the Bible was indeed true and did indeed contain knowledge that was supernatural in origin.
In other words, a series of unambiguous verifiable prophecies of events beyond human control or prediciton provides an infallible means of confirming that the Bible is supernatural, and the absence of ANY such predicitons justifies the suspicion that the Bible is a fraud.
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| To what end? Predicting an event a thousand years ago would have no relevance today. Predicting one today would have no relevance a thousand years ago. |
You are repeating yourself. You were wrong the first time, and you are wrong each time you repeat yourself.
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| Which events to predict? Which ones are relevant, if any? |
It does not matter what events are predicted, as long as they can be verified. The events could be huge or tiny, important to humanity or trivial. All that matters is that it should not be possible to explain the successful prediction of the events by human action.
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| To save lives? Why would God care? It's our souls he's interested in saving. |
Unsaved lives are worth saving, in order to provide a chance of their souls being saved, so God has a good reason to care about saving lives, as a matter of fact (though that's just an aside).
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| To convince more unbelievers? A line has to be drawn somewhere. God can only do so much to convince doubters. Even after verifiable miracles, there would still be doubters (random chance and all that). |
Yes, to convince unbelievers. And, no, there is no reason why a line should be drawn anywhere. According to mainstream Christian theology, God is omnipotent and omni-benevolent. That means he loves everyone, and wants everyone to hear his message and believe, and every soul matters to him. He could achieve that easily by producing some impressive miracles. Even if the miracles I have suggested so far would not convince 100.000% per cent of people, they would convince 99.999+%, and that would be a huge improvement on the 30% or so that currently call themselves Christian. There's no reason why the Christian God would not perform a miracle, if it meant saving so many souls. To say otherwise would be blasphemous in Christian terms, since it would be a denial of the tenet that God is omni-benevolent.
So, why has it not happened? The obvious answer is that mainstream Christianity, at least, is wrong, and claims that is represents divine truth are either error or fraud. Another answer is that the Bible is indeed the Word of God, but God doesn't actually want everyone to receive the message. It's not likely, but it is possible (if we ignore the numerous other reasons that exist for not believing the Bible). The most likely answer, though, is the that Bible is not supernaturally inspired, but is of human origin and is at least partly fraudulent, and that all religion based on it is wrong.
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| Should God then try to convince them? Or should the line be drawn there? And if there, why not before? Who are you to decide where God should draw that line? |
God has stated that he does not draw a line. It is generally understood from the Bible (Acts, Chapter 10), that he loves everyone, and wants to save everyone, and wants everyone to hear his message. That being so, who are you to suggest that God must draw a line?
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| "Us vs. them" is built into the core of the human psyche. Hinduism may not include it, but Indians sure have a problem with Pakistanis and Blacks (among others). It is hardly unique to Abrahamic religions. |
"Us vs. them" is not unique to Abrahamic religions, but since "us vs. them" is built into the core of those religions, there will be "us vs. them" as long as those religions continue to exist.
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| It has no intrinsic value, it's clearly wrong, it will be stamped out by education, etc. etc. These are your words. Now who is proselytizing? |
I'm not proselytizing. I'm responding to someone else's attempt at proselytizing. I did not start the discussion off. A religious person did.
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| Tolerance is a two way street. You demand religion be tolerant of your beliefs, but you don't seem willing to do the same for religion. |
I tolerate people having silly superstitions if they keep them private. If they preach those superstitions in public, as if what they believe is fact rather than fantasy, I feel it is entirely within my rights to reply accordingly.
Yes, tolerance is a two-way street, and eople who prozelytize religion in public are expressing a lack of respect for people who are not religious. In return, they should expect that people like me will express our lack of respect for religion. It is arrogant for a religious person to assume they can talk their nonsense in public, and never get any comeback.
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| If any religion is inherently intolerant, they will have to change. It's that simple. |
If it is inherently intolerant, it can't change. Christianity, Judaism and Islam cannot become tolerant without ceasing to be Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Every time a Christian, Jew or Muslim preaches tolerance, a fundamentalist will remind them of the passages in the Bible and Koran that dictate intolerance.
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| That, of course, assumes you are interested in being tolerant. |
I am tolerant; I am just not very respectful, that's all. I'm not interested in killing people or oppressing them, or silencing them, or preventing them from performing their religious rituals and prayers in the privacy of their homes and chapels. In return, I expect their tolerance of my irreligion. Let them not bother me with their silly stories of deities, or threaten me with fantasy demons and hells. If they do, I will tell them precisely how stupid I think they are.
This is pretty funny, by the way: