In response to our declining christain morality
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Mike Mullikin wrote:
If science could absolutely disprove the existence of God
That is an impossibility. :)
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ToddHileHoffer wrote:
So you use your brain to make a conclusin and then never question that conclusion?
I don't think the point I was making came across. To put it differently if you are convinced you have found the true message that is revealed by God you do not choose what pieces to accept to suit your preference and desires. These include the matters of the unseen, such as what happens after death and the details of the afterlife. This is different from say, growing up on a particular religion than finding not only elements of truth but also element of falsehood. If one grew up on a false or corrupted religion finding the message of the religion itself to be confused and contradictory, then one has a duty to search for the truth.
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A.A. wrote:
If one grew up on a false or corrupted religion finding the message of the religion itself to be confused and contradictory, then one has a duty to search for the truth.
So you, growing up in the one true religion must never question anything about it to preserve the illusion that it's not confused and contradictory and full of human interpretations that the church muckedy mucks use to beat each other over the heads with to garner more followers and power?
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Bassam Abdul-Baki wrote:
That is an impossibility.
Because those who make the religious rules and want to stay in power rig the game so their followers can't question it? :rolleyes:
No, there are some things that are mathematically impossible. This is one of them. Anything outside of mathematics is just circumstantial evidence. You can't prove God exists or not. It is strictly faith.
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Give me a break. I'm telling you right now. When you die there is 0% chance that the after life (if there is one) is as described in the bible. There is flat out no chance that you will be in heaven with Jesus and I will spend eternity rotting in hell. As if I will concisously suffer for Billions of years because I chose to use my brain instead of blindly following a book full of non-sensical contradictions that don't apply to modern life. Much of biblical morality was needed in a society without birth control. The Bible was a great framework for creation of a stable society. But times change, and Christianity is becoming increasingly more irrelevant. I would argue that increasing "social anomie" - Alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals - is a major part of our problem. Since our victory in World War II, Americans do lack purpose. No matter how money you make, you're still gonna die, so what's the point? The solution is not to find Jesus, but rather for all of us to use our god given intelligence, imagination and technology to figure out why the hell we are here in the first place. IMHO, the purpose of humanity might just be to figure out the purpose of humanity. Once we figure that out, perhaps we can start living for each other instead of living in a state of purposelessness and these murders / suicides will decrease.
ToddHileHoffer wrote:
There is flat out no chance that you will be in heaven with Jesus and I will spend eternity rotting in hell.
I thought you were talking about the Bible ? The Bible does not describe what you're talking about.
ToddHileHoffer wrote:
because I chose to use my brain instead of blindly following a book full of non-sensical contradictions that don't apply to modern life
It's always fascinating to me to hear the opinions people who plainly have never read the Bible, have on what it apparently contains.
ToddHileHoffer wrote:
might just be to figure out the purpose of humanity
If there's no God, how can there be a 'purpose' ? The answer might as well be 42.
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Why is there only one species that has the ability to contemplate its own existence? We are the only species on Earth that no longer lives to procreate. We have moved beyond the rules of nature. Why?
ToddHileHoffer wrote:
Why is there only one species that has the ability to contemplate its own existence?
A very anthropocentric view. We barely understand our own intelligence, much less the other mammals that appear to have something equivalent: whales and baboons, for example. We have no idea how far their awareness extends. Language does add something to the awareness equation but to say a lack of advanced syntactical grammar is evidence of lesser intelligence is merely conjecture.
ToddHileHoffer wrote:
We are the only species on Earth that no longer lives to procreate. We have moved beyond the rules of nature. Why?
Because we haven't. We live the rules of nature every single day, we just think we don't. We live in a positive feedback system: there is no counterforce to what humanity is doing. We've become so capable of manipulating the world around us for our own purposes that we have ceased being aware of where we should have stopped. It's a conceptual block, not a physical one. Nothing frees us from the laws of physics and the consequences of nature; global warming, increasing pollution of our own fresh water sources, and the need for ever more powerful fertilizers should convince you of that.
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Are you admitting that Greek mythology was a religion? Then maybe today's religions are tomorrow's mythologies? Although I am familiar with Greek and Norse mythology/religion, I have never heard of how they came about. I believe back then, a god was created for everything, which means it was done out of habit, but I could be mistaken.
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Bassam Abdul-Baki wrote:
I have never heard of how they came about. I believe back then, a god was created for everything, which means it was done out of habit
In a sense. The Greek form of godhood was very similar to that of Native Americans: creatures who had very human flaws but who had some particular power over something or another. Pan was evil but had power over nature. Zeus was king of the gods but was a womanizer and hated his wife. Hera was god of marriage but was a spiteful, selfish woman. I could go on. These are gods invented by people who are very close to the world they live in, and who need both an explanation and some comfort from its dangers. Unlike "pie in the sky" Christianity that has a distant, unknowable, untouchable God, the Greek gods were very real beings that the people could identify with. That is how the Christian God was first envisioned (and why a human form of it was necessary - just like the Greek gods). It has become a somewhat more ethereal concept over the millennia, however. The form of God that Christianity and Islam hold today is possible only when survival isn't an issue. But you won't see any Christian agree to that. Epistemology is a very interesting subject..
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ToddHileHoffer wrote:
The ideas of loving your neighbor had to exist before the bible because someone had to think them up in order to write them in bible.
I can agree with you on that point. Using the Bible as an example, Jesus was probably not the first person to say many of these things. Simply put Jesus was simply the first person with a lot of influence on a lot of people to say many of these ideals and someone was enamored enough to write them down for the first time. Do you know of another document in the Christian religion that has these items written down before the Bible? Is there another text from another religion that has these ideals that was written from the Bible? (I will admit I do not know and there could be, but my point is the same.) In many cases, ancient books that are used in religions for moral values were probably the first ones written that helped eliminate the need for the word of mouth values that passed before.
Brett A. Whittington Application Developer
bwhittington wrote:
Is there another text from another religion that has these ideals that was written from the Bible?
Yes. The Bible is essentially a rehash of many of the world's religious and mythological texts of the time. I don't know their names unfortunately but a philosophy friend of mine once pulled out several books MUCH older than the Bible and showed me the stories in them, most of which you can find versions of in the Bible. Stories like the flood exist in nearly every pre-Christian religious text.
bwhittington wrote:
In many cases, ancient books that are used in religions for moral values were probably the first ones written that helped eliminate the need for the word of mouth values that passed before.
Unfortunately "eliminating the need for word of mouth" encourages dogma. Once something is written down we give it an importance far beyond something spoken, even if it doesn't deserve it. All of this aside, it doesn't matter where the text came from. Good ideas are good ideas, their history notwithstanding.
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Why is there only one species that has the ability to contemplate its own existence? We are the only species on Earth that no longer lives to procreate. We have moved beyond the rules of nature. Why?
ToddHileHoffer wrote:
Why is there only one species that has the ability to contemplate its own existence?
Home sapiens is the only remaining representative of the genus homo probably because we're the bloodthirsty ape and relentlessly hunted our cousins to extinction. Or at best assimilated them. I guess we'll know if they manage to extract some sequencable DNA from those Neanterthal skeletons.
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bwhittington wrote:
Is there another text from another religion that has these ideals that was written from the Bible?
Yes. The Bible is essentially a rehash of many of the world's religious and mythological texts of the time. I don't know their names unfortunately but a philosophy friend of mine once pulled out several books MUCH older than the Bible and showed me the stories in them, most of which you can find versions of in the Bible. Stories like the flood exist in nearly every pre-Christian religious text.
bwhittington wrote:
In many cases, ancient books that are used in religions for moral values were probably the first ones written that helped eliminate the need for the word of mouth values that passed before.
Unfortunately "eliminating the need for word of mouth" encourages dogma. Once something is written down we give it an importance far beyond something spoken, even if it doesn't deserve it. All of this aside, it doesn't matter where the text came from. Good ideas are good ideas, their history notwithstanding.
I can agree with all your statements. But how do they counter argue my point that the Bible can still be used as a moral compass today? Surely, people should not discount everything the bible (or any other text) says. That is essentially what the OP was trying to say.
Brett A. Whittington Application Developer
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I can agree with all your statements. But how do they counter argue my point that the Bible can still be used as a moral compass today? Surely, people should not discount everything the bible (or any other text) says. That is essentially what the OP was trying to say.
Brett A. Whittington Application Developer
bwhittington wrote:
But how do they counter argue my point that the Bible can still be used as a moral compass today?
They don't :) I was merely answering your question.
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Mike Gaskey wrote:
if that were honestly true you wouldn't expend quite so much energy to promote an "anti" posture.
Red spends far more time on this board promoting an "anti" posture towards atheists than Mike does towards religion - doesn't that completely invalidate what you said?
Craster wrote:
doesn't that completely invalidate what you said?
no.
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Mike Gaskey wrote:
if that were honestly true you wouldn't expend quite so much energy to promote an "anti" posture.
Spend a few hours going through old threads (with a religious tilt) and you'll most definitely find you and Red expending many, MANY times more energy promoting religion than I've spent knocking it.
Mike Mullikin wrote:
you'll most definitely find you and Red expending many, MANY times more energy promoting religion than I've spent knocking it.
like I said, believe what you will.
Mike The NYT - my leftist brochure. Calling an illegal alien an “undocumented immigrant” is like calling a drug dealer an “unlicensed pharmacist”. God doesn't believe in atheists, therefore they don't exist.
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Parts of Judaism take into account that we don't know 100%. Learning and debate is so important that a library has higher importance than a synagogue. You could convert a synagogue into a library, but not the other way.
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leckey wrote:
Parts of Judaism take into account that we don't know 100%.
Yep, after thousands of years, you still don't know that pork, especially of the bacon variety, is quite delicious. ;P Seriously, do you think Jews will ever be capable of learning that?
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ToddHileHoffer wrote:
Alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals
ToddHileHoffer wrote:
use our god given intelligence, imagination and technology
Geez man - I don't need this kind of help. :rolleyes: "Red" has his "Matthew Faithfull", I apparently have my "ToddHileHoffer". Maybe the Buddhists are onto something with this Ying-Yang stuff... :^)
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ToddHileHoffer wrote:
I'm sure Buddhism is great. I just don't know enough about it, nor do I have time to meditate. I got bills to pay.
Yeah, so do I... I think you missed the point. I happen to be amongst the stronger critics of religion in the SoapBox. You're kind of stepping on my territory here and not doing a very thorough job of it. I mean you rant about how the Bible is wrong and there is no God and then you go off about "values" and "ideals" and "God-given" this and that. I mean, it's not really helpful to me; as a result you're kind of undermining my position. Red is amongst the more vocal proponents of Christianity, but occasionally this Matthew Faithfull dude does the same thing to Red as you just did to me - the "undermining" bit... So it's like a balance, you see. The Yin and Yang - so I suggested that perhaps both Red and I were wrong in our respective positions and the Bhuddists were maybe right... Anyways, I give your rant about 6.5 out of 10. Why? You've internally contradicted yourself and have done nothing to strengthen my position.
73Zeppelin wrote:
I happen to be amongst the stronger critics of religion in the SoapBox. You're kind of stepping on my territory here and not doing a very thorough job of it.
Get over yourself. This isn't your argument alone. Maybe you and Red need to get yourselves a room and share some alone time. Or start your own forum for your theistic/atheistic masturbation.
73Zeppelin wrote:
as a result you're kind of undermining my position.
Hahahahaha... how pretentious of you. Arrogant isn't it to state on a very public forum that one of the largest arguments in HISTORY is yours (exclusively). If its not exclusive you wouldn't use the possessive while telling someone to get out of your territory. What a hack.
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