Internet killing religion?

[Buster Bluth]

1. So the idea that many people can fervently believe they are right proves that none are right and all are wrong? That isn't sound logic.

No not at all, but it makes me be humble and take a step back to reanalyze the bigger picture. A lot of people "feel blessed" and that energizes them and reconvinces (a word?) them of God's love. It's self-confirming. And yet on the other parts of the globe, others do the opposite, or light themselves on fire in protest for their religion, thinking along the same lives, don't act like that doesn't say something that's quite obvious: humans can be made to believe anything. There isn't a single religion on the planet that overcame geographical and manpower constraints. Christianity, like the rest of them, spread through conquest and control.

And on a whole different level, if I can do something with my religion and someone else can do the exact same thing and we stand for different things...well I think it aids the argument that they aren't special.

2. You'll have to help me out with this. You're saying that Jesus told Constantine to do that? Or that Constantine claimed it and that's what devalues Christianity? Assuming Constantine did claim that, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that atrocities committed by members of any group shouldn't necessarily be held against that group.

They absolutely should be held accountable for atrocities, when it's systematic. On that note, I think it's disturbing that believers can play the "doesn't matter wasn't Jesus" card to everything from propagation of inequality to Catholicism's tyranny over Europe for more than a millennium to sexual abuse and cover up today.

As for Constantine, I don't think Jesus would have told anyone “by this sign you shall conquer” and yet it's perfectly accepted that this was the beginning of Christendom. What happened to "love your enemy?"

Further, Jesus was only a pacifist when it came to his own life. When people defiled the Jewish temple, Christ grabbed a whip and chased them out. Perhaps we just have a different conception of who Jesus was.

Well I don't think he ever performed a miracle, so I'm sure we do have different conceptions. Jesus and his followers had a message of peace that was so strong it angered the Romans (because of their militaristic tendencies) during Christianity's early decades/centuries ... True or false? That's my point.

3. Christianity is viewed by you as Judaism 2.0? Perhaps because they took the Torah, created an Old Testament and used the scriptures created Post Christ as the fulfillment of God's word, calling it the New Testament?

That's more or less how it was drawn up in three Catholic schools I attended, yes.

The general understanding is that Christ came to fulfill and lead people to an ultimate Truth and Christ's words were used in the development of these ideas (Heaven and Satan). I may just be failing to understand the problem, why is this an issue?

Because Christianity isn't Judaism 2.0, fundamental aspects totally change. The devil transformed, after Jesus, from an agent of God meant to help him deem who is worthy, to an incorrigible monster who is battling god at every corner of the globe for souls.

Furthermore, the questionappears: why does it need to develop in the first place? There's a whole tangent I could go on about how stupid it is for a religion to change. What shitty planning by god if that is the case. I'll spare us all that rant.

As to the slavery, racial and sexual equality questions that are failed. What are these questions and what is the right answer being used?

Surely this is an act.

4. This was found doing a quick search: Unicorn — described as an animal of great ferocity and strength (Num. 23:22), R.V., “wild ox,” marg., “ox-antelope;” 24:8; Isa. 34:7, R.V., “wild oxen”), and untamable (Job 39:9). It was in reality a two-horned animal; but the exact reference of the word so rendered (reem) is doubtful. Some have supposed it to be the buffalo; others, the white antelope, called by the Arabs rim. Most probably, however, the word denotes the Bos primigenius (“primitive ox”), which is now extinct all over the world. This was the auerochs of the Germans, and the urus described by Caesar (Gal. Bel., vi.28) as inhabiting the Hercynian forest. The word thus rendered has been found in an Assyrian inscription written over the wild ox or bison, which some also suppose to be the animal intended

Another source mentioned that the word was the tragic failure of literality. The greek word had the meaning, "One horn" and was thusly translated to "Unicorn" in english, which has the modern association of a mythical creature so everyone assumes our conception of unicorn is equivalent to what the greek intended.

Where in the Bible does it say to not take things literally? For me, this broad "some parts are open to interpretation, some aren't" just gives Christianity that much more room to manufacture the bullshit in, never mind their ~1,800-year head start.

6. If something was a historical event, it would make sense for it to be similar in many stories.

Until somehow it's no longer a historical event and gently finds itself in the "interpretation station."

Further, it makes sense that any nomadic group of people would adopt the stories of the culture and incorporate them into their understanding of the world.

So it's not the word of god then? Or did he put it there for them to find, acquire, teach as literal fact, pass on to us, realize it's for interpretation, etc etc. At some point in that line someone was looking at it the wrong way.

7. Finally, something worth talking about although not necessarily in the way you portrayed it. Your argument hear is a recycled argument from Constantine. Why would God use X because they were evil or not in perfect alignment with the Christ image we understand?

Well that'd be Saint Constantine, it's not like he was some bad dude in the eyes of the Church.

Christopher Columbus being the guy to discover the new world has little to do with it anyway, little more than a "really...Christ told his followers to spread the word as well as they could and yet that's the guy who gets it done??" Because, you know, Jesus failed to mention the existence of the Americas, or China, or India, or sub-Saharan Africa, or Australia, etc etc etc.

But to answer your questions: these humans weren't genetically inferior, their adaptive immunity hadn't been exposed to what the rest of the world was transmitting and sharing for a number of centuries.

Which is precisely why I said "(if you grade on a curve)," they certainly were genetically inferior in the same way that Europeans were, immediately prior to the Black Death, etc.

Are you irritated that they were isolated? Or that they weren't given some supernatural protection from the evil in the world? If someone hadn't heard of Christ or the Church, then it would be hoped (and I'm guessing believed) that sufficient grace would cover them insomuch as their actions in life allowed.

It's not irritating because I don't care for religion. We found another world that had never heard of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc. My common sense tells me that's a sign that they might not be supernatural.

Native Americans didn't need supernatural protection, but if god is real--and he isn't--surely he would have given them a decent chance at salvation by letting them know what game they were in on. It is simply unacceptable.

It would have to be believed that God's word would stand on it's own despite the introducer.

Wait a minute here. Atheists say "you don't need Christianity to be a morally sound person, look at moral codes in China, Japan, India, Americas, ancient Greece, Egypt, Babylon, etc and they aren't raping, killing, stealing like it's a good thing!" and here you are taking credit for that in the name of god?

Not a great first introduction but hardly a reason to cut the legs out from a whole theology.

I would agree that "truths are self-evident," you seem to be making the same that "God's truths are self-evident." I can't beat that logic because it's so conjured up out of thin air.

Most of these "issues" you've brought up can be wrestled with and defeated.

And yet, someone could do the same thing ("wrestle and defeat") inquiries about their own religion if they were Islamic, Buddhist, etc. ...going rightttt back to my first point.

 

[Veritate Duce Progredi]

#saved for tomorrow. I have to read before going to bed and this will take a while because your opening 30 cans of worms, hoping i can't keep them contained. I'll do my best but I'd much prefer we start on a single issue and discuss it until we've reached either: a. acceptance or b. agree to disagree.

I only ask that because it's so much easier to try and poke holes instead of trying to fill them, especially when some holes cause major cracks without attention, ie - require more than a two-liner.

 

[Buster Bluth]

No fair, I just rambled and you get to think about your responses!

 

[Veritate Duce Progredi]

No fair, I just rambled and you get to think about your responses!

Ha ha, but it's similar to someone asking, "Why is the sky blue?"

The questions are simple, the answers requires a bit more complexity. To be fair, I haven't thought about my answers yet, it's why I'm stalling on answering. I have some Comp Sci homework I have to turn in and I have some deadlines I'm moving towards at work.

When I'm energized enough to respond to your questions/statements, I'll write a reply.

Fair warning: I'm going to start at the top and work my way down sequentially. So each reply moving forward will only battle one topic. Otherwise my replies would take too long to type out because you have some specific and broad questions that greater men have battled for centuries.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

For a lot of people it's the similarities between other religious stories and what's in the Bible.

That's strong evidence in favor of revelation and objective truth.

For me the internet was a great place to find a myriad of observations about religion that I didn't get around to asking yet.

If you don't mind me asking, where are you getting a lot of this stuff? Because you seem to be arguing against a caricature of Christianity, instead of the real thing.

I remember discussing in like third grade the idea of "doing God's will" or whatever, and then Sam Harris pointed out "yeah a terrorist feels that he's doing that before he blows himself up. Which of you is wrong?"

Are you truly struggling to determine if Veritate is more likely to be "doing God's will" than an Islamist who murders innocent people in the name of Allah? You're a smart guy; I doubt you really have any issue discerning that such terrorists are clearly not doing God's will. As Veritate mentioned above, disagreements over "God's will" don't disprove God's existence one bit. Conversely, the fact that we argue about such a thing at all is evidence that He does in fact exist.

For me, knowledge of the fact that Judiasm doesn't share Christianity's beliefs when it comes to the Devil or heaven is a big one.

I'm not sure why this a smoking gun for you. All three Abrahamic faiths share a lot in common (due to their common Semitic roots), but also some significant differences that reflect the different historical and cultural contexts in which they developed.

That, and that Christianity fails the slavery question (as well as the racial and sex equality issues).

We've gone round and round on this issue before. Let's use an example from aSoIaF. Was it Good that Daenerys "freed" the slaves on Essos from their bondage? As Western liberals, we're inclined to say yes. But Martin rightly demonstrates in the books that without a feasible political alternative, Dany actually worsened their condition by sweeping aside the existing social constructs. This criticism fails because:
(1) Christian doctrine is apolitical in that it deals with the salvation of individuals, and not with ideal political and social arrangements. You might as well discount all revealed faiths for failing to warn about the dangers of Fascism and Communism.
(2) It arrogantly assumes that liberalism is the "End of History"-- a standard by which we can confidently judge all other political and social arrangements. Liberalism has its own problems that would have been utterly foreign to the ancient world.

Lately I've been exploring the idea that Native Americans lived for thousands of years never having received any sort of sign whatsoever about the existence of God or Jesus. Then the guy who does discover them happens to be a incorrigible POS whose first journal entry upon leaving was, to paraphrase, "I think we just found a bunch of slaves..." only to see 100% of Caribbean natives butchered and 90% of the rest succumb to smallpox/measles/etc. Why did God make a bunch of genetically inferior (if you grade on a curve) humans, not reveal himself to them even once, and have a man on the direct opposite end of the spectrum from Jesus be the guy to introduce His word?

How do you know that God never revealed himself to Native Americans? Native American origination myths share a lot of the same features as the one in Genesis. And to the best of my knowledge, no one in Christendom claims Columbus as the "Vessel of the Word" in the New World. He was definitely an evil guy, who caused a lot of suffering for his own prideful ends.

This is a recurring theme with your criticisms of Christianity. Why do you think it's logical to assume the actions of a divine being would be comprehensible to you?

Science

5. This is a difficult one, which I have also battled with.

The ancient world was a brutal place by the standards of modern liberalism. It all gets back to free will. The universe is an arena in which moral creatures (including, perhaps, non-humans) can make a meaningful choice between God (love, community, light) and themselves (selfishness, sin, darkness). God could surely have made a perfect world in which there was no suffering or death, but his creations would have been mere automatons, incapable of truly loving Him (since they would not have had any real choice in the matter).

Most of these "issues" you've brought up can be wrestled with and defeated. There are broader issues that I find myself wrestling with specifically evil in the world and pain.

Theodicy has always been the most compelling argument against God's existence.

I haven't found a true defense yet but I have much more to read. I've been told to read C.S Lewis' "Problem of Pain", Peter Kreeft's "Summa of the Summa" and the early Church Father's writings.

Strongly recommended. You have strong feelings about Christianity, Buster. I'm curious what steps you've taken to familiarize yourself with it? Have you ever read Lewis' Mere Christianity, Chesterton's Orthodoxy, or the gospels themselves? Because, as I mentioned above, you're not really arguing against Christianity, but a caricature of it drawn by materialists looking to sell books or attract eyeballs on the internet. I'd respect your positions much more if you actually cared to learn about the thing you denounce so vigorously.

I'm going to exhaust every resource before I decide what I can and can't deal with in a religion.

And good on you for doing so.

No not at all, but it makes me be humble and take a step back to reanalyze the bigger picture.

Humility is always a good thing. But I think you really mean "skeptical" here.

A lot of people "feel blessed" and that energizes them and reconvinces (a word?) them of God's love. It's self-confirming. And yet on the other parts of the globe, others do the opposite, or light themselves on fire in protest for their religion, thinking along the same lives, don't act like that doesn't say something that's quite obvious: humans can be made to believe anything.

Doesn't that strike you as a bit arrogant? The unwashed masses are so easily hoodwinked by Men of the Cloth, but you as, as an enlightened (Fedora-clad?) modern liberal with access to the internet, have finally thrown off the bonds of superstition? Spare me. One could just as easily draw a different conclusion from those facts-- that humans are spiritual creatures, and that questions about God and sexuality are really f*cking important.

There isn't a single religion on the planet that overcame geographical and manpower constraints. Christianity, like the rest of them, spread through conquest and control.

So, in your mind, a "true" religion would spread like wildfire, unopposed, across every cultural boundary? I could see how one with no appreciation for Free Will might think that.

And on a whole different level, if I can do something with my religion and someone else can do the exact same thing and we stand for different things...well I think it aids the argument that they aren't special.

Why does one religion have to be "special"? Why can't many religions all be referencing the same objective moral truth to different degrees and from different social and cultural contexts?

They absolutely should be held accountable for atrocities, when it's systematic. On that note, I think it's disturbing that believers can play the "doesn't matter wasn't Jesus" card to everything from propagation of inequality to Catholicism's tyranny over Europe for more than a millennium to sexual abuse and cover up today.

The Roman empire collapsed, and the Catholic Church stepped into the void as the only institution capable of holding the Western world together... and that's tyranny? I shudder to think what the middle ages would have looked like without Christianity.

As for Constantine, I don't think Jesus would have told anyone “by this sign you shall conquer” and yet it's perfectly accepted that this was the beginning of Christendom. What happened to "love your enemy?"

Christendom began in 33 AD, not in 313. The only reason it was even in a position to be adopted by Constantine was because it had become very attractive to people in the Roman empire during the first few centuries AD, and had already expanded rapidly. You look at the spread of Christianity and see lots of inefficiency and unnecessary suffering; that's because it was carried by fallible humans instead of angels. It could not have been otherwise without fundamentally altering the human person or the character of creation.

Because Christianity isn't Judaism 2.0, fundamental aspects totally change. The devil transformed, after Jesus, from an agent of God meant to help him deem who is worthy, to an incorrigible monster who is battling god at every corner of the globe for souls.

I'm not sure why this is a big deal to you. All three Abrahamic faiths believe that God is all Good, and the source of all being. Consequently, evil is just a perversion of the Good, and not an equally powerful opposing force (Manicheanism). Whether Lucifer is a prosecuting attorney in good standing with God or the leader of a group of fallen angels really isn't critical to any of the three religions; whether "evil" is the result of human weakness alone or is aided by supernatural forces isn't critical to any individual's salvation.

Furthermore, the questionappears: why does it need to develop in the first place? There's a whole tangent I could go on about how stupid it is for a religion to change. What shitty planning by god if that is the case. I'll spare us all that rant.

Again, this all comes back to your problem with Free Will. I'm sorry you struggle with the fact that humans are fallible. Christians believe it's a necessary "flaw" in the design of creation. Can you conceive of a perfect universe in which moral creatures make truly significant choices? I can't. Maybe you have a better imagination than I do.

Surely this is an act.

Small note here. When you argue with a theist, you risk nothing. Perhaps he debunks a few of your points, so you go back, adjust your argument, and continue on as you always have. But a theist risks everything when he argues with a materialist; his entire worldview. So a little more respect is in order for those you disagree with here.

Where in the Bible does it say to not take things literally? For me, this broad "some parts are open to interpretation, some aren't" just gives Christianity that much more room to manufacture the bullshit in, never mind their ~1,800-year head start.

Where in the Bible does it say to take things literally? Is one supposed to take poetry literally? How about allegory? Eschatological fiction? The Bible is compromised of different genres, and was written by different authors, for different audiences, in different historical, cultural and historical contexts. Veritate provided you with a nuanced contextual response to why one shouldn't disregard the Bible as foolishness simply because someone chose to translate a particular Greek word as "unicorn"; he's not claiming the Bible is literally true.

So it's not the word of god then? Or did he put it there for them to find, acquire, teach as literal fact, pass on to us, realize it's for interpretation, etc etc. At some point in that line someone was looking at it the wrong way.

The Bible conveys consistent theological and moral truth over a period of several thousand years. It is not intended to be a historical account, or a modern "how to" pamphlet. Your argument would be effective if Veritate was a fundamentalist, but no one here is arguing that position; so it's basically a strawman.

Christopher Columbus being the guy to discover the new world has little to do with it anyway, little more than a "really...Christ told his followers to spread the word as well as they could and yet that's the guy who gets it done??" Because, you know, Jesus failed to mention the existence of the Americas, or China, or India, or sub-Saharan Africa, or Australia, etc etc etc.

This criticism is no less absurd than complaining that Jesus failed to warn us about the dangers us Fascism and Communism. You don't understand the importance of Free Will, and assume that the actions of a divine being should be comprehensible to you; that's not very logical. You're holding religion to a ridiculous standard.

It's not irritating because I don't care for religion. We found another world that had never heard of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc. My common sense tells me that's a sign that they might not be supernatural.

Native Americans had their own religion, with a creation myth that's awfully similar to the account in Genesis. My common sense tells me that that's strong evidence for divine revelation, and that good Native Americans were probably finding salvation just fine before Columbus' disastrous arrival in the New World.

Native Americans didn't need supernatural protection, but if god is real--and he isn't--surely he would have given them a decent chance at salvation by letting them know what game they were in on. It is simply unacceptable.

Who are you to say they had no idea "what game they were in on"? Christian doctrine certainly doesn't hold that every "savage" who died before hearing the Word is beyond salvation.

Wait a minute here. Atheists say "you don't need Christianity to be a morally sound person, look at moral codes in China, Japan, India, Americas, ancient Greece, Egypt, Babylon, etc and they aren't raping, killing, stealing like it's a good thing!" and here you are taking credit for that in the name of god?

Yes. God is the objective moral truth that undergirds all of those religions (see Lewis' concept of the "Tao"). Christians agree that one can be a good person and find salvation through all of those faiths. But that's not what the New Athiests claim. They claim that one can be a "good" person without any concept of objective moral truth at all. And that assertion is completely unsupported.

 

[koonja]

If I could have anything in the world, it would be Whiskey's brain.

Holy alhfsdkghlksdjhfliuwyfhLUHFLwhufrlkHS.

 

[Buster Bluth]

That's strong evidence in favor of revelation and objective truth.

Agreed, which tells me that being a good person doesn't require a god. With or without Christianity, cultures will learn to behave over time.

If you don't mind me asking, where are you getting a lot of this stuff? Because you seem to be arguing against a caricature of Christianity, instead of the real thing.

You're going to have to be more specific for me.

Are you truly struggling to determine if Veritate is more likely to be "doing God's will" than an Islamist who murders innocent people in the name of Allah? You're a smart guy; I doubt you really have any issue discerning that such terrorists are clearly not doing God's will.

Was god doing god's will when he killed all of those innocent children in Egypt so the Jews could be freed, or is that one of those things up to interpretation?

My point comparing the Muslims was the level of satisfaction/fascination with their respective religions. I didn't even bring it up as a main point for why I don't believe in god. More of an observation that religion makes people to crazy things. Is pointing out how Catholicism butchered nonbelievers in things like the Spanish Inquisition arguing against a caricature?

As Veritate mentioned above, disagreements over "God's will" don't disprove God's existence one bit.

No god can be disproved.

Conversely, the fact that we argue about such a thing at all is evidence that He does in fact exist.

I don't get this.

I'm not sure why this a smoking gun for you. All three Abrahamic faiths share a lot in common (due to their common Semitic roots), but also some significant differences that reflect the different historical and cultural contexts in which they developed.

Which shows me how un-supernatural (yay new word) they are.

We've gone round and round on this issue before. Let's use an example from aSoIaF. Was it Good that Daenerys "freed" the slaves on Essos from their bondage? As Western liberals, we're inclined to say yes. But Martin rightly demonstrates in the books that without a feasible political alternative, Dany actually worsened their condition by sweeping aside the existing social constructs. This criticism fails because:
(1) Christian doctrine is apolitical in that it deals with the salvation of individuals, and not with ideal political and social arrangements. You might as well discount all revealed faiths for failing to warn about the dangers of Fascism and Communism.
(2) It arrogantly assumes that liberalism is the "End of History"-- a standard by which we can confidently judge all other political and social arrangements. Liberalism has its own problems that would have been utterly foreign to the ancient world.

It simply isn't good enough for me. I regard the idea of not owning other people as an objective truth, which society discovered and god apparently did not. It just shows me how not supernatural Christianity is. Much like a scientist would say "just show me one fossil in an age before it should be there and it'll prove evolution is false and that god is true!" I say that is Christianity were legitimate it would have promoted objective truths before society revealed them to itself. We have a Ten Commandments that laid down important laws and god missed slavery, you're using "salvation of individuals" as the excuse here. Like seriously, HOW THE HELL DOES THIS MAKE IT INTO THE BIBLE:

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

Don't brush it aside with "geez Buster know the context.." It's just grotesque.

How do you know that God never revealed himself to Native Americans? Native American origination myths share a lot of the same features as the one in Genesis.

Is that you Joseph Smith?!

And to the best of my knowledge, no one in Christendom claims Columbus as the "Vessel of the Word" in the New World. He was definitely an evil guy, who caused a lot of suffering for his own prideful ends.

I agree with all of that, none of that was my point.

This is a recurring theme with your criticisms of Christianity. Why do you think it's logical to assume the actions of a divine being would be comprehensible to you?

I could follow a religion I don't understand if I trusted the religious organization, but I do not trust any religious organizations.

Humility is always a good thing. But I think you really mean "skeptical" here.

One led to the other in my life.

Doesn't that strike you as a bit arrogant? The unwashed masses are so easily hoodwinked by Men of the Cloth, but you as, as an enlightened modern liberal with access to the internet, have finally thrown off the bonds of superstition? Spare me. One could just as easily draw a different conclusion from those facts-- that humans are spiritual creatures, and that questions about God and sexuality are really f*cking important.

I think that's a fair point.

(Fedora-clad?)

So, in your mind, a "true" religion would spread like wildfire, unopposed, across every cultural boundary? I could see how one with no appreciation for Free Will might think that.

It's not free will if I don't have a fucking clue what game I'm in on. Much like the "show me a fossil where it doesn't belong," Christianity is just like the rest of them in that it spread via the sword--ironically the last way I think Jesus would opt to spread his thoughts.

Why does one religion have to be "special"? Why can't many religions all be referencing the same objective moral truth to different degrees and from different social and cultural contexts?

They certainly can, but don't go around claiming that the message comes from god if they all figure out that we should kill each other, etc.

Also it's a bit weird that they more or less reach objective morals truths but miss the part where when you encounter a member of another religion you shouldn't butcher them and conquer them, like we did for all of human history. "Same objective moral truths, fucking hate each other. Religions!"

The Roman empire collapsed, and the Catholic Church stepped into the void as the only institution capable of holding the Western world together... and that's tyranny? I shudder to think what the middle ages would have looked like without Christianity.

You cannot claim the good without claiming the bad. But that is a good question for /r/askhistorians.

Christendom began in 33 AD, not in 313. The only reason it was even in a position to be adopted by Constantine was because it had become very attractive to people in the Roman empire during the first few centuries AD, and had already expanded rapidly. You look at the spread of Christianity and see lots of inefficiency and unnecessary suffering; that's because it was carried by fallible humans instead of angels. It could not have been otherwise without fundamentally altering the human person or the character of creation.

Which isn't any different than any other religion.

I'm not sure why this is a big deal to you. All three Abrahamic faiths believe that God is all Good, and the source of all being. Consequently, evil is just a perversion of the Good, and not an equally powerful opposing force (Manicheanism). Whether Lucifer is a prosecuting attorney in good standing with God or the leader of a group of fallen angels really isn't critical to any of the three religions; whether "evil" is the result of human weakness alone or is aided by supernatural forces isn't critical to any individual's salvation.

I've spent enough time with elderly Christians to know it was very important to them. Queue the "actions of believers doesn't impact the truth of god."

Again, this all comes back to your problem with Free Will. I'm sorry you struggle with the fact that humans are fallible. Christians believe it's a necessary "flaw" in the design of creation. Can you conceive of a perfect universe in which moral creatures make truly significant choices? I can't. Maybe you have a better imagination than I do.

Of course they see it as necessary, it's the perfect cop-out for every flaw in the story.

Small note here. When you argue with a theist, you risk nothing. Perhaps he debunks a few of your points, so you go back, adjust your argument, and continue on as you always have. But a theist risks everything when he argues with a materialist; his entire worldview. So a little more respect is in order for those you disagree with here.

He didn't point out a position. I said my bit because i could see the answer coming, which you said. I have no respect for a religion that endorsed slavery, for what it's worth.

Where in the Bible does it say to take things literally?

Where are the instructions for any of it? Where does it say what is fact and what isn't? If it told us what was fact and what wasn't before science got around to solving the question, I'd be impressed. It didn't. I don't want the "caricature" bit thrown at me again, but let me ask: have those in power, ever in human history, used portions of the Bible that are allegorical/poetry/etc as fact to control people? That bothers me, and I think a god who wrote it all could have seen that coming. Or did man put the Bible together in Southern France without that insight?

Is one supposed to take poetry literally? How about allegory? Eschatological fiction? The Bible is compromised of different genres, and was written by different authors, for different audiences, in different historical, cultural and historical contexts. Veritate provided you with a nuanced contextual response to why one shouldn't disregard the Bible as foolishness simply because someone chose to translate a particular Greek word as "unicorn"; he's not claiming the Bible is literally true.

I was specifically taught in high school my Sr. Mary Carroll that every word of the Bible was translated perfectly whether it was historical fact or merely a lesson. Is she wrong?

The Bible conveys consistent theological and moral truth over a period of several thousand years. It is not intended to be a historical account, or a modern "how to" pamphlet. Your argument would be effective if Veritate was a fundamentalist, but no one here is arguing that position; so it's basically a strawman.

"conveys consistent theological and moral truth" Dude, SLAVERY.

Has the Catholic Church always considered whole sections of the Old Testament to be open for interpretation. I'm seriously curious. Was the Church ever fundamentalist?

This criticism is no less absurd than complaining that Jesus failed to warn us about the dangers us Fascism and Communism. You don't understand the importance of Free Will, and assume that the actions of a divine being should be comprehensible to you; that's not very logical. You're holding religion to a ridiculous standard.

How is knowing about other geographical areas impacting free will. It's just stupid that Jesus can cure a guy of leprosy and the whole crowd goes "oooh! ahhhhh!" but he can't JUST ONCE tell them about the existence of germs.

Native Americans had their own religion, with a creation myth that's awfully similar to the account in Genesis. My common sense tells me that that's strong evidence for divine revelation, and that good Native Americans were probably finding salvation just fine before Columbus' disastrous arrival in the New World.

i can just picture it:

God: "Hey Moses, do you think we should send someone over to those Cherokee?"
Moses: "nahh, they'll probably find salvation just fine.."
God: "Right on."

Who are you to say they had no idea "what game they were in on"? Christian doctrine certainly doesn't hold that every "savage" who died before hearing the Word is beyond salvation.

The fact that those people weren't given an equal opportunity is appalling to me. It's that simple.

They claim that one can be a "good" person without any concept of objective moral truth at all. And that assertion is completely unsupported.

I'm not so sure about that.

 

[Buster Bluth]

So many spelling errors that I couldn't go back and fix and find if I had an hour haha

 

[koonja]

So many spelling errors that I couldn't go back and fix and find if I had an hour haha

You're really smart too.

 

[Cackalacky]

That's strong evidence in favor of revelation and objective truth.

Whiskey,
I think that convergent cultural evolution is a much more comprehensive explanation for why many cultures have similar dogmas and cultural structures.
On Memetics: Convergent cultural evolution
Cultural Evolution (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
It's is useful to think of it this way because it explains why humans developed similar methods to solve problems, similar linguistics and belief structures methods on how to transmit knowledge and history as well as maintain order in a complex society.

I am not going to mess with rest of your response as you know my feelings on morals.

 

[Buster Bluth]

I think I can boil it down:

I'm not jumping on the Christianity bandwagon because it apparently refuses to show itself to be anything out of the ordinary for fear of impacting free will. That's not good enough for me.

I think that Christianity is useless because you can reach objective moral truths without religion; Christianity says it proves god exists because there are objective moral truths in the first place. That's not good enough for me.

I think Christianity is a joke because of the endless abuses of power; Christianity, without breaking a sweat, brushes them off because that's not god. That's not good enough for me.

 

[dshans]

So many spelling errors that I couldn't go back and fix and find if I had an hour haha

Hire me. I charge a reasonable hourly rate.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Agreed, which tells me that being a good person doesn't require a god. With or without Christianity, cultures will learn to behave over time.

Right now, this is a simple statement of faith. We'll see how a secularized West fares in the long run.

You're going to have to be more specific for me.

Where are you getting this stuff? /r/athiesm, books written by Dawkins/ Hitchens/ etc, serious materialist philosophers? Because your posts are long on New Athiest sound bites, but short on philosophy, realistic alternatives, etc.

Was god doing god's will when he killed all of those innocent children in Egypt so the Jews could be freed, or is that one of those things up to interpretation?

Was every first-born Egyptian child truly killed by an angel at some point in history? I don't know. Since I'm not a Jew, whether or not the book of Exodus is literally true has little effect on my faith.

Is pointing out how Catholicism butchered nonbelievers in things like the Spanish Inquisition arguing against a caricature?

Sort of, because you have to treat the Church as a monolithic entity to make that statement. For instance, Pope Sixtus IV condemned the Spanish Inquisition, which was orchestrated by Spanish elites for mostly political reasons.

As you know, every church is flawed because they're all made up of fallible people-- Catholicism is no different. You believe that implies none of them are valid, because a "true" faith would spread like wildfire and be immune from error; but no earthly church can ever live up to that standard. You've essentially "proven" their invalidity by setting the bar impossibly high, based on nothing but your intuition that a real god would have figured out a way to abolish Free Will and make the Truth clear for everyone to see.

No god can be disproved.

Nor can His existence be proven through reason alone. So what are we doing?

I don't get this.

The fact that we, as humans, have a concept of the Divine, and that we frequently argue about it, militates more in favor of God's existence than against, which your argument seemed to imply.

Which shows me how un-supernatural (yay new word) they are.

It seems like you judge religion on the assumption that it's a top-down affair-- that churches should drop out of heaven fully formed, and a "true" church would be both perfect and unstoppable. No such church exists; ergo, no church is "true".

Reality's a lot messier; churches are built from the bottom up, by fallible humans, and are therefore bound to cultural, social and historical contexts. That doesn't disprove the supernatural any more than the existence of some skeptical climatologists disproves anthropogenic climate change. Whenever humans are involved, disagreement and error are unavoidable.

It simply isn't good enough for me. I regard the idea of not owning other people as an objective truth, which society discovered and god apparently did not.

Where does that objective truth come from? Regardless, there are a long list of ancient practices that modern liberals believe are inherently evil that the Bible is completely silent on. Slavery was a very common socio-political arrangement that was worse than some and better than others. It was possible to be a good Christian slave and a good Christian slave-owner.

It just shows me how not supernatural Christianity is. Much like a scientist would say "just show me one fossil in an age before it should be there and it'll prove evolution is false and that god is true!" I say that is Christianity were legitimate it would have promoted objective truths before society revealed them to itself. We have a Ten Commandments that laid down important laws and god missed slavery, you're using "salvation of individuals" as the excuse here. Like seriously, HOW THE HELL DOES THIS MAKE IT INTO THE BIBLE:

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

Don't brush it aside with "geez Buster know the context.." It's just grotesque.

Such was the ancient world. You seem to think the moral superiority of liberalism is self-evident, and since none of the major sacred texts described that complex set of political and cultural beliefs (which would have been unthinkable without Christianity, mind you), that proves that none of them was really divinely inspired. I'm not sure how to address your unshakable faith on this issue; needless to say, I'm much more skeptical about the moral implications of liberalism than you are.

Is that you Joseph Smith?!

Did I misread that bit of your previous post? You seem to think that Christian doctrine holds: (1) that only Christians can find salvation; (2) that peoples who haven't been evangelized are damned by circumstance; and (3) that whenever a "Christian" first travels to a pagan land, he must be "doing god's will". None of that is accurate.

I could follow a religion I don't understand if I trusted the religious organization, but I do not trust any religious organizations.

No one is asking you to trust any religious organization. But you may want to learn more about Christianity if you're going to devote a significant amount of energy to opposing it.

One led to the other in my life.

Really? Because the zeal with which you condemn Christianity strikes me as anything but humble.

It's not free will if I don't have a fucking clue what game I'm in on.

We were speaking of Native Americans, who had religions of their own; so they certainly understood that they were "in on a game", just as Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. do as well. And the Christian view is that while Truth is objective, sin is subjective, so each individual is judged fairly.

Much like the "show me a fossil where it doesn't belong," Christianity is just like the rest of them in that it spread via the sword--ironically the last way I think Jesus would opt to spread his thoughts.

Another bullshit New Athiest sound bite. Something like 7% of all wars ever fought have had "religion" as a major cause. Filter out Islam, and you get down to ~2%. The secular regimes of the 20th century have killed several orders of magnitude more people than religion ever has.

They certainly can, but don't go around claiming that the message comes from god if they all figure out that we should kill each other, etc.

Also it's a bit weird that they more or less reach objective morals truths but miss the part where when you encounter a member of another religion you shouldn't butcher them and conquer them, like we did for all of human history. "Same objective moral truths, fucking hate each other. Religions!"

Gross exaggeration.

You cannot claim the good without claiming the bad. But that is a good question for /r/askhistorians.

Why bother when I can ask the enlightened neckbeards in /r/athiesm?

I've spent enough time with elderly Christians to know it was very important to them. Queue the "actions of believers doesn't impact the truth of god."

Devastating anecdotal evidence, Buster.

Of course they see it as necessary, it's the perfect cop-out for every flaw in the story.

Cop out of what? Of Christianity's "failure" to liberalize the world in 313 AD?

He didn't point out a position. I said my bit because i could see the answer coming, which you said. I have no respect for a religion that endorsed slavery, for what it's worth.

I'm not asking you to respect a religion. I'm suggesting that you respect the individuals you're arguing with.

Where are the instructions for any of it? Where does it say what is fact and what isn't? If it told us what was fact and what wasn't before science got around to solving the question, I'd be impressed. It didn't.

It gave us a greater understanding of moral truth, which in turn led to liberalism and all those social advances that you take for granted. And now you can't wait to kick aside the ladder that allowed us to climb to our current heights.

I was specifically taught in high school my Sr. Mary Carroll that every word of the Bible was translated perfectly whether it was historical fact or merely a lesson. Is she wrong?

Yes, she's wrong.

Has the Catholic Church always considered whole sections of the Old Testament to be open for interpretation. I'm seriously curious. Was the Church ever fundamentalist?

Yes. And no. Thus, the Protestant Reformation.

How is knowing about other geographical areas impacting free will. It's just stupid that Jesus can cure a guy of leprosy and the whole crowd goes "oooh! ahhhhh!" but he can't JUST ONCE tell them about the existence of germs.

Again, in a typically materialist mindset, you assume that a benevolent deity would focus on improving health and wealth outcomes here on earth. That's not the aim of Christianity, and due to our fallen nature, we will never be able to rebuild Eden. But you believe in a lot of stuff (the Myth of Progress, the End of History, etc.) that isn't compatible with a Catholic worldview, so I'm not surprised you don't buy it.

God: "Hey Moses, do you think we should send someone over to those Cherokee?"
Moses: "nahh, they'll probably find salvation just fine.."
God: "Right on."

The fact that those people weren't given an equal opportunity is appalling to me. It's that simple.

Again, how do you know those people didn't receive an equal opportunity to reach Heaven? Sin is subjective; since their moral formation was presumably less complete than modern Christians, they were judged accordingly. Where's the injustice there?

I'm not so sure about that.

It is completed unsupported. And if you think otherwise, feel free to point me toward some evidence that the social advances achieved by Western civilization since the Enlightenment are sustainable without a shared framework of Christian morality. Since the New Athiests are utterly convinced that we'll all be so much better off without "silly superstitions", I would hope you can do better than "I'm not so sure about that."

I'm not jumping on the Christianity bandwagon because it apparently refuses to show itself to be anything out of the ordinary for fear of impacting free will. That's not good enough for me.

Christianity provided the moral foundation for modern liberalism, which you seem to be very fond of. That means nothing to you?

I think that Christianity is useless because you can reach objective moral truths without religion; Christianity says it proves god exists because there are objective moral truths in the first place. That's not good enough for me.

I'd love to read your thoughts on: (1) what those objective truths are; (2) where they come from; and (3) how humans discover them. As I mentioned many times in the previous God thread, as soon as you appeal to any sort of objective truth, you're no longer a materialist/ naturalist. What you've typed above sounds much more Deist to me.

I think Christianity is a joke because of the endless abuses of power; Christianity, without breaking a sweat, brushes them off because that's not god. That's not good enough for me.

Abuses of power are inevitable whenever humans are involved. Where are you going to place your faith instead?

 

[IrishMoore1]

For once I actually agree with Buster. I find it very difficult to trust organized religions. Just looking at the long history of the church or even recent history of all the hypocrisies, wars, and ill obtained control over people is reason enough. How can a flawed, imperfect organization expect me to believe a book that was written 2000 years ago by different authors/politicians?

I've read the Bible all the way through and studied scripture. Went through catholic high school and college (ND). I've read C.S. Lewis and many other christian apologist arguments, and it still doesn't add up. There is a deep conflict between what I know of the real world through science and personal experience and what the Bible teaches. Outside of putting complete, incontrovertible faith in the words that man wrote, it seems to me that there is little to no evidence of God's existence. When pondering the probability, the existence of a complex supernatural being is even less likely.

We are all atheist with respect to other religions. I'm sure most of you don't believe in Zeus, Baal, Krishna, or Thor. Why not take it one god further? If I had been born in the middle east instead of Arizona, I would almost certainly be Muslim and believe in it just as strongly as I would if I were born into a Christian family in the U.S. If you picked up the Quran and read it all the way through, you would probably say that it was interesting, it would be ridiculous to actually believe in it.

By the way if you want to label me anything, it would best be described as agnostic.

 

[irishog77]

Neckbeards! Ha!