The god Allah, like Jesus, is also an offshoot of the Jewish god Yahweh, and shares the main attributes and myths (with some minor modifications).

Thus "Abrohamic" (or "Abrahamic", but that spelling ain't as cool) can be used to denote the three main religions that sprout from Abraham's covenant with the god Yahweh - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Actually the Jewish Yahweh doesn't really have Heaven or Hell, just a promise of eternal life for believers when the messiah (finally) turns up, it's only after gentle Jesus meek and mild brings his "good news" that you get eternal punishment for the unbelieving dead, so the line about Hell only applies to Allah and Jesus.

All three are apparently fine with ocular tumours for infants, though.

Evil & Chaos wrote:

E&C, I am really interested in the proofs of your statements about the Mormons and Joseph Smith, Jr.
It would be interesting to have concrete facts to back the claims.

I've already given references in this thread, in particular a reference to his conviction for "glass looking" (a crime of fraud that involves looking into crystals and pretending to know mystical truths revealed therein - which just so happens to be the method he used to "divine" the truths of Mormonism years later).
... .

Then E & C, it should be no trouble at all to give me links to what you said then since you know exactly where in this mess you posted them since they are your own postings.
I did not see these references the first time through, they would have stood out for me since I need them.
Since they are so sure to be condemning, you should not be sad to re-post them here clear on the 21st page where all can see them clearly again.
Right E & C?

Now E & C, these references are not some "he said, he said" bits of junk, are they?
Heresay proves nothing and helps me not at all.
If ol' Joe Smith was convicted of something, you have the references to the legal bits, right?
I need concrete proof, not just some bit from some odd anti-Mormon pamphlet.
Proofs I can go to and get actual copies of primary documents from reputable sources E & C.
That is what I NEED!

Evil & Chaos wrote:
...
What need would a merciful deity have of a hell?
And why withhold evidence of its existence if a simple manifestation in the age of cameras would instantly convert everyone (why choose illiterate Bronze Age Palestinian desert for your revelations, if you have all of time and geography to choose from?).
Why, if nothing can happen that is contrary to your Will, do you allow babies to be born with (and soon die of) painful eye cancer?
What kind of omnipowerful, omnipresent evil schmuck does those kinds of things?

To put people who committed horrible acts upon humanity into.
That is what hell is for.
Or do you believe that "God" should throw out all His law and common sense as well, forgive people like this and let them join all the rest of mankind in some sort of heaven or elysium?
Seriously man, are you one of those who believe in no consequences for anything we do?

Proofs that can convert everyone in this age?
You are kidding right?
Have you read scripture at all E & C?
How many folks that had Christ right there that denied Him and His teachings?
How many that saw the miracles of Jehovah that denied Him deity?
In this day of Photoshop accusations and so forth, how fast would His miracles be turned to only hoaxes by the people He is here to save.
How many hundreds, if not thousands, of miracles would it take to convert all?
Is there even a number that would or could?
Is He supposed to force you or enslave you to believe?

Nothing can happen contrary to the will of God, E & C?
Who exactly are you listening to as to what is God's will for man?
Is He supposed to be out saving folks from themselves?

I guess E & C, you want a deity that saves people from the natural and earned consequences of their own actions, that defies nature every time you ask Him to and does not respect any of us as individuals or the choices we make?
What is this earthen existence supposed to be in your view E & C?
A no-stings vacation?
A toddler's play date?

BTW E & C, I believe that Book says that he started at the beginning of the world, not with the Jews.
Theirs just happens to be the written record that folks have gotten a hold of.
Everything we record on can be destroyed; otherwise, how could you record on it?
Do you have access to records that claim to be older that validly disprove or correct the Israelite account?

Gee E & C, I wonder what things we could be reading right now if the Library at Alexandria had not been destroyed?
Bible supposed to be older and younger than the creme of Greek theatre; how much of that body of work do we not have?

Seriously E & C, some of your demands seem to be just a bit long on the demand part and really short on the paying attention part of the equation..
Plus, you make some really illogical demands on deity to suit what purpose?
Do not mean to be annoying, but you really seem short and shy on the "why"s & "wherefore"s part of the issue that the philosophy classes I went to demanded.
Would you please point out how you are not?
Thank you.
I will really appreciate it.

 DouglasJB wrote:

Evil & Chaos wrote:

E&C, I am really interested in the proofs of your statements about the Mormons and Joseph Smith, Jr.
It would be interesting to have concrete facts to back the claims.

I've already given references in this thread, in particular a reference to his conviction for "glass looking" (a crime of fraud that involves looking into crystals and pretending to know mystical truths revealed therein - which just so happens to be the method he used to "divine" the truths of Mormonism years later).
... .

Then E & C, it should be no trouble at all to give me links to what you said then since you know exactly where in this mess you posted them since they are your own postings.

Here's a good overview for you of the entire case, plus some of the surrounding hoaxes, forgeries etc. conducted by Mormons interested in obfuscating the truth: http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no68.htm
Here's an overview of the publishers of that particular website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerald_and_Sandra_Tanner

Plenty of other resources available of course, they're just the number #1 hit on google on the topic.

I did not see these references the first time through, they would have stood out for me since I need them.

I posted a copy of Smith's court appearance document naming him as a "glass looker" amongst other things. Perhaps you didn't see that.

Now E & C, these references are not some "he said, he said" bits of junk, are they?

Nope, they are official court documents that show Smith was arrested, charged, and convicted with the crime of "glass looking" in his younger days (long before he "revealed" mormonism).

Heresay proves nothing and helps me not at all.
If ol' Joe Smith was convicted of something, you have the references to the legal bits, right?
I need concrete proof, not just some bit from some odd anti-Mormon pamphlet.
Proofs I can go to and get actual copies of primary documents from reputable sources E & C.
That is what I NEED!

Well, I'd say that's what you've gotten.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
...
What need would a merciful deity have of a hell?
And why withhold evidence of its existence if a simple manifestation in the age of cameras would instantly convert everyone (why choose illiterate Bronze Age Palestinian desert for your revelations, if you have all of time and geography to choose from?).
Why, if nothing can happen that is contrary to your Will, do you allow babies to be born with (and soon die of) painful eye cancer?
What kind of omnipowerful, omnipresent evil schmuck does those kinds of things?

To put people who committed horrible acts upon humanity into.
That is what hell is for.

The Bible says you go to hell for the crimes of... not believing in Jesus, and not repenting of sins. That's it.
Not earthly actions or actual sins committed (described as earthly "works" in most translations), but belief in Jesus, and repentance.

Under Christian theology, we are all born with original sin, we are all born already guilty enough to go to Hell, regardless of the other sins we may commit in life, only acceptance of Jesus as our personal saviour can remove our sins and allow us to enter Heaven.

The Qur'an is broadly the same - it's belief or otherwise in Allah that sends you to hell, your actions in life are distant secondary considerations.

Or do you believe that "God" should throw out all His law and common sense as well, forgive people like this and let them join all the rest of mankind in some sort of heaven or elysium?
Seriously man, are you one of those who believe in no consequences for anything we do?

This is the setup the Bible gives us:

- God is Love.
- God creates Earth, Heaven and Hell
- God sets the criteria by which the dead go to Heaven (belief in Jesus, plus repentance for all our sins, including the sin of allowing Eve to eat a forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden) or Hell (non-belief in Jesus).
- God fails to tell humankind about the existence of Heaven and Hell for the first 200,000 years of humanity's existence.
- God then sets out to provide evidence of his existence, by sending some prophets to the most illiterate and warlike parts of the bronze age middle east.
- God then decides to fix things once and for all, and the best way he can think of doing it is to torture himself to death in illiterate iron age Palestine, and inspire a set of four self-contradictory books to be written about his suicide 200 years later.

That is not a self-consistent set of behaviours to me. That's not a God of Love.
That is, in fact, the behaviour of a god who barely cares at all about the eternal fate of his creations.

- Islam also adds a coda where God gives visions of truth (not to mention a pet winged horse) to an epileptic illiterate warlord named Mohammad.
- Mormonism also adds a coda where God gives visions of truth to a convicted conman named Jospeh Smith Jnr.

Proofs that can convert everyone in this age?
You are kidding right?
Have you read scripture at all E & C?

I've read the Bible, the New Testament, chunks of Talmud, the Qur'an, some Hadith, various Buddhist texts, and I'm starting on the Gita.
I considered reading the Book of Mormon, but I prefer the ancient myths, they're more fun.
What have you read?

How many folks that had Christ right there that denied Him and His teachings?
How many that saw the miracles of Jehovah that denied Him deity?
In this day of Photoshop accusations and so forth, how fast would His miracles be turned to only hoaxes by the people He is here to save.
How many hundreds, if not thousands, of miracles would it take to convert all?

If God knows everything, and can do anything, (both common claims about Jesus) then he knows the single thing he could do that would convert everybody and save everybody from Hell.

Is He supposed to force you or enslave you to believe?

If god was even vaguely concerned about the eternal painful suffering of billions, he'd reveal himself in a credible manner (not to a preacher in pre-literate desert, in other words).

Nothing can happen contrary to the will of God, E & C?

By definition, nothing can happen contrary to the will of a being that knows everything and can do anything.
Because that being knows everything, and can choose to stop anything it doesn't want to happen, then anything that does happen, happens because that being chose to allow it to happen.

Who exactly are you listening to as to what is God's will for man?

All those preachers who tell me they know exactly who created the universe, what that being wants us to believe, how that being wants us to live our lives, who that being wants us to marry, etc.
You can't claim to know all those things about the will of a deity, and then say you don't know anything about a deity's will. It's inconsistent.

Is He supposed to be out saving folks from themselves?

He's supposed to be "Love".
"Love" doesn't equate to torturing people with fire for all eternity because of the monstrous crime of... not believing in the divinity of what appears to be a bunch of myths written down hundreds of years after all the alleged participants in those myths died.

I guess E & C, you want a deity that saves people from the natural and earned consequences of their own actions, that defies nature every time you ask Him to and does not respect any of us as individuals or the choices we make?

I'd be happier just with a deity that was described in an even vaguely self-consistent manner.

I find Allah to be more self-consistent than Jesus, by the way.
Not any more credible, but at least a bit more self-consistent.

What is this earthen existence supposed to be in your view E & C?
A no-stings vacation?
A toddler's play date?

I don't believe in any Gods, so I don't ascribe any purpose to existence other than what we as human free agents give to it.

BTW E & C, I believe that Book says that he started at the beginning of the world, not with the Jews.
Theirs just happens to be the written record that folks have gotten a hold of.
Everything we record on can be destroyed; otherwise, how could you record on it?
Do you have access to records that claim to be older that validly disprove or correct the Israelite account?

Well the ancient Babylonian myth of Gilgamesh the King contains an account of a Great Flood.
That predates early Hebraic texts.
What's interesting, is that before the Hebrews were present in Babylon, Hebraic texts contain no account of a Great Flood.
After they had been present in Babylon, Hebraic texts contain the Great Flood myth.

So what we have there, is a visible cross-pollination of mythology, that indicates the Israelitish account of history changed over time, based on their interaction with other cultures.
There are other examples - Moses' birth story is suspiciously close to another ancient myth, even the Jesus myth shares common ground with the myth of Mithras.

Needless to say, we have sufficient scientific archeological and geological evidence to say with confidence that the Great Flood did not happen, that the Jews were never slaves in Egypt, that the Exodus from Egypt did not happen, that thousands of dead bodies did not rise from their graves and wander the streets of Jerusalem when Jesus was crucified, etc.

Gee E & C, I wonder what things we could be reading right now if the Library at Alexandria had not been destroyed?
Bible supposed to be older and younger than the creme of Greek theatre; how much of that body of work do we not have?

Your point is a non-sequitur.

Seriously E & C, some of your demands seem to be just a bit long on the demand part and really short on the paying attention part of the equation..

At the core, I only make one demand: I will only believe that which has credible evidence.

Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence, and the deistic claims can't even provide self-consistent ordinary evidence, let alone extra-ordinary evidence.

Plus, you make some really illogical demands on deity to suit what purpose?
Do not mean to be annoying, but you really seem short and shy on the "why"s & "wherefore"s part of the issue that the philosophy classes I went to demanded.
Would you please point out how you are not?

I am a rationalist.
An existentialist.

I have no reason to believe in ghosts, until I see credible evidence of ghosts.
I have no reason to believe in magic, until I see credible evidence of magic.
I have no reason to believe in gods, until I see credible evidence of gods.

It does not matter that people tell me their gods will burn me for eternity if I ignore their claims, if there's no credible evidence for their claims, their claims may be dismissed just as easily as a man who has been convicted of pretending to have magic powers, who dictates a religion whilst he has his head face-down in a hat.

I'd have to say that an omnipotent Creator of Everything probably wouldn't be all that interested in the moral behavior of a single organism huddled on one out of trillions of planets in countless galaxies.

Honestly people should refrain from killing/stealing/etc based on their own morals rather than doing it because they expect a reward or fear a punishment at the end of their life. If we were good and honest to one another for no other reason than because it was the right thing to do, and left Deities out of it altogether, earth would be a much more pleasant place.

 Badablack wrote:
I'd have to say that an omnipotent Creator of Everything probably wouldn't be all that interested in the moral behavior of a single organism huddled on one out of trillions of planets in countless galaxies.

Honestly people should refrain from killing/stealing/etc based on their own morals rather than doing it because they expect a reward or fear a punishment at the end of their life. If we were good and honest to one another for no other reason than because it was the right thing to do, and left Deities out of it altogether, earth would be a much more pleasant place.

Frankly even without deities earth would be a messed up place regardless thanks to inherent human nature and our tendency to screw over anything in our path. Look at arguably the 1st two bloodiest wars in recent history with WW1 and WW2. They occurred largely for secular reasons and there was massive slaughter on a scale never seen before from both sides over pointless reasons of nationalism (and other non-religious isms in the case of World War 2) and warmongering. Not much to do with deities here and we're doing a great job blowing each other up.

Also secularization hasn't changed the fact that crimes and killing continues to occur, it just is hidden (or sometimes not at all) from the public eye under the falsity of legitimate businesses for organized crime and corruption flourishes regardless if there's a secular regime or a religious one.

Also by applying our own moral values with no relative objectivity we can not only bend our moral values to suit our needs which shows our inherent hypocrisy (and untrustworthiness regardless of religious values so just being "good and honest" doesn't really work out that well) but it means that morally you can't object to what I do that you may find offensive or "wrong", you can disagree but there's no moral basis that yours are better than mine. It just makes it based on a social contract that can be again corrupted by whichever group's ideas/beliefs is dominant and in power.

Needless to say I really disagree with the idea that a world without religion would make it any better.

And I don't think a primordial creator can be moved to care about the collective well being of seven billion souls, given the vast scale of the cosmos, and the fact that we are a very common insignificant speck toward the edges of a very ordinary galaxy among a sea of galaxies. We can expect.... What was it, 12 or 24 or something other intelligent civilizations to currently exist in space faring capacity at this time. Who knows how many came before us, and how many more will come after.... This Ian's about belief, this is about statistical probability, and our specialness is shrinking every day. I find it more frustrating that we most likely will never engage in the opportunity to interact with ETs from another civilization, irrespective of how our technology improves. It still takes 45 minutes to communicate with mars on a good day, I just don't see iton the cards for interstellar empires or interactions. In that sense, is It the sign of a benevolent creator to construct a habitation space in such a hazardous and remote manner so as to render the habitants prisoners?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit/addendum:
Stop referring to 1st and 2nd world wars. There are far far far bloodier conflicts, ie 30 years war and 100 years war. I'm not up to date on north American pre-european societal conflicts, but I recall reading those also being damnably devastating. Yes, mechanized warfare facilitated the speed at which slaughter could occur, the trouble was you didn't have armies sacking towns wholesale and murdering all of the inhabitants.

 poda_t wrote:
And I don't think a primordial creator can be moved to care about the collective well being of seven billion souls, given the vast scale of the cosmos, and the fact that we are a very common insignificant speck toward the edges of a very ordinary galaxy among a sea of galaxies. We can expect.... What was it, 12 or 24 or something other intelligent civilizations to currently exist in space faring capacity at this time. Who knows how many came before us, and how many more will come after.... This Ian's about belief, this is about statistical probability, and our specialness is shrinking every day. I find it more frustrating that we most likely will never engage in the opportunity to interact with ETs from another civilization, irrespective of how our technology improves. It still takes 45 minutes to communicate with mars on a good day, I just don't see iton the cards for interstellar empires or interactions. In that sense, is It the sign of a benevolent creator to construct a habitation space in such a hazardous and remote manner so as to render the habitants prisoners?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit/addendum:
Stop referring to 1st and 2nd world wars. There are far far far bloodier conflicts, ie 30 years war and 100 years war. I'm not up to date on north American pre-european societal conflicts, but I recall reading those also being damnably devastating. Yes, mechanized warfare facilitated the speed at which slaughter could occur, the trouble was you didn't have armies sacking towns wholesale and murdering all of the inhabitants.

Why exactly should we ignore those wars? How are they in any way less relevant? Especially given the context that it shows that religion is not the only deciding factor in why humans are stupid enough to keep killing one another for trivial reasons. Also about it though in comparison with time frame, those wars took decades compared to the mere years needed to inflict damage still short of the 1st and second world war in terms of sheer casualties and infrastructural damage. That's not including the deaths perpetrated by their own secular governments over the murder of Jews with the Holocaust from the Nazis and the purges and widespread deaths caused by the policies of the Soviet regime. Also the fact that technology HELPED rather than prevented this mass-scale warfare of death demonstrates any ideas of human progress and advancement through technology as folly given that the mass industrialization and gradual secularization of the Western world hasn't changed many of the inherent social issues in society and simply replaced them with other more insidious and underlying problems. There's still inequality between classes and poverty (that's becoming increasingly pronounced) and even the area of secular medicine is increasingly profit-based with pharmaceuticals (who can generally afford the best health care? the rich people).

And seriously? How are armies sacking towns and murdering them all not still there in some sense during the 1st and second world wars? Have you not heard of the Rape of Nanking? Nor the copious amount of war crimes perpetrated by the Soviet Red Army as they marched into German territory culminating in Berlin with the amount of mass rape and killing that occurred with their counterattack against the Germans?

 Grimskul wrote:

 poda_t wrote:
And I don't think a primordial creator can be moved to care about the collective well being of seven billion souls, given the vast scale of the cosmos, and the fact that we are a very common insignificant speck toward the edges of a very ordinary galaxy among a sea of galaxies. We can expect.... What was it, 12 or 24 or something other intelligent civilizations to currently exist in space faring capacity at this time. Who knows how many came before us, and how many more will come after.... This Ian's about belief, this is about statistical probability, and our specialness is shrinking every day. I find it more frustrating that we most likely will never engage in the opportunity to interact with ETs from another civilization, irrespective of how our technology improves. It still takes 45 minutes to communicate with mars on a good day, I just don't see iton the cards for interstellar empires or interactions. In that sense, is It the sign of a benevolent creator to construct a habitation space in such a hazardous and remote manner so as to render the habitants prisoners?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit/addendum:
Stop referring to 1st and 2nd world wars. There are far far far bloodier conflicts, ie 30 years war and 100 years war. I'm not up to date on north American pre-european societal conflicts, but I recall reading those also being damnably devastating. Yes, mechanized warfare facilitated the speed at which slaughter could occur, the trouble was you didn't have armies sacking towns wholesale and murdering all of the inhabitants.

Why exactly should we ignore those wars? How are they in any way less relevant? Especially given the context that it shows that religion is not the only deciding factor in why humans are stupid enough to keep killing one another for trivial reasons. Also about it though in comparison with time frame, those wars took decades compared to the mere years needed to inflict damage still short of the 1st and second world war in terms of sheer casualties and infrastructural damage. That's not including the deaths perpetrated by their own secular governments over the murder of Jews with the Holocaust from the Nazis and the purges and widespread deaths caused by the policies of the Soviet regime. Also the fact that technology HELPED rather than prevented this mass-scale warfare of death demonstrates any ideas of human progress and advancement through technology as folly given that the mass industrialization and gradual secularization of the Western world hasn't changed many of the inherent social issues in society and simply replaced them with other more insidious and underlying problems. There's still inequality between classes and poverty (that's becoming increasingly pronounced) and even the area of secular medicine is increasingly profit-based with pharmaceuticals (who can generally afford the best health care? the rich people).

And seriously? How are armies sacking towns and murdering them all not still there in some sense during the 1st and second world wars? Have you not heard of the Rape of Nanking? Nor the copious amount of war crimes perpetrated by the Soviet Red Army as they marched into German territory culminating in Berlin with the amount of mass rape and killing that occurred with their counterattack against the Germans?

i have, and appreciate the truth of your statements, but if it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to steer clear of Godwin's law.

 poda_t wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:

 poda_t wrote:
And I don't think a primordial creator can be moved to care about the collective well being of seven billion souls, given the vast scale of the cosmos, and the fact that we are a very common insignificant speck toward the edges of a very ordinary galaxy among a sea of galaxies. We can expect.... What was it, 12 or 24 or something other intelligent civilizations to currently exist in space faring capacity at this time. Who knows how many came before us, and how many more will come after.... This Ian's about belief, this is about statistical probability, and our specialness is shrinking every day. I find it more frustrating that we most likely will never engage in the opportunity to interact with ETs from another civilization, irrespective of how our technology improves. It still takes 45 minutes to communicate with mars on a good day, I just don't see iton the cards for interstellar empires or interactions. In that sense, is It the sign of a benevolent creator to construct a habitation space in such a hazardous and remote manner so as to render the habitants prisoners?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit/addendum:
Stop referring to 1st and 2nd world wars. There are far far far bloodier conflicts, ie 30 years war and 100 years war. I'm not up to date on north American pre-european societal conflicts, but I recall reading those also being damnably devastating. Yes, mechanized warfare facilitated the speed at which slaughter could occur, the trouble was you didn't have armies sacking towns wholesale and murdering all of the inhabitants.

Why exactly should we ignore those wars? How are they in any way less relevant? Especially given the context that it shows that religion is not the only deciding factor in why humans are stupid enough to keep killing one another for trivial reasons. Also about it though in comparison with time frame, those wars took decades compared to the mere years needed to inflict damage still short of the 1st and second world war in terms of sheer casualties and infrastructural damage. That's not including the deaths perpetrated by their own secular governments over the murder of Jews with the Holocaust from the Nazis and the purges and widespread deaths caused by the policies of the Soviet regime. Also the fact that technology HELPED rather than prevented this mass-scale warfare of death demonstrates any ideas of human progress and advancement through technology as folly given that the mass industrialization and gradual secularization of the Western world hasn't changed many of the inherent social issues in society and simply replaced them with other more insidious and underlying problems. There's still inequality between classes and poverty (that's becoming increasingly pronounced) and even the area of secular medicine is increasingly profit-based with pharmaceuticals (who can generally afford the best health care? the rich people).

And seriously? How are armies sacking towns and murdering them all not still there in some sense during the 1st and second world wars? Have you not heard of the Rape of Nanking? Nor the copious amount of war crimes perpetrated by the Soviet Red Army as they marched into German territory culminating in Berlin with the amount of mass rape and killing that occurred with their counterattack against the Germans?

i have, and appreciate the truth of your statements, but if it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to steer clear of Godwin's law.

Fair enough, I'll stick to communists for now then...but no promises! A Death Korps of Krieg grenadier may walk in and blow out the roof of this discussion!

 Grimskul wrote:
Frankly even without deities earth would be a messed up place regardless thanks to inherent human nature and our tendency to screw over anything in our path. Look at arguably the 1st two bloodiest wars in recent history with WW1 and WW2. They occurred largely for secular reasons and there was massive slaughter on a scale never seen before from both sides over pointless reasons of nationalism (and other non-religious isms in the case of World War 2) and warmongering. Not much to do with deities here and we're doing a great job blowing each other up.

World War I was indeed a broadly secular conflict.

But World War II?
- Christian Hitler sets out to exterminate Jews because of their religion.
- The head of the Japanese Government was regarded by his subjects as a literal living God.

I think you'd struggle to say there were no religious motivations on display there.

Also secularization hasn't changed the fact that crimes and killing continues to occur, it just is hidden (or sometimes not at all) from the public eye under the falsity of legitimate businesses for organized crime and corruption flourishes regardless if there's a secular regime or a religious one.

Actually, research shows that the most secular societies in the modern world, are also the most peaceful and least corrupt.
The most religious societies demonstrate the converse.

http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2009/06/atheist-nations-are-more-peaceful.html
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201103/misinformation-and-facts-about-secularism-and-religion

Also by applying our own moral values with no relative objectivity we can not only bend our moral values to suit our needs which shows our inherent hypocrisy (and untrustworthiness regardless of religious values so just being "good and honest" doesn't really work out that well) but it means that morally you can't object to what I do that you may find offensive or "wrong", you can disagree but there's no moral basis that yours are better than mine.

Your moral code (The Ten Commandments) refers to slavery (in the 10th commandment, it says "do not covet your neighbour's male or female slaves"), and in the very next chapter of Exodus after the 10th commandment is given, God relates how to capture slaves from amongst your enemies, how much to pay for them when you buy and sell them (women are worth half as much according to your God), and who inherits your slaves when you die (they are divided amongst your children).

I'm sorry, but my moral code is a lot better than that.
My moral code is based on rational situational ethics (not moral relativism as you assert, which to clarify is idea that whatever the majority of a society believes to be moral is de-facto moral, in case you don't fully understand what you're asserting), and not the morality of bronze age slave-taking barbarians.

It just makes it based on a social contract that can be again corrupted by whichever group's ideas/beliefs is dominant and in power.

That's moral relativism, which I do not ascribe to.

Needless to say I really disagree with the idea that a world without religion would make it any better.

Right now the middle-east is riven with a huge civil war between millions of Sunni and Shia Muslims, solely on the basis of who should be the true successor to their prophet Mohammad.
I think the world would be better off without that civil war.

I highly recommend watching this short lecture, entitled "The superiority of secular morality" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq2C7fyVTA4
If you don't have time for the full talk, just listen to his closing statement @ 25 minutes

If you find that interesting, and want to attempt to refute the points raised, I'd also encourage you to watch this longer version of the same talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXrML7zeY1w&list=PL4119AEC250E7777E

Have an exalt dude, that was an awesome read.

Thanks dude, I appreciate that my words were appreciated. :-)

Evil & Chaos wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
Frankly even without deities earth would be a messed up place regardless thanks to inherent human nature and our tendency to screw over anything in our path. Look at arguably the 1st two bloodiest wars in recent history with WW1 and WW2. They occurred largely for secular reasons and there was massive slaughter on a scale never seen before from both sides over pointless reasons of nationalism (and other non-religious isms in the case of World War 2) and warmongering. Not much to do with deities here and we're doing a great job blowing each other up.

World War I was indeed a broadly secular conflict.

But World War II?
- Christian Hitler sets out to exterminate Jews because of their religion.
- The head of the Japanese Government was regarded by his subjects as a literal living God.

I think you'd struggle to say there were no religious motivations on display there.

The Emperor is still considered a divine entity. However Japanese nationalism during WW2 was while racially colored, mostly secular in nature, the drive to conquer the Pacific was very similar to Hitler's own demand for "Living Space" for the German people. Japan is a relatively resource poor island nation, expanding Japanese territory via conquest seemed an adroit solution to those problems to increase Japan's standing as a global power.

Also Hitler wasn't a Christian.

In the final analysis religion is not a motivation for war, but rather an excuse for war and a means by which to control one's population. Witness the Crusades, it's all about controlling trade roots, population pressure and of course preventing the "second sons" of the dedicated warrior class who at the time stood to inherit nothing in Europe from tearing up the local country side.

The Emperor is still considered a divine entity.

Yes. Yes he was. A Living God.

To just assume that had no bearing on the conduct and attitude of the Japanese nation / armed forces is too easy for my tastes.

Hitler wasn't a Christian.

“I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty
Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work.” - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a
fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded
by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and
summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest
not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian
and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord
at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the
Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight
against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with
deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact
that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As
a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have
the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is
anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is
the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty
to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and
work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only
for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning
and see these men standing in their queues and look into their
pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very
devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two
thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people
are plundered and exposed.” - Adolph Hitler, Speech in Munich in 1922, in response to an opponent who stated he could not be anti-semitic due to his Christianity.

“I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of
the Almighty Creator.” - Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

“This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the
practical existence of a religious belief.” - Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

“And the founder of Christianity made no secret indeed of his
estimation of the Jewish people. When He found it necessary, He drove
those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God.” - Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

“Catholics and Protestants are fighting with one another… while the
enemy of Aryan humanity and all Christendom is laughing up his sleeve.” - Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

“I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so” - Adolph Hitler, letter to to General Gerhard Engel, 1941

“Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy
enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an
overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted
to live at this time.” - Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf


“The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral
purification of our public life, are creating and securing the
conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life”
- Adolph Hitler, speech to the Reichstag, 1933


“The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost
duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It
will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation
has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our
national morality, and the family as the basis of national life….”
- Adolph Hitler, speech in Berlin, 1933


The first international treaty he made when coming to power was not with another country, but with The Pope.

When his armies marched to war, they did so with "God On Our Side" stamped on their belt buckles.


I can find hundreds of more quotes from Hitler expressing admiration for Jesus, his Christian faith, etc, but I trust that's not going to be necessary.

In the final analysis religion is not a motivation for war, but rather an excuse for war and a means by which to control one's population.

I'll agree that that is often the case, albeit adding religion to the mix is often the catalyst that makes the war possible in the first place (the Crusades couldn't have happened if there was no religious motivation to whip the populations into a belligerent frenzy in the first place).

And some wars do occur mostly or even solely due to religion, and broadly lack secular impetus.

The Vatican is another country.

Hitler was a powerful orator and a master manipulator, much as now, you say what you need to get votes and sway the masses, then work your own agenda as you want.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/weekinreview/word-for-word-case-against-nazis-hitler-s-forces-planned-destroy-german.html

Hitler himself is considered a deist at best by historians.

The Wiki article on this is quite good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/weekinreview/word-for-word-case-against-nazis-hitler-s-forces-planned-destroy-german.html

I don't disagree that Hitler's view of Christianity was different to that of the mainstream Church, and that he wanted to subsume and divert its emphases more towards his own personal interpretation of the Bible. Or that he sought to undertake that transformation by imprisoning dissenting priests.

That doesn't make Hitler not a Christian, unless you're going to call the Anglican Church not a Christian Church because it holds to a different interpretation of the Bible than the Catholic Church.

Hitler himself is considered a deist at best by historians.

Some historians, by no means all.

There's some room for debate, but when the evidence for Hitler being a Christian is available in many speeches and books, in his actions and the actions of Germany, and the evidence against is exclusively (and often mutually contradictory) personal accounts (often from parties testifying at post-war trials, who would have an obvious self-interest in disassociating themselves from Hitler), I'm inclined to say that he clove to a Christian worldview, if not a strictly (dogmatic) Catholic one.

I dunno, multiple quotes attributing Christianity as a religion fit for slaves and his mass prosecution of the Catholic Church makes his world view pretty clear to me. The man was a master manipulator and an expert at duping people. That his propaganda and deceit is still fooling people in this day and age is impressive, but frankly I see your view on the matter as a case of confirmation bias.

I dunno, multiple quotes attributing Christianity as a religion fit for slaves

Quotes and source attributions, please.

I know he certainly held that opinion about certain interpretations / sects of Christianity.

...and his mass prosecution of the Catholic Church makes his world view pretty clear to me.

His treatment of many Catholic clergy does not affect his basic allegiance to his personal interpretation of Christianity.
Indeed it is consistent with it - he was trying to re-form the Church according to the nature he felt it should have, by weeding out dissenting voices.

He was rather successful at that, I'd say, considering the Catholic Churches in Germany held prayers for Hitler's good health on his birthday every year throughout the war, on the orders of the senior clergy.

Alan Bullock; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny;

Laurence Rees; The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler; Ebury Press; 2012

Are excellent places to start and contain all the information you seem to be denying so vigorously. In the end though you'll never see you're being shammed just as much of the German people were, because you are buying what Hitler wanted his people too because it confirms your view of Hitler as a crazed Christian psychopath.

Same deal with the Japanese, they were a brutal, expansionist military dictatorship in WW2. No need for religion involved.

Are excellent places to start and contain all the information you seem to be denying so vigorously.

I'm not denying, I'm putting forth what I believe, based on information I have available right now.

It would have been better if you'd have supplied actual quotes or arguments, rather than names of books I don't own.

I can note that Wikipedia says that Bullock changed his views somewhat after writing his book, later saying Hitler was more motivated by ideology than his book originally claimed. What affect that may have on the claims of his book, I can only speculate.

In the end though you'll never see you're being shammed just as much of the German people were, because you are buying what Hitler wanted his people too because it confirms your view of Hitler as a crazed Christian psychopath.

Same deal with the Japanese, they were a brutal, expansionist military dictatorship in WW2. No need for religion involved.

What you're doing here is called "strawmanning the argument", setting up a false version of my opinion and then knocking it down.

I didn't say that religion was the only factor, or even the prime factor in most wars. I said it was undeniably a major factor (a potential catalyst element without which wars might not occur, or might not occur to the same depths of depravity).

Ideology and religion aren't the same thing though. Nazism itself is a secular ideology.

and no I would still disagree, all wars are about power, religion is an excuse, not a motivation.

Nazism itself is a secular ideology.

I would contend that German Nazism was not secular, in the same way that, I don't know, the USA's "Tea Party" movement is not secular.
It has a secular manifesto, but is driven by a particular social worldview, and that worldview itself is (in a considerable degree) as a result of a particular religious movement.

Was religion the only motivator for Nazism?
No, just as religion is not the only motivator for the Tea Party.
But it is an inextricable element of it.

Some branches of Nazism (leaders of the SS in particular) got into their own amalgamated religious mysticism rites & cults, but by most reports Hitler regarded those groups as fetishistic nonsense. Permissible (because they were loyal) but silly.

all wars are about power,

There's never been a war that happened solely, or mostly, due to theological differences leading to political animus?

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Hitler himself is considered a deist at best by historians.

Given that Deism and Christianity are not mutually exclusive, your point is?

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Alan Bullock; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny;

Laurence Rees; The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler; Ebury Press; 2012

Are excellent places to start and contain all the information you seem to be denying so vigorously. In the end though you'll never see you're being shammed just as much of the German people were, because you are buying what Hitler wanted his people too because it confirms your view of Hitler as a crazed Christian psychopath.

Same deal with the Japanese, they were a brutal, expansionist military dictatorship in WW2. No need for religion involved.

oh for piss sake....... here we go again*eyeroll*can we not point at the obvious thing in recent memory?

I really, really dislike labels. The media and American culture likes to simplify things and define things in oversimplified ways that distort opinions on large groups of people. This is how discrimination starts. This is how hate begins.

Anyway, I would have the label atheist given to me. All common sense aside dealing with magic and all that, when I look at the religions of the world, it looks so obviously man-made to me. The amount of things that need to be ignored to believe in a deity is overwhelming.

Whenever I talk to people about their religion, I keep things polite, and things usually go very well. But at the end of the day it usually is the case that their belief is built on this thing called faith, and thats when things can get ugly.

Faith....It's blind trust that has been misplaced as a virtue. Someone with faith is looked up to in American society. Oh, look at that man, he has so much faith. Doesn't he sound like an upstanding man? Blind trust is dangerous. It's unhealthy. To say I have faith in something means I know there is to be no evidence for this idea, but I believe it anyway. That begs the question why, and the answer is because it feels good. Thats what every discussion ends with when I talk to religious folk.

I don't understand how a healthy human can think in such a way.

As for this whole debate over oh this good/evil guy was an atheist and oh this good/evil guy was a deist, I think its nuts. Ideas should be judged on what they are, not based on who agrees/disagrees with them. Anyone who uses such a tactic doesn't feel confident in addressing the topic of debate directly and isn't really interested in the finding truth through debate but is looking for some sort of victory to sate their insecurities.

Also I'd like to remind everyone to try to act as themselves. Think about what you post here, and ask yourself if its something you'd say if you were speaking to all of these people in person. Anonymity sure makes people bold.

Woah, I thought that thread had died ! Cool to see it's still alive. Need to come back more often.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
- Christian Hitler sets out to exterminate Jews because of their religion.

Totally agree with the rest of your message, but that specific line is just plain wrong. I so hope my grand-mother was given a free get-out-of-concentration-camp card by apostatizing. Even those that apostatized long before Hitler came to power were sent to the camps.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
Thus "Abrohamic" (or "Abrahamic", but that spelling ain't as cool) can be used to denote the three main religions that sprout from Abraham's covenant with the god Yahweh - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Bahaism feels left out again ! Think of those poor bahais. They really are not that much less bahais than jews, they should get some attentions sometime !

 Krellnus wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Hitler himself is considered a deist at best by historians.

Given that Deism and Christianity are not mutually exclusive, your point is?

Because Deism =/= Christianity?

 d-usa wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Hitler himself is considered a deist at best by historians.

Given that Deism and Christianity are not mutually exclusive, your point is?

Because Deism =/= Christianity?

You can be deist and a christian, just like you can be deist and a muslim or deist and a wiccan, it is just a sub type of religious belief just like a/gnosticism.

 poda_t wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Alan Bullock; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny;

Laurence Rees; The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler; Ebury Press; 2012

Are excellent places to start and contain all the information you seem to be denying so vigorously. In the end though you'll never see you're being shammed just as much of the German people were, because you are buying what Hitler wanted his people too because it confirms your view of Hitler as a crazed Christian psychopath.

Same deal with the Japanese, they were a brutal, expansionist military dictatorship in WW2. No need for religion involved.

oh for piss sake....... here we go again*eyeroll*can we not point at the obvious thing in recent memory?

I didn't start the Godwin.

Yup. DEFINITELY religion. NOT the nationalistic revenge of a nation taxed into economic irrelevance to pay restitution for a war started to appease the rampant megalomania of inbred monarchs. All warfare can be traced back to population pressure and trade routes. Even the crusades. Especially WW2. (Because that's literally all it fething was) religion is just another excuse for the powerful to attempt to increase their holdings.

As a side note, the understandings of the Sunni/Shia conflicts in the Middle East displayed in this thread are simplistic at best. It's all coming down to power. Sunni and Shia leaders are fighting to increase their own holdings and using religion as a tool to do it. The Taliban manipulates and controls many thousands of idiots, not for allah but for their own gain and to protect their massive drug trade.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Woah, I thought that thread had died ! Cool to see it's still alive. Need to come back more often.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
- Christian Hitler sets out to exterminate Jews because of their religion.

Totally agree with the rest of your message, but that specific line is just plain wrong. I so hope my grand-mother was given a free get-out-of-concentration-camp card by apostatizing. Even those that apostatized long before Hitler came to power were sent to the camps.

I've a whole chunk of my family tree gone dark too, and I don't think the answer is that simple.

Bahaism feels left out again ! Think of those poor bahais.

To be fair, they also draw from eastern religions and so can't really be considered classical abrohamic, they're closer to being a universalist or omnistic flavour of faith.

All warfare can be traced back to population pressure and trade routes.

I think your own fondness for religion is giving you the same kind of confirmation bias you're accusing me of (in reverse), albeit I don't hold that religion is always (or even often) the main cause for war, only that it is often a contributory factor (IE: I'm not taking an extreme black/white position).

Evil & Chaos wrote:
I've a whole chunk of my family tree gone dark too, and I don't think the answer is that simple.

Well, the nazis were quite explicit on their racial theories and classifications. Gypsies were not sent to death for religious reasons either.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
To be fair, they also draw from eastern religions and so can't really be considered classical abrohamic, they're closer to being a universalist or omnistic flavour of faith.

That's not false. It all boils down to the precise definition of Abrahamic that one choose to use.

Evil & Chaos wrote:

All warfare can be traced back to population pressure and trade routes.

I think your own fondness for religion is giving you the same kind of confirmation bias you're accusing me of (in reverse), albeit I don't hold that religion is always (or even often) the main cause for war, only that it is often a contributory factor (IE: I'm not taking an extreme black/white position).

I actively dislike religion. I'm not an atheist, I take a far more neutral postion. I just disagree with you on things you are factually wrong about. (I.E. WW2 was a religious war on the part of at least two factions)

Thanks for assuming though!

In other news http://thoughtsonliberty.com/why-i-left-the-church-to-find-freedom

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I'm not an atheist, I take a far more neutral postion.

Please elaborate. There is only question being asked here - "do you believe in god". It's a binary yes/no proposition, either you do (= theist) or don't (= atheist). I'm not seeing the scope for a 'neutral' position on the question.

 Riquende wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I'm not an atheist, I take a far more neutral postion.

Please elaborate. There is only question being asked here - "do you believe in god". It's a binary yes/no proposition, either you do (= theist) or don't (= atheist). I'm not seeing the scope for a 'neutral' position on the question.

Well to be fair he could be agnostic. One could always face the two choices given and choose neither.

 Riquende wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I'm not an atheist, I take a far more neutral postion.

Please elaborate. There is only question being asked here - "do you believe in god". It's a binary yes/no proposition, either you do (= theist) or don't (= atheist). I'm not seeing the scope for a 'neutral' position on the question.

When faced with a "yes or no" answer always seek a different option. Grimskul is correct. I'm agnostic. I can't answer a question I don't have enough knowledge to provide an accurate answer to.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 Riquende wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I'm not an atheist, I take a far more neutral postion.

Please elaborate. There is only question being asked here - "do you believe in god". It's a binary yes/no proposition, either you do (= theist) or don't (= atheist). I'm not seeing the scope for a 'neutral' position on the question.

When faced with a "yes or no" answer always seek a different option. Grimskul is correct. I'm agnostic. I can't answer a question I don't have enough knowledge to provide an accurate answer to.

If you can't answer the question "do you believe in (a) god(s)" in the affirmative, then you're an atheist.

An agnostic is a different thing, pretty sure this was covered just a couple of pages back.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here it is:

 Riquende wrote:


Agnosticism and Atheism are two seperate things entirely, the first deals with knowledge (which is a subset of belief) and the second deals with belief. It's entirely possible to be an Agnostic Atheist (and I think most Atheists would claim to be so if they're being intellectually honest) just as it's possible to be an Agnostic Theist.

It's not a sliding scale that runs Theist - Agnostic - Athiest, they're positions on two different questions.

I take a far more neutral postion.

Well then I think you're taking neutrality much too far - the idea that the middle east would still be riven between two mutually hostile groups of allied states (Sunni and Shia) without the factor of "who should lead the Caliphate after Mohammad's death" is irrational, and the idea that it has nothing to do with religion and is only a question as to "who has power in the mortal realm" is taking things to far - religions, like all human creations, are intrinsically linked with real-world socio-political power (that being the only kind of power that isn't imaginary).

Heck, one can make a solid argument that without the Sunni/Shia split, the regime change in Iraq (to pick a recent example) would have proceeded very differently, as 90% Al-Queda's violent response to the invasion was not to attack the western forces, but was to attack Shia Mosques and Shia neighborhoods in order to intentionally provoke internecine warfare - this they achieved, leading to a decade (so far) of Sunni/Shia strife in Iraq.

It's not irrational at all. Ancient roots based on tribalism and the control of temporal power aside (which is what the caliphate really represents) we're talking about fighting that's been going on since the 5th century. Go talk to an actual sunni or shia muslim "over there" sometime. They'll be happy to give you a long list of grievances about those other guys over there, ranging in importance from "The minority population seized control of our government and oppressed the feth out of us" to "they killed my brother's goat". Any thought of the caliphate is as dead as that position actually is. The Arabian peninsula with riven with strife and tribal warfare long before Mohammed carried his message to his people, and as we have seen it still is long after. The tribes of Afghanistan have been killing the gak out of each other as long as they've been living in Afghanistan. Religion's just another excuse.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
When faced with a "yes or no" answer always seek a different option.

When faced with a yes or no question, do you really always select a different option ? Yes, or no ?

(Sorry, had to do it )

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
They'll be happy to give you a long list of grievances about those other guys over there, ranging in importance from "The minority population seized control of our government and oppressed the feth out of us" to "they killed my brother's goat".

Yeah, but why do they still consider themselves two separate groups even though living close, and usually under the same government, for so long ? Why didn't they blend into a common identity ?
Religion, I guess.

Yeah, but do they still consider themselves two separate groups even though living close, and usually under the same government, for so long ? Why didn't they blend into a common identity ?
Religion, I guess.

Bingo.

Sorry for the delay in responding - I was elsewhere.

E & C, can you please do us all, but especially me, a great favor?
Connect us to primary documentation for your charges.
You do know the difference between primary and secondary sources, right?
Everything you linked us to were secondary sources, which are almost always questionable and do always have a bias.

And please leave the Tanners in the gutter where they deserve to be.
They were jokes that were never funny.
E&C, do you not know the difference between serious historical researchers and people with an axe to grind?

E&C, I want connections to factual and LEGAL documentation about Joseph Smith, Jr.'s wrongdoing.
Not alleged facsimiles, not to people who are actually propagandists and not historians, not to any of the many overally tired accusations that non-Mormon historians have proved over and over to be only false charges and pure wishes of anti-Mormons over the last nearly 200 years.
Is that so impossible for you E & C?
Legal facts is what I need; everything else is simply propaganda at best - at worse, a total waste of everyone's attention here, Dakka's electrons and my precious time.

As to your personal beliefs as to deity or not, well, that point of view is what you have stewed up for you and you will held responsible for it.
Why you want to "season" the stew the way you have, is only obvious to you.
Life is how it is and it does not help us, the test takers, if either the proctor or the test maker steps in all of the time and cheats for us because we think they need to.
I am sorry you feel life is so unfair; fairness was never promised and justice was only promised to be served at the final judgement.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
They'll be happy to give you a long list of grievances about those other guys over there, ranging in importance from "The minority population seized control of our government and oppressed the feth out of us" to "they killed my brother's goat".

Yeah, but why do they still consider themselves two separate groups even though living close, and usually under the same government, for so long ? Why didn't they blend into a common identity ?
Religion, I guess.

you really don't need religion. I'm not about to detail my personal life, but, I've had nothing but abuse or mistreatment at the hands of my brother. There's no reason to describe the context of that behavior, but after a certain incident sometime last year I realized that his effort at making things nice really just boiled down to being a facade. You don't need religion, religion is just a convenient excuse. Even the reasons KM lists, while reasonable, are more than the necessary criterion. It could be as little as condescension and a sense of an entitled self-serving, or manipulative, freeloading, non-contributive behaviour. It could be as little as just that kind of a splinter beneath the skin, and then you start finding excuses for this that and the other. Religion inevitable creeps into it. Either a differing point on one aspect of doctrine, broad interpretations.... you name it.

 poda_t wrote:
you really don't need religion. I'm not about to detail my personal life, but, I've had nothing but abuse or mistreatment at the hands of my brother. There's no reason to describe the context of that behavior, but after a certain incident sometime last year I realized that his effort at making things nice really just boiled down to being a facade. You don't need religion, religion is just a convenient excuse. Even the reasons KM lists, while reasonable, are more than the necessary criterion. It could be as little as condescension and a sense of an entitled self-serving, or manipulative, freeloading, non-contributive behaviour. It could be as little as just that kind of a splinter beneath the skin, and then you start finding excuses for this that and the other. Religion inevitable creeps into it. Either a differing point on one aspect of doctrine, broad interpretations.... you name it.

That is a very sad statement poda_t.
The actions of one have prevented you from reaching out to faith.
Even more because religion and faith, real quality religion and faith, is supposed to more about serving others than it is about serving oneself.

Here's hoping poda_t that faith will find you without something catastrophic happening in your life.
Though I must admit, one generally does not change one's attitude about faith and/or religion without a "Hatch, Match or Dispatch" event, and I have seen many times the "Dispatch" event being the required trigger.
With so many deciding not to these days, the "Match" event will occur far less often in the future; not enough rich grannys looking for an heir that is properly married to keep those numbers up in the UK or in the US.
And indiscriminate promiscuity throughout the First World and the normal results of it, has demeaned "Hatch" to just a physical process that should be able to be stopped whenever the parties involved want it to be because the product is inconvenient for them or is totally unwanted in their eyes.

No, religion and faith have become quite inconvenient to the modern social man.
They require moral fiber and behaviors that are just not the in thing any more.

For someone concerned with getting primary evidence on joseph smith (though i am not sure why copies of court papers are not good enough for you on this...) i am not sure how you can then go on to not produce any evidence at all for the existance of your (or any other) god and seemingly be happy with some vague feelings and the utterly cobbled together tripe that is most religious texts...

 DouglasJB wrote:

 poda_t wrote:
you really don't need religion. I'm not about to detail my personal life, but, I've had nothing but abuse or mistreatment at the hands of my brother. There's no reason to describe the context of that behavior, but after a certain incident sometime last year I realized that his effort at making things nice really just boiled down to being a facade. You don't need religion, religion is just a convenient excuse. Even the reasons KM lists, while reasonable, are more than the necessary criterion. It could be as little as condescension and a sense of an entitled self-serving, or manipulative, freeloading, non-contributive behaviour. It could be as little as just that kind of a splinter beneath the skin, and then you start finding excuses for this that and the other. Religion inevitable creeps into it. Either a differing point on one aspect of doctrine, broad interpretations.... you name it.

That is a very sad statement poda_t.
The actions of one have prevented you from reaching out to faith.
Even more because religion and faith, real quality religion and faith, is supposed to more about serving others than it is about serving oneself.

Here's hoping poda_t that faith will find you without something catastrophic happening in your life.
Though I must admit, one generally does not change one's attitude about faith and/or religion without a "Hatch, Match or Dispatch" event, and I have seen many times the "Dispatch" event being the required trigger.
With so many deciding not to these days, the "Match" event will occur far less often in the future; not enough rich grannys looking for an heir that is properly married to keep those numbers up in the UK or in the US.
And indiscriminate promiscuity throughout the First World and the normal results of it, has demeaned "Hatch" to just a physical process that should be able to be stopped whenever the parties involved want it to be because the product is inconvenient for them or is totally unwanted in their eyes.

No, religion and faith have become quite inconvenient to the modern social man.
They require moral fiber and behaviors that are just not the in thing any more.

oh heck no. What made me despise religion and see a distinction between the raw concept of faith, as applicable to science, and the concept of faith in something that... well, fails to provide advancment and tends to be used to justify ridiculous behaviours like, genocide, racism, the violation of human rights, marginalization of minorities, etc..... well long story short, I saw the hypocrisy of my parish, and began to see inconsistencies in religious doctrine. Thorough investigation led me to judaism, which, turns out to also have been abused and taken from elsewhere, which...... also had its source elsewhere. That made me think and drew me to the conclusion that the entire thing is ridiculous, proposterous and has been abused throughout history by madmen and men of power to subjugate and control others. I have a problem when a holy book at one point describes a whole-sale extermination of a city, followed by "and <<insert deity>> saw that it was good".... I'll be honest, being in a parish, where engages devoutly during mass, but then proceeds to violate every single lesson in the coffee social--or relate instances of such violation in a mutually/self-congratulatory manner... well.... well well well.... And this isn't just one parish I'm talking about. I've been to several, in different communities.

for me, religion isn't an inconvenience because it requires me to act morally. It's an inconvenience because some of the behaviors it considers "moral" I happen to find objectionable if not outright reprehensible and antithetical to human social progress. Mutilation of the body, obstruction of scientific development, theft, hypocritical behaviour, conflicting/contradictory teachings and behaviour, repression of minorities, jihad, crusade. Again, in most of these cases, religion has been seconded and used as another tool for subjugation of some form, but it is one that I find reprehensible, because it commits people to do ill acts, or to accept ill acts to continue to happen, because, if they don't, then they will burn in some imaginary hell of some madman's making.

If a man today, goes before a congregation and says god told him to raise an army and, say, go kill jews, or arabs, or muslims, or shriners, i think you will agree that people will assume that person is mentally ill, and needs therapy, or medication, or both. Why then should I not use the same standard to evaluate the past? Why does it receive a special reverence when the madmen raving about commandments from god about purging this that or the other are just as alive now as they were then. We know these people today need therapy, medication or institutionalization where rehabilitation is not possible.... Following through with the exercise of thought, it makes no sense to continue believing in this.

As to the serving the betterment of community? Oh, how often I've run into these devout religious types that love to go on about how community minded they are, but then i look at their habits which exhibit tendencies to opulence, luxury, theft and a failure to live up to the expectations of the faith. I'm not even going to start about the ridiculous witch-hunt attitude against communism that's still prevalent across north america, despite the fact that the lifestyle Jesus taught, who is supposed to be the herald and saviour of the vast majority of the people living in north america, what can fundamentally be described as a communist lifestyle. You preach a lack of moral fiber, but it just highlights to me again the lack of consistency of a religious mindset. It just strikes me as fundamentally strange that a society supposedly built around securing people's rights, whose inhabitants are dominantly christian, proceed to engage in witch-hunts vilifying and decrying anyone that has even a remotely socialist approach to governance.Your jab at rich grannies not looking hard enough for properly married heirs may have been an attempt at humor, but that just points out my problem all the same.

The ridiculous idea of some afterlife does nothing to better our lives here, because it drills the idea "oh, but it will be better in the other place". How do we make our lives better here then, if the core thought in our heads is "it will be better in the next life"? We can't, because we will never commit ourselves to our fullest capacity in truly helping each other. We dedicate a couple of odd hours here and there, a couple of bucks, and that's that.

you make broad sweeping generalizations about how "the first world" is demoralized by "turning away" from jesus. Look, buddy, Let's go back a bit. Celts? Aztecs? Assyrians? Spartans? Mongols? Huns? Vikings? heck, the Romans and Egyptians weren't so rosy either. This is nothing new, and to suggest that "it's because they didn't know christ", well, let's look at Europe shall we? Heard of the 30 years war? you know, where there was a small hissyfit over doctrines in christianity? you know, the one that saw eight million dead? What about the crusades, and the slavery perpetrated, again, by christians? I'm not calling christians out as being unique, I'm saying it's all the same garbage all around. I can also pull an example out of my own ethnic history: Koppany is always painted as a backwards barbarian hungarian, while St. Stephen is the spiritual liberator of Hungary. Well, turns out Koppany wasn't pagan, he was orthodox. And St. Stephen? Well, when he took the crown of hungary, he died without heirs, so it was Koppany's offspring that took the crown (another forgotten fact) who proceeded to then systematicall persecute non roman catholics. That's just the violence bit, what about the fornication? Honestly, I'm not going to touch this... because in my quest through history I found a number of interesting traditions and customs that existed throughout christendom that involved--or resulted in--fornication. Outside of wedlock. And supported if not sponsored or led by the church. Some of them are still celebrated today.

After all is said and done, I also find the concept of prayer disgusting. Sitting and wishing another person well? How is that supposed to help? What does it physically do for the other person? How does it make others help? Act! do something! Intent is a component of action, but intention alone is meaningless.

I've been at this for a while, and any attempt at trying to filter or clean this will jsut make this a more confusing mess and probably drag it out even longer.

 DouglasJB wrote:
Sorry for the delay in responding - I was elsewhere.

E & C, can you please do us all, but especially me, a great favor?
Connect us to primary documentation for your charges.

I'm sure that those court documents are available to view in person upon request.

You do know the difference between primary and secondary sources, right?
Everything you linked us to were secondary sources, which are almost always questionable and do always have a bias.

Authenticated court documents are primary sources.

And please leave the Tanners in the gutter where they deserve to be.
They were jokes that were never funny.
E&C, do you not know the difference between serious historical researchers and people with an axe to grind?

I know the difference between an open mind, and one unable to approach independently verified primary source documents as offering any kind of evidence at all.

E&C, I want connections to factual and LEGAL documentation about Joseph Smith, Jr.'s wrongdoing.
Not alleged facsimiles, not to people who are actually propagandists and not historians, not to any of the many overally tired accusations that non-Mormon historians have proved over and over to be only false charges and pure wishes of anti-Mormons over the last nearly 200 years.

So says the Mormon church.
Maybe try listening to someone who doesn't have a vested interest in maintaining the power structure of the church.

Is that so impossible for you E & C?
Legal facts is what I need; everything else is simply propaganda at best - at worse, a total waste of everyone's attention here, Dakka's electrons and my precious time.

I gave you legal facts. You are apparently unable to process them.

As to your personal beliefs as to deity or not, well, that point of view is what you have stewed up for you and you will held responsible for it.

So says the Mormon church.
And the Jewish sages, and the Islamic Immams, and the witch doctor upon the mountain.
It's all the same meaningless static to me, as silly as a legally convicted conman dictating a religion out of a hat.

Why you want to "season" the stew the way you have, is only obvious to you.

You seem to think that I give any credence at all to your myths.
I don't feel I'm "seasoning" my time in Hell, because I don't believe in Hell; None of my actions are undertaken in order to either move towards or away from "Hell".
And not the Christian Hell nor the Mormon Hell nor the Islamic Hell, for that matter.
And not for Kharmic reincarnation or to please my spirit-ancestors nor to keep the bad joo-joo from my door.

My actions are for the benefit of myself, my family, and mankind in general.
My actions are not undertaken in fear of, or in obeyance of, bronze age myths.

Life is how it is and it does not help us, the test takers, if either the proctor or the test maker steps in all of the time and cheats for us because we think they need to.

So says the Mormon church.

Incidentally, God loves to prove himself extant in the Bible.

Miracles, physical manifestations of the Spirit as a column of smoke & pillar of fire observed by tens of thousands, sending himself to earth in the form of Jesus to perform more miracles, showing up in person to have long and detailed conversations with many people, etc.

If God is eternal and perfect, why was it "perfect" to provide evidence for his existence upon request in ancient days (just ask the priests of Baal what happens when you ask for proof of God's existence!), yet nowadays it's "perfect" to never undertake any miracles, and manifestations, and great works, other than for conmen and madmen.

Can you show me a verified miracle that occurred due to Mormonism being true?
I assure you it would convert me in an instant to Mormonism if you could do that.

I am sorry you feel life is so unfair; fairness was never promised and justice was only promised to be served at the final judgement.

So says the Mormon church.

You say so many very specific things with such absolute certainty.
Such things, no human could ever claim to know with authenticity, unless they can give more tangible proof of their faith than "it makes me feel nice".
Can you?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DouglasJB wrote:
No, religion and faith have become quite inconvenient to the modern social man.
They require moral fiber and behaviors that are just not the in thing any more.

...you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance.
Leviticus 25:44
What kind of moral fibre and behavior promotes slavery?



If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.' If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever.
Exodus 21:2

So if your slave is a Jew, he only serves for six years, but notice, the Hebrew slave is given a choice - freedom and separation from his wife & children, or slavery forever.
What kind of moral fibre and behavior is that?


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.
Exodus 21:7
You may sell your daughter as a slave. What kind of moral fibre and behavior is that?


When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property.
Exodus 21:20
You may beat your slaves as long as they don't die. What kind of moral fibre and behavior is that?


Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.
Ephesians 6:5
Jesus agreed with slavery. What kind of moral fibre and behavior is that?


Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts.
Timothy 6:1
Jesus agreeing with slavery again. What kind of moral fibre and behavior is that?

The disobedient slave will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. "But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given."
Luke 12:47
Jesus not only agreeing with slavery, but in context is comparing the relationship between a slave and his master to the relationship between humans and Jesus. What kind of moral fibre and behavior is that?



You shall not covet your neighbor's house;
you shall not covet your neighbor's wife,
or his male slave, or his female slave, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”
The Tenth Commandment, Exodus
The Ten Commandments, supposedly the foundation of all Abrohamic morality ***, referring to slavery as an expected state of being. What kind of moral fibre and behavior is that?




From its inception until 1978, the Mormon Church taught that black people couldn't become priests or lay preachers (unlike the majority of white Mormons, who are expected to become lay priests & missionaries) because they were eternally cursed to wear the mark of Cain upon their skin, being descended from Cain the fratricide, son of Adam & Eve.
What kind of moral fibre and behavior is that?



***
And as an aside: It lumps in your neighbour's wife along with the rest of his property. What kind of moral fibre and behavior is that?



.

 poda_t wrote:
you really don't need religion.

Well, in this specific case, I think it was because of religion. Not saying it always has to be religion, just that here it's what caused those people to still see themselves as two separate groups.
And no disrespect intended, but your story seems much more like some personal problems between two brothers than two different groups not considering they belong to the same people.

SilverMK2, copies are no good because indeed they are copies - allegedly.
In this day of skilled computer fraud and back in the '70s and '80s with skilled surface and ink fraud, copies are not valid proof of anything.

Have none of you taken any history classes at the tertiary level?
There have been some huge frauds done as far as historical documents, and anyone with a quality historical education knows that.
Copies are not legitimate sources unless one can validate the credentials of those whose hands have "carried" the copy and even then, they are suspect in most historical fora and nearly every legal fora.
This is the environment I worked for years and find no valid reason to not apply it here to this subject, who was a candidate for the Presidency in the Election of 1844.
That was the environment I first ran into him.

Why do I have to prove God is real, imaginary or otherwise for you SilverMK2?
Holy writ is full of persons God Himself proved His existence to and Christ, His divinity to, and they still denied God was real and Christ was divine.
With E&C, I am simply asking for valid historical proofs of legal events that happened in four American states less than two hundred years ago, and he is just not bothering to toe the mark.

SilverMK2, I bet E&C still thinks the Salamander Letter and its compatriots are real historical documents, instead of very clever fakes.
The perp, Hoffman, was quite cunning; he took ink from the 1830s and matched it up to parchment about that old too and combined them.
He fooled several experts, who then "authenticated" these alleged Mormon writings and previously undiscovered poems of historical writers and more.
You know what happened SilverMk2?
Hoffman got greedy and in debt.
So he made more undiscovered writings in a wider scope and that got him caught.
Some, including the Salamander Letter, were analysed with a mass spectrometer (one of the first the FBI owned) and the joining was found to be modern; they looked completely real otherwise.
What a hoax!
And SilverMK2, there are folks like E&C still believe that Hoffman's papers are real; they say it was a Mormon Conspiracy that faked the lab results for all; one problem - not a single Mormon was employed anywhere at the lab in New York that proved the papers to be a hoax, let alone in the labs in Philadelphia or Dallas that followed up on the results; granted, there were and are Mormons at the FBI labs in Washington D.C. and Quantico.
But still, folks like E&C will claim it is all a Mormon Conspiracy.

E&C, E&C, (head shaking) you are certainly quick with the accusation, but glacially slow, if that even, when it comes to giving me proofs that can stand the scales of justice, let alone the meager judgement of man.
E&C, you sir, are a lost cause so therefore I am too - so far.
You only point me to people, who have been proven wrong by NON-MORMONs, and to alleged factual documents you link to that are not PRIMARY sources, but alleged copies of them, also mostly disproved by non-Mormon experts in their fields.

And then you try to accuse me of trying to convert you to Mormonism!
Why in the world would I try to do that?
I am looking for proof that will stand in the courtroom, let alone any other valid debate, that Joseph Smith, Jr. was a fraud and a charlatan.
I had and have no interest in you becoming a Mormon now or in the future.

And E&C, have you listened to any Christian church out there really.
Or any service group, faith collection or any person
"So says the Mormon Church" is getting tiresome when I hear so much of what you say that to at the Presbyterian church, have heard it in the Methodist church and have heard it at the Catholic church.
On top of all that E&C, I have even heard much of the items so labeled by YOU in conversations with friends that are Buddhist, Taoist, Hindi, Jew and Muslim among other non-Christian faiths.
If you have no interest in faith, that is your coil, not mine.
So lighten up, a great deal, on the accusations boyo!

And E&C, what modern translation of the Bible are you using?
I have content problems with most since they are not going by long standing valid Hebrew or Greek texts and translation guides/references; they claim to be more accurate when indeed they are among the most inaccurate and definitely skewed texts I have encountered.
And this modern language business is a joke in most cases since modern Greek or Hebrew, let alone the modern English they are playing in, is most certainly not what those languages were even an hundred years ago, let alone getting close to the times that the writing was taking place in.
In other words, just your quotes from Exodus, Chapter 21 (let alone any of the others) do not jib with any of the Bibles I referenced them in, with the youngest and possibly the most flawed being the KJV.
Additional evidence of your skewed platform E&C.

You know E&C, with how you started, I had such high hopes for you to have the proofs that I had not been able to find, but you proved to be just as much of a charlatan and con man as you say Jospeh Smith, Jr. to be.

After much thought E&C, I have come to a final conclusion about you and this "chip" of yours.
You are just another one of those Jack-Mormons, turned Anti- with an axe to grind.
From all the fuss & bustle you give here and the complete absence PROOF for any of your contentions, you have to be that or one of those hate-blinded Born Agains.
You sound perfectly so.

You give me nothing, when politely asked, that I can go and prove that Joseph Smith, Jr. is a fraud.
You repeat over and over myths that either I found to be complete falsehoods or found no proof to validate while at university decades ago on the subject.
And moreover, these are never from persons who actually have an education or experience to back up their accusations.
When is someone with the needed credentials going to come forward with valid proof?
At this rate, never.

E&C, I grow tired of your groundless accusations and your aversions to giving me anything I can work with to prove that Joseph Smith, Jr. was nothing but a fraud and a charlatan.
Therefore, I am done with you here unless you will part with solid, valid proof that I can use to prosecute the case.

poda_t, thank you for your reply.
I believe I understand your position.
Your feet are set; I respect that.
I disagree with your conclusions based on the facts before us all, but I respect your right to them.
Thank you for taking the time to tell your viewpoint to us all.
Have a Happy Holidays! (within your worldview)

 DouglasJB wrote:

poda_t, thank you for your reply.
I believe I understand your position.
Your feet are set; I respect that.
I disagree with your conclusions based on the facts before us all, but I respect your right to them.
Thank you for taking the time to tell your viewpoint to us all.
Have a Happy Holidays! (within your worldview)

I'm glad you were able to take my remarks the way you did. I do realize that the manner in which I put my thoughts to paper can, *ahem* be offensive, if not insulting.

 DouglasJB wrote:
SilverMK2, copies are no good because indeed they are copies - allegedly.
In this day of skilled computer fraud and back in the '70s and '80s with skilled surface and ink fraud, copies are not valid proof of anything.

You set the bar too high - I think the only thing that would really satisfy your criteria would be a TARDIS?

Have none of you taken any history classes at the tertiary level?

I hold an A grade History A-Level.

Why do I have to prove God is real, imaginary or otherwise for you SilverMK2?

Because you're making incredibly extraordinary claims and providing zero evidence other than a book written 100 years after Jesus died (The Bible) by people who never met Jesus, and a book written 1800 years after Jesus died (The Book of Mormon) by a man whose reliability is dubious at best.

Holy writ is full of persons God Himself proved His existence to and Christ, His divinity to, and they still denied God was real and Christ was divine.

You can't use the Bible as proof of divinity of Jesus, unless the Bible demonstrates extraordinary properties (it doesn't).
One might as well use The Lord of the Rings as proof of the divinity of Sauron.

E&C, E&C, (head shaking) you are certainly quick with the accusation, but glacially slow, if that even, when it comes to giving me proofs that can stand the scales of justice, let alone the meager judgement of man.
E&C, you sir, are a lost cause so therefore I am too - so far.
You only point me to people, who have been proven wrong by NON-MORMONs, and to alleged factual documents you link to that are not PRIMARY sources, but alleged copies of them, also mostly disproved by non-Mormon experts in their fields.

Actually I just pointed you to the #1 result on Google for "Joseph Smith Glass Looker".

Here's the #1 result on Google for "Joseph Smith Conman" : http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith,_Jr.

So anyway, doesn't the mere fact that Native Americans have been proven through genetic analysis to have no recent (sub 3000 years) common ancestors with Jews prove that Joseph Smith Jnr. claimed things that are obvious lies?

And then you try to accuse me of trying to convert you to Mormonism!

Did I?

Why in the world would I try to do that?

To save me from hellfire, duh.

I'm assuming you're a normal human being with normal empathy, of course, and that you find the idea of someone roasting alive in fire for all eternity a horrible thing, and would seek to prevent it from happening to as many people as possible.

I am looking for proof that will stand in the courtroom, let alone any other valid debate, that Joseph Smith, Jr. was a fraud and a charlatan.

Genetic analysis of Native Americans and Jews prove they do not share a genetic lineage.
Therefore Joseph Smith was lying when he said Native Americans were once white-skinned Jews, who left Saudi Arabia and journeyed to America (where they hung out with Jesus).

I had and have no interest in you becoming a Mormon now or in the future.

Stop telling me I'm going to burn in hell for all eternity when I die, then.

And E&C, have you listened to any Christian church out there really.
Or any service group, faith collection or any person
"So says the Mormon Church" is getting tiresome when I hear so much of what you say that to at the Presbyterian church, have heard it in the Methodist church and have heard it at the Catholic church.

So?
I wouldn't say the Mormon Church has exclusivity on silliness.

And E&C, what modern translation of the Bible are you using?

Translations that don't dishonestly try to replace the word "slave" with "servant".

I have content problems with most since they are not going by long standing valid Hebrew or Greek texts and translation guides/references; they claim to be more accurate when indeed they are among the most inaccurate and definitely skewed texts I have encountered.
And this modern language business is a joke in most cases since modern Greek or Hebrew, let alone the modern English they are playing in, is most certainly not what those languages were even an hundred years ago, let alone getting close to the times that the writing was taking place in.
In other words, just your quotes from Exodus, Chapter 21 (let alone any of the others) do not jib with any of the Bibles I referenced them in, with the youngest and possibly the most flawed being the KJV.
Additional evidence of your skewed platform E&C.

Are you seriously trying to claim that the following doesn't equate to slavery?

- Humans can be bought and sold as property
- Your human property that you own, passes into the ownership of your children (permanently) if you die
- Jewish men that are your property get a choice on whether to go free, or remain your property, after you have owned them for six years
- You may sell your own daughter to someone else to use as property, and unlike a Jewish man, she will not become free after six years
- You may beat your human property, just as long as they don't die within two days of the beating
- Human property must obey their masters, especially if they are Christian

Etc.

There is no wiggle room in translation here, that list of statements from the Bible describes slavery.

After much thought E&C, I have come to a final conclusion about you and this "chip" of yours.
You are just another one of those Jack-Mormons, turned Anti- with an axe to grind.

I'm an ex-Jew.

 DouglasJB wrote:
SilverMK2, copies are no good because indeed they are copies - allegedly.
In this day of skilled computer fraud and back in the '70s and '80s with skilled surface and ink fraud, copies are not valid proof of anything.

And yet this does not apply to the authenticity of anything written down a couple of thousand years ago about various actvities of the divine? Hell, you could (and people evidently did) write whatever the hell they wanted with no one questioning their facts, nor did even those attempting serious research in the ancient world work in the same way historians or researchers do today, having to rely on much second, third, fourth etc hand accounts, working with myths and legends rather than first hand experience.

Have none of you taken any history classes at the tertiary level?

Not really however I have done a lot of scientific work and courses where one learns to question that which one reads in the same way.

There have been some huge frauds done as far as historical documents, and anyone with a quality historical education knows that.
Copies are not legitimate sources unless one can validate the credentials of those whose hands have "carried" the copy and even then, they are suspect in most historical fora and nearly every legal fora.
This is the environment I worked for years and find no valid reason to not apply it here to this subject, who was a candidate for the Presidency in the Election of 1844.
That was the environment I first ran into him.

My brother in law is an ancient historian and I regulalry attend the pub with a number of his friends who are lecturers, PhD students and post-docs in ancient history at Oxford University - they work with historical information all the time, including photocopies/scans of original work. There are ways to authenticate copies of works in the same way that you can authenticate scientific data, observations of the stars or anything else.

Why do I have to prove God is real, imaginary or otherwise for you SilverMK2?

You are the one making a claim for the existance of god, therefore you have to prove your claims. As has been said quite a number of times now.

Holy writ is full of persons God Himself proved His existence to and Christ, His divinity to, and they still denied God was real and Christ was divine.
With E&C, I am simply asking for valid historical proofs of legal events that happened in four American states less than two hundred years ago, and he is just not bothering to toe the mark.

I've yet to hear of much of anything from most religious texts be authenticated as historically accurate. When you can apply your own standards to the stuff you are taking information from and find it good, then I would be happy to take a look at anything you are left with.

Some, including the Salamander Letter, were analysed with a mass spectrometer (one of the first the FBI owned) and the joining was found to be modern; they looked completely real otherwise.
What a hoax!

I can't comment on that particular letter or any others that followed it as I do not know the case. However, as you so eagerly point out to show how difficult it was to find out this hoax - they used newly invented technology that was, at the time, quite rare in order to demonstrate that the letters were fake. Now pretty much any lab in the world would be able to do the same tests as those done by the FBI (going by your account). I am sure that I have heard of many historical artifacts being tested in this way to determine their age, makeup, etc...

And SilverMK2, there are folks like E&C still believe that Hoffman's papers are real; they say it was a Mormon Conspiracy that faked the lab results for all; one problem - not a single Mormon was employed anywhere at the lab in New York that proved the papers to be a hoax, let alone in the labs in Philadelphia or Dallas that followed up on the results; granted, there were and are Mormons at the FBI labs in Washington D.C. and Quantico.
But still, folks like E&C will claim it is all a Mormon Conspiracy.

I have not heard EC (as far as I recall) making these claims. Again, I do not know the case to which you refer to so can't really comment on it. You are constructing an elaborate smear against those who disagree with you.

I have not heard EC (as far as I recall) making these claims

Nope, I've no idea what the Hoffman papers are.
According to Wiki they're some sort of forgery from the 1980's involving Mormonism, so DouglasJB is building a textbook perfect "strawman" there, describing a modified version of my position that includes weaknesses, then knocking over that false strawman with ease.
.
.

 DouglasJB wrote:
SilverMK2, copies are no good because indeed they are copies - allegedly.
In this day of skilled computer fraud and back in the '70s and '80s with skilled surface and ink fraud, copies are not valid proof of anything.
[…]
Why do I have to prove God is real, imaginary or otherwise for you SilverMK2?
Holy writ is full of persons God Himself proved His existence to and Christ, His divinity to, and they still denied God was real and Christ was divine.

So, we can not trust copies because they can be counterfeit, but not only do we have to believe persons claiming that god revealed his existence to them without questioning their motives and/or mental health, but even more so, we have to believe on a copy of a book pretend to give a fair account of their testimony ?
That is mental.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 DouglasJB wrote:
SilverMK2, copies are no good because indeed they are copies - allegedly.
In this day of skilled computer fraud and back in the '70s and '80s with skilled surface and ink fraud, copies are not valid proof of anything.
[…]
Why do I have to prove God is real, imaginary or otherwise for you SilverMK2?
Holy writ is full of persons God Himself proved His existence to and Christ, His divinity to, and they still denied God was real and Christ was divine.

So, we can not trust copies because they can be counterfeit, but not only do we have to believe persons claiming that god revealed his existence to them without questioning their motives and/or mental health, but even more so, we have to believe on a copy of a book pretend to give a fair account of their testimony ?
That is mental.

Yes. But then you have to realize there are essentially another layer on top of this where whole groups of other people who argue about which translations are correct, which editions are true, and what about whose interpretation is correct. It's amazing what our fear is capable of doing to us.

I am just replying as I get to an idea; separating them out as to who and when exactly is getting to be a bother, though with some issues, I will take the time.

Copies are valid if the chain of possession can be verified without gap and without question as to the credentia of the possessors of the copy along the path.
Therefore a photograph of something that must be kept in a strictly controlled environment is valid as long as it can be proven to be a real copy of the original artifact and that said copy has not traveled through suspect possessors.
This is the same test whether in the scientific community or in the legal world.

As to things thousands of years old, it is the case of duplication of artifact that gives verification like it does elsewhere.
Things like the Nag Hammadi codices and the papyri, parchments and the bronze from Qurum give a sense of validity to all those who believe in the Bible as sacred writ to name only two famous finds among several artifact finds concerning holy writ since the Second World War.
On the other hand, for the radical Humanists among us, it simply gives proof that the "con" has been going on longer than just a few hundred years.

I set the bar too high?!?
For legal proof that I can use that Joseph Smith, Jr., was a fraud and a charlatan?
Now, you are the one creating strawmen E&C!!!
I want proof that I am not going to get "egg on my face" with when some person with more resources than my own undoubtedly takes me to task over my accusations.
E&C evidently feels comfortable on his side of the Pond to repeat any internet b*%%#$*t he can find as valid proof of the criminality of the man.
As a virtuous man, I cannot use such and expect to maintain my integrity.

E&C, you hold an "A" grade and support such shoddy work and ideas E&C in what you refer me to?
There is an impolite question that begs asking here about your "A" grade, but it may not be according to posting rules here at Dakka Dakka.

With this claim of E&C, I see evidently that there is a British version of getting a degree/grade/certification/whatever and not getting the education that goes along with it like is so common on our side of the Pond.
That seems to be your case, E&C, since it seems that you cannot understand primary sources and clean chains of possession let alone valid peer reviews of secondary sources (man, you gave me a Wiki link of all the possible historiographical stupidities).
And I am not going to mess with any Mormon claims or doctrines concerning AmerInds!
Talk about someone trying to obfuscate the specific issue with strawmen!!
Keep on task E&C.

E&C, you are histerical and hysterical.
When did I say you were going to burn?
I would not E&C.
You know why?
The word "like".
Take another look at holy writ; see that word "like" around descriptions of Hell/Hel?
Looks like a simile to me, oh braggart of how much you claim to know!
From what I have gleaned from holy writ, Hell/Hel appears to be a state of mind that goes on through the eternities along with the fact that you are damned and going no where fast forever.
Did you not pay attention at the beginning when I said I was not a traditional Christian?!?
And who knows, furthermore from what is said in various places in holy writ, he "Hell/Hel-bound" soul might just be a slave to those who make it to "heaven"; not sold into eternal slavery by anyone but yourself!
What an hilarious irony!!

Moreover E&C, Hell/Hel is, I believe, a perfectly good state of mind for the many persons who could not get over themselves and then took their thoughts out on those around them.
People that make the lives of all around them a very great burden or, pardon the pun, a living hell seem to be just crying out to be bound in Hell/Hel.
Hell/Hel is a very good condition for those who do so.

Plainly folks, you will earn what eternal reward you will get if you bother to actually read the holy writ available out there.
Holy writ, if you include all that can be validated to the Faithful, clearly shows your actions along with what comes forth from you thoughts will be what earns you what you get.
The Judge will step in where He sees merit to make up for your human shortcomings that will never get you all the way to a heaven-earned state, but I cannot see any merit in saying He does not exist or in harming those around you in His name.

So, for those who still think I am trying to convert any one here, no I am not trying to lead you to any sort of "water", unlike some here who are trying to get you to drink lots and lots of Kool-Aid.
I see, through my education and personal experiences, some simple absolutes that not only may earn one an eternal reward that one can desire, but also make one a useful contributing human being while living in this existence.
I can rail against Humanism and its offshoots with as much and as many items as any of you can provide against organized religions.
The creature called "human" is generally the least humane organism on the planet unless it looks for a higher standard of behavior than just doing what feels good or doing what it wants to do right this instant, which much of Humanism proselytes.

So E&C, you are an ex-Jew?
What do YOU mean by this?
Are you claiming you are Hebrew, but no longer practice Judaism?
Or what?
I can go on for three more definitions that fit "ex-Jew", but that would be a waste for me.
"Ex-Jew" is meaningless without an explanation!

And E&C, if you are an "ex-Jew" along with being from Britain according to your sidebar (I cannot believe I was not cognizant of that before), where is your cred as to making statements about an American religious leader/political candidate of claimed Christianity?
I seem to be completely wasting my time trying to get valid & legal proof of Joseph Smith, Jr.'s criminal activities from someone like you.
Really, I appear to have totally wasted my time here attempting to deal with you.

SilverMk2, you will make your claim as to whether there is a deity or not out there.
That is your coil.
I am not trying to prove the divinity of any person or make you make a choice like my own.
What I would like YOU and all of the other Humanists here to do is to stop criticizing those who do believe in some deity.
You and your ilk SilverMK2 have made your decision; you impose upon my rights at the point you deride my choice or try to forcibly change mine through whatever means you see as valid.
Or are you and E&C from a land that does not have real protections for people to practice their religious beliefs?
I wonder these days after reading the media on both sides of the Pond these days.
There is no law or even valid legal fiction that gives anyone the right to persecute religion or that guarantees any citizen some sort of freedom from religion.
There is only the legal fiction of the separation of church & state and the American right that the government cannot legislate religions and cannot prohibit the free exercise of it when it does not impinge upon the other rights and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

If I have not addressed your complete replies, my pardon.
I am seeing these replies getting more argumentative and further departing from my original statements and replies so I finding less and less utility in responding.
As far as E&C, he is not providing what I asked for, so I am done here with his railings.
SilverMK2, if you feel the need to pursue me further on this, take it to PMs.

Poda_t, thank for taking up my "olive branch".
Please have the happiest of Holiday seasons.

 DouglasJB wrote:

Please have the happiest of Holiday seasons.

ERMAGHURRRD!!!!
AM SO 'FFENDED! GURRR! I am are be atheiest! Holiday implies sanctity, I see no sanctity, URRMAGHUUUURRRRRRRD!!! 'FFENDED! SO 'FFENDED! [/moron behaviour]

^---- this is why I'm probably not going to look forward to the coming period of drunken eggnog consumption. People detonationg over stupid non-politically correct crap instead of just taking joy in the fact that they get a couple days off work while, theoretically, everything everywhere is quiet.

Atheist. To elaborate shortly:

I never got along with Religion or religious people. The very first time I stood in the church as a little boy it felt like a giant cage you just willingly lock yourself into. You had to be quiet, sometimes they expect you to give them money. They forbid a whole bunch of stuff that should be completely normal. Often they hate on other people who do not follow these standards.

Im 20 now, until around 17 or 18 i actively opposed religion. I belittled and laughed at them. Was just a general prick the moment someone said he "beliefs in X". Luckily, I grew out of that, met some religious people who I can get along with, as long as they do not try to impose their standards on others. Also I realised that im not really being the better person if I oppose the screaming looney with being a screaming looney myself. I sometimes still argue with people like that, but the topic is just one giant troll-bait waiting to be swallowed. And in my experience, arguing with people that use "Because my imaginary friend jesus says so" as an actual argument, does not end well.

Today, im pretty indifferent towards religion. I usually avoid discussions around the subject, since people have a habit of circling around non-arguments. "A says you cant prove there is a god, while B says you cant disprove there is a god." Just seems like a huge waste of time, especially considering all I could say towards the topic would come over as very hostile towards religious people. The only time I still get up in arms is when religious people try to take peoples rights away, or just generally act like idiots. (Looking at topics like abortion, same-sex marriage etc.) Sadly, often those people seem to be the majority representing their faith.

 DouglasJB wrote:
SilverMk2, you will make your claim as to whether there is a deity or not out there.
That is your coil.

I'm not making a claim about there being a god, you are. As has been said soooo many times - the default assumption on any issue is that there is nothing. You are the one claiming that thre is something.

What I would like YOU and all of the other Humanists here to do is to stop criticizing those who do believe in some deity.

Firstly I don't recall criticising anyone. Secondly, I do not claim to be a humanist. I do not belong to any group, religious or otherwise. I'm quite happy living my own life without subscribing to the beliefs of another group and am perfectly able to make my own decisions about the universe without having to borrow those of someone else.

You and your ilk SilverMK2 have made your decision; you impose upon my rights at the point you deride my choice or try to forcibly change mine through whatever means you see as valid.

I'm not trying to change your point of view (other than through questioning why you believe as you do, thereby getting you to examine why you believe what you do I suppose...). Nor do I recall deriding your choices. You can go out and dance around a fire naked, throwing chicken blood into sacred patterns on the ground and chanting David Bowie lyrics for all I care - takes all sorts to make a world and as long as you are not hurting anyone, knock yourself out

Or are you and E&C from a land that does not have real protections for people to practice their religious beliefs?
I wonder these days after reading the media on both sides of the Pond these days.

We have pretty good protections for and from religion here. For example, you can't mutilate the genitals of girls because your gods tell you to. A good protection from religion there

Though if you want to point to any inequalities it would be easier to talk about them rather than a vague cry of "dey took our bibls!".

There is no law or even valid legal fiction that gives anyone the right to persecute religion or that guarantees any citizen some sort of freedom from religion.
There is only the legal fiction of the separation of church & state and the American right that the government cannot legislate religions and cannot prohibit the free exercise of it when it does not impinge upon the other rights and freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

There is nothing in law which says you should have some kind of magical protection just because you have an invisible friend either.

SilverMK2, if you feel the need to pursue me further on this, take it to PMs.

I don't believe I am "pursuing" you. I'm just replying to your posts. You make it sound as if I am hunting you through the forms, sending you PM's constantly, have somehow got hold of your email and am spaming you or something

Shinto isn't here, so I put Buddhism.

 DouglasJB wrote:
As to things thousands of years old, it is the case of duplication of artifact that gives verification like it does elsewhere.
Things like the Nag Hammadi codices and the papyri, parchments and the bronze from Qurum give a sense of validity to all those who believe in the Bible as sacred writ to name only two famous finds among several artifact finds concerning holy writ since the Second World War.
On the other hand, for the radical Humanists among us, it simply gives proof that the "con" has been going on longer than just a few hundred years.

Just because a book survived to the present day, does not prove anything as to its claimed divinity.
The epic of Gilgamesh is far older than the Bible, and claims its protagonist as a God. Is it thus divine?

We do know that the four main books of the New Testament weren't even written down until a long time after Jesus had died, most likely by people who never even met Jesus.

I set the bar too high?!?

You do. I gave you a link to a group who hold primary sources, and you dismiss them as fraudulent, based on .... the teachings that your church gives you that that group is fraudulent?

I want proof that I am not going to get "egg on my face" with when some person with more resources than my own undoubtedly takes me to task over my accusations.

I don't think that's what you want.
What you want, I suspect, is to be able to believe that Joseph Smith Jnr. dictated the eternal truth whilst face down in a hat, and nothing short of a TARDIS might dissuade you.

Here's a point: Even if Smith is proven to you that he was a fraudster earlier in life, what would that prove to you?
Such a proof does not negate the idea that Smith actually did have a direct line to the divine, for such a claim is unfalsifiable.
You would still be able to cling to your religion, and to the believer, Smith's earlier transgressions become an arc of redemption for a lowly sinner.

E&C evidently feels comfortable on his side of the Pond to repeat any internet b*%%#$*t he can find as valid proof of the criminality of the man.

I'm comfortable saying that a man who dictates a religion out of a hat is 99.999% likely to be a fraudster.
Especially if his "translations" of Egpytian scripts make zero sense when compared to translations derived from the Rosetta Stone.

That there are records available online (and available for personal inspection on request, I'm sure) that indicate he was also convicted of fraud in his younger days, is mere reinforcement, it is not the nub.

E&C, you hold an "A" grade and support such shoddy work and ideas E&C in what you refer me to?
There is an impolite question that begs asking here about your "A" grade, but it may not be according to posting rules here at Dakka Dakka.

No, I didn't cheat.

With this claim of E&C, I see evidently that there is a British version of getting a degree/grade/certification/whatever and not getting the education that goes along with it like is so common on our side of the Pond.

Here we have a claim of parochial superiority from you DouglasJB, without you even bothering to look up what an A-Level is.
I'll let that speak for itself.

And I am not going to mess with any Mormon claims or doctrines concerning AmerInds!

Why not?
Because in a case of contrast between your Mormon texts, and real life facts, you are forced to conclude that the real life facts are wrong?

Talk about someone trying to obfuscate the specific issue with strawmen!!
Keep on task E&C.

It is a genetically proven fact that American Natives are not related to or descended from the Jews.
Indisputable fact.

To brush that fact aside as if it weren't on topic, shows an inability to deal with the claims of your religion in a rational manner.

E&C, you are histerical and hysterical.
When did I say you were going to burn?

When you said this, amongst other things:
As to your personal beliefs as to deity or not, well, that point of view is what you have stewed up for you and you will held responsible for it.
Why you want to "season" the stew the way you have, is only obvious to you.

Seems pointless to deny that you've implied I'm going to be sent to Mormon hell in the Mormon afterlife.

From what I have gleaned from holy writ, Hell/Hel appears to be a state of mind that goes on through the eternities along with the fact that you are damned and going no where fast forever.

Hell is different between different sects. Most Christian and Islamic sects say it's a burning pit of fire, some say it's "just" an eternal separation from God that "burns" as badly as being burned in fire.
It's all unsubstantiated stories to me.

Did you not pay attention at the beginning when I said I was not a traditional Christian?!?

You seem traditional enough.

Moreover E&C, Hell/Hel is, I believe, a perfectly good state of mind for the many persons who could not get over themselves and then took their thoughts out on those around them.
People that make the lives of all around them a very great burden or, pardon the pun, a living hell seem to be just crying out to be bound in Hell/Hel.
Hell/Hel is a very good condition for those who do so.

Oh yes, humans are "born sick, and commanded to be well".
You must Love the God who you also must Fear.
You're saying nothing non-traditional so far, I must say.

Plainly folks, you will earn what eternal reward you will get if you bother to actually read the holy writ available out there.

I've already noted the various "holy" books I've read so far.

Why is your favourite magic book the real one?
What makes Mormonism true, and all the rest false?

Merely the fact that you were born into a Mormon family?

I cannot see any merit in saying He does not exist

I can't see any merit in claiming something does exist, when all you have as evidence is some books which contain stories of people with magic powers.
Show me some actual magic powers, and I'll convert to your flavour of Mormonism.
But you can't.
All you have is some stories.

I see, through my education and personal experiences, some simple absolutes that not only may earn one an eternal reward that one can desire, but also make one a useful contributing human being while living in this existence.

You have some personal experiences that prove Mormonism is true?
What are those?

I can rail against Humanism and its offshoots with as much and as many items as any of you can provide against organized religions.

Please do.

The creature called "human" is generally the least humane organism on the planet unless it looks for a higher standard of behavior than just doing what feels good or doing what it wants to do right this instant, which much of Humanism proselytes.

Nope, that's not what Humanism promotes; That's what psychopathy promotes.

So E&C, you are an ex-Jew?
What do YOU mean by this?
Are you claiming you are Hebrew, but no longer practice Judaism?
Or what?

I was born into a family that practiced the rites and propitiations of Judaism.
When I was young, I believed in the God Yahweh, learned the ancient prayers, and worshipped as Jews have done for millenia.
When I grew up, I came to a point where I saw no point in being Jewish, if there was no credible evidence that Judaism was true, other than an old book of stories.
I read a few other ancient story books since, as theology is a hobby of mine now. I've yet to see any credible evidence for the existence of the divine.

And E&C, if you are an "ex-Jew" along with being from Britain according to your sidebar (I cannot believe I was not cognizant of that before), where is your cred as to making statements about an American religious leader/political candidate of claimed Christianity?

This reminds me about an interview I saw on Fox News a couple of months ago with the Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, who had just released a book he'd written about the life of Jesus.
The Fox News host asked him by what right he could write a book about Jesus, if he didn't believe in Jesus' divinity.
His answer was, essentially, "that's a really stupid objection".

I am not trying to prove the divinity of any person or make you make a choice like my own.

Then why are you publicly claiming that there's a God?
(and that he lives next to the planet Kolob with his Wives, if you adhere to Mormonism)

If you are going to make a claim (and you are making a claim), then please present your evidence.

I don't want to go to Mormon hell if it's real, present your evidence and save me from Mormon hell!!!

What I would like YOU and all of the other Humanists here to do is to stop criticizing those who do believe in some deity.

We're not criticizing people. We're criticizing ideas.

Besides, I tend to label myself as an existentialist who believes in situational ethics.
Perhaps that makes me a "Humanist" by your measure.

Or are you and E&C from a land that does not have real protections for people to practice their religious beliefs?

The official state religion of the UK is Christianity.
The head of state is also the head of the Church.
State taxes go towards supporting Christian institutions.

There is no law or even valid legal fiction that gives anyone the right to persecute religion or that guarantees any citizen some sort of freedom from religion.

Are you claiming that you are being persecuted?
By some words on a page of an internet messageboard?

If I have not addressed your complete replies, my pardon.

You can beg my pardon better by presenting evidence for your claims.

As far as E&C, he is not providing what I asked for, so I am done here with his railings.

I have provided you with what you asked for. You weren't interested enough to take the further step of contacting the people I linked you to.
You merely stated "I don't trust those people" without providing any evidence as to why the links I gave you shouldn't be trusted.
You just asked me to take it on faith that the number #1 Google Hit for "Joseph Smith Glass Looker" was a fraudulent page.
If you have evidence that the claim of these people to hold court documents pertaining to Joseph Smith Jnr. is fraudulent, please present it.

Wait... now I'm confused. What are you guys debating about?

SkavenLord wrote:
Wait... now I'm confused. What are you guys debating about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Although Evil & Chaos is also talking about Mormans and their founder.

Ah, okay. Thank you!

SkavenLord wrote:
Ah, okay. Thank you!

I think most of it is summed up with:

"do you have any proof?"

"do you have any proof there is not?"

"stop shifting the burden of proof - you make the claim so supply the proof"

"you're the one making the claim!"

etc...

And Evil & Chaos has a similarly circular line going on regards Mormans and their founder.

"Here are some things to show that the Morman founder was a convicted fraud"

"I don't believe them! They are fake and made up by some people who tried to kill all Mormans but the bible is all OK!"

"... right..."

Yup, that's pretty accurate.

Secular Humanism. I appreciate the teachings of religion but do not believe in an absolute morality. You just do good things and try to improve yourself. That is all.

I left this thread long ago...
I discovered today it was still going...
Most of the time, I've found religious debates on the internet don't really achieve anything.
I'll just leave you guys to it.

 Gutsnagga wrote:
I left this thread long ago...
I discovered today it was still going...
Most of the time, I've found religious debates on the internet don't really achieve anything.
I'll just leave you guys to it.

Me too.

Merry christams athiests and everyone, let's tolerate the different beliefs in 2014.

Religious and civil liberty for ALL! 1690

Merry atheistmas everyone.

i worship the emperor and the omnissiah (have a shrine and at home) mark my words, the emperor WILL arrive

I'm a Christian, but really my views could be seen as Omnist, I guess. I've only been a Christian for a few months, after being an agnostic who leaned towards belief in a god or gods in one way or another. My views are exclusively mine, and I don't represent anyone else. If I sound assertive at all, it's only because that's what I think it means, not because that's 'how it is'.

The way I see things is like so:

The Christian/Judaic God is either part of a pantheon of other Gods, or is a facet of one God. I mean, there's 7 billion of us, and uncounted trillions of insects, all on one planet alone. I believe in intelligent life on other planets, so Drake's Equation (Is that the one?) theorizes that there are quite a few thousand other inhabitable planets out there, with potentially even larger populations. There is no way that there can only be one god. That's just my view. The Hindu God Brahmin (spelling?), Allah, even Ra, Zeus, Odin and so on, are part of a larger whole or part of a community of immaterial Gods who meddle in material affairs. Sometimes I think that it is hard to believe that these deities would bother to even consider our universe, but at the same token, despite God and all that having a different moral compass and mindset to us (not being human, after all), I know that if I had the ability to 'play God' (oh gawd, the puns ), I certainly would!

Also, the Bible is largely allegorical. Let's not forget that its' component scriptures were written two millennia ago by ancient scholars and philosophers to try and unify a sect that was under brutal Roman oppression, and that these scriptures were then chosen from the many others and collated into the current Bible a thousand years ago-ish by a Church that was at that point the spiritual authority of the civilised western world. What was ethically correct by their standards then is different now, because that's just the way of things. Things change.
Oh, and also: Genesis, to my mind, reads more like a 'song' or exhortation of praise. The first chapter is all fairly poetic about how God creates earth and sows life across it. The second goes on which the barrage of who begat who, which reads as a much more historical bit of record keeping. Therefore, there is room for Genesis and the formation of the universe/Evolution to go hand in hand, as while the latter happened, Genesis praises God's ability to do so, and describes it in a way that an Iron-age man would understand.

With this is mind, homosexual marriage and gender equality is a fine thing, because marriage is a good thing in the Bible, and homosexuality and women's rights are all a part of our modern society, which has evolved in the thousand years or so since the Bible was collated. Homosexual sex out of marriage is still a sin, as is heterosexual sex outside of marriage. But, as a Protestant, I feel that I know that if I pray to God or Jesus, a sin can be atoned for. I can pray and there, I am without sin. I understand that it sounds like a load of hooey; I thought so myself until a few months ago.

Also, personally I veer towards iconoclasm. While I love the idea of community that going to my local Baptist church provides (I'm not a Baptist myself, but it is friendly and local and everyone knows the Reverend there; I live in rural England), I do not appreciate the golden candlesticks, stained glass windows or other decorative accoutrements of the Anglican Church also in town. I respect the Anglican beliefs and why they have them, it just doesn't suit me. To my mind, gold and silver are symbols of wealth, not faith; wood and stone is humble and somehow modest, like a Christian should be (by my interpretation, again).

I don't feel like I am personally responsible for the death of Jesus, or for the Crusades, or for terrible actions committed in the name of God. Bad things are done by bad people (and sometimes good people with the best intentions), and while we all have a measure of sin, we are not all inherently bad. That's a thing I and many Christians also believe: Sins are often different to things that shouldn't ever be done. Jesus can forgive a sin, other things, maybe not so.

Overall, Christianity really changed my life in that it refined my moral code and principles. My life has been governed by a 'gentleman's code' of sorts, as many Victorian or Georgian codes of conduct (not all) have struck me as morally correct, and Christianity has really helped me to curb the excesses of my wants and thoughts, and provided a few new points to add to my list of do's and don't's.

I think that's about it. Ironically, I wrote this while listening to 'Twilight of the Thunder God' by Amon Amarth (for non-metalheads, it's about Thor slaying Jormungandr and other monsters from Viking myth)

I have a horrid feeling that this will be ripped to shreds, but hey ho, that's my fault for plucking up the courage to write ina religion thread!

LooT

Knockagh wrote:

 Gutsnagga wrote:
I left this thread long ago...
I discovered today it was still going...
Most of the time, I've found religious debates on the internet don't really achieve anything.
I'll just leave you guys to it.

Me too.

Merry christams athiests and everyone, let's tolerate the different beliefs in 2014.

Religious and civil liberty for ALL! 1690

Same here.

Oh you Catholic and Christians are such little sinners for loving the blood and violence that is warhammer. Even reading about these false deities is considered wrong by most of your churches..... Some of you even might believe that taking joy in any fiction is wrong, and that you should be burnt for it. Not even talking about the past, if your a Bible christian through and through, then your not even posting here, and if you are its all fire and brimstone.

Sources: In Christian school for six years and read the bible eight times total.
Second source: Reality trumps bull stories made by people who thought water turned to wine by magic.

Please ignore this post (the one I posted).

I'm a christian because Jesus changed my life.

 Lord of Timbraxia wrote:
I'm a Christian, but really my views could be seen as Omnist, I guess. I've only been a Christian for a few months, after being an agnostic who leaned towards belief in a god or gods in one way or another. My views are exclusively mine, and I don't represent anyone else. If I sound assertive at all, it's only because that's what I think it means, not because that's 'how it is'.

The way I see things is like so:

The Christian/Judaic God is either part of a pantheon of other Gods, or is a facet of one God. I mean, there's 7 billion of us, and uncounted trillions of insects, all on one planet alone. I believe in intelligent life on other planets, so Drake's Equation (Is that the one?) theorizes that there are quite a few thousand other inhabitable planets out there, with potentially even larger populations. There is no way that there can only be one god. That's just my view. The Hindu God Brahmin (spelling?), Allah, even Ra, Zeus, Odin and so on, are part of a larger whole or part of a community of immaterial Gods who meddle in material affairs.

You sound like a pantheist, not a Christian.

Lord of Timbraxia wrote:With this is mind, homosexual marriage and gender equality is a fine thing, because marriage is a good thing in the Bible, and homosexuality and women's rights are all a part of our modern society, which has evolved in the thousand years or so since the Bible was collated. Homosexual sex out of marriage is still a sin, as is heterosexual sex outside of marriage.

Why do you feel able to write off some parts of the Bible (stone homosexuals to death, women are property), but agree with other parts of the bible (marriage is good)?
Aren't you just making God what you want it to be, according to your own sense of morality?

Lord of Timbraxia wrote:I have a horrid feeling that this will be ripped to shreds, but hey ho, that's my fault for plucking up the courage to write ina religion thread!

Things that are true, need not fear intellectual inquisition.

fjgraham1 wrote:I'm a christian because Jesus changed my life.

What did Jesus do to change your life?

fjgraham1 wrote:
I'm a christian because Jesus changed my life.

He has one post on dakkadakka, and thats this. Probably another user created this account just to troll.

Someone said they were surprised this was still going. Why? People have talked about religion forever, and they will continue to until it becomes counter-culture.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
Why do you feel able to write off some parts of the Bible (stone homosexuals to death, women are property), but agree with other parts of the bible (marriage is good)?
Aren't you just making God what you want it to be, according to your own sense of morality?

Because the way that we live now is incompatible with several of the Bible's teachings. Stoning anyone to death is a criminal offence in most countries (although it is a punishment in some others, I think), Women, Ethnic Minorities and the LBGT communities have strived for decades to get their equality, and they deserve it now they have won it. Again, the Scriptures that comprise the Bible were written when all three of those groups had little or no say in anything or were deemed immoral and heretical, the same being true when the Bible was collated some thousand years later. With time being a factor, showing that a faith does evolve as the years go on (as do any other organisations or communities), we know that some things just aren't all that good anymore, 'Word of the Lord' or not.

I will be honest, the Bible is open to interpretation. Loosely affiliating as a Protestant, but not part of any Protestant church, it is my right to interpret the Bible as I will. Therefore, yes, a great deal of how I interpret the Bible is up to my moral compass. However, learning what I do from the Bible in that interpretation, my moral compass develops, and develops from other experiences, actions and teachings.

So, in conclusion:
Some parts can be written off because they are not compatible to modern circumstances (and thank God for that, some of those parts give me the shivers)
Personal morality is a big part in some people's sense of religion.

I think what you've either assumed or thought is that all religions and religious sects are codified and organised. Some are (the Catholic Church being a prominent example), many are not. Therefore, the way certain religious sects (or religious individuals, like myself) interpret the texts of their religion can differ to what is the established norm.

 changerofways wrote:

fjgraham1 wrote:
I'm a christian because Jesus changed my life.

He has one post on dakkadakka, and thats this. Probably another user created this account just to troll.

Someone said they were surprised this was still going. Why? People have talked about religion forever, and they will continue to until it becomes counter-culture.

Or maybe he made an account just to share his 2 cents. I know plenty of people who have been influenced in their beliefs by crazy stuff happening in their lives.

I said I discovered it was still going. I wasn't surprised, I just thought at least the arguing would have moved on to another thread. Instead, we now have multiple threads going at once!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PoisonWood wrote:
Oh you Catholic and Christians are such little sinners for loving the blood and violence that is warhammer. Even reading about these false deities is considered wrong by most of your churches..... Some of you even might believe that taking joy in any fiction is wrong, and that you should be burnt for it. Not even talking about the past, if your a Bible christian through and through, then your not even posting here, and if you are its all fire and brimstone.

Sources: In Christian school for six years and read the bible eight times total.
Second source: Reality trumps bull stories made by people who thought water turned to wine by magic.

Please someone tell me this is a troll post?

 Gutsnagga wrote:

 changerofways wrote:

fjgraham1 wrote:
I'm a christian because Jesus changed my life.

He has one post on dakkadakka, and thats this. Probably another user created this account just to troll.

Someone said they were surprised this was still going. Why? People have talked about religion forever, and they will continue to until it becomes counter-culture.

Or maybe he made an account just to share his 2 cents. I know plenty of people who have been influenced in their beliefs by crazy stuff happening in their lives.

I said I discovered it was still going. I wasn't surprised, I just thought at least the arguing would have moved on to another thread. Instead, we now have multiple threads going at once!

Wait... there are? Care to post the link?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

PoisonWood wrote:
Oh you Catholic and Christians are such little sinners for loving the blood and violence that is warhammer. Even reading about these false deities is considered wrong by most of your churches..... Some of you even might believe that taking joy in any fiction is wrong, and that you should be burnt for it. Not even talking about the past, if your a Bible christian through and through, then your not even posting here, and if you are its all fire and brimstone.

Sources: In Christian school for six years and read the bible eight times total.
Second source: Reality trumps bull stories made by people who thought water turned to wine by magic.

Please someone tell me this is a troll post?

Yeah, looks like one. Then again, I could be wrong. Poisonwood, I apologize if this seems rude to ask but care to explain?

There's a heated religious debate going on in the off-topic forum.

Me personally? Christian, although I try to be all-inclusive. I think that all the religions that claim descent from Abraham (all flavors of Christian, plus all branches of Judaism and all permutations of Islam) are essentially the same. (We worship the same deity, we just disagree on the details.)

I believe that the divine is a force beyond our ability to understand, and that most (if not all) world religions have something to contribute to our understanding of it. I do not believe that God is concerned with what we call him, nor do I think the details of our religious rituals are nearly as important as how we go about taking care of ourselves, each other, and taking stewardship of the Earth.

I also believe that spirituality is one of the six cornerstones of health. (Physical, social, mental, emotional, sexual, and spiritual.) While I support anyone's religious orientation, I feel that people who deny the spiritual in any form, or deny the innate human need for spiritual fulfillment of some kind, are neglecting their health as surely as people who insist that they do not need to take care of any one of the other aspects.

I said that I respect anyone's religious affiliation, although I feel the need to make a caveat to that. There is a point where it becomes easy for a (socially, spiritually, and mentally healthy) person to spot a religion that has become a cult. An organization that exists not to guide its parishioners spiritually, but instead exists solely to exploit them for either financial or temporal gain, cunningly disguised as a religion, is a cult. This sort of organization is one of the most despicable sorts of group I can think of. While I respect people who follow the beliefs of one of those religions by choice, I cannot support anyone who supports the organized version of said religion. (Scientology is a prime example. While I applaud and support the members of the Free Zone, I cannot condone support for the Church of Scientology itself.) People who use religious belief to prey upon those in need of spiritual guidance (such as faith healers, mediums, and cult leaders) are among the most abhorrent groups of people imaginable.

Religion should be free. Health should always be free.

That's just my two cents, of course.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/570802.page

I have a feeling I'm gonna regret joining in on this one.

Edit: Ninja'd

 Jimsolo wrote:
I also believe that spirituality is one of the six cornerstones of health. (Physical, social, mental, emotional, sexual, and spiritual.) While I support anyone's religious orientation, I feel that people who deny the spiritual in any form, or deny the innate human need for spiritual fulfillment of some kind, are neglecting their health as surely as people who insist that they do not need to take care of any one of the other aspects.

Spitituality, I would suggest, is not an innate human need. I would say it comes under the overview of social and emotional needs - the need for a community around them and a desire for social and emotional reassurance that they have value and meaning.

I have never been a member of a church or religious organisation (my schools were mainly CoE which is pretty much limited to hymns/prayer in assembly which I stopped singing at about the age of 8-9 and sopped praying at about 7, church 2-3 times a year and RE lessons which I dropped when I was about 13) and have not ever really felt the need for spiritual identity and I feel that the social and emotional needs I have are adequately filled by other means than having a religious lifestyle.

One of my uncles family and my nan are very active in their church (I think CoE) and do all sorts of things with their church - they give and take a great deal from their religious community. I don't agree that there is a god, but I do very much respect them for the work they do, and respect the community they are a part of - that is something far more important than what book you read from, or which direction you pray in and fills far more of a persons innate need, with what they read and which way they pray simply enabling that fulfilment.

 Gutsnagga wrote:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/570802.page

I have a feeling I'm gonna regret joining in on this one.

Edit: Ninja'd

Yup, I think you will, I know I would
I'll stay out of that one, as there are a lot of terms I don't understand, a few mindsets I don't quite get, and again and again the idea that Science disproves God. I think both are relevant, and as one of the forum posters put it, if he were a religious person he'd see evolution as God's 'autopilot' function for the world/galaxy/universe/multiverse etc etc, because otherwise it'd be millennia after millennia of 'babysitting', which isn't conducive to running everything in the background as He tends to do

 Lord of Timbraxia wrote:

Evil & Chaos wrote:
Why do you feel able to write off some parts of the Bible (stone homosexuals to death, women are property), but agree with other parts of the bible (marriage is good)?
Aren't you just making God what you want it to be, according to your own sense of morality?

Because the way that we live now is incompatible with several of the Bible's teachings. Stoning anyone to death is a criminal offence in most countries (although it is a punishment in some others, I think), Women, Ethnic Minorities and the LBGT communities have strived for decades to get their equality, and they deserve it now they have won it.

So you think the Bible actively insists its readers conduct evil acts, but still think the Bible is a good book?

Seems silly to me.

some things just aren't all that good anymore, 'Word of the Lord' or not.

So, when the Bible says "God told Moses to stone homosexuals to death", the Bible is lying and that didn't really happen?
Or was God cool with killing gays then, but likes gays now?

I think what you've either assumed or thought is that all religions and religious sects are codified and organised. Some are (the Catholic Church being a prominent example), many are not. Therefore, the way certain religious sects (or religious individuals, like myself) interpret the texts of their religion can differ to what is the established norm.

I understand interpretation. But this isn't interpretation, it's willful blindness to unambiguous exhortations to do evil things.
Do you consider the Bible to be a good book?

Evil & Chaos wrote:

So, when the Bible says "God told Moses to stone homosexuals to death", the Bible is lying and that didn't really happen?
Or was God cool with killing gays then, but likes gays now?

this, but, essentially:
if any Deity is real, the only possible reality is that.. ... .he? she? they? is/are schizophrenic.

Surprised that there are only 2 Hindus that have voted in the poll.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
Merry atheistmas everyone.

Isn't it generally thought that Christians co-opted older pagan festivities for Christmas? If so, suppose there is no reason for atheists not to jump in as well!

Polytheistic Christian

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Polytheistic Christian

I'm sorry but isn't this a bit of an oxymoron?

 Grimskul wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Polytheistic Christian

I'm sorry but isn't this a bit of an oxymoron?

yes and no. If there's an admission that mary, joseph, and all the other patron saints christians pray to--you know, in contradiction to what's taught in the bible--then, it's honestly. If it's belief in any other beings outside of what's permissible under the umbra of christianity, then.... yes. Complete oxymoron, or, not actually a christian.

 Pacific wrote:
Surprised that there are only 2 Hindus that have voted in the poll.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
Merry atheistmas everyone.

Isn't it generally thought that Christians co-opted older pagan festivities for Christmas? If so, suppose there is no reason for atheists not to jump in as well!

The Roman Saturnalia was celebrated on Dec 25th, involved gift-giving, and parties that involved public singing.

The Romans, of course, made Christianity their state religion in AD313, but they kept some old festivals such as the Saturnalia, under new names.

 Grimskul wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Polytheistic Christian

I'm sorry but isn't this a bit of an oxymoron?

It's arguable that some early parts of the Bible were originally written in polytheistic form, and were later edited to remove most references to other Gods; God talks in reference to himself as "us" and "we" a lot early in the Bible, but that gradually fades away as we come to the later-written books.

We know from archeology that the early Hebrews were probably polytheists.

Evil & Chaos wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Surprised that there are only 2 Hindus that have voted in the poll.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
Merry atheistmas everyone.

Isn't it generally thought that Christians co-opted older pagan festivities for Christmas? If so, suppose there is no reason for atheists not to jump in as well!

The Roman Saturnalia was celebrated on Dec 25th, involved gift-giving, and parties that involved public singing.

The Romans, of course, made Christianity their state religion in AD313, but they kept some old festivals such as the Saturnalia, under new names.

 Grimskul wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Polytheistic Christian

I'm sorry but isn't this a bit of an oxymoron?

It's arguable that some early parts of the Bible were originally written in polytheistic form, and were later edited to remove most references to other Gods; God talks in reference to himself as "us" and "we" a lot early in the Bible, but that gradually fades away as we come to the later-written books.

We know from archeology that the early Hebrews were probably polytheists.

The whole "we" and "us" are likely a reference to the Trinity given that the Christian god is a Tri-un god after all. It does solidify or at least demonstrate the continuity of it even in the Old Testament and how it wasn't just tacked on later by Christians in the New Testament with God's true nature being revealed with the arrival of Jesus.

[quote=Evil & Chaos 524739 6394521 null
So you think the Bible actively insists its readers conduct evil acts, but still think the Bible is a good book?

Do you consider the Bible to be a good book?

Evil & Chaos wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Surprised that there are only 2 Hindus that have voted in the poll.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
Merry atheistmas everyone.

Isn't it generally thought that Christians co-opted older pagan festivities for Christmas? If so, suppose there is no reason for atheists not to jump in as well!

The Roman Saturnalia was celebrated on Dec 25th, involved gift-giving, and parties that involved public singing.

The Romans, of course, made Christianity their state religion in AD313, but they kept some old festivals such as the Saturnalia, under new names.

 Grimskul wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Polytheistic Christian

I'm sorry but isn't this a bit of an oxymoron?

It's arguable that some early parts of the Bible were originally written in polytheistic form, and were later edited to remove most references to other Gods; God talks in reference to himself as "us" and "we" a lot early in the Bible, but that gradually fades away as we come to the later-written books.

We know from archeology that the early Hebrews were probably polytheists.

Not only that but the Bible in the old testament mentions other gods as entities. Plus I don't believe in the Trinity that God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit are one in the same. I believe in God, and Jesus who was born unto Mary a virgin, died for my sins, and was risen on the third day. The Holy Spirit, I'm on the fence about, as I think it's more the 'feel' and 'pull' of God on the spirit, rather then a separate entity. Plus the Bible has be edited, rewritten, books taken in and out of it, etc. It's a guideline. I believe that other deities can and do exist, and are viable pathways to an afterlife.

Anyways the core Christian concept of Jesus dying for my sins, and my belief in him will lead me to heaven is what makes me a Christian. The fact I believe other gods exist, can and do answer prayers, that there are alternative afterlives, and the lack of a Trinity, makes me Polytheistic.

It also makes you not a christian. When it comes to a monotheistic religion, you cannot sit on two sides of the fence.

 Grimskul wrote:

Evil & Chaos wrote:
We know from archeology that the early Hebrews were probably polytheists.

The whole "we" and "us" are likely a reference to the Trinity given that the Christian god is a Tri-un god after all. It does solidify or at least demonstrate the continuity of it even in the Old Testament and how it wasn't just tacked on later by Christians in the New Testament with God's true nature being revealed with the arrival of Jesus.

Or the early Hebrews were actually polytheists who over time stole a bunch of myths from other tribes around them (including monotheism), which as I said we actually know from archeology rather than conjecture that presupposes the existence of God.

 poda_t wrote:
It also makes you not a christian. When it comes to a monotheistic religion, you cannot sit on two sides of the fence.

Expect there is no fence. The only defining need to be a Christian is to believe in Jesus, and that Jesus died for all sins, and believe in him gets you to heaven. That's it. Christianity is also not wholly monotheistic. Especially if you believe that Jesus is separate from God.

Born into a "christian" family... yeah thats just what the census says about us. Took issue early on with some of the more radical sides to do with my self expression and found on the whole i have less of a problem with a belief system with multiple gods (less hypocrisy in the stories), I believe in the norse branch of paganism and i like how most of the gods are just personifications of natural events!

but in all honesty ones beliefs to me should be free to change as you grow and learn.

If I didn't believe in God or an afterlife I really wouldn't be wasting my time writing on a blog on the Internet. If I really believed that this was it, 70 or 80 years and then nothing and i had spent it fighting people who believed that something came next. Why would I care! I dont get militant atheists, I can get someone who does not believe and so chases hedonistic pleasure and abandons imposed morals. But fighting on the Internet and playing war-games, really if this is it. Man what a waste. I can waste my time and enjoy it because I know .......I'm gonna live for ever.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:

 poda_t wrote:
It also makes you not a christian. When it comes to a monotheistic religion, you cannot sit on two sides of the fence.

Expect there is no fence. The only defining need to be a Christian is to believe in Jesus, and that Jesus died for all sins, and believe in him gets you to heaven. That's it. Christianity is also not wholly monotheistic. Especially if you believe that Jesus is separate from God.

Your stance is analagous to saying you're a skeptic and believe in magic. The two positions oppose each other.

Uh...no, that's a pretty narrow manner of thinking. First you can be a skeptic on something specific, and believe in the 'broad' sense of term. You can be a skeptic of 'ancient aliens' but believe fully that aliens exist and have visited the Earth, for example.

My belief seems to offend you and I'm sorry, but it's what I've prayed on and came to believe.

Knockagh wrote:
If I didn't believe in God or an afterlife I really wouldn't be wasting my time writing on a blog on the Internet. If I really believed that this was it, 70 or 80 years and then nothing and i had spent it fighting people who believed that something came next. Why would I care!

Let's say you believe in Philosophy A.
You live in a country that is officially Philosophy B.
Your taxes, go to support and promote Philosophy B.
People who follow Philosophy B automatically get respect and deference from most people in society, whilst people who follow Philosophy A get looked upon as untrustworthy, amoral, even evil.

Wouldn't that sorta get your goat?

I dont get militant atheists,

http://freethinkblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Militant-Atheist.png
http://www.jesusandmo.net/strips/2008-06-20.jpg

I'd rather be a militant atheist. :-)

I can get someone who does not believe and so chases hedonistic pleasure and abandons imposed morals.

Atheists don't generally go around being hedonistic, ignoring morality, etc.

That's because morality is innate in human beings, not imposed by an external source such as a God or Gods.

But fighting on the Internet and playing war-games, really if this is it. Man what a waste. I can waste my time and enjoy it because I know .......I'm gonna live for ever.

You think you're going to live forever. You don't know that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
My belief seems to offend you and I'm sorry, but it's what I've prayed on and came to believe.

Why do you believe what you believe?

Calvinism for the win!
free will is for pussies.

Evil & Chaos 524739 6405676 wrote:

I can get someone who does not believe and so chases hedonistic pleasure and abandons imposed morals.

Atheists don't generally go around being hedonistic, ignoring morality, etc.

That's because morality is innate in human beings, not imposed by an external source such as a God or Gods.

Ha ha, Morality is innate ehh? Why would that be ' I have written my laws upon their hearts.' maybe thats why I know you don't beileve yourself because you know God, you just have wrapped yourself up in knots denying it which is weird.

I know I will live forever because I met God and he told me. So its not supposition it's fact.

And no I don't understand wasting my time arguing over a position that I believe to be irrelevant. As of course all life would be ime irrelevant in your world, murder becomes a man made notion as does any so called crime. If you really believed what you are saying your life would be truly and radically different.

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/01/07 10:15:13

Post by: Evil & Chaos

Ha ha, Morality is innate ehh?

Yep, experiments have shown that even infants will show a preference toward someone who acts kindly to another person, and an aversion towards someone who acts selfishly. Long before they learn about Jesus, or Mohammad, or whomever.

Do you think that the Hebrews would have reached Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, if they were under the impression that Murder and Perjury weren't injurious to society? How condescending an attitude.

Likewise, animals have shown behaviours that we would understand as social morality in action, both in the wild and under experimental conditions.

Why would that be ' I have written my laws upon their hearts.' maybe thats why I know you don't beileve yourself because you know God, you just have wrapped yourself up in knots denying it which is weird.

I don't "know" God. Or Gods. Never met any of them.

I know I will live forever because I met God and he told me.

You met God?
What does he look like?
What does he smell like?

So its not supposition it's fact.

Mmmmmm.

And no I don't understand wasting my time arguing over a position that I believe to be irrelevant. As of course all life would be ime irrelevant in your world, murder becomes a man made notion as does any so called crime. If you really believed what you are saying your life would be truly and radically different.

Yep, murder is definitely a man-made concept.
That doesn't mean that I think murder is great, though, as you seem to be insinuating.

I think murder is pretty darned horrible, worse than you do most likely, because I don't think the murder'ee will go on to live forever in Heaven after she gets brutally stabbed to death. I think she'll die in messy fear and pain, and then her consciousness will cease to exist, forever.

In your view of the universe, the murder'ee (assuming she's a fan of your favourite God - which one is that by the way? One of the Jesuses?) goes on to Heaven and lives in paradise eternally. "False consolation" springs to mind.

Reply by: Knockagh - click to view full reply 

56425

Religion @ 2014/01/07 19:22:28

Post by: Knockagh

We could keep this up all year.

Goodnight, the Lord loves ya, step out sometimes and sniff the air, God has many smells.

Soli Deo Gloria

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/01/08 09:21:50

Post by: Evil & Chaos

So you met God but are unable to say what God looks like.

I've got no reason to believe you met God, then.

Take a photo next time, hey?

Reply by: Troike - click to view full reply 

71489

Religion @ 2014/01/08 10:44:36

Post by: Troike

Was it Morgan Freeman? It was Morgan Freeman, wasn't it?

Reply by: Iron_Captain - click to view full reply 

80673

Religion @ 2014/01/08 15:37:46

Post by: Iron_Captain

 Troike wrote:
Was it Morgan Freeman? It was Morgan Freeman, wasn't it?

No. When you are dead, you will find out.
You will wake up in an empty room except for a desk (with a metronome on it )
Then, you will look up.
There will be a man sitting behind the desk
You will stare at him for some time,
before you realise with a shock who God really is:
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

And you will scream in despair when you realise that everything you have ever believed in was all a lie
and that Putin has been fooling the world all along.

Spoiler:

Search your feelings.
You know it to be true...

Reply by: Grimskul - click to view full reply 

73007

Religion @ 2014/01/10 06:51:05

Post by: Grimskul

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Troike wrote:
Was it Morgan Freeman? It was Morgan Freeman, wasn't it?

No. When you are dead, you will find out.
You will wake up in an empty room except for a desk (with a metronome on it )
Then, you will look up.
There will be a man sitting behind the desk
You will stare at him for some time,
before you realise with a shock who God really is:
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

And you will scream in despair when you realise that everything you have ever believed in was all a lie
and that Putin has been fooling the world all along.

Spoiler:

Search your feelings.
You know it to be true...

People will sure be Putin there place, that's for sure

Reply by: Phi-666 - click to view full reply 

80361

Religion @ 2014/01/12 10:13:58

Post by: Phi-666

I believe in the God Emperor of mankind. I know he is no Deity, in the classical sense, but He is the only one deserving of my belief.

Uniting humanity, leading people with a beacon in the dark, giving people hope.

Only a truly god-like entity can do so much.

For the Emperor!

Reply by: Truth118 - click to view full reply 

71499

Religion @ 2014/01/12 10:44:37

Post by: Truth118

I wasn't indoctrinated into any religion at a young age, although protestant Christianity is somewhat present in my community and my dad's side of the family is Catholic, so I claimed to be a Catholic.

Around the age of 12 I lost a lot of sleep thinking about the possibility of being tortured for eternity for masturbating, so decided being more religious might help, my only dilemma was determining which religion was the one true religion, so I decided to do some research on religion in general and that eventually made me an agnostic atheist. I am now much more at ease with life not believing I was created solely for the purpose of being given an unfair test and then tortured.

I don't fear death as much either, and I figure it'll be exactly the same as it was before I was born and I never lost sleep over that.

Reply by: ted1138 - click to view full reply 

59712

Religion @ 2014/01/12 11:37:32

Post by: ted1138

I'm agnostic because I believe there has to be something greater than just chance for us being here, and I believe that since we're not even close to knowing what that is, why should we follow anyone who says they do(especially when they've been proved wrong so many times before)...

Reply by: rockyreeves22 - click to view full reply 

66486

Religion @ 2014/01/12 13:19:11

Post by: rockyreeves22

Jehovas Witness... the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/01/12 14:08:36

Post by: SilverMK2

 rockyreeves22 wrote:
Jehovas Witness... the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

And the greatest trick religion has ever pulled is getting people to believe there is a god...

Though I don't quite understand the position of some religons (and here I am generally talking about various brands of Christianity) on evil and the devil. The whole Satan Paradox pretty much sums up for me why religion doesn't supply any answers.

Reply by: Iron_Captain - click to view full reply 

80673

Religion @ 2014/01/12 16:42:22

Post by: Iron_Captain

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 rockyreeves22 wrote:
Jehovas Witness... the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

And the greatest trick religion has ever pulled is getting people to believe there is a god...

Though I don't quite understand the position of some religons (and here I am generally talking about various brands of Christianity) on evil and the devil. The whole Satan Paradox pretty much sums up for me why religion doesn't supply any answers.

And the greatest trick Satan has ever pulled is inventing atheism. One could continue a long time with this kind of nonsensical statements.
And why is this 'Satan paradox' a problem to you? The problem of evil has been dealt with many times by theologians since ancient times, and there exist a myriad explanations for it. I don't see how it could be a problem.
In my personal opinion, discussions about religion are so extremely complicated that they are best left to those who are more knowledgable about the subject, like theologians and philosophers. If there exists such an thing as an omniscient, omnipotent being, how are we, with our feeble mortal minds ever going to understand it? Better to simply become an agnostic

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/01/12 18:28:19

Post by: Riquende

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Better to simply become an agnostic

An agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist? Agnosticism cannot replace atheism or theism in a person's belief system as it's a position on a matter other than belief.

the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Trite nonsense trotted out by the actual tricksters.

Reply by: Iron_Captain - click to view full reply 

80673

Religion @ 2014/01/12 19:36:55

Post by: Iron_Captain

 Riquende wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Better to simply become an agnostic

An agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist? Agnosticism cannot replace atheism or theism in a person's belief system as it's a position on a matter other than belief.

Whatever you want of course. I myself am a agnostic theist, but agnosticism of any kind is good.

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/01/12 19:37:29

Post by: SilverMK2

 Iron_Captain wrote:
One could continue a long time with this kind of nonsensical statements.

That was kind of the point I was making...

And why is this 'Satan paradox' a problem to you? The problem of evil has been dealt with many times by theologians since ancient times, and there exist a myriad explanations for it. I don't see how it could be a problem.

Well, the myriad explanations, none of which are rooted in reality for one?

In my personal opinion, discussions about religion are so extremely complicated that they are best left to those who are more knowledgable about the subject, like theologians and philosophers.

So, you don't care for anyone to discuss anything unless they are an expert in the subject?

If there exists such an thing as an omniscient, omnipotent being, how are we, with our feeble mortal minds ever going to understand it? Better to simply become an agnostic

If there exists such a being, there should exist a shread of evidence for it, or indeed the need for there to be one, do you not think?

Show me such and I will be "agnostic" too

For the moment "gods" exists far beyond reasonable doubt in the land of mystical rainbow unicorns.

Reply by: inkybones - click to view full reply 

39496

Religion @ 2014/01/13 01:45:27

Post by: inkybones

I am an atheist because of:

"The improbability of god, the evil done in his name, the likelihood he is man made, and the availability of less harmful belief systems."

~Christopher Hitchens

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/01/13 11:55:36

Post by: Evil & Chaos

On the problem of evil, I think Epicurus said it best:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

- Epicurus

Reply by: poda_t - click to view full reply 

38250

Religion @ 2014/01/13 22:54:07

Post by: poda_t

Standard response:
We can't understand god with our frail mortal minds, god is mysterious in his ways!

Translation:
We have no fething clue and choose to dismiss the reasoning you presented because it requires us to admit that this is all made up, we have no tangible evidence to counter your claim with and we are too unwilling to relinquish our childish fantasies. Also, we are going to continue praying to this estranged entity to act on our behalf rather than actually taking it on ourselves to do a damn thing to improve the lives of others, because that requires effort and touching the icky sick, smelly homeless and the dying.

Reply by: Inget namn - click to view full reply 

38414

Religion @ 2014/02/13 10:49:24

Post by: Inget namn

IMO this isn't the type of poll that should be on here...

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/02/13 12:29:40

Post by: Riquende

 Inget namn wrote:
IMO this isn't the type of poll that should be on here...

So instead of ignoring it and letting it fade away down the forum with no replies for a month, you bump it right back to the top. Well done.

Reply by: d-usa - click to view full reply 

37231

Religion @ 2014/02/13 12:31:14

Post by: d-usa

Maybe he can make a poll to see if there should be a poll?

Reply by: master of ordinance - click to view full reply 

40344

Religion @ 2014/02/13 12:58:50

Post by: master of ordinance

 d-usa wrote:
Maybe he can make a poll to see if there should be a poll?

I saw what you did there!

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/02/13 16:37:00

Post by: SilverMK2

 d-usa wrote:
Maybe he can make a poll to see if there should be a poll?

Im pretty sure we have had that poll already.

Reply by: poda_t - click to view full reply 

38250

Religion @ 2014/02/13 21:25:58

Post by: poda_t

I believe that the discussion surrounding the poll will be polarized. We may need to artificially adjust the polarity of the questions...

Reply by: d-usa - click to view full reply 

37231

Religion @ 2014/02/13 21:30:57

Post by: d-usa

What does Poland think of this?

Reply by: master of ordinance - click to view full reply 

40344

Religion @ 2014/02/13 21:48:58

Post by: master of ordinance

 d-usa wrote:
What does Poland think of this?

There having poll about it.

Reply by: DeadMutagen94 - click to view full reply 

82158

Religion @ 2014/02/14 04:19:14

Post by: DeadMutagen94

just to put my 2 cents in not that it matters but who cares what religion you are as long as you're not a dick its all good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

And then to have the Atheists proclaim that we are brainwashing kids in boyscouts is stupid. Especially when I only consul kids on their spirituality and mental well being. I do not consul kids and get them into religions, I just tell them "believe what you want to believe, just believe in something."

I was in the scouts all the basic ideals behind the scouts are religious even the scouts code said at the beginning of every scout meeting and just about every morning at camp. Gays scouts were not allowed and the head of the BSA has openly expressed his religious beliefs on the matter. I quit because it was that way,end of story




Automatically Appended Next Post:
just believe what you believe without being a jerk and killing everyones dreams then defend your right to do so.

Reply by: Capamaru - click to view full reply 

54575

Religion @ 2014/03/14 10:53:39

Post by: Capamaru

I am more of a Karma person. Regarding religion well the pic says it all...

Reply by: ToastyAwesom - click to view full reply 

84031

Religion @ 2014/03/14 14:33:13

Post by: ToastyAwesom

I was listed in the New Zealand electoral roll as Jedi. Seriously, I was allowed.

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/03/14 17:29:57

Post by: SilverMK2

That was blocked in the UK. Which is a shame. There are plenty of books with jedi in, which surely means it istrue!

Reply by: BaconCatBug - click to view full reply 

81759

Religion @ 2014/04/15 11:17:49

Post by: BaconCatBug

Obviously I worship the Immortal Emperor of Mankind. Anyone who doesn't is a filthy Heretic!

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/04/15 11:54:47

Post by: Riquende

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Obviously I worship the Immortal Emperor of Mankind. Anyone who doesn't is a filthy Heretic!

#

... or has no interest in GW's fluff.

Reply by: SirSertile - click to view full reply 

85944

Religion @ 2014/05/16 14:54:28

Post by: SirSertile

 Cheesecat wrote:
I'm just curious what the religious makeup of DakkaDakka is, so I made a poll. For me personally I'm irreligious I don't believe in any form of religion, in fact I don't believe in the supernatural either so I guess I'm a naturalist as well that being said I don't have any problems with other people

being religious or believing in the supernatural so long as they don't use it as an excuse for abusing others.

So . . . Do you play chaos SMs or a non Imperium Of Man owned force?

Reply by: Bronzefists42 - click to view full reply 

81093

Religion @ 2014/05/16 19:41:27

Post by: Bronzefists42

As if dakkadakka wasn't whiny enough now we bring religous beliefs into the mix. A big portion of this thread is people insulting other people for thinking differently.

Reply by: Shredder - click to view full reply 

40565

Religion @ 2014/05/17 00:13:07

Post by: Shredder

Much like the world's religious belief, this thread is trying to die. Maybe we should let it.

Reply by: SkavenLord - click to view full reply 

78065

Religion @ 2014/05/17 02:30:59

Post by: SkavenLord

Agreed. This is getting ridiculous.

Reply by: Samaphira - click to view full reply 

85165

Religion @ 2014/05/18 17:11:16

Post by: Samaphira

Pagan and I have to say in recent years the number of pagan gamers I've met has surprised me

Reply by: Cheesecat - click to view full reply 

28228

Religion @ 2014/05/19 06:22:12

Post by: Cheesecat

Still atheist but Louis CK makes a good point about how you can never be 100% sure that there is no god (which I agree with).

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/03/125229-video-louis-c-k-snl-monologue-liberals-feminists-absolutely-loved-nsfw/

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/05/19 08:43:15

Post by: Evil & Chaos

you can never be 100% sure that there is no god (which I agree with).

The philosopher Bertrand Russel agreed with you, and posited a thought experiment that shows how trivially easy it is to make unfalsifiable claims: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Reply by: Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl - click to view full reply 

78973

Religion @ 2014/05/19 23:53:31

Post by: Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl

 Cheesecat wrote:
Still atheist but Louis CK makes a good point about how you can never be 100% sure that there is no god (which I agree with).

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/03/125229-video-louis-c-k-snl-monologue-liberals-feminists-absolutely-loved-nsfw/

That is why Howard Philip Lovecraft said :
“All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will, a spirit world, or an eternal survival of personality exist. They are the most preposterous and unjustified of all the guesses which can be made about the universe, and I am not enough of a hair-splitter to pretend that I don't regard them as arrant and negligible moonshine. In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of radical evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist.”
Yeah, you cannot (dis)prove it.

Reply by: Melissia - click to view full reply 

29408

Religion @ 2014/05/20 00:04:18

Post by: Melissia

It'd have to break down further, because a lot of sects within specific religions are diametrically opposed to one another.

Reply by: Jimsolo - click to view full reply 

18690

Religion @ 2014/05/20 01:45:59

Post by: Jimsolo

 Samaphira wrote:
Pagan and I have to say in recent years the number of pagan gamers I've met has surprised me

Really?! Around here, 'pagan' and 'gamer' go hand-in-hand so often they might as well be synonymous.

Reply by: Njal Stormpuppy - click to view full reply 

74650

Religion @ 2014/05/22 13:20:20

Post by: Njal Stormpuppy

 daedalus-templarius wrote:
I'm agnostic, but I'll be the first to sign up once a deity rides down on a thunderbolt to smite those who oppose him/her.

Think that'll be me too

Reply by: Zond - click to view full reply 

37701

Religion @ 2014/05/22 13:59:46

Post by: Zond

I think I'm reaching a point where if I don't have something spiritual in my life I feel a crushing pointlessness to everything I do.

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/05/22 15:38:56

Post by: Riquende

Maybe you're just suffering from depression? There's nothing spiritual in my life and it's awesome.

I'd go and see a professional about it (not a priest).

Reply by: Zond - click to view full reply 

37701

Religion @ 2014/05/22 16:22:07

Post by: Zond

Possibly. I would also note that I never claimed I needed an organised religion per se, nor that everyone needed the same requirements I do. Just a frustrated musing.

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/05/27 08:27:20

Post by: Evil & Chaos

Zond wrote:
I think I'm reaching a point where if I don't have something spiritual in my life I feel a crushing pointlessness to everything I do.

What are your specific beliefs as regards the supernatural?
What does "spiritual" mean to you?

Reply by: Zond - click to view full reply 

37701

Religion @ 2014/06/05 11:38:37

Post by: Zond

I have no idea yet.

Reply by: stanman - click to view full reply 

67730

Religion @ 2014/06/06 20:31:56

Post by: stanman

The question I have isn't what religion people are, but rather do you believe in human beings having a soul of any sort? It's not something that can be currently proven by science as there's no tangible way to measure or detect it, yet the concept of a soul or greater consciousness is the one thing that's universal within all religions. We can't even explain why we developed the ability for abstract thought and self awareness, it's not something needed for evolutionary survival yet humans have it in abundance and it's one of the things that set us apart as a species over other animals.

Just because we cannot see something with our naked eye does not mean it does not exist, often science cannot explain things because we haven't asked the right questions or done the correct experiments yet. Electricity has been present since the dawn of the universe but science didn't get around to proving it until very recently (in terms of human history) it's something that is largely invisible in our daily lives and even for all of our advances with it there are aspects that are still being studied and explored. Thing like radiation are invisible to us and we can only discern them through the trace effects is has on something or through the use of special tools.

Lots of people are quick to dismiss notions of the supernatural because they can't produce it on demand, but it is entirely possible that it is a force just like any other that we simply haven't addressed it with the correct research to quantify it and we currently lack tools that would allow us to "prove" existence. While they claim to be open minded most atheist I've met are anything but, most of them can't offer any suggestions on how you could even begin to scientifically analyze the presence of any sort of a soul, or awareness that most human beings ascribe to having.

People that attempt to research potential ways to explore the soul or energies beyond our human body are usually mocked as pursuing fringe science as it fails to offer tangible proof, but people are quick to forget that the path to scientific advance has more failed experiments then successful ones. Science is a process of repeating and failing at something until favorable results are achieved in a repeatable process. Just because something can't be proven at the moment due to lacking the proper tools does not mean it's impossible that one day it won't become a proven science.

It's a bit of an double standard to say one can prove/disprove anything when no there's no generally no established research into the subject (at least from a scientific approach).

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/06/07 08:05:45

Post by: SilverMK2

People who research such things often are frauds. We have a reasonable grasp of a lot of things - enough to at least be able to get an idea of the shape the gaps in our knowledge have. As far as im aware nothing points to there being a "soul shaped" gap. But you certainly cant rule out future discoveries. I would just not holdy breath expecting one of them to be the discovery of the soul.

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/06/07 10:11:28

Post by: Riquende

 stanman wrote:
Electricity has been present since the dawn of the universe but science didn't get around to proving it until very recently (in terms of human history)

Um... is lightning not proof enough of the existence of electricity?

Really, you have a really sketchy grasp of how science works. Science starts out by making observations about physical, natural phenomena and hypothesising about the possible mechanics/processes that might be involved in creating that phenomena. At that point, experiments are drawn up attempting to disprove those hypotheses. The more experiments a particular hypothesis undergoes without being disproven, the closer it gets to becoming established as 'probably true' (very high praise in skeptic circles!).

Now, with regards to research into souls/spirits, what physical or natural phenomena have been observed to instigate the research? If there isn't any, then what is it you're trying to explain? And if you're not trying to explain something specific, how do you know what processes you're testing for? How would you set up a reliable experiment if you don't have a clue what you're testing?

 stanman wrote:
It's a bit of an double standard to say one can prove/disprove anything when no there's no generally no established research into the subject (at least from a scientific approach).

Science doesn't need to 'disprove' souls, because until souls are offered as a credible theory for the explanation of an observed phenomenon, they don't exist within science. There's no double standard at all. And as I've hopefully made it clear, there is no established research into the subject, because what is there to research?

Reply by: baxter123 - click to view full reply 

56925

Religion @ 2014/06/07 17:13:59

Post by: baxter123

I am a Prodestant, but prefer to think that Jesus was another prophet and believe in free and full hearted religion where you just follow the Two Commandments of Love your God and Love your Neighbour and your good to go. Its a good way to live and its served me well.

Reply by: Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl - click to view full reply 

78973

Religion @ 2014/06/07 17:51:10

Post by: Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl

 stanman wrote:
The question I have isn't what religion people are, but rather do you believe in human beings having a soul of any sort? It's not something that can be currently proven by science as there's no tangible way to measure or detect it

No. We cannot “prove” it by science (science does not prove stuff; science provide models that reliably describe how stuff happen) because it is not defined in scientific terms. To compare it to your later argument, nobody went on a quest to “prove” electricity. People just noticed some phenomenon, and tried to get a model that would accurately describe them. Electricity is basically the name we gave the model after it was built.

 stanman wrote:
We can't even explain why we developed the ability for abstract thought and self awareness, it's not something needed for evolutionary survival yet humans have it in abundance and it's one of the things that set us apart as a species over other animals.

What makes you think other animals lack self-awareness? Even for abstract thought, it is not that obvious.

 stanman wrote:
Lots of people are quick to dismiss notions of the supernatural because they can't produce it on demand, but it is entirely possible that it is a force just like any other that we simply haven't addressed it with the correct research to quantify it and we currently lack tools that would allow us to "prove" existence.

So, what do you advise doing? Just idle assumptions based on no evidence? If there are no observations that needs to be explained by a model, why build a model?

 stanman wrote:
People that attempt to research potential ways to explore the soul or energies beyond our human body are usually mocked as pursuing fringe science as it fails to offer tangible proof

Well, if their methods are flawed, they will be mocked. Of course. And if they start from a preconception that they try to “prove” rather than starting from facts gathered by experiments and observations and try to build a model around those, their methods are flawed.

Well, I pretty much repeated what Riquende said, I just wrote that before reading his answer.

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/06/07 19:59:29

Post by: Evil & Chaos

 stanman wrote:
We can't even explain why we developed the ability for abstract thought and self awareness, it's not something needed for evolutionary survival yet humans have it in abundance and it's one of the things that set us apart as a species over other animals.

Since others have addressed your other comments thoroughly, I'd like to comment on this one.

Evolution isn't just about survival, it's also about surviving more successfully than your competitors.
That being the case, anything that gives your tribe an edge, be it greater intelligence that allows better hunt planning, or greater empathy that allows tribal loyalty (the basis of ethics & morality), these traits will survive in tribes that survive, and die out in tribes that lacked them (just so long as the traits are advantageous to the survival of the tribe).

Therefore, there definitely is an evolutionary inculcation towards a sophisticated intelligence, in those animals that fit into environmental niches that reward intelligence & cooperation over brute strength.

Lots of people are quick to dismiss notions of the supernatural because they can't produce it on demand

I dismiss claims to the supernatural as unlikely because never, not once in all recorded human history, has a single supernatural event been verified.

While they claim to be open minded most atheist I've met are anything but, most of them can't offer any suggestions on how you could even begin to scientifically analyze the presence of any sort of a soul, or awareness that most human beings ascribe to having.

There is also a good evolutionary reason why we humans should be credible to claims to the supernatural, incidentally.
Credible tribe members survive more than tribe members who think for themselves and then go out on their own experimenting and get eaten by a lion.
Evolution has actually rewarded those who believe in their mystics without questioning, making their tribes unified in thought and cohesive in action.
Little wonder it's so easy to teach a child to believe in basically any myth you feel like indoctrinating them with, even myths you yourself know to be false.

Just because something can't be proven at the moment due to lacking the proper tools does not mean it's impossible that one day it won't become a proven science.

It's a bit of an double standard to say one can prove/disprove anything when no there's no generally no established research into the subject (at least from a scientific approach).

What evidence do you have to offer that there's anything there to study?

Reply by: The Dwarf Wolf - click to view full reply 

29833

Religion @ 2014/06/17 11:30:54

Post by: The Dwarf Wolf

 SilverMK2 wrote:
People who research such things often are frauds. We have a reasonable grasp of a lot of things - enough to at least be able to get an idea of the shape the gaps in our knowledge have. As far as im aware nothing points to there being a "soul shaped" gap. But you certainly cant rule out future discoveries. I would just not holdy breath expecting one of them to be the discovery of the soul.

Actually, there is a big gap in psychology who point toward the existance of a "soul". I remember speaking with an specialist in the area who said me "if the problem was purely chemical, we would solve it 90% of the times, but most of the time, the chemical problem is just the perceivable problem. There is something in the equation we quite dont know alredy".

I tend to disbelief the creator myth, just because nature show us that things starts simple, and became complex with selection.

And yeah, modern science is blind about a lot of things, including a lot of ancient wisdom that we simple ignore in our papers (specially when science developed an "ugly face for it")

For one example i would say this: the soul is for science as the evolution is for religions. Booth are plausible, and have good evidences of existance, but are to stabilished in the heads of "non sayers" as something contrary to their beliefs... (The word "taboo" come to my mind).

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/06/17 11:40:48

Post by: SilverMK2

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:
Actually, there is a big gap in psychology who point toward the existance of a "soul". I remember speaking with an specialist in the area who said me "if the problem was purely chemical, we would solve it 90% of the times, but most of the time, the chemical problem is just the perceivable problem. There is something in the equation we quite dont know alredy".

I'm not a psychologist but I am a scientist; there is nothing that I am aware of that points to the existance of an everlasting soul, nor anything beyond an interaction of biology, chemistry and physics that generates "the mind". Given one can significantly alter personality, memory, behaviour, etc, through physical or chemical means, it would seem to suggest that "we" are just expressions of some combination of physical things.

And yeah, modern science is blind about a lot of things, including a lot of ancient wisdom that we simple ignore in our papers...

Such as...?

Reply by: The Dwarf Wolf - click to view full reply 

29833

Religion @ 2014/06/17 11:44:48

Post by: The Dwarf Wolf

Just because something can't be proven at the moment due to lacking the proper tools does not mean it's impossible that one day it won't become a proven science.

It's a bit of an double standard to say one can prove/disprove anything when no there's no generally no established research into the subject (at least from a scientific approach).

What evidence do you have to offer that there's anything there to study?

Depression patients (sorry i dont know if you use the same word in english, my translate is approximate), who receive the right chemical treatment, have the right neurchemical balance, but dont get better.

Depression patients who dont receive chemical treatment, but get better only with religious experiences.

Plascebo Effect: we know it works, we dont know how it works (we have a glimpse, though)

Reply by: Hyglar's Hellraiser - click to view full reply 

81754

Religion @ 2014/06/17 11:56:56

Post by: Hyglar's Hellraiser

My personal views? Pretty much the emperor of man in 'the lightning stone' short story. Pretty much everything he says and do's. Empy for the militant atheist demi-god win.

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/06/17 11:58:08

Post by: SilverMK2

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:

Just because something can't be proven at the moment due to lacking the proper tools does not mean it's impossible that one day it won't become a proven science.

It's a bit of an double standard to say one can prove/disprove anything when no there's no generally no established research into the subject (at least from a scientific approach).

I mention that as far as we can see, there is not a soul shaped gap in our understanding. Certainly there are things we cannot explain currently; the point was that given our curent level of knowledge, we cannot forsee the need for anything that looks like a soul.

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:
Depression patients (sorry i dont know if you use the same word in english, my translate is approximate), who receive the right chemical treatment, have the right neurchemical balance, but dont get better.

Depression patients who dont receive chemical treatment, but get better only with religious experiences.

I can't comment specifically on depression patients, however there are people who are "immune" to certain treatments; some aspect of their biology makes them less able to be affected by certain drugs or procedures. Similar to how some people are allergic to certain drugs.

A large part of treatment can also come down to patient outlook, which leads me on to...

Plascebo Effect: we know it works, we dont know how it works (we have a glimpse, though)

This is quite well understood, although the exact mechanisms are currently undefined. Again, nothing that would indicate that a soul is required.

However, nothing you have so far posted mentions ancient wisdom that we are somehow failing to exploit - though I could post at length on all the ancient wisdom that has been investigated and shown to be a load of rubbish, and a few wisdoms which have been taken on by modern science having been found to work.

Reply by: The Dwarf Wolf - click to view full reply 

29833

Religion @ 2014/06/17 12:02:57

Post by: The Dwarf Wolf

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:
Actually, there is a big gap in psychology who point toward the existance of a "soul". I remember speaking with an specialist in the area who said me "if the problem was purely chemical, we would solve it 90% of the times, but most of the time, the chemical problem is just the perceivable problem. There is something in the equation we quite dont know alredy".

I'm not a psychologist but I am a scientist; there is nothing that I am aware of that points to the existance of an everlasting soul, nor anything beyond an interaction of biology, chemistry and physics that generates "the mind". Given one can significantly alter personality, memory, behaviour, etc, through physical or chemical means, it would seem to suggest that "we" are just expressions of some combination of physical things.

Cool, im not a specialist, indeed im just a student... And i cant explain that.

I agree with you about it, all is physics at the end, but them, how much we really understand about physics? You are aware that your experimentation of reality is limited to your senses? And that physics suggests the universe is a lot bigger than it? (i mean, last time i checked, someone was claiming there is actually 11 dimentions, not only the 4 we can perceive).

What im saying is: womans in the second room are dying more than womans in the first room, and maybe we should wash our hands before dealing with each patient. Please, dont discard the ideia of a "disease vector" just because it sounds "mystical", this may be science we are just blind about...

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:
And yeah, modern science is blind about a lot of things, including a lot of ancient wisdom that we simple ignore in our papers...

Such as...?

I dont have gone deep into it, but "dark matter" (or Bob as Neil deGrasse calls it) is an example of those stuff right now. Microbiology was a good example two centuries ago...

I mean, im preparing to be a scientist in about a year (im practically alredy am, but in dont have the document saying it yet), and i try to dont assume anything as truth in this path of life. After all, we only need to disprove ONE theory to destroy Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Math at once...

Reply by: Ojox23 - click to view full reply 

84565

Religion @ 2014/06/17 12:18:39

Post by: Ojox23

It makes me really sad
a) that people only ever hear the opinions of the loudest members of any theist or atheist group (crazies always seem to shout the loudest).
b) that people will then base their opinions of entire ethnic or religious groups on the twisted interpretation of one extremist from said group.

I'm just intolerant of intolerance. I guess that just makes me a hypocrite.

Reply by: The Dwarf Wolf - click to view full reply 

29833

Religion @ 2014/06/17 12:22:10

Post by: The Dwarf Wolf

 Ojox23 wrote:
I'm just intolerant of intolerance. I guess that just makes me a hypocrite.

Well, you are not alone... :/

Reply by: BigRedStandingBy - click to view full reply 

87206

Religion @ 2014/06/17 12:26:04

Post by: BigRedStandingBy

Born again bible believing christian. amen

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/06/17 12:46:46

Post by: SilverMK2

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:
I agree with you about it, all is physics at the end, but them, how much we really understand about physics? You are aware that your experimentation of reality is limited to your senses? And that physics suggests the universe is a lot bigger than it? (i mean, last time i checked, someone was claiming there is actually 11 dimentions, not only the 4 we can perceive).

We understand a great deal about physics. And certainly there are many theoretical models of the universe which suggest there are dimensions outside of the 4 we experience on a day to day level. I am not an expert on string theory but my understanding is that these extra dimensions are mathematical expressions of different aspects of the universe (for example, a "gravity" dimension); it is a way of relating the effects of small dimensions with those of large dimensions.

What im saying is: womans in the second room are dying more than womans in the first room, and maybe we should wash our hands before dealing with each patient. Please, dont discard the ideia of a "disease vector" just because it sounds "mystical", this may be science we are just blind about...

Scientific method and acceptance of scientific findings has come a long way since then. If a reputable source says we have a soul (for a given definition of "soul" obviously...), and others can duplicate the results I would be happy to open up to the possibility of a soul.

I dont have gone deep into it, but "dark matter" (or Bob as Neil deGrasse calls it) is an example of those stuff right now.

I am not aware of ancient wisdom on dark matter. It would be interesting to see if there were some.

Microbiology was a good example two centuries ago...

"Microbiology" for a long time was considered to be daemons or vapours in the bood and air. When science advanced to the point it could explain what was seen on the macro level, it was quite quickly taken up.

I mean, im preparing to be a scientist in about a year (im practically alredy am, but in dont have the document saying it yet), and i try to dont assume anything as truth in this path of life. After all, we only need to disprove ONE theory to destroy Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Math at once...

There is no one theory that underpins any of the sciences. New theories emerge all the time and existing theories are updated. Physics was not destroyed because general relativity does not work as we get close to the speed of light; we adopted special relativity to take account of this.

Reply by: hellrath - click to view full reply 

82895

Religion @ 2014/06/17 13:05:39

Post by: hellrath

I believe I already posted here, but it appeared on the home page so here's my take; I'm something of an Anti-theist Atheist, meaning that I don't think there is a God, but if a God does come down then I would probably denounce said God (for all the good it would do me) I don't mind people believing in Gods and miracles and things like that, as long as it doesn't interfere with the rights of others, I also think religion should be left out of politics, and that the only way to solve differences within the religion should be arguing, not trying to force their beliefs on somebody.

Reply by: Verstaka - click to view full reply 

83361

Religion @ 2014/06/17 15:45:22

Post by: Verstaka

I checked Christian as that was how I was raised and believe that the basic tenats are good ones to live by but Agnostic is probably a more accurate desription of my religious beliefs for the past decade.

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/06/17 16:51:42

Post by: Riquende

 Verstaka wrote:
Agnostic is probably a more accurate desription of my religious beliefs for the past decade.

'Agnostic' cannot describe a position on a belief as the word deals with what we know, not what we believe. There is no middle ground between theism and atheism. If you can't honestly say that you believe in a deity, then guess what? You're an atheist. You haven't passed through a phase of being agnostic.

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/06/17 17:24:39

Post by: SilverMK2

 Riquende wrote:

 Verstaka wrote:
Agnostic is probably a more accurate desription of my religious beliefs for the past decade.

'Agnostic' cannot describe a position on a belief as the word deals with what we know, not what we believe. There is no middle ground between theism and atheism. If you can't honestly say that you believe in a deity, then guess what? You're an atheist. You haven't passed through a phase of being agnostic.

The position of belief describing the "I'm not sure" portion of the belief spectrum from "nothing will ever change my mind from believing" to "nothing will ever change my minf from not believing" is described as being agnostic.

Belief is not an absolute.

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/06/17 17:38:13

Post by: Riquende

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Belief is not an absolute.

Yes it is, you either believe in something or you don't; it's a binary position. You can be 'not sure' about a premise, but that doesn't affect whether or not you believe it.

Here are two opposing sources that both agree with this interpretation:

The arch-rationalist Iron Chariots wikia: http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Atheist_vs._agnostic

And Catholic Answers : http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/is-there-a-difference-between-atheists-and-agnostics

I'm aware that 'agnostic' is commonly used to describe "the "I'm not sure" portion of the belief spectrum" but this is incorrect (there is no spectrum, it's a binary situation), and is almost always being used by the speaker to avoid coming out as an atheist (which has negative connoitations in many cultures, including large parts of the USA).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BigRedStandingBy wrote:
Born again bible believing christian. amen

I find the idea of 'born again' very intriguing. I get that most acceptance of religion can be blamed on childhood & upbringing, after all we're conditioned to believe what our parents (and other adults who have been identified as 'authority figures') tell us. I can't, however, grasp what would cause an adult to embrace religious faith, especially if they have been a rational, skeptical person before.

I guess you can be an atheist for bad reasons though.

Reply by: poda_t - click to view full reply 

38250

Religion @ 2014/06/18 01:00:23

Post by: poda_t

 Riquende wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Belief is not an absolute.

Yes it is, you either believe in something or you don't; it's a binary position. You can be 'not sure' about a premise, but that doesn't affect whether or not you believe it.

Here are two opposing sources that both agree with this interpretation:

The arch-rationalist Iron Chariots wikia: http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Atheist_vs._agnostic

And Catholic Answers : http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/is-there-a-difference-between-atheists-and-agnostics

I'm aware that 'agnostic' is commonly used to describe "the "I'm not sure" portion of the belief spectrum" but this is incorrect (there is no spectrum, it's a binary situation), and is almost always being used by the speaker to avoid coming out as an atheist (which has negative connoitations in many cultures, including large parts of the USA).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BigRedStandingBy wrote:
Born again bible believing christian. amen

I find the idea of 'born again' very intriguing. I get that most acceptance of religion can be blamed on childhood & upbringing, after all we're conditioned to believe what our parents (and other adults who have been identified as 'authority figures') tell us. I can't, however, grasp what would cause an adult to embrace religious faith, especially if they have been a rational, skeptical person before.

I guess you can be an atheist for bad reasons though.

no you're wrong.
Atheist is the response to the question of "do you believe in god", which you could say contains an absolute response because that response can only be yes or no. Agnostic is the response to "is there a god", which based on it's dependence on evidence to answer the question, then "I'm not sure" points to Agnostic. They are two completely different questions, one can not believe in a god, thus be atheist, then the default position on the next question can be "i'm not sure", indicating agnostic. You're welcome to pounce up and scream "AHA! HE DOESN'T BELIEVE! THEREFORE ATHEIST!" but, no. Belief is a willingness to assume that an understanding is true despite a lack of sufficient or absolute evidence. In this strict sense, most scientists are "believers" because there is no concrete evidence that chemistry or physics really is the way it is. That still doesn't give you the liberty to turn science into a religion because adherents of scientific principles happen to exhibit belief in their process. Similarly, Atheists can be agnostics, but not all agnostics are atheists.
Additionally, it comes down to understanding the definitions in the question. It's conceivable to believe in the concept of a being greater than oneself, but as to whether that conceived of being is part of a pantheon or the judeochristian/islamic abusive arch-father figure, well, in that context it's entirely possible to be unsure if one believes. The conext and content of the bible point out several things when taken in properly and entirety:
1.) there are sufficient implications in the bible to support that a claim that there is more than one god,
2.) taken from the satanist view of things, we are created in gods image. By definition, we share the powers, strengths, weaknesses and follies of god, making us gods too,
Then there are always competing views of what god is supposed to mean. Is it a definite being or is it a concept of a unified system? Using Dr. de Grasse-Tyson's words: "...If that’s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on..."
Your argument is predicated on a false dichotomy. It's possible to be a church-going agnostic, just as it's possible to be an agnostic whose fervent religiosity only extends to participating in easter egg hunts.

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/06/18 06:57:57

Post by: Riquende

Have you quoted the right person? You tell me I'm wrong then spend the first and last paragraph agreeing with my position, that belief and knowledge are two different (albeit linked) proposals.

There's a bit of muddy thinking in the middle, though. Your example would seem to indicate someone who definitely does believe in a deity (so no 'unsure' there), but doesn't know which one to believe in (so no 'unsure' there either, they simply don't believe that any of the claims made to them so far are true).

Again, belief is a binary proposition, with a yes/no state. Let me try to break it down.

The opposite of 'belief in a deity' is NOT 'belief that there is no deity'. The opposite of 'belief in a deity' IS 'lack of a belief in a deity'. I want to clarify here that I'm talking about 'a deity' in a way that would indicates responding to a claim about a specific god concept, not necessarily all god concepts at once.

If you can't say that you believe in a position, then, automatically, without needing to find some alternative belief or position first, you have a lack of belief in that position. It doesn't mean that you're stuck between two positions.

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/06/18 08:03:32

Post by: SilverMK2

Belief is not binary; there are degrees of belief which broadly fall into three categories - a large area of the spectrum is "belief", with an equally large portion of the spectrum on the other side "disbelief". The region in the centre between the two is a region of uncertainty which in terms of belief in god(s) is termed agnosticism.

So too with knowledge, something can be known to be "true" or "false" but there is an entire spectrum of certainty in how true or false that thing is, with a region in the centre where something in unknown, uncertain or unknowable.

Uncertainty is an established concept in both belief and knowledge, with written examples of agnosticism dating back to C5 BCE.

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/06/18 08:27:55

Post by: Riquende

 SilverMK2 wrote:
Belief is not binary; there are degrees of belief which broadly fall into three categories - a large area of the spectrum is "belief", with an equally large portion of the spectrum on the other side "disbelief". The region in the centre between the two is a region of uncertainty which in terms of belief in god(s) is termed agnosticism.

That's just completely, utterly wrong. What you getting confused with is how we feel about our beliefs, and how important we hold them. The core belief itself is a binary proposition, you either believe or you don't. If you feel uncertain, that means you don't hold the belief.

I'm not sure how much simpler this can be broken down to be honest; and I'm not altogether interested in a back and forth against someone's opinion when they're not even citing sources. I suggest if you want to take it further you read deeper into it first, starting with the links I posted above, and in the meantime we can get the thread back to what it should be, the education and enlightenment of the religious masses.

Reply by: poda_t - click to view full reply 

38250

Religion @ 2014/06/18 08:37:33

Post by: poda_t

That's not how it works. The implication of your claim is that everyone is an atheist, because there is no human being on this earth that believes in every conceivable deity. While you are technically correct, what have you contributed apart from a pointless technical achievement pointing to your a meaningless technical accuracy?

there are options that places the subject between the two sides because the individual has not made a specific decision on one of the questions. You don't get to pick one question and make that the truth. That's rigging the system. The answer you get is analogous to trying to establish a person's gender by asking if they have a penis or a vagina. It should be binary, but you very quickly find in practice it's not the case.

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/06/18 08:44:51

Post by: Riquende

 poda_t wrote:
That's not how it works. The implication of your claim is that everyone is an atheist, because there is no human being on this earth that believes in every conceivable deity.

No, you don't understand my position at all then. I'm talking about reactions to specific claims.

there are options that places the subject between the two sides because the individual has not made a specific decision on one of the questions. You don't get to pick one question and make that the truth.

We're not dealing with truth, we're dealing with belief. And we deal with our beliefs on specific claims one at a time.Like I advised Silver, I think you need to have read up on this if you're really interested, as you're pretty much just bouncing around on this, not really comprehending it.

The answer you get is analogous to trying to establish a person's gender by asking if they have a penis or a vagina. It should be binary, but you very quickly find in practice it's not the case.

Very poor analogy, but maybe I can use to explain a good one.

It's like trying to establish a person's gender by asking 'are they biologically male or not-male?' If they have a penis and no other genitals, we can classify them as male, if not we classify them as not-male.

The binary position of belief/not-belief is analogous to the proposition of male/not-male, we do not construct a binary proposition of male/female, because those are not opposite to each other. Similarly, we don't construct a proposition of 'belief/belief in an alternative', we deal with a specific claim and ask 'belief/not-belief' in that claim.

Is any of this sinking in?

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/06/18 09:22:33

Post by: SilverMK2

 Riquende wrote:
That's just completely, utterly wrong. What you getting confused with is how we feel about our beliefs, and how important we hold them. The core belief itself is a binary proposition, you either believe or you don't. If you feel uncertain, that means you don't hold the belief.

Uncertainty is not just about how you feel. I am an athiest - I do not believe there is a god. However, I understand that there is a level of uncertainty in the evidence that I base by beliefs upon. While I believe that the evidence is significant in favour of there being no god, I admit that there is the possibility that there could be. This is uncertainty of knowledge leading to uncertainty of belief. How strongly I hold to my beliefs is immaterial to this, although is another aspect to my belief in general.

I'm not sure how much simpler this can be broken down to be honest; and I'm not altogether interested in a back and forth against someone's opinion when they're not even citing sources.

I am unsure what to cite given that you seem to be lacking in basic understanding of well established concepts.

I suggest if you want to take it further you read deeper into it first, starting with the links I posted above

The links you posted above are both heavily religiously biased and do not conform to either general understanding of the terms being discussed, nor scientific understanding of the terms.

and in the meantime we can get the thread back to what it should be, the education and enlightenment of the religious masses.

Unfortunately, this thread is about the discussion of religious viewpoints, not the attempted conversion of people to your point of view.

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/06/18 09:50:10

Post by: Evil & Chaos

I'm going to agree with Riquende; Atheism and Agnosticism are distinct concepts.

A/theism is about what you believe.
A/gnosticism is about whether you are 100% certain in what you believe.

Ergo, you can have 4 basic positions as regards Theism:

Gnostic Theist - One who claims to know to 100% probability there is at least one God.

Agnostic Theist - One who believes there is a God but does not claim knowledge that proves it to 100% probability.

Agnostic Atheist - One who doesn't believe in a God, but doesn't claim knowledge that disproves all possible Gods to 100% probability.

Gnostic Athiest - One who claims to know to 100% probability that no Gods exist.


In this regard, there is no true neutral Agnostic "Abtheist" position available, unless you can find someone who holds all positions as regards belief in Gods as exactly equiprobable; the moment you move 0.00000000000001% in confidence away from a position of equal probability for the existence of God(s), you're an a/theist.

And if you simply don't care, or have never heard of Gods and so don't think about them, you're an apatheist.


I'd put myself as being an Agnostic Atheist, who believes it's 99.99999999999999% likely there are no Gods, but can't 100% prove it for all formulations of Gods.

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/06/18 10:21:00

Post by: SilverMK2

Evil & Chaos wrote:
I'm going to agree with Riquende; Atheism and Agnosticism are distinct concepts.

A/theism is about what you believe.
A/gnosticism is about whether you are 100% certain in what you believe.

While I generally agree with the rest of your post, I still say that belief itself is not as binary as you and Riquende suggest. Whilst I would not normally post to wikipedia, I am working so can't discuss at length: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

The article does discuss the difference in belief and uncertainty of the foundations of belief, and the main theme of the article does seem to be twinning the two in much the way that I have been discussing.

Reply by: SkavenLord - click to view full reply 

78065

Religion @ 2014/06/19 01:50:57

Post by: SkavenLord

I'm just going to post this question to get a clearer picture and then will quietly watch from the sidelines.
I apologize in advance if this causes another argument.

I believe all possibilities are possible. I believe there may be a god, but at the same time, I believe there might not be. Also at the same time, I believe the possibility that whatever form the deity/ purpose in life/ true view of reality exists but at the same time doesn't and is in a form that the human mind cannot/ will never be able to conceive of.
Does that mean I'm religious, atheist, or agnostic?

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/06/19 06:50:49

Post by: Riquende

 SkavenLord wrote:
I'm just going to post this question to get a clearer picture and then will quietly watch from the sidelines.
I apologize in advance if this causes another argument.

I believe all possibilities are possible. I believe there may be a god, but at the same time, I believe there might not be. Also at the same time, I believe the possibility that whatever form the deity/ purpose in life/ true view of reality exists but at the same time doesn't and is in a form that the human mind cannot/ will never be able to conceive of.
Does that mean I'm religious, atheist, or agnostic?

You believe there may be a god, you don't say you believe there is a god. Therefore atheist.

You don't claim to know anything, in fact seem quite comfortable with the idea that you don't know. Therefore agnostic.

So 'agnostic atheist' would fit for you.

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/06/19 12:31:02

Post by: Evil & Chaos

I concur.

SkavenLord doesn't actively believe in the existence of a God or Gods, so he's an Atheist.

He isn't sure about the certainty of that belief, so he's an Agnostic Atheist.

Reply by: SkavenLord - click to view full reply 

78065

Religion @ 2014/06/19 13:30:47

Post by: SkavenLord

Interesting. Alright, thanks for answering!

Reply by: jasper76 - click to view full reply 

80999

Religion @ 2014/06/19 16:54:42

Post by: jasper76

Atheist by default.

I'll stay comfortably agnostic about religious truth claims until such time as any kind of actual evidence for them materializes.

Reply by: The Dwarf Wolf - click to view full reply 

29833

Religion @ 2014/06/20 20:34:53

Post by: The Dwarf Wolf

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:
Microbiology was a good example two centuries ago...

"Microbiology" for a long time was considered to be daemons or vapours in the bood and air. When science advanced to the point it could explain what was seen on the macro level, it was quite quickly taken up.

Exactly this: before science could see microbians, it was "nasty nonsensic babble of supersticious people".

The whole "sould ideia" is beying trated like that right now in science (and if someday we found a way to prove its existance, science will call it by another completely different name anyway).

Im not saying that the soul really exist. Im just saying it could exist (an ideia that i find pleasant), and that not all guys trying to research it are frauds.

Plascebo Effect: we know it works, we dont know how it works (we have a glimpse, though)

This is quite well understood, although the exact mechanisms are currently undefined. Again, nothing that would indicate that a soul is required.

We are speaking the same things man

We know the light will be on if we pull the switch down. We have no ideia on how it happens. But some old ones tell something about "the energy who travel the wall", anyway there is nothing so special on the wall, and the lamp is in the roof, where is the connection?

And this made me question: what you understand when is say "soul"? It just crossed my mind that there are a dozen religions with different definitions, and maybe we are just talking about different animals...

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/06/21 00:20:51

Post by: Riquende

 The Dwarf Wolf wrote:


Exactly this: before science could see microbians, it was "nasty nonsensic babble of supersticious people".

The whole "sould ideia" is beying trated like that right now in science (and if someday we found a way to prove its existance, science will call it by another completely different name anyway).

Im not saying that the soul really exist. Im just saying it could exist (an ideia that i find pleasant), and that not all guys trying to research it are frauds.

No. Just stop. For someone looking for a career in science you seem to have zero understanding of how the scientific process actually works.

Amazingly, we just went through this on the previous page, but I guess it bears repeating.

In science, research begins with an observation about the natural world. In this case, the observation was that patients could become infected with diseases despite physical isolation. Clearly, there was some mechanism that caused infection to spread, and clever people were able to hypothesise various causes, and these hypothesese could then be tested. I won't go into specifics, but the net result is that we learned to wash our hands between touching patients, and medicine was improved greatly. Thanks to science.

Now, to come back to the soul. What observation has been made in the natural world that has caused 'a soul' to be the subject of a scientific hypothesis? Because, and I quote myself:

" what physical or natural phenomena have been observed to instigate the research? If there isn't any, then what is it you're trying to explain? And if you're not trying to explain something specific, how do you know what processes you're testing for? How would you set up a reliable experiment if you don't have a clue what you're testing? "

I would say that anybody just generally 'researching' souls is by definition a fraud, as they're simply not following the scientific method, which underpins all of science.

I get that you (and others) find the idea of a soul and eternal life 'pleasant'. But that is not enough... nowhere near enough to justify arguing it as equivalent to 'undiscovered scientific finds' just because.

As an aside, until microbial infection was proposed as a hypothesis and survived the scientific process to become a credible theory, it would not have been justified to believe in it, even though it later turned out to be true. It's simply not enough to say "I believe this, there's no evidence to refute it, and you don't know it won't be true someday!". It's just not rational to believe a claim until you have good supporting evidence to do so.

Reply by: poda_t - click to view full reply 

38250

Religion @ 2014/06/21 03:27:35

Post by: poda_t

The soul is a ridiculous idea. Don't you find it interesting that people that have NDEs or, cross over to the dead and come back, only ever seem to see people that they saw in real life? Yeah, there's a little something interesting about that.

Reply by: SkavenLord - click to view full reply 

78065

Religion @ 2014/06/21 15:21:59

Post by: SkavenLord

 poda_t wrote:
The soul is a ridiculous idea. Don't you find it interesting that people that have NDEs or, cross over to the dead and come back, only ever seem to see people that they saw in real life? Yeah, there's a little something interesting about that.

Just going to drop this here...

What if the soul was something else? Not a physical entity that controls the body, but, say, a representation of who we are represented by using several personal and social factors and seen with differing perspectives depending on the person that sees it? Could it exist as a symbolic metaphor for ourselves?

Because I don't spend a lot of time debating about this sort of topic, I apologize if I've accidentally offended anyone.

Reply by: Riquende - click to view full reply 

59456

Religion @ 2014/06/21 15:57:01

Post by: Riquende

But how would that be functionally different from our consciousness? We understand that we all have a 'me' within us (some people have several, sometimes with differing religious beliefs), but there's no reason to suspect that this sense of self is not a property of our brain, and hence tied to the physical world, despite having no physical form itself.

If someone wants to use the word 'soul' to describe nothing more than an individual's sense of self, then I'd agree in the existence of that. I'd still think it was needlessly relabeling something though, and contributing towards confusion in other discussions over 'souls' where it relates to religious beliefs such as eternal life.

Reply by: SkavenLord - click to view full reply 

78065

Religion @ 2014/06/21 16:29:29

Post by: SkavenLord

Just thought I'd throw that in there for the sake of reflection.

I usually try to connect religion through symbolism by connecting it to humanist ideals and the end goal being a bit closer to any other person's ideals. Granted, I'm never sure about anything, but the results can be interesting sometimes.
For example, they say good souls go to heaven while bad ones go to hell. What is Heaven and Hell? Could it a society or mindset we build ourselves?

For example, let's look at guilt. If someone did something bad to someone, he's likely bound to feel guilty. Considering guilt is usually registered as bad, it leads to suffering. This is his "Hell," the place (mindset) he went to for doing wrong to others.

We can confess what we did, which gives us strength now that we're somewhat used to it to apologize to someone. If the person accepts the apology, our mindset may get better, allowing the person to enter a state of happiness and therefore entering his "Heaven." Until the person apologizes, his mindset is one that harms himself.

Could religion be a doctrine? A set of guidelines to enter this state of mind? Well then, why do people tell us to believe in a god? God could be a representation of kindness in the world. A model to follow. Of course, some people may take this the wrong way completely and use it to bully others. They do still enter the mindset of "Heaven," because they believe what they're doing is the right thing.

Keep in mind, that's just how I see it of course. I could be completely wrong.
I know that by saying this, I may be interfering with other peoples' views of religion. If that is the case, I do apologize.

Reply by: changerofways - click to view full reply 

76101

Religion @ 2014/07/13 15:47:18

Post by: changerofways

 SkavenLord wrote:
Just thought I'd throw that in there for the sake of reflection.

I usually try to connect religion through symbolism by connecting it to humanist ideals and the end goal being a bit closer to any other person's ideals. Granted, I'm never sure about anything, but the results can be interesting sometimes.
For example, they say good souls go to heaven while bad ones go to hell. What is Heaven and Hell? Could it a society or mindset we build ourselves?

For example, let's look at guilt. If someone did something bad to someone, he's likely bound to feel guilty. Considering guilt is usually registered as bad, it leads to suffering. This is his "Hell," the place (mindset) he went to for doing wrong to others.

We can confess what we did, which gives us strength now that we're somewhat used to it to apologize to someone. If the person accepts the apology, our mindset may get better, allowing the person to enter a state of happiness and therefore entering his "Heaven." Until the person apologizes, his mindset is one that harms himself.

Could religion be a doctrine? A set of guidelines to enter this state of mind? Well then, why do people tell us to believe in a god? God could be a representation of kindness in the world. A model to follow. Of course, some people may take this the wrong way completely and use it to bully others. They do still enter the mindset of "Heaven," because they believe what they're doing is the right thing.

Keep in mind, that's just how I see it of course. I could be completely wrong.
I know that by saying this, I may be interfering with other peoples' views of religion. If that is the case, I do apologize.

People believe in a god for many reasons....a big one is pack mentality. Our most primal parts of our brain love the idea of an alpha male, an ultimate human like deity that is perfect in every way. That's a common theme across religions, I mean, how many imperfect gods have you heard of? "All praise god/allah/whatever the somewhat almighty?" Never been said, haha

Reply by: SilverMK2 - click to view full reply 

17349

Religion @ 2014/07/13 18:01:06

Post by: SilverMK2

A lot of the older gods were actually much more human, giving in to rages, getting drunk, falling in love, being tricked by other gods etc... of course that was in the days of being able to say the gods lived on top of a mountain; your god didnt have to be a vague unknowable being in order not to be instantly dismissed based on being able to climb to the top of said mountain in order to demonstrate that there are no gods living there...

Reply by: SkavenLord - click to view full reply 

78065

Religion @ 2014/07/13 21:05:10

Post by: SkavenLord

 changerofways wrote:

 SkavenLord wrote:
Just thought I'd throw that in there for the sake of reflection.

I usually try to connect religion through symbolism by connecting it to humanist ideals and the end goal being a bit closer to any other person's ideals. Granted, I'm never sure about anything, but the results can be interesting sometimes.
For example, they say good souls go to heaven while bad ones go to hell. What is Heaven and Hell? Could it a society or mindset we build ourselves?

For example, let's look at guilt. If someone did something bad to someone, he's likely bound to feel guilty. Considering guilt is usually registered as bad, it leads to suffering. This is his "Hell," the place (mindset) he went to for doing wrong to others.

We can confess what we did, which gives us strength now that we're somewhat used to it to apologize to someone. If the person accepts the apology, our mindset may get better, allowing the person to enter a state of happiness and therefore entering his "Heaven." Until the person apologizes, his mindset is one that harms himself.

Could religion be a doctrine? A set of guidelines to enter this state of mind? Well then, why do people tell us to believe in a god? God could be a representation of kindness in the world. A model to follow. Of course, some people may take this the wrong way completely and use it to bully others. They do still enter the mindset of "Heaven," because they believe what they're doing is the right thing.

Keep in mind, that's just how I see it of course. I could be completely wrong.
I know that by saying this, I may be interfering with other peoples' views of religion. If that is the case, I do apologize.

People believe in a god for many reasons....a big one is pack mentality. Our most primal parts of our brain love the idea of an alpha male, an ultimate human like deity that is perfect in every way. That's a common theme across religions, I mean, how many imperfect gods have you heard of? "All praise god/allah/whatever the somewhat almighty?" Never been said, haha

Good point.
I remember I would pray when stressful events happened. I'm not sure if it was divine intervention or not (I never take a side on these sort of things), but it at least gave me some form of confidence.
I didn't think of it much as a perfect being in every way, but more as a perfect father figure with rules (listen to your father, be nice to people, etc.)
Still, that's just how I see it. Others see it differently and they may be right too.

Reply by: Vet Sgt Ezekiel - click to view full reply 

9824

Religion @ 2014/07/18 12:16:16

Post by: Vet Sgt Ezekiel

I believe only in the Imperial Truth.

Reply by: SkavenLord - click to view full reply 

78065

Religion @ 2014/07/18 13:40:39

Post by: SkavenLord

 Vet Sgt Ezekiel wrote:
I believe only in the Imperial Truth.

PRAISE THE EMPRAH!!!

Reply by: Asherian Command - click to view full reply 

17923

Religion @ 2014/07/18 15:14:19

Post by: Asherian Command

 Vet Sgt Ezekiel wrote:
I believe only in the Imperial Truth.

I am a heretic I believe in The Lord of Destruction, The king of depravation, THE LORD OF DEBT, Bob The great and powerful cheese warlock of Amsterdam!

Reply by: Snilbog - click to view full reply 

53070

Religion @ 2014/07/18 20:40:20

Post by: Snilbog

Hell guys, what about Gork and Mork

Reply by: Vet Sgt Ezekiel - click to view full reply 

9824

Religion @ 2014/07/18 21:57:19

Post by: Vet Sgt Ezekiel

Illogical thuggery and superstition.

Next you'll be saying there's a Machine God.

Reply by: Overlord Thraka - click to view full reply 

73251

Religion @ 2014/07/18 23:08:28

Post by: Overlord Thraka

Good Baptist Christian.

Reply by: McKnify - click to view full reply 

82407

Religion @ 2014/07/19 06:05:18

Post by: McKnify

Hey TheDiscoSpider what made you lean towards being irreligious after doing all the Catholic stuff (was it like to much of it or something lol)

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/07/21 10:30:14

Post by: Evil & Chaos

 Overlord Thraka wrote:
Good Baptist Christian.

Why?

Reply by: flodihn - click to view full reply 

64752

Religion @ 2014/08/19 10:51:30

Post by: flodihn

I am agnostic atheist.

I am also hold beliefs that I think many would describe as militant, but from my perspective, it is a very reasonable belief to hold.

Those beliefs are:
- Communities that ostracize family members as punishment for leaving should be illegal, this means cults like Jehovah witnesses, Scientology would be propitiated from practicing in the country.
- The government is required to give children an secular education, that teaches science and keeps religion in religion class. Religious schools will be forbidden (unless is a school for adults 18+).
- Children until the age of 18 should be protected from religion, meaning preaching to kids, or bringing kids to places or religious site for religious purposes should be forbidden (kids will be allowed on religious places for non religious purposes, for example marriage, the priest will of course have to change his/her speak to be secular).


Religion should be a matter of a grown up individual making a choice to believe, not something that is thought into young minds or at occasion even brain washed into kids.

Reply by: orksmasha - click to view full reply 

89427

Religion @ 2014/09/20 12:04:43

Post by: orksmasha

flodihn wrote:



Religion should be a matter of a grown up individual making a choice to believe, not something that is thought into young minds or at occasion even brain washed into kids.

Like it or not, we're all brainwashed by whatever culture we grow up in (Western, middle-eastern, oriental, etc.), saying that one type of thinking is dangerous is a dodgy way to look at it - from their point of view everybody else has been "brainwashed".

I like to think that most people will grow up and think for themselves

Reply by: flodihn - click to view full reply 

64752

Religion @ 2014/09/20 13:59:41

Post by: flodihn

 orksmasha wrote:

flodihn wrote:



Religion should be a matter of a grown up individual making a choice to believe, not something that is thought into young minds or at occasion even brain washed into kids.

Like it or not, we're all brainwashed by whatever culture we grow up in (Western, middle-eastern, oriental, etc.), saying that one type of thinking is dangerous is a dodgy way to look at it - from their point of view everybody else has been "brainwashed".

I like to think that most people will grow up and think for themselves

Wow, you just tried to argue that religion, cultures and "type of thinking" is one of the same and brainwashed into us.

These three things are vastly different and it is not dodgy at all to consider "different types of thinking" dangerous.

1 Culture is not equal to religion
Culture is no way remotely comparable to religion, most culture has roots in religion but it does not impose a religion itself. For example, I am form Sweden where about 80+ percent of the population are atheists.

We still celebrate Christmas (Christianity moved Jesus birthday to match the winter solstice to better integrate with other religions). However, in my and most families, this is not a religions event, it originates from an ancient belief in Scandinavian leprechauns (that is how Santa got is look/cloths), and coca-cola during the 50 or so gave him the red dress (he was gray/green before) and Christianity exported this idea of a leprechaun as a christian saint, thus giving him the English/American name "Santa Claus" (Saint Claus). However in Scandinavia, he is not referred to as this saint rather just as "The Christmas Leprechaun".

During the summer solstice, Swedes also raise a maypole (which is a depiction of a male reproductive organ), dances around it and sing songs about little frogs, just google for "Swedish Midsummer" and you get the idea. This originates from ancient viking, perhaps even pre-vikings religions in the Scandinavian region.

But both of these events have really no religious meaning anymore, of course the Christian in Sweden still regards Christmas as an religions time, but all but the most religious extremists still celebrate Midsummer as a culture, non-religious event.

The bottom line is while cultures and cultural events often have religious origins, they have been adapted and transformed often over thousands of years so that they original religious meanings are lost and thus have became a cultural event practiced by different communities, participating in these cultural events are also often optional, often without requiring the participants to actually believe in anything or implant religious myths as truth into people's mind. Thus cultures are not "brainwashing" people in the same way as many religions do.
And that is how culture is vastly different from religion.
Sidetrack: There are many culture events/beliefs that are negative and should be fought, such as bride kidnapping in Kazakhstan or the concept of murdering your own daughter if she disobeys the family or lost her virginity the wrong way to preserve the family honor.


2 Is it really dodgy to belief some ways of thinking are dangerous?
Now let me address your viewpoint that "saying that one type of thinking is dangerous" is somehow dodgy. I don't think there is anyone in the entire world (not even you) that actually believe this. For example, let me state some "type of thinking" and see if you think it dodgy to be against that:
All people from wales should be killed.
All non-belivers in X faith should be converted or killed.
It is perfectly fine that woman are not allowed to vote, drive cars, or travel outside the house without the company of a male.

If you can honestly look at all these 3 statements and say that you don't see any danger in people actually having these beliefs, I claim that you are the one with a dodgy viewpoint, not me.
How do determine what is a dangerous belief is a bit of a side-track, I am willing to discuss it but I think I need to put some thought in a good definition of this.



3 Problem with people growing up and making their own choice
At last, "I like to think that most people will grow up and think for themselves". I agree on this, however, my issue comes afterwards someone made a decision to leave a cult (sometimes religious cult) that practice ex-communication of members and prevents family members and friends to socialize with the person leaving. If you search on "lost faith", "how I lost faith", "leaving Scientology" you will get a many people expressing the pain and hurt it took them to leave, sometimes they claim they stayed in their cult as non-believers for years just because of the implications it would mean to leave.
That is why I want rules against such cults and religions that practice punishment for leaving.

Reply by: Frazzled - click to view full reply 

221

Religion @ 2014/09/22 17:41:20

Post by: Frazzled

That is why I want rules against such cults and religions that practice punishment for leaving.

So you're intolerant of intolerance?


Me Acalyte of the Great Wiener, and TBone his ghostly Herald. Hail Wienie! We are Legion!

Reply by: Freakazoitt - click to view full reply 

35976

Religion @ 2014/10/09 10:48:43

Post by: Freakazoitt

I am not religious, but view about the life/world - more like pagan

Reply by: Atheos - click to view full reply 

64422

Religion @ 2014/10/21 10:15:58

Post by: Atheos

Atheist, I feel a lot of people in this thread are actual Atheists but the negative connotation that's been given to that title dissuades a number of people from wanting to attribute it to themselves.

I personally view it in a positive light.

Reply by: Quarterdime - click to view full reply 

38654

Religion @ 2014/10/21 10:41:35

Post by: Quarterdime

Atheist.

Agnosticism is non-exclusive. Nobody knows, regardless of what they claim. I used to be agnostic atheist until I realized that, at which point I realized I was just plain atheist. (That's right agnostics, atheists don't claim to know, either!) Unless you're simply torn between the gods of different faiths, in which case you're an agnostic theist.

@Evil and Chaos, some atheists may claim to know 100% that no gods could possibly exist, but if you actually ask around atheist circles you'll actually find that most would claim 99%. While that difference may sound silly, it's actually quite significant because most atheists have familiarized themselves with the concepts of absolute certainty. That, and they're not as arrogant as the religious tend to depict them. It's more a matter of how difficult it is to challenge something that someone else holds sacred without making them think you're being arrogant, condescending, or anything of that nature. It's hard to do.

Reply by: Atheos - click to view full reply 

64422

Religion @ 2014/10/21 11:06:18

Post by: Atheos

 Quarterdime wrote:
Atheist.

Agnosticism is non-exclusive. Nobody knows, regardless of what they claim. I used to be agnostic atheist until I realized that, at which point I realized I was just plain atheist. (That's right agnostics, atheists don't claim to know, either!) Unless you're simply torn between the gods of different faiths, in which case you're an agnostic theist.

@Evil and Chaos, some atheists may claim to know 100% that no gods could possibly exist, but if you actually ask around atheist circles you'll actually find that most would claim 99%. While that difference may sound silly, it's actually quite significant because most atheists have familiarized themselves with the concepts of absolute certainty. That, and they're not as arrogant as the religious tend to depict them. It's more a matter of how difficult it is to challenge something that someone else holds sacred without making them think you're being arrogant, condescending, or anything of that nature. It's hard to do.

I usually qualify the 99% certainty statement with "I'm 99% sure Harry Potter and Hogwarts aren't real either". That may sound condescending to some, which you say most try to avoid, but I prefer to put things in the proper context and let the chips fall where they may.

Reply by: Quarterdime - click to view full reply 

38654

Religion @ 2014/10/21 11:25:16

Post by: Quarterdime

 Atheos wrote:

 Quarterdime wrote:
Atheist.

Agnosticism is non-exclusive. Nobody knows, regardless of what they claim. I used to be agnostic atheist until I realized that, at which point I realized I was just plain atheist. (That's right agnostics, atheists don't claim to know, either!) Unless you're simply torn between the gods of different faiths, in which case you're an agnostic theist.

@Evil and Chaos, some atheists may claim to know 100% that no gods could possibly exist, but if you actually ask around atheist circles you'll actually find that most would claim 99%. While that difference may sound silly, it's actually quite significant because most atheists have familiarized themselves with the concepts of absolute certainty. That, and they're not as arrogant as the religious tend to depict them. It's more a matter of how difficult it is to challenge something that someone else holds sacred without making them think you're being arrogant, condescending, or anything of that nature. It's hard to do.

I usually qualify the 99% certainty statement with "I'm 99% sure Harry Potter and Hogwarts aren't real either". That may sound condescending to some, which you say most try to avoid, but I prefer to put things in the proper context and let the chips fall where they may.

And typically the two kinds of responses are given by people who are already predisposed to skepticism (no offense taken) or faith (offense taken). It's not that it's you're fault for being honest, you just need to learn how to... well... communicate. Honesty is only so good a communicator. People have totally different thought processes, and if you open your heart up to someone they may not even see that and just take it as they would any insult and respond with an insult of their own thinking that they were in the right, because after all, how dare you...

Reply by: 10penceman - click to view full reply 

85111

Religion @ 2014/10/21 11:26:23

Post by: 10penceman

Granda always said "if god created man the devil created religion". I have no time for religion or its peoples the world is better off without it. I have seen to much hate and death over a fecking book that is then interpreted differently when they want to get away with something.

Reply by: Aesop the God Awful - click to view full reply 

90273

Religion @ 2014/10/21 13:03:46

Post by: Aesop the God Awful

I'm an agnostic syncretist, maining Christianity.

So I guess I'll vote "Other"

Reply by: zombiekila707 - click to view full reply 

49696

Religion @ 2014/10/21 16:23:45

Post by: zombiekila707

Raised catholic then I learned that my religion slaughtered countless thousand and is a very hypocritical system. I kinda think the emperor of man was right with his belief that religion causes more trouble then good...

Not saying I don't believe in a "higher power" but that higher power may not care about our little spec of dust planet we call earth.

Or maybe he does love us and free will and such but I think self empowerment is the way to go.

You are your god lol

Reply by: Quarterdime - click to view full reply 

38654

Religion @ 2014/10/21 16:35:50

Post by: Quarterdime

 zombiekila707 wrote:
Raised catholic then I learned that my religion slaughtered countless thousand and is a very hypocritical system. I kinda think the emperor of man was right with his belief that religion causes more trouble then good...

Not saying I don't believe in a "higher power" but that higher power may not care about our little spec of dust planet we call earth.

Or maybe he does love us and free will and such but I think self empowerment is the way to go.

You are your god lol

If he made us and knew what we would do, and controls everything around us, then free will would be completely undermined by it. Which is evidence that he would be malevolent as opposed to powerless if that particular god exists. See "The Problem of Evil" and the famous quote by Epicurus:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

I would say that this is the formula that disproves god as written, but unfortunately he is written as a malevolent god in the bible so it sticks.

Reply by: Iron_Captain - click to view full reply 

80673

Religion @ 2014/10/21 22:58:44

Post by: Iron_Captain

 Quarterdime wrote:

 zombiekila707 wrote:
Raised catholic then I learned that my religion slaughtered countless thousand and is a very hypocritical system. I kinda think the emperor of man was right with his belief that religion causes more trouble then good...

Not saying I don't believe in a "higher power" but that higher power may not care about our little spec of dust planet we call earth.

Or maybe he does love us and free will and such but I think self empowerment is the way to go.

You are your god lol

If he made us and knew what we would do, and controls everything around us, then free will would be completely undermined by it. Which is evidence that he would be malevolent as opposed to powerless if that particular god exists. See "The Problem of Evil" and the famous quote by Epicurus:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

I would say that this is the formula that disproves god as written, but unfortunately he is written as a malevolent god in the bible so it sticks.

Epicurus's logic is flawed however, because he assumes that his definition of good and evil is the only correct one to which God must answer. Good and evil are highly subjective, even among humans. If an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being were to exist, its definition of good and evil might be completely alien to us. Therefore, God's unwillingness to prevent evil might not be malevolent at all in God's own view. Maybe this evil is there for a greater good? Maybe evil is even necessary to allow good to exist? After all, how could something ever be good if there was no evil?

Reply by: Quarterdime - click to view full reply 

38654

Religion @ 2014/10/21 23:03:38

Post by: Quarterdime

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Quarterdime wrote:

 zombiekila707 wrote:
Raised catholic then I learned that my religion slaughtered countless thousand and is a very hypocritical system. I kinda think the emperor of man was right with his belief that religion causes more trouble then good...

Not saying I don't believe in a "higher power" but that higher power may not care about our little spec of dust planet we call earth.

Or maybe he does love us and free will and such but I think self empowerment is the way to go.

You are your god lol

If he made us and knew what we would do, and controls everything around us, then free will would be completely undermined by it. Which is evidence that he would be malevolent as opposed to powerless if that particular god exists. See "The Problem of Evil" and the famous quote by Epicurus:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

I would say that this is the formula that disproves god as written, but unfortunately he is written as a malevolent god in the bible so it sticks.

If an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being were to exist, its definition of good and evil might be completely alien to us.

Unless we were made in God's own image

I can go on

Reply by: Iron_Captain - click to view full reply 

80673

Religion @ 2014/10/21 23:09:18

Post by: Iron_Captain

 Quarterdime wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Quarterdime wrote:

 zombiekila707 wrote:
Raised catholic then I learned that my religion slaughtered countless thousand and is a very hypocritical system. I kinda think the emperor of man was right with his belief that religion causes more trouble then good...

Not saying I don't believe in a "higher power" but that higher power may not care about our little spec of dust planet we call earth.

Or maybe he does love us and free will and such but I think self empowerment is the way to go.

You are your god lol

If he made us and knew what we would do, and controls everything around us, then free will would be completely undermined by it. Which is evidence that he would be malevolent as opposed to powerless if that particular god exists. See "The Problem of Evil" and the famous quote by Epicurus:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

I would say that this is the formula that disproves god as written, but unfortunately he is written as a malevolent god in the bible so it sticks.

If an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being were to exist, its definition of good and evil might be completely alien to us.

Unless we were made in God's own image

I can go on

We are not omnipotent etc.
We might be made in God's image, but that does not mean we are anything like God.
Also keep in mind that according to the Bible, humans were created without a sense of Good and Evil.

Reply by: Quarterdime - click to view full reply 

38654

Religion @ 2014/10/21 23:39:43

Post by: Quarterdime

 Iron_Captain wrote:

We might be made in God's image, but that does not mean we are anything like God.

I should frame that.

Yeah, how could we know what's REALLY good and evil, after all if god made everyone on earth happy then we'd probably be living in sin and deserve to suffer for it. Sounds like God's either malevolent or powerless to stop a greater power than he, which could only be the fabric of reality.

But I digress. You clearly want to overlook it, so I'll emphasize it.

We were made in God's image. This means that we are not unlike god. So genesis says that we were created without knowledge of sin, but then we bit from the tree of knowledge, and acquired it. So the ball's back in your court.

Reply by: ChazSexington - click to view full reply 

83680

Religion @ 2014/10/22 01:31:20

Post by: ChazSexington

Reply by: agnosto - click to view full reply 

21196

Religion @ 2014/10/22 01:41:43

Post by: agnosto

Agnostic. I want to believe there is purpose and order to the universe and that life isn't some pointless exercise but I think that all of the holy books have it wrong.

Reply by: Happyjew - click to view full reply 

46128

Religion @ 2014/10/28 16:26:33

Post by: Happyjew

 agnosto wrote:
Agnostic. I want to believe there is purpose and order to the universe and that life isn't some pointless exercise but I think that all of the holy books have it wrong.

If Descartes had been Agnostic: I doubt, therefore I might be.

Reply by: Occhiolini - click to view full reply 

90219

Religion @ 2014/10/28 16:33:51

Post by: Occhiolini

Agnostic

Edit: I made my full post somewhere below, I should have just edited this one

Reply by: agnosto - click to view full reply 

21196

Religion @ 2014/10/28 16:34:00

Post by: agnosto

 Happyjew wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
Agnostic. I want to believe there is purpose and order to the universe and that life isn't some pointless exercise but I think that all of the holy books have it wrong.

If Descartes had been Agnostic: I doubt, therefore I might be.

Not quite. I just think that there is enough fluctuation in the universe to confirm even a possible supreme being is fallible. My degree in ancient history has exposed me to enough linguistic, historical and archaeological evidence to know that every current major religion is most definitely not following their holy books, if they haven't just outright rewritten them. Since there's no hellfire and brimstone from a slandered and oft-misquoted deity, I'll assume that they either a) don't care or b) don't exist. In either case, if they can't be bothered to care, I won't be fussed about following the edicts of their supposed mouthpieces on earth.

Reply by: Occhiolini - click to view full reply 

90219

Religion @ 2014/10/28 17:12:11

Post by: Occhiolini

I am Agnostic
Also practicing Buddhism

I think organised religion is naive.

We can have all of the good morals and direction in religion with philosophy, without the blind faith of an organised religion.

Finding the ultimate meaning of existence, consciousness and life should be something that you find on your own, not what you read out of some holy sacred book.
Honestly, I don't believe in a "god". I think the closest thing to a god is nature, the existence of life that flows through all living things.

With respect, I think atheists are stubborn.
They have the main concept down, but lack direction
too focused on resisting religion rather than finding their own meaning.

Science gives us plenty of reasons to combat religion, but science does not have the answer to everything. People who say, why have religion when we have science I find are hypocritical, If you don't have faith, then what is science? Isn't that faith too?

My favorite quote from Buddhism
"Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue." -Buddha

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/10/29 15:05:21

Post by: Evil & Chaos

With respect, I think atheists are stubborn.
They have the main concept down, but lack direction
too focused on resisting religion rather than finding their own meaning.

Care to expand a little on what you mean by that?

I'm an Agnostic Atheist (just like 99% of atheists, including all the famous ones), with a heavy slant towards "there's no credible evidence for any gods, so it's almost certain there aren't any".

That fact (my atheism) is only one of a million facts about me, many of which give me direction and purpose in life.

Reply by: Furyou Miko - click to view full reply 

63973

Religion @ 2014/10/30 19:43:30

Post by: Furyou Miko

Cheesecat wrote:I'm just curious what the religious makeup of DakkaDakka is, so I made a poll. For me personally I'm irreligious I don't believe in any form of religion, in fact I don't believe in the supernatural either so I guess I'm a naturalist as well that being said I don't have any problems with other people

being religious or believing in the supernatural so long as they don't use it as an excuse for abusing others.

A Naturalist would be someone who doesn't believe in clothes.

I'm a non-denominational animist. I believe that there is a soul in all things, and that they should be respected... or sternly admonished if they mess up, right, PC?

My PC cowers appropriately.

Reply by: Iron_Captain - click to view full reply 

80673

Religion @ 2014/10/31 22:54:05

Post by: Iron_Captain

 Quarterdime wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

We might be made in God's image, but that does not mean we are anything like God.

I should frame that.

Yeah, how could we know what's REALLY good and evil, after all if god made everyone on earth happy then we'd probably be living in sin and deserve to suffer for it. Sounds like God's either malevolent or powerless to stop a greater power than he, which could only be the fabric of reality.

But I digress. You clearly want to overlook it, so I'll emphasize it.

We were made in God's image. This means that we are not unlike god. So genesis says that we were created without knowledge of sin, but then we bit from the tree of knowledge, and acquired it. So the ball's back in your court.

You are the one that is overlooking things.
Being made in God's image does not mean we are anything like God. God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and incorporeal. Humans are completely unlike that. These having or not-having of these characteristics makes a massive chance to the nature of a being. Because we humans are so very different, it is impossible for us to even get close to understanding something that is omniscient etc.
Being made in the image of God means humans have Godlike characteristics. It does however not mean humans have all of God's characteristics. And according to Genesis, one of those characteristics humans lacked in the beginning was knowledge of Good and Evil.
To return to the original point: Epicurus' argument only makes sense when you see the existence of evil in the world as malevolent negligence on the part of God. If you don't, the whole argument falls apart.

Evil, as a concept, is nothing more than the absence of good, just like darkness is the absence of light. Evil therefore has no positive reality. It does not exist, it is merely our name for the absence of good. God never created evil, evil is only the result of our choice to deviate from the path of perfect goodness.
Regarding "The Problem of Evil", St. Augustine had this to say about it:

And in the universe, even that which is called evil, when it is regulated and put in its own place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we enjoy and value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance,—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.

In other words, evil exists because we humans, unlike God, are not perfect and omnibenevolent as a result from the Fall of Man. We humans were created with the ability of independent thought, and therefore also the ability to rebel against God, the sole source of good, instead of being slaves to His Will. In doing so, we are also responsible for the existence of evil. Evil exists because humans have free will. If God had only allowed us to commit good, we would not have had a free will, and if our good had thusly not been committed out of free will, than how good would it have really been? What worth is good when there is no evil to compare it to?

Personally, I would argue that the existence of evil is necessary for the existence of good. Just like you would never know what 'cold' was if you would never have known 'warmth'. Evil therefore exists precisely because God is good. Without the existence of evil, God could not have been good.

The above are only a few of the myriad possible explanations of this so called 'problem' of evil.
I also rather liked C.S. Lewis' argument that the problem of evil is self-refuting:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies.

Reply by: dementedwombat - click to view full reply 

9982

Religion @ 2014/11/02 04:22:17

Post by: dementedwombat

Voted to complete the data set, but I don't think they manufacture a pole long enough to get me to poke this topic on the internet.

Reply by: Evil & Chaos - click to view full reply 

20610

Religion @ 2014/11/03 11:38:57

Post by: Evil & Chaos

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Evil, as a concept, is nothing more than the absence of good, just like darkness is the absence of light. Evil therefore has no positive reality. It does not exist, it is merely our name for the absence of good. God never created evil, evil is only the result of our choice to deviate from the path of perfect goodness.

Isaiah 45:7:

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

The word "create" there in the original Hebrew is the same word used when God creates the world in Genesis, by the way.

For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good?

I'd say that creating faulty DNA that gives fatal, extremely painful eye cancer to innocent babies would be evil.

In other words, evil exists because we humans, unlike God, are not perfect and omnibenevolent as a result from the Fall of Man. We humans were created with the ability of independent thought, and therefore also the ability to rebel against God, the sole source of good, instead of being slaves to His Will.

Except the predestination paradox of a Creator God which has Omnipotence and Omniscience logically precludes the existence of Free Will in his creations. It's a paradox that can only be solved by pretending that "god is mysterious" is a sufficient answer (It's not. It's a dodge that answers nothing).

And like I noted, the Bible makes it explicit that God creates evil intentionally, it's not a product of an absence of Godliness as per the Bible.

In doing so, we are also responsible for the existence of evil.

A baby is responsible for the painful eye cancer that kills her?

If God had only allowed us to commit good, we would not have had a free will, and if our good had thusly not been committed out of free will, than how good would it have really been? What worth is good when there is no evil to compare it to?

It's possible to have Good and Neutral.
Or Good and "Minor Evil" (a temporarily itchy eye, instead of fatal eye cancer, for example).

But you think your God chose to create Good, and create "Horrible Evil" as its counterpart.
That's a problem for the ethics of your "loving" and "all powerful" God > He uses his Omnipotence to intentionally create Evil.

Reply by: Rainbow Dash - click to view full reply 

61310

Religion @ 2014/11/11 22:47:44

Post by: Rainbow Dash

Interestingly enough, I've been to Mormon church more then any other church...I don't know any Mormons, nor do I have any family that are Mormon, I simply decided one day it would be neat to do...
Sometimes there was free food and I got some free books but not nearly enough.

I could never actually be a Mormon, they're way too stuffy (amongst a lot of other things).

Reply by: poda_t - click to view full reply 

38250

Religion @ 2014/11/14 21:13:24

Post by: poda_t

 Iron_Captain wrote:

We are not omnipotent etc.
We might be made in God's image, but that does not mean we are anything like God.
Also keep in mind that according to the Bible, humans were created without a sense of Good and Evil.

I call BS
According to the bible, the very definition of how woman was created suggests woman was created in man's image. Given the falliability and range of similarities that exist between man and woman, this suggests that the failures of one are inherent in the other and vice versa. Now we may not have been spawned from the rib of god, so I will grant a linear relationship as regards the difference between man and woman and mankind and god. That notwithstanding we still are created in god's image, and the trouble therein is that a copy is a lower quality cast of the original. If we are created in god's image, the flaws evident in us are the flaws that god must also have, and lo, read the bible and you will see it: Narcissism, Egoism, violent aggressive tendencies, fallibility (changes opinions), cruelty (if god was our owner and we were dogs, the police would come and take us away...), Approving genocide, self indulgent masochism (or well, this might techincally be cruelty again, i mean what's the point of sending someone in your stead to suffer in order to forgive your creation? If you're all powerful what's preventing you from, you know, just forgiving instead of going through this ridiculous play like a drama queen?). If we were created without a sense of good or evil, then that was something inherited from our creator, and as you can read from the bible, that same absence of awareness of moral consequence is as present in our creator as in us. The result? God is not omnipotent, otherwise we would all spend all our days venerating god, and clearly we engage in the exercise of our own agency, and have always through all of history engaged in the exercise of our own agency. God is not omnipotent, because he required a human agent to save his people. Several times. God is not omnipotent because he allowed the romans to take his jewish religion, rape and desecrate it and truss it up with pagan traditions and beliefs and parade it around as though it were still the same thing. God is not omnipotent, because he's neither shown nor been able to exhibit the choice of which sect of the different faiths that allege to follow God/Allah/YHWH/Yoheshua/pink fluffy unicorn queen.

If you want to maintain that women are in any way supposed to be inferior or subservient to men, by all means, go ahead and believe that. Just note that I am not going to be obligated to have any respect for you as a human being for thinking it's okay to reduce women to objects that can be bought and sold on the market like used cars.