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 Seaward wrote:
The pollsters were unable to find anyone under the age of 28 who professed a belief in a deity of any sort.

Awesome. While I suspect the zero was probably due more to bad survey design than a genuine complete absence of faith among the under-28 group, that's a pretty interesting (and promising) lack of religion. Welcome to the future of the world?

One interesting theory I've heard is how state churches may be responsible for declining religious belief.

In countries where there's a state church, people tend to be apathetic about it. It's always there, but it's kind of in the background. You might go to it occasionally and do the "normal" things, but there isn't much reason to feel strongly about it so you end up with the kind of Christians who go to church for Christmas and maybe pray for something occasionally. And since they don't have much of a stake in religion it's easy to go from that minimal default belief to atheism, or at least to stop caring about religion entirely.

In the US, on the other hand, we never had a state church, so churches had to compete for members and religion became a marketing exercise. If you don't have a church (or don't care much about your church) there's a huge amount of effort spent on marketing various brands of Jesus to you. Do you like old traditional stuff? Great, we've got a Jesus for you! Are you a teenager in your rebellious phase? Great, let me tell you all about how you can rebel against society by going to church every sunday. Feeling overwhelmed by bills? Great, here's my book about how buying my brand of Jesus will increase your income 20000%! And of course once you buy one of these products it's like you're following your favorite sports team, you and your fellow fans are all unified against all your rivals and you have a high emotional stake in your choice. So it's much harder to abandon religion, you care about it more, and even if you stop caring so much there's always someone ready to lure you back in.

I could imagine a similar thing happening in eastern Germany, by moving religion to the state church the government set up that same kind of apathy and people just drifted away and never came back.

 Polonius wrote:
I think his point is that while belief in god may vary, the God is omnipresent.

Yeah. It's pretty impressive arrogance though.

(Plus, we already have a word for a place where that genocidal tyrant is omnipresent: hell.)

 Polonius wrote:
First, attributing an attribute onto another being isn't arrogance. It might be flattery or exaggeration, but it's not arrogant for me to say "my friend is super smart."

Yeah, but saying your friend is smart (presumably with good reason) is very different from declaring, with no good reason, that your god is everywhere, even in places where your religion is a trivial minority. It's arrogant because it dismisses all other equally valid (that is, not valid at all) beliefs and assumes that yours is the universal and correct one. It's the same kind of thing as telling someone you'll pray for them when they state a belief you don't agree with.

Second, genocide is the destruction of a people, nation, or culture. The god of abraham did wipe out all the peoples, but that's not really genocide. More like omnicide. the killing of all.

True, I suppose I should give god credit for having higher ambitions than mere genocide. However, the Bible is full of incidents where god commands his chosen people to go wipe out a rival nation or culture (complete with smashing their babies against rocks), so it's safe to say that god is a fan of both omnicide and genocide.

Third, the very definition of hell is that it is removed from god. So, it's actually the one place he isn't.

Nah, that would be Hell, the place where you hope you go when you die. A place where god is omnipresent would be hell, a place of horrible suffering.

 generalgrog wrote:
Yes and a deeper point about............ hope.

Lol? The thought of your god being omnipresent doesn't really inspire hope. More like screaming in terror?

 d-usa wrote:
He did inform them of the consequences, and he gave them a choice.

Free will is both the biggest gift and the biggest curse at the same time.

Except that's a terrible excuse. If a human parent left a bottle of poisonous cleaning chemicals out and their child drank it and died, we'd call them a horrible parent and say they are guilty of neglect. We would blame them even more if they used the pathetic excuse that they once told the kid not to drink it, so it's not their fault. We might even throw them in prison for it, depending on where it happened. But we certainly wouldn't say that the kid was using their free will, and we need to just accept that they made the wrong choice and the parent has no responsibility for the outcome.

And of course if the kid survived but the parent, on arriving at the hospital, beat the child to death for their stupid choice we'd call the parent a murderer and punish them harshly. Any claim that they were justified in that murder because the kid was their creation would be dismissed as the insane ranting of an inhuman monster.

So why should it be any different for god? According to the story god knew perfectly well that the apple was dangerous, but failed to take reasonable precautions to keep Adam and Eve from getting to it. And then once they did, he blamed them for it instead of taking responsibility for his failures. And, to make it worse, he punished them in the worst way imaginable: by forcing them to suffer the pain of aging and death, expelling them from paradise into a painful and horrible world, and condemning most of their descendents to eternal unimaginable torture. So, we must conclude one of three things:

1) God is a neglectful and incompetent parent, and deserves neither worship nor respect. His failure to act properly has caused suffering on an unimaginable scale, suffering that he could easily remove without any consequences (remember, god is omnipotent, so he can give you both free will and no bad things).

2) God is a sadistic tyrant who imposes arbitrary rules and then inflicts unimaginably cruel and disproportionate punishments for breaking them. Obviously this god also doesn't deserve worship or respect, but you'd better give it to him anyway or you're going to burn in hell.

3) God exists on an entirely different level from humanity, and transcends our limited knowledge of right and wrong. This is a popular justification, but it completely destroys other aspects of theology. If god exists outside of human morality, what exactly does it mean to say that god is "good"? Or that god "loves" us? If we can't say that god is "evil" for actions that are clearly evil by human standards, then saying god is "good" also ceases to have any meaning.

Unfortunately the omnicide and genocide performed by god and/or people acting under god's orders suggests that option #2 is the most likely one: god is evil, and you should obey him out of fear of hell. Any claims that god "loves" you should be taken the same way as an abusive spouse's claims to "love" their victim.



(And to preempt the inevitable argument: yes, I can talk about god as an atheist. God does not exist, but it still makes perfect sense to talk about god the mythological character, or god as he "exists" under a particular belief system that we are discussing. Obviously I don't fear god myself, but anyone who genuinely believes that he exists should.)

 dogma wrote:
You probably want to rephrase that.

Why? If someone punished their child by murdering it and tried to claim "I have the right to do whatever I want to it, I created it" we'd (rightfully) consider them insane and throw them in prison. However, I can't even count the number of times I've had Christians attempt to justify god's atrocities by saying "god has the right to do it to us, he created us".

Well, your first problem is assuming that evil is a thing separate from "Things I don't like." The distinction you're making is about elevating your own judgment, nothing more.

Ooh, moral relativism? How about let's put aside the question of whether there's a universal morality in some absolute sense and just leave it at "the overwhelming majority of people would say this is wrong". The actions I'm talking about are pretty universally considered evil, and any plausible theory of morality will reach the same conclusion.

Your second problem is that you speak of God in human terms. This is something I will approach in an unusual fashion and say that God making Man in his own image entails a relationship between Man and God that renders them comparable. If Man is vicious/violent/aggressive at times, then so must be God.

Sure, I'd agree with that. However, most Christians I've encountered would disagree with a claim that the god of their religion reflects the worst of human cruelty and violence.

 sebster wrote:
Who the fething hell reads that story and thinks 'well there's a literal description of events that actually happened and something that is not a metaphor at all'?

Lots of people, unfortunately.

And even if it's a metaphor my criticism is still valid. Whether the apple is a literal apple or a symbol of tempting things god wanted us to avoid, the principle is still the same. God created Adam and Eve with a sense of curiosity, created Satan, created knowledge and locked it away from us, and then failed to take appropriate precautions to keep us away from that knowledge. And then when Adam and Eve disobeyed god in a way that any idiot could have seen coming, god punishes them in an unimaginably cruel way rather than take responsibility for creating the entire scenario in the first place.

Seriously, it's a symbolic story. Picking out one character, even God, and claiming his actions don't suit our morals is completely missing the point. Origin stories don't work like that.

Ok, fine. It's an origin story and we shouldn't take it literally. Congratulations on destroying the entire concept of original sin, a fundamental principle of many (if not all) branches of Christian doctrine. If Eve didn't actually give in to temptation then the entire story of Jesus makes no sense. Without original sin to make us all unworthy of god and require the sacrifice of Jesus to allow us into heaven there's no need for salvation through faith, and you can be a good person and be just as worthy of heaven. Now, one can argue that the doctrine of original sin is a horrible ethical concept, but it's not exactly a trivial detail about Christianity we're talking about reversing.

On the other hand if Eve did give in to temptation, the negligent parent analogy is correct. Whatever form the actual giving in to temptation took god failed to prevent it and then blamed the victim for allowing it to happen.

 sebster wrote:
That's true. And I think the answer to that is to try and explain to these people that stories don't work like that, instead of entering the same mindset as them.

Except what makes your non-literal interpretation correct while theirs is wrong? I could argue just as easily that the literal interpretation is correct, and it just means that the story is an outdated myth and we should just abandon the religion entirely as factually absurd nonsense.

It isn't just the apple that's a metaphor. There wasn't actually a Tree of Knowledge, or a snake, or a guy called Adam or a lady named Eve that was made out of him.

There is knowledge, temptation, man and life. Read in this way it's a pretty amazing story. Read as something that actually happened it's complete gibberish.

It doesn't matter if it's literal or not. All that matters is the following:

1) Forbidden knowledge (or whatever the apple represents) exists, and is created by god.

2) Humans obtain the forbidden knowledge by giving in to temptation.

3) God has not taken adequate precautions against us obtaining that forbidden knowledge.

4) God punishes us for doing so.

If these are correct, the negligent parent analogy is appropriate.

If these are not correct the story, as understood by most Christians, loses its meaning entirely.

Note that contrary to what you claimed, original sin makes no sense if it was actually the action of one man - why would anyone else be accountable for that? But as a symbolic story of something we all do, undertake actions that take us further from God, it nicely supports the idea of original sin.

You're right, original sin is horrifyingly wrong under any remotely sane ethical system. The concept of punishment for the sins of the father is little more than justification for revenge provided by a primitive society far removed from modern civilization. However, it's still part of Christian doctrine.

The answer of course is to say that Christianity is immoral and leave the church, not to pretend that the doctrine means something else entirely for the sole purpose of making the religion ethically acceptable.

No, because the actions of Adam and Eve are descriptors for what we do now.

That might be your personal belief, but the belief of many (if not most) Christians is that original sin refers to a single specific event that occurred in the distant past. In fact it MUST be a single event, since that's the entire point of original sin: no matter how good you personally are, no matter how much sin you avoid in your own life or how devoutly you obey god, you have inherited original sin and require Jesus for salvation.

 Manchu wrote:
The story of Adam and Eve is about moral responsibility of adult humans.

That might be what it was intended to be about, but it actually tells the story of god's horrible moral failings. God's behavior in the story is far below the standards we'd accept for humans, and it makes a joke of any claim that god is "good" and perfect beyond anything humans can reach.

Also, how can Adam and Eve have moral responsibility if they're created in a state of ignorance? They're no more "adult humans" than a small child is, and their only moral "failure" is failing to obey the commands of god.

Original sin is actually about human nature rather than being held accountable for someone else's faults.

You wouldn't know this from hearing people talk about it.

And even if the intent is to make a statement about human nature it's a horrible statement. The doctrine of original sin says that no matter how hard you try, you can't be good enough to avoid hell. The kindest, most moral person deserves to be tortured for eternity, just like the most evil person. If god casts you down into hell, he is giving you exactly what you deserve, no matter what you have done in life. Unless of course you accept Jesus, in which case your human nature is magically overlooked and you escape hell.

The whole story, from beginning to end, is about holding other people accountable. Original sin starts it by holding humans accountable for our ancestors, while torturing and killing Jesus somehow magically transfers our sins onto him. It's a classic story of scapegoating, and it's sad that people hold it up as an example of the highest morality when really it shows some of the worst of human nature.

 Peregrine wrote:
Except what makes your non-literal interpretation correct while theirs is wrong?

Reason.

How is reason involved here? What makes "this is a symbolic story" more reasonable than "this is a literal story but it isn't true"? The only reason I can see for preferring the first option is if you're starting from the premise that you have to believe in Christianity, so anything that helps you believe it is the most reasonable interpretation.

 Manchu wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
You wouldn't know this from hearing people talk about it.

I can pretty well address everything you've ever posted about religion on this website, at least that I've seen, by responding to this: if you want to know about something, you don't listen to idiots talk about it.

But at what point do those "idiots" become "mainstream religion"? If the majority of members of a religion believe things that make you dismiss them as idiots, shouldn't it be time to dismiss the religion as a whole?

Plus, it's not like "sophisticated theology" really does much better. Sure, it doesn't tend to do things like claim literal six-day creation or stand on street corners ranting about abortion, but its arguments really aren't any better. In my experience its believers might have good intentions, but all they really offer is a bunch of comforting excuses that aren't really good for much besides allowing decent people to ignore the worst parts of their religion. Once you look at it from outside the religion the flimsy rationalizations just fall apart and you're left with something that isn't any more plausible than the literalist claims.

 Manchu wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
But at what point do those "idiots" become "mainstream religion"?

That's a good question with a very simple answer: never.

But that doesn't make any sense. "Mainstream" is defined by what the majority of people believe, and unfortunately the majority of people seem to share a lot more with the "idiots" (as you call them) than with you. The heavily modified theology that you're talking about seems to exist in exactly two places: a handful of people who are both progressive and love thinking about theology, and when debating atheists about the morality of religion. It does not seem to have very much in common with the everyday beliefs of the majority.


Plus, like I said, it's still wrong. It's wrong in ways that take longer to argue about, but in the end the result is the same.

 Manchu wrote:
Sorry, I thought by "mainstream" you meant something like "authentic." Yeah, stupidity can be mainstream. I mean, look how many books Richard Dawkins has sold on religious topics.

"Mainstream" by definition means "average", not "most reasonable in my opinion".

And of course my original point about mainstream beliefs was that I'm not just picking on the easy target of some 10-person ultrafundamentalist church here. My criticism applies to commonly held beliefs among mainstream Christianity. You might disagree with the majority on those subjects, but that doesn't make my criticisms of their beliefs any less appropriate.

(I'd defend Dawkins on this, but having seen his utter cluelessness about sexism recently I don't really care enough to bother.)

Plus, it's not wrong. It's not wrong in ways that take longer to argue about but in the end the result is the same.

Ok, then let's see your version of the story and why it's a) morally good, and b) factually true (or at least plausible enough for belief in its truth to be justified). I'm willing to debate non-mainstream positions as long as the people holding them make it clear what their position is.

 Manchu wrote:
I don't know what you mean by morally good.

Since it's supposed to be a symbolic story, does it teach a good moral lesson? Do the things the story describes as "good" and worthy of approval match our understanding of what "good" is?

The point of the story is that human persons bear responsibility for the moral dimension of their lives.

Ok, that's what it claims to say. Now let's look at what actually happens:

First of all, Adam and Eve are created in a state of ignorance. That alone negates any point about moral responsibility because Adam and Eve didn't have moral responsibility when they made the central decision in the story, just like we don't hold a small child morally accountable for actions done out of ignorance. We also can't consider it a story about moral responsibility because of the influence of Satan (himself created by God) taking advantage of their ignorance to tempt them into doing the "wrong" thing (though we could argue Satan's moral responsibility if we wanted).

Then we have to look at the act in question, and we find that it really isn't a moral flaw at all. In fact, by taking the knowledge, Adam and Eve were acting against an injustice (God creating them in a state of ignorance and keeping them there), something we could easily argue is a good moral choice. The only reason it is "wrong" is because it is disobeying God, but there's pretty strong consensus that it is moral to disobey (or even fight back against) an unjust ruler.

But is God unjust? I think he pretty clearly is. Like the negligent parent he leaves a dangerous item around where his children can get to it, and then blames the child when the inevitable happens. God demonstrates a level of morality far below human standards. And, for an omnipotent being that could easily do better if it wanted to, this is a pretty huge failure. And then, consider God's punishment for this disobedience: he expels Adam and Eve from paradise into a world of suffering, dooms them to age and die, and declares that their state of sin will send countless descendents to eternal torture in hell. This is an insanely disproportionate punishment, and the only moral judgment we can apply is very simple: evil.

Finally, it's a pretty bad lesson because the resulting state of Adam and Eve is seen as a bad thing. We now have moral responsibility, but rather than this being a positive thing, that we've grown up and become adults, it's seen as a fundamental flaw in humanity that keeps us from god. Even the name says it all, the Fall, not the Awakening. If it's meant to be a statement on our moral responsibility, shouldn't it say something besides "here is why you are unworthy"?


End result: as a factual story it's complete nonsense. As a symbolic story it tells horrible moral lessons. It praises appalling behavior, and condemns good actions.

The further point, regarding original sin, is that human nature is not complete as to its own moral perfection, which requires grace, the entirely gratuitous gift of the benign creator. I am sure that it could be twisted to bad ends, as with anything. Fortunately, we have a long and indeed ongoing tradition to turn to so that we don't, in arrogance, believe we should interpret these things ourselves according to our ignorance.

It hardly requires twisting to take it to bad ends. The "gift" is the same "gift" an abusive spouse gives by deciding not to beat their victim one night. God created the entire situation in the first place, and did so deliberately*. He created us with these imperfections instead of creating us perfect and worthy. He decided to make his gift conditional on accepting an act of torture and murder, with refusal punished by eternal torture, instead of simply giving it to us and allowing everyone into heaven. These are not morally praiseworthy actions, they're the actions of a sadistic tyrant, or, at best, an amoral rules-obsessed sociopath.

As a moral lesson it's just a bad one. Why would you prefer "we are not worthy and require the grace of god" to "we stand or fall on our own merits"? If you're going to base your beliefs on a moral message atheism offers a message of hope and responsibility, that instead of trusting in god to make everything right it's our duty to make the best world we can for ourselves.



*As an omnipotent being god could have chosen from an infinite variety of potential universes to create, including ones in which humanity is perfect but still has free will. And yet he chose to create this one.

 Manchu wrote:
By all means, go educate yourself and approach the scripture in the context of tradition. Otherwise, we're talking about "Peregrinism" and not Christianity. No offense, but I couldn't care less about Peregrinism. It seems pretty fethed up, honestly.

So I guess what you're saying is that the Christians who I have argued about this stuff with were lying to me when they said what they believe? I'm not just making this stuff up, it's a direct consequence of the things people have told me about their beliefs. Now, I'll grant that I come to a different conclusion from the same story, but that doesn't make it a straw man. And of course you have yet to tell me how those beliefs are actually wrong. As far as I've seen your only objection to what I've said has been "this isn't exactly what I believe" without ever giving any real substance to it.

And as for "tradition", I fail to see why it has any value. If "tradition" is that we take the original text and pretend that it says something it doesn't actually say, then tradition should be ignored. In that case "tradition" is nothing more than an excuse to keep believing in something even when it violates your moral standards. At that point shouldn't you just let go of the whole thing?


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 Manchu wrote:
No. I mean that no one should listen to people preaching hatred, violence, oppression, etc, and think they're getting an authentic insight into Christianity. I don't care whether the idiot in question is a televangelist or a cardinal. And yep, there have been a fair few idiots given fancy red hats over the ages up even to this very day.

And, again, at some point it stops being a minority of idiots and becomes "authentic Christianity". It might be hard to accept that the mainstream beliefs of your religion are horrible, but the conclusion you should draw from it is that it's time to leave the religion, not that you and a small minority of people like you have the "authentic" religion and the majority doesn't.

 Manchu wrote:
The "original text" is just a tradition that got written down and that particular written version was preserved by the same ongoing tradition. Talking about scripture without tradition is ludicrous.

Sure, you have to take into account some of the history, but consider an analogy:

Suppose there's a movie that shows a parent murdering their child for disobedience, made back in the 1950s (AKA conservative fantasy land). Suppose that the intent of the movie, and the context in which it was shown and approved of originally, was "obey your parents or else".

Now suppose over time there is a tradition built up around the movie that says "it's a story about parents trying their best to help their children". Most people leave it at that superficial level and then go back to thinking about more important things, like who is going to win this week's football game, while a few scholars come up with elaborate explanations of how it works that way.

Now, would we consider that tradition to be valid, or would we say that the people following that tradition are just lying to themselves about what the movie really says? And should we say that the tradition is correct, or should we say that people should throw that awful movie in the garbage where it belongs?

The same thing is happening with Christianity. The message of the actual text and beliefs surrounding it is ethically horrible, but people say "this is a morally good story". What they say about the beliefs is completely out of touch with the content of those beliefs, and calling it "tradition" doesn't change anything.

Also, I don't doubt that you have talked to Christians. But if you are accurately reporting what they told you then all I can say is that they don't understand the religion that they profess or they aren't able to articulate it very well or you don't have the capacity to understand what they are saying. I suspect it is a little of each column, given your posts here.

And what makes you the judge of how well they understand their own religion? As far as I've seen your only complaint here is that they don't come to the same conclusion that you do.

And, again, at some point it stops being a minority of idiots and becomes "authentic Christianity".

And again, no.

And why not? If 95% of self-identified Christians believe in ethically horrible things, then those ethically horrible things are "authentic Christianity". What I don't get is why you insist on associating yourself with that label instead of letting go of something where the mainstream majority are so terrible in your opinion.

(Not saying it's exactly 95%, that's just a hypothetical number.)

 dogma wrote:
It is a rather interesting problem for many that oppose abortion. I imagine that you get around it by considering fetuses to not be children.

Edit: I see what you were actually saying.

In my experience they get around it by claiming that god has special creator rights that humans don't, and the poor "unborn child" is really god's creation so we have no right to destroy it.

I can come up with theories of morality that do not. It isn't hard, just assume the actions are not immoral and engineer the theory with that in mind. That's basically how all theories of morality are created.

Ok, can we not play devil's advocate just for the sake of arguing? You know perfectly well what I meant by that statement, that every moral theory that has ever found non-trivial acceptance in any community agrees on the very simple cases. We can argue all day about various theories and the most complex moral questions, but if you poll a hundred people at random they're all going to agree that murder is wrong.

 Manchu wrote:
If you think that it's about some tyrant terrorizing people, that is something you've come up with.

No, it's what the Bible actually describes. The only reason we're reluctant to apply the "tyrant" label is because Christians have decided that god must be "good" regardless of what the Bible says.

Because that's not what is actually said at mass, or by the bishops, or by the popes throughout all the ages of the church, right back to Christ himself, at least to any extent that it's actually been preserved and handed on down to the people of today.

Wrong again. You might not like the consequences I draw from the beliefs I'm talking about, but I'm referring to things which are commonly held beliefs.

My understanding of my faith and the tradition and scripture, comes from a lived experience.

And your lived experience does not seem to match up with what most people say about their beliefs.

Or, I could give a different explanation: you're a fundamentally decent person, and you want to have morally good beliefs. But, unfortunately, you've decided to rationalize away the bad parts of Christianity and convince yourself that it must be "good" even when the Bible describes horrible things. You've got a huge investment in the community and it's hard to leave it all behind, so rather than just say "this is evil, I'm done with it" you come up with some comforting explanations and don't question them too seriously. End result: you accomplish your goal of keeping your faith.

And even if this doesn't describe you personally, it certainly describes what a lot of people in your religion do.

 dogma wrote:
You got one prong, but the second prong related to your implied claims regarding death in the context of abortion; assuming you support it.

I'm not really sure what you're saying here. What exactly is the second prong and how did I get it wrong (or not)?

Actually, I was brought up in an areligious household. I converted to Catholicism over the course of about eight years, most of which were spent in college or grad school. Your hypothetical account of my biography is as out-of-touch as your hypothetical account of Christian beliefs.

I never said you were born into your religion, I said you have a significant stake in the community.

 Manchu wrote:
That's still reading it backwards. I didn't convert to gain baggage. I'm not sure if I ever really thought it wasn't, but now I'm sure this discussion is totally useless.

I'm not talking about having baggage in the past, I'm talking about your current state now. I'm sure you had perfectly good reasons for converting, but everything you've posted here seems exactly like the kind of person who really doesn't agree with their religion anymore but has too much of a stake in the community to let go of it.

 Manchu wrote:
Here's another Catholic website:

http://whosoeverdesires.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/moving-forward-with-polygenism/

Catholic theology affirms that that the emergence of the first members of the human species (whether as individuals or in populations) represents an event that is not susceptible of a purely natural explanation and which can appropriately be attributed to divine intervention.

So we can add hilarious ignorance of science to the list of the church's flaws? Or would that flaw be better described as stubborn refusal to accept that "god did it" isn't a good explanation?

 Manchu wrote:
Hmm, Peregrine told me that I don't really believe in my religion, which is Christianity -- and which might actually be the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me on Dakka -- in part because I don't read the Bible like he, a non-Christian, does.

No, if you read at all you would see that what I actually said was "you don't read the Bible like other Christians I've encountered do". Forget Peregrinism you seem to have invented Mancuism, your own brand of "Christianity" which changes everything to make it more appealing.

What every person can easily know about Christianity is that it is not about hatred and oppression.

Let me guess, the classic "no true Christian" argument is your explanation for why we should forget about the huge number of people who feel that their Christianity IS about hatred and oppression? Or are we supposed to believe them when they hate and oppress but call it "love"?


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 Mannahnin wrote:
Religious people who believe in evolution and the development of species still generally believe that the gods imbued us with the higher functions and inspiration which make humanity unique among the animals on Earth.

Read the source he cited again. It says that those things cannot be explained by purely natural events which ignores the overwhelming evidence that they were. It's no better than a theory saying that objects falling is too much for the theory of gravity to explain so we need to invoke "intelligent falling". I see absolutely no reason to approve of the church's decision to take an official position that contradicts everything we know about the subject.

And it IS a terrible explanation. There's absolutely no explanation of how "god did it", or exactly how the scientific theory is lacking, it's just an assumption that any theory the church can (officially) approve of has to include "god did it" somewhere in it. That might be fine for the average believer with little or no interest in the subject, but it's incredibly irresponsible for people in a position of authority to spread a (factually) terrible theory like that.

 Mannahnin wrote:
How about you try to communicate your views without being rude about it?

The people you're talking with have been mostly very patient and polite with you. Could you make an effort to be friendlier?

It's a lot easier to do that when the people in question don't consistently misrepresent what I actually said. I've corrected him multiple times about the fact that "my" version of theology is not my own personal "Peregrinism" developed as an ignorant outsider, it's the theology that actual self-identified Christians have explained to me. And yet over and over again it's just "my invention as an atheist".


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 Manchu wrote:
That original sin, a doctrine about the nature of all human people, somehow has special, mysiognistic connotations. No, what I know is that your are speaking 100% from prejudice and 0% from knowledge.

Oh yeah, it can only be based on prejudice and not knowledge. There has never been a case where people in authority have blamed women specifically for original sin. You know, since Eve was a woman and was the weak one who tempted Adam and destroyed him.

And, like it or not, the people saying that were self-identified Christians.

 Polonius wrote:
2) that those self identified christians actually knew what they were talking about?

Well, given that the entire "proof" of why they're wrong so far has consisted of "that's not what I believe", then no, I don't see any reason to doubt that they know about their own religion.

No offense dude, but you'd be better off claiming it was your own interpretation. Saying "I got it from a guy that says he's christian" is like telling a judge "the guy on the subway said there was case law on this."

That's a terrible analogy. The guy on the subway is claiming factual knowledge that is objectively true or not, and it's easy to prove whether or not they were correct. The self-identified Christian is simply declaring their membership in a group related to a subject where there is no factual proof* for any side and what is "correct" is determined solely by the members of that group. There is no objective outside authority to say "X is a Christian belief, Y is not" if both of the people claiming X and Y are self-identified Christians.


*Besides the whole "there is no god" thing, even believers admit it when they say how important faith is.

 Polonius wrote:
That you think the issue of if there is case law speaking on in issue is an objective fact that is easy to prove is hilarious and charming. In any interesting matter it's always a contest between interpretations.

In this context purposes case law is objective. It's easy to independently verify the subway guy's qualifications (or lack of, more likely) by consulting the independent set of facts that everyone relevant has agreed on*. We can't do the same for the self-identified Christian because there's no independent set of facts to say that one branch of Christianity is "right" or "wrong" compared to another one. You might be able to say it in the case of the extremist "church" that consists of a crazy preacher and his immediate family, but you can't dismiss, say, biblical literalism as "wrong" as illegitimate like that since it's a much more common belief.


*Ok, yes, there is controversy in law. But I don't think the subway "lawyer" is referring to any legitimate areas of controversy.

Well, hold on there. there is no factual prove that there is a god. There is no factual proof that the Bible is the word of god.

There is no absolute proof, but only because it's impossible to prove the nonexistence of anything.

However, any sensible system of beliefs about the world includes some variation of "don't believe in the existence of things without good evidence" and there is absolutely no evidence for god. There isn't even a solid theoretical argument for the existence of god. It's just like the case of the celestial teapot: we can't prove that it doesn't exist, but belief in it is not rational and the incredibly small chance of being wrong doesn't stop us from saying "it doesn't exist".

There is plenty of factual proof about what the Bible says, what it means, and how christians interpret it, especially since nearly all agree on the same basic document. You can construct a geometric proof or anything, but there are strong reasons to accept one interpretation over another. The same way there are reasons to interpret any document.

Except the person in question rejected the idea of just using the words of the Bible and insisted that we have to look at the "true" meaning as established by the tradition of his personal branch of Christianity. A meaning which turns the entire story we were discussing into a symbolic one, where the symbolism is all incredibly subjective and never defined anywhere in the actual text of the Bible.

 Polonius wrote:
Well, no. You're saying that in this context case law is objective. I mean, it sounds like what you're saying is that because Christianity is based on a set of texts, every person is going to walk away with a different meaning. Which is unlike the law in almost no meaningful way. Oh, sure, there's somebody who picks a winner from two competing interpretations when highly specific instances arise, but if the law were nearly as objective as you think, we would have a lot more unanimous supreme court decisions.

But, like I said, the guy on the subway is far outside that controversy and it's pretty easy to tell that his legal advice is absolute nonsense that no judge is going to consider seriously. On the other hand, when you're considering something like biblical literalism you can't say that it's objectively the wrong kind of Christianity. You can say that it isn't your Christianity, but it's absurd to say that a popular branch of the religion is not actually a part of it despite their self-identification as a part of it.

I'm not sure why you're teeing off on my statement that there is factual evidence for god's existence. I'd disagree about the sensibility about believing in things that can't be proven, but that's a given between any theist and atheist.

I'm just pointing out that "proof god doesn't exist" is a straw man of atheism. You might not have intended it that way but it's often followed by "you don't know 100% so STFU", when atheism actually claims something else. Call it a bit of preemptive defense if you want.

The point of the story is that God creates man, and man will inevitably disobey god (sin). Because of this, man cannot live in paradise, but most struggle and die.

I don't see why it matters if this literally happened 6500 years ago, or is a symbolic statement of the human condition.

Except I never argued for factual literalism about the story. What I said is that:

1) If we're going to take it as a symbolic statement about the human condition we need to consider the symbolism that is actually present in the text, not the symbolism that has been added by "tradition" independently of anything that's in the story.

and

2) The symbolic statements about the human condition are ethically horrible. If it's a symbolic lesson it's a bad one that we should strongly reject.

None of my criticism requires the Christian to believe in factual literalism, and "it's symbolic" doesn't dodge it one bit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dogma wrote:
Thankfully, as the Church is not a scientific organization it really doesn't matter.

Then the church needs to stop making statements about science. The source I was quoting from (linked by a Christian) says that evolution alone isn't good enough. It's a factual claim about a scientific subject, and an incorrect one. It's entirely appropriate to criticize the church for speaking from a self-appointed position of authority on a scientific subject.

 dogma wrote:
That's actually not true, its simply very difficult to do so without narrowly defining the thing. I can quite easily prove that a given word does not exist on a given page in a given book. Proving the existence or nonexistence of God is only difficult because God is in itself difficult to define, and even more difficult to constrain spatially. Indeed, according to some interpretations of the concept God cannot be constrained spatially.

How? You can show me the book, but I can argue that you're just blind and can't see it. And I can keep coming up with possible-but-absurd excuses until you finally give up. Now, you will certainly establish overwhelming evidence that the word doesn't exist and that's sufficient to make nonexistence of the word the only rational belief, but it's not 100%.

Anyway, the whole point was just to cut off an argument that he wasn't actually going to make, so I don't see much purpose in continuing it.

 Peregrine wrote:
The Bible isn't a scientific text, or a philosophical treatise. It doesn't need to explicit in the same way poetry does not need to be explicit. The type of truth people find in the Bible is, in many ways, the same sort of truth people find in something written by Maya Angelou.

Ok, fine. It's symbolic. I already said that. But if we have, say, a poem describing torture and murder we should consider symbolism like "wow, humans are really awful to each other" not "humans are always kind and peaceful". And we certainly shouldn't throw out the symbolism about people being awful just because we want the poem to be about happy things. Anyone who has studied literature can tell you this, you have to work with the actual text, and freedom to interpret symbolism is not the same thing as freedom to invent any meaning you like.

The same is true of the story of Adam and Eve. The symbolism and moral lessons of the story are horrible, and the only reason to pretend otherwise is if you start from the assumption that Christianity has to be about good and happy things.

 dogma wrote:
Does anyone who actually works in a field where evolution is relevant pay any attention to what the Church says? The answer is, of course, no.

Nobody who works in that field, but the church influences people who aren't biologists. We wouldn't be happy if the church taught that F = M/A instead of F = M*A and dismiss it with "oh, it's not like anyone who needs physics for their job listens", we'd be outraged about them spreading false knowledge. So why make an exception for evolution?

I think one problem here is that you misunderstand what is being said when the Church takes a particular position on science (at least when its acting correctly). It isn't a comment on the merit of the science itself. The Church is not claiming that evolution is a bad theory if it says it isn't enough, it is saying that it isn't enough to be spiritually satisfactory.

Except the quoted statement DOES make a comment on science and religious statements on evolution consistently use scientific language and an assumption that they're providing a legitimate scientific opinion not just spiritual guidance that stands entirely separate from science.

It depends on how the torture are employed in the poem. I think you're getting caught in your own hyperbole here, the Bible never indicates that people are always kind and peaceful. Quite the opposite, it describes how humans can behave in a way which is kind and peaceful while explicitly stating that their nature makes it difficult; at least as its presently arranged. After all, we've been fething around with canonization for quite some time.

Except the Bible doesn't just present flawed humanity and say "this is why we suck, we need to do better", it presents morally horrible actions with approval. Over and over again the supposedly "good" god does horrible things, or commands his followers to do horrible things. Over and over again we see horrible things presented as "virtue". And the fact that some Christians wave their hand and say "this is a story about good things" doesn't magically change it.

 Ahtman wrote:
What I get from this is that Peregrine admits that it is poetic and symbolic, but that he also decided what it meant and that anyone that disagrees his interpretation is idiotic and he dismisses them. So, essentially, we have a zealot on our hands.

No, I argued that if someone takes a symbolic interpretation that is completely opposed to the actual text there's a problem. We're not talking about a subtle difference in symbolic interpretation, we're talking about a dramatic change in the basic message of the story, and one that isn't supported at all by what it actually says.

So, please don't strawman my position anymore.

 LordofHats wrote:

Over and over again the supposedly "good" god does horrible things, or commands his followers to do horrible things

Ancient Judaism did not follow a a good vs evil dynamic. Like other ancient religious traditions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greater Syria, it followed a dynamic of Order vs Chaos. God under this dynamic was Order. Doing moral good wasn't necessarily his goal. This changed somewhere between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE after Zorastrianism exerted some influence with the rise of the Persian Empire.

The problem you present is one of cultural confusion, which is pretty much bound to happen in a religion with 3000+ years of baggage.

Ok, sure. Call it order vs. chaos. But you can't simultaneously say that somehow in 2012 it is a story of a good god and a book of symbolic lessons on how to be a virtuous person. And that's exactly the problem: modern Christians are claiming the Bible says something that it doesn't.

 dogma wrote:
Because evolution is an esoteric concept and not a particular equation, and one which the Church does not dispute outside its merit with respect to spiritual doctrine.

Except the quote in question is talking about the scientific merit.

It does, but it isn't a comment made by the Church.

It's a comment contained on a Catholic website, posted with approval by a Christian. And it's entirely consistent with other statements made by Christians (including those in positions of authority to speak for their churches) commenting on a scientific issue.

The only Christians I've heard say its a story about "good things" are what my dad calls Sunday Christians. They go to Church, but don't really pay any attention to the underlying theology and have probably never read the Bible.

Have you even been paying attention to this thread? The past few pages of argument have been about someone claiming that the story is about "good things", even if he didn't use those exact words.

 youbedead wrote:
No, it's lesson on how to be good, it itself is not a good story.

And everything it says about how to be "good" is horrible. It's like saying a story that says "torture and kill people" is a lesson on how to be good.

 dogma wrote:
To me the past few pages read as an atheist ranting about things he doesn't understand, and I say that as an atheist.

Fine, then help me understand. Tell me exactly HOW the story of Adam and Eve gives us good moral lessons. Tell me, in detail, which moral lessons it is supposed to present, and how the events of the story communicate that message. Because all I've seen here is a bunch of excuses and handwaving, and no attempt at all to explain WHY I'm wrong.

 Manchu wrote:
A defunct canon and the Malleus Maleficarum. Wow, I guess you really got me there.

And don't forget the one from 2010.

Plus, it's kind of amusing that you'd dismiss the one where the representative of god on earth is speaking on matters of theology. I guess it was only good until 1918, and then god changed his mind?

(Don't worry, I'll get to the rest of the comments later, I'm just going to take the easy short one now.)

 Manchu wrote:
Because 1918 was yesterday? I really wish you'd realize how incredibly hateful you are being. You're making judgments about a modern day institution based on centuries-old documents.

And again you ignore the one they mentioned that was published in 2010.

Also, 1918 is hardly "centuries ago". The original document may have been written a long time ago, but it was still in effect until 1918. And it's also entirely fair to ask WHY they changed. Did the god suddenly change his mind on the subject? Or was the church, god's representative on earth, wrong about theology?