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http://www.sandgrains.com/Closer-Sand-Time.html

This is a pretty cool site, lots of interesting stuff. Life reflects, and life reflects, and life reflects, and life reflects... etc...

Maui Red

* Three sand grains from the red sand beach at Makena Point, Maui are heavily eroded, revealing their beautiful interiors.

Maui Sand Arrangement #2

* Maui Sand Grains appear to float on a black background. These spectacular grains of sand were selected from a thimble-full of Maui sand.

Truth be told, this type of subtle patterning is the closest thing I have to being religious. I am agnostic until dust starts to speak to me in english... at which point I check what is in my drink.

WAIT... this dust does speak in english... no... that is me talking now...

*yoinks* That is a cool picture indeed.

Albatross wrote:

'Of course, you aren't meant to take it literally....' I HATE this about religious people! You either believe it's the word of God or you don't. The bible does not support the idea of evolution at all - it explicitly states the age of earth (if you do the calculations) and how everything came into being. This is presented as the sacred word of God - if you are christian this is unavoidable. If you believe this, you have to be prepared to have it shot down, you can't qualify your faith by cherry-picking the believable bits and leaving out the unpalatable stuff (hating gays, virgin birth - don't get me started on that!)

Except that many believe that there are stories in there that have the sole purpose of being cautionary tales or parables. Story told a lot of stories, but most are like aesop's fables and have a lesson in them. Do you think that there was actually a father who had two sons, one of which wasted his money and came back to receive a party thrown in his honor? Also, the bible wasn't written by the G-man, it was written by people who believed in him. The bible, like many other religious texts, aren't written by God, or related gods, but are the impressions created by men that heard him. Which is why there are 5 different versions of events in the bible told by different people(the gospel according to; John, Mark, etc.).

The old testament is the same as the new, there are stories that were meant to be taken literally and stories meant to be taken metaphorically.

generalgrog wrote:Personally, I thinks it's been pretty well behaved.
GG

Nevermind.

GG


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Panic wrote:yeah,
I don't believe that everything wrote in a book is the truth. Books are just another form of media, except they are more easily distorted and baised with every word translated and re-wrote or omitted. I don't think that a dude called Jesus, son of God, walked on water and then died for us... my opinion. Just a story that got exagerated through time because it sold bibles and kept the corporations top-execs rich?
...

I'm glad you pointed out that, that is your opinion, as we are pretty much getting the picture that you are highly opinionated. The internet is a great palcd where you can spout unsubstantiated claims and opinions, like Jesus didn't really exist, or the bible is "Just a story that got exagerated through time because it sold bibles and kept the corporations top-execs rich?"

Panic wrote:
The book is filled with wild horrible visons and text, most believe to be the rantings of mad man. ...

Who are the most? You mean the millions of Christians that actually believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God? or the small, yet vocal group of sceptics that like to spout unsubstantiated claims and opinions on the internet?




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Panic wrote:
And that's just the point. when we die there is nothing.. how scary is that? but if you pop along to church once a weak, and fill the coffers you'll get a nice gold rosy after party! deal?

Why am I not surprised that you show a complete lack of understanding of what it means to be a Christian.


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Cane wrote:Carl Sagan is my god:



He's done more for humanity than Geebus on a Buddha imo.

You mean like gets things mostly wrong? Wow you worship an errant false god. <-----litte g.




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frgsinwntr wrote:I don't think there is much difference at all between religions...





But I'll stay out now that I inserted my funnies.... I don't want to be the reason for locking EVERY religion thread

frgs are you trying to replace Gwar as the most offensive Religion hater on DAKKA?




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Panic wrote:I can't remember who showed this here on dakka first, but it's cool... thanx.
Panic

yeah,
That is cool and it goes to show how awesome God is. That he created this massive universe, and placed our planet in a privledged position that allows us to view the universe and study it and see his Glory. If our planet was located in another position, like say in a dust cloud, we wouldn't be able to see hardly any of the beautifull handiworkof God. Yet he chose to put Earth in a postition so that we can witness the awesomeness of power.

GG

The old testament is the same as the new, there are stories that were meant to be taken literally and stories meant to be taken metaphorically.

Who decides that? You? I think you're veering into apologist territory here. The Jewish faith believes that the Torah, or Old Testament is the immutable word of YHWH and is a literal description of events. This is the same with many Christians (see GeneralGrog - whose commitment I can't fault, but whose reasoning I can) - this sort of Christian back-pedalling is a relatively modern development and symptomatic of the fact that the weight of evidence against the existence of God, miracles, angels etc. is mounting (that's putting it delicately).
I truly have no wish to offend anyone, and would not enter into this debate with the intentions of hurting anyone's feelings. However I don't believe that Religion should be immune to criticism on those grounds - I support Middlesbrough Football Club, who I believe are the finest team on earth. However, the weight of evidence is greatly against this - the facts don't bear out my claims, so I can't get angry if someone points that out.
And before you say 'that's not the same as believing in God!!' - you're right, it's not the same.

There is plenty of evidence for the existence of Middlesbrough FC.

Albatross wrote:

Most of it, and this includes the creation story, is myth or gilded facts.

'Of course, you aren't meant to take it literally....' I HATE this about religious people! You either believe it's the word of God or you don't. The bible does not support the idea of evolution at all - it explicitly states the age of earth (if you do the calculations) and how everything came into being. This is presented as the sacred word of God - if you are christian this is unavoidable. If you believe this, you have to be prepared to have it shot down, you can't qualify your faith by cherry-picking the believable bits and leaving out the unpalatable stuff (hating gays, virgin birth - don't get me started on that!)

Not being able to disprove something is not the same as proving something exists.

This is quite an interesting statement, and your mostly right, except that real Christians don't "hate" gays. I too have a hard time with Christians who cherry pick what they believe about the Bible. Don't be wishywashy, either believe the whole thing or don't believe any of it.



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Albatross wrote:

The old testament is the same as the new, there are stories that were meant to be taken literally and stories meant to be taken metaphorically.

Who decides that? You? I think you're veering into apologist territory here. The Jewish faith believes that the Torah, or Old Testament is the immutable word of YHWH and is a literal description of events. This is the same with many Christians (see GeneralGrog - whose commitment I can't fault, but whose reasoning I can) - this sort of Christian back-pedalling is a relatively modern development and symptomatic of the fact that the weight of evidence against the existence of God, miracles, angels etc. is mounting (that's putting it delicately).
I truly have no wish to offend anyone, and would not enter into this debate with the intentions of hurting anyone's feelings. However I don't believe that Religion should be immune to criticism on those grounds - I support Middlesbrough Football Club, who I believe are the finest team on earth. However, the weight of evidence is greatly against this - the facts don't bear out my claims, so I can't get angry if someone points that out.
And before you say 'that's not the same as believing in God!!' - you're right, it's not the same.

There is plenty of evidence for the existence of Middlesbrough FC.

There is also plenty of evidence for God. See panics awesome post showing God's creative power. What evidence against the existence of God can you point to that isn't based on scientific assumption or bias? You can't.

I think this is starting to go the way of past threads, where we are starting to get into evolutionary debate. We have done that before, and I suggest using the search function on the DAKKA offtopic forum to see where we have gone before on the issue.

I'm bowing out of this thread because I know where it is going, and we've done this before. So I leave the last word to the sceptics. :-)

I'll certainly continue in pm's if anyone wants to. I still owe frigs some responces.

GG

Albatross wrote:

The old testament is the same as the new, there are stories that were meant to be taken literally and stories meant to be taken metaphorically.

Who decides that? You? I think you're veering into apologist territory here. The Jewish faith believes that the Torah, or Old Testament is the immutable word of YHWH and is a literal description of events. This is the same with many Christians (see GeneralGrog - whose commitment I can't fault, but whose reasoning I can) - this sort of Christian back-pedalling is a relatively modern development and symptomatic of the fact that the weight of evidence against the existence of God, miracles, angels etc. is mounting (that's putting it delicately)..

Actually I'd argue that it's really a fairly recent development that has seen people taking the Bible as a literal and infallible word from the big man himself. It seems mainly to have grown from a peculiarly American idea that seems to have spun out of/after the Scopes trials. Factor in the great depression and the sudden availability of cheap radio broadcasting time and it all seems to have grown from there. Sure at times the Xtian church has been notoriously oppressive and anti progress/science, but it has also at times been very forward thinking and accepting of science and its discoveries. There's a parallel here with Islam in many regards, but I think that'll open a whole new can o'worms/flamebait.

So, its safer to believe and practice religion, because if there is a God then you;re safe, if there isn't then it is wasted effort, but maybe you learned something

This view is more commonly known as Pascals Wager.

The thought behind is as follows:-

-If God does not exist, and I am an atheist, I get to have a little bit more fun and free time in my life.
-If God does not exist, and I am religous, at worst I'll have sacrificed one day a week sitting on my knees, and I'll have done some good in helping other people.
-If God does Exist, and I'm religous, I'll go to a wonderful happy afterlife.
-If God does exist and I'm an atheist, I'm screwed to burn for all eternity.

Therefore logic dictates that we should be religous, as the potential consequences for not being religous are far greater. It's not much of a sacrifice to make in hope of a massive payoff. As things stand, you have a 1 in 4 chance of eternal bliss after all. People gamble in the lottery on far worse odds than that. So we should believe in God.

Common problems with Pascals Wager:-

-How can you 'make' yourself believe something? Try and 'make' yourself believe that water is lava, or that computers produce chocloate if you press the power button ten times. It is impossible to force oneself to believe something one thinks is patently ridiculous.
-If God is really omniscient, he'll know that you're only believeing in him for selfish gain, rather than to be religous, and you'll still burn in hell forever.
-lolno.

Plus, if you don't have a reason to believe in God prior to the wager, you could just as easily hypothesize a second entity that will punish you for eternity if you worship God.

Thus rendering both choices equal.

There is no God, because we can pretty clearly see where the idea comes from, and how it developed...and it it's just a human idea, then it isn't real. There was no "God" in ancient Sumer...there were "Gods," and it was from this pantheon of Gods that all the following Near Eastern civilizations and peoples, including the people who would become the ancient Jews, took their own pantheons of Gods. The Jewish people decided one day to believe in only a single God from their pantheon, who became the chief deity for all the Abrahamic religions.

In the East, the ancient Chinese had nature Gods and household Gods to begin with. Later Taoism and Buddhism developed...but it's interesting that if there is, indeed, one "God" that He/She never reared His/Her head in ancient China or India around the time He decided to pop into the Middle East...

Pretty much all belief in deity comes down to humans wanting answers for questions they can't have answers for. For primitive man, it's what's that big glowing thing in the sky? Oh, that's Ra. No, that's the sun actually, but you don't know that yet.

How do the seasons changes? Oh, those are nature gods. No, that's the Earth rotating around the sun, actually, but you don't know that yet.

What happens when we die?

...

We'll probably have some sort of God around for as long as people are asking that question and insisting that they need the answer. That's the long and short of religion - it's a source of succor for human beings because we're too smart for our own good, as far as Earth animal species go, anyway. Who knows what happens when we die, but do we really want to bother thinking about it? All the choices are bad...you either subscribe to a theory which may be entirely wrong but you live your life by whatever morality that theory subscribes to, in which case you may be making bad or stupid decisions accordingly your whole life and missing out on who knows what, or you can actually try to go it on your own and figure it out in which case you go crazy as a loon.


Now, I'm not saying that there is no sort of grand Truth to the universe or anything...nor am I saying that there's just nothing after we die...I'm saying "I don't know" to any and all questions of that ilk. Sometimes I have moments where I highly suspect that there's something after we die, but that might be cultural influence and nothing more.

Agnosticism is the way to go. Profession of ignorance is no shame when you're incapable of not being ignorant.

Cairnius wrote:The Jewish people decided one day to believe in only a single God from their pantheon, who became the chief deity for all the Abrahamic religions.

I can just so picture this image of all the ancient Jews getting around a table one day and going, 'Sod having a pantheon of them, let's just have one God!'

Albatross wrote:However, we can say that there is ALMOST certainly no God.
And we can say that Jesus (or Yshua, to give him his real name) was ALMOST certainly not a miracle worker, because it is not physically possible to walk on water or heal the sick.

First of all, no, we can't. There is so much we don't know about the universe. What we do know is smaller then the picture of the Earth in your little chart, so I don't understand how you, as a self-proclaimed rationalist, can claim that we are so close to declaring that when we know so little. And this is information that is related only to our own dimension, physicists theorize there are at least 11 other dimensions besides our own.

Albatross wrote:'Of course, you aren't meant to take it literally....' I HATE this about religious people! You either believe it's the word of God or you don't. The bible does not support the idea of evolution at all - it explicitly states the age of earth (if you do the calculations) and how everything came into being. This is presented as the sacred word of God - if you are christian this is unavoidable. If you believe this, you have to be prepared to have it shot down, you can't qualify your faith by cherry-picking the believable bits and leaving out the unpalatable stuff (hating gays, virgin birth - don't get me started on that!)

Thank you for telling me how I am supposed to believe something, especially when you obviously don't know much about it. Who said anything about cherry picking? There are many, many elements to the Bible that are obviously metaphor, poetry, parable, etc. Just because we don't take it all literally doesn't mean that it was supposed to be that way.

Albatross wrote:

The old testament is the same as the new, there are stories that were meant to be taken literally and stories meant to be taken metaphorically.

Who decides that?

Actually this has been established Church doctrine since the times of St. Augustine and St. Athanasius, and probably before them.

Albatross wrote:The Jewish faith believes that the Torah, or Old Testament is the immutable word of YHWH and is a literal description of events. This is the same with many Christians (see GeneralGrog - whose commitment I can't fault, but whose reasoning I can) - this sort of Christian back-pedalling is a relatively modern development and symptomatic of the fact that the weight of evidence against the existence of God, miracles, angels etc. is mounting (that's putting it delicately).

Well Christians obviously aren't Jews, so we aren't bound by their theology, secondly most Jews don't believe that, only Orthodox Jews do, and even that's a stretch since it dooms them essentially without a Temple to sacrifice in. On the issue of back-peddling, I don't know how you got this idea. This whole "cherry-picking" idea as you put it isn't new. What is new is the idea of literal interpretation, which stems from post-Enlightenment philosophy and theology. The Church has largely been an adherent to the diversified Bible approach for nearly two millennium.

reds8n wrote:

Albatross wrote:

The old testament is the same as the new, there are stories that were meant to be taken literally and stories meant to be taken metaphorically.

Who decides that? You? I think you're veering into apologist territory here. The Jewish faith believes that the Torah, or Old Testament is the immutable word of YHWH and is a literal description of events. This is the same with many Christians (see GeneralGrog - whose commitment I can't fault, but whose reasoning I can) - this sort of Christian back-pedalling is a relatively modern development and symptomatic of the fact that the weight of evidence against the existence of God, miracles, angels etc. is mounting (that's putting it delicately)..

Actually I'd argue that it's really a fairly recent development that has seen people taking the Bible as a literal and infallible word from the big man himself. It seems mainly to have grown from a peculiarly American idea that seems to have spun out of/after the Scopes trials. Factor in the great depression and the sudden availability of cheap radio broadcasting time and it all seems to have grown from there. Sure at times the Xtian church has been notoriously oppressive and anti progress/science, but it has also at times been very forward thinking and accepting of science and its discoveries. There's a parallel here with Islam in many regards, but I think that'll open a whole new can o'worms/flamebait.

Thank you red, you are mostly right. The Literalistic movement though does predate the Scopes trial and was imported to America via English Dissenters.

Ketara wrote:

So, its safer to believe and practice religion, because if there is a God then you;re safe, if there isn't then it is wasted effort, but maybe you learned something

This view is more commonly known as Pascals Wager.

The thought behind is as follows:-

-If God does not exist, and I am an atheist, I get to have a little bit more fun and free time in my life.
-If God does not exist, and I am religious, at worst I'll have sacrificed one day a week sitting on my knees, and I'll have done some good in helping other people.
-If God does Exist, and I'm religious, I'll go to a wonderful happy afterlife.
-If God does exist and I'm an atheist, I'm screwed to burn for all eternity.

Therefore logic dictates that we should be religious, as the potential consequences for not being religous are far greater. It's not much of a sacrifice to make in hope of a massive payoff. As things stand, you have a 1 in 4 chance of eternal bliss after all. People gamble in the lottery on far worse odds than that. So we should believe in God.

Common problems with Pascals Wager:-

-How can you 'make' yourself believe something? Try and 'make' yourself believe that water is lava, or that computers produce chocolate if you press the power button ten times. It is impossible to force oneself to believe something one thinks is patently ridiculous.
-If God is really omniscient, he'll know that you're only believing in him for selfish gain, rather than to be religious, and you'll still burn in hell forever.
-lolno.

Thanks for noting that problem with Pascal's logic. I love Pascal, and I see how this argument might entice people, but it has to be handled very carefully. I doubt Pascal would ever just suggest a simple lip service devotion, but it is easy to see why people think he does. I follow his logic as begging humanity to give God a chance to reveal himself to you, if only to avoid Hell.

Cairnius wrote:There is no God, because we can pretty clearly see where the idea comes from, and how it developed...and it it's just a human idea, then it isn't real. There was no "God" in ancient Sumer...there were "Gods," and it was from this pantheon of Gods that all the following Near Eastern civilizations and peoples, including the people who would become the ancient Jews, took their own pantheons of Gods. The Jewish people decided one day to believe in only a single God from their pantheon, who became the chief deity for all the Abrahamic religions.

Your attempts at anthropological history are horrifying....No respectable historian in the World would dare put this forward in a peer edited journal because it is unsubstantiated at best, fabricated at worst. We have no idea how the idea of god's came about, I prefer to stick to the religious texts on that one, it is all theorized, not proven. In terms of history, the Jews are the only people or religion, up to the arrival of Christ, that were monotheistic, and even as late as 63 BC Romans were puzzled as to how someone could be that way. Pompey himself went into the Inner Sanctum of the Temple just to see what was there.

This is my religion.
There are many like it, but this one is MINE.
My religion is my best friend. It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.
My religion without me is useless. Without my religion, I am useless.
I must fire my religion true.
I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me.
I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will...
My religion and myself know that what counts in war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our bursts, nor the smoke we make.
We know it is the hits that count. We will hit...
My religion is human, even as I, because it is my life.
Thus, I will learn it as a brother.
I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts, its accessories, its sights, and its barrel.
I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage.
I will keep my religion clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready.
We will become part of each other. We will...
Before God I swear this creed.
My religion and myself are the defenders of my country.
We are the masters of our enemy.
We are the saviours of my life.
So be it, until there is no enemy, but PEACE.

George Spiggott wrote:This is my religion.
There are many like it, but this one is MINE.
My religion is my best friend. It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.
My religion without me is useless. Without my religion, I am useless.
I must fire my religion true.
I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me.
I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will...
My religion and myself know that what counts in war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our bursts, nor the smoke we make.
We know it is the hits that count. We will hit...
My religion is human, even as I, because it is my life.
Thus, I will learn it as a brother.
I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts, its accessories, its sights, and its barrel.
I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage.
I will keep my religion clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready.
We will become part of each other. We will...
Before God I swear this creed.
My religion and myself are the defenders of my country.
We are the masters of our enemy.
We are the saviours of my life.
So be it, until there is no enemy, but PEACE.

I'm sorry, but I already did that a few pages ago.

JEB_Stuart wrote:

Cairnius wrote:There is no God, because we can pretty clearly see where the idea comes from, and how it developed...and it it's just a human idea, then it isn't real. There was no "God" in ancient Sumer...there were "Gods," and it was from this pantheon of Gods that all the following Near Eastern civilizations and peoples, including the people who would become the ancient Jews, took their own pantheons of Gods. The Jewish people decided one day to believe in only a single God from their pantheon, who became the chief deity for all the Abrahamic religions.

Your attempts at anthropological history are horrifying....No respectable historian in the World would dare put this forward in a peer edited journal because it is unsubstantiated at best, fabricated at worst. We have no idea how the idea of god's came about, I prefer to stick to the religious texts on that one, it is all theorized, not proven. In terms of history, the Jews are the only people or religion, up to the arrival of Christ, that were monotheistic, and even as late as 63 BC Romans were puzzled as to how someone could be that way. Pompey himself went into the Inner Sanctum of the Temple just to see what was there.

This isn't a peer-edited anthropological history journal. It's a tabletop wargaming website called Dakka Dakka. Do you honestly believe that I'm going to present the kind of scholarship on this topic, for a posting on the Off-Topic Forum of a nerd website (and no, I don't think that's a bad word but there it is), that you seem to think I ought to?

You agree with me that there were no monotheistic religions in the Near East before the Jews...and the Jews developed from other, prior civilizations and cultures in the Near East who were polytheistic...which means that the progenitors of the ancient Jews were polytheistic...which means that at some point the ancient Jews decided to believe in only one of their Gods and that became the Abrahamic "God."

Which means that this "God" didn't always exist. A single, human culture brought it into existence. That means God is a human creation, not some sort of universal, eternal truth.

So...you're disagreeing with me by agreeing with me?

Ahtman wrote:I'm sorry, but I already did that a few pages ago.

Note to self, read all posts in thread. Fools seldom differ.

Albatross wrote:
Hmm... not so - Atheists, being rationalists primarily would admit that they don't know for certain what happens after you die.
That pretty much goes for everything - there are no absolutes in science. However, we can say that there is ALMOST certainly no God.
And we can say that Jesus (or Yshua, to give him his real name) was ALMOST certainly not a miracle worker, because it is not physically possible to walk on water or heal the sick
'Of course, you aren't meant to take it literally....' I HATE this about religious people! You either believe it's the word of God or you don't. The bible does not support the idea of evolution at all - it explicitly states the age of earth (if you do the calculations) and how everything came into being. This is presented as the sacred word of God - if you are christian this is unavoidable. If you believe this, you have to be prepared to have it shot down, you can't qualify your faith by cherry-picking the believable bits and leaving out the unpalatable stuff (hating gays, virgin birth - don't get me started on that!)

I bolded a couple of things you said here because I thought it interesting you first state there are no absolutes in science, then make a statement that is pretty absolute about physical laws. I'm not going to get long winded here, because you have your beliefs and a statement written here, no matter how well put or reasoned I think it to be is going to change your mind. I'd be a bit worried for you if it did, actually after reading what you wrote.
The science books are constantly being rewritten of what is true and what isn't. If I recall correctly piltdown man was evidence for 40 years or so of evolution and finally exposed as a hoax. Scientist were convinced for years that it was the real deal, though. People used to think it was not
physically possible to go more than a hundred miles an hour and survive. I could go on with what science accepted as possible and later proven wrong, just as you could throw back aspects of religion and bible writings you don't agree with. The main thing this thread proves is that no one here has absolute knowledge, but we are all passionate about what we hold to be true.

I always learn some interesting things on these threads that give me cause to research, and for that, I'm grateful to those that either believe in God or don't.

Here's the thing...one has to define what they mean by "God."

If you mean "the Abrahamic God," then most certainly it does not exist. We can trace the development of the concept quite plainly through a study of antiquity. We could point to where the concept of the Jewish "God" came into play on a timeline. Prior to that point, there was no "God," there were "Gods." The pantheons of the Near East all very plainly evolved from the Sumerian pantheon. The names changed, but what the Gods stood for, how they were described in mythology, it flows from one civilization to another. It's no different than the relationship between the Greek and Roman pantheons which most nerds have some passing familiarity with.

If you mean "any sort of extra-dimensional entity," then we don't know there's no God. We'll never *know* that in the scientific sense of the word. Atheism is not a rational belief in the least. It's just another form of faith. In this case, faith that there is no God - but most atheists I know couch their belief system so strongly in relation to Western religion rather than a general disbelief in any kind of spirituality whatsoever that it gives the game away. Atheism, as I've witnessed it, is mostly a reaction to Western religion and the God concept.

Agnosticism is the position that you don't know whether anything is true or false in the entire spiritual vein. That is a truly rational premise, because it's absolutely true. There is an utter and complete lack of physical evidence to support any sort of spiritual truth. We have stories, lots and lots of stories, some written, some verbal, about peoples' experiences and thoughts, but none of that is "truth." None of it is any kind of scientific evidence or proof one way or the other.

I'm not saying Agnosticism is better than Atheism, but to call atheism a "rationalist" system is entirely inaccurate. It is just as irrational to boldly proclaim the utter nonexistence of any kind of deity in theory as it is to boldly proclaim its existence.

If you're talking generalities, that is.

Cairnius wrote:
This isn't a peer-edited anthropological history journal. It's a tabletop wargaming website called Dakka Dakka. Do you honestly believe that I'm going to present the kind of scholarship on this topic, for a posting on the Off-Topic Forum of a nerd website (and no, I don't think that's a bad word but there it is), that you seem to think I ought to?

Whats bad about the word nerd? Who cares. Anyway, if you are going to present an idea of this magnitude you had better back it up with scholarship. I never just post random stuff on major points of history, philosophy, etc. without at least being able to write a substantial essay on it. That being said you shouldn't make such unqualified claims just because you can.

Cairnius wrote:You agree with me that there were no monotheistic religions in the Near East before the Jews...and the Jews developed from other, prior civilizations and cultures in the Near East who were polytheistic...which means that the progenitors of the ancient Jews were polytheistic...which means that at some point the ancient Jews decided to believe in only one of their Gods and that became the Abrahamic "God."

Which means that this "God" didn't always exist. A single, human culture brought it into existence. That means God is a human creation, not some sort of universal, eternal truth.

So...you're disagreeing with me by agreeing with me?

No, not at all. I am not gonna deny that the first recorded existence of monotheism is the Jews, but that doesn't mean the worship of one God, specifically the Judeo-Christian God, didn't exist beforehand. We don't have proof in writing that they did, but we know ancient man probably made bread and wine. Not having it in written history does not necessarily negate the possibility of somethings prior existence. You are jumping to extremes, and from an extremely cynical viewpoint might I add. You automatically throw out the remote possibility that there could be a God. Pagan ritual and religion surrounded gods living in the mountains, in the Earth (Hinduism, which is the only mainstream, modern pagan religion), etc. but that has all been disproved by science. The unique nature of the Jews, and what makes their circumstance so interesting, is the fact that nothing was attributed to God as everything was attributed to God. Their beliefs, as given to them by God, removes him from this physical world and gives us the context of his existence in the realm of the spiritual, thus never able to be disproven. God does not require our belief to exist, nor does He require us to believe in Him, this is a choice He leaves to us.


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Cairnius wrote:If you mean "the Abrahamic God," then most certainly it does not exist. We can trace the development of the concept quite plainly through a study of antiquity. We could point to where the concept of the Jewish "God" came into play on a timeline. Prior to that point, there was no "God," there were "Gods." The pantheons of the Near East all very plainly evolved from the Sumerian pantheon. The names changed, but what the Gods stood for, how they were described in mythology, it flows from one civilization to another. It's no different than the relationship between the Greek and Roman pantheons which most nerds have some passing familiarity with.

Again based on incomplete and inaccurate historical fact. Our records on this era are so sketchy it isn't even funny. Your idea that we can perfectly trace something like this is completely nonsensical and frankly not empirical in the slightest.

Cairnius wrote:If you mean "any sort of extra-dimensional entity," then we don't know there's no God. We'll never *know* that in the scientific sense of the word. Atheism is not a rational belief in the least. It's just another form of faith. In this case, faith that there is no God - but most atheists I know couch their belief system so strongly in relation to Western religion rather than a general disbelief in any kind of spirituality whatsoever that it gives the game away. Atheism, as I've witnessed it, is mostly a reaction to Western religion and the God concept.

So the Judeo-Christian God can exist, since it has always been believed that He resides in the realm of the spiritual...

Cairnius wrote:Agnosticism is the position that you don't know whether anything is true or false in the entire spiritual vein. That is a truly rational premise, because it's absolutely true. There is an utter and complete lack of physical evidence to support any sort of spiritual truth. We have stories, lots and lots of stories, some written, some verbal, about peoples' experiences and thoughts, but none of that is "truth." None of it is any kind of scientific evidence or proof one way or the other.

Except for the historical fact that many religious texts, especially the canonical Bible and its apocrypha refer to.

Cairnius wrote:If you mean "the Abrahamic God," then most certainly it does not exist.

Sorry... I couldn't stay out of it. I really tried..I really did.

But Cairnius is making a similar mistake as what panic was making, in that panic "assumed" that Jesus was a fabrication, much like what Cairnius is doing "assuming" that God is a fabrication. Nothing what Cairnius has said proves that an Abrahamic God "most certainly does not exist".

As JEB said, just becuase some historical timeline doesn't show monotheism until the Hebrews, doesn't mean that monotheism didn't exist before hand. In fact the book of Genesis talks about Abraham giving tithes to a king of Salem called Melchisedek who was a, "priest of the Most high God". (Gen 14:18 KJV) So the book of Genesis at least shows that there was a monotheistic priesthood before the Hebrews even existed.


GG

But GG there is no history in the Bible! Its all fairy tales and the sayings of a deranged lunatic!

Cairnius wrote:
If you mean "the Abrahamic God," then most certainly it does not exist. We can trace the development of the concept quite plainly through a study of antiquity. We could point to where the concept of the Jewish "God" came into play on a timeline. Prior to that point, there was no "God," there were "Gods." The pantheons of the Near East all very plainly evolved from the Sumerian pantheon. The names changed, but what the Gods stood for, how they were described in mythology, it flows from one civilization to another. It's no different than the relationship between the Greek and Roman pantheons which most nerds have some passing familiarity with.

You can also account for that effect via a combination of anthropological gaps, and the notion of progressive revelation. That's certainly enough to neuter the 'certainty' of your conclusion.

Cairnius wrote:
If you mean "any sort of extra-dimensional entity," then we don't know there's no God. We'll never *know* that in the scientific sense of the word. Atheism is not a rational belief in the least. It's just another form of faith. In this case, faith that there is no God - but most atheists I know couch their belief system so strongly in relation to Western religion rather than a general disbelief in any kind of spirituality whatsoever that it gives the game away. Atheism, as I've witnessed it, is mostly a reaction to Western religion and the God concept.

Of course it is. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in God. It literally cannot be a reaction to anything else.

Cairnius wrote:
Agnosticism is the position that you don't know whether anything is true or false in the entire spiritual vein. That is a truly rational premise, because it's absolutely true. There is an utter and complete lack of physical evidence to support any sort of spiritual truth. We have stories, lots and lots of stories, some written, some verbal, about peoples' experiences and thoughts, but none of that is "truth." None of it is any kind of scientific evidence or proof one way or the other.

Agnosticism overlaps with both Atheism and Theism. There is a case to be made that one cannot be purely Agnostic. Though that may be the most relevant descriptor.

Cairnius wrote:
I'm not saying Agnosticism is better than Atheism, but to call atheism a "rationalist" system is entirely inaccurate. It is just as irrational to boldly proclaim the utter nonexistence of any kind of deity in theory as it is to boldly proclaim its existence.

That's not what Atheism does. Revisit the definition of the word.

JEB_Stuart wrote:Whats bad about the word nerd? Who cares. Anyway, if you are going to present an idea of this magnitude you had better back it up with scholarship. I never just post random stuff on major points of history, philosophy, etc. without at least being able to write a substantial essay on it. That being said you shouldn't make such unqualified claims just because you can.

They're not unqualified - I'm just not going to, during a break from work, find citations for you. Most of the time when I post about something I'm working off of readily-available information on a given subject which someone else can just look up quickly to find for themselves. This falls under that category. Monotheism evolved from polytheism, and the Jewish culture evolved from previous, earlier cultures. Unless you're asking me to prove those two basic truths about human history I'm not sure where the complaint lies.

JEB_Stuart wrote:No, not at all. I am not gonna deny that the first recorded existence of monotheism is the Jews, but that doesn't mean the worship of one God, specifically the Judeo-Christian God, didn't exist beforehand. We don't have proof in writing that they did, but we know ancient man probably made bread and wine. Not having it in written history does not necessarily negate the possibility of somethings prior existence. You are jumping to extremes, and from an extremely cynical viewpoint might I add. You automatically throw out the remote possibility that there could be a God. Pagan ritual and religion surrounded gods living in the mountains, in the Earth (Hinduism, which is the only mainstream, modern pagan religion), etc. but that has all been disproved by science. The unique nature of the Jews, and what makes their circumstance so interesting, is the fact that nothing was attributed to God as everything was attributed to God. Their beliefs, as given to them by God, removes him from this physical world and gives us the context of his existence in the realm of the spiritual, thus never able to be disproven. God does not require our belief to exist, nor does He require us to believe in Him, this is a choice He leaves to us.

Look, clearly you're a religious person, and believe it or not I can respect that in theory. Whether I respect someone's religious beliefs is decided by whether or not they follow the tenants they profess to believe in...but you can't use religious dogma to defend religious belief in a conversation where you're also asking for "anthropological scholarship." Either you want to have this conversation from a scientific point of view, which reduces the Bible and all other religious writings from any religion as texts written by humans and interesting pieces of cultural heritage to read and study but not truth, or you can have this conversation from a religious point of view which holds the Bible as truth because the religion says it's true, which is as unscientific as you can get.

We DO have a great deal of information on Near Eastern history from the Sumerians forward, more than enough to say that if there was a monotheistic deity called "God" that existed in the Near East prior to the development of the Jewish faith, I believe some 2,000 years of history prior to that, that we'd have SOME evidence of it, even if ONE piece of evidence.

We don't. Nada. Zilch. Zero. That's as empirical as it gets. The evidence doesn't exist.

What you're doing is making an unscientific proposition, that just because we don't have evidence of something doesn't mean it wasn't there (I mean, come on, you're really going to say this after attacking "my scholarship?"), and using that proposition to attack a scientific truth regarding lack of evidence.

No offense, but you don't sound like you have a clue what you're talking about. The history of relationship between the Greek and Roman pantheons isn't sketchy in the slightest. Again, I'm not going to do scholarly work for you here, but don't listen to me - go to your local library.

JEB_Stuart wrote:Except for the historical fact that many religious texts, especially the canonical Bible and its apocrypha refer to.

Have you ever studied history at the university level, Jeb?

Religious texts are not "historical fact" the way you mean it. They're just not. Not from a scholarly point of view.

The Bible says that the Earth was created in six days. That's not true. We know it's not true. Anyone who believes it is true is either ignorant and hasn't learned better yet, or understands the science of things like carbon-dating but willingly chooses to remain ignorant.

The Bible is extremely useful for locating cities of antiquity. It is an supremely-important cultural document...but it's not "historical fact." David and Goliath is not historical fact. Noah is not historical fact. Even Jesus is not historical fact. They're all stories in a book which some people choose to believe in, but they do so through faith, not evidence.

And that's fine - but don't pretend that there's any science in their thinking. Just be honest about it. Couching religious belief in science is the worst kind of scholarship.


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generalgrog wrote:
But Cairnius is making a similar mistake as what panic was making, in that panic "assumed" that Jesus was a fabrication, much like what Cairnius is doing "assuming" that God is a fabrication. Nothing what Cairnius has said proves that an Abrahamic God "most certainly does not exist".

As JEB said, just becuase some historical timeline doesn't show monotheism until the Hebrews, doesn't mean that monotheism didn't exist before hand. In fact the book of Genesis talks about Abraham giving tithes to a king of Salem called Melchisedek who was a, "priest of the Most high God". (Gen 14:18 KJV) So the book of Genesis at least shows that there was a monotheistic priesthood before the Hebrews even existed.

Okay, I think I get it.

People who believe in Abrahamic religions believe that their God always is, always was, always will be.

If that's the case, I find it exceptionally difficult to believe, from any scientific and rational point of view, that no evidence of Him as Him, as the same God we can recognize from Jewish to Christian to Muslim faith, had no kind of references to it whatsoever for over 2,000 years of human history, or more specifically through all the physical evidence we have from those 2,000 years.

When it comes to history, the only thing that is "true" is that which we can "prove," GG. So, if a historical timeline doesn't show monotheism until the Hebrews, then historically it makes it a reasonable proposition that monotheism didn't exist until the Hebrews.

And scientifically, it is very odd to be able to look across the rest of the planet at the ancient Chinese, at the Mayans, later at the American Indians, to see all these cultures that developed in relative isolation (at the time the ancient Chinese were sailing around exploring these wasn't much to see, really - they were so much more advanced than other civilizations and not many people seem to know that, it's fascinating - they could have conquered the world by sea but didn't bother because there was nothing around better than what they had in plenitude back home) and again see NO reference to this "God" the Jews believe in, and who then was worshiped by the Christians and Muslims who also developed in the same part of the world.

Science is a bitch. You have to go with the hypothesis which makes the most sense...and for better or worse, I tend to take that which holds the most water as "truth" until it's proven otherwise, or unless "the most water" is still pretty thin.

There's an awful lot of fact to suggest that God didn't exist prior to the Jews because there's no evidence of him anywhere, across the entire planet Earth, prior to the Jews proclaiming he was around. If that's not a human construction, I don't know what is.


Oh, on that Biblical quote, GG - "Most high God" doesn't necessarily mean "Judeo-Christian God," taken out of context. Most pantheons had a "top of the God food chain," and also don't discount the authors of the Old Testament doing a little historical editing and making the assumption that Melchisedek was a priest of their God and not someone else's.

No one should need a lesson on how religious texts get edited and altered to suit the purposes of those who are using them to thier own advantage *cough*Council of Nicea*cough*


So - no, you're right. I don't KNOW in the truest sense of the word that there was not a single human being in history who did not say or think the word God and mean PRECISELY what JEB means when he says or thinks "God," which is what he is arguing may be true.

I also don't KNOW, in the truest sense of the word, that the universe doesn't actually exist in a marble being held by a big green alien like at the end of Men In Black, but if someone were to write a book that said this was the case and then say that someone wrote that book 4,000 years ago and the BOOK said that the universe existed in a marble being held by a big green alien like at the end of Men In Black, would I really be out of line to suggest that this isn't the way the universe actually was?

So, come on, get real. No one believed in the Abrahamic God prior to the Jews because they DEFINED what "God" IS the way we think of it today. If you're asking for 100% validated truth you can't prove that...but you have to be a believer to suggest that it's an outrageous proposition to accept on the weight of the evidence that this is the case.

History and anthropology are soft sciences at heart, but they're still sciences...

Cairnius wrote:They're not unqualified - I'm just not going to, during a break from work, find citations for you. Most of the time when I post about something I'm working off of readily-available information on a given subject which someone else can just look up quickly to find for themselves. This falls under that category. Monotheism evolved from polytheism, and the Jewish culture evolved from previous, earlier cultures. Unless you're asking me to prove those two basic truths about human history I'm not sure where the complaint lies.

So in otherwords your allowed to come on here and make statemements without backing them up? How convenient.

Cairnius wrote:
We DO have a great deal of information on Near Eastern history from the Sumerians forward, more than enough to say that if there was a monotheistic deity called "God" that existed in the Near East prior to the development of the Jewish faith, I believe some 2,000 years of history prior to that, that we'd have SOME evidence of it, even if ONE piece of evidence

We don't. Nada. Zilch. Zero. That's as empirical as it gets. The evidence doesn't exist.
..

Lets just say for a minute that your statement is true about no evidence before the Hebrews. That's still a leap of faith on your part to proclaim that there was no monotheism before the Hebrews. Again another assumption on your part.

Cairnius wrote:
What you're doing is making an unscientific proposition, that just because we don't have evidence of something doesn't mean it wasn't there (I mean, come on, you're really going to say this after attacking "my scholarship?"), and using that proposition to attack a scientific truth regarding lack of evidence...

You mean like the people that believe in macro evolution? The whole theory is propogated without a lack of scientific(fossil) evidence, but I am willing to bet that you ascribe to it.

Cairnius wrote:
The Bible says that the Earth was created in six days. That's not true. We know it's not true. Anyone who believes it is true is either ignorant and hasn't learned better yet, or understands the science of things like carbon-dating but willingly chooses to remain ignorant. ...

Again, according to macro evolutionsts it's not true. And no WE don't know it's not true, since macro evolotionist theory is based on more assumptions like the ones you are making concerning the lack of belief in One God, pre Hebrew times. Carbon dating is hardly the "answer" your looking for. Since carbon-14 has been found in diamonds, and we all know that diamonds are some of the oldest rocks in existence. How can we be finding carbon-14, with a 1/2 life of thousands of years, in a rock that is supposed to be millions of years old?

Must resist...must resist..........
GG

Rather than talking about the Abrahamic God and the like, a nice phrase I came across in Philosophy once was the 'God of classical theism'. It refers to the idea of a omnipotent, omniscient God that is shared between all the major religions.

EDIT: Ninja'd


@Ketara: I believe that this 'God of classical theism' is sometihng along the lines of 3 or 5 no?


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@generalgrog: There is some sort of theory that the creation of the earth in six days actually represented six periods of creation (over millions of years).

Day 1 = Big Bang
Day 2 = Earth in it's molten volcanic state
Day 3 = Earth calming down and giving rise to oceans.

Ect, ect.

Cairnius wrote:
They're not unqualified - I'm just not going to, during a break from work, find citations for you. Most of the time when I post about something I'm working off of readily-available information on a given subject which someone else can just look up quickly to find for themselves. This falls under that category. Monotheism evolved from polytheism, and the Jewish culture evolved from previous, earlier cultures. Unless you're asking me to prove those two basic truths about human history I'm not sure where the complaint lies.

It seems the level of proof you require from others is not equal to your own....

Cairnius wrote:Look, clearly you're a religious person, and believe it or not I can respect that in theory. Whether I respect someone's religious beliefs is decided by whether or not they follow the tenants they profess to believe in...but you can't use religious dogma to defend religious belief in a conversation where you're also asking for "anthropological scholarship." Either you want to have this conversation from a scientific point of view, which reduces the Bible and all other religious writings from any religion as texts written by humans and interesting pieces of cultural heritage to read and study but not truth, or you can have this conversation from a religious point of view which holds the Bible as truth because the religion says it's true, which is as unscientific as you can get.

Again, the Bible, among other religious texts, has been used to support historical arguments. Not ALL of it certainly, but a great many parts have been.

Cairnius wrote:We DO have a great deal of information on Near Eastern history from the Sumerians forward, more than enough to say that if there was a monotheistic deity called "God" that existed in the Near East prior to the development of the Jewish faith, I believe some 2,000 years of history prior to that, that we'd have SOME evidence of it, even if ONE piece of evidence.

Again, we don't have that much evidence concerning Sumeria, at least not written evidence. We have found a bunch of their buildings and statues, but the written evidence that we do have is either hard to impossible to translate or it is younger and more closely related to Egyptian structure.

Cairnius wrote:What you're doing is making an unscientific proposition, that just because we don't have evidence of something doesn't mean it wasn't there (I mean, come on, you're really going to say this after attacking "my scholarship?"), and using that proposition to attack a scientific truth regarding lack of evidence.

It is wholly different to declare something from nothing than it is to acknowledge the possibility of something existing because of the unknown. You declare that there was no such thing as monotheism, thus the Judeo-Christian God doesn't exist, on limited information. I merely pointed out that such a declaration was extremely unsubstantiated, and examined the possibility based on our lack of evidence. I never said it was certain, despite my personal beliefs, but I never said it couldn't be that way either.

Cairnius wrote:No offense, but you don't sound like you have a clue what you're talking about. The history of relationship between the Greek and Roman pantheons isn't sketchy in the slightest. Again, I'm not going to do scholarly work for you here, but don't listen to me - go to your local library.

How do you jump from 5th Century BC to 700 BC and equate them as relevant comparisons? The records we have, especially primary sources, is in a far greater abundance than we had for Sumer. Rome isn't even a distinct regional power for another 400 years, I am only referring to the end of the Ancient Greek Dark Age. The plethora of information we have on the Classics is found in infinitely higher quantity and quality, thanks in no small part to the Roman Catholic Church. While I am no expert on ancient Sumer, I do know an incredible amount of ancient Rome and Greece, and have done significant research on the Late Roman Republic especially.

Cairnius wrote:Have you ever studied history at the university level, Jeb?

Yes, I studied at Baylor University, and graduated, and did some work in residence at Oxford. I am also going into my PhD program shortly.

Cairnius wrote:Religious texts are not "historical fact" the way you mean it. They're just not. Not from a scholarly point of view.

So when the apocrypha detail Pompey's conquest of Israel and Judah that isn't historical fact? Or the fact that the Gospels and the historical elements of the NT detail several important items about Roman magistracy, that isn't historical fact?

Cairnius wrote:The Bible says that the Earth was created in six days. That's not true. We know it's not true. Anyone who believes it is true is either ignorant and hasn't learned better yet, or understands the science of things like carbon-dating but willingly chooses to remain ignorant.

No one has brought up the Creation story except you.

Cairnius wrote:And that's fine - but don't pretend that there's any science in their thinking. Just be honest about it. Couching religious belief in science is the worst kind of scholarship.

So are aggressive declarations that aren't substantiated by fact.

The Bible says that the Earth was created in six days. That's not true. We know it's not true. Anyone who believes it is true is either ignorant and hasn't learned better yet, or understands the science of things like carbon-dating but willingly chooses to remain ignorant.

With all respect, I know quite a few doctors, engineers, professors, etc. that very much believe this. Hardly ignorant or unlearned types in the least. As far as carbon dating goes, humans of the highest learning have proven themselves fallible in all things, so perhaps the information about dates is not totaly perfect. As I said earlier, piltdown man had the scientific community totaly convinced it was prime evidence of evolution until decades later it was proven a fraud. In the scriptures it says one day to God is like a thousand years to us. Hardly significant when talking of a world being created according to best scientific knowledge, but I thought I'd help you with timelines a bit.
It comes down to a faith based thing. If you believe in an omnipotent being that created an entire universe, then putting a planet together in a few millenia, is not a great leap.

The Bible is extremely useful for locating cities of antiquity. It is an supremely-important cultural document...but it's not "historical fact." David and Goliath is not historical fact. Noah is not historical fact. Even Jesus is not historical fact. They're all stories in a book which some people choose to believe in, but they do so through faith, not evidence.

Once again, it comes down to faith. One of the big problems here is that the bible went through a number of translations turning it into a kind of "whisper game". Hence the many flavors of Christian belief. The underlying concept, however is sound for believers.

Oh, on that Biblical quote, GG - "Most high God" doesn't necessarily mean "Judeo-Christian God," taken out of context. Most pantheons had a "top of the God food chain," and also don't discount the authors of the Old Testament doing a little historical editing and making the assumption that Melchisedek was a priest of their God and not someone else's.

One of the 10 commandments is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me". People worshipped a lot of gods, no denying it, The Jews even started worshipping a golden calf while Moses was on the mountain, but according to the bible, these were false Gods. Once again, it comes down to faith in the biblacle concepts.

History and anthropology are soft sciences at heart, but they're still sciences

How many different scientists disagree on things and establish camps of thought?

yeah

JEB_Stuart wrote:... there is no history in the Bible! Its all fairy tales and the sayings of a deranged lunatic!

QFT

Panic...

@JEB and Cairnius: Actually, the romans adopted and incorperated many Greek innovations into thier own work. (And the similiarites between dieties are simply too strong to ingnore.

As for religeous texts as historical evidence, they should most certainly be scrutinised like any source, but they should not be simply thrown out the window becuase the are religeous. In fact, many religeous texts act as both a bible AND a history book for thier people.


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(This thread is so on it's way to lockage)

Anywho, saying that the King david never existed is quite simply foolish. Even from a non-religeous point of view, the jewish communities can trace back their familes for many generations. To say that he did not exist would be like saying Alexander the Great did not exist, nor did Rameses II. There is simply too much evidence to dispute this characters existence. (The details is where it gets scketchy)