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Equality 7-2521 View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 08:34
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Why would such a being need six "days", or even have a construct such as a "day" in the first place? It's the idea of magnitude and scale from the perspective of a bronze-age culture, things take time regardless of how large the task is, "instantaneous" would have been inconceivable, just as it is to modern theists. (Not that the "big bang" is instantaneous - it is predicted that it took ~400 thousand years for subatomic particles to form atoms)
 
For them creating a whole world in one week was an impressive achievement of supernatural proportions that didn't need a shorter timespan because shorter periodic time-intervals do not occur in nature: hours, minutes and seconds are artificial - one day (solar cycle) is the shortest time-interval we can measure without mechanical apparatus. The other naturally occurring time-intervals of months (Luna cycles) and years (seasonal cycles) would be too long, less likely to be as impressive and could be usurped by a more productive/powerful supreme being who could do it quicker (my god is better than your god).
 
The "day of rest" was not for the supreme being, but for the priesthood - a means of ensuring that one day a week was handed over to them. In other cultures and religions these "rest intervals" were different but still existed as times when the population stopped working and worshiped.


Most religions don't take Genesis seriously though.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 08:42

Equality: They use actual numbers/statistics to quantify the morality. In areas with higher concentrations of atheists, crime is consistently lower. Religions are over-represented in jail populations while atheists are vastly under-represented. (For example in an area where 12% of people identify as atheist, .02% of the jail population was atheist.) There's actual data behind it. Of course it is not and can never be exact but it certainly gives food for thought.

 
It adds up. Remember, the theist has a special friend in the guy who will make excuses for him so he can enter paradise whatever he does. Ever met a theist who told you he sincerey believes he's going to go to hell? I didn't think so.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 08:55
There cannot even begin to be numbers to quantify morality unless you admit to a universal morality of which you know all the details. Can you claim that?

You start talking about morality and switch to measures of crime. Crime and morality have little to do with each other. If you have a bunch of people thrown in jail because of marijuana possession or underage drinking, how does that relate to morality? Also, the claim is additionally misleading since it suggests that the explanatory variable for the difference in "morality" comes from the beliefs of the individuals. That's nonsense. Poor African Americans are more likely to commit crime than rich Asians. The former are also more likely to be theists.

It doesn't add up. You're spouting nonsense and your own biased interpretation of things. I know theists who believe themselves to be in the wrong if they even have thoughts of defending themselves from others or reprimanding those who do wrong. I know theists who believe themselves unworthy of heaven and refuse to comment on the ultimate fate of anyone else's soul. You're being ridiculous. It's fine to say theists are wrong, but it's ridiculous to say that theists are inherently immoral.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 09:43
Originally posted by Equality 7-2521 Equality 7-2521 wrote:

Most religions don't take Genesis seriously though.
Of course they don't - and neither should atheists, but as long as some fundamentalists do take Genesis to be literal there will be those who will use it against all religions... just as there are those who will use Mosaic law of Leviticus as argument against christians. It does seem rather illogical to me to use the text of the bible to refute the text of the bible.
 
(the following is not directed at Pat, I'm just musing)
 
However, if you take one aspect of a myth to be literal then all aspects deserve to be treated (or at least considered) similarly; and vice versa with any that are taken allegorically or metaphorically. Where, when and why the transition from literal to allegorical or allegorical to literal occurs isn't arbitrary or open to interpretation - if one passage that says "supreme being says this" is not literal and another that says "supreme being says this" is literal then the distinction between the two ought to be easy to interpret for all from the contexts contained within the relevant passages. If most religions don't take Genesis literally, where do they start taking the bible "history" seriously and what determines that switch-over from alegory to history?
 
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Edited by Dean - April 13 2012 at 11:46
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 09:51
I agree. It's more of an idea of context. I see self-righteous atheists making absurd comments to Catholics trying to refute their beliefs by pulling quotes from books of the Old Testament that are really ignored by the religion. It's just silly. That doesn't apply to you obviously. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 10:16

Like refuting quantum mechanics by suggesting that Schrödinger never owned a cat... Wink

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 10:21
Religions don't accept Genesis now because it's obviously ridiculous. But they once all believed it devoutly. They have changed to avoid ridicule. But if an almighty God existed, then Genesi could just as easily be true. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 10:33
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Like refuting quantum mechanics by suggesting that Schrödinger never owned a cat... Wink



Oh shoot that doesn't work?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 10:35
Originally posted by Snow Dog Snow Dog wrote:

Religions don't accept Genesis now because it's obviously ridiculous. But they once all believed it devoutly. They have changed to avoid ridicule. But if an almighty God existed, then Genesi could just as easily be true. 


It could be true without a one way arrow of time too.

I don't see what that matters though. There's no reason to view religion as a static entity. You wouldn't criticize any other philosophy for change.

I'm also pretty sure that the gnostics never took the story literally.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 11:15
Originally posted by Equality 7-2521 Equality 7-2521 wrote:

Originally posted by Snow Dog Snow Dog wrote:

Religions don't accept Genesis now because it's obviously ridiculous. But they once all believed it devoutly. They have changed to avoid ridicule. But if an almighty God existed, then Genesi could just as easily be true. 


It could be true without a one way arrow of time too.

I don't see what that matters though. There's no reason to view religion as a static entity. You wouldn't criticize any other philosophy for change.

I'm also pretty sure that the gnostics never took the story literally.

It's all crap whatever.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 11:37
Originally posted by Snow Dog Snow Dog wrote:

Religions don't accept Genesis now because it's obviously ridiculous. But they once all believed it devoutly. They have changed to avoid ridicule. But if an almighty God existed, then Genesi could just as easily be true. 
I don't think this is completely true in that they changed to avoid ridicule, they changed interpretation to fit the known data, which is not unreasonable just as it was not unreasonable to change our model of gravity to fit the known data of planetary motion. 
 
You can work your way through each book of the OT picking off each one in turn through similar arguments... Exodus has no historical basis that we know of, such a major historical event should have corroborating documentation from other cultures, especially Egyptians who feature so prominently, yet the unarmed Pharaoh cannot be identified by correlating the events described in Exodus to Egyptian history of 1500BCE (or there abouts). Similarly Joshua and the associated history of Israel is thought to be a composite rather than a factual account of historical events. And so on. As historians learn more of the history of the time that the bible documents then adjustments in the interpretation are made - this is certainly more reasonable (and acceptable) than either changing the story or ignoring the known data.
 
None of this refutes the existance of a supreme being, it can't - the being could still exist if all of it were shown to be literal, allegorical or a complete myth. It could be argued that the more we prove that the bible is not historical or literal and the more allegorical it subsequently becomes we are validating it as a purely spiritual thesis... when a "supreme being says this" to a historically factual person and the conversation is held to be true and actually happened it is less "believable" than when a "supreme being says this" to a purely fictional person and the whole conversation is thought to be allegorical. (I don't think I explained that too well, but ho-hum.)
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 13:10
There's a plenty of reasons why I deny religions.

For example, the Bible claims that God created a man in his own image and likeness. I know what man is. Man is greedy, stupid, evil, egoistic, hypocrite. I know it because I am the same. Does it mean that God is the same? According to Bible, yes, he is.

Lucifer was the best of the angels. But he was a bit selfish. He didn't wanted to be a part of angel's grey mess. Literally, he was clever. Then God has punished him because he didn't wanted to have somebody really clever around him. The most funny part of that tale is that God made a very very good rival and foe for himself with his own hands. It indicates that God is rather stupid.

The Christian church never wanted anybody clever in their congregation. In Russian, the most common term for congregation is 'pastva' ('паства'). Literally it means 'a flock'. It means that church needs a stupid sheeps in their congregation because clever people wouldn't give any donations for rich popes, bishops and priests to make them even fatter than they are.

Anyway, Christianity just doesn't make a sense for me.


Edited by ole-the-first - April 13 2012 at 13:52
This night wounds time.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 13:38
That's more of a reason of why you deny Christianity.

Lucifer's sin was pride, which I always found very interesting.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 17:30
^ even when reading the various version of the fall of Lucifer (or Satan or Shaitan or Satanael or Shemjaza or Satariel or whatever the godette was called before he was demonised) it is not exactly obvious what the crime was - pride as a sin seems to me to be the least convincing, having pride in ones achievements is something to be celebrated whereas having a high opinion of self-worth is deemed a sin or vanity - the distinction between them is very narrow. The stories imply that Lucifer's sin was hubris (rather than pride in general), not for thinking he was better (or equal) to god, but for thinking he was better than one of god's creations (i.e. man). "Hey Luci look what I just made out of mud, don't you just love it"     "Meh..."    "ROT IN HELL BIATCH!" ... or words to that effect.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 13 2012 at 18:06
Originally posted by Equality 7-2521 Equality 7-2521 wrote:

That's more of a reason of why you deny Christianity.

Lucifer's sin was pride, which I always found very interesting.


I always found Lucifer interesting, but more when I was reading Nietzsche back a decade ago. The idea that a worldly, successful, intelligent, ambitious, rebellious person gets condemned to demonization... what does that say about independent thinkers under Christianity in the middle ages? Another thing was biting the forbidden apple - knowledge - knowledge is the worst thing you can pursue - you need to be blissfully ignorant, like Adam and Eve were supposed to be.

I was less interested after i moved on from existentialism but it is still an interesting point about the messages the bible sends.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 14 2012 at 04:44
I like this video a lot. It basically posits that any one person's god is actually Tyler Durden from Fight Club. It's a non-existant cool persona they use to motivate them and make them feel better, yet he strangely approves of everything they do whatever that might be, because he's them.
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 16 2012 at 04:47
Comedy gold. A supernaturally incompetent theist.
 
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 16 2012 at 11:29
I enjoy arguments where both parties leave feeling as though they had won. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 16 2012 at 15:57
You don't think Dillahunty actually won that? Explain.
 
And secondly, I don't think Dillahunty feels any great satisfaction over that conversation. I think he's aware that this woman has taken nothing from what he said.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 16 2012 at 16:01
^ That's not what he said. Clown
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