Where theists go wrong...

Sure is convenient having all those contradicting statements in the holy text so you can mould your religion to suit your will.

 

And how are the statements contradictory? How much do you know about the context they were made in, the scope of their address, and how it relates to the greater whole of God's revelation of Himself to us? Claiming that the comments are contradictory is simply appealing to one's ignorance and hoping it wins an argument.

I will be absolutely clear on this-there are plenty in the church who are just as unclear, but they have an axe to grind when they do it. I don't have issues elucidating questions from the crowd-I have no axe to grind. I've done so many times in the past here in Serious and I will continue to do so as long as people choose to be civil.

So please, hit me with it.

 

”Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" --Epicurus

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." --God entity, in Futurama: Godfellas

OK, let's think about this. Suppose you're God. You want people to be wise and moral. What do you do? Reveal yourself? Then people will behave as you want, but not because they understand the wisdom and virtue of it, but because they're trying to avoid disapproval and punishment, and seek approval and reward. They won't really learn anything about the intrinsic value of being wise and moral. You (being God) will be able to tell the genuine believers from the fearful sycophants of course, but other people won't, so they'll get confused why you might punish or ignore this seemingly good guy, but reward the other good guy. So all you can do is drop hints, inspire, keep faith, hope and love alive, but you can never, ever reveal yourself or let on, before people are ready. Which is millions of years away.

Think of it as a form of Prime Directive.

I think you (like many) make the mistake of thinking that science and faith have overlapping domains. They don't, so they don't conflict. The explanation for I came to exist falls in the domain of science. The question of what my existence means to me falls in the domain of faith or philosophy.

 

First mistake most people do is to think someone has to be religious in order to believe in God. Second mistake they do is to assume that God must be a bearded man in the sky. Third mistake they do is to look at all the religious nutcases….then abandoning the idea of a God altogether. Forth mistake they do is to do a literistic interpretation of the Bible. Much of what is written in the Bible is written in metaphor.

Time.
How can "they" assume they can tell the time without knowing what time the clock was set at at the beginning?This is one of the reasons I get a kick out of people who claim the world is either 6000 or 6 million years old. It could be BOTH. Depending on A: when the clock was set, and B: How you measure time.

The life span of a fruit fly is ~50 days. The life span of a human is ~80 years. On the human scale 50 days isn't much. But on the fruit flies scale ~50 days could be what ~80 years is to the human, on its scale.

Time is interesting, isn't it.

If you live in a geographical location which has only ONE season, or to use an old English word - year tide. Then your perception of time will be very different from the perception of someone who's living in a geographical location which has all FOUR seasons. You will be lacking three reference points of time.

As for science I love science, but Science is not immune from cherry picking, sometimes they set out to find data which will support their theory. Don't get me started on scientific data when it is whatever the political agenda has determined it should be. Science is conducted by human beings after all, all of whom have their own egos and axes to grind.

 

But the point is they don't, and they ascribe these frequently inhumane beliefs to the authority of an infallible being - Not to real world observation.

FTFY

And I remind you that while we're discussing this academically, children are being blocked from being adopted by perfectly adequate parents, and potentially life-saving research is being hampered by religious objection.

Faith in divine authority, and it's political ramifications in the real world, diametrically oppose science. Certainly it's possible to have a benign strain (an interpretation that agrees with empiricism), but religion is a volatile meme and can easily become 'carcinogenic' within a generation.

 

Forgive me if I don't delve into any specific examples right now but I'm a bit pressed for time. You'll also have to forgive a bit of ignorance in certain areas; I tend to avoid debates centered around particular issues around the practice of religion as I find they are rarely productive and in ones where ground is covered, the subject matter rarely interests me.

Now, wrt the issue at hand, it has been my long lasting impression that there are numerous glaring contradictions at various points in the Bible (and indeed other holy texts). This is probably not as big an issue as it is sometimes made out to be, after all, the bible is a collation of many different books from many sources (so one would expect some contradictions) and in practice, I gather, only a small portion is considered to be of particular importance. However, the wide array of different viewpoints between subgroups seems at least somewhat symptomatic of a religion open to interpretation. I know all this is incredibly wooly and it's not really meant to be the basis of an argument, more an explanation of my line of reasoning.

Let me make two points here - since I can't really argue their case effectively right now, lets call them hypotheses, and we can argue if they are actually true or not later:

1.) The Bible (and various other holy texts) as a raw text is full of contradictions and correct interpretation is not intrinsicly obvious.

If this is true then we must accept that either 1a.) Christianity (and various other religions) are not logically self-consistant or 1b.) Christianity (et al) is logically self-consistant but various issues are open to interpretation. Now my impression of modern Christianity is that it is very self-consistant so really I'm positing that 1b.) is the case which moves us onto the next point:

2.) Christianity (et al) is flexible and over time it has shifted its views and practices in accordance with both social and scientific advances.

Now if this is true, I'd argue that as a religion it loses value as this marginalises the core components of the religion. Now, personally I embrace this change as it aligns the interests of Christianity more with my own, but I feel it reflects badly on Christianity as a belief system even if it increases its worth, in my eyes, as a concept.

So, to sum up, I think many modern religions have simply reacted to maintain consistancy in the face of scientific and social advances and I think they will continue to do this in the future. This, to me, takes away from the credibility of these religions as a permenant consistant belief system. At the very least I feel that Christianity will soon diverge so far from its original principles that it will lose all meaning.

I'm almost certain I haven't worded this all very well, and besides, I still need to provide some proper backup for my arguments, but in the meantime this should suffice as some food for thought, or allow anyone to hilight particular bits I haven't made clear.

 

"I was only following (divine) orders..." was never a valid defence.

Eugenics ring a bell? A crime committed on the basis of 'scientific' rationale. The MMR vaccine scare? Based on 'scientific' argument. Any philosophy or rationale can be perverted or distorted to justify prejudice, bigotry or crime.

 

While surfing on the net I found these 2 sites, the first is the 'Canadian Atheist Association' and the second 'The Canadian Catholic Organisation'.

- About the Atheist one - Theyre are making fun of other religion (Dahhh) AND moreover the page ain't disponible in French (assholes).

- About the Catholic one - Pretty boring HOWEVER they are collecting money for the victims of the Syrian civil war and the page is disponible in french.

 

As far as the 19 century go people haven't resorted to religion for justification of wars and genocide, the 19 century saw wars and genocide based on secular ideas (Stalin, Hitler, Pol pot, Mao) Today it is "humanitarian" ideas that are used as justification.

The idea that Religion would be the root of all evil and the root cause for all our problems is simply not true.

Religions do evolve, it's a constantly evolving process, having said that – there are key points which are set in stone though, after all. Religions are not political parties.

 

Stalin was 100% behind Darwins ideas, he was nearly worshiping him.

 

This is what I'm talking about though, in the case you describe, the difference between theism and atheism is purely philosophical. If you define belief in some nonspecific higher power as being religion then science is a form of religion as it all follows from the idea of symmetry which is an example of a higher power. In this case, higher power is really just the set of rules you believe the universe operates on, whever that's an omnipotent omniscient superbeing or a physical principle.

Therefore, when I talk about religion I make my definition a bit narrower, otherwise everything gets just a bit too abstract and meaningless, and for most practical extents and purposes science and religions are not happy bedfellows.

I need sleep.

 

Apropos of the discussion about the difference between theists and atheists, it's been my experience throughout life that humility and pride, kindness and malevolence, they are all pretty much universal concepts. I've encountered all kinds of people, been friends with many races, creeds, and sexual orientations, and I've found there to be zero difference between any of the groups with regards to whether the people are nice or not.

This is one of the primary reasons that when people ask me which group I belong (are you Christian/Straight/fan of rock music?), my default answer is usually, "I'm supermonkey." That's really all I can say nowadays without the other person instantly categorizing me into whatever group he's decided based on preconceived notions about the chosen label. I've come to the conclusion that while everybody else hates on each other, the only thing we can do is try to be as decent as we can be, because at the end of the day I find that we achieve more when we are constructive, rather than destructive.

 

There are millions of Christians who believe the bible is literal. So who decides what is allegory and what is not? Is it just a personal preference?

 

I don't agree. God is supposed to be omnipotent and infallible and the bible is the word of God. So who are we to decide what is allegory and what is not. If it is the case that the bible is open to interpretation and therefore is not the word of an omnipotent and infallible God then why are we accepting any of it?

 

Wow, there's some underlying athiest hate in you, isn't there?

Anyhow, to alleviate your ideas on us athiests. I have no problem, whatsoever, with whomever you choose to worship, or what religous code you live by. I would never thrust my opinions on you, because I respect you wouldn't do the same.

Not all us atheist's are the same. For example, the New Unity Unitarians have a leader who happens to be an atheist, yet they have no problem discussing faith and beliefs with it's members.

 

I'd go as far as to say that most atheists (myself included) don't give religion a lot of thought or even mention it unless it comes up in civil conversation. The majority of us aren't militant, just apathetic.

 

Agreed.

I often find that the ones who make the most noise (athiests), are people who originally came from religous backgrounds, but for whatever reason decided to give them up, or grew up resenting them.

One of my friends is a fellow atheist. He grew up in a strong Catholic family, but rejected his background and still harps on to this day about how religion is wrong etc.

It's all a rather dull carousel...

 

Not that much, I only read that somewhere.