I made a new thread because I thought some of these arguments from a previous thread were straying too far off topic. So instead, I'm continuing the rest of the argument here. For everyone else, here's the topic:
Religion is too ambiguous. If you look in a holy text, sometimes, it will say one thing while saying another. This is why religions like Christianity have experienced changes, and have different denominations. Take a look at the Dark Ages. People get killed and tortured for all sorts of things, and you can find verses in the bible supporting some of these punishments. But modern Christianity doesn't do that anymore--why? How has this change come about? I suggest the Enlightenment had a part in it because it brought in secular ideas including humanism, which are very similar to what most modern day Christians believe--except for the parts about god, Jesus and the justification of these morals. And yet, if you take a closer look at the bible, you'll see that some verses say one thing, while another verse says another. And that's why it's easy to keep humanist values and still be Christian. So nobody really knows the "true" message in the bible because now we don't know if they really think heathens are immoral, or if slavery is wrong--of course we believe both to be immoral, but that's only in light of the Enlightenment. Is religion even able to say anything on its own merits without requiring the support of other philosophies, or is it just an ambiguous mess that doesn't mean anything without an external context?
Discuss.
Which was conveniently written by someone who existed after Jesus died. And you don't even have to be a historian to know that; the contradictions in the Old Testament gives it away.
No, for the same reason you can't prove a negative. Instead, if you want to assert that the Earth was created in 6 days, you would have to prove it. But I say it isn't true because there is no scientific evidence that shows that the Earth was created in 6 days. So the default position to take is to say that it wasn't created in 6 days.
A circle is not a sphere. If you didn't already know that the Earth isn't flat, the description of a "circle" doesn't help you very much. And there are several other verses describing god being able to see everybody on the Earth, but if the Earth were spherical, it would be impossible to do so.
I find it amusing that it's mentioned not once, or twice but several times. And don't tell me it's a metaphor; you couldn't have known without external reference that the Earth doesn't have pillars and isn't flat.
Which means it wasn't a global flood. Which means it wasn't true when every single organism except for the ones Noah gathered were killed.
It's implied. Because it is implied that everything that happens in the bible from the creation of the Earth up until Jesus dies takes over a span of about 4000 years, and everything after that was about 2000. So most people who try to believe everything in the bible think the Earth to be 6000 years old. Again, you couldn't be more ignorant if you tried; if you didn't have some way of knowing how old the Earth was, you wouldn't have any reason to take that as a metaphor.
You don't have to be 6000 years old to know that. Do you have to be 121 years old to know Hitler existed?
Yes indeed. If only more people could know they have it, despite what religion says.
And Revelations also says that heathens will rot in hell for eternity. Thanks a lot.
And just because it doesn't say that slavery is "right" doesn't mean it isn't implied. Think of it this way. If you truly condemned slavery, would you even bother describing how to treat slaves? It's completely unnecessary and hypocritical. If you condemned slavery, would you tell slaves to obey their masters?
Then if you believe Christianity truly condemned slavery, why has it taken until the Enlightenment before anybody attempted to do anything about slavery? Why is the Enlightenment a secularist movement and not a Christian one?
But it has. People previously took a "natural" interpretation of the bible by reading most of the things they couldn't have known then (like science) literally--the problem here is that anyone can claim that god told them how to interpret the bible, and you couldn't prove them wrong. So instead, you get a gajillion different interpretations of the bible, in which no one is particularly "correct" over any one interpretation, and none of them know if they are any closer to the true word of god.
How do you know what god, if he existed, intended in the bible?
It's not a very good one because it has contradictions all over it. You can't use the bible itself as the criteria unless it's a contradiction (although contradictions are in the realms of logic, which is philosophy in its most simplest form). You can't use the bible as its own criteria because it can't dictate anything in the realms of science with inaccurate metaphors, and they are not measurable, you can't use the bible as criteria for history because it says one thing while saying another, and you can't use the bible as criteria for morality because it is arbitrary.
Some people interpret this exclusively to mean that everyone else is damned to hell. I know you probably don't interpret it that way, but that's a recent development to appease religious tolerance.
No it doesn't. If you've studied the slightest bit of science, you should have learned that science has no such aims to prove anything indefinitely; science may be used to find evidence to support something, or disprove something, but never prove. Whenever you talk about knowing something from science or scientific knowledge, you are referring to evidence obtained from the results of science, which can sometimes be made more accurate. However, people often forget this because they take a spherical 4.5 billion year old Earth for granted as fact. You couldn't have known about these properties about the Earth without science though.
And that's also why religion needs to be criticized. Because faith is blind. It's blind and dangerous. It allows you to believe in just about anything without proof, without evidence, and without any reason whatsoever except because you feel like it. And if religion is likened to a collection of ideas born out of faith, it's even more blind and dangerous.
Ja, might I suggest it's because the bible is treated like some immutable authoritarian book? If a man refuses to change, or a set of ideas remain unchanged, while the world around you changes, advances and grows, he/it becomes obsolete. This is why science makes a good comparison with religion. Because science, unlike religion, is willing to change and grow. If a scientist discovers evidence which leads to the modification of a theory that already exists, the scientific world willingly accepts the change and moves on. But this is not arbitrary; all scientific studies are rigorously reviewed by other scientists before being accepted. Unlike religion, science is honest. It is man made, and we are aware that we are not perfect. Religion, on the other hand, claims to be divine, and impregnable to change. But I don't believe that religion really is divine; it's just something made up by humans to cull the masses. I dislike this kind of honesty where religion can be thought of as divine, and therefore, it cannot be changed.
However, you can still choose to ignore verses if you'd like. But then you would have to admit that you are ignoring parts of the bible, and that you are doing so on your own criteria, and not because the bible told you so, and not because god "said so".
I don't have a problem with that. But that also means you can't claim any "correct" interpretation of the bible because it doesn't exist.
But that's circular because that verse doesn't tell us anything about what it actually is. It's like I ask you what you are, and you say I am what I am. It doesn't tell me anything about you besides what I already know.
No, they are Christians. They did believe in god and Jesus, as we already agreed. And you can find the verses in the bible that refer to the kind of morality they believed in.
I find that quote offensive because it's like saying we can't judge other people, even if we've lived with them all our lives and gotten to know them, and that this one singular entity, who might as well not exist, and isn't tangible can. If that's not what you see in this verse, you'll have to explain it better.
And people from the Dark Ages don't?
By your own admittance that it is your interpretation, where do you get it from? How do you decide how to interpret something?
And those in the Dark Ages have done basically the same thing. But with even less knowledge and philosophy.
I am not saying it's wrong because it's indefinite; on the contrary; I'm saying it's wrong because it's definite in the sense that one can take a metaphorical writing and claim it means one thing and one thing only.
If you were following my argument, you'd realize this is a red herring.
That sounds a bit circular. Care to word that better?
Which is my point entirely. It is your opinion what you believe the bible says about certain things. It is someone else's opinion what they believe the bible says about certain things. They may be radically different, but no one would be the wiser about it for the same reason no wrong opinion exists. There's no point in showing you a horrible passage in the bible because you don't interpret it as being horrible, while someone else might.
And apparently you, since you don't think they exist. How do you know you're not ignorant of them? You just implied you're not certain of anything.
Regardless of what it is, it's one of the only few honest and original philosophies that doesn't need to be sugarcoated to get its point across, and helps society benefit by asserting basic human rights and freedoms. I find it hard to believe that Christians cherry pick verses from the bible that happen to agree with humanism, and think that's inherently Christian.
That could happen, but that's only because I don't hold any religion, ideal or philosophy above being criticized or immoral. If you want to criticize humanism, you are free to do so. If you think it's detrimental for everyone to be humanists, feel free to say so. Just don't forget that you may be biting the very hand that feeds you.
The context in which humanism exists is on the well being of humanity. I find it funny you are making this comparison because you'd be right about it. However, since Christians are striving to go to heaven, they don't really have any reason to treat other human beings fairly, unless they believe god says so. So in principle, if your god told you to kill non-believers, and you only cared to go to heaven, you'd probably do it. If your god said to kill your family members, you'd probably do it. The reason you aren't doing any of these things is because you happen to believe your god isn't telling you to do these things. The reason Hitler killed Jews was because he thought it would please god.
But humanists, because they have nothing to look forward to other than death, would rather focus on the life they live in now, and would rather treat other people better because they have to live with them.
No, but there are verses that suggest loving Jesus more than your family, and anybody that you know. Why is loving someone you don't know personally more important than loving people you can know and love? Love is something that you gain over time. You can't love someone overnight; you have to spend time with them in order to do so.
And love cannot be commanded; it must be picked by the person doing the loving, in the same way you can't force someone to be a part of a religion.
And I don't believe anyone will be judged. I don't live in fear of being watched and being judged by someone whose intentions I cannot know, and may not agree with.
Are you trying to say the bible isn't metaphorical? You can objectively determine if something is metaphorical or not. What it means exactly is something else entirely.
If you wanted to do that, then anything the bible says about science related facts is refutable, and in fact, mostly inaccurate.
So now I can't categorize literature as being metaphorical or non-fiction fact?
Religion is man made. Same difference.
According to you they don't. Take it up with some Churches of Christ members though; I think they'll disagree with you, and can use the bible to back it up.
There are people who call themselves Christians, and don't believe they have to attend church every Sunday. I don't know which one you believe you are, but conversely, you can find people who call themselves Christians who consider it necessary to go to church on Sundays. Again, take it up with them if you disagree.
They aren't separate because there are statements in the bible concerning homosexuals. By giving away your own verdict of homosexuals and passing it onto a deity figure that exists in an authoritarian text, you are waiving any opinions you might have of homosexuals and letting religion decide for you, regardless of what the general religious opinion is at the time you happen to be living in.
Then why assert statements about heaven and hell as if they exist, if you truly believe we don't know what happens after death? Are you sure you're not...an agnostic atheist?
But Christians can speak of their morality on views of baptism, homosexualty, church attendance and so on because they are described in the exact same bible from which they derive their god.
Yet, they are all mentioned in the bible. And the exact same reason why no Christians can agree on it is because the bible is too vague and contradictory.
Well, let's suppose, as a demonstration, that you don't have any reservations about shooting anybody if you were given a gun. Even if it were your mother. Now if god told you to shoot your mother, and you say "I can't do this", it would be pretty vague why you couldn't. But if you were to say "I can't do this, that's my mother", then it would be a contradiction. But now if we were to take a look at what the verse says, it specifically says that they couldn't drive away the inhabitants because they had iron chariots, and not because they were unwilling. Perhaps it might be more convincing if they never said why, but then you run into the problem of ambiguity because now we don't know why they couldn't. Regardless of how experienced iron charioteers are, it doesn't change the fact that a god, who can do anything, is capable and willing (because he was with Judah) to move iron chariots. But instead, it says there that they couldn't, even with god.
And since god is generally accepted to be omniscient, he would have known if Judah could have driven them out without his help.
Not if it bothers to explain how to treat slaves.
You're missing the whole point of the argument. Whether or not someone actually did eventually believe, and therefore "realize" the bible was nonsense is irrelevant. Moving on.
That's not the point.
Missing the point entirely. What I am saying is that one person's opinion, if it differs enough from everyone else's, isn't likely to convince people to change. It's sad but true; people find comfort in great numbers. But if a whole bunch of people start doing it, they join in. A movement as great as the Enlightenment is just one such example. Galileo didn't change the church's opinion on the Earth's orbit. Neither did Copernicus. But the Enlightenment helped this change along.
No, it's just a more subtle way of controlling the masses. "If you do this you are..." still existed back then, but in a more pronounced way--if you do this, you will be killed. If you do this you will be tortured. In society now, you can think and do whatever you want--but if society doesn't like it, they'll just give you a harder time. They're unspoken rules, and the idea hasn't changed, the only difference being you aren't being killed or tortured for it, you can express your difference of opinion and not get penalized by the law for it. Simply put, there are more ideas available for any one person to ponder. You can go to the library and research on any given philosophy you want. You can find books on just about any religion you want, as well as people's criticisms of them, and you can also use the Internet to find articles written by various people with various opinions. None of this ever existed in the Dark Ages.
But they were told how to keep slaves, and anyone who condemns slavery wouldn't even talk about how to keep slaves. And those verses would need to be downplayed, otherwise you run the risk of suggesting that slavery is alright.
Except for all those verses that aren't clear on whether or not Moses is meek, how many angels there were when Jesus was resurrected, or whether or not the dead rose from their grave, and several other details that supposedly happened. And if that's what the bible says about altering the word of god, then technically, anybody who's translated the bible is guilty because things can get lost in translation, and there are several different versions of the bible, which have some of the verbs and adjectives changed around completely, as well as missing verses.
If contradictions exist, you can't obey a message without disobeying it at the same time. So if there is a message saying not to marry non-believers, and you can find another verse elsewhere saying it's alright to marry non-believers, you can't obey it without disobeying it if you do marry a non-believer. Because you'll be obeying the verse that says it's alright to marry non-believers while disobeying the verse that says it's not alright to marry non-believers. So instead, you have to completely ignore one of those verses to make any sense out of it.
Centuries ago, the church disagreed with Galileo over his theory that the Earth orbits the sun on a fundamental principle: that it states in the bible that the Earth doesn't move, but the sun does. Given that nobody else in the Christian world had knowledge (or shall I say, evidence) of the Earth's orbit, it's natural for anyone reading the bible then to believe that the Earth doesn't move and the sun does. However, I find it abhorrently ignorant and authoritarian for the church to not roll over and admit they were wrong when they were presented with ample evidence from the likes of Galileo, who explained how he found out about the Earth's orbit. Instead, they justified their position with an authoritarian book, that makes huge claims with no evidence, and not only condemned his idea, but prosecuted him for it, and made him retract his statements about the Earth's orbit.
So if you are a Christian, and you take the word of the bible to be an authoritative book, and you believe that the Earth doesn't move, and that anyone who disagrees should not be allowed to voice your opinion, then you need to apologize. If you are hindering scientific progress on account of your religion, you need to apologize.
Things like these hinder scientific progress, and in the long term, it can prevent our living standards from advancing.
Now, since the entire scientific community has more than enough evidence to show that the Earth has an orbit around the sun, and the Enlightenment helped people who aren't Christian to have a platform for their thoughts, the church actually did end up apologizing for it.
Perhaps you don't think religion has anything to do with it directly, but it can cause people to believe in things they don't know to be true, and it would actually have been better without it--without it, anyone would have less of a reason for being so adamant about an unmoving Earth.
But that's not the point; my point was that religion was wrong about things that we have discovered through science; and this isn't even about proving religion wrong, it's about disproving what religion asserts with evidence that contradicts what it says.
The church already did apologize for trying to silence Galileo and hindering science.
And we are in a position to criticize it.
Well, according to lots of free thinkers, religion can say whatever it wants, but it would look stupid if it were to speak of things like the age of the Earth, it's shape, and other physical properties of this universe. It can't even back up its ridiculous claims, and excuses them away on the idea of faith. In my opinion, that's not a good philosophy. But if that's what you want, then fine by me. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I am referring specifically to asserting statements or ideas as being true for which you have no evidence to support them. In other words, if religion asserts ideas as being true on no basis other than because nobody else asserted another idea that could be proven or disproven, it doesn't mean that someone or something else will assert another idea that is supported by evidence and can be disproven. I am not saying that any scientific idea is absolutely true with any certainty; on the contrary. Scientists are always dealing with the uncertainties of their ideas. That's why probability is so important.
This is just an inaccurate application of a quote that does not apply to science because science makes no claim to absolute knowledge; it is only relative, and true insofar as the probability of a theory can be determined (which is actually a requirement of any hypothesis in science--that an idea can be falsifiable.) But having an idea in which you know its probability and can support with evidence is much better than an idea for which you know neither, and is no more feasible than fairies at the bottom of the garden existing. And that would be where Socrates' quote is best applied.
The power the church has over influencing people. If Christianity is appealing to people, they will believe in it. But if it isn't, people will eventually stop believing in it, and we'll eventually stop hearing about nonsense from people trying to get ID in schools, and people trying to condemn homosexuals on religious grounds.
Which is, in my opinion, encouraging fairness and equality. Why wouldn't you want to do what's best for humanity anyways? What could be so barbaric about that? And even if it is, what's wrong with that? It's much more realistic than trying to appeal to a fear-inducing deity, who expects us to love him, even though we know almost nothing about him, including whether or not he exists.
I might say the same about your god. Really, are you sure you're not an agnostic-atheist? Because that's the favorite line of many agnostic-atheists in arguments where Christians assert they know anything because of god.
So you're saying that whole creation story, along with the justification it gives the morals in the bible is just made up by humans.
However, you can't own atheism without knowing what it is. Atheism says nothing with respect to what reasons atheists have for being moral, including not having any reason at all. So you can't assume that any given atheist is being compelled to being moral by nothing. An atheist is free to choose which morals he deems are appropriate, and has his or her own personal reasons for choosing them, usually due to experience in life.
Get your facts straight before you even try owning atheism.
By extension, I take it you think you'd be immoral without religion, would you?
Present day Christians and humanists share in common morals about condemning slavery, allowing freedom of speech, freedom of religion (despite what the bible says), gender equality (despite what the bible says), and the golden rule (which, by the way, isn't originally from the bible). If being Christian meant only believing in Jesus and god, then it doesn't matter if you condemn slavery, allow free speech, religious intolerance or gender equality. So it's entirely possible for someone to have some of these values, and at the same time, believe in Jesus and god.
If they don't believe it, it is because they are ignorant of the definition of humanism. And ignorance is not an excuse not to be something. Just because you're ignorant of something you are doesn't mean you aren't that. If we found that Hitler was Jewish, and he denied it, it doesn't mean he isn't Jewish just because he denied it; he can deny it all he wants, but it wouldn't change the fact that he's Jewish.
(And don't bother pointing out that Hitler (was) wasn't Jewish; that's besides the point.) Human belief has no bearing on reality.
I didn't mean anything by that. I'm just pointing out the main difference between modern Christians and humanists. Read the entire argument before you pick out bits of it, please.
That doesn't change the fact that religion can cause these things to happen. Which is why I can criticize it.
So why do you believe anyone has an incentive to follow a religious moral code that is different from the ones they already believe, and come from the same source?
So why do you think it will change? Why do you think they'll decide slavery is wrong and conform to modern day Christian values? Why is there no movement in the name of Christianity advocating modern day Christian values, and instead, why is there a secularist movement that advocates similar values? The fact is, they didn't change their religious views, they didn't see the righteousness of religion according to modern interpretations, and it doesn't exist; it's induced by something else entirely.
Then why are you making statements about them seeing the "righteousness" of religion?
I can't take that claim seriously because I don't believe in god. And I find it hard to believe that a god-inspired book could be so filled with contradictions and various interpretations. Why would god make a book so confusing to read? It doesn't make sense. The only thing that explains all the discrepancies is if we admit the bible was written by several different people anachronistically. However, I won't take the claim seriously simply because the believers who make that claim are Christian.
That's an ad hominem. The merit of anything I say is independent of my personal choices of religion; I can justify my morality on reasons that are different from any other atheist. You might not like the way one atheist justifies his morals, but that doesn't mean that other atheists justify their morals the same way. Atheists are allowed this freedom because atheism isn't a religion, and doesn't have a definite, authoritative code or set of rules and doctrines that every atheist must abide by. Such a notion is absurd and unreasonable.
Ja, like a genre is a genre. You still haven't told me which genre you like.
As I said, there are way too many to list.
And that's not even all of them. The majority of the contradictions, however, indicate that the people who wrote the bible wrote their books independently of each other, and wrote them some time after all the events happened (ie, probably after all the people they were describing died).
Including whether or not god exists? You can't make that an exception without resorting to special pleading, otherwise you could say the same for the flying spaghetti monster or the fairies at the bottom of the garden.
No, not really. If you don't believe, you're going to hell. And it's all there in Revelations. It's not even about if I don't believe, that I think those statements are false; it's that they shouldn't even be there--it serves no purpose whatsoever except to distill fear into people of being heathens. If you are given free will, then god wouldn't command love. He wouldn't expect anything of anyone. These are the things people have believed, and it's all there in the bible.
Instead, people need to be told that they have free will; that they don't have to believe anything in the bible that makes them afraid of changing their religion. The problem is, their religion doesn't necessarily encourage that--people have to criticize it.
And several other petty crimes like being stoned for not obeying your parents. There's some really strange stuff you can get punished for in the bible. To be honest, the whole idea of being punished for working on a given day is weird anyways.
If there weren't any passages to scare people into believing you might be punished for working on Sunday, then perhaps. But on the principle of being free to do whatever you want doesn't mean people aren't aware of it; of course "freedom" has always existed, but that doesn't mean people act as if it's always been an option. Particularly when having free will and not being punished for arbitrary acts isn't an option.
Well, there is a commandment that says not to have other gods before god. And there are commandments dealing with skepticism, which is essentially a generalization on what to believe when someone makes claims. You can have beliefs telling people when it is moral to believe something, and when it isn't.
Yes, and I believe it should be done on the basis that people need to be told why they're being afraid, and how it's affecting them, so that they can make informed choices about what they want to believe, and be told that they do have free will, and they don't have to believe anything they read in a book. And they're afraid because of something that's being said in a holy book that's a part of a religion, which cannot be proven, which cannot be falsified, and cannot be justified.
As I said, free thought exists in principle, but it doesn't matter if people aren't aware of it. If a religious text is interpreted to inspire fear into people, as a natural reading of it often does, without the context of the Enlightenment, philosophy or science, people will often believe they don't have a choice. Of course they can decide they want to be like Galileo and speak out against the majority of people who believe everything they read in a book, but that thought probably never occurred to them, and if it did, they believed it to be impossible. My point is, I object to having people being punished for expressing their thoughts; I object to punishments for people leaving a religion. I object to these things on the basis that it places conditions on things that people should be free to do, and should not be punished for, and it influences their decisions. That was actually the freedom I was referring to all along; not being conditioned to pick something because of unpleasant consequences for picking a different option. I am not referring to the free will where you can do and say anything you want, despite being punished for it.
Chronologically speaking, there is. Because if we take a look at history, most of our freedoms (please refer to the definition of freedom I provided above) weren't recognized until the Enlightenment. Before that, you could be killed or tortured for being a heathen; you could be prosecuted and condemned for saying something that contradicts what's written in the bible, even if you had evidence for it. I'm sure a lot of people don't agree with any of those things that happened then. None of these things were abolished until the Enlightenment. If Christianity itself advocated freedom, then there should have been a Christian reformation that criticizes punishment for free speech and apostasy, but instead, a secular movement does that. I find it hard to believe that the freedoms we enjoy and agree with could have happened with just Christianity alone--it didn't help us see what's wrong with condemning people who don't agree with you or your religion, and it didn't help us see that people shouldn't be punished for apostasy. Instead, the Enlightenment did that.
Perhaps there was a chance that Christianity could have done that, but historically, it hasn't.
See the list above.
What is all this a reference to?
Yes it does because in order to bother writing rules on how to treat slaves, you would actually have to be alright with having them. And there is one, in the New Testament that tells slaves to obey their masters--if the bible truly condemned slavery, it wouldn't have that statement in it.
Religion is too ambiguous. If you look in a holy text, sometimes, it will say one thing while saying another. This is why religions like Christianity have experienced changes, and have different denominations. Take a look at the Dark Ages. People get killed and tortured for all sorts of things, and you can find verses in the bible supporting some of these punishments. But modern Christianity doesn't do that anymore--why? How has this change come about? I suggest the Enlightenment had a part in it because it brought in secular ideas including humanism, which are very similar to what most modern day Christians believe--except for the parts about god, Jesus and the justification of these morals. And yet, if you take a closer look at the bible, you'll see that some verses say one thing, while another verse says another. And that's why it's easy to keep humanist values and still be Christian. So nobody really knows the "true" message in the bible because now we don't know if they really think heathens are immoral, or if slavery is wrong--of course we believe both to be immoral, but that's only in light of the Enlightenment. Is religion even able to say anything on its own merits without requiring the support of other philosophies, or is it just an ambiguous mess that doesn't mean anything without an external context?
Discuss.
Which was conveniently written by someone who existed after Jesus died. And you don't even have to be a historian to know that; the contradictions in the Old Testament gives it away.
No, for the same reason you can't prove a negative. Instead, if you want to assert that the Earth was created in 6 days, you would have to prove it. But I say it isn't true because there is no scientific evidence that shows that the Earth was created in 6 days. So the default position to take is to say that it wasn't created in 6 days.
Job said:
Samuel2 said:
Isaiah40 said:
A circle is not a sphere. If you didn't already know that the Earth isn't flat, the description of a "circle" doesn't help you very much. And there are several other verses describing god being able to see everybody on the Earth, but if the Earth were spherical, it would be impossible to do so.
I find it amusing that it's mentioned not once, or twice but several times. And don't tell me it's a metaphor; you couldn't have known without external reference that the Earth doesn't have pillars and isn't flat.
Which means it wasn't a global flood. Which means it wasn't true when every single organism except for the ones Noah gathered were killed.
It's implied. Because it is implied that everything that happens in the bible from the creation of the Earth up until Jesus dies takes over a span of about 4000 years, and everything after that was about 2000. So most people who try to believe everything in the bible think the Earth to be 6000 years old. Again, you couldn't be more ignorant if you tried; if you didn't have some way of knowing how old the Earth was, you wouldn't have any reason to take that as a metaphor.
You don't have to be 6000 years old to know that. Do you have to be 121 years old to know Hitler existed?
Yes indeed. If only more people could know they have it, despite what religion says.
And Revelations also says that heathens will rot in hell for eternity. Thanks a lot.
And just because it doesn't say that slavery is "right" doesn't mean it isn't implied. Think of it this way. If you truly condemned slavery, would you even bother describing how to treat slaves? It's completely unnecessary and hypocritical. If you condemned slavery, would you tell slaves to obey their masters?
Then if you believe Christianity truly condemned slavery, why has it taken until the Enlightenment before anybody attempted to do anything about slavery? Why is the Enlightenment a secularist movement and not a Christian one?
But it has. People previously took a "natural" interpretation of the bible by reading most of the things they couldn't have known then (like science) literally--the problem here is that anyone can claim that god told them how to interpret the bible, and you couldn't prove them wrong. So instead, you get a gajillion different interpretations of the bible, in which no one is particularly "correct" over any one interpretation, and none of them know if they are any closer to the true word of god.
How do you know what god, if he existed, intended in the bible?
It's not a very good one because it has contradictions all over it. You can't use the bible itself as the criteria unless it's a contradiction (although contradictions are in the realms of logic, which is philosophy in its most simplest form). You can't use the bible as its own criteria because it can't dictate anything in the realms of science with inaccurate metaphors, and they are not measurable, you can't use the bible as criteria for history because it says one thing while saying another, and you can't use the bible as criteria for morality because it is arbitrary.
Some people interpret this exclusively to mean that everyone else is damned to hell. I know you probably don't interpret it that way, but that's a recent development to appease religious tolerance.
No it doesn't. If you've studied the slightest bit of science, you should have learned that science has no such aims to prove anything indefinitely; science may be used to find evidence to support something, or disprove something, but never prove. Whenever you talk about knowing something from science or scientific knowledge, you are referring to evidence obtained from the results of science, which can sometimes be made more accurate. However, people often forget this because they take a spherical 4.5 billion year old Earth for granted as fact. You couldn't have known about these properties about the Earth without science though.
And that's also why religion needs to be criticized. Because faith is blind. It's blind and dangerous. It allows you to believe in just about anything without proof, without evidence, and without any reason whatsoever except because you feel like it. And if religion is likened to a collection of ideas born out of faith, it's even more blind and dangerous.
Ja, might I suggest it's because the bible is treated like some immutable authoritarian book? If a man refuses to change, or a set of ideas remain unchanged, while the world around you changes, advances and grows, he/it becomes obsolete. This is why science makes a good comparison with religion. Because science, unlike religion, is willing to change and grow. If a scientist discovers evidence which leads to the modification of a theory that already exists, the scientific world willingly accepts the change and moves on. But this is not arbitrary; all scientific studies are rigorously reviewed by other scientists before being accepted. Unlike religion, science is honest. It is man made, and we are aware that we are not perfect. Religion, on the other hand, claims to be divine, and impregnable to change. But I don't believe that religion really is divine; it's just something made up by humans to cull the masses. I dislike this kind of honesty where religion can be thought of as divine, and therefore, it cannot be changed.
However, you can still choose to ignore verses if you'd like. But then you would have to admit that you are ignoring parts of the bible, and that you are doing so on your own criteria, and not because the bible told you so, and not because god "said so".
I don't have a problem with that. But that also means you can't claim any "correct" interpretation of the bible because it doesn't exist.
But that's circular because that verse doesn't tell us anything about what it actually is. It's like I ask you what you are, and you say I am what I am. It doesn't tell me anything about you besides what I already know.
No, they are Christians. They did believe in god and Jesus, as we already agreed. And you can find the verses in the bible that refer to the kind of morality they believed in.
I find that quote offensive because it's like saying we can't judge other people, even if we've lived with them all our lives and gotten to know them, and that this one singular entity, who might as well not exist, and isn't tangible can. If that's not what you see in this verse, you'll have to explain it better.
And people from the Dark Ages don't?
By your own admittance that it is your interpretation, where do you get it from? How do you decide how to interpret something?
And those in the Dark Ages have done basically the same thing. But with even less knowledge and philosophy.
I am not saying it's wrong because it's indefinite; on the contrary; I'm saying it's wrong because it's definite in the sense that one can take a metaphorical writing and claim it means one thing and one thing only.
If you were following my argument, you'd realize this is a red herring.
That sounds a bit circular. Care to word that better?
Which is my point entirely. It is your opinion what you believe the bible says about certain things. It is someone else's opinion what they believe the bible says about certain things. They may be radically different, but no one would be the wiser about it for the same reason no wrong opinion exists. There's no point in showing you a horrible passage in the bible because you don't interpret it as being horrible, while someone else might.
And apparently you, since you don't think they exist. How do you know you're not ignorant of them? You just implied you're not certain of anything.
Regardless of what it is, it's one of the only few honest and original philosophies that doesn't need to be sugarcoated to get its point across, and helps society benefit by asserting basic human rights and freedoms. I find it hard to believe that Christians cherry pick verses from the bible that happen to agree with humanism, and think that's inherently Christian.
That could happen, but that's only because I don't hold any religion, ideal or philosophy above being criticized or immoral. If you want to criticize humanism, you are free to do so. If you think it's detrimental for everyone to be humanists, feel free to say so. Just don't forget that you may be biting the very hand that feeds you.
The context in which humanism exists is on the well being of humanity. I find it funny you are making this comparison because you'd be right about it. However, since Christians are striving to go to heaven, they don't really have any reason to treat other human beings fairly, unless they believe god says so. So in principle, if your god told you to kill non-believers, and you only cared to go to heaven, you'd probably do it. If your god said to kill your family members, you'd probably do it. The reason you aren't doing any of these things is because you happen to believe your god isn't telling you to do these things. The reason Hitler killed Jews was because he thought it would please god.
But humanists, because they have nothing to look forward to other than death, would rather focus on the life they live in now, and would rather treat other people better because they have to live with them.
No, but there are verses that suggest loving Jesus more than your family, and anybody that you know. Why is loving someone you don't know personally more important than loving people you can know and love? Love is something that you gain over time. You can't love someone overnight; you have to spend time with them in order to do so.
And love cannot be commanded; it must be picked by the person doing the loving, in the same way you can't force someone to be a part of a religion.
And I don't believe anyone will be judged. I don't live in fear of being watched and being judged by someone whose intentions I cannot know, and may not agree with.
Are you trying to say the bible isn't metaphorical? You can objectively determine if something is metaphorical or not. What it means exactly is something else entirely.
If you wanted to do that, then anything the bible says about science related facts is refutable, and in fact, mostly inaccurate.
So now I can't categorize literature as being metaphorical or non-fiction fact?
Religion is man made. Same difference.
According to you they don't. Take it up with some Churches of Christ members though; I think they'll disagree with you, and can use the bible to back it up.
There are people who call themselves Christians, and don't believe they have to attend church every Sunday. I don't know which one you believe you are, but conversely, you can find people who call themselves Christians who consider it necessary to go to church on Sundays. Again, take it up with them if you disagree.
They aren't separate because there are statements in the bible concerning homosexuals. By giving away your own verdict of homosexuals and passing it onto a deity figure that exists in an authoritarian text, you are waiving any opinions you might have of homosexuals and letting religion decide for you, regardless of what the general religious opinion is at the time you happen to be living in.
Then why assert statements about heaven and hell as if they exist, if you truly believe we don't know what happens after death? Are you sure you're not...an agnostic atheist?
But Christians can speak of their morality on views of baptism, homosexualty, church attendance and so on because they are described in the exact same bible from which they derive their god.
Yet, they are all mentioned in the bible. And the exact same reason why no Christians can agree on it is because the bible is too vague and contradictory.
Well, let's suppose, as a demonstration, that you don't have any reservations about shooting anybody if you were given a gun. Even if it were your mother. Now if god told you to shoot your mother, and you say "I can't do this", it would be pretty vague why you couldn't. But if you were to say "I can't do this, that's my mother", then it would be a contradiction. But now if we were to take a look at what the verse says, it specifically says that they couldn't drive away the inhabitants because they had iron chariots, and not because they were unwilling. Perhaps it might be more convincing if they never said why, but then you run into the problem of ambiguity because now we don't know why they couldn't. Regardless of how experienced iron charioteers are, it doesn't change the fact that a god, who can do anything, is capable and willing (because he was with Judah) to move iron chariots. But instead, it says there that they couldn't, even with god.
And since god is generally accepted to be omniscient, he would have known if Judah could have driven them out without his help.
Not if it bothers to explain how to treat slaves.
You're missing the whole point of the argument. Whether or not someone actually did eventually believe, and therefore "realize" the bible was nonsense is irrelevant. Moving on.
That's not the point.
Missing the point entirely. What I am saying is that one person's opinion, if it differs enough from everyone else's, isn't likely to convince people to change. It's sad but true; people find comfort in great numbers. But if a whole bunch of people start doing it, they join in. A movement as great as the Enlightenment is just one such example. Galileo didn't change the church's opinion on the Earth's orbit. Neither did Copernicus. But the Enlightenment helped this change along.
No, it's just a more subtle way of controlling the masses. "If you do this you are..." still existed back then, but in a more pronounced way--if you do this, you will be killed. If you do this you will be tortured. In society now, you can think and do whatever you want--but if society doesn't like it, they'll just give you a harder time. They're unspoken rules, and the idea hasn't changed, the only difference being you aren't being killed or tortured for it, you can express your difference of opinion and not get penalized by the law for it. Simply put, there are more ideas available for any one person to ponder. You can go to the library and research on any given philosophy you want. You can find books on just about any religion you want, as well as people's criticisms of them, and you can also use the Internet to find articles written by various people with various opinions. None of this ever existed in the Dark Ages.
But they were told how to keep slaves, and anyone who condemns slavery wouldn't even talk about how to keep slaves. And those verses would need to be downplayed, otherwise you run the risk of suggesting that slavery is alright.
Except for all those verses that aren't clear on whether or not Moses is meek, how many angels there were when Jesus was resurrected, or whether or not the dead rose from their grave, and several other details that supposedly happened. And if that's what the bible says about altering the word of god, then technically, anybody who's translated the bible is guilty because things can get lost in translation, and there are several different versions of the bible, which have some of the verbs and adjectives changed around completely, as well as missing verses.
If contradictions exist, you can't obey a message without disobeying it at the same time. So if there is a message saying not to marry non-believers, and you can find another verse elsewhere saying it's alright to marry non-believers, you can't obey it without disobeying it if you do marry a non-believer. Because you'll be obeying the verse that says it's alright to marry non-believers while disobeying the verse that says it's not alright to marry non-believers. So instead, you have to completely ignore one of those verses to make any sense out of it.
Centuries ago, the church disagreed with Galileo over his theory that the Earth orbits the sun on a fundamental principle: that it states in the bible that the Earth doesn't move, but the sun does. Given that nobody else in the Christian world had knowledge (or shall I say, evidence) of the Earth's orbit, it's natural for anyone reading the bible then to believe that the Earth doesn't move and the sun does. However, I find it abhorrently ignorant and authoritarian for the church to not roll over and admit they were wrong when they were presented with ample evidence from the likes of Galileo, who explained how he found out about the Earth's orbit. Instead, they justified their position with an authoritarian book, that makes huge claims with no evidence, and not only condemned his idea, but prosecuted him for it, and made him retract his statements about the Earth's orbit.
So if you are a Christian, and you take the word of the bible to be an authoritative book, and you believe that the Earth doesn't move, and that anyone who disagrees should not be allowed to voice your opinion, then you need to apologize. If you are hindering scientific progress on account of your religion, you need to apologize.
Things like these hinder scientific progress, and in the long term, it can prevent our living standards from advancing.
Now, since the entire scientific community has more than enough evidence to show that the Earth has an orbit around the sun, and the Enlightenment helped people who aren't Christian to have a platform for their thoughts, the church actually did end up apologizing for it.
Perhaps you don't think religion has anything to do with it directly, but it can cause people to believe in things they don't know to be true, and it would actually have been better without it--without it, anyone would have less of a reason for being so adamant about an unmoving Earth.
But that's not the point; my point was that religion was wrong about things that we have discovered through science; and this isn't even about proving religion wrong, it's about disproving what religion asserts with evidence that contradicts what it says.
The church already did apologize for trying to silence Galileo and hindering science.
And we are in a position to criticize it.
Well, according to lots of free thinkers, religion can say whatever it wants, but it would look stupid if it were to speak of things like the age of the Earth, it's shape, and other physical properties of this universe. It can't even back up its ridiculous claims, and excuses them away on the idea of faith. In my opinion, that's not a good philosophy. But if that's what you want, then fine by me. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I am referring specifically to asserting statements or ideas as being true for which you have no evidence to support them. In other words, if religion asserts ideas as being true on no basis other than because nobody else asserted another idea that could be proven or disproven, it doesn't mean that someone or something else will assert another idea that is supported by evidence and can be disproven. I am not saying that any scientific idea is absolutely true with any certainty; on the contrary. Scientists are always dealing with the uncertainties of their ideas. That's why probability is so important.
This is just an inaccurate application of a quote that does not apply to science because science makes no claim to absolute knowledge; it is only relative, and true insofar as the probability of a theory can be determined (which is actually a requirement of any hypothesis in science--that an idea can be falsifiable.) But having an idea in which you know its probability and can support with evidence is much better than an idea for which you know neither, and is no more feasible than fairies at the bottom of the garden existing. And that would be where Socrates' quote is best applied.
The power the church has over influencing people. If Christianity is appealing to people, they will believe in it. But if it isn't, people will eventually stop believing in it, and we'll eventually stop hearing about nonsense from people trying to get ID in schools, and people trying to condemn homosexuals on religious grounds.
Which is, in my opinion, encouraging fairness and equality. Why wouldn't you want to do what's best for humanity anyways? What could be so barbaric about that? And even if it is, what's wrong with that? It's much more realistic than trying to appeal to a fear-inducing deity, who expects us to love him, even though we know almost nothing about him, including whether or not he exists.
I might say the same about your god. Really, are you sure you're not an agnostic-atheist? Because that's the favorite line of many agnostic-atheists in arguments where Christians assert they know anything because of god.
So you're saying that whole creation story, along with the justification it gives the morals in the bible is just made up by humans.
However, you can't own atheism without knowing what it is. Atheism says nothing with respect to what reasons atheists have for being moral, including not having any reason at all. So you can't assume that any given atheist is being compelled to being moral by nothing. An atheist is free to choose which morals he deems are appropriate, and has his or her own personal reasons for choosing them, usually due to experience in life.
Get your facts straight before you even try owning atheism.
By extension, I take it you think you'd be immoral without religion, would you?
Present day Christians and humanists share in common morals about condemning slavery, allowing freedom of speech, freedom of religion (despite what the bible says), gender equality (despite what the bible says), and the golden rule (which, by the way, isn't originally from the bible). If being Christian meant only believing in Jesus and god, then it doesn't matter if you condemn slavery, allow free speech, religious intolerance or gender equality. So it's entirely possible for someone to have some of these values, and at the same time, believe in Jesus and god.
If they don't believe it, it is because they are ignorant of the definition of humanism. And ignorance is not an excuse not to be something. Just because you're ignorant of something you are doesn't mean you aren't that. If we found that Hitler was Jewish, and he denied it, it doesn't mean he isn't Jewish just because he denied it; he can deny it all he wants, but it wouldn't change the fact that he's Jewish.
(And don't bother pointing out that Hitler (was) wasn't Jewish; that's besides the point.) Human belief has no bearing on reality.
I didn't mean anything by that. I'm just pointing out the main difference between modern Christians and humanists. Read the entire argument before you pick out bits of it, please.
That doesn't change the fact that religion can cause these things to happen. Which is why I can criticize it.
So why do you believe anyone has an incentive to follow a religious moral code that is different from the ones they already believe, and come from the same source?
So why do you think it will change? Why do you think they'll decide slavery is wrong and conform to modern day Christian values? Why is there no movement in the name of Christianity advocating modern day Christian values, and instead, why is there a secularist movement that advocates similar values? The fact is, they didn't change their religious views, they didn't see the righteousness of religion according to modern interpretations, and it doesn't exist; it's induced by something else entirely.
Then why are you making statements about them seeing the "righteousness" of religion?
I can't take that claim seriously because I don't believe in god. And I find it hard to believe that a god-inspired book could be so filled with contradictions and various interpretations. Why would god make a book so confusing to read? It doesn't make sense. The only thing that explains all the discrepancies is if we admit the bible was written by several different people anachronistically. However, I won't take the claim seriously simply because the believers who make that claim are Christian.
That's an ad hominem. The merit of anything I say is independent of my personal choices of religion; I can justify my morality on reasons that are different from any other atheist. You might not like the way one atheist justifies his morals, but that doesn't mean that other atheists justify their morals the same way. Atheists are allowed this freedom because atheism isn't a religion, and doesn't have a definite, authoritative code or set of rules and doctrines that every atheist must abide by. Such a notion is absurd and unreasonable.
Ja, like a genre is a genre. You still haven't told me which genre you like.
As I said, there are way too many to list.
And that's not even all of them. The majority of the contradictions, however, indicate that the people who wrote the bible wrote their books independently of each other, and wrote them some time after all the events happened (ie, probably after all the people they were describing died).
Including whether or not god exists? You can't make that an exception without resorting to special pleading, otherwise you could say the same for the flying spaghetti monster or the fairies at the bottom of the garden.
No, not really. If you don't believe, you're going to hell. And it's all there in Revelations. It's not even about if I don't believe, that I think those statements are false; it's that they shouldn't even be there--it serves no purpose whatsoever except to distill fear into people of being heathens. If you are given free will, then god wouldn't command love. He wouldn't expect anything of anyone. These are the things people have believed, and it's all there in the bible.
Instead, people need to be told that they have free will; that they don't have to believe anything in the bible that makes them afraid of changing their religion. The problem is, their religion doesn't necessarily encourage that--people have to criticize it.
And several other petty crimes like being stoned for not obeying your parents. There's some really strange stuff you can get punished for in the bible. To be honest, the whole idea of being punished for working on a given day is weird anyways.
If there weren't any passages to scare people into believing you might be punished for working on Sunday, then perhaps. But on the principle of being free to do whatever you want doesn't mean people aren't aware of it; of course "freedom" has always existed, but that doesn't mean people act as if it's always been an option. Particularly when having free will and not being punished for arbitrary acts isn't an option.
Well, there is a commandment that says not to have other gods before god. And there are commandments dealing with skepticism, which is essentially a generalization on what to believe when someone makes claims. You can have beliefs telling people when it is moral to believe something, and when it isn't.
Yes, and I believe it should be done on the basis that people need to be told why they're being afraid, and how it's affecting them, so that they can make informed choices about what they want to believe, and be told that they do have free will, and they don't have to believe anything they read in a book. And they're afraid because of something that's being said in a holy book that's a part of a religion, which cannot be proven, which cannot be falsified, and cannot be justified.
As I said, free thought exists in principle, but it doesn't matter if people aren't aware of it. If a religious text is interpreted to inspire fear into people, as a natural reading of it often does, without the context of the Enlightenment, philosophy or science, people will often believe they don't have a choice. Of course they can decide they want to be like Galileo and speak out against the majority of people who believe everything they read in a book, but that thought probably never occurred to them, and if it did, they believed it to be impossible. My point is, I object to having people being punished for expressing their thoughts; I object to punishments for people leaving a religion. I object to these things on the basis that it places conditions on things that people should be free to do, and should not be punished for, and it influences their decisions. That was actually the freedom I was referring to all along; not being conditioned to pick something because of unpleasant consequences for picking a different option. I am not referring to the free will where you can do and say anything you want, despite being punished for it.
Chronologically speaking, there is. Because if we take a look at history, most of our freedoms (please refer to the definition of freedom I provided above) weren't recognized until the Enlightenment. Before that, you could be killed or tortured for being a heathen; you could be prosecuted and condemned for saying something that contradicts what's written in the bible, even if you had evidence for it. I'm sure a lot of people don't agree with any of those things that happened then. None of these things were abolished until the Enlightenment. If Christianity itself advocated freedom, then there should have been a Christian reformation that criticizes punishment for free speech and apostasy, but instead, a secular movement does that. I find it hard to believe that the freedoms we enjoy and agree with could have happened with just Christianity alone--it didn't help us see what's wrong with condemning people who don't agree with you or your religion, and it didn't help us see that people shouldn't be punished for apostasy. Instead, the Enlightenment did that.
Perhaps there was a chance that Christianity could have done that, but historically, it hasn't.
See the list above.
What is all this a reference to?
Yes it does because in order to bother writing rules on how to treat slaves, you would actually have to be alright with having them. And there is one, in the New Testament that tells slaves to obey their masters--if the bible truly condemned slavery, it wouldn't have that statement in it.
There are people who could interpret it to be great for humanity. So that 'no matter what' attitude dies hard.
What part of "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." do you not understand? It says right there that anyone who doesn't believe in Christianity will suffer an (eternal) hell. How could you interpret that to be great for humanity?
You were advocating about how much better the New Testament is because it has Jesus in it, and he has laws that are better than the likes of which appear in the Old Testament--but all of this still means nothing because everyone who still doesn't believe in god will suffer an eternal hell. If free will without intentional punishment existed, was it really necessary to enforce whatever teachings Jesus made in the New Testament?
But it's not even about that; Revelations just basically says heathens are going to be punished eternally anyways, despite whatever the New Testament says.
I mean really; would you want to be a part of a religion that condemns everyone else eternally for not believing the same things as you?
No. Instead, people believe in a Christianity that has humanistic ideas in it with all the unpleasant stuff heavily sugarcoated, ignored or twisted because people are so insistent on religion being immutable on the basis that it's authoritative, despite risking being obsolete. That was the entire comparison I was making all along.
Well, nobody likes it when you criticize them, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Criticism has benefits.
And how did we prevent them from creating nukes? With a piece of paper? Some conference? That's not violence. And it is against international law to use any nukes.
So you're for the "eye for an eye" idea, and not the "turn the other cheek", both of which are in the bible. Right.
And I'm saying we should criticize those who look to harm us. I think some people try to harm us out of ignorance. And if that's the case, there's no point in bringing the ignorance to justice by punishing them for something they're unaware of, or by killing them because they'll never get to apologize if they realize it (same reason I find an eternal hell abhorrent). If that doesn't work, then perhaps we should turn to justice.
I already explained to you why people might do it. I guess you just happen not to agree on it.
I don't consider that a justification (or else we run into the problem of childhood indoctrination), and if they have been told they are harming the lives of others that don't have anything to do with them, and they continue to keep doing it, then I think it's perfectly fine to continue criticizing them. It doesn't matter how they see themselves or compare themselves with people from other religions; it doesn't change the fact that it makes them selfish, and it doesn't change the fact that they're harming people.
Fine, but my point was that it's pointless to use being offended as an excuse to ban something. If you are offended, just walk away from it. Nobody's forcing you to experience it, and they shouldn't.
No actually, atheism says nothing with respect to whether or not people should kill, steal or rape others. You can choose to do any of these things, but you cannot blame atheism for it for exactly the same reason that atheism makes no claims on it. Instead, you have to honestly admit that you did those things because you chose to.
And yet, you wouldn't have people killing people or doing bad things in the name of atheism. There may be people who have done bad things and happen to be atheists, but they wouldn't be doing it simply because they are atheists.
No, atheists have less of a reason of getting away with it because they cannot use religion as an excuse. Instead, they have to admit to themselves that they lost their temper and did something they probably shouldn't have done. However, I am not advocating a society run strictly on atheism; it is usually the case that atheism is in conjunction with humanism. But how atheists arrive at humanism (or even at all), and to what degree they agree with it varies. And according to humanism, shooting and killing someone is wrong because you are adversely interfering with the someone else's life.
The thing about atheism is that you are allowed to choose what you deem is moral on the basis of a real, unconditional free will that will benefit your life, and presumably, the lives of others around you.
If you truly believed atheists are immoral and go around killing, stealing and raping people, why can't you find too many such people doing that? Am I going around killing people, stealing from people and raping others? Is Richard Dawkins doing that? Is Christopher Hitchens or Pat Condell, or several other free thinkers who happen to be atheist doing that? No? Just because atheism doesn't have any rules on condemning things that don't benefit society doesn't mean atheists will do them.
Wait--you actually profess to know? That's a new one.
And additionally, they've removed some verses and changed the meaning of some verbs completely.
But humans can let themselves be ruled by a book, particularly one that scares them into submission to a fear-inspiring, love-demanding god. Any ideas that are held up to high regard arbitrarily and cannot be questioned are not ideas that anyone should use to run a country.
But marriage isn't strictly religious in the Christian sense (and it's been seriously downgraded by divorce), as it has existed before Christianity, and secular marriages exist, and there are verses in the bible about adultery, gambling and drinking. Where do Christians draw the line?
You could just say 'some Christians'
Anyone can argue anything, but it's also immoral to impeach on someone's free will. You can call that a contradiction, I say God gave man the right to sin and man is fully in his right to exercise that.
Actually, I'd call it a contradiction if it's alright for god to impeach on people's free will, and if it's acceptable, it might be considered special pleading, at least considering my treatment of god as a fictional character, and not as some deity which has power and knowledge above all else.
That's irrelevant because I am talking about why using religion as a reason to condemn homosexuals, or to pass any law for that matter is arbitrary, and not a good idea. Perhaps there are other stupid ways of passing laws that don't involve religion, but that's one less way of passing stupid laws.
Ja there were, but not an awful lot. If you were a pagan, and people knew you were, you'd be tortured and killed. And it doesn't matter if you think it was an un-Christian thing to do; the fact is, they tortured and killed these people, and they were part of a minority, and couldn't influence other people too scared or ignorant of free will to choose anything else over Christianity.
And if Christianity didn't exist, they'd have less of a reason to harm someone else. I'm not saying they won't, but they'd have less of a reason to. And just because a set of ideas doesn't directly hurt other people doesn't mean they aren't potentially dangerous, or have no effect whatsoever; otherwise, you cannot credit your religion for your morality, you cannot make claims against atheists for being immoral for lacking a code of morals--because to do any of these would mean that your religion is responsible for it, and not on the merits of your own choices.
Actually, it's incredibly convoluted, and lots of stuff needs to be cut out in order to make any sense. I find it doesn't explain anything because it doesn't explain how the writers knew the shape of the Earth or its orbit. It doesn't explain anything subjectively nicely because it's ambiguous, and people have interpreted verses to mean very different things. And a book with loads of contradictions can hardly explain everything nicely. The thing is, you can explain everything clearly and concisely without resorting to metaphors, retelling of the same few accounts, contradictions and better choice of words. And ironically, that's actually what science is good at doing.
If the bible did not exist, the church wouldn't have a reason to persecute Galileo or cling to the idea that the Earth doesn't move. I mean, there's really no reason to obsessively cling to that idea unless some authoritarian book that speaks of a fear-inspiring god ruling your life says so, is there?
And it's in Psalm 93, and several other verses concerning the immovable foundations of the Earth (which, either way you take it, is incorrect; if you are referring to the crust of the Earth, you'd be wrong because they are divided into tectonic plates that move over the magma inside the Earth. This explains the idea of earthquakes better than the bible does. And conversely, it's a known scientific fact that the Earth orbits the sun and spins on an axis.)
Who also wrote a book, which most people believed for a good few centuries.
It doesn't matter if you think religion caused it, or people were ignorant and clung to it; if scientists' ideas are going to be condemned because some people don't like it, possibly on the basis of what their religion says, then scientific progress is being hindered.
I disagree with you on gay marriages fundamentally because I don't believe it to be exclusively religious, and religious people shouldn't throw a fit over it just because they thought marriages were religious (and they're not; secular people can marry each other). And actually, there's a pretty good example of Christianity damaging someone who is homosexual. There was an Evangelical preacher by the name of Ted Haggard, who couldn't admit he was gay on account of his religion--it has damaged his reputation, and I have no idea how he lives with it, since he thinks homosexuality is a behavior and not a sexual orientation. He has to live with knowing he's a homosexual, and knowing that his religion treats it like it is a sin, and not something he can freely engage. Between distinguishing sexual orientation from behavior and his religion, he's suffering. And I can say religion had something to do with this because there are verses in the bible that say homosexuals will not go to heaven, and therefore, are sinners.
Again, I am not saying that Christians will do these things, but that if you allow religion any sort of merit, anyone can use religion as a reason to allow these things.
And we don't use the bible to condemn homosexuality in modern society, since homosexuals aren't condemned.
But in the bible, they don't.
Physical, as in the numerous punishments it suggests people should do, or the bits about slavery, or any number of commands god gives to people.
It's in the Old Testament in at least two different places. But that doesn't matter because it threatens believers with damnation if they don't believe, and it grants unbelievers a trip to eternal hell in the Apocalypse in Revelations. If you were to believe any of that, you might be scared into submitting to god, even if you don't want to.
Actually, a lot of religions fail in my book. They all have the same problems. Dishonesty, large claims that fail to be backed up, highly ambiguous passages, and contradictions.
Not as blind as someone who asserts things without evidence.
That's rather circular--how did you know it was written by divine ordnance? Oh right, from the book itself. It's like the liar who says he's not a liar.
I am referring to the context of the mainstream Western world. My point is that morality changes over time, which was the whole point of those examples. Perhaps somewhere in some other country, they had different morals, but if you focus on one country and notice what happens to the morals that the people there generally have, they never stay the same.
Scary, isn't that? You're basically saying that you'll steal whatever you want if you weren't Christian, which actually makes you worse than a lot of atheist humanists, who don't steal, rape or kill people on impulse, and aren't even interested in doing so.
Just because we don't have a sugarcoated fairytale to give context to morals doesn't mean we aren't capable of being moral. Atheism may be "baseless", but it's not necessarily immoral. It just means atheists need to have their own reasons for finding their morals, and it's usually through their own personal experiences. Some of their personal experiences may lead them to believe in a religion, and some of them may find a revelation away from religion for themselves that suits their lifestyle, and benefits them and other people around them.
The problem with trying to create a context for morals from religion is that they are arbitrary, highly inaccurate, and largely unnecessary--if atheists can find their own context for morals within their own lives and personal experiences, you don't need religion to give morals context. Finding context for morals in life means so much more than trying to take a context from a religion where you can't relate with any of the characters in the holy texts because they're too far-fetched for modern life, and historically distant, and any mention of the supernatural does not normally apply to our daily lives.
That's because you're reading it with a pair of rose-colored glasses.
Why not? More like why would you do it in the first place. Why would you have an incentive to do something that is detrimental to someone else, and with some probability, detrimental to yourself? (which, by the way, applies to killing and raping as well.) I think that question speaks for itself. And just because you can claim stealing is wrong in the context of religion doesn't mean it's a good justification. I can hardly call "because god said so" a good reason to do anything.
The morality of anything that you do can be determined based on the merits of personal experience and realizing the consequences. If you steal, you risk losing people that could potentially be your friends. And if someone were to steal from you (possibly as revenge), you wouldn't like it. If you kill someone, you risk losing a friend, and you risk making enemies. And these things will affect you personally eventually. These are all good reasons why people shouldn't kill or steal without requiring religion to justify them--they work just fine on their own merits.
If you let religion tell you how to lead your life, then your personal experiences of anything become stifled and one-sided, and you'll never experience life and see it as it is, and be able to ponder it freely. (Because killing and stealing aren't considered absolute morals to everybody; euthanasia is questionable, as is capital punishment--religion is much too generalized to have an adequate say over these matters.)
That's a strawman. I don't have an incentive to care only for myself because I realize that there are other people that live around me, and they're not going to go away any time soon. So instead of making it worse by remaining selfish, it's better to try getting along with them by not interfering with their personal lives, so long as they'll extend the same courtesy. Of course, I could just be selfish if I wanted to, and were that ignorant, but that actually sounds more like something religion would do. As I said, religion isn't justification of anything. It's just some arbitrary rules that people hide behind because they don't like to think about it, or are somehow unwilling to experience it for themselves.
You probably shouldn't be passing judgment without having seen what he wrote. It damages your integrity as a debater, and makes you prejudiced.
As an example, he lists the idea of Moses writing himself as being meek above all men a contradiction because a meek person wouldn't call themselves meek, least of all, being more meek than everyone else on the planet--which means it's unlikely for Moses to have written the five books in the Old Testament, and if he did, then he's a terrible liar.
Beyond that, I'm not doing your homework for you. Read the document yourself; it's readily available on the Internet.
Ironically enough, Christians stricter than you have believed the world was going to end in 2000, and it didn't. And some have made so-called "prophecies" in other years, and the world didn't end. However, since you can't prove that the world will end if Christianity is being misinterpreted, I'd suggest not using that argument to claim that the bible isn't being misinterpreted.
Yet, he does not spare the children (or babies, if you will), who have done neither, and are not capable of rape or murder.
I was actually referring specifically to heathens though, not gays.
No, but it is a specific rebellion against prohibiting people to speak against something, or indeed, on anything at all--it would be the perfect expression of using one's facilities to speak out for freedom. If you can think of another large movement that advocates freedom, do mention it.
Actually, that kind of reasoning just fails for the simple reasoning that you can keep asking "why" ad infinitum. Including if you back it up with religion. This problem is called infinite regression--you keep going back onto farther and farther reasons, and you never reach a conclusion. It's just absurd because you'll probably end up on reasons that are so far-fetched that they don't have anything to do with the whole point anymore. So instead, typical arguments just have to stop somewhere. Otherwise, I could ask you why you believe religion is justified in a given moral, and you'd either have to give me a response that's external to the bible (and keep doing it), or risk using a circular fallacy argument.
Yes, but you serve under a lord, and assert that it makes you a better person, because now that you "love" god, he favors you, despite the fact that you can't justify your position of faith, you cannot use evidence to support anything the bible says, and you do not know indefinitely if god actually does favor you.
No scientist worth his salt would claim to have unlocked all the mysteries of the universe--maybe they've unlocked a small part of the mysteries of the universe, but none of them would claim to have unlocked all of it. Perhaps you are mistaking their excitement of discovery and willingness to learn more about the universe objectively with that kind of arrogance.
Well, saying the Enlightenment wouldn't exist without religion is like saying there's no light without darkness, isn't it?
At least without religion, there isn't such a thing as apostasy, and punishing people for it, and at least without religion, science won't be hindered. And we won't have arbitrary rules in law or morality. I can't see what's so dire about that anyways.
You may be right about religion enforcing morality, the problem is what morals it's enforcing. If we are talking about several centuries ago, that would mean the torturing and killing of heathens and homosexuals, simply because it's immoral to be a heathen or a homosexual.
Atheism doesn't have a moral code. Try again.
Religion enforced a different set of morals from the ones humanism accepts. Because religion enforced much more than just not killing, not raping and not stealing (despite the fact that they did plenty of them anyways, and justified them under different verses in the bible). Instead, humanism is a small subset of some of the morals that exist in religion, and a whole lot more, that did not come from religion, including the freedom to choose religion (and free will in and of itself is too vague). If humanism simply borrowed some moral codes from religion, it couldn't have had some morals of its own, and it wouldn't have its own criteria to decide which morals that might come from religion are not considered moral. Instead, it has a criteria based on consequences and the betterment of society for humans that determines what is moral and what isn't--and that's why you see morals there for freedom of religion, which religion itself didn't advocate, and no morals for slavery, condemning of homosexuals, and gender inequality.
And religion isn't original anyways. Any moral that you can find there are mostly predated by morals you can find in the writings of other philosophers who existed before Christianity did. The golden rule predates Christianity.
