Ignorance and the Bible

[Based Chad]

Because then it's possible to create God in the exact image that the believer needs him to be. God comports perfectly with the believer's imagination.

but if you have good biblical arguments it means you're just in accordance with actual Christianity.

organizations pervert the message for worldly power.

 

[Based Chad]

"I only trust decisions made by committee" -- dumbest person ever.

 

[gmark77]

but if you have good biblical arguments it means you're just in accordance with actual Christianity.

organizations pervert the message for worldly power.

Without organization there's literally nothing standing between the almighty power of God and the almighty power of the human imagination.

 

[Based Chad]

Without organization there's literally nothing standing between the almighty power of God and the almighty power of the human imagination.

no.

individuals are perfectly capabe of reading a moral code and adhering to it.

you totalitarians genociders love to pretend you're the enforcers of morality, but you're fucking evil.

 

[Into the Night]

So you only live in the flesh

Pivot fallacy. A world is not a universe.

 

[Into the Night]

Nobody is more Bible centric than Atheists, who are obsessed with Jesus that they don't believe in! But they always, always, always hedge their bet!

Why would an atheist be obsessed with the Bible or Jesus? What are they 'betting'? $1? $2? What hedge?

 

[Into the Night]

While I don't know if @gmark77 is chronologically 12, he is most certainly mentally 12. IDK about @domer76 .

Over all, most militant, Christian-hating, cherry-picking American atheists are younger, white males as the previous links pointed out.

There is no such thing as 'militant' atheism, Sybil. Why would an atheist hate Christians?

 

[Into the Night]

There is no solution when generation after ignorant generation peddles the same myths as fact. As time passes, science will prevail and the God of the Gaps will slowly fade into insignificance.

Your religion isn't science, dumber.

Education, with an emphasis on critical thinking, is a start. Alas, too much of the population remains uneducated and possess no critical thinking skills. Many, willfully so.

You just described yourself again. You can't blame your problem on anybody else.

 

[Into the Night]

I have some news. This message board is hardly a significant representation of anything.

After a career of working with and among scientists,

You deny science, dumber. You have already denied several theories of science.

my little retirement job in retail has me exposed to an entirely different mentality. I can assure you, a great many are unable to differentiate between allegory, myth, hyperbole, metaphor or the truth.

Nope. It's your career. Working in retail for minimum wage.

 

[Into the Night]

Thanks for acknowledging my point that atheists here read the Bible as strictly and as literally as most nutjob Bible thumper do.

He didn't.

You guys, and Richard Dawkins + Christopher Hitchens are almost the only evidence I have to go on. I don't meet atheists in real life who spend time complaining about the Old Testament.

Richard Dawkins was not an atheist. He is a religious fundamentalist in the Church of No God.

I never said there weren't substantial numbers of people and nut jobs who read the Bible as literal history and fact: I have named several of the groups - aka, atheists, Pentecostals, conservative Southern Baptists, right-wing evangelical Bible thumpers.

So everyone that reads the Bible is a 'nut job'???? Does that include you??

 

[Into the Night]

From the first cave paintings in France and Spain, it's pretty obvious that homo sapiens had an innate predisposition for the spiritual and transcendent.

We can argue until the cows come home as to why that is. But the reason genuine atheists will probably never make up more than five to ten percent of the human population, is we generally do not believe reality is limited to what our senses can ascertain, and that life, the universe, and everything is not ultimately best explained by quarks and electrons.

You are not an atheist.
A quark is not an explanation. An electron is not an explanation.

 

[Into the Night]

I don't know, ask someone who is an atheist.

Going to try to deny your own post now? YOU made the claim!

 

[Into the Night]

I questioned your demographics, not dismissed them. And I truly don’t give a shit about them. In the context of this thread, rational vs irrational is a good start for sorting people out.

The irrational mind tends to accept the historical accuracy of something as simple and straightforward as the birth story. The rational mind recognizes the contradictions and comes to the rational conclusion that it is all a concoction. From the time, location, reason and the virgin.

See how that works? That’s called evidence-based reasoning.

What is irrational about the birth story?

 

[Into the Night]

As you confessed earlier that you don't care about facts, statistics and demographics, but my humble recommendation is to separate people into different categories. Rational vs. Irrational is a good one. Educated vs. less educated is another. Experienced vs. inexperienced, mature vs. immature, male vs. female, and American vs. foreigner just a name a few. Once assessed, people are easier to figure out. This works well with religious fanatics and militant atheists alike.

You mentioned working with scientists. Psychological assessments also use the scientific method: observation, experimentation, and evidence-based reasoning. This is why your dismissal of demographics raised an eyebrow with me since you are denying data in pursuit of an emotional argument.

Science is not a method or procedure, Sybil. It isn't an experiment either. It isn't data either. Go learn what 'hypothesis' and 'theory' mean. A hypothesis stems from a theory, not the other way 'round.

 

[Into the Night]

True.

As for atheists, even not all of them are non-spiritual which is why they claim Buddhists among their numbers. They believe in an afterlife/spiritual world, just not some old geezer on a golden throne.

Atheism is not a religion, Sybil.

 

[Into the Night]

But just proposing the "transcendent" does NOT mean it is real.

Yes it does. Go learn what 'real' means and how it's defined.

The Transcendent you talk about manifests as thousands of different versions of "ultimate truth" many of which are mutually exclusive.

Babble ignored.

Just because people wonder at the stars does not ipso facto mean that God manifested himself as himself to sacrifice himself to himself to atone his creation to himself in a small backwater colony of the Roman Empire. Nor does it mean that an illiterate man in a cave could write a holy book by himself. Nor does it mean that golden tablets were squirreled away in norther NY State in the 1800's.

True.

If no single religion is correct then why is the "instinct" to those religions necessarily correct?

A single religion might very well be correct.

 

[Into the Night]

Yeah, I can see they probably make you feel bad for not having had a logic class.

Logic is not a class. You deny and discard logic.

 

[Into the Night]

No, fundamental Christian theology is based on grace and salvation, and the redemptive power of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

Luke and Mathew - the only gospels which briefly mention a birth narrative - say nothing directly about Christian practice and theology.

The gold standard for Christian practice, theology, and salvation are the epistles of Paul. Paul said nothing of consequence about Jesus' birth, and apparently considered it so inconsequential it doesn't factor in at all Paul's instructions and guidance on Christian practice, theology, and salvation.

Paul knew the apostles Peter and John, and he knew Jesus' brother James, so if the birth was so important they would have told him.

There is decent circumstantial evidence that Mark's gospel is based on Peter's teachings. Peter was Jesus' closest apostle, and the birth narrative is never mentioned in Mark. If the birth was so bloody important, you'd think Peter would have told Mark.


Now, the birth story of the Buddha is even more fantastical than the birth story in the Gospel of Mathew. But it doesn't figure prominently in the practice, beliefs, and metaphysics of Buddhism.

Atheists have never used the Buddha birth story to diminish Buddhism.

Buddhists are not atheists.

 

[Into the Night]

but if you have good biblical arguments it means you're just in accordance with actual Christianity.

Rather by definition, since the Bible is a witness of God and Christ and their teachings.

organizations pervert the message for worldly power.

Often true, but not always.

 

[Into the Night]

"I only trust decisions made by committee" -- dumbest person ever.

For the simple reason that such committee might very well be an oligarchy.