Global warming one big hoax?

[Squeek]

Do you have time to explain a few more things, JemyM? What role does ego play in science? Where does arrogance fit in? At what point does earnest discussion stop and mental masturbation begin?

 

[Corwin]

Quote from Jemy
"The key difference is that scientist knows alot more about the world than your average person while a religious person knows alot less about the world than your average person. Within science you may loose your job if you make claims without being able to back them up. Within religion you earn your job if you make claims without being able to back them up."

Such a display of arrogant ignorance!!

Squeek, I love your questions!!

 

[Pladio]

I really don't agree with that statement Jemy. I know some religious people who are professors in universities, others teach at schools and most of them know multiple languages, know more about politics, history and some even about sciences than other people. A lot of religious people even go as far as study sciences to try and find ways to prove what they believe is right. Others are scholars in many fields of study and know more about a lot of things than other people.

In Belgium (and I believe you can ask Bartacus for confirmation) the Jesuit schools are seen as the best schools with the best educational system in Flanders. Now consider Flanders' high schools were ranked in the top 10 in the world in mathematics and I think physics too and then you'll see a strive to become better, a 'quest' for knowledge of the religion and other 'worldly' things.

To clear things up, I'm not a Jesuit.

And what happened to the other topics in this topic ?

 

[Pladio]

Thanks Pladio, for correcting the way I stated that My meaning actually was that men wrote those texts; as you state, many different men and not God, but that they nonetheless all purport to be a message from a divine entity. The Ten Commandments were given directly to Moses from God, the Angel somebody or other spoke to Joseph Smith(Mormons) and I would be really surprised if Muhammed didn't claim that Allah was endorsing his message, but the study of religion is not my major field of knowledge, so I apologize if I was inaccurate as to detail.

(I think Buddha is the only one who never claimed to be a god, but he ended up one anyway after he died.)

I pretty much agree with you about the role of science, but again, not ALL science. Medical advances, computers and many other things we rely on every day have changed our civilization for the better.

My take is that it's people who make bad religions and bad science, as well as the good versions of both, so I would say instead of this:



it's more like this: Because of human nature and the greed of individuals and large corporations , enabled by science and unrestrained by a personal code of morals, the world is getting as you describe.

Other than that, as you said, we agree.

Didn't see your post. But, again I agree with you. I might have misunderstood your first post then if you meant what I have written

Christianity is the bible.

This is completely false. What about the Muslims (just one billion, I believe) and the Jews (about 13-14 million), the Bahai (another 6 million) and other sects/religions who follow the bible ?

And thats basicly the problem with "different interpretions" and "if everybody would just follow my version it would all be fine". History shows that a combination between education and using your head prevents disaster better than religion while religion makes people less capable of distinguishing right from wrong and speaking up against them who are the true villians of this world.

I agree with this.

People are born without an understanding of the world and that gives us a few problems.

What do you mean ?

There are ways to look at this back and forth. Taking the old testament the women are worth little more than cattle (compare the last commandment where women are considered a possession like a mule or ox). There are dozens of wierd reasons why a woman should be killed, including getting raped. Reading the old testament with a modern education, it's idea about women belongs somewhere along the line of "brutal" or "barbaric". How judaism have cleaned up that mess I do not know, I only have the part of Judaism that is present in my christian bible. As a sect, Judaism is rather small and considering the past tension I am fine with simply proving their foundations of their beliefs wrong, no need to compare brutality between judaism and christianity. I have much respect to the secular jews and I support their culture just as much as I support muslim apostates.

That's why Judaism doesn't take the Old Testament literally, since they (the Talmudists, forgot the names given to them) explained everything (or most of it) in more modern ways. I think there's even a book on how people should treat and be with their families. A lot of laws also protect the woman. Even though it's right that if you just the read the Bible as it is, it will seem barbaric and maybe even horrific.
Muslims seem to be looking at the Old Testament in a more literal way, in treating women, I mean.
Christianity seems to have settled it with modernism taking over, giving women more rights...

What are Muslim 'apostates'?

They are direct quotes from Paul. Paul wrote several letters to early christianity explaining how church should be controlled. He declared himself a messenger from god. Historically he's far more important to christianity than Jesus himself since it's him who defined how the religion should work and he's also the one who created the philosophy of Jesus as a savior. Mark/Matthew/Luke/John was written long after Paul founded the sect, not the other way around. When you read Paul you realise he really had no clue about anything said in the stories about Jesus, still he is the original founder.

Do people read the gospels as laws or as stories ? If Paul is the original founder, as you say he is, then Christianity has certainly changed since then and you should maybe look into more modern Christianity instead of focusing only on the 'ancient' basis of Christianity.

It's impossible to read every angle of the book. There are no right ones, there are no wrong ones, but we know alot more about it than some people think and I believe it's time to universally treat it as little more than the national epos of Israel, with the same value as King Arthur or Tristan and Isolde. As long as the book gives birth to bad ideas, there is an issue. Trying to find new meanings within the book like it give better insight than the later political philosophies is a major waste of time and money, stopping people from dealing with the more serious issues. We only need to know that some people are prepared to go to war and reduce civil liberties becuse they believe the book is litteraly true and the rest of the religion support the fundies before they support human values. There's a direct relationship, statistically, between the amount of pain and suffering and how strong religion is. Western Europe and Japan have currently the lowest rate of the social issues as well as the lowest amount of believers, while the US are as bad as the middleeast on some problems like the spread of HIV, murders and teenage pregnancies. Within Europe, the strong catholic countries like Spain, Italy, Poland and Ireland are statistically the worst on many similar issues.

Maybe this means the religious leaders are as corrupt and bad as most other leaders. Have you seen what happened in Russia when there was a period without religions ? Just Stalin killing several millions of people. Others were sent to the Gulag, other tortured ... Communism (or to be more precise, dictatorial Communism) isn't a religion, just a form of government where people keep dying... Really, North Korea, even now, still has concentration camps.
Eastern Europe: Serbia, Kosovo, there were concentration camps there too. This wasn't about religion, but about nationalism.

It's just human beings fighting. It has been around for ages and will always be there as long as human beings exist. Three fights : Fighting over women, over land and over religion. IF you remove religion, then something else will come up in its stead.
It doesn't mean religion in itself is bad, just that human beings are selfish and moronic.

But, you're right about one thing. You can't read the bible from every angle.

A few 100 years ago you could be burned to the stake for black magic. We should be happy that science evolves.

Yup, after that, people were killed because they were black, then because they were something else. Look above, people have always liked killing, since the beginning of time (Cain and Abel ) .

People who speak about what god wants, always speak about what they want.

Maybe, but he would be able to do it, no ? (if he exists, that is ?)

 

[JemyM]

I really don't agree with that statement Jemy. I know some religious people who are professors in universities, others teach at schools and most of them know multiple languages, know more about politics, history and some even about sciences than other people. A lot of religious people even go as far as study sciences to try and find ways to prove what they believe is right. Others are scholars in many fields of study and know more about a lot of things than other people.

Many studies have been made on this subject that have shown that there's a direct relationship between higher education and lack of faith. Also there are a direct relationship between higher IQ and lack of faith. It is still possible to be at the peak of your academic career and still have faith but they are very rare. The mindspell works quite fine on people with high IQ as long as they are children when indoctrinated, but IQ often means higher education with obvious results. In the US, only 4% of the lead scientists claim to have religious beliefs. There's also a relationship with what field of science you have. Phycisists within the US have a higher percentage of believers where Biologists have the lowest.

Move outside the US and the percentage is far lower, especially in the countries who look up to knowledge and have a scientific tradition such as western Europe or Japan.

Theology is also heavily corrosive to religious beliefs. Many theologians begun as a strong believer and ended up atheist or agnostic after spending some time studying what we know. I am not a theologian myself but I went that path (got to know too much because my faith drew me there).

You see, within scientific tradition there is a few philosophies you really need to become a sucessful scientist. Theese philosophies are in themselves heavily corrosive to religion because religion have always warned for theese philosophies. All religion warns you from the unknown, calling it satan or seduction down to hell. As a scientist you are forced to overthrow all that and look to nothing but evidence. When you are forced to learn that philosophy to get through your education and then work with it for every day of your life, religius grip on you begins to fade.

In Belgium (and I believe you can ask Bartacus for confirmation) the Jesuit schools are seen as the best schools with the best educational system in Flanders. Now consider Flanders' high schools were ranked in the top 10 in the world in mathematics and I think physics too and then you'll see a strive to become better, a 'quest' for knowledge of the religion and other 'worldly' things.
To clear things up, I'm not a Jesuit.
And what happened to the other topics in this topic ?

Private schools tends to be more focused/controlled which is an advantage to things like math. You can be both intelligent and logic and still believe as long as you live within a community where belief is socially more accepted than disbelief. Faith/Lack of faith is simply a difference between how much you know and how much you want to learn. However, ask a student of a faith school about their understanding of world history and other cultures and they are usually less aware of what's going on.

 

[Corwin]

Let's see, I have an extremely high IQ, several degrees, have taught both Mathematics and Philosophy, lecture in Theology and have written courses in Ancient and Mediaeval History and as an ordained minister, I have a very high level of Faith!! I think something might be wrong with your analysis!!!!

PS. I play RPG's as well!!

 

[JemyM]

Im tired so sorry if there's things here that do not make any sense.

This is completely false. What about the Muslims (just one billion, I believe) and the Jews (about 13-14 million), the Bahai (another 6 million) and other sects/religions who follow the bible ?

Muslims = Quran
Jews = Torah
Bahai = Bayan
Christians = The old and new testament = The Bible

What do you mean ?

Ouch. Part of my reply must have been deleted.

It's a theory that is complex to explain but rather simple.

I'll try to explain:

Everything we see is filthered through our memories.

Our memories is what tells us whats right, whats wrong and what's the right decision in a situation we are exposed to.

If your memorybank is limited or twisted by bad experiences you are more likely to make a weak/dangerous decision because you are less capable of imagining the consequences.

This have a few problems since every child are born with a blank head and must be taught. An even greater problem is that we are born with a fear of the unknown and an instinct to attack the unknown. Every child is therefore a potential murderer unless taught the right things at an early age.

So every child is capable of doing bad things and proper education is a very good way to keep them from doing them. A doctrine that makes you fear education and tell you that everybody outside your group are worshippers of satan or demons is not a good one.

That's why Judaism doesn't take the Old Testament literally, since they (the Talmudists, forgot the names given to them) explained everything (or most of it) in more modern ways. I think there's even a book on how people should treat and be with their families. A lot of laws also protect the woman. Even though it's right that if you just the read the Bible as it is, it will seem barbaric and maybe even horrific.
Muslims seem to be looking at the Old Testament in a more literal way, in treating women, I mean.
Christianity seems to have settled it with modernism taking over, giving women more rights...

I cannot discuss judaism more than I know the roots of their religion.

What are Muslim 'apostates'?

Apostate is a muslim word for someone who left their religion.
http://www.apostatesofislam.com

Do people read the gospels as laws or as stories ? If Paul is the original founder, as you say he is, then Christianity has certainly changed since then and you should maybe look into more modern Christianity instead of focusing only on the 'ancient' basis of Christianity.

Enough christians consider the bible to be a most exalted rulebook that should be the foundation to our society, a few consider it to be above the law of the country they live in. The Christian Ultra Fundamentalists are a very strong american lobby group in the US that stands behind the bible as literal truth and the law that should control society.

http://adultthought.ucsd.edu/Culture_War/The_American_Taliban.html

Maybe this means the religious leaders are as corrupt and bad as most other leaders. Have you seen what happened in Russia when there was a period without religions ? Just Stalin killing several millions of people. Others were sent to the Gulag, other tortured ... Communism (or to be more precise, dictatorial Communism) isn't a religion, just a form of government where people keep dying... Really, North Korea, even now, still has concentration camps.
Eastern Europe: Serbia, Kosovo, there were concentration camps there too. This wasn't about religion, but about nationalism.

It's just human beings fighting. It has been around for ages and will always be there as long as human beings exist. Three fights : Fighting over women, over land and over religion. IF you remove religion, then something else will come up in its stead.
It doesn't mean religion in itself is bad, just that human beings are selfish and moronic.

But, you're right about one thing. You can't read the bible from every angle.
Yup, after that, people were killed because they were black, then because they were something else. Look above, people have always liked killing, since the beginning of time (Cain and Abel ).
Maybe, but he would be able to do it, no ? (if he exists, that is ?)

You see any wars in western Europe anytime soon?

We in the western world have managed to combine a coctail of liberalism, socialism, capitalism and democracy that is currently working rather well dont you think? Nazi germany was 60 years ago now and every child is indoctrinated to know that nazism is BAD for you. In a recent study 97% of the swedish students claimed that nazism is evil. Most of them could also give ideas of why it happened. School teachers are given special training in how to see and respond to nationalistic behavior among their pupils, dissolving such ideas as quickly as possible. Yes, neonazis do exist, but noone takes them seriously.
Education is very important to learn about the world and to keep bad apples out from the regimes. But we are way behind on recognizing religions as political ideologies.

Now communist dogma is not much different from christian dogma. They do not excuse eachother.

They are based on closed groups, a hostility to criticism, the promise of the ultimate truth, a black and white worldview, a hostility towards education and scientists, a glorious and charismatic leader etc. When placing extremist groups next to eachother you might be surprised how similar they are to eachother. The solution, as always, is education, free speech, democracy etc, everything that theese closed groups hate.

 

[JemyM]

Let's see, I have an extremely high IQ, several degrees, have taught both Mathematics and Philosophy, lecture in Theology and have written courses in Ancient and Mediaeval History and as an ordained minister, I have a very high level of Faith!! I think something might be wrong with your analysis!!!!

Title: Leading scientists still reject God
Authors: Larson, Edward J.; Witham, Larry
Publication: Nature, Volume 394, Issue 6691, pp. 313 (1998). (Nature)
Publication Date: 07/1998

Table 1. Comparison of survey answers among "greater" scientists.

1986 the economist Burnham Beckwith put together the results of 30 studies that compare higher education and more IQ and it's impact on faith. Article is known as "The Effect of Intelligence on Religious Faith".
16 more surveys have been done after that.
Four studies shows no effect, the rest show that IQ and higher education lowers your faith.

Within the NAS, National Academy of Sciences, only 7% claim to have a personal belief.

According to Norris & Inglehart 2004a,b, societies that managed to create a social security and equality are less likely to believe in god. The less secure someone feels, the more likely they are to turn to the comfort of religion.
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/statistics/some_findings.html

In a recent danish/american study it was found that atheists have an average of 5.8 points higher IQ than believers.

In a study of 34 countries 2006, Miller et al found that knowledge in genetics is a strong factor to support evolution. It also shows that fundamentalist countries are the least likely to have such knowledge. The United States end up in the bottom compared to every other country in the study, including Turkey. Best overall knowledge in genetics was among danish, swedish and icelandic people.

The failure of the american public education system is well known and notorious all over the developed world.

 

[Corwin]

There are 3 degrees of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics!! I can twist statistics as well as anyone, but I refuse to lower myself to that level!!

 

[JemyM]

There are 3 degrees of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics!! I can twist statistics as well as anyone, but I refuse to lower myself to that level!!

Unless you cough up something at all that is actually based on any sort of facts, evidence, proof etc I can only see this as a moot discussion. Im not learning anything from it and you do not seem to have anything of value to present to support your claims.

 

[Bartacus]

Facts hun, facts.
You have not been able to give any facts to support your statements yet.

Neither have you!

You simple prove again and again that you never read your own bible.
Facts are on my side on this one.
I came from my mother. She's a woman. See?
What do you have to go on?

I came from my mother ... This proves that you do't have any idea either were we are comming from!

I do not know how you can live with yourself looking down on your gender like that.

I don't look down on gender, you read the bible in a dispicible way.

Ah. The "I am christian, I just do not believe we can follow the christian bible" argument.
Here's some random quotes from theese "womenunfriendly bible". Pay note to Deutoronomy, because that's what Jesus speaks about when he say:
"Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfil. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled."
The Tenth Commandment
Exodus 20:17 "You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour."
Deuteronomy 5:21 Neither shall you covet your neighbour’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbour’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour."
1 Corinthians 14:34-35
Let the women keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a disgrace for a woman to speak in church.
1 Tim 5:13
As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to. So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander. Some have in fact already turned away to follow Satan.
Deuteronomy 22:28-29
If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.
Deuteronomy 22:23-24
If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.
Deuteronomy 20:10-14
As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.
Judges 5:30
They must be dividing the spoils they took: there must be a damsel or two for each man, Spoils of dyed cloth as Sisera's spoil, an ornate shawl or two for me in the spoil.
Zechariah 14:1-2
Lo, a day shall come for the Lord when the spoils shall be divided in your midst. And I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem for battle: the city shall be taken, houses plundered, women ravished; half of the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be removed from the city.

As I said: your reading is flawed, because you're taking things out of context. Those parts were common at that time, so you should read them for that time. You simply don't seem to understand that, most likely due to a lack of intelligence I thought (but you have said you were quite smart, so that makes it even worse.)

Atheism is simply a "I do not believe your claims" statement and christians felt they had to give a word for the people who were not part of their sect. We do this in every day of our lives. Is it a religion to not believe in communism? Nazism? Do organised anti-dictatorship people trying to seek world domination as well?

Please. You are acting like a child or someone who blatantly failed social science.

So do you, JennyM, you who are believing that it's common sense to deny the goodness of a relegion of about a billion people on this world

Nevermind. I find it useless to discuss with someone who are better to deny facts than to present them. You are not adding anything to my knowledge more than you waste my time.

You're so full of yourself that you can't take it that someone actually dares to fight your believes. No wonder that you give up so quickly, cause you don't bring any facts in here.

 

[Bartacus]

Unless you cough up something at all that is actually based on any sort of facts, evidence, proof etc I can only see this as a moot discussion. Im not learning anything from it and you do not seem to have anything of value to present to support your claims.

Neither have you, JennyM, because a research like that is always made from a certain point of view.

 

[Bartacus]

They are based on closed groups, a hostility to criticism, the promise of the ultimate truth, a black and white worldview, a hostility towards education and scientists, a glorious and charismatic leader etc. When placing extremist groups next to eachother you might be surprised how similar they are to eachother. The solution, as always, is education, free speech, democracy etc, everything that theese closed groups hate.

Funny, the black and white worldview is just how you view upon Christianity is.
BS about the hostility on education and scientists -> A lot of schools are created by monks and a lot of Jezuits( don't know the English term of it) are in fact very good scientists. As I told you the theory of the Big Bang was created by one of them.
Indeed extreme groups are suprisingly similar to each other: militant atheïsts are one of them (not atheïsts as a whole) and they are suprisingly similar to extrem Christian factions.
About the Free speech: How come that it's still unimaginable to say that one denies the camps of WW2? If I take Free speech above all even that has to be able to be spoken out. (I do believe that it happened, so don't go saying that I'm a 'negationist'.) I say that the open view that you claim to have is a hoax and nothing more then another form of obstruction that has to broken trough.

As you already have guessed possibly (if you read my posts very carefully) I'm not a believer of anything. I call myself somewhat like a Christian, but I don't see it as the truth. In my opinion there can be many versions of the truth, as there can be many lies as well. I want you to break that last boundry of faith, JennyM, cause what you're doing now is just a childish revenge on things you once believed in.

 

[Pladio]

Private schools tends to be more focused/controlled which is an advantage to things like math. You can be both intelligent and logic and still believe as long as you live within a community where belief is socially more accepted than disbelief. Faith/Lack of faith is simply a difference between how much you know and how much you want to learn. However, ask a student of a faith school about their understanding of world history and other cultures and they are usually less aware of what's going on.

The people I know, who are very religious, know more about history than anyone except my high school history teachers. I even think one of them studied history in college, but all of them just read millions of books millions of different subjects.

Muslims = Quran
Jews = Torah
Bahai = Bayan
Christians = The old and new testament = The Bible

The Quran is mostly the Torah, Zabur and another book. But the Torah is the base of the Old Testament.
The Torah is only the Pentateuch. The Jews read the whole Old Testament and then more books have been written over time which have become (almost) 'cannon', such as : the Talmud, Gmara...
Christians have the Old Testament and the New Testament (Gospels...).
So the base of these three religions are the same.
But you're right I made a mistake

About the Bahai, I thought they had the Old Testament as base too. Another mistake.

So every child is capable of doing bad things and proper education is a very good way to keep them from doing them. A doctrine that makes you fear education and tell you that everybody outside your group are worshippers of satan or demons is not a good one.

That's true, except I don't know a lot of religious people who think I'm a worshiper of Satan or demons. Most of them know the differences between good and evil. They also know killing isn't good. So, again, is it religion in its self which is bad or their leaders which make people do bad things?

Apostate is a muslim word for someone who left their religion.

Thank you

Enough christians consider the bible to be a most exalted rulebook that should be the foundation to our society, a few consider it to be above the law of the country they live in. The Christian Ultra Fundamentalists are a very strong american lobby group in the US that stands behind the bible as literal truth and the law that should control society.

Then the US might relive the European middle ages if they become too powerful. hehe
I think every voice should be allowed to speak. Just don't let them get power and it'll be alright.

We in the western world have managed to combine a coctail of liberalism, socialism, capitalism and democracy that is currently working rather well dont you think? Nazi germany was 60 years ago now and every child is indoctrinated to know that nazism is BAD for you. In a recent study 97% of the swedish students claimed that nazism is evil. Most of them could also give ideas of why it happened. School teachers are given special training in how to see and respond to nationalistic behavior among their pupils, dissolving such ideas as quickly as possible. Yes, neonazis do exist, but noone takes them seriously.
Education is very important to learn about the world and to keep bad apples out from the regimes. But we are way behind on recognizing religions as political ideologies.

Now communist dogma is not much different from christian dogma. They do not excuse eachother.

They are based on closed groups, a hostility to criticism, the promise of the ultimate truth, a black and white worldview, a hostility towards education and scientists, a glorious and charismatic leader etc. When placing extremist groups next to eachother you might be surprised how similar they are to eachother. The solution, as always, is education, free speech, democracy etc, everything that theese closed groups hate.

So listen to what you're saying. Religion in itself isn't bad, extremism is. Any form of extremism is bad for the world and doesn't allow for the other side to speak their mind. Religion however, as long as practiced normally, gives hope to people, helps other people live their lives in happiness (and actually reduces the number of divorces ).

 

[JemyM]

As I said: your reading is flawed, because you're taking things out of context. Those parts were common at that time, so you should read them for that time. You simply don't seem to understand that, most likely due to a lack of intelligence I thought (but you have said you were quite smart, so that makes it even worse.)

I gave you the opportunity to start adding facts to support your claims, and this is the best you can do?

So do you, JennyM, you who are believing that it's common sense to deny the goodness of a relegion of about a billion people on this world

There are not a billion christian fundamentalists in this world. Outside the US they are quite rare. Religion is already a minority within western europe and they have started to loose their rights. Atheists are also the fastest growing minority in the US. The only minority that do not belong to any group.

You're so full of yourself that you can't take it that someone actually dares to fight your believes. No wonder that you give up so quickly, cause you don't bring any facts in here.

I have posted plenty of facts in this thread, including the correct names of several of the mythologies that inspired the bible, plenty of quotes, statistics etc. All you have shown here so far is your capacity of using denial to avoid to explain facts.

 

[Myrthos]

I always found the Bible an awesome book. Its possible to read and interpret it too fit whatever belief (or disbelief) you have. They should make laws like that....
This thread just has too many text for me to read all of it, but from what I read I would say that JenyM is the better advocate.
Then again being an atheist, I might just interpret what she says in a manner that better fits my personal beliefs

 

[mytgroo]

I challenge you to live the bible literally in every sense of the word. Not to interpret the bible, but live by its principles. You will find that it is impossible to not interpret the bible on some level if you try to live by what it says literally. It is self-contradictory because religion by its nature is there to show you how to deal with human nature, overcome impossible situations, and deal with tough spiritual and moral quandries. Even those who choose to live by its principles completely like the Amish are forced to interpret its contents to live by its sayings.

In a sense it teaches you faith, a way to deal with contradictory human situations. The bible was written down by people and people hear and interpret whatever they have read in different ways. Even translating the bible into different languages changes its contents. It is like a long line of telephone going back to the original text in aramaic, each time it got copied, it got altered slightly through translation, or human error which is part of what makes it the bible.

 

[Myrthos]

I challenge you to live the bible literally in every sense of the word. Not to interpret the bible, but live by its principles.

Yeah right, like I will consider doing that. I don't expect a religious person to change his/her beliefs because of anything I say. Just as much as I won't change my beliefs just because of what is written in the bible.

You will find that it is impossible to not interpret the bible on some level if you try to live by what it says literally. It is self-contradictory because religion by its nature is there to show you how to deal with human nature, overcome impossible situations, and deal with tough spiritual and moral quandries.

I think I'll manage those things also without being religious. Just as there are people who do find guidance in religion to accomplish all that. Then again there are of course also people who use their religion to justify about anything.

I've read the bible more than once and I still don't have faith in the existence of God. I've read Lord of the Rings also multiple times and I still don't have mounted enough faith to belief it to be true either. And yes to me the bible is indeed a book like others. And yes, at the same time I do accept that it isn't just a book for others at the same time.
I do have faith, but then in some people, but that has nothing to do with the bible.

 

[Rendelius]

The bible recounts a couple of historical facts. Archeology proves them. This is something I can agree on. And then my agreement stops, because conclusions are drawn that are simply not valid.

Example: The bible reports about an immense flooding. Science is able to prove at least two instances after the last ice age where these floodings happened: The Black Sea (which wasn't an ocean until after the ice age, when the sea level of the mediterranean sea rose), and the canal of Dover.

Now, the big flooding is reported in other and older texts as well. Here sciences proves these facts for the other texts as well.

BTW, a lot of things found in the bible can be tracked back to older texts, mainly those of the Sumerians. The story of Moses is actually an old tale from the region of today's Irak. It was recorded way earlier there than in the bible.

Now: creation vs. evolution. Evolution doesn't mean that there was no creation. If you accept the findings of evolutionists, you just simply cannot believe that God created the world in the way the bible describes that. At least not word by word. You still can believe that God created the universe and thus everything in it. You can still believe that God created everything. You can still believe in God, and you can still believe that the bible is inspired by God. You just have to stop to believe that the Bible describes creation like a textbook about chemistry describes chemistry.

Religion isn't science. Science isn't religion. When religion demands to be treated as science (but refuses to accept scientific practices), I don't like that - and I don't like it when science refuses to be questioned, which, of course, doesn't happen too often

 

[dteowner]

I get a bit worried when the stock response to questioning is, "Oh, you're reading it wrong." How does one decide the "right way"? Who's the guy that knows the right way? Jimmy Swaggart? Osama? Perhaps Corwin and Bart? It's all so arbitrary and seems to lend credence to my theory that (100% real, 100% fiction, or somewhere in between) it's all designed to give a select group of people power over the masses.