Its weird, when I was growing up in a very conservative home, went to a Christian school and I used to feel like I was suffocating all the time. I am not a very religious person because I don’t really see the point. Who can prove one god exists and one doesn’t? My life goes pretty smoothly and I have great family and friends and I play college sport; so it seems as though my life as a purpose right? I feel as though when I truly look at life as a whole I don’t understand how God (whoever that may be) can not be obvious, and so people just live there lives as though it doesn’t even matter that he is there. All I know is a Christian God and I have so many doubts I wouldn’t even consider myself a Christian. And so, according to what ive grown up with, am I damned? I used to think of these things on my own and was deeply depressed then I started to think less of it and ever since then I have been a lot happier. I don’t think that this is a healthy thing to do, because sometime in my life I will have to deal with reality instead of staying in my own little world. I also love hearing stories about how people think of things like me so if yall want to comment and tell me your thoughts that would be great!
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I don’t think you’re damned. I think, if anything, you have a tendency to want to know the truth about stuff, whatever it may be. That’s a guess, though, which comes from you saying this: “I feel as though when I truly look at life as a whole I don’t understand how God (whoever that may be) can not be obvious, and so people just live there lives as though it doesn’t even matter that he is there. All I know is a Christian God and I have so many doubts I wouldn’t even consider myself a Christian.”
At first, that sounds a little contradictory – like saying, “The light switch is turned on. It’s also turned off.” But life itself, and those kind of thoughts, are not black and white, on or off, binary, etc..
But to be safe, can you elaborate on what you mean by that quoted block of text? What kind of doubts do you have which make you want to refrain from identifying as Christian?
The doubts, like everyone has, is the typical “How can God be a loving God and send people to hell?” I am just happy to be alive but when critically thinking about the meaning of life, I come to the conclusion that I don’t know what is going to happen in the next life. And this causes me to doubt my future (when I die what will happen), which then causes me to doubt the present, and now that I am doubting the things I should take for granted in this life. So now that I am doubting the things that are right in front of me am I suppressing God himself? Am I suppressing the God that gave me life ( a pretty damn good one looking at other people.) I grew up with Christian kids and am I missing something that they picked up on? What would be nice is a solid foundation, but I cannot bring myself to start somewhere, so I am living my life aimlessly. Since the Bible has been around so long is there truth in it? Maybe I should force myself to accept that because its the only thing that will give life meaning.
Youre correct. Absolutely no one knows the truth. No one. Until jesus floats down from heaven and proves his existance I know I wont be believing in him. But thats the thing, everyone would like to believe that candy land is next for us but you just cant know. Your best bet is just to be accepting of everything and everyone. The definitive purpose of religion is to make you feel safe and secure, thats why its so attractive. Id rather live in the reality of what we know rather then living a lie.
Would you say that there is a truth though?
@Nick King: You have a human mind; humans have this ability to think about things and to test their conclusions and presuppositions with the scalpel of reason – and as they do, it seems apparent that it’s a natural ability. Could you stop yourself from questioning things that way? If not, how could it be a bad thing unless your conclusions are wrong or distorted?
gabriel said… “Id rather live in the reality of what we know rather then living a lie.” I like that – but I’d add that it’s impossible to live completely in a reality built around what we know, since what we know may or may not be right, and thus may or may not be reality. Reality is usually outside anything anyone thinks or believes they know. There’s always room for doubt, even in, ‘what we know,” and so there will always be a mysterious aspect of reality itself. That ain’t bad to admit. It’s just not arrogant enough for certainty.
No, there isnt a definitive truth.
Mathematical principles are rather definitive, supposing they’re rooted in observable medium. Truth is just thoughts/ideas that are approximate to the things they describe.
It is interesting, have you seen the documentary about the mathamatical equations and patterns weve found in nature? Its pretty amazing. Its still not an answer to any questions we have though. At the same time, our species is very young and while brilliant in comparison to cave men I dont think weve discovered 1% of the universe. This conversation would be a lot better if we were all sitting around with a bong though.. Lol.
Most people seem to get caught up in/with, and/or feel most comfortable operating via metaheuristics, when often hyper-heuristics would be more appropriate.
There is definitely an actual truth, it’s just that too many people have adopted the “there is no truth” position, in order to protect their favored paradigms from the consequences of their incompatibility with said truth. Saying “there is no truth,” is a tactic used to undermine the credibility of criticisms levied against one’s own potentially fallacious thought paradigm.
As long as you deny existence of “the truth,” you don’t have to feel accountable for your own potentially significant misinterpretations, or susceptible to the realization that one’s own senses are not reliable, and hence, not to be trusted, which would then produce insecurity with one’s own subjective experiences (aka “phaneron”), thereby creating a real need to exhaustively reassess, reevaluate, and likely significantly and/or extensively reconfigure one’s own perspective and interpretation of both themselves, AND reality (e.g. unlearn and relearn everything).
…and since “ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat!”
The “there is no truth” meme was born. And it appealed to many people, who would then go on using it as if valid justification for their “i don’t wanna know i’m wrong” methodology toward achieving and maintaining a useful and sustainable mindset, in order to most efficaciously navigate “life.”
Focus on what matters; ignore everything else.
The individual subjective experience sometimes matters more than the truth… so we learn to pretend the truth “doesn’t exist,” or is at least favorably different than it actually is.
Also! if you say “there is no truth,” then by definition, that cannot be true. “There is no truth” cannot be true, unless “A Truth” actually exists, which the statement itself contradicts.
Question Everything.
^ Why?
I want to believe…
Question everything, because if you don’t, you won’t get any cake. 😉
But…but…the cake is a lie!!?
Well what i mean is, no one knows anything about what happens when you die. Period. Thats what im referring to when i say theres no definitive truth. Sure you can some of the things that we perceive truths but im not getting your point. What truth do you know clevername?
Sure there are some things we perceive as truths*
Nobody knows anything about what happens before you’re born, either, much less why the universe exists, why it’s expanding, what and where all this shit was before the big bang, what the big bang looked like, or whether unicorns were somehow responsible for it. Like, maybe a cosmic unicorn was prancing in a mystical meadow somewhere and suddenly had to fart and….. *poof* thus the universe was begun…
truth exists regardless of interpretation.
I’d reckon that the actual truth is as often the problem, as is the (mis)interpretation thereof.
Some people do the right thing due to misinterpreting the truth. Some people do the wrong thing due to most accurately interpreting the truth.
But the mystery of those imponderables is one of the cornerstones of religious sentiment, in it’s most pure form. It’s an attempt to explain the awe and wonder of it all – then, of course, it gets hijacked by douchebag politicians who want to derail that wonder and awe, and funnel it into a kind of cynical and blind obedience to authority because, well, they’re politicians and that’s what they do.
Lorax, im disputing none of that. So i dont know what your going on about.
Theres a truth in regard to what happens when we die, before were born, why the universe is expanding, ect. We have no fucking clue what those truths are though and I doubt our feeble minds will be able to fathom many of them. I still dont understand your point clevername, that truth exists? Whos disputing that? I think you may have interpretted what I meant wrong.
we didn’t exist before we existed. We will not exist after we stop existing.
Being alive is what allows you to experience consciousness, and to be aware of your own existence. Once no longer alive, there is no longer a functional organic machine persisting to produce your consciousness, and it will never regain living-human status.
Nothing happened “to us” before we were born, because we did not yet exist. Nothing happens “after” we die, because what makes us “us,” no longer exists in a functional state, and rapidly decomposes, until it eventually only minimally exists in any state at all, of which we are not conscious, since that material stopped functionally producing our consciousness.
If you want to invent “souls,” and then claim those existed prior to our being born, and extend indefinitely into some imponderable future…
Then i think it is actually You, who is misinterpreting things… perhaps intentionally so.
technicality: change “born” to “conceived.” We do not exist prior to conception, but we do exist prior to birth.
Topics like this are touchy. Every time I think about it, I cannot see the afterlife. I cannot see what nothingness could be.
Whos to say conciousness is produced in the brain? You act like we have our brains figured out, we understand a very miniscule part of it. Im not religious nor superstitious, but to think definitively say that we cease to exist in every way when we die is ludacrous. You dont know, none of us do. I can tell youre one of those people who need a predetermined pattern of behavior and thinking all the time.
But to definitively say*
“…but to think definitively say that we cease to exist in every way when we die is ludicrous.”
No, actually, it isn’t. In fact, in lieu of any indication to the contrary, it is MOST reasonable AND justifiable, to “assume” (tentatively), that we do indeed have a beginning and an end, just like every other creature we are able to observe.
What’s “ludicrous” is to invent fantastical paradigms of of “afterlives,” and then “beforelives,” in the utter absence of any legitimately interpreted indication of any such thing, and then act appalled when anyone suggests “maybe we just die, and nothing else happens… since that’s exactly how it seems, if we observe death as closely as possible.”
@Nick King
“How can God be a loving God and send people to hell?†That is a question every Christian should ask himself. If God, about whom the Bible says that “He is love” , was to send people in an afterlife of eternal torment, wouldn’t his standard of love be much lower than that of humans? I will assume that you have heard about the teaching of a fiery hell from a priest or a pastor. But, Nick, have you ever thought to yourself: where does he have that teaching from? Have you ever checked if the Bible really talks about a place of eternal torment? Because “even if an angel out of heaven were to declare to you as good news something beyond the good news we declared to you, let him be accursed.”
No, actually not “in fact” thats an opinion bud. You still dont know, you dont. In your opinion it might be the most reasonable, but thats your digested view of reality. I agree its not likely that its candy land, but i cant say for sure. And neither can you. Thats where this conversation ends unless you have evidence. As for what you said about everything seems to have a beginning and a end, thats true too man but I also wasnt disputing that. Another thing, NO ONE acted appalled when you said maybe we just die and end. (Not that you even stated it like that, you stated it like it was fact) And that may be, but still no evidence. Theres no evidence that we have a soul either but you cant label it a fallacy until you have something that proves different.
nope, wrong again. The facts are the facts, and there are many ways we can reliably interpret what we can observe.
That part is all good.
The bad part is when people get this idea that subjective interpretation means all knowledge is inherently impossible, and therefore we should just make shit up and pretend a god exists, and then get upset when anyone says “reality doesn’t show that to be the case.”
“Thats where this conversation ends unless you have evidence.”
LOL!
No… the conversation cannot even BEGIN, until you provide any evidence to justify your premise. I always wait for this conversation to begin, but it stalled thousands of years ago, and people keep acting like they’ve somehow gained the upper hand, when in fact, they’re just making themselves look ridiculous.
And yes, i can “label it a fallacy,” if people go around insisting things that are not even based on reality at all, and are asserted as “true,” despite having *absolutely zero* evidence with which to substantiate their clearly fictitious claims.
Only fools believe in any afterlife or “god.” If you want to feel insulted or offended by that, go ahead. That’s not my intention, but there is no way to speak truth without offending those who dislike it. The truth is more important than your feelings, in this case. Sometimes it’s the other way around (such as when one’s feelings are more important than the truth).
@Yeshua: The bible really does mention a fiery Hell quite frequently. One would have to be illiterate to miss, or misunderstand what it says on the topic. I mean, either that, or one could listen to a half-rate supposed Greek scholar talk about how “aion” means, “a temporary period of time,” in koine Greek, but I ain’t buyin’ dat shit.
Enough with the word paradigm. Arghhhh!!! 🙂
As far as I’m concerned, if I go around saying to people “Unicorns exist” or “The Loch Ness Monster exists” or “I stole a pot of gold from a leprechaun”, then the burden of proof is on me and not on the people who don’t believe me.
In the same way, those who say “God exists” or “There is an afterlife”, the burden of proof is on you. Not us who don’t believe you.
I really did steal a leprechaun’s pot of gold, but there’s no damn way I’m showing anyone but a precious metals appraiser because, I mean, that’s fucking gold, man. People got some snatchy grabbers and won’t nobody be stealing me lucky charms, arr.
lmao. Thanks lorax for making me properly laugh out loud 🙂
Its very difficult to take anything you say seriously when you say “facts are facts” when theres no facts! Please let me in on the break through youve made! Im sure all the scientists would love to hear it too. And interpret what? Death? Can you see what happens after?
“The bad part is when people get this idea that subjective interpretation means all knowledge is inherently impossible” again, not disputing that. But it doesnt mean its fact. I agreed with you that its probably not candy land, but youre not reading what im writing.
“No… the conversation cannot even BEGIN, until you provide any evidence to justify your premise.” I have no premise, again if youre reading youd know that where I stand is a place of not knowing. Because I dont *know*, and neither do you. Youre the one that needs evidence to justify what youre stating as fact.
“And yes, i can “label it a fallacy,†if people go around insisting things that are not even based on reality at all, and are asserted as “true,†despite having *absolutely zero* evidence with which to substantiate their clearly fictitious claims.” I agree with you on those religious nuts, but youre doing the same shit in a way.
“Only fools believe in any afterlife or “god.†If you want to feel insulted or offended by that, go ahead.” Again, you know where I stand. Im not a believer.
I have no problem with you giving your opinion, its just not a fact. And if you believe it to be you dont know the definition of the word fact or youre just not a rational human being.
I don’t know the right words to properly articulate it, but there is a very commonly used tactic, almost exclusively deployed by claimants in lieu of substantiating evidence, in which they attempt to shift the burden of proof away from themselves, or even attempt to justify disregarding the need for any proof or evidence, or even an observable indication. It’s stupid and infuriating, because their basically using circular un-reasoning, to illegitimately justify themselves as except from the need for evidence, while framing the issue as if negative proof would be required, in order to justify any counter to their claims, thereby deploying a “catch-all,” in which all opposition is automatically invalidated by the claimant’s denial of the responsibility to provide evidence to support a claim; especially when that claim IS NOT evidenced, BECAUSE it CAN’T be evidenced, because it is “almost certainly” not true. Were such a thing true, there WOULD be some sort of observable indication which could be corroborated by multiple witnesses, and then presented as “evidence” to support their own claims. But they act like their own faith is an adequate substitute for sheer lack of evidence, across their entire belief-group, and all other groups based on similar beliefs. And it isn’t. Wishing it’s true as hard as you can, isn’t going to support your argument that it is and was already true. If it were true, no one would need to wish or “try” to believe, and “faith” would be entirely unnecessary.
*they’re, *exempt… etc.
And dude… why in the hell do you keep insisting that because i can’t see what doesn’t exist, that somehow means i can’t know anything?
Are you insane?
Of course “no one can see what comes after.” THERE IS NO “AFTER!”
Are you claiming there is an “after?” If so, i would like you to first qualify your apparently fallacious premise, by offering any evidence to support that any part of our consciousness remains intact and aware, beyond the moment when our bodies are no longer able to produce it. (and yes, it DOES come from the body/brain… all evidence indicates this, none contradicts it; the only contradictory CLAIMS, are those of absurdists and religious fanatics)
Also: Paradigm.
You cannot prove that something which you assert does not exist, does not exist, because it does not exist within the spectrum of your perception, or your ability to extrapolate its non-existence. Therefore, saying it does not exist, is really saying, “I’ve never seen any evidence that it exists.” Which is not the same as conclusive proof of its non-existence, because that concept makes no sense, logically. Statistically, it’s the most probable explanation, and for all intents and purposes has the greatest legitimacy, but certainty itself is nonsensical in 90% of cases – outside mathematics.
@lorax ” The bible really does mention a fiery Hell quite frequently.” The Bible does talk about a place of eternal destruction, the fiery Gehenna (the Valley of Hinnom). That was an actual place outside of Jerusalem where Jews burned garbage and criminals that were not deemed worthy of a memorial tomb, worthy of a resurrection. But that is different from the Hades or Sheol (in Hebrew), the common grave of the dead.
“For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all, nor do they have any more reward, because all memory of them is forgotten. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might, for there is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave, where you are going.” says Ecclesiastes 9:5,10. The Grave, or Sheol, is translated Hell in various places in the King James version.
If you don’t believe me on all this, check the Wikipedia on the fiery Gehenna.
@Yeshua: The bible has a structure built around visceral type-references – like in the sense that Jesus is a type of David, so Hell is a type of Gehenna (also applicable from a Judaic point of reference, but I’m from a Judeo-Christian background and understand that theology a lot better than I understand Judaism). I mean this in the most literary way possible – the language itself is rooted in metaphor, but the metaphors are not ambiguous in nature.
So… Yeshua just posted a part of the bible which apparently says “there is no afterlife.”
Interesting.
@clevername
“Are you claiming there is an “after?†If so, i would like you to first qualify your apparently fallacious premise, by offering any evidence to support that any part of our consciousness remains intact and aware, beyond the moment when our bodies are no longer able to produce it. (and yes, it DOES come from the body/brain… all evidence indicates this, none contradicts it; the only contradictory CLAIMS, are those of absurdists and religious fanatics)”
You are perfectly right. That is even what the Bible says. The Church introduced the teaching of an afterlife.
@clevrename: I actually like that way of looking at it, to be frank with you, but I can’t honestly say the Bible makes that case consistently. Either the Bible is a fragmented bunch of books written by many different authors, over the span of many generations, or it’s an inspired holy book with some overlaying message one might understand by reconciling the seemingly inconsistent statements that each book makes. Who can say? 😛
so… the bible says there is no afterlife… but the church says there is?
Isn’t that a bit suspicious?
How do people reconcile that profound inconsistency?
And here are others parts:
(God’s own words): “In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For DUST YOU ARE and to dust you will return.†Genesis 3:19
“For there is an outcome for humans and an outcome for animals; they all have the same outcome. As the one dies, so the other dies; and they all have but one spirit. So man has no superiority over animals, for everything is futile. All are going to the same place. They all come from the dust, and they all are returning to the dust.” Ecclesiastes 3:19,20
Do you see what the Bible says? Humans are only dust, are only matter. The consciousness, the mind is body-based, matter-based. Just as science has also proved.
John 3:11 Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?
Types are intrinsic.
@clevername
They don’t. Most people follow blindly what the church says, as you may have seen. They don’t do any kind of research.
But the thing is that this apostasy, these false teachings in christianity have been predicted in the Bible many times.
“I know that after my going away oppressive wolves will enter in among you and will not treat the flock with tenderness, and from among you yourselves men will rise and speak twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves.” Acts 20:29,30.
Interesting, isn’t it?
@lorax What do you mean with by those verses?
Burdan of proof? Okay man, I really cant continue this if you refuse to read my points. What am I trying to fucking prove dude? Im not stating any facts at all. The burdan of proof has NEVER shifted from you. YOURE the one stating facts, not me. I might as well be claiming the existance of Allah and your argument would remain the same. “And dude… why in the hell do you keep insisting that because i can’t see what doesn’t exist, that somehow means i can’t know anything?” It means that you cant know that nothing exists after! You cant see it! Thats the point! You dont know! Fuck. “Are you claiming there is an “after?†Alright. Youre just not reading what im saying. Just looking at the paragraph that has my name above it, and replying. “and yes, it DOES come from the body/brain… all evidence indicates this, none contradicts it; the only contradictory CLAIMS, are those of absurdists and religious fanatics)” wrong. Consiousness arises as an emergent property of the human mind. But the most basic of questions about it are not answered. Such as timing, where it resides, dynamics of neural events, ect. Lorax, youre right. At least as far as we know theres no way of knowing. Which is precisely why you cant say for sure, which also is my point.
@Yeshua: Typology is intrinsic between the “old testament,” books and the, “new testament,” books – although it’s really debatable whether the two categories are meant to be separated. The point isn’t lost regardless of that issue, though – the earthly (limited, human, etc..) perspective within books like Ecclesiastes is a shadow – a type – to reference some higher-order thing, if you want to understand it systematically. The same can be said about the Psalms and Proverbs and any of the stories that have apparent symbolic significance. Any other way of reading it creates inconsistencies that only grow larger the further in the book you proceed.
@gabriel: I don’t want to ruffle any feathers for you or clevername, but I think you’re both arguing past each other for some reason – in reality, I doubt either of you disagree on much of any significance. I can’t be totally sure, but such is life.
So instead, maybe we should all get stoned or drunk and then listen to some Bob Marley while munching on doritos. I’d do that but I ain’t got nothin’ to smoke or drink, dammit. I can still groove out to Marley, though.
@Lorax, ive got some tree! We can have a smoke out sure! Aha
For sure*
@lorax
Interesting!… It seems like you know a lot about this subject.
It’s true, the Bible is a whole, the pre-christian or Hebrew scriptures not being in any way “old” or outdated when compared to the Greek scriptures.
Many people in the Hebrew scriptures and things they went through have prefigured Christ and what he went through. But they weren’t only imaginary figures in stories. Jesus and the others that have written the Greek scriptures repeatedly quoted them and talked about them as real, flesh and blood persons.
If you mean that the nothingness that comes after death spoken about in the Hebrew scriptures has been replaced by a “higher-order”, well, that has been reconfirmed by Jesus. What did he say when Lazarus was dead for a few days already? Did he say that Lazarus was in heaven or anywhere else? No, Jesus said: “Laz′a·rus our friend has fallen asleep, but I am traveling there to awaken him.†Jesus said about his state that it was like a sleep, a state of unconsciousness.
And if you come to think about it, what would be the point of the future resurrection that Jesus spoke about if dead people were already in a blissful heaven or already condemned to a fiery hell?
@Yeshua: That’s a common misconception that things in the Hebrew canon are somehow replaced by things in the later books – but some theologians actually hold that view. I don’t – I think it’s not either/or, but both at once. The types in the Hebrew books point ahead – they are, for lack of a better word, incomplete, partial, “through a glass darkly,” while they become elucidated from an eternal perspective through the gospels and epistles (speaking in a literary / theological sense). But the problematic thing here is that the whole concept of the resurrection throughout the Bible is hinged on the idea that souls are in waiting for some kind of future judgment – Jesus will separate the righteous sheep from the wicked sheep, which is a figurative statement repeated throughout the bible, and one will go to one place, while the others will go somewhere else. The fiery Hell with brimstone and demons with pitchforks is drawn more from Revelation, and a handful of statements Jesus made in the gospels elucidating what that judgment might mean. Also, the demons with pitchforks bit was tossed in there as a way to make it more palatable to conquered heathens during the Church’s expansion in the middle ages.
I also believe that the Bible as a whole is a beautiful work of literature, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s divine revelation any more than I think the Homeric epics are divine revelation. I’d need something more tangible than 2000+/- year old testimonials and specious accounts written decades after-the-fact to believe something’s divinely inspired.
To put that spiel I just wrote into more secular terms – the later books developed the concepts and ideas in the earlier books, and expanded upon that foundation. The Bible started in Genesis, traditionally, as a simple story with a simple message and lots of visceral symbolism without much exposition to explain it, and it grew into a hugely complex thing through countless generations and many different authors. It ends in the “eternal,” type of Eden (in Revelation – the Tree of Life and the rivers flowing through the temple and all that) that ties the whole thing together as a systematic whole. “The end was contained in the beginning.â€
@lorax
Yes, you are right. With Christ’s coming some things have changed yet others have stayed the same. Many new things have been revealed in the Greek scriptures.
As for the “nephesh” (“That which breaths”), the word in the Hebrew scriptures rendered as “soul”, this is what Ezekiel said about it: “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” 18:4,20. The soul dies! Meaning that the soul, the nephesh, is the person, the flesh and blood human. At death, humans cease to exist. But the ones that God considers that should live again are kept in his infinite memory: their every memory, feeling, their personality features, everything about them. Until the appointed time.
What is tangible about the Bible? It’s prophecies. Especially the ones that are happening right now. How it was prophecised that starting with 1914 the world will take a radical turn. For the worse. The wars, the famines, the diseases, the natural disasters were all foretold by Jesus a long time. “You are going to hear of wars and reports of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for these things must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be food shortages and earthquakes in one place after another.” Mathew 24:6,7. The scale of the wars in the last century, the hundreds of millions that have died from diseases, famine and disasters.
And just look around on this site and all around you. Do you see any conection with these words: “But know this, that in the last days critical times HARD TO DEAL WITH with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride.” 2 Timothy 3:1-5
All of these things are happening right now and are visible to all people.
You know a lot about the Bible. Did you find out Why? Why do we suffer? What is the point of all this?
People have been claiming the prophecies in the bible have been coming true in their lifetimes since the first preterist proclaimed that Jesus’ return was a spiritual one and not a physical one. That was probably 100 years or so AD. For the next ten millennia, people will say the same thing – because in your lifetime, what’s happening right now just seems much more relevant than stuff that happened in the past, or stuff that might or might not happen in the future. Everyone wants to feel they live in a special point in history. If you think times are bad right now, just imagine living in an age before iodine was invented. Got an infection? Cut your limb off sooner rather than later because if you wait too long, you might not survive. Times are easier now than they ever have been. But war – wars happen no more or less than they ever have. They’re a fact of life today just as they were a thousand years ago. Blasphemers, haughty, headstrong, arrogant, etc.., etc…, people have always existed. All it takes is a little humility to see it.
I can’t answer the last few questions – it’s one of those imponderables about human nature, I think. Everyone is at war with themselves and sometimes, that war spills outside themselves. The easiest and most vague answer is: Because people are primates and life is messy.
There is one thing that every single doomsday prophecy has in common: They’ve all be wrong. Tomorrow always come.
*comes*
I was refering to the magnitude of all these disasters. There have never been world wars before 1914. The Influenza that followed the war killed 50-100 million people, 5 to 10 times more than WWI, in one year as much as the plague did in 100 years. The panidemics of HIV, cancer, tuberculosis, swine flu and many other diseases. Scientists get close to finding a cure for a disease, and then a stronger strain or form appears. And let’s see how much there is till a world crisis because of antibiotics-resistant bacteria.
As for morality, ask anyone that has lived in the 1940s or 50s if people were this cold, cruel, if there was all this garbage in the media as there is now, all the debauchery.
Things are very bad, and the prospects for the whole world society are very bleak. Things are only getting worse. They are bound to get worse.
This really does show that these are the last days of Satan’s system, of his rulership over the Earth.
I meant did you understand the Bible’s theme? Did you find out what it says about why did God let the whole world in Satan’s hands? Because that’s what the Bible says! “The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one”. 1 John 5:19.
@Cosmic Blip
Yes, but what was the credibility of those prophecies’ sources?
Who is this Satan you’re talking about? I’ve always been confused about who this oft-maligned character is – he only makes rare and very brief appearances in the Bible, and it seems like this whole mythology has been built around him without any real basis to speak of. Was he God’s buddy, or God’s enemy? Was he sent to tempt people, or to test them?
But again – we have iodine available at every corner pharmacy. It’s unbelievable the amount of medicines we have today that didn’t exist even 50 years ago. Preventable diseases are almost absurdly rare, historically speaking. It’s always been the fallback of every generation of prophecy-seekers to harp at the ambiguity within historical events and trends, but ambiguity is the problem. The prophecies in the Bible are non-specific and anyone, in any culture, at any point in history can see their time and place spelled out within them.
“The prophecies in the Bible are non-specific and anyone, in any culture, at any point in history can see their time and place spelled out within them.”
Yup, exactly. That is the basis of every “prophesy”. Be very vague and open to interpretation. As for the whole world war thing, the only reason war was never waged at that level before is because we didn’t have the ability and we weren’t as well connected. Not because the world is going to hell or people are getting more evil.
Who is Satan? Revelation 12:9 has the answer. After talking about the war in heaven and it’s outcome in verses 7 and 8, Revelation talks about what happens to the ones that have lost that war. “So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him.”
Do you remember the serpent in Genesis chapter 3? He is the angel that used the snake like a ventriloquist to deceive Eve. His names describe him best: Satan means Adversary or Resister and Devil means Slanderer. He accused God of being a liar and of hiding something good from Adam and Eve. “You certainly will not die. For God knows that in the very day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and bad.†What did he assert here? That God was lying about the fact they will die if they eat from the tree. “In the very day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and bad.” He asserted that if they ate from the tree they would come to know what is good and what is bad and be like God. That they wouldn’t NEED God anymore. And they could be their own gods, and choose themselves what is good and bad. Eve believed him and ate, and she also made her husband eat. At that point God could have simply wiped out both the humans and the rebel angel. But his accusation was a universal controversy. The other countless angels have seen all this and could have also asked themselves: “What if he’s right? God has the power to rule over us, but does he have the right to? Does he really know what’s best for us?”
So what did God do? He knew that this issue needed to be settled for peace to ensue in his universal family. So He banished the humans from the garden and He cut off any connection with them. In a way, He said: “You say you don’t need me? Let’s see how good you will be without me!” So for the last 6000 years, He has let humans rule themselves. And we have all seen what a failure that has been. Human rulership has only brought suffering. But God did not abandon humans for good. When He pronounced the death sentence on the rebel, He also spoke of someone, the woman’s offspring, who will reduce to nothing the Devil.
So that is who Satan is. But you may ask yourself who his angels are. The demons are “the sons of the true God that have come to Earth to take wives from the daughters of men”, “the angels who did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place” (Genesis 6:2; Jude 6). They have joined Satan in his rebelion against God so they will share in his punishment as well.
Going back to Revelation, in chapter 12:12 we read: “On this account be glad, you heavens and you who reside in them! Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing that he has a short period of time.†The Devil and his angels, the demons, have been defeated and banished from Heaven, so they focus their rage on the inhabitants of the Earth. They wreck havoc on the Earth “knowing they have a short period of time”.
There are plenty of proofs from the Bible chronology that the war in Heaven and Satan’s throwing down to the vecinity of Earth has taken place in 1914. Are you interested in talking some other time about that subject?
I cannot brain that right now. Maybe will reply tomorrow. 😛
@lorax
I’ve been awake for about 24 hours now. I need to go get some sleep. If you want to talk some more another time, reply on the thread. I’m going to bed now. Take care!
It can’t be brained, lorax. Using bible verses as evidence of satan is like using a Batman comic as evidence of the Joker.
P.S. @bullfrog
IF the other things the Bible talks about are real, then what it says here may be just as real! But that’s for another time! 🙂 Bye!
“The bible mentions a horse and we know that horses exist, therefore, everything in the entire bible is obviously factual.”
Is that really the argument you just put forward?
“Using bible verses as evidence of satan”
Well, you misunderstand him on purpose or you’re just to dumb to understand what he wrote. OBVIOUSLY an theist can’t proof the existence of Satan to an atheist by using the bible, and that’s not what he did.
The only thing he said is that IF you believe in the bible you also believe in Satan.
But apparently you don’t know about simple logical implications.
Also let me just predict what you are gonna say:
CDL believes in God so he is unable to think logically, so anything he says is definitely invalid, even if it is valid. Also some insults probably, but Ive already heard so many insults Im just curious which one you are going to use.
I saw a horse one time. His name was Mr. Ed and he talked like a human. I think he was related to Balaam’s donkey. That story’s probably one of my favorites in the bible – dude’s donkey was like, “Quit beating me with that stick, you ass!” And Balaam had a couple of back and forth’s with his donkey before he realized that donkeys shouldn’t be able to talk. I love it. Classic ANE humor, right there.
Well, the way I read it, he wrote “Who is Satan?” and then went on to provide an apparently factual description of him from fictional text. Simply because you understand the bible to be a work of fiction doesn’t mean that all theist do and that they all represent it the same way that you do.
And frankly, were I to hurl insults in your direction, it would only be in retaliation. Throw out a few snide attacks and then feign turning the other cheek? How very Christian of you, CDL.
I also note that you’ve already decided what I’m going to say to you before I’ve had the chance to respond. You’re just getting more and more Christian by the minute!
CDL: I have never, and do not mean to come across as trying to offend you or belittle your beliefs. I respect you – you’re well spoken and seem rational.
CDL: I have no trouble at all belittling or offending others that I see utilising those very approaches.
The intention of my prediction was not to actually predict what you say but to make you not use the usual religion-hater phrases which I predicted you would say if I hadn’t made that prediction. And apparently it worked out well.
Also I remember enough posts of you and people like you with endless amounts of insults, so don’t act like you’re insulting in “retaliation”. And I honestly don’t know why I should let someone criticize me who doesn’t act up to the Christian ideal in the slightest manner.
@lorax: Well thanks. You’re very tolerant.
“I won’t tolerate people that aren’t like me…lorax, thanks for being tolerant.”
Hmmm.
And, generally, all I do is call religion unhelpful tribal memetics. I honestly can’t think that you could find that as offensive as I find the propagation of fairytales as some kind of help to someone who should be looking for help in an actually legitimate field.
…so what else can you remember that I’ve posted that was insulting? Or are you using a strawman argument? Trying to see how many logical fallacies we can drop into the one thread, CDL?
I don’t tolerate intolerant people. Btw show me please where I did not tolerate someone because he was not like me. One single example.
“bullfrog 9:26 am on March 13th, 2014
Your hypothetical is a false dichotomy and I raised your theism because only theists claim absolutes in morality. Way to enforce the theist stereotype by employing a logical fallacy while trying to dictate moral absolutism. Arsehat.”
That insulting enough for you?
“I find the propagation of fairytales as some kind of help to someone who should be looking for help in an actually legitimate field”
Im surprised I have to agree with you even though the word “fairytales” is just another insult. If the author of a thread is asking for help and if he isn’t religious one should not answer religiously. I don’t do that anyways.
Also show me a single logical fallacy I used in this thread.
The word “arsehat,” perhaps, the rest of that quote isn’t at all insulting so far as I read it. If anybody is insulted by logic then they need to take a good, hard look at their own thought-processes.
I don’t think that religion should be offered as a any kind of avenue for any kind of help whether a poster expresses that they’re religious or not. There’s simply no significant empirical evidence that believing in fairytales (yep, used that word again) can help so to offer them as an option for consideration is immoral. People should be pointed towards legitimate help in all instances, and reserving your perpetuation of the unhelpful meme, regardless of what prompts the discussion, is and can be detrimental. You wouldn’t recommend snake oil to someone who mentions that they believe in the product’s efficacy, would you?
And I wasn’t saying that all of the logical fallacies in this thread were yours. But you did use a strawman argument. Just sayin’.
Oh, and the tolerance thing was a paraphrasing of this: “I honestly don’t know why I should let someone criticize me who doesn’t act up to the Christian ideal in the slightest manner.”
So just because I don’t hold the same values of me, you won’t tolerate my views? Again, very Christian of you, mate. Wouldn’t expect less.
And sorry, over-tired and typing quickly so am making errors.
Yes I was specifically talking about the word “arsehat”.
“So just because I don’t hold the same values of me, you won’t tolerate my views? ”
I was not talking about the fact that you dont believe the same things I believe in. I was talking about the fact that you criticize me for something (which I admit I shouldn’t have said) when you do exactly what you criticize me for and don’t even realize that it is wrong. That’s a clear case of double standards. I used the term “Christian ideal” as in “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” etc and not the ideal of believing in God.
“You wouldn’t recommend snake oil to someone who mentions that they believe in the product’s efficacy, would you?”
Why not if it helps? Placebo is very effective. Even if everything you’re saying is right and I am stupid to be a theist, why do you think you have a disadvantage because some people believe in something stupid? If their beliefs make them be good and selfless people, why would you care about their beliefs?
Yeah, ‘arsehat’ was used there more as punctuation than anything else.
I’d draw your attention to the fact that social ethics and treating others as you’d want to be treated yourself evidently HAS to pre-date your religion, so to label that as a Christian construct betrays your ignorance to human social evolution, but I rather think that you made that turn-about at the last minute simply because I called you on it.
You also seem to have me confused with someone who gives a flying toss what you believe in. Protip: I don’t. Believe whatever you want and sing whatever songs you’d like to whatever almighty sky fairy floats your boat. It only bothers me when your (or anybody’s) belief is used to the detriment of others (like, for example, posting religious dogma on a site dedicated to people that clearly are in psychological, emotional anguish with the suggestion that it would be beneficial for them…) which I think we’ve both already agreed isn’t acceptable anyway.
tl;dr, I think we’re just starting to split hairs here but that we’re more-or-less in agreement on the larger issues.
your all arsehats in the morning 😮
*you’re
You’re welcome 🙂
The whole beef with the comment to which I replied, “Cannot brain,” was mostly because of how specific the statement was. “There are plenty of proofs from the Bible chronology that the war in Heaven and Satan’s throwing down to the vecinity of Earth has taken place in 1914.”
Ah, c’est de l’hébreu.
See, pre-1914, Watchtower proclaimed that the year 1914 would be the end of days – not the beginning of some transitioning period in some vague periphery to the end of days, but not quite there yet and they’ll let us know when the apocalypse is here. Of course, post-1914, Watchtower proclaimed that they never made any such pre-1914 claims because that would be silly since we’re, you know, not dead and stuff. It’s all Orwellian, if you ask me. “Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”
Hello! Do you have time to talk about the bible? No? Ok. Just go to jw.org, there’s all information you will need. Good bye!
Why would I go to that site when I can just read some of the literature I have on my bookshelf?
Well, a bible isn’t enough, you will also have to know which numbers to add up to get the next apocalypse’s date.
Whenever someone tells me to add up dates to find out when the next apocalypse will happen, I just remind them of the Christian Scientist doctrine of the nothingness of matter – like, stuff doesn’t exist, man. It’s like, totally an illusion or something.
Heresy! Witchcraft! You will burn on the stake!
@lorax
Hey again. I see you continued the discussion without me. 🙂 I guess I said it wrong. There is proof in the Bible that the year 1914 was very important. The Bible Students preached for about 30 before that year that it would mean the enthroning of Christ as the King of God’s Heavenly Kingdom, “the end of the appointed times of nations” and turmoil in the world (Luke 21:24). How did they figure out that year? By adding up 2520 years (7 times of 360 years each or twice 3 and a half times of 1260 years – Daniel 4:10-16; Revelation 12:6,14) from the destruction of Jerusalem in 607 BC and the cutting off of the line of human kings that “sat on Jehovah’s throne” until “the one that has the legal right to the crown comes, and it will be given to him”.(1 Chronicles 29:23; Ezekiel 21:26,27)
Yes, they understood that Jesus’ enthroning would take place in 1914, but they didn’t yet understand that it wouldn’t mean the end of the Satan’s system. Eventually they understood “that it does not belong to them to know the times or seasons that the Father has placed in his own jurisdiction” and that we can not know the exact time of this system’s end. So they don’t make any more predictions cause that would be useless.
You may say “why do they change their mind about these things?” In Daniel 12:4 after telling him about certain things that will happen, an angel told Daniel: “As for you, Daniel, keep the words secret, and seal up the book until the time of the end. Many will rove about, and the true knowledge will become abundant.†I wanna ask you this, lorax. When somebody starts to study a certain subject, say the scientists that studied chemistry and substances, did they have full knowledge very soon after they started?
*for about 30 years
I put no real stock in numerology, verse numbers, chapter numbers, the arbitrary addition of disparate years, months, weeks, days, hours, or word counts, considering all of those things are artificial constructs that do not exist in the original codices of scripture. But to be totally blunt here, I think all of the eisogesis, and even a lot of the exegesis that theologians of any given branch of the faith practice, amounts to a bunch of superstitious nonsense that detracts from a meaningful understanding of scripture, as it actually is. When you start overlaying the text with extraneous thoughts, ideas and systems, you muddy the waters and make true understanding much more difficult. Simple relationships between ideas in scripture are fine and dandy since they help to reveal underlying meaning, but once things start going all pie-in-the-skies, i start rolling my weary eyes.
@bullfrog
I meant if the figures and happenings in the Bible are historically accurate, if the predictions it made about the future proved/will prove to be true and if the explanations to certain questions that it gives MAKE SENSE, doesn’t it seem reasonable that the Bible is trustworthy?
@lorax
There is no numerology here. It’s like telling in a puzzle that something important is going to happen after a number of years in the future. I just gave you the books and where to find the pieces. In Luke Jesus talks about the Jerusalem being trampled till the end of the appointed times of the nations. Jerusalem was capital of Israel and the line of kings that ruled there were said to stay on God’s throne, being his representatives Him. To the last king, Ezekiel told to take off the crown because nobody would rule over Israel until Mesiah or Christ (both meaning the Anointed one) would come. In Daniel, there it talks about the vision of a huge tree being cut off and banded with iron for seven times for no sprout to come up. In the Bible trees sometimes represent rulerships (See Ezekiel 31:2-4). So the huge tree being cut off represented the line of kings in Jerusalem that represented God not rullling anymore for seven times till the “sprout”, ‘The Anointed One” would start ruling again. How long are the seven times? Revelation talks about 3 and a half times as being 1260 days long. Double that is 2520 days. As days sometimes represent years in the Bible, by adding 2520 years to the fall of Jerusalem in 607 BC you get 1914! Simple, isn’t it? 🙂
Jesus dun prefixed his prophetic forecasting with warnings that nobody may be knowin’ when or betwixt what skies or at what time of day or any other such hoobaloo that the son of man was gonna ride down on his chariot of angriness and fire. He did reiterate that point a number of times;
Matt.24:36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.
[insert a bunch of prophetic stuff here]
Matt. 24:44 Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Even assuming I’m arguing from the same theological premise, I’d be dubious about any statement of special knowledge regarding whatever lies between those two verses, granted the redundant redundancy of Jesus’ prefix and postfix.
“…doesn’t it SEEM reasonable that the Bible is trustworthy?”
That’s the whole point: it’s supposed to SEEM reasonable, to any mind which has not learned how to discern and assess its contradictions. This is why asking questions results in counter-accusations of insufficient faith. They want to make people “believe” what they’re saying, not have to answer questions which highlight all the reasons and contradictions which easily destroy its credibility.
All effective lies include “just enough truth” to “seem” believable. That’s how deception works. The less truth you include, the less believable it becomes. So it would be perfect to mix actual and verifiable historical accounts, with total fiction, in order to trick people into believing the fictitious parts, due to manufacturing false credibility through association with factual information.
Damn, I wonder if this comment will also get carted off to the spam folder. Something wonky is going on here, methinks.
Frankly, the most impressive and astounding aspect of any bible from any religion (particularly the christian ones), is how they were able to so effectively employ the exact same types of psychological manipulation tactics that marketers still use, today.
You have to catch people who can buy, when they’re ready to buy, by mixing “hype” with facts… even by playing on their emotions, which works best when they are most vulnerable (which then creates the need for a reliable heuristic built to identify and exploit vulnerable people… which furthermore creates the notion of manipulating huge chunks of the world’s population, in order to ensure a reliably steady production of more vulnerable people who can be exploited throughout their lifetimes, for the benefit of a select few…).
The fact that thousands of years have passed, with such a low percentage of people able to recognize this type of deceptive exploitation, completely astonishes me. That’s part of why i find it so impressively diabolical, and feel so strongly about it (and for the purpose of defeating this type of practice, once and for all!).
@clevername
Can you please name some of the places where you think the Bible contradicts itself?
As for the Church… Haven’t we already seen that it does not teach what the Bible really says, clevername?
You will not find any answers about the Bible in a church, because it teaches things opposite to what the Bible says.
The one contradiction that annoys me more than any other in the Bible.
Drumroll, please!
.
..
…
….
Exodus 34:7
..
VS
..
Ezekiel 18:4.
….
…
..
.
FIGHT!
Most of the contradictions have already been exhaustively cataloged by scholarly types. They are readily and freely available on the web. You can actually google it. But since i’m sure you don’t want to do that, you can go straight to infidels dot org, and find several entries specifically referencing and scrutinizing many of those contradictions and inconsistencies.
That said: i’ll never trust a church. But, what’s more important, is that it is impossible to sufficiently verify the most contentious claims of any bible. We can achieve enough verification for the sake of argument, on certain historical events, but all the IMPORTANT parts are utterly unverifiable. We have no way of verifying the legitimacy of any of the questionable parts, except to compare such unsubstantiated claims with what we are able and have observed.
If i said “only half the bible is actually discernibly true,” i’d be being extremely generous. And that’s still ONLY half, which is just too low of a percentage to justifiably use it as anything more than a book with a few good ideas (which unfortunately also includes a plethora of ludicrously bad ideas).
@lorax
When God made the covenant with Israel, He warned them that if follow other gods, He would let other nations conquer Israel and they would be taken as prisoners in exile. And that happened eventually. Now you answer this question: When Judah was conquered and men, women and children were taken into exile for 70 years, who suffered? Only the initial prisoners?
@clevername
The funny thing is that you gave that link before and I looked it up. I didn’t reply back to you then but I guess I’ll make a post with one of the articles there. Just to talk a little about the acuracy of the statements on that site.
*if they follow other gods
@Yeshua: Both of those verses are talking to a similar theme; punishment being visited upon the guilty (vs. punishment being transferred from a father to a son, regardless of inherent guilt). I remember back in the day, all the mental gymnastics everyone would go through trying to work out exactly how to reconcile those two statements and it never quite sat well with me. I actually attended an apologetics conference in Alabama once that had a speaker who went on for two hours straight about how those two verses were not contradictory because of [insert long, winding, hard to follow explanation here] (I think I mis-referenced the Ezekiel verse, but it’s close enough).
I’m content to say it doesn’t really matter one way or the other, in so far as I’m concerned.
@lorax
Have you even read the verses? Exodus talks about God punishing parents, children and gradnchildren for the parents sins, and Ezekiel says that everyone will pay only for their own sins. God does not keep acountable the children for their parents sins, but the consequences of the parents errors may come upon their children. And they did when the jews were taken into exile and their children and grandchildren suffered because of their parents’ errors.
@lorax
Sorry for the question… 🙁 I didn’t pay too well attention to your comment.
“…about the acuracy of the statements on that site.”
As far as i’m concerned, everyone on that site is far more qualified and credible than anyone operating upon the premise of the bible being legitimate.
If you can’t understand why circular logic (the bible claims to be the word of god; ergo, god exists?) is not valid evidence, then i’d rather not waste my time.
@clevername
If someone comes to you and says he is a certain person”s child and that he’s trustworthy that doesn’t means it’s automatically true. So yes, I do understand that the Bible claiming that it’s God’s word and that God exists isn’t actual evidence for the reality of that claim. There’s the need for a few things more to prove that to be true. But those things, tangible evidence exists to make the Bible trustworthy.
@Yeshua: I do get what you’re saying – that was one of the better arguments against the two verses being contradictory that I’ve heard, I just have a hard time buying it. I could go into why, pull out my Strong’s concordance and dissect the Hebrew text, but I don’t really care enough to go through all that trouble. lol
“But those things, tangible evidence exists to make the Bible trustworthy.”
Prove it.
@lorax
It makes sense though. Because it fits perfectly with God’s principles. It teaches about responsability, shows that your actions may have big consequinces on the ones you love.
“…the consequences of the parents errors may come upon their children.”
Obviously, this can easily be understood through causality, which is completely separate from theistic notions.
Causality exists; “God” is a superfluous meme.
Understanding that actions have consequences, does not require any faith or belief in any god. Actions Having consequences, does not require the existence of any god. Existence itself, does not require a prior or persistent existence of any god.
The word visit – look that up in Strong’s concordance (H6485). And remember, this verb is referencing God who is actively doing something to another noun (in this case, up to the third and fourth generations…). You may veer along the axis and understand it as you’ve suggested, or you may veer the other way and understand it as punishment, appointment of guilt, assignment of blame, etc.
@clevername
Ok, I will make you a small list why the Bible is reliable:
-Hyperdiffusionism: The same symbols are found in most ancient civilizations all around the globe showing that the story about the tower of Babel may be real. Here are some of them:
-The story of a world deluge is present in many ancient mythologies (check out the huge Wikipedia on List of flood myths)
-Ancient structures all in the form of piramids are found all over the globe.
-The eye, a symbol in magic, was present in various civilizations since the Egyptians. And it still is. Anyone ever heard about thy Illuminati? 🙂
-Also, the cross was present in many ancient civilizations.
-The Bible’s wholeness. Even though it was written by over 40 men in about 1610 years, it has a main theme and it does not contradicts itself if you dig into it and you understand it.
-The Bible shows great wisdom in the advices it gives, advices for virtually every situation and person: Husbands to love and take care of their wives and their children, wives to have respect for their husbands, for couples to work out problems instead of breaking up, for people to show consideration for each other, to be careful about who you choose as your friends… As I said advices for any situation, ones that don’t have half-life as in human invented psychology.
-It gives an explanation about how we appeared on this planet. One much better than evolution.
-It explains the reasons why humans are suffering, why people are cruel, the whole world sittuation.
-It reveals what is going to happen in the future with humanity, where we are headed.
-Hystorical accuracy: Many of the persons and events in the Bible are historical facts: Moses, David, various other kings of Israel and Judah.
-The prophecies that can be checked to be true for sure. To name a few:
-How Jesus Christ apeared exactly at the time specified in Daniel 9:24-27: 483 years from when the order to reconstruct Jerusalem was given; and how he died 3 and a half years into his ministry.
-Jesus’ enthroning in 1914 (see one of my previous comments);
-The turn for the worse that the world took in every single way since 1914: morality, scale and brutality of wars, famine, diseases, the Earth being polluted and destroyed by humans. (also see one of my previous comm)
-And now my favorites: How it was foretold by Jesus and apostles Paul and Peter before the organised Church appeared that it would go astray from the Bible’s teachings: “However, there also came to be false prophets among the people, as there will also be false teachers among you. These will quietly bring in destructive sects, and they will even disown the owner who bought them, bringing speedy destruction upon themselves. Furthermore, many will follow their brazen conduct, and because of them the way of the truth will be spoken of abusively.” says 2 Peter 2:1,2. And everyone has heard about the priests, how they act, the Medieval Ages, the Inquisition, the Crusades.
-In the last days of Satan’s system, people having a pretense of piety, saying that they believe in God, that they listen to him but proving by their actions that they don’t . – 2 Timothy 3:5
-And for anyone that doesn’t believe any of the above, this one is going to be the most obvious. The Church and all religions will fall. Because of it’s coruption and the bad influence it had and still has, governments will eventually ban religion. It’s gonna fall and it’s gonna fall fast!
I got duped by a oreaccher he said to ask the holy spirit to remove the rock from my heart it was awful now that I think about it but who knewq it a heart blockage for me he was a dumb ass lol
illuminati? nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no right to free thinking, everything is collectively. what the bible meant of higher power what they use to be collective. humph I thought I was the only scholar yeshua it was nice to meet you, but…. gotta go maybe suicide would be better for me right now I know ive lost my battle now.
Stop right there. Even were the Tower of Babel an entirely factual story, that does NOT prove that the entire bible is factual. We covered this a few hours ago. “The bible mentions a horse, we know horses to exist, therefore the entire bible is fact,” is not an argument that can be used in any logical manner.
You use “historical accuracy” as some kind of evidence of the bible’s accuracy. There are far more examples of historical inaccuracy in the bible than the opposite, so you’re really just using arguments now that both fall over very easily and can be turned around to argue the opposite point.
And then you go on to make very vague links between scripture and life and claim that it means that prophecies have been fulfilled. Pro-tip: if you look hard enough for links and patterns in ANYTHING you will find them.
Also, if you want to maintain some kind of credibility, for flying-spaghetti-monster’s sake, stop talking about 1914. Even most mainstraim Christians find JWs to be batshit, imagine what atheists think of them.
Lastly, “magic…Illuminati…” <— lol'd. Pretty sure you just claimed that you think science is magic.
@lorax
I looked that up. Well, what I meant is this: because of the series of murderous and idolatrous kings that have SINNED AGAINST GOD, He punished that generation when Jerusalem has fallen for their forefathers’ sins, and the generations that were born in the babilonian exile.
Now see that the book of Ezekiel was written during the exile. If you’ll read the whole chapter 18 you’ll find that God asks: ““What does this proverb that you quote in the land of Israel mean, ‘Fathers have eaten sour grapes, but the teeth of the sons are set on edge’? “‘As surely as I am alive,’ declares the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, ‘you will not continue to quote this saying in Israel. Look! All the souls—to me they belong. As the soul of the father so also the soul of the son—to me they belong. The soul who sins is the one who will die.” God promises that this will not happen again, the sons will not pay for their father’s errors again only for their OWN SINS AGAINST GOD. “‘But you will say: “Why does the son not bear guilt because of his father’s error?†Since the son has done what is just and righteous, has kept all my statutes and has observed them, he will surely keep living. The soul who sins is the one who will die. A son will bear no guilt because of the error of his father, and a father will bear no guilt because of the error of his son. The righteousness of the righteous one will be accounted to him alone, and the wickedness of the wicked one will be accounted to him alone.”
This whole thing you can say is a type for what happened to the whole human family. Us, as humans, have been punished to imperfection and we suffer because of Adam’s sin, but we are not held acountable for his sin, only for OUR SINS.
Yes it is punishment by extension from part of God, but it doesn’t mean appoinment of guilt.
@bullfrog
“The bible mentions a horse, we know horses to exist, therefore the entire bible is factâ€
“magic…Illuminati…†<— lol'd. Pretty sure you just claimed that you think science is magic."
If that's what I've being saying till now…. 😀 😀 😀
Geez.
“If religious people could be reasoned with, there would be no religious people”.
the judgment of the white horse one measure of wheat for a penny 3 for barley the sower and the seed, wheat and the tariff no matter what fallen or human we all worth same in God’s eyes. Ezekiel 30 something God’s vision is “the ride” man made raptures there aare really programmed people out there. tv- do you know how and where those concepts are really made? ring ring anybody cleartv lol put it all together it may sound crazy but its the truth. military brat anybody? brb going outside suicide mission to fulfill Praise God this one can’t be stopped!
@nobodysgirl The Illuminati do not exist. I’ve mentioned these Satanic symbols to show that they have been around for thousands of years. The Illuminati are the latest thing the demons are using to terify people. The ones that are controlling the world right now are Satan and the demons, these invisible fallen angels that can control humans’ minds to do what they want. But God will not let this go on for much longer.
i believe that word because it camae form the bible but its so hard to accept when man is doing God’s work making it seem like God and I am locked out of everything dr.s, lawyers, etc reverse polarity is a son of a gun,i will respect you and not cuss because you just gave me a little bit of hope but i aint letting my guard down. they are going to get me anyway. if you only really knew and nobody cares that i had a right to life. 2.
they do still exist i am sorry to correct you i can prove it easily but i will leave that alone i don’t want ot offend you but i can prove it to you without having to do anything but say watch and see
“If religious people could be reasoned with, there would be no religious peopleâ€.
All my this.
@nobodysgirl The fact that many people are corrupt and that politicians, bankers, judges, etc. are playing their own games in the background I guess is pretty obvious to anyone. All I meant is that the picture extends much higher than any human scheme.
oh i really do agree. it is higher than a human scheme. trust me higher im a military brat remember!
what is a military brat?! I give you 2 guesses (definitions)
The Illuminati DOES exist. Just not in the ultra-villainous, cartoon-ish caricature the fear mongers like to portray them.
They certainly don’t hate everyone; indeed, they LOVE everyone, because that’s where their money comes from, and how they maintain their positions of indisputable power.
This “illuminati” operates under many names, across the entire spectrum of establishment and authority, and has a hand in every pot.
Also: “If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people.”
My question is: how, then, should we proceed, when interacting with religious/unreasonable people? Can i avoid them all? Can i avoid having various conditions of my life dictated by delusional and unreasonable people?
How do you effectively communicate with someone who is unreasonable, cannot be reasoned with? Wouldn’t it be a waste of time to even try? Shouldn’t we make this part of our interaction heuristics, and say that “anyone who can be identified as ‘unreasonable’ should not be granted my time?”
What do you say to someone who will never listen?
@nobodysgirl
You’re the child of someone serving in U.S. armed-forces, right?
@clevername: I avoid them like the plague. People who have chosen to be willfully ignorant and dismissive towards any idea which doesn’t fit their invalid, irrational, far fetched fantasy way of thinking aren’t to be taken seriously. I’ll try to be civil, but I won’t waste my time debating someone who’s fundamentally incapable of removing their “filters”. It sucks that I have to share the world with them, but as long as they stay out my way we’ll get along fine.
I understand why most of you think believing in God is stupid, but I don’t understand is why you put so much effort in demonizing religions. Why don’t you talk about rapists, thieves, warmongers, murderers, political parties, the leading class, I don’t care what. Because they actually harm you, unlike most Christians.
@CDL: Every group you just described claims to have God on their side. Many of them happen to be Xians, too.
@clevername
Call them whatever. Human rulership has always been corrupt. People try to get their hands in as many pots as they can.
I listened to what you said. You said to prove it, I gave you my reasons for believing the Bible. To take them into account or to ignore them, is entirely your choice.
And you can be glad cause soon there will be no more religion.
@CosmicBlip
“Every group you just described claims to have God on their side. Many of them happen to be Xians, too.”
Have you even read my comments about how the Bible foretold christians will be like that?
@Yeshua: When you were looking that word up, did you happen to notice the other occurrences of it throughout the Bible? They’re all almost identical to the passage in Exodus except for some subtle differences that reveal a lot about what the word means when it’s used in that form. You have to remember, this is the same God that hardened Pharaoh’s heart so he’d refuse to let the Hebrew people out of captivity, thus allowing for the slaughter of every first born male in the country – which God also did. God doesn’t play fair when there’s an important point being made in a story.
If Christians had their way, this world would be waaay more fucked up than it already is.
Xians are control freaks who want nothing more than to impose their beliefs on everyone else. If you’re opposed to tyranny, mind control, and efforts to control you through fear then you’ll resist Christianity.
@Cosmic Blip:
Through many dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side
@Yeshua: The ingredients on the back of a cereal box are as “divinely inspired” as the bible. More accurate, too.
“Every group you just described claims to have God on their side.”
Lol? First of all there are enough of those people who use other justifications for doing what they do, and secondly only because someone misinterprets the bible doesn’t make all religious people criminals. Same argument bullfrog complained about.
The difference between “rapists, thieves, warmongers, murderers…” and “christians,” is that the former examples aren’t going around trying to normalize their own value systems through politics (which is why i left “political parties” out of that quote), while both directly and indirectly persecuting and yes, Harming, people just like me… and people not like me at all, aside from the part where we agree that there seems to be no god, and no good enough reason to believe there is one.
Another problem is that we’ll never be able to arrive upon a consensus of “what to do,” if half the world is too unreasonable to Reason What To Do.
Also, you don’t see rapists, thieves, warmongers and murderers coming to sites like this, to influence psychologically unstable, desperate, vulnerable people, into joining their “team” (aka “recruiting”), or telling them “just go rape/steal/kill someone, and you’ll feel much better!!”
Sure, it’s not all about “the terrible christians,” but there is good reason they encounter the degree and extent of dissent they do.
And this is the whole point: THERE IS GOOD REASON TO DISAGREE WITH THEIR BELIEF SYSTEM. But they are too unreasonable to understand that (exceptions notwithstanding; some are reasonable, but are too upset by the apparent reality of the situation, and so they cling to those notions and ideals, as a sort of consolation, almost a “grounding” technique, if you will… which seems paradoxical, but seems to help those types).
Lorax: You’re quite the poet. That’s deep – Judas betrayed Jesus, but that was all part of the master plan.
The whole thing is wacky. A big elaborate dramatic pageant – who cares.
You wanna beer?
The only people who “misinterpret” the bible are the people who don’t interpret it the same way you misinterpret it.
T’was my home-boy Bobby Dylan that wrote that. “With God On Our Side”
A beer would be freaking fabulous right about now. Either that or some wine, but I haven’t seen Jesus in a while and all’s I gots is water at the moment. I’d miracle myself up some Scotch ale if I could.
“exceptions notwithstanding; some are reasonable, but are too upset by the apparent reality of the situation, and so they cling to those notions and ideals, as a sort of consolation, almost a “grounding†technique, if you will…”
What a kind description of myself.
@yeshua:
Actually… i said this:
““But those things, tangible evidence exists to make the Bible trustworthy.â€
Prove it.”
You’re supposed to be proving that the bible “is trustworthy,” not “that you believe.”
Prove that the bible should be reasonably, justifiably interpreted as “trustworthy.”
That has absolutely nothing to do with whether you believe what it says, and everything to do with you citing enough evidence to reasonably justify claims of its validity, authenticity, accuracy, legitimacy, and credibility.
If i say “bill gates is the richest woman in the world,” am i credible?
I mean, bill gates does exist, and is incredibly wealthy… but is he a woman? Is he the richest? Is he “the richest woman?” No!
And that’s how the bible’s legitimacy fails. It contains SOME truth, but also quite a lot of stuff that cannot be true, or is unlikely to be true, with absolutely no evidence to support any of the *important* parts. Historical documentation of events (through several language translations), is one thing; extending “we included some history to make the crazy parts seem legit,” is entirely something else.
You know how much flack, grief, scrutiny and ridicule any flawed scientific hypothesis or theory gets, if ANY PART OF IT can be tested and shown to be incorrect?
In scientific terms, the bible *cannot* even achieve “theory” status. Christianity is not even qualified to be called “theoretical.” It FAILS as a theory, because too much of its information is completely untestable, and blatantly contradictory, and even provably either false, or mistaken.
It is… entirely implausible, to raise any bible to the status of a “trusted” source of information, because no one has any way of knowing why who wrote what was written.
We can only look at what was written, but we have no way of knowing who told how much truth, and who mixed in how much lie, or who simply innocently misinterpreted events they observed, due to the widespread ignorance prevalent at the time, or who altered what, to misrepresent something more favorably, in order to benefit from doing so, or how many times that may have happened, or…
Etc.
@lorax
Oh, so that was what you meant. You know, in the Bible, sometimes when it is said that God did a certain thing, actually it refers to the fact God allowed that thing to happen. And one instance is exactly the one with Pharaoh. Exodus 4:21 reads this: “Then Jehovah said to Moses: “After you have returned to Egypt, see that you perform before Phar′aoh all the miracles that I have empowered you to do. But I will allow his heart to become obstinate, and he will not send the people away.” Likewise in Exodus 7:3 God says: “As for me, I will ALLOW Phar′aoh’s heart to become obstinate, and I will multiply my signs and my miracles in the land of Egypt.” (The majuscules are my emphasys). Then what happened in Exodus 8:15? “When Phar′aoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and he refused to listen to them, just as Jehovah had said.” Did you notice these verses before?
Personally, I don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with belief in a higher power – I think that’s a personal judgment and between an individual and the universe/vishnu/cupid/pan/jesus/ipu – the problem that I see within this venue is putting trust in human institutions of religion. People are silly – it’s like Yeshua’s been saying about human governance. It’s exponentially worse when it comes to religion, though. So as it says in Revelation, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.”
The problem, really simply, is that the bible does not have enough preserved and tenable citations of verifiable sources, to ever be acceptably defined as “trustworthy.”
It simply lacks integrity. Had the integrity of the document been maintained and preserved (as one would expect of alleged “holy scripture”), we might have a very different scenario today.
@Yeshua: Have you ever read the great theological disputes between the Calvinists and the Arminians? They hinge on the division between dictionary definitions, much like that word, “visit,” we were talking about. Does God make sinners sin? Was Judas Iscariot part of God’s plan? If so, was he compelled to betray Jesus, like a type of Satan?
These questions are not simple, cut or dry – they are deeply rooted in the language the Bible uses, and there are no easy answers to them.
“the problem that I see within this venue is putting trust in human institutions of religion”
Yes, there is much wrong with the church as an institution. That’s why I think the personal relationship to God is more important than following bishops and cardinals. And I get so angry every time a bishop says or does something stupid and all Christians are judged because of it. Btw I’m not talking about the pope here.
That’s funny. Through selective interpretation, one is able to gauge God’s true motives.
I guess if you’ve already made up your mind about something and conflicting evidence surfaces, you have to reinterpret the conflicting text in a way where it’ll still correspond with your pre-conceived notions. Never doubt your rigidly held convictions, just put a spin on contradictory information until it suits your agenda. Classic religious demagogue technique.
@ClairDeLune: I’m 100% on the same page with you, there. I get annoyed when people assume Richard Dawkins is like a clone of every agnostic/atheist on earth. Makes me want to hurl feral cats at people, honestly.
“…and all Christians are judged because of it.”
Kinda like with being a “gamer,” or a “loser,” or “atheist,” or “stoner.”
I am associated with many persecuted groups… because i AM those things, not because i’m somehow drawn to being persecuted… and certainly not “because god wants me persecuted, and will see to it that any group i associate with, will also be persecuted, for the purpose of ensuring my personal persecution.”
But people get carried away and think like that, such as: “woe is me, god hates me, he’s punishing thousands/millions of people, JUST so that *I* will experience his wrath!!”
@CB: “Judas betrayed Jesus, but that was all part of the master plan.
The whole thing is wacky. A big elaborate dramatic pageant – who cares.
You wanna beer?”
Would you like any intellectual property credit when I get this as a tattoo?
a 9th: No thanks, lemme just beer you too.
@clevername
Oh yeah and I forgot about the scientific things it says. It states about the Earth as being round and it talks about different natural cycles.
I gave you facts about it for you to judge for yourself if they are true or if they make sense. But you don’t even want to talk about any of them, to reason about them, to attack them. You simply attack me for talking about the Bible! What would be enough, what would you want the Bible to say for you to deem it trustworthy?! It explains human nature, it foretells things. What would be enough for you?! I’m interested in finding out what’s true. I see you don’t care even to look for what’s true, real.
“In scientific terms, the bible *cannot* even achieve “theory†status.” In bland terms, scientist don’t want a Creator foot in their door! People don’t want a God’s foot in their life!
@lorax
“At that time Jesus said in response: “I publicly praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intellectual ones and have revealed them to young children. Yes, O Father, because this is the way you approved.”
I gotta go now. Goodbye, lorax.
P.S. The answers are simple, for even “young children” understand them. But only they find them cause they are the only ones willing to look for them.
🙂 I’m going now or I’ll fall asleep on this chair. Bye!
Right. Children believe in Santa Claus, too. It’s not difficult to believe when you’re “simple” 🙂 Sleep well.
@Yeshua: What was Jesus talking about there? Any ideas? Its all wedged in there between Jesus condemning a bunch of cities, and the block of text with one of the most groovy gospel tidbits that can be found in Matthew: “12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” Wisdom is justified by her children, as it were. Children have a kind of innocence and usually don’t bludgeon or decapitate each other very often.
Bad Joke.
Q: Why don’t Baptists have sex standing up?
A: People might think they’re dancing.
Sorry to take the argument back a few paces, but I’ve been busy derailing other conversations with awesome pictures of Spiderman.
““Every group you just described claims to have God on their side.â€
Lol? First of all there are enough of those people who use other justifications for doing what they do, and secondly only because someone misinterprets the bible doesn’t make all religious people criminals. Same argument bullfrog complained about.”
I agree that reducive reasoning is fallacious but don’t think that CB was trying to say that ALL religious people are murderers, thieves, etc. It is just the case that a lot of people perform those heinous acts simply because it is divinely mandated.
I put to you a challenge that Christopher Hitchens was fond of asking his audiences:
A) Name one moral or ethical action or behaviour committed or carried out by a believer that could not have been committed or carried out by an atheist.
B) Name one immoral or unethical action or behaviour that has been committed or carried out in the name of God.
I think you’ll find that you cannot answer A but that you’ll have no trouble coming up with at least 10 responses to B without giving it much thought at all.
@CB:
Why do Calvinists prefer subways and trains?
Because the destinations are all pre-determined.
How many Arminians does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but the light bulb has to want to be changed.
Shit, tangent. Probably should have gone for the low-hanging fruit:
Q: What do a Christmas tree and a priest have in common?
A: Their balls are just for decoration.
Look dude, i’m almost 34 years old, and grew up around and among a bunch of very confused christians (catholics, even). This is not the first time i’ve been exposed to the bible’s alleged “foretellings.” All of those “foretellings” are invalid and simply not true.
I decided a long time ago, that the bible had too many inconsistencies to be deemed a source of reliably valid information. I even went through my own little existential crisis upon realizing that not just me, but the majority of humans, are raised to believe unbelievable falsehoods, and even worse, some people actually /kill/ each other over “whose god is the one true god.”
I’m sorry to have to say it, but anyone who /actually believes/ that anything resembling any religion’s “one true god” actually /exists/, will find it difficult, if not impossible, to gain my respect of their intellect.
Along the way, through many years of difficult experiences and personal growth, i learned that some people simply cannot let go of those lies they were raised to believe, because interpreting the world without those fantastical filters, is just too harsh for quite a lot of people. While “those people” annoy and agitate and even occasionally infuriate me, i never forget that i also pity them, because they are not mentally strong enough, or lack the necessary strength of character, to boldly face a more realistic interpretation of a world that, for all intents and purposes, has no “one true god” connected to it in any way, other than in fairy tales and fanatical blind faith. In the real world, god is only an idea, not an actual thing. And that real world sucks SO MUCH, that lots of people end up opting out, or just going totally apeshit and causing as much destruction as possible, as a lashing out against all the immeasurable injustice in this unacceptable world created by our predecessors, and still disgustingly maintained and perpetuated by our peers, and each new generation of indoctrinated children, deceived into the biggest hope-destroying paradigm ever contrived, only to later experiencing an irreparable degree of psychosis, from discovering it was all a lie.
When i say “what you seem to believe, is almost certainly completely false, and i disapprove of your insistence to the contrary, despite utter lack of evidence, and i find it incredibly tedious and unappealing to constantly encounter this same interaction among so many different people who are all wrong in the same way…”
I’m not attacking you. I’m offering you a helping hand, despite knowing you’ll only swat it away. You don’t want to see what’s real. That’s why you think i’m “attacking you,” when i poke holes in your false constructs… but i only do that to show you that “what’s real” can only be seen from beyond your indoctrinated but self-perpetuated false paradigm. Take the red pill and knock down those walls.
Or maybe you already took that red pill, glimpsed the matrix, didn’t like what you saw, and begged for a blue pill and a matrix reinstall, so that you could go back to believing whatever felt good, instead of having to accept your own mortality and insignificance.
@Lorax; heheh
Q: How many existential nihilists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
@Lorax;
Q: How can you tell when you’ve been burglarized by an Asian?
A: All of the computers in your house run faster, and he’s still backing out of the driveway three hours later.
Nihilist jokes are always kinda anticlimactic. 😛 They should only be made while droning techno music is playing and someone is being flogged lazily with a cat-o-nine.
Here’s one for Yeshua:
A Sunday school teacher asked her children on the way to service, “And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?”
A little girl replied, “Because people are sleeping.”
hehehehe
If i say: “everything matters, but nothing matters.”
What does that make me?
Causality exists and “matters,” but anything that matters, only matters to those subjectively experiencing its effects.
It matters because what we do, causes other things to happen.
But even if we all do the most destructive imaginable things, and ultimately wipe out humanity, and destroy the earth’s ecosystem equilibrium, making it uninhabitable for all life… it doesn’t matter. We’re all going to die and rot or be incinerated, and our particles will be recycled into other things; perhaps eons from now, we will all be part of the same dust particles deposited upon another planet, after dead-earth is flung from the orbit of the solar system, slamming into another celestial body, after drifting lifeless through space for millions of years (though “years” won’t exist anymore by then, since earth will no longer have an orbit… and there won’t be any humans to measure anything anyway!).
It’s a matter of perspective. What matters to you subjectively does indeed matter.
Objectively? Probably not so much.
You’ll live, shit seems important, then you’ll die. How important was it really?
I am the walrus.
I’d say that, objectively, it matters if you need to take a serious shit. That shit’s definitely important. Nobody wants an impacted colon, after all.
@bullfrog: We are talking about Christians and we are talking about the 21st century. No middleage crusades and no suppressing of Muslim women.
Let me also add C here:
C) Name moral and ethical actions and behaviours which are carried out by Christians more often than atheists.
Easy to find enough examples for this. This doesn’t mean that being a member of a church makes you a better person, but rather that Christians are more likely to be selfless than others (more likely = on average. NOT all Christians by definition). You will probably deny this fact, but that’s just because you can’t accept that acting according to the bible makes you a better person.
Btw, Christopher Hitchens is stupid and uses populist methods to demonize Christianity. Stupid people will think that because you can’t find answers to A but you find a lot of answers to B, this makes Christianity a bad religion. I just proved this to be wrong.
But that’s my point: it’s important while it matters, while you’re in the middle of it… but after that, it’s not, and doesn’t.
While temporal beings temporarily experience the impacts of events, “it matters,” even though it won’t matter after we die. Our death may “matter” to certain people, while they’re alive… but after they die, it won’t. Their deaths may matter to others… but after those others are gone, it won’t.
It matters, but it doesn’t matter.
What we experience, matters while we experience (including experience of resulting extended impacts), but not after.
A) Name one moral or ethical action or behaviour committed or carried out by democrats that could not have been committed or carried out by non-democrats.
B) Name one immoral or unethical action or behaviour that has been committed or carried out in the name of democracy.
DEMOCRACY SUCKS.
More often moral and ethical. What the hell does that even mean?
“Well, I molested a child but I give ten percent of my earnings to the church every single goddamn week, so I am such an ethical person!”
I rather think that you’re trying to allude to philanthropy but even still, provide the evidence that religious people are significantly more philanthropic than non-religious people. Can’t be done.
@Lorax; True dat. Bowel movements provide meaning. I saw Jesus in a used toilet paper wad once, he was smiling and I think he was trying to impart sage words of wisdom.
I need to create a religion.
I’ll make millions. Thank you, chocolate Jesus.
And if B) is where you’re getting caught up on, let’s make C) Name one immoral or unethical action or behaviour that has been committed or carried out in the name of atheism.
Rather think my having to explain that shows how much you missed the point.
“Well, I molested a child but I give ten percent of my earnings to the church every single goddamn week, so I am such an ethical person!â€
Populism. No one said giving money to the church is by itself a moral and ethical action.
A) Name one moral or ethical action or behaviour committed or carried out by Bullfrog that could not have been committed or carried out by someone else.
B) Name one immoral or unethical action or behaviour that has been committed or carried out in the name of bullfrog. (example: insults)
BULLFROG SUCKS.
This is so fucking ridiculous and you even believe that this A+B thing proves anything.
This A+B thing is a thought experiment. Your response to it speaks volumes about you, frankly. But then, I can see why you’d be opposed to consciousness-raising…
lol… i didn’t know this, so i wiki’d it:
“Populism is a political doctrine in which one sides with “the people” against “the elite”.”
So you’re saying that because Hitchins used* “populist methods” to make his point (instead of being an elitist), he was wrong, or bad?
I know several people around SP have given me shit for “being an elitist.” But you know what? Sometimes “what most people think” is simply incorrect, and “elites” are the only ones with enough specialized and relevant insight into a particular matter, to properly understand it, and thus, reach the most correct available conclusion/solution.
The rare few smartest people, are quite a bit more intelligent than “most people.” If you let “most people” dictate the direction of society, despite “elite intelligencia” having a better but less popular way… what do you think will happen? The smarter people with the better idea, get overridden by a moronic populous. When could this ever be a good thing? I’ll tell you when: when widespread and perpetuated ignorance, by design, serves to facilitate extraordinary benefits for those few elites in positions of control. It works out better for them, if the stupid masses can be easily misguided into overwhelmingly choosing the wrong choice, which is easily misrepresented as the right choice, for the sake of the controller’s gains.
This is why people’s compulsion toward the power of knowledge is intentionally impeded. If everyone (or most people) were smart enough to see what’s really going on, then “the masses” would overrule the controller’s dictation, depose them, and… who knows what might happen after that!
How terrible could it possibly be, if everyone was taught to think properly and be smart enough not to be deceived into mass stupidity?
I’m pretty sure that’s the first step toward the closest possible actualization of Utopia.
I also note the avoidance of my challenges and reducing your stance to ad hominem attacks. We’ve come full-circle back to the fallacies, haven’t we, CDL?
Well, I used the word populism not as in “people” vs “elite”, but rather as in: You say something which stupid people (most of the time = all people) will believe (which you apparently believe yourself, too) and therefore it must be right.
@clevername; What you described is what makes it all hilarious to me. The intrinsic meaninglessness of it all, yet feeling compelled to take it seriously in the moment when it doesn’t even matter. 🙂 You gotta love the irony, the paradox. This country’s institutions are filled with people who get it and have decided they’d rather not participate.
Clevername, please help us out here. Apparently bullfrog is a populist.
He made the implication:
“A) Name one moral or ethical action or behaviour committed or carried out by a believer that could not have been committed or carried out by an atheist.
B) Name one immoral or unethical action or behaviour that has been committed or carried out in the name of God”
=> “Christianity sucks”
I made the implication
“A) Name one moral or ethical action or behaviour committed or carried out by Bullfrog that could not have been committed or carried out by someone else.
B) Name one immoral or unethical action or behaviour that has been committed or carried out in the name of bullfrog. (example: insults)”
=> “BULLFROG SUCKS.”
Why am I wrong and he is right?
We’re on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin’ that ride to nowhere
We’ll take that ride
oh man… idk if i want to even try to mediate that.
But recently, i realized something: the notion of democracy is inherently flawed, and contains a logical fallacy: “appeal to popularity” (which could be aka “populism”).
Doesn’t that mean it’s “logically fallacious” to be against elitism?
lol…
You know what I don’t even care: Bullfrog continues to refuse to use valid arguments to prove his point, and when he is I dismantle the argument in a single post. If you are not going to read what I write you are a stupid idiot. If you make the simple implication you made, you are and idiot BY DEFINITION.
Im done with this conversation.
You may have inferred that christianity sucks from what I posted, but that’s not actually what I posted. If that isn’t Freudian…
The point of what I posted was to stop people saying crap along the lines of “well, religious people are good” when it’s plainly an incorrect generalisation to make.
Feel pretty stupid to have missed the so painfully obvious point? Yeah, I bet you do.
Good gawd have moicy. I feel like I have brain damage. These A) B) statements keep going back and forth, and I can’t even read them because of the verbose use of nouns. No offense, but I’m a firm believer in one subject, one predicate marriages. God did not make noun and noun, after all – that’d just be unnatural. Don’t even get me started on those blasphemous logical operators, either.
“Bullfrog continues to refuse to use valid arguments to prove his point, and when he is I dismantle the argument in a single post”
Ahh, you do understand that I see the opposite to be the case, right? Right? All I’ve seen from you is dodging questions and refusing to fully grasp the points that are being made to you.
Also, u mad, bro?
Yes I am mad, because I was stupid enough to try convince an idiot of the fact that he is an idiot. At least I know now that you are not worth arguing with because you arguing means both sides use arguments, which you apparently refuse to do.
@CDL:
That argument path leads toward the breakdown of morality.
The next logical step down that path is to insinuate that the god-side has morality, where the non-god-side does not… which i would suggest is backwards, but i know i’d be walking into that assertion, were i to progress down that line.
I don’t think morality is based on, or requires any god; i think it’s based on appreciation of suffering, through experience, and wanting to extend that self-respect-induced reduction of suffering, to others, since we see those others as similar enough to ourselves, that we “hurt for them,” when we see them suffering as we have. However, those who do not know suffering, or simply lack the capacity for empathy, cannot understand this side of morality.
it gets really complex in the sense of articulation, but it’s an easily understood and fluid thought process.
@CDL. Yeah, u mad, bro.
@Clever: “I don’t think morality is based on, or requires any god”
Hm I think about this a lot. Empathy isn’t logical, is it? Not feeling empathy can apparently get you great profit. So it would be logical to try to get rid of my empathy, right?
“it gets really complex in the sense of articulation”
Well, that’s like saying “I’m right and I want you to believe me, but I cannot specifically tell you why.”
Oh, and, the problem with the breakdown of morality?
It doesn’t matter!
Morality is actually as superfluous as it is useful/beneficial.
We could just as easily abandon it and behave as wild animals… and i could make the argument that we would all be completely justified in so doing, because we ARE animals.
There is no need for our species, or even any of the life on this entire planet, to thrive or even survive. It simply isn’t necessary for earth’s creatures to flourish. The universe would not weep, should no creature wake from their next sleep.
“Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference”. – Mark Twain
“Don’t argue with an idiot. He’ll only bring you down to his level and win through experience” – George Carlin
@clever: I know I will be hated for bringing this up again. But without morality, why was it wrong to Nazis to kill Jews in concentration camps?
@CB: Thanks for supporting my point.
@CDL: Actually I’m on Bullfrog’s side.
“Well, that’s like saying “I’m right and I want you to believe me, but I cannot specifically tell you why.—
More like “i’m satisfied with my own subjective interpretation of such things, and i realize that it’s unlikely that most people, specifically you, would agree with me, were i able to properly articulate it… which i unfortunately cannot do, at this time.”
If i AM right… i want others to more rapidly discover that, in whatever way allows them to feel that they “learned it on their own,” so that they can own that discovery, instead of feeling that it was imposed upon them by an evangelist. It’s a catch-22. I can’t evangelize any of my strongest convictions, because it would betray the nature of those things, by negating the value of being able to reliably arrive at acceptably accurate tentative conclusions, upon one’s own volition.
Have you ever heard the phrase: “if you don’t get it, you don’t get it.” ?
I hate that phrase… because of who i learned it from, and because it’s sometimes the only way to explain the problem. Some people Can’t get it, and no amount of questions or answers or explanations will fix it. But if that person were to just naturally “get it,” then they wouldn’t need to ask; they would simply “get it.”
Our species has sprung forth from the stuff that comprises the universe at its most primal level (a la Carl Sagan). You and me and that annoying bird squawking all day long outside your window – we’re all, in essence, the universe. At least as much as a big boulder, or a quasar star might be. There is no need for any of it, and yet there it is. The universe can cry, the universe can laugh, the universe can make stupid jokes about how the best part about being a Rabbi is that they get to keep the tips. Sometimes I like the universe. Other times it annoys me to no end. However, as parts of the universe that are no more or less a part than bonobos or chimpanzees, it’s reasonable to say that we do behave like animals – which is to say that we behave like human beings. Morality appears to be part of that package, somehow.
“@CDL: Actually I’m on Bullfrog’s side.”
ROFL. I so knew that was coming 🙂
@CB: Yes because you (as an onlooker) arent able to tell the difference.
@clever: Couldn’t I used the same argument to prove that I am right to believe in God?
Also what about the Nazi question?
“@clever: I know I will be hated for bringing this up again. But without morality, why was it wrong to Nazis to kill Jews in concentration camps?”
Without morality, there is no right or wrong. We’re all just animals vying for unimpeded, uncontested access to resource surplus and mating opportunities.
The reason morality is useful, is that more people working together at once, can accomplish more and bigger things, which provides the avenue for potentially rapid advancements… but all those people need some kind of “code” to live by, or they’ll all end up killing each other over the limited resources allowed by their elite controllers.
Or, “it’s wrong because: your rights end where mine begin.”
You own only yourself, not anyone else, and no one else may own you, without your voluntary and non-coerced consent. When someone encroaches upon you and causes you detriment, that’s “wrong.” If you have to kill them to stop them from harming you, you’re completely justified in doing so, because “they started it.”
@CDL; I can recognize an idiot when I see one. (Sorry). I’ve also noticed that people who are wrong never seem to know that they are.
“I’ve also noticed that people who are wrong never seem to know that they are.”
Well then i’d say you’re lucky, because i’ve met a few who knew they were wrong, and preferred it that way.
“You own only yourself, not anyone else, and no one else may own you, without your voluntary and non-coerced consent. When someone encroaches upon you and causes you detriment, that’s “wrong.†If you have to kill them to stop them from harming you, you’re completely justified in doing so, because “they started it.—
Well, afaik Jews didn’t start it.
“Without morality, there is no right or wrong.”
Right, I see why that question is stupid^^
Let me rephrase: Without morality, would you kill Jews in concentration camps?
Let me just say that Im not calling you a Nazi and that I am pretty certain you wouldn’t kill Jews, but why? What is your logical reason to do so?
And yes, if every human being acts according to morality of course humanity as a whole profits. But if you personally don’t act according to morality and everyone else does, you have a greater profit (Prisoner’s dilemma). Now the easy answer “If I don’t act according to morality no one will” doesn’t count since you can act immoral without being seen.
@CB: You call me an idiot? Ok, what grades did you graduate with? Simple answer to why you’re not smart. I could ask bullfrog the same.
@ CDL; My grades were lackluster. I smoked a lot of pot and didn’t attend school as often as I was expected to. I had better ways of spending my time. If you think grades are a valid indication of a person’s intelligence, then…uh….I was right about you.
Human “morality” can be seen as just another function of nature, no god or spirituality is necessary to explain it. There is no divine right or wrong, there is only what we as an intelligent species have come to define as right and wrong, and what we have come to call good and bad. There are things that are commonly agreed upon to be “wrong” (like the Nazi’s massacre of Jews) but not because there is any such thing as good and evil. But because of human emotions, empathy, and fears, all of which have their place in our natural design.
@CB: If you think they aren’t then I’m right about you. Intelligence rarely comes through smoking pot and staying out of school, so to me it is very probably that you are not smart.
“Well, afaik Jews didn’t start it.”
Think of it from the other angle (i wasn’t saying the jews “started it,” lol).
“Let me rephrase: Without morality, would you kill Jews in concentration camps?”
Without morality, why would i NOT do as my commanding officers order me to do? I’m just an animal trained and paid to wield express violence against either intruders or targets assigned to me by my superiors. I’m not here to “think” or “feel,” i’m here to efficiently destroy anything my boss wants dead. I’m a machine, built from what was once a man. I am a Terminator. Accomplishing my assigned objectives is “right,” no matter what those objectives are.
If morality isn’t a normalized social construct, and any semblance of it is stripped away through conditioning of an active wartime soldier… yes, anyone in that position would absolutely kill Jews, because morality doesn’t exist, and that is their job.
And i’m not sure what to make of “act immorally” as a “prisoner’s dilemma.” I’m not interested in being a prison whore, regardless of any morality construct. My only “prisoner’s dilemma” would be whether to spend however many years cultivating my intellect and physique, in hopes of rejoining the free world someday, or just offing myself, because fuck prison. I’d do the former until the latter became significantly more appealing (just like i do in my actual life… except i’ve been heavily focused on the mental side for a long time, completely disregarding the physical, due to lack of sufficient motivation and the much higher energy requirements of physical cultivation).
As for the whole “why wouldn’t we kill Jews” thing….because there is no reason for us to. No incentive. And we have emotions that get in the way. Again this can all be explained through the natural order of things. No spiritually-decided-upon code of right and wrong that we feel in our souls is necessary…just nature.
@CdL: If you’re “smart”, I’m glad I’m not. If you’re “intelligent”, you’ve done an excellent job of hiding it so far. 🙂
@TheRiver: I like to think of it as our answer to the musk deer’s vampire fangs and pleasant aroma. Social cooperation (and consequently, morality) is just how a human do.
And why did the Nazi’s kill Jews? It ain’t cause they hadn’t found Jesus. It’s because they were taught different things. Or often times their hands were forced in one way or another. A human can be conditioned to believe and do almost anything (your faith for example). Further proof that their is no universal right or wrong.
@clever: This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma. With cooperating = acting morally and defecting = acting immorally.
If you were a Jew, how could you be mad at Nazis for torturing you if you would do the same to them if your roles were swapped?
@CB: You’re glad you’re not smart. Way to go.
@clever: Wikipedia Prisoner’s dilemma. With cooperating = acting morally and defecting = acting immorally.
If you were a Jew, how could you be mad at Nazis for torturing you if you would do the same to them if your roles were swapped?
@CB: You’re glad you’re not smart. Way to go.
There is no way grades are indicative of intelligence. All these standardized tests are bull.
You can test book smarts, but there’s much much more to intelligence.
Hitler had God on his side. (Just ask Adolph).
Adolph was kind to his dogs, you know. He wasn’t 100% evil. People who are nice to their pets aren’t all bad. He was just mean to the Jews.
Oh well. It was all part of God’s will.
Who are we to question Him?
@poisontongue: Someone with higher grades is more likely to be intelligent. That is what I am saying.
I always figured the Nazi’s killed Jews because they synthesized industrial methodology with social engineering – the result was a mechanical, and highly impersonal system that worked a lot like a machine and reduced the ability of morality or ethics to impinge upon the lowest-common-denominator of human nature. “This machine kills fascists,” ~ Woodie Guthrie
Kind of the same way industrial meat farming works – nobody wonders whether their steak had a name, or whether the cow the steak came from lived a happy life. Nobody cares. In Nazi Germany, there wasn’t even that much of a reminder of the reality behind the curtain. People always ask the wrong questions and get easy answers.
Getting higher grades just means you know how to play the game, it doesn’t indicate intelligence. Man…you really are brainwashed.
@CB: Wouldn’t have expected any different from someone with bad grades 😀 Just keep lying to yourself.
@CDL; Thank you 🙂 The day that I care about impressing an idiot is the day I kill myself.
@CB: Ignorance is bliss.
You must be in heaven
Grades are for people who didn’t drop out of high school because it felt too much like a factory. I feel sorry for people who get/got grades.
What a common logical fallacy.
Ignorance gets you to heaven.
CDL is in heaven. (wrong btw)
Therefore CDL must be ignorant.
=> != <=
Ignorance is bliss
CDL is as ignorant as they get.
CDL must be in a blissful place.
Got it?
@lorax: I feel sorry for people without good grades, because they usually end up with crappy jobs and owing people lots of money.
@CB: You can imply anything from a false statement.
@CDL True. That’s why I don’t take you seriously. 🙂
@CB: That is why you are still talking to me.
Ah, so you too, huh, lorax? But I wouldn’t go as far as to say I feel sorry for people who get/got grades, it can be pretty important. Grades can be an indicator of certain kinds of intelligence, but for the most part it is an indicator of dedication and work ethic. An idiot can make it far in the educational system, and an intelligent person nowhere at all…it mostly depends on the persons motivation and what they put into it.
Intelligence is an odd subject though, with a lot of complexity and layers. For me “intelligence” means, more than anything, common sense and an ability to reason and think critically. A free thinker.
@CDL; Dipshits are entertaining. You make me laugh. 🙂
I was kicked out of school at age 15 with less than average grades…well, no grades at all actually. Two years later; I was making more than the average 25 year old on a military salary and living the dream. Relentless pursuit and the drive to better myself regardless of what my country’s flawed education system said about me is what got me where I was in life. Not some letter on a piece of glossy paper.
Also: This thread has so much win.
Hey now, I went to college and got mah papurz seyin’ dat I can spall Engrish pretty gooder than other people. Also dat I can computer. Despite no HS diploma and just a GED.
But honestly, I think the whole formal system needs to be smashed into little tiny pieces and then burned with fire to make sure it’s dead. Formality is one of the stupidest things in modern society. Grades are formality. Ties and business suits are formality. Job interviews and resumes are formality. So long as you know the proper form for those things to take, you can advance. If you don’t, then you’ll forever be flailing around, confused as to why nothing ever works. Intelligence has no bearing on formality.
@TheRiver:
“And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good—
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?â€
Phaedrus is mah hero.
So you decided to finally pop into this crazy little comment thread as well I see, Shephard. It’s funny how everything is based on pieces of paper…you go to school for a piece of paper that will allow you to get into a bigger school. That school will allow you to get another fancy piece of paper, and with that paper you will be able to get a decent job that will provide you with tons of other little pieces of paper, on which you live. Hell, we even wipe our asses with pieces of paper…although probably not the kind I’m talking about, unless you’re one rich mofo.
People who care about those little pieces of paper are people you want nothing to do with. They are the assholes who drove you to this site.
But they are also the ones you have to appease in order to get what you want. The nature of the world drove me to this site…and myself of course.
It’s a quagmire.
Want a beer?
Well… we trade the more valuable pieces of paper, for a roll of many more sheets of softer paper, more appropriate for the intended usage. Luckily, it doesn’t cost a whole dollar to wipe an ass. I bet dollars would clog a commode quite swiftly, since they don’t really dissolve… or at least not in any reasonable amount of time.
School teaches people how to obey and conform and be good complicit little robots. It also teaches lots of people “life is all about being forced to spend all your time and energy doing stuff you don’t want to do, in exchange for inadequate compensation, so that you can barely stay alive enough to continue hating barely staying alive.” Though i strongly agree with learning, “school” tends to be geared toward producing certain types of products, rather than actually making people more intelligent. Or… maybe it sucks on purpose, so that people like me will learn that the systems suck on purpose, in order to produce people who can readily, reliably, and rapidly, assess the relative efficacy and integrity of any given system.
:points_finger:
“your system sucks. Fix it.”
“life is all about being forced to spend all your time and energy doing stuff you don’t want to do, in exchange for inadequate compensation, so that you can barely stay alive enough to continue hating barely staying alive”
LOL….yup. Welcome to life, kids. This is how shits done up in here.
Oh boy… I can just imagine if everyone from this thread was at the pub having a few cold ones.
Unfortunately internet beers are worth about as much as they weigh.
@Shephard: We might have a few seriously sad drunks though.
@ Shephard; Irish whiskey. Jameson’s. I’m buying – you down?
C’mon, lemme hook you up.
That’s a shame.
I’ve always liked the company of happy drunks though. Sad drunks tend to kill the vibe a bit, even then I’ve seen some who can really breathe life into a night out. I’ll put this on my to-do list for when I win lotto:
“Bring together SP users and have a night out at the pub.”
Aw mate, hook it UP!
I love how whisky is translated as “water of life”; it definitely puts life into me. Whiskey is the go to for me. Although I don’t mind a burly Russian every now and then.
Sometimes I just have to have a moment to reflect on how thankful I am that alcohol exists in this world, haha. Especially recently. And of course, the company of others who enjoy it as much as me.
Weird thing is I only started drinking a couple years ago. Before then I always thought of it as something my Grandpa did just to drown out the irritating noise emitted from his four daughters – turns out, it’s also an awesome way to unwind after a particularly hard day at work and forget about your dramas, if only for that one night.
I’ve never looked back.
Alright then. Let’s meet up at the bar. C’mon you two, let’s get obliterated (anyone else can join in). I’m buying. Drink up – we’re getting fucked up! Let’s do this! Tomorrows another day-let’s just get drunk. Ready?
School isn’t about learning, it’s about absorbing the structure of the system, and learning which button gives you a treat and which button gives you an electric shock. It is the molding of your mind to fit into a system of formality – form, appearance, superficial routines that don’t in and of themselves mean anything but are for some mysterious reason deemed vital. It’s a lot like a Greek mystery cult, only the weird shit the priests have you do isn’t supposed to impart on you any magical wisdom, and there are no satyrs playing the fife to entertain you. Also, goddamnit, there are no nymphs. Western culture has the most boring mystical rituals of any culture that has ever existed.
@lorax. Yes and yes.
I laugh at CDL’s earlier comment that people that didn’t get good grades end up with low-paying jobs.
>whatatwat.gif
Never finished highschool (although, granted, I’ve earned a few pieces of paper since) and I make quite a comfortable living.
@CB Jamesons is the only dark spirit I can stomach (long story involving being me, 14, bottle of bourbon, alcohol poisoning…) so good choice! 🙂