Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on July 11, 2010, 01:32:23 am
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According to 40% of americans, amoung other things. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7847625/Jesus-will-return-by-2050-say-40pc-of-Americans.html)
Americans are largely optimistic about the future, according to the poll from the Pew Research Center For The People and The Press/Smithsonian Magazine.
By mid century, 71 per cent believe cancer will be cured, 66 per cent say artificial limbs will work better than real ones and 81 per cent believe computers will be able to converse like humans.
But Americans are also braced for a major energy crisis and a warming planet, according to the survey. More than half, or 58 per cent, fear another world war in the next 40 years and 53 per cent expect a terrorist attack against the United States using a nuclear weapon.
The poll also shows a sharp dip in overall optimism from 1999, when 81 per cent said they were optimistic about life for themselves and their families. The current poll found just 64 per cent were.
Sixty-one percent said they were optimistic about the future of the United States, compared to 70 percent in 1999. And 56 percent predicted the US economy would be stronger in 40 years, compared to 64 percent of those polled in 1999.
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i might have my warhead finished in about 40 years. i like that.
as for hey-sus, il have my sniper rifle ready.
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Which would promptly explode in your face when you pulled the trigger.
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Which would promptly explode in your face when you pulled the trigger.
Why? Jesus would just turn the other cheek, man.
He's not about hurting people.
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I think he was assuming Nuke's sniper rifle was home-made. :P
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Why? Jesus would just turn the other cheek, man.
He's not about hurting people.
The character of the second coming will be significantly different from the first.
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The character of the second coming will be significantly different from the first.
So we're going Old Testament evil death spewing bastard again? Dammit, he was supposed to have outgrown that crap.
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Why? Jesus would just turn the other cheek, man.
He's not about hurting people.
The character of the second coming will be significantly different from the first.
No, man, I really don't think the Dude is into hurting people.
The Dude just abides, you know?
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Why? Jesus would just turn the other cheek, man.
He's not about hurting people.
The character of the second coming will be significantly different from the first.
What he means is that when the Second Coming happens, if you are not with Him you are with The Enemy and will be treated as such. He will come as an avenger and all that serve The Enemy will be...dealt with.
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What he means is that when the Second Coming happens, if you are not with Him you are with The Enemy and will be treated as such. He will come as an avenger and all that serve The Enemy will be...dealt with.
Which brings us straight back to "God is evil" territory since, you know, he finally got around to absolutely proving himself and now he's going to kill you for it.
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Except that outside of the engagement area he's the embodiment of Love and all that stuff. At The End, His sole purpose will be the elimination of sin and it's promoters.
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Except that outside of the engagement area he's the embodiment of Love and all that stuff. At The End, His sole purpose will be the elimination of sin and it's promoters.
Which doesn't work, because it means the embodiment of love has gone totally bat**** insane and decided to kill them all.
Which sounds really stupid.
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Except that outside of the engagement area he's the embodiment of Love and all that stuff. At The End, His sole purpose will be the elimination of sin and it's promoters.
Which doesn't work, because it means the embodiment of love has gone totally bat**** insane and decided to kill them all.
Which sounds really stupid.
which sums up religion in my eyes so I guess in 2050 I'm gonna burn
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Something tells me we're going to be blowing each other up in 2050, and the presence of God blowing stuff up isn't going to help.
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American Christianity is, in certain areas, fast becoming a Doomsday Cult, and we know how those usually turn out.
Edit: it's like to 2012ers, who think Christ will return at the restart of the Mayan Calender...
"God called, he sounded angry. Said something about the First Commandment...."
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Why? Jesus would just turn the other cheek, man.
He's not about hurting people.
The character of the second coming will be significantly different from the first.
What he means is that when the Second Coming happens, if you are not with Him you are with The Enemy and will be treated as such. He will come as an avenger and all that serve The Enemy will be...dealt with.
What if i'm a simple non-believer :D
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Then nothing happens and you can enjoy yourself a beer.
'tis what I do anyway. :3
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Exactly. There's no such thing as an atheist so convinced that God doesn;t exist that Jesus walking around force-lightning-ing people to death wouldn't convince them. After all, all we've ever asked for is proof, and a beardy halo bloke standing on a pile of thousands of charred corpses would pretty much do the job I reckon.
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That'd do it for me, would all the sins i commited as a non believer of either side come into effect?
I'd be against it on principle as the threat of a potiential bbq would do nought to sway me however.
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Meh. Good and evil, morality, sin, those are all human concepts. The idea of a supreme being, or his kid, coming down to punish us for all the bad stuff we did is so obsolete it makes my brain hurt. Humanity really should have outgrown such childlish concepts a long time ago.
I'm having a beer.
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The thing that annoys me is that you can live your entire life being a good person, helping the poor, healing the sick, comforting the lost and the lonely, and then, when you die, get told that because you didn't thank some kind of deity every single day for the fact that you choose to do this, that you are 'on the wrong side' and therefore deserve to burn in Hell...
Being a 'good person' is not the realm of any religion, never has been, though many try to stick their flag in the concept, so any Deity supposed to judge people by what they believe, rather than what they do, has no truck with me whatsoever.
Edit: I always think of God as a 'Babysitter for Life', it's like your parents telling you that there's a monster in the closet, and if you misbehave, even if your parents don't see you, the monster in the closet will jump out and eat you. Some parents actually consider this good parenting, rather than permanent phsychological damage in the making, and I see Religion tending to work along pretty much the same mentality.
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The thing that annoys me is that you can live your entire life being a good person, helping the poor, healing the sick, comforting the lost and the lonely, and then, when you die, get told that because you didn't thank some kind of deity every single day for the fact that you choose to do this, that you are 'on the wrong side' and therefore deserve to burn in Hell...
Being a 'good person' is not the realm of any religion, never has been, though many try to stick their flag in the concept, so any Deity supposed to judge people by what they believe, rather than what they do, has no truck with me whatsoever.
Any mass religion is a big organization not unlike a big business in many respects. In the same way a business needs customers, organized religion needs followers - without them it would be nothing. It's hardly surprising then that any religion's first goals are the acquisition and retention of followers, rather appropriately sometimes also referred to as "flock".
The stick and carrot method is an old but proven way of keeping people in line. You want them to basically do as they're told, remain inside the organization, and not ask too many questions; so you have a simple system of reward and punishment. Those who remain loyal and faithful (as in, accept and do what they're told without asking for proof or reason) shall be rewarded in the afterlife (rather convenient as it makes it unnecessary to actually reward them yourself). Those who require proof are labeled as non-believers, cynics, and so on - and they will be punished.
The fact that most religious organizations do like to say at least indirectly that being a good person isn't enough, that you need to be a faithful member for it to count, is essential to most religion's efforts to keep their "flock" inside. After all, if they simply said "look, it doesn't really matter if you go to church every sunday, what matters is what sort of a person you are and how you treat the people around you", that would somewhat work against their efforts to keep people in, and to some extent defeat the whole purpose of an organized religion.
Which is why they monopolize goodness. And partly why I don't like any organized religion on the planet.
Also why I'm having another beer :)
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lol if someone does come in 2050 I'm going to pit him against Hindu Floaty Thing.
Deity Fight!!
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Why? Jesus would just turn the other cheek, man.
He's not about hurting people.
The character of the second coming will be significantly different from the first.
What he means is that when the Second Coming happens, if you are not with Him you are with The Enemy and will be treated as such. He will come as an avenger and all that serve The Enemy will be...dealt with.
Jesus ****ing Christ that's terrible. There's seriously no difference between the Biblical God and Satan?
I'm joining team NGTM-1R and rooting for Nuke and his sniper rifle. This guy sounds like ****ing Hitler. Anything that can be done to stop him should be.
I mean for ****'s sake your Jesus would have torched Mother Theresa just because she was a nonbeliever.
No omniscient being of supreme love would accept massive collateral damage amongst those who never had a chance or choice to meet the 'good guy' criteria as an acceptable price for anything.
(Of course I was raised Christian and read the Bible and I'm pretty sure Jesus isn't gonna pull any **** like that. This is just a line of **** fed to people by alarmists who try to evoke obedience through terror rather than faith through love and compassion.)
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American Christianity is, in certain areas, fast becoming a Doomsday Cult, and we know how those usually turn out.
Edit: it's like to 2012ers, who think Christ will return at the restart of the Mayan Calender...
"God called, he sounded angry. Said something about the First Commandment...."
What's scary about that statement is America actually does possess enough weapons of mass destruction to bring on the apocalypse, if one of them got into power with enough support.
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Jesus ****ing Christ that's terrible. There's seriously no difference between the Biblical God and Satan?
I'm joining team NGTM-1R and rooting for Nuke and his sniper rifle. This guy sounds like ****ing Hitler. Anything that can be done to stop him should be.
I mean for ****'s sake your Jesus would have torched Mother Theresa just because she was a nonbeliever.
No omniscient being of supreme love would accept massive collateral damage amongst those who never had a chance or choice to meet the 'good guy' criteria as an acceptable price for anything.
(Of course I was raised Christian and read the Bible and I'm pretty sure Jesus isn't gonna pull any **** like that. This is just a line of **** fed to people by alarmists who try to evoke obedience through terror rather than faith through love and compassion.)
Maybe you should read Revelations again.
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I read it. It's trippy as ****, but like most of the Bible is wildly open to interpretation. It's literature, not prophecy.
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God bombs have no discrimination in their target selection :sigh:
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Well how's the bomb supposed to track the sparkle if Jesus is up there and not down here lazing the target?
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I read it. It's trippy as ****, but like most of the Bible is wildly open to interpretation. It's literature, not prophecy.
It's also not anything Jesus said or taught or even related to him at all except he'll supposedly be there.
I don't buy it. (This is a statement of agreement with Battuta, in case that's not clear.)
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I worship the sun cause it directly gives me warmth and indirectly gives me life, plus I get to see it rise every morning. :)
Also it will sooner or later wreak havoc and utter annihilation upon the earth. And that's not a prophecy, that's a fact. :D
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I worship the sun cause it will sooner or later wreak havoc and utter annihilation upon the earth.
Now this kind of worshipping I could do.
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The thing that annoys me is that you can live your entire life being a good person, helping the poor, healing the sick, comforting the lost and the lonely, and then, when you die, get told that because you didn't thank some kind of deity every single day for the fact that you choose to do this, that you are 'on the wrong side' and therefore deserve to burn in Hell...
Not all sects of Christianity believe this, you know. Many, in fact, teach exactly the opposite... that what you actually do matters a lot more than what your claimed allegiance is.
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/matt/25/31-46#31
For whatever it's worth.
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It all depends on how liberal your particular sect's interpretation of some ancient book is.
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It all depends on how liberal your particular sect's interpretation of some ancient book is.
It's a bit more complicated than that. :) If you want to be critical of religion, fine. Just recognize that you can't lump everyone together and then complain that the resulting mishmash doesn't make any sense.
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Didn't I just point out that religions are somewhat different? That's what happens when you have billions of people trying to base their lives and worldviews around hearsay from over a thousand years ago. Irreconcilable differences.
And which interpretation of the world is correct? There's no way to judge, except that they are all probably wrong.
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Didn't I just point out that religions are somewhat different? That's what happens when you have billions of people trying to base their lives and worldviews around hearsay from over a thousand years ago. Irreconcilable differences.
And which interpretation of the world is correct? There's no way to judge, except that they are all probably wrong.
It would seem that most of the people here have deemed you a troll and decided not to listen to you anymore.
Slightly-more-on-topic: see, this is why I posted that thing toward the end of that thread about "Bible 'literally true'" ... Basically I was like, if you're going to treat the thing as open to interpretation, give written definition to it; go through section-by-section and remove the stuff you don't believe is true, or don't agree with, or don't give a damn about, and revise and edit the rest.
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I mean for ****'s sake your Jesus would have torched Mother Theresa just because she was a nonbeliever.
Well, in reality Mother Theresa from what I've read was in some respects a horrible person, like many, many other nuns (especially here in good ol' parochial Ireland), who wasn't interested in actually lifting the people she 'helped' out of poverty because in her mind the suffering they endured made them better people and more worthy of God's reward.
Another reason to love certain organised religions; their support for the rich elite maintaining crushing superiority over the masses while they're shaped into good moral souls on the grinding whetstone of life.
It would seem that most of the people here have deemed you a troll and decided not to listen to you anymore.
While not a big fan of iamzack's usual contributions I found her last two posts to be fairly pertinent to the overall trend of the thread.
@ Flipside and newman; Kudos, right on the money!
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I'm a troll because I'm not nice to people when they spout retarded ****.
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I mean for ****'s sake your Jesus would have torched Mother Theresa just because she was a nonbeliever.
Well, in reality Mother Theresa from what I've read was in some respects a horrible person, like many, many other nuns (especially here in good ol' parochial Ireland), who wasn't interested in actually lifting the people she 'helped' out of poverty because in her mind the suffering they endured made them better people and more worthy of God's reward.
I don't disagree and I'm well aware of those facts, but it doesn't change the fact that this would be irrelevant: all that apparently matters to this Monster Jesus is whether or not she Believes.
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Better get your VCR tapes converted over by then! Just remember they all get destroyed during the second coming of Jesus. LOL
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Haha, Monster Jesus. It's got a nice ring to it.
Um, why no more VHS?
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Better get your VCR tapes converted over by then! Just remember they all get destroyed during the second coming of Jesus. LOL
should i be ashamed i got that reference? D:
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I thought Legios XV Apollinaris, V Macedonica, XII Fulminata and X Fretensis under Titus put and end to these shenanigans when they pulled down the temple back in 70AD?
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I thought Legios XV Apollinaris, V Macedonica, XII Fulminata and X Fretensis under Titus put and end to these shenanigans when they pulled down the temple back in 70AD?
Well, I think we've proved we can kill The Messiah certainly. No reason we can't deal with another one.
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I thought Legios XV Apollinaris, V Macedonica, XII Fulminata and X Fretensis under Titus put and end to these shenanigans when they pulled down the temple back in 70AD?
Well, I think we've proved we can kill The Messiah certainly. No reason we can't deal with another one.
Then Nuke should be practicing his pilum throw, cuz I'd rather use a tried and true method then depending on something that may or may not work.
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Then Nuke should be practicing his pilum throw, cuz I'd rather use a tried and true method then depending on something that may or may not work.
Relax, we can just find some reenactors with gladii. That's much more likely the method anyways.
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How to best deal with Old Testimate Monster Jesus...
For all the times Gen Disc is a expanding ball of flaming debris it's discussions like this that make it all worth it.
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The thing that annoys me is that you can live your entire life being a good person, helping the poor, healing the sick, comforting the lost and the lonely, and then, when you die, get told that because you didn't thank some kind of deity every single day for the fact that you choose to do this, that you are 'on the wrong side' and therefore deserve to burn in Hell...
Not all sects of Christianity believe this, you know. Many, in fact, teach exactly the opposite... that what you actually do matters a lot more than what your claimed allegiance is.
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/matt/25/31-46#31
For whatever it's worth.
Oh, I agree, it's not universal and, if anything, Christianity in many parts of the world is one of the lesser offenders, certainly, CoE in many parishes seems to adopt an almost Bill and Ted philosophy towards religion, I can tell my minister I'm not a big fan of the Bible, and I won't get threatened with eternal damnation. But the ones that are getting all Doomsday about things tend to be the other sort.
It's as if, 10 years ago, all the religions were sitting in a bar and someone shouted 'Least fanatical buys the next round!'
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What he means is that when the Second Coming happens, if you are not with Him you are with The Enemy and will be treated as such. He will come as an avenger and all that serve The Enemy will be...dealt with.
Except that at that point, there will be no fence-sitters; everyone will have chosen sides.
Which brings us straight back to "God is evil" territory since, you know, he finally got around to absolutely proving himself and now he's going to kill you for it.
Wait, what? Agnostics often question why, if God is good and is capable of permanently eradicating evil, does he not do so -- the Problem of Evil (tm). And now at the point that he finally does so, you're going to hold it against him? How does this follow?
Exactly. There's no such thing as an atheist so convinced that God doesn;t exist that Jesus walking around force-lightning-ing people to death wouldn't convince them. After all, all we've ever asked for is proof, and a beardy halo bloke standing on a pile of thousands of charred corpses would pretty much do the job I reckon.
Except that at that point it will be too late.
The thing that annoys me is that you can live your entire life being a good person, helping the poor, healing the sick, comforting the lost and the lonely, and then, when you die, get told that because you didn't thank some kind of deity every single day for the fact that you choose to do this, that you are 'on the wrong side' and therefore deserve to burn in Hell...
Being a 'good person' is not the realm of any religion, never has been, though many try to stick their flag in the concept, so any Deity supposed to judge people by what they believe, rather than what they do, has no truck with me whatsoever.
See the Matthew 25 link that Sushi posted, and also James 2. The Biblical position is that a life of doing good deeds is indicative of a heart receptive to God, and a heart receptive to God is going to do good deeds. They're intertwined.
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Wait, what? Agnostics often question why, if God is good and is capable of permanently eradicating evil, does he not do so -- the Problem of Evil (tm). And now at the point that he finally does so, you're going to hold it against him? How does this follow?
That assumes that belief makes you good, and non-belief makes you evil, as belief is the only thing being selected for in the end. A simple glance around you is usually sufficent to dispute this.
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When Judgement happens the only real deciding factor of your destination is whether you have honestly accepted Christ as your personal lord and savior. Good deeds great things, and you are rewarded for them in Heaven, but they are not, on their own, sufficient to gain entry. Think of it like this, God and sin are like matter and antimatter(kind of), God is perfect and cannot allow sin into His presence, therefore, people being sinners by default and being unable to not be sinners under any circumstances are unable to enter His presence in Heaven by themselves or by their own works. Enter Jesus, the solution to "well, that's not fair" that is most people's reaction to the previous situation. By being God made flesh he is the only sacrifice worthy as payment to enter Heaven. Another way to look at it is this, one day, sooner or later, we will ALL stand before God under judgement for our actions and the way we led our life. As sentence is passed, and we are damned to hell for being sinners, Jesus stands beside us and says, "This ones OK! I'll take his punishment for him". In fact this has already happened, Jesus died and walked through hell before being resurrection on the third day.
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im sure vlad the impaler accepted christ. and if god lets him in, might as well worship the devil.
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So if anyone sins in heaven, god is annihilated? There's definitely no god now in that case.
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You people take it all too seriously. Remember, it's just a game.
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Think of it like this, God and sin are like matter and antimatter(kind of), God is perfect and cannot allow sin into His presence, therefore, people being sinners by default and being unable to not be sinners under any circumstances are unable to enter His presence in Heaven by themselves or by their own works.
“He doesn’t want you to go there, Eric. Sure, he made it the default for your afterlife, and sure, he’s omnipotent, and could just not punish you for the rest of time, and sure, maybe his instructions are vague and contradictory and he’s never really done anything to correct this, but really, he doesn’t want you to go to hell when you die.”
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Wait, what? Agnostics often question why, if God is good and is capable of permanently eradicating evil, does he not do so -- the Problem of Evil (tm). And now at the point that he finally does so, you're going to hold it against him? How does this follow?
That assumes that belief makes you good, and non-belief makes you evil, as belief is the only thing being selected for in the end. A simple glance around you is usually sufficent to dispute this.
Agreed.
And it's utterly asinine as you simply cannot argue with the data. Which make it clear that the major determinant of whether or not you're Christian is whether you were born and raised in a Christian society.
Your particular mythology condemns the majority of the people on the planet for lacking a trait they never had the choice or ability to accept. If God were just, everyone would have a fair shot at it.
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If Christianity or any religion for that matter was the "one true religion" then really it should have spread across the globe spontaneously and independent of a central source rather then at the sword point of European conquest. But it didn't, Christianity spread because it was borne by the explores and conquers sent from Europe across the globe. Really, until the late 1400s when Europe really kicked off its exploration drive, Christianity is going to be confined pretty heavily to Europe and the Med. So basically for the better part of a millennium and a half most of the world's population is pretty much being sent to hell since they don't even know Jesus existed. Now I dunno, but if I'm Master of the Universe I tend to think I might have done a little more to make sure the Dogma that must be followed is spread a bit more quickly and peacefully then waiting 1400 years before the Vatican can give the Conquistadors orders that they can rape, butcher, pillage and enslave the indigenous population if they don't heel to the Church.
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Seriously.
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Exactly. There's no such thing as an atheist so convinced that God doesn;t exist that Jesus walking around force-lightning-ing people to death wouldn't convince them. After all, all we've ever asked for is proof, and a beardy halo bloke standing on a pile of thousands of charred corpses would pretty much do the job I reckon.
Except that at that point it will be too late.
I imagine "heaven" stuck for an eternity with your asshole god would be worse than hell.
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That assumes that belief makes you good, and non-belief makes you evil, as belief is the only thing being selected for in the end. A simple glance around you is usually sufficient to dispute this.
And you'll notice that I did not state such an assumption. It's a straw-interpretation of Christianity that is unfortunately embraced by many theologically immature Christians. A tree is known by its fruit; the Christian will bear Christian fruit.
Your particular mythology condemns the majority of the people on the planet for lacking a trait they never had the choice or ability to accept. If God were just, everyone would have a fair shot at it.
When Judgement happens the only real deciding factor of your destination is whether you have honestly accepted Christ as your personal lord and savior.
Not as such, because that would exclude the Old Testament saints. They are saved because of and by means of Christ's sacrifice, despite their ignorance of it and despite living prior to it.
God is both merciful and just, and he will judge everyone fairly. This passage from The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis is an excellent illustration of this line of theology:
"So I went over much grass and many flowers and among all kinds of wholesome and delectable trees till lo! in a narrow place between two rocks there came to meet me a great Lion. The speed of him was like the ostrich, and his size as an elephant’s; his hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes like gold that is liquid in the furnace. He was more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty he surpassed all that is in the world even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert.
Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.
Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, though knowest how much I understand.
But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless they desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what the truly seek.
If Christianity or any religion for that matter was the "one true religion" then really it should have spread across the globe spontaneously and independent of a central source rather then at the sword point of European conquest. But it didn't, Christianity spread because it was borne by the explores and conquers sent from Europe across the globe. Really, until the late 1400s when Europe really kicked off its exploration drive, Christianity is going to be confined pretty heavily to Europe and the Med.
A cursory examination of Christian history decisively disproves this. First of all, Christianity spread due to persecution by the Romans during its first 300 years of existence. It was despite, not because of, the sword point of a European power. After spreading throughout the Mediterranean, it then spread to Africa and India independent of the Roman Empire's influence in northwest Europe. Ironically, many Christian kingdoms in Africa were themselves displaced or conquered by Islamic military expansion.
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That assumes that belief makes you good, and non-belief makes you evil, as belief is the only thing being selected for in the end. A simple glance around you is usually sufficient to dispute this.
And you'll notice that I did not state such an assumption. It's a straw-interpretation of Christianity that is unfortunately embraced by many theologically immature Christians. A tree is known by its fruit; the Christian will bear Christian fruit.
Ridiculous. That's a testable assertion and it does not hold up.
There is no evidence whatsoever that prosocial behavior tends to correlate with converting to Christianity in any society. Nor any evidence that being Christian correlates with being good.
It's a directional fallacy of colossal proportions.
Every time you try to justify your faith on empirical grounds, whether historical or behavioral, you cheapen it and render yourself vulnerable to a very frank criticism: if you were genuinely a believer you would just believe.
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(http://i425.photobucket.com/albums/pp333/elan_smith/Jesus_Superman_fire.jpg)
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A cursory examination of Christian history decisively disproves this. First of all, Christianity spread due to persecution by the Romans during its first 300 years of existence. It was despite, not because of, the sword point of a European power. After spreading throughout the Mediterranean, it then spread to Africa and India independent of the Roman Empire's influence in northwest Europe. Ironically, many Christian kingdoms in Africa were themselves displaced or conquered by Islamic military expansion.
Nonsense. For one, that's not what StarSlayer was talking about--no one's arguing that Christianity spread on its own during its early years. He's referring to the days when people would set sail to the Middle East or the New World and conquer the locals in the name of Christendom. If you're trying to deny that there wasn't some religious motivation or justification for the Crusades or colonial expansionism then you're frankly just dead wrong.
On the second topic, yes, Islam at a point was largely spread by the Arab conquests, but it had reached Mauritania, Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, India, China, and Indonesia well before that through trade. And besides, it's not as if Christians in the conquered territories were necessarily oppressed by the Muslims--in fact, they were treated as monotheistic brethren to the Muslims, a practice which allowed the Muslim empire to expand so rapidly and peacefully. Compare the individual conquests of Jerusalem--the Crusaders slaughtered indiscriminately. Saladin, on the other hand, offered tolerance. Huge difference.
Ironically, the Crusades actually made it much, much worse for Christians in the Muslim world, as the Muslims isolated themselves further and further from Europe and turned hostile against the Christians.
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The problem is, most religions see 'good' as 'doing what our Holy Book tells you'. Some of that is common sense, don't kill other people etc, people will usually obey those rules with or without any religion. It's the stuff like working on a Sabbath, eating during Ramadan, wearing the wrong costume etc, it's stupid stuff like that which really causes the problems.
I'll note that I stated in my first post that 'Religion', not 'Christianity' tends to put some kind of flag into the act of 'being good' as though only they knew the correct way to be good (as in, the silly stuff, not the important stuff), and I'll also highlight that I agreed that not ALL sects of Christianity are like that, but some people from the same religion interpret the book differently, some believe you should tolerate other beliefs, others say that the Christians who say this 'aren't real Christians'. That's how silly it's got, in almost every religion there are Sects, Protestant, Catholic, Sunni, Shiite, even supposedly united religions cannot agree on the details of what is in their holy book. And, as I mentioned earlier, it's the intolerant ones who seem to get the most airplay.
If 'being good' is all about strange customs performed at specific times in specific fancy dress, it 'being good' is eating the right food and not working on the right day, then it seems to me the Religion has completely lost track of what 'good' actually is.
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Goober, are you a lawyer or something?
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Large scale organized religion is pretty much a scam that is only successful because of mass indoctrination at birth. It's hard to shake off what you've been told "all your life" with mere logic. ;)
Conversion and/or indoctrination of adults is a much harder feat and usually requires more drastic measures, which brings us to the methods of smaller cults and certain new "upstart/wannabe religions".
Don't take me wrong. I do respect honest belief. And if you ask me, merely believing in something, anything, a wee bit more noble than the supremacy of ones own needs and desires would solve a huge majority of our current societies problems right there.
But funneling such self-sacrifice to serve a man-made institution of questionable integrity and with questionable motives ain't really anything else but the exploitation of the desire to believe.
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Heh, I've always said I'd never believe in a God small enough to squeeze into a book, or even two, of there's one thing that would dissapoint me, it would be to die and find out that God was nothing more than ANY religious book made it out to be, I think I'd pity any sort of Jealous, Possessive or Vengeful God, it'd be horrible to find out that God was just the worse aspects of Humanity but with super-powers.
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Takes a pretty self absorbed creep to think a real god would give a damn about his sex life.
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Ridiculous. That's a testable assertion and it does not hold up.
There is no evidence whatsoever that prosocial behavior tends to correlate with converting to Christianity in any society. Nor any evidence that being Christian correlates with being good.
Okay, then what metric do you propose for the testing? Let's take charitable giving for an example:
From Professor Arthur Brooks, Syracuse University, via Christianity Today (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/13.21.html):
Ninety-one percent of regular church attendees give to charity each year, compared with 66 percent of those who said they do not have a religion. The gap adds up—the faithful give four times more money per year than their secular counterparts. While most of that money is given to churches, religious people also give more to secular charities, such as the Red Cross or their alma mater.
Religious people also donate twice as much blood and are more likely to "behave in compassionate ways towards strangers," Brooks said. For example, they are much more likely to return extra change to a cashier when they are accidentally given too much.
Nonsense. For one, that's not what StarSlayer was talking about--no one's arguing that Christianity spread on its own during its early years. He's referring to the days when people would set sail to the Middle East or the New World and conquer the locals in the name of Christendom. If you're trying to deny that there wasn't some religious motivation or justification for the Crusades or colonial expansionism then you're frankly just dead wrong.
European expansionism was motivated by mercantilism and the desire for empire. The religious justification was justification after-the-fact. This can be seen by the sequence of events in European exploration: first came the Conquistadors seeking gold, power, and fame. Only after the conquerers found new lands did the Christian missionaries follow. They weren't the spear-point of European exploration.
On the second topic, yes, Islam at a point was largely spread by the Arab conquests, but it had reached Mauritania, Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, India, China, and Indonesia well before that through trade. And besides, it's not as if Christians in the conquered territories were necessarily oppressed by the Muslims--in fact, they were treated as monotheistic brethren to the Muslims, a practice which allowed the Muslim empire to expand so rapidly and peacefully. Compare the individual conquests of Jerusalem--the Crusaders slaughtered indiscriminately. Saladin, on the other hand, offered tolerance. Huge difference.
And likewise, the Crusades were primarily motivated by territorial expansionism. Many of the Crusades spread havoc, conquered cities, and carried back treasures while on their way, and at least one Crusade stopped at Constantinople and didn't bother even to attempt finishing the trip.
Goober, are you a lawyer or something?
I'm not a lawyer. What do you mean by "or something"?
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Goober, are you a lawyer or something?
I'm not a lawyer. What do you mean by "or something"?
Or advocate. :)
I was curious, that is all. I see many analogies between your claims and the claims of a few friends of mine, whose studies have made them a bit too passive in accepting God and Jesus. I used to take a look at one of your previous debates about religion, and judging from your replies I could swear you were a lawyer or, at least, a person who has the same approach of a lawyer on Christian history. When Rome got "conquered" by Christianity, Roman law (or better, law in general) entered a period of strong Christian influence and that led to certain consequences.
I heard one of the first things a lawyer-wannabe gets to know is that Jesus' existance is a fact and is treated in history of law because it implied one of the most important cases of crimen of the time. Sadly, the existance of Jesus cannot be proved so easily.
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Okay, then what metric do you propose for the testing? Let's take charitable giving for an example:
From Professor Arthur Brooks, Syracuse University, via Christianity Today (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/13.21.html):
Ninety-one percent of regular church attendees give to charity each year, compared with 66 percent of those who said they do not have a religion. The gap adds up—the faithful give four times more money per year than their secular counterparts. While most of that money is given to churches, religious people also give more to secular charities, such as the Red Cross or their alma mater.
Religious people also donate twice as much blood and are more likely to "behave in compassionate ways towards strangers," Brooks said. For example, they are much more likely to return extra change to a cashier when they are accidentally given too much.
Note that it conveniently uses the metric "religious people". This is so vague as to be meaningless. They could be talking about (in fact they probably are talking about considering both make charity mandatory) Islam and Mormonism. To say nothing of the possiblity the source is biased.
But on a larger level, you have now run into my favorite informal fallacy, which I call "the Elephants Fallacy".
Because all elephants are grey, you have asserted that everything which is grey is in fact an elephant. This not only does not follow logically, but is demonstrably false. Your argument is hogwash.
To say nothing of the things pointed out earlier in the thread that make a mockery of the benevolence of any omnipotent being subscribing to just about any human religious concept ever.
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Note that it conveniently uses the metric "religious people". This is so vague as to be meaningless. They could be talking about (in fact they probably are talking about considering both make charity mandatory) Islam and Mormonism. To say nothing of the possiblity the source is biased.
Brooks defines this as those who attend religious services at least once a week, which works out to around 30% of the population. Elsewhere it's said that Christian charities tend to be more wide-ranging in their scope, because Christian charities generally don't restrict their work toward only Christians, and Christian givers don't restrict their giving toward only Christian charities (giving to secular charities along with religious ones). In constrast, Muslim, and to a lesser extent Jewish charities tend to be narrowly focused on Muslims and Jews respectively.
Because all elephants are grey, you have asserted that everything which is grey is in fact an elephant. This not only does not follow logically, but is demonstrably false. Your argument is hogwash.
What is grey, and what is an elephant, in my example?
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Why? Jesus would just turn the other cheek, man.
He's not about hurting people.
The character of the second coming will be significantly different from the first.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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There is a wonderful book by Pratchett, called 'Small Gods', that does a really good job of summarising my opinions. There's an interesting idea put forward in that book that the food of the Gods is not Ambrosia, but belief, as long as people believe, a God has power. There's also another very interesting theory about one of the ways that a God can 'die', which is that, over time, a superstructure of ceremonies, routines and practices forms over the God themselves, as people take on the role of 'moral adjudicator' for the God in question, people start to believe more and more in the Church (because it's them doing the judging and the punishing) than the God itself. Eventually the God ends up entombed in ceremony and dies, and quite often, no-one notices.
Edit: Not to mention it contains the classic exchange of:
'But that was in the century of the Floating Dog, when you appeared to the third prophet as a column of fire and gave him 300 new commandments!' said Brutha.
'Really?" said the Great God Om, 'all I can remember saying was "Look what I can do!"'
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The problem is, most religions see 'good' as 'doing what our Holy Book tells you'. Some of that is common sense, don't kill other people etc, people will usually obey those rules with or without any religion. It's the stuff like working on a Sabbath, eating during Ramadan, wearing the wrong costume etc, it's stupid stuff like that which really causes the problems.
It's all about hats (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FKOVFyd3nc).
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Brooks defines this as those who attend religious services at least once a week, which works out to around 30% of the population. Elsewhere it's said that Christian charities tend to be more wide-ranging in their scope, because Christian charities generally don't restrict their work toward only Christians, and Christian givers don't restrict their giving toward only Christian charities (giving to secular charities along with religious ones). In constrast, Muslim, and to a lesser extent Jewish charities tend to be narrowly focused on Muslims and Jews respectively.
This merely proves my point that you are not offering evidence that supports your interpretation by citing this study since he bothered to include Muslim and Jewish groups in the total. The thesis that Christian belief makes better people cannot be supported with evidence so tainted.
What is grey, and what is an elephant, in my example?
Good works and religion, or perhaps goodness in general and religion.
Battuta's and my own point is that you are posisting that the Second Coming will occur only when the world has been divided into the believing good and the unbelieving evil. This is first-order crazy because such a thing cannot occur; belief in Jesus or even the Abrahamic god in general is not a precondition to being a good person. The conditions you state for the Second Coming are impossible, thus it will play out differently in such a way as to prove God is a prick by condemning based solely on belief or lack thereof with no regard to any other factors.
Or the Second Coming will not, can not, play out at all. By our diversity we have rendered God impotent. While I find that fitting, I doubt it's what you meant.
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Goob's argument is basically the circular 'good people will become Christian, and Christian people are good'. No empirical proof can ever be acquired because of the hideous confounds.
And the argument that Islam spread by conquest and Christianity by trade is absurd - Islam was known as 'the merchant's religion' for a reason, and when Islam came to power there was a golden age of scientific and commercial development (taken versus Europe's Dark Ages.) Both religions spread both by conquest and trade, and the events that occurred under their reign (golden age vs. dark age) had more to do with the people and politics of the regions than the faiths concerned.
Religions are superficial expressions of historical currents as much as they are historical power players.
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Ridiculous. That's a testable assertion and it does not hold up.
There is no evidence whatsoever that prosocial behavior tends to correlate with converting to Christianity in any society. Nor any evidence that being Christian correlates with being good.
Okay, then what metric do you propose for the testing? Let's take charitable giving for an example:
From Professor Arthur Brooks, Syracuse University, via Christianity Today (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/13.21.html):
Ninety-one percent of regular church attendees give to charity each year, compared with 66 percent of those who said they do not have a religion. The gap adds up—the faithful give four times more money per year than their secular counterparts. While most of that money is given to churches, religious people also give more to secular charities, such as the Red Cross or their alma mater.
Religious people also donate twice as much blood and are more likely to "behave in compassionate ways towards strangers," Brooks said. For example, they are much more likely to return extra change to a cashier when they are accidentally given too much.
Let's not take charitable giving as a metric. Let's take, I dunno, tolerance and inclusiveness of homosexuals. Or compassion for the dying through euthanasia. Or, I dunno, hmm, how about prevention of AIDS in the third world by promoting contraception through condoms. Let's see... what about... hmm, I know, what about the compassion for the millions of people suffering huntingtons and parkinsons that might be cured through stem cell research. Let's see how Christians stack up against the non religious in those areas of human compassion.
There're lots of areas where Christianity is very, very bad for society. And that's just the Christians - we don't even have to get into the horrible things done to women, gays and non-muslims in parts of Africa and the Muslim world. You can't take one study and assume it means religion -> Better Person.
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The study's bull**** anyway. Constant reminders to be generous could probably produce the same effect on secular individuals. Or, alternatively, churchgoing may be correlated with wealth and leisure (or may not - but it's a hypothesis) and therefore indirectly with more giving. The confounds are infinite.
The decision to post that study clearly involved very little critical or scientific thought. Which points out some of the dangers of faith, I suppose.
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I wonder... would jesus ride in a Lamborgini Diablo? :P
I love these threads, tons of good stuff to read.
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the Christian will bear Christian fruit.
No true Scotsman.
Ninety-one percent of regular church attendees give to charity each year, compared with 66 percent of those who said they do not have a religion. The gap adds up—the faithful give four times more money per year than their secular counterparts. While most of that money is given to churches, religious people also give more to secular charities, such as the Red Cross or their alma mater.
Makes the claims less meaningful. Show us the data after you eliminate the churches; supporting one's preacher is not morally equivalent to feeding the hungry.
Oh, sure, the folks supporting the preacher probably think otherwise, as they're enabling him to do God's work, but those folks are wrong.
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Sum up: people can be good with or without religion, and people can be evil with or without religion.
Exceptions going to Buddhists. Buddhists aren't good or evil. Buddhists just abide :p
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That's because they get all the best rugs ;)
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Yes! Someone got it! :D
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Most historical proof is about Christians, not Christ himself. We know for sure that the former existed, but we can't say the same of the latter:
"...subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat..."
Classic document, but with minimal references to Jesus.
This is much more interesting:
"Auctor nominis eius Christus Tibero imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat; repressaque in praesens exitiablilis superstitio rursum erumpebat, non modo per Iudaeam, originem eius mali, sed per urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque"
Pontius Pilatus was a praefectus. These words, which are considered "undebatable proof", indicate that Tacitus knew of Christ thanks to hearsay and did not verify his sources. He would have never made a mistake like that.
Other "proof" show similar glitches, so I wouldn't accept Jesus' existance so passively. Why would we discuss the return of a person who probably never existed?
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This may surprise you Mobius, but not everyone around here speaks latin.
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I don't speak Latin, either. Studying it doesn't mean learning how to write and talk in Latin. What I posted in the last part of my previous post can be easily understood and no knowledge of Latin is required.
That's what, in poor words, those quotes were meant for:
1) Most documents dating back to that period (several decades after Jesus' death) are about Christians, not Christ himself. The existence of HLP and HLPers, for example, cannot prove the existance of Carl the Shivan.
2) Historians make mistakes. Sometimes they don't verify their sources. Sometimes they turn hearsay into History. Tacitus made both mistakes in that part of his Annales, and turned the supposed existance of Jesus into a fact.
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I don't speak Latin, either. Studying it doesn't mean learning how to write and talk in Latin.
Actually, yes it does. I studied it both in elementary and high school. Being able to read texts in latin aloud and translate each sentence as you finish it was a requirement. Not sure what the purpose of studying a language is if it doesn't make you capable of speaking and writing the said language in the end, even if it's a dead language.
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Not really: study of Latin as I know it is a bit different.
Unless you studied Latin for years and years, istantaneous translation can be done with simple sentences, like "Ubi newman est?" ("Where's newman?"), but I wouldn't expect teenagers to learn how to actually speak Latin at school. Study of Latin is limited to the comprehension of its grammar's fundaments and the translation of 5-10 lines of text per time. The rest comes with experience, and speaking Latin s.s. requires a hell lot of time because it's a very complex language.
/OT
Those quotes were meant to prove that knowledge of old languages helps in debates. Perhaps a person who studied Greek may post the glitches (if there are any) of the New Testament's original version, and that'd be interesting. If we're unsure about Jesus' existance, how can we discuss his return on Earth? That's what I'm trying to say. :nod:
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Those quotes were meant to prove that knowledge of old languages helps in debates. Perhaps a person who studied Greek may post the glitches (if there are any) of the New Testament's original version, and that'd be interesting. If we're unsure about Jesus' existance, how can we discuss his return on Earth? That's what I'm trying to say. :nod:
That assuming the new testament is actually a translation of the original scrolls and not just an appreciation of them.
For some time now, I've been in constant dispute with my mother and some religious friends about this kind of stuff, for some reason I just can't turn my eyes and thoughts away from the stupid contradictions most of the religions have, thus making me think that abiding to a certain stream of belief will put me in a wrong position at the end, when facing the almighty being (if it exist).
I don't want to say.. "I did that because someone else told me it was the right thing to do", sure... it's like trying to save your own butt, but HEY what you know... religions (most) are not about doing the right thing because is the right thing to do, it about doing the right thing, because if you don't you'll suffer for eternity :P .
So here I am, an atheist that believes that believing can be dangerous sometimes, and that the only real option you have is the one you take yourself.
Something funny:
Congress round here is debating about making legal gay marriages, and at the same time a really cold polar breeze is hitting the city.
What do you think the news are right now?... I'll tell you:
1)
Catholic Church (and others) all over the country call for a demonstration to be made today in order to show their discontent about this subject even being treated in the congress.
2)
Homeless people dying in the streets because of the cold, and some small non-gob organisations making an effort to save some of them from the cold of the streets.
Do you see what I see?
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Translations can be bogus even if they're made by the most expert people. Just take a look at the whole "Adam's rib" debate.
Uhm, I suggest you to watch at least one of these YouTube videos (http://www.youtube.com/user/thethinkingatheist?blend=1&ob=4).
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(http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/9200/godg.png)
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Although the chart itself points this out, it's flawed - it doesn't include any way to account for 'picked the wrong god'.
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I've heard a line about gods and worship. It goes something like this, but don't expect it to resemble the original quotation too much: "One should never worship gods. If the gods are just, they will not care whether or not you believed as long as you were virtuous. If they are cruel gods who demand worship, they are undeserving."
So yeah, about sums my views.
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Religious people also donate twice as much blood and are more likely to "behave in compassionate ways towards strangers," Brooks said. For example, they are much more likely to return extra change to a cashier when they are accidentally given too much.
... and can you and/or the study also show us for certain that this isn't a classic case of claiming "the cart must be pushing the horse, because we can see them both move"?
I.e. one of the classic mistakes - if not the most classic - of interpreting statistics.
(also often used as a parlor trick to make nonsense look plausible to the untrained eye "because we did a survey". ;) )
You need to go into much more detail to show that religion is actually the cause for higher charity.
Otherwise it is just as likely that you are actually observing the effects of something else entirely. For example, the surveys results would be easily explainable by an entirely different variable/character trait, like "being selfless" which could be the cause for both, a) being more charitable and b) being more susceptible to religion.
Just because a subset of the population displays certain character traits doesn't mean you can simply put them into a cause = effect relationship.
You can't even say if religion is a beneficial or detrimental aspect to charity as long as you can't rule out that another variable isn't responsible for the charity in the first place.
I.e. Do selfless people who are not religious give just as much and do they make better or worse choices when actually allocating that money? For all we know Religion could be harvesting all the selfless people and take away from the money (church tax ring a bell?) that they would otherwise fully allocate to charities. lol.
With the data you've shown us so far, one explanation is just as likely as the other.
Considering how more extreme forms of religion (i.e. sects and cults) usually demand (and get) much greater amounts of the wealth of their members, we could as well be observing the effects of guillibility.
And are people that simply give more money even "better persons"? How do you define a "better person?". By how much money they give and how they treat strangers? While we have no clue what else they do with/in their lives? I'm sure that amongst the people responsible for the current financial crisis you will find several that are not only religious but also have been giving lots of money to charities and treated strangers on the street just fine - while they scammed their customers and business partners out of millions of dollars.
And in the case of Katholic Christians, how would supporting an organisation that both first welcomes fanatics that deny the Holocaust back in its arms just last year and now has been shown to be responsible for what is propably the greatest number of child abuses committed by any single organisation in history just this year, wheight in into being such a better person? Not to forget the untold harm that has been done in the third world by preaching against Condoms while half the population is dieing from Aids...
Just can't see it. Churches in its current forms are manmade institutions and just as prone to the currupting effects of power as any other organisation (and let's not forget simple human incompetency and shortsightedness either) - except that they have even less oversight and less checks and balances than pretty much anything else. Whether Churches and/or organised Religion in general are doing more good or evil is certainly up for debate. Would be hilarious if there was a GOD that would throw supporters of all organised religions into hell in the end - out of principle :p
The only thing that is for certain is that religious activism doesn't seem go well with objective statistics interpretation. Not in most cases anyways :p
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Monster Jesus
Does this quality for monster Jesus?
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/423937
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And are people that simply give more money even "better persons"? How do you define a "better person?". By how much money they give and how they treat strangers?
I seem to recall the Church selling Indulgences at one point, though I'd need to reread my Chaucer to see if it mentions the actual prices though.
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Brooks defines this as those who attend religious services at least once a week, which works out to around 30% of the population. Elsewhere it's said that Christian charities tend to be more wide-ranging in their scope, because Christian charities generally don't restrict their work toward only Christians, and Christian givers don't restrict their giving toward only Christian charities (giving to secular charities along with religious ones). In constrast, Muslim, and to a lesser extent Jewish charities tend to be narrowly focused on Muslims and Jews respectively.
This merely proves my point that you are not offering evidence that supports your interpretation by citing this study since he bothered to include Muslim and Jewish groups in the total. The thesis that Christian belief makes better people cannot be supported with evidence so tainted.
That makes no sense at all. Let me quote from the book:
Imagine two women who are both forty-five years old, white, married, have an annual household income of $50,000, and attended about a year of college. The only difference between them is that one goes to church every week, but the other never does. The churchgoing woman will be 21 percentage points more likely to make a charitable gift of money during the year than the nonchurchgoer, and will also be 26 points more likely to volunteer. Furthermore, she will tend to give $1,383 more per year to charity, and to volunteer on 6.4 more occasions.
Pretty self-explanatory. If you are a Christian who regularly attends church, you are part of this statistical group.
Battuta's and my own point is that you are posisting that the Second Coming will occur only when the world has been divided into the believing good and the unbelieving evil. This is first-order crazy because such a thing cannot occur; belief in Jesus or even the Abrahamic god in general is not a precondition to being a good person. The conditions you state for the Second Coming are impossible, thus it will play out differently in such a way as to prove God is a prick by condemning based solely on belief or lack thereof with no regard to any other factors.
You are conflating two independent points here. As for "the Second Coming will occur only when the world has been divided into the believing good and the unbelieving evil", Revelation states that the circumstances immediately before the Second Coming are the Antichrist having forced the entire world to either worship him or be killed. That's a pretty binary situation.
As for "belief in Jesus or even the Abrahamic god in general is not a precondition to being a good person", I never said it was. I said that a Christian will bear fruit (i.e. actively be a good person) by virtue of his Christianity. I also said that being a good person is indicative of having the kind of heart that the Christian God accepts. But being good in general does not necessarily mean you are a Christian (or even religious), though they are strongly correlated.
Goob's argument is basically the circular 'good people will become Christian, and Christian people are good'.
See response to NGTM-1R above.
And the argument that Islam spread by conquest and Christianity by trade is absurd - Islam was known as 'the merchant's religion' for a reason, and when Islam came to power there was a golden age of scientific and commercial development (taken versus Europe's Dark Ages.)
Quite false. Compare the first 300 years of Christianity (when Christians were fleeing Roman persecution) with even the first 30 years of Islam. The Muslims conquered, in quick succession, Damascus in 635, al-Basrah and Antioch in 636, Jerusalem in 638, Alexandria in 642, Cilicia in 650. The reason there was a "golden age" is because they were plundering their neighbors.
And I wish to amend my earlier statement that the Crusades were primarily about territorial expansion. They started off first of all as a defensive war. The Muslims had conquered nearly all of Spain by 715, held Sicily from 827 through 1091, and captured Manzikert in 1071. It was in response to this that the First Crusade was called in 1095 -- to recapture Christian lands that had been lost to Islamic expansion over nearly 500 years.
Let's not take charitable giving as a metric. Let's take, I dunno, tolerance and inclusiveness of homosexuals. Or compassion for the dying through euthanasia. Or, I dunno, hmm, how about prevention of AIDS in the third world by promoting contraception through condoms. Let's see... what about... hmm, I know, what about the compassion for the millions of people suffering huntingtons and parkinsons that might be cured through stem cell research. Let's see how Christians stack up against the non religious in those areas of human compassion.
You do realize that you're cherry-picking a lot of core theological issues, right? You may as well choose the metric of worshipping Zeus. (Also, you should note that most Christian opposition to stem cell research is specifically to embryonic stem cell research.)
The study's bull**** anyway. Constant reminders to be generous could probably produce the same effect on secular individuals. Or, alternatively, churchgoing may be correlated with wealth and leisure (or may not - but it's a hypothesis) and therefore indirectly with more giving. The confounds are infinite.
The decision to post that study clearly involved very little critical or scientific thought. Which points out some of the dangers of faith, I suppose.
How does a scientific study, complete with an appendix full of statistical data, involve very little scientific thought? Be careful that you're not committing the error of the backfire phenomenon (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128490874).
the Christian will bear Christian fruit.
No true Scotsman.
On the contrary, Christian fruit is an essential mark of a Christian life. It's far more consequential than eating porridge with or without sugar.
Ninety-one percent of regular church attendees give to charity each year, compared with 66 percent of those who said they do not have a religion. The gap adds up—the faithful give four times more money per year than their secular counterparts. While most of that money is given to churches, religious people also give more to secular charities, such as the Red Cross or their alma mater.
Makes the claims less meaningful. Show us the data after you eliminate the churches; supporting one's preacher is not morally equivalent to feeding the hungry.
Then let's take strictly secular charity. Again from the book:
Although the charity gap between [religious people and secularists] was not as wide in secular giving as it was for all types of giving, religious people were still 10 points more likely than secularists to give money to nonreligious charities such as the United Way (71 to 61 percent) and 21 points more likely to volunteer for completely secular causes such as the local PTA (60 to 39 percent). In addition, the value of the average religious household's donation to nonreligious charities was 14 percent higher than the average secular household's.
This same correlation extends to donating blood, giving money to a homeless person, and returning extra change accidentally given them by a cashier.
You need to go into much more detail to show that religion is actually the cause for higher charity.
I've gone into quite a bit of detail already, especially with this last post. If you're really interested in the statistics, you should probably review them yourself. :) I was able to get the book on Kindle for $10. But I'll close with another quote:
My explanations are based entirely based on data. They are the fruit of years of analysis on the best national and international datasets available on charity, lots of computational horsepower, and the past work of dozens of scholars who have looked at various bits and pieces of the giving puzzle. ... the findings of this book -- many of which may appear conservative and support a religious, hardworking, family-oriented lifestyle -- are faithful to the best available evidence, and contrary [emphasis in the original] to my political and cultural roots. Indeed, the irresistible pull of empirical evidence in this book is what changed the way I see the world.
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I can't even read that post. Ten seconds looking at it were enough to establish that it included no attempt to grasp any of the points it quoted.
How does a scientific study, complete with an appendix full of statistical data, involve very little scientific thought? Be careful that you're not committing the error of the backfire phenomenon.
I just explained why. Why are you asking a question I just answered?
Reread my previous post. You have a bad habit of repeatedly ignoring statements presented to you and then begging that these very statements be provided.
There is nothing more fundamentally hopeless than attempting to establish faith on rational grounds. If you genuinely believe in what you say you do - rather than being desperately afraid it means nothing - why are you even carrying on this discussion?
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That makes no sense at all. Let me quote from the book:
Imagine two women who are both forty-five years old, white, married, have an annual household income of $50,000, and attended about a year of college. The only difference between them is that one goes to church every week, but the other never does. The churchgoing woman will be 21 percentage points more likely to make a charitable gift of money during the year than the nonchurchgoer, and will also be 26 points more likely to volunteer. Furthermore, she will tend to give $1,383 more per year to charity, and to volunteer on 6.4 more occasions.
Pretty self-explanatory. If you are a Christian who regularly attends church, you are part of this statistical group.
As are the Muslims and the Jews and the Christians who believe in other rather different things such as the LDS and Seventh Day Adventists and a lot of other people. Your study is not specific enough to support the assertion that Christianity, particularly the brand we are discussing which believes in a near-future Second Coming, necessarily leads to good. The study sample has been hopelessly contaminated.
Or you simply can't explain this point correctly (I doubt you'd have held it in reserve so long), which makes your commentary about other religions being less charitable even more suspect than it already was since it destroys any residue of belief that this study of yours is not a feel-good exercise.
You are conflating two independent points here.
If so, this is only because you have already conflated them and quite possibly are now trying to deconflate them to disentangle yourself from evidence you don't want to see. Battuta and I have always, always been arguing that the Second Coming will either demonstrate that a God of boundless love and caring does not exist or that the Second Coming cannot occur. That has been our single, key, consistant point through the thread, and you have responded to it with this study. If this is a conflation, you have only yourself to blame.
As for "the Second Coming will occur only when the world has been divided into the believing good and the unbelieving evil", Revelation states that the circumstances immediately before the Second Coming are the Antichrist having forced the entire world to either worship him or be killed. That's a pretty binary situation.
It's also a remarkably stupid one as even a cursory knowledge of geopolitics will show. At this point in time the only possible solution to the creation of such a situation is divine intervention. This only further reinforces the premise that if God does in fact exist then we need to be rooting for Nuke.
As for "belief in Jesus or even the Abrahamic god in general is not a precondition to being a good person", I never said it was. I said that a Christian will bear fruit (i.e. actively be a good person) by virtue of his Christianity. I also said that being a good person is indicative of having the kind of heart that the Christian God accepts. But being good in general does not necessarily mean you are a Christian (or even religious), though they are strongly correlated.
Considering Christianity does not even represent a majority of the world population, this is an incredibly conceited statement. Considering Christanity's visible sins against others and itself, it is also unbelieveable.
Quite false. Compare the first 300 years of Christianity (when Christians were fleeing Roman persecution) with even the first 30 years of Islam. The Muslims conquered, in quick succession, Damascus in 635, al-Basrah and Antioch in 636, Jerusalem in 638, Alexandria in 642, Cilicia in 650. The reason there was a "golden age" is because they were plundering their neighbors.
This is why the Islamic golden age can be considered to last until about 1400, nearly eight hundred years after you claim it ended because they stopped conquering their neighbors. Right?
And I wish to amend my earlier statement that the Crusades were primarily about territorial expansion. They started off first of all as a defensive war. The Muslims had conquered nearly all of Spain by 715, held Sicily from 827 through 1091, and captured Manzikert in 1071. It was in response to this that the First Crusade was called in 1095 -- to recapture Christian lands that had been lost to Islamic expansion over nearly 500 years.
Which is why the First Crusade was directed at Jersulaem? Not, you know, Spain or Sicily? The Spanish accomplished the Reconquista pretty much on their own, and it took until the 1400s.
It is also a very poor fig leaf to hide behind that the Crusades were not religiously motivated, and you even reject this concept your self now.
You do realize that you're cherry-picking a lot of core theological issues, right? You may as well choose the metric of worshipping Zeus. (Also, you should note that most Christian opposition to stem cell research is specifically to embryonic stem cell research.)
No, he’s actually picking issues related to being kind to one’s fellow humans, providing them relief from suffering, protecting them from needless suffering and death due to disease via a method that is known to be effective. These are excellent metrics by which to judge the benevolence of an organization.
Or do you deny that allievating pain and suffering makes a good metric?
How does a scientific study, complete with an appendix full of statistical data, involve very little scientific thought? Be careful that you're not committing the error of the backfire phenomenon (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128490874).
The study's bull**** anyway. Constant reminders to be generous could probably produce the same effect on secular individuals. Or, alternatively, churchgoing may be correlated with wealth and leisure (or may not - but it's a hypothesis) and therefore indirectly with more giving. The confounds are infinite.
The decision to post that study clearly involved very little critical or scientific thought. Which points out some of the dangers of faith, I suppose.
I have highlighted the relevant points of interest. I’m sure Battuta can produce more.
On the contrary, Christian fruit is an essential mark of a Christian life. It's far more consequential than eating porridge with or without sugar.
The consequence or lack thereof does not prevent the fallacy. “If all A are B” was posisted, then had to be amended to exclude A which are not B. You have invoked No True Scotsman and hence also begging the question.
This merely proves that rather than take an evidence-based view, you have worked backwards from your conclusion to create a view which supports it. That is the essential mark of a begging the question argument.
Then let's take strictly secular charity. Again from the book:
Although the charity gap between [religious people and secularists] was not as wide in secular giving as it was for all types of giving, religious people were still 10 points more likely than secularists to give money to nonreligious charities such as the United Way (71 to 61 percent) and 21 points more likely to volunteer for completely secular causes such as the local PTA (60 to 39 percent). In addition, the value of the average religious household's donation to nonreligious charities was 14 percent higher than the average secular household's.
This same correlation extends to donating blood, giving money to a homeless person, and returning extra change accidentally given them by a cashier.
The study's bull**** anyway. Constant reminders to be generous could probably produce the same effect on secular individuals. Or, alternatively, churchgoing may be correlated with wealth and leisure (or may not - but it's a hypothesis) and therefore indirectly with more giving. The confounds are infinite.
The decision to post that study clearly involved very little critical or scientific thought. Which points out some of the dangers of faith, I suppose.
Relevant parts again bolded. I do hope you read them this time.