[Nemesis6]

Interesting to know that you consider my personal beliefs stupidity.

Silly also how you can't prove it's stupidity.

If I can just make a general observation about judging the beliefs of others here -
I'm betting you are Christian. As a Christian, what do you think of the Mormons' beliefs that Jesus came to America and the Native Americans are really Israelites whose skin was turned red because they disobeyed God? What about Joseph Smith reading and translating the Book of Mormon out of a hat? Yeah, sure, that's their belief and you respect that, but honest answer: That is kind of funny isn't it?

Religious people generally live inside their own bubbles where they keep their delusions. Critical thinking about religion applies to everything apart from the one they keep inside their own bubble. Looking outwards from inside their own bubble, the Christians see the Mormons' beliefs about seer stones and magical underwear as hysterical and wrong. At the same time, the Mormons are inside their own bubble, laughing at the Muslims' concept of Muhammed as a prophet. There's a lot of that going around, and that's what makes the "interfaith" thing so disingenuous -- You automatically sign up as a foot soldier for this war in one way or another when you join a religion, because religions claim to hold the incontrovertible truth, so whichever one you join, you are always a heathen, and a follower of the one true religion at the same time. The only way to get out of this, is to not be religious. This whole thing is called "compartmentalization", and it's a must for religions, because they cannot stand up to the scrutiny of a rational, analytical mind.

[iamzack]

Nah, I think she meant that when stupid people (not necessarily anyone from this forum) believe the same thing she does, she changes her beliefs. At least, that's what I find myself doing sometimes.

Nope, I definitely consider Christian beliefs really stupid. I mean, seriously, how many holes are there in the briefest possible story? God had to impregnate a human woman with himself and then sacrifice himself to himself into order to convince himself to forgive the sins of the beings he created in his own image? And people go on and on about John 3:13 (or whatever the verse is) "god so loved the world that he sacrificed his only son..."

SACRIFICED HIS SON? His son ended up in heaven at the right hand of his father for eternity! That's not a sacrifice! His son went through a tiny, brief amount of pain, and then sat at the right hand of god in heaven for forever. Come on, that's not sacrifice at all.

Meanwhile, the all powerful god has nothing better to do than police the sex lives of humans and help various basketball teams win championships or something while millions who pray just as hard to him starve to death.

And then we have the nonsense with talking donkeys, talking snakes, silly (STUPID) and pointless laws (gay sex is apparently so much worse than rape that the punishment for gay sex is death, while the punishment for rape is purchasing the rape victim from her father).

But god works in mysterious ****ing ways, right?

God has never done **** that was worth worshipping him over.

"you can't prove it's stupidity"

I can and I did and it wasn't hard.

[General Battuta]

I like to think of religions as particularly devoted science fiction fandoms.

Within the fandom, they make perfect sense to each other.

To the uninitiated, they are opaque and sometimes silly.

And that leads to a great deal of frustration on both sides.

Occasionally a fandom member will attempt to demonstrate, via objective means, that their fandom is the best fandom, and furthermore that anyone of reason could see this (my favorite example of this is when people try to cite the number and historical veracity of their religion's holy texts, by comparison with other religions.) This generally leaves them looking like a bit of a loon.

I suppose a religious person could take this as bashing, but the fact is, we're all members of a particularly small and devoted fandom right here, so 'empathy' might be a better term.

[Turambar]

Captain Picard makes a better god than God.

[Spicious]

SACRIFICED HIS SON? His son ended up in heaven at the right hand of his father for eternity! That's not a sacrifice! His son went through a tiny, brief amount of pain, and then sat at the right hand of god in heaven for forever. Come on, that's not sacrifice at all.

That doesn't make any sense at all. Sacrificing himself is clearly suicide, which is a sin. Hence Jesus must have ended up in hell at the right hand of Satan for all eternity.

[iamzack]

he was in hell for three days. baw.

[Turambar]

he was in hell for three days. baw.

Captain Picard became a Borg.   Also, he was tortured by Cardassians.

[General Battuta]

How many lights do you see?

[Turambar]

Oh yeah, he also died.  He then had to put up with Q's bull****.  Q is much more crafty and silly than satan.

[iamzack]

speaking of satan, the entire book of Job also disproves the existence of the jewish/christian god

[karajorma]

It does?

[iamzack]

the omnipotent, omniscient god needs to test a man's faith by killing off his family and destroying his life in order to prove to satan that job is faithful and ****?

[watsisname]

Makes sense to me.

[Turambar]

Captain Picard once encountered a society that believed he was god.  He demanded they stop, and allowed one of them to shoot him to prove his mortality.  Truly, an example to follow.

[karajorma]

the omnipotent, omniscient god needs to test a man's faith by killing off his family and destroying his life in order to prove to satan that job is faithful and ****?

Proves he's a bastard, not so sure it disproves his existence though.

[iamzack]

you didn't see all the contradictions in that sentence?

[karajorma]

I didn't see anything special about Job. You could pick almost any chapter and make the same claim.

[Rodo]

Captain Picard once encountered a society that believed he was god.  He demanded they stop, and allowed one of them to shoot him to prove his mortality.  Truly, an example to follow.

mmm.. another one as good as that and I'm joining the cult!

[Sushi]

I don't mind that not everybody believes the same way I do, but I do occasionally get frustrated that people don't even try to understand each others beliefs, and just paint broad brushstrokes instead. Not just for religious beliefs, either.

I hold out hope that humanity will get better at mutual understanding than it is at mutual bashing. Unfortunately, history doesn't give me much hope for that.

[Mongoose]

ITT iamzack exhibits incredible ignorance regarding the tenets of Christianity.  Film at 11!

(Also, Picard was a pussy. )