Religion

[matty406]

Holy books have been re-written over and over again and it's very possible the writers slipped in their own prejudices, that accumulated over centuries.
The point of Christianity was "be good to others and you will be rewarded when you die", and religion is so strong i wouldn't be surprised if people hundreds of years ago warped and used it as a controlling tool.

Point is take the scripts with a grain of salt and not as a solid resource for either side of the argument, they're probably like a written version of chinese whispers

[Bla]

Holy books have been re-written over and over again and it's very possible the writers slipped in their own prejudices, that accumulated over centuries.

Even if that's true, we should take them for what they are - the versions people cling to today, not what they "should have been". The ancient versions that no longer exist and nobody believes in are irrelevant today.

The point of Christianity was "be good to others and you will be rewarded when you die", and religion is so strong i wouldn't be surprised if people hundreds of years ago warped and used it as a controlling tool.

Based on what do you say that is the whole point of Christianity? If the original versions had been lost, how can you say what the original versions meant to say?
Christianity is based on a book with hundreds of pages, many of which up and down are filled with barbaric moral commandments. Many of the commandments in it contradict other parts, and I'm not just speaking Old-New Testament, the NT has its bad sides too.
In any case the Bible that christians believe in today which has actual relevance to the world and actually affects it IS a controlling tool - it contains morbid ideas telling people to kill innocent people.

Point is take the scripts with a grain of salt and not as a solid resource for either side of the argument, they're probably like a written version of chinese whispers

They're not a solid source of anything. Neither morals nor truth. That is why it is extremely dangerous when people take them seriously and think they are.

[tuto99]

I've never experienced people looking down on me for my atheism like that in Denmark. Even though there are occasional cases of religious idiocy and all that, but luckily not to the extent it seems like in USA.

Most people here seem mostly apathetic about it. Too apathetic I would say. Too many seem so apathetic about it that they don't mind the fact that the church still receives millions of DKK from the state every year from taxes and the duties they have, such as registering births, that really should be state duties. I think the biggest problem here is that the broad population has so little interest in it that they have no clue they're atheist but think that being atheist means being strongly antireligious. And then again I have read plenty of people on Danish internet forums who go about saying "atheists are just as bad as religious extremists" "science doesn't have all the answers so it's really as bad as religion" and all that nonsense.

How sad that we as a society still hasn't managed to progress beyond such stupidity. It is a disgrace.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Denmark is different from the United States. There are people who are assholes and/or idiots here, and all I can do is get used to it. I may have made it sound like a big deal when it's not, but it's something that just bothers me sometimes. Unnecessary stress ;_;

[Bla]

If Jesus was a Conservative

[Darvince]

kol I'm laughing so much

[Bla]

A good video.

John 3:16

And a ranting lunatic. Enjoy.

Hagee Tells Atheists To Leave The Country b/c They Are Not Wanted & Won't Be Missed

[Darvince]

mfw Hagee is an intolerant dunce and my parents and grandparent love his services /s

[Bla]

A good discussion of the absolute "morality" of christianity.

Christian Apologetics: Hitler can't help you.

[Bla]

Kol the ending

"You Send Yourself To Hell"

[TheMooCows]

"the biggest piece of evidence supporting creationism imo is that oranges are pre-sliced" hmm true

[Bla]

Well that's still a more convincing argument than the modern cultivated bananas fitting so very perfectly and smoothly into our mouth.

In other news, Saudi Arabia has now officially decided that all atheists are terrorists.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/04/02/atheists-classified-terrorists-new-saudi-arabian-laws_n_5075129.html

[Darvince]

Well that's still a more convincing argument than the modern cultivated bananas fitting so very perfectly and smoothly into our mouth.

just like a pēnis

[atomic7732]

i thought it was fit into the hand

[Bla]

It's both! So amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4

[matty406]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/biologists-confirm-god-evolved-from-chimpanzee-dei,35755/

[Bla]

Kol that article is hilarious. Awesome.

[blotz]

i feel bad for peopl who are forced to be religious

[Xriqxa]

I'm really proud of everyone for having such a civil conversation about a potentially contentious topic.

Thanks!

I was scared to open this topic. I thought I was about to peek into an inter-universal war.

[Bla]

Hypocricy. I wonder what people would say if you got 15% discount for pledging to be an atheist in a restaurant.
...And if prayer is so amazing, couldn't they just pray to have the food conjured up from nowhere. That'd solve a lot of hunger problems around the world too... Oh right, we can't have prayers that affect the real world. No matter how many hundreds of millions of people who pray every day, we still live in the same world where millions of people must starve every day.
It's puzzling how people can believe in such magic to me, but to give a discount for it... Hopefully they accept prayers to the Flying Spaghetti Monster too?



http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/07/31/restaurant-praying-discount-marys-gourmet-diner?hpt=hp_t4

[tuto99]

Oh wow....

[Cosmos]

A store that gives discounts for praying in public is a store this guy won't shop at.

[Xriqxa]

Hypocricy. I wonder what people would say if you got 15% discount for pledging to be an atheist in a restaurant.
...And if prayer is so amazing, couldn't they just pray to have the food conjured up from nowhere. That'd solve a lot of hunger problems around the world too... Oh right, we can't have prayers that affect the real world. No matter how many hundreds of millions of people who pray every day, we still live in the same world where millions of people must starve every day.
It's puzzling how people can believe in such magic to me, but to give a discount for it... Hopefully they accept prayers to the Flying Spaghetti Monster too?



http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/07/31/restaurant-praying-discount-marys-gourmet-diner?hpt=hp_t4

-.-
These people lolol.

But Bla, you've got to consider, there are also people out there (like me ^.^) who don't believe in divine magic (if that's what it's called), we believe religion doesn't exactly mean what it says, that religion is just a big metaphor.
Like  God doesn't directly intervene with the Universe, but has created the initial Big Bang in a certain way so all of things he wanted to happen would happen. You see what I'm saying?

Take a look at this:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

To the extent that you can find good things in Christianity and Islam you'll have to cherry pick. Of course you can always simply ignore the bad parts and pretend that Christianity is good. But the truth is that it's clearly not - and that is equally evident from it's evil influence. Thanks to that an entire millennium has been spent where people have been killed for being gay, atheist... people they thought were witches were killed, people who spoke out against their worldview such as world being flat were killed, people were sent to conquer other lands and purge those who did not share their superstitions, pretty much every oppressive fascist bandit government has come to power using christian ideas as arguments to support their actions, from Hitler's delusional fear of jews... And the remnants of this poison we still see in society today which has not yet progressed beyond the point where bigotry and prejudice doesn't remain... we see it every time the American evangelicals fly to Uganda to set up laws to kill gays now that they can't do it in USA, we see it when the conservative idiots in Russia speak of burning people in ovens, we see it when Taliban buries people alive.... I do not understand for one second how people can remain apathetic of that. The sooner this pollution can vanish from the surface of the Earth the better.

A large portion of Muslims are extremists. You shouldn't bias a religion by what it's followers do.

For example, Muslims were never told to shun or kill gays, just not to encourage that (I'm sorry if this offends you >.<)

But yeah, I often see religious people as stupid. I especially dislike religious Christians. I've heard about this atheist guy who was sightseeing at a pond or something, and this priest walks up to him and asks him if he would like to pray at his church (Well of course everyone you run into should be the same religion as you!  ). The tourist declines, explaining that he's atheist. Of course, the priest gets mad at him and starts ranting on about creationism shite etc.

But I don't immediately judge people by their religion. When they start acting like that^, I start judging.

[Bla]

But Bla, you've got to consider, there are also people out there (like me ^.^) who don't believe in divine magic (if that's what it's called),

I don't deny that at all

we believe religion doesn't exactly mean what it says, that religion is just a big metaphor.
Like  God doesn't directly intervene with the Universe, but has created the initial Big Bang in a certain way so all of things he wanted to happen would happen. You see what I'm saying?

Yes, but that raises more problems. For example:

- If your god is good, why does it not directly intervene in the universe to prevent innocent people from suffering? How can it sit by and watch world wars unfold and millions of innocent people get oppressed and killed?

- Why did it create the initial Big Bang in this certain way, that would inevitably result in all the suffering we see on Earth? It was omniscient, so it knew it would happen, it was omnipotent, so it was capable of preventing it, and if it is also omnibenevolent, it would have prevented it, and thus is incompatible with the universe we see. In creating a universe where natural disasters are inevitably bound to kill innocent lives, we can see what kind of mentality such a god would have. A mentality that isn't concerned with random people dying every day for no reason. That doesn't seem compatible with the presumably "good" gods of many religions at all.

In addition to these issues, there's no evidence for the claim that the universe was created by a god. It simply raises the question, where did the god come from?

And I often see people saying religious books are meant to be taken metaphorically. While I appreciate they don't want to take all the barbaric verses serious, that is really all I can take it for. I don't see any reason why a divine being would be so unclear in its communication that it sends a holy book down to Earth, that so many people end up committing atrocities in the name of. The omniscient god would know this was bound to happen. If it didn't want it to happen, it could've just freaking said what it wanted people to believe in the book. To me it seems like they just want to bend the meaning of the religion to whatever they themselves feel most comfortable with.

So in the end, while I don't have a problem with people believing the Big Bang was created by a god, whether they want to call it the one from the Bible or Quran or a unicorn, in the end, I don't see the point of it.

A large portion of Muslims are extremists. You shouldn't bias a religion by what it's followers do.

If the religion is based on a holy book created by a presumably pretty clever and almighty god, a large portion of people committing barbaric acts in the name of the book is a sign that the god didn't achieve what it intended with the book. And again - if the god is so almighty and knows the future etc., it knew what the result would be of all its actions and holy books, so I do think a religion of a good god is somewhat incompatible with all these atrocities.

But I agree the religions must ultimately be defined by the text in their holy books and not by what their followers do.
However, I'm not a big fan of all the metaphorical interpretations for the reasons I gave above. When I see the Bible verses, like Leviticus 20:13, I don't make up a fuzzy interpretation for it that feels more comfortable. I read what it says, "a man should not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, if they do, they should be killed", and think "if this stuff can end up in your holy book under supervision of a deity, your religion is plain simply crazy."
I'm not as familiar with the Quran (I know you don't believe in the Bible) but it looks to me like there are plenty of examples in there that look similar to the stuff in the Bible.

For example, Muslims were never told to shun or kill gays, just not to encourage that (I'm sorry if this offends you >.<)

The Quran isn't as bad as the Bible when it comes to view on homosexuality
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/gay/long.html
But from the verses here (click the numbers), I'm still disappointed. Homosexuality isn't unnatural at all (not that I see any reason why it matters).
If it truly wanted to be a good religion, its god should've gotten rid of those verses and written "treat LGBT people as equals". Maybe that'd have made Iran, Saudi Arabia, Taleban and others think twice before killing thousands of LGBT people and actually have made the world a better place (at least on that issue).

I've heard about this atheist guy who was sightseeing at a pond or something, and this priest walks up to him and asks him if he would like to pray at his church (Well of course everyone you run into should be the same religion as you!  ). The tourist declines, explaining that he's atheist. Of course, the priest gets mad at him and starts ranting on about creationism shite etc.

But I don't immediately judge people by their religion. When they start acting like that^, I start judging.

Agreed.

[Xriqxa]

But Bla, you've got to consider, there are also people out there (like me ^.^) who don't believe in divine magic (if that's what it's called),

I don't deny that at all

we believe religion doesn't exactly mean what it says, that religion is just a big metaphor.
Like  God doesn't directly intervene with the Universe, but has created the initial Big Bang in a certain way so all of things he wanted to happen would happen. You see what I'm saying?

Yes, but that raises more problems. For example:

- If your god is good, why does it not directly intervene in the universe to prevent innocent people from suffering? How can it sit by and watch world wars unfold and millions of innocent people get oppressed and killed?

- Why did it create the initial Big Bang in this certain way, that would inevitably result in all the suffering we see on Earth? It was omniscient, so it knew it would happen, it was omnipotent, so it was capable of preventing it, and if it is also omnibenevolent, it would have prevented it, and thus is incompatible with the universe we see. In creating a universe where natural disasters are inevitably bound to kill innocent lives, we can see what kind of mentality such a god would have. A mentality that isn't concerned with random people dying every day for no reason. That doesn't seem compatible with the presumably "good" gods of many religions at all.

In addition to these issues, there's no evidence for the claim that the universe was created by a god. It simply raises the question, where did the god come from?

And I often see people saying religious books are meant to be taken metaphorically. While I appreciate they don't want to take all the barbaric verses serious, that is really all I can take it for. I don't see any reason why a divine being would be so unclear in its communication that it sends a holy book down to Earth, that so many people end up committing atrocities in the name of. The omniscient god would know this was bound to happen. If it didn't want it to happen, it could've just freaking said what it wanted people to believe in the book. To me it seems like they just want to bend the meaning of the religion to whatever they themselves feel most comfortable with.

So in the end, while I don't have a problem with people believing the Big Bang was created by a god, whether they want to call it the one from the Bible or Quran or a unicorn, in the end, I don't see the point of it.

A large portion of Muslims are extremists. You shouldn't bias a religion by what it's followers do.

If the religion is based on a holy book created by a presumably pretty clever and almighty god, a large portion of people committing barbaric acts in the name of the book is a sign that the god didn't achieve what it intended with the book. And again - if the god is so almighty and knows the future etc., it knew what the result would be of all its actions and holy books, so I do think a religion of a good god is somewhat incompatible with all these atrocities.

But I agree the religions must ultimately be defined by the text in their holy books and not by what their followers do.
However, I'm not a big fan of all the metaphorical interpretations for the reasons I gave above. When I see the Bible verses, like Leviticus 20:13, I don't make up a fuzzy interpretation for it that feels more comfortable. I read what it says, "a man should not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, if they do, they should be killed", and think "if this stuff can end up in your holy book under supervision of a deity, your religion is plain simply crazy."
I'm not as familiar with the Quran (I know you don't believe in the Bible) but it looks to me like there are plenty of examples in there that look similar to the stuff in the Bible.

For example, Muslims were never told to shun or kill gays, just not to encourage that (I'm sorry if this offends you >.<)

The Quran isn't as bad as the Bible when it comes to view on homosexuality
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/gay/long.html
But from the verses here (click the numbers), I'm still disappointed. Homosexuality isn't unnatural at all (not that I see any reason why it matters).
If it truly wanted to be a good religion, its god should've gotten rid of those verses and written "treat LGBT people as equals". Maybe that'd have made Iran, Saudi Arabia, Taleban and others think twice before killing thousands of LGBT people and actually have made the world a better place (at least on that issue).

I've heard about this atheist guy who was sightseeing at a pond or something, and this priest walks up to him and asks him if he would like to pray at his church (Well of course everyone you run into should be the same religion as you!  ). The tourist declines, explaining that he's atheist. Of course, the priest gets mad at him and starts ranting on about creationism shite etc.

But I don't immediately judge people by their religion. When they start acting like that^, I start judging.

Agreed.

These are all exemplary arguments (seriously, you might even find success as an attorney(but thats up to you ;3)), and I see your point when you say God is evil for letting us suffer, but actually, I think it's good. It's like a parent and a child. If God made the world with no problems and CUPCAKES FOR EVERYONE!, we would be sorta dependent on him. I think God is trying to teach us to manage ourselves. Look at us. We're sentient, we're civil, yet we've abused our power so much and now look what we've gotten ourselves into.

[matty406]

It also assumes that a god actually cares. An eternal omnipotent being would have nothing to lose.

[Bla]

These are all exemplary arguments (seriously, you might even find success as an attorney(but thats up to you ;3)), and I see your point when you say God is evil for letting us suffer, but actually, I think it's good. It's like a parent and a child. If God made the world with no problems and CUPCAKES FOR EVERYONE!, we would be sorta dependent on him. I think God is trying to teach us to manage ourselves. Look at us. We're sentient, we're civil, yet we've abused our power so much and now look what we've gotten ourselves into.

Thanks but I see no problem in being dependent on a god. The god is omnipotent, so it could easily help humanity. Why would it teach us to manage ourselves if it could simply help us forever without problems?

It's like if Belgium had an infinite storage of aid supplies and an infinite workforce ready to distribute it without causing any strain on Belgium at all, but France got flooded, and Belgium doesn't ever send any aid, because it doesn't want France to become dependent on it, even though it'd have no negative consequences. That's wouldn't be very nice of Belgium, would it?

[Xriqxa]

A ha ha! This is where you got me thinking 

What exactly would be the point of living if God helped us endlessly? Success would have no meaning, everyone would have everything, etc. There's just no goal to achieve anymore.

Your analogy has a flaw, though. We, humanity, are inflicting our demise on ourselves. France, in your analogy, has experienced a natrual disaster that it cannot control/has no control over. The flood in your analogy, I imagine, would be some sort of Satanic force. I would imagine God would start involving himself if this happened.

However, if France started bombing itself, why does Belgium need to do anything? France needs to start solving it's own problems, not depend on a totally unrelated country to mediate it's activity and wellbeing?

Also, if God did start helping us in (when we are in the situation we are in currently) we would start becoming dependent on him. This then leads to taking God for granted to the point we start nuking ourselves expecting him to do something about it.

See, being God and handling your Universe(s) is like childcare.

[FiahOwl]

This message is only viewable with Universe Sandbox Galaxy Edition. Access it and much more with promo-code '130355'.

[Xriqxa]

I meant that Bla made an error in his analogy.

I didn't mean the flood WAS a Satanic force, I meant that the flood would REPRESENT a Satanic force IRL.
We aren't putting Satanic forces on ourselves, just analogically bombing ourselves.

[Bla]

What exactly would be the point of living if God helped us endlessly? Success would have no meaning, everyone would have everything, etc. There's just no goal to achieve anymore.

What's the goal? Success? I don't believe in god-given goals. I think humans define their goals. If you think success is the goal and a god ensures that, then the goal is achieved. If the goal becomes meaningless when it is achieved, the goal seems pointless to me in the first place.
What's the point of living if god did not help us endlessly? I think it is to be happy. If a god then helped us to be happy all the time, does that make life meaningless? No, I would say the opposite.

Your analogy has a flaw, though. We, humanity, are inflicting our demise on ourselves. France, in your analogy, has experienced a natrual disaster that it cannot control/has no control over. The flood in your analogy, I imagine, would be some sort of Satanic force. I would imagine God would start involving himself if this happened.

Now you're attributing properties to my natural disaster that have nothing to do with what I said.
The flood in my analogy is a natural disaster like any other in the history of the planet, caused by nature/the laws of physics, being plain simply the uncaring laws they are, and not magic forces to make our lives pleasant or unpleasant. The flood is not a satanic force which I do not believe exist as I see no evidence for that. It is not created by humanity either. There are countless natural disasters that humanity hasn't created, and imagine this disaster to be just like one of those.

However, if France started bombing itself, why does Belgium need to do anything? France needs to start solving it's own problems, not depend on a totally unrelated country to mediate it's activity and wellbeing?

That's irrelevant to my example. Coming up with this different example doesn't solve the case for the good god in my previous example.

But to reply to it anyway, France is not one unit, but consists of millions of people. If a few of them are responsible for the bombing causing millions fo suffer, I do think Belgium has a responsibility to prevent that from happening if it is capable, the same way I do think a god isn't good if it's capable of preventing the holocaust, but sits idle.
In the other case that they all somehow collectively agree to bomb themselves, then it's fine.

Also, if God did start helping us in (when we are in the situation we are in currently) we would start becoming dependent on him. This then leads to taking God for granted to the point we start nuking ourselves expecting him to do something about it.

And what's the problem? The nukes would hit nobody if it took care of it. Currently on the other hand, people in fact do die from war and disasters, even though we don't take it from granted.

Also if we have mentalities that make us want to launch nukes on ourselves if he helps us surely I think he made a flaw when making the universe that gave rise to us and not a humanity that cared for itself.