Religion, what's the point?

RexHamilton said:
You can't or don't have to explain why you nitpick the nice parts of the bible to follow but ignore the racist and sexist parts? Either it's the word of god or not? Who are you to decide which parts of The Almighty's laws to follow. It seems to be you'll have a debate with a god incarnated yourself while he's wondering why you allow your wife to speak and why you don't keep slaves. (Well, obviously you won't, because the idea of doing anything after you die is ludicrous.)
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Christian fundmentalism and bible inerrancy are distinctly modern phenomena. Famous discussions such as the development of the nicene creed couldn't have happened if no interpretation of the bible had ever taken place. Its only in the last 150 years or so that we've had people claiming that the entirity of the bible is literally true, never to be changed with no interpretation to be had. (Obviously there have been degrees within that over the years)

I wonder whether the rise in fundamentalism is in part because the body of social and scientific evidence that refutes some of the bible's stories is growing. 1000 years ago there was no choice for the average christian to make between science and religion, because science was barely a discrete discipline by that point, and was inaccessible to most people anyway.

Nowadays Christians are increasingly making a choice between accepting biblical dogma over scienctific principles, or questioning & probing the bible in a way that doesn't threaten their religion. What's worrying is that, looking at the historical trend, it seems to be the former, not the latter, that's winning out.

Wibble said:
The question isn't if we can prove he didn't exist. The null hypothesis is that he didn't exist. We therefore need proof that he did exist to reject this null hypothesis. And to me the evidence available is far from convincing.
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Personally I wouldnt agree with that. In sciences a common starting point for a complete unknown is the position maximum ignorance - the chance of something existing or not is 50%. It may be true, it may not, but we have no evidence pointing us either way. That was the basis in my area of study, genetics.

0% on the other hand is a position of maximum certainty. To be at 0% requires definitive proof. You cannot be more certain. Obviously there are lots of different probability models in use in different fields, so there's loads of ways to do it, and no right way.
 
Sky1981 said:
That'll be hard my friend, nobody ever seen the Big Bang, nor live long enough to witness monkey turned into man, if Darwin is right, it takes hundreds of years, even thousand for a single evolution, we will never see one, not in the span of our 2000 years existence.
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What's this now?
 
bishblaize said:
Christian fundmentalism and bible inerrancy are distinctly modern phenomena. Famous discussions such as the development of the nicene creed couldn't have happened if no interpretation of the bible had ever taken place. Its only in the last 150 years or so that we've had people claiming that the entirity of the bible is literally true, never to be changed with no interpretation to be had. (Obviously there have been degrees within that over the years)
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OK, so it's a new phenomenon. So what? It still doesn't explain why people are able to just choose the nice parts of the bible to follow. It's either all the word of god or it's not. Interpretation is one thing but ignoring the bad bits and saying "oh they don't apply now" doesn't wash. You either follow the scripture or you don't.
 
RexHamilton said:
OK, so it's a new phenomenon. So what? It still doesn't explain why people are able to just choose the nice parts of the bible to follow. It's either all the word of god or it's not. Interpretation is one thing but ignoring the bad bits and saying "oh they don't apply now" doesn't wash. You either follow the scripture or you don't.
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That view itself is a fundamentalist view. Religious liberals don't take that view. The latter group take the view that revelation comes from the bible by study and reflection on the essential message, not blindly following every detail. Since the 'right' way is the one that puts you in touch with god, and there is no god, there isn't really a right or wrong way. (Which isn't to say that some christians dont contradict themselves)

To be honest, christianity itself only exists because people ignored much of what jesus said. As I read it, Jesus wanted his followers to be Jews, albeit a new form of Judaism (with a 'complete' Law). However that notion seemed to have disappeared within even 100 years of his death and Christianity was by then quite different from Judaism.

Islam (which I know little about tbh) from the outside appears to be a religion with a much stronger focus on following the rules in order to meet a base standard to be called a Muslim, or to benefit from whatever divine benefits the religion offers. I'd be interested to hear from a Muslim whether selective interpretation of the Quran and Hadith is a thing.
 
bishblaize said:
Personally I wouldnt agree with that. In sciences a common starting point for a complete unknown is the position maximum ignorance - the chance of something existing or not is 50%. It may be true, it may not, but we have no evidence pointing us either way. That was the basis in my area of study, genetics.
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Then you would be wrong. And you didn't concentrate enough when studying.
 
Sky1981 said:
That'll be hard my friend, nobody ever seen the Big Bang, nor live long enough to witness monkey turned into man, if Darwin is right, it takes hundreds of years, even thousand for a single evolution, we will never see one, not in the span of our 2000 years existence.
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First of all, evolution does not teach that we evolved from monkeys as you put it. Humans and apes both share a common ancestor.

Secondly, small changes take place over thousands/millions of years as species adapt to their environment, every animal born looks similar to its parents. Think of it this way, at no point did a Latin speaking mother give birth to a Spanish speaking child. At some point, two groups of Latin speakers separated and over time their language changed to be distinctive enough that we call them Spanish and Portuguese.

Lastly, 2000 year existence?
 
bishblaize said:
That view itself is a fundamentalist view. Religious liberals don't take that view. The latter group take the view that revelation comes from the bible by study and reflection on the essential message, not blindly following every detail. Since the 'right' way is the one that puts you in touch with god, and there is no god, there isn't really a right or wrong way. (Which isn't to say that some christians dont contradict themselves)

To be honest, christianity itself only exists because people ignored much of what jesus said. As I read it, Jesus wanted his followers to be Jews, albeit a new form of Judaism (with a 'complete' Law). However that notion seemed to have disappeared within even 100 years of his death and Christianity was by then quite different from Judaism.

Islam (which I know little about tbh) from the outside appears to be a religion with a much stronger focus on following the rules in order to meet a base standard to be called a Muslim, or to benefit from whatever divine benefits the religion offers. I'd be interested to hear from a Muslim whether selective interpretation of the Quran and Hadith is a thing.
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That's my point though. Who are they to decide what to take seriously and what to ignore. You can't claim it's the word of god, but say that he didn't mean the stuff that is socially unacceptable in today's society. They whole thing makes no sense. Look at things at the minute. Christians are saying how gay marriage is wrong because it says homosexuality is wrong in the bible. But in a hundred years time when gay marriage in universally acceptable in western countries, people will point out that we are not to take the "homosexuality is wrong" argument seriously. The relevant bits of the bible recede all the time.
 
Amethyst said:
First of all, evolution does not teach that we evolved from monkeys as you put it. Humans and apes both share a common ancestor.
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Meh... One of which probably looked a bit like this.

Aegyptopithecus_NT.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegyptopithecus

That's a monkey, as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, carry on... I just wanted to post the cute monkey drawing. Don't let it distract you from being baffled by Sky's bizarre ramblings.
 
RexHamilton said:
That's my point though. Who are they to decide what to take seriously and what to ignore. You can't claim it's the word of god, but say that he didn't mean the stuff that is socially unacceptable in today's society.
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The idea that the entire bible is the literal 'Word of God' is another fundamentalist concept, not a christianity wide concept. There's a tonne of different views about how god and the bible inter-relate. There's way too many to outline here, but a quick google will bring some up.
 
RexHamilton said:
That's my point though. Who are they to decide what to take seriously and what to ignore. You can't claim it's the word of god, but say that he didn't mean the stuff that is socially unacceptable in today's society. They whole thing makes no sense. Look at things at the minute. Christians are saying how gay marriage is wrong because it says homosexuality is wrong in the bible. But in a hundred years time when gay marriage in universally acceptable in western countries, people will point out that we are not to take the "homosexuality is wrong" argument seriously. The relevant bits of the bible recede all the time.
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The "don't take the bible literally" eventually just becomes a cop-out used by moderates to reconcile their secular morality today and the evil shit that the bible promote.
 
bishblaize said:
The idea that the entire bible is the literal 'Word of God' is another fundamentalist concept, not a christianity wide concept. There's a tonne of different views about how god and the bible inter-relate. There's way too many to outline here, but a quick google will bring some up.
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Nah, I'm not having that. The bible is taken as literally as the society allows. Today very little is taken literally because it's a 2000 year old book but if taking it literally is a fundamentalist concept then the whole of Ireland was fundamentalist Catholic up until a few decades ago. Women were second class citizens. For years after they, eventually, got the vote, they couldn't hold civil service jobs once they got married as the job of the woman was to be at home looking after the family. You weren't allowed to eat meat on Fridays in Ireland. There are loads of examples of rules that were followed up until not that long ago. They are only changed now because people wouldn't abide by them anymore so it was easier to say that they are not to be taken literally as lose face by trying to enforce unenforceable rules.

You can claim that taking the bible literally is fundamentalism, but then 90% of Christians were fundamentalists up until about 100 years ago. As @Winrar said, the "don't take it literally" approach only ever appears once something is no longer culturally acceptable.

Watch how in 20/30 years time the church has no opposition to gay marriage and stem cell research. They oppose them now, but when they are commonplace the church will have no objection to them.
 
RexHamilton said:
Nah, I'm not having that. The bible is taken as literally as the society allows. Today very little is taken literally because it's a 2000 year old book but if taking it literally is a fundamentalist concept then the whole of Ireland was fundamentalist Catholic up until a few decades ago. Women were second class citizens. For years after they, eventually, got the vote, they couldn't hold civil service jobs once they got married as the job of the woman was to be at home looking after the family. You weren't allowed to eat meat on Fridays in Ireland. There are loads of examples of rules that were followed up until not that long ago. They are only changed now because people wouldn't abide by them anymore so it was easier to say that they are not to be taken literally as lose face by trying to enforce unenforceable rules.

You can claim that taking the bible literally is fundamentalism, but then 90% of Christians were fundamentalists up until about 100 years ago. As @Winrar said, the "don't take it literally" approach only ever appears once something is no longer culturally acceptable.

Watch how in 20/30 years time the church has no opposition to gay marriage and stem cell research. They oppose them now, but when they are commonplace the church will have no objection to them.
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Well, as I say, there's plenty of resources online if you're interested in the topic.
 
RexHamilton said:
Nah, I'm not having that. The bible is taken as literally as the society allows. Today very little is taken literally because it's a 2000 year old book but if taking it literally is a fundamentalist concept then the whole of Ireland was fundamentalist Catholic up until a few decades ago. Women were second class citizens. For years after they, eventually, got the vote, they couldn't hold civil service jobs once they got married as the job of the woman was to be at home looking after the family. You weren't allowed to eat meat on Fridays in Ireland. There are loads of examples of rules that were followed up until not that long ago. They are only changed now because people wouldn't abide by them anymore so it was easier to say that they are not to be taken literally as lose face by trying to enforce unenforceable rules.

You can claim that taking the bible literally is fundamentalism, but then 90% of Christians were fundamentalists up until about 100 years ago. As @Winrar said, the "don't take it literally" approach only ever appears once something is no longer culturally acceptable.

Watch how in 20/30 years time the church has no opposition to gay marriage and stem cell research. They oppose them now, but when they are commonplace the church will have no objection to them.
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I've lost track on their position on condoms now. I know they thought them immoral fairly recently in spite of innumerable AIDS deaths in Africa, at any rate.
 
Ubik said:
I've lost track on their position on condoms now. I know they thought them immoral fairly recently in spite of innumerable AIDS deaths in Africa, at any rate.
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I think you're allowed to wear one. But only as a fashion accessory. If you want to have the sex you have to go bareback.
 
Wibble said:
Not to mention nothing was written until at least 40 years (and probably much longer) after his alleged death and then certainly not by anyone who knew him (if someone the myth was based on even existed).
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Wasn't the Council of Nicosia about 300 years after the event where the contents of what is considered the bible were decided?
 
Wibble said:
Not to mention nothing was written until at least 40 years (and probably much longer) after his alleged death and then certainly not by anyone who knew him (if someone the myth was based on even existed).
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Does that meet your burden of proof then?

:p
 
Regarding Jesus - Israel was teaming with self proclaimed messiahs at the time- a lot of them got crucified for heresy or disturbing the peace. Jesus is probably an amalgamation of the stories about several different people. Rome needed a Religion that could unify the empire, so they picked and choosed from a bunch of written accounts, added some pagan traditions and voila - Christianity was born.
 
Momochiru said:
Regarding Jesus - Israel was teaming with self proclaimed messiahs at the time- a lot of them got crucified for heresy or disturbing the peace. Jesus is probably an amalgamation of the stories about several different people. Rome needed a Religion that could unify the empire, so they picked and choosed from a bunch of written accounts, added some pagan traditions and voila - Christianity was born.
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It was even better at controlling the poor and giving them something to hold on to.
 
Yeah Josephus (writing about 70AD) mentions it in passing: 'Another bleedin' wonderworker down in Galilee, miracles, visions - usual hoopla'.
 
Sky1981 said:
Why is it that you have a notion people who holds a religion is indoctrinated? I was indoctrinated as a Budhist, yet I converted to Christianity. It's not always the case of not knowing what I choose and simply being assigned a religion by birth.
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The overwhelming majority are religious through indoctrination and often via parental/peer inference. I was indoctrinated into the Baptist faith from an early age, by age 30 I finally came to believe it was all bullshit. Some of the older Caf members can attest to my ridiculous attempts to support religion many years ago.
 
How come there are so many atheists on the internet but not so many in real life?
 
Do most athiests consider all religions equally ridiculous? I ask because it seems to me that athiests pick on easy targets, like Christianity for instance. I seldom see athiests trolling Judaism or Islam
 
Loublaze said:
Do most athiests consider all religions equally ridiculous? I ask because it seems to me that athiests pick on easy targets, like Christianity for instance. I seldom see athiests trolling Judaism or Islam
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Whuh? Really?

Most atheists just pick on Christianity because it's the religious context they were brought up in, and as such they were exposed to its ridiculous doctrines more than others... I reckon most atheists who've thought about things can make fun of the other Abrahamic religions with similar ease.
 
Today's light form of non political Atheism is quite small and non violent movement in a civilized countries. They don't walk with torches to burn heavy metal and porn like Westboro baptist church which is pretty rare example these days.

Using sense of humor, logic is hardly an offense against Christianity who by the way in some cases did their homework about reformations. An atheist may laugh and ridicule but they won't hurt anyone... just like majority of Christians. That's why debates between Atheists and Christians on the internet are so popular. You may take points from this and even chuckle but no head shall fall.
 
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Eriku said:
Whuh? Really?

Most atheists just pick on Christianity because it's the religious context they were brought up in, and as such they were exposed to its ridiculous doctrines more than others... I reckon most atheists who've thought about things can make fun of the other Abrahamic religions with similar ease.
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I get what you're saying, but I still feel Christians are easy targets. For instance, Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a scientist I hold in high esteem who recently poked fun at Christianity on Christmas day with some pretty funny tweets. Do you think he'd do that on Rosh Hashanah or Ramadan? I don't think so, and I don't think it has much to do with the religion he was supposedly raised in.
 
DiseaseOfTheAge said:
Same. Which has always confused me a touch as an awful lot of folk apparently believe when you stick a census form in front of them.
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Some utterly reliable (Wiki) stats...
In a 2011 YouGov poll, 34% of UK citizens claimed they believed in a God or gods.
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Then again...
Religion in the United Kingdom (2011 census)

Christianity (59.5%)
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We have quite a lot of Christians who don't believe in God.
 
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