Quoting anything from the bible is fecking ridiculous because of the amount of revision and censorship it's undergone throughout the centuries. It's all just political agenda wrapped up in a (not so) nice fairytale about a magic man in the sky that will let you come to his party if you're nice enough to him.
Religion, what's the point?
- Thread starter TheRedFlag
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Quoting anything from the bible is fecking ridiculous because of the amount of revision and censorship it's undergone throughout the centuries. It's all just political agenda wrapped up in a (not so) nice fairytale about a magic man in the sky that will let you come to his party if you're nice enough to him.
It's illegal in Ireland to get an abortion because of religion, and quite recently it lead to the death of a woman. But no, we should leave them be wrong in peace.
In a discussion about religion, the existence of God is crucial. I doubt anyone goes up to people wearing crucifixes and insults them, well nobody sane.
This is quite a good argument to be fair, not sure how you could respond to it.
America's a mess because of the pressure put on politicians by Christians. It's hardly like they keep it all in the church, many would be very happy to let church rule state.
The most laughable part is that most of the Gospels were written centuries after the death of Jesus.
I've never denied being a bit of a cnut when it suits me to. I even got a tagline referring to it.
I'm all for people having an opinion and a belief. Just because I'm a cnut doesn't make it right for me to be or for anyone else to be. If I'm pulled up on being a cnut, so be it, I can take it.
Would what you've referred to there that I'm guilty of be akin to criticizing religion for causing wars and promoting the slave trade, among other things, while happily consuming goods procured by war and using goods produced by the slave trade?
You can be against all the bad things in the world without giving up all your earthly possessions and living in a fecking cave, you lunatic.
No you are tediously asking people to do on this subject what you won't do any other. And it's wearing thin.
Also not partaking in beliefs with no proof and opting out of modern society are not the same. I've done one quite easily but find the other very very difficult. Believe me, I've thought long about it too.
Centuries? Wasn't the bible as we know it canonized at most 100 years after Jesus's death?
They were written centuries after his death after being nothing more than spoken tales, subject to the usual effects of Chinese whispers. They've been written in many different languages, have been translated and rewritten countless times, and been subject to many forms of censorship.
It might make me a bad person but I automatically assume that someone's less intelligent than me when I find out that they're religious.
No, the bible was put together by a council in 450ad or so, they choose the gospels that suited them and left everything else out.
Also a lot of the stories are categorised folk tales that predate Christ.
Lot's of aetiological works are like this.
That's not true, at all. There are plenty of subjects on which I'll happily let other have their opinion on.
Why do atheists even care what religious people believe? It doesn't effect them.
Live and let live, I say.
Wearing thin? Why? Because you don't agree with me?
What does Jesus have against goats? Can any religious person answer that? Goats are awesome.
It does effect us, jesus feck, it's like you're willingly ignoring the whole history of religion and where so much of the backward laws that society forces on us come from. A lot of conservative ideals (stemming from religion) effect us all, it effects the law, it effects the way you live your life and it's harming millions of people around the world as we speak.
- No, they're not. They're truth claims about the universe that we live in, and as such they are either true or false. Either people have good reasons for believing what they do, or they don't. If they don't, they should recognize it, and change their beliefs accordingly. But religion is playing by a different set of rules here, and it's the only area of discourse where it is roundly accepted for people to believe things on bad evidence. In every other area people are ridiculed and marginalized if they make fantastical claims of this sort.
- I don't care. If they take offense to anything I say about their religion, what they're really doing is taking offense at their own lack of intellectual honesty. There wouldn't be anything to be offended by if they were convinced that they had good reasons for believing what they do - not to mention that they'd be able to articulate those reasons. But they don't, and they're not, so they play the hurt-feelings card instead.
There's nothing wrong with challenging people's beliefs and certainties, be they religious or otherwise. The only reason why you and others have bought into this crap that religion deserves more respect and protection than everything else is because of the aura of respectability and taboo that the religious have successfully trotted up these past centuries in order to shield themselves and their beliefs from criticism.
- The religious tend to take offense to reasonable criticism. And in any case they're not mutually exclusive.
- I take offense to that. It's my belief.
1) There's not a single sentence in there that could not have been authored by a 1st century person.
2) There's absolutely no evidence for any of the fantastical and supernatural claims in it.
3) It's piss poor, full of contradictions, and obviously not divinely written or inspired in any way (unless god is an idiot, an argument I might be willing to accept).
Is there anything to suggest that Christianity is not false? (And please don't say "because it says so in the Bible" again)
- Wow. So your argument is basically that because it says so in a book written by ignorant people who didn't know the first thing about physics, biology etc. 2000 years ago, that automatically makes it more believable?
- No, the analogy works just fine, and your objection to it is laughable - though symptomatic of how partitioned the human mind can be when it comes to critical thinking. As if the fact that many people believe in the truthfulness of these texts (without being able to conjure up any good reasons for why) somehow grants it any credence. It's absurd.
No you fecking don't.
No, I disagree with most people on most topics, I'm used to that.
I've explained that you are changing your whole persona to suit your argument in this thread. All of your own arguments in this thread can be used against you more than any other poster on the forum. It's almost like you are lying.
The only reason I'm in this thread is someone brought your aggressive posting to my attention , again.
I can't shake that at the end of the day they believe in a mystical being. I've known people who basically accept everything that science has proven to be wrong about their religious teachings, acknowledge the poor social aspects of their religious teachings and don't follow them, but still believe that their every move and thought is being monitored by a magical man in the sky.
Not when you demonise someone for going to church and throwing a tenner into the collection box as being complicit in worldwide suffering, while filling your car up with petrol procured by illegal wars in foreign lands.
You can't have it every way that suits you. If you want to point out the ills caused by religion and religious people then you need to accept and take responsibility for the ills you're complicit in.
You really don't see the point that people following without proof or question is a unique danger?
I'm only going to say this one more time.
Money given to religion is made in the form of charitable donations. People choose to do that.
When someone buys petrol, they often have to in order to live in a modern society which requires them to travel long distances.
Buying petrol does not mean that you approve of the vile things oil companies do, and I'm sure many people who buy petrol hate the oil companies. No one is walking into the offices of BP or Exxon and giving money to them for no fecking reason.
Fine, you now post under your own strict guidelines of tolerance.
I cycle where I can but two kids living 35 miles away makes the car fairly obligatory. Making the offerings at church a silly comparison, and I wouldn't be buy diesel from any garages who were buggering my countrymen as children.
Fair enough, but I'm sure the NT was completed long before their canonization, where as you mentioned, some gospels were chosen.
Nothing is completed until it is published, as that is 'The Book'.
The idea of propaganda originates in all these early texts. From the Odyssey to the Aeneid to the Bible to the Book of Kells, they are all folk tales but really they are political documents validating power and control. They are all collections and the commandeering of extant folk tales to convey much bigger ideas. Nothing makes the bible unique among these works of which there are many.
Aphorisms.
By the same token, giving money to the church does not mean you approve of the vile things they do. It's not the reason people give money. Nobody walks into church and says 'wahey for buggering that child, have a tenner.'
It's a bullshit argument IMO that serves only to try and make people feel guilty about their actions so that they no longer do it.
A donation can be for many other legitimate reasons.
People donating to church shouldn't be looked at, or be an issue. A few of the many actions of the church should be an issue and should be dealt with seperately.
Can't say I've seen many atheists in the street handing out leaflets and telling people to repent.
Agreed. My parents are both born again Christians (their term, not mine) who go to church and donate money. Much of it is used for charitable works and they do a lot of work in Africa, building schools and hospitals and providing communities with life essentials. My Da gave up time from his work to go out to Africa to help with these building projects.
I've donated money to the church to help with these projects. I don't think I or my parents should be demonised for doing so.
I don't know Zarlak, I think it's far trickier to disassociate the two acts. I really cannot believe the church in Ireland has survived this last 10 years. My own parents, whose peers were raped argued for me baptizing my kids. It makes no sense to me. I think it's wrong to fund an organisation that is guilty of so much wrong just because they do some good.
You need to look up the meaning of self-evident Saliph.
Before responding to anything else I’m going to clarify the Santa distinction, because you are just not getting it.
I’m saying that something stated as being true, is more believable than something which is stated as being false. You have to be utterly insane to reject this as being correct.
As I said, I'm not making any comment on the evidence for religion or the historical accuracy of the bible. The point is that there is a difference between something which is proposed as being true and something which is admitted as being a lie or fictional. It's clearly more ridiculous to believe in something which is admitted as being made up, than something which is proposed as being true - regardless of the evidence.
If I made these two statements,
1) “yesterday I went to the gym – this is true by the way”
2) “yesterday I played 5 asides – that is a lie by the way”
Then out of the two it’s unquestionably more reasonable to believe in number one, despite you having no other basis for believing it than me proposing it as true. The same logic can be applied to Santa/God. One is proposed as being a lie, the other as being the truth. It is more reasonable to believe in the latter.
As I stated before, you can accurately trace the tradition of Santa and observe the embellishment of the original Saint’s facts and history, with fictional additions leading to the current Santa interpretation.
So if you were saying – believing in God is the same as believing in St Nicholas – then that would be a fair comparison.
But saying – believing in God is the same as believing in Santa Claus – is a ridiculous comparison because it originates from admitted fiction, such as Moore’s poem.
It's called faith to try and stop the masses questioning how they're being controlled.
Other people do charity work without the suspension of belief.
In the church in St Stephen's Green in Dublin there are 3 slots to give money. One is marked The Parish, one The Priest and the 3rd The Poor. They all lead into one drawer.
I can see your side of it moses, but it could be any number of reasons. I'm not a religious man at all, I think it's all nonsense. I believe the bible was written at the time it was, as a set of guidelines. A 'how to live a good life' book. The whole 'god' shit IMO was just to strike fear into people so it encouraged them to live good lives. The problem is it that most of it relates to that time period. It's not necessary anymore. Some of the passages we can take to our hearts today that still benefit us, some we completely can not.
So those are my views, some people tend to buy into the whole god bit and that's fine, but religion and the whole concept goes far beyond the individual churches guilty of these acts. Your parents may have encouraged you to baptize your kids because they believe in the bigger picture however much they abhor the acts of the church they attended. Religion goes much further than that church, and the crimes commited by these churches have no place in said religion anyway. They're completely seperate attrocities that need dealing with legally. A donation given to the church is not given to the sick paedophile that likes to get his end away with little boys, it's given to the organisation as a whole for any number of reasons that the donator feels merit it, to continue the religion itself and what they perceive as peaceful teachings/good ways of life for anyone who chooses to follow it.
I could be wrong on that, like I said I'm not religious at all.
You may not to be able to prove there is no God but I think you can probably go a long way toward showing the bible is a load of made up shit with the distinct aim of controlling people.
@ Zarlak
Your middle paragraph does sum up my folks to be fair. I just feel they are trapped into the church by the idea of religion. Religion has always subjugated the individual that way so it's not only not knew but the whole point.
Your middle paragraph does sum up my folks to be fair. I just feel they are trapped into the church by the idea of religion. Religion has always subjugated the individual that way so it's not only not knew but the whole point.