Religion, what's the point?

InfiniteBoredom said:
Cumulatively probably a similar number of men believed in the Greek pantheon, fervently so, are we to apply the same logic to these characters who openly practiced patricide, incest, adultery and human sacrifice in their mythology?

Equally though, argument from authority is poor, Nietzsche was/is reverted by many and he was a certified weirdo pl0nker.
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Carolina Red said:
That's also the book where he made the case for the dictatorship of the "great man" and got himself coined a proto-fascist by later historians.
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I’m only messing, Dumbstar’s post immediately brought that Carlyle quote to mind.
 
Carolina Red said:
On Schopenhauer...
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Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger
For the bottle hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart
"I drink, therefore I am"
Yes, Socrates, himself
Is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker but a
Bugger when he's pissed

 
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Wibble said:
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger
For the bottle hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart
"I drink, therefore I am"
Yes, Socrates, himself
Is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker but a
Bugger when he's pissed

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I prefer this one :lol:

 
Withnail said:
This is much repeated by Christians, and I heard it a lot attending Catholic school and doing all the sacraments etc but it has never made any kind of sense to me.

Jesus died for your sins.

God sacrificed his only son so you could have eternal life.

But, like, God is ubiquitous and all-powerful, why the feck would he need to have a human son and have him tortured in order to ensure people went to heaven? Also Jesus is sitting pretty in heaven so he wasn't sacrificed at all.

I mean, I get that a lot of it is faith based etc but this part I can't find any kind of logic in at all. I keep coming back to it, in that if millions of people are swallowing this, there must be some kind of logic I'm not understanding. Not that it would change anything about my avowed atheism, but it niggles at me everytime I hear or read about it that I can't see why anyone would believe it.
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But a Christian with good theological underpinnings would never suggest God "needs" you to reach heaven so you've framed it in a way that's always going to be a difficult circle to square. You've inserted a sense of human self importance and when the human is placed as the centre of things and you try to work backwards in your rationale then nothing would make sense with respect to the holy because we are not that. Even as a non believer, even to look at it conceptually you must see that your ratione is not the rationale of the theoretically holy. He wants you, not needs you - Christianity is more about God finding people than people finding God, which is quite different to the way other religions approach things.

Why did he have a human son, because the wages for sin are death which was established from the beginning. If God made no reconcilation towards us he would be more righteous in his divine judgement than loving, and if he did not establish divine judgement and "let us get away with it" so to speak just because you may think that seems very forgiving from a human perspective than he would be more loving than righteous. But biblically speaking the teaching is that God is both perfectly righteous and good, and there is no righteousness without consequence or love without justice offered to those that suffer, those concepts cease to exist. This comes down to the holiness and righteousness of God which even Christians struggle with conceptually, as humans we kind of imagine God to be a bit like us with a tad more stats in each department.

What we see on the cross is the perfect offering, because an eternal being has infinite capacity. It fulfilled prophecy set out in the Old Testament. It satisfied God's righteousness in the moments Jesus was on the cross due to his nature as an eternal being and ability to take on our sin. It satisfied God's desire for a ongoing reconcilliation. God becoming flesh offered a light to the world and an example for humankind through Jesus and the gospel and through his willingness to enter this world for the purpose he was given by the Father, demonstrating the perfectly good human - as Jesus is both human and divine. Far from lacking logic it contains all logic in theological terms. Probably doesn't seem so from a staunchly athiestic persuasion.
 
Imagine thinking someone died & came back from the dead days later & that is a core tenet of a religion.

Absolute manmade batshittery.
 
Abraxas said:
But a Christian with good theological underpinnings would never suggest God "needs" you to reach heaven so you've framed it in a way that's always going to be a difficult circle to square. You've inserted a sense of human self importance and when the human is placed as the centre of things and you try to work backwards in your rationale then nothing would make sense with respect to the holy because we are not that. Even as a non believer, even to look at it conceptually you must see that your ratione is not the rationale of the theoretically holy. He wants you, not needs you - Christianity is more about God finding people than people finding God, which is quite different to the way other religions approach things.

Why did he have a human son, because the wages for sin are death which was established from the beginning. If God made no reconcilation towards us he would be more righteous in his divine judgement than loving, and if he did not establish divine judgement and "let us get away with it" so to speak just because you may think that seems very forgiving from a human perspective than he would be more loving than righteous. But biblically speaking the teaching is that God is both perfectly righteous and good, and there is no righteousness without consequence or love without justice offered to those that suffer, those concepts cease to exist. This comes down to the holiness and righteousness of God which even Christians struggle with conceptually, as humans we kind of imagine God to be a bit like us with a tad more stats in each department.

What we see on the cross is the perfect offering, because an eternal being has infinite capacity. It fulfilled prophecy set out in the Old Testament. It satisfied God's righteousness in the moments Jesus was on the cross due to his nature as an eternal being and ability to take on our sin. It satisfied God's desire for a ongoing reconcilliation. God becoming flesh offered a light to the world and an example for humankind through Jesus and the gospel and through his willingness to enter this world for the purpose he was given by the Father, demonstrating the perfectly good human - as Jesus is both human and divine. Far from lacking logic it contains all logic in theological terms. Probably doesn't seem so from a staunchly athiestic persuasion.
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You've misinterpreted that, I said why would God need to go to the bother of having a son but you illustrated my point perfectly. I can't find any real logic in your post.

It seems to be to only makes sense in the context of being down a theological rabbit-hole and to justify previous theological theories and possibly prophecies.

On the face it it's a nonsense that a ubiquitous, all powerful god wouldn't get into.
 
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If I've learned one thing from this forum, it's that Andrew Tate and being deeply religious go hand in hand.
 
Withnail said:
You've misinterpreted that, I said what would God need to go to the bother of having a son but you illustrated my point perfectly. I can't find any real logic in your post.

It seems to be to only makes sense in the context of being down a theological rabbit-hole and to justify previous theological theories and possibly prophecies.

On the face it it's a nonsense that a ubiquitous, all powerful god wouldn't get into.
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Not at all, you suggest he needs to go to the bother of having a son to save you, you as a human being in the abstract. But he doesn't, he wanted to. It's not a semantic difference, it's a meaningful difference, just as the things you want or need in life are different.

But justifying previous prophecy is neccessary for consistency. Whether you think it is true prophecy or true events makes little difference to whether it is consistent with its own internal descriptions. We should expect to see a truthful God deliver on a promise and an untruthful one renege on a promise. The cross and Jesus himself delivered on a promise. So the overt aspects of God delivering on his promises are very clean, consistent and logical. Where it becomes a rabbit hole is in the many foreshadowings and symmetries that play out in The Bible but that's another topic.

What would God "get into"? The reason I ask is the Christian says this is what God said, this is what he did, and this is exactly how he told you what he did via scripture - and rarely does God in the Bible extrapolate on his inner machinations, more often than not what is said is restricted to what is neccessary for humankind to know. So as a non believer (presumably) - what would a God with omni atttributes do, why would he not do what the Bible says God did? You haven't specified exactly what he wouldn't do so I'll presume this is still in reference to the cross, in which case I ask what would a God do with respect to judgement, justice, love, compassion towards his creations? Presumably you will say the cross never happened, which is fine - but it's those ideas that are tied up in the cross narrative.
 
Abraxas said:
Not at all, you suggest he needs to go to the bother of having a son to save you, you as a human being in the abstract. But he doesn't, he wanted to. It's not a semantic difference, it's a meaningful difference, just as the things you want or need in life are different.

But justifying previous prophecy is neccessary for consistency. Whether you think it is true prophecy or true events makes little difference to whether it is consistent with its own internal descriptions. We should expect to see a truthful God deliver on a promise and an untruthful one renege on a promise. The cross and Jesus himself delivered on a promise. So the overt aspects of God delivering on his promises are very clean, consistent and logical. Where it becomes a rabbit hole is in the many foreshadowings and symmetries that play out in The Bible but that's another topic.

What would God "get into"? The reason I ask is the Christian says this is what God said, this is what he did, and this is exactly how he told you what he did via scripture - and rarely does God in the Bible extrapolate on his inner machinations, more often than not what is said is restricted to what is neccessary for humankind to know. So as a non believer (presumably) - what would a God with omni atttributes do, why would he not do what the Bible says God did? You haven't specified exactly what he wouldn't do so I'll presume this is still in reference to the cross, in which case I ask what would a God do with respect to judgement, justice, love, compassion towards his creations? Presumably you will say the cross never happened, which is fine - but it's those ideas that are tied up in the cross narrative.
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Yeah you've lost me again. Thanks for the effort but it's impenetrable to me and I went to Catholic school.
 
‘Demolishing democracy’: how much danger does Christian nationalism pose?
Documentary Bad Faith looks at the history of a group trying to affect and corrupt politics under the guise of religion

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/apr/27/bad-faith-documentary-christian-nationalism


Bad Faith, a new documentary on the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States, opens with an obvious, ominous scene – the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021 – though trained on details drowned out by the deluge of horror and easily recognizable images of chaos. That Paula White, Donald Trump’s faith adviser, led the Save America rally in a prayer to overturn the results for “a free and fair election”. That mixed among Trump flags, American flags and militia symbols were numerous banners with Christian crosses; on the steps of the Capitol, a “JESUS SAVES” sign blares mere feet from “Lock Them UP!”
 
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