1. What?

2. You're back!?

I got the same impression just from flipping through a few pages at Foyles the other day

I almost bought it, but after reading a few bits opted for Surely Your Joking Mr Feynman, instead. which was in the Physics section just next to it

I am an aetheist but I have no wish to "convert" anyone to aetheism. I'm happy to give my point of view on it if someone asks, but at the same time if someone has faith then I am happy for them if thats what they need to get through life.

I actually have as much of a problem with an agressive aetheist movement as I do with organised religion. I don't like being told what to do or what to think.

My mum joined the Humanist Association a few years ago and is considering becoming a minister in order to perform non-religious weddings and funerals. Again although I have no problem with the ideas of Humanists, it is the organisation, grouping and labeling that I find difficult.

It might well be to do with my age, perhaps as I grow older and the concept of my own death becomes more real I might also turn to some form of non-religious organisation to give me comfort. For now I want the freedom to develop my own ideas on life, and the universe we live in.

I love it when I hear people say this....

I agree 100%, I want the exact same freedom, and thats precisely why I've spent so much time learning about my culture and knowing about Gd's existance.

Okay, to be honest, I haven't read every single post in this thread. Still, it looks like it could turn up to be pretty interesting. I think I'm probably the sort of person you were hoping to poll with this kind of thing, Xavius. I am a Christian (Baptist to be precise). Ironically, given how many people decided to become atheist based for intellectual reasons, I am a Christan for intellectual reasons. Having examined and weighed evidence on every side, it just makes more sense to me. In fact, I debate and discuss religion in an online forum called Theologyweb (same user name there).

As for the article itself...I have to wonder, like other people have asked, why they are so violently opposed to religion. Granted, people have done a lot of stupid things using religion as an excuse. That, however, is a problem with the people, not necessarily with their religion. I could also easily compose a list of Atheists who had done a bunch of stupid things, and begin a strong crusade against them.

Basically, I don't think the live and let live philosophy works - in the end, someone has to be wrong, and if it's me I want to know it. So, I understand speaking with people about what you believe. Strong opposition and sweeping accusations, though, usually come from the uninformed as a way to try to prove their point without actually having to put any thought or effort into it. Arguments like those annoy me, and usually aren't worth listening to regardless which side they come from.

I respect these people in that they are putting effort into it. I'd rather see people strongly opposed to my own believes than completely apathetic. I think they're wrong, and most likely their issues are based on personal problems more than truly intellectual issues, but the more people talk, the more likely they are to iron out truth. After all, look what happened to Flew...

Ooh, interesting thread, and I think I may have to go smack my head against a wall now for agreeing with sentiments argued by Verithrax, Shiri, and Elryn.

Anyways, as per the discussion...

Religion terrifies me. Before someone misconstrues, I do not mean all of religion, simply the extremists. You may argue that extremists are a minority and I should not allow their negative image to taint my viewpoint on other religious followers. However, these extremists, while a minority, are powerful in their conviction; all it takes is a single suicide bomber.

The main reason religion worries me is because it allows people to shirk accountability and sunder morality with the belief of a supernatural reward or redemption. Things done 'In the name of...' can be evil and inhuman. When someone believes -insert higher power here- is guiding their hand, the normal morality they would exhibit flies out the window, and they are capable of anything.

But that's not the only reason I do not like religion. I, too, see religion as a brainwashing agent and, especially nowadays, a multi-national commercial ultra-conglomerate(concerning the Christian faith). Whenever I'm flipping through the channels and see a pastor prancing around on stage surrounded by thousands...it makes me sick.

Religion is there for those who are too weak to believe in humanity and themselves to fall back upon. It purports the afterlife, but in doing so, it stifles enjoyment of life. I am a firm believer in the self, I live for myself and none other (even concerning loved ones, acting in their interest reinforces their love for me, and thus I am actually acting in my own interest). I take pleasure in my goals, my accomplishments, and other self-indulgent acts. I am entirely selfish, and I wholeheartedly believe that it is the only way to truly live life to the fullest. Religion suppresses this sense of self with communal spirituality, selflessness, and the purported existence of a higher cause or being, and thus, is antithetical to my way of life.

Ok, now that I've successfully pissed off anyone who's ever been to church...

I'm not saying that Religion is evil and needs to be done away with. I'm not saying I agree with the New Atheists. Heck, I think they're idiotic (and extremists, themselves). Well, their mission is idiotic, at least. Comparing religious belief to slavery is as ludicrous as it would be to try to remove religion from civilized society altogether. As well, they do not seem to understand the good that comes from religion.

Sure, many intolerably evil acts may have been caused by religious 'inspiration' or mandate. However, everyday there are countless innately and unquestionably good acts done in the name of religion as well. Also, I stated earlier that I believe that religion acts like a crutch to weak people...well, I believe that a good percentage of humanity IS weak. Weak of mind, weak of spirit, confidence, self, whatever. What they lack, religion helps to provide. If it cannot provide, it consoles. Belief in a higher being/cause can dull the pain of life (and death). Congregations and other religious gatherings provide an incredibly strong social support structure for many people around the world.

But, like I said earlier, religion is not for me. I am atheist, or at the least, agnostic in favor of being polite. Do I look down upon members of religious congregations? Perhaps, though I really haven't delved into that matter as of yet. I think I may. However, whether or not someone is religious is a very minor factor in deciding whether I like/respect a person or not. What is more important is how you conduct yourself in your life and relationships.

I'll repress the urge to respond and debate religion and such here, since that's not really the point of this thread. Still, if anyone is actually interested in discussing intellectually the reasons for/against religion, send me a message. There's a common conception that Religion is based on ignorance or weakness, but I disagree.

That's all I'll say on that topic for now, I'm looking forward to seeing where this thread goes.

Benedict de Spinoza published the Theological-Political Treatise in 1670. If you value logic and reason, it effectively demolished the foundation of traditional religion. The title also sounds much more impressive in its original Latin. Anyway, you can imagine that with such a start, he was considered an atheist. He went on to publish the Ethics, which denied any recognizable concept of God, but offered a pantheistic 'religion of disenchantment' inplace. All the modern translations of his work are easily understandable. The two above also completely cover, refute, or affirm, everything in this thread. They have the added benefit of clearly explaining the reasoning behind their assertions.

He has a very different reputation in Jewish circles.


I.e. I assume this is the same person you are talking about.

http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm

*edit: I put up a new link. This new link, fully read, (not just the first paragraph) better explains his reputation.

Except, not. Apparently it didn't do diddly for the original sin (Baptism). And in the case of Catholics, it didn't do diddly for most other sins either - you still have to have them absolved by the church.

Ah, yes. The cherry-picking. All those horrific things done in the name of the lord are completely erased and invalid as soon as Jesus rolls around to make everything nice again. My original point was that 1) The Bible, if taken literally, doesn't paint an accurate picture of Christianity - Christianity is based on oral and ecclesiastic traditions that tell people how to interpret the Bible. If you give the Bible to someone who has never been exposed to Christianity at all (IE, totally unaware of its existance) and make him believe it's the word of god, chances are that what would emerge would be radically different from most if not all current denominations of Christianity. And, 2) This is a good thing, as the Bible, taken literally, is a pretty scary book.

Please be aware that I had been awake for over 24 hours in a row when I wrote this.

I'd just like to make a minor correction to this statement.

The bible, "taken literally" - meaning, not knowing, or ignoring all oral traditions, is impossible to live by. Because it was never intended to be taken literally without the oral traditions.

Its been tried, and they have all ended up creating new oral traditions within their lifetimes.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. In the case of Catholics, you're right. Baptism, however, has nothing to do with the Original Sin, or with any sin for that matter. It's symbolic, and doesn't in itself do anything to save or cleanse anybody.



It's not quite that simple, but I suppose you could look at it that way. Though, you should replace "rolls around" with "suffers and takes on the punishment for the horrific people," and we'll be in business.



Historically that's been true, but it's becoming less and less so as time goes on. If we were really all bound by Oral Tradition, we would all be Catholic. Instead, we all interpret the Bible different ways.



What kinds of things do you believe would emerge, if someone were to take the Bible at face-value? A few verses taken out-of-context and interpreted literally can be confusing and scary. The Bible as a whole teaches a pretty clear message that's not scary at all.

2) That's a bit of a confusing statement. The Bible is a very large book, full of tons of different kinds of writings, from literal history to allegory to poetry. The style of the work helps us understand if it should be taken literally. Still, while some out-of-context sections might be scary or bizarre, overally it's pretty clear and not incredibly scary.



While the second part of this is true, I believe the first part is mistaken. Our natural tendency is to add to the Bible. One of my favorite theology qoutes was "In the beginning, God created man in his own image. Since that time, we've been trying to repay the compliment."

Still, the Bible is meant to be taken on its own. The Bible itself condemns anyone who would add to it. One of the big goals of the Reformers was to seek "Sola Scriptura," saying the Bible should be our only guide, and anything which did not flow directly and logically from it should not be a part of Christianity. For the most part, that sentiment hasn't really succeeded, but it is the goal anyway.

Yes, that is a tendency, and the Bible says do not add or subtract, but its built in with many verses which require you to add or subtract.

For example, bind these words between your eyes and on(not in) your heart. Doesn't explain what to bind them with, or how exactly to do the binding.

In addition to that, there are 4 examples of "prophets" in the bible who talk to Gd, get a message, and then when they repeat the message to others, they add and subtract from it. Basic example: Gd tells adam, don't eat from the Tree, Adam tells eve, don't Touch the tree. Gd tells Moses, don't let the people on the mountain, Moses tells the people, don't come near the mountain.

It also says, slaughter the animal in the way I showed you. (need an oral tradition to know what was shown)

As with anything stated about Christian theology, this is true - to a certain extent. Wikipedia has a handy comparative chart, and it shows us that several denominations believe baptism to be essential for salvation, not just symbolic.

I didn't say just oral tradition, but also ecclesiastical tradition - Each Christian denomination has its own body of theological work, some of which are radically different from others. Calvinists believe salvation is predestined, Catholics believe it comes from doing good things, most other Christians believe it comes from faith alone, no matter how loathsome you are in life. And they can all quote the bible to support their positions, not just because they all use different versions of the bible. My point is, the bible, on itself, does not seem to provide a clear message for what Christians are supposed to believe in.

The Bible isn't terribly clear on a lot of things. To quote someone from another forum:


The Bible seems clear to you because you were raised in a theological tradition that purports to explain it by imposing its own mostly arbitrary standard of which parts of the Bible are 'to be taken literally', and which are allegories (For what, I wonder?). In my little thought experiment, I believe that if you handed a group of people who have not been exposed to Christianity at all (IE, never heard of it - so this is not really possible in real life) and handed them a Bible (No missionaries, no nothing. Just assume they take your word for it that it is the word of god) the religion that would emerge would reflect the people more than it would reflect the bible.

There are whole chapters of the bible which are all scary. It's not just the odd verse; it's lots and lots of places where truly unjustifiably horrific things take place. The canonical (pardon the pun) example is the Flood.

More like reinterpret the bible to fit your own prejudices. Most Christian denominations start that way.

It can't succeed. As I have explained, the Bible doesn't stand on its own. It's not a clear, comprehensive manual to Christian behavior. If the Bible is the inspired word of God, then why is it so difficult to find things in it everyone can agree on?

The official answer boils down to "Human imperfection," which has it's own can of worms associated with it.

Huzzah for Gnosticism.

I just love how Christianity blames all bad things on us and makes God responsible for all good things.

The thing is, God would be perfectly aware of human imperfection - So why didn't he inspire people to write a clear and concise book? Why not toast any prophets that write things down wrong to a crisp? Why does the Bible bother with entire chapters of begats and begets while skirting over a number of moral issues?

Not necessarily. Throughout the history of christianity there have been small groups that point out quite the opposite; the early gnostics, the Marcion Heresy, the writings of Valentinus, the medival Cathars. The jist being that the "creater" god is either imperfect, insane, or outright evil -- hence why the world sucks -- while the "real" god is a fan of letting humans figure out how to deal with this themselves, with help from a few prophets (Christ, the snake in Eden) to guide them when necessary.

That is very far removed from mainstream Christianity, though, which is what I was talking about. Gnosticists are a fringe group; Christianity is horribly variate, and while several broad generalisations certainly do apply, you can't expect everything I say to fit every last group that claims to be Christian.

You can't tell me what I can and can't expect!

Verithrax:

As with anything stated about Christian theology, this is true - to a certain extent. Wikipedia has a handy comparative chart, and it shows us that several denominations believe baptism to be essential for salvation, not just symbolic.

I suppose I misunderstood the purpose of the original statement. I am one of those people that encourages that all things should go back to scripture, and that human traditions should be recognized as just that. So, what I intended to imply was that while there may be some Christian movements which believe baptism to be necessary to salvation, it is not actually biblical, so I do not believe it holds water when speaking universally about Christianity.

I didn't say just oral tradition, but also ecclesiastical tradition - Each Christian denomination has its own body of theological work, some of which are radically different from others. Calvinists believe salvation is predestined, Catholics believe it comes from doing good things, most other Christians believe it comes from faith alone, no matter how loathsome you are in life. And they can all quote the bible to support their positions, not just because they all use different versions of the bible. My point is, the bible, on itself, does not seem to provide a clear message for what Christians are supposed to believe in.

The things you are focusing on here are minor sub-points of Christianity. Calvinists and Arminians don't agree on some things, Baptists and Church of Christ members disagree on some things. The vast majority of beliefs, however, are central and universal. While there may be fringe issues that are left up to interpretation, those issues are not the message of the Bible. The central truths (God created the world; he is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, atemporal, etc; Christ was the son of God, born from a virgin; Christ taught a lot of things, but his most important purpose on Earth was to take on our sin and die for us on the cross; there are several more I could list) are all clear, and all the same. What Christians believe on the minor issues hardly defines their Christianity. I doubt anybody is 100% correct on secondary issues.

The Bible isn't terribly clear on a lot of things. To quote someone from another forum:

None of these verses actually take into consideration context. In addition to ignoring the textual context, they ignore the cultural and political context in which they were each said - the majority are quotes of single verses. I could address each one individually, but that would take quite a bit of time and would make all of these posts much longer and more tedius. If you were willing to start a different thread to talk about verses like these, I'd happily jump in and explain my take on specifics.

The Bible seems clear to you because you were raised in a theological tradition that purports to explain it by imposing its own mostly arbitrary standard of which parts of the Bible are 'to be taken literally', and which are allegories (For what, I wonder?).

Actually, it's not an arbitrary standard. The decisions of what should be considered allegorical/poetic/historical/etc. comes primarily from textual criticism (which is becoming quite a large sub-field of biblical scholarship). Experts which have studied other Jewish/Greek/Roman writings look for styles and hints in the text to tell how it was intended. I imagine, for example, that if I posted one quote from a history book, and a quote from a Donne poem, you would be able to tell which was which just by the nature and flow of the text. In the same way, we examine to determine how biblical texts were meant.

In my little thought experiment, I believe that if you handed a group of people who have not been exposed to Christianity at all (IE, never heard of it - so this is not really possible in real life) and handed them a Bible (No missionaries, no nothing. Just assume they take your word for it that it is the word of god) the religion that would emerge would reflect the people more than it would reflect the bible.

Still, I'm curious in what ways you think those people would differ from Christianity today. Would they believe Jesus was God? Would they believe that God created the universe? Would they believe that there really was a God at all, or that Jesus ever lived at all? I'm not going to come out and say that they would turn out exactly like Baptists, or exactly like Catholics, or anything else of that sort, but I imagine that they would come up similar to mainstream Christianity.

There are whole chapters of the bible which are all scary. It's not just the odd verse; it's lots and lots of places where truly unjustifiably horrific things take place. The canonical (pardon the pun) example is the Flood.

I don't find anything about the Flood all that scary. Another similar example you might cite is Sodom and Gomorrah. In every similar instance, you should note that God gave the people every opportunity, but they continually rejected him and became worse and worse. In the end, he killed them only to prevent them from falling further. Also, keep the afterlife in mind. When we die is not all that important, from a biblical perspective our lives are very short, so if God intervenes and we die a few years earlier than we otherwise would have it's not all that big of a loss. The time we spend AFTER our deaths is much more important. We should pity those people not because they died early, but because of the way they will now spend eternity. In that sense, the frightening things are all their own decisions, not their early deaths.

More like reinterpret the bible to fit your own prejudices. Most Christian denominations start that way.

True enough. But then, as I've pointed out, the central and core issues of Christianity are all the same. People reinterpret (or invent) secondary issues based on their own life experiences - a practice I hope to eliminate, but that won't ever be accomplished.

It can't succeed. As I have explained, the Bible doesn't stand on its own. It's not a clear, comprehensive manual to Christian behavior. If the Bible is the inspired word of God, then why is it so difficult to find things in it everyone can agree on?

The Bible is quite a clear manual on its own. There are some minor issues (predestination, pre- or post-tribulationism, dispensationalism, etc.), but the important things are all clear.

A comprehensive manual of the most important Christian beliefs can be found almost completely in one book, if you look at Romans (and one verse added from John):

Romans 3:23: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord

Romans 5:8: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only son that whoever would believe in him would not perish, but have eternal life

Romans 10:9: If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

These verses present a pretty clear overview of the central tenants of Christianity. I believe you'll find them reiterated several times in different parts of the bible, but you will be hard-pressed to find them contradicted or muddled anywhere.

As for a concise manual of Christian behavior, that's even easier, it's summed up for us when a teacher asked Jesus what the greatest of God's commandments was:

Mark 12:30-31: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.

He even went on to clarify what he meant by 'neighbor' to ensure nobody could get it all mixed up. These same ideas are repeated throughout the Bible (in fact, they're direct quotes from the old testament), and are never contradicted or confused.

Those verses above are all anyone would need to arrive at mainstream Christianity. If you know of any exceptions or confusions of those ideas anywhere else in the Bible, I would understand that someone given the bible for the first time might not turn out like mainstream Christianity. However, if they do accept these ideas, then regardless of their other secondary beliefs, they would be considered a traditional Christian.

I just love how Christianity blames all bad things on us and makes God responsible for all good things.

The thing is, God would be perfectly aware of human imperfection - So why didn't he inspire people to write a clear and concise book? Why not toast any prophets that write things down wrong to a crisp? Why does the Bible bother with entire chapters of begats and begets while skirting over a number of moral issues?

This brings up a couple of different issues. First, God is perfectly aware of human imperfection. Another similar question I've heard asked is "why doesn't God just come down, perform some ultimate miracle, and prove to all of us he's out there?" The answer comes from God's reason for creating us in the beginning. He already had angels which worshipped him constantly because they had no other choice. God created us purposefully to have the choice to either follow him, or to reject him. He purposefully leaves those other options open because he'd rather have willing followers than forced slaves.

The second issue is the question of morality. I have to ask you, what is it that actually makes something 'good' or 'bad'? If there is no god, it doesn't make much sense to have a universal morality. We can't really say "god must not exist, because the world is too immoral" because it begs the question of where morality comes from. Either universal morality comes from God, or universal morality does not exist. So, you might either say that God exists but is immoral, or that God does not exist and there is no universal moral code. Any mixture of the two confuses things.

EDIT: Anyone have any guess why my quotes aren't working?

I think your quotes aren't working because you have too many of them. You can only have like 5 or something.