As for lere il... fine you start from a premise that God exists and I don't...

I see no need for faith in an all powerful God to add meaning to my life... some people do. More power to them.

Regardless of what you believe I see no need to hold all that is in the Bible as the "truth". It works just as well as a fiction.

This is very easily explained by the anthropic principle.
That is, that if the constants weren't suitable for proving life, then we wouldn't be here to observe that.
I quite strongly believe that there is more to reality than that which is within our universe. We define our universe as that which we can perceive, directly or indirectly. There is no reason to believe that, that which we perceive encompasses reality.
Now I believe that the nature of the "reality" outside of our own universe cannot be know to us. Furthermore I don't believe that even if it could, that we would be able to comprehend it. For the same way we cannot visualise a hypercube. We have evolved our brains through living in a three dimensional world. The reason we can "visualise" three dimensions is because are brains are "designed" that way.
Our brains in a similar way, could not hope to understand the reality our side of our universe.
So I will explain this in a concrete, understandable way, but bear in mind, that my "explanation" is only for illustrative purposes, and could be considered more as a metaphor.
What if ours, was not the only big bang. To me there seems no reason to believe that it was an isolated event. Whatever "caused" the big bang, could very easily have "caused" other such phenomena, all of which are mutually exclusive.
Some people "picture" this as different universes scattered around like specs of dust in some huge space, others prefer to think of it as other universes occurring "before" or "after" our universe. Of course this is misguided, as applying such concepts as space and time to this situation is meaningless. (This is why I cringe when people ask "what came before the big bang"...nothing came "before" the big bang. The question is meaningless. What they of course should as is what caused the big bang).
So if we have this infinitude of different universes, all with different physical constants, we can realise that only those with constants favourable to support live will foster inhabitants, who will undoubtedly ask..."why are the constants the way they are?".

Also I would point out that your point a has a fundamental flaw, but from the viewpoint of my above argument, it happens to be inconsequential.
"with very little change, the universe could not have supported life.", should read "with very little change, the universe could not have supported life, as we know it"...subtle, but vital.

Someone may point out that my belief in the anthropic principle is fundamentally no different than their faith in God. That is not so, and I feel that the reason why is pretty much self evident. If anyone really thinks that, then I will be happy to provide an explaination as to why it isn't.

The llama is "invisble" because it cannot be seen in any way. It is "purple" because I am projecting properties found in our evryday life onto my pet.

Lebell, you enjoy telling me about all of this wonderful evidence that you have for the existence of God, yet you provide none. You did the exact same thing in a previous thread.
Like I said...I'm all ears when it comes to your evidence.

Freedom is a desirable thing.
People typically go after what is desirable, despite any logical reasoning.
Why are so many people so keen to start a family?
There's no purely logical reason for anyone to have children.

I wouldn't exactly call it "enjoy", but I won't remain silent, especially when you present inaccurate or incomplete statements.

Nor do I think you are "all ears", since it appears that unless it can be measured or reproduced, it is not "evidence". (Nor is it, in the scientific sense.)

I will also correct you in that I've answered the question of "why I believe" at least twice that I can think of on TFP.

All that being said, I will answer a third time.
--------------------------------------------------------

Proving God?

Proving or disproving God is a fool's errand, as witnessed by the facts each side in the debate attempts to present.

Athiests will point to the fact that God as an entity can not be seen or measured, and that typical theological 'proofs' such as the burning bush, visions, out of body experiences, and the like can be explained away by modern science. For them, no proof logically leads to no God, via Occam's razor.

The faithful on the other hand, counter that God must be approached by belief or "faith" and that any attempt to prove God or to quantitize God is doomed to failure since God will thwart such efforts.

My personal contention is that any person who does have faith in a higher power (be He Buddah, Jesus or Allah) must acknowledge that which is most frightening of all: The possibility that there is really no one there.

So the question then becomes, if you acknowledge your belief may be wrong, then why believe? Aren't you happier facing the "probable" grim reality instead of releaving your fear in a "fantasy"?

Ultimately this answer must be a personal one and perhaps this is why science cannot (or maybe was never intended) to answer with theorems, measurements, etc.

My reasons for believing span well over 3 decades, so such a condensation does not do them justice, but in brief, I believe one of the dichotomies of this existance is that you generally find what you are looking for.

If you are looking for unhappy people everywhere and a miserable existance, you will probably find it. Conversely, if you look for the good in people and a generally joyous existance, you seem to find that as well.

So too, I believe it with the search for God.

I find it intellectually curious that science (of which I am an ardent proponent) cannot seem to squash God out of reality. There always seems to be wiggle room for an "Almighty" that can't be proved away. This can be seen in the Heisenburg (sp?) uncertainty principle, super space theory and chaos theory. This can also be seen in the above mentioned visions, along with past life experiences, levitation, and prayer healing, to name a few.

But we still come to that pesky, "Yeah, but maybe science just hasn't gotten around to explaining that yet" and I concede the point.

But for me, the bottom line is this: There appears to be much to me that indicates some higher existance than the one we experience in the daily grind. Further, those that I would consider far along in a spiritual life (The Dali Lama, Mother Theresa, Thomas Merton) seem to have a peace, a...a...something that is beyond words and physical explaination.

So my own scale tips and I choose to believe that there is a God.

And to date, the path that has proven most rewarding in pursuing the "God" I've choosen to believe in is Christianity.

And I don't believe that God would have it any other way.

You're giving reasons as to why you believe. That is not proof that any god exists. You have not, along with everyone else, provided any proof.

You're right.

My point was and is entirely that "proof" must always be personal and experiential when it comes to God.

In agreement with you so far.



A kind of a twisted up, bent over back wards Pascal's Wager goin on here. I put forward a poll on this subject as Red Pill or Blue Pill.
It is certainly easier to believe in God, then face the horrifing truth..."one day I am going to die."...to die in the absolute sense. I will cease to exist.
Again, what you might like to believe in, has no bearing on what is real.



How does Heisenberg leave the wiggle room for God to exist that a Newtonian universe did not?
Similarly, how does chaos theory prove God? If anythingm I would consider chaos theory as evidence against the need for a god to explain things.



Exactly. A couple of hundred years ago, the fact that humans and animals exist would be taken as (nearly irrefutible) evidence that God existed.



Like what? This is what I am looking for. What indicates a spiritual existence? This is the evidence that I am looking for.



Well, I would agree with you in a sense.
They are at peace with themselves. But their reasons for being so, are not necessarily correct ones. It is quite easy to convince oneself of the existence of God, and once you have that, and you devote your life to this cause, I can see how it would be easy to be "at peace".
I have seen this first hand. My aunt was years ago very very depressed. She was a mess. She is now a very religious person, and I know that it was her "faith" that allowed her to psychologically heal herself. It is in situations like this that I cannot claim to completely dispise religion. Her beliefs may be wrong, but if they allow her to get on with her life then what harm does it cause?
So having a faith has benifits, but that doesn't make it correct.

You still have not given me any evidence. You have made refference to evidence. Yuo have pointed out some consequences of religion, but you have given me no evidence, even of the non-experiemntal kind.

so basically your evidence is points 1-4 on my list of 7 responses that I hoped not to see?

Actually he is right. It can be proven with a reasonably siple geometrical excercise, by measuring the distance to an object that is just barely visible on the horizon, or noticing that when watching a ship appear on the horizon it is the mast that appears first, as if it were coming over a hill.
Anyway, for how long it has been know is inconsequental to the argument.

Interesting that you have caught a glimpse, a tendril, a whisper, but that it is preferable, (perhaps safer?) to explain it away rather than explore it yourself.

Sigh...

You insist on distilling the breadth and depth of the faith experience to something akin to Letterman's Top Ten List, a process analagous in my mind to taking Beetoven's 9th Symphony and reducing it to its digital 1's and 0's in an attempt to understand the emotion it evokes in the mind and soul.

I'm sorry, but you will have to look elsewhere.

I sincerely wish you luck.

What am I explaining away?
The fact that it is a more comfortable viewpoint to have that something all powerful loves you, and that you are never going to die?

I can respect that opinion, but I just don't agree that it should be considered proof. ;)

It's hard not to believe the Bible. Most of the verses hold true even today! For example, the words of Genesis 3, 18-19:
And who can forget the wisdom of Numbers 6, 2-8:
Even today, many people find solace in these words of truth and security. My favorite verse, though, remains Revelations 6, 7:

fuck you thraeryn. i laughed so hard i woke the fiance. i'll be sleeping on the couch tonight.

Lebell...thank you...i appriciate all your words.

CSFilm: I sincerely beleive you owe Lebell an apology. You've done nothing more than frame the debate in ways to ignore what he's saying, then taunt him when he won't play by your rules. It is quite clear that there is very little desire to "prove" God to you on the scientific evidence. It can't be done. But when you ask "why believe", as the title of the thread suggests...we try to tell you why. Experience. If you don't want to listen to that, then don't get in this kind of fight.

If you think that there is no role in experiential evidence...i suggest you try proving that love exists someday. You'll have a hell of a time if you can't cite someone's personal example.

I'm rather sick of being told that i'm wrong if i follow life's teaching, and explore what life has told me. You can't possibly construct an actual proof that i'm wrong...the closest you might come is occam's razor, which is hella far from 100% sure. Your life doesn't suggest faith, as you interpret it. You argue from your experience, but shut people down when they offer theirs. That's not fair, and that's not debate.

Charlatan: I didn't think of the perspective of a Commie in that example, but i don't think it takes anything from the idea. Why is that they fear "freedom" so much? Is there something logical about their reaction? Why do they live in fear that such movements will arise again, if not the human impulse towards freedom. I actually think i rather like this example all the better for that criticism. thanks.

The Communist party doesn't fear freedom.
They do, however, fear widespread unrest, rebellion, and separatist terrorism.

China has one problem; It is too big. The country consists of more than 200 minorities. What makes the situation unique is that the minorities are not there due to immigration, but because they are where they always have been.

When I see the footage, I just see it as another example of the tribal instincts that we still have programmed into us.
Some are good, such as empathy. Others are not so good - me and mine first.

All I am asking is what have you experienced that could only be explained by the existence of God?
I am not ignoring experiential evidence, simply because I haven't been given any.



Love exists, because I can see it's effects. Do I think that it is some profound and mystical force? No.
Do I think that those experiencing love feel it to be "magical"? Yes I do.
Love has observable effects.

I consider religion to be similar in some ways to hypochondria.
Many people believe that hypochondriacs lie about their symptoms. But in fact they are not lying. They truly believe that they have these symptoms.
Though they are experiencing these symptoms which don’t exist, They are absolutely real to them.
How could you convince a hypochondriac that they are not actually ill? If you accept at face value their "experiential" evidence, then you will never get to the truth of the matter.
Hypochondria is a psychological disorder. It tends to manifest itself in people who are isolated or lonely. In essence they are looking for attention. Of course, they don't know this. It is only deep in their subconscious that this "deception" occurs.
The way I see things:
Religion is similar. It manifests itself in people that cannot accept the facts about life. It is short and pointless. They experience things which comfort them. These things seem real to them, but ultimately they are nothing but a bit of sleight of hand on the part of the sub-conscious..
This is why I am always very sceptical about accepting experiential evidence. What difference is your experiential evidence to that of the experiential evidence of a hypochondriac?

How many times have you heard a widow claim that "I felt Henry with me last night"?...of course she did, because she cannot accept the fact that he is dead.

Like I said already, there are plenty of things that we cannot prove don't exist. Doesn't make them exist.

Communists don't fear freedom per se... The whole point of Communism (when you get down to it) is equality. You cannot have both equality and freedom... They are either sides of the see saw...

Communists (like the Soviets and the Chinese) believe that personal liberty must take a back seat to the "betterment of all".

As such anyone who steps out of line must be squashed for the greater good.

(the US is pretty much the opposite of this thinking... Freedom for all at the expense of many)

This thread has gone way off topic. Well... admittedly it's related, but noone is looking at the title anymore. Unless someone decided to use the argument that we believe the Bible because God gave it to us, and then tried to prove the existence of God, I can't see any direct correlation. I would have thought this discussion would be going the other way, that if we can believe the Bible there is a God, but we need to examine whether the Bible is trustworthy first. In addition, I'm a little irritated that noone has answered my main point that is on topic, although CSflim has kindly replied to my flippant off topic criticism of his pet.
To be incredibly hypocritical, I'm going to have to defend my pointless statement: When you say something is purple, you mean it presents to your visual sense the impression we term purple. By definition, if something is invisible, it presents NOTHING to your visible sense. I wouldn't have thought this needed explanation. To call it a projection of something you see elsewhere doesn't make it any less contradictory, you are just weaving words. One wonders at such faulty logic even when applied to a joke, and if it portends anything concerning more important matters. But perhaps you don't give a damn about whether your jocular metaphor makes any sense, quite rightly. So let's just move on from that...

Charlatan: Firstly, I never so much as implied an initial premise that you do not exist, which is preposterous considering I'm arguing with you, and did not mean to imply, nor include in my working in any way, any assumption that God exists, which would be equally preposterous given the nature of our argument. Please show me the quote you get this from, and your analysis thereof, if you find it important enough to need working out.

As to belief in hypochondria, and the presence of people who are not there, and could not possibly (due to death or otherwise) be there, surely these are in somewhat a different category... You might say that a hypochondriac does not have these symptoms, but not that the symptoms do not exist at all. You might say that a grieving person did not sense the deceased, not that the deceased never existed. These are misplaced expectations of something which is known to exist. If someone claims to have experienced God, when there is not, and hever has been, any such being, it follows a different pattern from the misplaced expectations you present as analogies.

NONETHELESS, while you will note that I have answered several posts at length here (whether accurately or not is obviously for you to judge), I have not at all touched on the ACTUAL topic of this thread, and niether has anyone else since my previous post... should we start a new thread as to whether God exists, and either close this one or get back on track? Should we rename this one? Or just ignore the topic entirely... I'm kinda new here, maybe you noticed =P, so I don't know the usual conventions.. but on other message boards I've been to people tried to address the topic they were arguing about.

Yup. It's not supposed to make sense.
It's invisible because I can't see it, and it's purple because I said so!

You see effects. Okay. I can't see 'em. Prove it. And i don't want to hear "I just know it. I can't explain it, i just do."

See how this starts getting annoying?

alrighty....one effect i do see from God? The ineffible worth of the human being....
http://tfproject.org/tfp/showthread....threadid=23643

i didn't read your paper yet, but i will eventually. anyways though, based on the above post, you're saying that humans have an indescribable worth. i disagree. i think we only have the worth that we attribute to ourselves and our kind. god has nothing to do with our worth, it's all us.

now i know many people dont appreciate it being looked at this way, but for you economists, its a simple question of marginal analysis and risk. Weigh your benefits with your costs.

Beleiving in God: cost: Rules and regulations...but can still have fun in life
Benefit: Eternal salvation

Aetheism: Benefit: no rules, do what you want
cost: Hell. Forever.

Is it not worth the risk of a little bit of self control on earth, just incase you may be banished to hell forever? Forever is a pretty long time. i know you shouldnt force yourself to believe in God, but i was just made that way.

i'm sorry, but that's only if christianity is right. according to other religions, eternal salvation isn't necessarily what you get for believing, and even if it is, if you don't follow the rules right, you might still go to hell.

if christianity is wrong, and atheism is right, then there won't be hell. it'll just be nothingness. we exist, then we don't. no hell. and i think i'd rather an eternity of hell for not mindlessly following something (i realize not all religious people are mindlessly following it) then follow something i think is wrong just for supposed eternal salvation.

That is known as Pascal's wager.

I think my reaction to this is summed up pretty much by what Douglas Adams has to say on the subject:

Like I said, I don't believe that Love exists in the "magical" sense.

The effects that can be observed:
Parents caring for and protecting their children.
Their children reciprocating this affection.
The feelings shown between two partners.

Like I said, I don't believe love exists in the empirical sense. It is something that we feel, in the same way that we feel anger, hate, fear, etc.
In a similar way to concept of "freedom", love exists, because we claim it exists.

This however does not apply to "spiritual" feelings. Certainly the feelings are real. You have felt them, therefore they are real.
However, it doesn't mean that they are genuine. It does not mean that they have external causes.
In the same way as the widows dead husband did not cause her to "sense him". She certainly felt something, but what she felt wasn't "genuine".
In the same way as the hypochondriac does feel the pain of some illness, but it doesn't mean that that pain is "genuine", in the sense that it is actually caused by said illness.

I'd much rather burn in hell for eternity, if there is one, than be in heaven with a bunch of liars and cheaters. All of my friends are "christian" and they do things that I would never do, but they get a pass from god because they lick his balls!!!!??? Fuck that! I'd rather be true to myself and fry!

This is a lame weak argument. Love is an emotion. There are thousands of them and they all exist.

Religion is a belief in a higher power... It's a faith.... Basically, it can fall in the category of an emotion. You have faith in god, which I don't have a problem with, but you can't prove that he exists. God is not an emotion. God is the supreme being who created the universe.... Now prove that he exists... ;)

You would think that if he was so great and powerful that it would be a rather simple task to prove his existence, right?

Yea well i dont go do shit behind his back and expect ultimate and infinite forgiveness for anything i do, and therefore do jackass shit...I try...thats all anyone can say

You say prove it? We can't. End of story. And you cant prove that he doesnt exist. We believe he does based on faith. You believe he doesnt based on science (which i have still yet to see discrediting his existence, infact whenever i study it i only see credit to it... but i guess thats just my mind)

Anyways, someone once said this, which i believe sums it up pretty well... (not exact)
"Whether you choose to believe God exists or doesn't, you will have doubt
Doubts are the ants of both religion and science, they keep it moving and building
Anyone who has no doubt on their belief of God existence is either asleep or kidding themselves."

EDIT: I know this was a couple pages ago, but the argument 'we KNEW the earth was flat' isnt entirely true... Medieval Europe in the dark ages knew it was flat. Every sort of Native Americans knew it was round. Ancient Greece new it was round... and I havent studied the orient, but they very well may have too....
all u had to do is look at the sun and the moon

See, that's the thing. I'm not sure what God is...and since the beginning of the Hebrew scriptures, this has been a constant theme of the faith. Moses is denied seing God's face...he is only allowed to peek at where God has been, Abraham hosts some angels, and doesn't know that it's even out of the normal until they suddenly promise him he will have child in his old age. God has a cage match with Jacob/Isreal, and Jacob only figures it out after the fight is over. These all are stories that exemply this simple truth...it is very rare that we can concive of God out of personal experience, and that we don't usually see it right away. I don't claim God is the supreme cause of everything in the universe...it would in no way surprise me if that turned out to be...but what i have loyalty or faith in is that God has been a real precense in my life. I have the very same faith in love, and indeed, they are two beleifs that cannot be torn apart.

I'm not trying to prove a Man in the Clouds style God....and i think there are a lot of logical problems in doing so. You say "God is not an emotion." I think you're right...i think there is more to God that a emotional fervor, but i think you're missing something if you say God cannot be real or true in any way if God does not have a physical manifestation.

And? If the human mind has a propensity to sense moral, ethical and metaphysical things, they cannot be "true?" simply becuase you can't physically prove that it's there?

i've never heard of this before, could you tell me the book/verse whatever, i'd love to read it. sounds interesting. thanks!

the close of chapter 32 of genesis...The translation is tough....but NRSV does a good job. The one quarrel i would make is that they have the angelic being ask jacob "why do you ask my name?" when the hebrew suggests "you must not ask my name." The latter suggests more strongly that it is indeed God that jacob has fought....

Why do people keep comparing God to concepts?
Concepts exist as soon as they are defined.
We can "define" God, so he can exist as a concept. But that has absolutely no bearing on whether or not he actually exists.

Suppose we are to compare the feeling of "Love" with God.
Some people believe in a magical, metaphysical, profound "force" called Love, I don't, but the disagreement is purely academic. With God it is a different matter.

Suppose we accept that Love (capital L) exists, as does God.
The powerful Love force causes itself to manifest feelings inside the human brain, called love (lowercase l). We experience love as a result of Love.
Similarly we can say that God causes us to experience "spiritual feelings", or belief.
We can see the effects of both of these things in the empirical world, by seeing how people behave.

Love -> love -> behaviour.
God -> belief -> behaviour.

Now we can tell that both love and belief exist. But we have to ask what caused them. Some would point to the system above.
I would claim that since Love has no effect on anything, except to cause love, then we can dispense with it. Ultimately it is an erroneous concept. Although we may use Love metaphorically, to try and describe our awesome experience of love, ultimately it remains, nothing more than an idea, with no "actual" existence.
But the point is, that it makes no difference if we take away Love, as the expression (Love -> love) could be regarded as a "single term".
So we can keep Love, or lose love. Ultimately it makes not one bit of difference to our outlook on life, except maybe one would result in more poetry.

Now if we try to do the same with God. We could claim that belief is caused by God, or that it is not caused by God. This time however it makes a difference, as God is not just supposed to be some abstract concept. He is supposed to exist.
In other words (God -> belief) is a fundamentally different thing to (belief).
Since belief is a model that works perfectly well without God, then we cannot claim that the belief could be used as evidence for the existence of God.

You can pretty much replace love with all the abstarct concepts you want, but it doesn't effect the argument at hand.

I agree with you CSFilm. Beleiving in God means he exists in your mind, but it does not dictate the fact that he will be saving you when you die.

Now i beleive that He exists, and that He will be saving us, but i dont beleive He exists simply because i want Him to, therefore He does. I beleive He exists simply because of experiences and feelings which science nor coincidence cannot explain, and because of the way i view nature. It does not mean that i have an unscientific viewpoint... in fact it is quite the contrary, i simply view science through different eyes.

I'm not saying what my opinion is. Just recognizing the reference in which this verse should be taken. In the day and age in which these laws were laid out there was no medicine as we know today. Diseases were common, easily contracted (no vaccines), and could kill off entire populations. It is known in current medicine that those who are homosexuals are more susceptable to certain STD's because of the nature of the relationship. We now have the technology to deal with the diseases and even cure some of them if not at least control them. The purpose of this law and many of the laws in the book of leviticus were to protect the nation or race from plague and disease that could become uncontrollable.

Ok so you don't believe the Bible. I suggest you read a book written by an athiest. It is "The Bible Was My Treasure Map" written by Paul Ilton. The whole Bible may not be historical fact but the numbers, main events such as wars and natural disasters, and locations given are quite accurate. The author of this book made many archaeological discoveries based on the records in the Bible.

Utimately, that's unknowable...and such a short cut is just that....an assumption made to simplify that may or may not be right.

imagine thus...love in each instance is incomplete, and varient. but all love has the character of bearing some relation to the ideal type, Love. The points of the set "love" tend towards that Love. Whether or not there is a point on our graph that is the point Love, isn't relevant. The data we have suggests that point, and we can talk about it being relevant to our knowledge of the lowercase love, becuase it teaches us out how those points might be distributed etc....

okay...for the last time...the physical existance of a thing called "God" isn't the crux of a valid religious belief. As long as our experiences/data points seem to indicate that there is a point or function that is the ideal type of the positive attirbutes we seek in life, that point is relevant, teaches us about life, and adds to our knowdlege of our experiences. Our experience indicates a mystery and a power, one that does not seem to obey the logic of this world. Now, it may be that that point is indeed vacant, and that we have imagined the whole thing. I will admit, i cannot prove that this cannot be. But our limitations prevent us from simply entering in the applicable "variable" in to the function of life to see if it produces "Error" or "God." Until then...look at the data we do have, and draw your own conclusions. I'll respect your findings, and i'd ask for the same respect in return. Fair?

I apologize for the extensive metaphor...but this is what you get when such ideas rattle in my brain for a few days.

Nice post, chavos.

Are you serious? So god said, back then, that all gay men should die so that no others would....... :confused: :confused: Is there a section of the bible that nobody knows about that says it can be updated as the times change and we learn how to deal with things? This is just one of the most ridiculous things of all time.

Nowhere does it say that this crap was to protect anyone.. God says to kill gay men cause they fuck each other in the ass. Do you think that straight couples don't get into ass play? I've boned a few chics in the ass. I guess I committed an abomination and should be put to death. There isn't a difference if it's a straight or gay couple fucking each other up the ass. It's all the same damn thing.

Leviticus 20:10
And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

What lame explanation do you have for this one? Have you ever cheated on a significant other..... I haven't, and I don't need to believe in god to know not to do that. If this were true there would be a lot of dead christians!!

Leviticus 20:9
For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.

Again, what's your explanation for this. I sure hope you never swore at your parents cause according to god you should be dead right along with me.

Leviticus 20:27
A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.

I could go on with crap like this forever, but this will be my last example. When was the last time you saw a witch or wizard....... Wait a minute! There never have been any. Surely, god should know this, right? Why is it that I know they are fictitious creatures yet god doesn't. I can answer that. Because god is just as fictitious as a witch or wizard... Now remember, the next time you see a witch or wizard you better do your part and stone them to death. ;)

My only explanation (and strict enterpratationists will disagree with this as much as you will) is this:

The bible is a book, and you have to remember that it was written by human beings. I beleive God to be present in most of the bible, divinely intervening in human's writing... but i also beleive he to be absent in some of it. Perhaps some things that humans wrote, and were not in accordance with God, were added into the Bible.

Heres an example. Did Moses part the Red sea? Possibly... and i don't beleive it outside of God's power to do so. However, if you trace a line between the section of Egypt he was in, and Israel... the Red sea is pretty far out of the way... why would he go there. However, directly on the path is the Reed sea, nothing but a big swamp and an easily mistakeable word. I have a feeling a false story may have been passed down to try to persuade conversions, and that it could have been an overzealous author that included that and not God.... or maybe not. There could have been some overzealous priests (naww, so such thing!) who finagled anti-gay passages into the Bible, because they knew it would be followed

sixate

I agree with you sixate that this does sounds extremely harsh. These verses that you are choosing to show the absurdity of the "Whole" Bible with are from a single chapter in Leviticus. You do realize there are thousands more verses don't you?

I am not condemning homsexual activities. I am only pointing out the thinking behind the laws that the nation of Israeal had for certain offenses. I personally agree that the consequences were quite harsh. There are those who believe that the New Testament section of the Bible supersedes the laws of the old Testament. There is even a portion that condenses the Ten Commandments saying "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hand all the law and the prophets." Matthew 22:37b-40. There is another incident in the new Testament where a woman who was caught in adultery was going to be stoned and Jesus told the crowd intending to stone her that "He that is without sin among you, let him cast a stone at her.

To tell you what perspective I come from. I don't like organized religion - it has betrayed me too much. I am bi-sexual and have participated in swinging. So I am not condemning any of those practices. My purpose in mentioning these things is to point out that the Bible isn't all bad and does have many helpful things and history at least. Granted you may not believe that the "miracles" truely happened but you as well as I know that in ancient times there were many things that people did not understand and they would explain by supernatural stories. Don't through out the whole book simply because you dislike some of the more harsh portions.

Well, in the original hebrew text Adam had a wife before eve. her name was lilith. lilith did not obey adam so she was cast out and god created eve cause she would obey adam. did this make it into any of todays bibles? nope.

Does anyone believe that noah REALLY had 2 of every animal on the ark? that must have been some ark!!! Noahas flood actually comes from a much older legend, I think ancient Syrian or babylonian that describes how the black sea was created. its too long to go into here but if you research it you will find out it is true.
jesus existed, im sure of it. was he the son of god? i do not know.
I do not believe in immaculate conception either. sorry no convincing me. joe knocked up mary. and when she figgured out she was pregnant how in the hell were they gonna explain that to mary's dad? immaculate conception.
what about when moses was leading the hebrews out of egypt. he told everyone dont look back. but that one lady did and she was turned into a pillar of salt!!! sorry i dont believe it.

two answers to this little snippet......

- you are trying to apply an English misspelling to a Hebrew text! sorry, can't be done - you'd have to check the original language to see if a misspelling was at all possible.

- while we're talking about OT stories and Moses doing grand things: today's scholars are now able to read ancient egyptian like we all can read english. a wealth of records have been retrieved from the moses time (using the emperor's name, and with a LOT of margin on both sides). now, for those of you who believe that the exodus happened the way it did in the bible, please answer me this: if moses caused ten plagues in Egypt, culminating with the death of EVERY SINGLE FIRST-BORN, then made off with all the hebrew slaves, and THEN drowned the entire egyptian army in the red sea (or any sea, for that matter), why can not a single shred of evidence of this be found in any egyptian records?

there IS evidence that the group of people who would become the hebrew nation were actually thrown out of egypt due to a cruel and tyrannical government of the people.

now, for those interested (cue sound of crickets chirping), i used to believe that christianity was the One True Way and that the bible was without flaw, giving weight to the idea that there was a God, and he was the Christian God. many things have convinced me otherwise, and one of the best bits was found here:

History is Written to Glorify the Winners

so. why believe the bible? i consider it nothing more than a grand work of literature, and as a container of both mythology and some fairly good guides to living (if you pick the right guides).

Kind of misleading to call it THE original hebrew text if there are others that are more widely considered to be authentic. I have yet to see a convincing proof that the lillith story predates the J source creation story, or that it had anything beyond a small following before 1996.

Indeed, such a confusion is still possible in the Hebrew. The song of Miriam suggests crossing a swamp (Sea of Reeds) instead of a ocean like Red sea.

With out making a comment one way or another about the feasibility of the exodus story, there are other defeats that are not recorded by the egyptians, nor are those records complete in the form we have them today. Omission in the incomplete records we have found is not a negative proof. For generations, the "Exodus Event" whatever it might have been, was THE formative story and myth of the Hebrews. There's probably a fair amount of myth in that story...but there is also likely a kernal of truth, small or large.

The Pharoh's name is never given. Indeed, there is no solid indication with in the text of when these events took place.

Reading the link you posted, jynx, i'm struck by the focus on proving the historical anachronisms of various texts, while ignoring the idea that the ancestor legends are not meant to be read as history, but as legend. Much of that book is cultural transmission, not historical transmission. Check the geneologies. They make no sense in terms of timing, and other evidence we have...people of these names have no other record. But...translate the names, instead of just transliterating them. They aren't people's names, but ancient hebrew names for places. They are meant to show political and social relations between nations and ethnic groups, not blood lines. This is just one example of the type of misreading i feel that source falls in to. Over literalism kills scripture, whether it be from skeptics or from fundamentalists.

chavos I think the point was thus:

Stuff that was described in the bible really happened.
Therefore the bible is true.
The bible describes Jesus being the son of God and performing miracles and rising from the dead etc, so these must all be true.

The point Jynx was making that the bible is indeed only a collection of myths and legends, which is how I consider the bible.

As it is only a myth, we cannot look to it as a source of evidence of what Jesus did, or did not do (assuming such a person existed).

Either assertion doesn't hold much. You can't prove truth or fiction by association in a book that's compiled from so many differnet sources. It's like trying to judge a whole cookbook by a few recipes. Does the Jesus story say something to your life? Does Genesis? These are far more important questions, regardless of their answer, than "are these books factually solid"?

I think one way to look at the Bible is to keep the big picture in mind. We look at many other ancient documents in their original text. Few of the have been translated into so many different versions and those who truely study the texts do so in the original language primarily. We need to compare all the many different accounts of history and compare. When a car accident happens there are always more than one account/viewpoint of what occured. The same is with the Bible. Just look at the 4 gospels - they were written by 4 different men from different walks of life and they record different events. The events that you can cross reference between the 4 gospels are recorded in different ways - for example: Matthew was a tax collector and frequently records monetary transactions while the other 3 sometimes completely leave them out. Luke was originally a physician and records things of medical interest such as the composition of the blood that was spilled when Christ was pierced in the side.

We need to view it as a whole and to compare it to other texts. It's a good point that Egyptian documents do not record plagues and the defeat of their army as recorded in the Bible. It is possible that they left it out. Who would record their own defeat - more likely a people will record their successes more frequently.

The Bible speaks to individuals as they interpret it. Why believe the Bible? Because it serves a purpose for you to believe it. If you desire something to place your faith in and someone to follow then do so. If you desire to trust only yourself then that is your choice. Personally I dislike organized religion. I was raised very religious and I am currently learning where I stand on many religious issues. I don't know how much faith I will put in the Bible or not at this time. My only consolation is that I am questioning what I have been taught and deciding for myself what I will believe. I hope I can teach my daughter to decide for herself what to believe.

Why believe Scientology?

True, science has just as many flaws...in fact scientific views from the past have been proved completely wrong far more often than religious views

Yeah, and the scientific community tends to correct their theories based on those errors being picked up. That's why it's called science, from the Latin term "scientia", which means "knowledge" and comes from a root word meaning "to seperate".

Religion doesn't do that. Science is a quest for reason and truth; religion claims to have all of the answers. Pick up a logical error in a religious text or piece of dogma and...well, you'll get a long flamewar for starters.

and to go along with what easytiger said, there'sa reason that science has been proved wrong more often than religion. in science, there's the room for error, but in religion, there isn't. an error in religion is just a failure of faith on the part of the congregant, rather than a problem with the dogma.

and now, for a slightly unrelated semantics lession.

1. Kerygma: Public teachings of the church. Doctrines which are widely known, and taught to converts and unbelievers. Can be expressed rationally.

2. Dogma: Traditions and teachings which are the product of internal searching. Known to community of believers alone, personally and non-rationally revealed.

That's the original terms...the west has forgotten the first, and hijacked the second.

Anyhow, that's part of the issue here. There's a conflation between the logical and rational public teachings, and the truths that believers come to over their journeys. I blame televangelists for this, but that's just me. But over all, there is a sense that the public teaching "jesus died for your sins" or "allah is the prophet" or "YHWH delievered our people" or "Bhudda found nirvana" or whatever...will contain enough content to radically reshape the unbeliever. Pardon my french, but this is bullshit. The mysteries of God are not just suddenly revealed by a few public teachings, rationally expressed. People come to understanding though their life, as their faith matures...usually though questioning, adversity, tripumph, and the panoply of human experience.

So, what's this got to do with anything? Science has infringed on kerygma(what you probably think is dogma), as i define it above. The rational, systemic theology does often run head long in to rational systemic science. And the skeptic says that they've disproved religion. But the thing is that the public teachings are, IMO, nothing more or less than metaphors...ways of expressing unexpressable things. We're trying to talk publicly about a subject that defies definition and rationalization, and so we come up with ways of talking about it. Science does religion a favor...it is an iconoclast, that breaks apart the idols of literalism...making us remember that our metaphors, our "God is like a..." statements, are just that...that we didn't get to define God with our words...we just tried to get a little bit of that reality down on paper.

PS...a reminder to those who say religion does not have a trial and error, hypothesis and test model like science...i would strongly suggest a review of church history. Despite the best attempts of the western latin church, both the Eastern and protestant traditions, not to mention catholic dissenters did carry on with heterodoxy...what might be called heresy. I just cannot agree with the idea that religion is not a search for answers...it defies the study of church history, christian or not, it defies the current trends and methods of theology, christian or not, and defies the experience of believers around the globe, christian or not. To assume that because some religious sects focus on stability and easy answers, that all are like this is a logical fallacy...

Religion is a quest for understanding, a way to find something that eases your soul. However, that quest has limits, and those limits are defined by your particular religion.
Take evolution as a prime example. Most religions have creation myths, and most of them are incompatible with the theory of evolution. So nine times out of ten, what happens? The theory is discarded and the myth is maintained and defended as the truth.

Science doesn't have those limits because no aspects of it are immune from criticism and refinement. The process is infinitely more outward-looking than the religious quest for truth, which tends to be a matter of trying to marry old thinking with new and different environments and situations.

I introduce to you a new fallacy. The Nine Times out of Ten arguement. In abscence of any clear data, a fictional 90% majority is constructed to represent the whole of a group. Any counter example is dismissed as the 10%, and no amount of evidence will shake the claim that 90% do X, Y, and Z.

In reality, it's something around 80-85% of Americans that support the teaching of evolution in public schools, even when a vast majority, around 90% IIRC, are at least nominally religious.

The worst part of the fallacy is that it is a tension between unamimity and incompletion. It allows for sweeping statements such as "All A's do B" but are sheltered from counter proofs of an A that does not in fact do B. So please...if you'd like to make these sorts of outragous claims....have some proof...

edit: this is longer that I anticipated, heh. If you want the answer to the question of the thread, just read the part starting at: So why believe at the Bible :)

why is it that people use such superficial definitions of alot of things.

A Legend & a saga are tales, with alot of fantasy added, but with a grain of truth in it every time.

The Bible is that: a collection of legens and sagas, with a core of true elements. Did Mozes really ascend to a mountain on his own and come down with 2 holy slabs of stone? Highly unlikely. Did they make up the 10 commandments around that period: that sounds very reasonable. Did Jacob die wrestling God? Not very likely either, but a fitting end to a great leader who took care of his people for so long. Best to have him remembered as "struggling with the journey" to finally get there.

see, images are so much more fun and so much better for people to understand and remember. Why do you think Jezus used parables to bring across alot of his message?

Noah & his Ark... basically just stolen, yes, you read it, stolen from other religions. At the time the Israelites were nomadic or banished (I don't remember which) near other cultures and the elders started to see that their own were beginning to take over local legends like the great flood as it was described by that culture. So they just adapted some names, details & numbers and proclaimed it as their own legend.

Another thing to be said is the story of the Virgin Mary. According to literary traditions, at the time the first gosples were being written, there was a custom to have an important person's birth become a virginal pregnancy. The only way this can happen is afterwards, they just add this part, again to make it that much more alluring.
Does that diminish the value of Mary? Of course not. She is still the mother of Jesus and still stood by him and took care of him. That is what she symbolises.

As for the religion having a trial & error method...
What do you think Deut. & Leviticus are? They are added much, and I mean much later than the other books. They were just a bunch of rules that were added to the books, rules that were good, necessary and just made plain sense at the time. It was the trial & error method at work. The thing is that people always like to classify things, and declare them final.
What would have made more sense, would be to realise that those books are children of their time, and should be updated constantly. But when the New Testament was written, they figured that since these stories were the Old Testament, that it was finished, done, over and closed.
Lev & Deut are NOT the core of Christianity. They don't have ANYTHING to do with it. They are just interpretations of the earlier books, with clear and specific wording for each case.

(remember the notice on the boards about not posting pictures of children under 18? Remember how many countless replies that came with "what ifs" ? That's what Deut & Lev are for... To smother rule lawyers that try and find the line they can't cross. Seems like it's part of human nature mostly, even thousands of years later.)

See, I love being catholic and I love to use common sense. And yes, most of the things I talked about were taught to me. At school. By a catholic priest.


So why believe in the Bible? Not because of all the litteral interpretations, like so many people constantly try to do. But because of the truth, the message hidden in those stories.

David & Goliath? Who knows whether there was a giant at those times or whether it was just a big bulky man, but does it matter? The point of that story is that if you are small but have skills and the wits to use them right, you can easily overcome brute force.

Why believe in Jesus? Not because of what the historical figure represents, but what the figure in the Bible tried to achieve, what he wanted to become... And to try and aspire to that ourselves.

As for the person who says they would rather be true to themselves, I agree, you can burn in hell :)

Someone who is just true to himself can never better himself, since he believes himself to be more than good enough (or that is how it sounds to me).
If you don't even bother to try and make a difference around you, to maybe cut yourself short once in a while to significantly help others and try to be respectful to others and yourself, then yes, go burn for all eternity.

If you do try, and genuinely want to become a better person, then you can do it by a number of means.
One of these means is the Bible & the Christianity that comes with it :D

last time i checked, all christian sects say their way is right and focus on that stability. they only seem to change under extreme pressure to do so. yes, there were heretics that changed their beliefs, disagreed with the status quo, gathered followers and went their seperate ways, but since founding the different protestant sects, those sects are now nice and rigid.


the number of american's that support teaching evolution vs. the number that are religious is inconsequential. the religous organizations are what easytiger's talking about. the people in charge who make the policy. not the people who merely go to their churchs.

also, calling it a fallacy doesn't seem quite right. it may be a misrepresentation, or an exaggeration, but for all you know, the data, although no hard data is quoted, could actually be that way.

Incorrect. Many Christian sects are progressive in their theology, and from the highest ranks recognize that God is doing something new in the world. Many are not. But the 9 times out of ten claim is pure bullshit. The christian consensus is not so creationist as has been implied.

Organizations are made of laity. With so many to choose from, they must be responsive to the people.

When the "majority" is fictional, and invented out of thin air, i believe it is a fallacy. False stastistics are a danger unto themselves.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics, eh?

i suppose...but it's not technically a statistic when the numbers involved are completely fictional...

well, aren't all statistics fictional? the whole 9/10 thing that was said is really just a figure of speech meaning that most are like that. whether that's what was meant by it or not, i don't know. also, since i assume he did not have any hard evidence, i'm guessing that he said 9 out of 10 based on his experiances and what he's seen. obviously, that's not objective nor does it cover the whole realm of christian sects.

the thing with any statistics is that you could give me one set, and i could give you a contradictory set, and they'd both be right. and both be wrong. after all, how could 4 out of 5 dentists perfer crest and another 4/5 perfer colgate?

Mael is right- "nine out of ten" was a figure of speech. And despite the name of this thread, please note that my comment related to ALL religions- my own included- and not just Christianity.
Mael is also right about the nature of statistics, especially on sensitive subjects like religion. How accurate can they be and how honestly have they been applied?
My last post quoted Mark Twain, who was talking about the three different kinds of lie, and frankly, I think he was on to something.

thats why I don't beleive in religion. I beleive in myself, thats it. But sometimes I do find myself saying a prayer or something just because people around me are. Gotta fix that.

it wasn't twain. it was benjamin disraeli. But that's not the point. my overblown reaction to your figure of speech was to show just how meaningless and sneaky the use of such figures are. If you don't have data to back it, you have a completely unrepresentative sample size that means nothing. Using that statistic despite that is deceptive, pure and simple. And you dog religion for not caring about the Truth? Please...

A primitive interpretation of current events at the time.

...that reminds me...
Mojo_PeiPei I'm still waiting on Einstein's proof of the existence of a soul. After all, he believed in God right?

Jeff GoldBlum said it in Powder!!!

http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/einstein.htm

Basically what that says and what I misinterpreted was that Einstein doesn't believe in a soul free from a body. The idea was that electricity is what operates our brains, electricity never degrades.

That's precisely meaningless. Does your computer have a soul? What about your toaster?

Are you questioning the almighty Jeff Goldblum???