Why is /sci/ so hateful and intolerant against Christians?

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Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:17:27 2010 No.2238281 [Reply] [Original]

Why is /sci/ so hateful and intolerant against Christians?

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:19:27 2010 No.2238289 >>2238281 because they perpetuate a stupid cult that has primitive values which have stupid political and social consequences pretty much any system based on dogma and faith is gonna suck and degrade human life

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:21:27 2010 No.2238295 to become a scientist you actually have to sacrifice a Christian infant on the infernal altar and pledge your eternal soul to Satan

Barack !446r2OBAMA Tue Dec 21 22:22:27 2010 No.2238299

We aren't.

We are incessantly trolled by "Christians" (in reality, high schoolers who are finished their 'AP' homework).

Because of this trolling, high schoolers that frequent /sci/ "troll" back.

But of course only after looking up the odd problems in the back of their physics book for 'AP' physics.

/sci/ is a shithole. Not only because of the trolls, but because of the charlatans that think they understand math and science (high school kids).

tl;dr high school children ruin this board.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:22:27 2010 No.2238303 >>2238299 I am hateful of them. I don't troll them either. Your post is invalid.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:24:27 2010 No.2238308 >>2238295 I'm a junior and I just cannot wait for this part of my graduation ceremony next year.

Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:24:27 2010 No.2238309

I have managed to separate atheists in 3 cathegories.

- Those who, through rational thought and study, have reached the conclusion that there is no God.
- Those who wish really hard that there are no gods, and thus, no consequences for their actions.
- Juveniles who rebel against it with no real thought at all, close to what creationists fundies do.

The last 2 are the most vocal, and the ones you see on religion threads. The first do not give a damn.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:26:27 2010 No.2238316 >>2238309 You're a retard. If you're so worthless that you want to say anyone who speaks out against religion came to the conclusion that religion is wrong irrationally then you really need to be sterilized.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:28:27 2010 No.2238329 File: 96 KB, 768x787, 12903195.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2238316 See what I mean? Ad hominems, threats and no real argument. This one falls on No. 3. You need to grow up junior, and join the ranks of No. 1.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:29:27 2010 No.2238334 >>2238309 >- Those who, through rational thought and study, have reached the conclusion that there is no God. implying we can use reason to transcend the limitations human reason and make conclusions regarding things beyond our universe

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:30:27 2010 No.2238337 >>2238334 >implying there are things beyond the universe

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:33:27 2010 No.2238347 File: 26 KB, 400x278, 1291499661353.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2238334 ... what? >>2238337 >Implying humanity can even begin to fathom what lies beyond. "I know that I know nothing".

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:34:27 2010 No.2238351 >>2238347 >appealing to ignorance, thinking it is philosophical enlightenment

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:38:27 2010 No.2238360 >>2238337 >implying your trivial understanding of the "universe" is complete and encompasses all of reality

Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:39:27 2010 No.2238365
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>>2238351
So you mean your claims are truth, because you proclaim them to be true?

Science is about being logical.

"What lies beyond the Universe?". As if right now, we have no idea. We can make conjectures and educated guesses, but that's all they are. Until facts and solid proof are set before us, THEN we can a claim. And even then, such a claim can be debunked later on.

Of course, you can go believe in unicorns for all I care.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:40:27 2010 No.2238367 >>2238351 >implying knowing that you know nothing is not enlightenment.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:41:27 2010 No.2238370 I choose to dislike christians because I dislike idiots. Also I believe all religion is unhealthy; it teaches ignorance is ok, is the leading cause of violence and hate, and slows the progression of humanity.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:41:27 2010 No.2238373 >>2238365 There are never proofs in science. The only "facts" are what we observe. So any statement associating facts with reality is also pure speculation.

Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:42:27 2010 No.2238374

>>2238337

you have no access to that knowledge

there could be other dimensions beyond your tiny human understanding of planets, galaxies, and solar systems....

a rational human mind can't come to a conclusion about transcendental things like God, by definition.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:42:27 2010 No.2238375 >>2238370 Ignorance had better be fucking ok, because that is the fucking human condition.

>>	Anonymous !s4GaN.hvy. Tue Dec 21 22:46:27 2010 No.2238391 >>2238309 Ridiculous.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:48:27 2010 No.2238402 File: 761 KB, 900x900, 6019519.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2238373 Thus the "I know that I know nothing". To admit that you do not know something is the beginning of knowledge.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:50:27 2010 No.2238406 >>2238370 >it teaches ignorance is ok You do realize that the big bang theory was first proposed by a Catholic priest?

Anonymous Tue Dec 21 22:53:27 2010 No.2238416
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>>2238406
An even better one, that a monk, Mendel, was who started the study on genetics, which Darwin based his research on.

Another one was that the Rennaisance started with the printing of the bible, which was recently unbanned to the general public.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 23:04:27 2010 No.2238453 because /sci/entists are Satan-worshiping atheists

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 23:06:27 2010 No.2238465 >>2238453 If they worship Satan, that does not make atheists. Try again.

Anonymous !s4GaN.hvy. Tue Dec 21 23:23:27 2010 No.2238524

>>2238416

>Another one was that the Rennaisance started with the printing of the bible, which was recently unbanned to the general public.

It wasn't just the bible though, was it. The true breakthroughs came from the printing of scientific, philosophical and humanist texts.

Seem to have forgotten Galileo? Giordano Bruno?

The Church actively protested against the public pursuing new ideals that were contrary to the teachings of the Church, by pain of excommunication, arrest or death.

Funnily, the Church decided to promptly apologize for Galileo's permanent house arrest in 1992. Almost 400 years later.

Anonymous Tue Dec 21 23:27:27 2010 No.2238535

>>2238416Mendel, was who started the study on genetics, which Darwin based his research on.

There is no evidence that Darwin ever read Mendel's work which was more obscure at the time. Mendel on the other hand was familiar with Darwin. It's somewhat unfortunate because Darwin was having a lot of trouble answering why traits develop the way they do and don't all just blend. If Darwin had known about dominant and recessive traits it would have saved him a lot of grief.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 23:52:27 2010 No.2238593 >>2238465 >implying Satan is a god.

>>	Anonymous Tue Dec 21 23:55:27 2010 No.2238601 >>2238524 >Seem to have forgotten Galileo? Giordano Bruno? Both fervent Christians. Bruno was a monk and Christian intellectual, executed for his religious views. Strange heroes for an atheist.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:04:27 2010 No.2238623 File: 246 KB, 1400x483, 1282441185882.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] ITT: neckbeards neckbearding in a troll thread.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:07:27 2010 No.2238630 >>2238365 How are you defining the Universe. By your statements it seems that you take the universe to be everything you personally understand and nothing more. I doubt your definition lines up with what a cosmologist defines the universe to be.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:09:27 2010 No.2238637 >>2238406 That catholic priest does not represent the whole of religion. Anecdotes are not evidence.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:11:27 2010 No.2238645 >>2238374 >could be and there very well could be a teapot in orbit around the sun somewhere between the orbits of earth and mars but we have to reason to believe that there is as of yet.

Anonymous !s4GaN.hvy. Wed Dec 22 00:13:27 2010 No.2238648

>>2238601

Whether they were Christians or not is irrelevant (as if there was much choice in that time anyway), Bruno was burnt at the stake for "Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers."

He was reported to have said: "Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it" to the Catholic Prosecution before he was killed.

Still very relevant to this day.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:14:27 2010 No.2238655

>>2238402
Except that you are admitting to lacking knowledge of anything.

I don't know something and I know nothing are two very different statements.
First "I know that I know nothing" is a contradiction but as a play on words it implies that you believe everything you have learned to be false.

Starting from that point, I don't think anyone has reason to take you seriously on your conjectures about scientific knowledge.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:14:27 2010 No.2238656 >>2238645 Such a teapot would have no explanatory power or significance, so it's pointless to speculate about it, unlike God.

>>	Anonymous !s4GaN.hvy. Wed Dec 22 00:16:12 2010 No.2238666 File: 34 KB, 500x389, 1292899628424.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2238656 LOL.

>>	Anonymous !s4GaN.hvy. Wed Dec 22 00:18:27 2010 No.2238675 >>2238656 It does now, I just gave it them.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:19:27 2010 No.2238683
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>>2238637
That's kind of a weak argument against what he said.

Belief in God != Disbelief in Science/Evolution

<-- Meet Francis Collins. He would agree with this statement.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:21:27 2010 No.2238691

>>2238648
>Whether they were Christians or not is irrelevant
should leave it at that

>>2238601
What you fail to grasp is that we generally take the individual making a claim to be independent of the idea being presented.
This is a serious hurdle for the religious trying to understand scientific knowledge.
With religion, truth comes from authority. If the pope says it, it is true.
With science, a retard could present a fundamental truth with supporting evidence and we would have to consider it. Likewise I have no reason to take a prominent scientist's opinion as true without evidence to support it especially if the opinion rendered concerns a subject outside his primary field.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:21:27 2010 No.2238693 Science: Explains how things happen. Not why.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:23:27 2010 No.2238697 >>2238655 Being obtuse to try to invalidate your oppositions argument is NOT how you refute. You are evading the question.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:29:27 2010 No.2238719

>>2238648
Yes, he was executed for his Christian beliefs by a corrupt church, especially his beliefs regarding the trinity. Today atheists take up the position that the Catholic church used to in the persecution of Christian intellectuals.

Also implying that there weren't atheists then, or that Galileo and Bruno believed what they did because of external pressures -- when they both believed and expressed things with complete disregard to their personal safety, is obviously absurd.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:30:27 2010 No.2238724

>>2238656
nice try but the god hypothesis has been shot down many times and the prime reason it is rejected is that "god did it" explains nothing.
Lightning strikes - why? god did it.
An apple falls from a tree - why? god wanted it to.
ad infinitum
For each example of phenomenon that you explain by god we can extrapolate no useful knowledge from it the explanation.
If we instead look for the actual reason behind occurrences we can discover a means by which an occurrence and be repeated to a useful end.

For the point of fact, if god exists, he does nothing except through the natural laws anyway and is again a useless explanation.
Such an explanation is only useful if it is required to explain what we see in the universe.
Such as if, for example, all amputees were to suddenly and inexplicably grow back their fully functioning limbs.
Then you might say "god did it" and we would then want to find out how to get god to do a few other useful things.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:31:27 2010 No.2238726

>>2238691
>With religion, truth comes from authority. If the pope says it, it is true.
Sounds like you got your understanding of religion from a Dawkins book. Most Catholics take different position on doctrinal matters than the pope.

BTW, have you personally verified the results of the Michelson-Morry experiment, or do you take those results on faith.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:34:27 2010 No.2238742 >>2238724 >nice try but the god hypothesis has been shot down many times stopped reading there

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:37:27 2010 No.2238758

>>2238724
That's just the point. If you take many religions, you will find that they have the how and why. The christian god, which you are focusing on, offers no hows whatsoever. It merely says who and why, not the how. You could comb the entire book and you will find nothing.

If the question is whether evolution disproves the basic underlying theme of Genesis, that God created the world and the life in it, the answer is no. Evolution cannot say exactly why common descent chose the paths that it did.

If the question is whether evolution contradicts a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis as an exact historical account, then it does. This is the main, and for the most part only, point of conflict between those who believe in evolution and creationists.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:38:27 2010 No.2238764 because this is not /x/. gtfo /sci/

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:39:27 2010 No.2238770 I don't hate them, I just find questioning their line of reasoning funny. I actually share a lot of the values.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:40:27 2010 No.2238779

>>2238726
I get my understanding of the faith from having been a christian, like many atheists.

As for specific experiments I'll take the results on faith up to the point where it doesn't make sense to me or runs counter to what one would expect given the rest of what said individual knows about the universe. Then I'll set to finding out for myself.
Your questioning is exactly what I'm getting at.
I must trust that what a prophet says is true.
I must trust that what the bible says is true.
I must trust that what my pastor says is true, although to a lessor degree.

I cannot see for myself that Jesus rose from the grave after death by crucifixion.

For scientific knowledge, I have the option of seeing for myself.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:46:27 2010 No.2238809 >>2238779 >Test everything. Hold on to the good. Here. You might have missed this tiny itsy botsy detail.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:49:27 2010 No.2238816

>>2238758
Actually, this is a minor issue.
Literal or figurative, Genesis does not merely declare that a god figure created the universe and life in it.
It declares that such a god did it in a specific and short time period and that the earth is only 6000 years old.
Additionally, if Genesis is not taken literally than original sin does not exist and thus the main reason Jesus was sent here to save humanity from his own wrath is also non existent.
You are in about the same place I was before I realized that any way one approaches the issues, more unjustified rationalization is required to make any religious claim fit with reality than is required to dismiss said claim.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:53:27 2010 No.2238826

>>2238809
Then tell me how you test for the effectiveness of prayer or the existence of heaven and hell or divinity of a man that supposedly existed more than two thousand years ago or any of the other claims of any of the other religions.
Lets setup some falsifiable claims and some repeatable tests and lets get at it.
I'm all for it.

If you can't or won't then all you have is conjecture.

>>	pascal !n5Z3VuZapw Wed Dec 22 00:54:27 2010 No.2238829 >>2238816 original sin? jesus has nothing to do with that.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:58:27 2010 No.2238846 >>2238779 Why do you think people believe in the bible in the first place? It's because they read it and they see something for themselves in it that is transcendent.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:59:27 2010 No.2238848

>>2238829
Clearly you haven't read your Bible then.

Jesus is only necessary because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Were it not for the fact that each of us is born tainted with the sin of Adam, it would be possible at least in principle for a man to be born into this world and live a sinless life pleasing to God.
Because you are a descendant of Adam and inherit the knowledge he so unrighteous gained you also inherit his sin. As such, you need a savior even if you have never offended God in your lifetime.
Jesus has everything to do with original sin.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:59:27 2010 No.2238850
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>>2238816
Been there, done that. Like you, I have done research, sought my own evidence on the contrary. Still, I disagree. From a non-literal interpretation, I hardly see anywhere that disagrees with the views science has to the making of this world or the universe itself.

Though the Bible is not the place to look for those answers. It never was.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 00:59:27 2010 No.2238853 >>2238816 >It declares that such a god did it in a specific and short time period and that the earth is only 6000 years old. >has never read Genesis.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:00:27 2010 No.2238855 >>2238848 >Clearly you haven't read your Bible then. LOL. Original Sin is not mentioned in the Bible, dipshit.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:05:27 2010 No.2238870

>>2238846
Now you are dodging the questions.

Make a falsifiable claim that your faith supports and we will design a test for it.
"Just look at the bible" is not a test and anecdotes are not evidence.

I didn't stop believing in Jesus until I did read my Bible, all of it.
Ask all of the Christians you know if they have read the Bible completely. Take statistics on it and post it for us then we can discuss the relevancy of that claim.

People are not converted to Christianity by the Bible they are converted, in large part, by other Christians. Many of those also misrepresent what is in the Bible and disagree among themselves about the meaning of what is actually in it.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:05:27 2010 No.2238871

>>2238850
This, obviously. There was a 3rd century monk who basically suggested a kind of evolution for natural history. Forget his name. No one had a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 back then, because they could read Hebrew, and such an interpretation is absurd.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:07:27 2010 No.2238878 >>2238853 >doesn't know the meaning of the phrase "and on the seventh day" >cannot add up the lifespans of characters mentioned. Go read a creationist web site sometime so you know what your argument is.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:10:27 2010 No.2238885

>>2238850
Good for you, this means you are not a christian. Whatever your god is, it's not the one discussed in the Bible.
Now, if you can make a few claims from your faith then we can discuss the validity of those claims.
If test a few of them and find them to be true and meaningful, I may yet adopt your religion.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:14:27 2010 No.2238898 File: 38 KB, 390x237, all_your.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2238281 Because christians need to be actively persecuted lest they grow decadent and corrupt.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:17:27 2010 No.2238909

>>2238855
>doesn't know what Catholics mean by "original sin"
Study up on what your cousins in the faith actually believe.
If you think original sin is not a factor in the coming of Jesus, will you provide a good reason why Jesus needed to save all humanity and not just the ones who lived a sinful life.
It is, in fact, theoretically possible to live a life without offending God, the bible discusses a few individuals who did so early in the old testament. One was even taken into heaven before he died because god was so pleased with him. Yet Jesus still came to save all humanity because all had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:21:27 2010 No.2238921
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>>2238885
Claims? All of my experiences are largely subjective, appliable only to me and what I have seen done to my life. I do not ask for a magical way out of trouble. I ask for guidance, nothing more. The answer always appears one way or another. Some people call it wisdom, but it happens in such subtle ways I can't help but think that it is God showing me the way. That is the kind of god I have. Gifts of the Spirit, anyone?

I have read the Bible, and it works for me. However, I cannot make "claims".

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:22:27 2010 No.2238925

>>2238630
The Universe is all of physical reality.
It is literally everything. Right now, we don't, and in fact CAN'T know anything about what might exist *outside* the universe; because human logic and science only work within the context of the universe.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:23:27 2010 No.2238928 Because we logic.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:24:27 2010 No.2238933 >>2238848 So... if this is true, how does mormonism work? One of their basic tenents (the thirteen articles of faith) is that original sin isn't passed on to adam's descendents.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:26:27 2010 No.2238936 >>2238933 Mormons are taken as heretics by most, if not all, of christianity. You should ask a mormon about it.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:26:27 2010 No.2238937 >>2238925 basically, we can't know what is "beyond" existence because we are limited to existence.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:27:27 2010 No.2238941

>>2238921
Then I call your god intuition coupled with confirmation bias and whatever name you put to it, no one else has any reason to believe that he/she/it exists apart from your own imagination.

I also have no problem with your god or your belief so long as you don't want to convince me to believe in your god or pass laws according to what you think your god is telling you and nothing more.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:27:27 2010 No.2238945

>>2238936
You wouldn't believe how often I've asked mormons to explain what the fuck they believe.
They seem to have a theology that basically consists of random bits of christianity glued together by 19th centuray ignorance and the assertion that "we should all just be nice to each other."

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:31:27 2010 No.2238956

>>2238945
...Yep, that sounds about right.
Is it weird that one of the stupidest, most cultish religions is also one that I consider amongst the best?

I don't think any religion is particularly "good", but if people need to have it, I want it to be somewhat like mormonism.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:34:27 2010 No.2238964
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>>2238941
*shrug*

This is why it is called faith, and not a part of science. And I could not agree more with not forcing religion on anybody. Faith should be embraced of your own free will. God doesn't want robots.

Would be nice if you reverted to your faith though.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:34:27 2010 No.2238967

>>2238937
Go ask a philosopher what existence is or look it up on Wikipedia.

This is a useless exercise. Whatever thing may exist "beyond existence", by definition, cannot effect existence without first changing such that it now exist, in existence. At that point such a thing must conform to to laws of nature or break them in acting upon existence.
In case A, the proposed thing may as well not have existed beyond existence in the first place since it may only act as if it exists within existence.
In case B, we would observe phenomenon which we previously thought impossible and seek an explanation which will never be found since the effects were caused by an undefined entity.
So far, case B has not occurred.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:35:27 2010 No.2238969 >>2238967 Precisely my point.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:39:27 2010 No.2238979

>>2238933
Mormonism is not Christianity no matter how much they claim it to be or mirror it's values.
Joseph Smith was supposed to have been their original prophet. The Bible states that the test of a prophet is his predictions and that any prophet who makes even one prediction that does not come true is a false prophet and not a messenger of God.
Joseph Smith made several well noted predictions during his time that did not come true.
Prophets of the Mormon church to this day continue to make claims that don't come true.

You need to research complex organizations more before claiming their beliefs.

(aryan)lucis, the prophet !B.0X4iZ/uM Wed Dec 22 01:42:27 2010 No.2238985
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>mfw this thread was created by an atheist posing as at theist to make it seem like all Christians believe in the man on the cloud sky-wizard God rather than an aseuxal cubic

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:42:27 2010 No.2238987

>>2238969
Just so you know:
Case A implies that your God is irrelevant.
Case B implies that your God does not exist.

If what I wrote is what you were actually trying to claim then 1. you suck at conferring ideas through writing. and 2. Neither I nor anyone else has any reason to believe that your god exists apart from your own imagination.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:44:27 2010 No.2238992

>>2238979
I don't know what the fuck your point is, unless it's just that "Mormonism =|= Christianity"

Of course J. Smith was a fraud. He sold fucking dowsing rods for a living at one point, and he was jailed for fraud in the same year that he started his religion.

But isn't EVERY prophet and religious leader a fraud?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:45:27 2010 No.2238996 >>2238987 What? I don't believe in any god.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:45:27 2010 No.2238998 >>2238985 ...asexual cubic?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:47:27 2010 No.2239004

>>2238964
Why would it be nice for you?
By your own admission, you require nor receive from your god anything more and a gut instinct concerning the meaning of external stimuli.
Interpreting such things as god has no value to me so it certainly wouldn't be nice for me considering all the baggage that comes with making such claims to other people.

>God doesn't want robots.
And how do you know that god doesn't want robots?
By intuition? then why call yourself a christian?
Certainly there are Christians who might well say the opposite. There's supposedly nothing wrong with indoctrination of children after all.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:49:27 2010 No.2239006 >>2239004 There have been some christians who've thought that we ARE robots.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:49:27 2010 No.2239007 >>2238996 then we're square and you previous claims about not being able to know anything about a proposed God and moot since this thread has been discussing specific claims about gods as they pertain to existence.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:50:27 2010 No.2239010

>>2238992
>But isn't EVERY prophet and religious leader a fraud?

There's a theory that Jesus never actually claimed to be divine, and the resurrection was caused by some of the disciples stealing the body. Then everyone made up lots of stories about him.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:50:27 2010 No.2239011
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>>2238992
Currently christianity is on a To Be Announced if the predictions in Revelations turn out to be false or not.

So far, if you want to take it seriously, the existence of Jesus means that the old prophets were right.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:53:27 2010 No.2239021

>>2238992
you missed the post I was responding to.

Christian was trying to claim that Jesus had nothing to do with original sin and vice verse.
Failing that anon implied that Mormonism = Christianity argued that their 13 tenants declare that original sin is not inherited.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:55:27 2010 No.2239024 >>2239010 You need only look to Elvis and his followers to see first hand how plausible that is.

>>	Ranma Wed Dec 22 01:56:27 2010 No.2239027 File: 66 KB, 1600x1600, hassansmildlyretardedcamel.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2238329 >>responding to tone The only one who made a fallacy here is you.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:56:27 2010 No.2239030 >>2239011 >on a to be announced As it has been for over 1500 years. Every generation of Christians tends to include individuals claiming that they are living in the end times and xyz event proves it.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:58:27 2010 No.2239034

>>2239011
Well, I technically don't know that Jesus fulfilled any of the old prophecies. The people writing about it could have been lying, or mistaken.

In fact, they CERTAINLY were, in at least one case.

> Matthew made a colossal blunder...in his gospel... [it involves] what is known as Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem riding on a donkey (if you believe Mark, Luke or John) or riding on two donkeys (if you believe Matthew).
>In Matthew 21:1-7, two animals are mentioned in three of the verses, so this cannot be explained away as a copying error. And Matthew has Jesus riding on both animals at the same time, for verse 7 literally says, "on them he sat."
>Why does Matthew have Jesus riding on two donkeys at the same time? Because he misread Zechariah 9:9 which reads in part, "mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

>Anyone familiar with Old Testament Hebrew would know that the word translated "and" in this passage does not indicate another animal but is used in the sense of "even" (which is used in many translations) for emphasis. The Old Testament often uses parallel phrases which refer to the same thing for emphasis, but Matthew was evidently not familiar with this usage. Although the result is rather humorous, it is also very revealing. It demonstrates conclusively that Matthew created events in Jesus' life to fulfill Old Testament prophecies, even if it meant creating an absurd event.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:59:27 2010 No.2239036 GO FUCK YOURSELF ALL OF YOU

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:59:27 2010 No.2239038 >>2239030 >(Mark 9:1 NIV) And he said to them, "I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power." Even Jesus got it wrong.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:59:27 2010 No.2239039 >>2238281 I tend to be tolerant of tolerant people, and intolerant of intolerant people.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 01:59:27 2010 No.2239040

>>2238985
I'll actually take you up on this one aether.

Define your cubic god and make a falsifiable claim as to what effect it has on reality and lets discuss.
At a minimum, I'm willing to bet you have the most entertainingly complex argument of any of these religious anons.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:01:27 2010 No.2239049 >>2239036 >he mad i loled We really do need a philosophy board.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:01:27 2010 No.2239050 >>2238309 I'm the first and second. I believe that the evidence is clear that all of the popular theist gods do not exist, and I'm glad that they're don't.

>>	(aryan)lucis, the prophet !B.0X4iZ/uM Wed Dec 22 02:02:27 2010 No.2239053 >>2239040 Actually I can't be fucked. Three reasons, 1. I've been doing it all day. 2. You're a parasite. 3. You're too dumb to comprehend it. Sorry if I let you down Charles Manson but I think you're an absolute faggot

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:02:27 2010 No.2239054 >>2239040 I curious to hear what he means by "asexual cubic", as well.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:04:27 2010 No.2239057
File: 182 KB, 600x843, 13736623.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2239034
Mistranslation.

Matthew 21
The Triumphal Entry
1 Now when they drew near Jerusalem, and came to Bethphage,[a] at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Loose them and bring them to Me. 3 And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and immediately he will send them.”
4 All[b] this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying:
5 “ Tell the daughter of Zion,

‘ Behold, your King is coming to you,
Lowly, and sitting on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.’”[c]

6 So the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, and set Him[d] on them.

Two diciples, one donkey.

There goes one prophecy. Feel free to bring more.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:04:27 2010 No.2239060

>>2239038
Unless you take his meaning to apply to Jerusalem and the initial spread of Christianity, some of those present did live to see that event.
A (metaphorically speaking) powerfully driven spread of Christianity and with it a kingdom of god existent within the people.

Although I won't blame you if you call bullshit since most Christians don't seem to interpret the passage this way.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:04:27 2010 No.2239061 >>2238374 Except a theist god by definition is one that interacts with humans, and is thus observable. Hence the term atheist.

>>	(aryan)lucis, the prophet !B.0X4iZ/uM Wed Dec 22 02:06:27 2010 No.2239064 i cant be fucked, as said, lets just put it this way, a giant imaginary cube. first god created the heaven (mother) and earth (father) translation: first god created the nature and the time

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:06:27 2010 No.2239065 >>2239050 I'd ask what this evidence is, but you'll probably say the earth is older than 6,000 years and I'm afraid I might facepalm through my face.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:06:27 2010 No.2239066

>>2238416
>An even better one, that a monk, Mendel, was who started the study on genetics, which Darwin based his research on.

Fucking retard. Darwin didn't know jack about Mendel or genetics. They were contemporaries, but knew nothing about each other. Mendel languished in relative obscurity for quite some time.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:07:27 2010 No.2239067 >>2239053 meh, trollin then. enjoy it, this thread is ripe. But I wonder, if not to copy pasta your cuboid blather once again and lol @ the ensuing rage and confusion. Why post in here?

Ranma Wed Dec 22 02:08:27 2010 No.2239070
File: 78 KB, 407x405, biblebullshit.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2239057
>>HURR
Picture related.
You don't get to call your religion anything when its a pile of contradictions and vague premises, by anyone with REASONABLE standards, it's falsified, by the mere fact that christfucks put all their eggs in one basket and called it innerant when the book is practically so swiss cheese there's hardly any substance.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:08:27 2010 No.2239071 >>2239053 ..Was it just me, or was this an utterly nonsensical post?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:08:27 2010 No.2239073 >>2239038 It's referring to his resurrection. His return means that the Kingdom has come, as the church, which are the same thing.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:09:27 2010 No.2239075

>>2239061
Atheism implies a disbelief in any conception of God, not just the non-deist conception of God. Sometimes "theist" is used to mean non-deist theism, but only when deism is the subject being discussed. In general theism means any sort of belief in God, including a desistic belief.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:11:27 2010 No.2239080 >>2239038 No one who goes to heaven tastes death... ever. Instead they see the coming of the kingdom of God. The taste of death is hell.

(aryan)lucis, the prophet !B.0X4iZ/uM Wed Dec 22 02:11:27 2010 No.2239082

>>2239067
I said I can't be fucked to do it you faggot,

also when I said 'mother' and 'father' a few posts up from this one I may have been lying, for only babies are born, so it would have just been male and female.

bitter troll is bitter

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:11:27 2010 No.2239084 >>2239057 ...Sorry, you don't seem to have clarified the contradiction very well... Maybe I'm just retarded. The other three gospels that mention this all speak of just ONE donkey anyways.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:12:27 2010 No.2239085

>>2239034
>>2239057
Flawless illustration of the unreliability of religious dogma.
If translations can't even be trusted then we must all learn Hebrew and read the originals. Of course then we will still have to argue over what different words meant in the time they were written.
For a book concerning eternal punishment and what you need to do to avoid it, it seems there is far too much room for interpretation.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:12:27 2010 No.2239086 >>2239070 But it is not contradicting itself? It follows the previous prophesy, and the most accurate translations agree with it. Of course, I can fetch you the greek (hebrew/original) version and prove that it doesn't.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:13:27 2010 No.2239088 >>2239085 For a book that is purported to be THE WORD OF GOD and often literal truth, it's FAR too susceptible to human error.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:14:27 2010 No.2239092 >>2239071 When you see those, just know that it's Aether and ignore it. he's just a namefag troll that changes names once in a while and oh yea he's batshit crazy.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:14:27 2010 No.2239093 >>2239086 Even if it's not contradictory (and it clearly is), there's no reason to believe that it truly happened.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:16:27 2010 No.2239101 >>2238645 A theist god isn't a teapot in orbit. It's a teapot on your desk when you see no teapot. We have evidence that the holy books of all of the religions contain great amounts of falsehoods.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:17:27 2010 No.2239102 >>2239085 The bible is a giant case of PICS OR GTFO. And if it ever gave pics, they'd be shoops. >non /b/tard speak: It can't prove any of its predictions were accurate, and when it attempts to, its proof is fabricated.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:18:27 2010 No.2239106

>>2239073
1. church and kingdom are the same thing now?
and the kingdom isn't here yet?
Then what do Christians call the church at the moment?

2. If the passage refers to his resurrection then it is a false prophecy since everyone there has already tasted death and according to you the kingdom has not come yet.

Unless, of course, the cessation of brain function means something different to you than it does to the rest of us.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:18:27 2010 No.2239108 >>2238742 But it has. Noah's flood didn't really happen. Genesis didn't really happen. We have lots of evidence that clearly shows these things are false as literal, and false as metaphorical.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:18:27 2010 No.2239109 >>2239101 Clarification: It's the ALLEGATION of a teapot on your desk where you don't detect one.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:18:27 2010 No.2239110

>>2239093
All four gospels agree on ONE(1) donkey. Even though I am proving to you that they do not disagree with one another, you accuse it of saying otherwise.

And hey, it is entirely up to you to believe it or not. Still, kind of a silly way to try to contradict it. And I am reading the NIV version which you just quoted.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:19:27 2010 No.2239112

>>2239086
I don't pretend to know everything about the bible, I could care less about what youre argueing about right now, all that matters is weather you are right or wrong here your religion i still falsified because your holy book contradicts itself heavily and is full of errors and moral depravity. In short, you are making the cardinal scientific sin of only accepting evidence that confirms your beliefs and totally ignoring everything that points in the opposite direction.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:19:27 2010 No.2239113 >>2239108 eh... I'm an atheist fag, but I feel I have to correct you anyways: Those things DON'T disprove the existence of a God, they just disprove the veracity of the bible.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:20:27 2010 No.2239114

>>2239085
Yes, any work of philosophy or religion requires interpretation. If you don't like it, stop being a buthurt faggot. There aren't many huge issues with translations, as there are a lot of good translations out there, but obviously if you're going to be a seriously Christian scholar, you must learn Hebrew and Greek, just like you need to learn math if you're going to be a physics scholar.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:20:27 2010 No.2239115 >>2238850 Plants came Genesis "days" before the sun. What metaphor do you use for Noah's flood?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:21:27 2010 No.2239116

>>2239108
>But it has. Noah's flood didn't really happen. Genesis didn't really happen. We have lots of evidence that clearly shows these things are false as literal, and false as metaphorical.
They events metaphorically described DID really happen. There is no evidence that suggests otherwise.

(aryan)lucis, the prophet !B.0X4iZ/uM Wed Dec 22 02:22:27 2010 No.2239117

a man cant create children without an opposing female element
>therefore God is not male
-----------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS
a man cant create children without an opposing female element
>therefore God is not male
-----------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS
a man cant create children without an opposing female element
>therefore God is not male
-----------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS
a man cant create children without an opposing female element
>therefore God is not male
-----------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS
a man cant create children without an opposing female element
>therefore God is not male
-----------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS
a man cant create children without an opposing female element
>therefore God is not male
-----------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS
a man cant create children without an opposing female element
>therefore God is not male
-----------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:22:27 2010 No.2239119

>>2239080
Semantic redefinition.
None of the sheep herders and fishermen he was talking to at the time knew what true death of the soul was.
If you have to redefine common language to keep your god from lying then you push your idea of god into the realm of meaningless ideas.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:22:27 2010 No.2239120

>>2239110
This is a digression from the previous discussion, but I just want to say...

That's not much of a prophecy, is it? I mean, "Jesus is going to ride a donkey into this city"? Come on, Why the fuck would someone be given fore-knowledge of that event?
That's utterly trivial.
Shouldn't prophecies be highly spiritual matters of earth-shaking importance?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:23:27 2010 No.2239122 >>2239113 we are talking about God not gods.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:23:27 2010 No.2239124 >>2239116 >metaphorical >evidence fullretard.jpg

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:24:27 2010 No.2239125 >>2239122 That post was utterly meaningless. What are you trying to say?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:24:27 2010 No.2239126

>>2239115
Noah's flood describes in metaphor how the original people were wiped out, with the spiritual cause being the inundation of spiritual falsehoods and persuasions (a flood). If anything, physical science helps confirms that this happened, by discovering earlier species of humans than our own, who were wiped out.

(aryan)lucis, the prophet !B.0X4iZ/uM Wed Dec 22 02:24:27 2010 No.2239130

first God created the Heaven and Earth
first God created the Nature and Time
first God created the Female and Male
>------------------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS
first God created the Heaven and Earth
first God created the Nature and Time
first God created the Female and Male
>------------------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS
first God created the Heaven and Earth
first God created the Nature and Time
first God created the Female and Male
>------------------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS
first God created the Heaven and Earth
first God created the Nature and Time
first God created the Female and Male
>------------------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS
first God created the Heaven and Earth
first God created the Nature and Time
first God created the Female and Male
>------------------QUOTING FOR EMPHASIS

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:25:27 2010 No.2239131 >>2239065 Astrophysics. Modern genetic diversity could not have happened by natural law if we all descended from 2 (or 7) animals ~4000 (?) years ago from the flood myth. That's just a start.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:25:27 2010 No.2239132 >>2239124 He's the one who claimed to have evidence that the events didn't metaphorically happen.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:25:27 2010 No.2239135 >>2239126 >>huurrrrr No, noas flood is a (retarded) Christian explanation of the black see flood at the end of the ice age. It's not a 'metaphor,'

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:26:27 2010 No.2239136 >>2239115 No metaphors this time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List Humans seemed to live an abnormal length of time pre-flood. Take this any way you feel like it.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:26:27 2010 No.2239140 >>2239132 But if they are metaphors, THEY DIDN'T HAPPEN That doesn't mean they can't still be metaphorically true, but FOR FUCK'S SAKE LEARN2ENGLISH

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:26:27 2010 No.2239142 >>2239131 Why does the existence of God imply that species descended from 2 or 7 MRCA's 4,000 years ago?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:27:27 2010 No.2239144 >>2239113 Of course, I said all popular theist gods. That's the really easy one. Throw in some healthy skepticism and Occam's Razor, and you get it down to no theist god at all.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:28:27 2010 No.2239145 >>2239140 Are you being willfully dense? If I say, "he killed me at racketball", I'm using a metaphor. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just means that people who understand it literally (atheists and fundamentalists) are retards.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:28:27 2010 No.2239146 >>2239136 No. Just fucking no. Get out of /sci/. >and here we come full circle; with me being hateful and intolerant towards christians. There's your answer, OP. Because they are intolerable retards.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:28:27 2010 No.2239148

>>2239110
The point between you too is now argued to an impasse.
Moving on:
What actually happened to Judas after Jesus' death.
Death by clumsy rock impact or suicide by hanging?
Did he buy the field or did someone else buy the field?

Can't be arsed to quote the books and chapter, you very likely know exactly what I'm talking about.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:28:27 2010 No.2239149

>>2239116
Plants came Genesis "days" before the sun? How the fuck does that make sense even as a metaphor?

What metaphor do you apply that even makes some marginal sense of the story in Noah's flood? It sure wasn't global. The flood didn't kill all men. At best it's an Aesop, not a metaphor, and an evil Aesop at that. Kill all humans? You mean the babies were unsavably evil as well?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:29:27 2010 No.2239150 >>2239142 It doesn't, but the bible does.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:29:27 2010 No.2239151 >>2239135 Only complete idiots buy that explanation. Seriously.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:30:27 2010 No.2239153 >>2239150 Then you don't have the evidence you claimed to have. Also, your biblical understanding is as shallow as a fundamentalist's.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:30:27 2010 No.2239154

>>2239142
As I said, I can pick apart any popular theist god because there is positive evidence that they're full of shit.

Healthy skepticism and Occam's Razor to dispose of the rest of the theist gods.

I'm starting with christianity and working my way down.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:31:27 2010 No.2239160

It's about who you are and how you treat other people, not what you are or what you believe.

If at the end of the day, you're treating other people like shit or behaving like an immoral lump of human garbage, then whatever identity or ideology you hold is worthless.

If your identity and/or ideology has no bearings on your moral character or relationships, then it's worthless.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:32:27 2010 No.2239165

>>2239126
There are words for that kind of argument: specious and unfalsifiable. You are pulling bullshit out of your ass to save an obviously false assertion.

It's the same thing people who believe in Nostradomus's predictions. Once you go to that level of vagueness, it could have meant fucking anything.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:32:27 2010 No.2239166 >>2239153 You have to love 4chan. It makes it possible for us to argue with people that don't exist.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:32:27 2010 No.2239169

>>2239113
moot point

Religions attempt to convince others to believe in their god and their dogma.
The fact that events in the Bible did not happen calls into question the veracity of the Bible and thus the existence of the God it describes.
We may not be able to disprove the idea that any god exists but we can disprove illogical ones and we can disprove specific claims as to what those gods can do.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:32:27 2010 No.2239171 >>2239154 So pick one apart. All you've shown so far is your ignorance of biblical scholarship.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:32:27 2010 No.2239172

>>2239120
This expectation is why the jews did not believe in Jesus. If you want to be picky, Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies during his life. Some minor, some grand.

When you are called the "Suffering Servant", you would not expect many nice things happening to you.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:33:27 2010 No.2239174 >>2239160 Thank you captain obvious. >No, seriously, thank you. Sometimes it does help to have fundamental truths like that pointed out.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:35:27 2010 No.2239180

>>2239171
As I said, Genesis, Noah's flood, jews in the desert. Pick whatever you like.

Genesis is bullshit as a metaphor: it says plants came Genesis "days" before the sun. That makes no fucking sense. If you want to abstract it out even more, then it could mean anything. You just took an unfalsifiable and specious position.

Same for Noah's flood.

Jews in the desert? Is that metaphorical? Because as best as we're able to determine, there was no such thing. There was no Moses leading dudes around in the desert for 40 years. The evidence is clearly against it, though not quite as clearly as Genesis and Noah's flood.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:35:27 2010 No.2239182

>>2239165
No it can't mean anything. It can mean only one thing. There was a system of correspondences used universally in ancient times. It's used throughout ancient spiritual writing, such as the Egyptian mythologies, and it is used in the Bible as well.

People who have never studied the subject, and then throw around words like "unfalsifiable" when talking about understanding ancient representational writing don't have the intellectual background to sustain a serious discussion on the subject.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:36:27 2010 No.2239185

>>2239120
Pointless constraint.
I actually prefer specific, verifiable events.
Compare that claim to those made by those who believe Nostradamus' scribble is prophetic.
It's much easier to test if the prophesied event is specific although I would also prefer it be a more uncommon event.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:36:27 2010 No.2239186 >>2239151 >>only scholars buy that explanation FTFY Basically every culture around the black sea has some story about a catastrophic recent flood.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:37:27 2010 No.2239188 >>2239182 He's used that word, and in fact a specific phrase containing it, twice now. I'm on his side of the argument, but I think he's probably a bit of a fool.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:37:27 2010 No.2239189

>>2239182
Look dude. You have an unfalsifiable position.

You also don't represent most religious people. Most religious people tend to take things a little more literally, not "When god said he killed all humans with a flood ~4000 years ago, it really means that there was an ice age through purely naturalistic causes".

Do you even hear what you're saying?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:38:27 2010 No.2239192

>>2239180
>Genesis is bullshit as a metaphor: it says plants came Genesis "days" before the sun. That makes no fucking sense.
Do you know what "metaphor" means? How does it make no sense?

>If you want to abstract it out even more, then it could mean anything. You just took an unfalsifiable and specious position.
wat?

>Jews in the desert? Is that metaphorical? Because as best as we're able to determine, there was no such thing.
Of course that's not metaphor. The Israelites lived in the desert for at least a generation. They were not called Jews then. "Jews" refers to the descendants of the kingdom of Juda, which were composed of one of the tribes of Israelites.

>There was no Moses leading dudes around in the desert for 40 years.
Of course there was.

>The evidence is clearly against it
Again claiming to have evidence that doesn't exist.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:39:27 2010 No.2239194

>>2239186
So there was a flood. There are lots of floods all over the world, all the damn time. That's not very special. There was nothing miraculous about this flood at all. It didn't kill all of the humans. There was no dude who was told by god that it was coming, who built an arc, who took 2 (or 7) of each animal on it. Everything except "there was a flood of some kind" is completely false, and the flood itself was supposed to be global to kill all humans which is clearly wasn't.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:39:27 2010 No.2239195 >>2239186 No, you idiot. Every culture around the world, including the Americas, Africa, and Australia. It has nothing to do with the fucking black sea.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:40:27 2010 No.2239199 File: 89 KB, 703x712, 1290428002468.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2239192 >>he still thinks egypt enslaved the jews

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:41:27 2010 No.2239204

>>2239189
>Look dude. You have an unfalsifiable position.
Do you even know what unfalsifiable means? There's nothing wrong with having an unfalsifiable position. That you even exist is an unfalsifiable position.

>You also don't represent most religious people.
Neither do you. And yet...

>Most religious people tend to take things a little more literally...
make your own arguments.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:41:27 2010 No.2239205

>>2239192
What is it a metaphor for? I can talk about a disk file system using the metaphor of a filing cabinet. I can describe the aspects of the file system using the terminology of the file cabinet. That is, there is still some basis in reality. It's not completely divorced from reality.

Do you believe that the plants and animals in Genesis refer to real plants and animals, or something else? If it doesn't refer to an actual creation event, then it's not a metaphor - it's an Aesop, which is something entirely separate and distinct. The metaphor at least attempts to describe reality, where the Aesop is just a false story attempting to tell a point, such as a moral lesson.

What is the meaning behind the metaphor of god creating green leafy plants days before the sun? Either it's metaphorical for some real life thing, or it's a (false) Aesop.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:42:27 2010 No.2239208 >>2239195 [sitation needed] Sorry I must have missed the bit about native america thinking a giant flood covered the entire world, care to specify?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:43:27 2010 No.2239210 >>2239199 Wow... only hard-core Dawkinites try to claim that the exodus was invented. At least we know what kind of moron we're dealing with now.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:44:27 2010 No.2239215 >>2239208 It's in MANY native american mythologies. Pick up a book on the same, or on flood myths in general. I can't be bothered to find citations for you.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:45:27 2010 No.2239220

>>2239204
Look. I'm not at all interested in discussing if there's a natural world, or if we're all in The Matrix. Get off your philosophical high horse.

Either you submit that you're not insane according to the Einsteinian definition, or we're done.
>Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Let's at least start with that.

Once we have that, then we can move forward a little. I have evidence that I exist, and I have evidence that you exist. Anything else is mental masturbation and entirely irrelevant to this discussion.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:45:27 2010 No.2239224 >>2239205 Here you go, knock yourself out: http://newearth.org/frontier/arcana/

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:46:27 2010 No.2239228

>>2239199
Religious people aren't known for their knowledge of history.

Mormons think that the americas were settled by some jews that sailed across the pacific a few hundred years before jesus, and that they brought iron and horses with them.

Oh, and that modern native americans are dark skinned because of how evil they were.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:46:27 2010 No.2239229 >>2239220 >I have evidence that I exist, and I have evidence that you exist. And I have evidence that God exists. Looks like we both have unfalsifiable positions.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:47:27 2010 No.2239232 >>2239210 >hurr durr your religion is atheism, never mind that I still can't give you a valid reason to believe in my god.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:49:27 2010 No.2239237 >>2239224 Listen dude. I'm not going to just link to a page for you to read my argument. You could show me the same courtesy.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:49:27 2010 No.2239239 >>2239224 ...What are you people even doing on this board? This is worse than the person that linked the fucking Sumerian Kings List... I'm out.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:49:27 2010 No.2239240 >>2239204 So would you have use convert to Christianity based on the idea that we might not exist apart from your imagination?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:50:27 2010 No.2239244

>>2239229
Do you even know what unfalsifiable means?

Falsifiability is the kind of idea which is testable, for which there is a conceivable test which you can perform, perhaps an observation, which will deny your idea.

You have no good evidence that the theist god jesus exists, or at least third party verifiable evidence.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:52:27 2010 No.2239250 >>2239237 If you want to understand the metaphor of Genesis, it is a huge subject, requiring background understanding of how ancient representatives worked. I can't explain it all to you in a post.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:53:27 2010 No.2239254 >>2239250 Yes you can. You can describe in a post what the first part of the creation myth is supposed to represent, namely the green leafy plants and the creation of the sun and stars above.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:53:27 2010 No.2239255 >>2239240 wat?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:55:27 2010 No.2239260 >>2239244 Like most people in the world, I have a relationship with God, and that serves as evidence that God is real. Like your belief that you exist, it is unfalsifiable, and there is nothing wrong with that.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:56:27 2010 No.2239265 >>2239254 A day represents a distinct stage of spiritual development. A plant represents living knowledge in the mind. Stars represent spiritual conceptions. The Sun represents the spiritual capacity of love received from God.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:57:27 2010 No.2239267 >>2239260 No. It is (third party) falsifiable. People can come over and touch me. No one can come over and touch god through your personal relationship in your head.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:58:27 2010 No.2239271 >>2239265 Do you believe that jesus was a real person? Do you believe there's an afterlife? Why is one part metaphorical to the limit and the other part is literal? So, there is a god right? Why isn't god metaphorical for nature?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 02:59:27 2010 No.2239273

>>2239250
I submit on anon's behalf that anything requiring this level of understanding was not meant for the general public and therefore not permissible as religious dogma.
The prime motive behind discussing this shit is to make a determination as to whether there is an eternal punishment and if so how we should go about escaping it.
This is the main motivation behind christian conversions and the central idea that you must prove or at least provide evidence for if we are to take your god seriously.
Alternatively you might submit some real benefit that your god provides to those who follow him in which case you could skip proving hell and prove instead that such a god has a real effect on the world and the benefit you claim is really there.
So please, stop this nonsense and get down to the real argument.
You won't convince anyone by arguing over small potatoes.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:00:27 2010 No.2239280

>>2239271
He won't admit it, but everyone knows why. It's because he has to back off when evidence gets in the way. If we knew more about Middle Eastern history, he'd be saying that the existence of Jesus is "obviously meant to be taken metaphorically".

Interesting how something is "obviously meant to be taken metaphorically" if and only if there is evidence against it. You'd think people would have noticed earlier if it was that "obvious".

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:02:27 2010 No.2239284 >>2239273 Dunno, it's hard to argue against someone like this. I find a hole in their argument, but then they qualify the argument so it no longer has the hole. It's impossible to win against such unfalsifiable positions.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:02:27 2010 No.2239286 >>2239267 That your body exists does not imply there's such a thing as "you". There's no experiment that can show that you're not just a machine unconsciously reacting to stimuli.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:03:27 2010 No.2239290 >>2239286 What if I think I am? I never claimed I'm not a member of an evolved mammalian species.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:04:27 2010 No.2239291 >Jesus didn't exist It's real hard to start a cult and convince people that you are the messiah when you do not exist. Please explain to me how such a cult could begin in the first place, unless you want to tell me Muhhammad didn't exist either.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:05:27 2010 No.2239295

>>2239255
To clarify:
The post to which I was responding was attempting to use the philosophical argument that existence cannot be proven as an escape when faced with the reality that he/she cannot provide valid evidence for the existence of his/her god.

It's a nonsensical argument and still does not give anyone a reason to believe said god exists.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:05:27 2010 No.2239299 >>2239291 No one claimed that. I think most people believe that jesus as a man did exist. Naturally, a lot of people think that jesus as a theist god does not exist and did not exist.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:08:27 2010 No.2239314

>>2239271
>Do you believe that jesus was a real person?
Yes, I'm not a complete idiot.
>Do you believe there's an afterlife?
Yes.

>Why is one part metaphorical to the limit and the other part is literal?
They aren't parts of anything. They are different books.

>So, there is a god right?
yes
>Why isn't god metaphorical for nature?
Natural language is good at talking about natural things. It is very poor at talking about spiritual things. There aren't words that can directly capture the necesssary meanings. That's why spiritual things were discussed in ancient times almost completely through metaphor with natural things. There's no need to talk about natural things with metaphor.

Even God was talked about in metaphor before the explicitly monotheistic religions. Hinduism is one of my favorite religions to study because it preserves how ancient religions talked about a unified divine principle manifest in different representations. The Hebrews did it a bit differently, though.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:09:27 2010 No.2239319

You guys playing with philosophy have no idea what you are talking about.
The key point is to provide other people (whether they really exist apart from your imagination or not) a reason to believe your claims about whatever god you claim exists apart from your own imagination.
If you can't do that, dropping to "well, you can't prove you exist either so there!" will not help your argument.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:11:27 2010 No.2239328 File: 114 KB, 600x600, 1234835449484.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Obligatory.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:11:27 2010 No.2239330

>>2239273
I'm just answering questions. If you have a specific question, I'd be happy to answer it. If you don't want to invest the time in understanding the underlying meaning of Genesis I certainly understand. Not many do. But don't take offense if I correct people who imply that Genesis was intended to be taken literally.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:11:27 2010 No.2239333 >>2239314 Define your god and make some claims as to what he can do in reality as we know it and we will have something to discuss. So far your arguments are meaningless and you have provided no reason why anyone should believe in your god.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:13:27 2010 No.2239342

>>2239280
You don't know what you are talking about. Genesis has been taken metaphorically since at least the first Christians. It has nothing to do with scientific evidence. It is what is on the fucking page. The hebrew word Adam is not even a name. It is the word that means "mankind". The text isn't talking about two literal people, period.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:14:27 2010 No.2239347

>>2239330
You are defending the truth of Christian doctrine are you not?
If so, then lets get down to why you think your god exists and what he can do.
If not, you are confusing the argument in this thread and your argument is additionally meaningless since we have no reason to take the Bible seriously in the first place.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:15:27 2010 No.2239349
File: 16 KB, 300x312, rolleyes.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>2239342
>Genesis has been taken metaphorically since at least the first Christians.

How convenient that you ignore that it's an ancient Jewish myth and was always taken literally by the Jews.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:15:27 2010 No.2239351 >>2239314 So, what would be sufficient evidence that your idea of god was false? Is it anything we could go out and test?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:16:27 2010 No.2239356 >>2239295 No, you fucking tool. You're going around calling things "unfalsifiable positions", when you don't even know what the term means. There's nothing wrong with an unfalsifiable position.

>>	atheismIsGay !7CG864.u4Y Wed Dec 22 03:17:27 2010 No.2239363 because mommy and daddy forced them to go to church when all their friends were outside playing football

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:17:27 2010 No.2239364 >>2239356 >There's nothing wrong with an unfalsifiable position. There is if you want to post on /sci/.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:17:27 2010 No.2239366 >>2239342 >Genesis has been taken metaphorically since O rly? 'cause I think Answersingenesis, concerned mothers of america and every other creationist christian/organization/website would disagree.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:18:27 2010 No.2239370

>>2239351
I don't know. Why does that matter? I have sufficient evidence to know that God is real, which is all that matters to me.

If there's no life after death, that would prove that my understanding of things relating to God are mistaken. That's an experiment that's very easy to perform... and in fact hard not to perform.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:19:27 2010 No.2239372 >>2239366 Literalism is a mostly modern phenomenon. That's not how the early christian writers viewed it.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:19:27 2010 No.2239373

>>2239356
I very clearly know what it means.

You don't mean to say that. You mean to say "You're wrong that an unfalsifiable position is worthless and irrelevant". You don't mean to say I don't understand the words, because we both obviously agree that your position is unfalsifiable through the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

With regards to your intended point: I do believe that an unfalsifiable proposition about things in the natural world automatically renders the argument completely bullshit. You said that jesus existed as a man, and he was god, so there he is in the natural world, so it is in principle falsifiable.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:20:27 2010 No.2239377 >>2239364 No there isn't, because /sci/ is mostly about religion and philosophy, and even sometimes math. The axioms of math aren't falsifiable either.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:20:27 2010 No.2239382 >>2239364 No no. It's ok. If that's what he thinks, that's good. It's a demonstration of faulty logic and reasoning. At least it's better that he's honest about it. That way it's easier to ridicule.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:21:27 2010 No.2239384

>>2239356
>There's nothing wrong with an unfalsifiable position.
You know you are implying we should take your word for it when you make claims that may be false but can't be proven either way, right?

I personally, and I think most rational people would agree, find that notion patently absurd.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:21:27 2010 No.2239385 >>2239377 >the axioms of math >assigned truth values Maybe you should go away and stop embarrassing yourself in front of the mathematicians.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:21:27 2010 No.2239386 >>2239377 Yes, but the key difference is that the unfalsifiable math axioms are not assertions about the natural world.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:22:27 2010 No.2239387 >>2239349 >was always taken literally by the Jews. [citation needed] Seeing how ancient Jewish writers wrote entire lengthy treatise on the nature of God's beard, something tells me you're complete wrong about the literalism of the Jews.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:23:27 2010 No.2239389 >>2239384 I never asked you to take my word about anything.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:23:27 2010 No.2239392 >>2239386 Religion is not about the natural world either.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:24:27 2010 No.2239394 >>2239387 Fine. I don't even care. Either you start making some falsifiable predictions from your idea of god, or all of /sci/ just stopped caring.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:24:27 2010 No.2239395

>>2239372
Fantastic that you claim this since it's only the modern Christians who are trying to rewrite our laws and textbooks to fit their (as you claim) incorrect interpretation of the bible that we have to deal with.
If you are on point with this, go tell your comrades about it.
That would well serve both of us.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:24:27 2010 No.2239396 >>2239392 You can say that again!

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:26:27 2010 No.2239401 >>2239392 Most people disagree. Most people think that god performs miracles, so religion is about the natural world.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:26:27 2010 No.2239403 >>2239394 >or all of /sci/ just stopped caring. That would be perfect. I'm not the one who puts religious threads in /sci/. I just respond to bullshit when I see it.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:27:27 2010 No.2239410

>>2239403
Sadly, you're in the minority of religious people. Most religious people believe that god performs miracles.

If you can't think of a falsifiable observation, then consequently you must be retarded, or you believe that god does not perform miracles.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:28:27 2010 No.2239415

>>2239314
>>no need to use metaphors for natural occurrences
You are the most retarded person in the world. You are drowned in your own delusions and your own provincial culture that you do not even notice we (scientists) actually describe shit like atoms being excited, attracting positive or negative charges?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:28:27 2010 No.2239416 >>2239395 It's as pointless for me to argue with a literalist fundamentalist as it is for an atheist to do so. It is the opposition that strengthens them in that position. Arguing and debating makes the situation worse.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:29:27 2010 No.2239418

>>2239389
If you make a non-falsifiable claim, declare that it is true and then expect us to believe you and act as if it were true then that is exactly what you are doing.
Stop playing games.
Do you want people to believe in your god?
Do you want the laws and text books taught in school would reflect your understanding of God and the history of the earth?
Do you want people to allow you to teach children that your god is real and things like hell and eternal punishment are real?
Do you want your religion to have any effect on other people whatsoever?

If you answered yes to any of those, then you must give us a reason to believe your claims and you claims must be provable.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:30:27 2010 No.2239429

>>2239342
>>taken metaphorically
>>people seriously believed till the 13-1400s males had one less rib than females.

youre an idiot. the idea of liberal readings of the bible are extraordinarily new, if you said this shit back in the day the pope would have you executed/mmunicated.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:30:27 2010 No.2239430 >>2239410 I do think God performs miracles, or has done so. That's not falsifiable either. But it is retarded to think that it's pointless to have an opinion on the question, just because any opinion on the question is unfalsifiable.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:31:27 2010 No.2239436 successful troll is successful

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:32:27 2010 No.2239437 >>2239416 No, it's not. A fundamentalist literalist cannot be swayed by evidence. An atheist will be swayed by evidence.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:32:27 2010 No.2239441 >>2239430 >That's not falsifiable either. Now you're just wrong. Anything that has interacted with the physical world is falsifiable. The world today is different depending on whether it did or did not happen.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:33:27 2010 No.2239444 >>2239430 >>not falsifiable If its not falsifiable, he cant be preforming miracles. things that happen on earth are subject to observation and are therefore falsifiable.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:33:27 2010 No.2239446

>>2239415
Usually we either make up new words or retask old words to describe new phenomena in science. We never just use metaphor, although I can understand your confusion between metaphor and the retasking of old words. For example, "electron" is a new word, while "charge" is a retasked old word.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:34:27 2010 No.2239451

>>2239392
>>2239396
Yet it often makes claims like, prayer works, and you must believe in {insert god here} to avoid eternal punishment, and you have a soul that will get it's ass kicked by god if you don't believe in him, and you should blow yourself up to kill those to do not believe because god commands it, and you should stone adulterers to death, and you should wipe out entire cities because not all of their citizens believed, ect ect ect.

Fuck off with the cop outs. Provide evidence, or stop promoting a dogma and it's real (negative) effects on society.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:35:27 2010 No.2239457 >>2239446 >>hurr the metaphors are still used to explain science. it's fucking everywhere, if you didn't see any anthropomorphism in your classroom you wheren't paying any fucking attention.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:36:27 2010 No.2239462 >>2239429 Indeed, as this new religious apologist never heard of Galileo, or Tycho Brahe, or the other innumerable people who were slaughtered for their heretical views against the biblical literalism?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:41:27 2010 No.2239491

>>2239418
>If you make a non-falsifiable claim, declare that it is true and then expect us to believe you and act as if it were true then that is exactly what you are doing.
That's absurd. Why would I expect you to believe me or act like you do?

>Do you want people to believe in your god?
I want people to experience things that reveal God to them. I care more about people finding wisdom than just about what facts they possess.

>Do you want the laws and text books taught in school would reflect your understanding of God and the history of the earth?
No, I want laws to reflect religious freedom and freedom of belief, like we have in America. If you're talking about a comparative religions textbook, I would hope my beliefs are represented therein... otherwise I don't know what you're talking about.

>Do you want people to allow you to teach children that your god is real and things like hell and eternal punishment are real?
Yes, I am in favor of freedom of speech. Anyone should be allowed to express their beliefs to anyone else in the proper forum. One should be able to teach their children what they belief.

>Do you want your religion to have any effect on other people whatsoever?
You mean people who don't profess my religion? I would hope the effect of my religion on those who don't profess it would be a positive one by making those who do profess it better people.

>If you answered yes to any of those, then you must give us a reason to believe your claims and you claims must be provable.
I have no desire to try to prove anything, though I'm happy to answer questions.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:43:27 2010 No.2239502 >>2239429 >Has never studied the history of christianity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretations_of_Genesis

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:45:27 2010 No.2239518

>>2239502
Do you know who Galileo is?

Are you aware of the Great Schism? You know what that shit started over? A focal point was the Nicene creed, specifically whether jesus was trans-substantate (sp) with god, aka of the same substance as god. Whatever the fuck that means.

The whole history of christianity has been literal you numbnut.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:45:27 2010 No.2239520

>>2239441
>Now you're just wrong. Anything that has interacted with the physical world is falsifiable. The world today is different depending on whether it did or did not happen.
By all means then, tell me the test you can do to tell me whether or not miracles have ever taken place.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:46:27 2010 No.2239528 >>2239444 What's unfalsifiable is whether or not miracles happened in the past. Since the situation is not repeatable, you can't test it.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:48:27 2010 No.2239535

>>2239528
And you just displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of science.

That's like saying the principle of geology or evolution or astrophysics aren't testable. They are. They make falsifiable predictions. You don't need a controlled experiment to perform an observation for a falsifiable prediction.

For example, again, Genesis, Noah's flood, and the jews in Egypt. All make falsifiable predictions. Important and central predictions of all have found to be false.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:49:27 2010 No.2239540 >>2239462 >Galileo was slaughtered wat? I don't know whether Galileo took genesis literally or figurative.. do you? (I'm guessing you don't.)

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:49:27 2010 No.2239541

>>2239520
I have. It's called modern molecular genetic analysis. It clearly shows that all species on the planet were not reduced down to 2 (or 7) species in the near past. The genetic diversity is way too high for such a small number of ancestors in the near past. Aka no Noah's flood.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:50:27 2010 No.2239544

>>2239540
Misquote. Read it again. I admit I was a little ambiguous. I said Galileo and the others who were slaughtered, as in "The people who were slaughtered, and that guy Galileo who got life house arrest for questioning the nature of the solar system".

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:50:27 2010 No.2239546

>>2239491
Then wtf are you doing here?
The point here is to argue for or against the god hypothesis, currently we are (still) stuck on the christian god.
So far no believer has yet made an attempt do define their version of the christian god and make a claim as to what he can do in the world.
If you are not here to argue that we should believe in your god then we have no issue with you.
Since you jumped in anyway I will suggest however that you go find out what a falsifiable claim is and why it is important to make falsifiable claims when trying to argue for any specific idea.
No one cares what you personally believe via your own conviction, we care about ideas you communicate to others and act on.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:51:27 2010 No.2239552

>>2239535
You're the one proving you don't understand science. Again, please device a test that shows whether or not miracles have taken place. Your belief that the exodus has been "proved false" proves that you read atheist dogma, but not scholarly debate, so I don't know why I'm even bothering.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:52:27 2010 No.2239557 >>2239552 Continue focusing on that if you want. I much prefer Genesis and Noah's flood. They're much more clear cut.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:53:27 2010 No.2239558 >>2239544 the only reason that guy wasn't burned at the stake was because he was wealthy and powerful, catholics had it out for him hard, they planned that 'trial' years and years in advance.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:53:27 2010 No.2239561 >>2239541 How does that prove that no miracles have ever taken place? Are you fucking dense?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:54:27 2010 No.2239565 >>2239544 WTF does Galileo or Brahe have to do with an allegorical interpretation of Genesis?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:55:27 2010 No.2239571

>>2239561
No. You just keep redefining the argument to suite your needs. I've said several times now that the argument goes:

Step 1- Disprove all popular theist gods. I'm starting with christ.

Step 2- Disprove all theist gods. Apply liberal doses of healthy skepticism and Occam's Razor.

Step 3: Disprove all gods to the extent that they offer no predictive power, are unfalsifiable, and are not required to explain anything. In short "I have no need of that hypothesis".

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:56:27 2010 No.2239574 >>2239546 I am here to correct the many falsehoods that are being expressed in this thread, and am also happy to answer questions about what I believe.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:56:27 2010 No.2239576 >>2239552 You fail hard at this man. He's saying miracles are by definition not falsifiable. No god anywhere has ever cause a verified effect that could not be explained via the laws of nature. Ergo miracles have not occurred.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:57:27 2010 No.2239580

>>2239565
Everything. They questioned the official church stance on biblical literalism (as the church understood it). The church said that the earth was the center of the universe, and shit went around the sun, because that's what the bible says.

You might argue that that's not what the bible says, but that's not what this little point is about. The church thought that was the literal interpretation, and they killed a bunch of dudes over it, and almost killed Galileo over it.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:58:27 2010 No.2239582

>>2239557
The question was whether or not God has performed miracles. For example, did he make water come out of a stone when Moses struck it with his rod. Whether you believe that water came out or water did not come out, it is an unfalsifiable belief.

As for the creation story and the flood, it's been established that those are allegorical, and have nothing to do with actual miracles.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:58:27 2010 No.2239585

>>2239576
What? No. Noah's flood, and Genesis, definitely imply falsifiable observations. They are falsifiable. Not all miracles are falsifiable in practice, but they're all falsifiable in principle. Luckily, the writers of the bible didn't expect us to be so knowledgeable to be able to call shenanigans on some of their bullshit, like Genesis and Noah's flood.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:59:07 2010 No.2239590 >>2239574 Then correct me if I am wrong but the points you wish to correct are irrelevant because they depend on your god being existing apart from your imagination and none of us believe that your god is exists.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:59:27 2010 No.2239591 >>2239552 what are you kidding me? your critisisng me for your inability to Google? www.whywontgodhealamputees.com

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 03:59:27 2010 No.2239592

>>2239582
>As for the creation story and the flood, it's been established that those are allegorical, and have nothing to do with actual miracles.
No. It hasn't. For the majority of christian history, it has been taken literally. Only recent have the apologists come along and tried to salvage what's left of their holy book with this preposterous specious reasoning that rivals the antics of Nostradomus believers.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:00:27 2010 No.2239594 >>2239574 Then correct me if I am wrong: The points you wish to correct are irrelevant because they depend on your god existing apart from your own imagination and none of us believe that your god exists.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:01:27 2010 No.2239597 >>2239576 see >>2239582 You're assertion that if x is unfalsifiable, x didn't happen, is pathetic, and hopefully a troll. The belief that miracle x happened is equally unfalsifiable as the belief that miracle x did not happen.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:01:27 2010 No.2239599 >261 posts and 19 image replies omitted. Click Reply to view. Fucking hell /sci/, you should know better.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:03:27 2010 No.2239606

>>2239592
You are wrong. Literalism accounts for a much larger percentage of today's Christians, than has generally been the case over the last 2,000 years. The most notable allegorical analyses of Genesis were done long before Darwin or any other scientific reason to doubt the literal interpretation.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:03:27 2010 No.2239607

>>2239597
I didn't say that. I said that if it happened in the natural world, then in principle it's falsifiable. Perhaps not in practice because all of the evidence is lost, but it is in principle.

As a related point, any argument that is unfalsifiable is a bullshit argument. You might as well declare it by fiat. An argument is supposed to start with premises, and take those points to use logical inferences to arrive at a conclusion. It's meant as a form of proof or persuasion. If your argument is not falsifiable, then it's automatically full of shit because it's indistinguishable from simply asserting the conclusion and skipping the argument entirely.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:04:27 2010 No.2239609 >>2239594 No, I'm mostly correcting falsehoods dealing with history and logic.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:05:27 2010 No.2239615 >>2239607 >As a related point, any argument that is unfalsifiable is a bullshit argument. This argument is unfalsifiable and therefore a bullshit argument.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:05:27 2010 No.2239617

>>2239606
Want to explain to me the Spanish Inquisition, the Great Schism and the Nicene Creed bullshit, the Martin Luther schism, Galileo bullshit and related persecution of science and astronomy, the fact that a majority of modern religious people tend towards literalism, and so on?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:06:27 2010 No.2239620 >>2239615 That wasn't an argument. It was an assertion. I missed an important point too. Sorry. Any argument or assertion about the natural world which is unfalsifiable is bullshit.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:09:27 2010 No.2239634

>>2239606
>>hurr
yeah? and?
some prick in a library speculated that greeks/whites where not in fact the master race and that every race was equal, doesn't make it any more prevelant, the fact of the matter is people took the bible literaly, its stories literaly, down to the fucking dogma of human bodies; the god damn fuckers (these aren't peasants either but Jesuits who practiced healing) thought human males would have one less rib than females, this shit was handed down for fucking generations. if the creation story was not taken literaly, why did quite educated people in that day seriously believe in this shit?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:10:27 2010 No.2239638

>>2239607
It seems like you don't understand what falsifiable means. A falsifiable argument isn't the same thing as a deductive proof, which is what you seem to be saying. Falsifiability is an important principle in science, because science deals with empiricism. It is not an important principle in philosophy in general, or math, though logic and deduction in general are used to a great extent there.

When I'm figuring out what to believe about certain things I care about evidence and experience and reason. I don't stop to worry about if a 3rd person can set up a potentially falsifying experiment. Some important questions don't allow for any such experiment, and we must rely on reason and experience to judge what the most likely answers are.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:11:27 2010 No.2239643

>>2239597
Fuck off man, seriously.
Stating that to be the case does not make it so no matter how much you want it to be.
If you want anyone to believe that your flood happened then we need a way to prove it otherwise, it's just how you choose to read the story book and that means nothing to anyone else.
You opponent claims that no global flood ever happened in the history of the Earth.
As it happens, we can test for that. Massive floods leave evidence in the crust of the Earth, if a global flood had occurred at some point we should be able to find evidence of it in the ground, we just need to look and see.

If you want to claim the flood in the bible is a metaphor, whatever, but that doesn't mean shit for anyone else and there is no way to prove that it is since the authors are all dead and they didn't leave any other works stating what is and is not a metaphor in the Bible.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:12:27 2010 No.2239645

>>2239638
And I disagree. If it's a question about the natural world, then armchair philosophy is worthless. Look at Plato, for example.

For questions about the natural world, all that matters is evidence. You can't divine (pun purposeful) answers about the natural world with reason alone.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:12:27 2010 No.2239647

>>2239638
>we must rely on reason and experience to judge what the most likely answers are.

No, that loophole doesn't work. If God is talking to you and telling you religious facts, then he's interfering with your brain in the physical world. That is in principle detectable, and is beyond known physics.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:13:27 2010 No.2239649 >>2239617 Are you trolling me? None of those things featured anyone being persecuted for having an allegorical interpretation of Genesis.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:13:27 2010 No.2239651

>>2238365
Nothing lies "beyond the universe." The universe is defined to be the set of all things that exist. To say that something is not in that set is exactly equal to saying it doesn't exist.
If there's a portal in your closet to the magical land of Narnia, and it actually exists, then we can add the closet, the portal, and Narnia to the list of things in the universe and science can start over better this time figuring out how the hell it happened.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:14:27 2010 No.2239655 >>2239649 Yes. They disagreed with the literal interpretation of the bible, and got screwed for it. Thus the prevalent interpretation has been literal. Agree? [yes] / [no]

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:16:27 2010 No.2239661

>>2239634
I'd like to see a citation showing that it was believed that males had one less rib. There have always been some who have taken it literally, and some who have taken it figuratively, but I think the figurative view was much more common in the early church. I think this because I have read the writings of the Church fathers from the first few centuries AD.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:18:27 2010 No.2239665 >>2239661 Once again, you're pretending that the Old Testament was written in Jesus' lifetime. Don't look at the early church fathers, look at the ancient Jews.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:18:27 2010 No.2239667 >>2239643 This is what I mean. You don't have a fucking clue what falsifiability means or implies.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:20:27 2010 No.2239670

>>2239661
So, did the dead rise from the grave on judgment day? Did jesus rise from the dead.

I really hate asshats like you who believe that the really bullshit stories are supernatural, but in the same breath say that the plausible but still supernatural stories are literal. It's called specious reasoning, unfalsifiability, and the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:20:27 2010 No.2239671 >>2239645 You think plato is worthless? You obviously need observation for science. But we're talking about religion, not science.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:21:27 2010 No.2239674

>>2239671
But religions generally say miracles happen, so it is subject to science. What is so hard to understand about this? Ex: christianity says that the earth was created ~6000 years ago, and that there was a global flood ~4000 (?) years ago. There was neither. We know this quite conclusively from the available evidence.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:22:27 2010 No.2239677

>>2239647
The brain works how it does so that my mind influences it. God is present with every mind, so God influences every mind, and therefore every brain. I don't know how it works, but physics as we understand it certainly doesn't preclude it. It's wrong to call it "interfering" though. It's the brain working as it was intended to work.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:22:27 2010 No.2239678

>>2239667
That anon is correct. He very much knows what falsifiability means. Genesis and Noah's flood myths are falsifiable. When we went looking for the evidence to verify the predictions, guess what? It turns out that the predictions were inaccurate, grossly inaccurate.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:24:27 2010 No.2239682

>>2239638
This seems to be necessary:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/falsifiable
See: #2
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/falsifiable
See: #3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
>Falsifiability or refutability is the logical possibility that an assertion could be shown false by a particular observation or physical experiment.

Now, with that out of the way, we can hopefully stop playing word games.
If you are not concerned with falsifiability when constructing your world view then you very likely hold opinions and views that are delusional.
If you hold belief x that is not falsifiable then you have no means by which you may know if that belief it a figment of your own imagination or not.

As a consequence, when communicating your worldview to others, it is unlikely that other people will accept your beliefs as true unless they are falsifiable.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:28:27 2010 No.2239697

>>2239655
No. Again, none of those religious arguments or persecutions were based on a literal versus non-literal interpretation of the bible. They were based on purely religious opinions, like whether Jesus was completely divine, complete human, or both.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:29:27 2010 No.2239703 >>2239678 You need to re-read his posts. He's twisting his original argument around since he backed himself into a corner. He was originally saying that whether the flood happened or not is as non-falsifiable as the idea that the flood was a metaphor.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:30:27 2010 No.2239705 >>2239697 I did mention Galileo. I did mention that the persecution of science has been around for hundreds of years before Galileo, and has persisted to the modern day. Do you agree? [yes] / [no]

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:31:27 2010 No.2239711 >>2239665 None of the rabinical commentaries on Genesis that I've read have been favorable to a literal interpretation.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:32:27 2010 No.2239717 >>2239711 I'm curious. Which? I strongly suspect you're referring to modern apologists, not anything from 200+ years ago. The jewish culture was rather closed off from the rest of the world even a hundred years ago.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:32:27 2010 No.2239720 >>2239670 Yes, I believe Jesus rose from the dead. I have no idea what else you're blathering about.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:34:27 2010 No.2239726

>>2239674
>christianity says that the earth was created ~6000 years ago, and that there was a global flood ~4000 (?) years ago. There was neither. We know this quite conclusively from the available evidence.
FFS, "christianity" says no such thing. Some christians say that.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:34:27 2010 No.2239727

>>2239711
>>2239705
>>2239697
You guys are still arguing a moot point.
The fact is, mainstream Christianity and Christian organizations which have a real effect on society believe the bible is literal.
Anon needs to take his argument to the Christians and convince them that it is all a story book.
Personally, I wish him good luck.

The point of contention for /sci/ is whether this anon's god exists at all.
Until that is shown to be the case the rest of this shit doesn't matter.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:35:27 2010 No.2239729

>>2239720
So, why is jesus rising from the dead not metaphorical? There are good arguments that can be made that jesus only rose in spirit form, not in the flesh. Why do you believe that he literally rose from the dead, but that Noah's flood is a metaphor?

You pick the ones that are impossible to defend due of modern science, and they become metaphorical. The ones which remain outside of science's reach remain literal. This is my gripe. It's classic hallmark of someone who is qualifying his argument to the point of saying nothing at all. It's closely related to the idea of unfalsifiability.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:36:27 2010 No.2239731

>>2239678
No one asked whether the literal creation view or noahs flood were falsifiable. The question was if God's ability to perform miracles was falsifiable. And if you're going to call them myths, it makes no sense to ask if they're falsifiable, unless you have no clue what a myth is.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:36:27 2010 No.2239732 >>2239726 blatant cop out. Who's the true Scotsman then? Which "Christian god" shall we believe in? To who's interpretation of the Bible shall we bend our laws and modify our textbooks?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:37:27 2010 No.2239734

>>2239726
What? I'm pretty sure the bible /clearly/ states that there was a global flood ~4000 (?) years ago to kill all humans because they were unsaveably immoral, even the children, except for Noah and coincidentally his immediate family.

There is absolutely no reason to believe it's metaphorical any more than jesus rising bodily from the dead is metaphorical.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:37:27 2010 No.2239735 >>2239682 So by your criteria, the belief that you are conscious is a delusional belief.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:39:27 2010 No.2239741 >>2239705 I do not agree. When was "science" persecuted before Galileo?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:40:27 2010 No.2239743 >>2239735 Yep. I've already covered this, that your belief that I'm somehow magically sentient and am an agent is unsupported by evidence. I have already stated in this thread that I am simply a member of an evolved mammalian species.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:44:27 2010 No.2239748 >>2239741 >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_science#Condemnations_of_1210-1277 Educate yourself.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:45:27 2010 No.2239752

>>2239729
I've explained before, it's obvious from textual analysis what is intended as metaphor and what is intended literally. The gospels are all written as direct or researched accounts, especially Luke's, which he wrote as an educated scholar, with the same kinds of date references you'd expect from a historian.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:47:27 2010 No.2239756 >>2239752 So, remind me, Noah's flood was written as a metaphor, as was Genesis. Was Moses and those pesky Egyptian Jews written as a metaphor?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:48:27 2010 No.2239758

>>2239748
Yes, I'm aware of the banning of Aristotle's Physics. Many historians actually credit that as clearing the path for the development of modern science. I'm obviously against banning books, but that's not the same as persecuting individuals, and in this case it paradoxically helped science.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:49:27 2010 No.2239761

>>2239735
Have you been here the whole time or are you just jumping in without having read the thread.

I don't blame you if you're jumping in, there is a lot of shit in here.
If you've been here the whole time, I'd like to slap you.
We've been through this cop out twice already.

We start with the assumption that thinking makes us a real person.
Define consciousness for me and we will discuss it's falsifiability
here's a helper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

If you mean to say that I can't prove I exist, that is independent of proving to others that things exist.

Science assumes that there is a such thing as reality and that things actually happen independent of individual minds.
As it happens, if you do not make this assumption, arguing anything at all is utter nonsense.

Either way, no one has any reason to believe that your claims are true.

So we can agree that shit happens and it's not all just in our heads. Thereby allowing us to differentiate between that which is in our heads and that which is not.
Or we can say it's all in our head and everyone can just ignore you.
Case A - you have to support your claims with evidence and it's good practice to only believe that which can be falsified.

Case B - reality doesn't matter to you and all of us non existent people put you in a non existent asylum.

Which will you be choosing then?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:49:27 2010 No.2239762 >>2239758 So, do you agree or disagree that there is clear evidence that the prevailing interpretation of the bible is literal? Literal? [yes] / [no]

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:49:27 2010 No.2239764 >>2239732 >To who's interpretation of the Bible shall we bend our laws and modify our textbooks? Wow. There may be no true scottsman, but you're a true idiot.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:50:27 2010 No.2239766 >>2239743 So is it your position that you are not conscious? Or are you unwilling to take a position on whether or not you are conscious?

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:52:27 2010 No.2239767 All religions = myths and "faith" (read: belief without evidence) of supernatural beings All religions are shit and therefore all religious people = dumber than shit

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:54:27 2010 No.2239771

>>2239756
>So, remind me, Noah's flood was written as a metaphor, as was Genesis. Was Moses and those pesky Egyptian Jews written as a metaphor?
Noah's flood is in Genesis, genius. By my own analysis, the people from Eber onwards in Exodus refer to literal people. The history before Eber and after Noah uses a technique where history has been consolidated into personified groups and phases of development. I could be wrong about the exact place, but certainly everyone Abraham on refers to real people.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:54:27 2010 No.2239775

>>2239766
By your interpretation of what it means to be conscious, /I think/ I am not.

I am conscious according to a reasonable definition. In cognitive psychology, it's called the theory of mind. The cool part about science is that an idea is cool if it offers correct useful predictions. In that sense, I can use the theory of mind on myself, and on others, to get useful correct predictions.

It really depends on your pedantic definition of consciousness. I am a member of an evolved mammalian species. I consider it probable that my consciousness is nothing more than the result of chemical processes in my brain.

What are you trying to get at anyway? Attempting to compare the theory of mind to the hypothesis that jesus was a god is completely asinine. They're not related at all. Both are ideas which offer falsifiable predictions. One is well supported by evidence, and one is well disproven by the evidence.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:57:27 2010 No.2239781

>>2239771
Interesting. I haven't heard this approach before. It's rather interesting, and might I say obscure.

I'm sorry that I can't do any better atm than to call it specious reasoning from an apologist who is in the minority. I'll let you know if I think of anything.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 04:59:27 2010 No.2239789

>>2239761
I don't know why you're going on about whether or not external reality is real, since that's not the question. I define consciousness as the subjective awareness of what you think and feel and experience through your sensory perceptions.

So do you believe you have a consciousness or not?

If you are not completely insane, then you do have this belief. Yet it is an unfalsifiable belief.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:00:27 2010 No.2239793

>>2239764
Read a creationist web site sometime if you think that.
Or look up the debates in US schools and court cases over evolution vs creationism.
The separation of church and state has been an issue in the US for a long time now.

The fact is some parts of Christianity want to fuck things up for everyone else, some parts just want me and others to believe in the christian god.
The problem is that the "innocent" parts won't tell the fucked up part that they are wrong and stop taking their side on important issues.

You can't shove your skeletons back in the closet every time their ridiculous turn out to be inconvenient for you to address in an argument.
If you cannot address why they are wrong and convince them of it then I say christians don't know what they really believe and no one has any reason to believe in the christian god.

I mean seriously, one version of him is telling people the earth is 6000 years old and the other version of him lets people know that's nonsense, both sides claim they talk to the one true god and have the ultimate truth.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:01:27 2010 No.2239794 >>2239781 And how did you conclude that it's specious?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:04:27 2010 No.2239802

>>2239794
Because I know enough of the rest of the bible to know that I can find some falsified stories if I look hard enough. I'm just not well enough versed now.

You still believe in a book written by man, whose contents were decided by committee, which claims insane ideas like "if you pray, your prayer will be answered ... so long as it's part of god's plan" and shit like that. While I lack the proverbial smoking gun of idiocy without Genesis or Noah's flood, the rest of the bible is still completely bogus.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:05:27 2010 No.2239803 >>2239775 What I'm trying to get at is to show you the idiocy of the statement that unfalsifiable beliefs are useless or false.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:08:27 2010 No.2239810

>>2239803
I apologize for saying that. What I meant to say is that "unfalsifiable assertions about the natural world are stupid, worthless, idiotic, asinine, etc.".

Obviously my morality is a list of assertions of one may do and ought not do. The list isn't falsifiable - it doesn't make any assertions about the natural world.

I'm not even sure I really understand what it means to be falsifiable when not talking about assertions about the natural world.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:09:27 2010 No.2239813

>>2239789
Whether or not you believe you are conscious has nothing to do with whether or not external stimuli exists apart from your own imagination.
That's the fucking point.

You are trying to justify your ridiculous beliefs to other people by putting them on the same level as their assumption that they are conscious.
Your beliefs about god are not on the same level as the assumption that you are conscious.

You have to assume that you are receiving and processing external stimuli in order for anything you perceive to have meaning.
After that, you can differentiate between that which is real and that which is imagined.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:11:27 2010 No.2239819

>>2239802
I'm not aware of any other part of the Bible that is falsified. The books included in the Bible were decided on by a combination of community acceptance and committee, but I don't put stock in that selection, personally, but judge each book by its own merits.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:14:27 2010 No.2239825 >>2239819 Are you aware then of the books which were not included in the bible and how their stories of what Jesus did conflicts with the stories of the books that are included as well as the conflicts between even the gospels.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:14:27 2010 No.2239826

>>2239819
Well, at the very least it's not infallible. I remember talking to my learned christian friend about some passage that referred to like 4000 horses or something in one book, but another book talked about the same event and it was only 400. I'm sorry that I can't remember the details.

You still believe despite all evidence that prayer does anything.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:16:27 2010 No.2239828 >>2239810 And as it happens, a position on your own consciousness is not an assertion about the natural world.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:17:27 2010 No.2239830

>>2239813
>You have to assume that you are receiving and processing external stimuli in order for anything you perceive to have meaning.
So you're in favor of making assumptions necessary conferring meaning on experience? Congratulations, you are now a theist.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:20:27 2010 No.2239841

>>2239830
>So you're in favor of making assumptions necessary conferring meaning on experience? Congratulations, you are now a theist.
Lolno. A theist is someone who believes that there's a personal supernatural god who answers prayers and shit.

What he has is faith. That's a very different thing. Everyone has faith in the basics of science. Rationalists and scientists just stop there.

It's just not being insane according to the Einsteinian definition:
>Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

That totally not the same as believing in an interfering god.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:20:27 2010 No.2239839 >>2239825 I've read the non-included gospels. Most of them are of questionable authenticity, so I don't take most of them too seriously. However, I don't remember reading anything that was at odds with the 4 included gospels.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:23:27 2010 No.2239849

>>2239839
Ah, there it is.
http://www.freethoughtdebater.com/tenbiblecontradictions.htm

It was 700 vs 7000 horsemen. My actual liberal christian friend, who is much more studied in this than I, cites this as his personal biggest unexplainable contradiction in the bible.

So, obviously the bible isn't 100% true. Thus this word of god nonsense needs to stop. Once we lose the word of god nonsense, we're at moral Aesops, and as moral Aesops they're quite horrendous and atrocious. So, we're left with nothing of value beyond that of a work of fiction.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:27:27 2010 No.2239859

>>2239830
Again with the illogical jumps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism
>the belief that at least one deity exists.
>In a more specific sense, theism refers to a doctrine concerning the nature of a monotheistic God and God's relationship to the universe.
Nowhere in there does it say that assuming reality exists implies that a personal god exists.

I will say it again since you don't get it yet.
>You have to assume that you are receiving and processing external stimuli in order for anything you perceive to have meaning.

><bold><strong><paythefuckattention>After that, you can differentiate between that which is real and that which is imagined.</paythefuckattention><strong></bold>

One more time:
Once you assume reality exists and you already know that your mind exists, it's time to differentiate the two.

Most things that happen to you in a day and most of the things you use daily are based squarely on scientific discovery which demands that such discoveries are based on falsifiable claims.

Your god is not.

Why does this not bother you?

Whatever the case, until you can make falsifiable claims about your god and his impact on reality, I have no reason to take your claims seriously and neither does anyone else.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:27:27 2010 No.2239861

>>2239826
There's a supposed copy of the original hebrew document, from which the book of matthew is theorized to be a translation. If that theory is true, there are a couple significant errors in the greek we have of the book of matthew. There are also a couple known errors in Hebrew manuscripts that have been used for translations. So sure, there are unavoidably some errors that creep in to the text. Anyway, I'm out.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:29:27 2010 No.2239867 >>2239859 You really have reading comprehension problems. I'm going to stop replying now because every response you make is like a response to some imaginary person in your head and has nothing to do with what I've said.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:31:27 2010 No.2239875 >>2239841 He's a theist because he's in favor of making assumptions necessary for conferring meaning on experience. Meaning cannot exist without some kind of transcendent God.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:31:27 2010 No.2239876

>>2239861
So don't be telling me that it's the word of god and that it's infallible. That's all I'm saying.

Use critical thinking. What that means is to take a devil's advocate approach and try to prove yourself wrong. That's what every good scientist does. That's what every open minded person does. They try to prove themselves wrong, and in the process either prove themselves wrong, or gain more knowledge and reinforce their beliefs with more evidence and reasoned arguments.

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:33:27 2010 No.2239890

>>2239875
>He's a theist because he's in favor of making assumptions necessary for conferring meaning on experience.
No he's not. Never did he say that he's inferring meaning. He simply stated that he has faith that there is a natural world, that we can think of things which are not in the natural world, and that we're in that natural world. Never did he say anything about meaning or purpose.

>Meaning cannot exist without some kind of transcendent God.
I again argue this point. Mostly because I'm not sure what it means. What do you mean? Can you phrase it as a falsifiable proposition or assertion? Every statement about the natural world is either a tautology, or it claims that certain things are not possible. What things are you claiming are not possible so that we can go and try to observe them to see if you're right or not?

Anonymous Wed Dec 22 05:43:27 2010 No.2239914

>>2239839
Might re-read them a few more times then.
This guy addresses these issues and several more with the christian faith in general.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Evid3nc3#p/c/A0C3C1D163BE880A/0/mSy1-Q_BEtQ

Have a look at the complete playlist there.

In short details of their stories are mix up at times and conflict with other books of the Bible.
Such details as the progression of events and even who did what changes, surely you've noticed.
One example of conflict with other bible books is what exactly happened to Judas after Jesus' death and who bought the field?

As the other anon said, at a minimum the Bible is not infallible and if you are really interested in truth or genuinely concerned with finding god or avoiding eternal punishment then I think you have to agree the Bible needs to be addressed in the same manner as any other book or collection of books rather than taking any of it to be true by default.

Indeed, if the book is so subject to interpretation that some people read it and get that hell exists and you must repent and be baptized through total immersion and others read it and get that eternal punishment doesn't exist how you can really know which it right?
That's no way to gamble with something like an eternal soul, if such a thing exists.

>>	Anonymous Wed Dec 22 11:22:27 2010 No.2240795 File: 2.91 MB, 260x187, 1246387462992aaa.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Boobs?

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/sci/ - Science & Math