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Peter Hicks
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 1912
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| Posted: 01 February 2013 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | 1
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"The Old Testament draws its authority from being the transcribed Word of God. How can that be "misconstrued"? " God dictates only a few portions,e.g., the Ten Commandments. The rest is human beings reporting their impressions of events. And there is a lot of Hebrew folklore thrown in there too.
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Larry Hart
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 September 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 112
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| Posted: 01 February 2013 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | 2
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JB: "As I grew older, read more, thought more, I realized that we CAN know. It's something of a variant on something else Bertrand Russell said -- that all religions cannot be right, so they must all be wrong." * * Believing in God is not the same thing as believing in a particular scriptirue or a particular religion. Many people conflate the concepts, though. I've called myself variously an atheist, an agnostic, and a skeptic. As to whether God exists, I've come to the conclusion that I can't even understand the question, let alone answer it. It's way above my pay grade. However, when asked whether I believe the Bible to be God's word, my answer is similar to JB's. No, I do not. I'm also somewhat amused (or is that bemused) at the accepted wisdom that the Bible is a "manual" for living a human life. I'm not claiming to disagree with its instructions--what I"m saying is that the Bible doesn't read like an "instruction manual" at all. It's a collection of stories, some of which have God as a character, and some of which do not. But in any case, its form is not that of an "instruction manual". To me, it makes as much (or as little) sense to say that Fantastic Four #1-#200 is an instruction manual on how one should live one's life. The counterargument to that is not that the FF got the instructions WRONG, but that "A comic book series just isn't an instruction manual, period."
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Steven Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5646
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| Posted: 01 February 2013 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | 3
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I had a conversation with someone who thought the ten commandments should be posted in places like schools and courts, yet she didn't know what the first commandment said.
Preach it, don't read it....
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Kevin Hagerman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 April 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 17997
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| Posted: 01 February 2013 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | 4
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Representative Lynn Westmoreland can't name the Ten Commandments. It's near the end if you want to skip ahead.
Edited by Kevin Hagerman on 01 February 2013 at 8:59pm
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Larry Hart
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 September 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 112
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| Posted: 01 February 2013 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | 5
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Why do the kind of Christians who want to insist that the law enforces THEIR values always want Old Testement stuff posted in courthouses? No one ever insists on displaying the Beatitudes or the Sermon On The Mount in public venues.
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Monte Gruhlke
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3303
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| Posted: 01 February 2013 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | 6
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LOL, I've always been comfortable being a Roman Catholic and have presence of mind to know what works for me works for me. I don't push others to change what they believe (or don't). Maybe that is the luxury of having been raised in America where I have that freedom.
That said, I abhor the human ambitions of any group (religious or not) that actively suppress or otherwise inflict their philosophy upon others, especially under the thin veil of some kind of legislation. #FAIL
I wasn't aware that atheists were in a closet, or whatever, and it seems to me that any effort or allusion that "<name of group> be ostracized from the rest of society" is always a douche thing to do. |
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Jodi Moisan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 6832
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| Posted: 01 February 2013 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | 7
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Well isn't this special, Valarie sees a flaw in their plan.
Separation of church and state, we don't need no stinkin separation of church and state.
In Indiana we passed the voucher system, I am waiting for the idiots of Westboro Baptist church to open a school here, I can see it now: "Oh Paw, I am so proud, little Leviticus passed Sign Holding 101."
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Monte Gruhlke
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 03 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3303
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| Posted: 01 February 2013 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | 8
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Leviticus was a hater, and haters gotta hate. )
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Jodi Moisan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 February 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 6832
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| Posted: 02 February 2013 at 12:28am | IP Logged | 9
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LOL OK Monte, that cracked me up!!!!!
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Eric Smearman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 5808
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| Posted: 02 February 2013 at 1:00am | IP Logged | 10
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@Monte: Awesome!
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Robert White
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4560
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| Posted: 02 February 2013 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | 11
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Atheists are in the scientific closet, that's for sure, forwarding and progressing the science that is helping all these theists live longer and better lives while extending the duration that they're a pain in the rest of the worlds ass. Oh, irony!
The thing about the Ten Commandments that was pointed out by Christopher Hitchen's in some of the books I've read of his, is that there is nothing in them that speaks against slavery. As we know, the culture and society of the time would have been unthinkable without the institution of slavery. Being that the Jews were often on the short end of this stick, it's and interesting oversight.
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John Bodin
Byrne Robotics Member
Purveyor of Rare Items
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3911
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| Posted: 03 February 2013 at 1:08am | IP Logged | 12
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John Byrne wrote:
| As I grew older, read more, thought more, I realized that we CAN know. It's something of a variant on something else Bertrand Russell said -- that all religions cannot be right, so they must all be wrong. For me, it comes down to BELIEF requiring me to reject so much of what science has actually shown us to be true. |
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Good thing Bertrand Russell was never called upon to take witness testimony at the scene of an accident or tragedy -- most of the time, if you ask 5 different witnesses to describe what they saw, you'll get 5 different perspectives, none of which agree 100% with the others. Obviously, none of them are 100% right, which would mean that ALL of them are wrong . . . which in turn would mean that the accident never occurred?
:-/
Not sure how belief in a higher power would require one to reject scientific truths -- every day we see "known" scientific truths overturned as we learn MORE about nature and physics and science in general ("Hey, Galileo says the sun DOESN'T revolve around the earth!"). When "belief" and "science" don't line-up, I always assume that we (with our simple, primate minds) simply haven't found a way to reconcile the two.
Fundamentalists reject things like evolution and dinosaurs and such -- I don't. Fundamentalists "BELIEVE" in the Bible as the word of God -- I don't (not necessarily, and not literally, anyway); the Bible was written by MEN, churches (of all faiths) are MAN-made organizations. Man may have been created "in God's image," but if there is a higher power (and I like to think there is), it is a simplistic mind that minimizes the greatness of that potential "higher power" by imagining "Him" to be a caucasian, bipedal humanoid with a long beard and a white robe sitting upon a golden throne in the clouds.
To that I say, feh.
That doesn't change the fact that I do believe in some higher power, though. Maybe not the white anglo-saxon "God" that appeared in Monty Python's "The Holy Grail," and maybe not The Flying Spaghetti Monster, but I believe there must be something out there. Until -- or unless -- science can prove to me that our galaxy is merely a microscopic mass of atoms floating amid the wood grains of some near-infinite coffee table top, which is in turn merely part of some other microscopic galaxy made of atoms floating amid the wood grains of some other even larger and even more near-inifite coffee table top, I'll stick with the idea that, yeah, the big bang probably did occur . . . and perhaps God was behind it (or some "higher power," at least).
Larry Hart wrote:
Believing in God is not the same thing as believing in a particular scriptirue or a particular religion. Many people conflate the concepts, though.
I've called myself variously an atheist, an agnostic, and a skeptic. As to whether God exists, I've come to the conclusion that I can't even understand the question, let alone answer it. It's way above my pay grade.
However, when asked whether I believe the Bible to be God's word, my answer is similar to JB's. No, I do not. |
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Well-said, Larry. This is why I have atheistic friends who look at me and consider me to be a near-moron because I'm willing to actually consider the possibility of a "higher power," while at the same time the more fundamentalistic of my religious-minded friends tend to look at me as some depraved, heretical, sicko "non-believer" who just might decide to copulate with their pets without warning.
Go figure.
:-/
Edited by John Bodin on 03 February 2013 at 1:13am
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