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Donating = Loving
Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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There's a line that goes, Science tells us how the heavens go. Religion tells us how to go to heaven.
Say God had revealed to some ancient person everything we know now and more (include how to cure AIDS int here) and told him to write it down. Do you think his work would be accepted by the people of the time? Wouldn't they just shake their heads and say, "what's a quantum physic? Can I eat it?" or "So you're claiming something exploded and that's what created us?". Again, the creation account in Genesis is meant to relay certain truths to us, the most important being humans were created above all creatures and have a purpose. As compared to other creation myths which imply (even when taken non-literally) that our existence is by accident and we have no purpose.
As to you asking me where in the Bible it states this, I don't actually need to since this interpretation is actually the one held by almost all Christians until like 200 years ago. Even the early church fathers knew this to be the case (see Aquinas on Genesis 1).
@JontheCatholic Your argument is horrendously weak - if God didn't want to tell people how to cure life-threatening diseases because they simply wouldn't understand, then why wouldn't He show mankind today how to cure all forms of cancer (we understand what cancer is). Also, God tells us in Leviticus that to treat Leprosy, we should rub a male lamb's blood on our right earlobe, the thumb on our right hand and the big toe on our right foot and slaughter a one year old lamb as an offering. Whoever went and orally conveyed this to the public was "accepted".
The fact that you believe an interpretation of the Bible simply because almost all Christians and early church fathers say so (based on no evidence from the Bible) proves your blindness to the obvious fact that Christians only claim this to be true because the Bible has been proven to be wrong in many aspects.
"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" - Christopher Hitchens
I was going to give an answer to the first part but then realized you wouldn't accept it anyways. You're twisting words left and right, my friend.
As to your contention about the the Bible having a million interpretations is correct. But I'd think you'd agree that when anyone writes anything or speaks anything (regardless of how it's interpreted), there should only be a specific way of interpreting it.
@JontheCatholic Please do answer to the first part. Believe you and me, if I was so ignorant and didn't care about what you had to say, I would have walked away from this forum a long time ago. When you say that i "wouldn't accept it", if you mean that I will challenge it, you're absolutely right - if it requires a challenge. By that, I mean you may be absolutely right and I could wholeheartedly agree with you and that's the beauty of conversing and debating. Whenever discussing such a controversial topic, I make sure to be as open-minded as I possibly can - to both the strengths of your arguments and to the criticisms.
Okay then.
You’re assumption is basically that:
God has no good reason for not reveal directly to mankind the cure for certain diseases now. As to what those reasons are, I wouldn’t know either coz I’m not God. One can only speculate. And I’ve seen many people turn to God in times of need like sickness (even cancer). This actually hits quite close to home (not cancer but close enough) and many people have come out of it much better people - and I don’t mean in the religious sense.
Another reason to speculate him not revealing directly to mankind the cure is that he wants mankind to find it himself. He may point the way and guide the scientists looking for the cure.
As to your claim that he revealed the cure for leprosy, well, short answer is, He didn’t. He gave a series of instructions that if you believe in him and do them, He will heal you. Like when a doctor gives you a prescription, if you believe (have faith) in him, you might get cured. But if you ignore his prescription, you’re not getting better any time soon.
@JontheCatholic
I find it quite contradictory that you can assure me that the Bible is not supposed to be taken literally but more metaphorically, even though God states this nowhere in the Bible. You then decide that nobody can know God, they can only "speculate".
Also, if God is omniscient, then only He can know the cure to diseases, therefore, He would have to reveal the cure to His creation Himself.
When you say that God gave a "series of instructions that if you believe in him and do them, He will heal you", then why do religious people resort to using medicine? If you believe in Him - and in His name murder a few animals - then why isn't this practice used more often by theists? I'll tell you why - because it simply isn't true.
Jon, I can see that you are really trying to believe in God despite all the evidence that points against it. I truly believe that you are making a slave of yourself to this religion and i say this because your arguments are proving really easy to tackle. If you stepped away from religion as a whole and read the scriptures with an open-mind (taking into account the achievements humans have made in science and technology), I would have no doubt that you would free yourself from the monotony of trying to justify the ridiculous, disgusting and sadistic claims the Bible makes. All I can do is hope.
That’s true that the Bible doesn’t have a instruction manual on how to interpret the Bible. Kinda like how any government’s constitution doesn’t interpret itself, there exists a body which does have the authority to interpret the Bible correctly.
In the case of the constitution, we have the Supreme Court. For the Bible, we have the church. Which church you ask? I think it’s best to ask the question of where the Bible came from.
When you say that since God knows how to cure all disease, he should reveal it to us, I can draw for you another analogy. Is a parent any less loving of their child if they allow them to make mistakes or get hurt even if they could stop it?
Jon the Catholic: "When you say that since God knows how to cure all disease, he should reveal it to us, I can draw for you another analogy. Is a parent any less loving of their child if they allow them to make mistakes or get hurt even if they could stop it?"
A parent who allows some mistakes as a learning episode is pragmatic. A parent who allows a child to make a fatal mistake is negligent and guilty of the child's death. It is a matter of degree.
Let's bring god into this. Recently, a local man raped and murdered a nine year old girl. God did nothing to stop it. Was he sacrificing this young girl's life in order to allow this monster to make a mistake?
So, to rephrase your question: Is a parent any less loving if they allow their child to get hurt or killed by the mistakes of others even if they could stop it?
The purpose of the declarative statement (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.) is to set the stage for all subsequent events. Right off the bat you know that you are dealing with a very powerful entity who created everything so after that there is nothing that is impossible for him to do.
You have to remember that a committee composed of storytellers, writers, and artists based in England wrote the original Bible. And the English are fantastic storytellers. The first sentence is actually very effective because it sets the entire tone for everything that follows. It’s a beautifully craft topic sentence for the entire story because it makes everything else relevant. How would you start such a story?
Once you buy the topic sentence then everything else becomes logical.
@Diotrephes
What you're describing there is the process of writing fiction. Non-fiction treatises use logical arguments supported by provable fact.
The bible isn't even good fiction - it's blatant plagiarism. If you were to present any of the books of the bible to a modern publisher he'd read the first couple of paragraphs and then bin it - you wouldn't even get a rejection slip. And as for Revelations, he'd think "This guy's on acid." A good fiction writer draws his readers into a fictional world by presenting fiction as fact. It's called 'suspension of belief'. Of course, it helps if the readers WANT to believe what he's writing about. The best fiction writers can almost MAKE his/her readers suspend belief - that's the secret of writing good novels. When you read the bible you're not indulging in belief, you're suspending it.
awesome point!!!
If one was to follow every doctrine, commandment and or any instruction from the bible you would be contradicting yourself left right and centre. No matter what happens in this world religious people always seem to find a way of blamelessly avoiding the fact their religious teachings are the cause of mass murder across the world. Biblical teachings such as love thy neighbour are positive but ones such as an eye for an eye have been the cause of a lot of conflict, this is why in the modern world religion has been more or less redundant because of a rise of rational secularism meaning that people who still hold their faith as holy word are more or less holding back the advancement of society.
@jon the catholic
So you're saying that the Bible should not be law due to the inconsistency of facts or untrue truths( not a typo)! If I told you that I'm going to bring you a ham sandwich for lunch but it was 95% actual shit would you still call it a ham sandwich? I don't understand the argument; " yes the book is incorrect on all aspects of science, yes you can say men wrote it, yes it doesn't actually explain how we came here or how we evolved, yes I teach evolution to people around me!" But it came from the all powerful creator so believe it??? WTF if this is how you justify your world view please send me all you own, all money in your accounts , steal the donations in your church and give to me. I spoke to god on my god phone an he said you have to do it to reach heaven... he said you will not understand now but when you see him he will enlighten you! I can't write down why he said you have to do it because with your intellect it would be like poeple from 1000 years learning quantum mechanics! I fully believe you sir are a atheist posing as a catholic in order to start debates about nonsense ( troll) !
I don't recall saying any of that. What I can agree though is that the Bible taken alone cannot be and should not be the sole authority in either religion or law. Confused?
The Bible, by itself has not authoritative power. It needs an equally authoritative interpreter. A simply analogy I like to draw for this is with the constitution. The constitution/laws by themselves cannot interpret themselves. When two people both claim their rights are both infringed by another, who decides whose right supercedes the other - the answer is clear. The courts but the final authority on any of these cases is the Supreme Court. The Bible is the same in that by itself, you can draw all these conclusions which might seem contradictory but if you have a "Supreme Court" of the Bible, you're actually guided away from erroneous interpretations of the Bible.
Oh and in case you actually are gathering your money and planning how to get the donations... I am being sarcastic! I didn't want you to do something illegal and blame me and my god phone( I really do have one)
@ Lisa first comment
If God's all powerful, then God could create light that came for 12 hours and then went away until he created the sun or the passage is figurative.
@DumbOx That wouldn't make any sense. I think that's a really desperate explanation for something which is just clearly a flaw.
@ Lisa
Assuming God is all powerful like the Bible does, then it is not at all strange to imagine him creating light apart from the sun and then calling it day when it shines. It's actually quite beautiful weather it happened literally or not. God is the source of our light not some sun god who moves the sun with a chariot.
@Dumb Ox
I find it extremely ironic that you can mockingly refer to "some sun god who moves the sun with a chariot" yet believe in a God which says "Let there be light" and there was light. You can see the ridiculous claims made by other religions but not your own.
@dumb ox
If god was real ( no proof ) and he was all powerful then he could also create the events that started the Big Bang knowingly produce the starting points of life guide evolution to over billions of years produce humans, then he could guide them with a book written by humans for humans where he lies continually on how earth, space and people were created. Speak to countless people at the beginning then come to earth as his son/ himself die for his laws in order to create a loophole for humans to go to heaven then play the longest game of hide and seek ever. While he plays hide and seek he also creates certain people with the ability to to prove that his original book was nothing more than a fable... what an awesome creator he is and 100% he would have to be a he. Well actually I would argue that he is actually dressing up as a woman on the weekends just so he can feel like he relates to all humans. Now if all that was true ( not a chance )
Why would we as humans praise such an asshole... if god was real and you met him on the streets you would kick his ass for being a hypocritical sexist moron that allows slavery, the miss treatment of women and children!
Sincerely,
Burn your bible
Burnyourbible.org
I found a great quote about freedom and truth in the Bible.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32)
And that reminded me of another quote about freedom.
"Arbeit macht frei" (work shall make you free)
And another:
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” (George Orwell, "1984")
Sounds gnostic to me.
@ Lisa Williams....
Excellent idea for a thread...
I've been following closely...... enthralling stuff...... but if I may just interject..... surely in the Genesis stories ...what we are looking at are two widely differing tales.....
Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are very different narratives .... could it be they represent two different origin stories?....perhaps from differing sources.... this idea would also help to account for the appearance of the Canaanite god EL and his children the Elohim ...
( I know it is put forward that El & Elohim are alternative names for Yahweh ...but really ?... the alternative name for Yahweh just happens to be the same as that of one of the chief Gods of the greater Levant area..)
No ... to me ,this looks very like the attempted crude merging of two narratives desperately trying to create a single story line.
@watchman
I think your idea is very interesting about Genesis being split into two narratives. I'm currently reading the NASB version of the Bible and have read Genesis in its entirety. I would argue that they are not two different accounts/narratives but they are one. I agree that there are some contradictions deriving from both, for example, animals being made before man or man being made before animals. I find it extremely unlikely that this is just the result of two differing narratives simply due to the fact that it really isn't uncommon for the Bible to contradict itself.
I also believe that the second part of Genesis is just going into more detail with the relationship between man and God. It also portrays that, unlike other some other deities, God is personal and acts both transcendentally (Genesis 1) and imminently (Genesis 2) hence portraying God's 'ultimate omni-benevolence'.
@LW......
"I find it extremely unlikely that this is just the result of two differing narratives".....
You may well be right...... but....I did not say it was just 2 narratives ... nor did I say it was "simple"....
For instance apart from the differing sequences of events.... the joint creation of men and women as opposed to the separate creation.....consider the use of water in the story.... now compare it with the Egyptian creation myths where the creator god called into existence each thing ....further look at the Mesopotamian creation stories... note the garden and the mankind as gardener motif .
Like I say... you may well be right... but for me the purloining of myths is a far more likely scenario....especially in light of the later "similarities" ....
Eastern Rite Catholics worship Allah in their liturgies. Oh wait, so do Muslims, so since ERC worship God as a Trinity then Muslims must worship the Trinity too... or maybe it's the other way around.
This is the same kind of extrapolation as you made. Believe me, I know there are hard passages in the Bible, but at least pick them out if you are going to criticize the Bible.
The idea that the Biblical creation myth was meant as allegory is weak. Does this mean that God said "Well, these people are scientifically ignorant and will remain so until they invent the telescope. I will give them this little tale to keep them busy until then!"
Of course the writers believed it. It was not meant as allegory. They were just fucking wrong.
Actually it seems unlikely they thought it to be literal. If you look at the sequence of events, God created night and day before he created the sun moon and stars (4th day). This is a little clue by the author of genesis that this isn’t to be taken literally.
I fully agree!!! totally unlikely
Jon the Catholic:"Actually it seems unlikely they thought it to be literal. If you look at the sequence of events, God created night and day before he created the sun moon and stars (4th day). This is a little clue by the author of genesis that this isn’t to be taken literally."
How would an iron aged goat herder know anything about the order things arose in the Universe? They did not know what the sun and stars were. They did not know the earth was a planet in a solar system within a galaxy. Quit your daydreaming. The story of Creation was just the kind of ignorant nonsense people make up grasping to understand.
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