I want to talk about atheism

[Xavier_Onassis]

Right. A just and loving God would curse nothing. Certainly not at random in the way that innocent people are cursed with malaria and other diseases.

A loving God would not send Jesus to save the world and then allow a Mohammad 600 years later in the same part of the world.


Mohammad appearing in the time place and fashion he did makes zero sense in any possible Christian context.

[Plane]

Mohammad appearing in the time place and fashion he did makes zero sense in any possible Christian context.

Ok, but as a Christian I don't feel compelled to defend Mohammed.

[hnumpah]

Clay, in and of itself, is inanimate and lifeless. It has no feeling, no beliefs, no hopes, fears or aspirations for a better life. God as a potter and mankind as clay?

X asks how can a loving God be so cruel to his creation. My question, for years, is how the Christian god can so callously mislead and lie to his creations.

We have evidence, scientific evidence, that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago right here on earth. We have scientific evidence the earth itself is billions of years old. That the stars, the galaxies, and the universe itself is even older. Yet according to the Bible, as calculated by Ussher, the entire creation took place just over 6000 years ago. This is calculated from the Bible, the supposedly unerring word of god, as passed down to various prophets and scribes and whatnot.

Now, there is a huge discrepancy between 6000 years ago and fifteen billion years ago. Why the difference? Archaeologists can show man was present in the Americas longer than the Bible says the universe even existed - why?

I get some who admit, basically, yes, the Bible is allegorical, the creation story and other parts were made up for the same reason some Native American tribes tell the story of the great turtle, holding all creation on his back - simply put, they don't know, so the ancients spun tales to explain what they didn't know.  Now, that's all well and good, except when you think about it, if the Bible made up some stuff, how do we know it isn't all made up? Or just certain parts - but then which parts? We have archaeological evidence that backs up some parts of it. We also can show parts of the Bible completely contradict other parts, or are even completely false. So we're stuck with, the Bible lies.

The alternative is no more appealing, but it's the one most of the hard-core believers I've talked to try to fall back on - that the Bible is absolute truth, and the evidence is wrong. The claim is that all this archaelogical, paleontological, geological, astronomical, scientific evidence was planted to mislead us and make man doubt the Bible's truth. This alternative gives us a lying, deceitful god, who uses trickery to mislead mankind into believing false evidence, thus condemning ourselves to hell as non-believers.

Is that the kind of god you want?

[kimba1]

I alwats thought my religion and science has no true conflict and my thoughts of god was hardly as hands on to be as loving or nonloving as brought up here.

Thiers alot of us radical baptist who think like this. We start out traditional but came to our conclusion on our own and confound how we all seem to get the same idea.

[hnumpah]

I am not out to convert you, and I don't generally discuss religion because it is such a divisive topic. I have my beliefs, others have theirs, and as long as each is happy in their beliefs, it's all good.

[kimba1]

I have also intend not to convert. But this is not toward you hnumpah but i do question the current extreme anti-religious trend . I stated example of my discussion with my friend who the mere mention of religion gets him on a tangent. But from the response here i see it really hasn't been as rampant as i thought. But i do see such behavior in the news and various internet talks

[hnumpah]

Like anything else, kimba, it's the extremes that get noticed or make the news. I don't have any problem with Christians (this is just an example), or even fundamentalist Christians, or any of the myriad divisions and denominations thereof. They go to their church, worship and pray to their god, whatever makes them happy. None of that bothers me.

What I don't like is people trying to shove their beliefs down other's throats. I don't like people trying to force prayer and religious teachings into public schools. I don't like people banging on my door, figuring just because they have a Bible in their hands and they are trying to 'save' me, the NO SOLICITING signs I have prominently posted do not apply to them. I don't like people trying to tell me i'm going to hell because I don't believe as they do.

Why is Islam in the news lately? It's not because Yusef, or Mohammed, or Saeed - your Joe-blow average Muslim - goes to the local mosque, or prays several times a day, or has a different holy book, or a different name for God. It's because a few extremists twist and pervert the teachings and beliefs of Islam to their own ends. If Christianity had their own extremists (and who's to say they don't?), we would have people preaching that anyone who didn't accept their God should be wiped out, down to the last man, woman and child; their livestock killed as well; and their cities destroyed. They would be preaching slavery is totally acceptable and legal, women should always be subservient to men, transgressors should be stoned, and on and on....All of this taken from the Bible. And before anyone starts going "But...but...but...", claiming it's all OT teachings that were superceded by the NT, look again.

But again, it's the extremes you notice. The everyday people minding their own business barely rate a passing glance.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Christianity has already had its days of intolerance, There were all those religious wars  between the 1400's until the "troubles" in Ireland. I agree that Islam is worse now, but the fact is that Judaism, Christianity and  have all had their bad days, mostly because each has claims that it is superior to all the others.

[Plane]

Christianity has already had its days of intolerance, There were all those religious wars  between the 1400's until the "troubles" in Ireland. I agree that Islam is worse now, but the fact is that Judaism, Christianity and  have all had their bad days, mostly because each has claims that it is superior to all the others.

Is atheism never going in such an intolerant path?

[Plane]

We have evidence, scientific evidence, that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago right here on earth. We have scientific evidence the earth itself is billions of years old. That the stars, the galaxies, and the universe itself is even older. Yet according to the Bible, as calculated by Ussher, the entire creation took place just over 6000 years ago. This is calculated from the Bible, the supposedly unerring word of god, as passed down to various prophets and scribes and whatnot.

I have never added up all of the begats. If I did I would consider the result an estimate based on a presumed length of generations, and the presumption that nothing , however trivial , was left out.

I take the scientific evidence to be a lot more precise even though on the geologic time scale misplacing a few thousand years is a small rounding error. Mostly because the  geologic record is automatically kept and can be examined by anyone. About a year ago I found a Trilobite myself.

I am not aware of any scripture that claims that the Bible contains every scientific fact nor every fact of history. I just don't think this is what it is for.

[hnumpah]

James Ussher (1581-1656) calculated all the begats and ages etc and figured, according to the Bible, creation began in 4004 BC - specifically, on October 23 at about 6 pm. He didn't specify a time zone.

You can let it slip a few hundred, or a few thousand, years either way, and still not come anywhere close to the billions of years science can show the universe has existed. Nor the billions of years the earth itself has existed. Or the millions of years life has existed on earth. Or the tens of thousands man himself has been around.

The fact is, the Bible is so wrong on so many points that can be proven, through astronomy, paleontology, archaelogy, other historical records and accounts; and many of the stories have been shown to be allegorical, or 'borrowed' from other civilizations; and it contradicts itself at times; what one is left wondering is what, if any, is left to be believed? Can any of it be believed? What is the explanation for the inaccuracies?

Was this 'perfect' god such a goof-off he let the writers screw it up? Why didn't he correct it? Did he intentionally have all this crap put in there to mislead people so they would misbelieve and go to hell for it? All anyone can give me is a bunch of gobbledygook about the human mind not being able to comprehend blah blah blah. I comprehend just fine when someone is trying to shine me on.

[Plane]

  There was definitely some shining on happening , but was it the fault of the scripture ?

    Was James Ussher reading into the Bible some information it was never meant to have?

       Some of the "errors" of scripture require some work to produce.

           Some of what it gets right is really surprising.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Is atheism never going in such an intolerant path?

There is really no such thing as "atheism" in the same way that there is something called "Christianity" or "Islam". There is no organized body of atheists that all believe the same thing, as Christians believe the Apostle's Creed, or Muslims believe the Koran, or that there is but one God and Mohammad is his last and greatest prophet,

Atheists simply believe that, because there is no adequate proof that God as described in the Bible or Koran (an eternal omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent Creator of the Universe), no such entity is in any conceivable way likely to exist. There might be one or more intolerant atheists, but there is no atheist movement to which all atheists belong, Atheism is not a religion, it is simply a single belief. An atheist can be religious and perhaps even spiritual. There is no requirement that all spirits be immortal, after all. Buddha refused to deal with the afterlife because his goal was to teach people how to lead more beneficial, possibly happier lives on Earth during their life spans.
 

 

[Xavier_Onassis]

Some of the "errors" of scripture require some work to produce.

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How about this: the tale of the Gaderene Swine,
https://tvaraj2inspirations.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/miracle-of-jesus-the-healing-of-the-gadarene-demoniacs/

In this bit of scripture, there are one or more "demoniacs" blocking the road and preventing Interprovincial Commerce. Jesus sees these ranting crazy guys as possessed by the demons, and removes the demoniacs in a fanciful and rather incredible manner.

Let us note that Jesus is said to be God.
God is defined as omnipotent. Ergo, Jesus is also omnipotent.
An omnipotent being could cause demons to vanish instantly with no effort. An omnipotent being can do anything. That is the meaning of omnipotence.

But Jesus did not do this, Instead, he cast the demons into a herd of pigs, This caused the pigs to run into the Sea of Galilee and drown.

If you believe in the Bible and the accuracy of this tale, you are therefore  acknowledging that (1) there are such things as demons, (2) demons are the cause of insane antisocial behavior, (3) insanity can be cured by relocating demons into pigs, which (5) will then become suicidal, and destroying both the pigs and the demons that possess them.

I suppose this also indicates that demons (unlike Satan  and his Fallen Angel accomplices are mortal) and can be drowned.

Most sane people do not seem to believe that insanity is the result of demon infestation.
There are instances of Christians furgling venomous snakes to show that they are godly, but I have yet to hear of any preacher who cures insanity through the  relocation of demons into swine, and the accompanying swinish suicide.

I imagine that it was tried, and found to be ineffective.

This tale contradicts a lot of things we know about insanity as well as pigs. I have yet to hear a preacher cover this topic, perhaps because it is so  lame.

It is not necessary to prove that every bit of dumb nonsense in the Bible is flawed to prove that the Bible is flawed and imperfect.

We must produce only ONE black swan to prove that the statement that "all swans are white" is false.

[Plane]

We must produce only ONE black swan to prove that the statement that "all swans are white" is false.

I think I can agree that not all insanity , cruelty or stupidity is demon related.

What proportion is  I am not qualified to ascertain.

But, do you mean that a single instance of demon inspired behavior would prove the principal, no matter how rare?