Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Part 2)

RikuoAmero · 01-03-2015 06:12PM

J C wrote: »

Yes, the Jewish Laws were quite fallible ... just like all law can be.

The Christian advice to excel in their work for their masters remains good advice still, for every employee who wishes to succeed in their chosen career.
... as for the slavery itself, you can blame the Secular Roman authorities for that particular injustice.

The Jewish laws that were supposedly handed down from God himself...

katydid · 01-03-2015 06:19PM

J C wrote: »

Are they banned from expressing their religious differences?

.

No

RikuoAmero · 01-03-2015 06:26PM

J C wrote: »

Religious doctrine and beliefs cannot be transmitted through the religious institution the child and its family adhere to if these beliefs are disrespected 5 days a week in school.

... and religions cannot be respected as something external to the school community ... when they are internal to the community as the religions of the members of that community.

This principle plays into the hands of atheists by effectively having practical atheism as the 'ethos' of the school ... and no religious expression allowed therein.
Atheism has free reign within the school while a divine foot isn't allowed inside its thresholds.

How is a school supposed to properly treat students of religious background equally? The only sane answer is to ignore their religions, tell them to be religious on their own time.
I went to a RCC secondary school, and several times of the year we went to the local RCC church. Despite the fact I was an avowed non believer (at the time I had stopped believing in the Christian God but I wasn't quite fully atheist yet) I was forced to go. Despite the fact there were a few Muslim students we never went to a Muslim service. We never went to an Anglican or Methodist or Baptist church ( I remember at least one student saying she was Church of Ireland, and I can't rule out the possibility of there having been or are at the moment other denominational students).
If the school had done as you suggest and catered to each religion, this would mean even more school time wasted by ensuring that each and every students religion has the school body turn up for service. Or we could do as what did happen and have a tyranny of the majority and only allow one religion to be serviced.

J C · 01-03-2015 07:28PM

RikuoAmero wrote: »

The Jewish laws that were supposedly handed down from God himself...

... This applies to the ten commandments that were handed down on Mount Sinai allright.

J C · 01-03-2015 07:31PM

wrote:

Originally Posted by J C
Are they banned from expressing their religious differences?

Katiedid
No

RikuoAmero wrote: »

How is a school supposed to properly treat students of religious background equally? The only sane answer is to ignore their religions, tell them to be religious on their own time.

... so can they express their religion in these schools or not?

RikuoAmero · 01-03-2015 07:31PM

J C wrote: »

... This applies to the ten commandments that were handed down on Mount Sinai allright.

What about the rest of the 600 odd commandments? Did the Jews just make them all up? Aren't they attributed to God too in one way or another in the OT?
Oh and you'll have to clarify which set of ten commandments. There were two.

RikuoAmero · 01-03-2015 07:33PM

J C wrote: »

... so can they express their religion in these schools or not?

Yes (to an extent), but the school shouldn't be forcing the entire student body to go to a church at all. The school is there to educate, and wasting time pandering to a religion is not part of that.

J C · 01-03-2015 07:52PM

RikuoAmero wrote: »

What about the rest of the 600 odd commandments? Did the Jews just make them all up? Aren't they attributed to God too in one way or another in the OT?

They are the laws the Israelites gave themselves.

RikuoAmero wrote: »

Oh and you'll have to clarify which set of ten commandments. There were two.

Its the one ten commandments written in two places.

J C · 01-03-2015 07:54PM

RikuoAmero wrote: »

Yes (to an extent), but the school shouldn't be forcing the entire student body to go to a church at all. The school is there to educate, and wasting time pandering to a religion is not part of that.

Educting people to live respectfully in a multi-cultural society is an important objective of any liberal education worthy of the name.

RikuoAmero · 01-03-2015 07:57PM

J C wrote: »

Educting people to live respectfully in a multi-cultural society is an important objective of any liberal education worthy of the name.

And what...the only way to do that is to force the entire student body to take part in religious ceremonies, when not all of them are part of that religion and feel extremely uncomfortable being there? Is the only way of teaching multi-culturalism to do religious ceremonies from only one religion?

silverharp · 01-03-2015 08:13PM

J C wrote: »

They are the laws the Israelites gave themselves.

yet if you look at christian sites about homosexuality , everyone loves quoting Leviticus and Deuteronomy. So whats the principle? quote the OT if you like what it says , but say its man made if the quote is past its sell by date.....

katydid · 01-03-2015 09:19PM

J C wrote: »

Educting people to live respectfully in a multi-cultural society is an important objective of any liberal education worthy of the name.

I'm sure most of us would agree with that. I'm not sure what it has to do with your opposition to a secular education system, though. A secular education system does exactly that.

J C · 01-03-2015 10:09PM

katydid wrote: »

I'm sure most of us would agree with that. I'm not sure what it has to do with your opposition to a secular education system, though. A secular education system does exactly that.

How does a secular education system encourage respect for religious diversity by banning all religious expression from its premises?

J C · 01-03-2015 10:14PM

silverharp wrote: »

yet if you look at christian sites about homosexuality , everyone loves quoting Leviticus and Deuteronomy. So whats the principle? quote the OT if you like what it says , but say its man made if the quote is past its sell by date.....

Levite Law has no application to Christians.

RikuoAmero · 01-03-2015 10:16PM

J C wrote: »

How does it do this if it bans all religious expression from its premises?

Are we talking about ignoring a student's religion, or banning it outright? Should the school allow Muslim students to stop their lessons and go elsewhere five times a day for prayers? What if another student is part of a religion that has to do so ten times a day or twenty?

RikuoAmero · 01-03-2015 10:16PM

J C wrote: »

Levite Law has no application to Christians.

But before Jesus came along, Levite Law was a thing, right? It was handed down from God himself, right?

katydid · 01-03-2015 10:19PM

J C wrote: »

How does it do this if it bans all religious expression from its premises?

Why would it? We're talking about allowing religious teaching, ceremonies etc. Not stopping people expressing themselve.

RikuoAmero · 01-03-2015 11:31PM

J C wrote: »

They are the laws the Israelites gave themselves.

Its the one ten commandments written in two places.

No, Moses goes up the mountain the first time, is handed the tablets, comes down, sees the golden bull, loses his temper, smashes the tablets, kills a few thousand people, (nice guy isn't he? He punishes people with death for breaking a rule they couldn't possibly have known...by immediately breaking the rules he has just been handed!) then goes back up and gets a second set.
The set of ten commandments that everyone is familiar with were the set that Moses broke, the second set is just full of weird stuff (despite God promising to write the same commandments as before at the start of the chapter) (Exodus 34:10-26) has things like the Feast of Unleavened Bread, don't boil a young goat in it's mother's milk (doesn't that seem a tad random to place there, in the most important list of laws handed down by God himself? If it's food hygiene God was trying to teach here, why not just say "Don't touch food with dirty hands, clean them and cover them first"?) oh and this is hilarious

When you sacrifice an animal on the altar, don’t offer bread made with yeast. And don’t save any part of the Passover meal for the next day.

So when christians such as yourself say "Oh, the 10C are binding on christians", you can't mean the first set of commandments, since Moses broke the tablets. So we're left with the second set, the newer set, and yet...I don't see animal sacrifices being performed. I don't see these specific festivals being celebrated.

As for the laws the Israelites gave themselves...how is it you know this? What justification do you have that, apart from the Decalogue, none of the others were handed down by God? (What justification do you have for the decalogue? There's no evidence supporting the Exodus at all)

Ex 34 is a hilarious chapter, especially since I'm talking to a guy who professes to a "plain reading" of the bible.
34:1 "...I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets"
34:7 "I keep my promise for thousands of generations"
34:10 onwards...completely different set of commandments.
So J C, how do you sort that out? How does any of that make sense? If this actually is the word of your god, then he is a liar and I ought not to pay any attention to him.

tommy2bad · 02-03-2015 10:54AM

katydid wrote: »

I don't see how it's a tough distinction. It is, as you said, the fact that religion was used as an excuse. Roman Catholicism, or Christianity in general, doesn't condone or encourage child abuse any more than Islam condones what Isis does. So no, it is not Islam doing the decapitation and it wasn't the RCC doing the child abuse.

Well no. It's not Islam condemning ISIS, it's Muslims, Muslims who read the same books as ISIS and implement their instructions differently. Islam like Christianity is whatever you want it to be.
Don't count child abuse as that was condemned by the RCC, just badly handled. The Magdalene laundry however were born of Christian values, run by religious and with the blessing of the RCC.
Not in the same ballpark of horror as ISIS, I'll grant you but still an abhorrent example of Christianity in action.

orubiru · 02-03-2015 10:59AM

J C wrote: »

I think that some Atheists will ensure that religion will be thought about always because of their stong denials of God ... even people of lukewarm religious faith will be stimulated to look further into the proofs for the existence of God, in respose to the questions raised by many Atheists.:)

Sorry to revisit such an old post but I actually disagree with you here J C.

I was raised as a Christian, sent to church as a kid and made to attend various groups that were connected to the church.

Unfortunately I was also a little <snip> and spent a large amount of that time asking "stupid questions" like asking why didn't all the animals on The Ark eat each other.

As I got older my ability to get a rise out of the people in charge increased and if I was feeling particularly rebellious in my teens I'd ask things like "was Jesus black", "were Jesus and the disciples gay", "if Jesus was God then the crucifixion probably didn't even hurt, right?"

I'm not proud of myself but I am sure many kids go through a rebellious stage and the reaction of the adults around them will have a bearing on how things turn out.

At the end of the day, any kid with Google can find compelling evidence for evolution and an almost endless amount of information debunking religion.

Your reaction (and others too) seems to be to attempt to ridicule "science" because incorrect things have been assumed true in the past. Or you try to shout down Atheism because "It's a belief too! Just like mine!"

Ultimately it's yourself, and people like you, that are driving young adults away from religion.

They have questions, valid questions, and they want to have those questions answered but all you are offering is lame tactics to try and tangle Atheism or the theory of Evolution (the amount of people on your side who don't even seem to understand what "theory" means in this context is alarming) in an endless circular debate.

You tend to make sweeping statements and pass them off as if that's just the way it is. Often those statements raise a multitude of follow up questions and you are generally ill equipped to answer those.

For example, you believe in God and The Creation...

Creation of what? Could you be more specific?

Did God create all the sub atomic particles and set them off interacting and over time the result became us?

Or did God craft each Star, planet, rock, plant, animal individually and then left them to develop?

Or did God specifically create every thing individually with a specific purpose?

Was I, personally, created by God or was it just the Human species that God created and I am just a random result of the reproductive process?

Or did God create the earlier "versions" of Man that would subsequently evolve (or not) to become us?

How much space did God allow for his creation to expand and develop and change? So, for example, if God created humans and said "OK, only men and women can marry" was that something he intended to have set in stone or is it possible God would allow room for us to develop to a point where we'd accept same sex marriage?

If God made us in his image then where did he get his inspiration for all the other stuff we see around?

For me, to even begin finding God would require a lot of questions to be answered.

So, it's over to you. Make a believer out of me. Let's do this!

tommy2bad · 02-03-2015 11:04AM

RikuoAmero wrote: »

But before Jesus came along, Levite Law was a thing, right? It was handed down from God himself, right?

No the laws in Leviticus are cultural not from God! It's important to remember the context of these laws.

silverharp · 02-03-2015 11:04AM

tommy2bad wrote: »

Well no. It's not Islam condemning ISIS, it's Muslims, Muslims who read the same books as ISIS and implement their instructions differently. Islam like Christianity is whatever you want it to be.
Don't count child abuse as that was condemned by the RCC, just badly handled. The Magdalene laundry however were born of Christian values, run by religious and with the blessing of the RCC.
Not in the same ballpark of horror as ISIS, I'll grant you but still an abhorrent example of Christianity in action.

Also the church protecting the church first instead of defending the rights of the abused was catholic. An ethical approach would have been to do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may

RikuoAmero · 02-03-2015 11:06AM

orubiru wrote: »

Sorry to revisit such an old post but I actually disagree with you here J C.

I was raised as a Christian, sent to church as a kid and made to attend various groups that were connected to the church.

Unfortunately I was also a little <snip> and spent a large amount of that time asking "stupid questions" like asking why didn't all the animals on The Ark eat each other.

As I got older my ability to get a rise out of the people in charge increased and if I was feeling particularly rebellious in my teens I'd ask things like "was Jesus black", "were Jesus and the disciples gay", "if Jesus was God then the crucifixion probably didn't even hurt, right?"

I'm not proud of myself but I am sure many kids go through a rebellious stage and the reaction of the adults around them will have a bearing on how things turn out.

At the end of the day, any kid with Google can find compelling evidence for evolution and an almost endless amount of information debunking religion.

Your reaction (and others too) seems to be to attempt to ridicule "science" because incorrect things have been assumed true in the past. Or you try to shout down Atheism because "It's a belief too! Just like mine!"

Ultimately it's yourself, and people like you, that are driving young adults away from religion.

They have questions, valid questions, and they want to have those questions answered but all you are offering is lame tactics to try and tangle Atheism or the theory of Evolution (the amount of people on your side who don't even seem to understand what "theory" means in this context is alarming) in an endless circular debate.

You tend to make sweeping statements and pass them off as if that's just the way it is. Often those statements raise a multitude of follow up questions and you are generally ill equipped to answer those.

For example, you believe in God and The Creation...

Creation of what? Could you be more specific?

Did God create all the sub atomic particles and set them off interacting and over time the result became us?

Or did God craft each Star, planet, rock, plant, animal individually and then left them to develop?

Or did God specifically create every thing individually with a specific purpose?

Was I, personally, created by God or was it just the Human species that God created and I am just a random result of the reproductive process?

Or did God create the earlier "versions" of Man that would subsequently evolve (or not) to become us?

How much space did God allow for his creation to expand and develop and change? So, for example, if God created humans and said "OK, only men and women can marry" was that something he intended to have set in stone or is it possible God would allow room for us to develop to a point where we'd accept same sex marriage?

If God made us in his image then where did he get his inspiration for all the other stuff we see around?

For me, to even begin finding God would require a lot of questions to be answered.

So, it's over to you. Make a believer out of me. Let's do this!

Very well done. I was just like you. I wouldn't shut up. I was the only one in my class who had actually read the bible...yet when it came time to exams, the ditsy girls in class who had never cracked it open got better scores.

looksee · 02-03-2015 11:25AM

How much space did God allow for his creation to expand and develop and change? So, for example, if God created humans and said "OK, only men and women can marry" was that something he intended to have set in stone or is it possible God would allow room for us to develop to a point where we'd accept same sex marriage?

God didn't actually say that people needed to get married at all, he just said 'go forth and multiply'. And while the 10 commandments say that 'thou shalt not commit adultery' it doesn't say anyone has to be married, just that if you are you should respect that state and not go off with anyone else.

As to people being created in his image, if they actually were then this suggests that god is a flesh and blood creature. If he is not corporal why does he look like he does? Why would a spirit need a nose?

orubiru · 02-03-2015 11:26AM

RikuoAmero wrote: »

Very well done. I was just like you. I wouldn't shut up. I was the only one in my class who had actually read the bible...yet when it came time to exams, the ditsy girls in class who had never cracked it open got better scores.

Yup, same here. Even as an adult I have found that many of these "believers" have not read the book but I am still an "Ignorant Atheist".

(I am not really sure I am Atheist, really, I'm more of an "I don't know" person. The "evidence" for God is in no way compelling.)

I see it as an extremely influential work of fiction. It is not "based on a true story" though.

I will give people like J C credit. They know their Bible. Too bad their response is basically "shut up, you ignorant militant Atheist fool, why are you so mean and loudmouthed and rude" when someone comes along and asks the tough questions.

If you don't want to be ridiculed then stop saying idiotic things and stop trying to pass them off as facts.

orubiru · 02-03-2015 11:30AM

J C wrote: »

Are they banned from expressing their religious differences?

The solution wouldn't appear to be to give irreligion preferential treatment ... with all religious expression excluded.

If people want to have religion taught in school then how long before some smart-ass realizes that they can invent their own religion? Will that religion be excluded? Why? Is there a set criteria that a religion has to meet before it is acknowledge by the education system?

I propose that "Christianigay" be taught in schools. Its basically the exact same as Christianity but Jesus really, REALLY, likes men.

You are OK with the schools acknowledging my religion is valid? It's a belief, just like yours. In fact, it's EXACTLY like yours except for one detail (and, of course, the number of believers).

So what would the criteria be for allowing some religious expression and banning others?

tommy2bad · 02-03-2015 11:33AM

silverharp wrote: »

Also the church protecting the church first instead of defending the rights of the abused was catholic. An ethical approach would have been to do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may

Yes, the sin of pride. My point is it's easy to fall into the no true Scotsman fallacie. Just because we find something abhorrent don't mean it's not Christian in the sense of being part of Christian laws or practice.

Nick Park · 02-03-2015 12:49PM

RikuoAmero wrote: »

It's rather telling don't you think that me simply pointing out my outsider perspective somehow enrages you this much. How will you be able to handle the actual trolls, the ones who will actually call you all sorts of nasty names? Are you seriously arguing that the only way for christians to get on is to wrap themselves in cotton and be isolated and protected from the big bad world?

Do you think we could try to keep this truthful? I'm not enraged in the slightest, and I don't see why you would invent such a thing.

I'm simply pointing out that a point you raised, that Christians can't expect to have discussions about Christianity in the Christianity Forum without being derailed by you wanting to discuss your atheism, was rude.

RikuoAmero · 02-03-2015 12:53PM

Nick Park wrote: »

Do you think we could try to keep this truthful? I'm not enraged in the slightest, and I don't see why you would invent such a thing.

I'm simply pointing out that a point you raised, that Christians can't expect to have discussions about Christianity in the Christianity Forum without being derailed by you wanting to discuss your atheism, was rude.

How about annoyed or some other synonym? Given how much energy and effort you've taken responding to my one small point, it does speak to your emotional state.
As for me wanting to discuss my atheism...'twas never my intention. I was merely pointing out to the people involved in this discussion "Hey guys, look at your argument, look at how they're constructed and what evidence you're using in support of them. From an outsider's perspective, both of you are equally credible, thus there's no clear way to differentiate between the two of you"
Could I have worded my post better? Yes, but it was never my intention to be rude.

Nick Park · 02-03-2015 12:56PM

RikuoAmero wrote: »

How about annoyed or some other synonym? Given how much energy and effort you've taken responding to my one small point, it does speak to your emotional state.
As for me wanting to discuss my atheism...'twas never my intention. I was merely pointing out to the people involved in this discussion "Hey guys, look at your argument, look at how they're constructed and what evidence you're using in support of them. From an outsider's perspective, both of you are equally credible, thus there's no clear way to differentiate between the two of you"
Could I have worded my post better? Yes, but it was never my intention to be rude.

This is a discussion forum. People engage in discussion based on what others have posted.

That does not indicate that anyone is enraged, or annoyed.

There would seem to be little point in having a discussion forum unless people can expend the 'energy and effort' required to tap out a few words on a keyboard without inviting speculation as to their 'mental state'.

Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Part 2)

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