Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Part 2)

jaffusmax · 29-03-2015 08:12PM

On 11 November 1950 the Rev. Cornelius Greenway of Brooklyn wrote a letter to Einstein which had also quoted his alleged remarks about the Church. Einstein responded, "I am, however, a little embarrassed. The wording of the statement you have quoted is not my own. Shortly after Hitler came to power in Germany I had an oral conversation with a newspaper man about these matters. Since then my remarks have been elaborated and exaggerated nearly beyond recognition. I cannot in good conscience write down the statement you sent me as my own. The matter is all the more embarrassing to me because I, like yourself, I am predominantly critical concerning the activities, and especially the political activities, through history of the official clergy. Thus, my former statement, even if reduced to my actual words (which I do not remember in detail) gives a wrong impression of my general attitude

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein#Christian_churches

marienbad · 29-03-2015 08:52PM

hinault wrote: »

Time Magazine is an internationally recognised publication for one.
It has a large domestic readership and international readership.
Given those facts, it would not be in Time Magazine's interest to misquote an eminent figure such as Albert Einstein at that time.

Your skeptic.com link :rolleyes: states that the document allegedly disputing the veracity of Times Magazine's December 1940 quotation is unpublished. Which is interesting.
Why hasn't the Einstein Archive published the unpublished document?

And if Time Magazine did misquote Einstein why didn't Einstein contact Time Magazine to inform them about their misquotation after the quote was published?

It's not as if Einstein didn't have great favour at Time Magazine. Einstein appeared on several covers of Time Magazine, such as in 1946.
He was after all Time Magazine's "man of the century" in their December 1999 edition too.

You mean this magazine , with their man of the year 1938 ?

tommy2bad · 30-03-2015 12:07AM

indioblack wrote: »

Not sure, Tommy. Jesus certainly has the longevity.
But, again, it would have to be a god capable of encompassing all of existence.
And for a god to be able to tolerate that, to which he must bear at least some responsibility for, would you say it was Jesus?
Didn't Dennis Potter write a play called "Son of Man?" in which Jesus doubted his own ancestry? This was a Jesus at the mercy of whatever wind would blow.
Not the Jesus, son of god, that we were raised to believe in.

Back to what is the purpose of religion. If you accept that religion should be the expression of man's sense of trtranscendence then Jesus is a perfect fit. If like me you have a slight cynical view of the world and see religion being more about who's in and who's out then Jesus is a bit of a let down. No superpowers, no rules about what you eat or wear, even willing to talk and socialize with outcasts. That's no use for keeping the show on the road and must be parsed or spun to maintain the power.
Someone said religion was uniquely dangerious as it tapped people's most primal needs, they could be right, I would dispute it but for the sake of argument let's take it as true. The problem is what do we replace it with? The desire won't go away, people will still seek God. People will still seek a tribe and seek a structure they feel comfortable in. Remove God from people and like the Hebrews in the desert they will build a golden calf. Nationalism, socialism patriotism whatever.
The trick is to somehow seperate God from religion or more accurately integrated God into religion. The problem is we are told religion is to serve God when it only serves man.
Yes this is all shown and traced in the bible, it's a problem as old as man, I don't have a solution, I suspect their isn't one. It's called the human condition. In that sense God exists if in no other.

Peregrinus · 30-03-2015 01:36AM

jaffusmax wrote: »

Yet from 1 Samuel 15 of the Old Testament we know God is an advocate of Genocide and Infanticide! Im just curious why God is so selective upon whom he orders the genocide of, the Romans would have been high up his list going by past actions?

15:2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

OK, better late than never. A few thoughts:

1. Yes, this is a troubling text. Especially if you’re of the plain-reading it-means-what-it-says school of interpretation. Not going to pretend otherwise.

2. On the other hand, we must immediately concede that the plain-reading it-means-what-it-says (hereinafter PR IMWIS) reading is flatly contradicted by the PR IMWIS reading of many other scriptural texts. And I think the PR IMWIS approach does at least require you to pay equal attention to all scriptural texts, not just pick the one that supports the conclusion you want to reach, and disregard the less convenient ones.

3. So, what can we make of it?

4. It’s trite, when presenting text verses of this kind with a flourish and a cry of “Gotcha!” for critics of religion to add “Of course, they’ll say that I’ve taken it out of context”, as though to suggest that anticipating this objection is the same thing as countering it.

5. That’s nonsense, of course. And this is a case which illustrates just how much context can matter. Let’s put this verse in its immediate context:

”15:1 And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore hearken to the words of the Lord. 15:2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I will punish what Amelek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Amelek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’”
See what dropping verse 15:1 serves to conceal? The scripture – the authorial voice – doesn’t present this as something God said; it presents this as something Samuel said to Saul that God said. If you are actually concerned to interpret this text, that’s a pretty important context.

6. For still more context, read the whole of 1 Sam 15. I won’t set it out here; you can read it yourself. What it describes is a power play between Samuel and Saul. Samuel take the position just set out; Saul doesn’t buy it, and won’t implement it. Samuel eventually prevails, but this leads to a falling-out between them which is never repaired. As Samuel and Saul are both significant figures in the OT histories in their own rights, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the focus of this passage isn’t really the rules of war, but about the relationship between Saul and Samuel.

7. And, if the reader insists on reading it as a lesson about the rules of war, we should note that the authorial voice tells of the conflict between Samuel and Saul, how it played out and the consequences it had, but he never says “and Samuel [or Saul] was right”. One of the corollaries of insisting on a PR IMWIS approach to scripture is that you cannot, with consistency, treat scripture as saying something that it doesn’t say. This scripture doesn’t say that the Lord did, in fact, tell Samuel what Samuel claimed. It doesn’t say that Samuel’s take on what the Lord wanted was correct, and Saul’s was wrong. That could be because, as already suggested, the scripture isn’t really about that. The point is there was an argument between Samuel and Saul, and that had certain consequences for Israel. What the argument was about is not so much the point. We may be inclined to read the scripture that way, especially if we’re not terribly interested in Samuel and Saul and their little spats, but that’s not scripture, that’s us.

8. A still wider context: this story is what they call a doublet; i.e. it appears twice in scripture, in two different versions. This is extremely common. (Genesis, famously, contains two creation stories, one immediately after the other. They are similar but not identical; in certain respects the contradict one another.)

9. Why is this so common, and what does it tell us? Before these stories were written down in the form we now have them, they were handed down orally. And there was a period of couple of centuries (from the 10th to the 8th century BCE) where the oral tradition developed separately in the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, leading to two versions of many foundational stories. The Northern Kingdom was overthrown by an Assyrian invasion in about 720 BCE, and a flood of migrants and refugees came south, bringing with them their cherished versions of the foundational stories – recognisably the same stories, but also recognisably different in detail. It’s speculated that the written texts that we now have were produced, at least in part, in a conscious effort to reconcile and reconnect the two traditions. Whether that’s correct or not, it’s definitely the case that, in the written texts, two versions of many of the stories are preserved - presumably, because both were regarded as important.

10. The other version of this story appears in 1 Sam 13. Again, it tells of a disagreement between Samuel and Saul, in which Samuel says that the Lord wants X, but Saul does Y and Samuel criticises him for it. In both versions, Samuel eventually has his way. In this version, though, the point of disagreement is not battle tactics, but the proper mode of offering sacrifice to God. Which, again, is a bit of a pointer that, for the culture that produced the story, and their descendants who produced the scripture, battle tactics were not the point.

11. Having said all that, if you want to read this story, or at least the Chapter 15 version of it, as endorsing genocide, that’s possible. Why would you want to do this? Well, you might be a bloodthirsty psychopath, looking to fuel your psychopathy. Or you might be a militant critic of religion, looking for confirmation of your existing conception of religion. Or a host of other reasons. The point is, the reason you choose this (or any other) reading tells us more about you than it does about the text.

12. But that rather glib comment doesn’t entirely solve the problem. Why in even one version of the story do they pick war crimes as the subject of the dispute? Well, it helps here to remember the respective roles of Samuel and Saul. Samuel is a prophet, a religious figure; Saul is a king, a political leader. (In fact, he’s the first king, chosen because the previous collective rule by “judges” wasn’t working). In the Chapter 13 version of the story, Samuel criticises Saul for having offered a sacrifice before Samuel’s arrival; he should have waited for Samuel, the religious leader, to do it. In the Chapter 15 version, Samuel is laying down battle tactics, which really ought to be Saul’s department. And all of this is happening at a time when the people of Israel are transitioning from a semi-nomadic tribe of goatherds who follow the their flocks, with a minimal political structure, to a settled community of farmers who are starting to trade on a larger scale, to establish towns and to accumulate wealth, with a corresponding need for a more developed political structure. The prophets and the kings are rival sources for political authority; at a time when it’s still unclear who will have what authority, they are jockeying for position. And the Samuel/Saul conflict encapsulates this.

13. The lesson may well be, therefore, not that genocide was right or that genocide was wrong, but that genocide happened because Samuel and Saul were trying to “outbid” one another in been seen to provide decisive leadership, with a view to acquiring power.

14. And a little bit more context: 1 Samuel isn’t the first time we meet the Amalekites. They turn up in Genesis, and in Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and elsewhere. They are cruel, ruthless and tyrannical. They launch unprovoked attacks, picking on those who are weak or isolated. They do not give up; their response to defeat is to retreat, regroup and attack again when the opportunity presents. (At least, this is how the Israelites saw them. We don’t know their side of the story.) What the Chapter 15 version of this story may capture is a debate among the Israelites, or a subsequent justification among the Israelites, about how to deal with the Amelekites. “Basically, we have to destroy them utterly, because nothing else will stop them.” Think of it it as the OT equivalent of debates about, or retropsective justification for, the Allies demanding uncondtional surrender from Germany, or the tactic of area bombing, or the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The hardline attitude is attributed to Samuel, possibly by a storyteller who himself favoured the hardline view and wanted to give it the authority of having been Samuel’s view.

15. Does this mean that we, the readers of scripture, have to accept that position, and agree that genocide was warranted? No, it doesn’t. As already pointed out, the story is presented to us as something that happened. (Whether it actually happened or not is irrelevant.) It appears in scripture because it’s judged to be an important story, but there is no statement, or even implication, that everything happened just so because God ordained or, or God wanted it. We get to make our own judgments about the story; we draw our own lessons from it. And we have to accept responsibility for the lessons we choose to draw.

obplayer · 30-03-2015 01:59AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

OK, better late than never. A few thoughts:

1. Yes, this is a troubling text. Especially if you’re of the plain-reading it-means-what-it-says school of interpretation. Not going to pretend otherwise.

2. On the other hand, we must immediately concede that the plain-reading it-means-what-it-says (hereinafter PR IMWIS) reading is flatly contradicted by the PR IMWIS reading of many other scriptural texts. And I think the PR IMWIS approach does at least require you to pay equal attention to all scriptural texts, not just pick the one that supports the conclusion you want to reach, and disregard the less convenient ones.

3. So, what can we make of it?

4. It’s trite, when presenting text verses of this kind with a flourish and a cry of “Gotcha!” for critics of religion to add “Of course, they’ll say that I’ve taken it out of context”, as though to suggest that anticipating this objection is the same thing as countering it.

5. That’s nonsense, of course. And this is a case which illustrates just how much context can matter. Let’s put this verse in its immediate context:

”15:1 And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel; now therefore hearken to the words of the Lord. 15:2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I will punish what Amelek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Amelek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’”
See what dropping verse 15:1 serves to conceal? The scripture – the authorial voice – doesn’t present this as something God said; it presents this as something Samuel said to Saul that God said. If you are actually concerned to interpret this text, that’s a pretty important context.

6. For still more context, read the whole of 1 Sam 15. I won’t set it out here; you can read it yourself. What it describes is a power play between Samuel and Saul. Samuel take the position just set out; Saul doesn’t buy it, and won’t implement it. Samuel eventually prevails, but this leads to a falling-out between them which is never repaired. As Samuel and Saul are both significant figures in the OT histories in their own rights, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the focus of this passage isn’t really the rules of war, but about the relationship between Saul and Samuel.

7. And, if the reader insists on reading it as a lesson about the rules of war, we should note that the authorial voice tells of the conflict between Samuel and Saul, how it played out and the consequences it had, but he never says “and Samuel [or Saul] was right”. One of the corollaries of insisting on a PR IMWIS approach to scripture is that you cannot, with consistency, treat scripture as saying something that it doesn’t say. This scripture doesn’t say that the Lord did, in fact, tell Samuel what Samuel claimed. It doesn’t say that Samuel’s take on what the Lord wanted was correct, and Saul’s was wrong. That could be because, as already suggested, the scripture isn’t really about that. The point is there was an argument between Samuel and Saul, and that had certain consequences for Israel. What the argument was about is not so much the point. We may be inclined to read the scripture that way, especially if we’re not terribly interested in Samuel and Saul and their little spats, but that’s not scripture, that’s us.

8. A still wider context: this story is what they call a doublet; i.e. it appears twice in scripture, in two different versions. This is extremely common. (Genesis, famously, contains two creation stories, one immediately after the other. They are similar but not identical; in certain respects the contradict one another.)

9. Why is this so common, and what does it tell us? Before these stories were written down in the form we now have them, they were handed down orally. And there was a period of couple of centuries (from the 10th to the 8th century BCE) where the oral tradition developed separately in the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, leading to two versions of many foundational stories. The Northern Kingdom was overthrown by an Assyrian invasion in about 720 BCE, and a flood of migrants and refugees came south, bringing with them their cherished versions of the foundational stories – recognisably the same stories, but also recognisably different in detail. It’s speculated that the written texts that we now have were produced, at least in part, in a conscious effort to reconcile and reconnect the two traditions. Whether that’s correct or not, it’s definitely the case that, in the written texts, two versions of many of the stories are preserved - presumably, because both were regarded as important.

10. The other version of this story appears in 1 Sam 13. Again, it tells of a disagreement between Samuel and Saul, in which Samuel says that the Lord wants X, but Saul does Y and Samuel criticises him for it. In both versions, Samuel eventually has his way. In this version, though, the point of disagreement is not battle tactics, but the proper mode of offering sacrifice to God. Which, again, is a bit of a pointer that, for the culture that produced the story, and their descendants who produced the scripture, battle tactics were not the point.

11. Having said all that, if you want to read this story, or at least the Chapter 15 version of it, as endorsing genocide, that’s possible. Why would you want to do this? Well, you might be a bloodthirsty psychopath, looking to fuel your psychopathy. Or you might be a militant critic of religion, looking for confirmation of your existing conception of religion. Or a host of other reasons. The point is, the reason you choose this (or any other) reading tells us more about you than it does about the text.

12. But that rather glib comment doesn’t entirely solve the problem. Why in even one version of the story do they pick war crimes as the subject of the dispute? Well, it helps here to remember the respective roles of Samuel and Saul. Samuel is a prophet, a religious figure; Saul is a king, a political leader. (In fact, he’s the first king, chosen because the previous collective rule by “judges” wasn’t working). In the Chapter 13 version of the story, Samuel criticises Saul for having offered a sacrifice before Samuel’s arrival; he should have waited for Samuel, the religious leader, to do it. In the Chapter 15 version, Samuel is laying down battle tactics, which really ought to be Saul’s department. And all of this is happening at a time when the people of Israel are transitioning from a semi-nomadic tribe of goatherds who follow the their flocks, with a minimal political structure, to a settled community of farmers who are starting to trade on a larger scale, to establish towns and to accumulate wealth, with a corresponding need for a more developed political structure. The prophets and the kings are rival sources for political authority; at a time when it’s still unclear who will have what authority, they are jockeying for position. And the Samuel/Saul conflict encapsulates this.

13. The lesson may well be, therefore, not that genocide was right or that genocide was wrong, but that genocide happened because Samuel and Saul were trying to “outbid” one another in been seen to provide decisive leadership, with a view to acquiring power.

14. And a little bit more context: 1 Samuel isn’t the first time we meet the Amalekites. They turn up in Genesis, and in Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and elsewhere. They are cruel, ruthless and tyrannical. They launch unprovoked attacks, picking on those who are weak or isolated. They do not give up; their response to defeat is to retreat, regroup and attack again when the opportunity presents. (At least, this is how the Israelites saw them. We don’t know their side of the story.) What the Chapter 15 version of this story may capture is a debate among the Israelites, or a subsequent justification among the Israelites, about how to deal with the Amelekites. “Basically, we have to destroy them utterly, because nothing else will stop them.” Think of it it as the OT equivalent of debates about, or retropsective justification for, the Allies demanding uncondtional surrender from Germany, or the tactic of area bombing, or the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The hardline attitude is attributed to Samuel, possibly by a storyteller who himself favoured the hardline view and wanted to give it the authority of having been Samuel’s view.

15. Does this mean that we, the readers of scripture, have to accept that position, and agree that genocide was warranted? No, it doesn’t. As already pointed out, the story is presented to us as something that happened. (Whether it actually happened or not is irrelevant.) It appears in scripture because it’s judged to be an important story, but there is no statement, or even implication, that everything happened just so because God ordained or, or God wanted it. We get to make our own judgments about the story; we draw our own lessons from it. And we have to accept responsibility for the lessons we choose to draw.

So as a brief summing up you are saying, at quite unnecessary length, that scripture is clearly unbelievable nonsense?

Peregrinus · 30-03-2015 03:10AM

obplayer wrote: »

So as a brief summing up you are saying, at quite unnecessary length, that scripture is clearly unbelievable nonsense?

Nope. Almost exactly the complete opposite of that.

I realise that will be a bit disappointing for those who can only deal with absurdly simplistic one-line answers to any question but, hey, you always lose a few along the way. That market is well-catered for already; you can buy The Little Book of Trite Feelgood Aphorisms in any stationery shop and that should provide all the philosophical depth that they require to make sense of their lives.

Timberrrrrrrr · 30-03-2015 07:20AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

Nope. Almost exactly the complete opposite of that.

I realise that will be a bit disappointing for those who can only deal with absurdly simplistic one-line answers to any question but, hey, you always lose a few along the way. That market is well-catered for already; you can buy The Little Book of Trite Feelgood Aphorisms in any stationery shop and that should provide all the philosophical depth that they require to make sense of their lives.

Better known as The Bible.

jaffusmax · 30-03-2015 07:37AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

Nope. Almost exactly the complete opposite of that.

I realise that will be a bit disappointing for those who can only deal with absurdly simplistic one-line answers to any question but, hey, you always lose a few along the way. That market is well-catered for already; you can buy The Little Book of Trite Feelgood Aphorisms in any stationery shop and that should provide all the philosophical depth that they require to make sense of their lives.

Thank you for such a well thought out and put together arguement, although it raises far more questions then solves. It makes it more clear then ever that the Bible cannot be regarded in anyway as reliable histroical source, it should be very troubling for theists that such a powerful god cannot have his greatest text written in a way that would take less effort to interpute than the Nostradamus Quatrains!

Occams Razor predicits that the simplest less convoluted explanation is usually the correct one.

The razor's statement that "other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones" is amenable to empirical testing. Another interpretation of the razor's statement would be that "simpler hypotheses (not conclusions, i.e. explanations) are generally better than the complex ones".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

silverharp · 30-03-2015 07:45AM

Peregrinus wrote: »

OK, better late than never. A few thoughts:

1. Yes, this is a troubling text. Especially if you’re of the plain-reading it-means-what-it-says school of interpretation. Not going to pretend otherwise.

.........

but even if you want to make a distinction between "god says to someone" type events there are other God "does" type events in the bible. One that sprung to mind was the Passover where you have a God punishing innocent Egyptians culminating in every first born being murdered by God and preceding that if it is to be believed God hardening the heart of Pharaoh when he was buckling so that God could show off some more.

jaffusmax · 30-03-2015 07:53AM

silverharp wrote: »

but even if you want to make a distinction between "god says to someone" type events there are other God "does" type events in the bible. One that sprung to mind was the Passover where you have a God punishing innocent Egyptians culminating in every first born being murdered by God and preceding that if it is to be believed God hardening the heart of Pharaoh when he was buckling so that God could show off some more.

Either Hitler lead the Nazis to commit Genocide or it was just a huge misunderstanding of historical accounts!

Either God led the Israelites to commit Genocide or it was a huge misunderstanding of biblical/historical accounts!

pauldla · 30-03-2015 08:12AM

So, does this mean the whole genocide was merely a gambit in a power play between two Patriarchs?

silverharp · 30-03-2015 08:28AM

jaffusmax wrote: »

Either Hitler lead the Nazis to commit Genocide or it was just a huge misunderstanding of historical accounts!

Either God led the Israelites to commit Genocide or it was a huge misunderstanding of biblical/historical accounts!

I dont really buy the whole my prophets went rougue argument . we are presented with a god who does not have a problem getting his message accross so it would be logical to assume that any prophet that went off message would be dealt with quickly.

jaffusmax · 30-03-2015 08:31AM

silverharp wrote: »

I dont really buy the whole my prophets went rougue argument . we are presented with a god who does not have a problem getting his message accross so it would be logical to assume that any prophet that went off message would be dealt with quickly.

That is a very common excuse used by despots in the Hague when charged with War Crimes. Either I was only following orders or the subordinates went rogue!

jaffusmax · 30-03-2015 08:37AM

Once again a story close to home to illustrate how Religion poisons evereything. The NI national football team are already performing mircales by even winning a match but that is not good enough for these Christains!

Furious Free Presbyterians protest at ‘disgraceful’ Northern Ireland victory.

http://theulsterfry.com/featured/furious-free-presbyterians-protest-at-disgraceful-northern-ireland-victory/

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/religious-protest-ahead-of-northern-irelands-first-sunday-home-international-31103079.html

silverharp · 30-03-2015 08:48AM

jaffusmax wrote: »

Once again a story close to home to illustrate how Religion poisons evereything. The NI national football team are already performing mircales by even winning a match but that is not good enough for these Christains!

Furious Free Presbyterians protest at ‘disgraceful’ Northern Ireland victory.

http://theulsterfry.com/featured/furious-free-presbyterians-protest-at-disgraceful-northern-ireland-victory/

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/religious-protest-ahead-of-northern-irelands-first-sunday-home-international-31103079.html

Pretty mild, I remember god having someone killed for picking up a stick. Have they ever protested outside an ICU? Or a powerstation?

jaffusmax · 30-03-2015 08:52AM

silverharp wrote: »

Pretty mild, I remember god having someone killed for picking up a stick. Have they ever protested outside an ICU? Or a powerstation?

Good point! Imagine being in intensive care and having these lot doing gods work by protesting outside of the ICU that the Doctors and Nursing are to stop breaking the Sabbath! Gods work would be done by having a massive spike in fatalities on every Sunday!

Delirium · 30-03-2015 08:55AM

jaffusmax wrote: »

Once again a story close to home to illustrate how Religion poisons evereything. The NI national football team are already performing mircales by even winning a match but that is not good enough for these Christains!

Furious Free Presbyterians protest at ‘disgraceful’ Northern Ireland victory.

http://theulsterfry.com/featured/furious-free-presbyterians-protest-at-disgraceful-northern-ireland-victory/

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/religious-protest-ahead-of-northern-irelands-first-sunday-home-international-31103079.html

Pretty sure the Ulster Fry is a spoof website like Waterford Whispers.:pac:

jaffusmax · 30-03-2015 08:57AM

SW wrote: »

Pretty sure the Ulster Fry is a spoof website like Waterford Whispers.:pac:

The Belfast Telegraph is not

although I take the Ulster Fry as serious as that Alive paper that lands in my letterbox!

galljga1 · 30-03-2015 08:57AM

jaffusmax wrote: »

Once again a story close to home to illustrate how Religion poisons evereything. The NI national football team are already performing mircales by even winning a match but that is not good enough for these Christains!

Furious Free Presbyterians protest at ‘disgraceful’ Northern Ireland victory.

http://theulsterfry.com/featured/furious-free-presbyterians-protest-at-disgraceful-northern-ireland-victory/

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/religious-protest-ahead-of-northern-irelands-first-sunday-home-international-31103079.html

Yeah, we had it bad enough down here in years gone by but these good christians take it up a level. Idiots.

silverharp · 30-03-2015 09:00AM

SW wrote: »

Pretty sure the Ulster Fry is a spoof website like Waterford Whispers.:pac:

In 2000 years it will be fact

MaxWig · 30-03-2015 09:38AM

jaffusmax wrote: »

Just an article to demonstrate what I mean when only Religion can make good people say and do evil things! [/url]

What about the guy that committed the crime?

He was a bad person as opposed to a good person and so no religion was required to make him act like that?

Is that correct. Trying to get my head around this one still!

indioblack · 30-03-2015 09:50AM

tommy2bad wrote: »

Back to what is the purpose of religion. If you accept that religion should be the expression of man's sense of trtranscendence then Jesus is a perfect fit. If like me you have a slight cynical view of the world and see religion being more about who's in and who's out then Jesus is a bit of a let down. No superpowers, no rules about what you eat or wear, even willing to talk and socialize with outcasts. That's no use for keeping the show on the road and must be parsed or spun to maintain the power.
Someone said religion was uniquely dangerious as it tapped people's most primal needs, they could be right, I would dispute it but for the sake of argument let's take it as true. The problem is what do we replace it with? The desire won't go away, people will still seek God. People will still seek a tribe and seek a structure they feel comfortable in. Remove God from people and like the Hebrews in the desert they will build a golden calf. Nationalism, socialism patriotism whatever.
The trick is to somehow seperate God from religion or more accurately integrated God into religion. The problem is we are told religion is to serve God when it only serves man.
Yes this is all shown and traced in the bible, it's a problem as old as man, I don't have a solution, I suspect their isn't one. It's called the human condition. In that sense God exists if in no other.

Religion can be one way of transcending .
Jesus, as Jesus - in isolation - makes a compelling story.
As you say there may be no solution - it is the human condition.
But we are an awkward species - we question when maybe we should accept and accept when it may be valuable to question.
A few years ago a man made a parachute jump for, I think it was, a cancer charity. Laudable, good, worthy.
Except the parachute failed to open and the man died.
A test of people's faith?
Simply a faulty parachute with no supernatural connections?
An indifferent celestial overseer?
Or nothing at all?

jaffusmax · 30-03-2015 09:59AM

MaxWig wrote: »

What about the guy that committed the crime?

He was a bad person as opposed to a good person and so no religion was required to make him act like that?

Is that correct. Trying to get my head around this one still!

The sub human that committed that crime is filth and i do not know what motivated it other that some sexual perversion.

The point I made is that this Roman Catholic priest whom we presume to be good as he is a priest said an evil thing based on his religious belief. It an easy concept to understand religion makes good people say and do evil things.

jaffusmax · 30-03-2015 10:10AM

I should add this concept is not mine but from Steven Weinberg

http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Weinberg

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.

MaxWig · 30-03-2015 10:15AM

The sub human that committed that crime is filth

Sub Human? Wishful thinking I'm afraid.

The point I made is that this Roman Catholic priest whom we presume to be good as he is a priest said an evil thing based on his religious belief.

Presume to be good? Why? Do you see how you divide the world up? Good and bad. Black and white. How is that different from a religious point of view?

It an easy concept to understand religion makes good people say and do evil things.

It really isn't. It's based on a complete fallacy. That there are good people and bad people in the world. Evil people and us. Them bad. We good. Angels and devils

jaffusmax · 30-03-2015 10:18AM

MaxWig wrote: »

Sub Human? Wishful thinking I'm afraid.

Presume to be good? Why? Do you see how you divide the world up? Good and bad. Black and white. How is that different from a religious point of view?

It really isn't. It's based on a complete fallacy. That there are good people and bad people in the world. Evil people and us. Them bad. We good. Angels and devils

Is this your opinion or a fact?

MaxWig · 30-03-2015 10:20AM

jaffusmax wrote: »

Is this your opinion or a fact?

"The point I made is that this Roman Catholic priest whom we presume to be good as he is a priest said an evil thing based on his religious belief. It an easy concept to understand religion makes good people say and do evil things."

Opinion or a fact?

MaxWig · 30-03-2015 10:24AM

jaffusmax wrote: »

I should add this concept is not mine but from Steven Weinberg

http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steven_Weinberg

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.

From the link:
"This comment is modified in a later article derived from these talks:
Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion."

So his mother was a 'good' person who believed in slavery?
She was good, because he was related to her?
Or because her other works outweighed her love of slavery?
Because she had a 'soft heart'?
Did her slaves think she was a good woman? Or a devil?
What about the slave traders? Were they good? Or bad?
Or does it depend on who they are related to? Or if they were religious? Or if they had soft hearts?

silverharp · 30-03-2015 10:25AM

MaxWig wrote: »

It really isn't. It's based on a complete fallacy. That there are good people and bad people in the world. Evil people and us. Them bad. We good. Angels and devils

But the church is in a position to institutionalise hate or bizarre rules which hold back society. The gay issue or even something like divorce where it takes a secular attitude to how couples should be legally bound to each other to make the best of the messy business of being human not the church's view

jaffusmax · 30-03-2015 10:27AM

MaxWig wrote: »

"The point I made is that this Roman Catholic priest whom we presume to be good as he is a priest said an evil thing based on his religious belief. It an easy concept to understand religion makes good people say and do evil things."

Opinion or a fact?

My opinion based on the fact a priest said an evil thing based on his religious belief.

Would the fact he may have been trained in any other profession make him say such a wicked thing?

Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Part 2)

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