Kirangel Posted July 14, 2007 Share Posted July 14, 2007 Gnostics are cool!!! I religion hop, more than I bar hop...maybe I should just be a Chaos Magician, then I can just keep switching belief systems, it makes belief hopping not only okay, but expected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted July 14, 2007 Share Posted July 14, 2007 Now I have a question for you. There's a guy at work who keeps telling me I should listen to Charles Stanley & Joel Osteen. In my best Seinfeld voice I ask: "Who are these people?" Assuming that you really want to know--they are both TV preachers. Stanley is a folksy looking old gray-haired Presbyterian preacher. His TV set looks like the typical boring protestant church, with fake corinthian columns, choir, etc. Watered-down preaching for the masses. Joel is pastor of a megachurch somewhere in Texas, raking in the millions of dollars. Some of us can't get past his perpetual smile, which reminds us of Jack Nicholson's portrayal of the Joker in Batman. He tends to use silly jokes. Obviously folks, I have watched these TV preachers way too often. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted July 14, 2007 Share Posted July 14, 2007 We all need a hobby... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 One can't just throw out something about their religion that they don't agree with. The Bible is God's WORD, it's infallible. I haven't read the rest of the responses yet but I'll put my thoughts out first before reading them. Your arguments are good arguments if you're arguing with a literalist. You're arguments are coming from a literalist interpretation of the Bible, against a literalist interpretation of the Bible. But you aren't debating with a literalsit, so they miss the target each time. You may try to convince them they should take it literally, but they don't approach their beliefs through logic. You can't call a non-literalist a cherry picker. I've challenged this point many times that the non-literalist is not cherry-picking. It's a different level altogether. A cherry-picker calls every word of the Bible true and binding, then evades and dodges the bits they don't like, thus being intellectually dishonest. The non-literalist however doesn't it approach the Bible the same as the literalist. It's all taken from different points of view. What makes the Bible true to them, is when it agrees with a philosophy they feel represents God. It's an apples and oranges comparision. It's using English words, when the two parties use the language differently. You know that most Christians don't read the Bible literally? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eccles Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 "Throw that Old Testament out!" I'd throw out the whole bible. If one fell into my hands I would tear it up. I would like to see all bibles destroyed. I know the thought of destroying books is abhorrent to many people, but how many books did the "Holy" Roman Catholic Church order destroyed? There are many so-called "Christians" in the USA who want many books they think are bad destroyed. Remember this about the bible: it has been one of the main causes of suffering and genocide for billions of people. It is NOT the "Word of God". THere is no "God". Nobody know who the real authors are. In fact it is a very poor plagiarism of Egyptian and Babylonian Myths and was poorly translated and copied, and as there are no original authored manuscripts, who knows how much has been altered and mis-translated. Take the worst example of mis-translation: the Hebrew word Almah which means "young woman". Some idiot in the early days translated it as "Virgin" referring to the alleged mother of Jesus the Nazarene, Miram (Mary). It sounded so good: Jesus born of a virgin. Well so was Horus and many other "Gods" from other cultures. The sooner the bible is thrown out, the better for humankind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a skeptical believer Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 A cherry-picker calls every word of the Bible true and binding, then evades and dodges the bits they don't like, thus being intellectually dishonest. But can you be a cherry picker, not believe in every part of the bible, and not be labeled intellectually dishonest? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 Can one say it's all true and be honest in the first place? Intellectual honesty is certainly not a feature of the literalist, nor of the liberal, beliver. In fact, taking the label of the faith means that one has accepted it's tenets... thus one can't be an intellectually honest Christian *and* cherry pick the bits one likes to make out that your god is a good guy, despite the genocides... It's part of signing up that one becomes a liar, both to ones self and to anyone you try to sell the lie to. The closest I know to an honest Christian is Bishop Spong, who says it's mostly allegory, and where it's not, it's illustrative myth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sceadugenga Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 Take the worst example of mis-translation: the Hebrew word Almah which means "young woman". Some idiot in the early days translated it as "Virgin" referring to the alleged mother of Jesus the Nazarene, Miram (Mary). It sounded so good: Jesus born of a virgin. Well so was Horus and many other "Gods" from other cultures. Hehe... context is just as, if not more, important that literal meaning when working on translations. 'Almah' means young woman yes - closest english term would be the traditional use of 'Maid' or 'Maiden'; ie. basically a young teen girl, under the 'protection' of her family, and a virgin depending on the context. Now when it comes to the arguement of that word applying to the Isiah - Matthew arguement the basics is the pre-Christian Jewish theologians took the broad or maore vague definition for the term, while the Christians took the more specific idenitification ~ the former because prophecies ain't exactly an exact science, the later because they wanted to link directly to that prophecy to say it was fulfilled.... which of course lay at the heart of the messianic theologies of the Jewish and Christian teaching, and which of course conflicted with other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sceadugenga Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 Can one say it's all true and be honest in the first place? Intellectual honesty is certainly not a feature of the literalist, nor of the liberal, beliver. By being intellectually honest in the understanding the meaning of "true" - the literalist interprets that as a literal and exact record, or 'fact'; the intelligent interprets 'true' to apply more to the message and meaning than the actual words. The closest I know to an honest Christian is Bishop Spong, who says it's mostly allegory, and where it's not, it's illustrative myth. Which of course is echoing the writings of the early Christian theologians (such as Augustine for example) that saw the OT as just mostly allegory and myth meant to teach a moral message, or a record of the pseudo-history of a people using God to justify political power and regimes.... which is I'm sure one of the many reasons the Fundies denouce the 'papists' or 'Romans' (rational or critical thought ain't their forte, much less the hint of it being 'Christian'.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 but Augustine was also a liar of note... after all he regarded the NT as 'factual'... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sceadugenga Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 but Augustine was also a liar of note... after all he regarded the NT as 'factual'... ... no he regarded it as true, not factual - his arguement was that it was a 'true' account seen or recorded by different people who each would have seen and recorded the events differently It was his theological arguement to deal with the different accounts of the Apostles, an arguement which basically argued that the message of each was true, and that the differences in the records was 'God using those with different eyes and hands to appeal to different minds and souls' (crappy paraphrasing, but I don't have the source on hand). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted July 16, 2007 Share Posted July 16, 2007 Semantic back flip from a liar... It's like the 'not inerrant but infallible' crap that they pump from time to time... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted July 16, 2007 Share Posted July 16, 2007 I think it does establish a level of intellectual dishonesty on seldom finds outside the legal profession... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sceadugenga Posted July 16, 2007 Share Posted July 16, 2007 Semantic back flip from a liar... ??? Gee sorry if I like to be exact in terminology, since it can make all the difference in trying to understand or interpret any subject... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted July 16, 2007 Share Posted July 16, 2007 but Augustine was also a liar of note... after all he regarded the NT as 'factual'... ... no he regarded it as true, not factual - his arguement was that it was a 'true' account seen or recorded by different people who each would have seen and recorded the events differently It was his theological arguement to deal with the different accounts of the Apostles, an arguement which basically argued that the message of each was true, and that the differences in the records was 'God using those with different eyes and hands to appeal to different minds and souls' (crappy paraphrasing, but I don't have the source on hand). First, if I'm not mistaken Grandpa, I think you may be thinking of the chruch father Eusibus who stated he thought lying to win souls to Christ was acceptable? I think it was Augustine who had the major problem with his wang, right? I was working on a response about this literalist, non-literalist earlier today but got called away mid-response. But I'll get back to it later. In the mean time, I hear someone else echoing what I am saying here - at least at this point from what I can tell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted July 16, 2007 Share Posted July 16, 2007 Semantic back flip from a liar... ??? Gee sorry if I like to be exact in terminology, since it can make all the difference in trying to understand or interpret any subject... I am a simple man, of simple, albeit decadent, and mostly legal, tastes... To clarify my stance. I was speaking of St. Augustine... he was back flipping to try and justify the lies thus he, himself, was no better than the lying liar (God bless Al Franken) who coined them. The 'fog of witness statement' canard is just that, a canard. If they were collected at the time I'd agree with him, but they were not. They were selected by a commitee, having undergone numerous changes (The woman to be stoned appeard suddenty in later versions of what would become luke, sloshed around there for a bit, then, having gather momentum up sticks and landed in John, where it underwent some minor textural changes and it's still there to day. A contemporaneously collected Witness statement does not usually alter that much from the time of their collection, unless the investigator it trying to retro fit 'facts' into his case, thus it would appear that Augustine's assertion does not pass muster. so, he was either ignorant, a fool, or a liar. since he's trying to bolster a case he himself was clearly unsure of, I'd favour liar. OK to be accurate, Augustine tried to tell us that bullshit can taste good... 100 billion flies can't be wrong... And Uncle Eusebius was more a politician than a cleric... He not only thought lying was a good method of converting people, but applied use of death was handy too... I understand the nature of his exposition, but he still espoused the idea that there was an underlying 'fact' that was embodied in the Nicean Creed, which, if anything, points away from any 'good' or 'truth' in the message, replacing it with the need to beleive that God took form in Palestine in the womb of a virgin and that the Trinity are all objective fact... Wiggle around the allegory message as one will, the articles of faith are pretty clear on the subject. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
essence Posted July 21, 2007 Share Posted July 21, 2007 THe whole 'Virgin' mess came when they translated it into Greek. A pastor I know claims that a 'young woman' would be a virgin any way... but he also claims that the Isralites would have tipped off 'good' Egyptians to mark their doors with the blood of a young goat to avoid the angel of death visiting them for their first born. That is something I never got... why couldn't an omniscient and omnipotent god do it himself, rather than send an idiot angel who couldn't tell the good guys fromthe bad? Also, God appeared as a man numerous times to Abraham, yet he takes the face off Moses when they meet face to face. When did God go from being able to stroll in the Garden of Eden and kick back having a meal with Abraham to discuss the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah to being a nuclear chaos that burns and kills and needs containment in the Ark? Aside from it being a Jewish fable, with no outside validity at all, none, I was a questioning Christian and also thought it odd to say the least, that an all powerful God would have to send an angel who couldn't tell the good guys from the bad. So, without any answers I merely trudged along on faith but finally got fed up with all the BS and said that's enough of that crap. God seemed to advance a bit with each succeeding generations of prophets. I noticed when the Jews grew tired of the prophets grissly forecasts and placed a death penalty on the heads of men who prophesied lies, the prophets then decided to change the way their god was speaking. So the prophet sayings went from an evil god who punished the Israelites to a god whom the prophets said "will now do you good". I suppose it all came down to the prophets realizing that if they wanted to keep themselves alive and kicking, they'd better get with the program and start preaching good things to the Jews. So out of the mouth of the prophets came blessings instead of cursings. And then along came Jesus and tried to return the Jews to their OT biblical days in his cursing the Pharisees, Sadducees and elders, and the Jews said "that's enough of that shit" and so they executed Jesus as they had all the other prophets before him. Now today we have all the TV evangelists who want to do as the prophets did and take society back to those OT days and what will be their sentencing? No, not physical death. But a death in silencing their craziness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted July 21, 2007 Share Posted July 21, 2007 In some respects, it's the somewhat dour 8 year old I was asking the questions, rather than the mean, bitter old man I've grown into... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eccles Posted August 2, 2007 Share Posted August 2, 2007 What irks me about Christians and them quoting the bible all the time is that they don't realise or even consider the fact that it is all fiction. Take events like the Flood, the Exodus, Sodom and Gomorah. They never happened. But you can go back to Genesis. There was never a "god/creator", Adam & Eve. The "creation" story was copied from the Egyptian creation story and not very well copied. It also copied the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Flood story is just a highly exagerated account of the usual floods that happened around the Tigris and Euphrates and Nile. If the annual inundation of the Nile did not happen Egypt was in deep trouble: no crops. The Exodus: 2 million people "escaping" Egypt and wandering the Sinai for 40 years. Archaeologists have been digging there since the 1920's and found no evidence of so many people having been there. Oh no. These brain dead Christians accept every their preaches tell them and in the case of Roman Catholics, they are forbidden from questioning. They must believe OR ELSE. As far as Jesus the Nazarene is concerned, did he ever exist? You can't believe the Gospels. Nobody knows how wrote them and when. There are no original authored manuscripts and no way of verifying their origin and accuracy. Then the "Holy" Mother Church had them redacted to suit their own version of the alleged events. The "Holey Babble" is all bullshit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted August 2, 2007 Share Posted August 2, 2007 From my deluge researches, it looks like there was something that affected more than just Babylon... there are contemporaneous flood legends among the Indians, the Chinese and oral traditions among Pacific Islanders. The Americas have earlier flood legends, but nothing that seems to map to the Babylonian, southern and far Asian, and Pacific legends. I'm not saying Noah existed, but that myth cycles of numerous disparate cultures, some pre-literate all have similar legends that have a root in the same time period... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted August 8, 2007 Share Posted August 8, 2007 Deluge stories are easily explained (about the easiest actually). Take a quick look and you'll find that most "funny business" starts up around 10,500BCE (when YHWH created the earth the first time...before the "gap" ). Seems about this time things started thawing out pretty good and kept on going for another 3-5 thousand years depending on where you happened to be (you ARE that old, right?). Since people live along water (even today) like rivers or oceans...they flooded as the glaciers melted away...and sometimes extremely fast (relatively speaking for coastlines). The thawing starts way before 10,500BCE of course but, as I recall, that's when things warm up enough for populations to grow large enough to start thinking about becoming villages (allowing for a collective "memory" as it were) and in the final throws of this ice age there were a number of re-thawing cycles so ice-damns would form then break causing a number of large rushes of water (deluges) over vast areas (like the American Northwest). Sadly, for the xians, none of this flooding is on the scale needed to support their biblical flood so they just point to ancient sea beds and local (although extremely large) flood damage and say "Noah!" I'm sure I've messed something up in my explanation but it should be close enough. mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jubilant Posted August 9, 2007 Share Posted August 9, 2007 Her: The Old Testament is about a vengeful God, as displayed by the Flood, the Exodus, Sodom and Gomorah, etc.The New Testament is where most Christians' faiths come from. It was from a loving God, who gave his only Son for the sins of his people. Jesus' message was one of love and forgiveness, not vengeance against his fellow man. Ya know...what kills me is that they speak about God/Jesus as if two different Gods but then claim that Jesus is God in the flesh. Hello!! If they are one in the same then that means JESUS authored and did all those nasty things in the OT too. Good grief. Of course the whole thing is nonsense so, whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perianwalsh Posted August 11, 2007 Share Posted August 11, 2007 he chinese is abouta story of a son of a son of god(that means grandson of the god) helping the humans ,saving them from the flood caused by wrath.-gee,it makes me once think that the noah's flood is actual it all just early humans who does not knew much about geography and thinking every disaster is a punishment for their wrongdoings Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Harley Posted August 11, 2007 Share Posted August 11, 2007 The Chinese pictogram, iirc, is phonetically Nu-Ah, with a mark that the sound is more important than the meaning (which I can dig up if required) is given as the name of the rescuer... Now, you lads and lasses know my stance on things Biblical as literal proof, but I'm not going to hide an interesting coincidence with the Chinese deluge legends and the Hebrew ones... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perianwalsh Posted August 12, 2007 Share Posted August 12, 2007 granpa- i am not aware of the Nu-Ah pictogram.can you describe what is it? there are concidence-yes,i am aware of that.I am not sure when the interaction between hebrew and china begins,but as far as i understand ,there's jews in china called Kaifeng Jews. but the origins of chinese are much different-their creator is called Pan Gu-it's described as a giant,and the creator of human is ni wa,a female god this is what i knew about the chinese flood story: one of the minor gods,鲧(i dunno how to pronounced in english)-did not agree with yu di(the major god),so he helps the humans secretly,but eventually he's discovered and killed by Yu Di.this 鲧,some says he's minor god,some says he's minor god plus the son of YU Di.As far as i could recall,this 鲧 has been sentenced to death.but his soul has not departed yet,,and hence his son,Da Yu was born.He help the humans to survive and plead for them to Yu Di Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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