My Starting De-Conversion

[JamesG]

Yes group psychology is a hard thing to fend  off. You don't have to make  a big deal about it but you will be better off for it.

[Ravenstar]

There are about 5,000 gods that we know of.  I'm sure the list will grow as archeology uncovers more artwork from antiquity.  But think about it.  Millions of years ago our ancestors were animals.  They were very much like clever chimpanzees.  Then slowly over the eons, and quite by accident, being clever gave these animals enough of an edge that it became reinforced by biology.  Many mutations took place that allowed the hominid type animal to have bigger brains and more efficient brains.  Then around 60,000 years ago there was a disaster that nearly killed all human beings.  The only tribe that made it was the smartest one on the planet at that time.

 

Suddenly we find artwork.  Humans are painting.  They make figurines and sculptures.  And sure enough gods and goddesses show up too.  All of the early gods are as primitive as early human cave paintings.  The mutation that gave these animals the ability to have art also drove them to invent gods.  Then humans start to burry their dead with gifts.  It's profound.  The corps is known to decay and stink.  It is known that it will never move again. so they cover it up but give it useful gifts that it cannot use.  Primitive people tried to come to terms with death.  Generation by generation these people slowly build up their technology.  As they do that the most useful people, the most popular people are the clever ones - the ones who can get the technology to the next level.  Building the better spear or better raft is the thing that gets your tribe to survive.  As these people progress they invent new and better gods that reflect what they have learned.  All through history we can see gods improving right along side the development of literature.  The better humans become at story telling the better their gods become.  Human burials grow more complicated as well.  Literature, godmaking and burials have an intersection when humans invent the concept of an afterlife.

 

The Bible represents several religions from the bronze age to the early Roman period.  The earliest sources were Canaanite and pagan because that is where the Judaism comes from.  The ideas were heavily influenced by Egyptian religion.  Most of the Ten Commandments were striped from a longer list of Egyptian commandments.  Then the Sea People invaded and kicked the Jewish tribes out of what would become the Philistine land.  That was the real conquest of the Holy Land.  The Jewish tribes fled for their lives and moved into the hills.  They built new villages there and made up new myths and new gods so that they could pretend they were superior.  There were many religious conflicts between Jewish tribes and lots of war as well.  At one point the prophets of their war god started spreading the idea that there was only one god.  Well nothing really came of this in the big picture because one of the larger empires in the region came in and conquered everybody.  

 

Over time there were all kinds of religious sects in the area.  Every one of these cults claimed to be the one with the truth.  They were no better than charlatans we see today.  But people desperately want to believe in gods so some of the religious sects were popular.  Con artists would work the literature, in this context known as theology, in order to make their personal cult more popular than others.  Any con artist who made a mistake would lose but over time some cults remained popular.  One meme that turned out useful was to pretend that very old writing from another cult was really about your cult.  Sometimes the older text had to be altered or fabricated but the con artists didn't mind.  They are always happy to provide the new true interpretation and thus steal the image of legitimacy from an older cult.  A lot of that was going on during the first through third centuries when the Jesus meme was very popular and there were several dozen gospels each more fantastic than the next.  Well the Roman Empire noticed just how popular the Jesus cult was.  Rome needed something to bind it's entire empire together with a common culture.  So Rome took over Christianity, reworked all the literature to fit Rome's needs and then set about the systematic extermination of any group that didn't fall into line.  The Roman engineering was very successful.  Christianity lasted much longer than the Roman empire itself.  Once the Christian power grab was unleashed it built upon itself and caused the dark ages.  There were witch hunts and crusades and inquisitions.  

 

Then the human animals started using the printing press and knowledge began to fight back.  As knowledge became more available religion grew less powerful.  Step by step the Church powers were striped way by the enlightenment and the modern world.  Over time we have created this collection of gods.  There are some 5,000 of them.  There is no reason to believe any of them are real.  Each is goofy in his or her own way.  Most are even laughable.  Even today human animals still have the same urge to create gods.  But now we create them in comic books and movies.  Our need to have gods transcends our belief in them.  But we go on making them anyway because it's cool.

 

 

TL;DR

 

Now I ask you to prove to me that comic book heros are not real people.  How do you know it's not a writer being inspired to write about a real person?

Best nutshell EVER!

 

a million kudos to you, my friend!

[LivingLife]

To expand on the four pillars above, the creationists will offer WWII planes in Greenland that are below 400' of snow so the data of the Antarctic must be wrong...

 

Different climate and different ice. The WWII plane are/were on a glacier that is moving and the precipitation of the north pole far exceeds that of the south pole.

 

Usually they do not refute the genetics argument of creation and/or the 3 pairs post flood and 99.99% of them do not have a clue wrt DNA/RNA or simple genetics. One would think that the mere fact that most countries prohibit sibling marriage or 1st cousin marriage should give them a frigging clue.

 

There will be a lot of spin as far as Exodus goes and some will offer proof of the Red Sea crossing by posting pics of wheels which are in fact valve parts of modern shipping. Back in the day, wheels were wood and possibly with a steel rim. After 2500 years, no wooden artefact would still be visible and any encrustation of coral would have removed all semblance to the original junk that may have been left. Other proofs offered are stones/monuments which have been debunked.

 

I have seen them offer anchor stones as proof of the ark but there is no mention of these in the babble account. Also offered are shells at high altitudes in the Himalayas but this proves tectonics and not the flood. Sea shells would remain at the bottom of the ocean where they originated and not to mention the salinity of mixed water would have wiped out all fresh water and sea critters rather rapidly. Remember the waters are sad to have been around for a year or so.

 

The biblical flood is a direct rip off of the tale of Gilgamesh and that possibly had origins in the formation of the Black sea. I personally do not buy into that theory as there are very few place in this world that are below sea level. One need only look at the dead sea and how inhospitable that is to critters and humans. 

 

Of course the single biggest refutation to the flood and creationism is the fossil record. Nowhere are there single layers of fossils of various types of critters. Not to mention, the huge diversity and the constant discovery of new species daily.