[quote]Julius_Caesar wrote:
What is the difference between a cult and a religion besides the fact that religions usually have more members?
[/quote]
Better funding, political connections, and a more active PR department.
[quote]haney wrote:
Digital Chainsaw wrote:
haney wrote:
postcrime wrote:
The religious guys never get this right. You’re not supposed to try to prove that Jesus existed, and you’re not supposed to need or ever care about the proof. You’re supposed to just believe it for no other reason than because the Bible says so. And if you can’t take it on blind faith then you’re not a true believer in Christianity.
That would be contrary to the Bible its self. No where does it say that we should have faith with out questioning things.
Don’t know what dictionary you’re using but how do you figure one can have faith with questioning things?
Can you say “oxymoron”? I knew that you could.
For one specific example (there are countless others):
Matthew 21:21:
I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
So much for “No where [sic] does it say…”.
In fact, anytime the Bible commands one to “have faith” or “believe”, that is exactly what it is saying.
I can’t wait to hear how I have misinterpreted everything. I’m gonna go make some popcorn.
Can you say taking it out of context?[/quote]
Taking what out of context? I proved a statement you made was wrong, deal with it.
What who was saying?
Which paragraph, and what is “proof in God” supposed to mean? I never addressed any such point.
Hello kettle? You’re black!
I just did in my last post to you. You saying that I didn’t doesn’t make it not so.
OK son, let’s put down the Introduction to Applied Ethics text book for a moment. What was my alleged red herring?
To recap, you said;
And I provided a biblical quote that completely contradicted this.
Instead of addressing this one thing, you went on a rant about some unknown third party and “proof in God”, whatever that means.
[quote]haney wrote:
I would say any person who claims to be a Christian that doesn’t have doubts in their faith would be a liar. [/quote]
And according to what you call Scripture, one who does is a heretic. You can’t pick and choose the parts you want to follow
“Prove that your faith…”
Holy shit.
So, you have a “need for reasonable proof” to maintain your “faith”. Wow.
If that’s your criteria for believing your religion, you are pretty much fucked.
[quote]Honestly to say that would be to say that the entire field of apologetics is unbiblical. While you can make that argument, I think you be an extreme minority in that believe.
I do find it funny that these nay sayers dismiss
Paul’s conversion
Nathan
Jesus miracles to prove who he was
The miracles of the Apostles
Gideon
Elisha
Elijah
All of the prophecies
All of the miracles of the prophets
Moses
King David
etc…
Don’t believe the Bible all you want, but don’t try in make an argument from it that doesn’t exist either.[/quote]
Ahh, the power of denial is eternal…
[quote]Michael570 wrote:
Digital Chainsaw wrote:
No, but you specifically called out atheists and their take on a moral question based on what they believe.
I asked a question specifically aimed at atheists because I am specifically interested in how the atheist forms his/her moral foundation. I didn’t “call out atheists”.
Split some hairs, why don’t you?
Ok, my interpretation of the phrase “call out” is “an adversarial challenge”. In elementary school “to call someone out” was to challenge them to a fight. Since you accused me of “calling out atheists”, I assumed that you meant I was challenging atheists in an adversarial manner. Judging by your initial response, and repeated assumptions that I’m a typical Christian trying to bash atheists, I think you have misinterpreted the intent of my question from the start.[/quote]
OK, I will concede a bad choice of words on my part. What else ya got?
[quote]Then you turn around and claim you are not defending religion, but want a serious answer to why murdering children is wrong. If that is really what you wanted to know, why involve belief/disbelief in a deity at all? It should have nothing to do with the question you want an answer to.
I didn’t involve belief in a deity at all, and I think that’s where we’re not connecting. I involved disbelief in a deity only.
Can you explain your ideology without contrasting it with the competing ideology? Why is that so hard for people to do?
It isn’t, but you can’t seem to ask a direct question without muddying the water with all sorts of non-essential bullshit.
If I’ve done anything, it’s been to avoid non-essential bullshit.[/quote]
In my last post I whittled it down to what it seemed you were asking. Was I wrong? You’ve never said either way.
Hardly.
Half my fault, I suppose, but if you’d done one minute of research on the topic you seek to explore, you would know that nearly identical questions are used constantly by evangelicals to encourage already gullible people to believe that atheism = amorality.
And since, in an earlier post you wrote:
[quote]We’re talking about atheism. Value? What value? A human is no more important than a cockroach. You may think you are, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution behind the human ego, but that doesn’t make it so.
No God? No afterlife? No right. No wrong. No value. Just physical matter and nothing more.
That would be the intellectually honest position of an atheist. Unfortunately it’s too uncomfortable to admit. [/quote]
You state this as absolute fact, not an inquiry. Since you were claiming such an ignorant position as your own, I felt that you had much more to learn than I cared to type, so I provided the links.
So did I once you claimed neutrality after the fact.
I already did by whittling down your question to what I thought was its core twice.
[quote]I’m not interested in a theism vs. atheism debate. T-Nation folks tend to be smarter than the average bear, so I had hoped I wouldn’t get a typical knee-jerk response.
It seems what you were asking was:
“Is it absolutely wrong to murder an entire classroom full of children? If so, then why?”
But then, you already know the answer to that…
That is what I meant. I didn’t think I had to qualify the question in terms of an absolute considering the context.
So, basically, you wanted to know what the grounding for atheist morality was sans creating a deity who made things “wrong”, but instead you asked a morbid question concerning murdering children.
Perhaps this will give you the answers you seek:
http://www.creationtheory.org/Morality/
Through the use of logic and reasoning a “morbid” question can be answered without resorting to an emotional response.
[/quote]
Yes, and I have not given a single emotional response. Presumptive, possibly, but hardly emotional.
My problem is that you are asking a question based on false pretenses. Atheism is the absence of theism, nothing more. It does not in any way imply an absence of morality, or value.
I do not usually provide links as a response to anything, but in your case, you have so much to learn on this subject (not trying to be offensive here, but your position as quoted above would only be held by an evangelical Christian with an agenda or a child who doesn’t know better) that I thought a good grass-roots reading on it would be a good place to start.
[quote]pookie wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
so if Mary were a gecko…
…you could call Jesus and save a bundle on your car insurance.
[/quote]
I love a good Jesus joke.
[quote]panther2k wrote:
harris447 wrote:
panther2k wrote:
Michael570 wrote:
harris447 wrote:
You try to come across as intellgent, but you can’t tell he difference between “their” and “there” and have to “look up” existential theories which don’t exist.
No need to look it up. It’s called Solipsism.
Thanks. Good call, Harris.
Yeah…but YOU idn’t know what you were talking about, did you?
Back to class, son.
Let’s recap:
Strike 1- You were wrong about anyone calling me an idiot.
Strike 2- You call me out for a typo when you can’t tell your ass from a keyboard.
Strike 3- “Existential theories that don’t exist”- oops, actually, they do!
That’s three buddy, you’re already out.
[/quote]
No, someone did call you an idiot: me.
The whole “philosophy 101” thing was cute, but you still stated that “no one can prove anyone exists, man”
Which is the biggest load of freshman year bonghittery I’ve encountered since I saw Pink Floyd at Giants Stadium.
And the fact remains: you had no idea what you were talking about. Stil don’t. Luckily the whole field of philosophy is full of such utter dreck an nonsense, that a “theory” exists for every half-baked ruin of an idea.
You were just playing the odds.
Bell just rang. Go play tag with the other boys and girls.
[quote]Michael570 wrote:
Natural selection isn’t driven by any moral compass, so why rely on the hard-wired nature of human behavior to explain a moral position?[/quote]
Err… wait. It is possible for the “hard wiring” to produce behavior which is parallele to what the “moral position” might call for. Its possible too for the hard wiring to produce behavior which is in sharp contrast to a moral position. The two don’t seem to be mutually exclusive, though.
You’re right in saying that a moral compass is not what drives natural selection. Reproduction is obviously the ultimate factor. However, that does not preclude that, as a by-product of natural selection, we could have developed what we might call a “moral compass.”
Lets look at your original example about killing a group of children. Lets then hypothesize that there are two variations of some gene: one which is linked to a higher likelyhood of killing children(“killing”), and one which is not (“non-killing”). We’ll assume that both are represented equally at the start of our ficticious society.
Randomly killing children provides little benefit in and of itself. I could only think of a few things that someone might claim as a benefit: food, entertainment, and freeing oneself of the costs which it would take to raise them (if they were yours). The only one which seems to provide a strong benefit is the last one, however, if you’re killing off your own children, your genes wouldn’t get passed on anyhow, so its a genetic dead end.
However, I can think of a great number of drawbacks. Killing a child would anger the kin (genetic relatives) of that child. This produces a number of problems for someone as the “killer.” First, it could put you or your kin in direct danger of retaliation by the family.
Second, it could negatively influence the degree of cooperation you receive. If a killer has slain part of a family, I don’t think they are going to be very likely to become trading partners. In the course of evolution, these kinds of trading interactions were vital for survival. I’m sure there are more, but I think my arguement can be established using these.
Let’s then return to our two variations. It seems that the people with the “killing” gene would likely disappear over many generations. They are getting inflicted with massive costs while not receiving a very significant benefit, if at all. These peoples survival and reproduction rates would likely be much lower than those who are not killing groups of children, and thus on average you’ll see more and more of the “non-killing” than the “killing” represented in our society.
Does this arguement imply that what is evolved is moral prima facie? No. It would be the “naturalistic fallacy” to claim otherwise. However, it is entirely possible that once society recognizes the two different behaviors, they can teach those predisposed with the less desireable behavior to act as if they had the other. I don’t think its ridiculous to speculate that this sort of “folk wisdom” might be what becomes what we might call “moral law” over time.
I think evolutionary psychology is very interesting. If you too might be interested in it, I recommend looking up this guy called David Buss.
[quote]harris447 wrote:
panther2k wrote:
harris447 wrote:
panther2k wrote:
Michael570 wrote:
harris447 wrote:
You try to come across as intellgent, but you can’t tell he difference between “their” and “there” and have to “look up” existential theories which don’t exist.
No need to look it up. It’s called Solipsism.
Thanks. Good call, Harris.
Yeah…but YOU idn’t know what you were talking about, did you?
Back to class, son.
Let’s recap:
Strike 1- You were wrong about anyone calling me an idiot.
Strike 2- You call me out for a typo when you can’t tell your ass from a keyboard.
Strike 3- “Existential theories that don’t exist”- oops, actually, they do!
That’s three buddy, you’re already out.
No, someone did call you an idiot: me.
The whole “philosophy 101” thing was cute, but you still stated that “no one can prove anyone exists, man”
Which is the biggest load of freshman year bonghittery I’ve encountered since I saw Pink Floyd at Giants Stadium.
And the fact remains: you had no idea what you were talking about. Stil don’t. Luckily the whole field of philosophy is full of such utter dreck an nonsense, that a “theory” exists for every half-baked ruin of an idea.
You were just playing the odds.
Bell just rang. Go play tag with the other boys and girls. [/quote]
Well, I talked to my teacher and she said you should learn some basic grammar and punctuation before insulting other people’s intelligence. She also said there was a word for what your doing, but I can’t seem to remember it. Oh yeah, IRONY.
Who knew a guy who had an avatar with him holding a sledgehammer would be that insightful!
[quote]PGA wrote:
Who knew a guy who had an avatar with him holding a sledgehammer would be that insightful![/quote]
You talkin’ about me? Haha!
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
PGA wrote:
Who knew a guy who had an avatar with him holding a sledgehammer would be that insightful!
You talkin’ about me? Haha!
[/quote]
Is there a sledgehammer somewhere in there?
That avatar looks like Wolverine getting up from the can.
[quote]pookie wrote:
Is there a sledgehammer somewhere in there?
That avatar looks like Wolverine getting up from the can.
[/quote]
My previous avatar, Pook. It had a picture of a muddy, somewhat skinnier me holding a sledgehammer, having just pulverized a hunk of granite in the rain. Our friend PGA evidently has a good memory.
Just for you, Pookie, here’s the old avatar. This was from nearly a year ago. I’ve become much more insightful since then.
[quote]Digital Chainsaw wrote:
What who was saying?
[/quote]
Jesus
Sorry poor choice of words. The faith that he was talking about was the faith that God can do all things
Show me where I took something out of context.
You saying you did doesn’t make it so either.
No you went quote mining and took the words out of context.
I explained above it was a poor choice of words
[quote]Digital Chainsaw wrote:
And according to what you call Scripture, one who does is a heretic. You can’t pick and choose the parts you want to follow
[/quote]
I’m not. I just understand the text better than you do. Since you are so certain then why don’t you explain to me why Paul had to see Jesus to be converted?
I seem to be continuously searching for more answers. So no I am not as you describe. I am very content with my journey. I have found many things re-affirmed, and many thoughts totally changed.
Faith as you described it would mean I would be wrong for searching for answers. My version of faith, and the Bible I read says the opposite. As proof from the thousand of times where God allows people to ask for proof.
[quote]
Ahh, the power of denial is eternal…[/quote]
The only one in denial is you…
you throw out one verse that you took out of context, and suddenly you are a Bible scholar.
Son you should sit down while the big boys have this discussion. When you learn exegessis, and hermanuetics then you can come back to the big boys table.
[quote]haney wrote:
Son you should sit down while the big boys have this discussion. When you learn exegessis, and hermanuetics then you can come back to the big boys table.
[/quote]
Do you mean exegesis and hermeneutics?
[quote]panther2k wrote:
harris447 wrote:
panther2k wrote:
harris447 wrote:
panther2k wrote:
Michael570 wrote:
harris447 wrote:
You try to come across as intellgent, but you can’t tell he difference between “their” and “there” and have to “look up” existential theories which don’t exist.
No need to look it up. It’s called Solipsism.
Thanks. Good call, Harris.
Yeah…but YOU idn’t know what you were talking about, did you?
Back to class, son.
Let’s recap:
Strike 1- You were wrong about anyone calling me an idiot.
Strike 2- You call me out for a typo when you can’t tell your ass from a keyboard.
Strike 3- “Existential theories that don’t exist”- oops, actually, they do!
That’s three buddy, you’re already out.
No, someone did call you an idiot: me.
The whole “philosophy 101” thing was cute, but you still stated that “no one can prove anyone exists, man”
Which is the biggest load of freshman year bonghittery I’ve encountered since I saw Pink Floyd at Giants Stadium.
And the fact remains: you had no idea what you were talking about. Stil don’t. Luckily the whole field of philosophy is full of such utter dreck an nonsense, that a “theory” exists for every half-baked ruin of an idea.
You were just playing the odds.
Bell just rang. Go play tag with the other boys and girls.
Well, I talked to my teacher and she said you should learn some basic grammar and punctuation before insulting other people’s intelligence. She also said there was a word for what your doing, but I can’t seem to remember it. Oh yeah, IRONY.
[/quote]
The definition of ‘irony’ is correcting someone else’s (proper) grammar while steadfastly refusing to learn the difference between “your” and “you’re”.
That was funny, actually.
Care to try again, son?
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
haney wrote:
Son you should sit down while the big boys have this discussion. When you learn exegessis, and hermanuetics then you can come back to the big boys table.
Do you mean exegesis and hermeneutics?
[/quote]
yeah, I was in a hurry to leave, so I didn’t bother with a spell check.
Do you have any experience with either?
[quote]haney wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
haney wrote:
Son you should sit down while the big boys have this discussion. When you learn exegessis, and hermanuetics then you can come back to the big boys table.
Do you mean exegesis and hermeneutics?
yeah, I was in a hurry to leave, so I didn’t bother with a spell check.
Do you have any experience with either?
[/quote]
Oh, you know, I dabble a bit. I’m more of a linguist than a theologian, and while my Koine, Hebrew and Aramaic are certainly not up to what they should be to call myself a “bible scholar”, I do enjoy comparing the generally accepted English translations with the original texts, to have a chuckle at the discrepancies.
For instance, in John 20:29 (which I quoted above, and you rebutted), the original Greek says “makarioi oi me idontes kai pisteusantes” (literally “happy [are] they who see and [yet] believe”), which uses the same word “makarion” as in Acts 20:35: “makarion estin didonai mallon e lambanein” (“happier it is giving than receiving”).
The word makar was translated into the Latin Vulgate as “beatus”, which was then rendered “blessed” in English, implying a specific blessing from God.
But the original meaning of makar, which also appears in Homer, is “happy”. The Olympian gods in the Iliad are described as “makares”, free from care, toil, or grief. A more apt translation would be “lucky”, and indeed, the word “happy” was synonymous with “lucky” in Shakespeare’s time.
So perhaps what Jesus meant in John 20:29 is that you’ll be lucky (and perhaps even happy) if you can believe without question, because that will save you from the toil of critical thinking, and the grief of self-doubt.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
haney wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
haney wrote:
Son you should sit down while the big boys have this discussion. When you learn exegessis, and hermanuetics then you can come back to the big boys table.
Do you mean exegesis and hermeneutics?
yeah, I was in a hurry to leave, so I didn’t bother with a spell check.
Do you have any experience with either?
Oh, you know, I dabble a bit. I’m more of a linguist than a theologian, and while my Koine, Hebrew and Aramaic are certainly not up to what they should be to call myself a “bible scholar”, I do enjoy comparing the generally accepted English translations with the original texts, to have a chuckle at the discrepancies.
For instance, in John 20:29 (which I quoted above, and you rebutted), the original Greek says “makarioi oi me idontes kai pisteusantes” (literally “happy [are] they who see and [yet] believe”), which uses the same word “makarion” as in Acts 20:35: “makarion estin didonai mallon e lambanein” (“happier it is giving than receiving”).
The word makar was translated into the Latin Vulgate as “beatus”, which was then rendered “blessed” in English, implying a specific blessing from God.
But the original meaning of makar, which also appears in Homer, is “happy”. The Olympian gods in the Iliad are described as “makares”, free from care, toil, or grief. A more apt translation would be “lucky”, and indeed, the word “happy” was synonymous with “lucky” in Shakespeare’s time.
So perhaps what Jesus meant in John 20:29 is that you’ll be lucky (and perhaps even happy) if you can believe without question, because that will save you from the toil of critical thinking, and the grief of self-doubt. [/quote]
Not bad. Had you rebutted, my rebuttal I would have probably gone to the greek next…
I admit I have changed many of my presupposition about the Bible by just going to the original text.
Perhaps we can have a few interesting conversations about other topics if you are up to it.