Science vs. Faith

[_Sethbag]

I find it to be much more fascinating when considered as a purely cultural artifact than it ever was as repository of God's teachings.

If that was true, you'd be hip deep in in historical and critical analysis. But you're not, and Seth just argued against ever having to do that.

I just argued against ever having to do that as a way of understanding The Truth about God.

In other words, I reject as of very low probability that a God would really exist, would want us all to know about him/her/it, and then would set up the channels of communication of this knowledge to us in such a way that being hip deep in historical and critical analysis, and let me add learning ancient languages so one can read texts in their original language, and so forth, were the only way this Truth could ever be learned and understood by anyone.

[_Sethbag]

Why do you keep insisting that those of us who criticize the Bible are doing so out of ignorance?

Yes, women were property, no argument there. She had to marry her rapist, because she was considered damaged goods. In the ancient near east, marriage = sex. Surely, you are not inserting you’re modern anachronistic moral reasoning into a text that couldn’t even conceive of it, yes?

There's the problem. The God that modern folks in our era are teaching actually exists apparently thought that the rapist paying the raped woman's father off, and marrying her, was perfectly fine. Or, at the very least, this is what the tribal goat herders of 3000 years ago may have thought that their God thought.

I have no problem with the idea that this was acceptable morality among the ancient tribal goat herders of Palestine 3000 years ago. It may well have been. And I'm sure that in-depth historical and cultural study could reveal whether, and how, and to what extent you are right.

But that knowledge still doesn't convince me that this represents what the God people say exists wants me to know, or wants me to use as a guide to correct morality, or whatever. This stuff is part of what people say is "God's Word", and yet the entire story contributes more to a feeling that this can't be the "Word" of anything like the loving and fair and righteous God people say exists.

[_MrStakhanovite]

There's the problem.

That is only a problem for someone who believes that very passage was dictated by God, and preserved by God for the express purpose of being in place forever.

Now…How many Christians and Jews believe that?

[_Sethbag]

There's the problem.

That is only a problem for someone who believes that very passage was dictated by God, and preserved by God for the express purpose of being in place forever.

Now…How many Christians and Jews believe that?

First off, I can't speak for the Jews at all, but a great many Christians, probably tens of millions of them in the US alone, do in fact believe that.

Secondly, once you get away from the "fundamentalist" approach to scripture that apologists like to decry, there's the problem that the more "crap" one allows the Bible to include, the harder it is to tell apart from all the other manmade "crap" out there, and the less reasonable it becomes to assert that this is the method that a loving and kind God, who really wants us to know the truth about him, would use that as his method of communicating said truths to us.

It is a fact probably all of us have experienced in our relations with others, that the more educated a person is, the less likely they are to take a great many of the stories in the Bible seriously. Now, how reasonable does it sound to you that God would set up his means of communicating his Truth to us in such a way as to actually make it harder for a person to believe his Word the more real knowledge he or she aquires? One almost has to posit a God who sets the smart people up for failure.

[_Chap]

(What is the Greek for 'dawkfag'?).

σκατοϕάγος

(But you don't like me posting Greek, remember?)

Since at the time I was engaged in a comparison between Socrates and Mr S. (I mean, it just leaps to the mind, doesn't it?), I wondered what Socrates could have said that would have been the equivalent of one of Mr. S.'s terms of abuse, 'dawkfag'. Since I was, taking my words literally, asking for some Greek to fill out my fantasy, how could I have been offended by receiving a suggestion? (Although, as I hope you can see, my question was not so much a linguistic query as a way of drawing attention to the fact that Socrates does not usually seem to address his opponents using abusive language).

My objection in the previous thread was to your taking a perfectly comprehensible English sentence like 'I do not suffer fools or god-bashers gladly', and changing it into the pretentious 'I do not suffer fools or theomachoi gladly.' I commented then:

What the heck is the point of saying 'God-fighters' in Greek?

To those who know Greek it adds nothing. To those who don't know Greek it adds nothing.

So why do it?

My comment stands.

(On your suggestion 'σκατοϕάγος' for dawkfag: I don't think that it is very good, since the first half of the word comes from the root 'excrement', which is not in the original, and although the second half mimics the sound of 'fag' it comes from a verb meaning 'eat', and has no sense of 'homosexual'. There is no analog of "Dawkins" at all so far as I can see. But I really don't mind very much either way, and I am in any case certainly not an expert scholar in the field of ancient Greek.)

[_Panopticon]

Because that would not be an accurate statement.

Although I did conclude, as part of my conclusion that God probably doesn't exist, that the Bible is also extremely unlikely to be the "Word" to us of any God, should a God in fact exist. And I also concluded that I had, as yet, not seen any other religions in the world whose arguments, so far as I had been exposed to them, were fundamentally any better.

I will readily admit that this is a sort of inductive argument on my part. I've seen X number of religious claims, and they've all failed, therefore it's unlikely that the X+1th claim would do any better. Part of my justification for this is that if a really True claim about God really did exist, I would probably have been exposed to it already, and since I haven't, it probably doesn't. In other words, I've kept my eyes open enough for religious arguments over my last 43 years, and seen so many bogus religious arguments, that if a real, legitimately true argument were in fact out there, I should have seen it by now.

Again, I readily agree that this is an assumption on my part. The best we can do in this area, in my opinion, is to deal in probabilities. And at this point I'm willing to accept that the probability that a real Truth about a God who actually does exist is A) out there still, and B) I just haven't seen it yet, I estimate to be quite low. A C) argument, that I have actually seen it, but didn't understand it, and therefore falsely concluded that it was a bad argument, is a possibility I acknowledge. There's not much I can do about C) other than what I already do, which is to keep my mind open and be willing to adjust fire upon receipt of new and better argument and evidence.

Hey. We are the same age. I was a believer until 13 years ago. My loss of faith came because of the failure of Moroni's promise, which led me to question Mormonism and ultimately the Bible and Christianity.

In college, I took several classes on comparative religion. While I can't say that I am familiar with every religion, I do believe I have studied the faiths of about 99% of the world's population. In all of my study, nothing has led me to believe that they are closer to knowing the "Truth" than Mormons.

Also, when you have actually studied other religions, you see how the "all roads" theory doesn't work. The dogmas are often contradictory. One religion requires what another prohibits.

If God is the author of such confusion (by failing to provide clear guidance), he does not deserve to be worshiped.

[_MrStakhanovite]

First off, I can't speak for the Jews at all, but a great many Christians, probably tens of millions of them in the US alone, do in fact believe that.

What denomination(s)?

[_MrStakhanovite]

I don't want to derail this thread, but I will say that the point I understand Stak to be making is that if you want to criticize Christianity you should do it on its own terms. In order to do that, you have to learn the real history of the real texts, not the made-up history invented by Joseph Smith. I don't understand why that is such a controversial statement.

Mormon habits are hard to break.

[_Some Schmo]

(What is the Greek for 'dawkfag'?).

σκατοϕάγος

(But you don't like me posting Greek, remember?)

You can take the boy out of Greece, but you can't take the Greek out of the boy (not until they're done, anyway...)

[_honorentheos]

I don't want to derail this thread, but I will say that the point I understand Stak to be making is that if you want to criticize Christianity you should do it on its own terms. In order to do that, you have to learn the real history of the real texts, not the made-up history invented by Joseph Smith. I don't understand why that is such a controversial statement.

Mormon habits are hard to break.

You know, Stak, it's at times like this I find myself wondering why Christianity gets a pass despite having core concepts developed from a misuse of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (not to mention the blatant butt-rape of Jewish prophecy perpetrated by the author of Matthew to make his view of Jesus fit the apocalyptic Messiah) or Paul's behavior as proto-Joseph Smith (if you really think about it replacing Christianity with Judaism)...