Jul -- General Chat: So uh...Moses was high?

Kles

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Posted on 03-07-08 10:03:20 AM

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Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Kles
I don't think that most atheists (or non-Christians in general) are very intimately familiar with the Bible, though.
Eh, the Bible is the best book one could read to become an atheist. I'll go as far as saying most atheists know more about the Bible than christians do.

Simply reading the Bible is not the same as becoming "intimately familiar" with it.

Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Kles
and if there's anything that threatens the safety and security of that emotion, the mind will rationalize in every way possible to disregard those other "facts" and not analyze it based on rationality.
That's why I still say religion is a dangerous disease that should be treated accordingly.

This is spooky. Religion is not the dangerous disease, dogma is. While religion is full of dogma and as such has aspects of the "dangerous disease," religion is not the sole offender of this. You'd be surprised at how equally dogmatic "atheist skeptics" are.

Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Kles
This goes for not only the theists but the atheists. You'd be surprised at how many "open-minded atheist skeptics" are actually more mentally shut out than the theists they dog on.
I'm proud to say I'm a close-minded atheist. Simply because the chance of some kind of God existing is almost 0.

Tsk tsk. There's not much I can say to this, really. I used to personally philosophize the same thing, but lately, I've opened my mind up to "God" more. I still don't believe "it" exists (although a "cosmic consciousness," I'm not as skeptical about, I wouldn't call that "God" if such a thing existed). Regardless, being proud about being closed minded about anything, even a concept that you clearly regard as ridiculous, is foolish. Remember, scientists once regarded heavier-than-air flight as utterly ridiculous, and the light bulb was regarded once as "completely idiotic."

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Posted on 03-07-08 01:31:52 PM

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Originally posted by Tanks
There's always an opposite viewpoint. And no one ever said you HAD to follow the "truth". It's your choice.

Uh, you DO realize that if it was proven the existance of any given god, 99% of atheists would believe it, correct? Atheism isn't a bunch of nonbelievers just to look cool; it's because it doesn't make sense to believe without proof.

Originally posted by Tanks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Greco-Roman_sources

Even the Romans spoke of "the one named Jesus." Ones who didn't even really give a crap, they just used him as a time period marker in history. The typical Roman way of saying, "During this time there was a guy who did this, but back to my story."

You do realize Jesus is a mix of quite a number of pagan gods, right? That fact alone makes me doubt he was even called Jesus if he existed in the first place.

Originally posted by Kles
Simply reading the Bible is not the same as becoming "intimately familiar" with it.

Ok, let me rephrase: I'll go as far as saying most atheists are more "intimately familiar" with the Bible than christians are.

Originally posted by Kles
This is spooky. Religion is not the dangerous disease, dogma is. While religion is full of dogma and as such has aspects of the "dangerous disease," religion is not the sole offender of this.

I disagree.

Originally posted by Kles
You'd be surprised at how equally dogmatic "atheist skeptics" are.

Examples please.

Originally posted by Kles
I used to personally philosophize the same thing, but lately, I've opened my mind up to "God" more. I still don't believe "it" exists (although a "cosmic consciousness," I'm not as skeptical about, I wouldn't call that "God" if such a thing existed).

A tendency I've began to notice is that of atheists becoming agnostics. Really sad imo, I consider agnostics to be half-assed atheists afraid of god(s) (aka atheists without balls).

Originally posted by Kles
Regardless, being proud about being closed minded about anything, even a concept that you clearly regard as ridiculous, is foolish.

I don't think so. I don't think you or I should be dictating what people should be allowed to think so I'll leave it at that.

Originally posted by Kles
Remember, scientists once regarded heavier-than-air flight as utterly ridiculous, and the light bulb was regarded once as "completely idiotic."

There was also a time when the lightings were sent by Zeus and deaths were handled by Anubis. Sadly (or not), religious oppression got rid of such beliefs and science proved they could not be true. If it can happen to pagan religions, I wonder why christianity is invincible to it.

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Posted on 03-07-08 01:54:51 PM (last edited by Kles at 03-07-08 11:00 AM)

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Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Kles
Simply reading the Bible is not the same as becoming "intimately familiar" with it.
Ok, let me rephrase: I'll go as far as saying most atheists are more "intimately familiar" with the Bible than christians are.

Maybe laypeople who argue, but I'm still not sure about it. Regardless, this is opinion versus opinion so there's not much to say here.

Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Kles
This is spooky. Religion is not the dangerous disease, dogma is. While religion is full of dogma and as such has aspects of the "dangerous disease," religion is not the sole offender of this.
I disagree.

About what point?

Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Kles
You'd be surprised at how equally dogmatic "atheist skeptics" are.
Examples please.

"Atheist skeptics" tend to automatically eschew anything that doesn't comply with their world view. Stuart Hameroff presented at Beyond Belief on his and Roger Penrose's theory of mind, which was firmly grounded in scientific theory and is still very plausible. However, it could be interpreted to have "spiritual" aspects which is what Hameroff spoke about. The atheist skeptics freaked out about this theory, even though it's scientifically plausible. See here. Hameroff has been involved in some of "religious" things involving the theory, but Sir Roger Penrose (who is a leading theoretical physicist) is the one who formulated the majority of the theory and as such, the theory should not be taken out just because of its possible "spiritual-like" links, and yet the popular atheist skeptic movement bashed it purely because it's opposite to their beliefs of what's popular and not.

There have also been empirical studies on reincarnation. "Atheist skeptics" tend to simply attack them with theories like fraud, "cryptoamnesia" or something else, because they're just so damned certain that reincarnation is impossible that they won't honestly investigate the evidence. Perhaps in some cases, fraud, subconscious fantasizing or other things like this are the most likely explanations, but taken on the whole and the strongest cases, it becomes harder and harder to deny the conclusion that, at least some people, are capable of reincarnation (if you're curious about it, look up the books by Ian Stevenson).

Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Kles
I used to personally philosophize the same thing, but lately, I've opened my mind up to "God" more. I still don't believe "it" exists (although a "cosmic consciousness," I'm not as skeptical about, I wouldn't call that "God" if such a thing existed).
A tendency I've began to notice is that of atheists becoming agnostics. Really sad imo, I consider agnostics to be half-assed atheists afraid of god(s) (aka atheists without balls).

Uhhhh, no, I don't think so. I think it's just intellectually dishonest to actively disbelieve in a deity when there is no strong evidence that such a thing can't exist. The problem is that the deity hypothesis is sort of non-falsifiable. I doubt fear is the leading reason, although admittedly I think fear is a strong component in beliefs of any type - see my previous post about emotional reasoning.

Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Kles
Regardless, being proud about being closed minded about anything, even a concept that you clearly regard as ridiculous, is foolish.
I don't think so. I don't think you or I should be dictating what people should be allowed to think so I'll leave it at that.

I wasn't dictating how I feel you should be, I was just expressing my opinion. I could never feel comfortable willingly knowing I shut my mind off to a possibility of something ever existing, no matter how unlikely.

Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Kles
Remember, scientists once regarded heavier-than-air flight as utterly ridiculous, and the light bulb was regarded once as "completely idiotic."
There was also a time when the lightings were sent by Zeus and deaths were handled by Anubis. Sadly (or not), religious oppression got rid of such beliefs and science proved they could not be true. If it can happen to pagan religions, I wonder why christianity is invincible to it.

Science has not proven that they can not be true, just that they are extremely unlikely. I mean, I obviously don't believe that these things are true because there's no evidence for them, but as I said before, don't say that something is impossible because "Science proved they cannot be true." Classical physics "proved" a lot of things that quantum physics are showing to be untrue. While obviously I don't think there's an anthropomorphic dog-like species who handles death, it also hasn't been disproven. You can't prove the null hypothesis.

I mean, obviously I'm being a tightwad here. With reasonable practicality, we can say that Anubis doesn't exist. We cannot, however, say that "Science has proven that Anubis or Zeus cannot exist."

Also, might I add that your statement doesn't necessarily follow my original statement. My statement is saying that people proposed scientific theories that were shot down as completely ridiculous by the intellectuals of the time, where your statement is saying that folklore beliefs were shown by science to be untrue. It's not the same thing.

And as for Christianity not being "immune' to the destruction through science, I would argue that it is several orders of magnitude more resistant to it than the pagan religions purely by sheer followers - around 20% of the world's population believes these things to be true, compared to marginal amounts of pagan religions. You're not going to destroy things like that are believed by so many people. Again, see my post on why it's about emotions and not facts.

God damn it, I need to work on being more coherent, I think.

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Posted on 03-07-08 08:24:48 PM

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Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Tanks
There's always an opposite viewpoint. And no one ever said you HAD to follow the "truth". It's your choice.
Uh, you DO realize that if it was proven the existance of any given god, 99% of atheists would believe it, correct? Atheism isn't a bunch of nonbelievers just to look cool; it's because it doesn't make sense to believe without proof.

Ok, I can believe that. But that's just a statement. Are you going to rebut what I originally said?

Originally posted by Tanks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus#Greco-Roman_sources

Even the Romans spoke of "the one named Jesus." Ones who didn't even really give a crap, they just used him as a time period marker in history. The typical Roman way of saying, "During this time there was a guy who did this, but back to my story."

You do realize Jesus is a mix of quite a number of pagan gods, right? That fact alone makes me doubt he was even called Jesus if he existed in the first place.

You're denying scientific finds my friend. OH WAIT! DID I JUST SAY SCIENCE! Yes I did. Your beloved science, through the power of ARCHEOLOGY found these texts of ancient Roman citizens who wrote these. Judging by your response, it seems to me you completely ignored what I posted there. So I'll have to explain it myself.

I'll use the guy I'm most familiar with. Josephus. Unfortunately the quote on Wikipedia is the bad one so I wouldn't trust it to much. Pretty much he'd follow Jesus around and try to prove him wrong on many subjects. I do not know of the outcome. But seriously, if you're going to ignore archeological finds, and just toss out a statement with no evidence, you're just being plain ignorant, as Kles has already said about you.

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Posted on 03-07-08 11:28:18 PM

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Oh my god, not that- the whole "Jesus was a number of pagan gods" thing? I've heard about that book- as I recall, nearly all of his ideas were based on complete distortions of pagan god mystery religions- most blatantly around the cult of Osiris...

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Posted on 03-07-08 11:48:45 PM

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Originally posted by Imajin
Oh my god, not that- the whole "Jesus was a number of pagan gods" thing? I've heard about that book- as I recall, nearly all of his ideas were based on complete distortions of pagan god mystery religions- most blatantly around the cult of Osiris...

Yea, that's what he showed me in IRC. Most of it is baseless mish-mosh. The one that did catch my was the Christianity - Krishna comparisons. I'm going to look into it later on. It's actually pretty interesting.

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Posted on 03-08-08 11:56:47 PM

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Hm, Krishna? Interesting- a lot of "comparative religions" stuff I tend to get a bit skeptical of, not only because of my natural pro-Christian bias (being Christian and all), but also because a surprisingly large amount of what we know about paganism is guesswork from inscriptions. Some myths survive in texts, but all in all Christianity did a decent job eradicating the competition (which is a shame from quite a few perspectives) This is especially true with the mystery religions, which were already predicated on secrecy, so much of what we know are rumors written by people who knew other people in the cult or from much later Christian sources that could easily just be making things up to make pagans look bad. But Krishna is interesting because that's not the European tradition- Hinduism survived, so we have a lot more texts there, though they often get ignored by Westerners. That might be worth looking into just out of curiosity.

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Posted on 03-13-08 02:12:30 AM

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we just need to start bashing other shit like evolution the person(s) that said this was prolly on LSD or some acid this is so stupid.

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Posted on 03-13-08 02:16:31 AM

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Actually, micro evolution has pretty much been proven true. However macro evolution... well... good luck with that...

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Posted on 03-13-08 06:10:15 PM

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Not going to reply to Imajin's arguement; it's pointless to argue with someone who believes pagan religions are guesswork and the bible wasn't a manipulated book.

Originally posted by Randy53215
we just need to start bashing other shit like evolution the person(s) that said this was prolly on LSD or some acid this is so stupid.

Yeah except evolution is a scientific theory.
Keyword: science

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Posted on 03-13-08 06:19:51 PM

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Originally posted by Kagome
Originally posted by Shion
Science itself has to admit to that one, since there's no fully provable take on what started the universe, for example...
Sorry sir, you're wrong. 2 centuries ago we didn't know much about eletromagnetism or the atom, and look at it now. Just because we don't know about something now it doesn't mean we never will. Science evolves. In Gurren Lagann terms (sorry to compare it but I had to) science uses Spiral power while religion is just an UnSpiral being...

And two centuries ago we didn't have microwaves but that's besides the point - that still doesn't come up with a proven theory on universal creation. As far as I've got on the subject, there HASN'T been one...it's all faith-based that was 'proven' given what we believe to be scientific fact. Kles re-pointed that out after I did so in my initial post.

Not saying it's wrong or right...but I've been through Philosophy; I know how people can take any given point, run with it, prove it to their belief to be wholly true and then have someone turn around and say it's completely false.

Although...we might want to cut the whole 'let's kick each other around with our religious beliefs' like we always do...when this really wasn't ENTIRELY about them to begin with...it was about someone that say Moses was high...HE WAS HIGH. HIGH! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL ALL YOUR DOGS!

[ahem] ...sorry...

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Kles

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Posted on 03-13-08 07:13:32 PM

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Originally posted by Tanks
Actually, micro evolution has pretty much been proven true. However macro evolution... well... good luck with that...

"Macro evolution" has a lot going for it. Sure, there are weaknesses in the theory, and "missing links" here and there but just because we can't find links between certain creatures doesn't mean there aren't links between other creatures. Besides, let me pose this: If "micro-evolution" surely exists and can happen within 10 years or so, what happens if a creature "micro-evolves" every 10 years for a million years? It becomes a little easier to imagine such a thing happening.

Having said that, I DO have a problem with "Dawkinsism" - the idea that all evolution comes solely from natural selection is slightly bizarre. The fact that there is rampant altruism between animals (some species even committing suicide for others of their type to get by) seems totally antithesis to pure natural selection. No doubt natural selection plays a role, a big role, but to dismiss things like "group selection" out of hand is really stupid.

And here's a mind-boggling proposal: "Epigenetics" - Epigenetics is effectively Lamarckism in tiny (mostly single-cellular organisms). It's inheritance of traits that is not reflected in the genes. That is COMPLETELY antithesis to what we consider to be evolution/natural selection, and yet scientists have shown it almost certainly exists in very tiny creatures (although not big creatures).

We're not as smart as we think we are. Not even close.

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BlackNemesis13
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Posted on 03-14-08 12:35:11 AM

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Originally posted by Kagome
Yeah except evolution is a scientific theory.
Keyword: science

Keyword: theory

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Posted on 03-14-08 12:40:19 AM

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Originally posted by Kagome
Not going to reply to Imajin's arguement; it's pointless to argue with someone who believes pagan religions are guesswork and the bible wasn't a manipulated book.

Hm? I think you're misinterpreting my views to make me seem more insane that I am, of course the Bible is a manipulated work- it doesn't take a genius to realize that large parts of the historical books (this is a common name for a section of the Bible) are almost certainly written to clearly bias towards the Kingdom of Judah- especially when compared with those records we have of the political environment in those times show a different story... which lends suspicion onto a lot of the David story as well. I also have some suspicions about the entire Book of Deuteronomy, which is described as being miraculously found by some king behind a temple wall- I wonder if said king didn't just have his scribes write something up and then say it was from Moses and found in the temple to promote his new laws. Anything as old as the Bible is going to get corrupted just in transition as well- I don't pretend that it's some perfect word passed down from God's lips and never changed at all, that would be silly.

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Kles

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Posted on 03-14-08 03:55:56 AM

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Originally posted by BlackNemesis13
Originally posted by Kagome
Yeah except evolution is a scientific theory.
Keyword: science

Keyword: theory

Theory is a word used very differently in a scientific context. While a layperson will use the word theory to mean something as simple as a random guess, in science, a theory is testable, falsifiable and a proposed explanation of the observed facts.

Quantum theory is still a theory, but no one denies quantum effects anymore.

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Posted on 03-14-08 08:00:54 AM

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Originally posted by Kles
Theory is a word used very differently in a scientific context. While a layperson will use the word theory to mean something as simple as a random guess, in science, a theory is testable, falsifiable and a proposed explanation of the observed facts.

I completely agree with you.

My point was just that even though it is a scientific theory, it is still a theory, and thus not 100% proven.

Meaning that even though it may be the most plausible explanation at the current time, and is consistently supported by current scientific evidence, to the point even where most people just assume the "scientific theory" to be fact, it is still not fact. It is as you said, a proposed explanation of the observed facts. A proposed explanation that is subject to change as new evidence is discovered that could either revise and improve said theory or even completely disprove it.

I'm sure there are other examples of this, but off the top of my head I seem to remember hearing something on PBS that said that scientists are already starting to find flaws with our current theory of gravitation. Of course they may have simply been discussing how while our current theory of gravitaion works for astronomic physics, it completely falls apart at the subatomic level. But even that is enough to show that our current theory of gravitation only explains gravitation under certain circumstances when it was previously believed to be a "proven" theory for all gravitational behavior. And thus, we were reminded once more that our current understanding of gravitation is not perfect 100% scientifically proven fact, but a theory subject to evolve over time. It is precisely because science evolves that we can never call our current scientific understanding of the world 100% proven.

Science has always been more about disproving things than it is about proving things right anyway. So for this reason, I have this to say to Kagome: If you choose to believe that a God does not exist unless one is ever 100% scientifically proven to exist, that's your decision, and I'm sure you have perfectly valid reasons for arriving at that conclusion. But personally I decide to believe in the christian God until he is 100% scientifically disproven to exist. That is my personal decision, and I, and I'm sure others who believe the same, have perfectly valid reasons for arriving at that conclusion as well. So is either decision really so irrational? For if one is, then so must the other. Since the existence of a God is neither proven nor disproven, each of us is essentially making a leap of faith in terms of what we choose to believe.

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