Religious belief

[Buster's Uncle]

...Thus my remarks about being broken of my habit of looking for good arguments.  Nerds don't listen, they don't learn and they don't know when they're beat - at which point it becomes a Molly Bloom-esque exercise of mutual trolling if it keeps up.  Mature conversation between people who may not agree but aren't trying to "win" is better...


I suppose much of it rests on what definition of Religion one intends; I'm certainly not trying to just point and shout "Hypocrite!"  I'm more making the point that atheism is inherently a belief about a spiritual matter - that opinion not actually meeting a less casual definition involving organization, dogma beyond a flat refusal to dignify the Flying Spaghetti Monster with acknowledging any possibility of its existence, leadership/priesthood, meetings, meeting halls - or most of the usual things one looks for in a religion.

Still, it's a belief, a take-no-prisoners dogmatic belief about a spiritual matter, and it's a belief that there's nothing despite the logical impossibility of proving a negative.  I'm an agnostic, which means I don't think I have the answers; but a spiritual belief in the mysterious and even improvable is faith, and faith is the heart of religion, if only millions of little one-person religions.


Me?  I first said that line about having hard questions for God in February to an atheist visitor who called my attention to just how many churches one can see along the main roads in my county.  God the Creator in the Bible is terrible, and I would need more than just proof that He is to climb back aboard THAT particular bus.

[Unorthodox]

God the Creator in the Bible is terrible.

How is He so terrible? 

(and why single out the Bible?) 

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm Southern Baptist, have read the Bible cover-to-cover, and talking what I know - I have a four years' perfect Sunday School attendance pin somewhere.

"How is He so terrible?"  What a question.

Try to see how often you can go an entire page in the OT after Adam and Eve are cast out of the garden (for springing God's trap with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil) without God sending a flood, a curse, a plague, opening up the ground and consuming someone into Hell, -at least a(other) muleish demand that He be Worshiped.  Try it.  He's a rough, harsh, demanding my-way-or-the-highway (to Hell) customer, not least to His Chosen People.  It's like the Creator is an innerwebs nerd Who hasn't learned the futility of trying to enforce foolish absolutes.  If the Bible is accurate, God has some 'splaining to do to me, if He wants me.



Why demand worship?

Why make Hell and use it on people?

Why a universe with entropy and being born turning out to be 100% fatal?

Why a universe at all for me to suffer and die in (and I DO suffer)?  I didn't ask to be created and I do not accept Your tests and insistence on worship.

Is anything in Your Book even true?

How are you better than some cruel immortal aspie with reality-altering powers?

Jesus is great and all, but why did You take 13.7 billion years to come up with/implement Mercy?

[Elok]

The answers to those questions will vary greatly depending on one's interpretation of scripture.  Baby on shoulder so can't elaborate well now.  Briefly, my understanding of Orthodox Xian answers: We were created to live in communion w/God and each other, every other life and afterlife is like a tool being damaged by misuse.  Modern idea of man as radically free individual profoundly self-destructive; morality begins not w/rights establishing personal sovereignty but with obligations binding us together.  Bible reflects our growing awareness/sharpening focus of our idea of God centered on culmination in Christ.  Literal truth less important--even in 1 AD logistical flaws in e.g. Noah's ark would have been obvious, that's not the point.  Our whole POV takes some adjustment from dominant Western values and attitudes.  More but am sick of typing one-handed.

[Unorthodox]

I'm Southern Baptist, have read the Bible cover-to-cover, and talking what I know

Cool, guess it's better than talking what you don't know.  A lot of people do when it comes to religion.  As you know, I've researched a little wider than most on the topic. 

As a good southern Baptist, I'm sure you know the OT is figurative at worst, and replaced by the NT at any rate.  To extend your own analogy, complaining the OT is not user friendly is like complaining how bad Windows Vista was.  Who cares, we don't use it any more? 

Why demand worship?

As an artist myself, it's frustrating when people don't acknowledge your work.  It's down right MADDENING when they attribute it to SOMEONE ELSE! 

Why make Hell and use it on people?

Any animal needs a stick and carrot approach to training. 

Why a universe with entropy and being born turning out to be 100% fatal?

Opposition in all things.  I'm too lazy to look up the specific verse.  To live, you have to die.  And to Die is only to live again. 

Why a universe at all for me to suffer and die in (and I DO suffer)?

Without suffering there can be no joy.  Again, too lazy to look it up. 

I didn't ask to be created and I do not accept Your tests and insistence on worship.

This is a presumption.  Not knowing the physics of a soul, you very well may have asked.  I do think God follows the general law of conservation of energy. 

Is anything in Your Book even true?

The book in question was written by monkeys attempting to understand what God was trying to show them.  Portions true, probably.  Stuff lost in translation, certainly. 

How are you better than some cruel immortal aspie with reality-altering powers?

Hm...lessee here...are we really ok with this term?  Really? At least I agreed to stop insulting dogs when referencing my brother's wife. 

Jesus is great and all, but why did You take 13.7 billion years to come up with/implement Mercy?[/b]

A:  Backwards compatible.
B:  Assuming it wasn't always there. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Those are excellent answers, Uno -especially the point about the New Covenant v. Old- but I want His answers, and He needs to do better than giving me doctrine/possible handwaves with which I'm already familiar.

A GOOD Southern Baptist wouldn't even ask the questions - see also the Jimmy Carter thread.

(I also speak a little entry-level Taoism -the basics are something I worked out for myself- if not terribly fluently, and am not hopelessly ignorant about a number of faiths.)



Elok, that's pretty much in detail what I would have told myself back in the day.  I don't know as much about Orthodox as I should, and I'm surprised to hear so much doctrinal agreement - I wouldn't expect that from a Catholic.

Do we have any Catholics here?  Geo, will you stand in until a believing one shows up?

[Unorthodox]

You got a Catholic centric question? 

Like most Christian Faiths (Baptists included, and that takes TALENT), they've given me a one way ticket to the pit/declared me unforgivable, but I can take a stab at a question. 

Could also orovide any by-the-book answers for the LDS church. 

I'm also apt to play devil's advocate whenever I feel. 

[Buster's Uncle]

You go on with your bad devil's advocate self.

No questions, exactly, but interested in those perspectives, especially in reaction to the hard questions.  I think you'll certainly do for LDS, having grown up knowing who Nephi is...

[Unorthodox]

LDS UNO HAT ON

Why demand worship?

God does not.  It is ours to choose what we wish to do.  God promises certain blessings if we do worship, and certain consequences if we do not. 

Why make Hell and use it on people?

There is no Heaven/Hell dichotomy.  Even the murderers and rapists end up in Heaven ( stop short of the Gnostic even the Devil ends up in heaven, though).  There are differing DEGREES of heaven.  To attain the "best" heaven, you need to follow THE RULES.  Entire threads could be spent explaining this alone. 

Why a universe with entropy and being born turning out to be 100% fatal?

The PLAN OF SALVATION (same as above question).  We need to be born in order to get a body as part of our natural progression.  Again, entire threads could be spent.  If you really want.  (I HAVE ACTUALLY TAUGHT CLASSES ON THIS) 

Why a universe at all for me to suffer and die in (and I DO suffer)?  I didn't ask to be created and I do not accept Your tests and insistence on worship.

Again same as above.  Suffering is a natural part of living and having a body/a needed experience to prepare ourselves for heaven.   

You DID ask for this test, and in fact participated in creating the ground rules for the tests

Is anything in Your Book even true?

Yes, but people misinterpret and take it out of context constantly.  Modern day prophets are the primary source for the current Word of God - scripture is still being written.   

How are you better than some cruel immortal aspie with reality-altering powers?

List of rules with rewards and consequences. 
God does not alter reality.

Jesus is great and all, but why did You take 13.7 billion years to come up with/implement Mercy?[/b]

The world took a while to get ready for Jesus.  Took some time to make man, took some time for man to be ready.  Heck, we had to stop eating each other and learning thou shalt not kill before we were ready for Love One Another stuff. 

[/hat]

[Valka]

The world took a while to get ready for Jesus.  Took some time to make man, took some time for man to be ready.  Heck, we had to stop eating each other and learning thou shalt not kill before we were ready for Love One Another stuff.

*glances at news headlines, wonders when the "thou shalt not kill" stuff will finally be learned*

I don't think the part about not killing has sunk in yet...

[Dio]

The world took a while to get ready for Jesus.  Took some time to make man, took some time for man to be ready.  Heck, we had to stop eating each other and learning thou shalt not kill before we were ready for Love One Another stuff.

*glances at news headlines, wonders when the "thou shalt not kill" will finally be learned*

I don't think the part about not killing has sunk in yet...

That was similiar to the thought that went through my head  .

[Unorthodox]

The world took a while to get ready for Jesus.  Took some time to make man, took some time for man to be ready.  Heck, we had to stop eating each other and learning thou shalt not kill before we were ready for Love One Another stuff.

*glances at news headlines, wonders when the "thou shalt not kill" stuff will finally be learned*

Sadly, individuals still struggle with the concept, yes.  However, Society as a whole has accepted thou shalt not kill as a standard.  OT times, that was not entirely the case.  Killing and even human sacrifice were common, and even accepted.   

This crosses 90% of the religions, too (there ARE exceptions, but they are generally tribal in nature).  And ALL the major religions.  Yeah, you can find skewed perspectives to allow killing, but they ALL have a version of thou shalt not kill. 


I've long been of an opinion the world would be better off if people actually lived according to their religions. 

[Buster's Uncle]

(EDIT: I found the thread where it started, and there's the background to why I was interested in proving them as denied the foundational importance of the Bible in western culture and history were actually arguing religion and not my thesis at all.  -Which I still conclude says something about where the atheists in question were coming from, speaking of who's rational and who's not.   http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/showthread.php?2745-Lord-of-the-Rings  -You can skip to the last post at the bottom of page two.)

Specifically on atheism, to save having to rehash arguments extended there:  http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/showthread.php?2795-The-required-reading-list

My assertion that the Bible was a Foundational Document in western history (that any truly educated western person has to know reasonably well or be ignorant) mutated the topic wildly into a vigorous argument between friends holding some mutual respect (that last being key to understanding the level of manners displayed, yet it still being considered courteous by Penry).  ISTR that I anticipated it happening, and they totally proved a point I meant to prove by letting them turn it into an argument about religion, but I've yet to find the thread where the discussion actually originated to refresh my memory...

If I made the point about passionate belief in an improvable negative -that you can't, logically, prove a negative, so it doesn't make sense to be so sure as Maniac is- I haven't seen it yet.  Probably in the previous thread.

[Buster's Uncle]

Addendum:  Ali sent me an EXTREMELY disrespectful PM when she bowed out.  What's on the page is a pretty cool argument, but not the entire story...

[Elok]

Elok, that's pretty much in detail what I would have told myself back in the day.  I don't know as much about Orthodox as I should, and I'm surprised to hear so much doctrinal agreement - I wouldn't expect that from a Catholic.

We resemble the Catholics insofar as they are the nearest spot to us on the family tree of Christianity.  We split from them more than a thousand years ago, and have grown in rather different directions from them and Western Christianity in general.  We resemble them more than we resemble Southern Baptists, but the similarities can be misleading.  Our conception of sin, for example; we see it more as an illness to be cured than a crime to be punished.  That shapes our whole attitude to salvation.  No satisfaction theory of atonement--apparently some guy named Anselm of Canterbury came up with that around the time of the final split.  We don't do guilt nearly as much as the RCC does either.  The purpose of an Orthodox life is theosis, reunion with God, which sounds almost Hindu to a casual Western learner (it's derived primarily from "partakers of the Divine nature" in 2 Peter).