>>No, you're also saying that that particular verse trumps all others.
Then you're making the same mistake that he did, which is to say that you didn't know that the Bible itself says what is the most important verse. Which is what I was paraphrasing.
>>If all Christians really did just love god and treat others as they'd like to be treated themselves, we atheists wouldn't have much of a problem wih them, other than feeling sorry for adults who still literally believed in fairy tales.
Sure, I agree with you.
And if atheists simply stuck with the "we don't know why we came here" attitude, instead of the "...but we also know that it absolutely, positively couldn't have been made by a God of some sort" (as the "fairy tale" bit always goes) then I'd have less of a problem with them. (Not that I do very much, mind you. I'd say the majority of my friends are atheists.)
>>Except according to the new laws, homosexuality is still a no-no. Fornication of any kind for that matter, outside of God's original natural plan (1 man and 1 woman married together) is supposed to be avoided. But hey, if all the non-religious folks are okay with it, go ahead and ignore that stuff.
Fornication is a word that means extramarital sex, right?
Unfortunately for fundies who always point to this word, it is a modern invention. There's no prohibition in the Bible on extramarital sex other than adultery. The word translated as "fornication" is pornea, which is sort of a catchall for sexual immorality. It is enumerated in several places as being adultery, bestiality, and incest.
You mean the document I just quoted to you? You recognize that one?
>>How does it compare the the Ten Commandments?
How does it compare to the Declaration of Independence?
What was the Declaration of Independence based on? Enlightenment philosophy, which created the theory of Natural and Inalienable Rights. Where did this philosophy come from? Christianity. God is the ultimate source of human dignity and inalienable rights.
Re-read the preamble to the UN Declaration of Human Rights keeping that in mind. It'll enlighten you, pun intended. Think about *why* we believe certain things are important.
>>Can we not just love others without bringing the magic pixie into it?
Without God, the above chain of reasoning would fall apart. More likely, if our current scientifism trend continues, humans will just be perceived as collections of barely-differentiated cells, with no inherent worth or dignity other than what they can bring to the table.
>>The big mistake is to assume that The Bible has a monopoly on morality.
I don't. You can find echoes of commonality in a lot of the world's religions, though it, of course, would be a mistake to assume they are all equivalent.
>>eg. It advocates the death penalty for just about everything. It says slavery is cool - it even tells you the correct way to sell your own children into slavery, ie. The bill of sale for your sons should have a time limit but not your daughters (who are usually sold as wife-slaves).
I would be very surprised to learn of the existence of Klingons.
Not that I know they don't exist. I think I understand that they are a fictional race/species from a TV show. Maybe the writer who "created" them accidentally identified an existing race/species. Statistically, though, it seems very, very unlikely.
Despite what you "know" from the book you might have read.
You never took the GRE, I take it? The words I chose are typical nonsense words used to test logical equivalencies.
My point is that if a certain book claims that "all Quarks are Jaguars, and all Jaguars are Klingons" then I can say that *the book* claims that "all Quarks are Klingons" and that anyone who says *the book* says anything different is wrong. Not "in my opinion you are wrong" wrong, but actually wrong.
If the Bible says that X, Y and Z are the most important things, then I can safely say that *the Bible says* that X, Y and Z are the most important things. And yes, that people that disagree with me are wrong.
This is a logical tautology - it's quite odd that you are so fearsome in disagreeing with it.
>>Should a hospital let someone bleeding to death die in their Emergency Room if they have no insurance? I think except for at republican debates the answer is "no".
Republicans don't even believe that these days. I know, I've asked several Tea Partiers if they think EMTALA should be repealed (the act that requires free medical care in ERs regardless of the ability to pay) and I've yet to hear one say that they do think people should die if they can't pay, though most agree the law should be revised. And rightly so, as it's a total piece of shit, based on the assumption that no-pay ER costs will never be more than a negligible portion of a hospital's costs, a premise which has proven to be quite wrong.
But, hey, nice tar brush you got there. It's mighty wide.
I think J. F. Christ said that he wasn't there to change the old laws, and that the old laws still are valid. One of his followers had something to say about gays too. Well I guess that the Bible is about pick and choose... First the father says things, and then comes the son with all this 'turn-the-other-cheek' -stuff and gets nailed to a cross...Who do you listen? Just pick the parts you like and still claim that the whole book is Gods word and to be followed in letter. (Not including touching pig skin or shaving ones hair from the side of the head etc...)
It would be really neat, wouldn't it, if someone had asked Jesus what the most important bits were? Because then we wouldn't need to pick and choose from the Bible.
Shame no one did that... oh, wait. They did. (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22%3A36-40)
And his paraphrased answer was what you just responded to.
>>The old testament remains 100% in force, according to Jesus. Whom, I presume, as a Christian, you would take as a higher authority than whoever fed you that nonsense.
You're calling the words of Jesus (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22%3A36-40) "nonsense"? What a great Christian you must be!
The OT is not "100% in force". Think about what "fulfilling the law" actually means, especially in relation to the Expounding of the Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expounding_of_the_Law). He took the law, and reoriented it to its original purpose - "The Law was given to Man, not Man to the Law."
In the Apostolic period, they decided the Law did not apply to Christians. Re-read Acts and Galatians.
>>Anybody basing their lives around the 'moral code' of the Bible (if not the actual self-damning stories) hasn't really compared it against man-made moral codes like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Side by side with The Ten Commandments it makes the Ten Commandments look stupid.
What do you think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is based on? "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world"
What gives humans inherent dignity and inalienable rights?
Think before you post. You'll save a kitten.
>>Anybody basing their lives around the Bible hasn't really read it.
Oddly enough, anyone who really understands the Bible will realize just how simple and how difficult is is to be a Christian - Love God, Love Others As Yourself, All Else Is Details.
>>What are the Ten Commandments anyway?
They're grouped a couple different ways, depending on tradition, but it certainly has nothing to do with jihads or cooking.
>>I'm guessing that you couldn't keep up with the discussion. Whatever.
I'm guessing that you never played D&D.
>>You might still be right. Maybe. I said that I did not know because God has never spoken to me (nor has Jesus) to tell me that X and Y are the most important verses in the Bible
Again, you're missing the fact that Jesus himself said it was the most important thing in the Bible. You're confusing what I say and believe with what is empirically verifiable as being in the Bible.
Dude 1: "Jesus, What is the most important commandment in the Law?" Jesus: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.â(TM) This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: âLove your neighbor as yourself.â(TM) All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.â (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22%3A36-40&version=NIV)
>>I'm not the one claiming that I "know" which verses are more important than which other verses in the Bible or that people who do not agree with me are "wrong".
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn't know the above verse existed in the Bible, so that you were "assuming" that I was putting my own, personal, imprimatur on a specific verse in the Bible and saying it was the most important. "I" have nothing to do with it - the "claim" is "empirically" verifiable by "anyone" who can pick up a Bible, and if they "claim" the "verse" is not in "there", then they are "wrong". (Or possibly have a vandalized version of the Bible.)
>>If I had just spent several thousand years murdering and genociding about the country side I would want to sweep it under the rug as "mere details" as well.
Given that the verse I was paraphrasing was written in the 1st Century, it's a bit misguided to claim that it was written to sweep the details under the rug.
>>The New testament is no better. If I asked you whether or not you thought Star Wars was better than Star Trek and murdered you as a result I would be hung as a psychopath.
I can't recall any verses in the NT about murdering people over their otaku status, but perhaps you have one for me?
>>If God condemns people to hell for a difference of opinion he's still an upright guy? Nuh uh.
It depends if you think that God condemns people to hell through a difference of opinion. The official church position is a bit more nuanced than that, due to an old, old, debate over dead babies, which you can read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin#Unbaptized_infants
>>>>>Christianity is one of the reasons credited to the enormous advancement of science in Europe as opposed to other parts of the world in the same time period. >>During what time period?
>>You're right! Where would we be today without the Dark ages? The Crusades? The AIDs epidemic in Africa? The Inquisition? The Salem Witch burnings?... Why... why... we'd be.... centuries more advanced probably.
So, you're saying that you never studied history, then?
That's cool, most objectors to Christianity never have either.
The Dark Ages: Not the fault of Christianity, certainly. They were the fault of a series of "barbarian" people who overran and destroyed the Roman Empire during the 4th and 5th Centuries. During this time period, literacy rates plummeted, and the only source of erudition and literacy, in fact was in the church - the only bit of light in a dark continent. If it was not for the church, we likely would have lost most all of classical literature in Europe during this time period.
The Crusades: Full of folly, but relatively justified by the atrocities committed by the various Caliphates at the time. Murdering pilgrims and the like. Instigated by the Byzantine Empire, in fact, to retake lands lost to Islam centuries earlier and to stop Islamic expansion. From the Byzantine perspective, it was fully justified, as Islamic expansion continued for over a thousand years, destroying the last of the Eastern Roman Empire (wait, what was that about Dark Ages again?) in 1453, until checked at Tours in the 8th Century, Malta in 1565, Vienna in 1683, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War One. The fact that the crusaders never got their shit together for very long doesn't change the fact that Islamic Expansionism was a valid casus belli for the Crusades.
The AIDS epidemic? I agree the RCC is wrong in not providing condoms, but again, the Christian church didn't create the virus. The very reason that Christianity expanded in the Roman Empire, contrawise, was because people saw that during the Plague of Galen Christians were willing to lay down their lives to tend to the sick, whereas the pagan priests (including Galen himself) fled into the hills. Give credit where credit is due.
>>Like I said, you "know" that you are "right" and that they are "wrong". But you want to argue about whether you said that or not. Whatever.
I love your quotes. They make you sound much more of a know it all than the one you claim I am.
Yes, in fact, sometimes people are wrong. If you don't believe that, then you believe in nothing.
>>In your personal religion, you "know" that they do.
Hey, more quotes!
>>And that certainty from the believers is why there are problems such as wanting to teach "intelligent design" along with evolution.
Even more quotes!
I think you don't understand the proper use of the things. Which is tragic, given that we all just celebrated National Punctuation Day on 9/24/11.
>>My point is that you cannot know that without direct guidance from God or Jesus.
I can read a fucking book.
If a book says that all Quarks are Jaguars, and all Jaguars are Klingons, then I can very firmly say that all Quarks are Klingons, and that everyone who disagrees with me is wrong.
>>Yep! Arguing about whether statement X is in book Y is meaningless. Because it is only the BELIEVERS who look to that book as an authority in the first place. Some of those religions have additional holy books. Some don't.
If the verse is in the CVS respository, so to speak, of your religious fork of choice, it certainly matters. All of your forks above (even Jews) believe in the two principles that I outlined above. Or, well, are supposed to, anyway.
>>And, more importantly, the person who "KNOWS" that the others who do not agree that his beliefs and religion and holy book and translation and precedence of statements is "wrong".
I love how you always throw quotes around the word "know" when referring to other people. You can't begin to imagine how misguidedly arrogant it makes you sound.
If someone claims that a certain verse is not in the Bible, they are wrong. Simple as that. You're reading far too much into my statements, thinking that I'm saying I have special knowledge of God's mind. I'm not claiming that - I am pointing out two lines, that can be empirically verified quite easily. This is the key concept you cannot seem to understand.
>>So what you're ACTUALLY saying is that what you were taught is what you believe and you are mistaking belief for knowledge and claiming that others are wrong because they believe something that you "know" to be different.
(Cross-posting here, sorry - I couldn't let this one go.)
No. I say that people are "wrong" when they say something that can be empirically demonstrated to be false. When atheists claim that Christians worship a zombie, for example, I point out that they are confusing True Resurrection (Level 9 Cleric Spell) with Animate Dead (Level 3 Cleric Spell).
Your arrogance, again, though, is quite appalling, claiming I am "mistaken", especially when you don't know me very well at all (as is obvious) and that, in fact, what I was taught is very different from what I believe.
Whoa, human rights? Christianity is responsible for more torture and death in the first 19 centuries AD than almost any other human cause, and probably stunted development of "civilization" by several hundred years
Don't drink the kool-aid.
Christianity is one of the reasons credited to the enormous advancement of science in Europe as opposed to other parts of the world in the same time period. The Vatican has one of the longest-running observatories in the world, and has long had an interest in science.
The very concept that Christianity was harmful to science wasn't even considered until some atheist propaganda coming out of 19th Century France, and has been a long-running and incorrect meme ever since, like the Galileo affair.
>>If, as you say, the whole Bible should now be reduced to 2 concepts, why does there need to be such a massive infrastructure around it all?
>>So it seems like you DO claim that they're wrong.
I'm being partly facetious, and partly serious. If Christians are in doctrinal error, I try to correct them. If atheists make incorrect statements about Christians, I try to correct them as well. (You know, wrong statements like "Religion has killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao put together!")
>>I do not claim that certain statements are not in the Bible.
I paraphrased the Bible, which you said was "my" statement of fact which millions or billions of people disagreed with (with "their" statements of fact). The verse is in the Bible (empirical truth) and if they think it is not in the Bible, they are wrong, and I correct them on it.
I've responded to the jot and tittle objection three times above. Read my posts above so I don't repeat myself.
The NT definitely supersedes the OT - for example, we do not require people to be circumcised in order to be Christian. All this was settled way back in the time of the Apostles.
The interesting bit is that my summary of the NT (these are the most important things, all else are details) was an intentional mirror of a similar statement made by Maimonides, the greatest Jewish scholar of the middle ages. Maimonides, incidentally, was also a firm believer that there was no conflict between science and religion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonidies#Negative_theology) which is relevant to the premise of this entire thread.
>>You should read the NT. You'll find it doesn't say what you think it says.
I've read the entire NT several times over. Just because you don't understand supersesionism doesn't mean you're right. It's a bit obscure, and not many Christians have figured out how the NT is supposed to relate to the OT. Read, oh, Galatians 3:19 on why the law was given ("until the Son of Man arrives") or Acts 15 on why Christians don't need to be circumcised.
The jot and iota bit was about Jesus being the fulfillment of the law, which means (as I've stated in the posts above several times) that he is reorienting the Law away from the Legalistic interpretation that had come to dominate at the time ("You can't heal on the Sabbath!") to the original meaning ("The Sabbath was given to man, not man to the Sabbath.") Read Mark 2, or the various Expoundings of the Law
>>1. Create rules which, by his own admission, are so strict that they cannot be followed.
Who says the rules are so strict they can't be followed? Jesus said, "Be thou perfect, as thy father is perfect." The concept of Original Sin was the pet project of St. Augustine, who said rather famously "I cannot not sin." This was done to counter Pelagius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagius) who felt that it was possible for good folk to live without sinning for extended periods of time. St. Augustine also felt it was impossible to do good deeds without God's help, whereas Pelagius thought that while God was an inspiration for us to do good, it was our free will that made actions good or bad. St. Augustine also felt that unbaptized kids go to hell, whereas Pelagius thought they were born without sin (again, Original Sin was an Augustinian thing based on some of the writings of St. Paul, not Jesus). St. Augustine felt that people died because of sin, not because we're physical beings, and physics sort of sucks like that (as Pelagius felt).
Pelagius, quite unfortunately, lost the debate to St. Augustine (and got excommunicated for his efforts) and so we ended up with these theological contradictions that you sort of rightly point out don't make a lot of sense.
The irony is that after two thousand years I'd say that most churches would be considered Pelagian these days. So your ranting is a little bit misguided.
>>The teachings of Paul in the NT also have a number of examples of outdated morality. If you just stick to the teachings of Jesus from the Gospel's you'll probably be alright, but probably the majority of modern Christianity comes from Paul's teachings.
Indeed. I think Paul was a bright guy, but I also think he got a lot of elements wrong (he was a misogynist, when Christ wasn't), and/or gave advice that has been since transmuted by the RCC into divine law. For example, he recommended chasity to others, but explicitly said he was not going to mandate it. But the RCC has taken those words and created the celibate clergy that we have today, that has given us so much trouble. (The RCC conveniently also ignores Paul's rule that a bishop or overseer in the church should be married and have obedient kids - the obedient kids being a sort of litmus test of how well they could parent a congregation.)
That said, I don't think Paul would necessarily mind people arguing against him if he lived today. He seemed to enjoy debating people and arguing with them.
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." -- Matthew 5:17
Sorry, buddy, you're going to hell.
As I said elsewhere, this is part of the reason why The Law has been superseded by the New. If you read Jesus' Expounding of the Law, they are all of the form, "You have heard it said X, but I say unto you Y..." They do not change the Law, but rather refocus it away from the Legalistic interpretation that had become preeminent at the time of Christ back onto its "original meaning", so to speak.
Read the debate over Jesus healing the sick on the Sabbath, for example. It's quite brilliant, really.
>>Give up, you have no hope. You must already know this, but in an argument between science and religion, science can never win because it's constrained by provable facts, whereas religion has the entire depth of the human imagination to come up with a response.
What sort of argument are you talking about?
Science and religion deal with two different domains. If you're trying to see if neutrinos can go faster than C, that's science. If you're trying to decide if it's right to murder a man, that's religion (or philosophy or ethics).
There's areas where they can inform the debate for the other sphere of influence (for example, what the length of the human colon says about us being vegetarians), but that's about the sum of their interference.
>>But you have pointed out the key bit - why should the Bible be any more a source of authority than, say, Dianetics?
Pragmatic reasons. Christianity has done pretty damn well for itself over the last 2,000 year in terms of advancement of human civilization and human rights. Scientology, rather the opposite.
>>No, I think he's saying that he doesn't know he's right any more then you do. It really is when people claim to know they are right that problems arise. Jesus was a pretty humble guy, but despite that most Christians exhibit and disturbing lack of humility.
I'm saying that I'm right that a certain Bible verse exists. =)
Now, he might not have known that I was essentially paraphrasing right from the Bible and thought I was just inventing my own religion, but the way he came off sounding was that he didn't believe the Bible exists. Which is sort of funny.
>>Well, then. That already proves 95% of the Christian right doesn't follow Jesus.
What standard are you setting here?
If they try to follow the precepts, but fail from time to time, does that count?
>>"If this is gonna be a Christian nation that DOESN'T help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition - then admit that we just don't want to do it."
Christians, if I can generalize very broadly, care very much about charity and helping others. As far as the poor go, thinking that it would be better served by the church rather than the government is a policy decision, not a decision to not help the poor. You may or may not disagree with the notion that the church could provide better social services, but you shouldn't pretend that it stems from a lack of love or compassion for the poor.
My church in San Diego sends a significant fraction of its donations overseas to help the poor, supporting things like the Heifer Project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heifer_International) which tries to build up infrastructure in poor countries. At the same time, probably a number of people in the congregation are opposed to foreign aid to these countries, based on the notion of government inefficiency and the fact that charities like the Heifer Project actually work to build sustainable infrastructures, so that they *won't* need aid in the future. Again, it's a policy decision, not a animosity toward the poor.
Slashdot Mirror
>>No, you're also saying that that particular verse trumps all others.
Then you're making the same mistake that he did, which is to say that you didn't know that the Bible itself says what is the most important verse. Which is what I was paraphrasing.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22%3A37-40&version=NIV
>>If all Christians really did just love god and treat others as they'd like to be treated themselves, we atheists wouldn't have much of a problem wih them, other than feeling sorry for adults who still literally believed in fairy tales.
Sure, I agree with you.
And if atheists simply stuck with the "we don't know why we came here" attitude, instead of the "...but we also know that it absolutely, positively couldn't have been made by a God of some sort" (as the "fairy tale" bit always goes) then I'd have less of a problem with them. (Not that I do very much, mind you. I'd say the majority of my friends are atheists.)
>>>>The words I chose are typical nonsense words used to test logical equivalencies [on the GRE]
>>Again, that only makes sense to a believer.
Ok, you're officially crazy now. Anyone who can't understand how logic works is crazy in my book.
(You do know that the GRE is not, like, a Christian test or something? You can read sample logic problems here: http://www.bestsamplequestions.com/gre-questions/analytical-reasoning/analytical-reasoning.html)
You might also want to read about how logical inferences work -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference
>>Except according to the new laws, homosexuality is still a no-no. Fornication of any kind for that matter, outside of God's original natural plan (1 man and 1 woman married together) is supposed to be avoided. But hey, if all the non-religious folks are okay with it, go ahead and ignore that stuff.
Fornication is a word that means extramarital sex, right?
Unfortunately for fundies who always point to this word, it is a modern invention. There's no prohibition in the Bible on extramarital sex other than adultery. The word translated as "fornication" is pornea, which is sort of a catchall for sexual immorality. It is enumerated in several places as being adultery, bestiality, and incest.
>>Have you read this?
You mean the document I just quoted to you? You recognize that one?
>>How does it compare the the Ten Commandments?
How does it compare to the Declaration of Independence?
What was the Declaration of Independence based on? Enlightenment philosophy, which created the theory of Natural and Inalienable Rights. Where did this philosophy come from? Christianity. God is the ultimate source of human dignity and inalienable rights.
Re-read the preamble to the UN Declaration of Human Rights keeping that in mind. It'll enlighten you, pun intended. Think about *why* we believe certain things are important.
>>Can we not just love others without bringing the magic pixie into it?
Without God, the above chain of reasoning would fall apart. More likely, if our current scientifism trend continues, humans will just be perceived as collections of barely-differentiated cells, with no inherent worth or dignity other than what they can bring to the table.
>>The big mistake is to assume that The Bible has a monopoly on morality.
I don't. You can find echoes of commonality in a lot of the world's religions, though it, of course, would be a mistake to assume they are all equivalent.
>>eg. It advocates the death penalty for just about everything. It says slavery is cool - it even tells you the correct way to sell your own children into slavery, ie. The bill of sale for your sons should have a time limit but not your daughters (who are usually sold as wife-slaves).
All OT stuff, that has been superseded by the NT.
You never took the GRE, I take it? The words I chose are typical nonsense words used to test logical equivalencies.
My point is that if a certain book claims that "all Quarks are Jaguars, and all Jaguars are Klingons" then I can say that *the book* claims that "all Quarks are Klingons" and that anyone who says *the book* says anything different is wrong. Not "in my opinion you are wrong" wrong, but actually wrong.
If the Bible says that X, Y and Z are the most important things, then I can safely say that *the Bible says* that X, Y and Z are the most important things. And yes, that people that disagree with me are wrong.
This is a logical tautology - it's quite odd that you are so fearsome in disagreeing with it.
>>Should a hospital let someone bleeding to death die in their Emergency Room if they have no insurance? I think except for at republican debates the answer is "no".
Republicans don't even believe that these days. I know, I've asked several Tea Partiers if they think EMTALA should be repealed (the act that requires free medical care in ERs regardless of the ability to pay) and I've yet to hear one say that they do think people should die if they can't pay, though most agree the law should be revised. And rightly so, as it's a total piece of shit, based on the assumption that no-pay ER costs will never be more than a negligible portion of a hospital's costs, a premise which has proven to be quite wrong.
But, hey, nice tar brush you got there. It's mighty wide.
It would be really neat, wouldn't it, if someone had asked Jesus what the most important bits were? Because then we wouldn't need to pick and choose from the Bible.
Shame no one did that... oh, wait. They did. (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22%3A36-40)
And his paraphrased answer was what you just responded to.
>>The old testament remains 100% in force, according to Jesus. Whom, I presume, as a Christian, you would take as a higher authority than whoever fed you that nonsense.
You're calling the words of Jesus (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22%3A36-40) "nonsense"? What a great Christian you must be!
The OT is not "100% in force". Think about what "fulfilling the law" actually means, especially in relation to the Expounding of the Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expounding_of_the_Law). He took the law, and reoriented it to its original purpose - "The Law was given to Man, not Man to the Law."
In the Apostolic period, they decided the Law did not apply to Christians. Re-read Acts and Galatians.
>>Anybody basing their lives around the 'moral code' of the Bible (if not the actual self-damning stories) hasn't really compared it against man-made moral codes like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Side by side with The Ten Commandments it makes the Ten Commandments look stupid.
What do you think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is based on? "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world"
What gives humans inherent dignity and inalienable rights?
Think before you post. You'll save a kitten.
>>Anybody basing their lives around the Bible hasn't really read it.
Oddly enough, anyone who really understands the Bible will realize just how simple and how difficult is is to be a Christian - Love God, Love Others As Yourself, All Else Is Details.
>>What are the Ten Commandments anyway?
They're grouped a couple different ways, depending on tradition, but it certainly has nothing to do with jihads or cooking.
>>I'm guessing that you couldn't keep up with the discussion. Whatever.
I'm guessing that you never played D&D.
>>You might still be right. Maybe. I said that I did not know because God has never spoken to me (nor has Jesus) to tell me that X and Y are the most important verses in the Bible
Again, you're missing the fact that Jesus himself said it was the most important thing in the Bible. You're confusing what I say and believe with what is empirically verifiable as being in the Bible.
Dude 1: "Jesus, What is the most important commandment in the Law?"
Jesus: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.â(TM) This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: âLove your neighbor as yourself.â(TM) All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.â
(http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22%3A36-40&version=NIV)
>>I'm not the one claiming that I "know" which verses are more important than which other verses in the Bible or that people who do not agree with me are "wrong".
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn't know the above verse existed in the Bible, so that you were "assuming" that I was putting my own, personal, imprimatur on a specific verse in the Bible and saying it was the most important. "I" have nothing to do with it - the "claim" is "empirically" verifiable by "anyone" who can pick up a Bible, and if they "claim" the "verse" is not in "there", then they are "wrong". (Or possibly have a vandalized version of the Bible.)
(See how much fun quote abuse can be?)
>>If I had just spent several thousand years murdering and genociding about the country side I would want to sweep it under the rug as "mere details" as well.
Given that the verse I was paraphrasing was written in the 1st Century, it's a bit misguided to claim that it was written to sweep the details under the rug.
>>The New testament is no better. If I asked you whether or not you thought Star Wars was better than Star Trek and murdered you as a result I would be hung as a psychopath.
I can't recall any verses in the NT about murdering people over their otaku status, but perhaps you have one for me?
>>If God condemns people to hell for a difference of opinion he's still an upright guy? Nuh uh.
It depends if you think that God condemns people to hell through a difference of opinion. The official church position is a bit more nuanced than that, due to an old, old, debate over dead babies, which you can read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin#Unbaptized_infants
>>>>>Christianity is one of the reasons credited to the enormous advancement of science in Europe as opposed to other parts of the world in the same time period.
>>During what time period?
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the only sources of literacy and learning in Europe were from the church, and people educated within the church. There was actually quite a bit of innovation during what Renaissance propagandists called the Dark Ages, though people like to pretend otherwise. (For example - http://books.google.es/books?id=bQlJP9O9hKkC&lpg=PA82&ots=Rifr5KZcY5&dq=crop%20rotation%20and%20Charlemagne&pg=PA82#v=onepage&q=crop%20&f=false)
And in more modern times, too.
>>You're right! Where would we be today without the Dark ages? The Crusades? The AIDs epidemic in Africa? The Inquisition? The Salem Witch burnings?... Why... why... we'd be.... centuries more advanced probably.
So, you're saying that you never studied history, then?
That's cool, most objectors to Christianity never have either.
The Dark Ages: Not the fault of Christianity, certainly. They were the fault of a series of "barbarian" people who overran and destroyed the Roman Empire during the 4th and 5th Centuries. During this time period, literacy rates plummeted, and the only source of erudition and literacy, in fact was in the church - the only bit of light in a dark continent. If it was not for the church, we likely would have lost most all of classical literature in Europe during this time period.
The Crusades: Full of folly, but relatively justified by the atrocities committed by the various Caliphates at the time. Murdering pilgrims and the like. Instigated by the Byzantine Empire, in fact, to retake lands lost to Islam centuries earlier and to stop Islamic expansion. From the Byzantine perspective, it was fully justified, as Islamic expansion continued for over a thousand years, destroying the last of the Eastern Roman Empire (wait, what was that about Dark Ages again?) in 1453, until checked at Tours in the 8th Century, Malta in 1565, Vienna in 1683, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War One. The fact that the crusaders never got their shit together for very long doesn't change the fact that Islamic Expansionism was a valid casus belli for the Crusades.
The AIDS epidemic? I agree the RCC is wrong in not providing condoms, but again, the Christian church didn't create the virus. The very reason that Christianity expanded in the Roman Empire, contrawise, was because people saw that during the Plague of Galen Christians were willing to lay down their lives to tend to the sick, whereas the pagan priests (including Galen himself) fled into the hills. Give credit where credit is due.
>>Like I said, you "know" that you are "right" and that they are "wrong". But you want to argue about whether you said that or not. Whatever.
I love your quotes. They make you sound much more of a know it all than the one you claim I am.
Yes, in fact, sometimes people are wrong. If you don't believe that, then you believe in nothing.
>>In your personal religion, you "know" that they do.
Hey, more quotes!
>>And that certainty from the believers is why there are problems such as wanting to teach "intelligent design" along with evolution.
Even more quotes!
I think you don't understand the proper use of the things. Which is tragic, given that we all just celebrated National Punctuation Day on 9/24/11.
>>My point is that you cannot know that without direct guidance from God or Jesus.
I can read a fucking book.
If a book says that all Quarks are Jaguars, and all Jaguars are Klingons, then I can very firmly say that all Quarks are Klingons, and that everyone who disagrees with me is wrong.
>>Yep! Arguing about whether statement X is in book Y is meaningless. Because it is only the BELIEVERS who look to that book as an authority in the first place. Some of those religions have additional holy books. Some don't.
If the verse is in the CVS respository, so to speak, of your religious fork of choice, it certainly matters. All of your forks above (even Jews) believe in the two principles that I outlined above. Or, well, are supposed to, anyway.
>>And, more importantly, the person who "KNOWS" that the others who do not agree that his beliefs and religion and holy book and translation and precedence of statements is "wrong".
I love how you always throw quotes around the word "know" when referring to other people. You can't begin to imagine how misguidedly arrogant it makes you sound.
If someone claims that a certain verse is not in the Bible, they are wrong. Simple as that. You're reading far too much into my statements, thinking that I'm saying I have special knowledge of God's mind. I'm not claiming that - I am pointing out two lines, that can be empirically verified quite easily. This is the key concept you cannot seem to understand.
>>So what you're ACTUALLY saying is that what you were taught is what you believe and you are mistaking belief for knowledge and claiming that others are wrong because they believe something that you "know" to be different.
(Cross-posting here, sorry - I couldn't let this one go.)
No. I say that people are "wrong" when they say something that can be empirically demonstrated to be false. When atheists claim that Christians worship a zombie, for example, I point out that they are confusing True Resurrection (Level 9 Cleric Spell) with Animate Dead (Level 3 Cleric Spell).
Your arrogance, again, though, is quite appalling, claiming I am "mistaken", especially when you don't know me very well at all (as is obvious) and that, in fact, what I was taught is very different from what I believe.
Don't drink the kool-aid.
Christianity is one of the reasons credited to the enormous advancement of science in Europe as opposed to other parts of the world in the same time period. The Vatican has one of the longest-running observatories in the world, and has long had an interest in science.
The very concept that Christianity was harmful to science wasn't even considered until some atheist propaganda coming out of 19th Century France, and has been a long-running and incorrect meme ever since, like the Galileo affair.
>>If, as you say, the whole Bible should now be reduced to 2 concepts, why does there need to be such a massive infrastructure around it all?
You don't?
>>So it seems like you DO claim that they're wrong.
I'm being partly facetious, and partly serious. If Christians are in doctrinal error, I try to correct them. If atheists make incorrect statements about Christians, I try to correct them as well. (You know, wrong statements like "Religion has killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao put together!")
>>I do not claim that certain statements are not in the Bible.
I paraphrased the Bible, which you said was "my" statement of fact which millions or billions of people disagreed with (with "their" statements of fact). The verse is in the Bible (empirical truth) and if they think it is not in the Bible, they are wrong, and I correct them on it.
There - everything clear, now?
I've responded to the jot and tittle objection three times above. Read my posts above so I don't repeat myself.
The NT definitely supersedes the OT - for example, we do not require people to be circumcised in order to be Christian. All this was settled way back in the time of the Apostles.
This has an interesting commentary on the Law:
http://bible.cc/galatians/3-19.htm
The interesting bit is that my summary of the NT (these are the most important things, all else are details) was an intentional mirror of a similar statement made by Maimonides, the greatest Jewish scholar of the middle ages. Maimonides, incidentally, was also a firm believer that there was no conflict between science and religion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonidies#Negative_theology) which is relevant to the premise of this entire thread.
>>You should read the NT. You'll find it doesn't say what you think it says.
I've read the entire NT several times over. Just because you don't understand supersesionism doesn't mean you're right. It's a bit obscure, and not many Christians have figured out how the NT is supposed to relate to the OT. Read, oh, Galatians 3:19 on why the law was given ("until the Son of Man arrives") or Acts 15 on why Christians don't need to be circumcised.
The jot and iota bit was about Jesus being the fulfillment of the law, which means (as I've stated in the posts above several times) that he is reorienting the Law away from the Legalistic interpretation that had come to dominate at the time ("You can't heal on the Sabbath!") to the original meaning ("The Sabbath was given to man, not man to the Sabbath.") Read Mark 2, or the various Expoundings of the Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expounding_of_the_Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism
>>1. Create rules which, by his own admission, are so strict that they cannot be followed.
Who says the rules are so strict they can't be followed? Jesus said, "Be thou perfect, as thy father is perfect." The concept of Original Sin was the pet project of St. Augustine, who said rather famously "I cannot not sin." This was done to counter Pelagius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagius) who felt that it was possible for good folk to live without sinning for extended periods of time.
St. Augustine also felt it was impossible to do good deeds without God's help, whereas Pelagius thought that while God was an inspiration for us to do good, it was our free will that made actions good or bad.
St. Augustine also felt that unbaptized kids go to hell, whereas Pelagius thought they were born without sin (again, Original Sin was an Augustinian thing based on some of the writings of St. Paul, not Jesus).
St. Augustine felt that people died because of sin, not because we're physical beings, and physics sort of sucks like that (as Pelagius felt).
Pelagius, quite unfortunately, lost the debate to St. Augustine (and got excommunicated for his efforts) and so we ended up with these theological contradictions that you sort of rightly point out don't make a lot of sense.
The irony is that after two thousand years I'd say that most churches would be considered Pelagian these days. So your ranting is a little bit misguided.
>>The teachings of Paul in the NT also have a number of examples of outdated morality. If you just stick to the teachings of Jesus from the Gospel's you'll probably be alright, but probably the majority of modern Christianity comes from Paul's teachings.
Indeed. I think Paul was a bright guy, but I also think he got a lot of elements wrong (he was a misogynist, when Christ wasn't), and/or gave advice that has been since transmuted by the RCC into divine law. For example, he recommended chasity to others, but explicitly said he was not going to mandate it. But the RCC has taken those words and created the celibate clergy that we have today, that has given us so much trouble. (The RCC conveniently also ignores Paul's rule that a bishop or overseer in the church should be married and have obedient kids - the obedient kids being a sort of litmus test of how well they could parent a congregation.)
That said, I don't think Paul would necessarily mind people arguing against him if he lived today. He seemed to enjoy debating people and arguing with them.
As I said elsewhere, this is part of the reason why The Law has been superseded by the New. If you read Jesus' Expounding of the Law, they are all of the form, "You have heard it said X, but I say unto you Y..." They do not change the Law, but rather refocus it away from the Legalistic interpretation that had become preeminent at the time of Christ back onto its "original meaning", so to speak.
Read the debate over Jesus healing the sick on the Sabbath, for example. It's quite brilliant, really.
You can read more about supersessionism here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersessionism
>>Give up, you have no hope. You must already know this, but in an argument between science and religion, science can never win because it's constrained by provable facts, whereas religion has the entire depth of the human imagination to come up with a response.
What sort of argument are you talking about?
Science and religion deal with two different domains. If you're trying to see if neutrinos can go faster than C, that's science. If you're trying to decide if it's right to murder a man, that's religion (or philosophy or ethics).
There's areas where they can inform the debate for the other sphere of influence (for example, what the length of the human colon says about us being vegetarians), but that's about the sum of their interference.
>>But you have pointed out the key bit - why should the Bible be any more a source of authority than, say, Dianetics?
Pragmatic reasons. Christianity has done pretty damn well for itself over the last 2,000 year in terms of advancement of human civilization and human rights. Scientology, rather the opposite.
>>No, I think he's saying that he doesn't know he's right any more then you do. It really is when people claim to know they are right that problems arise. Jesus was a pretty humble guy, but despite that most Christians exhibit and disturbing lack of humility.
I'm saying that I'm right that a certain Bible verse exists. =)
Now, he might not have known that I was essentially paraphrasing right from the Bible and thought I was just inventing my own religion, but the way he came off sounding was that he didn't believe the Bible exists. Which is sort of funny.
>>Well, then. That already proves 95% of the Christian right doesn't follow Jesus.
What standard are you setting here?
If they try to follow the precepts, but fail from time to time, does that count?
>>"If this is gonna be a Christian nation that DOESN'T help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus is just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition - then admit that we just don't want to do it."
Christians, if I can generalize very broadly, care very much about charity and helping others. As far as the poor go, thinking that it would be better served by the church rather than the government is a policy decision, not a decision to not help the poor. You may or may not disagree with the notion that the church could provide better social services, but you shouldn't pretend that it stems from a lack of love or compassion for the poor.
My church in San Diego sends a significant fraction of its donations overseas to help the poor, supporting things like the Heifer Project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heifer_International) which tries to build up infrastructure in poor countries. At the same time, probably a number of people in the congregation are opposed to foreign aid to these countries, based on the notion of government inefficiency and the fact that charities like the Heifer Project actually work to build sustainable infrastructures, so that they *won't* need aid in the future. Again, it's a policy decision, not a animosity toward the poor.