Well, he says it's free because you don't have to pay and it's cheaper than what we're paying now. If you look, the US pays more for healthcare than anybody and we receive not only bad service but significantly less service than we could if the services themselves were paid for rather than giving lots of money to insurance companies, whose best interest is served by letting you die.
A lot of reporters are actually democrats, they just don't have any real control over what gets on the air. As such, we get massive biases toward the right. As shown by a number of studies. My favorite was the PIPA study which found that the more Fox News a person watched, the less they knew about world affairs during the lead up to the Iraq war.
If it weren't for hatred of Microsoft the geeks of the world would crumble. They would have no uniting cause and start turning on each other. Nobody need be reminded of the Startrek-Starwars wars. Mutual hatred is the only thing keeping this patchwork bunch of basement dweller from LARPing with real fireballs.
Nonsense. I defined quite aptly the people I disliked. These disease loving HIV is God's gift to Christianity asshats who will be saddened by curing the disease. Frankly, I want everybody to be saddened by curing aids to be saddened. There are a good number of this bastards. And they need to be pointed and laughed at.
It doesn't matter to me if I sound ignorant or close-minded. I'm not. I look forward to the cure to any disease, and anyone who doesn't, needs their faces metaphorically stomped in by curing these diseases. Long live progress, may it harm those who oppose it.
If it worked I could see the Gates Foundation buying it and distributing it. The idea behind this odd sort of conspiracy theory is the idea that there is just one giant entity. Certainly a cure for cancer would by and large destroy a huge profit center of a number of different places, however, whoever invented the cure would be set. There's certainly money to be made, and frankly if you're going to destroy HIV you can have my money. Any cure for AIDS or cancer, and you can have whatever money you want just by asking for it.
Really? You mean the missionaries who go into AIDS epidemic regions and tells the people of the evils of condom use? My point isn't that the religious right are evil, but that they tend to, within the United States, love HIV. They view it God's punishment against promiscuity and homosexuality. If you claim that you've never seen some tool arguing that you shouldn't do something because HIV will get you, you're kidding yourself.
So we have the actual harm of discouraging condoms in regions where that kind of activity would be tantamount to murder. And we have the homegrown people who love to preach the evils of sex and homosexuality (see above in this thread). If this worked, it would piss off the latter group, and prevent the harm of the former group.
My aunt spend a good number of her years at an orphanage she founded in Africa taking in AIDS babies. My hope for a cure has nothing to do with pissing women like her off, it's these sort of AIDS is God's Gift People, who really will be crying bloody murder that I want to see the faces of. I want to laugh as their favorite disease is ripped out from under them by science. The very first post on this thread is this sort of sanctimonious bullshit I want crushed.
Saving the lives of millions of people is a good bonus, but I really want to see these disease lovers get punched in the face. The same sort of thing happened when antibiotics starting curing other STDs, they got all pissy because they needed that disease for their God punishments.
Um. Lets go with no. First off, genetically speaking, there's not really any races. There are different traits which tend to group in different areas where they are more important. There's no exclusive genes. The fact, is over the ages, Africa has again and again produced new hominids which pretty well took over the other regions again and again. Most advancements in evolution don't originate from "ideal environments" and if you think Africa is "ideal" you're an idiot. Oh, and as a really odd side note, your stupid racism is actually more Multi-Regional than Out of Africa.
Actually, even without the need for sun protection the pigmentation doesn't hurt and doesn't just devolve. In reality, lighter skin serves as a method of increasing vitamin D, though blending into the snow a bit better while chasing down a deer or running from some big hulk of a Neanderthal would also be good. Where sun is heavy, protection is more important. Where it is less important, vitamin D is more fit more needed. It doesn't take much, the pigmentation is created by a gene, to evolve lighter skin only takes breaking a couple genes rather than making any fancy new ones. And frankly, those genes for lighter skin are probably already present in any given population and just selecting for them is enough to change skin tone.
In truth, it's a rather minor trait, though your explanation seems more Lamarckian than Darwinian. We're adjusting the gene levels, not just getting a tan.
Why the hell don't they tell us this kind of stuff sooner? I've been forcing myself to think, "Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot... for going on 25 years now!"
Um. Deciding that something is symbolic because it doesn't make any sense, is silly. Why should I put a coversheet on this internal TPS report? It's only going to be read within the company! Well, it must be symbolic! The blood sacrifice thing isn't symbolic it's actual. The Christian response is that Jesus wasn't a symbolic sacrifice but a real sacrifice. That the real physical bloodsoaked sacrifice of Jesus cleans off your sin just as sacrificing an animal (better the animal, the better the sin washing power) would. But, because it's such a good sacrifice it has infinite sin washing away power for you and yours.
As for wedding rings, they are meant to be symbolic, though if you would listen to De Beers you would know that you simply must have a diamond ring and it must cost about three months salary. Personally, I'd prefer a tattoo of a wedding ring rather than a real ring. "I love you 'ouch' much, and I don't want to slip it into my pocket and sleep with hussies while on business trips". Though, don't let me speak ill of symbolism, let me speak ill of the assumption of symbolism. It would be one thing to say that this ring is a symbol of our love, this symbolism is a decision made before hand. It's another thing to say, that that person dying like he was just some first century cult leader caught by and dealt with by the Romans was actually God and his death (which wasn't out of his hands) was a symbolic sacrifice rather than the real sacrifice that many Christians believe it was. Myself! Myself! Why have I forsaken Myself!
From the immoral horrific real blood sacrifice sense, this explanation makes perfect sense. However, under the modern understanding including trinitarianism where Jesus is actually God, it simply becomes a giant plot hole. Oh, and they didn't eat the sacrifice animals. FYI.
>>This God's knowledge is cast as "prior knowledge", then it looks like an effect before a cause. But God is timeless and his knowledge is "transcendent knowledge" or "timeless knowledge," making it instead a question of the interaction between time and timelessness.
Lofty claims without evidence. Superman flies faster than the speed of light and reverses time, doesn't that mean he violates free will too? It's one thing to pontificate on nonsense, it's another to actually believe it.
>>There's no evidence to suggest that the future is undefined, that the future is any less tangible than the past.
Actually, there's nothing to suggest the past is tangible. Though, I wouldn't start bringing evidence into the picture after citing God this and God that.
>>Augustine got it primarily from Paul, although he obviously elaborated a bit.
I wouldn't call that "getting it primarily from Paul". I would call that using Paul to justify the claim. There's a lot to recommend the Calvinist position Biblically, a lot to disrecommend Calvinism ethically and a lot to disrecommend the Bible in general. One could argue that Superman could have sex if he wore a kryptonite condom. But, you still have a larger problem of unjustified beliefs. Reframing the problem with regard to causality still doesn't let you chose what you you won't choose (though, perhaps multiple universes allows for this). This entire thing does seem a lot like arguing about Superman's condoms. Sure, they could work, but you're still just assuming Superman.
You know, I came up with that same solution to the idea of free will myself. I was rather astounded that other people didn't pitch the entire effect before cause idea in apologetics. It works out so well considering God is already exempt from spacetime by popular demand (and to suddenly become causeless). That the knowledge of your action prior to your action is the effect of your future action rather than the cause.
The argument itself is exceedingly silly. It is simply less silly than other arguments. It still results in an entirely deterministic universe where choices are known prior to them being made. It still results in a situation where you can between A and B, but you will choose B. Though, granting God even more superpowers "transcendence of time" and the like you might as well give him the power to eat his cake and have it too. The same situation would thusly exist, the creation or non-creation of a person would present a deterministic set of choices that individual would make. It is still like having a random number generator, but knowing the seed number. It's not really random.
Though, the idea of freewill is extra-biblical anyhow, and disproving it would only lend credence to Calvinism. The original argument is flawed in that it ascribes the claim of free will to the Bible, rather than Augustine. It's also false that it was God tempting Eve with an apple. Firstly it only says fruit, and secondly God told them not to eat his fruit or they would die that same day (though they lived another 900 years). And still, even from an effect before cause point of view, it still would still have this obvious result, and thus does kind of gut the story of Eden. Personally I would have left the talking snake out of the garden. Stupid bugger can't keep his yap shut.
Well, you could show it to Muslims and make them stop blowing themselves up. Show it to Christians and get stem cell research off the ground. Show it to atheists and they would roll their eyes ('I saw that years ago').
I thought it was great when you said at the risk of your karma... and then had a +5. Though, you did get knocked down to 3. My +5 has dropped a bit too.
That said, I haven't seen any specific statistics on that, but there is a few pretty strong correlations theres which do imply you're right.
Isn't that a lot like having stuff taken from you without a choice in the matter? What attachment can be made to the sacrifice of somebody who had no choice in the matter?
>>The differences include that Christianity believes in a supreme being and does not believe in karma/reincarnation.
Well, that's certainly a difference. Although, I don't think it's for the best. There's nothing more moral about a belief in God. Reincarnation is rather moot, but karma is itself probably a step forward (though, I doubt there's any truth there). The more fundamentalist a Christian becomes the more they act like Fred Phelps, the more fundamentalist a Jaine becomes the more respectable they are.
>>Jainism's tenet that harming other life is never justified to me is not tenable on many levels.
Well, a reduction of the harm you cause to the people and animals as best you can manage. If you don't think that opposing the harm of agribusiness or that paying respect to the life we take lock-step with Jainism, you'd be wrong.
>>Jesus' preaches strongly at several points tolerance for slights against us and love of enemies and means it, but also demonstrates (by turning out the money changers at the temple, for instance),
I don't think destroying a person's business constitutes turning the other cheek. In fact, I would cite that story as Jesus being kind of a dick. Right up there with cursing a plum tree because plums are out of seasons.
>>In any case, people will always argue about morality. It is not meant to be easy.
We are arguing about religion. Morality is rather easy. Doing what is right, doesn't require a second thought, nor does it typically require a first. I am often exposed to other people's things, it almost never occurs to me that I could steal them.
>>As we learn more about certain things, our beliefs advance to new levels, but also shift from side to side.
There is a sort of shifting zeitgeist of morality. Slavery was once thought to be moral. It was staunchly defended because it was condoned by the Bible. It took an amazing coalition of different people (quakers and secularists get some special awards here) and a war to finally put a stop to it. Looking back, I can't even understand the thinking at the time, not of American slavery or Biblical slavery. Sometimes you need to break a few rungs in the ladder.
>>Jainism is the focus on personal study, scholarship, and development. As a Lutheran (also emphasizing these things), I can very much appreciate that. I think it is the only way that any faith (philosophy if you must) can be real.
They are real either way (in the sense that they exist), it's simply the only way you can increase the chances of it being right. Though, rather than study, outright challenging everything you believe would probably do the job a bit better. Though, with religion, everything goes to faith at some point because you are still left with an unevidenced book that makes more sense as fiction. Certainly there may be aspects, which are good for their own sake. Those aspects, should be taken, but it doesn't need to be a package deal. And, ultimately, faith cannot be justified by definition. And though, many people view this sort of sacrifice of reason as a virtue, I find it to be the most repugnant of vice. As Voltaire said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -- I find this quite telling in light of 9/11 and other 'faith-based initiatives'.
>>Anyway, I appreciate the conversation. Finding someone who can discuss these things without being hostile is rare.
You should see hostility I get. Just the other day I was lambasted for judging somebody without knowing their astrological sign! Oh, and then there's all the damnations. Though, each time some Christian with poor spelling extols the virtues of the suffering I will endure, when I die (somehow both assuming and proving him right simultaneously), I chuckle and with the knowledge that, he will be denied the Elysium fields and cursed to Hades or not invited to Valhalla and instead occupy Helheim. Oh, the mead he will miss waiting for Ragnarök.
Your citing a distinction without a difference. You are claiming that PPM and God is a flawed analogy because some people believe PPM are established by science whereas some people believe God is established by science (creationists etc). That is borderline pathetic, and at most it could be construed (if one tried really really hard) to be a difference between some PPM believers and some God believers, not the actual ideas themselves. They don't go to great lengths to pretend to be scientific or logical, they go to those lengths to confuse the issue and blind people to the errors.
And religion is never guilty of this? For example, here's a fragment from the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on the trinity:
Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God." In this Trinity of Persons the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent. This, the Church teaches, is the revelation regarding God's nature which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to deliver to the world: and which she proposes to man as the foundation of her whole dogmatic system.
-- One certainly must agree that that isn't scientific or logically respectable, but it certainly tries. It doesn't take a great imagination to see how this above entry could be harping on getting three newtons of output from one newton of input via some eternal generation, eternal procession, and co-equal yet identical forces.
Actually, it seems that very few religions have blood sacrifice as a central theme. The idea of karma is the antithesis of blood sacrifice. The idea that the blood of the innocent can wash your guilt away is abhorrent, and fundamentally different from the idea that everybody gets their comeuppance and if you put good into the world you get good out of the world. The idea of blood sacrifice litters the Bible, from the story of Abraham and Isaac (and other stories where the parent actually murdered the child), to Noah's Ark, and most prominently in the Gospels. It doesn't appeal to me in the least, but, it's there, clear as day.
I have nothing against rejecting things which don't work, but if Christianity is true... why are their such obvious and fundamental flaws in the central doctrines? I mean, why does one need to cherry pick the Bible so heavily in order to make a moral religion out of some of the pieces? Shouldn't it have been vaguely good to start with? It just seems that once you admit there are flaws in the Bible, nothing should stop one from concluding that God is one of those flaws.
Why would God need to walk a mile in our shoes? He should know everything, and his judgment should be just. It seems to be a lot of effort in order to scrap together a makeshift theology out of Christianity which doesn't insult one's sense of decency. And we need our moral understandings to make such judgments about the immoralities within the Bible. It seems like we could just keep our moral understandings and get rid of the Bible.
I understand that one can reject the idea of blood sacrifice. Though, the blood sacrifice explanation was an attempt to explain this odd hole in the story. Without it, you have a much more moral story, but you also have this gaping plot hole again. It makes more sense as really poorly written fiction with makeshift morality borrowed from other sources, built on over the years, without any evidence to support it, and no reason to accept it. And even if you ignore the poorly written fiction, take the makeshift morality, and ignore the lack of support, you've accomplished nothing. One seems to need to gut the religion in order to suggest there is some morality there.
I see no reason to keep the bathwater if you've thrown out the baby.
From reading the Bible is seems to grow out of Paul and the Jewish idea of blood sacrifice. Sacrifice a good animal for this or that or the other. And, without it, the other parts don't make any sense. Jesus gets killed because... -- Doesn't seem to make any sense. I don't blame people for trying to explain it, it needs explaining. Certainly good people suffer, I daresay your average cancer suffer goes through worse than any crucified person does. God dies horribly for no reason at all. Why put one's head on the executioner's block at all? I think it's unworthy of any respect. If nobody is forcing you, don't do it.
And even the little interesting parts are still less moral than Jainism. A Martin Luther King could have been created more easily via Jainism than Christianity, and actually he got his positions from Gandhi, and not Christianity. Gandhi coincidentally got his from Jainism. I don't see why, one should accept a story which makes little to no sense, when there are more moral philosophies out there for the taking. And, on a related note, I don't see how anybody can conclude the Bible is true to even make the offer worthwhile.
The story doesn't seem to work. The moral philosophy is subpar.
The entire core of Christianity is that it is unreasonable to believe that Joseph could have just stepped up rather than have his wife stoned to death (the punishment to for adultery). It is thusly much more likely that his wife gave sexless birth to a magical wizard.
So that years later Mel Gibson could make a snuff movie about how awesome Drippy McBloodspurt was for dying as horrifically as he could (even though he could have avoided it, but didn't care to... though he wasn't above asking himself why he forsook himself).
Though, if I thought the Jews killed God, I'd worship the Jews.
As an atheist, I feel it is my duty and honor to help Christians be as Christlike as possible, even though I am unduly hampered by insufficient quantities of lumber....
Certainly there is a lot of focus on sacrifice and Christ, and certainly if you focused less on incoherent beliefs like the main story of Gospels. Certainly one could focus on philosophy as there are smatterings of it here and there in the Gospels, but I don't see why it deserves any special credit above say Buddhist or even Marxist philosophy. Sure, it's there, if you read between the bizarre story or just skip to the Sermon on the Mount. As for making tough moral choices, I daresay becoming a Jaine would be far more moral and more difficult than following the few things the Bible gets right (and those few things can usually be found in other earlier sources).
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Well, he says it's free because you don't have to pay and it's cheaper than what we're paying now. If you look, the US pays more for healthcare than anybody and we receive not only bad service but significantly less service than we could if the services themselves were paid for rather than giving lots of money to insurance companies, whose best interest is served by letting you die.
He pulled it out of his ass.
A lot of reporters are actually democrats, they just don't have any real control over what gets on the air. As such, we get massive biases toward the right. As shown by a number of studies. My favorite was the PIPA study which found that the more Fox News a person watched, the less they knew about world affairs during the lead up to the Iraq war.
If it weren't for hatred of Microsoft the geeks of the world would crumble. They would have no uniting cause and start turning on each other. Nobody need be reminded of the Startrek-Starwars wars. Mutual hatred is the only thing keeping this patchwork bunch of basement dweller from LARPing with real fireballs.
Nonsense. I defined quite aptly the people I disliked. These disease loving HIV is God's gift to Christianity asshats who will be saddened by curing the disease. Frankly, I want everybody to be saddened by curing aids to be saddened. There are a good number of this bastards. And they need to be pointed and laughed at.
It doesn't matter to me if I sound ignorant or close-minded. I'm not. I look forward to the cure to any disease, and anyone who doesn't, needs their faces metaphorically stomped in by curing these diseases. Long live progress, may it harm those who oppose it.
If it worked I could see the Gates Foundation buying it and distributing it. The idea behind this odd sort of conspiracy theory is the idea that there is just one giant entity. Certainly a cure for cancer would by and large destroy a huge profit center of a number of different places, however, whoever invented the cure would be set. There's certainly money to be made, and frankly if you're going to destroy HIV you can have my money. Any cure for AIDS or cancer, and you can have whatever money you want just by asking for it.
Really? You mean the missionaries who go into AIDS epidemic regions and tells the people of the evils of condom use? My point isn't that the religious right are evil, but that they tend to, within the United States, love HIV. They view it God's punishment against promiscuity and homosexuality. If you claim that you've never seen some tool arguing that you shouldn't do something because HIV will get you, you're kidding yourself.
So we have the actual harm of discouraging condoms in regions where that kind of activity would be tantamount to murder. And we have the homegrown people who love to preach the evils of sex and homosexuality (see above in this thread). If this worked, it would piss off the latter group, and prevent the harm of the former group.
My aunt spend a good number of her years at an orphanage she founded in Africa taking in AIDS babies. My hope for a cure has nothing to do with pissing women like her off, it's these sort of AIDS is God's Gift People, who really will be crying bloody murder that I want to see the faces of. I want to laugh as their favorite disease is ripped out from under them by science. The very first post on this thread is this sort of sanctimonious bullshit I want crushed.
Saving the lives of millions of people is a good bonus, but I really want to see these disease lovers get punched in the face. The same sort of thing happened when antibiotics starting curing other STDs, they got all pissy because they needed that disease for their God punishments.
It's pretty sad, I so want this to work not because it will save millions of lives but because it will piss of the religious right.
What? You don't believe in Darwinian Evolution? YOU GODDAMN LEMARCKIAN!
Um. Lets go with no. First off, genetically speaking, there's not really any races. There are different traits which tend to group in different areas where they are more important. There's no exclusive genes. The fact, is over the ages, Africa has again and again produced new hominids which pretty well took over the other regions again and again. Most advancements in evolution don't originate from "ideal environments" and if you think Africa is "ideal" you're an idiot. Oh, and as a really odd side note, your stupid racism is actually more Multi-Regional than Out of Africa.
Actually, even without the need for sun protection the pigmentation doesn't hurt and doesn't just devolve. In reality, lighter skin serves as a method of increasing vitamin D, though blending into the snow a bit better while chasing down a deer or running from some big hulk of a Neanderthal would also be good. Where sun is heavy, protection is more important. Where it is less important, vitamin D is more fit more needed. It doesn't take much, the pigmentation is created by a gene, to evolve lighter skin only takes breaking a couple genes rather than making any fancy new ones. And frankly, those genes for lighter skin are probably already present in any given population and just selecting for them is enough to change skin tone.
In truth, it's a rather minor trait, though your explanation seems more Lamarckian than Darwinian. We're adjusting the gene levels, not just getting a tan.
No. Just close the audio hole. Total audio saturation, even at the analog level.
Sure, if he wanted to legalize prostitution I'd give him all the leeway he wants. But he doesn't... so screw em.
Why the hell don't they tell us this kind of stuff sooner? I've been forcing myself to think, "Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot... for going on 25 years now!"
Um. Deciding that something is symbolic because it doesn't make any sense, is silly. Why should I put a coversheet on this internal TPS report? It's only going to be read within the company! Well, it must be symbolic! The blood sacrifice thing isn't symbolic it's actual. The Christian response is that Jesus wasn't a symbolic sacrifice but a real sacrifice. That the real physical bloodsoaked sacrifice of Jesus cleans off your sin just as sacrificing an animal (better the animal, the better the sin washing power) would. But, because it's such a good sacrifice it has infinite sin washing away power for you and yours.
As for wedding rings, they are meant to be symbolic, though if you would listen to De Beers you would know that you simply must have a diamond ring and it must cost about three months salary. Personally, I'd prefer a tattoo of a wedding ring rather than a real ring. "I love you 'ouch' much, and I don't want to slip it into my pocket and sleep with hussies while on business trips". Though, don't let me speak ill of symbolism, let me speak ill of the assumption of symbolism. It would be one thing to say that this ring is a symbol of our love, this symbolism is a decision made before hand. It's another thing to say, that that person dying like he was just some first century cult leader caught by and dealt with by the Romans was actually God and his death (which wasn't out of his hands) was a symbolic sacrifice rather than the real sacrifice that many Christians believe it was. Myself! Myself! Why have I forsaken Myself!
From the immoral horrific real blood sacrifice sense, this explanation makes perfect sense. However, under the modern understanding including trinitarianism where Jesus is actually God, it simply becomes a giant plot hole. Oh, and they didn't eat the sacrifice animals. FYI.
Well, you just need to start at a lower level. One should not sacrifice truth for comfort. And build from there...
>>And it's one thing to claim something is nonsense and another to demonstrate it.
Am I honestly expected to demonstrate that Superman doesn't exist?
There's a reason positive claims require support, not the other way around.
>>This God's knowledge is cast as "prior knowledge", then it looks like an effect before a cause. But God is timeless and his knowledge is "transcendent knowledge" or "timeless knowledge," making it instead a question of the interaction between time and timelessness.
Lofty claims without evidence. Superman flies faster than the speed of light and reverses time, doesn't that mean he violates free will too? It's one thing to pontificate on nonsense, it's another to actually believe it.
>>There's no evidence to suggest that the future is undefined, that the future is any less tangible than the past.
Actually, there's nothing to suggest the past is tangible. Though, I wouldn't start bringing evidence into the picture after citing God this and God that.
>>Augustine got it primarily from Paul, although he obviously elaborated a bit.
I wouldn't call that "getting it primarily from Paul". I would call that using Paul to justify the claim. There's a lot to recommend the Calvinist position Biblically, a lot to disrecommend Calvinism ethically and a lot to disrecommend the Bible in general. One could argue that Superman could have sex if he wore a kryptonite condom. But, you still have a larger problem of unjustified beliefs. Reframing the problem with regard to causality still doesn't let you chose what you you won't choose (though, perhaps multiple universes allows for this). This entire thing does seem a lot like arguing about Superman's condoms. Sure, they could work, but you're still just assuming Superman.
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You know, I came up with that same solution to the idea of free will myself. I was rather astounded that other people didn't pitch the entire effect before cause idea in apologetics. It works out so well considering God is already exempt from spacetime by popular demand (and to suddenly become causeless). That the knowledge of your action prior to your action is the effect of your future action rather than the cause.
The argument itself is exceedingly silly. It is simply less silly than other arguments. It still results in an entirely deterministic universe where choices are known prior to them being made. It still results in a situation where you can between A and B, but you will choose B. Though, granting God even more superpowers "transcendence of time" and the like you might as well give him the power to eat his cake and have it too. The same situation would thusly exist, the creation or non-creation of a person would present a deterministic set of choices that individual would make. It is still like having a random number generator, but knowing the seed number. It's not really random.
Though, the idea of freewill is extra-biblical anyhow, and disproving it would only lend credence to Calvinism. The original argument is flawed in that it ascribes the claim of free will to the Bible, rather than Augustine. It's also false that it was God tempting Eve with an apple. Firstly it only says fruit, and secondly God told them not to eat his fruit or they would die that same day (though they lived another 900 years). And still, even from an effect before cause point of view, it still would still have this obvious result, and thus does kind of gut the story of Eden. Personally I would have left the talking snake out of the garden. Stupid bugger can't keep his yap shut.
Well, you could show it to Muslims and make them stop blowing themselves up. Show it to Christians and get stem cell research off the ground. Show it to atheists and they would roll their eyes ('I saw that years ago').
I thought it was great when you said at the risk of your karma... and then had a +5. Though, you did get knocked down to 3. My +5 has dropped a bit too.
That said, I haven't seen any specific statistics on that, but there is a few pretty strong correlations theres which do imply you're right.
>>Many times people are forced into sacrifice.
Isn't that a lot like having stuff taken from you without a choice in the matter? What attachment can be made to the sacrifice of somebody who had no choice in the matter?
>>The differences include that Christianity believes in a supreme being and does not believe in karma/reincarnation.
Well, that's certainly a difference. Although, I don't think it's for the best. There's nothing more moral about a belief in God. Reincarnation is rather moot, but karma is itself probably a step forward (though, I doubt there's any truth there). The more fundamentalist a Christian becomes the more they act like Fred Phelps, the more fundamentalist a Jaine becomes the more respectable they are.
>>Jainism's tenet that harming other life is never justified to me is not tenable on many levels.
Well, a reduction of the harm you cause to the people and animals as best you can manage. If you don't think that opposing the harm of agribusiness or that paying respect to the life we take lock-step with Jainism, you'd be wrong.
>>Jesus' preaches strongly at several points tolerance for slights against us and love of enemies and means it, but also demonstrates (by turning out the money changers at the temple, for instance),
I don't think destroying a person's business constitutes turning the other cheek. In fact, I would cite that story as Jesus being kind of a dick. Right up there with cursing a plum tree because plums are out of seasons.
>>In any case, people will always argue about morality. It is not meant to be easy.
We are arguing about religion. Morality is rather easy. Doing what is right, doesn't require a second thought, nor does it typically require a first. I am often exposed to other people's things, it almost never occurs to me that I could steal them.
>>As we learn more about certain things, our beliefs advance to new levels, but also shift from side to side.
There is a sort of shifting zeitgeist of morality. Slavery was once thought to be moral. It was staunchly defended because it was condoned by the Bible. It took an amazing coalition of different people (quakers and secularists get some special awards here) and a war to finally put a stop to it. Looking back, I can't even understand the thinking at the time, not of American slavery or Biblical slavery. Sometimes you need to break a few rungs in the ladder.
>>Jainism is the focus on personal study, scholarship, and development. As a Lutheran (also emphasizing these things), I can very much appreciate that. I think it is the only way that any faith (philosophy if you must) can be real.
They are real either way (in the sense that they exist), it's simply the only way you can increase the chances of it being right. Though, rather than study, outright challenging everything you believe would probably do the job a bit better. Though, with religion, everything goes to faith at some point because you are still left with an unevidenced book that makes more sense as fiction. Certainly there may be aspects, which are good for their own sake. Those aspects, should be taken, but it doesn't need to be a package deal. And, ultimately, faith cannot be justified by definition. And though, many people view this sort of sacrifice of reason as a virtue, I find it to be the most repugnant of vice. As Voltaire said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -- I find this quite telling in light of 9/11 and other 'faith-based initiatives'.
>>Anyway, I appreciate the conversation. Finding someone who can discuss these things without being hostile is rare.
You should see hostility I get. Just the other day I was lambasted for judging somebody without knowing their astrological sign! Oh, and then there's all the damnations. Though, each time some Christian with poor spelling extols the virtues of the suffering I will endure, when I die (somehow both assuming and proving him right simultaneously), I chuckle and with the knowledge that, he will be denied the Elysium fields and cursed to Hades or not invited to Valhalla and instead occupy Helheim. Oh, the mead he will miss waiting for Ragnarök.
Your citing a distinction without a difference. You are claiming that PPM and God is a flawed analogy because some people believe PPM are established by science whereas some people believe God is established by science (creationists etc). That is borderline pathetic, and at most it could be construed (if one tried really really hard) to be a difference between some PPM believers and some God believers, not the actual ideas themselves. They don't go to great lengths to pretend to be scientific or logical, they go to those lengths to confuse the issue and blind people to the errors.
And religion is never guilty of this? For example, here's a fragment from the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on the trinity:
Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God." In this Trinity of Persons the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent. This, the Church teaches, is the revelation regarding God's nature which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to deliver to the world: and which she proposes to man as the foundation of her whole dogmatic system.
-- One certainly must agree that that isn't scientific or logically respectable, but it certainly tries. It doesn't take a great imagination to see how this above entry could be harping on getting three newtons of output from one newton of input via some eternal generation, eternal procession, and co-equal yet identical forces.
Actually, it seems that very few religions have blood sacrifice as a central theme. The idea of karma is the antithesis of blood sacrifice. The idea that the blood of the innocent can wash your guilt away is abhorrent, and fundamentally different from the idea that everybody gets their comeuppance and if you put good into the world you get good out of the world. The idea of blood sacrifice litters the Bible, from the story of Abraham and Isaac (and other stories where the parent actually murdered the child), to Noah's Ark, and most prominently in the Gospels. It doesn't appeal to me in the least, but, it's there, clear as day.
I have nothing against rejecting things which don't work, but if Christianity is true... why are their such obvious and fundamental flaws in the central doctrines? I mean, why does one need to cherry pick the Bible so heavily in order to make a moral religion out of some of the pieces? Shouldn't it have been vaguely good to start with? It just seems that once you admit there are flaws in the Bible, nothing should stop one from concluding that God is one of those flaws.
Why would God need to walk a mile in our shoes? He should know everything, and his judgment should be just. It seems to be a lot of effort in order to scrap together a makeshift theology out of Christianity which doesn't insult one's sense of decency. And we need our moral understandings to make such judgments about the immoralities within the Bible. It seems like we could just keep our moral understandings and get rid of the Bible.
I understand that one can reject the idea of blood sacrifice. Though, the blood sacrifice explanation was an attempt to explain this odd hole in the story. Without it, you have a much more moral story, but you also have this gaping plot hole again. It makes more sense as really poorly written fiction with makeshift morality borrowed from other sources, built on over the years, without any evidence to support it, and no reason to accept it. And even if you ignore the poorly written fiction, take the makeshift morality, and ignore the lack of support, you've accomplished nothing. One seems to need to gut the religion in order to suggest there is some morality there.
I see no reason to keep the bathwater if you've thrown out the baby.
From reading the Bible is seems to grow out of Paul and the Jewish idea of blood sacrifice. Sacrifice a good animal for this or that or the other. And, without it, the other parts don't make any sense. Jesus gets killed because... -- Doesn't seem to make any sense. I don't blame people for trying to explain it, it needs explaining. Certainly good people suffer, I daresay your average cancer suffer goes through worse than any crucified person does. God dies horribly for no reason at all. Why put one's head on the executioner's block at all? I think it's unworthy of any respect. If nobody is forcing you, don't do it.
And even the little interesting parts are still less moral than Jainism. A Martin Luther King could have been created more easily via Jainism than Christianity, and actually he got his positions from Gandhi, and not Christianity. Gandhi coincidentally got his from Jainism. I don't see why, one should accept a story which makes little to no sense, when there are more moral philosophies out there for the taking. And, on a related note, I don't see how anybody can conclude the Bible is true to even make the offer worthwhile.
The story doesn't seem to work. The moral philosophy is subpar.
Oh, I've seen some goodies. ...
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The entire core of Christianity is that it is unreasonable to believe that Joseph could have just stepped up rather than have his wife stoned to death (the punishment to for adultery). It is thusly much more likely that his wife gave sexless birth to a magical wizard.
So that years later Mel Gibson could make a snuff movie about how awesome Drippy McBloodspurt was for dying as horrifically as he could (even though he could have avoided it, but didn't care to... though he wasn't above asking himself why he forsook himself).
Though, if I thought the Jews killed God, I'd worship the Jews.
As an atheist, I feel it is my duty and honor to help Christians be as Christlike as possible, even though I am unduly hampered by insufficient quantities of lumber.
Certainly there is a lot of focus on sacrifice and Christ, and certainly if you focused less on incoherent beliefs like the main story of Gospels. Certainly one could focus on philosophy as there are smatterings of it here and there in the Gospels, but I don't see why it deserves any special credit above say Buddhist or even Marxist philosophy. Sure, it's there, if you read between the bizarre story or just skip to the Sermon on the Mount. As for making tough moral choices, I daresay becoming a Jaine would be far more moral and more difficult than following the few things the Bible gets right (and those few things can usually be found in other earlier sources).