Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Warp wrote:
Consider how much respect would you give to someone saying that the Bible is nothing but a fairy tale.
I wonder if someone making such a remark would realize how many books and literary techniques the Bible consists of. To say and really believe that the Bible does not contain any sort of truths, factual data, or any sort of historical accuracy whatsoever is equivalent in its naivete and nearsightedness to someone who believes every word of the Bible is as it seems at face value without metaphor, parables, or fairy tales. Neither extreme is a sane position to take.
Personally I wouldn't respect someone convinced of either extreme, but for some reason when it comes to religion, most people seem to be fully polarized.
Take the story of Noah as an example, the majority of people will say:
A) It's utter baloney as there's no way what is describes could have happened, or they'll cite Mesopotamian or Babylonian literature which is familiar with the overall story but with a significant amount of differences.
B) Every word in the Bible regarding Noah is historical fact and occurred exactly as described in its most extreme explanation, where the entire world was flooded, and miniature animals of every known species were on an ark and blah blah blah.
There are two sane approaches which are non-extremist.
A) The story of Noah is based on some historical flood which flooded the "known world" (some area of Mesopotamia / Babylonia), with some guy and his family getting on some kind of boat with his family, of which the Bible is adapting for its own needs.
B) The story is a fairy tale to teach some specific ideas about human behavior.
"Believing" in the Bible does not mean one should turn off their brain. In fact, the Bible's continual commentary on the worthlessness of magic, or its nonacceptance of various superstitions or not even considering the possibility that statues may represent real powers somewhere and aren't just meaningless rocks, shows how much it wants its readers to look at life with a discerning mind and not just accepting the status quo or preexisting beliefs.
Believing in the Bible does not mean you need to believe every story of David in Samuel is historical fact. Just because there may be some fairy tales in their about national heroes or leaders doesn't mean one should take the opposite approach and think they never existed. The truth is whether David existed or not, or whether all the stories about him are true or not is entirely besides the point, if you think that's the key point of why they're there, you missed the boat.
To drive the point home, the book of Leviticus and elsewhere mentions animal sacrifices over and over and how/when people must offer such sacrifices. Yet look at the words of Samuel, Hosea, Isaiah, or Jeremiah who rebuke the people for believing that animal sacrifices have any inherent value. They tell their listeners that bringing many sacrifices completely misses the point. Man's objective is to consider how their actions affect others and they should improve themselves, not walk around thinking they can influence the divine with silly rituals or they can do and act as they please if only they have a lot of sheep or doves on hand.
At the end of the day, much of the Bible is open to interpretation. The Bible does not necessitate a belief in a flat or round Earth. The Bible does not necessitate a belief for or against various theories of Evolution. The Bible does not necessitate a belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun, or Sun around the Earth, or both of them around some floating body of water. Due to the Bible's rich usage of metaphors and perspective writing (which most so-called believers completely fail to understand or notice), practically any position on most topics can be read into the Bible. Someone even wrote a book convincingly explaining how the Bible does not require any beliefs whatsoever, not even a belief in God.
Trying to claim a certain scientific theory is true or false based on the Bible, or learning a scientific theory out of the Bible is misusing the wonderful book you have in front of you. The Bible is about a quest for a sustainable life style built upon personal betterment with a running commentary on things that worked and things that did not throughout history and trying to understand the human condition. The only thing the Bible really demands of its readers is to pay attention to their surroundings and some history to learn from, care about others, and aim to improve. Using the Bible as a means to bash others for running and studying experiments or burn them at the stake for doing so is an utter perversion of the overall message it is conveying. The amount of people here claiming some approach is mandated by the Bible to understanding the mechanics and science of the universe makes me want to vomit.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
While atheists claim to be atheists. Don't many of them still treat other aspects of life as if it were religion? Whether it be money, the state or celebrities.
What is atheism? Do you believe that no gods exist or do you just reject the claim that god exists?
I believe someone who classifies themself as atheist rejects any form of higher power.
I used to call myself atheist but that wasn't very true so I now go by agnostic.
ag·nos·tic
1. a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.
Seems a little bit more reasonable to my understandings.
I'll say one thing briefly because I think it is crucial to any discussion of faith and atheism.
What atheism (or absence of faith or whatever you want to call it) has that religion lacks is falsifiability.
If anyone wants to elaborate on that point, be my guest. As for me, I hope I'm done with this thread.
While atheists claim to be atheists. Don't many of them still treat other aspects of life as if it were religion? Whether it be money, the state or celebrities.
You seem to be confusing an atheist with a non-religious person. You also seem to have a very skewed view of what the term "religion" means (essentially you are committing an equivocation fallacy here.)
Technically speaking a Buddhist is an atheist, because Buddhists do not believe in a god. Obviously Buddhists can be deeply religious, but they still don't (usually) believe in any gods. (Some Buddhists probably also believe in Hinduism, which has craploads of gods, but that's a mixture. It's not pure Buddhism.)
Technically speaking Raëlians are atheists because they don't believe in a god. Their religion is ufology, and believe aliens created us, but they don't believe in gods.
You are also equivocating two completely different meanings of the word "religion" (probably on purpose): The literal meaning and the figurative meaning.
While atheists claim to be atheists. Don't many of them still treat other aspects of life as if it were religion? Whether it be money, the state or celebrities.
You seem to be confusing an atheist with a non-religious person. You also seem to have a very skewed view of what the term "religion" means (essentially you are committing an equivocation fallacy here.)
Technically speaking a Buddhist is an atheist, because Buddhists do not believe in a god. Obviously Buddhists can be deeply religious, but they still don't (usually) believe in any gods. (Some Buddhists probably also believe in Hinduism, which has craploads of gods, but that's a mixture. It's not pure Buddhism.)
Technically speaking Raëlians are atheists because they don't believe in a god. Their religion is ufology, and believe aliens created us, but they don't believe in gods.
You are also equivocating two completely different meanings of the word "religion" (probably on purpose): The literal meaning and the figurative meaning.
You didn't even answer his question.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
What atheism (or absence of faith or whatever you want to call it) has that religion lacks is falsifiability.
I'm not sure that sentence makes any sense. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in a god. It's simply not having a certain belief. It's not a positive claim. (Sure, some atheists may make a positive claim with respect to the existence of gods, but that's not generally what the word means.)
It's like saying: What not collecting stamps has that a hobby lacks is falsifiability.
That's a bit nonsensical, don't you think?
I'd prefer an Agnostic thread myself. Much more to talk about.
There seems to be a very widespread misconception that the range of belief is a linear range, with theism on one and, atheism on the other, and "agnosticism" right in the middle. Especially, there seems to be a widespread misconception that "agnosticism" and "atheism" are mutually exclusive things.
No. Agnosticism is not on the same axis as theism-atheism. The latter deals with one question, and one question only: Do you believe in the existence of a god?
That question is not a binary question. "Yes", "no", "maybe", "I don't know" and "I have no opinion" are all valid answers, but they are still not related to agnosticism.
Agnosticism is related to the concept of knowledge and certainty. Do you know, or do you think that it's possible to to know for certain, about the existence of deities?
That term is not mutually exclusive with atheism, or theism for that matter. "Agnostic atheist" and "agnostic theist" are perfectly valid terms. The former simply means "does not believe in gods, but claims no certainty", the latter means "believes in a god, but claims no certainty".
You can think of it as a two-dimensional graph with two axes. On one axis you have belief in the existence of a god. On the other you have certainty of that belief. You can freely place yourself anywhere in that graph. It's not contradictory.
If the question uses an equivocation fallacy, how do you answer it (other than pointing out the error)?
His question was, and I'm quoting him on this:
Mitjitsu wrote:
While atheists claim to be atheists. Don't many of them still treat other aspects of life as if it were religion? Whether it be money, the state or celebrities.
Let's break this down.
1) He's saying atheists claim to be atheists, ok whatever.
2) Do many of them treat other aspects of life as if it were religion?
3) Example of 2)
So as you can see, the question was 'do they treat other aspects of life as if it were religion'.
An equivocation fallacy is when you use different meanings of words in different contexts. As far as I know, the words "while atheists claim to be atheists, don't many of them still treat other aspects of life as if it were religion?" is not a fallacy.
It's a question. He's asking a question. About atheists. In a topic called Ask an Atheist.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
Technically speaking Raëlians are atheists because they don't believe in a god. Their religion is ufology, and believe aliens created us, but they don't believe in gods.
To define atheism I think you also have to explain what you mean by "god". Someone who believes that spiritual beings created us, is he an atheist?
Atheists don't exist, because the Bible defines God as "I am", and everyone has that sensation of existence within them, so everybody not only believes, but knows that God ("I am") exists.
Personally I wouldn't respect someone convinced of either extreme, but for some reason when it comes to religion, most people seem to be fully polarized.
Yeah, just like magnets are polarized, and humans are polarized into two sexes, so does the human mind also polarize into extremities, so that they can battle against each other, and show who is right and wrong, so that they unify more and more, because both of them were both right and wrong, in some areas.
There are two sane approaches which are non-extremist.
A) The story of Noah is based on some historical flood which flooded the "known world" (some area of Mesopotamia / Babylonia), with some guy and his family getting on some kind of boat with his family, of which the Bible is adapting for its own needs.
B) The story is a fairy tale to teach some specific ideas about human behavior.
Maybe your two "sane approaches" are a bit of a simplified polarization :P I think there are a lot more sane approaches.
I would say that it's completely reasonable that the whole earth could flood. For example, if the axis tilted to 90 degrees, the poles would melt, and there would be a global flood. I've read that something similar to that caused the global flood...s in the past.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Mitjitsu wrote:
Don't many of them still treat other aspects of life as if it were religion?
Yes. When they shit, they flush. Obviously religion. They use money. That's religion. They collect stamps. Religion. Everything can be described as if it was religion. Describing or defining something as religion does not make it religion.
"money" and "celebrity" have zero hits here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religionnfq wrote:
I am
In this game God can be skipped and the skip does not even require any OOB glitching. Descartes optimized the run in 1637, so any attempt that involves God will always be obsoleted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sumRT-55J wrote:
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
nfq wrote:
Nach wrote:
Personally I wouldn't respect someone convinced of either extreme, but for some reason when it comes to religion, most people seem to be fully polarized.
Yeah, just like magnets are polarized, and humans are polarized into two sexes, so does the human mind also polarize into extremities, so that they can battle against each other, and show who is right and wrong, so that they unify more and more, because both of them were both right and wrong, in some areas.
Yes, there are duality in many things, male and female, night and day, smooth and extra chunky. However, it is the way of the child to only see black and white, as one gets older, they start noticing more and more areas of grey.
Some people are not exactly male or female. There are times that exist like twilight which isn't necessarily just night or day. Peanut butter exists in other compositions than the two aforementioned.
We can say killing is wrong. How about killing a crying baby when a family is being chased by a large pack of wolves so they aren't noticed and saving the rest of them? How about when a group of people is trapped with little air somewhere, can they kill a few people so the rest have enough air to breath so they can succeed in having enough time to dig themselves out? If a city is under siege due to one person they're protecting, can they kill that person to save everyone else? (2 Samuel 20:1-2, 14b-22)
nfq wrote:
There are two sane approaches which are non-extremist.
A) The story of Noah is based on some historical flood which flooded the "known world" (some area of Mesopotamia / Babylonia), with some guy and his family getting on some kind of boat with his family, of which the Bible is adapting for its own needs.
B) The story is a fairy tale to teach some specific ideas about human behavior.
Maybe your two "sane approaches" are a bit of a simplified polarization :P I think there are a lot more sane approaches.
They're two examples of non-extreme positions which find some kind of truth of the story in the Bible without taking an absurd extremist stance on it. You're welcome to enumerate others.
nfq wrote:
I would say that it's completely reasonable that the whole earth could flood. For example, if the axis tilted to 90 degrees, the poles would melt, and there would be a global flood. I've read that something similar to that caused the global flood...s in the past.
Is it normal for the Earth's axis to tilt 90 degrees?
Can someone really get all animals from vastly different habitats from all over the Earth to get onto some kind of relatively small sea vessel and live there for a year?
But again, this is not the point, is the story of Noah in the Bible there to each us mere history? Does it honestly matter whether that story or some version of it really occurred or not?
Or rather, is the Bible coming to teach us that stealing is wrong, not caring for others is wrong.
Or maybe it's trying to convey an idea that natural disasters can wipe out whole communities in an instant, destroying everything they've worked towards, and people should be lawful abiding citizens, work together, and not spend their lives aiming solely for personal benefits that can vanish in an instant and have no lasting value?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
The thing about the biblical story of Noah and the Flood is that, after the flood story we get Peleg, in whose days the whole face of the earth was changed. So yeah, plate tectonics kinda mess with that as well.
Bear in mind that most cultures have some sort of flood legend; the Norse are interesting in that their flood legend of Ragnarok is supposed to be endgame. It's just we're currently attributing that to the ice age more than anything else.
Consider how much respect would you give to someone saying that the Bible is nothing but a fairy tale.
I wonder if someone making such a remark would realize how many books and literary techniques the Bible consists of. To say and really believe that the Bible does not contain any sort of truths, factual data, or any sort of historical accuracy whatsoever is equivalent in its naivete and nearsightedness to someone who believes every word of the Bible is as it seems at face value without metaphor, parables, or fairy tales. Neither extreme is a sane position to take.
To play Devil's Advocate, perhaps literally in this case, he said that they were fairy tales. Although fairy tales are considered to be pedestrian, fanciful and not worthy of serious consideration in modern times. You can bet that they contained truths, factual data, and some historical accuracy. They contained important lessons and morals and they functioned as a cultural repository to European pagans and medieval Christians much in the same way that the Bible does and still do to those who believe it.
The major difference between the two is that the Bible "won" the battle of the mind viruses and is taken much more seriously now than fairy tales are. But I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss fairy tales as mere flights of fancy, they do have important historical and cultural content that is not easily accessible through other means.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Yes and No. It depends on your conception of the meaning of atheism.
There is scads of circumstantial evidence for the position of so called strong atheism. For instance, if the Bible were true with respect to certain supernatural claims we would expect to find evidence of them (Noah's Flood, Tower of Babel vs Evolution of Language, presence of archaeological prior to the purported beginning of the world, and so on.)
There is no evidence for so called weak atheism because weak atheism is simply a rejection of other claims. A claim that you don't find their arguments persuasive, no evidence is really required for such a position.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
The bible won the battle of the mind viruses because the roman emperors *consults notes* definitely as early as Constantine but possibly earlier wanted to harness the power of this new Christianity cult, only it backfired on them and Christianity ate the pagan (read: non-Abrahamic) religions of the Mediterranean.
The bible won the battle of the mind viruses because the roman emperors *consults notes* definitely as early as Constantine but possibly earlier wanted to harness the power of this new Christianity cult, only it backfired on them and Christianity ate the pagan (read: non-Abrahamic) religions of the Mediterranean.
I do not disagree. However, Europeans kept a number of their traditions, mostly modifying Christian concepts, such as Easter, Yule, May Day, as well as other cultural tidbits knocking around in their stories and oral traditions. This is why I consider fairy tales and other folklore to be important.
I do consider the Bible to be more or less a fairy tale. But I don't dismiss it or other fairy tales as unimportant or irrelevant.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
However, Europeans kept a number of their traditions, mostly modifying Christian concepts, such as Easter, Yule, May Day, as well as other cultural tidbits knocking around in their stories and oral traditions.
That would be why I use the term "ate" and not "displaced" or "destroyed". Vodou came about in much the same way - it's a combination of African Vodun and Catholicism.
In this game God can be skipped and the skip does not even require any OOB glitching. Descartes optimized the run in 1637, so any attempt that involves God will always be obsoleted
Do you believe that there is non-zero opportunity that one day new even faster route with "game end glitch" in god section can be created!?
Seems your atheism is not enough strong. You disappointed me.
Warp wrote:
Technically speaking a Buddhist is an atheist, because Buddhists do not believe in a god. Obviously Buddhists can be deeply religious, but they still don't (usually) believe in any gods. (Some Buddhists probably also believe in Hinduism, which has craploads of gods, but that's a mixture. It's not pure Buddhism.)
Technically speaking Raëlians are atheists because they don't believe in a god. Their religion is ufology, and believe aliens created us, but they don't believe in gods.
In more wider sense atheism also the rejection of belief in existence of any spiritual, supernatural, or transcendental concepts.
So even the 100% buddhist cannot be accepted as atheist. Some aspects of Raëlians beliefs also not allow accepted them to atheists (even if their attempt had some entertainment value).
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell)
Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Pokota wrote:
The thing about the biblical story of Noah and the Flood is that, after the flood story we get Peleg, in whose days the whole face of the earth was changed. So yeah, plate tectonics kinda mess with that as well.
It's funny you should mention that. The Bible's stories can be understood in various ways, and their juxtaposition can be historically linked or thematically linked to drive a point home.
The back to back stories of Noah and the Dispersal / Languages are actually two examples of extremes. One story is about every man for himself or every family for themselves. The story of the city and tower that follow is about many people working together for some undesirable end. The two couldn't be more opposite. Many of the opposites are also merely hinted to and completely lost in translation. For example, the measurements of the ark spell out the word Tongue (metaphor: Language), the following story discusses many Tongues (metaphor: Languages).
The Bible rejects the people of both those stories (extremists), and follows it up with a role model Abraham who traveled from place to place, helped others, rejected personal gain, turned his back on his family if it led to fighting, but came to their rescue in times of need, dug wells for the public, signed peace treaties, and overall aimed for a balance in life.
There can be historical truths in all these stories, but looking at the big picture, the Bible is preaching lifestyle and behavior, not history.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
To play Devil's Advocate, perhaps literally in this case, he said that they were fairy tales. Although fairy tales are considered to be pedestrian, fanciful and not worthy of serious consideration in modern times. You can bet that they contained truths, factual data, and some historical accuracy. They contained important lessons and morals and they functioned as a cultural repository to European pagans and medieval Christians much in the same way that the Bible does and still do to those who believe it.
Not disagreeing with your definition of fairy tales or old and contemporary connotations, but is it even sane to say that the Bible in its entirety is entirely such? Is it sane to say David never existed? That no one named Jeremiah every went around preaching surrender?
How do you even look at the book of Proverbs and call it a "fairy tale"? To do so requires a complete lack of reading comprehension, as the book doesn't even contain tales.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
The major difference between the two is that the Bible "won" the battle of the mind viruses and is taken much more seriously now than fairy tales are. But I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss fairy tales as mere flights of fancy, they do have important historical and cultural content that is not easily accessible through other means.
Again, a point which I have tried stressing over and over, the Bible is not one single book with one literary style. It's multiple books with different viewpoints and different literary styles within. I would be quite quick to proffer some of the books are mere flights of fancy devoid of serious content which are tagging along for the ride alongside the others.
This is a strong point, as different religious groups / biblical scholars accept or reject various books or parts thereof, or ignore them. As examples: Song of Songs, Wisdom of Ben Sira, Jubilees, Revelation, Mormon. To paint all these books and the others with one single brush is naive.
Pokota wrote:
The bible won the battle of the mind viruses because the roman emperors *consults notes* definitely as early as Constantine but possibly earlier wanted to harness the power of this new Christianity cult, only it backfired on them and Christianity ate the pagan (read: non-Abrahamic) religions of the Mediterranean.
You're looking at things on a superficial expressed belief system or conformance with rituals. The Bible won the battle of minds in its pervasive ideas that people don't even realize they were ever consciously conforming with.
As an example, the fourth article of the ten articles (commonly mistranslated as ten commandments) is that people should work for six days and take off one day a week from their job. In the western world, only the destitute and the greedy work all seven days a week. Most people take off for the weekend. This concept was sheer lunacy millenia ago, yet today in large parts of the world is nearly universal.
If you start looking at the ideas beneath the surface, you see that society as a whole now conforms with most of them. This even pervades to ideas and expressions people use without even realizing it. Take "don't put all your eggs in one basket" or "the writing is on the wall", both are biblical concepts, yet even Atheists use them.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
