Not a religious scholar but I think that the Old Testament serves as a basis for all of these cults.

Now, give me some Old Time Atheism!

Many people over thousands of years have found inspiration in Christianity -- including churchgoer Kamala Harris.

I don't understand all the mysteries of the universe, but that doesn't mean that I can disprove faith. Not to mention Pascal's Wager, etc.

A "saint" she wasn't ....

But, life helping the poor, Nobel Peace Prize, etc.

Though have also heard that sometimes the stronger ones were lacking, so she had to use aspirin-type stuff instead.

Theresa was ugly in spirit and soul; she treated her staff/volunteers cruelly. She fought against birth control and abortion, even in cases of ectopic pregnancy which would kill the mother.

A rational review shows she did little good and much harm.

Nobel Peace Prize

Not perfect, tho.

She wasn't interested in doing any suffering herself. When she needed medical care, she went to modern facilities to get the best care available.

Then again, she ran a hospice, didn't she? So I'm not sure how much could've been done for folks there, just saying.

Then again, as I may've commented previously, there may have been a supply problem, so that she was reduced to giving aspirin rather than morphine, or something like that.

Thanks for your comment.

Here's just one counter argument. Assuming there is a conscious, purposeful "God" (we'll name it OG for convenience), what if Og values ration/reason above blind faith? What if Og intends to punish people who blindly follow religious leaders? What if Og wanted to find humans who could think on their own and intends to destroy all of the blind faith followers?

Voltaire said something like, "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

One thing is certain, if Og is Jehovah of the King James Bible, everyone is well and truly fucked.

What kind of god what tell the devil, "Have you considered my servant, Job. . ." God sicked the devil on Job just to fuck with him. I'm familiar with the apologetics. God didn't allow the devil to mess with Job; Job did it to himself by being proudful, and that God was merely helping Job grow in character.

What kind of sick parent would put an evil being on notice that their child was ripe for the pickings? What kind of parent would watch their child walk to close to a raging river, warn them not to go near the slippery rocks, and then cop an attitude, "Oh well, serves them right. I told them not to walk next to river. ----Guess I'll have to find another child to help [torment] into becoming a better being. . ."?

The corollaries/alternates you give, I've heard similar before... yes, there could be hypothetically a horrible "God", say, one who sends everyone to Hell except red-haired seventh sons of seventh sons. Somehow I don't think so, though.

The basic "math" of Pascal's Wager, that given infinite rewards/punishments, it's good odds to believe and behave well, I think is perfectly sound.

The Book of Job is somewhat mysterious, but Job does get rewarded in the end.

Thanks for your provocative input!

Let's assume hypothetical God is putting everyone to a test to determine who believes without evidence. This allows this hypothetical God to cast all of those who believes without evidence into a pit of fire forever because hypothetical God finds such whimsy abhorrent.

The rules are easy if you get to make them up.

I've thought of similar ones myself.

I still think Pascal's original is good though.

is that it implies that there is no problem in basing your life, beliefs and actions on something you can’t prove to be true.

Love, for example, is something that can't always be proven with a chemical test: can you always see it? or smell it? etc.

is what people say it is. If someone says they love someone or something, then they do. It is self defining. As are most emotions.
We know emotions exist because we feel them. there is no mystery there. There is nothing to "prove".

I accept my wife loves me because she tells me she does and demonstrates that she does every day. So either she is lying, or I can accept what she is feeling is love for me. That is different rthan believing in a God that there is no evidence for.

Well, people can ask if something is *true* luv, though, or just glands calling to each other...

As for no evidence, some have claimed that the universe wouldn't work without God, e.g., "intelligent design". I often prefer the Pascal's Wager route, since it's a little more cool-eyed/"skepticism-friendly"/not pushing stuff too far/etc.

(I'll be the first to admit God's not on videotape!)

demonstrably proven false. Intelligent design is intellectually bankrupt as well as scientifically ridiculous.

There MAY be int. design, but it may be hard to prove, true.

But I was talking about your statement that some people say the Universe can only work with a designer. That is the opposite of true.

Again, int. design can be dicey, I admit.

to be clear, I was not talking about your opinion, but of the people you mentioned.

Forgot to mention.

So what if famous people were/are churchgoers. The meme is about the absurdity of xtian dogma.

The suffering she did little to nothing to help, while she flew around on private jets (Charles Keating, anyone?), was “beautiful.” Fuck her and the entire pedophile-supporting RC Church.

I'd have to see the quote in full context.

I've read she also acted as a stewardess once (!) to help out on a plane. Or maybe she just volunteered.

No need for foul language; and the Church has produced Joan of Arc, Dorothy Day, JRR Tolkien, Lenny da Vinci, etc.

Instead of assuming all of those people did the good things they did because of religion, you should be asking yourself if the same good people would be still doing good things without religion. The answer should be pretty obvious.

Meanwhile there’s arguably a lot more bad people who are doing bad things while being either inspired by religion or who are using religion as a tool to enable them to do bad things.

Better to think like John Lennon and image a world without religion and consider whether we would be better or worse off. Again the answer there is pretty obvious.

Atheists.

Sure, many atheists/agnostics are nice people. However, there may be lots of people who need religion, call it a "crutch" if you must, to be good, or even be not too evil.

And the ath/agn might be even better people with religion (hope of connection to ancestors/descendants in the afterlife, etc.).

John Lennon... great musician, but beat women. Maybe he could've used a nun shaking a ruler at him... (?)

Not only is this fully predictable, it has been utterly debunked as a ridiculously false equivalence.

The obvious problem with this reasoning is atheism has no dogma or doctrine or sacred texts to be interpreted or divine ultimate arbitrators of behavior or conveniently unverifiable promises of reward or punishment in the afterlife. As such it is an utterly useless tool to motivate yourself or other people to do anything, which is very much the opposite of organized religion which was specifically designed for that purpose.

Several of the Nazis hanged at Nuremberg invoked god during their last words, fully content in the knowledge they would be rewarded in the afterlife for murdering millions which is fully consistent with a religion that only requires belief for the conveniently unverifiable reward. Religion certainly didn’t hinder their evil and it can be much better argued it aided and abetted their actions. Regardless of what you think of the atheists you are invoking, one thing is for sure is that they had no such comfort in their last moments and atheism had exactly zero to do with it.

The idea that anyone needs religion to keep them on the straight and narrow is ridiculous. Anyone who wishes to do evil can find a way to justify it to themselves or others. If anything, atheism makes it harder by completely removing the idea you are doing things evil or otherwise to appease your invisible sky daddy.

If you honestly believe you need an invisible entity to keep you from doing bad things, you should be seriously asking yourself if you really are a good person. I prefer to think that truly good people whether or not they subscribe to religious beliefs or not would be truly good people with or without it.

However...

I don't claim to be a good person, tho I try to do good. The 10 Coms and Beatitudes are helpful reminders.

I'm not comfortable with the Nazi officers killing all the Jews and then asking for forgiveness... then again, anyone who does evil, whether small or large, may have the option for forgiveness. There were also Christians who helped save Jews in WWII, cf., e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hiding_Place_(film) .

Organized religion can be used as a social-control tool, true; then again, it may have other purposes, see MLK using religion to disrupt evil patterns of social control.

Happy Sunday!

Was trying to italicize just "disrupt", not everything after it.

I'll live. God forgive me.

If you want to give religion all the credit for the good deeds of those who are religiously affiliated whether or not religion deserves any of that credit, you should probably not forget how religion lends itself much more efficiently to bad deeds.

I didn't say religion deserves all the credit; and,

I don't know if it's more efficient at bad deeds. Stalin and Mao killed plenty.

If you wanted to offer some kind of counter argument, feel free to explain how atheism deserves any credit for anything good or bad. Should be well worth the read. Until then the false equivalency BS flag has been raised.

Meanwhile you did explicitly say some people "need" religion, as if it is or could somehow possibly be solely responsible for people doing good or it's absence solely responsible for people doing bad. That was certainly what I inferred from what you wrote, but if you want to walk that back be my guest.

Then again, "badly" may vary to people; if people don't object to adultery... there may be people who don't mind being lied to, or even killed if they're depressed. But I think the 10 Coms and Beatitudes have inspired some people.

At least some who believe in no God, may reason, as Dostoyevsky noted, "If there's no God, everything's permitted". Dostoy had his own problems (anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism, Russian ultra-nationalism, etc.), but a stopped clock is right twice a day,;and some people may be corrupted by their atheism into saying, "I'll do what I want, I don't see anyone in the clouds stopping me, I'm not my brother's keeper, f*&k you and die."

Believe a man who lies, commits adultery against three wives, steals from his own charity, and boasts about sexually assaulting women is the type of leader they want. It makes you question the efficacy of their religion.

I'll give you that.

I'll believe in your fable when everyone believes in Star Wars, Star Trek, NOVA and PBS.

(in a tin cup)

But the five loaves and the fishes ain't gonna be much help
I got a hungry juggler here who wants to keep ahead
Before he walks the water he wants his bread!
I don't know if I trust you
As you try to shoot me down
Before I walk on the water
Put the money down, down, down

Why would 11 out of the 12 apostles die for this 2 millennia hoax. Why so many more after them. Come to think of it, why have so many been willing to be killed for democracies of the last 200 years? Why does anyone allow themselves to be killed for what they believe? Just what is it for, when humans die or are willing to be killed, having faith that it will be for the better futures of others? Actually, where did the concepts of evil, faith, hope, or love, generosity, humility (one of the 7 virtues), truth, or soul (as in "the soul of America&quot come from?

For 20 years I was a Four Horsemen atheist. Then not. This book, full of timelines, charts, numbers and ancient and modern church fathers and archeological authorities, was only one of several books that helped me see why what Jesus said and did (long before he lived, and during his time, the spread of his words and healing work) mattered for humankind. As does the idea democracy. If it wasn't a Greek hoax, then why wasn't it established before the 18th Century. Where do Western laws, statutes, judges, courts, eyewitness testimony, juries, rules of evidence, the word democratic come from? They existed long before America's founders. Along with the Bible, this book, helps explain the 4,000 year evolution of Western rule of law.

The "David Limbaugh" thing is "scary", but I'll overlook it.

Having had a good graduate education at Northwestern, I can attest that this book is as rigorous as any other history of anything in the West (and I've read both Piketty tomes ).

I encourage all atheists and secular skeptics to open up to what it explains, gives numbers to, shows graphs and studies about, etc. Especially if they want to beat back the fake, lazy, easily deceived christians-in-name-only.

AAAAAGGGHHH

is absolutely Rush Limbaugh's brother. Turek is a right wing Christian bigot.
And the scholarship of this book is as crappy as all the other apologists.

I think some sign up to join in wartime because they perceive it as the superior road out of their dismal, and often deadend and or impoverished existence.

Sadly.

When humans fail to love their neighbor (they don't have to "like" them, just honor their basic humanity) they go to war for other humans' reasons and decide to answer their call, not being aware that the call is false or mammon based. imo, historically, almost all wars are wars to steal another people's wealth; that almost all wars are bankers' resource wars. Even the ones in the Middle East where faith is the cover reason.

One reason the draft was abolished after Vietnam was that the young just refused to be forced to serve in a war not declared by congress, and one that we couldn't win. The only country that really won was China. Back in those days, Mao was a charismatic teacher of Asian unity with China.

Except that they know that religion isn't really going to help them out of their misery. The gamble in that case revolves around an afterlife of bliss. It is just another variation on the "what have you got to lose" fallacy.

Call it a gamble if you like, but there've been worse "gambles"...

it is prime for the "what do you have to lose?" fallacy.

What I have to lose is my intellectual integrity and a lifetime of talking nonsense. That is important to me -- not so important to others.

An hour of church on Sunday, a lifetime of avoiding murder/adultery/theft/lying/disrespect to parents/covetousness, and a charitable, kindly life... these things sound good anyway, maybe. If this can get you an eternal reward, not a bad deal.

Maybe not nonsense!

(Now if it's Jerry Falwell Jr.-type "religion", that's a problem, sure.)

Last edited Sun Nov 24, 2024, 11:15 PM - Edit history (1)

in my experience, I don't see any correlation with religion and "lifetime of avoiding murder/adultery/theft/lying/disrespect to parents/covetousness, and a charitable, kindly life".
Certainly, some religious people do have these values, but I bet they would have good values even without a religion telling them what to do.
I'd wager at least 70% of the MAGA people would claim to be religious, and these values are mostly non-existent in that crowd.

And some atheists/agnostics can be virtuous people, in various ways.

Religion can make people think twice about doing evil, though. A Big Person in the Sky, watching...

I have never met an atheist or agnostic that appeared to me to have any problem with values. Some may be a bit irritable and caustic, living in a world where anybody who doesn't worship the invisible bearded man in the sky is often placed on the totem pole somewhere between mass murderers and people who torture cats and dogs to enjoy the pain they cause.

I'm glad the ones you know have values.

But some people can profit from religion, I feel. The 10 Commandments can be a useful guardrail.

the beatitudes, which is actually Jesus' updated view of the values. Jesus' version appealed to deeper values. Moses was all negative, as in, "if you do any of these 10 things, God will strike you dead or send you to hell for eternity."

The Sermon on the Mount was more like "Be kind. Be a good person. Think about these things."

I don't need a religion and I don't need to pay dues to have good values. If that is what others need, so be it. But somewhere along the way, much of Christianity has become the opposite of what Jesus taught and that has become a grave danger to our society.

And even among the "faithful" who do try to be good people, a fiction-based existence makes them highly vulnerable to falsehoods from political charlatans. I mean, if you literally believe in a bearded guy in the sky who controls what every sparrow does and turns people to pillars of salt, then you are far more likely also to believe people in Springfield are eating the cats and dogs.

God can perform miracles, but that doesn't mean Trump can.

Glad we're against charlatans!

the first three are just about a thin skinned God. The forth too, because the Sabbath is meaningless. Mother and Father? How about abusive parents honoring their children. Coveting? Sorry, no thought crimes. So we have murder, stealing and lying, morals that are pretty universal in almost every civilization. So 3 out of 10 are okay. That is a bad average.

And people should honor Ma and Pa... and they should love their kids.

So, at least 5 out of 10!

are these just a moral compass, or the basis of laws. Do you think the State should prosecute Adultery. In the Bible he is fine with Adulterers being put to death.

is good.

Or do we just take the 2 crimes and the misdemeanor?

Morally valid, may not be same as legally punished.

I mean, Moses wasn't that far removed from people literally living in caves, or at least hunting/gathering. Agriculture didn't begin until about 12,000 years ago, and didn't really change how societies operated until a bit closer to Moses' time. In Moses' day, slavery and brutality were widespread, considered normal. There was a need for a stronger social code if people were to get along, living closer together in cities. As has happened many times throughout history, political leaders found it helpful to partner with "God's earthly representatives" to scare or coerce citizens to stay in their lane, so to speak.

That was less about morality and more about trying to establish enough foundational laws in order for a society to be controlled, one step away from chaos.

The Beatitudes were more about morality in the sense that we understand that word today. The 10Cs are more useful to authoritarians. That makes it ironic that Christian zealots (and authoritarian politicians finding it useful to manipulate Christian zealots) keep trying to put the 10Cs into public places, but you never, ever see them trying to get the beatitudes posted.

It becomes obvious when we remind ourselves what that sermon said, because these were very liberal ideas then, and sadly, still are seen as too liberal for most Christians even today. Here is Matthew's interpretation (and there are some variations on these themes in Luke):

And these codes were mostly absorbed from Babylon and Mesopotamia closer to 600 BCE 1500 BCE.

It's not like the Hebrews were the only one with laws.

And Hammaraubi predates this by 1000 years.

Uh oh!

A myth, again mostly borrowed from Babylonia.

No record of Hebrews in Egypt. Egypt did not have slaves as described in aexodis, and no events from it are mentioned in Egypt, who wrote stuff down in stone.

Shall look it up.

Last edited Tue Nov 26, 2024, 11:29 AM - Edit history (1)

There are scholars who think Jesus Christ was an amalgam of several different people. After all, "Jesus" never wrote anything as far as we know, and "Christianity" wasn't formalized for another 400 years after his time. That's plenty of time for the texts to have been rewritten and lost in translation many times over. And the same goes for Moses. These are mostly oral traditions that have been heavily edited over the millennia.

My point is mainly that it is silly for Christians to obsess about the 10Cs when their guy made it clear that his values were more potently expressed through the sermons on the mount and on the plain. If it is all conjured fiction, that doesn't really change anything. These are just value statements, take them or leave them. Some are fairly universal. Some are self-serving for the business enterprise of the churches. Some are self-serving for the politicians of the day. And some really aren't as applicable as they once might have been. Be that as it may, I wonder why "Christians" don't want to own their guy's clearest value statements.

Thanks for that!

I am a good person without someone watching. If it takes fear to get someone to be good, they aren't inherently good to begin with.

One issue is that, besides you (heh), most of us are not all good, and often do require some "incentive", etc., to be good.

I would stack my morality and behavior against any Christian, however.

Morality evolved. It exists in the animal kingdom. Imagined punishers are not required.

Then again, spiders eating their young, etc. ...

The aminalz still haven't set up a Humane Society for *us*, tho...

When considering which of those two concepts are more or less plausible, consider that Christian doctrine expects you to believe god sent himself, to sacrifice himself, to himself, to save everyone from himself. The obvious purpose of offering such a conveniently unverifiable promise of reward/punishment is to manipulate people into a system of control that makes things like subjugation, misogyny, xenophobia, racism, slavery, etc. far more palatable to those who would otherwise reject such nefariousness if they spent much time thinking about it. The idea we should just blindly believe in any unfalsifiable notion with zero evidence that defies reason is simply a road to gullibility with all sorts of potholes along the way.

I can’t really think of any worse gambles at the moment, but can certainly imagine a lot better ones.

I'm not sure that afterlife reward/punishment is to manipulate people into control, even if it does help motivate people at times. Again, MLK found Xianity useful against racism.

As God saving himself from himself: I've thought of that argument, but it may be more like saving people from the Devil, and God being willing to make the sacrifices that normal humans were expected to make.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So there really doesn't need to be any sort of argument against it, but rather it's incumbent upon those who support that particular doctrine to make an argument for it. Meanwhile there's numerous examples in the bible that defy any notion of it. Most Christian denominations subscribe to the idea in one form or another, but not all of them do.

So yes you can dream up all sorts of ways to find biblical support for most anything you want, including slavery. Make that especially slavery since the bible not only regulates slavery, but endorses it. You can certainly twist yourself into a pretzel figuring out ways to use the bible to support all manner of things like equal rights for women, even though the bible regards them in the same way as livestock.

That still doesn't change the reality that the bible is far better suited to support those bad behaviors.

There are Unitarians, but, 1 John 5: 7: (King James Version) "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%205%3A7&version=KJV
The Trinity's there from the beginning!

As for slavery, women:
MLK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_feminism

Happy (Pilgrim Puritan Xian-inflected) T-giving!

Remember, the Bibles (in none of their 32 Protestant versions nor the Catholic version) mention democracy, voting, freedom of speech, ...not even freedom of religion....

There are at least 1 million murders and uncountable rapes (with god's approval, minor girls, too)).

The Bible is unfit for children or humanists.
--------------------------------------
And then there are the Coptic Bible, the Orthodox Bibles, the Armenian, Manchean, Jefferson, etc.

So many claims to the TRUTH, they can't all be right. Therefore, some must be FALSE.

I'm not going to guide you in reading. Believe what you want, but the fact that you can't explain further implies that you prefer confident but empty claims.

Every single thing that courts in the West uses as their tools of justice come from that the ancient biblical record -- laws, courts, judges, eyewitness testimonies, making rulings in which punishments fit crimes.
Read it and that will become apparent.

Nothing wrong with being humanist or children, either.

Jesus is quoted in Luke 18:15-17

But there may be room for progress, whether a "New Covenant" or whatever.

Hmm. Valid 'covenants' are made between sentient, informed homo sapiens, not between "holy" ectoplasmic ghosts nor UFO spies and infiltrators.

I did disbelieve in Aramaic-talking snakes, but then Sarah Palin and Tucker Carlson came along

Palin-Carlson part funny.

Christian Nationalist bullshit here?

Just saying.

are based on the Bible is pure Christian Nationalist bullshit.

"Where do Western laws, statutes, judges, courts, eyewitness testimony, juries, rules of evidence, the word democratic come from? "

The book he posted is loved Christian Nationalist. And David Limbaugh is Rush's brother.

This is complete apologists garbage.

There's Greek democracy, etc., now that you mention.

where thinkers abandoned the Bible and went back to the non-Christian philosophers.
To say our nation is based on Christianity goes against much of the Founders writings.

This book is an effort to rewrite History.

And I don't buy for one minute the poster was ever n atheist. He is so immersed in Christian apologetics.

what your second paragraph means.

as confusing as it is, can be simpler than that religious stuff. I mean, when the bible says 'we made man in our image' who the hell is this 'we' spoken of? Ancient Aliens makes more sense than that book of fables and fairy tales. Or, is it the aliens they talking about in the book and it's not fairy tales? And, every 'holy book' has the same stories about 'he who has no name', floods, destruction of civilization to rebuild it. It's all the same old story. See what I mean? Confusing would be an improvement.

In fact, Christians developed the original sciences with their self-correcting structures. The man who engineered and named the Voyager was Christian. So are thousands of scientists, tech and engineers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christians_in_science_and_technology

Frances S. Collins, PhD. from Yale and MD from the U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

"The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate and beautiful -- and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect human can start such battles. And only we can end them."

You can look up what Alister McGrath, Dr. of Philosophy for Research in Molecular Biophysics, Cambridge; or what Ian Hutchinson, Ph.D in Engineering Physics, Nuclear Engineer and Physicist at MIT say, along with what John Quincy Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman all said about the Bible. Or ask President Joe Biden what he thinks about the Bible.

Here's a quote from Lincoln, rated as our greatest president after Washington: " In regard to the Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave the world was communicated through this book. But for it, we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it."

Unbelief isn't an intellectual problem -- It's a spiritual problem.

Thanks!

Testaments??

Weird humans.

23 what?