Theism vs. Atheism ... will it ever be settled?

The T wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: Here's my question to all the Atheists who are criticizing me here: Why are you blowing this way out of proportion, exaggerating any point I make to the extreme? If you want to keep your Atheism to yourself and leave the floor to the religious people - fine, but please don't demand that I do the same. Exactly the same I demand from religious people: keep your beliefs to yourself.

The T wrote:   Whenever you find something that works wonderfully for you, you need to let it be known to the world. That's good a few times, but then it gets old. People here are not going to change it seems. And the great discussion that you probably want was had a long time ago in one of those other threads....

Edited by JLocke - July 06 2010 at 18:43

JLocke wrote: jampa17 wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: JLocke wrote: Reminds me of a friend of mine who is essentially an atheist, morally an agnostic, yet gets upset with me when I 'declare' myself as a non-believer. He says he is 'nothing', and thinks that if everybody just stopped talking about it, everything will go away.  I've never understood how people can be Agnostics. Like former Christians who are no longer sure which Christian denomination is the right one, but they still believe that the Christian God exists. IMO that would be a bit of a paranoid state of mind ... there is a god, and he'll probably punish you for not following the right path, kind of like a lose-lose situation. They should ask themselves: If there was a God, and he wanted us to behave a certain way, wouldn't he give us some better clues? Are we really to believe that He would allow that His books contain so many errors and contradictions? One gospel says that you should follow all the old testament rules (including circumcision), the other says that you *must not* follow these rules. In the light of all that, I don't understand how people can prefer the conclusion that there is a God but we can't know what he wants of us to the much simpler conclusion that there probably isn't any god, and even though today billions of people are worshipers, they're as obviously wrong as those who worshiped Zeus or Apollo. When you read the bible vertically (as Bart Ehrman describes in Jesus, Interrupted) and look at how the books of the new testament were written and by whom, and you see that the stories were in (mouth to mouth) circulations for decades until they were written down ... you see that it's a human creation all the way. It shows.   Oh, that's easy Mike... they keep believing in God but lost their faith on the leaders of the religions... there's no too much problem with that, but as usual, you seem to be not able to understand others people's point of views. Agnostics generally, depends on them, believe in God and they find the Bible quite accurate (no matter your silly picking about circumcisions and other stuff that you don't know well) but they don't like the methods of the religions. Maybe they feel that some decisions are bad and that's why the keep believing. Because they understand the message, but dislike the messenger...     He just wrote an entire paragraph stating how full of error the bible is, and you ignored it. Yet you are the one who tells him that HE is the one who refuses to listen to reason?

jampa17 wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: JLocke wrote: Reminds me of a friend of mine who is essentially an atheist, morally an agnostic, yet gets upset with me when I 'declare' myself as a non-believer. He says he is 'nothing', and thinks that if everybody just stopped talking about it, everything will go away.  I've never understood how people can be Agnostics. Like former Christians who are no longer sure which Christian denomination is the right one, but they still believe that the Christian God exists. IMO that would be a bit of a paranoid state of mind ... there is a god, and he'll probably punish you for not following the right path, kind of like a lose-lose situation. They should ask themselves: If there was a God, and he wanted us to behave a certain way, wouldn't he give us some better clues? Are we really to believe that He would allow that His books contain so many errors and contradictions? One gospel says that you should follow all the old testament rules (including circumcision), the other says that you *must not* follow these rules. In the light of all that, I don't understand how people can prefer the conclusion that there is a God but we can't know what he wants of us to the much simpler conclusion that there probably isn't any god, and even though today billions of people are worshipers, they're as obviously wrong as those who worshiped Zeus or Apollo. When you read the bible vertically (as Bart Ehrman describes in Jesus, Interrupted) and look at how the books of the new testament were written and by whom, and you see that the stories were in (mouth to mouth) circulations for decades until they were written down ... you see that it's a human creation all the way. It shows.   Oh, that's easy Mike... they keep believing in God but lost their faith on the leaders of the religions... there's no too much problem with that, but as usual, you seem to be not able to understand others people's point of views. Agnostics generally, depends on them, believe in God and they find the Bible quite accurate (no matter your silly picking about circumcisions and other stuff that you don't know well) but they don't like the methods of the religions. Maybe they feel that some decisions are bad and that's why the keep believing. Because they understand the message, but dislike the messenger...

From the gospel of Matthew you can get the impression that the laws of the Jews should be kept, while in John as well as Paul's letters it explicitly says that those laws are not to be kept. Please don't say that I don't know these things well ... I'm sure that Robert (Epignosis) knows the Bible better than I do, but reading about it has become somewhat of a hobby lately and I would say that I'm qualified to at least say something about it which merits a more serious response.

The Bible contains many serious contradictions that are not easily reconcilable. Even if you reject all "leaders" and try to base your life on the Bible alone, you'll find that for many important situations one verse tells you to do one thing, and another tells you to do the exact opposite.

^ Which practical implication does your religion have?

Mr ProgFreak wrote: jampa17 wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: JLocke wrote: Reminds me of a friend of mine who is essentially an atheist, morally an agnostic, yet gets upset with me when I 'declare' myself as a non-believer. He says he is 'nothing', and thinks that if everybody just stopped talking about it, everything will go away.  I've never understood how people can be Agnostics. Like former Christians who are no longer sure which Christian denomination is the right one, but they still believe that the Christian God exists. IMO that would be a bit of a paranoid state of mind ... there is a god, and he'll probably punish you for not following the right path, kind of like a lose-lose situation. They should ask themselves: If there was a God, and he wanted us to behave a certain way, wouldn't he give us some better clues? Are we really to believe that He would allow that His books contain so many errors and contradictions? One gospel says that you should follow all the old testament rules (including circumcision), the other says that you *must not* follow these rules. In the light of all that, I don't understand how people can prefer the conclusion that there is a God but we can't know what he wants of us to the much simpler conclusion that there probably isn't any god, and even though today billions of people are worshipers, they're as obviously wrong as those who worshiped Zeus or Apollo. When you read the bible vertically (as Bart Ehrman describes in Jesus, Interrupted) and look at how the books of the new testament were written and by whom, and you see that the stories were in (mouth to mouth) circulations for decades until they were written down ... you see that it's a human creation all the way. It shows.   Oh, that's easy Mike... they keep believing in God but lost their faith on the leaders of the religions... there's no too much problem with that, but as usual, you seem to be not able to understand others people's point of views. Agnostics generally, depends on them, believe in God and they find the Bible quite accurate (no matter your silly picking about circumcisions and other stuff that you don't know well) but they don't like the methods of the religions. Maybe they feel that some decisions are bad and that's why the keep believing. Because they understand the message, but dislike the messenger...     From the gospel of Matthew you can get the impression that the laws of the Jews should be kept, while in John as well as Paul's letters it explicitly says that those laws are not to be kept. Please don't say that I don't know these things well ... I'm sure that Robert (Epignosis) knows the Bible better than I do, but reading about it has become somewhat of a hobby lately and I would say that I'm qualified to at least say something about it which merits a more serious response. The Bible contains many serious contradictions that are not easily reconcilable. Even if you reject all "leaders" and try to base your life on the Bible alone, you'll find that for many important situations one verse tells you to do one thing, and another tells you to do the exact opposite.

jampa17, let me ask you something . . . 

JLocke wrote: jampa17, let me ask you something . . .  Do you really believe that a man was able to fit two of every species of land animal onto a boat?

of course that wouldn't be possible, but it misses the point of the Noah story and doesn't do justice the probabilty that if floods did occur it's probable someone would load their animals (and as many others they could find) into a big ship.  I am not religious but It seems to me the Noah legend is one of the more credible stories to the extent that it is quite plausible, even likely.

If one is going to question the Bible why not question the improbable things rather than the credible ones.  The dispute is whether God told Noah to do it, not whether someone, his family and livestock might build a big ship to survive a flood.



 

Atavachron wrote: JLocke wrote: jampa17, let me ask you something . . .  Do you really believe that a man was able to fit two of every species of land animal onto a boat? of course that wouldn't be possible, but it misses the point of the Noah story and doesn't do justice the probabilty that if floods did occur it's probable someone would load their animals (and as many others they could find) into a big ship.  I am not religious but It seems to me the Noah legend is one of the more credible stories to the extent that it is quite plausible, even likely. If one is going to question the Bible why not question the improbable things rather than the credible ones.  The dispute is whether God told Noah to do it, not whether someone, his family and livestock might build a big ship to survive a flood.