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Old 03-18-2015, 03:01 PM
 
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Originally Posted by jacqueg View Post



And why on earth should atheists focus on the bible (or any of the other holy scriptures which litter the earth) as a teaching tool? If you want to do that, you go right ahead, no one is stopping you. Like most atheists, I do want people to think clearly, so I'm a big fan of logic and evidence in all its forms. A good idea does not need a scripture to support it - that's one of the ways you can tell it's a good idea.
because it is better than anything you got. You tell me one book that teaches us that being selfish and short sighted can end up in a disaster any better? And all those actions taken for selfish reasons over the last 6000 years have ended up the same way ... innocent people dead.
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Old 03-18-2015, 03:13 PM
 
Location: Home is Where You Park It
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Originally Posted by Arach Angle View Post
because it is better than anything you got. You tell me one book that teaches us that being selfish and short sighted can end up in a disaster any better? And all those actions taken for selfish reasons over the last 6000 years have ended up the same way ... innocent people dead.
Plenty of people have died - often very painfully - because of which holy scripture they espoused, and because of which interpretation of the same holy scripture they espoused. Unfortunately, religion is no defense against the human propensity for mayhem, let alone selfishness, and in fact religion is known for being one of the prime factors in urging them on. Just read any national or international news source if you doubt this.

Wherever the solution to human violence lies, religion can make no convincing claim to be it. The answer must lie elsewhere.

Neither can atheism of course, the only thing I claim for atheism in this regard is that it removes one of the primary weapons that people have used (and use still) to bludgeon each other.
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Old 03-18-2015, 03:16 PM
 
Location: Sitting beside Walden Pond
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jacqueg View Post
And why on earth should atheists focus on the bible (or any of the other holy scriptures which litter the earth) as a teaching tool?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arach Angle View Post
because it is better than anything you got.
I agree the Sermon on the Mount is very good, but overall the bible is not nearly as good as Walden or Star Trek for helping you decide how you should live your life.
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Old 03-18-2015, 03:28 PM
 
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Originally Posted by AREQUIPA View Post
Your observations are not wrong. Being based on the rationale not believing that something exists that is not known to exist means that we cannot rule out a creator. We do leave options open. Theists close them by claiming they either know on faith or on reasoning, neither of which convince us.

As to religion, that is a serious beef. We argue against it on evidential grounds and on social grounds, too and we militant atheists do have an agenda and an aim in view and that is removing the influence and authority of religion from society. That also means from Law, politics, the workplace, sport, education and science. If anything flagged up now needful this is it was the attempt to replace science with Genesis. That does not mean hunting down and eradicating all traces of religion. Freedom from religion also implies freedom for religion -of all kinds.

I do hope that atheism and what it is about is a bit clearer now.
But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. The community gathering and prayer support will always be important to people.
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Old 03-18-2015, 03:32 PM
 
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Originally Posted by jacqueg View Post
I agree that whether he existed makes little difference to the religion that claims his name. But the early movement - both the jewish christians led by jesus' brother james and the pagan christians, led by paul - was emphatically not about a scientific understanding of the world. It was about getting right with god who was coming back *real* soon.
What I have trouble understanding is that you seem to believe the intended message in the religious stories was to take everything literally. But to me, it sounds like I am reading fictional stories. There are so many clues pointing to that, I wonder how so many readers don't see that. And I don't understand how an atheist could possibly read it that way either. No modern biblical scholar thinks that.
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Old 03-18-2015, 03:48 PM
 
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Originally Posted by hiker45 View Post
I agree the Sermon on the Mount is very good, but overall the bible is not nearly as good as Walden or Star Trek for helping you decide how you should live your life.


star trek ... that's what you bring? All of star trek's ideas can be found in bible. logistically speaking star trek is not as good either. 'walden" is just stupid.


take into account logistics. What do we have today. how can we move away from the bible in such a way that we are glad to put it down? Forcing star trek is a good idea?
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Old 03-18-2015, 03:52 PM
 
Location: Home is Where You Park It
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Originally Posted by OzzyRules View Post
What I have trouble understanding is that you seem to believe the intended message in the religious stories was to take everything literally. But to me, it sounds like I am reading fictional stories. There are so many clues pointing to that, I wonder how so many readers don't see that. And I don't understand how an atheist could possibly read it that way either. No modern biblical scholar thinks that.
There are a lot of stories in the bible. Some are about events that can be documented historically. Some are clearly mythic, indicative of a religious worldview. And many of course are a mix.

Whether or not a people's core myths are intended to be taken literally is a good question. Did the norse literally believe that the world started when a cow licked ice? But we do know that many people even today believe that all the biblical stories are to be taken literally.

Ancient people did not think about stories, including written history, the way that we do. They were quite capable of claiming battle victories when the facts were clearly otherwise. They did not look at history as a series of events to be evaluated, but as a manifestation of the will of the god(s), whatever god they happened to believe in - jews were not unique in this regard. For them, literal truth was not as significant as deciphering clues about god's workings.

And there are modern biblical scholars (including archaeologists) who are always looking for evidence that a particular bible story is literally true.

I do my best to understand how the people who wrote the stories understood them, knowing that my thinking patterns are quite different from theirs. I think the evidence is that most of them were meant to be taken literally.
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Old 03-18-2015, 04:11 PM
 
Location: Home is Where You Park It
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Originally Posted by Arach Angle View Post
star trek ... that's what you bring? All of star trek's ideas can be found in bible. logistically speaking star trek is not as good either. 'walden" is just stupid.


take into account logistics. What do we have today. how can we move away from the bible in such a way that we are glad to put it down? Forcing star trek is a good idea?
You ask a very good question.

For me, the answer lies in understanding human nature. Humans are among the most social of animals. Despite survivalist fantasies, a truly lone human being is difficult to imagine. The few real world examples we have are feral children, who clearly are way off the normal development path.

We have strong propensities to interact altruistically with "us", and equally strong propensities to act to dominate and even destroy "them". These propensities are hardwired, the heritage of 4 billion years of survival, and it is foolish to think we can ignore them. Seems to me the trick is to work with our genetic heritage, not against it, and enlarge our definition of "us", since the definition of "us" is culturally defined. Which, surprisingly, is what many religious teachers urge.

We know this can be done, it is not a pie-in-the-sky fantasy of how the world could be if the world was perfect. There are lots of youtube vids of pet cats cuddling pet rodents and pet birds. I refuse to believe that I (or any other normal human) am less socially flexible than a cat. These particular cats have just learned a more inclusive definition of "us". Humans can learn this too.

Edited to add - in a way, isn't the social history of the US an example of changing the definition of "us"? To view political cartoons from the civil war era is to understand how far we have come in this redefinition.
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Old 03-18-2015, 04:34 PM
 
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Originally Posted by jacqueg View Post

And there are modern biblical scholars (including archaeologists) who are always looking for evidence that a particular bible story is literally true.
That is impossible.

Any contemporary novel written today which is set in a real location could be proven to be a "true" story in the future if archaeologists discovered evidence of the location. Should they be taken seriously in the future?

So how can anyone take those claims seriously today, regarding events in ancient stories?
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Old 03-18-2015, 05:11 PM
 
Location: Home is Where You Park It
23,856 posts, read 13,632,186 times
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Originally Posted by OzzyRules View Post
That is impossible.
No, it isn't impossible. As you'd know if you knew anything about modern biblical studies or scholars.

Quote:
Originally Posted by OzzyRules View Post
Any contemporary novel written today which is set in a real location could be proven to be a "true" story in the future if archaeologists discovered evidence of the location. Should they be taken seriously in the future?

So how can anyone take those claims seriously today, regarding events in ancient stories?
There's a lot more that we can know about the veracity of bible stories than just their locations. There are the people the stories are about, there is the dating, there are the artifacts, there are contemporaneous events...

For instance, the story of Jericho. Jericho existed (several times), it was in fact a major city when it did exist. Did the walls ever come down flat? No evidence of that. Did Joshua "fit" the battle of Jericho? We don't know whether Joshua was a real individual or a composite folk hero. Did the jews actually invade and conquer the land of canaan? Evidence is equivocal. In part, it depends on whether the story of Moses and the egyptian captivity are literally true. Some biblical archaeologists recently announced that they have actually found Joseph's house and tomb in egypt. Others of course think that highly unlikely. Nevertheless, the house and tomb in question do exist. Here's a relatively good summation of the attitudes of biblical scholars who are doing their best to support the biblical history with evidence, using modern techniques - Has Joseph?s Tomb Been Found in Egypt?

Does it matter to me whether we find that Joshua is a historical person? Or Joseph? No, it doesn't. They may be real persons, but what they did or what they believed about what they did or believed about the events of their day do not influence my atheism. Because my atheism is based on both a modern understanding of biology and, as well as I can understand it, physics, and my own observation that one of the most useful things god could have told the israelites was to "wash your hands!" - and he never saw fit to do so. That would have improved the lives of the israelites, and subsequent bible believers, far more than prohibiting shellfish and pork.

Last edited by jacqueg; 03-18-2015 at 05:20 PM..
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