Should we work to get rid of Christianity?

[Harry Leggs]

Only if wrongness has to be objective.

We agree and that is why you do not believe sex with chickens is wrong.

Me, and those close to me.

Yawn and none of it is tested since you have no anchor

Prove it.
Without challenging me to prove that it's not.

Why not and why the two faced standard?

 

[Eightcrackers]

Yawn and none of it is tested since you have no anchor

I have an anchor. Just not one that you accept.
And I don't care whether or not you accept it.

Why not and why the two faced standard?

You made a claim; I did not.
I challenged you to prove your claim.

 

[En Hakkore]

There is no mountain of evidence against Mosaic authorship. That is a laff. You have not one shred of empirical evidence from that time period, which treats it all as different authors. What you do have is the musing of some Germans from the 1800s as I recall. Thin.

That you think the evidence against Mosaic authorship is limited to the musings of 19th-century German scholars is what's laughable. We are now in the 21st century... you need to expand your reading beyond stale and desperate apologists who would like you to think that later composite authorship has all been debunked. It hasn't... as I already noted, only a very small clique of interpreters are still clinging to unified Mosaic authorship.

Writing styles blah blah blah. it is speculation which is easily explained.

If it's so easily explained, why aren't you doing that instead of blowing smoke?

Your postulates have to do with Gen 2 before Gen 1

No, I specifically referred to the garden story as a supplement... you'll find that a supplement, by definition, follows rather than precedes the writing to which it is related.

and different authors

I did state that... and I stand by it.

mystery editors, as I recall and if correct then state your empirical basis for some mystery editor (?) which falsifies Mosaic authorship.

You seem to like that word 'empirical' --- very well, start with Jeffrey Tigay's edited volume Empirical Models of Biblical Criticism (Wipf & Stock, 1985). If you can't get a copy, I'd be happy to summarize the empirical evidence therein marshalled for the kind of literary growth being theorized.

Extraordinary claim require extraordinary evidence. The origin source is Moses via God since it contains direct quotes from God. God is the origin source. If it is not God then it is compromised and mostly worthless. If it is Godless then differences are incidental since the whole thing is more trash than actual value.

I agree that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence... and it is an extraordinary claim that we have enshrined in the Pentateuch some of the very words of a supernatural divine being --- I'll be waiting for you to provide the extraordinary evidence for that.

Kind regards,
Jonathan

 

[El Cid]

Why?

Because the deist god does not intervene in human affairs. Look up deism if you didnt know that.

The Christian god apparently does no more to protect and enforce these supposed rights than would a deistic god - how, exactly, does the Christian god directly intercede to ensure the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

The Christian God very rarely directly intervenes supernaturally. But if He exists, then we actually do have those rights unlike the deist god. He has indirectly intervened in the founding of the US which is one of the best nations at protecting those rights. There were some very unusual happenings in some battles of the Revolutionary War. Many "Coincidental" events. He primarily relies on His people to protect those rights and they have many times.

 

[El Cid]

Yes, their moral consciences.

Then you judge your god by your standards, and he is not your ultimate standard.
You (think you) choose him to be your standard because, by your standard, he is good.

No, we discover that He is the ultimate standard.

El Cid said:
No, but we can discover the objective good, and that is what Christians do when they discover God.

But you arrive at the conclusion that he is good by, in your words, evaluating your god by your moral conscience.
Where does that conscience come from? If the answer is "my god", then you are judging him by the standard he gave you. Which is to say, his own standard.

Initially before we discover Him and have a relationship with Him we dont know where our conscience comes from. We use our logical reasoning and determine that morality can only come from a moral source. Unlike the atheist claim it comes from an amoral source. But then we discover that He and His moral character is the ultimate standard.

And judging a thing by its own standards is no judgement at all, is it...?

We dont know that initially as I stated above, but since He is the standard, such a thing is necessarily ultimately true.

El Cid said:
I can't prove it, but you can't prove you exist to others.

Tu quoque fallacy.

No, that is not an ad hominem, I am just stating a fact.

El Cid said:
But There is historical evidence that they were revealed by Him in written form to the ancient hebrews.

"Historical evidence" = "a story in a book", in this case.

No, there is textual and archaeological evidence.

El Cid said:
And there is sociological evidence that they are built into human consciences.

Is there sociological evidence that Yahweh was the one that "built" them there?
If so, what is it?

No, but there is scientific evidence, ie the existence of the Christian God, the BB and causality.

El Cid said:
We can't build things into us since we can't create ourselves.

False dichotomy fallacy - I never said we put them there.

I didnt say you did, I was just stating a possible attempt at explaining morality.

 

[El Cid]

Similar to our discussions in the late summer, you're going in circles... my very first post to you in this thread after returning from sabbatical was here where I specifically challenged your claim about the Hebrew and invited you to resolve the contradiction involving the verse cited here. You provided the same claim offered in this post about the verbal form here and I rebutted it here and backed that up upon request with citations here. It is unclear whether your false claim that I attempted to move goalposts derives from deliberate obfuscation, the time delay in your responses, that you might be juggling too many conversations or something else... in any case, please stop wasting my time --- either move the conversation forward with pertinent engagement with the evidence I've already laid out or concede the argument.

Kind regards,
Jonathan

I see nothing in post 1811 that refutes my statement about the verb form. You make some statement about vaw consecutive that you claim shows that birds were created after humans but that does not change the fact that no english translation that uses the correct verb form, ie had created, shows birds being created after humans.

 

[Eightcrackers]

Because the deist god does not intervene in human affairs. Look up deism if you didnt know that.

It doesn't look as though the Christian god does, either... when was the last time he stepped in to protect these rights you think he gave you?

The Christian God very rarely directly intervenes supernaturally.

Give one example where we can confirm that he interceded - supernaturally or otherwise - to protect somebody's rights.
One.

He has indirectly intervened in the founding of the US

Prove it, without weasel words like "probably" or "most likely" or "reasonable".

There were some very unusual happenings in some battles of the Revolutionary War. Many "Coincidental" events.

Prove that

0. they happened,
1. they were supernatural, and
2. your god was involved.

 

[Eightcrackers]

No, we discover that He is the ultimate standard.

How?
By judging him.

No, there is textual and archaeological evidence.

What archaelogical evidence supports the story of Moses receiving the Commandments?

No, but there is scientific evidence, ie the existence of the Christian God, the BB and causality.

Why is the Big Bang evidence only of the Christian god, and not other things?

 

[5wize]

I like secrets.

How will you work to get rid of the artifact?

What is your bestest strategery?

Will you open a child center to teach the chillins that there is no God?

I figure I will ask every few months to see if you've made any headway in your Master Plan of riding the world of all this Christian stuff!

That will take care of itself as people listen to the arguments. The sunset of Christianity in the west started before this latest "atheist evangelism". Now many of the doubters know that there is a much larger home for their thoughts and doubts to find confidence in than Christianity can overcome with their cultural incredulity that we would ever dare speak against the holy of holies! Oh-My!!!!!!

 

[5wize]

Buddhism may be able to provide those things, though I noticed you didnt provide any evidence that it does.

You don't provide evidence that Christianity does. You just declare it. So do the Buddhists - same as you... step for step.

Buddhism fails to provide an objective source and rational foundation for them.

You just declared that, you didn't prove it. Your entire belief system is just a set of empty declarations and hope that it's true, but you never make a case for your beliefs. You can't. You just close your eyes and believe. It' a very weak epistemology.

The existence and nature of the Christian God DOES provide an objective and rational foundation for them.

And yet you could do no better to support that than you could support that the Buddhist doesn't have such a foundation (which has been churning out contentment and happiness for its adherents 500 years longer than Christianity). That's the key to Christian doctrine - hollow belief.

 

[Furion]

That will take care of itself as people listen to the arguments. The sunset of Christianity in the west started before this latest "atheist evangelism". Now many of the doubters know that there is a much larger home for their thoughts and doubts to find confidence in than Christianity can overcome with their cultural incredulity that we would ever dare speak against the holy of holies! Oh-My!!!!!!

You get em, underdog!

If you will, please pontificate on your master plan of christian elimination. It seems a little sketchy at this point.

Did you just say your atheist evangelism is going to win the day? You can't even defeat the handful of Christians around here. If fear massive expectations and overperforming disappointment.

 

[En Hakkore]

I see nothing in post 1811 that refutes my statement about the verb form. You make some statement about vaw consecutive that you claim shows that birds were created after humans but that does not change the fact that no english translation that uses the correct verb form, ie had created, shows birds being created after humans.

Your response is not surprising since it's obvious you have no working knowledge of biblical Hebrew and therefore have no business making claims about the language... your presumption to do so is what prompted my intervention into this thread again. Here's what I wrote with some added emphasis:

The Hebrew grammar itself precludes the resolution you propose... the vav consecutive orders events in Hebrew narrative and in chapter 2 the creation of the man precedes that of the birds, which contradicts the order of chapter 1.

I followed that up, on your request, with support from Arnold and Choi's A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pointing specifically to their section on Verbal Sequences (3.5) and the Imperfect plus vav consecutive (3.5.1):

this verbal construction is summarized as one of "succession in time or progression" (p. 83) and that it "expresses temporal sequence" (p. 84).

You infer there are English translations that use "the correct verb form, ie had created" but fail to document this. Very well, I'll do so for you and in the process expose your confirmation bias... the only version that I'm aware of that translates it such is the NIV:

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air.

The problem is that the NIV is a shamelessly biased translation prompted by the Christian Reformed Church and the National Association of Evangelicals... they claim that by including translators from a large cross-section of Christian denominations that the NIV has been "safeguarded ... from sectarian bias", this despite the subsequent claim that "the translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God's Word in written form" (Preface v) --- this, of course, is itself reflective of sectarian interest since not all Christians would commit to so radical a claim as biblical infallibility. And, not surprisingly, the like-minded translators' bias shines through in mistranslations of passages like Gen 2:19 where they sweep aside the contradiction under discussion with a sleight of hand, misleading unsuspecting readers such as yourself into thinking there is no problem when there really is one.

Now here is the same verse in other major translations:

And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air... (KJV)
Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air... (NKJV)
And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky... (NASB)
So the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air... (NAB)
So from the soil Yahweh God fashioned all the wild animals and all the birds of heaven. (NJB)
So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air... (NRSV)
And the LORD God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky... (JPS)

So on the one hand we have the NIV with "had formed" and on the other hand we have all these other translations with "formed/fashioned"... are you seriously going to suggest that all the scholars involved in these other versions botched the job, that their knowledge of Hebrew is deficient compared to the NIV translators? I can assure you with over twenty years of biblical Hebrew under my belt and easily passing two competency exams in the language at the graduate and post-graduate levels of university that I am in a position to evaluate what's going on here and, rest assured, the majority of translations in this case have it right and the NIV reflects a blatant mistranslation aimed at eliminating the conflict between Gen 2:19 and the creation account in the previous chapter.

Kind regards,
Jonathan

 

[5wize]

You get em, underdog!

If you will, please pontificate on your master plan of christian elimination. It seems a little sketchy at this point.

That's because I said here is no master plan. This outcome does not need one. At the end of the season, whenever that is - the fruit just dies on the vine.

Did you just say your atheist evangelism is going to win the day? You can't even defeat the handful of Christians around here. If fear massive expectations and overperforming disappointment.

No, I did not just say that. I implied that atheist evangelism offers a confident cultural pronouncement for those that might need to know that the culture is no longer lorded by Christian fiat and there are choices that you would find a confident and comfortable home in.

 

[Furion]

That's because I said here is no master plan. This outcome does not need one. At the end of the season, whenever that is - the fruit just dies on the vine.

Another two thousand years maybe?

No, I did not just say that. I implied that atheist evangelism offers a confident cultural pronouncement for those that might need to know that the culture is no longer lorded by Christian fiat and there are choices that you would find a confident and comfortable home in.

Oh ok, because that would have been weird.

Is what you offer different than what everyone already knows about?

Do you feel christians are lording this stuff over you? How? Are you being forced to pray or something?

 

[5wize]

Another two thousand years maybe?

I don't know. What is happening however is that as Western civilization advances in finding and delivering solutions for humanity, solutions that the churches could not, we find the churches emptying and time being spent gearing up more and more to delivering what the ancients thought a burning a bushel of first fruits would secure for them. Where we find faith prospering is in the 3rd world where the growing human hope is still in need of distribution, so God is still a big player in that hope.

Oh ok, because that would have been weird.

Is what you offer different than what everyone already knows about?

Do you feel christians are lording this stuff over you? How? Are you being forced to pray or something?

No. I just believe that Christian doctrine is an unhealthy psychology. I wouldn't want my kids - or the next generation - bought into the idea of their damnable eternal inheritance from birth and told how to live a life digging out of it by someone else's grace. Worse than living a life under college debt, because the consequences are so eternally dire - the issue NEVER goes away - even at death. Actually that's when it all ramps up. terrible way to live and conceive of a life.

 

[El Cid]

Where do you believe our morality comes from?

Our minds, in that they are capable of abstract thought where morality, right and wrong, fairness etc, are abstract concepts. At a simple level, it's easy for us to understand when we've been treated unfairly which equates to being wronged.

Yes, but our minds were created and shaped by evolution right?

El Cid said:
Both of those would be expected if there was a common designer as well.

Maybe, but they point to evolution whether there's a designer or not.

Not necessarily. All Rembrandts show certain similarities because they are Rembrandts. So it could be with living things such as certain basic patterns being used on multiple occasions.

El Cid said:
Island species change only reflects microevolution which most creationists accept.

Big change only happens over large periods of time, there are other ways to "see" this besides direct observation.

There is nothing magical about time. Some things will never occur no matter how much time passes.

El Cid said:
Systematic gaps occur in the fossil at genera which is what would be expected if genera is equivalent to the Biblical kind.

It's also consistent with the fact that it's rare for bones to become fossilised.

No, because then the gaps would be random, but they are systematic and only where the biggest morphological changes are expected.

El Cid said:
How is being concerned about the fate of humans NOT based on feelings for humans?

Well, yes feelings are involved but being aware of the abstract concepts of right and wrong are more the basis for morality.

The whole foundation of your morality is your feelings for a certain species, ie homo sapiens. But according to evolution there is nothing special about humans so your feelings are objectively irrational.

El Cid said:
If the Christian God exists then this is true. And I can demonstrate that He probably does.

You've done it again, you've just said it without justification.

See my post to Eightcrackers above.

El Cid said:
If our value is built into us by our creator then it is intrinsic.

That's not the definition of intrinsic. If something is built in it's not intrinsic. Intrinsic is when something is naturally there in the first place.

That is what I mean since we were created in his image our value is naturally there in the first place.

El Cid said:
See my posts about UFOs for evidence of the supernatural.

Why are things that are unidentified evidence of the supernatural, or anything for that matter?

Because they have been proven to be real and empirically observed violating the laws of physics. Something that violates the laws of physics is "above" natural law (supernatural) by definition.

 

[Whatsisface]

Yes, but our minds were created and shaped by evolution right?

That seems irrelevant to the point.

Not necessarily. All Rembrandts show certain similarities because they are Rembrandts. So it could be with living things such as certain basic patterns being used on multiple occasions.

This is all speculating in the vaguest terms

There is nothing magical about time. Some things will never occur no matter how much time passes.

You are missing the point. Small changes add up to big changes over large periods of time.

No, because then the gaps would be random,

Why?

The whole foundation of your morality is your feelings for a certain species, ie homo sapiens. But according to evolution there is nothing special about humans so your feelings are objectively irrational.

Why are you attributing to me morality is based on feelings when at the beginning of post I said morality is based on rationality?

See my post to Eightcrackers above.

No, if you can't be bothered, neither can I.

That is what I mean since we were created in his image our value is naturally there in the first place.

Sorry, if it's because of his image, then you need another word than intrinsic.

Because they have been proven to be real and empirically observed violating the laws of physics. Something that violates the laws of physics is "above" natural law (supernatural) by definition.

Violating the known laws of physics.

 

[El Cid]

And that makes sense to you?

That is like saying the legal system allows everyone to commit murder, but if you choose to do so, you will go to prison.

Seriously, I have to ask, do you understand what the word "commandment" means?

That is true. You do have the freedom to commit murder, but you will have to face the consequences. I think one thing that might be confusing you. There are different types of laws in the Bible. There are moral laws and there are civil laws. And there are the punishments. There are punishments meted out by government and those only meted out by God. In addition, there are violations of these laws. Some are sins and some are crimes and some are both. Not worshipping the true God is a sin, but not a crime. Murder is a crime and a sin. Since the government cannot see your heart or mind, it cannot punish things that are just sins. So the first commandment cannot be enforced by the government, only by God. Murder is a crime and a sin, and so will be punished by God, and should be punished by a good government based on Gods law. Do you understand now?

 

[Eightcrackers]

Since the government cannot see your heart or mind, it cannot punish things that are just sins.

Nor SHOULD it - punishing thoughts is the stuff of dystopian nightmare novels.

So the first commandment cannot be enforced by the government, only by God.

Of course it could be enforced by the goverment - there were legal punishments for failing to attend Protestant worship services in Seventeenth Century England, for example - Catholics ("recusants") had to buy their way out of it.

In fact, let's go straight to the source: OT Hebrews enacted genocides against worshippers of other gods. If that's not the government enforcing the First Commandment, I don't know what is.

 

[Furion]

I don't know. What is happening however is that as Western civilization advances in finding and delivering solutions for humanity, solutions that the churches could not...

You have many notions. Presuppositions if you will.

Men, using science or religion, have not advanced mankind one bit. Same problems, same humans. Granted, you have a cell phone, and a kid just starved in Africa, an aborigine just got kicked in the head in aussieland, an old man just slipped into the night at the age of seventy.

Same man, same violence, same enslavement (they tell us there is more slavery today than at any time). Same diseases only more, same wars, and now the tell us the planet may be done with us.

No. I just believe that Christian doctrine is an unhealthy psychology. I wouldn't want my kids - or the next generation - bought into the idea of their damnable eternal inheritance from birth and told how to live a life digging out of it by someone else's grace. Worse than living a life under college debt, because the consequences are so eternally dire - the issue NEVER goes away - even at death. Actually that's when it all ramps up. terrible way to live and conceive of a life.

Beautiful way to live in love, to expect and receive the best from our children, to live in honor of our parents, to enjoy fidelity in relationships, to have peace that surpasses understanding. These things and more are good reasons for me and my house. We're good.