You are correct that a single "someone" didn't write the Bible. It was compiled from ancient myths from a variety of sources which were translated, modified and adapted across cultures and time by a plethora of ancient scribes over a period of thousands of years for the Old Testament and hundreds of years in the common era for the New Testament. And what we remain with as the King James Bible is comprised of only a tiny fraction of the contradictory myths that different sects of ancient Jews and Christians believed in. Many other myths including wildly varying as well as redundant or partly redundant myths were lost, discarded, censored or suppressed for a wide variety of reasons, making the Biblical literature we study today an end product of random chance more than a purposeful narrative as much of actual history is.

And for crying out loud, have you ever actually read the Bible? It's a horror show full of genocide, incest, murder, rape and tale after tale of every dark and deviant human impulse as one might expect from a bunch of fairy tales made up by superstitious bronze age warlords. Even the personalities of the deities portrayed in it are those of spiteful vengeful, hateful monsters beyond what any modern horror writer could imagine. The only profound thing about it is that any modern, educated person could take it literally rather than studying it as a fascinating document of historical significance that it is.

Thanks Mutt.

This damn topic has my brain spinning reading people still believing in fairy tales. lol

I give up. Believe what you want everybody. In the end, you're gonna fucking die. And if you go to "heaven" then you can laugh at me then.

I don't think you're going anywhere by the way...I think the lights are gonna turn out. The end.

I think that our "spirit" is nothing more than wishful thinking by a bunch of animals who are so intelligent that we are self-aware and understand our own mortality.

Examples of ridiculousness in the Bible? God damn it!

Are you shitting me?

A virgin birth, healing the sick, parting the red sea, a staff becoming a snake, some dude coming back to life, living forever in some magical place in you believe in a flying zombie jew, the Garden of Eden, original sin, a talking snake, a burning bush?

A god so incompetent that he fucked up his own creation, flooded the world, then came back as his own son to be killed by his own creation to wash away his own mistakes?

All of the animals in the world just happened to live within walking distance of Noah's house, all fit on his boat, and didn't eat each other?

A wall falling down because someone blew a trumpet?

A bunch of kids were killed, but NOT the ones in the houses with sheep's blood above the door?

Voices in people's heads, telling them to kill their kids, oops, no, just kidding?

Some people mocked someone for being bald, so god sent bears to murder them?

Passages on how to treat your slaves, what price to sell your daughter for, and to put people to DEATH for working on Sunday or mixing up cotton and materials in their clothes?

Living inside of a big fish? Water into wine? A magic sky fairy destroying cities for wickedness?

Do I seriously have to go on? This just just the shit that occurs to me right off the bat as absolutely bat-shit insane for people to even consider believing.

Here's just a few of the more obvious contradictions in the Bible:

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...adictions.html

Note that this is just the contradictions from the books that made it in. There were TONS of books that didn't make it into the "current" form of the Bible, that say all kinds of fucked up and contradictory things. Taking those books out was to hide some of that shit from an increasingly intelligent populace.

Let's face it: Mary fucked some other dude, told a lie to avoid being stoned to death for it, and now it's gotten WAY the fuck out of hand.

It's also pretty amusing (and sad, in a way) how many Christ figures there were, exactly like Jesus, that just didn't "catch on" like he did. And how much the Christian mythology matches Greek and Roman mythology, as well as other Pagan mythos.

I feel that two of the most insidious problems that modern mostly secular Western societies still face are:

1- This idea of a generic version of god that each person can simply make up on their own and half-assedly believe in and which they expect other people to respect. Obviously some unique religious belief that a person admits to making up on their own and "works for them" can't be disproved like the historical myths can. It's a total cop out in my opinion by otherwise intelligent people who who can't be bothered to follow any of the inconvenient rules of the organized and established religions, but who just want to pay some lip service to the vague idea of spirituality once in a blue moon.

2- The rampant anti-intellectualism that even otherwise intelligent people who mostly live secular lives still cling to. Arguing that science can't really prove anything or that any conclusion is just as good as any other interpretation of the world does absolutely nothing to advance mankind. This attitude pervades everything from education and even Presidential politics with all the rubes in the flyover states for example who won't vote for a "feller who seems too smart".

Thanks edgeprod for a great post

But a lot of people WANT to believe the fairy tales.

It's their "faith" and it proves how "good" they are. lol

Your awesome post will just fall on deaf ears I'm afraid.

Damn, I had to double check to make sure that this post wasn't something I had written, LOL. Well put!

Passover still celebrated by the Jews to this day

hey!!! maybe god's touchy about male pattern baldness :1orglaugh

I always wondered why Jesus had to die and be reborn.. simple: seasons, crops grown, crops die, crops crow etc...

interesting but I'm not sure what you mean? I'd say our legal system allowing our boarders to be broached and our moral values degraded along with the medias constant persecution of our culture is far more disastrous... a country that has no respect for its boundaries, no respect for it's language or culture or history can not stand IMHO

I'd say the pseudo intellectualism displayed by the intellectual class of our society and media is a real disaster... has caused several wars, poverty, propagates class warfare and racism...

There are basic contradictions in the bible itself, you don't even have to look at individual stories.

God says don't kill, it's his most important commandment yet he kills millions including babies. Sometimes he does it himself and sometimes he orders others to do it.

God killed all the world except Noah and his family, then promised never to do again but we are all waiting for Jesus to come back and kill us all.

God/Jesus wants us to love and care for each other but as his biggest example of love he sacrifices his son to forgive us instead of just forgiving us which would defiantly be a more loving act.

This shit was written by mentally twisted desert nomads. The sun must have baked their brains.

Lookup deism

I believe in Him!

Deism = Intelligent Design

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Intelligent Design



http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/...-here-meme.png

Big logistical problem with these monotheistic religions - all believe in the Resurrection of the Dead - it's estimated that 108 billion people have been born on this planet - where are we going to put all our dead relatives when they're resurrected? Not everybody has a home with spare bedrooms. There will be a run on pull out sofa beds and tents.

The soul is not physical so it takes up no space.

What I mean is there is no such thing as a soul. The only way religious people can justify its existence is to say that the non physical world exists.

So heaven is basically a fantasy land for adults.

question: why do you keep trying to blame god for religion? there is NO connection whatsoever... isn't that like the Twinkie defense?

whoops!!! some scientist are thinking there are as many as 17 dimensions... before you spout off look into tube theory, black holes and quantum physics.. you keep referring to bronze age nomads to prove god doesn't exist yet refuse to look at modern science to see that you have no concepts of yes or no... and saying no without proof is just as lame as saying yes with out proof... it's faith in fact.... saying god doesn't exists is saying you have FAITH there is not god because it can't be proved :winkwink:

For me it's more like saying: There is no way to prove it. And religion is a bunch of fairytale superstition. So the only reason to even ponder "god" is if you have a slow day and you're kinda bored...or stoned. lol

He's pointing out the ridiculous logic in the Bible, not blaming anyone for anything. Gotta look at his context.


I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but if you think god is hiding in one of the 11 dimensions of M-theory, the 10 dimensions of superstring theory, or the 26 dimensions of bosonic string theory, you're misunderstanding what those dimensions consist of, and why they're theorized to exist. They're not somewhere you can phase into and out of, we exist in all of them as part of our daily lives, if the theory is correct.


So you're saying "the absence of proof is not proof of absence?" This is a logical fallacy if i ever heard one. You're saying that not believing in flying unicorns because there's no proof is just as wrong as believing they exist? If there's no proof for something, the default is to not believe in it. There's no proof any sort of god exists, so why put any belief in it?

I'm not talking about heaven, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all believe in an end days scenario where the dead are physically resurrected on this earth before judgement day.

God/Satan = Yin/Yang and I believe.

That's crazy. That's in Revelations, right? Written almost 100AD. Pretty much added to the bible after everything else was written as a scare tactic to get more converts from the pagans who weren't buying the bullshit.

Is it any wonder that most pagans had to be forced to convert to this crazy shit?

I think this notion of a supernatural afterlife originated from concepts the Greeks developed, who were pagans. There is nothing in the Jewish Torah, the Book of Moses, about an afterlife, the opposite, there are passages that are very depressing emphatically describing that death is final, lights out. In later books of the the OT the concept of an afterlife appears. It's not until the Talmud was written by rabbis that a Heaven and Hell are described and the resurrection of the dead end days gets added. My guess is that the Jews were worried they'd lose their followers to other religions like Christianity that promised more hope so they had to compete by including similar promises in their religion.

If you want to get tech, the direct hebrew translation is "Thou Shall Not Murder". Killing is righteous if justified, someone seeks to take your life.

Considering the work yall do, lookin at some of the finest piece o a on the planet, how can you NOT believe in God after seein so much boot-ay? :winkwink:

suggesting that the bible has anything to do with god is ridiculous logic IMO, suggesting that since bronze age tribesmen had a different concept of reality than modern science provides, proves there is no god is bad logic to me as well... you?



I pointed out m theory to nullify his argument that god is bullshit because we can't see god, because god lives in some bull shit dimension or other... pls read his arguments for no god... SO if m theory and the other theory's are correct or at least pointing to the right thoughts why would you suppose that nothing else will be found that will lead thought process into other directions? and why would you suppose that the new directions or thought lines would disprove a god anymore than those new lines of logic would prove a god? wouldn't that be an act or leap of 'faith' on your part?

why believe the earth is not flat? why not believe you can't go faster than 35 mph in a train because the air will suck out and you'll die? why not believe that you'll never need more than 4 MB of memory? why not believe the Patten office should be closed because everything is invented? need I go on? I could do this all day... and so could you

the arguments against a god are as flimsy as the arguments for a god... 'schoenberg's cat'... you'll never know absolutely if there is a god until you die (i.e. open the fucking box) so it takes faith to believe in a god and faith to disbelieve in a god which is very different than' the absence of proof is not proof of absence' .. see? :winkwink:

thank you.. and all the haters never even get the 7 commandants for genitals :thumbsup

fucking Madison Avenue in the sky :1orglaugh

take religion out of the equation when you consider god..... you'll get a different answer :)

I was trying to stay out of this discussion anymore but this is beyond ridiculous. It does NOT take faith to disbelieve in something. It's just common sense and straightforward logic. You're the one with the supposition that some fantastical entity for which there is no evidence whatsoever exists so therefore you are the one with the burden of proof to convince the rest of the world. Not the rest of the world having to prove a negative and convince you that some deity or the Easter Bunny or whatever else you dream up *doesn't* exist.

For crying out loud, you won't even go on record as supporting the supposed existence of one of the recognized mythical deities from history, but instead choose to promote the supposed existence of some generic, unique and non-specific deity that you made up on your own in your own head and for your own reasons . How the hell is anyone supposed to take that seriously or argue against that in any rational way?

http://blog.chriss-baumann.de/wp-con...ers_katze.jpeg

Schrödinger - please... :winkwink:

why do most people equate the word god with a deity? The OP tried to make it ultra clear the difference in use of the word, as has grapesoda. Try this when seeing the word 'god' as used by those who have no belief in any intelligent deity - swap the word god for:

mother nature
karma
fate
natural order
the force

as befits, and I think a lot of people will then understand where grapesoda, at least as far as I'm reading, is coming from when he talks about *his* belief, which is an aside from the other discussion about proof of a deity.

Apologies Grapesoda if I'm reading you wrong :thumbsup

thanks, couldn't remember the exact name and search pulled wrong name up... (I get my damn germans mixed up) :thumbsup

correct.. I place no 'value judgment' on god any more than I do on electricity and place no regulations on god any more than I do electricity... can you imagine? you can only turn the light on if you dress like it's 1820 and don't eat pock chops, and you won't get electrocuted if you wipe your butt only with your left hand :1orglaugh0

Jim I feel no obligations to prove anything to you... in my personal experience I see existence of god everyday all around me... I never said god was a fantastical entity, I never said god was an entity... maybe if you'll stop applying weird superstations and suppositions and myths to god you won't be as upset about the acceptance of god... I used to work with a guy that had a thing for dinosaurs... once I told the guy a tyrannosaurs was a giant chicken... boy did he get fucking PISSED!! reality is now dinos are being considered more avian than reptilian... in fact I think scientifically the 'reptile class of animals ' is now considered obsolete..

and what's even more fucked up is a crocodile is actually a bird :1orglaugh

so now here you are Jim, the intelligent, enlightened 21st century man with all the answers? no fucking possibilities for any other outcome or consideration for any other directions of thought or reality.. all based on the 'the bible is bullshit' theory.... fucking brilliant Jim :winkwink:

why would I do that, I don't believe any of it? if you hold a gun to my head I'll believe any one you pick though :thumbsup

I'm not promoting anything... I'm simply stating that to deny the existence of a god is a just much of a fallacy as demanding that there be a god based on the available 'physical' evidence'.

I haven't made up anything, and have nothing to prove to you.. I just laid out my philosophy and how I live... that's all... why must I prove or you argue? are you able to understand parables or non linear thinking?

I only ask because some people are much to literal to comprehend anything other than 2+2=4. nothing wrong with that and definitely a valuable asset.... but also definitely not Buddhism correct?

so having no real interested in eastern philosophy other than mild curiosity let me lay out this thought exercise for you, and remember I'm not sayin this is Buddhism:

hold your fist tightly closed with as much pressure as you can exert... for a long as you can... eventually your fist will not respond to your will and open. even holding you fist 'closed' takes applied pressure from your muscles, and concentration of mind or your willpower. eventually your hand will open and relax, correct? try it and see...

now lay your hand naturally on the table, your hand is open and it takes no effort to remain that way, no will power no struggle... correct?

now consider the tightly held fist a negative and the open hand a positive.. the lesson: it is easier to accept a positive in life than a negative. that's my poof of god. :winkwink:

I'm not expending any energy finding reason to accept god in my life, any more than I must prove electricity on a dally basis. I accept and use and enjoy and am grateful. while those that deny must always expend energy and thought disbelieving and trying to prove. I spend no energy accepting and enjoy the rewards and have nothing to prove... I assume you understand human nature enough to grasp the tribalism in belief systems? 'if I believe it, if they believe it, if we all believe it together, we are the same and we are safe and it is true' correct?

so how is your denial any different that those who demand existence. you are safe in a group, pull an identity from that, find safety and build value judgments based on that belief system... just like the 'religious nut jobs ' do, and to my mind based on exactly the same 'non evidence' :2 cents:

yes. my theory: takes one to know one... not being a god, I have no understanding of what god is... other than a positive experience in my life...

I think the basic understanding is I use god and a verb, while other use god as noun setting up the disagreement for belief or non belief.. .. if I drop something it will fall, a verb..... if I say it's because of gravity, a noun, that's when the issues start because no one knows what gravity is..

just like love. to me is love a verb, love is an action not a 'noun', not a thing.
:2 cents:

This is not an opinion but a quote I like, so its relevant. "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself" - Carl Sagan

that's pretty cool.... a function of self-realization :thumbsup

Soul-immortalism entered Christianity, not from the Bible, but from ancient Greek philosophy, profoundly influenced by Plato (c.428 ? c.348 B.C.). Alan Richardson, former Dean of York, acknowledges this:

?the ancient Church inherited from Greek thought the notion of a soul substance which was by nature immortal, and this conception was often entwined with biblical teaching about resurrection. In the biblical view, a man dies and literally ceases to exist: his resurrection?was the result of an act of new creation by God.

So in other words, when people talk about this generic non-deity idea of god, they're just spouting a bunch of half-assed pop philosophy and non-specific bullshit that could mean anything, everything and nothing at the same time. Thanks for clearing that up. Sounds about right to me.

Newton and Einstein worked out what gravity is quite some time ago.

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

Isn't it still supposed to be the most mysterious force out of the 4? Because it's immensely weaker than all of the rest and there's no conclusion as to why yet? I think that's supposed to lead into theories of higher dimensions also. Here's a thing i just googled about it. http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_13.htm

Don't think world-mysteries.com is a citable source. :)

you certainly are mean spirited aren't you? it's not my fault you can't grasp the situation Jim...

here is my perception of the issue for you: you need everything quantified. I don't... I'm okay with NOT knowing EXCATLY how much my grip equipment weighs, you're not... pretty simple actually.

there is no need to be nasty about unless it makes you feel better of course... does it? if it makes you feel superior to people with a different understandings of life that you...... maybe you'll change as you grow and mature?

seriously I'm not concerned about 'new wave pop phycology' any more that I am concerned about the bible, the to rah, the quran or fucking scientology... and I'm not spouting anything at all. I live exactly as stated on a day by day basis to the best of my ability... that's spouting to you?

funny to me that considering all the evidence gathered and counted and slotted and qualified and delineated and understood to confirm to you: there is NO god... okay I'm good with that...

but Jim are you going to feel strange in about 30 years when there are a completely different set of sources and understanding of physical reality than there is now and it will prove... how in the fuck do I know what it will prove :1orglaugh

but new understanding will reveal different conclusion of that I'm very sure.. :2 cents:

Just using that as an example, but you can find credible sources all over the internet about the mysteries of gravity.

"Though people live with the effects of gravity every day and Newton's law of gravity has been around for over 300 years, scientific understanding of gravity is lagging, he says.

"The way planets and stars move, we understand that well." But how matter attracts matter on a molecular level is still greatly a mystery, Hangst says. The ALPHA Collaboration hopes to raise the level of understanding."

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/02/world/...and-antimatter :thumbsup

nope they worked out the effects of gravity... nobody knows what gravity is.. in ancient times the Greeks thought heat was is an actual 'particular' that was added to something 'some fucking way' to make it hot. ..... put 5 pieces of this in and you will get hot soup... a fire would add the particles of heat into the soup

just like the Greeks thought 'things' were made of 'smaller things'. like a chair was made up of billions or whatever of smaller chairs...

so everybody was well aware of heat and the effects of heat, yet know one knew what heat was... just like gravity in todays world... :2 cents:

As I said earlier..."God" is something to ponder when stoned. lol

This conversation is starting to sound like that scene in the movie "Animal House" when Donald Sutherland played a professor at the university and was getting a group of students stoned on pot and they all started discussing the universe. lol

:1orglaugh:thumbsup

Grapesoda...next time you come to Vegas, let's find some good acid. Put on some white robes. Get in the lotus position and hold hands (in a MANLY way) and get in tune. :)

I consider that attention to detail a strength for what it's worth. But that's funny that you picked that example out of a hat. I recently purchased some new sandbags and had my p.a. fill them with nice clean sand from the local hardware store and he couldn't understand why I insisted he weigh them so that they would weigh exactly the same in each pouch and each sandbag. Maybe you like lopsided and unbalanced sandbags holding your light stands up?

By the way that lack of rigorous thinking or at least precise quantification gets you into trouble sometimes, especially when discussing science. For example, in your previous dinosaur mentions you exhibited only a very facile understanding of the complexity of reptilian evolution based on your own citations. That is to say that your summations of the articles you mentioned were incorrect on both examples.

To wit: Tyrannosaurus Rex is not "a big chicken", but rather it would more accurate to say that a chicken and all birds for that matter are descendents of small to medium sized avian dinosaurs, a specific sub-branch of dinosaurs, the members of which are only cousins so to speak of larger meat eating dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex. No scientist thinks that chickens are descended directly from Tyrannosaurus or that Tyrannosaurus is an ancestor of any extinct or living birds.

And likewise, no scientist thinks that crocodiles are birds. The article you quoted mentioned that modern crocodiles are more closely related to modern birds than either one of them is to other types of living reptiles like snakes, monitor lizards or turtles for example. They share a fairly distant common ancestor on the reptilian evolutionary tree and that's very far indeed from saying that they are the same thing as one another.

Of course the beauty of the scientific principle is that the finer points and occasionally major points of our understanding of knowledge these relationships will change with greater discovery and research by scientists all over the world. That is something to be respected. The beauty of science is that it specifically insists that everyone keep an open mind and that a healthy debate based on actual evidence from fossils, DNA or whatever else can lead to a change in knowledge, based on the best evidence and research available.


That contrasts sharply with the completely closed minded attitudes that religious people and people who are adherents of various pop philosophies maintain. Those people who start out with a premise based on no evidence, with no rigorous research, peer review of challenges to the dogma allowed and they won't listen to any reason or be willing change their minds for any reason. In summation, it's easy to convince an atheist that god or the Loch Ness monster or anything else you want to claim else exists. Prove it with evidence. The opposite- getting those with faith to change their opinion about anything- simply cannot be accomplished- and that's the fatal flaw in all faith based systems of belief.

?I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.? - Plato