JCC Arena The Theist/Atheist Thunderdome™

The God Delusion by Dawkins downloaded ten million times in Arabic

 

it takes a pretty simplistic and shallow reading of the bible to arrive at this conclusion.

 

Haven't you heard? That's the new version of the Bible: the Pub Talk Bible. It's only two sentences long.

 

Prenntacular: Agreed. Having read Scripture cover-to-cover in my early twenties, I can legitimately state that the Bible is a maelstrom of the exquisitely beautiful, the grotesque, the unfathomably noble, the bizarre, and the depressingly dull. There are the tribalist horrors of Joshua and Judges, set against the social justice clarion calls of Amos and Isaiah; there's the plodding and absurdist strictures of Leviticus, set against the transcendent troves of Ecclesiastes and Job. And then there are the Gospels, which constitutes the most breathtaking wisdom literature passages I've ever come across.

You'll find apologias for ethnic cleansing, just as you'll come across dreams for brotherhood. You'll see plunder, just as you'll happen upon the most fervent condemnations of greed. You'll be exposed to a God of bloodlust and caprice, just as you'll see a lamenting God of the widows and the orphans. It's all there, in a clusterfield of contradictions.

 

Well ******* said. I can't add anything. That's just well ******** said. And that's why it remains my favorite book. Because it really is everything. Everything in the world and in human experience. I will never stop being fascinated & surprised & challenged by it. I've spent decades with this book and it's just as compelling and fresh as it ever was; more so, really. I can't imagine ever setting it aside. It'll never go on my "finished books" stack. It's a text like no other.

 

Rogue1: Let me also add that as an atheist, I find myself disenchanted by fellow nonbelievers who denigrate and eviscerate one of the supreme works of world literature in the most thoughtless, shallow fashions. (And this is NOT an attack on posters here, as I have not perused the back pages of this thread.) The Bible is a remarkable collection of mores, histories, aspirations and failures from an equally remarkable desert tribe, and it's downright juvenile to approach these 3000+ year-spanning chronicles with anything other than deliberate care and meditation.

 

it's a library rather than a book, really.

 

that's how i like to characterize my dilz, actually

 

The bible is much easier to understand and appreciate when seen as a historical compilation of some records and fables that give a look into how those ancient societies saw the world. To say the bible is all literal, infallible, and trying to apply all of it as rules for today is where it becomes problematic for me.

 

Blame sola scriptura for that sort of thing. Thoughts on Scripture were more varied before the Protestants came about.

 

The UK bans the teaching of creationism in any school that recieves public funding



Edit: Oops. Old news. I may have even linked it years ago. Wa wa.

 

As it should be. Creationism/ID is pseudoscientific bull**** which has nothing to do with reality.

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So called holy books might be intersting to read, but the problems remain: Some religions like Christianity and Islam contain many examples of intolerance, hatred and violence. Hence, mankind would be better off without Christianity and Islam.
It's like that, people CRAVE explanations for all the things they don't understand. People did not understand thunder so there must be a thundergod. People fear the sea so there must be monsters or a God in it. The sun moves across the sky, what efforts it took until many accepted that we live on a ball that travels through our solar system - and still there are Muslims who believe in a sky that is made of 7 layers and that the moon landing never happend. And that devils exist.

So many people believe in religions and hence believe
-that women are inferior to men
-that homosexuality is a sin and needs to be punished
-that people with other world views are non believers and need to be punished, too
-that people of a certain ethnicity are bad
-that bad actions sometimes have to do with the influence of a devil

Superstition, intolerance, mindless self-abandonment, racism, homophobia, sexism - that's what you find in these books. Hence, people are still hostile towards other people because it is written in their myth collection - which is man made, btw.

Moral, Responsability, common sense - that's not in these books. We could live a happy life based on human rights but it's so hard to get the stupidity out of the people - people need education, not religion/intolerance/hostile behaviour. Stupidity is everywhere, not just in the Middle East, where they bomb themselves all the time, but also in western countries like the USA and Great Britain. I read a meme today that's kinda funny but also true: It looks like these countries are having a competition on who can **** themselves up the most. Britain is in the lead, but the USA have a Trump card...

 

That last bit, that's original, I have to remember that!

And then post it on a forum.

 

Your reply came so fast that you could not see my finalization of the posting: That last bit about GB/USA is not by me, I saw it on the internet today.

 

Sure.
I was already wondering if I should wait half an hour so you couldn't edit that in anymore, but I thought, whatever. He won't do it. But you did.

 

Watto: Oh man Watto, just give the people some time to work on their long postings that take more effort than your two liners. I edited it in before I read your posting. When I post a long text like that I always find something to edit afterwards. Did not expect an answer to that posting so fast, I mean I posted, read through it again, started editing and during these maybe 3 minutes or something you already replied. I bet a mod can look up when what was posted, if it makes you feel better.
This is the second time that I wrote something long and thoughtful and you something short that is only intended to provoke, that's childish but maybe it makes you giggle. Last time I was the only one who understood your trolling and no mod reacted. So next time you release your inner troll, I just gonna put you on my ignore list and you can troll others. Would be refreshing if you would contribute to the discussion.

Jedi Merkurian: Not all religions are like that. I read a bit about Buddhism. I am not a part of it, but the teaching seems way more sympathetic than some others. Siddharta Gautama wanted to see the real world outside of his parents' palace and found poverty, sickness etc. He wanted to sit underneath a tree until he would have found a solution. He then realized that everything in the world is suffering, everything changes and goes away. We age, get sick, we die. The solution he found is that if you practice inner peace, not feeling attached to anything and if you do good things to others (altruism), you contribute to a world without any suffering. That teaching itself could indeed contribute to world peace but we have power hungry men everywhere, be it in Turkey, North Corea, the US... Some try to control people with fear (-> racism), some with superstition/religion, some with capitalism/fear (-> leading the public eye away from the bad things that are happening right now, for example with diseases that bother you while the real danger is something else like a new law that allows lower health standards or less rights for you).

 

It's interesting that "non-theistic religions" (philosophies?) tend to be less hateful in general. Buddhism and Taoism for example.

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I agree with Revyl Ren. I am also not sure whether religion or philosophy is the better word. I read that religions assume that there was some kind of paradise that needs to be regained. I also read that Buddhism is more than a philosophy (maybe because of the meditations)?

SuperWatto: Not feeding the troll I must.
*SuperWatto is blocked. Bye, kiddo*

 

As someone who's studied Archeology of the Middle-East (Prehistory up to Assyrian) let me tell you that this is *precisely* how religion came to be: Someone in a society decides he wants to run the show, so he makes up (or draws from pre-existing spiritual beliefs) some bullsh** rules and laws and uses fear of the supernatural in order to impose them on his peers.

Superstition and belief in supernatural are innate to primitive societies (it helps people cope with things they don't understand) but once society becomes hierarchical, someone figures a way to use superstition to advance or solidify their position.

The only difference between a cult and a religion is that with religion, the guy who's made it all up is long dead.

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