Merged (edited) General thoughts about Christianity and the bible

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Atheism is a very small part of who i am, and how i view the world, it's just a lack of belief in any gods. And having never believed in any of them, they all seem equally fictional and unbelievable to me.

I defaulted to atheism as being the least rediculous of the available options. I do often state that "I'm not religious enough to call myself an atheist".

 

[arthwollipot]

...and enables you to outsource your ethics.

Except that in fact it doesn't. Everybody thinks that God thinks like they do. They do what they think God likes, and then say that God likes them because they do those things.

The more hierarchical religions, like Catholicism sorry Roman Catholicism, have more of a structure around what people think God likes, but God's ethics are still their own, dressed up in a robe and a hat.

 

[arthwollipot]

The choice is always "Anything but God". Seems like an escapism cop-out.

Anything but Thor. Anything but Vishnu. Anything but Boddhisatva. Anything but Pallas Athena.

 

[arthwollipot]

No. "God did it" is always a silly fantasy answer. That's escapism.

Furthermore, it enables you to stop trying to answer the hard questions. Where did we come from? God did it. Question answered, moving on. The real answers to these questions are far more interesting.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

In other words, you admit that you believe in God because you can't handle the alternative. You need that hope and will defend it against everything, even hard facts.

No. That's not what it means.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

A very strange basis for a worldview. And even stranger, since it seems to imply thst you could choose not to believe.

Jesus requires us to "take up the cross" daily.
So Yes, I could choose not to believe. (despite knowing better)

 

[Rusty Tyler]

The concept of "triggering" and some intelligent agent to trigger are wholly irrelevant to the Big Bang.

No more relevant than asking me "Who created God?"

 

[JayUtah]

Jesus requires us to "take up the cross" daily.
So Yes, I could choose not to believe. (despite knowing better)

A very strange position from which to look down on others for their supposed unbelief.

 

[Rusty Tyler]

Are you also looking forward to finding out what's North of the North Pole?

LOL
From the North Pole everything is south.
(even for flat-earthers)

 

[JayUtah]

No more relevant than asking me "Who created God?"

Asking how the Big Bang may have may have happened is reasonable. Asking it in a way that presumes some separate agent needed to "trigger" isn't. In logic that's called a "complex question." The classic example of that is the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

You proposing an uncreated God as an alternative to an uncreated universe isn't at all the same thing.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Not really true. Getting closer to the original texts, whichever texts we're talking about, is good. There are many translations made by non-theistic academics, that are not aimed at making the original texts more palatable, just more accurate - in the process, often showing how weird and contradictory the original texts really are.

Good for academic study perhaps, but not good for the religion. The King James Version is actually an excellent translation of the sources it was created from, with only a few (relatively unimportant) translation 'errors'.

But more importantly,

Blayney's 1769 version, with its revised spelling and punctuation, helped change the public perception of the Authorised Version to a masterpiece of the English language. By the 19th century, F. W. Faber could say of the translation, "It lives on the ear, like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego."

and,

Geddes MacGregor called the Authorized Version "the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language", "the most important book in English religion and culture", and "the most celebrated book in the English-speaking world".

and,

prominent atheist figures such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have praised the King James Version as being "a giant step in the maturing of English literature" and "a great work of literature", respectively

Dismissing the KJV as simply a flawed translation of 'original' Christian writings does it a great disservice. If we managed to unearth all the earliest Christian writings we would find a hodgepodge of incomplete and incompatible texts that don't represent Christianity as we know it. It took many years for the Church to whittle away at this mess until they had molded it into a Bible with some kind of coherence, and the KJV is the seminal result. For the English-speaking world it practically is the original text of their religion.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Those with a God have hope in something beyond themselves.

The idea that atheists don't believe in anything greater than themselves is a self-serving straw man. I find that most all of the atheists I've encountered in life are stunned and humbled by the wondrous universe science has revealed to us, on a scale that no religion had even imagined. Carl Sagan spoke of the profound sense of awe he felt in the face of the universe, beyond what any religion could inspire. And when you aren't focused on trying to appease an invisible judge into granting you eternal existence in paradise, you can focus on the fact that we're all just links in a chain of life that will continue long after we're personally gone, and understand that the best thing we can do is to leave the world better for those who come after us. And honestly, what's more self centered than thinking the universe was made for you - that you're the primary concern of the ultimate power/intellect that created it all?

I grew up among Evangelical Christians, so I'm very familiar with the belief that people who aren't of like faith can't know true happiness. I even remember claims that non Christians who say they lead happy lives only think they're happy. But the truth is that many people lead satisfying lives in which they find love and personal meaning not only without Jesus, but without any gods at all.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I'm looking forward to finding out what was there before God created the universe.
No way to know at this point, unless your understanding of the BIG Bang reaches back before that time.

Who pulled the trigger on the BIG Bang?

There was no trigger. My own 'theory' is that the Universe is constantly collapsing in on itself via the black holes inside it, which become white holes at the 'beginning of time'. Or it may simply be that we don't understand what the Universe should look like at the limits of visibility.

The Big Bang theory itself exists due to religious influence. Humans are predisposed to theorizing an anthropomorphic origin of the Universe due to our need to interact in social groups. The human brain is tuned to predicting human behavior, and so tends to impress that thinking onto inanimate objects too. Even scientists who know better still use language that anthropomorphizes, because it's so difficult to communicate without it.

 

[theprestige]

There was no trigger. My own 'theory' is that the Universe is constantly collapsing in on itself via the black holes inside it

We know this isn't true. The expansion of spacetime clearly outpaces the attractive force of even the most supermassive black holes. Gravity has nothing on dark energy.

I mean, think about it. The mass of any given black hole cannot exceed the mass of the stars and other material it's consumed. If galaxies are being driven apart by Dark Energy, where are your precious super turbo epic black holes that are holding the large-scale structures together in the face of the inexorable expansion of spacetime?

 

[Roger Ramjets]

From my perspective, religion was created by humankind to answer questions about where we came from and where we are going.

Evolution can only theorize about where we came from if you leave religion out of it.

Both live in the minds of humankind.

Evolution can only theorize about where we came from if you leave Star Wars out of it.

But evolution doesn't only exist in our minds. The evidence for it in the fossil records and elsewhere is most definitely external, and furthermore refutes what the Bible says about our origins.

Let's be honest here. The only reason to make the comparison is that we have been indoctrinated with the Christian theory of mankind's origin. If the religion we grew up with had some other origin theory we would be debating that instead, or if it had none we would simply accept the science.

So what claim to accuracy does Christianity have on this topic? Basically none. Ancient Israelites had no clue about the science and their chances of fluking it were nil. So they came up with the kind of fantasies you would expect based on what little they did know. The question is why should we give it any credence today? That answer to that is no reason. There's no point hanging onto outdated theories when you have better ones.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

The idea that atheists don't believe in anything greater than themselves is a self-serving straw man. I find that most all of the atheists I've encountered in life are stunned and humbled by the wondrous universe science has revealed to us, on a scale that no religion had even imagined. Carl Sagan spoke of the profound sense of awe he felt in the face of the universe, beyond what any religion could inspire.

The person you are addressing, like many of those you grew up with, cannot be stunned or humbled by the wondrous universe they inhabit, because they are almost completely unaware of what science has discovered, and have conditioned themselves to reject any glimpse of the universe that makes its way past their doggedly dogmatic ignorance.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

We know this isn't true. The expansion of spacetime clearly outpaces the attractive force of even the most supermassive black holes. Gravity has nothing on dark energy.

I mean, think about it. The mass of any given black hole cannot exceed the mass of the stars and other material it's consumed. If galaxies are being driven apart by Dark Energy, where are your precious super turbo epic black holes that are holding the large-scale structures together in the face of the inexorable expansion of spacetime?

We don't know that spacetime as a whole is expanding, only that it seems to be in our corner of the Universe. The necessity for 'dark energy' to balance the equations is problematic, suggesting that there's (literally!) more going on than meets the eye. Lots of interesting stuff is happening in astronomy right now as we collect more data. The holes in current theory are getting larger. I'm hoping they get at least partially resolved in my lifetime.

But this is how science works - collect data, develop theories, make predictions, modify theories to better match new data. This way we are constantly improving our understanding of how everything works. We like doing this because such thinking helps us to survive and prosper, and therefore has been 'bred' into us via what we call evolution.

 

[Pixel42]

LOL
From the North Pole everything is south.
(even for flat-earthers)

The point being made is that the Big Bang may be the four dimensional equivalent of the North Pole, i.e. there is no before the Big Bang, in the same way there is no north of the North pole.

 

[Helen]

Good for academic study perhaps, but not good for the religion. The King James Version is actually an excellent translation of the sources it was created from, with only a few (relatively unimportant) translation 'errors'.

But more importantly,

and,

and,


Dismissing the KJV as simply a flawed translation of 'original' Christian writings does it a great disservice. If we managed to unearth all the earliest Christian writings we would find a hodgepodge of incomplete and incompatible texts that don't represent Christianity as we know it. It took many years for the Church to whittle away at this mess until they had molded it into a Bible with some kind of coherence, but the KJV is the seminal result. For the English-speaking world it practically is the original text of their religion.

I don't see a conflict; the KJV, as well as similar works in other languages, have shaped our cultures; that will no change with any new translations. Those texts are much more representative of their time, and the minds of those who interpreted the texts, than of the original disjointed scribblings. I will always be far more interested in getting as close as possible to the original texts of ancient fiction, to not see them through the filter of later translations. I am not interested, however, in trying to keep the texts palatable for later generations. That, to me, is doing them a great disservice. It is, essentially, lying to them. Enjoy the KJV, by all means, for its literary values, which remain the same, but new translations, based on new knowledge, will be far more interesting to those who actually want to know more about the texts, the people who wrote/retold them, and the times and circumstances they lived in.

And if it's not good for the religion, than that's a problem for those who care about that pov. Translators should follow the texts, wherever that takes them.

 

[Helen]

Jesus requires us to "take up the cross" daily.
So Yes, I could choose not to believe. (despite knowing better)

You know better, but still choose to believe? I don't think that is true.