Truth in Christianity

[Fraggle Rocker]

When you describe the message of Christianity in such a way, I want to run down the road screaming.

Then perhaps you now have a glimmer of understanding as to how the rest of us feel when "the faithful" describe... oh, let's say just about anything they're taught in church. It is all based on argument from authority, it has not one shred of credible evidence to support it, it is anachronistic Bronze Age morality (or at best Early Iron Age, the all-time low point in the development of civilization until the Colonial Era), and it demands respect for irrational faith.

What you just described is totally preposterous. No modern, rational, thinking person could ever believe such tripe.

Forgive me for not remembering the entire evolution of this thread, but are you speaking as a man who believes in a virgin birth, a resurrection, and all the rest of the claptrap that is alleged to have occurred between those two utterly impossible events? And if so, do you count yourself as a modern, rational, thinking person?

As I said, forgive me if you're just one more kind-hearted outsider trying desperately to find something worth salvaging in the world's dominant religion. We've all been there. After 68 years I've given up. I understand why you might hope not to have to do that, since it leaves one with a very cynical attitude toward his fellow humans. My family have been atheists for three generations. What's wrong with everybody else?

Such a vengeful explanation of the purpose and work of Christ leaves me feeling cold (and a bit nauseous).

I don't quite understand your reasoning for the choice of the word "vengeful." As for "nauseous," I can easily invoke that sensation by poking around two (or a maximum of three) Christian websites.

One lady wrote in to a Christian "authority" and asked how to talk to her young children about the death of their beloved dog. They were consoling themselves with the notion that they would be reunited with him in Heaven, yet the lady "knew" that dogs don't have "souls" and therefore, unlike humans, experience no oxymoronic "life after death."

The preacher explained that since God can do anything (except, apparently, install a soul in an animal that by many measures is better adapted to the civilization we have created than we are and in many important situations behaves more honorably than we do), that God can create an exact likeness of Rover, complete with all of his memories, emotions and tics, so that the children would experience no discontinuity in their relationship with him--except of course the hiatus during the decades of separation. He told the mom that of course this is much too complicated to expect young children to understand, so she should simply LIE TO THEM and tell them that yes, Rover will be patiently waiting for them over a period of several dog lifetimes, wagging his tail, licking their faces, and waiting for them to throw his favorite toy when they arrive.

Now dude, you wanna talk about "nauseous"??? I was as nauseated by that website as I was by the one featuring the equally execrable Muslim "authority" who told a weeping inquirer that yes, she absolutely must take down all the photographs of her children who died in a fiery auto crash AND BURN THEM!

Were the Jews commonly writing in Greek at the time?

For starters, you guys have to really internalize the fact that virtually no one could read or write in the days before the invention of the printing press, for the perfectly good reason that there wasn't enough reading material available to justify the learning effort. This world in which even the stupidest, laziest people can puzzle out billboards and road signs (and stroke victims and Alzheimer's patients can still read and write long after they lose the ability to utter and/or comprehend speech) is only a couple of centuries old.

Being a skeptical lot, the Jews refuse to allow a priest or rabbi to explain their religion to them, so they have always placed a high priority on literacy and the ability to read and interpret the Torah for themselves. Therefore I assume (with no other evidence) that their literacy rate was probably a bit higher than the surrounding community. Still, writing was a relatively rare ability by today's standards, and most storytellers worked in oral language.

That said, the Jews have always adopted the language of their host people. Hebrew had long been strictly a liturgical language by this time, and the people of the Middle East all spoke Aramaic. (Which they continued to do clear up into the 19th century, hundreds of generations after the Aramaeans themselves vanished into the melting pot.) But only scholars knew how to write, and the language of scholarship was Greek. All educated Jews could, of course, write fluently in Hebrew, and probably also in Aramaic, but when they wrote something important that they hoped would be passed down through the ages, they wanted it to have the widest possible audience (among the community of scholars, the only people who would be able to read what they wrote), so they wrote in Greek more often than not.

 

[Gandalf]

then perhaps you now have a glimmer of understanding as to how the rest of us feel when "the faithful" describe... Oh, let's say just about anything they're taught in church. It is all based on argument from authority, it has not one shred of credible evidence to support it, it is anachronistic bronze age morality (or at best early iron age, the all-time low point in the development of civilization until the colonial era), and it demands respect for irrational faith.forgive me for not remembering the entire evolution of this thread, but are you speaking as a man who believes in a virgin birth, a resurrection, and all the rest of the claptrap that is alleged to have occurred between those two utterly impossible events? And if so, do you count yourself as a modern, rational, thinking person?

Martin Luther was once quoted as saying, "Reason is the enemy of faith." That has always bothered the hell out of me. As the years have progressed for me, I'm losing much, if not all, of my belief in Christian dogma. It is becoming a hideously deformed monster to me. Still, as I shed the dogmas of Christianity, I find my belief in spirituality and the wonder of life/existence to be growing. I haven't thrown dogma away completely, but I've reworked what I've kept extensively so that what I cling to is in alignment with my sense of the wonder of life and my spirituality.

as i said, forgive me if you're just one more kind-hearted outsider trying desperately to find something worth salvaging in the world's dominant religion. We've all been there. After 68 years i've given up. I understand why you might hope not to have to do that, since it leaves one with a very cynical attitude toward his fellow humans. My family have been atheists for three generations. What's wrong with everybody else?

One of the biggest reasons I haven't given up all religious faith completely is I ask myself the question: "What's left?" All too often the answer I get is a nihilistic wasteland devoid of any existential purpose.

Also, I find that parts of the Christian message fulfill deep emotional needs for me. We all have a dark, irrational part to ourselves which exists along side our rational side. Religion can often meet the needs of our irrational selves, even when views are hopelessly archaic (think Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth). For many lapsed Catholics, midnight Mass on Christmas Eve is very important to them on many levels that are hard to explain. For much of the year, they may be secular people, but they still seek out a religious experience, even if for only a few hours a year.

 

[gmilam]

One of the biggest reasons I haven't given up all religious faith completely is I ask myself the question: "What's left?" All too often the answer I get is a nihilistic wasteland devoid of any existential purpose.

And the problem is...?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7lWHJHhOs0&noredirect=1

 

[Aqueous Id]

Why does a person say "I believe in Jesus" except for indoctrination into the Bible or some offshoot of the Bible. Why does a person say "I believe in the Bible" except for indoctrination, typically of a more insidious nature, that denies history and science.

To say "Jesus died for our sins" is no more significant than to say "Socrates died for honor". They are both ancient figures, one who left no credible record of his existence, the other whose credibility is historical.

The quest for Jesus in this context (died for me) surrenders the quest for credible evidence to determine why the story of Jesus ever arose.

The story that prevails today is drastically different than the story that prevailed in the era of his alleged life. Although Christians commonly believe there were four predominant writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John this itself is fabricated information. These names were attached in the "Catholic" era when the Church was attempting to unify the scattered definitions of scripture that existed across the Roman Empire.

The approximate dates of creation of the New Testament can be inferred from some of the content. For example, the Jewish uprising can be attributed to the era of Nero which places the authorship very long after the alleged crucifixion. But this was not the only story. The Gnostics had a completely different version. Many of the New Testament works were created after the rise of Gnosticism, as evidenced by the late disciples' criticism of Gnostics.

If young people were introduced to the Bible only after being introduced to science and history, it is unlikely they would grow into a need to sacrifice evidence on the altar of myth and superstition. Everyone should study Christianity because it is a perennial worldwide social phenomenon. But why close the mind to glaring truths (the world is not flat) just to embrace an ancient idea that evolved out of a mixture or pre-existing philosophies (Platonism, Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, etc)? Especially when the seed religions are considered anathema to Christianity?

For me, it is enough to say "I believe" and walk away from inquiry, provided there are no unresolved issues obstructing my exit. The story of Jesus is a story, nothing more, highly decorated by eons of gilding the lily. To derive any other meaning than this is, to me, simply a matter of blind faith.

 

[Gandalf]

And the problem is...?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7lWHJHhOs0&noredirect=1

Great link. Thanks.

 

[wellwisher]

Entrepreneurs live by faith in the unproven and can see things that are not yet in reality. Those whose vision is restricted, to what they can learn or memorize, will always doubt what they do not understand and lack the vision to see.

For example, if man was meant to fly he would have wings was the logic of the blind over a hundred years ago. Those with faith in their vision of flight, knew it was possible even before it was in reality. The faithful are a different breed from the blind.

If you told a blind man the sky was blue and he lacked faith, he will either deny it because he can not see it to verify it. But if he has faith he will be able to see. The faithful entrepreneurs need to lead the blind, usually pulling them along as they kick and scream. Finally one day they get vision.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Martin Luther was once quoted as saying, "Reason is the enemy of faith."

I've always appreciated Luther for being the first Protestant. Which is rather lame, considering that for quite some time Protestants have been responsible for far more evil than Catholics. It wasn't Catholics who staffed Auschwitz, shut down an entire public school district in Virginia to avoid integration, built the Creation Science Museum, or picketed a military funeral as a protest against homosexuality.

Anyway, Luther makes the same mistake that most modern people do: fails to distinguish between rational and irrational faith. The example I've posted on this forum many times, although the number of years keeps increasing: My wife has been unwaveringly tolerant, loving and loyal to me for 34 years (now exactly half of my life). Based upon this empirical evidence, it is rational of me to have faith that she will continue to do so. This faith does not have the weight of a scientific theory: true beyond a reasonable doubt; but it has enough support for me to sensibly regard it as a constant in my life and make plans on the assumption that it will continue.

Religious beliefs, on the other hand, are not based on empirical evidence. They are based on trust in the people who taught them the beliefs, even though as they grow older they realize that those people were similarly taught by their elders, and so on back beyond the Dark Ages into an era when people also believed that the world was flat and that draining blood out of a sick person would make him healthy. This is argument by authority, which everyone who has attended a halfway decent university knows is arguably the worst of all types of fallacies. This makes religious belief an irrational faith.

Faith can be supported by reason, or it can be revealed by reason to be balderdash. That's a world of difference.

One of the biggest reasons I haven't given up all religious faith completely is I ask myself the question: "What's left?" All too often the answer I get is a nihilistic wasteland devoid of any existential purpose.

Religion is merely one of the things our species has brought to this planet. There are many others. I'm a musician and a music lover and I regard music as the most wonderful thing that exists in the universe: mankind's crowning achievement. In fact the only aspect of Christianity I appreciate (besides the ephemeral pleasures of Christmas trees and Easter baskets) is its music.

But on a larger scale, mankind's truly greatest achievement is civilization. Our species is the only one to develop both the will and the power to transcend nature. We have transcended external nature by turning rocks into tools, installing roofs between our heads and the rain, harnessing fire, creating new types of plants that grow at our bidding, changing wild animals into livestock and companions, discovering the secret of turning chemical energy into kinetic energy, even unlocking the mystery of subatomic particles. We have transcended our own internal nature by overriding our pack-social instinct to live in nomadic tribes of a few dozen hunting and gathering extended-family members who regard other tribes as hated competitors for scarce resources, and supplanting it with reasoned and learned behavior in which tens of millions of total strangers live more-or-less in harmony and cooperation, steadily (although not exactly monotonically) building a more remarkable world that appears to have no limit, except more limits of nature which we continue to overcome.

I think civilization is awesome and I'm immensely proud to be part of it; not just an inhabitant but one of its crafters. I find this much more thrilling than a bunch of Bronze Age legends about the proper way to keep women and slaves in their place.

Also, I find that parts of the Christian message fulfill deep emotional needs for me. We all have a dark, irrational part to ourselves which exists along side our rational side. Religion can often meet the needs of our irrational selves, even when views are hopelessly archaic (think Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth).

Mrs. Fraggle was a big Joseph Campbell fan when she was working on her master's degree, and we even attended one of his last lectures before he died.

But his popularization of Jungian psychology teaches us that archetypes (instinctive beliefs which, armed with more knowledge of genetics than Jung had, we now know are programmed into our synapses by our DNA, either priorities that had been survival traits in eras whose dangers we can't imagine, or random mutations passed down through genetic bottlenecks) have existed in every culture in every era. Christianity is merely one of the more recent cultural phenomena that presents these archetypes dressed up in stories that we find familiar and comforting.

If you lived in Ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesoamerica, or any pre-Abrahamic culture, you would have had these same archetypes dressed up in stories that resonated with the other elements of your culture. And you might very well have gotten more out of them, because the flaw in Abrahamism is its bizarre constriction of the rich 23-dimensional traditional pantheon, representing the balance of instinctive forces tugging at the human spirit, into a pathetic one-dimensional model in which everything we think, do, want or hope is ranked on a linear scale between "good" and "evil," reminiscent of the bonehead legislation passed by modern governments.

For many lapsed Catholics, midnight Mass on Christmas Eve is very important to them on many levels that are hard to explain. For much of the year, they may be secular people, but they still seek out a religious experience, even if for only a few hours a year.

As I pointed out earlier in this thread, I get that same thrill out of the deep philosophical issues raised in non-religious literature, even popular literature such as film and TV. Religion has no monopoly on the exposition of archetypes. I'm sure Mrs. Fraggle has read the entire works of Shakespeare more times than the average Christian has read the Bible, and I suspect she's gotten much more out of them.

Why does a person say "I believe in Jesus" except for indoctrination into the Bible or some offshoot of the Bible. Why does a person say "I believe in the Bible" except for indoctrination, typically of a more insidious nature, that denies history and science.

Archetypes are not to be taken lightly. Religion presents us with motifs that are drifting around deep inside us, and they resonate. This is why it's so easy to assume that religious stories are true. Things that you have known since birth feel more true to you than any knowledge you have acquired by learning and reasoning subsequently.

To say "Jesus died for our sins" is no more significant than to say "Socrates died for honor". They are both ancient figures, one who left no credible record of his existence, the other whose credibility is historical. The quest for Jesus in this context (died for me) surrenders the quest for credible evidence to determine why the story of Jesus ever arose.

It's very difficult to win over a religious person with logic and empirical evidence. They're running on something that they feel has been part of them since they were born.

Nonetheless, it's not impossible. We have many archetypal instincts that have not been co-opted by religion. For example, virtually all animals have an instinct to flee from a large animal with both eyes in front of its face. Any animal that doesn't run away from a predator will not live long enough to bear young, so its bloodline dies off pretty quickly. A century ago, when motion pictures were just coming out and when there were still a few parts of the world in which pre-modern people lived almost totally insulated from civilization, Westerners introduced a few Africans to movies--by (helpfully, they thought) showing them a film shot in Africa. As soon as a scene appeared on the screen in which a lion was running toward the viewers, every single person jumped out of his seat and bolted from the theater, screaming. Even though they knew it wasn't real, the archetypal instinct, of the lion as the animal to be feared above all others, was so powerful that they couldn't make their legs stop running or their voices stop shouting until they were safely outside.

Yet today, we take our children to zoos where the lions are live, and it's unusual for one of them to run away screaming. By training them very young, we are able to teach them to override their instinctive fear of predators. (Having a domesticated wolf in the house for a baby to play with helps a lot too. )

This is just another step in our transcendence of our internal nature. After all, it's only been a few hundred generations since we invented agriculture and began living in villages with people outside our family, and that's not nearly long enough for evolution to rewire our instincts. We teach our children that civilization is better than nomadic hunting and gathering, and they learn to suppress their Stone Age instincts. (Most of the time anyway. Every day's newspaper is full of accounts of individuals whose Inner Caveman got fed up and seized control for a while.)

We just need to do the same thing with religious archetypes. My parents didn't teach me to be an atheist, in fact I never heard of religion until I was seven. But they also didn't teach me religion. I didn't grow up with my archetypal beliefs organized into a Bible. They just rattled around in my head until I discovered other types of literature, and then they became organized in a different way. (I fondly recall reading "The Wizard of Oz" and loving all the supernatural creatures and events, without having any pressing need to think they were real.)

If young people were introduced to the Bible only after being introduced to science and history, it is unlikely they would grow into a need to sacrifice evidence on the altar of myth and superstition.

If they were simply introduced to the Bible as a renowned and valuable work of fiction rather than as literal truth, that's all it would take.

Everyone should study Christianity because it is a perennial worldwide social phenomenon.

Two thousand years is hardly "perennial." A lot of great things happened on this planet before the alleged birth of Jesus. Our children should be studying them too!

But why close the mind to glaring truths (the world is not flat) just to embrace an ancient idea . . . .

Unfortunately for us Americans, the Religious Redneck Retard Revival of the late 1970s overturned the liberal religious movement that had been gaining ground since the Roaring Twenties, a strong force in the Counterculture era when we atheist hippies were glad to have the help of the "Religious Left" (a term that was never coined) in fighting for peace and civil rights. There was no evolution denialism or young earth faction back then. The more thoughtful, educated religious people realized that much of what was in the Bible was metaphorical, and they managed not to be dismayed by that. Even today, the Pope and the leaders of virtually every other respectable Christian denomination accept evolution as simply one of the many tools God used to create this world, and accept the six-day creation as a symbol. They won't fly into a rage when and if we finally crack the secret of abiogenesis, because it won't shake their faith that it's all just part of God's Enormous Plan. Maybe all God did was create the laws of nature such as electromagnetism and entropy by waving his magic wand, and the Big Bang happened, and everything since then has been merely the turning of precision gears in his Cosmic Watch. Surely you're familiar with the Cosmic Watchmaker model of the universe, which we can never disprove, but only point out that it simply expands the scope of what should be called "the universe" and begs the question of where all of that other stuff, including the god himself, came from.

. . . . Especially when the seed religions are considered anathema to Christianity?

The typical statement of one of Abrahamism's dogmas, "Our God is a jealous God," says to me that monotheism does not quite synchronize with the archetypes in our heads, that in fact the old 23-god pantheon was a closer image of our psyche. Therefore, the One God movement has to be zealous about preventing its children from learning about the traditional model of the human spirit.

The Romans, Norsemen, Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, etc., fought with each other, but almost never over religion. In fact their scholars usually discovered quickly that they had the same gods with different names. It appears to be only the Abrahamic monotheists, who claim that they all believe in the same God and even revere the same Torah, that kill each other over their (only slight) disagreement over the nature of that God.

For me, it is enough to say "I believe" and walk away from inquiry, provided there are no unresolved issues obstructing my exit. The story of Jesus is a story, nothing more, highly decorated by eons of gilding the lily. To derive any other meaning than this is, to me, simply a matter of blind faith.

Perhaps today I have given you the more useful concept of irrational faith, which has an opposite against which it can be contrasted.

 

[wellwisher]

The way I look at it, sour grapes or not, Christianity helped shaped history for 2000 years. How was that possible if is so easy to dismiss? Rational and irrationsl theory came and went, but the same faith endured for 2000 years. It is called natural selection and selective advantage.

According to Darwin, natural selection has a connection to breeding preference and passing on the most genes. Last I heard, religions breed more than atheism; according to the teachings of darwin, natural selection would have to go to the religious. Atheism aborts itself, instinctivrly putting itself in the secondary role to the natural selection of religion. This creates a chip on their shoulder. The solution to becoming more Darwinian and the choice of natural selection is to follow religion.

Religion is more naturally selected. This is inferred by how it parallels what Darwin taught. Unless Darwin was wrong, atheism is following the path of the dinosaur.

 

[kx000]

There is no more religion.. i struck it from the earth, bound to hell with Satan, and the box.

 

[Rhaedas]

The way I look at it, sour grapes or not, Christianity helped shaped history for 2000 years. How was that possible if is so easy to dismiss? Rational and irrationsl theory came and went, but the same faith endured for 2000 years. It is called natural selection and selective advantage.

According to Darwin, natural selection has a connection to breeding preference and passing on the most genes. Last I heard, religions breed more than atheism; according to the teachings of darwin, natural selection would have to go to the religious. Atheism aborts itself, instinctivrly putting itself in the secondary role to the natural selection of religion. This creates a chip on their shoulder. The solution to becoming more Darwinian and the choice of natural selection is to follow religion.

Religion is more naturally selected. This is inferred by how it parallels what Darwin taught. Unless Darwin was wrong, atheism is following the path of the dinosaur.

For most of this, my response is...? Word salad as some would say. But I would respond to a part...

Christianity helped shaped history for 2000 years.

True. Not always in the positive either.

 

[Dywyddyr]

Last I heard, religions breed more than atheism

What?
Why is atheism on the rise?

according to the teachings of darwin, natural selection would have to go to the religious.

Then why is atheism on the rise?

Atheism aborts itself, instinctivrly putting itself in the secondary role to the natural selection of religion. This creates a chip on their shoulder.

Word salad.

The solution to becoming more Darwinian and the choice of natural selection is to follow religion.

Nonsense.

Religion is more naturally selected. This is inferred by how it parallels what Darwin taught. Unless Darwin was wrong, atheism is following the path of the dinosaur.

What are you talking about?

 

[wellwisher]

Natural selection is about selective advantage in terms of breeding success since this will define the future genetic distribution. Religions tend to teach breeding success while atheism is about breeding limitations. According to Darwin which is expressing natural selection?

Christ said blessed are the poor. These tend to breed the most implicit of natural selection. Atheism is about artificial selection. On the one had it tries to define natural human based on the ape standard but ingnore what Darwin says about breeding and natural selection. This is not a rational cult.

If we plot national high school test scores in the USA, versus the rise of atheism, one may notice as test scores fall, atheism recruitment rises. Social expense also rises with atheist recruitment. The low level of social efficiency is why it lack natural selection.

 

[Dywyddyr]

Religions tend to teach breeding success while atheism is about breeding limitations.

How?
Source please.

Atheism is about artificial selection.

Is it?
Source please.

This is not a rational cult.

Please provide any evidence that atheism is a "cult".

If we plot national high school test scores in the USA, versus the rise of atheism, one may notice as test scores fall, atheism recruitment rises.

Does that also explain why atheists tend to have higher IQs? (Or, probably more specifically, the higher the IQ the more likely one is to be atheist).
Atheism recruitment?

This appears a continuation of your utterly mistaken diatribe posted here. (Which also appears to be a discussion you dropped out of after your claims were shown to be false).

 

[markl323]

Christianity helped shaped history for 2000 years.

for the worse. it has led to wars, hindered progress and wasted valuable time and resources.

How was that possible if is so easy to dismiss? Rational and irrationsl theory came and went, but the same faith endured for 2000 years.

people used to believe the earth was flat for how many millenniums?

Last I heard, religions breed more than atheism; according to the teachings of darwin, natural selection would have to go to the religious. Atheism aborts itself, instinctivrly putting itself in the secondary role to the natural selection of religion.

Religion is more naturally selected.

wrong.

Christians simply breed more because they tend to be poorer. the more well off a person is the less likely they are to breed. this is why Whites around the world (Europeans included) are not breeding as much as Africans and Asians. according to the argument you made, i guess natural selection prefers Africans and Asians? Absurd.

why are they poorer? if you look at most of the religious infomercials on TV you'll often see a sick or disabled person on stage being magically healed by a pastor and the audience is in awe. what kind of people do you think these ads would appeal? obviously the sick, the disabled, the elderly, the wounded, the ones with some type of problem in their lives they can't solve, which is why they are turning to an invisible super-being for hope.

another reason is the different levels of education. if someone spends 4 years in a university taking all the basic science courses, chances are they will not believe in a God. this is why most scientists are either atheist or agnostic. the more one learns, the less they believe in a God. and education usually means higher income.

another reason for the high breeding rate is that many Christians don't believe in the use of condoms. the Catholic church even sent preachers to Africa, an AIDS infested continent, to encourage the locals to stop using condoms.

 

[Gandalf]

The way I look at it, sour grapes or not, Christianity helped shaped history for 2000 years. How was that possible if is so easy to dismiss? Rational and irrationsl theory came and went, but the same faith endured for 2000 years. It is called natural selection and selective advantage.

According to Darwin, natural selection has a connection to breeding preference and passing on the most genes. Last I heard, religions breed more than atheism; according to the teachings of darwin, natural selection would have to go to the religious. Atheism aborts itself, instinctivrly putting itself in the secondary role to the natural selection of religion. This creates a chip on their shoulder. The solution to becoming more Darwinian and the choice of natural selection is to follow religion.

Religion is more naturally selected. This is inferred by how it parallels what Darwin taught. Unless Darwin was wrong, atheism is following the path of the dinosaur.

Word salad.


Nonsense.


What are you talking about?

Oh my frickin' God! My brain just melted reading your post wellwisher!

Agree with you Dywyddyr: word salad nonsense!

 

[Gandalf]

@ Fraggle Rocker, thanks for your thoughtful response to my post. Skimmed it tonight, 'cause I'm sleepy. Appreciate your effort to share your views.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

The way I look at it, sour grapes or not, Christianity helped shaped history for 2000 years. How was that possible if is so easy to dismiss?

I can't speak for the other posters, but Christianity--and religion in general--is not easy to dismiss. All attempts to suppress religion in general or specific religions in particular not only fail, but incur second-order effects that are far worse than the religions themselves. Religious wars have torn apart entire continents, including Europe during the Reformation, which was virtually a century of non-stop warfare.

The Holocaust was an attempt to obliterate an entire religious community; one would think that humanity would have learned something important from its aftereffects--not to mention its ultimate failure, including Germany's subsequent ignominious obligation to supply Israel with free Mercedes-Benz buses. Yet we still have religious communities trying to wipe each other out or at least persecuting each other into marginality. The Hindus and Buddhists in Sri Lanka, the Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq, the Muslims and the Christians in hot spots all over the planet, and most horrifyingly, the Muslims and the newly prosperous and nuclear-armed Jews in the Levant.

This is why, despite my abiding hatred of religion, I am an outspoken supporter of the sacred American principle of Freedom Of Religion. This is a problem that must be allowed to work itself out, taking as long as it needs. The only restriction we can legitimately place on religions and religious people is the same rule we must all obey, what I identify as the First Rule of Civilization, the rule that lifted us out of the Stone Age:

You may never kill anyone for any reason except self-defense against an imminent lethal threat.​

Rational and irrational theory came and went, but the same faith endured for 2000 years. It is called natural selection and selective advantage.

Previous, equally irrational religions endured for thousands of years before Christianity. Judaism is nearly twice as old, and has not spread more widely for the simple reason that it is not an evangelical religion. The polytheistic faiths of Asia and North Africa and the various spiritualities of other parts of the world go back to the dawn of our species. Christianity has no claim to exceptional powers of endurance, and we have no compelling reason to assume that it will still be influential--or even remembered--in another 2,000 years.

Remember Mithra and Zarathushtra? Exactly. No one does!

According to Darwin, natural selection has a connection to breeding preference and passing on the most genes. Last I heard, religions breed more than atheism.

I wonder where you heard that. The history of the 20th century clearly shows that fertility is a negative function of prosperity. As societies raise themselves out of poverty, their urge to have large families abates for various reasons:

• Infant mortality drops precipitously from its historical level of 80%, so one need not have as many children to ensure that the family will survive, and that there will be someone to keep the family farm or business running.
• Jobs for wages, investments, pensions and social security programs provide a more secure life for the elderly, so they don't need twelve children to ensure that someone will be around to take care of them if they live into old age.
• A modern urban life provides more activities and interests than a Stone Age life, so there are other forms of recreation besides procreation and other interesting activities besides staying home and tending the family.
• Contraception and other family planning methods make it possible to have fewer children.
• Prosperity increases education, and people in prosperous countries are more aware of the pressure of human population on the environment, voluntarily reducing their birth rate for the good of the species.

. . . . according to the teachings of darwin, natural selection would have to go to the religious. Atheism aborts itself, instinctivrly putting itself in the secondary role to the natural selection of religion. This creates a chip on their shoulder. The solution to becoming more Darwinian and the choice of natural selection is to follow religion.

Your reasoning is not sound and your facts are out of date. In prosperous nations, the religious are as aware of the need to slow population growth as the atheists. Even the Catholic Church is wise enough to avoid speaking out categorically against family planning; it simply opposes all practical means to do it, and (in the prosperous nations) its members blithely ignore the prohibitions and seek forgiveness through the confessional. The fertility rate in all prosperous countries is on the verge of falling below replacement level (and has already done so in places like Japan). At the same time, their populations are becoming increasingly less religious. Denmark and New Zealand, for example, have large, growing, thriving atheist populations. Even in the USA, with the Religious Redneck Retard Revival still in high gear, an increasing percentage of the population identify ourselves as "not religious" or outright "atheists" in every census.

Religion is not a modern phenomenon, and as the world modernizes it will fade away.

Religion is more naturally selected. This is inferred by how it parallels what Darwin taught. Unless Darwin was wrong, atheism is following the path of the dinosaur.

Darwin is not wrong, but you are. You have completely misread and misinterpreted the statistics. Religion is clearly on the way out, and the only way people can stop it from happening is to keep the world at war.

Christ said blessed are the poor. These tend to breed the most implicit of natural selection.

Yes, even Christ seemed to intuitively understand that poverty is one of the strongest factors in the spread and survival of religion.

Atheism is about artificial selection. On the one had it tries to define natural human based on the ape standard but ingnore what Darwin says about breeding and natural selection. This is not a rational cult.

Much of what you write is so poorly stated that I have to read it two or three times. But that particular passage is completely incoherent. If you're trying to make a point you have failed. I have no idea what you were trying to say there.

If we plot national high school test scores in the USA, versus the rise of atheism, one may notice as test scores fall, atheism recruitment rises. Social expense also rises with atheist recruitment. The low level of social efficiency is why it lack natural selection.

I give you credit for knowing how to manipulate statistics to make a fraudulent point.

Congratulations, you have just committed today's first instance of The Fallacy of Correlation, something those of us with effective educations learned in college:

Correlation does not imply causation.​

Your argument is fraudulent.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Uh dude, one of those "accounts" was written by a man whom even Christians acknowledge would today be classified as clinically insane and not allowed out in public. (Paul, right?)

1. No. Paul, Wrong.
Paul did not write an account of Christ's life.
He wrote letters to the early churches, was an evangelist, and wrote a book describing his travels.

2. How was St Paul clinically insane?

And which Christians acknowledge that he would now be considered so?
I wonder how they overcome the fact that judging an earlier mythology in the
terms of a later one is fraught with difficulties?

(I am talking about the mythology regarding insanity, not the mythology of religion)

As I said to Arauca, if they had simply written biographical essays on a person whose life was believable, then we would have to say that there is at least a reasonable probability that they were true.

I'm not a believer in the literal truth of the Bible myself.
As far as I'm concerned, some of it is an account of things that actually happened, some of it is metaphor, and some of it is things that people agree must have happened.

You can't argue against a single "Christian" point of view, because the people who shout loudest and most violently, don't form the majority, and they are often bigots.

I wouldn't argue at all. I don't like religious argument.
I detest people who try to use argumentative bullying and fear to get people to accept their religious views,
But I believe that religious experience is an important and inseparable part of what it is to be a human being.
and I sometimes look at a person whose life has been transformed by religious belief, and think,
yes, I would like to be like that.
I know very little about it, though my knowledge is increasing as I get older.
I have a number of doubts and difficulties myself.
I wouldn't say anything at all, but the level of knowledge of many Christians about their own religion,
seems so minimal that I feel obliged to say something.

 

[Yazata]

First of all there is proof Jesus existed in the Talmud, the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, other historians make mention of him and his followers and the of course the New Testament scriptures which carry the record of his teachings.

The earliest non-Christian references to Christianity that we have refer to the early Christians and to their beliefs. None of it is independent evidence about Jesus himself. The only information that we have about him comes from what the early Christians said about him. Some of that material was subsequently collected in the New Testament, while other material is extracanonical.

Personally, I don't have much doubt that somebody called 'Jesus' probably existed. But it isn't entirely clear whether this real Jesus did and said everything that the Christian accounts depict him as doing and saying. The accounts aren't entirely consistent and the stories of miracles and Jesus' resurrection are doubtful by their very nature.

But having said that, it's clear that these were all strands of early tradition, that they certainly do represent things that various groups of early Christians said and believed about Jesus. So right out of the gate, we have to distinguish betwen the man Jesus and the Jesus of pious story and myth.

The fact that Christians still exist even though at one time were persecuted for their faith and that Judaism still rejects Jesus as their Messiah should be adequate proof of his historicity.

The fact that the great majority of Jews in the areas in which Jesus had been active, those most likely to have actually seen and heard him, didn't immediately convert to Christianity tells me that they didn't believe that the resurrection story was true, didn't believe the claims that Jesus had been the Messiah, and so on. So even though the Jews of Jerusalem didn't leave us any independent eye-witness reports about what the real Jesus had been up to, the simple fact fact they remained unconvinced by Christianity suggests that the Christian accounts were probably greatly embroidered.

 

[arauca]

There is no truth in Christianity, it is all based on myth and fabrication.

Here is a man who who knows every thing he is 2000 years old