Do you know Dr. Dawkins?

[Pyrotex]

There are terrible things which are done in the name of many causes. Religion may be one, but power, lust, greed, madness, the cult of personality, and many other aspects of human nature find their expression through unfortunate methods. It's rare that "God wants someone to do it" for religion alone, unless there are also politics and spoils involved.

Politics and spoils are often involved, indeed. I'll give you the point. But how many non-religious agencies can you name that persuade its members to go out and slaughter as many people as possible while committing suicide?--AND--that their reward will be eternal life in paradise?

 

The Kamakazi warriors of WWII come to mind, but I can think of no others.

[cwes99_03]

Indeed.

 

I admire Dawkins. He is so articulate and persuasive in his books and other writings. He is one of those rare folks I refer to as a "fun read". Daniel C. Dennett is another.

 

His anti-religion stance does sound rather heated and some of his statements could have been better thought out, but in general, I agree with him. The damage done to our world and our societies in the name of one religion or another is ghastly and heart-wrenching. Even now, mass slaughter is taking place because "God wants someone to do it". It is about time that someone speak up against this tragedy. Dawkins is a good start.

 

 

Sorry Pyro, I have to call you on this one.

 

I agree that some pretty horrible things are going on in this world, but your labeling them as done because God wants someone to do it I think is way off basis.

Find me a scripture in the Bible that you think supports this ideology and I'll find you 15 or 20 that say that you should not. Really though, all I need to find is one.

"vengence is mine, sayeth the LORD"

I'm sure you've read it.

 

Thus the acts you and others speak of are misattributed to God, but do find a large square target on the philosophies and governments of men who have dominated their fellow man to the tune of much death and hatred.

[InfiniteNow]

Find me a scripture in the Bible that you think supports this ideology and I'll find you 15 or 20 that say that you should not.

I guess that's the beauty of a book which is not internally consistent, eh?

[cwes99_03]

Einstein and Hawking both published that they do not believe in "personal gods" are not "religious". Their quotes have been taken out of context by "true believers". Newton DID believe in God, and did one of the most serious researches on the Bible performed until centuries later. He found it to be so internally inconsistent and vague as to be unusable as a scripture. He continued to attend church services after that, but wrote very little more about his beliefs.

 

Also, let's turn your logic around a bit: Einstein never denied the possibility of the existence of little, furry green unicorns from Mars. True statement. You cannot take this as evidence for the existence of little, furry green unicorns from Mars, without making yourself look just a tad silly. Replace the words "little, furry green unicorns from Mars" with "god" and the logic does not get any better.

 

 

Might I suggest that just because they published papers on subjects that others could not easily understand at the time, that these men are not necessarily the smartest men ever to have lived. You elevate these men to the position just a little lower than some elevate their gods, yet who knows what the next 1000 years will bring. Likewise, how do you know that 2000 years ago a man did not live that held much higher mental abilities, but who was spurned by man and treated like an idiot because people around him could not understand what he was teaching.

You don't, but you like to think you do.

[Pyrotex]

The inconsistency of the Bible is not apparent to the vast majority of believers because they themselves do not read the Bible. What they do is allow themselves to be guided to certain verses and certain chapters by their teachers, and quickly assume that this small subset represents the whole. To tell a believer that the Bible is inconsistent is tantamount to accusing their beloved teachers to be liars and scoundrels! Which of course, they were not.

 

It's turtles all the way down.

[cwes99_03]

"Which of course, they were not."

 

No need to be patronizing of flippant. :doh:

 

Likewise, what happens all the time in the theology forum, people like Abstruce post theories and quotes of authors who have stated that Christianity is nothing but lies. Do you suppose he has read the Bible, and is able to speak as you do?

You make claims, I make claims, others make claims to have read the Bible through, in some case several times. You make the claim it is terribly inconsistent. I make the claim that it is not inconsistent.

Neither one of us is going to get anywhere making these accusations. All we can do is demonstrate how one or the other may not understand something that was written or said, but in doing so we walk the thin line of "preaching" and using bible verses as proof.

However, no such rule has been made stating that someone can't call religious people idiots on this forum, while those religious when they get a bit incensed and demonstrate how they are repeatedly attacked for their beliefs get warned.

Got to love this system, but some of us decide to continue on despite it all.

[Pyrotex]

The inconsistency of the Bible is not apparent to the vast majority of believers....

For example, prepare a timeline of Jesus' death and resurrection. Make 4 columns, labeled Mathew, Mark, Luke, John. Make a number of rows, each labeled with a question, such as:

What did J say before he died?

Who took J down off the cross?

Who was with J when buried?

Who was first at the tomb later?

Who met her (them) at the tomb?

What did he/they say?

Who went into the tomb?

What did the women do afterwards?

 

As you parse through the Gospels, other questions will present themselves.

 

The point is, no one since Gutenburg ran off the first non-Latin copy of the Bible in the 1500's has ever been able to make these 4 accounts consistent, not even with a good deal of imagination. The Encyclopedia Brittanica once offered a sum of money for a single consistent flow of events--there were no takers. And I've heard LOTS of believers say, "Oh, that's easy! It's been done before! Somebody showed me the solution, once!"

 

And so it goes. Turtles all the way down.

[maikeru]

Politics and spoils are often involved, indeed. I'll give you the point. But how many non-religious agencies can you name that persuade its members to go out and slaughter as many people as possible while committing suicide?--AND--that their reward will be eternal life in paradise?

 

The Kamakazi warriors of WWII come to mind, but I can think of no others.

 

First, I don't think that suicide or the promise of an eternal reward in the afterlife are necessary requirements for religious genocide. (I *do* agree that suicidal mass-killings, like we see in the Middle East, are insane, but it's still understandable, and the motivations are not all religious.) Simply, differences in religion and flames stoked by them can be enough. It also depends on if the differences in religions make the religions compatible or not.

 

For example, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, and various types of shamanism or nature-based religions have often co-existed without notable incident. As some of the board members from India might well know, India has a long history of religious diversity and tolerance, until several hundred years ago when Islamic conquests brought Islam into India. Tons of wars were fought in India, but mostly for territory, wealth, or power (to succeed or maintain dynasties). Same in China and Japan. As for non-religious organizations, many Communist organizations and dictatorships are responisble for the deaths of millions of people, from Pol Pot in Cambodia to the current thousands waiting in death camps in North Korea (because they've disagreed with the system). Stalin's sham trials and executions and mass deportations to Siberia, Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and "Cultural Revolution," and Hitler's gas chambers.

 

Even the kamikaze pilots of WW2 were driven by political and cultural pressures. After the Meiji restoration, nationalized education brainwashed children into thinking the Emperor and Japan were divine. But that wasn't completely religious, it was mostly for political gains, because Japan had major plans for the "Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" (a larger, newer Japanese Empire) which it tried to start with the invasions into Korea and Manchuria. That didn't work out.

 

Religion can provide another tool for people in power to control those under them. In the case of people in the Middle East, many of the suicide bombers are young men and women, in their teens to early 30s. Some are students, lawyers, or doctors--others just poor, starving people. What makes them into killers? These should be rational people doing anything else but blowing themselves, and others, up. But circumstances, forces, and pressures, from economics to familial ones, as well as religious ones, force them into it. And the Quran provides a model for jihad, and some find this the best way. Also, it's a very cheap way. Why mount a formal jihad with fighters, guns, and vehicles (i.e., war or armed struggle), when a person walking into a cafe with a bomb belt can kill as many of the "enemy" or more? The widespread and shocking poverty, biased and lopsided education (through madrasas, the religious Islamic schools), living in the past (of failed conquests, lost territory, Crusades, colonialism, etc.), fears of the hieratic oligarchies and dictators in some countries losing power (Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc.), and fears of their cultures, values, and religion eroding away--these factors and more drive them.

 

Whether the model comes through politics, power, or religion taken to an extreme, I see it as forced or self-induced dehumanization. Once you're no longer human, so are the others around you too. Once the mind cannot see outside of itself, it sees only the darkness within.

[cwes99_03]

Maikeru, All the cases thta you have posted above were almost all examples of either religion mixed with politics or politics trying to destroy religion.

 

Particularly I will point out the kamikaze as both of you have used it.

 

Kamikaze pilots were under pressure from their emperor. However, the reliigon of the time stated that the emperor was to be treated as a god (emperor worship). So stating that it was politics that caused them to do what they did is inadequate. The pair worked in harmony together, so they would be both guilty.

However, I would probably find support, if I could ask those men today, for the idea that most of them did not believe that their emperor was a god, nor did they necessarily believe in the cause they fought for, but they believed that if they did not fight and die then they would certainly lose so much face that they might as well be dead. So society was tied into it as well. In fact, I'd say more so than religion or politics. Instead it was the human philosophy that a man was worthless if he did not do what he was told by his superior.

[InfiniteNow]

All the cases thta you have posted above were almost all examples of either religion mixed with politics or politics trying to destroy religion.

Okay, not to nit pick here, but speaking of internal inconsistency, what the hell does that even mean? :cup:

 

Got to love this system, but some of us decide to continue on despite it all.

I'll just leave this one at a smilie: :evil:

[maikeru]

Maikeru, All the cases thta you have posted above were almost all examples of either religion mixed with politics or politics trying to destroy religion.

 

From the rise of shamans in the distant past to the priest-kings of Egypt to kings of Europe who ruled as God's appointed on Earth, you will see religion and politics entwined, mostly for the purpose of furthering politics.

 

Particularly I will point out the kamikaze as both of you have used it.

 

Kamikaze pilots were under pressure from their emperor. However, the reliigon of the time stated that the emperor was to be treated as a god (emperor worship). So stating that it was politics that caused them to do what they did is inadequate. The pair worked in harmony together, so they would be both guilty.

 

The Emperor, since at least 500-600 AD (and before if you believe Japan's divine histories, Nihongi and Kojiki), has been regarded as a divine figure, and literally a god, the descendant of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. From Prince Takeru to Hirohito, they were all regarded as divine, and primarily responsible for Japan's heavenly welfare through rites and rituals. The Meiji restoration toppled the shogunate and reinstituted the Emperor as the (nominal) head of the Japanese government, after which it carried out several European-style reforms, which included heavy industrialization, militarization, and nationalized education. From early on, the Japanese regarded their Emperor as a divine, if distant figure. After the Meiji restoration, it was drummed into their heads through school propaganda, so that politicians and military officials could better mobilize the nation for the ultimate purpose of war and colonization (under the cheerily named "Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" plan).

 

You need to understand this wasn't a belief that popped up then. It's been a part of Japanese society for a long time. Just as the Chinese, at one time, believed the emperors were divine and religious figures. After the Meiji restoration, it went to a new level, with an ultranationalistic military and pro-war politicians changing the face of the traditional society and its values. This is not the mixing of men and philosophy and religion, but a partnership, more or less willing, between all which has been present for as long as recorded history has been.

 

Men do not create new evils, but simply find better ways to rear them.

[ughaibu]

Cwes99_03: You wrote, "it was the human philosophy that a man was worthless if he did not do what he was told by his superior", which I find puzzling, as it seems to essentially be the philosophy you hold with regard to what's written in the Bible.

[catholiboy]

Pyro,

 

And yet despite this, no-one has yet said that a God cannot exist.

I've said it once, I'll say it again: I am very sceptical, empirically. So when you mention furry little green men existing on mars, I CANNOT reject that as a possibility. Nor can I reject God as a possibility. So, from my point of view at least, you need to

OPEN YOUR MIND.:ebomb:

 

I was reading A Brief History of Time yesterday, and I'll quote you from the conclusion: "What is it that breathes fire into these equations, and gives them a life of their own?"; and later, "...It would be the ultimate triumph of human reason, for then we would know the mind of God."

 

I'm not suggesting here (as you seem to think) that Hawking is a rabid Evangelist. Rather, I'm stating that he doesn't deny the possibility.

And once again, his choice of words (or is it yours...:love: ) clearly state "belief", not knowledge.

 

The difference being that as the Greeks themselves pointed out, many of their Gods were simply exaggerated representations of their own culture. Whereas looking throughout history, and religious events, it seems quite clear that the God of the Christian texts is a predominantly unknowable and transcendental one.

[ughaibu]

Catholiboy: There are proofs that the christian god is conceptually incoherent, a search for "Patrick Grim" will provide examples and counter arguments. It may seem pointless to prove the incoherence of an imaginary entity but, in fact, that's not the case, as imaginary entities are not uncommon as features of hypotheses, it's important for the viability of a hypothesis that a distinction can be drawn between imaginary entities that make sense and those that do not.

[Abstruce]

"Which of course, they were not."

 

No need to be patronizing of flippant. B)

 

Likewise, what happens all the time in the theology forum, people like Abstruce post theories and quotes of authors who have stated that Christianity is nothing but lies. Do you suppose he has read the Bible, and is able to speak as you do?

You make claims, I make claims, others make claims to have read the Bible through, in some case several times. You make the claim it is terribly inconsistent. I make the claim that it is not inconsistent.

 

cwes99_03

 

Have you studied the history of any other religions?

 

There were many religions that died out. Most were created on a similar myth structure.

 

The question of what connection Christianity has to Mediterranean religions has been a controversy since the early centuries of Christianity.

 

Such questions subsided and were suppressed as the power of the Church grew, they have returned as the knowledge about early religions has been rediscovered.

 

Whether this connection exists, and who copied whom, is at the core of the question of Jesus as myth.

 

Most religions of the Mediterranean in the time of early Christianity were centred on a single divine figure (in the case of Orphism, the central figure is essentially an avatar of his own master, Dionysus), who had in most cases originally been a minor deity, whose mythology contained a narrative involving the deities death. In several cases, the original mythology seems to have been completely hijacked and abruptly altered, often bearing very little relation to the original myth.

 

This is particularly noticeable in the way that Mithra somehow became Mithras. A number of the Mediterranean religions of the period contain several similarities to each other, such as a prominent life-death-rebirth narrative, and the central deity being semi-human.

 

This group (including the religions of Osiris-Horus, Dionysus, Mithras, Aion, Adonis, and Attis) were identified as connected in early times, and as a group were named Osiris-Dionysus after the two earliest groups.

 

Modern scholars have argued that most of these Osiris-Dionysus religions evolved when earlier Osiris-Dionysus religions spread into a new region and localised themselves by hijacking convenient local deities.

 

This is most evident in how Sabazios, originally a Phrygian deity, became another name for Dionysus, it is also evident in how Orphicism developed with the central figure of Orpheus, supposedly a priest of Dionysus, but essentially Dionysus himself.

 

Most scholars that have an opinion on the matter argue that the earliest form of this religion was the Osiris-Horus form of ancient Egyptian religions, and that the others developed from there, having been transferred by merchants. Notably, although a form of Osiris-Dionysus was present in most nations around the Mediterranean, particularly in the east, at first glance no such form appears to have existed in Roman Palestine.

 

A central contention of the Jesus-as-myth argument is that Jesus, or at least much of the Gospel narrative about him, and early Christian tradition concerning him, is the form of Osiris-Dionysus localised for Roman Palestine.

 

Enough has survived from the comments of their enemies (for example, Origen and Irenaeus), and a few relics of their own, for scholars to be fairly certain that many

religions were, at least by the first century, Pythagoreanist and Neo-Platonic reinterpretations of earlier myths

 

Earlier myths became, religions, allegory and metaphor, concerning universal truths, rather than something considered literally true.

 

What connection exists between Gnosticism and the Mediterranean religions is an unsolved question, but it is certain that they would have shared considerably similar teaching methods, soteriology, and mysticism.

 

Thus to approach the question of whether Christianity borrowed from other religions (and vice versa), comparisons should be made not only between early Christianity and Mediterranean myths, but also between early Christianity and Pythagoreanism.

 

This is good evidence that Jesus is a myth.

 

JQ

[Eclogite]

Returning somewhat to the topic, which did relate to the illustrious Dawkins, here is a brief compilation of remarks I have had occasion to make about him elsewhere.

 

1. Personally I find his style presumptive and arrogant, but I am in a distinct minority in this regard.

 

2. Dawkins' Achilles heel: he has rarely contemplated the possibility that his great mind could ever be wrong. Fortunately for science the process of peer review will correct any errors resulting from this hubris.

 

3. We can safely ignore Dawkins's Selfish Gene, since ignoring Dawkins is just good application of scientific method.

 

4. A suggestion for you Mitchell. I considered Dawkins the most arrogant, self satisfied, smug, unscientific purveyor of popular evolution on the face of the planet, simplifying theory to the point of pointlessness, and glossing over genuine gaps in our knowledge. I would as soon vomit over him as buy him a hamburger.

After having read the first three or four chapters of Ancestor's Tale I have forgiven him.

 

5.Try the Ancestor's Tale, by Dawkins. It is so good I have forgiven the arrogant prat for the self indulgence of all his earlier works.

 

My problem with Dawkins is that his intellect is so brilliant it sometimes blinds him to reality. It is dangerous when a major spokesperson for a scientific approach to the world is themselves enmeshed in a para-religious stance on science.

[Pyrotex]

I find it amusing (and not a little scary, actually) that people of respectable but middlin' intelligence are so sure that high intelligence, brilliance, genius, has this effect of "blinding one to reality".

 

It is not brilliance that blinds, but unexamined dogma.