Remind me to never argue supernovas with a Muslim, I am totally ignorant as to the stance of the Koran in regards to heavy elements.
Frankly I find this talk of the summation of the ten commandments hilarious, and serves to further illustrate the illogical compartmentalizing theists do when it comes to matters of faith that they do not do for ANYTHING else - something I find so damn puzzling, something I could never do and will probably keep me from ever truly understanding them.
The mental gymnastics these poor Christians must employ to reaffirm their nonsensical beliefs is incredible. Nay, astounding.
On one hand we have the Ten commandments outlined here by Sir Oinksalot :
[quote]
- Thou shalt have no other God’s before me - Punishment: Death.
- Thou shalt not make graven images - Punishment: Cursing.
- Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain - Punishment: Death.
- Thou shalt remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy - Punishment: Death
- Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother - Punishment: Death.
- Thou shalt not kill - Punishment: Punishment: Death.
- Thou shalt not commit adultery - Punishment: Death
- Thou shalt not steal - Punishment: Death
- Thou shalt not bear false witness - Punishment: Death
- Thou shalt not covet - Punishment: Death.
[/qoute]
Quickly followed by:
Unrepentantly and in all seriousness offered as a fair SUMMATION of the above.
I’d wager that no Christian, unless mentally deficient, would afford the same kind treatment of a similar scenario in ANY other aspect of their lives.
Imagine, if you will, Mangetout showing up for his first day of work at a new company. The boss basically tell him to follow these rules and he’ll be alright:
- Come in to work at 10, leave by 4.
- Take a two hour lunch.
- Do no more than one job a day.
- Do raid the fridge for other people’s lunches. We all think it’s funny, and it will help you fit in.
Upon the general manager discovering Mangetout’s weird behavior he sits him down for a serious talk, where upon his boss makes an appearance. The manager asks Mangetout’s boss to sum up the rules he gave Mangetout and the boss replies, with a straight face: “I told him to Come in on time at 9 am we expect him to work until 6, he has only an hour lunch, and he should respect other people’s property!”.
Now, If I knew nothing of this world or theists, and did not know anything about Mangetout personally, except for the exchange he has in this thread regarding the ten commandments I might think he would do something which in reality he would not do - because if something similar where to happen to him I’m sure he’d be ripping his boss a new one, not nodding his head in agreement.
So what is this strange ability of theists, to throw logic, reason, the trust of empirical evidence out the window on COMMAND when it comes to their holy books, but not to anything else in their lives? Is it genetic?
Of course you’re insulting me. It’s thoroughly insulting to claim that I’m ignorant of the New Testament merely because I do not accept that the Ten Commandments are properly “summed up” by that passage. It’s thoroughly insulting to claim that I’m ignorant of the New Testament merely because I would not regurgitate that passage as a “summary” of the Ten Commandments.
Stop playing games, please. And justify your assertion that most adult American Christians would echo that passage when the evidence demonstrates that most adult American Christians can’t even name ONE of the four Gospels. You are chock-full-of-shit, sir or madam.
Such sophistry! And you’re making stuff up as you go along. What percentage of Christians could reproduce such sophist reasoning, do you think? Myself, I’d guess far less than a majority without fear of contradiction.
To get an idea how readily most adult American Christians would cite your dubious passage, let’s google “summary of the commandments”, shall we? That will give us a reasonable idea of how commonly Christian web sites echo that passage as a summary of the Ten Commandments.
Here’s the top, number one link, indicating that this is the most often linked (and thus most popular) “summary of the Ten Commandments”: Summary of the Ten Commandments
As you can see, the most popular page giving the summary of the Ten Commandments does not agree with your idiosyncratic and unpopular “summary”, for there we read things like:
There’s not one single reference to your non-summary “summary” there.
Your arguments are sophist nonsense and are irrelevant to the question of whether most adult American Christians are ignorant. And if you stupidly and unfairly want to consider me ignorant of the New Testament, too, then all you’ve done is confirmed that most adult American Christians are indeed ignorant, since I’ve read the New Testament many times and most adult American Christians haven’t read it once!
If you ask that group to list the Ten Commandments, they will not reply as you have claimed, and you know it.
Actually, I thought that the main point of our discussion was “Are Christians ignorant of their own religion?”. To briefly recap our posts so far:
[ul]
[li] I stated that the majority of Christians are ignorant of their own religion. I used the ten commandments as an example. This would appear to be setting the bar rather low as this was the only part of the Bible that God felt necessary to write personally, and as such should be rather memorable.[/li]
[li] You than said that most Christians prefer Mark 12: 30 over Exodux 20: 1-18 and, consequently, an inability to recite the ten commandments & their punishments isn’t really relevant to anything.[/li]
[li] I then said that Mark 12: 30 isn’t a fair summation of the ten commandments.[/li]
[li] You responded with an argument which took the form of saying, to paraphrase a common Stateside aphorism, “Jesus said it. Most Christians believe it. That settles it”.[/li]
[/ul]
In my most recent response I was trying to argue two points. The first was that what Jesus said in Mark 12: 30 just doesn’t make very much sense. Mark 12: 30 is not a straightforward extrapolation of the ten commandments as written in Exodus. It adds stuff and it drops stuff. Moreover, according to Matthew 5: 18, Jesus was personally opposed to this practise of reinterpreting Old Testament law.
Secondly, Deuteronomy 4: 2 makes it quite clear that the ten commandments are not to be revised in any way, and certainly not to the extent that Jesus revises them. Consequently, if Jesus is God, Mark 12: 30 is an example of an Omnimax deity correcting himself, something which should be logically impossible.
My purpose in presenting these arguments was twofold. Firstly, I wanted to make it clear that, contrary to what you seemed to be arguing earlier, Mark 12: 30 and Exodus 20: 1-18 are not interchangeable, and are actually quite different. Consequently, even the most intimate familiarity with the former does not compensate for an ignorance of the latter. Considering the primacy awarded to the latter in the Old Testament, an unfamiliarity with the Decalogue is inexcuseable for a Christian, is a sign of scriptural ignorance, and is not ameliorated by a familiarity with Mark 12: 30.
Secondly, I wanted to make it clear that maintaining that Jesus’ words in Mark 12: 30 somehow trumped Yahweh’s words in Exodus 20: 1-18, despite the unambiguous prohibition against tampering with the original Decalogue in Deuteronomy 4: 2, quickly leads to the emergence of contradictions in the nature of God (‘How could an Omnimax deity contradict himself’? etc…). Believing otherwise is a sign of philosophical ignorance, which was also part of the original topic of our discussion.
P.S. - I haven’t been able to find the polls themselves but this book review from the Washington Post does make reference to the book ambushed talked about earlier and might be of some interest.
I attempted, on page two, to narrow the terms of the debate and frame the argument in such a way as to eliminate or at least minimize the typical traps – ambiguous semantics, talking past one another, veiled hostility – into which a discussion like this typically falls. I was ignored, and this thread is drifting the way of all such discussions.
I shall therefore abandon the rational argument as pointless, and begin making jokes from the sidelines.
Ahem.
Heretic!
Thank you. I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.
You are extremely intellectually dishonest by even suggesting that the poll results I cited do not make my essential point. How can you not be ashamed? How can you even believe you are being fair and intellectually honest by making such a ludicrously nitpicking argument?
Unless you can demonstrate that the adult American population in this regard is significantly from both non-adult American Christians and non-American Christians, then I’ve made my point and I suggest you try to be a bit more mature.
I must now leave the board till much later.
This thread is about two more hostile posts away from being closed.
The amount of ignorance demonstrated by posters on both sides of the issue (generally in the form of straw man attacks on issues they apparently do not understand) is truly saddening, to me, on this message board.
Regadless, the amount of venom (even if no one has (yet) broken a specific rule) is extremely disproportionate to the topic.
Calm down. Take deep breaths. Stop making personal comments about other posters–even if marginally within the rules.
[ /Moderating ]
[QUOTE=Sir Oinksalot]
Actually, I thought that the main point of our discussion was “Are Christians ignorant of their own religion?”. To briefly recap our posts so far:
[ul][li] I stated that the majority of Christians are ignorant of their own religion. I used the ten commandments as an example. This would appear to be setting the bar rather low as this was the only part of the Bible that God felt necessary to write personally, and as such should be rather memorable.[/li]
[li] You than said that most Christians prefer Mark 12: 30 over Exodux 20: 1-18 and, consequently, an inability to recite the ten commandments & their punishments isn’t really relevant to anything.[/li]
[li] I then said that Mark 12: 30 isn’t a fair summation of the ten commandments.[/li]
[li] You responded with an argument which took the form of saying, to paraphrase a common Stateside aphorism, “Jesus said it. Most Christians believe it. That settles it”.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
A couple of points:
The thread was supposed to be about the general statement that theists are (generally) “ignorant” with no clear definition of what that term meant. Given the unclear nature of the question, you are free to assert that it should be about whether Christians are ignorant of Christianity, although you should have made that more explicit on the first page.
Your use of the Ten Commandments is actually pretty silly as regards the ignorance of Christians. Although it has become a matter over which people can feud on several levels, it is not really fundamental to Christian theology, either as expressed or as it has developed. You can make arguments for it, of course, (such as your later claim that God wrote it in his own hand as oppposed to your original erroneous declaration that it was the only part (traditionally) dictated by God), but, in fact, the Ten Commandments are simply not intrinsic to the foundation of Christianity. While Mangetout’s statement that Mark 12 “sums up” the Commandments is not technically true, to the extent that the Ten have been incorporated into Christian theology, they have expressed first the duty to God and then the duty to men. His comment that the passage from Mark is much more central to the development of Christian theology is exactly correct, borrowing, as it does, from the Shema Israel of Deuteronomy 6:4 - 6 combined with the passage in Leviticus 19:19. (Note that in Mark, Jesus is not asked about the Ten Commandments, explicitly, and the scribe to whom he is responding agrees with him that the Shema Israel, not one of the Ten, is the greatest.)
Similarly, your claim that the punishment for each of the transgressions against the ten commandments is death is something you appear to have invented for your own reasons. Specific actions related elsewhere in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy may be linked to one of the Ten Commandments and include a sentence of death, but none of the Commandmenst carry such a sentence in their declaration. (I would be interested to see where you find a death sentence for theft or coveting, for example.) So, would it be fair to assert ignorance in this instance?
In order not to be ignorant a person must not restrict themselves to believing the contents of one or few books.
And they must lack, as much as possible, prejudice.
You’re assuming malice where none exists. I might be plain wrong (in which case, you’ll please demonstrate it), but I’m not being deliberately dishonest.
Your assertion was:
Whereas your citation says:
And along the way, you also said:
Please can you explain in step by step logic, how your citation supports your points, without commiting a logical fallacy of composition.
It could be, for example, that the majority of Americans unable to name the gospels doesn’t include any Christians, or it could be that the majority of Americans unable to name the gospels includes every Christian. whatever the case, there is no sound chain of deduction from a statistic about the general populace, to an assertion about a specific portion of it, without further data that you haven’t yet provided, that is.
For example; the majority of all British people consider it right and proper to wear clothes most of the time. The British Naturist society is a wholly-contained subset of all British people, can we therefore conclude that the majority of members of the British naturist society also consider it right and proper to wear clothes most of the time?
[QUOTE=Sir Oinksalot]
Actually, I thought that the main point of our discussion was “Are Christians ignorant of their own religion?”. To briefly recap our posts so far:
[list]
[li] I stated that the majority of Christians are ignorant of their own religion. I used the ten commandments as an example. This would appear to be setting the bar rather low as this was the only part of the Bible that God felt necessary to write personally, and as such should be rather memorable.[/li][/QUOTE]
Let me suggest something as gently as I can. Who is most qualified to determine which parts of the Bible are most important to Christians, a Christian or an atheist? I would say the Christian, seeing as the Christian is the one who actually applies the Bible rather than approaching it as an academic exercise. The atheist is, of course, free to hold opinions on the topic, but it’s tough to see why his or her opinions ought to be the guiding principles for the Christian.
Now about the ten commandments. Being non-ignorant on all things biblical, you doubtlessly are aware of how the Israelites responded when Moses came down Mt. Sinai with the ten commandments. But for the edification of those less knowledgeable, I’ll summarize: the Israelites were not impressed with the words on the tablets, but rather with the fact that Moses’s face was shining with white light, which indicated that he’d been speaking with God. (See Exodus, ch. 34:29-30)
We live in an excessively legalistic and bureaucratic age, so it’s not surprising that many people would want to focus on the laws that Moses got from God. But that’s not what the Israelites did. They focused on the mystical dimensions of the event, namely that Moses had been chatting with the Man upstairs. And that dimension is what we still should be focused on today, rather than trying to memorize how many goats the Israelites were expected to sacrifice for this or that.
That’s well and good, but I think the point was that anyone who holds the Ten Commandments as important enough to be posted in a courthouse but doesn’t actually know the commandments is ignorant (and hypocritical). I won’t hazard a guess as to how many fall under that category, suffice it to say it is a number larger than zero and sufficient to serve as an example of “ignorance” within the context of the debate.
It is good to see you arguing for Science, here.
Science is a self-correcting set of disciplines. An error made in the name of science will be subjected to further analysis, (even when it appears to be correct), and if it fails, it will be junked while a new search is launched.
You seemed to post as though that were a bad thing, but it is the best aspect of science.
I don’t have time to address any more than just this, but is it really all that surprising - the notion that Christians would hold statements made by the founder of their religion in high regard?
On the subject of ignorance generally, I think I might be prepared to concede that Christians are (generally) somewhat ignorant by design - there’s not, as far as I can tell, any requirement that believers become experts in every minuscule detail of their faith, in fact, I think an argument to the contrary could well be made - unless ye become like little children… - that simplicity of faith is, or can be, a virtue.
I haven’t a clue really what your analogy was all about, but I feel I ought to point out that it isn’t my summary. The verse in Romans actually explcitly states that it’s a summary of the commandments.
kifler mentioned he was Catholic in another thread.
For the last several centuries, the Catholic Church has managed to get along with Science quite well. Catholic schools teach Evolution & you can get real science degrees in Catholic universities. (But you know that.)
True, but some of his earlier posts were putting torches to enormous straw men, so I found the defense of science (if he intended it) to be refreshing. 
This is my point. That it “says so in the bible” is irrelevant. Or more importantly, it SHOULD be. You should be able to look at it, look at the commandments, and come the absolutely obvious conclusion that no, it ain’t.
But you Don’t. Instead you say: “But it says so in the bible!”.
‘Says so in the Bible’ may well be irrelevant or useless in everyday life. whatever - you may if you wish, for the purposes of this thread, assume that I have conceded that the whole of Christian theology is false, contradictory, evil or whatever you like - because I’m not arguing in support of the actual theology, I’m discussing what it consists of, and which parts of it that it is reasonable for Christians to consider important.