Are Xians stupid?

Great Debates
161

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
And you’re not calling me a fucking liar or anything in GD, right? Of course not. :rolleyes:
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Well, I am, for post #151, in which you fucking make up what you think is my position and attribute it to me. I have made my position clear on the Bible and belief in enough posts on this board, in threads you have commented in, that I consider this an arrant lie, a misrepresentation of me and my beliefs for whatever pleasure you may have gotten out of posting it.

In a nutshell: The term “believe in” for me does not signify “have confidence in the factuality of without proof” but “but one’s faith and trust in.” It is used of persons, not of dogmata, doctrines, books, etc. I believe in God. I’ve attempted to give the reasons why I do. You’ve apparently tuned them out as delirium. I consider the Bible a primary source for knowledge of him, regretfully composed of a mixture of the sublime, the banal, the legendary, and the mythical. I do not “believe in” it any more than you “believe in” The Waste Land.

An apology would be nice. Not expected, but nice.

You really have no clue about history, do you? Within the past week, in this or another thread in which you’ve been giving your reasons why you feel you should be able to insult theists (specifically Christians) with impunity, I’ve posted a link to what Bishop Ussher was doing – as explicated by one of the two or three foremost scholars of evolution of our day.

162

[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
No, the witnesses said the sun “danced in the sky.” Some of the descriptions said that it seemed as though it was hurtling towards the earth, but no one claimed it there was an actual collision.
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Here is the account you reference (from The Fatima Network http://www.fatima.org/):

Okay…the sun doesn’t actually crash, but does that detail make it any more believeable? It is still promoted as a true event by the church as far as I can tell. From where I stand, it looks like a whole lot of people stared at the sun a little too long. However, I am drawn to the “insta laundry” accounts. If I could convince myself that it actually happened, I would convert on those grounds alone! :wink:

163

[QUOTE=don’t ask]
I presume Xian is some kind of insulting label for Christians rather than a reference to the inhabitants of the city of the same name in central China. Where does it come from?
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The Chinese? Man I thought this was some sort of a $cientology thread before I remembered it was Xenu I was thinking of. Then I considered the X referred to the cross Jesus was (allegedly) nailed to :rolleyes:

164

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
The way some dumbass like Bishop Ussher wasn’t hooted out of his pulpit for suggesting pseudo-scientific bullcrap, while people who suggested a longer timeframe were ridiculed for their anti-authoritarian ideas.
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Ussher wasn’t a dumbass. He was one of the most prominent, influential scholars in the Church of Ireland, and the most vocal spokesman for the Irish Puritans. His “Britannicarum Eccles. Antiquitates” is still considered a classic history of early Christianity in England and Ireland.

Ussher’s dating is wrong, sure, but remember, the guy was living in the 1650s. He didn’t have carbon dating, he didn’t have a fossil record, he didn’t have all the later archeological finds. All he had was the bible and secular history works. Who at the time was suggesting a longer timeframe, and getting ridiculed for it?

165

[QUOTE=Polycarp]
Well, I am, for post #151, in which you fucking make up what you think is my position and attribute it to me. I have made my position clear on the Bible and belief in enough posts on this board, in threads you have commented in, that I consider this an arrant lie, a misrepresentation of me and my beliefs for whatever pleasure you may have gotten out of posting it.

In a nutshell: The term “believe in” for me does not signify “have confidence in the factuality of without proof” but “but one’s faith and trust in.” It is used of persons, not of dogmata, doctrines, books, etc. I believe in God. I’ve attempted to give the reasons why I do. You’ve apparently tuned them out as delirium. I consider the Bible a primary source for knowledge of him, regretfully composed of a mixture of the sublime, the banal, the legendary, and the mythical. I do not “believe in” it any more than you “believe in” The Waste Land.

An apology would be nice. Not expected, but nice.

You really have no clue about history, do you? Within the past week, in this or another thread in which you’ve been giving your reasons why you feel you should be able to insult theists (specifically Christians) with impunity, I’ve posted a link to what Bishop Ussher was doing – as explicated by one of the two or three foremost scholars of evolution of our day.
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Yet another post by a theist that will contain bold insults but will not be criticied by our Xian-loving Mod.

Poly, I honestly don’t know what the fuck you think at this point. I’ve asked you politely to explicate your thoughts, and you give me snarky, cryptic shit that’s virtually meaningless to me, so I tried to paraphrase what I felt was your position (and still do). You don’t believe in parts of the Bible? You do believe in other parts? If God doesn’t exist (for me), how can I possibly believe in him as a person? (Is God a person?) Or are you asserting that of course it’s a fact that God exists, which means you believe in him as a person, and not as a concept? Do I need to have read your posts on Bishop Ussher (link, maybe?) to qualify as having a cue about history? You believe in the Bible the same way I believe in “The Wasteland”? You mean you think the Bible is a bunch of weird wacky shit dreamed up by a depressed crackpot trying to make sense of a senseless world and imposing his vivid fucked-up imagination on us and producing a document that speaks vaguely and gloomily about the human condition? I’ll buy that for a dollar. Is there someplace in this thread where you feel I’ve insulted Xians? If so, could you point it out to me? That’s far from my intention here–I thought I was trying to get us off the whole “Xians=stupid people” meme that has introduced a fallacious element to this discussion. Maybe I can’t use those two words in a discussion without your feelng insulted. “Are Xians stupid? No.” “Look, PRR used the words ‘Xians’ and ‘stupid’ in adjacent sentences–let’s lynch him.”

166

[QUOTE=Polycarp]
you fucking make up what you think is my position.
[/QUOTE]

This is my paraphrase in post #151, btw:

Is this inaccurate? Isn’t it your contention that certain parts of the Bible are literally true, other parts completely untrue, and still other parts true when read imetaphorically? Please correct as to which characterization of any or all of these three elements you take such vehement exception to.

167

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
And you’re not calling me a fucking liar or anything in GD, right? Of course not. :rolleyes:

I’m talking about the insistence the church(es) had on a literal reading of Genesis for centuries before Darwin had proven evolution scientifically (to the degree he he proved anything) but people had speculated that maybe the Genesis story is kinda made up fiction invented by people who didn’t really, you know, know anything about the way the world came into being. The way some dumbass like Bishop Ussher wasn’t hooted out of his pulpit for suggesting pseudo-scientific bullcrap, while people who suggested a longer timeframe were ridiculed for their anti-authoritarian ideas. The way the church wasn’t in the forefront of the movement suggesting that their Biblical version of the world’s origins (and other scientific stuff in its very earliest stages) was pure fiction but instead insisted that it was solid fact. You know, the way people swear on Bibles in some primitive cuiltures as a sign of their devotion to the purest form of truth?
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As I have pointed out on several occasions, recently, it is not actually against the rules of GD to claim that another poster is a liar.

HOWEVER,
No, I am not, in fact, calling you a liar. I do not think that you are posting things with clear factual errors with the full and complete knowledge that what you have posted is false.
Rather, I am noting that you tend to ignore or fail to understand the actual statements made by other posters regarding history, historiography, belief, scientific advancement, and other explorations of human understanding and that, crippled by your own misunderstanding, you continue to invent positions for the people you so desire to scorn.

For example, you take a rather stupid cheap shot at Bishop Ussher, in the matter I have quoted. Before you make yourself look wholly uninformed on some later post, please read Stephen J. Gould’s essay, Fall in the House of Ussher, found in his collection Eight Little Piggies. Note, also, that the concept of an old Earth did not arise in “scientific” circles for around 120 years after Ussher’s death, so you clearly are lacking sufficient knowledge of either Ussher or science to make the silly claim you have done.

Similarly, with claims about Genesis. While some religious persons have held it to be a strictly factual accounting, that has not been the path followed by all religious persons. In addition, prior to the development of nascent geology and, later, evolutionary science, the Genesis story was as good an explanation as any other story that was out there and many religious scholars still explored it as a symbolic explanation of the meaning behind the universe, not a treatise on the mechanics of creation. So your arguments that I have quoted are just wrong, relying, as they do, on “cherry picking” the statments of some religious persons while ignoring the voices of any religious thinker whose words would disprove your claim.

So if you wish to hop around waving your anger all over the place, feel free, but don’t expect anyone to accept your little rants when they are filled with errors and hypocrisy.

168

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
As I have pointed out on several occasions, recently, it is not actually against the rules of GD to claim that another poster is a liar.

HOWEVER,
No, I am not, in fact, calling you a liar. I do not think that you are posting things with clear factual errors with the full and complete knowledge that what you have posted is false.
Rather, I am noting that you tend to ignore or fail to understand the actual statements made by other posters regarding history, historiography, belief, scientific advancement, and other explorations of human understanding and that, crippled by your own misunderstanding, you continue to invent positions for the people you so desire to scorn.

For example, you take a rather stupid cheap shot at Bishop Ussher, in the matter I have quoted. Before you make yourself look wholly uninformed on some later post, please read Stephen J. Gould’s essay, Fall in the House of Ussher, found in his collection Eight Little Piggies. Note, also, that the concept of an old Earth did not arise in “scientific” circles for around 120 years after Ussher’s death, so you clearly are lacking sufficient knowledge of either Ussher or science to make the silly claim you have done.

Similarly, with claims about Genesis. While some religious persons have held it to be a strictly factual accounting, that has not been the path followed by all religious persons. In addition, prior to the development of nascent geology and, later, evolutionary science, the Genesis story was as good an explanation as any other story that was out there and many religious scholars still explored it as a symbolic explanation of the meaning behind the universe, not a treatise on the mechanics of creation. So your arguments that I have quoted are just wrong, relying, as they do, on “cherry picking” the statments of some religious persons while ignoring the voices of any religious thinker whose words would disprove your claim.

So if you wish to hop around waving your anger all over the place, feel free, but don’t expect anyone to accept your little rants when they are filled with errors and hypocrisy.
[/QUOTE]

I’ll re-read Gould’s essay this weekend (I think it’s at home–it’s not in my office anywhere I can find) but your paraphrase of his argument just seems to support my point that for a millenium and a half people looked to the Bible as a historical document that could tell them useful information about the way the earth began, when it began, and other stuff that now we discount entirely (or read as a metaphor). Ussher literally believed the Bible was capable of telling him the truth about geology–he wasn’t (as far as I can tremember) claiming humbly–“This is only one man’s opinion, using a source that is seriously flawed throughout factually, so please don’t take it as anything more than a number I’ve pulled out of my ass, with a little help from Methuselah.” As science advanced, religion retreated, bit by bit, but never gave up their ludicrous claim to know every single truth that science hadn’t yet nailed down, which is what I’m calling their effrontery. “Yes, okay, I lied but I’m telling the truth now about everything in the universe–ok, except there, all right, I’m lying again, and there and there and there, but otherwise believe me, except there and and there and there…”

169

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
I’ll re-read Gould’s essay this weekend (I think it’s at home–it’s not in my office anywhere I can find) but your paraphrase of his argument just seems to support my point that for a millenium and a half people looked to the Bible as a historical document that could tell them useful information about the way the earth began, when it began, and other stuff that now we discount entirely (or read as a metaphor). Ussher literally believed the Bible was capable of telling him the truth about geology–he wasn’t (as far as I can tremember) claiming humbly–“This is only one man’s opinion, using a source that is seriously flawed throughout factually, so please don’t take it as anything more than a number I’ve pulled out of my ass, with a little help from Methuselah.” As science advanced, religion retreated, bit by bit, but never gave up their ludicrous claim to know every single truth that science hadn’t yet nailed down, which is what I’m calling their effrontery. “Yes, okay, I lied but I’m telling the truth now about everything in the universe–ok, except there, all right, I’m lying again, and there and there and there, but otherwise believe me, except there and and there and there…”
[/QUOTE]

A prime example would be the Our Lady of Fatima “event.” As far as I can tell, the church tells people this miraculous event actually happened as cited above. Does anyone actually believe that? If not (and I suspect 99.9% of catholic followers don’t), why would you believe anything else they tell you? And why, in this day and age, would the church want to align themselves with such a goofy-ass story?

(Well I guess it isn’t exactly on track with PRR, but I’m sticking with it.)

170

[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
As far as I can tell, the church tells people this miraculous event actually happened as cited above.
[/QUOTE]

Then I suggest you do some reading of your own. And rather than citing individual accounts as gospel, perhaps you’ll read a more reputable source. Surely you can’t think that citing a couple of personal accounts counts as ‘evidence’ for your point?

171

[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster]
Then I suggest you do some reading of your own. And rather than citing individual accounts as gospel, perhaps you’ll read a more reputable source. Surely you can’t think that citing a couple of personal accounts counts as ‘evidence’ for your point?
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Show me where the church denounces it.

What did these kids do to get this attention if the pope wasn’t convinced they had a holy encounter?

172

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
I’ll re-read Gould’s essay this weekend (I think it’s at home–it’s not in my office anywhere I can find) but your paraphrase of his argument just seems to support my point that for a millenium and a half people looked to the Bible as a historical document that could tell them useful information about the way the earth began, when it began, and other stuff that now we discount entirely (or read as a metaphor).
[/QUOTE]
Ussher did not address geology in any way. He was, (in the context of writing a history of the entire known (to him) world), making a moral point in a single chapter of his text, that while God could make everything in an instant, God chose to spend six days in the effort, a point from which Ussher drew relevant theological conclusions. The 6,000 years was simply a sideline that was fastened upon by other people, later.

And, as noted, (and which you avoid addressing), the account of Genesis has always been recognized for its religious truths more than its historical accuracy, a point made by Philo in the first century and reiterated by Augustine in the late fourth century.
Prior to the eighteenth century, all history was treated more for its moral lessons than for its lessons of fact. (Which is not a claim that no one ever attempted to get their facts straight, but that they recognized that most of the things they had learned from earlier years were presented through the filter of moral lessons.)

Individuals within different groups have behaved in the manner that you claim. Entire groups, not so much, and you are simply projecting your ignorance-based beliefs on religion in your imaginary quotation, here. For one thing, you grossly exaggerate the claims by religious groups to have information regarding the physical world. It appears to be based on the erroneous misunderstandings of mythology that are often popularized by people who are clueless regarding anthropology or mythology.
The “I hear thunder, some big sky god must be moving furniture or farting” claim for the origin of mythology is a stupid–if widely held–belief that has nothing to do with how mythology arose or how it was understood by the people whose beliefs were based on it. I find it amusing that you claim that religion keeps retreating from science, while basing your claim on a denial of scientific information regarding belief.

173

[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster]
Then I suggest you do some reading of your own. And rather than citing individual accounts as gospel, perhaps you’ll read a more reputable source. Surely you can’t think that citing a couple of personal accounts counts as ‘evidence’ for your point?
[/QUOTE]

Or is the Pope not quite authoritative enough for you?

174

For whatever it’s worth, I think that the Vatican spent more than fifteen years investigating the accounts of the strange solar “activity” before declaring it a miracle. I am not a Catholic, but I am aware that they don’t just take every claim as automatically true.

Estimates of the number of people present range from 30,000 to 100,000 and included skeptics and at least one natural scientist whose name I came across.

I have no dog in the fight about the miracle of the sun. But I do believe that Mary appears – especially to children and young people. I didn’t get that from my Protestant background.

175

[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
Show me where the church denounces it.
[/quote]

You have been going on about the ‘falling sun’ thing. You based it on anecdotal accounts from two people, did you not? This was not an official Vatican site, was it?

I’m getting a little dizzy. What, exactly, are you disputing? A spiritual experience or a falling sun? Whichever it is, I suggest you research it in something a little more authoritative. And I can guarantee the Pope didn’t say the sun fell out of the sky.

176

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
And, as noted, (and which you avoid addressing), the account of Genesis has always been recognized for its religious truths more than its historical accuracy.
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Thank you for acknowledging, at last, that Genesis has been recognized as a source of serious historical truth for its entire existence by devout Xians. Of course, it has always been MORE acknowledged as a religious document (duh–it’s a religious text) but you really need to be some kind of historical (or even logical) dunce to give it ANY credence whatsoever as a historical text.

Which Ussher does, and which Gould acknowledges.

Mostly Gould’s perverse little essay tries to show a fairly trivial point. It might have been subtitled “Ussher wasn’t quite as huge a fool as everyone thinks he is” because his foolishness has been summed up in one declaration (a date and time, actually) that turns out to be a little more complicated (but not much less foolish) than people assume. Basically, as Gould explains at length, Ussher DID posit a date of October 23, 4004 BC at noon as the exact date of the beginning of the universe (Gould jumps up and down pointing out that three of Ussher’s many ridiculers committed the error of citing the date as October 26th!!) but for a vast variety of foolish reasons, not simply adding up the dates of various Biblical patriarchs, as so many of his critics have claimed. Well, whoop-de-damn-doo! He did include the ages of Biblical patriarchs in his “computation” but also included a lot of equally fallacious assumptions, which Gould lays out to prove that Ussher was far more serious a scholar than most people believe.

But let’s stick with those Biblical ages, for a moment, because they speak to my point. Ussher certainly relied on them for much of his authority in dating historical events, and it doesn’t take a 21ist century rocket scientist with subspecialities in brain surgery and carbon-dating to question their likelihood. Ludicrous as they as are, Usshur chose to rely on the notion that people used to live for hundreds and hundreds of years routinely because–why? Because the Bible said they did. Didn’t matter that Ussher hadn’t seen any recent record of such longevity, didn’t matter that medical science had, if anything, been adding to, not subtracting from, modern lifespans, didn’t matter that ancient kings’ lifetimes (as seen in more recent and more historically based records) seemed about the same as contemporary kings’ lifetimes, didn’t matter that it didn’t make a whit of common sense–no, what mattered was that THE BIBLE SAID IT WAS SO, and Ussher eagerly lent his own authority as a learned man to the falsehood of Genesis by relying on it as a source of history. And Gould and you and all the apologists in the world can’t hide that simple act of hubristic propaganda in all the heaps of irrelevant trivia in the world.

Gould’s defense (if an essay admitting that “Ussher could hardly have been more wrong” can said to be a defense) of Ussher attempts to downplay focusing on Usshur as a symbol of fundamentalist thought because by the standards of his time he was an enlightened thinker. Again, whoop-de-damn-doo. People don’t ridicule him because he was a particularly important figure but because he attached his name and his authority to perpetuating a pernicious bit of fallacious history. Instead of saying. “Hmmm, doesn’t seem like I have much basis for computing an age of the earth—these figures seem wacky” he decided to sign his name to a book misstating this issue significantly. It just pisses you off that Ussher’s hubris gives me an easy answer when you snidely ask for a “cite” that the church bears some responsibility for perpetuating a fraudulent belief in Biblical inerrancy. But, as I say, all your special pleading for Ussher can’t begin to erase his foolish and citable hubris.

177

[QUOTE=Quiddity Glomfuster]
You have been going on about the ‘falling sun’ thing. You based it on anecdotal accounts from two people, did you not? This was not an official Vatican site, was it?
[/quote]
There were a few more than that:

I’m getting a little dizzy. What, exactly, are you disputing? A spiritual experience or a falling sun? Whichever it is, I suggest you research it in something a little more authoritative. And I can guarantee the Pope didn’t say the sun fell out of the sky.
[/QUOTE]

I’m disputing both.

Do you have information stating they’ve reversed this decision?

178

I fucked up the coding a little … can someone please fix that for me?

179

And Kalhoun’s debate about the sun brings up another Biblical point: Joshua. My problems with the erronous and downright impossible science of the Bible is not that it’s mistaken, which any good scientist could be, but that it’s deliberately fraudulent. Claims of various miracles are based on the “fact” that God can do anything, even stop the sun in the sky. Of course this is possible only to an audience of scientific numbskulls, but the writers of this (and other) myths had no reason to assume that we would ever know definitively the truth of when the world began, or what else would have to happen for the sun to stand still in the sky, or anything else we now know, so they felt free to perpetuate these (and other) arrant falsehoods, “knowing” that they would never be caught.

Well, we’ve caught them ,and they’ve surrendered those “facts” now proven beyond dispute to be 100% bullshit. They’ll always have “God to spoke to me, no one else could hear him but he spoke to me clearly and you can’t prove he didn’t so nanananananna” but I’m content labelling their entire belief system as part and parcel of the bullshit they tried passing off as authoritative for so long, and succeeded at getting away with this crime for a good chunk of that time. I view their apologists as acccessories after the fact in trying (and failing ludicrously) to cover up this monstrous fraud upon humanity.

But they are definitely not stupid. Clever, evil, casuistical, fraudulent, self-centered, egotistical, arrogant, closed-minded…the list goes on and on, but I dont think “stupid” appears especially high on the list of my problems with Xianity.

180

Isn’t this strange? Exactly what am I supposed to take away from that? Are they saying they admit the supernatural aspect doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny but it’s their story and their sticking with it? I’m not being snarky here. Am I missing something?