So when they say that they are the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions, they should be saying they are the Ten Results from a thousand year old game of telephone?
Even if one grants that God started the message, the result has little if any god content. Thus any reasonable person evaluating it must do so as if it were purely secular.
Now some messages are recent enough so that they are not distorted all that much - but their god content is pretty clearly bogus.
There is an old method of software testing called bebugging. After the developers finish a program they give it to a bebugging team who inserts errors into the code - changing the sense of compares, making loops be off by 1, that kind of thing. Then they give it to the test team and monitor how many of their inserted bugs are found. The idea is that if you find N% of the bugs you know about, you probably have found somewhere around N% of the real bugs.
If you divide the Bible into the statements we can evaluate and the statements we can’t (moral directives from God) we can use the same technique to check what percentage of the statements we can’t directly know the proof of come from God. Since pretty much every statement about the world in the Bible is false, and thus can’t come from God who knows better, we can conclude that just about every moral statement doesn’t come from God either.
Yeah, you can make any shit up you want to about salvation. It’s a free country. You can call it religion, but the connection with any god or gods escapes me. The moral code you make up may be something a lot of people agree with, but it is yours. It is ethics, not religion. And to keep us on track it helps if you have some rational justification for it.
I would add:Jesus didn’t accept the Scriptures as the Word of God. In John ten he calls it “YOUR LAW” He does state scriptures are good for teaching, but the same can be said for any written or taught idea. He also stated (according to the Bible writers) that the Kingdom of God is with in you… and John 10 implies that he was no more divine than men who wrote Psalm 82 in KJ version 81 in The RC version. a matter of translation.He also is said many times to say My father and yours.
If it is true Jesus came to save the world, then why did he tell the woman who wanted help that his purpose in coming was only for the lost sheep of Israel?
Just because God tells someone something doesn’t mean that person understands perfectly or acts on it perfectly. The world isn’t dichotomous.
I think God does care and does have expectations, but I do not expect him to magically make us understand everything perfectly. We’re not capable of understanding everything, and part of being human is making moral choices.
Alan Smithee made an excellent post explaining the why. Mine own poor attempt is there, too.
Yes, it boils down to “it just feels right”. And liberal Christians generally don’t have a problem with saying our beliefs are not rationally determined. That’s what we mean when we say “faith”. As to whether our beliefs are correct or not is not possible to say, since our beliefs are non-falsifiable.
The amount of “god content” is a judgement call, and one that different Christians and Christian sects make differently. You’re entitled to making your decision about it; allow us to make ours.
To add to that, the Bible explicitly equates the Word of God with Jesus, not the Bible.
If Jesus was only going to save Israel, why did he then help her?
My answer: that story shows that the Messiah, traditionally the savior of Israel, is more than that. Or, Israel is more than the descendants of Jacob; anyone who has faith becomes a spiritual part of Israel.
There’s a difference though between “magically make us understand everything perfectly”, and making the only direct reference to those expectations be so apparently debatable.
I mean, if I was teaching a class, and I set a task for them, and six of them came back with written answers from one page of the textbook, four of them had completed a different page, three had only read those pages, ten had written an essay on one question on one page, seven hadn’t thought they needed to do anything…
I think I’d conclude that my instructions were too vague. And that any kind of expectation I’d had for how they’d live up to the standards I’d set would be unreasonable. And if I made no attempts to change the way I gave instructions - I think I could rightfully be accused of not caring about educating those kids. I’d be a jobsworth, effectively.
When you’re God, you can do things differently. 
Your expectation is reasonable, but it’s not what God has done. And it’s up to each individual to decide what that means to them.
It’s true! If I were an omnipotent teacher, I’d have the ability to simply impart directly anything I thought was of utter importance, while still allowing me to continue teaching normally - in a way designed precisely for each person - anything I thought worth knowing without invalidating the learning of, well, how to learn.
It’s a shame that God has, to continue the analogy, 100% proof tenure. Even a class of F students impacts not upon his own grade.
There are three cases. The first, the one I think always happens, is that a guy just makes up what God told him. It could be deliberate, it could be from a dream or something which says what the guy wants and so comes from God.
The other two are that God talks to someone and that person understands or doesn’t. If a person says something and it is not perfectly understood, we can accept that. But God should be able to be perfectly understood, and, if not repeat himself. Is he running out of bandwidth that he can’t text any more? Is he too busy? Why are you equating God with Mumbles from Dick Tracy?
Why not? He’s God. Understanding the rules does not rule out moral choices. Plenty of people break laws they do understand. But we don’t expect people to obey laws never published and locked in the basement of the Congress.
If morality comes from God we must obey what God tells us. If we have to choose from n different options, with equal chances of being what God wants as far as we know, we’re not really making moral choices, we are rolling the dice.
No one is disputing your right to make your own choice, we’re just curious how you do it. More or less randomly is an answer. But every so often an atheist says that religion is irrational, and a gigantic storm ensues, often around the strawman that calling a belief irrational is the same as call a person irrational. So remember this the next time this kind of thread shows up.
There is a real conflict inherent in this question of religious moderation. Faith is defined by it’s degree of devotion, in an un-escapable way. Moderate positions weaken and reveal the obvious flaw in absolute religious zeal; One of the paradoxes of belief in a purposeful deity. Why does God evade our search for Him ? Or seem to.
Just listen to yourself. Does God define morality? Doesn’t matter, since he’s not going to share it with us in any meaningful way. Does God care what we do? Not particularly it seems. Is God eternal and unchanging, as a perfect thing should be? Nah, he changes his mind every so often.
Not only does he not give clear instructions, as Revenant Threshold said, he doesn’t grade the tests, or give us the grades at least. Or maybe not until after we’ve graduated already.
The University of God runs for four years. The assignments can be interpreted in many different ways. The tests are never graded. People in the same classroom get different texts saying contradictory things, and appeals for clarification go unanswered. The professors often don’t even show up.
And at graduation the president says “you get a diploma, but you failed too many tests and don’t.”
Hope the parties were good, at least.
Oh brother! [rolleyes x’s infinity]
You are imparting your own expectations on God. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you can’t expect anyone else to agree with it.
You haven’t been reading the responses, then.
Maybe it would be helpful to pick a particular belief and discuss that? So we’re not being so general. Was my response to monavis at all helpful?
Yes, some Christian are very tetchy about that. I’m not one of them. But it doesn’t help that some atheists (not you) do intend to imply negative connotations.
“Moderate” is a poor term. “Liberal” is better, but risks confusion with the political label. The intensity (or zeal) of one’s faith is independent of one’s specific beliefs. I am very religious, in that I have strong beliefs, but I miss church once or twice a month, I do not hold a literal interpretation of the Bible, I do not push my beliefs on those uninterested.
Yes, I understand you have opinions, but this thread is about the why of Christian belief, not the why of atheist disbelief.
I have no expectations of god - I’ve been exploring the space of possible gods. The deists like to believe in a god who created the universe and then withdrew. I don’t ask them these questions since their beliefs are consistent with this premise. If one of them said that he believed in a God who has never interacted with us but who has definite opinions about our sex lives I’d be asking questions - but none of the deists have done this, more credit to them.
So my point is about a god you seem to be proposing, who cares out our morals but who won’t tell us what is right.
In the context of a divine morality, “it feels right to me” is roughly the same as random, since it depends on your environment, upbringing, culture and even genetics.
I’ve covered this already. That religion has evolved is a fact. But has god been involved in this process? Is our religion today any closer to his wishes than it was 2000 or 3000 years ago? How do you know?
The Bible isn’t a science book. But why not? Not that we’d expect equations, but consider the view of a Bible which contains stories that are confirmed by science rather than being contradicted by science. Wouldn’t this drive people to god, not away from him? True, here I’m assuming God gives a crap. But if he doesn’t, why should anyone waste time going to church or figuring out what he wants?
None of this is about the why of disbelief. For instance, several gods are nasty, so the problem of natural evil is not a big issue with religions believing in them. Almost none of my arguments come from an atheist perspective - I think I could have said almost the same things if I were a fundamentalist.
Well, what more can be said? We’ve given the reasons and you find them unsatisfactory.
I think the thread has run its course. There can be no answer that satisfies the atheists - after all, that is why they are atheist. But live and let live.
Well, no, as an atheist I disagree with this point.
I am an atheist because I have not yet been presented with any information or reasoning to believe in any particular deities, while having been so in a way that I think provides evidence against certain deities. That doesn’t mean that there “can be no” answer that satisfies me as to why I should change my mind. There has been no such answer, so far for me, but that’s a distinctly separate thing. One is a statement of current disbelief. The other implies that this can never change.
You can, however, be an atheist without insulting religious people. THAT’S what I see a lot on this particular board. The vast majority of atheists I know are cool people. Here? A lot of them tend to be pretty judgmental – pretty much the other side of the fundie coin.
The OP basically boils down to the whole “No True Scotsman Fallacy”. You’re either a fundamentalist and believe it all, or you’re just playing around.
How long have you been here? This board is the most black and white thinking place I’ve ever visited. It also saddens me anymore that you can’t even have a hypothetical discussion about stories in the Bible, like, oh, what does such and such religion teach, or, what happened to so and so in this chapter without some jackass coming in and stating, “There’s no god!”
FWIW, I’m a lapsed Catholic and consider myself sort of a vague theist – I believe in a God, but that’s really it. Why? I can’t explain, I just do. For some reason, I can’t make myself not believe. I’m of the belief that well, I don’t think you CAN choose to believe or not. And that’s okay, as long as you’re not being a douchebag.
Which was really what Jesus’s message when you think about it. The Golden Rule. Help the less fortunate, the poor, the sick, those who have less than you. Jesus didn’t say jackshit about gays, blacks, other religions, etc.
No, I am NOT saying you need to listen to Jesus to be a good person, or people wouldn’t be good people if they had never heard such teachings. I’m looking at them more as a philosophical point of view, or a way of teaching. Isn’t that the whole point of studying philosophy, to learn?
The Bible itself is actually more of a collection of books. You have some poetry, some philosophy, fables, the history of certain civilizations (whether it was true or not), some teachings, moral guides, etc.
I like this.
True. And, also bad, the OP asks us to show disrespect for the very people we should be having the most respect for. It’s asking us (nonbelievers) to trash the people who can be our best friends, and to whom we can be the best friends.
Trying to shove people in the direction of extremism is really rotten tactics!
Really? I’ve always found a high proportion of people here willing to look deeper into matters, to accept nuanced answers, and to explore for middle ground. Most certainly there are worse places – like Rush Limbaugh’s debate pages…
(Oog, I just made myself sick to my stomach…)
Yeah, that’s true. Threadshitting is not uncommon.
I think that one could, in really extreme cases. There are self-hypnosis techniques, along with ordinary everyday doublethink. If I had a very strong emotional reason to want to believe, I think I could crowbar my brain into believing. There is a little more plasticity to our minds than many people think.
This isn’t really a particularly relevant point, I confess in great haste. It’s sort of like saying, “You could lose 40 pounds of weight in one month if you really, really had to.” I could compel myself to believe in Jesus as Lord and Son of God in about a month of really, really hard work. It wouldn’t be pretty…
Hear hear! That’s the principle problem with the OP. It’s asking us to disrespect people, because they’re not being douchebags. That’s exactly the reason I respect them!
Exactly! It’s a wide anthology of themes, from rollicking high adventure to sexy poems about physical love. It’s got the raw comedy of Job, to the tragic drama of the Gospels. And it’s capped with the mysterious Revelation.
(I have a friend who is studying for the ministry – I do not know what denomination – who rejects the Revelation. She holds it to be crazy-talk. She actually declares John insane. Wow! And that’s a believer!)