For some strange reason it seems impossible for you to recognize that a belief system which directly contradicts itself is intellectually bankrupt.
Most of everybody is nuts in their own little way. Moderately nutty people are the best! So long as they don’t passively aggressively inflict their own brand of crazy on the public at large (a trend that I think is dying out), I think it serves everybody to have them around because it takes all sorts to make a world.
I have christian parents, and while some of their social mores are repugnant to me I know they have made few if any ever real attempts at changing my own codes, they live and let live. I love them for that. If they were dogmatically rigid, unswerving, unthinking literalists of their faith I doubt I’d be feeling that way so manifestly, if at all.
Hell, I value evidence also. In think God gave us eyes to see the universe and a mind to understand it, and ignoring the evidence of our senses - meaning science - is not only stupid, but also blasphemous. I have no illusions that my religious faith provides any explanation on how the universe works. It doesn’t. It may, however, attempt to give me a reason for *why *it works. For me, religion gives the universe meaning - meaning being outside the purview of science.
That’s why I know my religious beliefs aren’t logical - they’re not supposed to be. Humans aren’t completely logical beings, nor should we be. We’re creatures of both mind and emotion, intellect and spirit, and while science provides all of the answers the former needs, religion serves my purposes regarding the latter. Besides, it makes me happy.
Oh, and I don’t think you’ll burn in hell. First of all, I’m Jewish, and I don’t believe in hell. Second of all, if I thought atheists were evil I wouldn’t have married one.
I am open to being corrected, but I do not think that original sin and Christ’s redemption are directly in the Bible at all. Whether or not they directly appear there at all (it is possible they are directly discussed in some part such as Paul’s epistles), they are allegorical interpretations of certain stories, that are in the Bible, namely, in these cases, Adam and Eve and the serpent, and Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. As such it makes perfect sense to say that the stories are not literally true but the allegorical meanings, the moral and spiritual lessons they teach, are. That is exactly how an allegory is supposed to work.
For most of the 2,000 or so years that Christianity has been around - until the rise of Biblical literalism, which was invented in early 20th century America specifically to attack the world view of modern science (and evolutionism in particular, because it was seen as dangerously socially radical) - hardly any educated Christians believed that the miraculous stories of the Old Testament were literally true. Know-nothing atheists who do not understand this, and insist, like you, that the only true Christians are the Biblical literalist fundamentalists, are doing enormous harm to the cause of science by driving all the people (most of the American population) who would otherwise be quite happy as “moderate” (i.e., traditional) Christians, with a positive attitude towards science and its progress, into the arms of the lunatic fundamentalists. Fundamentalist atheists like you do almost as much harm to science and rationality as do the fundamentalist Christians, such as young Earth creationists, that actually hate it.
This is basically saying you know it is not logical but you believe it anyway because it makes you happy… how can that work? Saying science provides answers to these sets of questions ad religion provides answers to this set of questions… well… that would be ok if it actually did provide answers.
I love America. That doesn’t mean I love the fact that my country committed genocide against the Indians, enslaved blacks for a hundred years, threw the Japanese in camps during WWII, and continues to have problems treating gays and transgendereds as human beings.
I love my mother. That doesn’t mean I love the fact that she had major drug problems for years when I was little that made us homeless more than once.
I love hamburgers with bacon and bleu cheese and grilled onions. That doesn’t mean I love that they’re making me fat.
Why must the Bible then be an all-for-nothing, take it or leave it, either “every single word is literally true” or “there is no God and the book isn’t worth using for kindling” matter, when pretty much every single other aspect of life is about prioritizing and deciding what is and isn’t important to you?
Yep, that and being told outright to not question god. We were actively discouraged from thinking about it too much.
It works because I’m not completely logical. The difference between me an a fanatic is that I’m capable of compartmentalizing my illogic and preventing it from interfering with my logical mind.
It’s complicated. But then, people are infinitely complicated. That’s part of what makes us awesome.
It provides answers in the same way any other philosophy, system of beliefs or personal code provides answers. It may provide answers for me and not for you - YMMV. That’s cool. You’re happier as an atheist, I’m happier as a theist. It’s all good.
Not being able to say for sure whether theses stories are allegories or meant to be literally true, is not a very good indicator that you should trust what you find in the bible.
I don’t know much about the history of the bible in 800AD or 1600AD. And quite honestly I doubt you do either. But it seems odd people would start wars and burn people at the stake and argue and move halfway across the world to form new colonies if they thought the bible was just a bunch of stories…
I’m asking you to be consistent in your methods of what you choose to believe. That does not make me a fundamentalist of any sort.
What is there to love about a system of morality that says you are not accountable for your own actions, cast your sins on jesus, and, anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus goes to hell? If that is not your “interpretation” of the bible you are just ignoring the unpleasant parts.
Well at least you admit it’s not logical. Very few Christians do. I can’t say I have any big problem with your beliefs.
If that’s what one believes to be true about the nature of the universe, then whether one wishes things were different or not is hardly relevant. Just because you wish the sky weren’t blue doesn’t mean you can say it’s green.
I am an atheist and I most certainly do not believe that. I also find it hard to believe that any agnostics believe it. Clearly agnostics are people who see much that is positive and sensible in religion. The only people who think in the way you describe are, on the one hand, the actual religious extremist fundamentalists, and, on the other hand, fundamentalist atheists like the OP, who are deeply ignorant about religion and its history.
I do not think it is a no win discussion at all, incidentally. The OP’s opinions arise mainly from ignorance about religion and its history, not from mere disbelief in it. People can be educated out of this sort of ignorance, and probably the OP is generally in favor of rationality an in having more and better knowledge. (Unlike Young Earth Creationist types, who care nothing for reason if it conflicts with their beliefs, and are determined not to learn any better.) If the OP understood religion better, which he is probably quite capable of, he would realize that it it is perfectly possible and rational to be an unwavering atheist who nevertheless respects the motivations and intellectual integrity of “moderate” Christians (and “moderate” adherents of other religions) , just as it is perfectly possible, and intellectually consistent, to be a Christian who accepts the findings of modern science.
God isn’t a moderate. Fundamentalists tend to stick more closely to established scripture than liberals, who ignore the text and water down the faith by appropriating ideas from other philosophies.
Anti-vaxxers should call themselves germ theory moderates.
Actually I know a fair bit about about it, and clearly know a lot more you do. For most of its history, Christianity has not been about belief in Bible stories. Indeed, until the 16th century Protestant reformation, few Christians ever read the Bible, and were generally discouraged from doing so by the Church authorities (largely for fear that, being untrained in the techniques of allegorical interpretation, they would misunderstand it by taking it too literally). To a considerable extent, that is still true for Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Most of the unpleasant events that you refer to did not occur because Christians thought the Bible was telling them to behave that way. Christianity is nearly as much about the Bible as you think. The only people who think it is all about the Bible are the extremest modern fundamentalist Christians, and their mirror image, the fundamentalist atheists like you, who play into their hands.
Saying that you believe proposition X is true is not the same as saying it is moral, logical, or… true. You have to establish that it is true first, then, you can try to explain it or rationalize it.
Again… I really don’t care what happened in the 16th century. This is all a big distraction on your part because what is in the bible does not correlate to reality, or, to logic either one.
God doesn’t exist, dear.
As Christians have been doing at least since the time of St Paul (i.e., pretty much from the start of the religion, and long before any such book as The Bible existed).
The fetishizing of the text of the Bible as literal truth and the whole basis of the religion is a very modern (20th century) aberration from Christianity as it has been practiced for most of the past 2,000 years. I find it very sad the way so many atheists have bought into this dangerous nonsense. Arguably (I believe some theologians do argue) Biblical fundamentalism is, from a traditional Christian perspective, a form of idolatry: they make an idol of, they worship, the Bible, which one of most serious of sins according to Christian tradition.
1- If the bible is not “literally” true then what possible value is it?
2- The fact that there is no consensus among the non-literalists is a big problem.
Exactly. I don’t think anyone has ever killed anyone because they disagreed on what one of Aesop’s fables meant.
I agree, they are the one’s who follow the teachings of Jesus that some fundamentalists over look like: Jesus is quoted as;" I give you one commandment; that you love one another.Don’t judge, love your enemies, return good for evil, turn the other cheek"
. He seemed to despise the Pharisee’s who made a public display of their religion but didn’t follow the spirit of the law. Jesus was a liberal and the first Christians were communistic, they shared all in common.
It was you who brought up what Christians have done in the past, burning each other at the stake and so forth. I was merely pointing out that that your understanding of this history is defective.
It really saddens me to fellow atheists being as willfully, pig-headedly ignorant as Young Earth Creationists are. You are helping their evil cause. 