Wonder what this was in response to.
Your OP is making a case against “God” based on the alleged/institutionalized-version behavior thereof as recounted in that Book, yes?
I thought I was making a case based on an errant document authored (or authorized) by an inerrant author, and left errant for 2000 years.
What you were doing, whether you realized it or not, was not making a case against God, but making a case against a particular understanding of the Bible (i.e. that God desires to spell everything out for humanity in a direct, inerrant, unambiguous way, and that the Bible is his means of doing so).
Either that, or you were trotting out a variation of the old “God can’t exist because things aren’t the way they would be if I were God” argument.
I’m willing to discuss your rationales for a God schmucky enough to want to send his only begotten Son to this crummy old Earth, torture and kill him in order to send a clear message about his new covenant and all that stuff, but mess it up so badly that we spend the next 2000 years slaughtering each other in various confusions over what the message means. I’m up for that.
Sounds like you have a bone to pick with fundamentalist Christianity, not the concept of God.
One thing at a time.
So what do you hope to accomplish with this thread? Convice the SDMB that the Bible has inconsistancies and factual errors? 'Cause I think we already knew that.
Although the problems with this thread have been pointed out to the OP by dopers of every stripe, it seems he still can’t grasp that there is a problem or what the problem is.
I suggest that we all pray for him, so that he may see the error of his ways.
God didn’t write the Bible, directly or indirectly.
Yeah, you’ve got a prayer with that.
The question should be an empirical case for case.
If there were such a thing, we would no longer ‘believe in order that we may understand’. This is slang for: Have a bias and and produce hostility towards any evidence of the contrary while closing our minds to every facet that does not suit our prejuidices.
If God could be logically derived we would all know he exists. It would be a truth that cannot be proved false. Such a thing doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist, simply that the evidence doesn’t favor reason.
Having read the OP, I’d say its a (weakish) case against (some forms of) Christianity.
But as an atheist, I disbelieve in all gods equally. Thus, unless I have some special interest in an aspect of the conversation (like the Scientology and LDS threads I’ve been in recently) I’m not sure I need to make any sort of case against a diety.
I’m not now nor have I ever been entirely comfortable with Christian bashing for the sake of it. All religion is easy to tear apart - a simple “prove it” will usually suffice - but it just seems mean spirited and not advancing my own beliefs to pick at just one religion.
Look, I will call a Christian or anyone else on gross stupidity (and we had one of those in here recently, and I did call him on it) but just to start a thread entitled The Case Against God and then specifically go after one aspect of the worship of one god seems a bit weak, IMO.
Its easy to attack Christianity because as atheists in western society, particularly in the US, we’re forced to deal with the consequences of that belief, be it lack of stem cell research or the 10 Commandments on the courthouse wall. It is far better to argue the specific issues than it is to attack the group as a whole, no matter how misguided you think they might be. Because, you know, they think we atheists are misguided as well, and a sizable proportion of them are afraid for us as fellow human beings, in their belief system, they just want us to to burn forever.
Just sayin’.
Cheers,
G
Preview is my friend
Preview is my friend
Preview…
That should be “they just don’t want us to to burn forever.”
Cheers,
G
Right. I’ll make specific cases against the God of Maoris, Hopi indians, Presbyterians, and the Inuit later on because I’m getting everyone so confused by pointing some fundamental problems with the strange and obscure words “God” and the “Bible,” foolishly assuming that you share roughly the same understanding of those words that I do. Don’t want to overgeneralize here, or use specialized terminology bound to get everyone all discombobulated. My bad :rolleyes:
Delightful
One of my favourites on SD is roughly paraphrased :
- Only God knows
- and He does not seem to want to tell us
My position is that it is very possible that ‘God’ exists, certainly a higher intelligence, like a kid created us as a chemistry experiment
Betrand Russell said if God existed then he would be a member of the Parliamentary Opposition
I prefer to be an an-theist (check the spelling carefully), if God - or gods - exist then he/she/it/they is/are pretty shoddy operator(s)
- I am damned if I am going to worship an incompetent deity.
There is another problem with god-botherers, they might catch the idiot’s attention, like inviting a seriously incompetent mechanic to service your car.
I propose that all religions should be abolished, as they are potentially inviting ‘friendly fire’.
And possibly my bad for taking the title of your OP literally. Fair enough. To be fair, the SDMB automagically capitalises everything. Maybe the hamsters are gods?
That said…
You failed at what you were trying to do anyway.
Assuming you mean capital G God, as in the God of the Christians (and not Jews or Muslims), that’s fine, but you go on to make a case against the Bible.
Which, as was pointed out upthread, isn’t exactly news.
What you’ve left open is the argument that fine, the Bible is flawed, but that doesn’t rule out the existance of the God of Abraham, and you find yourself round in circles going on about the Koran, the Torah, the Apocrypha, Zorastrianism, and on and on and on.
Unless this just an opportunity to point and laugh at the Christians, in which case, knock yourself out, but there’s no debate there, either.
What did you want to discuss, exactly?
Cheers,
G
What part of “the entity known as God” or “the document known as the Bible” do you find so baffling? Do you truly not know what YOU mean by these terms? Why is so satisfying for you to try to catch me up in some circle of definitions (of plainly understood terminology) so you can infinitely postpone the discussion? Do you not realize how feeble this makes you appear?
Define “God” however you like. If you’re intent on including the little statues worshipped by Polynesian islanders, then I will safely ignore you you as as a deliberate would-be obfuscator. Define the Bible however you like. If you want to point out that there are differences between the Hebrew Bible and those used by various Christian sects, I’ll ignore that too, since there are more than enough blatant lapses of common sense and textual consistency to go around.
But for the purposes of this discussion, most Christians and Jews express some strong belief that “God” has something to do with the “Bible.” Some believe he actually wrote it, others believe its wisdom stems from God through human writers, very few devout Christians or Jews believe that the Bible is a fictional text devised by human beings alone, as I do.
I could respect someone who claims the Bible asw a literally true document, at leastt o the extent of not denouncing that person as hypocritical. I think they’re totally batshit insane to believe in such childish claptrap, but I respect them for expressing their beliefs withoutwaffling or subterfuge. But cherry-pickers who find passages to accept and to reject, and who try to rationalize their repugnance at certain sections of the Bible by claiming that they don’t apply to modern life (or any of hundred other rationales) are simply pathetic fools. Well, that or manipulative and evil, but mainly weak-minded fools.
You’ve got a text in front of you, Defend it. and prepare to be torn to pieces by any competent textual scholar, who will quickly demonstrate that your holy text is a work of fiction whose interpretations have shifted as science has provided an ever-growing body of laws that flatly contradict it. Hold it up as a work of truth that happens to contain misstatements, illogical constructions and out-and-out lies, and prepare to be laughed at. Force it down my throat, and compel me to acknowledge in my secular life, and prepare for the floodtide of vomit that will overwhelm you and drown you in a horrible sea for 40 days and 40 nights.
Wait, don’t take that literally–when I say “drown in a sea of vomit for 40 days and 40 nights,” I mean “get all bombastic on your ass for a few seconds” (but I can get literal again, too, whenever I like, it all depends on my needs of the moment. My ways are mysterious and not to be easily understood.)
One of my problems with “believers” is th
Just a piece of advice, take it as you want. But you’re coming off as an extremely defensive, argumentative jag off. That doesn’t necessarily facilitate debate.
Scratch that, I read the rest of your post, and your not even interested in debate.
Enjoy you’re rant.