oh of course… a man or woman doesn’t HAVE TO have children… i guess i should have been a bit more specific. but i do think the main point of marriage is to reproduce a lovely child. there’s also adoption, etc for those who unfortunately cannot have kids. however, that privilege shouldn’t be available homosexuals.

thank you. same to you ‘cxj’

@Vinsanity (below)

I’m not saying we should create life (I could care less what those weirdos do in their labs). This is an argument about same-sex marriage. You missed my point.

Anyway, “genetic diversity” as you mentioned, is kind of my point. Everyone is born different; people can like metal or rap, men and women can like men or women. It’s pretty basic bro.

You are reading a metal blog and talking about sinning. Does not compute.

Fair enough.

I’ll stop bugging you with follow-ups as I respect – and respectfully disagree with – your beliefs.

Be well.

Thanks Milan. I was hoping for some kind of response, but it looks like I was too late to partake in the debate.

>Ok first of all Jesus was an historical figure. You might not believe He was the Son of God but he did exist. Thats an almost universally accepted historical fact.

No, he wasn’t a historical figure. There’s no evidence he existed, outside the Bible.

> Secondly that’s still only 2 sections (The Books
> of the Law and The Pauline Epistles) so it still
> isn’t a major biblical theme the way its made out
> to be.

Oh OK. So your argument appears to be: God only tells people to violently bash in the heads of gays with a bloody rock in only a few teeny tiny places in the Bible. That’s not so bad, is it?

Yeah, I don’t think I can buy that one. You might wanna walk that back a few paces.

>Yes the Bible is full of some messed up stuff. Thats
> my point virtually no one applies half the stuff in there
> to the modern world but the make an exception with
> gay marriage to try and justify their bigotry. Also by
> saying its simply an evil horrible book and ignore all the
> stuff about loving your neighbour, forgiveness, helping
> the poor, turning the other cheek etc your being as one
> sided as you accuse others of being.

No it’s not. The evil and horrible shit in the Bible far, far outnumbers the good stuff. It’s not that it’s not there; it’s that, why would you want to dig through all that manure to get to an ice cream cone at the bottom? All you have done is gotten shit all over yourself.

It’s not that hard to be a good person on your own, love your neighbor on your own, and be charitable on your own, without attaching yourself to all the horrible things in the Bible. If people like you would stop insisting the Bible has some kind of value because of the few good parts in it, then less people would give the bad parts (like slaughtering gays) validation.

>I believe in a higher power and reading about the life
> and teachings of Christ help me to feel connected to
> that power. Its just a shame mankind managed to
> distort His message.

I don’t think Jesus taught anything that great. He was pro-slavery (Ephesians 6:5-9), anti-women’s rights and equality (Luke 2:23, Romans 1:27, 1 Corinthians 11:3, 14:34-35, 1 Timothy 2:9) and planning to destroy the world in a full-scale terrorist attack, then torture all the dead people’s souls forever in a hell that he created. That’s a pretty fucked up philosophy if you ask me.

> Actually Jesus is mentioned by Roman and Jewish
> historians.

Cite examples. There are no contemporary histories written by anyone living at the time Jesus supposedly lived. The closest one is 40 years after the fact, and doesn’t even mention Jesus by name.

> And if he didn’t exist theres no explanation
> for the emergence of Christianity.

Did Zeus exist? If not, how do you explain the emergence of Greek mythology?

> I mean the early Christians were haevily persecuted.
> Would the really do that for something they knowingly
> made up?

Quite likely, they sincerely believed in Jesus, based on stories that someone had written decades earlier, and had gotten embellished over the years.

>I don’t belive the Bible was written by God. Men wrote it.

I agree, but — the only account of Jesus and his supposed philosophies etc. is in the Bible. So if you believe the Bible to be fallible and prone to error, then what’s your basis for believing in Jesus?

> The vast majority of the evil stuff is Old Testament.
> Jesus is New Testament.

Actually, some of the most horrible evil stuff is in the New Testament. I already directed you to the New Testament verses that are pro-slavery, anti-women’s rights, and so forth. There’s also the concept of Hell that wasn’t introduced until the New Testament; and Jesus himself introduced what is probably the most sickening, disgusting thing in the whole Bible, which is the idea that if you pray for something, you will receive it as long as you believe in Jesus. That one concept has gotten more people killed than all the stonings of the Old Testament combined.

I never said I attach myself to horrible parts of the Bible. I don’t. Most of the scriptures you referenced were by St Paul not Jesus (apart from Luke I don’t have a Bible with me right now so I can’t comment on that (I’m at a Cybercafe). The earth gets renewed not destroyed and only sinners who refuse to repent go to hell.

So — God makes people flawed and prone to sinning… then if they don’t do what he wants, he tortures them eternally in hell. What a guy!

>Well Josephus is the main one i’ve heard of.

Here’s a pretty good synopsis of why Josephus is not good evidence that Jesus existed: http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-josephus-so-called-testimonium.html

To sum it up, it was written 40-50 years after the fact, doesn’t mention Jesus by name at all, only talks about people who were following Jesus, and parts of it have been proven to be forgeries.

> I’m not that familar with the historical evidence but I do
> now the majority of scholars reject the non existence
> hypothesis and its leading exponent (Wells) has recently
> retracted his claims.

I hate to say it but it sounds like you haven’t done much research into this yourself and you’re just repeating what someone told you about the topic. I’d prefer you look over the actual evidence and debate your thoughts about it with me, then parrot what your youth pastor told you to say.

> I guess I’m more likely to belive academic historians
> and biblical scholars then some guy on metalsucks.

And that’s a bad approach to a topic like this. It’s a logical fallacy (“appeal to authority”). The evidence is the evidence, and you and I can interpret and understand it as well as someone who studied theology and history for 50 years. Not to mention that the greater majority of published Western scholars over the past 300 years have been Christians, and have a personal vested interest in Jesus being a real person.

But on top of that, you just admitted you haven’t even read any of the “evidence”; you only know about Josephus because someone told you about it but you don’t know what he actually said or didn’t say about Jesus. So, what we have is a case of you really wanting to believe something and seeking out things that confirm your belief, rather than looking at the evidence objectively and coming to conclusion.

> Zeuss was a God who lived on a fictional mountain.
> Jesus is portayed as man in a historical time and place.

Yes, a man in a historical time and place who had the magical power to make blind people see, walk on water and change inedible objects into delicious food items. Then died and came back to life.

Come on, you really don’t see any similarities between other fictional stories and Jesus?

> I sure the people of Gallilee, Jerusalem etc could have
> responded to stories by saying “hey this guy never lived
> here”. But they didn’t. I don’t know if every thing the Bible
> says about Jesus is true because I wasn’t there to
> witness Him. But I feel there is enough common ground in
> the Gospels to gain a reasonable picture.

Actually, the Gospels themselves are completely contradictory in relation to each other about even the smallest details about Jesus. They are all over the place. Here’s a good list: http://www.evilbible.com/contradictions.htm

> I’m choosing to have faith. Can I guarantee I’m right?
> Of course not and neither can you or anyone else when it
> comes to spiritual themes.

That’s fine, if your argument is “I believe what I believe with no evidence because that’s how I feel”, then I have no problem with you. You’re still wrong, but I can’t make a rational argument against that, because you’re at least being honest, and saying you are going into this discussion without any regard for logic or evidence.

The problem only comes in when you start saying that Jesus was a real person that lived, and the claims about him being God are exaggerated stories about a real person. That’s when you cross the line from “faith” into a bad argument. The evidence just is not there.

> How has praying killed anyone? What are you even
> talking about?

Well, for one example, how many children have died because their parents refused medical treatment, relying on prayer? Thousands? Millions? Because they took that bullshit verse literally. How many people like Jehovah’s Witnesses have refused blood transfusions that could have saved them? They took the Bible’s lies at face value, and they died.

> To say God created humans fallible and prone to sinning
> simply means He gave us free will. If we didn’t have that
> we wouldn’t be human. We would be molre like Gods
> puppets. Goodness only exists if you choose to be good
> in light of the knowledge of evil.

God gave people the free will to rape babies? You really believe that? Why would God do that? You would think he would say, OK, I’ll give everyone free will, but at least I won’t make anyone desire to rape babies. But, no, there those people are, still raping babies and God doesn’t do anything about it. Why?

The world makes a lot more sense, when you realize there is no magical caretaker looking over it, and good and bad things happen for NO REASON. People are born sick or born good for NO REASON. And we have to make the best of things, help each other, be kind to each other, and make the world a better place, because it’s the right thing to do. Not because of fear of an idiotic imaginary concept like burning in hell.

> That link about Josephus simply said Josephus didn’t
> believe Jesus was the Christ which was kinda obvious
> to begin with since Josephus was Jewish. He does
> mention him by name I’ve read it before. More scholars
> accept than reject Josephus so how is it proven to be a
> forgery?

You’re misunderstanding the link I sent you. Josephus’s work is not a forgery — it is legitimate. The forgery part is explained here by Wikipedia:

“…the famous Testimonium Flavianum found in the Antiquities of the Jews 18.63-64, in its current form summarises the ministry and death of Jesus; but the authenticity of this passage remains contested by many scholars, and has been the topic of ongoing debate since the 17th century. The most widely held current scholarly opinion is that the Testimonium Flavianum is partially authentic; but that those words and phrases that correspond with standard Christian formulae are additions from a Christian copyist.”

> I have done research into it but it was ages ago and I
> can’t remember of the top of my head. I guess I could try
> and hunt down some of the books and stuff again.

It’s OK if you don’t know something. I don’t everything. The problem is that you are coming into this argument/discussion acting like you know definitively that Jesus existed, and you can’t name one thing that supports this theory, other than Josephus which has a ton of problems.

It’s clear you WANT to believe that and so, when someone tells you there is evidence to that effect, you’re eager to believe it without questioning it.

> Aren’t you appealing to authority by sending me links
> written by atheists who have a vested interest in
> Jesus not being a real person?

No. Why would an atheist have a vested interest in Jesus not being a real person? Atheists are about being rational. If the evidence points to Jesus being God then we would believe that. We don’t believe in God because there is no evidence for it, not because that’s what we WANT to believe.

It’s tempting for people to just turn their brains off and say, “I’m going to a magical place when I die and there I will meet all my family and we run through sun-soaked fields all day playing frisbee forever.” It’s a nice thought. But my brain doesn’t work that way; I know it’s bullshit, so I can’t force myself to believe it. I follow the evidence, even if it takes me to an uncomfortable conclusion.

>I know about Josephus because I read it in an
> encyclopedia but I don’t have a photographic memory
> for quotes and stuff. Sorry about that.

There’s this thing called Google, don’t know if you’ve heard of it…

> Ok whether you believe the miracles attributed to
> Jesus is a different question to whether he existed at all.

No — that’s the problem. It’s the SAME question. Because the ONLY proof we have Jesus existed, is in the Bible. Everything other the Bible is hearsay — weak evidence that could have come about zillions of other ways, from being totally fabricated and passed down through oral history.

So either the Bible is right, and Jesus is the son of God, or the Bible is wrong, and there’s no evidence he existed at all. There’s no choice (c) of “Jesus existed but was just a man”. That’s something Christians made up recently, because they don’t want to stop being Christians, but they realize that the stories about him having magical powers are stupid, just like the rest of the Bible.

> That link about contradictions proved my point actually.
> There is minor differences in the details but the basic
> account of the things that happened is broadly similiar
> which is what you would expect when different authors
> independently complie oral tradtions into written works.

Did you read the link? They are not “minor differences”. They are huge differences in the story.

And these are not the only contradictions in the Bible. It’s completely full of them from cover to cover. The point here is — the Bible is the only place we have to turn to, to learn about what Jesus supposedly taught. If it’s so unreliable, which YOU ADMIT, then why do you believe it happened? Why do you believe he taught that?

> (The earliest Christian communities were based on oral
> tradtions about Jesus since the New Testament didn’t
> exist yet but theres enough commonality in what emerged
> in the Gospels to suggest a common original source
> which I believe was the actual life of Jesus.)

“Believe” is the key word. It’s fine if you want to believe that, but there’s no reason it couldn’t just be some guy sitting in his hut who made up a story about Jesus.

You choose to believe because you want to. Your source is the Bible which is erroneous. You’re not operating on logic or reason, just faith.

> My point was that I can’t 100% certain about details
> surrounding Jesus but He is regarded as an historical
> figure and despite what you think you’ve presented
> nothing which concretely disputes that.

In logic, it’s not incumbent on me to prove a negative. I can’t prove something DOESN’T exist, I can only conclude, through lack of evidence, that it probably didn’t exist. There may have been a purple unicorn that created the story of Jesus, too. I can’t disprove it, but I know it’s not likely. It’s YOUR job to prove Jesus existed, and so far you are 0-for-1 with Josephus. Got anything else?

> I highly doubt the number of people who refused medical
> treatment based on faith would reach the millions and
> Jehovah’s witnesses aren’t representative of the majority > of Christians.

That’s right, because most Christians are sane, rational good people with 21st Century morals — like yourself — and whenever the stupid crazy Bible conflicts with their good secular morals, they IGNORE the Bible. Jehovah’s Witnesses are just like any fundamentalists, like al-Qaeda — the closer you follow religion, the more crazy your actions are. The more you secularize and de-mystify the Bible, and only do the rituals and holidays, like most Christians do, the less crazy your actions are.

> How does refusing blood transfusions have anything to
> do with Bible? I don’t know where the got the idea that it’s
> somehow Christian to refuse medical treatment but it
> certainly doesn’t come from any sayings recorded by
> Jesus.

YES IT DOES. Did you not read the Bible too? It says dozens of times that if you pray, whatever you pray for will be granted, as long as you believe sincerely in Jesus. It’s the worst lie by far told in the Bible and it’s demonstrably false.

Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses base their refusal of medical treatments on these verses. You correctly interpret these people as crazy and delusional. I agree. Why? Because on some level, you know that the Bible is bullshit, and you effectively ignore it when it says something you know is ridiculous. But they don’t, and so they are in the minority of the world who still doesn’t realize that religion is archaic BS.

> Personally I have never heard of anyone actually raping a baby.

Really? It happens all the time. How about child molestation? Ever hear of that? God lets that happen too. Why?

> God gave us free will and Satan tries to pervert our free
> will by leading us to sin. Things don’t happen for no
> reason the happen as a result of choices we make and
> natural processes.

Wow, what a disgusting thing to say. What choice did a 6 year old girl make to deserve some guy scarring her for life by molesting her? You really think God thinks in such horrible, evil terms? If he does, then he’s an asshole anyway.

What about hundreds of thousands of people who died in tsunamis including very religious, pious people and babies who never did anything? What bad choices did they make? Are you starting to see why this is more bullshit?

> As for you last paragraph about how we should act I
> agrees 95%. I just think its possible that hell or
> somewhere like it may exist.

Based on what? The Bible? Which you just said was written by men and made up?

> But if we be good only to avoid hell and no other reason
> than in Gods eyes we are not really being good at all. I’m
> sure He judges internal thoughts and motives as well as
> external actions.

But he doesn’t judge actions. You can go to heaven no matter what evil vile things you do, as long as you accept Jesus. And you still go to hell no matter how great a person you are, if you reject Jesus or never heard of him. So it’s not about actions at all, just kissing Jesus’s ass.

And if you really believe that God wants us to be good, and judges us on our inner monologue, then why does he need to threaten them with hell? The threat won’t make them really act righteous anyway — just going through the motions out of fear. How is that free will? “Do what I want or I will torture you” is not free will.

> I’m afraid that, yes, Jesus is considered a historical figure, if his history has been significantly
> mystified and clouded since his death, much like the Buddha or Confucious. The reason
> that the only historical annecdotes about his life come up to 40 years after his death is because
> nobody had any reason to report them at the time. He was just another Jewish man, born in the
> tiny, TINY town of Nazareth, who never traveled more than several miles from home, never
> wrote anything, and all of his significant teachings came in a single week before he was
> promptly executed. Who would record that at the time? He was hardly a renound figure durring
> his life, and the Romans wanted him to be forgotten sinse he opposed the established order so
> much.

The problem with this argument is that the Bible reports historical events of the time and places Jesus in the middle of them — like for example the Census of Quirinius — the time frame is all wrong, and if the actions of the historical figures appearing in the Bible were indeed motivated by what the Bible claims they were motivated by, they would definitely have been recorded elsewhere besides the Bible. But they weren’t.

> The real heart of the matter though, which you seem so opposed to, is that the Bible MUST be
> read as a collection of historical and cultural sources because it is one of the only recorded links
> we have to one of the most influential peoples in Western culture: the Hebrews. Of course it is
> contradictory, but does that invalidate the entire document?

No, it’s a perfectly valid collection of folk tales and oral history and tradition. But it invalidates the document as an accurate recording of history, which you are trying to turn it into. At every step of the way it fails in that respect.

Consider: there are 30,000 different sects of Christianity. All of them disagree on which parts the Bible wants us to take literally and which parts the Bible wants us to take as a metaphor, and they are so sure about it that they often pipe bomb each other’s fucking cars over different interpretations. So why is YOUR interpretation the right one? Better yet, why is the Bible valid and the Koran wrong? Or any other religious text? If we’re allowed to act like you and go on a whim cherrypicking which parts of the Bible to believe in, then anything goes.

I think my position (that it’s full of shit from cover to cover) is a lot more tenable than your position each of those sects’ positions (“the part I say is valid is valid, and anything else is just metaphor and folk tales”).

> It is composed of hundreds of different books from just as many different authors. Some stories
> are folktales, others are cultural laws and regulations of the time, others are mythology, and
> others are historical. Biblical scholars work on seperating these from eachother, and through
> this you can learn a huge amount of the origins of western civilization. If we discredit the entire
> Bible, based on inconsistancies over GENERATIONS of different writers and varying subject
> matter, then we are subjecting it to harsher critisism than ANY other historical source in
> existance, and we should begin questioning the existance of Archemedis, Plato, and many other
> classical figures.

But, Archimedes showed his work. He didn’t say “a submerged three-dimensional object will displace an amount of water equal to its volume, because a burning bush told me so.” He proposed things that are testable and verifiable. That’s why Archimedes is a respected historical scientist, and the Bible is a bunch of self-contradictory, magical bullshit that we can dismiss as never having really happened.

> I can tell from your generalized description of the Bible that you have not actually read it, and
> definately not studied it.

I have read it cover to cover, twice. I made it through all 10,000,000+ of God’s violent killings, all the stonings, all the boring ass “begats”, all the vile stuff Jesus supports, and all the ridiculous crap in Revelation. I read it because I don’t believe in arguing against things I am not familiar with.

> You references to insanely biased websites and quickly-gathered quotes through google hardly
> substitute for an accute understanding of the source material.

You should try addressing my actual arguments, instead of attacking the websites themselves. You’re a Christian arguing that Christianity is awesome, so I could easily dismiss you as “biased”. But, I’m not doing that, I’m listening to what you have to say, and dismissing it because it’s absurd. Not because you have an “agenda”.

> Calling it an evil book won’t do you any good either; the notion that evil is inherent in an
> inanimate object is absurd, not to get into to the whole objective existance of an “evil” force,
> which i find equally absurd.

I think it’s obvious to anyone who can read English at an adult level that when I say the Bible is “evil” I don’t mean the physical pages and book-binding are possessed by a demon. I mean the concepts inside the book, expressed through words, are evil. Don’t play semantic games in lieu of a real argument. Either defend the crappy stuff in the Bible, or don’t. Do you think it’s evil to bash someone in the head with a bloody rock, or not?

> Your understanding of my beliefs and alex’s beliefs are confined by the narrow stereotypes that
> you have for Theists, that they are attached to irrational and easily disproven beliefs out of fear,
> preffering pretty or nice thoughts to hard realities because they can not accept them. We also > > clearly must believe in a fairy-tale afterlife to comfort our inevitable deaths.

Prove me wrong. You believe that a dead man came back to life and crawled out of a cave; you believe if you masturbate you will go to a bad bad place where demons will poke you with fire-sticks for all eternity. Explain how that’s rational.

> I will not go into mybeliefs about God here, but I find that they fit my reason, which I value, and
> are not based on an escapist approach to fear. Instead of arrogantly discarding this God idea as
> absurd, childlike, and beneath your consideration, you could approach it from the perspective of
> reason and see how it could make sense philosophically.

Well, that’s your job. I’m still waiting for either of you to make an argument how God makes sense philosophically. My argument is that it doesn’t, and I supported that idea with facts, which you haven’t refuted.

In case you didn’t see them earlier, I’ll repeat them. Why did God design earthquakes and tsunamis into the system to regularly kill hundreds of thousands of people? Why does he allow babies to get raped? Why are children born with horrible diseases, missing organs, and awful deformities? Why do we live on a planet that’s constantly bombarded with meteorites, cosmic rays, and volcanic eruptions? Why is over 70% of the planet inhabitable? Why “design” things that way if he is perfect? Those are circumstantial evidence that God (a) doesn’t exist, (b) exists but is just a malevolent asshole, or (c) exists but doesn’t give a fuck about human existence. Either way, it doesn’t conform with the stuff the Bible says about God loving us. I don’t really see a choice (d) there, but if you have one, please enlighten me.

> Then you could go about this discussion as an equal, without seeing us as irrational,
> irreversably biased idiots who just somehow refuse to see the clear evidence of Jesus’
> nonexistance as demonstrated on the not-at-all-agenda-oriented sites debunkingchristianity
> and evilbible.

You really have a persecution complex, don’t you. I didn’t call you an idiot. I don’t equate religious delusions with stupidity, at all. Quite the contrary, when you are indoctrinated into a cult since birth, and everything you’re taught keeps you from applying critical thinking to your philosophical beliefs, it’s very hard to break away from that, and I have a lot of respect for the many who do. For the others who spend their whole lives under the burden of believing in religion, many are very, very intelligent. They just compartmentalize their rational, 21st Century beliefs in one box and their backwards religious beliefs in another box in their brain, and try really hard not to let the two meet each other.

As for sites having an agenda — again, everyone has an agenda. That doesn’t invalidate their points. You have an agenda too — holding onto belief in Jesus despite all evidence to the contrary — but I’m not holding that against you, I’m arguing against the actual arguments you’re making, rather than attacking your “agenda”.

> Respecting us as rational beings, as well as respecting the scholars and historians
> and…reading…the…god…damn…source material…could take this conversation in a totally
> different way. Right now you seem just as intolerant, one-sided and stubborn as the radical
> Jehova’s witnesses that you mentioned.

I think you’re using the word “tolerant” wrong. I am completely tolerant of religious people. Tolerance means accepting that others think differently, and coexisting with them peacefully. I’m perfectly happy to be your friend and coexist with you peacefully, no matter what your religious beliefs are.

The problem comes in when you want RESPECT for your beliefs, from the get go, without others applying critical thinking to them; just accepting them no questions asked. That is a problem, because while my default position is to respect and be kind to others, I do not respect shitty ideas. And the Bible is full of really shitty ideas. I believe that respect for ideas should be given on merit, not given to anyone who says they believe in God, just because.

>Anyway I would like to add a couple of points. Atheists
>always seem to feel God has to be scientifically proven
> before they can even entertain the possibilty of his
> existence.

No, this is wrong. God is no different from anything else in the world. We make conclusions about everything based on the evidence available. We believe the sun will come up because the empirical data predicts exactly what time it will come up tomorrow. We believe if you drop a pencil 100 times, it will fall to the ground 100 times, because we understand gravity and it’s a testable, repeatable experiment. If something lacks evidence — sure, it COULD be possible, but we dismiss it as unlikely.

God is the same: it COULD be possible, but there’s no evidence for it, so we dismiss it because it’s unlikely.

>But the question of God is on a whole other level that can
>never be adressed by science. It’s not rational to say
>there’s no God because I haven’t seen Him walking
>around.

Not a good argument. We never see certain invisible chemicals floating around either, but we know they are there, because we can TEST for their presence and we know their properties and behavior. We cannot test for God nor does God impact our world in any kind of way that we can detect. Whenever something good happens, people attribute it to God, and whenever something bad happens, they keep God out of it.

The only reason you keep God “on a whole other level” is because if you apply some thought and logic to it, it will disappear in a puff of smoke because you will realize it’s ridiculous. So you do your best to keep logic out of it, by pretending that logic and reason don’t apply to the biggest questions in life. When really, those are the #1 questions you should apply them to.

>Also if a Jehovah’s Witness falls sick and then pray’s to
>get better but dies because he doen’t seek medical
>treatment that’s no ones fault but his own. God didn’t let
>him down because the medical treatment was right there.

What about all the people who pray to get better but don’t receive any medical treatment? What about amputees, why doesn’t God ever give their arms back?

You’re taking the scientific achievements made by the hard work of PEOPLE, and acting like God made them. If he did, why did he wait 10,000 years before letting us have cures for simple diseases, letting so many people die? What a prick.

The Bible tells you to pray and you will get anything you want. Yes, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are at fault — for believing in a delusional book. I agree, that like you, they should realize the Bible is full of shit and not take it literally. But, if the book didn’t exist, no one would be able to take it literally, and more people would be alive.

>Thats like me praying to God to give me money directly
>because I refuse to use an atm.

No, it’s like praying to God to give you money directly instead of going to work. And if you read the Bible, you will see that this is what the Bible tells you to do. ANYTHING YOU WANT will be given to you, if you pray — and sincerely believe in Jesus in your heart.

>Also girls aren’t raped because of their choices. Their raped because of the rapists choices.

But why design people with brain disorders that cause them to want to rape? Why make people who are capable of molesting children? Why design a system like that unless you are sadistic?

>And I said things happen because of choices & natural processes. I think tsunamis would fall under the latter.

Why design the Earth with those horrible events as part of the “natural processes”? Couldn’t God make a world where tsunamis don’t happen every year and kill hundreds of thousands of people? And earthquakes? And bombardment by cosmic rays, and meteorites, and 70% of the planet being covered by water we can’t survive in, and deserts, and jungles filled with hazards, and unlivable climates at the poles… Why design all these constant threats to our existence if God loves us? Have you really never thought this through that far?

> 3D not everything is black & white. Stop saying the Bible has
> to be either 100% historical document or 100% lies. Reality
> doesn’t work that way.

I didn’t say “the Bible has to be either 100% historical document or 100% lies”.

The point is that the lies invalidate its standing as a historical document, because it’s demonstrably WRONG about many, many, many historical facts, provable by looking at other historical documents of the time. It’s purely a work of fiction.

To use a current example: movies like The Da Vinci Code (and thousands of others) use current events as backdrops to tell a story. Some of them are accurate and some of them are bent and molded to fit into the story as necessary. Would you call The Da Vinci Code anything other than a “work of fiction”?

> Many parts of the Bible have been proven i.e through archaeology.

For example?

> Other parts are regarded as symbolism.

The problem is — how do you know which part to regard as “symbolism”?

When the Bible tells you to pick up a rock and beat somebody over the head with it until they are dead, for being gay, it is not being “symbolic”. It’s trying to be a “Morality for Dummies” guide. The Bible is very literal; the words on the page mean exactly what they say. People only try to complicate matters, by saying it’s “symbolic”, because — like you — they are good and decent people, who are very rightly EMBARRASSED by the ridiculous, evil shit that is in the Bible.

But instead of doing the right thing and throwing away the Bible, the propaganda of the cult is very strong and they are compelled to make excuses and rationalizations for why the Bible contains embarrassing and evil things.

> Christians actually have never pipe bombed each other over minor
> disagreements regarding the Bible. Thats a lie.

Oh my. I guess your youth pastor never told you about Northern Ireland.

Check out this Wikipedia entry for a refresher course. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army Or, alternatively, you could just pick up a U2 album at random.

> As for why there are bad things in the Universe I don’t have the answers but
> the theory is that Satan corrupted Gods work.

Isn’t God perfect? Why does he bend to the will of Satan? Is God incapable of overcoming Satan’s interference? Then he’s not God. If he can, but just refuses to, then he’s passively evil.

> The thing is you’re determined to believe there’s no God. Thats why you only focus on the bad side of everything.

No — quite the contrary. I’m very open to believing in God, if you show a compelling argument. But you’re not.

> You seem to think the entire Bible is evil (the message not the book it self). That proves right there you are not operating on reason.

No, I don’t think “the entire Bible is evil”. I think that there’s so much evil stuff in it, that it far, far outweighs any good things that are in there. And the good stuff in there is universally good and can be arrived at by being a kind person, without the Bible.

And worse, the “good stuff” is often contradicted by other parts of the Bible. For example, the Bible says “love thy neighbor” but then condones slavery. Says “thou shalt not kill” but commands you to pick up a rock and beat people in the head with it for being gay, and to burn people alive if you suspect they are witches. So I’m not impressed with the “morality” of the Bible.

> And you proved my point. You clearly do think God has to be scientifically
> proven. But God is the eternal omniprescent Creator who is transcends
> physical time & space. You can’t go into a lab, do some experiment and
> say “hey look its God”.

Why not? If God exists, shouldn’t God have SOME observable effect on our universe?

In reality, the universe operates EXACTLY as you could predict it would if there was no God. Or at least, a God that doesn’t give a shit about human affairs and stays completely out of them. You believe in something with absolutely no evidence.

If there is an eternal, omnipresent Creator, then who created the Creator?

> As for Jehovahs Witnessess…well anyone who thinks everything the read has
> to be taken literally needs to go back to school and relearn basic english.

Says the guy who thinks there HAS to be a God, even though there’s no observable evidence for it whatsoever. Maybe you need to go back to school and relearn 4th grade science.

> As for bad things in the world well everybody dies sometime. But as long as
> you don’t reject God you’ll go to heaven. besides the world is already getting
> overpopulated. Imagine how much worse that could have been

Oh OK. So you are now arguing that God kills millions of people in earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, famines, starvation, terrible painful diseases, etc. etc. every year, to solve the world’s overpopulation crisis. And yet, there is still… (*drumroll please*)… massive overpopulation. Go figure!

Hey, if you were designing the world and had perfect omniscient foresight, how would you approach this problem? I know, make the world bigger. Or, maybe make more than 30% of it livable, instead of covering it with water, deserts, ice caps, jungles filled with dangerous animals, and horrible diseases. Or… make a nearby planet where people could migrate to, that’s habitable, with clean water and a breathable atmosphere. Those all seem like reasonable options and well within the capabilities of God.

But no — according to you, he came up with the brilliant plan of having millions of people starve every day, die under rubble in horrible earthquakes, creating awful, painful diseases, letting people murder and rape each other, and perpetual war. What a guy!

Fuck, last one didn’t work, here goes.

Your understanding of my beliefs and alex’s beliefs are confined by the narrow stereotypes that you have for Theists, that they are attached to irrational and easily disproven beliefs out of fear, preffering pretty or nice thoughts to hard realities because they can not accept them. We also clearly must believe in a fairy-tale afterlife to comfort our inevitable deaths.

“Prove me wrong. You believe that a dead man came back to life and crawled out of a cave; you believe if you masturbate you will go to a bad bad place where demons will poke you with fire-sticks for all eternity. Explain how that’s rational.”

Ooooh, you made this waaay too easy: I am not a Christian.

Can you take a step back and see what you just did? I do not believe that any dead man has ever come back to life. I have no problem with masturbation or other more “sinful” forms of sexual expression. I am not going to create a rational basis for those beliefs because YOU came up with those beliefs and placed them on me by assumption. I do not believe in any real afterlife except in a poetic sense. I do not believe in a soul. In my opinion, these things are far more difficult to deny than the existance of a divine character, who, at first glance, doesn’t really seem to give a shit. But I do believe in God. Therefore, I, a Theist, am not attached to beliefs out of fear. I have faced my greatest fears regarding my death and subsequent nonexistance. I love hard reality far more than pretty ideals because I find it beautiful. There: you have been proven wrong. QED

All my beliefs are based on my own philosophical reasonings. I was raised agnostic; I was not “indoctrinated into a cult at birth.” Am I going to give a rational explanation for my beliefs, to you, right now? No. And here’s why:

Nowhere in anything that I wrote did I suggest anything about my beliefs except for a vague reference to “God.” I was attempting to defend the Bible based on its merit as a historical work of art, and had no intention of roping my personal baisis AGAINST its mythology into the conversation. However, when you read this, you projected onto me the cookie cutter image of “the Christian” that suits your worldview. Here are a few funny little moments that followed:

“So why is YOUR interpretation the right one? Better yet, why is the Bible valid and the Koran wrong? Or any other religious text? If we’re allowed to act like you and go on a whim cherrypicking which parts of the Bible to believe in, then anything goes.”

Well, let’s see. I believe I left my personal interpretation out of this, but in any case, everyone believes that their personal interpretation is correct. Otherwise they wouldn’t have interpreted it that way. I base my interpretation on what I observe in nature and what I infer that the Hebrews were observing at the time of the writing. Yes, I do find this more realistic than interpreting the entire text literally as if there were no external world, so i guess that’s “better”…maybe? But I hadn’t said that. I also didn’t say that the Koran was wrong. I am currently studying arabic so that some day I can read it in its intended language. I do not dismiss any religious text outright. The pagan and indiginous texts that Western culture refutes offhand are no less true or beautiful than the Bible, and I think they should all be considered as holding a grain of truth. But I can’t take them all literally, and I refuse to dismiss them all just because they are strange or outlandish. So I guess you can call it cherrypicking. I see no problem with “anything goes.” If we leave it open like that then we allow our personal reasoning to take over and guide us instead of the texts guiding us. “Anything goes” is good.

Also nice bit about the pipe bomb. It reminded me of a time when a man, arguing against something as harmless as the legalization of marijuana, described a vivid car crash where pair of stoners passing a joint mid-drive lose focus and run over a helpless baby in the middle of the road. It was naturally moving and utterly pathetic. Don’t resort to stupid shit like that. We’re talking about something as harmless as A BOOK.

“You should try addressing my actual arguments, instead of attacking the websites themselves. You’re a Christian arguing that Christianity is awesome, so I could easily dismiss you as “biased”. But, I’m not doing that, I’m listening to what you have to say, and dismissing it because it’s absurd. Not because you have an “agenda”.”

You should try adressing me as a person instead of the image of me that you’ve fabricated. In that way, you’re really not listening to what I have to say. You’re putting words in my mouth and ideas in my head. I don’t know what I’ve said that is “absurd” and dismissable; you seem to be refering to the words of Christian institutions in general. As someone who is NOT a Christian and doesn’t care much for religious INSTITUTIONS, I really don’t think you could dismiss me as biased, either. I, too, have listened to what you have to say, and I gotta tell you, I am much more interested in the lack of a historical Jesus than I was before this shindig. And I don’t think it would alter my worldview much at all, so don’t act like I have a personal stake in this.

“Well, that’s your job. I’m still waiting for either of you to make an argument how God makes sense philosophically.”

No, it’s not my job, because I’m not interested in converting you or convincing you. Everyone follows their own path towards truth. Wherever you are is wherever you should be right now.

And don’t go on from here and tell me that I’m hiding in my little bunker of my own secure worldview. I am more than happy to discuss philosophy or semantics with anybody who can manage such a conversation. But your talent for fair and respectful discussion seems pretty dismal right now, so I don’t know what would come of it for either of us. Until you stop telling me what I believe and why I do, I’m not going to start answering your questions about why God lets…ugh…babies get raped?…did I mention the baby-in-the-road story yet?

“I think it’s obvious to anyone who can read English at an adult level that when I say the Bible is “evil” I don’t mean the physical pages and book-binding are possessed by a demon. I mean the concepts inside the book, expressed through words, are evil. Don’t play semantic games in lieu of a real argument. Either defend the crappy stuff in the Bible, or don’t. Do you think it’s evil to bash someone in the head with a bloody rock, or not?”

I don’t mean…wait demons? What? Who’s been fucking with my medicine?

Look, what I meant was that it’s useless approach to think of the contents of ANYTHING as “evil.” Example: I reject most nihilist philosophy, and yet I listen to a lot of nihilist metal. Based on my personal beliefs I could dismiss this music as “evil,” since most of it (advocating suicide, violence, etc) don’t match up with my morals. But what’s the use of that? I approach it assuming that if the artist went through all the effort to put this together, then they might have something to tell me that I haven’t considered. Maybe this “evil” music will radically change the way that I look at the world. Or maybe I can just appreciate it as interesting art, since art isn’t entirely about the message, but also about the process of expression (art that IS entirely about the message is propoganda).

So when you try push me into a black and white corner of defending this work of art—a definition that I’m applying loosely…call it a historical document or not or whatever—based only on a grosely simplified message that you have taken from it, I’m going to dismiss your questions as entirely irrelevant. This is not “real argument,” as you said.

“You really have a persecution complex, don’t you. I didn’t call you an idiot. I don’t equate religious delusions with stupidity, at all. Quite the contrary, when you are indoctrinated into a cult since birth, and everything you’re taught keeps you from applying critical thinking to your philosophical beliefs, it’s very hard to break away from that, and I have a lot of respect for the many who do. For the others who spend their whole lives under the burden of believing in religion, many are very, very intelligent. They just compartmentalize their rational, 21st Century beliefs in one box and their backwards religious beliefs in another box in their brain, and try really hard not to let the two meet each other.

As for sites having an agenda — again, everyone has an agenda. That doesn’t invalidate their points. You have an agenda too — holding onto belief in Jesus despite all evidence to the contrary — but I’m not holding that against you, I’m arguing against the actual arguments you’re making, rather than attacking your “agenda”.”

Okay, at this point I’m just about fucking done. I’m boarderline losing my composure having to wade through all of the stuff that you’re assuming about me, as well as about everyone else living a life of “religious delusions” under some religious “burden” with a 1984-esq brain trained in double truths. You are absolutely refusing to try and understand or relate to people different from yourself beyond this very shallow and condescending level. I don’t need to go into all the rediculous things you just said to prove that. The entire reason that I spent all this time picking appart your dickary is to show the outrageous assumptions that you are making about me (without cause) and the pidgeonhole questions you’re asking and “proofs” that you’re requiring. So as long as you’re telling me about my “persecution complex,” I have nothing more to say to you regarding the Bible, off topic as this responce may have been.

Not that this whole conversation isn’t off topic…so yeah…um, gay couples are cool, huh?

Oh, and it’s not too much to ask for respect for the beliefs of the person that you’re talking too. I respect Atheists. Maybe they understand God far better than I do. Point being, I can never really know until I sympathize with their view and get in their shoes instead of telling them what they believe and how their minds work and so on.

P.S. And I respect that you have actually read the Bible…though cover to cover? Hell, you coulda skipped Generations and I woulda been fine with that. But anyway, I agree with understanding fully what you disagree with. And I admit that I was presumptuous myself in accusing you of not understanding the source material without truly knowing that…though I gotta say, your understanding does not exactly shine through in your arguments.