Wrong thread, dude.

all threads lead to python in time.

Well, at least I wasn't targeting you.


Sal'right.

And, understand that I'm not saying the texts lack any value*, just that our confusion over them is an indicator that there probably is no God. It's a valid point of discussion, and I hadn't mentioned it in, you know, like, 5 pages. So I was due.





*I should clarify that, in my later post, when I said "2. None of the translated text or rules or etc. are relevant to our lives." I meant "relevant in any way that concerns God (i.e. He will not punish us for our adherence or lack there of to the texts in question)" and not "devoid of anything useful from a human perspective".

Logically speaking, that doesn't follow. And really, if you're talking about numerology as an example of "confusion" then that's a pretty weak case. Does the constant use of the number "40" or "seven" impact any major issue of doctrine? No.

The problem isn't that the Bible is confusing; it's that it isn't. Anyone can read it and figure out what it's saying, aside from whatever cultural peculiarities there might be in the text, such as weights and measures.

The problem is the fact that the Old Testament, the record of the religious history of (what would have been if not for Jesus) an obscure little tribe in the ancient Near East, has become annexed by Christianity and has been taken as having applicability to the Christian church. As in, the Church is the new Israel, and if God wanted his people to drive out the heathens back in B.C. days, surely he must still feel the same way today. Presto change-o, you have the Crusades.

When I speak of "confusion" I refer to impact of all the religious texts on humanity. The nitty-gritty. The dogma. The rules. Which matter, which don't. Lots of people claim to know for sure, but they all say different things.

If any of that stuff mattered to an all-powerful and loving God, we'd have had the issues straightened out long ago, and we could rely on him to continue correcting our misconceptions, mistranslations, and just plain wrong assumptions for all time.

That is a logically consistent position.

But you're assuming that these texts came from him in the first place, which is demonstrably untrue given how they completely contradict one another.

Yes, the fact that they contradict each other demonstrates that they did not all come from the same God - but believers may argue that their's did, in fact, come from God and it is the others that are "counterfeit."

So, the fact that we haven't had the aforementioned confusion straightened out demonstrates that not a single one of them came from a God who cares about what we believe.


There are a number of stages to this in which you can make logical and rational assumptions about whatever qualities God, if he exists, may have. If He exists, He's apathetic to us at best.

and that ladies and gentelmen is the point of todays narrative.

If the book is not accurate it is not the work of a deity. If it is not the work of a deity it is a book of (possibly historically based) myths. If it's a book of myths purporting it as truth is foolish.





What is this notion that topics should not be debated because there are other topics conceivably more important?

Don't you think that it's intellectually lazy to say "people disagree, therefore none of them can be right" without actually examining these people's various claims? It's the other side of the PC coin ("PC", not "P-C", lol), where everyone's right and we're all so happy to be getting along and never bring up divisive issues.

I'm not saying that you'll end up thinking "wow, X religion was totally right!" But I think the work should be done, if you're going to be serious about this. And really, from a purely logical standpoint, the fact of disagreement means that they're all wrong? In what other case is that argument viable? None that I know of. (Well, maybe the mass shifting debate.)

But one of the main problems in your argument is the fact that you're thinking of God in a Judeo-Christian sense and then rejecting him because the Judeo-Christian source texts don't fit with reality. "God is apathetic toward us"? What would cause you to conceive of God in that way? You're drawing conclusions based on assumptions that you've made about the nature and character of God.

I'm not really arguing "for" anything; I'm just saying that you need to sharpen your argument a bit if you're going to argue against the existence of God based on what people have said about him.


What I was specifically addressing is the point you were making about Hebrew numerology. I wasn't saying just that there are more important things to debate; I was saying that you were making an issue out of nothing. It would be like attempting to read the Torah in the original Hebrew and then rejecting it because you don't know how to read Hebrew. The obvious answer would be: learn Hebrew.

No, because the claim that I'm arguing against is the notion of an all powerful being that cares what we believe. If a God cared what we believe, it is a logical assumption that He'd act to make sure we all knew exactly what was expected of us.

Any religion that does not claim their God will stand in judgment of us for anything (like, say, maybe you worship the Gods of Mt. Olympus) is excluded from this line of reasoning, obviously.

But if you think he cares about Lint or eating pork or foreskin or baptism or any number of other behaviors that could get one banished to hell (or at least excluded from Heaven) then you have to explain why He would allow X number of people (which would probably number in the billions) to not be perfectly clear on these issues.

Okay, but saying "I think the Judeo-Christian tradition is wrong" is different from saying "God doesn't exist."

Okay, "The God that they describe does not exist."

And before anyone else brings it up, Free Will does not save you from this conundrum.

I want to apologize. I was wrong to say that Agent Zero uses his Judaism to cover up for his own insecurities. After reading this thread and learning more about him I have come to realize that he uses his holier than thou additude and long pointless rants to do so.

Again, I'm sorry if I offended.

YESSS! I AM SAFE.

seriously, I thought the greek gods had hell too? or at least a place of retribution for bad folk.

I'm not sure what free will has to do with any of it, but I do like the song.

I just think that your statement is open to misinterpretation because it is worded in that way. I mean, if someone wrote a biography of Abraham Lincoln that claimed he was a midget from Japan who liked elephants, you could say "the Abraham Lincoln that the author describes does not exist," but the more common phrasing would be "that's not what Abraham Lincoln is like."

Not that I'm trying to argue that there's an objective biography of God out there somewhere to which you can compare these various religious texts. I just mean that when you're talking about issues of God's existence and religion and what not, IMO you reserve the phrase "does not exist" for, well, existential statements about God and not the veracity of religious texts claiming to define him. It may seem a semantic point but I just like to avoid confusion.


You had to be a real dickwad to end up in Greek Hell. Most people just sort of flitted around the underworld as ghosty things, and the awesome people got to go to the Elysian Fields where it was all awesome and stuff.

I've never met or spoken to anyone who would positively say "I'm sure god does not exist." Because god is unobservable supposedly by superseding choice. Such a declaration would require the crutch of faith.

However we can reduce his probability to that of leprechauns and the tooth fairy.

God not withstanding, I think what most Atheists are saying, certainly myself, is that we are as convinced as a logical open minded being can be that NO myth of supernatural Deity/Creation/intervention is any thing but fiction created out of ignorance, fear, or to control populations.

These belief systems are ridiculous, contradict themselves, and should be exposed at every turn as the fallacies that they are.

I see what you're saying, and you're not wrong.

But I would suggest that the difference is that we have accurate and undeniable proof of what Abraham Lincoln was like, but no undeniable proof of what God is like, so a better analogy would be a biography of a midget from Japan who like elephants named Bob Lickensalt'n'peppa.

Now, we can't prove beyond all doubt that Bob Lickensalt'n'peppa did not exist, but without any historical evidence of him of any kind, we can safely say "somebody just made him up" and no one would think twice about it.

For some reason, God gets to keep on being explored in a way that Bob Lickensalt'n'peppa would not be.

The fact that you rule out honest spiritual searching as a possible cause for religion is one reason why this argument will never gain any traction outside of the circle of people who are either a) already convinced of it, or b) angry at mommy/daddy/their priest and want to give them the finger.

Surely it's enough to say that it's untrue, isn't it?


hey, look what this guy said

Okay, but then why do people continue to leave room in their world view for God when they would not leave room for Bob Lickensalt'n'peppa? That doesn't seem inconsistent and illogical to you?

First off, that is seriously an awesome name.

Secondly, I think that the conclusion a lot of people draw is "there's something out there" and all of these various religious traditions, in all of their diversity, are evidence for that (rather than against).

that elephant name keeps makin me think of Sir Auric of Lichtenstein...everytime I see it.

that's not illogical Hobbes but some people feel that they need a god. whether you do or not is irrelevant. I prefer to keep my personal beliefs...well personal..but my 2 best freinds are on both sides of this argument and I chalk it up to preference. one feels he needs a god to live a decent life the other thinks its hogwash.

Spiritual searching? I find my inner voices only tell me what I think. How is nutballs trying to shove ancient nonsense down your throat from infancy claiming its the TRUTH supposed to let any one "Honestly" Spiritually search. Somehow I doubt a child of any culture if removed from all religion would sit up one day and say... "I bet some one died for our sins..." from spiritual searching.

I think the group that this argument doesn't hold traction with are the indoctrinated.



All it's indicative of is our hardwired self importance. We assume that things must be here for us, created by a creature like us (but cooler).

The reality is we have nothing to do with it. We're just the most aware part of the evolved structure of the universe.

People don't want to face that they are not Beautiful and Unique Snowflakes, personally and lovingly crafted by the supreme and most important being for a purpose.

This works both ways, you know. I've seen lots of people who are absolutely determined to tear down religion because of their own experiences with it. Emotion and psychology influence this issue, no matter what you believe.

And I think that you confuse "spiritual searching" with "being taught religious dogma". I keep trying to speak of this issue broadly, but I'm always being given specific examples of hardened religious tradition in response. I'm not really talking about that stuff at all.

Well for one thing, valid or no, Religion is real. So those experiences were part of those peoples real life.

And my point was just the opposite. That there can be no true (even imagined) spiritual searching in a world dominated by whackjobs with books full of lies claimed as truth.

Nobody's saying that you have to listen to them. I don't accept the notion that people can't learn to think for themselves, even if they do have certain influences in their life as a child, religious or otherwise.

And there are lots of people who synthesize various religious traditions, rather than running from them.

Anyone can learn, but it's a long, hard, and a very emotional ride when you've been told since childhood that your doubts will put you in hell.

For the record, the idea that because a number of different peoples have "similar" myths, that there must be truth to the myths is baseless. If we go by that then there is as much proof of god as there is of the wolfman.


(I am pointing specifically to the fact that many cultures including Mesoamerican, Ancient Greek, Celtic, Hindu, Arabic, Egyptian, Japanese and Aboriginal Australian share stories of people turning into animals.)

Well, that does suck, without a doubt. And if that's what happened to you, then I am truly sorry. My mother-in-law was raised to believe that if you weren't Catholic, you were going to hell. Needless to say, she wasn't happy when her daughter started going to a Presbyterian youth group.


I'm not saying that it must be so; I'm just saying that some people choose to look at the diversity of religion in different ways. Nor am I saying that this is even a logical argument. I mean, when you're dealing with something that by definition can't be proven, logical proofs are a bit moot.

I figured. It's just I really hate when people bring that argument up.

I didn't think that we were pitting different religions against each other.
The "Confusion" that Hobbes is concerned about (and correct me if i am wrong) is that none of YAWHEH's followers can agree on anything, ever, at all. period.

And a LOVING God would have at least told HIS people what his expectations were.

Don't for me. My road to non-belief wasn't easy, but it wasn't as hard as others I've known, nor as easy as yet others.


Logic is never moot.

Just IMO and all.

Again, options A or B dude, I'm cool either way.

I've got a hankie if you need one.

This gets back to what I was saying before. Instead of just throwing your hands in the air, maybe you could read the Torah or the New Testament or the Koran (or the Book of Mormon, so nobody feels left out). And from there you can say "well I can see how this follows from this, but I don't think that follows from that." (Hunter note: I may do this myself on my blog, depending on how it goes.)

Why the connection between love and telling people what to do? Why does that follow? Maybe God wants people to figure stuff out for themselves? I'm not actually saying that I believe that; I'm just questioning where your assumptions come from.


except when it comes to human behavior :spock

Which is to say that it's kind of useless to try to apply logic to such issues past a certain point, since spirituality or religion or whatever is more about feelings than thoughts IMO. (To be simplistic about it.)

This gave me the most awesome mental image ever btw

Super Deformed Lincoln, riding the lead charge of pygmy oliphaunts.. smiley.

Because:

1. If you do what God wants, you spend eternity in paradise. If you do what God does not like, He will drop you into a burning pit of fire and brimstone for all eternity.

2. So, if He loves you, it follows He would not want to see you end up in an eternity of flaming torment. It would totally suck to see someone you love burning for eternity.

3. It then follows that, if He doesn't want to see you end up in an eternity of flaming torment, He'd make sure you knew exactly how to avoid it.

(This is all assuming, of course, someone that loves you could threaten you with Hell anyway, but that's another discussion.)

Leaving people to figure things out for themselves is completely contrary to the idea of the Lord's Judgment.


While it is true people do tend to act illogically very often, I would argue that most people would live better, happier, more fulfilling lives if they were educated in real critical thinking and applied logic to their life's problems instead of spirituality or faith.

Which, by the way, is not the same as acting like Spock. Star Trek scripts often equated a lack of emotion with logic, which is not the case at all. But I don't blame you for making the joke. I just want to be clear, because, let's face it...for all the God talk we're on a fanboy site.

I'm sorry but that is a total fallacy. Logic, (and math) can give us probabilities of the unprovable. ALL science is defined in probability.

The "God Hypothisis" may be impossible to disprove is so low in probability as to be treated as if false. In the same way (useful) Science does not pursue leprechauns or Zues.

I don't think we're speaking the same language... which is okay.

and Hobbes: I agree with you, but why posit the whole death and judgment thing to begin with? Is orthodox Christianity what we're talking about here? It's not what I've been talking about. Why assume that God abides by Christian rules if we disregard the Christian Bible?

It sounds then like the question is: what value do you perceive in a god who does not interact with the universe in any observable way. And it seems that both sides (all the various sides) have given their answer to this question, ranging from "absolutely none" to "well, there's still something.."

Since you specifically mentioned in your post that the belief you were presenting was not your own, I thought we were having a more "broad strokes" discussion, and the afterlife is a key element in the faith of many people who believe in God in our society. It's an important thing to discuss.


It's just The Lickensalt'n'peppa Effect in action again. I've only got this biography someone wrote to go on. Once I point out the inaccuracies and flat-out falsehoods in the biography, I quit worrying about Bob's existence. You continue to explore a different, hypothetical "Bob" that might still exist, but I see no point in it.

Once I am able to confidentially disregard all of the various Bob Biographies as being inaccurate to history or logically inconsistent, I've got sufficient evidence to disregard Bob entirely, IMO.

I don't see a language gap here.

You say logic is moot when the subject is unprovable. I say that that is a deliberate theist obfuscation of the truth.

Do you believe in Zues, Mermaids, fairies? Have they been DISPROVEN? No, your reason tells you that the probability of these things is ridiculously low.

We constantly confront Non-disprovable nonsense with rational thought.

To say that logic "cannot" be applied to the as yet un-proven and foreseeably unprovable is nothing but an excuse not to apply honest critical thought to the theist fantasy.

Lets take a look at good old Zeus....he's like the Flock of Seagulls of deities....used to be real cool, but now? Yeah.....

Anyway it's interesting to note that there are still small cults devoted to Zeus and the rest of the Greek Pantheon. Now while we can't disprove Zeus (sorry Hobbes, if I hijack an earlier point you made), it's easier to disprove him then the Yahweh of the Abrahamic faiths.
The Greek myths tell us that Zeus lives on Mt. Olympus and causes lightning and thunder. Well we know that lightning and thunder are caused by electrodes in the atmosphere (I probably butchered that, but oh well), and we know there's no palace of the gods atop Mt. Olympus. So it's fairly easy to dismiss Zeus as a legend, and nothing more.

Yet there are still people who worship him, and the rest of the Greek Pantheon. Why? Because they find fulfilment in their lives that way. Praying to Zeus and co. gives their lives structure, the myths of the ancient Greek faith provide them guides of how to live their lives as decent human beings.
They aren't forcing people to convert, they aren't sending suicide bombers into crowded marketplaces, they're just living their lives. Their beliefs in an antiquated religion have allowed them to live as good, upstanding human beings.
So what if we could point out to them that Zeus doesn't create thunder and lightning? What good would that do? It would destroy these people's faith in the world, in how they view reality. It would do more harm then the good of believing.

I'm bringing this all up not as a theist trying to prove the existence of G-d, I'm bringing this up as someone who 1) recognizes the good religion plays in the lives of people and 2) someone who wants to point out the folly of militant Atheism.

Remember the Simpsons episode where Lisa finds out that the founder of Springfield, gold old Jebediah, was really a thieving pirate? Why didn't she revival the truth? Because Jebediah's example, however fictional it may be, provided a guide for people to live upstanding lives.

So yes, you may be right. There may be no divine power watching over us. All of us theists, whether we pray to Yahweh, Zeus, Vishnu, Taranis, Odin, etc...., the joke may be on us. There may not be any divine presence in the universe. Yet for us it's our beliefs that provide us with a guidebook of how to live a better life, how to be a good person.
Belief in the Almighty works for us. Likewise the belief that there is no Almighty works for you. To each his own, I say. If there is nothing beyond what we can observe and study, then the joke's on us and we'll find out when our time comes.
Yet even if G-d does not exist, if believing in Him allows me to live a good, upstanding life, then that belief, however misplaced, was worth having.

Hmm.. this makes me ponder a different question to the believers: In your view, what is the distinction between a religion and a cult?

You make a lot of presumptions about Zeus' followers:

You presume they all find fulfillment in their worship of him.
You presume their lives all have structure.
You presume their worship is the source of all that structure.
You presume their worship is the source of their behavior as good, upstanding human beings.
You presume they are all decent human beings to begin with.

I know - and I think down in your heart of hearts, you know - that not every member of any religion are decent, upstanding people with fulfilling, structured lives - which means religion is not the source of upstanding people with fulfilling lives.

Ergo, the truth can do them no harm, even if they are scared of it initially.

And we covered the rest of this thirty pages ago in this thread - it is not your faith that leads to morality. If it were, you would not pick and choose which of God's commands are important, and which are trivial and don't count. We all have an innate morality that resides within us as a result of evolution and societal interaction.

Removing faith from a human will not change that.


And Glue's question about religions and cults is an excellent one. I'd love some people to weigh in with an answer.

oh that's easy, a cult has; crazy leaders who molest kids, ceremonies involving chants, candles and drinking, and followers so devout they'll do anything the leaders say.

religion is nothing like that.

its just pokin fun. don't nobody flip out kthnx

Of course there are those in every belief structure who are not good, upstanding people. And yes, mankind would probably be able to come up with a concept of morality without religious beliefs.
That goes both ways though. Mankind would still kill, oppress, and wage war on a basis of ideology, slaughtering all who did nor conform without religion. Religion is simply used as a tool to carry out these atrocities because it's available. If it were not, then the evil men of the world would find a new tool, and go back to business as usual.

Arguing that religion wouldn't be necessary to figure out right from wrong is a double-edged sword, because then you have to accept that religion isn't necessary for all the evils you attribute to it.


That's a pretty big assumption. All those Christians in the American heartland who go to church every Sunday, who accept Jesus being the son of G-d as just as much a reality as the sky being blue, all those orthodox Jews who pray three times a day at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, all of those Muslim fundamentalists willing to sacrifice their lives and the lives of their children for Allah, think about them.
If you could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that G-d does not exist, what do you expect from these people?
Do you think they'll shrug, say "oh well?" and go about their lives as good, enlightened human beings? No. You'll shatter a good amount of lives. Even years after, when the worst is over, families will still be broken, lives will still remain in ruin. The belief in G-d is a powerful one. No one's saying you can't be an Atheist. I encourage you to be one, if it makes you a better person.

Just think about what it would cost the human race to implement a secular world vision. I say it's best to live and let live. Let those who want to believe believe. Eliminating those beliefs will cause a great deal of shock that the world is probably unable to deal with, and I promise you, a secular world will still contain the same evils that are currently pegged as religion's fault.


Honestly, it's a numbers game. Christianity was once a cult, now it's a religion. It all depends on how many card carrying members you have.

I'm sorry but I'm not backing up letting billions of people be lied to. I can't believe the best course for humanity is to skulk around behind bronze age myths.

It's just more excuses.

We need to plot our course into the future knowing who we really are.

This silliness is nothing but. Einstein used the right word, It's childish.

What's so bad about growing up, finding out who we really are and that we need to create or own life's meaning? Instead of waiting around for some mythic git to bestow it upon us.

Well, I certainly thought so, but was I incorrect then to expect that it was only atheists who felt this way?


I mean I just look around at the world today (particularly in US politics) and think about how much more it costs us to keep sticking by religious world views.

I think that's a lot like saying, "We've had it for so long, we might as well not bother seeking anything different because this is all we know and we're used to it." And I disagree. It's only when you're forced to face the reality of your situation and problems that you are capable of meaningfully dealing with it. Covering it up with comforting lies only compounds the problems of the world and of human nature.