Dawkins' Atheist Bus

[Chris]

Chris, you act like the "crimes" of Christians are in the past-tense.

No I don't. But it's not like Christian nations are marauding others now. And the Iraq War isn't an example because that wasn't sincerely motivated by ANY IDEAS OF THE BIBLE, as was any previous war.

And the gay-bashers have forgotten the "he who is without sin..." thing. So again, not real Christianity. You could say there's some connection, if not intentional, but the same argument goes for Social Darwinism and atheism.

 

[Chris]

I think you drank too much of the kool-aid. Regardless of what you may have read in a Chick tract when you were 5, no, "child sacrifice" was not "common" in any culture, ever. That's bullshit propaganda ancient Israel used to get its army all riled up and ready to slaughter warring tribes.

The Israelites raped and pillaged. Tons of times. Remember those verses? I sure do.

If you *really* think the Old Testament is offering some sort of viable, preferable alternative to more "savage" societies of the time, you're nuts. It was part and parcel of its time.

I didn't say the Jews weren't warlike themselves. I'm not even saying their way was neccesarily right. But I'm not going to romanticize pagans either, and neither should you if you're going to get so worked up about the things some "Christians" have done.

And I don't know if I buy that about the sacrifices. There's no way we could really know whether some cultures did or didn't practice such things now. But of course cultures have practiced things like that, it was common throughout the world. You could easily in turn say that the argument that sacrifices never happened was made by rich, sheltered intellectuals who just can't believe those wise, peaceful pagans were capable of such things, and are eager to discredit anything Judeao-Christian. I'm not saying I know either way. But I don't have this unrelenting agenda to make Christians out to be worse than they are.

 

[nomadthethird]

First, I don't accept the term "pagan", it's a derogation and it unnecessarily lumps together cultures and religions that have nothing to do with one another.

As I've made abundantly clear in several threads lately, I think violence has been a constant in human history. I do not "romanticize" any culture in that regard. Not even our own--I do not believe we are any less "barbaric" than the ancient Jews or any other ancient people. We routinely sacrifice humans at the altar of Mammon, the God of Money/Oil, in all sorts of ways--in pointless wars, by refusing to educate and properly take care of people in our ghettos, by putting our own interests ahead of others in the third world and letting people starve, etc.

I don't have any unrelenting agenda, unless acknowledging facts and refusing to excuse a tradition or institution for its vile acts because some people who believe in its precepts are nice people is an "agenda"...

 

[Chris]

Know anything about the Peoples' Temple/Jim Jones? I do. Actually, his beliefs were much more tolerant and enlightened than Jesus'.

followed by...

He was a masochist with a God complex, just like Jesus. As his meth use got worse and worse, so did his paranoia, and he ended up planning and executing a mass suicide based on resistance to an imaginary breakup plot by the CIA. All so senseless. Just like all of the Deaths-By-Jesus.

I meant to say "look at who's teaching and EXAMPLE" was closest to the truth...

still... I do know about Jim Jones. I know a good deal about various religions. And Jim Jones' example clearly disqualified him. Fuck's sake. Meth habit. Mass suicides.

 

[nomadthethird]

Not everyone who reasonably admits the possibility of a higher power is a fundie.

but I'm just not going to be the rabid, intolerant, fundie-equivalent of an atheist either. The hate on this thread is like the atheist version of those "God Hates Fags" assholes.




But if you studied Christ's teaching honestly, it's quite clear that the "fanged", warlike versions of Christianity are much further from what it's meant to be.

So being critical of Christianity and the hateful things many Christians have done is first of all necessarily "atheistic" (huh?), and second of all intolerant? What?

Did anyone say people shouldn't be able to believe in Christianity? No. Did anyone say they wanted to strip you of your right to believe? No.

I don't hate anyone. I have a problem with ideologies that are responsible for hateful, violent acts, and that I won't apologize for.

And don't tell me "if I studied Christ's teaching honestly", I have studied Christ's teachings, I did it for years. I gave it years of my life, and you know what? It didn't add up. It didn't stack up against facts.

 

[nomadthethird]

the curse on Cain thing never implicated black people obv, this was just a racist excuse. Nothing to do with the teachings of Christianity.




No, when all people act hateful they're acting "savage", I also implicated Christian cultures have also acted savagely. Humanity is savage when it acts in it's self interest. Please stop trying to find some non-existent prejudice here by picking through needless semantic details.

The curse on Caanan, the son of Moses, most certainly DID implicate black people in the minds of many, many Christians. I suggest you learn a little more about racism and Christianity in the American South.

 

[nomadthethird]

The New Testament very clearly and openly condemns homosexuality. Want verses?

 

[nomadthethird]

Jesus. Fuck's sake! Wine drinking. Mass martyrdoms.

 

[Chris]

First, I don't accept the term "pagan", it's a derogation and it unnecessarily lumps together cultures and religions that have nothing to do with one another.

Paganism is something I know a bit about, and have explored myself. I didn't mean to use it as a derogation either. And it doesn't necessarily imply human sacrifice, though there usually is the concept that people have to defer to higher powers. That said, it's all basically based on the same universal laws and ideas. Christianity even exists in the same cosmology with it's same laws and processes and fundamentals of rituals. That's why there still had to be a payment for people's sins with Christ. Religion is universal. The difference in the various religions usually is more a simple matter of which power or values they believe in and align with. But paganism, in it's various degress of comlpexity, is still a universal set of assumptions and traditions.

As I've made abundantly clear in several threads lately, I think violence has been a constant in human history. I do not "romanticize" any culture in that regard. Not even our own--I do not believe we are any less "barbaric" than the ancient Jews or any other ancient people. We routinely sacrifice humans at the altar of Mammon, the God of Money/Oil, in all sorts of ways--in pointless wars, by refusing to educate and properly take care of people in our ghettos, by putting our own interests ahead of others in the third world and letting people starve, etc.

Agreed.

I don't have any unrelenting agenda, unless acknowledging facts and refusing to excuse a tradition or institution for its vile acts because some people who believe in its precepts are nice people is an "agenda"...

I acknowledge all those facts too. I just don't think they were the product of the teachings of Christ. Sorry about the agenda thing, but you seem so much more down on Christianity when the problem is just people being assholes.

 

[Chris]

The curse on Caanan, the son of Moses, most certainly DID implicate black people in the minds of many, many Christians. I suggest you learn a little more about racism and Christianity in the American South.

in the minds of many, many Christians

I know about racism and the South, half of my family is Southern, though fortunately not racist. Christ was Jewish, and he meant his message for everyone. The racists were idiots.

 

[nomadthethird]

Paganism is something I know a bit about, and have explored myself. I didn't mean to use it as a derogation either. And it doesn't necessarily imply human sacrifice, though there usually is the concept that people have to defer to higher powers. That said, it's all basically based on the same universal laws and ideas. Christianity even exists in the same cosmology with it's same laws and processes and fundamentals of rituals. That's why there still had to be a payment for people's sins with Christ. Religion is universal. The difference in the various religions usually is more a simple matter of which power or values they believe in and align with. But paganism, in it's various degress of comlpexity, is still a universal set of assumptions and traditions.


I acknowledge all those facts too. I just don't think they were the product of the teachings of Christ. Sorry about the agenda thing, but you seem so much more down on Christianity when the problem is just people being assholes.

Nothing is "universal", I don't really know what you mean by this, but I doubt I agree with you here.

I don't believe you can pick one verse from a book, when it suits you, when you like it's message, and then ignore the rest, while still claiming Divine Inspiration for this book. In my mind, that is hypocritical to the nth degree.

I'm sure a lot of people mean well when they choose to believe in Christianity, but that does not negate the significance Christianity has as an institution, and what it stands for semiotically, and what it functions as politically. Trying to separate the tree from its fruits is something I don't think Jesus would have done, do you?

 

[nomadthethird]

Yes, I know Christ was Jewish. My father is Jewish. What is your point? I'm not sure what that has to do with racism in the south.

The Bible is full of lies, bigotry, hypocrisy, and superstitions. I'm sorry if this is hard for you to understand, but this is not my idea of a holy book.

 

[Chris]

Which moral choices people make and their alignments or non-alignments aren't univeral, but the processes and traditions of paganism totally are.

 

[nomadthethird]

Which moral choices people make and their alignments or non-alignments aren't univeral, but the processes and traditions of paganism totally are.

I still don't know quite what you mean.

 

[Chris]

btw, I tend to totally agree with you, and most everyone else on here, on social issues,

and by Old Testament standards I'd probably had been stoned to death by now, as would a lot of us I suppose.

this is why I meant to stay off the thread, I'm not willing to write off the possibility of a God, or to condemn all believers, whatever type... but obv it's too vague an issue to tackle, so I'd better just get off this thread.

and I haven't been taking offense at any of this btw, and I think your questions are valid.

 

[nomadthethird]

Good!

I don't want to take away anyone's right to believe whatever they want. I want people to get good information and make their choices based on that.

 

[Mr. Tea]

There are definitely ways you could tell, forensically, with pretty good accuracy, how a given set of bone remains had come to be killed. In 1921, the time when the Wikipedia article claims these discoveries were made, these forensic techniques did not exist. If you check their "reference", it is a Bible verse.

OK, but just because something is written in the Bible that doesn't mean it necessarily has no basis in historical fact, even if it is preserved in the form of a necessarily biased account. The relevant passage mentioned in that article hardly lets the Hebrews off the hook, as it describes the Hebrews themselves sacrificing their firstborn.

No single ideology has a monopoly on fucking shit up, but don't expect me to pretend like your ideology of choice, esp if it's Christianity, is somehow above, or different, or better, in kind and type than the others in this respect.

Clearly not 'my' ideology of choice, but I take your point.

And really, who knows? If we had different beliefs earlier, maybe we would've made better scientific discoveries earlier, and we would've gotten rid of more superstitions earlier and maybe circumvented some of the slaughter in the name of God/Christ.

Maybe, who knows? An alternative history in which (say) Manichaeism beat Christianity to become the official religion of Rome, or in which the Ottoman Turks overran 17th-century Europe, would be pretty fertile grounds for an interesting speculative historical novel, I imagine.

 

[Chris]

I still don't know quite what you mean.

I'm sorry, this would take to long to get into... but I guess I could just say that on a lot of traditional levels, practitioners and believers in Animism, Hinduism, Catholic Mass, Hermeticism, Egyptian Magic, Greek Mysteries and Cults, Lutheran Litergies, Shintoism, Chaos Magicians, New Agers, etc etc... are practicing the same fundamentals of ritual based on the same assumptions. It's their values and alignments that are different. Which do happen to be crucial details. Study theurgy, liturgies, etc, and you start to realize that true or not, there are a few fundamental processes these systems work in.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I should probably also mention that it's a misunderstanding of (current) big bang theory to simply say "In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded" (as Terry Pratchett puts it). A number of current hypotheses don't involve a singularity at 'time zero', but do actually discuss the possible physical conditions before the BB - thus you have ideas like our universe 'budding off' from an existing universe, so-called chaotic inflation or bubble universe models (examples of 'eternal inflation' models), or even a big bang resulting from the energy released in a collision between oscillating space-time manifolds called 'branes'. All massively speculative, but phenomenologists are nonetheless making some headway in finding ways to make these models empirically testable, I think.

 

[nomadthethird]

OK, but just because something is written in the Bible that doesn't mean it necessarily has no basis in historical fact, even if it is preserved in the form of a necessarily biased account. The relevant passage mentioned in that article hardly lets the Hebrews off the hook, as it describes the Hebrews themselves sacrificing their firstborn.

Right...I don't doubt that maybe there were a few instances, very rare, probably during times of great stress--war or famine--where cultures that routinely used human sacrifices turned to child sacrifice (which would've been considered an especially "pure" form of human sacrifice I imagine). I just don't imagine that it was "common" anywhere, or that there were entire religions based upon it. I can see how in early Judaism it was probably outlawed because it was seen as a particularly brutal form of human sacrifice, probably extreme even at the time the Torah was written...

It's pretty well-known that in South American cultures the human sacrifices got more frequent when food got scarce or war got bloody...