The Faith & Religion mega Thread

Originally Posted by moxieman99 Understanding the Bible will certainly help people be good, moral, citizens, and teach them intellectual humility, but it will do nothing about science.

I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, "Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him." The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayers for heavenly guidance instituted his imitations. He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way. -Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

Originally Posted by reed9 I will tell you a pleasant tale which has in it a touch of pathos. A man got religion, and asked the priest what he must do to be worthy of his new estate. The priest said, "Imitate our Father in Heaven, learn to be like him." The man studied his Bible diligently and thoroughly and understandingly, and then with prayers for heavenly guidance instituted his imitations. He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him. Then he reported to the priest, who said that that was no way to imitate his Father in Heaven. The convert asked wherein he had failed, but the priest changed the subject and inquired what kind of weather he was having, up his way. -Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

See? That comes from literalism about the Bible, not understanding it. I hope BlueGospel is smart enough to now understand the difference.

Originally Posted by moxieman99 See? That comes from literalism about the Bible, not understanding it. I hope BlueGospel is smart enough to now understand the difference.

Alright, but how does interpreting these same stories as metaphor "help people be good, moral, citizens, and teach them intellectual humility"?

Originally Posted by bluegospel Wrong. God created everything

Exactly. God created everything, including the human, and one of the properties with which he imbued that human was pride. Can you really not see your self-contradiction there? Because it's pretty obvious.

Originally Posted by bluegospel which was initially good, including free will--which is 100% good. Like a glass of water. A glass of water is arguably good. It's not bad, it's good. If I swish the water around in the glass it basically stays in the glass. It moves about, but basically stays put in the glass. Imagine water had a mind of its own (I realize this is silly). That's not necessarily bad. For this illustration God decided to create water to have a mind of its own, to move about as it pleases, and in his estimation this was good.

Why do I keep hearing "mmmmkay?" at the end of these sentences?

The quality of this argument is just awful. The good/bad/indifferent value of any object depends entirely on context. A glass of water is very good to have if you're thirsty, but it's pretty awful if someone spills it on this lady: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...ons-tears.html

Originally Posted by bluegospel Now, you have two among other scenarios: 1) All the water everwhere converges on the surface of the earth. The result--all life on earth, wiped out. 2) Water is well behaved, acting with just the properties we now know it to have. It's useful and beneficial for life. That's free will! It's good as God creates it. The course the creatures take who exercise it may be good, may be bad. As God created it, it's good.

So what you're saying here is, you have no idea what free will means.

If God created water, and imbued it with certain properties, then the water will behave exactly as God created it to.

Originally Posted by moxieman99 First, nobody said that everything could be distilled into science. The problem comes when someone tries to portray something as science when it isn't. That's why the Bible cannot be allowed into science class and cannot be allowed to decide which science theories should be taught in science class. Second, science is not an "area of life." It is a subject of intellectual pursuit. Intellectual curiousity is an area of life. Understanding the Bible will certainly help people be good, moral, citizens, and teach them intellectual humility, but it will do nothing about science.

Ditto, but I'd also add that if you truly applied the lessons of the Bible to every facet of life, you'd be arrested, because many of the things taught in the Bible are illegal.

And with good reason, because they're also immoral.

Originally Posted by reed9 Alright, but how does interpreting these same stories as metaphor "help people be good, moral, citizens, and teach them intellectual humility"?

The Bible has two purposes. The first, and foremost, is the creation and instillation of a creation myth and identity for the jews, to set them apart from the other peoples of the middle East at the time. The stories Twain alluded to are part of that.

The second purpose is teaching a particular version of how to be a good, moral, humble, person, drawing its strength from the religious dictates set forth in the creation myth and ethnic identity in the first purpose.

Originally Posted by moxieman99 The Bible has two purposes. The first, and foremost, is the creation and instillation of a creation myth and identity for the jews, to set them apart from the other peoples of the middle East at the time. The stories Twain alluded to are part of that. The second purpose is teaching a particular version of how to be a good, moral, humble, person, drawing its strength from the religious dictates set forth in the creation myth and ethnic identity in the first purpose.

I'm not arguing what the purpose of the Bible may or may not be. I'm asking whether people do, in fact, get their morals from it and if so, how that happens? Hypothetically, if someone with complete ignorance of the extra-biblical religious traditions were to read the whole Bible, what moral teaching would they come away with? Is the Bible a good source of moral teachings? A better source than other myths?

It seems to me that people come to the Bible with their own moral intuitions already developed, that the reason different people find different morals in the Bible is that, in fact, they interpret the Bible through their own morality and find justifications within it for what they already believe or want to believe.

Originally Posted by DJ Shaji I would like to mention one thing that has been by and large ignored in this discussion; supposing that the world was in fact created by God ( which many contributors to this thread believe) the logical question that follows this assumption would be - which one? Every religion of the world has credible texts that authenticates their belief system. How can you determine which one is true? And only one can be, for all religions are mutually exclusive. So, even if those who believe do defeat us atheists, the battle is but half won.

I like this line of thought.

AFAIK, most religions have their origin in a particular person. If not, they are usually oriented around a particular person, or at least that person's teaching.

The doctrine of Christ is unique because not only do we have a history (sic) beginning before the creation, through the apocolypse, but we have a collection of books, each allegedly cowritten by unique people in unique styles, and by God himself. We have a framework of the form of God being three persons; God the Father, who is holy and yet to whom we have access through Christ, his Son; God the Son, through whom, by faith, we have access to absolute forgiveness from every sin we've ever committed; and God the Holy Spirit who is a witness & a deposit in the spirit of believers guaranteeing the promises and the Word of God.

Muhammed was bold enough to write the Quran. But no human was ever so bold and/or authorized as Christ, who stated, "I am the way, the truth and the light. No one comes to the Father but through me." If every religion really is "mutually exclusive," Christ is inarguably the only resolution to sin and death, which are pretty certain for all of us.

But honestly, the little I do know about other religions, suggests the world's religions are not mutually exclusive. Muhammed gives flex to Jews and Christians. Hinduism is quite open to just about anything. Buddhism pretty much gives it's followers discretion to find their own way to "Nirvana." I've never heard about any religion besides Christ say, point blank, "there's one way to God."

He tricked his wife into falling downstairs, and she broke her back and became a paralytic for life; he betrayed his brother into the hands of a sharper, who robbed him of his all and landed him in the almshouse; he inoculated one son with hookworms, another with the sleeping sickness, another with gonorrhea; he furnished one daughter with scarlet fever and ushered her into her teens deaf, dumb, and blind for life; and after helping a rascal seduce the remaining one, he closed his doors against her and she died in a brothel cursing him.

Originally Posted by moxieman99 See? That comes from literalism about the Bible, not understanding it. I hope BlueGospel is smart enough to now understand the difference.

If the point of this illustration is that faith and morality should be taken only casually, then I think that nothing can be more profane, quite honestly (not that Mark Twain is an antichrist or something).

Originally Posted by SL00b A glass of water is very good to have if you're thirsty, but it's pretty awful if someone spills it on this lady: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...ons-tears.html

The water in itself can never be awful. The fact that it spilled on the lady is awful. There's nothing awful about the glass of water.

Originally Posted by SL00b If God created water, and imbued it with certain properties, then the water will behave exactly as God created it to.

Only in the absence of endowing it with free will. That's my whole point. If water were endowed with free will, it could act destructively, against the will of it's creator, or in step with its creator.

Am I the only one here reading and seeing bluegospel disregarding all the other religions than Christianity still accepting the fact that he knows nothing much about them? You seem to be contradicting yourself every now and then.

Originally Posted by linuxlover.chaitanya Am I the only one here reading and seeing bluegospel disregarding all the other religions than Christianity still accepting the fact that he knows nothing much about them?

No, I think most the people here agree with you on that.

You seem to be contradicting yourself every now and then.

How so?

Originally Posted by bluegospel If the point of this illustration is that faith and morality should be taken only casually, then I think that nothing can be more profane, quite honestly (not that Mark Twain is an antichrist or something).

No, the point of the illustration is that God as described in the Old Testament is an evil being and an awful moral example and that taking the Old Testament literally is an invitation for disaster, and that anyone concerned with morality ought to stand is united opposition to those who draw their (im)moral inspiration from it.

Originally Posted by bluegospel If every religion really is "mutually exclusive," Christ is inarguably the only resolution to sin and death, which are pretty certain for all of us.

Huh?

Jesus Christ may have CLAIMED to be the only resolution to sin and death, but that hardly makes his claim the truth. On what basis do you claim that CHrist's resolution is "inarguable."

Use your head for something besides a hatrack, blue.

Originally Posted by moxieman99 Huh? Jesus Christ may have CLAIMED to be the only resolution to sin and death, but that hardly makes his claim the truth. On what basis do you claim that CHrist's resolution is "inarguable."

On the basis that no other religion offers any remedy--to sin and death.