All about Religion. (Rights, wrongs, Theocracy, etc.)

[Radiant]

If there were three or more mistakes, the copy was burned.  These scribes took their jobs very seriously. 

This sounds like wishful thinking, and falls foul of Occam's Razor. Given the amount of time and people involved, and well-known transcription errors in other documents, it is unreasonable to suppose that errors were never made here.

If "the Kings" had been changing the Bible as they pleased wouldn't they 1) Contradict the Bibles found in other parts of the world

They do, that's the whole point. There are several translations, and interpretations, of the Bible, and all major versions are subtly different. A major part of this is because ancient Hebrew and Greek do not translate one-on-one into modern English. Some of the verses are poetic or allegorical and would lose meaning in a "straight" translation; some of the verses use grammatical structure that does not exist in English. And opinions differ on how best to interpret certain verses.

Example? In most modern Bibles, male pronouns are used for God. This is not the case in the original Hebrew.

Example? Apocrypha. Opinions vary on which works are canonical and which are not. Some allege that the selection done by Augustine c.s. is, to some degree, arbitrary.

Example? Catholics and protestants both claim to be Christians and to follow the Bible. Both have access to the same sources. Yet they disagree anyway.

[rharpe]

Catholics and protestants both claim to be Christians and to follow the Bible. Both have access to the same sources. Yet they disagree anyway.

[Helm]

We can use Wikipedia on our own, rharpe.

[rharpe]

Hahaha! Sorry Helm... I guess I got carried away. Thought it might help some that were too lazy to look it up on their own.

[Raggit]

Those are just liberal lies from Godless "scientists!!!!" Ã, 

liberal lies

If the liberals are lying so much, then what the conservatives doing?

I was only using the phrase, "Those are just liberal lies from Godless scientists" to make a satirical point about how the  various right-wing leaning people I've dealt with have responded to my arguments.  That seems to be how they get out of answering questions and using reason, just claim that everything you believe and are saying are "liberal lies."
For the record however, nobody is perfect, and there ARE plenty of lies from both sides.

rharpe:

What I mean to say is that I never got the impression that Jesus wanted his teachings to be put into effect on a government level, or in other words, he didn't want governments passing laws that FORCED people to keep his doctrine.   
By keeping the law of God personally, I'm speaking of disciplining yourself to keep it, not wanting or allowing the government to do it for you, and everybody else.

[rharpe]

By keeping the law of God personally, I'm speaking of disciplining yourself to keep it, not wanting or allowing the government to do it for you, and everybody else.

The problem with "disciplining yourself" is that everyone does according to their own will... which is not God's will. This is why Christ came... to show us the way to His Father. I agree with you regarding the government FORCING religious beliefs... but not necessarily moral beliefs. If a society is not moral, it will self destruct. Religion is the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church.

[Helm]

The problem with "disciplining yourself" is that everyone does according to their own will... which is not God's will.

There is a little zen story encaptured in this sentence.

[Disco]

I lost a great friend once because she got influenced by 7th day adventists and had to "follow what God told her" and ended up as a radical person.

I have experienced this heart-breaking situation too, losing my best friend to radicalism. I won't get into details, as it hurts to talk [write] about it,  but I will say that he dissappeared for a year in which he fell in with some dangerous (thought admittedly non-violent) people. I was forewarded this link by a concerned mutual friend, and article about one of the things he was getting up to.

A Time For War

These days I'm just not radical enough to be his friend  .

What I mean to say is that I never got the impression that Jesus wanted his teachings to be put into effect on a government level, or in other words, he didn't want governments passing laws that FORCED people to keep his doctrine.   
By keeping the law of God personally, I'm speaking of disciplining yourself to keep it, not wanting or allowing the government to do it for you, and everybody else.

Wow, I couldn't agree more. When it is forced by theocracy I believe christian practices are under taken for the wrong reasons. I've heard some argue that you should be christian "just in case", "I'd rather be safe than sorry", things like that. How week must you be in your faith to base it on that?

[Erenan]

The least possible amount of epistemological assumptions has always been, and will always be: None. Good luck with that. Anything you hold to be correct and enduringly reliable and possible on top of that, is the subject of some sort of faith. Faith in causality, faith in gods... we're not talking strictly different things here. However much of this goes outside the scope of the thread. Excuse.

Honest question: Would you then say that every declarative sentence in your post is an assumption? For example, is your assertion that anything held to be correct and enduringly reliable is subject to faith also subject to faith?

But did he ever actually say that we should form government laws based on the Bible?  All the years I spent as a Christian, I never saw anywhere in the Bible that Jesus discussed politics, or said that laws should be made from his teachings.  I always thought they were to be followed personally.

No, I don't think Jesus ever said, "Make laws based on what I say." But that's because he wasn't there to set up a system of government on earth. He had bigger fish to fry (the salvation of mankind, raising up followers who would found the church, etc.). But would it make sense for Jesus to leave us with a whole bunch of commands and messages and then for us to ignore them whilst establishing our governments? Anyway, that doesn't mean we have to make unenforcable laws like, "Love your enemy." Outlawing the murder of your enemies is a practical example of such a commandment put into real practice in the law.

Also, entire books of the Old Testament are essentially legal documents, laws based on what they believed God had told them directly.

[Helm]

Honest question: Would you then say that every declarative sentence in your post is an assumption? For example, is your assertion that anything held to be correct and enduringly reliable is subject to faith also subject to faith?

Well if my assumption "every assumption believed to be truthful is based on faith" is in my opinion truthful, then it belongs in the set of held-as-truthful assumptions, and therefore requires faith as I said. I know where this leads to. I have no problem accepting a bit of epistemological despondency here... Language doesn't lead to any undeniable truth as far as I'm concerned, it's just a socratic organon, invented to be put to social use. The use of absolutes is inherent in language and you'll go nowhere fast trying to protect yourself from them, everything you say will draw dualistic boundries. But be wary of self-referential paradoxes, they're more sophisms based on how language and logic operate than a valid argument against them. At least not on any high level... If you try to shield yourself by what seems to be an 'error' in logic, you'll find yourself on that path, asserting absolutely nothing whatsoever and that's fine as long as you're prepared to be a solipsist. I'm not. I enjoy human interaction. Me saying that I believe something to be truthful and me accepting that there are undeniable, objective, enduring truths do not necessarily follow.

A discussion such as this (in this thread, not in our two posts. The latter is pretty useless, actually) is useful on many other levels than those that people may believe lead to truths. It tells us a lot about the people speaking, it's stimulating and enjoyable for many reasons and that's good enough for me. I hope we won't have to discuss this epistemological undercurrent much more.

[Nacho]

A thought without reading anything in this thread.

"Is really believing in supernatural things to believe in religion?"

Because I do not believe in a white bearded man creating things, a guy walking over the waters and resurrecting after being dead for thre years.

I guess that this is why many religios people "lose faith". Because all that supernatural stuff is, IMHO, crap.

But the message is still real... No matter if it was not GOD who dictated it, or if some other cultured habe repeated that message before... If the message is good, it is good.

I consider myself religious in some way, and I am totally skeptical about any form of supernatural issues, including a God. Somebody has that "atheistic religion" too?

[The Inquisitive Stranger]

Well, that all depends on what one defines the nature of God to be, now doesn't it?

[Erenan]

Helm: Yes, I see what you mean. I'm no more interested in having a conversation such as "yes, huh," "nuh uh," "yes, huh," "nuh uh" than you are. And it's really not terribly relevant to the topic of the thread anyway.

[Raggit]

I think I've organized some thoughts on God that I'd like to share.  I'm not trying to be aggressive or malicious towards any believers here, but I want to express these ideas for discussion. 

Even though I sincerely doubt God's existence, if he DOES exist, I believe he is a psychopathic sadist.  So God created angels and humans to worship him.  (That alone signals some psychopathic tendancies.)  But he wants more than just worshippers, he wants creatures that can, of free will, choose to worship him.  Afterall, who wants people to like them out of coercion?  We want to be loved by choice, or else it means nothing.

Yet, God is all knowing, all powerful.  He knows it all from beggining to end.  Thus, he knew the individuals he would create would rebel against him, and thus this evil world would come about.  In my view, if he really loved us as much as we're told, and if he had our best interests in mind, he would've created worship robots, with no free will.  It'd be kind of like a mercy killing, sparing us the pain before we even knew it.  But that probably wouldn't be enough for him.

Instead, he creates free willed creatures, and they rebel.  Now, he watches us struggle along on the earth, enduring pain and confusion.  He's actually the only one who can help us.  But he waits until we're so worn down that we can't take it any longer, and then we go to him.  (This must be very fulfilling to his ego.)
When we go to him, he says he'll help us no matter what, but we have to totally give into him.  We must do everything he says (more psychopathic still) and we have to become like little children, or sheep, and give him all control.  (More satisfaction still.)
In turn, he'll replace our will and mind with his, so that we won't perceive that we're being dominated by him, or we at least won't care.  That seems to fix our problems, but it also seems like we lose our individuality.

However, if some of us never give up due to our circumstances,  he'll burn us up in Hell. 

So we either have to become the worship robots he SHOULD'VE created us as in the beggining, or we have to face the lake of fire.

It doesn't seem logical that an all loving God would create beings he knew would rebel and be punished, just so he could have the satisfaction of us coming to him after we couldn't take it anymore. 

If he knows everything, he knew we would rebel, he knew he'd kick Satan and his angels out of Heaven and onto earth, but he must've cared more about his own ego than about our suffering. 

That doesn't sound all loving to me. 
In fact, it sounds senseless, and that's why I can't believe he exists at all.  It sounds like God was the creation of human insecurity.  An imagined force to believe in to make life seem easier.

[Vince Twelve]

Raggit,  what you're saying is that you can't believe that the Christian god exists.  Remember, there are more than one interpretations on this Earth regarding what god is and what she wants, and it's not a sure thing that any one of them is correct.  God may exist and be something completely different than any religion believes.

I personally don't know if a god or gods exist.  And it's not something that keeps me awake at night, because like you, I just can't believe that god could be such an asshole.

I suppose while I'm here, I should throw in my two cents regarding the original topic.  Bible-based legislation does exist in America.  It's spreading and it's unfortunate.  The problem with trusting an ancient book for your laws is that people can learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others, while a book doesn't.

For example, I  think the current hot topic regarding the mix of church and state is gay marriage.  There are no legitimate reasons that two people who love each other, but happen to be of the same sex, shouldn't be allowed to marry.  The reasons that people are voting such barbaric ideas into law are almost entirely based on religious beliefs.  And I'm not sure that the last sentence even needed the word "almost."

I think it's unfortunate that people believe that morality is dictated by religion, and moreover, that morality needs to be legislated.  The government should be enabling its citizens to enjoy thier life.  "Pursuit of happiness" and all that.  It should not be taking away freedoms for the sole reason of furthering a religious agenda.

[nihilyst]

You talk of God as if he would be some being, that can easily be compared with a human, as if would be an old long-bearded man, sitting on the clouds following the evolution of humankind as if it was a TV show. You can, of course, think like this, and if you do, I don't wonder, that you call him "a psychopathic sadist". Thus, in your eyes, since this simply can't be true, you conclude, that he doesn't exist.

It may sound pathetic, but in my eyes, God is not a "being" at all, but some kind of force, that flows through everyones body and mind, and God can't be measured with anything human beings could describe properly, nor is he a puppet player and we're his puppets. I know, that fellow christians don't easily accept my set of beliefs (in fact, I never met one that actually did), and that they usually flutter with the bible, singing some songs and truly hoping, that one day there will come a man with a beard from the clouds to redeem the world. That's not what I believe, but I often attend the divine service and have been involved in many things in and around the church for fifteen years now. I could write pages to describe my set of beliefs, but unfortunately I'm not very good in phrasing such complicated things in English.

cheers
nihilyst

[Kinoko]

nihilyst - Ahh, so you're of the Church of Skywalker!

I just wanted to say how proud I am of you all ^_^ I haven't read everything here but when I saw that this thread had ballooned a bit, I thought, "Uhoh, another cat fight". You guys are totally discussing this in a mature manner though. No fights, just healthy discussion and debate.

Keep up the good work!

[Raggit]

Raggit,Ã,  what you're saying is that you can't believe that the Christian god exists.Ã,  Remember, there are more than one interpretations on this Earth regarding what god is and what she wants, and it's not a sure thing that any one of them is correct.Ã,  God may exist and be something completely different than any religion believes.

Yes, correct.Ã,  Sorry if I didn't make that specific.

Haha, I noticed that too, Kinoko.  I was beggining to wonder if this was still the AGS forums.

So, are you going to reward us, Kinoko??? 

[The Inquisitive Stranger]

For example, IÃ,  think the current hot topic regarding the mix of church and state is gay marriage.Ã,  There are no legitimate reasons that two people who love each other, but happen to be of the same sex, shouldn't be allowed to marry.Ã,  The reasons that people are voting such barbaric ideas into law are almost entirely based on religious beliefs.Ã,  And I'm not sure that the last sentence even needed the word "almost."

What about people who are against the institution of marriage altogether because it promotes heteronormativity? Are they acting entirely on religious beliefs?

[Kinoko]

So, are you going to reward us, Kinoko???Ã, 

Nah.