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Zeitgeist
- Thread starter SPX
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Frankly i cant believe anyone would argue for the validity of a literal global flood
What makes more logical sense, that local floods happen the world over and are a big deal, as they are when they happen today. Its a big news item when a massive flood hits.
Or that the chinese and egyptians of the time just didnt notice they were underwater.......
Why is there no mention of the flood in the records of Egyptian or Chinese civilizations which existed at the time?
The choices are A: it didnt happen or B: they didnt notice they were all underwater.
When we throw in all the other evidence against it, including geological and biological the answer has to be obvious
Problems with a Global Flood
some of my favourites
The only evidence for a global flood is that people all over the globe tell flood storys, but this is easily explained by the premise floods happen and they stick in the memorys of people
They are still talking about a "great flood" in this area,(will no doubt be talking about it for generations to come) They havent yet fully recovered, is that evidence this flood was "global" ?. Of course not.
There is masses of evidence against the premise of a global flood, and the only argument we have here is people the world over remember a flood, which is what you would get with localised floods the world over.
Given the evidence and simple logical explanations i think we can put this one to rest
Problems with a Global Flood, 2nd edition
What makes more logical sense, that local floods happen the world over and are a big deal, as they are when they happen today. Its a big news item when a massive flood hits.
Or that the chinese and egyptians of the time just didnt notice they were underwater.......
Why is there no mention of the flood in the records of Egyptian or Chinese civilizations which existed at the time?
The choices are A: it didnt happen or B: they didnt notice they were all underwater.
When we throw in all the other evidence against it, including geological and biological the answer has to be obvious
Problems with a Global Flood
some of my favourites
The only evidence for a global flood is that people all over the globe tell flood storys, but this is easily explained by the premise floods happen and they stick in the memorys of people
They are still talking about a "great flood" in this area,(will no doubt be talking about it for generations to come) They havent yet fully recovered, is that evidence this flood was "global" ?. Of course not.
There is masses of evidence against the premise of a global flood, and the only argument we have here is people the world over remember a flood, which is what you would get with localised floods the world over.
Given the evidence and simple logical explanations i think we can put this one to rest
Problems with a Global Flood, 2nd edition
Fellas - some pretty good arguments for both 'sides' but I'd like to point out something about the religious debate that I feel very strongly.
HOW the universe came to exist is one question - physics or god's creation. But I find that one question has nothing to do with man-made religions. The absolute point for me is whether Jesus (Sticking to Christianity cos it's in my 'hood) was some kind of super-natural walking on water type sent to save us or he was not. If he was not, then I think the whole deal is based on a lie.
I hate being lied to. For me if you believe stuff in the bible then you might as well believe the earth is ~6000 years old. Why is the age of the earth not supposed to be taken seriously but other parts are? They are all equally ridiculous if you ask me. I actually think there are plenty of clever religious people and it's a neat trick for them to avoid thinking about the parts of religion which are just silly. The need to believe in this stuff make people do craaaaaazy shit and really good at ignoring glaring evidence.
Also things like the following are enough alone to make me NOT believe: so JC was sent to 'save' us and we were to pass around his 'message' so that we could all be 'saved'. All well and good, that's fine and dandy etc. But, why would god send his saving son to the middle east, totally ignoring most of the humans in the world who could not even possibly get to hear about him for over a millenia? God seems to love people in the middle east but he could not care less about the Aboriginal people of Australia or NZ for instance.
That argument is more than enough for me to call 'bollocks to Christianity it is obvious beyond belief that it's made up by humans! C'mon folks! It's ridiculous. There is no other term for it.
No-one would tiptoe around my 'belief' if it was based on the work of Ian Fleming -they'd say it was silly to believe a world where the baddie does everything possible to allow the good guy to escape. No laws will be written to protect my belief that 007 is the second coming. Well I refuse to tip-toe around people who think JC made the blind see, walk on water, feed 5000 tiny little crumbs to make bread go around (!) or 'ascend to heaven' (how?) and rise from the dead. Who really thinks a guy called Moses went up a hill and god gave him some laws on stone tablets?
REALLY? I'm trying to keep a straight face but it's really hard!
Seriously though I think the reason people don't enjoy religion being questioned is that we have been conditioned NOT TO QUESTION IT. This is the sole reason I don't think religious people should be locked up as insane. If someone had 100% conviction rabbits talked to them you would think they need to be in a secure unit. It's only by conditioning for centuries that we do not think the same about religion.
There is no possible way Hinduism and Christianity and Islam can all be correct. So which one? is?
HOW the universe came to exist is one question - physics or god's creation. But I find that one question has nothing to do with man-made religions. The absolute point for me is whether Jesus (Sticking to Christianity cos it's in my 'hood) was some kind of super-natural walking on water type sent to save us or he was not. If he was not, then I think the whole deal is based on a lie.
I hate being lied to. For me if you believe stuff in the bible then you might as well believe the earth is ~6000 years old. Why is the age of the earth not supposed to be taken seriously but other parts are? They are all equally ridiculous if you ask me. I actually think there are plenty of clever religious people and it's a neat trick for them to avoid thinking about the parts of religion which are just silly. The need to believe in this stuff make people do craaaaaazy shit and really good at ignoring glaring evidence.
Also things like the following are enough alone to make me NOT believe: so JC was sent to 'save' us and we were to pass around his 'message' so that we could all be 'saved'. All well and good, that's fine and dandy etc. But, why would god send his saving son to the middle east, totally ignoring most of the humans in the world who could not even possibly get to hear about him for over a millenia? God seems to love people in the middle east but he could not care less about the Aboriginal people of Australia or NZ for instance.
That argument is more than enough for me to call 'bollocks to Christianity it is obvious beyond belief that it's made up by humans! C'mon folks! It's ridiculous. There is no other term for it.
No-one would tiptoe around my 'belief' if it was based on the work of Ian Fleming -they'd say it was silly to believe a world where the baddie does everything possible to allow the good guy to escape. No laws will be written to protect my belief that 007 is the second coming. Well I refuse to tip-toe around people who think JC made the blind see, walk on water, feed 5000 tiny little crumbs to make bread go around (!) or 'ascend to heaven' (how?) and rise from the dead. Who really thinks a guy called Moses went up a hill and god gave him some laws on stone tablets?
REALLY? I'm trying to keep a straight face but it's really hard!
Seriously though I think the reason people don't enjoy religion being questioned is that we have been conditioned NOT TO QUESTION IT. This is the sole reason I don't think religious people should be locked up as insane. If someone had 100% conviction rabbits talked to them you would think they need to be in a secure unit. It's only by conditioning for centuries that we do not think the same about religion.
There is no possible way Hinduism and Christianity and Islam can all be correct. So which one? is?
Great post,
I think this is the reason some people still want the literal flood to be a real event, which all the evidence says it cannot have been.
If the noah story is just a story, then as its presented in the bible as the literal truth ,its a lie.
If the noah narrative is a lie, then in legal parlance the bible becomes an "unreliable" witness.
If we can see one segment is an obvious lie, then how do we know any of it is the truth ?
If we can clearly see one segment is "just a story", then why isnt all of it just a collection of old myths. And the evidence is pretty clear not only are they old storys, they are not even original, many are rehashed from earlier myths. Noah/Gilgamesh being a prime example.
For god to be the truth, the bible has to be the truth, for the bible to be the truth, the great flood has to be the truth.
Prove its not, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down
Which is why some of the faithful subscribe to ideas like this
Bugger the logic this has to be true, because if its not......... the whole story perishes, the house of cards comes crashing down.
So in order to prop up one falsehood, you need to subscribe to all the falsehoods below. one weak link and the chain is broken.
Since they are mutually exclusive on many many levels, they cant all be correct, thats impossible.
What is possible, is thay can all be wrong............
stonehart
Paranormal Adept
Amen!
Digital Trickster
Paranormal Maven
“Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?”
-Arthur C. Clarke, author
God yes. Still is as true as it's ever been. Good quote. You made a decision about your next atomisers?
Digital Trickster
Paranormal Maven
Thanks
Going to try the CE2s you told me about and the boge 510 lr 2.0 cartos and see which works best and lasts longest.goggsmackay said:
I agree.
It's interesting when I try to debate this with my parents (which I really try not to do for a variety of reasons). It's pretty much impossible for them to separate the idea of god with the idea of the Christian god. In their mind, either no god exists at all or he is Yahweh. And that's just all there is to it.
I think there's literally something in their brain that keeps them from even being able to comprehend the concept of a god existing but not being the god of the Bible.
goggsmackay said:
Well in all reality most people who are believers and try to tell others about Christianity genuinely believe in what they're saying. They may be wrong. But they believe it and come from position of sincerity.
As for what the founders of Christianity believed, I really have no idea. Maybe Paul really did have some sort of experience on the road to Damascus--whether it was a real spiritual experience, hallucination, or whatever else--that brought him to a point of conviction about the truth of Jesus's divine nature.
In fact, I often wonder this about Joseph Smith. Living in the land of Mormonism, I am pretty much assaulted by it every day. Did Joseph Smith really have some experience that he interpreted as genuinely supernatural? Or did he just make it all up? Who knows.
goggsmackay said:
Well to be fair, I think that you can make a reasoned argument that a lot of what the Bible teaches was meant by the writers to be interpreted allegorically--or spiritually--and that it wasn't until latter day fundamentalists started interpreting things literally (like the story of Adam and Eve) that this even became an issue.
Even St. Augustine, eminent church father, firmly believed in the symbolic nature of the creation story, saying:
"There is no way of preserving the literal sense of the first chapter of Genesis , without impiety, and attributing things to God unworthy of him."
Parables and symbolism have been used to impart greater truths since the dawn of time. I don't see any reason why Christianity should not be afforded the same privilege.
goggsmackay said:
Yes, these were the kind of arguments that caused me to leave Christianity.
Playing the Devil's Advocate, I could say that Paul seems to assert in Romans ch. 2 that those who have not heard of Christ will only be judged based upon what they know, i.e. "the law written upon their hearts."
But yes, the whole thing is ridiculous, to me at least. If God wants people to know something, then why doesn't he just employ direct revelation? Why does he entrust this whole process to a book and missionaries?
Etc. . . I really could go on and on.
goggsmackay said:
This is true, but I do think that throughout history religious people have had supernatural--or at least unexplainable--experiences. I never did. But I have heard a lot of stories, and not just from Christians, about things happening that I certainly have no explanation for. I think this is at least a form of evidence that SOMETHING may be out there . . . some kind of supernatural or spiritual reality that we don't really understand.
In fact, as I was talking about earlier, I think it may be a combination of these real experiences and local mythology that has brought many religions into the world. That is, people were having real experiences . . . but they did not really know how to interpret them. Nevertheless, if that is the case, then it means there is a core reality to religions and that much at least should be respected.
Lastly, I will say that while I wish I had never been raised Christian, and feel in some ways that it was very detrimental to me psychologically, I also voluntarily continue to embrace certain aspects of Christianity. I think that whether real or fictitious, the biblical Jesus was an OK dude who said a lot of worthwhile things. I still use some of these principles to guide my conduct, like "doing unto others as I would want them to do unto me." Likewise, I still celebrate Christmas and choose to maintain at least some focus on Jesus when I do so. Because while the Old Testament is full of horrors, and Paul was kind of a douche, shoe-horned in between is Jesus, who continues to inspire me.
And while non-believers tend to focus only on the negative impact of Christianity, such as the inquisition and the crusades and the Salem witch trials, there is a long history of POSITIVE things that Christianity has brought into the world as well. One needs only to do a modicum of research to realize that the vast majority of charities in operation today are in some way connected to a church or religious organization. And you don't have to look too far to find someone who was once making terrible choices--whether drugs or criminal activity or whatever else--who only turned their life around because of religion.
With this particular issue, it's easy to let emotions get in the way of sound judgment. But it's important, regardless of what you believe, to remain fair and unbiased and, as cheesy as it may sound, to consider other people's feelings.
stonehart
Paranormal Adept
The interesting thing about the latter books in the new testaments is that it is almost certain that they could not have been written until very late on .. we know for sure that the Gospel according to John due to the use of such language as "Logos" places the work to around c500CE as it was not used in philosophical writing until that time clearly marking through language the time and place in which it was written.
Place against that the latter books and we see dates as far out as 800 to 1000CE and much latter. What this shows is a tradition of editing and addition to what is meant to be the complete revelation of GOD as many fundamentalists would say. It however is not and just like epics such as the Mahabharata (Far better work in my opinion) it developed over time to become a religious work reflecting the bias and attitudes of the hierarchy at the time the edits and additions occur.
I'm certainly not an expert so I have to rely on those who are, but everything I've read suggests that even secular scholars don't date any books beyond the 2nd century. And my understanding is that as new manuscripts and other archaeological discoveries have been found, those dates get pushed closer and closer to the time when the apostles are actually supposed to have lived.
I do understand what you mean about the development and evolution of ideas. When I was a Christian I started to have serious questions about the depiction of the afterlife in Christianity. It didn't escape me that what we find written about the afterlife in the OT doesn't really match what is said in the NT. Even knowing what little I did about other religions and ideas floating around the Roman Empire at the time, it seemed obvious that Christianity was a fusion of Judaism and these other foreign elements.
I was especially wondering about the idea of hell. This idea as we know it just doesn't really show up in the OT. And then instantly it is a hot topic in the New Testament. This just didn't make sense to me.
Its not surprising
Its an "addition" to the mythology, no doubt serving a function as a system of control
Hell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Its an "addition" to the mythology, no doubt serving a function as a system of control
sorry, you can't polish shite.