Is God a Delusion?

I don't believe in a higher power because I don't believe in magic. All aspects of science point against there being a god and since science actually proves things and gives us facts, where religion just gives us fairy tales, I'm more inclined to believe in science.
 
well so far this is a great fucking thread.

just another thought to throw in, atheism is illogical. so is religion.
1-big bang=shit, yeah yeah, i know, the whole where did it come from cliche. but really.
2-what makes you think you can know god? thats just silly.

i digress. now continue
 
disagree on the "bible isnt meant to be taken litteraly",

1 god says that its the truth
2 ive been raised to take the bible literaly ( not 100% of it cause like it says "if a kid disobeys his parents he needs stoned to death" , no i dont think thats what was trying to be said but....
3 if the bible is just the "guide lines" of life than why does it list past and future events?
4 if the bible is just the "guide lines" of life than what is the 10 commandments or are those not real??

and i beleive the "big bang" theory not to be real...... but i do thinl evolution takes place today but thats just within the animal kingdom.... and i beleive that god did "plop" us (humans) here.....

just my thoughts

 
Heres my problem with the Bible, or any religious text for that matter (I just know the Bible better than the Koran, at least for now).

You can either take this text literally, or symbolically. If you take it literally, you're either a hypocrite or just plain fucking crazy (aka, you must go around stoning people you see picking up sticks on the holy day). If you take it smybolically, its gets worse - who is to say what we should take literally or symbolically? Do we pick and choose based on the current atmosphere of our culture and the moral compass of society?

This brings me to a larger point I feel must be made; Religion and morality are exclusive. Morality is something that most (99% or greater) are born with. I believe that its a naturally occurring behavior stemming from Darwinian principles. Believe that or not, but I challenge this: Religion does not give morals, your morals can only fall within a religion.

For anyone who would declare, "No, my religion gives me the morals I need and without religion man is lost!", I pose a question. If religion is your guide to morality, then why do you follow such morals? For favor with the deity that sets them out? Goodness then it seems, is only for the sole cause of a reward in a later life, and being 'saintly' is nothing more than pandering for higher gain in the next life. How "moral" is that? IF you still answer, yes, religion is still my moral guide, I'm steering well clear of you.

The alternative is that morality is defined by something other than religion. There have been numberous studies in which participants were asked questions concerning their morality - like having to chose between saving one person in favor of five(over 95% chose to doom the single person rather than 5, nonwithstanding relationships with the endangered); or in a separate case where five patients have different organs failing, and the only option to save their lives is a innocent man in the hospital waiting room (few will ever choose to doom an innocent man to save 5 lives). In all of these studies, religion has no preferance on the outcome - you'll get the same percentage of people making either choice.

So what morals does humanity seem to live by? Its certainly not the ten commandments... if morality is a truly intrinsic human value, then the first few concerning god dont apply. I dont think humanities morals need be laid out - they are imbibed within each of us as humans, and you should know right from wrong as much as I do. However, just from some perusing, heres a good set I came across that puts the values I find most important to humans into words:

1: Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you

2: In all things, strive to cause no harm.

3: Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the

world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

4: Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but

always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly

regretted.

5: Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

6: Always seek to be learning something new.

7: Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be

ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

8: Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.

9: Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

10: Question everything.

And as for humans just being plopped here... we seem to evolve just like the rest of the animal kingdom, both physically and behaviorally. I see no reason to make a special exception for us.

 
If only we could break up the quote and reply to sections at a time... Well I'll try my best to makes sense so you know which part I am replying to.

First off, I agree that taking religious texts literally is a BAD idea. There is no way to be a functioning member of today's society if you truly follow the Bible literally. And on the opposite spectrum, interpreting symbolically also leads to problems as you suggested, but I disagree where you say it gets worse. The tradition of religious discussion has been almost entirely lost by both scholars and especially common people in our society, but throughout older Western history it was a very common topic. A whole field called hermeneutics (or exegesis, they are similar) deals with interpreting the Bible. The process varies between denominations, but generally one looks at many things such as the historical, societal, geographical, and political context of the Biblical author, the editing the book or section has gone through, the translations and original language, and literary devices used. (Just to be clear, the people doing the analysis consider the context of the text, not the present context in which the analysis is being done.) Obviously different people come to different conclusions, but each Church generally agrees that the conclusion of the interpretation must fall within acceptable limits of doctrine.

Maybe one example would help. In the Book of Judges, Chapter 3, verses 12-30, there is a little known story of a guy named Ehud. Basically the Israelites are getting dominated by this other tribe and call out to the Lord for help. In the story, the Lord then sends Ehud to save the people. Briefly, Ehud tricks the obese enemy king, cuts open his stomach, steals his treasure, and runs away. If you look at this literally, then you would think it's okay to murder and steal to help your friends. But when you use exegesis, you see that it was written in a time of persecution and affliction for the Jews and a story meant to provide solace and reassurance to the people. The passage also emphasizes that Ehud is just a common man, showing that God does not give preference to those who are seen as powerful or special on Earth.

This lead me to some questions, namely well then, who is right? And how are we possibly supposed to get anything out of the Bible without twenty years of study learning all this interpretation stuff? I don't think anyone can answer the first question. Part of the answer that I have come up with to the second one is to focus on the obvious messages in the Bible. Especially in the New Testament, you cannot read it and disagree that Jesus's message is love and justice and care for other humans unless are incredibly close-minded or have no functioning central nervous system (Ex of both: Fred Phelps) And it is also a horrible habit that we have of using single verses as basis for theology. That is NOT how the Bible is meant to be written. One or a few verses on their own may be beatiful and you may personally find meaning, but it is a slippery slope looking at only select parts of the Bible and finding problems with the Bible simply because they disagree with one verse. I didn't really finish, but I desperately need to do homework and then go to bed. Again, anyone who has questions or disagrees with anything I would love to discuss.
 
The passage you bring up illustrates your point. Luckily for the both of us, the Bible is large enough to fit both our views. When I've read Bible passages, I'm literally in disbelief.

Take the notion of Jesus for example: A man who has no father that raises his dead buddy days after the dudes death, dies himself, then comes back to life three days later and performs miracles, before ascending to heaven. To any psychologist, one who believes that something like this actually happened would be bonkers. It has the same validity to me of Hatian belief that the dead come back to life and feast on the flesh of humans as zombies, and are controlled by witches. Or that Harry Potter is an actual person who can perform magic.

Some of the Bible does have messages that 'deep down' could show morality. But lets face it, a lot of it doesnt. Theres a fair amount that depicts a vengeful and jealous god, who has occasional bouts of bloodthirstyness. Flooding the world except Noah, Moses killing those who worshiped a golden lamb, the story of Sodom and Gamorra, ect. Christianity is not alone in such notions, much can be said for many other religions too of the nature of God as depicted by texts.

Furthermore, you say we cannot look at sole passages... well than what dictates what we DO look at? If we're only reading select ones since the message of the entire text is NOT followed to exacting standards, why is that so and who decreed it? It seems completely arbitrary to me, maybe even controlled that we do so. If anything, we focus on the texts we do now from the Bible because our society supports them, rather than visa versa.

My point is this - scriptures cannot be relied upon as a moral compass. They have in general passed through too many hands, languages and people who have more motives than solely spreading the word of god.

 
I really don't want to get into this debate, but I'm so sick of seeing this statement - "The Bible's been translated through so many different languages there's no way to know what it originally said." That's just not true. The Old Testament has been translated from Hebrew to English. The New Testament has been translated from Greek (and some Aramaic) to English. That's it. No intermediate languages.

Also, the manuscript authority of the Bible isn't even comparable to any other ancient texts - there are THOUSANDS of copies still in existence, many from only a few hundred years after the original (especially the New Testament). Basically, if you take two copies of a book written in vastly different places and times and they're virtually identical, you have good reason to believe they're very close to the original. If you take thousands of copies.....you should see where this is going.

Now I'm not going to get into the "every word is literally true" argument (as a Christian, I don't buy it myself), but it's just factually wrong to say the Bible's been translated "through tons of languages" or that the "copies we have now are probably nothing like the original." There is literally hundreds of times more evidence to indicate that the modern Bible is very consistent with the original manuscripts than there is to say the same of ANY other ancient text.
 
I really don'? does the t want does take in this discussion, but I'? m

so much sick it sees this statement - "? The Bible'? s translated via

so much a lot of different languages there'? s no way to be known what

it said initially. That'? s precisely not genuine. The old will has

been translated from Jewish in the English. The new will has been

translated by Greek (and certain aramaic) in the English. That'? s

this. No intermediary language.

Thats your first paragraph translated into and back out of Greek. Even few translations can begin to modify the text. Its not just languages to, its the copy of the scripture. We simply do not know what the original text said. There was a period in the middle ages where there were so many different texts going around that they had to make a conscious effort to collect all the edits and figure out what was to be kept and what was to be lost. The content between versions could be completely different.

This is right from Wikipedia's section on the historical bible:

"When ancient scribes copied earlier books, they wrote notes on the margins of the page (marginal glosses)

to correct their text—especially if a scribe accidentally omitted a

word or line—and to comment about the text. When later scribes were

copying the copy, they were sometimes uncertain if a note was intended

to be included as part of the text. See textual criticism. Over time, different regions evolved different versions, each with its own assemblage of omissions and additions."
 
No, I'm an idiot.

Dude, of course. Its what is referred to as an example. Forgo the language translations, you still get a text thats had numerous versions and edits in its existence. The very idea of a text surviving 2000 years of copies without change would be nothing short of a miracle.
 
Yeah, that was sarcasm. I'm just saying, an automatic online translator is obviously not going to give anything remotely close to a good translation. So it's not a good example.

And I'm not saying the text hasn't changed at all in 2000 years, just that compared to any other ancient text, it's pretty damn close to the original. And that the argument, "It's been translated through so many languages" is 100% incorrect.

 
Even in the version today, no matter the validity, theres unabated incest, slaughter of innocents, and a dude almost sacrifices his son to God (God was just testing his faith). I really fail to see much positive message in a lot of it.
 
it's not just the differences in languages, it's the differences there are in versions. i believe there are about 6 different versions of the Bible, the one most people follow today is the King James version. they're all pretty different, making it impossible to know which one is "right."
 
which is constantly changing as new versions come along. the latest version is so different from the oldest known copy that it's almost a completely different story. the church really needs to just write their own version and stick with it, stop making revisions and confusing people.
 
There's WAY more than 6 versions. But find me an example of a passage that says something different in one version than in another - not that uses different words, but that SAYS something different.

You might be able to find some, but I'm not familiar with any off the top of my head (and I know the Bible reasonably well).

 
all of the versions differ on the deity of Jesus, salvation, sins, hell, etc.

one version says God is heavenly and another says He is earthbound, one version describes sins and the other version describes them in a completely different manner.

the one the church is currently promoting is the King James version, which differs in so many ways from The New International Version that they almost preach two different religions.
 
No, SHOW me an example. That all looks like hearsay. It looks like you picked a bunch of huge issues and assumed that the different versions have radically different stances on them. They don't.

Have you actually READ either version? Because I have, and while there's some significant difference in the way they sound, I'm not aware of any passages that have different messages. Also, the KJV (and the NKJV) are generally considered to be much better translations than the NIV.

The burden of proof here is on you. If you're claiming there's enormous differences between versions, you need to substantiate that.

 
okay i can't be bothered to go through the entire bible twice in two different version but here's a quick, half-decent one:

Matthew 25:13 KJV "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." NIV "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour." NIV leaves out "wherein the Son of man cometh," changing the whole meaning of the verse.


 
Given the context, I don't think it does. It's pretty clear in those parables what Jesus is talking about. Bud admittedly, this is another place where the NIV drops the ball - as I said, it's not a very good translation. That said, this isn't really a translational issue; this is a case of words being left out, not of words being different.
 
i know that there are a few cases where the story differs, which is why the church now claims the NIV as heresy. and of course there are still other versions that people ascertain to, but the NIV and KJV are probably the two most popular.
 
I've never heard anybody call the NIV "heresy." But it certainly is very popular and not a very good translation. I'd be interested to see examples of cases where the story differs.
 
the NIV version says that Joseph is Jesus' father, whereas the King James version says Joseph is just a man who takes care of Jesus with Mary. the church called that heresy.
 
Better translations how? What do you measure them against? Each other?

Look, my point is that the bible has so many changes and edits that its just the same as any historical text and that the one we have now is different than the one that existed in early Christianity.

If you take the Bible literally, I, and the rest of society, would be morally outraged. Try binding your son to a pyre (Abraham and Isaiah) as if to sacrifice him. I dont know who wouldnt see that as child abuse. Just one instance, there are hundreds of others.

If you take the bible symbolically, they we have issues too. Who dictates what to abide by? Also, there are some passages in there that CANNOT be taken symbolically (Leviticus). What about these? Besides that, I think its rather a stretch to draw moral codes from a highly edited and modified text symbolically.

 
No, you measure them against the manuscripts from which they're translated.

I don't take the Bible literally (well, at least, not all of it), but even if you did, there's no where that it says we should do what Abraham did. And it's Isaac, not Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet.

Personally, my moral code isn't explicitly based on the Bible. It's based on the character and teachings of Jesus. I have my share of doubts about how the actual book was constructed and the political motivations that played a part in the process. So I have far more faith in Jesus than in the Bible. I think that's probably kind of unusual within Christianity. But a moral code based on Jesus boils down pretty simply to, "Love God, love others." If only more Christians actually lived that way.

 
...manuscripts we dont have in many cases.

The best way to teach is example. Thats what many people take from biblical stories. We may think they are crazy now, but in the past, passages have been used top uphold some of the most immoral acts of our time - slavery is a good one. Whats being done is a picking and choosing of what to follow based on the current moral compass, which progresses independently of such texts.

What we know about Jesus is mainly from the bible, so you cannot say you learn from Jesus, not the bible. The two are intertwined. Your knowledge of Jesus is unavoidably from that text.

All I'm saying is that the bible is a poor moral compass, and its right well that we do not follow it. It seems more to me at least that our decisions of what is moral are steadily progressing in a said direction, one in which we do not condone slavery, we dont treat women like property, ect. Morality does not rise from religion, but religion can match with morality. It seems much more likely to me that he bible is just a historical snapshot of the current moral codes of when it was written.
 
I think one of your basic questions that hasn't really been answered yet. And I'm not sure if I am the best person to be "arguing" with you, because you are basically asking the same questions that I am struggling with. So keep in mind I'm not trying to disprove you, I'm just sharing my own thoughts.

There are many supposed details about Jesus's life that are just so out there that I find them very hard to believe as historically accurate. The examples you've given are good ones, the virgin birth and resurrection are two especially tough ones. How could someone be born without a father? How on earth is it possible to come back alive after being beaten and nailed to a cross? These are good questions, but in my religious life, they aren't all that important. Honestly we will probably never absolutely prove or disprove these events, and they basically just lead down a road with no benefits. Wars have basically been fought over these things. Some Christians would probably see this as blasphemous, but whether or not Jesus really did rise from the dead really isn't that important to me. If they could factually prove that he did not, then my faith would not be changed much, because another thing I really struggle with is atonement theories and why salvation is necessary. Another story...But to go back, Jesus's absolutely revolutionary message would be enough for me if all the miracles are bullshit and he was just an ordinary dude. When you think about it, preaching love and acceptance of EVERYONE, of denouncing worldy desires for a higher purpose of service, is basically absurd. But I believe in it, and I try (not very successfully) to live it out in everything I do. So maybe I don't really have a good reason to be a Christian, because many Christians do a much shittier job of following Christ than many non-Christians. I'm not really sure what I consider myself, we'll see.

The Old Testament is a fucking crazy book. It would make for an intense movie. The stories of murder, betrayal, adultery and incest, and a vengeful God who punishes those who don't follow his law are tough to reconcile with the New Testament picture of a loving and forgiving God. The best explanation I have heard sort of makes sense, but doesn't entirely answer all my questions. It again goes back to looking at the cultural and historical context in which these stories were written. For thousands of years, those people were nomadic groups fighting to survive in the Middle East. The idea of a nonviolent God simply wouldn't have worked. The people needed a patriarchal, violent deity because that was the way they lived. A tribe trying to survive in the desert that preached nonviolence and loving its enemies would have gotten annihilated in an instant. This a brief explanation which hopefully kinda made some sense. It does raise the scary thought that it seems this God is changing depending on the society of his followers, but I guess you think of God as somewhat pragmatic in that he knows how to relate to humanity. Kind of hard to justify slaughter and oppression so that you can have a sensible God, but I guess to answer your question of where to find morality in these stories, I don't think you're looking for morality. Some might argue the meaning in the Old Testament is more historical and provides a tradition and background of culture that Jesus can then basically turn upside down. I dunno, this is something I'm not entirely sure of either, but I need to go to class...

 
Its a good point you bring up, for sure. What Christianity pulls from Jesus's teachings nowadays are basic tenants of a good person that we like to see in society. However, these tenants arent exclusive to Christianity. Christians preach love, compassion, ect, but so can atheists. So can anyone who values humanity.

Why do we need religion?
 
some people need religion because they're too afraid to face the reality that they might not actually be worth anything at all in the grand scheme of things. it's like a safety blanket for people who can't handle the fact that sometimes things happen for no reason at all.
 
Which is why people don't usually follow one passage's interpretation without taking into account the rest of the text, and use the original etymology of key words to find further meaning, on top of historical context...

When that doesn't happen, we get cults.

Sad to have come in to this late. Maybe next time. All I know is that Dawkins won't debate Christian philosophers, only creationists... Easy pickings.
 
Creationists are the only ones that invite him to debates. I'd love to see him and a theologist debate, it would be good stuff.
 
He was probably an atheist, but it would be a fair argument that he did that in the name of dementia and for absolute power rather to enforce an atheist agenda.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top