Shila

I don’t believe, and my objection with religion when it causes harm, is intolerant and tries to use coercion impose its beliefs on others seems reasonable unless one is a member of the Spanish Inquisition. And as I said, I don’t debate religion with those who would be unreceptive to that debate.

Polytheist-Witch: Troll thread. One of the religion forum issues. 

Wilted: Why don't you list out it's problems and we can work together to fix the ones we agree with. I think banning troll threads would be silly, so we won't agree there, but how can I be of service?

Elliott:  I would like a secular one that allows for all religious beliefs or disbelief and the right to practice them.

FLRW: I pray (to the simulation creators) that you find Humanism.

The oldest painting of Jesus comes from the Dura Europos Synagogue in Syria and was painted 200 years after his death.

I am an agnostic atheist and although I may not always respect people’s beliefs I try to respect their right to believe them. My only real objection with religion is when it causes harm, is intolerant and tries to use coercion impose its beliefs on others.

 

I wouldn’t necessarily want an atheistic world and I feel such a word would be unrealistic as religion in some form has been with us from the dawn of humanity, but I would like a secular one that allows for all religious beliefs or disbelief and the right to practice them.

 

I will debate religion with those open to debate and are willing to discus it, such as in a forum like this but I wouldn’t want to thrust my views on those who I feel wouldn’t be receptive to them.

@Poly

To be honest, spaceships is the more reasonable explanation for the whole GOD thing.

Though they seem to have forgotten the way back.

Or have they.

@Shila.

Did Moses get lost too.

Polytheist-Witch: Threatening members with death could result in banning.

I sure love the spiritual gift of Ice cream.

We have a bloke who comes around in a pink van selling creamy fantasy treats.

His name is Paul.

And he has a lot of Greek pals.

How's that for a miraculous coincidence?

Exactly.

Is original sin an example of Kin punishment?

If so, the wiki article of kin punishment needs to be updated. 

Original wiki entry: Kin punishment is the practice of punishing the family members of someone accused of a crime, either in place of or in addition to the perpetrator. It refers to the principle of a family sharing responsibility for a crime committed by one of its members, and is a form of collective punishment. Kin punishment has been used by authoritarian states as a form of extortion, harassment, or persecution. Countries that have practiced kin punishment include pre-Christian European cultures, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and non-Western cultures including China, Japan, and North Korea.“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_punishment

Polytheist-Witch: I'm just glad with all the walking he had to do Noah wasn't flat-footed.

Polytheist-Witch: Basically what everyone's written here is I'm an atheist because I didn't believe the Bible so you are all basically Christians. Because only Christians care about the Bible. No efforts been made to investigate any other religion, gods or spiritual concepts. Lazy m************.

Polytheist-Witch: Nobody knows what Jesus was because nobody that's wrote that book had anything to do with Jesus. If he even existed. You know what sketchy calling yourself an atheist and then spending about 20-30 minutes writing a five part post more than once about a book you think is fiction.

God and Hitler.

Why did an omnipotent God allow 6 million Jews to die, while knowing that many of those victims were whispering begging Him in their final moments.

That's any almost exclusively modern American view.  

Nobody would believe that the bible was inerrant in Roman times because they could see how Emperors edited the text to suit their politics.

Nobody would believe that the bible was inerrant in the Middle Ages because each copy was hand-written over years and any literate monk could see the difference between one bible and the next.

Believing that bible is unchanging depends on the consistency that comes with the printing press.  And even then, the  next few generations of people could see how radically different the King James Version was from the Coverdale version, or the Lutheran from the Vulgate.  As it become common for Europeans to speak more than one language, it became easy to see the radical differences between Greek and French Bibles, Latin and German, etc.

Only in America where the King James Version dominated for centuries would it possible to go from place to place and find a consistent version of the Bible, and so Americans are really the only place where people really think the Bible (mostly the KJV) is inerrant and consistent over time and place.

Half of all Christians are Catholic and Catholics are not taught that the bible is in inerrant.  Gallup estimates fewer than 17% of all Christians believe the Bible is the literal truth.

Nontrinitarian Christians do not believe in the trinity, they do not believe that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all equal as one. 

These folks believe that only the Father is without beginning, that the Father is greater than the Son in all things, that the Son had a beginning, and he was brought forth at a certain point as "the firstborn of all creation" and "the only-begotten son." They do recognize Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and Redeemer, and believe that after his ascension to Heaven he resumed his pre-human identity, but exalted to God's right hand until the last days. 

They do not believe that the Holy Spirit is an actual person, but rather refers to God's power or character depending on the context. They believe the Holy Spirit is God's "active force" that He uses to accomplish His will. Judaism and Islam also reject the concept of the trinity. How would you describe or defend the trinity to these people, and  nontrinitarian Christians in particular? 

See: "Why the Ontological Proof of God's Existence is Bullshit" (Copyright © 2010-01-21

Duke Physics Department)

Repeating yourself won’t make what you say any truer. It just makes you look desperate.

Bible timeline is a joke. Earth is older than the biblical “timeline.” Earth is NOT the center of the universe. 

And the Bible was written by men to be used by men to control mankind through fear and violence to force submission or suffer eternal damnation in hell (a place that simply does not exist except in the delusional minds of the gullible sheeple).

The fossils found that date back to the Precambrian lack distinct structures as there were no skeletal forms and that means no people. Actually Precambrian life forms would have done okay in the flood as they were all aquatic.

And science doesn’t back creation as there is no empirical evidence to support it and it relies on a supernatural cause, it is unscientific.

Ah yes, Creation Science, an oxymoron if ever there was one. Thanks for the link, an amusing read.

For all those who claim that Islam had no hand in black people slavery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OdIqeWkhHU&t=138s&ab_channel=AlMuqaddimah

What are theists's honest opinion on atheists, vice versa?

Polytheist-Witch: Noah's Ark was a spaceship and the mountain it landed on was actually planet Earth and after it let all the animals off onto the nice dry planet that they arrived at, it flew away and left behind that family they brought to take care of the animals. This is a far more believable story for the atheists they actually might consider this one legit. 

Polytheist-Witch: There are alcoholics that post on this board you should really be nice. It's a disease, lol 

Assuming God exists and is unknowable that would render all religious texts relating to God as being worthless. Even the creation of the universe couldn’t be attributed to God as that would make him known. Therefore it would be impossible to differentiate between an unknown God and a non existent one.

Ah yes, Creation Science, an oxymoron if ever there was one. Thanks for the link, an amusing read.

Therefore we end up with typical mythology.

A mix of people, places and fantasy.

QUICK REMINDER.  

God didn't choose to interact with people and do the whole bible thing in and around the time you were here on earth. 

Andddddddddddd.

The whole 2nd coming thing looks like it's not going to happen in  our lifetimes.

What i am trying to say is. 

We the people of today are not that ummmm,  terribly important to god. 

I couldn't imagine us being nowhere near as important to god as puffins or stars.   

Just to name two of gods top 10 greatest loves.  

Butttttttttttt, i may be wrong.  

Im close to positive it would boil down to. 

There ummm probably was a bloke named jesus.  Of the Nazareth that existed.    

A Totally normal human one.

With Adam and Eve the failure is that they disobeyed god. But god created these pair. I didn’t. Yet I am told I will suffer in hell for three reasons.

(1) I apparently have inherited their sin.

(2) I don’t believe Jesus was god;

(3)It is doubtful that even Jesus believed himself to be a god either?  So then his master plan for the creation of man was a complete failure. 

Then mankind become so corrupt by his actions and multiple sinful ways that he sent a flood to wipe them from the face of the earth. Another fail.

He confuse human language after the destruction of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel incident so that they could not effectively communicate with each other. Another failure.

Matthew 13: 40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Mathew 13 comes well after these previous disasters sent onto the shoulders of mankind by god,  and it appears that god still hadn't corrected a single one of his own previous errors, either!?  

  Why so many failures if god is said, and seen to be by millions, to be perfect? How many goes does he have to have before getting it right, before we are sent to the flames to face much gnashing of teeth in perpetuity?

You cant know even from analyzing the creation, because we have no idea why things were created. 

I suppose some people could have superior knowledge to mine, yet you have no idea if your knowledge is truly correct. How could you?

Whether atheist, agnostic, or theist what do you see as the benefiting factor that most prominently contributes to your belief. To be clear, I'm not asking what caused your belief or lack thereof but rather why maintain your position? 

Me personally, I stay a religious person because I know spirituality has, and does, help me overcome challenges while having the possibility to help others. Without the focus on God that I've had I can be quite confident that I personally wouldn't have had the focus on personal growth that I have.

Lemme hear what ya got

is it a weak point that many types of miracles of the bible dont happen nowadays?

The Ontological Argument.

Making a koran from recycled christian bibles and vice versa also would fetch a few bucks from weird people.

Polytheist-Witch: Well considering you're an atheist I doubt you are a member of a church. And I won't even direct it to the mods because it'll be okay for you to do that because you're one of those people and I'm one of those people.

The four canonical gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—were all composed within the Roman Empire between 70 and 110 C.E (± five to ten years) as biographies of Jesus of Nazareth. Written a generation after the death of Jesus (ca. 30 C.E), none of the four gospel writers were eyewitnesses to the ministry of Jesus.

The majority of New Testament scholars agree that the Gospels do not contain eyewitness accounts; but that they present the theologies of their communities rather than the testimony of eyewitnesses.

I think the fossil record would dispute that.

Noah’s ark must be pretty big.

How do you get 8.7 million animals onto a boat?

Question: as is adamantly shown in this treatise, the pseudo-christian, and me as the only TRUE Christian upon this forum, our faith’s Bible is guilty of pornography and the obscene!  Therefore, what do we do to not get our JUDEO-Christian Bible from being banned, or worse, even burned like many of Jesus’ creation want to perform for this type of book?!

Fortunately these days, we all know that witches are make believe.

I thought we had agreed that the Gospels are not eyewitness accounts.

Polytheist-Witch: Threatening a member  of the board with death could be a violation.

What do Jews believe the afterlife is like?

The Jewish idea of the technical aspects of an afterlife is a matter of much discussion. Early biblical/textual sources give scant reference and even less explanation. Post biblical source flesh out a little more, explaining that there is a next world, judgment, resurrection of the dead in messianic days, and other stuff. But the details and structure are not universally agreed upon by Jewish authorities.

An over simplified version would include the following ideas:

after death, the immortal soul is judged. There are 3 basic categories -- fully good, fully evil and middling. Most of us are middling. There is a period of time after death when the soul goes through what can best be thought of as a period of re-education, of realization about responsibility for having committed sins. At this point, the soul is separated from the divine presence and that stinks. Re-education prepares the soul for a reconnection to the divine. That time period is up to a year, but we assume less.

People who are purely evil are separated from God eternally and those who are purely good connect to the divine presence imemdiately.

The idea of a resurrection, of an eternal (physical) life or like that, and where that fits in to this process and the arrival of a future messiah is where things get confusing.

https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/9335/rambam-on-olam-haba-mashiach-and-techiyat-hameitim

a side note -- the next world, and any form of "eternal reward" is for those who are Jewish (as measured by their adherence to the canon of 613+ laws) and non-Jews who are measured against the obligation to follow the 7 Noachide laws.

 I have heard a few reasons as to why god is said to have become flesh and not once have I been able to understand why this "incarnation" had to happen and even why it  should  be believed.

The common shout from Christians is that god,  became flesh to understand "human suffering"  . But this simply cannot be in any way true ...unless we ignore the awkward fact that God as god, understood human suffering perfectly well?  And we know this because THE BIBLE says so.

 So let us first blow the "human suffering" argument out of the water by highlighting what god himself has to say on the matter while he is still god;

Exodus 3:7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering".

 So we see right away, that god didn't need to go to all the trouble of sending anyone in any shape or form and that he could clearly see (and we have to assume understand) that god was well up to speed on the matter.

Another of the reasons given for this "incarnation" is that  god as Jesus was sent to forgive our sins. Why?  And again this shite can also be blown out of the water by THE BIBLE! 

Isaiah 45:21-22. God as god says;  “Turn to me and be saved,  all you ends of the earth;  for I am God, and there is no other".

Jonah 3:5-10. " When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened".

So we can clearly read,  god as god on both these occasions was forgiving sins before he is believed to have "incarnated" as Jesus on earth. And as a point of fact, Jesus as Jesus was also forgiving sins before he was crucified so that blows the "crucified for our sins" clean out of the water too.

So can a single one of the Christian fold here give a valid and factual reason why god had to "incarnate" as a human being here on earth.

why do religions -in general- fears criticism ?

I mean if you know that you're religion is the only one true religion out there would you really fear criticism ?

would you need to be two faced and hide some stuff when you talk about your religion ?

would you need to dirty your hands and kill blasphemers and apostates ?

is it not enough that your god would punish them in the afterlife as your religion claims ?

how pathetic is your god and it's trust in its very own religion to need a death penalty to dissuade  people from leaving that religion or insulting it ?

Nothing can be more disgusting then religion telling people to engage in pedophilia.

one of the things which the hindu religion can't stop supporting even today

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CHILD-MARRIAGE Enforced by the Brahmins, this custom destroyed the very

life-soul of the non-Brahmins. Child marriage of daughters as young 5-6 y

old was common during the Brahmanic Dark Ages due to the custom of dowry [

Nand 17 ] [ Bash.167-8 ] [ Yad 70 ] [ Alt.16 ] [ Ban.70 ]. Lawbooks

prescribe that the best partner for a man in one-third his age. Thus a man

18 year old should marry a girl 6 years old! This is the wonderful wisdom of

the most authoritative Hindu law-book -

Manu.IX.94 : " A man, aged thirty years, shall marry a maiden of twelve

who pleases him, or a man of twenty-four a girl of eight years of age; if

(the performance of) his duties would otherwise be impeded, he must marry

sooner."

One of the reasons for such early marriage of girls was to prevent any

scandals. Narada states that some of the defects to be avoided in brides are

if they already had a relationship with another man or have their minds set

on another, they should not be selected [Sheth 67]. This shows that

non-virgin girls could not be married, a custom similar to Church-ruled

medieval Europe.

The custom of child-marriage and child-molesting has divine sanction in

Hinduism. The `great god' Rama was 16 years old when he married Sita, and

Sita was only 14 years old [ Ram.wh 69 ]. However, the age of Sita is now

known to be a forgery; it is almost certain that she was, as per the Manuid

laws, one-third of his age, namely 5 years old. It is inconceivable to

imagine that `great' Rama could have dated to violate the Vedic laws of

Manu. Besides being a child-molester, `holy' Rama was also guilty of incest,

for Sita is referred to in the oldest surviving Ramayanas as his own sister

:

" In the Dasarathajataka Sita is represented as the sister as well as the

wife of Rama , son of Dasaratha of the Ikshvaku line."

[ Chandra, p.156 ]

Mr. Chandra, who has given the passage cited above, then claims that this

incriminating passage was `infiltrated' by the Buddhist nastikas. This

objection, however, can be discounted immediately. Firstly, it would not be

possible for Buddhists to `distort' a Hindu scripture. Secondly, Chandra

himself is a Brahminist, so his statements in defence of Brahmanism can be

discounted as being the result of religious fanaticism. The fact is, that

the extant Buddhist tales are much older than the Hindu versions, and this

episode was deleted from the later falsified Ramayanas. This is confirmed by

anthropological research showing that incest was institutionalised in Rama's

race, the Ikshvaku dynasty of Aryan Kshatriyas :

" In the Anabattha Sutta and the Mahavastu Avadana we are told that the

Ikshvaku princes, who were banished by their father and took shelter on the

slopes of the Himalayas, and from whom the Sakyas traced their descent,

married their own sisters in order to maintain the purity of their line."

-- [ Chandra, p.155 ]

Hence, it is virtually certain that Sita was Rama's sister, and that it is

certain that such an `upright astik Hindu' as he would not have let his

sister grow beyond the age limit of 8 years prescribed by Aryan law.

Now, what was the main reason for the Brahmins enforcing child marriage and

incest upon the subject populations ? The answer is that these activities

led to the permanent genetic degradation of the non-Brahmin races. It is

well known that consanginuous marriage leads to genetic mutations in the

offspring and eventually ends in the extermination of the blood lineage

concerned. Incest and child marriage has a high risk of leading to

irreversible hereditary defects in the second generation which are then

passed on to succeeding generataions. These were hence convenient methods

for the Brahmins to annihilate the non-Brahmins and establish a pure

Brahmavarta ! Even to this day one finds the process of genetic

deterioration occurring in non-Brahmin children inhabiting Brahmin-ruled

regions. These are entirely the result of Brahmin-enforced child-marriage

and Brahmin-inflicted incest.

1.10 ENFORCEMENT OF VIRGINITY

As a further instance of the oppressive rules of Hinduism imposed upon

women, young girls were required to remain virgin till marriage. Failing

this requirement, they would be discarded by the husbands at will :

Manu.IX.72 : " Though (a man) may have accepted a damsel in due form, he

may abandon (her if she be) blemished, diseased, or deflowered, and (if she

have been) given with fraud."

Such girls were reduced to a pitiable state and were unable to find husbands

thereafter. They were mostly forced to live the life of early wretched

widowhood. This shows that the systematic discrimination meted out by

Hinduism to women extends down to early childhood. Whilst Brahmin men were

free to indulge in debauchery with aboriginal Devadasis at an early age,

girls had to remain chaste virgins. This is the truth about `wonderful'

Hinduism.

These are merely a handful of facts showing that Hinduism is the single most

anti-woman civilization in the history of the world. The followers of

Hinduism are mindless male supremacist pigs who know nothing better than to

burn their own women and rape their own daughters. This they do in the name

of the `Holy Vedas', the invention of perverted Brahmin bigots. No other

religion imposes such an inhuman genocide of women as does the truly beastly

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