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@Mopac
This is the church and religion forum.If anyone is out of place here it is the atheist. Yet for some reason, so many atheists want the board to themselves. Strange indeed.
I doubt the owners, developers or moderators of this site would agree.
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@janesix
Human eyes are very good at adapting to varying light levels. When you say 'the light in my back yard stays bright' is that a subjective judgement or an obective measurementusing a light meter? If it's the former, there's your explanation.
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Jesus' philosophy was 'quietism' (in the political sense). To him political and economic system were irrelevant because it was all going to end soon anyway. "Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's" was his instruction to 'keep calm and carry on' until the new order arrived.
Politics and economics are very much 'of this world', about which Jesus expressed little interest.
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@Cogent_Cognizer
I think there is a 'terminological' issue to be resolved.
There is a sense in which I can choose which direction to walk (either to the library or to the shops,say). A leaf blowing in the wind has no desire to go in any particular direction and does not make any decision about how it will be blown around.
The danger is that one can 'define free will away' and it becomes impossible to distinguish between the two cases, when there is clearly avery big difference between choosing where to walk and being unconsciously blown hither and tither by the wind.
Given that determinism is 'true' (for present purposes!), I think the interesting question is how 'entities with free will' (such as people) differ from object that don't have it (such as fallen leaves). Reducing them both to a 'lowest commin denominator' is trivial, but (to me)that only scratches the surface of 'free will'.
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@Tradesecret
It's Catholic dogma. My point was that people tend to use the term 'immaculate conception' in refernce to the virgin birth of jesus, which is just plain wrong!I don't hold to the view that Mary was sinless.
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@RationalMadman
That sounds great... If you really want to draw the attention of 'the authorities'!
Billions of e-mails are sent every day... perhaps the best form of hiding is to get lost in the crowd.
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@janesix
Why should it want to reproduce? Or do anything at all? Shouldn't matter just be inert, only moving when the forces of nature move it?Yet we all sit here, horny and hungry.
No doubt there have been lots of critters born without the desire to reproduce or eat... but they are not likely to have passed those traits on...
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@Tradesecret
It really gets my goat when people use the term 'original sin' wrongly!therefore she committed the original sin FIRST
'Original sin' is the state of sinfulness we are all born with - it is 'original sin' in the sense it belongs to our beginning (origin) to be a person.
It doesn't refer to the 'first sin ever commited'.
It's like 'immaculate conception' - Jesus was not the subject of 'immaculate conception'.
Mary - and no-one else - was born without original sin (see above!). Mary was 'immaculately conceived' in her mother's womb. This was so the mother of jesus was herself sinless.
So Adam and Eve did not commit the 'original sin' and 'immaculate conception' is not an alterative term for 'virgin birth'.
</peeve>
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@Tradesecret
I'm very ready to admit I know nothing about idioms in ancient Hebrew! I'd be interested to know how you got your expertise - or are you relying on the say-so of an unnamed 'expert'?
Are you sure you're not adopting an interpretation because it suits your prejudice? In any case I don't see a problem... it's only a story!
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@janesix
Darwinians are those who believe in the modern synthesis.
Then Darwin is not a Darwinian!
I'd say darwinism is really the belief that natural selection is the primary driver of adaptive change. Loads of people had suggested evolution happens before darwin... Lamarck for one, a generation before. Darwin's big idea was natural selection, not evolution per se.
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An important job of the brain is to maintain a model of the world so the body containing that brain can do all the things it needs to do in order to survive (and ultimately reproduce). The self is that part of the brain's world-model that represents the individual.
When we perceive the world we do so by accessing information contained in our brain's world-model. The effect of that is that in a sense it doesn't matter what is 'really' in the world - what we perceive is what is in our world-model. We can presume that evolution has seen to it that our world-model is a useful approximation to the real world, but that alter the fact that we perceive what is 'in the model', not what is 'out there'.
So a human being is a bag of wet chemicals that maintains an internal model of the world with 'itself' as central element of that model.
We can see that a human being has no access to its true nature - what we preceive is how we represent ourselves with the larger world-model maintained by our brains.
Bear in mind you never preceive reality - you preceive information contained in the brains world-model, even if that information is about your 'self'. If your brain represents you as having 3 arms then you will percive youself as having 3 arms. You will get problems if you do, because your model has diverged dangerously far from reality, but there is no theoretical reason you cannot preceive yourself ashaving 3 arms, or 2 heads or can fly.
If that does happen then what happened is that the information 'about you' in you brain has gone awry!
So we are bags of chemicals with a mechanism for maintaining a world-model and retrieving information from it (thanks to evolution!) How you seem to be is how you are modeled.
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@Tradesecret
God let Pharaoh do what Pharaoh wanted
We aren't told what Pharaoh would have done if God had not hardened his heart! Given that God took the trouble to do so implies Pharaoh might well have let the Israelites go. God forced Pharaoh to do what God wanted him to do on that specific occasion.
We are talking about a story written before philosophers had spilt gallons of ink on 'free will'. I doubt the scribes who wrote Exodus ever discussed 'free will'!
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@EtrnlVw
If you ditch scriptiure then it's hard to know what is meant by the word 'god'.
I suggest there are two schools of thought. One holds hat consciuosness is fundamental an the material universe was brouht into eistence by sconsciousness the other schoolholds that matter is fundamental and consciuosness arises from a serendipitous arrangement of matter.
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@Tradesecret
The relavant passage is ex. 7:2-4
"...you, and your brother Aaron must declare it to Pharaoh so that he will let the Israelites go out of his land. 3But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I will multiply My signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, 4 Pharaoh will not listen to you."
Clearly Pharaoh has free will - he will hear Moses and Aaron and could indeed choose to free - or not free - the Israelites based on their declaration.
However God intervenes to ensure Pharaoh will choose to not free the slaves. So while God has grants us free will, he can impose his will on us when it suits His purpose to do so. He is God, after all! Gods can of sort of thing (allegedly).
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@Castin
Is it the case that with ddo (and dart etc) that 6 people take it far too seriously, a dozen or so people use it to pass the time and 6,999,999,980 people couldn't care less?
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In fact the passage in question shows that in those days employers used physical punishment to discipline their (non-slave) employees. That might seem barbaric,but it had the advantage of giving an alternative to sacking.
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@dylancatlow
Nothing magical happens once it's established that genetic variation within races > genetic variation between races.
The 'magic' is that the almost totally irrelevant factor of race gets over stressed! If you want to choose an intelligent person and go for the white guy as you suggest you are going to get a lot dumb white guys and lose out on a lot of clever blacks. Even allowing for a 15% difference using 'whiter' as a proxy for 'more intelligent' is not much better than 'random'. You might as well toss a coin as use race as a criterion.
For example I have a black friend and a white friend - which do you think is taller?
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@Trent0405
Credit cards only make money because people get in trouble and end up paying extortionate interest and fees. That's why credit card companies like to sign up idiots - they don't make money out of 'sensible users'.
Razor blades are useful, but you wouldn't give one to a baby. But credit card companies hand out their cards in full knowledge that some people will get badly hurt. Sure,it's still the customer's choice, but credit card companies are like drug-pushers and exploit the weak and vulnerable - the sensible users are something they tolerate. It's not Visa or Mastercard campaigning to stop idiots getting cards.
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@dylancatlow
Any governmental policy that is based on the assumption of racial equality needs to be changed
I think government policy should be based on the principle that race is irrelevant. I except from that policies such as 'affirmative action' which attempts to alleviate the continued effect of historical racism.
I thoroughly disagree that there are 'significant differences between the races'. There are differences in the 'average' of some measures, but in such cases the difference within a race swamp the difference between races. Knowing someones race tells you nothing useful about them. If Abel is white and Baker is black then it's near as dammit 50:50 which one has the bigger brain, or has more testosterone!
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@GuitarSlinger
All we need is a time machine and we can settle it once and for all!
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@SkepticalOne
@RoderickSpode
The Hebrews certainly operated a 'two-tier' system for Hebrew and non-Hebrews. Hebrew 'slaves' were certainly better off than foriegn 'slaves' and I'd say its fair to say hebrews slaves were held under conditions resembing 'indetured servitude' but foreigners were essentially chattel.
My impression is that the Hebrews attude to slavery was entirely typical of the time and place.
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@GuitarSlinger
I disagree. In the ancient world the reality of gods was not a matter of debate - gods were considered to be as real as gravity or rocks. The story of Adam and Eve would not have seemed far-fetched or fantastical but a natural consequence of how gods were. Lay Hebrews would accept that their priests knew these things by virtue of their relationship with the gods - the priests themselves may have had a more complicatedreationship with the stories, but no-one was encouraged to question its veracity too closely. Presuamaly they accepted that god had revealed what was necessary, not everything.So then, would you agree that the story of Adam and Eve is not meant to be a scientific dissertation on how man came to be? In other words, it's not intended to explain scientifically how "man" came into existence?
So if by a 'scientific' explanation of how man came into eistence you mean a factual account, I think Gen 1-2 were intended as such and would have been universally accepted as such at the time. it continued to be taken as simply factual right upto the C19th when science proper began to cast doubt on its literal interpratation. In 1851 Rusin wrote:
"If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses"
But for more than 2000 years the truth of Genesis wasvirtually unquestioned
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@GuitarSlinger
You asked:what is the intent or purpose of that story?
Your answer was: Pretty simple actually. It's to convey a simple truth that (a) humans had not always existed, (b) humans were created (by God) , (c) they were given the ability to make choices (free will) and (d) we are often tempted to make the "wrong" choice, etc. If you get stuck on the story because it used a talking animal as part of the story, etc, then you are missing the point.
My answer:To instruct readers what they should believe. The main elements are that yhwh is the creator and paradise was lost because of disobedience, as described in the text.
Do you think the scribes who wrote gen 1-2 (in Babylon, 2700 years ago, probably) wanted/expected the ordinary Hebrews of the time to take it as a true story? Obviously we can't know if they did, but what do you think? I think they wanted their story to be believed.
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@SkepticalOne
chattel slavery is condoned in the Bible.
I think this shows how CNs get away with what they do! They rely on people not actually knowing what the bible says and assuming the bible supports their version of morality! Slavery is immoral, ergo the bible must be against it, homosexuality is immoral ergo the bible is against it, socialism is immoral so the bible is against it... at least that is what conservative christians like to think! Whether the text supports it or not doesn't matter, (although a verse can usually be located to support any claim - and its opposite)!
Some CNs may be genuine theocrats, but I think a much larger number are political conservatives exploiting religion to gain support.
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@GuitarSlinger
To instruct readers what they should believe. The main elements are that yhwh is the creator and paradise was lost because of disobedience, as described in the text.what is the intent or purpose of that story?
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@3RU7AL
I'd come across Mach's principle before which is why I posted what I did. I think that someone - possibly you - argued that you could take either of two bodies to be at rest. Well, you can certainly do that for linear motion but I'm not convinced that it works for rotations and orbits.
I'm still thinking about it, but I suspect the earth orbiting the sun and the sun orbiting the earth are different. However it's very tangential to the topic and it's a long time since I did any serious physics so I'm not interested in making an issue out of it.
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Has anyone else commented that 'preclude' is not the right word?
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@RoderickSpode
Hebrew slaves should be released on the "Year of Jubilee":
Lev 25:39 “‘If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to you, do not make them work as slaves. 40 They are to be treated as hired workers or temporary residents among you; they are to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. 41 Then they and their children are to be released, and they will go back to their own clans and to the property of their ancestors.
The sentence in question makes it clear that provision does not apply to foreigners who may be 'slaves for life'.
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@RoderickSpode
Are you actually claiming there's no significant difference between the treatment of slaves between Israel and the rest of the NME?
How much difference does it take to make it 'significant'? From what I've read about Egyptian, Hityite and Baylonian slavery laws and practice there isn't much diference. So I suppose I do claim there is no significant difference.
A very early condemnation of slavery is found on the Cyrus Cylinder from the 6th century BC. The Persian ing Cyrus the Great decreed:
"I prevent slavery and my governors and
subordinates are obliged to prohibit exchanging men and women as slaves within their own
ruling domains. Such a traditions should be exterminated the world over.”
The Hebrews had no monoply on the moral,high ground about slavery!.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
If they'd included the last 2 lines it wouldn't have got so much air-play.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
Offiicially, you should try to emulate Jesus and walk on top of bodies of water, but I think swimming would only be an actual sin if you enjoyed it. It's a safe bet that if it's fun then it's a sin. Puritans don't sing hymns because singing's fun (Puritan have a low fun threshold). That's why I drink vodka... I don't like vodka much so drinking it is more a pennance than a sin.Couldn't swimming be a sin,
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@EtrnlVw
The Bible is a spiritual book, and where spirituality is concerned is where it makes more sense, this is where the Bible is applicable.
I think there is very little that is actually very spiritual in it. I think one of the most inspiring and beautiful passages is 1 Cor. 13,
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
But it's not specifically Christian or even theistic. Love hope and charity are not owned by Christianity - they are univeral. Another passage is
Jas 1:27
Religion ... pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
That could almost be the central creed of atheist humanism.
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@TheRealNihilist
Let me tell you who I am
I am the man
That is scared of concrete
For you I have a plan
I put my money in the bank
I don't keep it in my hand
And sometimes it all goes wrong I make a stand
Whenever, I walk down the street I feel afraid
People want there money cause they want to get paid
All I want is a little love and to live my life.
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By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
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@Dr.Franklin
Perhaps I should have said 'conceived' rather than born.
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@Dr.Franklin
Death is the irrepairable breakdown of the human machine. It is my belief that consciousness is the result of the operation of a working brain, much as an electric current is the product of a working dynamo. When a dynamo wears out it no longer produces electricity - when a brain dies it no longer produces consciousness.
Being dead is quite like not being born yet.
I hope to be able to demostrate how the brain produces consciousness one day to prove that! In the meantime, I have to stress 'it is my belief'!
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@EtrnlVw
The bits that are true are commonsense humanism, the baloney bits are theistic superstition.This is why you would want a more wholistic approach to religion, where you can objectively understand what is true and what is baloney.
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@TheRealNihilist
Can the question be restated as 'what is self?
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@Deb-8-a-bull
How do you go about removing your sins ?
Since I passed 60 my problem is getting them in the first place.
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@SkepticalOne
@RoderickSpode
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An example would be the foreigners right to leave their master if they were oppressed. And to be housed by whomever they seek help from. And the potential to become a citizen, become wealthy, etc.
It's hard to tell all the social norms surrounding slavery and how 'bad' it was to be a slave. No dout there were good and bad msaters everywhere. I note this law in Hamurrabis code:
176. And if a slave of the palace or a slave of the freeman take the daughter of a man (gentleman); and if, when he takes her, she enter into the house of the slave of the palace or the slave of the freeman with the dowry of her father's house; if from the time that they join hands, they build a house and acquire property; and if later on the slave of the palace or the slave of the freeman die, the daughter of the man shall receive her dowry, and they shall divide into two parts whatever her husband and she had acquired from the time they joined hands; the owner of the slave shall receive one-half and the daughter of the man shall receive one-half for her children.
Cleaely male slaves were permitted to marry the daughters of free men. That implies that slaves were not dehumanised. Nor was slavery always permanent: "117. If a man be in debt and sell his wife, son or daughter, or bind them over to service, for three years they shall work in the house of their purchaser of master; in the fourth year they shall be given their freedom."
I don't know if a slave was better of in Babylon or Israel.. it probably depended on the master becuase the rules (even if they ere always followed which is doubtful) aren't substantially different. In all probability most slaves in the AME were much better off than the planation slaves in the ultra-Christian ante-bellum Southern states of America.
I think it's obvious that the Hebrew's laws are not divine revelations but entirely typical of the norms of the age. How could it be anyhthing else becauase there are no gods!
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@RoderickSpode
An example would be the foreigners right to leave their master if they were oppressed. And to be housed by whomever they seek help from. And the potential to become a citizen, become wealthy, etc.
It's hard to tell all the social norms surrounding slavery and how 'bad' it was to be a slave. No dout there were good and bad msaters everywhere. I note this law in Hamurrabis code:
176. And if a slave of the palace or a slave of the freeman take the daughter of a man (gentleman); and if, when he takes her, she enter into the house of the slave of the palace or the slave of the freeman with the dowry of her father's house; if from the time that they join hands, they build a house and acquire property; and if later on the slave of the palace or the slave of the freeman die, the daughter of the man shall receive her dowry, and they shall divide into two parts whatever her husband and she had acquired from the time they joined hands; the owner of the slave shall receive one-half and the daughter of the man shall receive one-half for her children.
Cleaely male slaves were permitted to marry the daughters of free men. That implies that slaves were not dehumanised. Nor was slavery always permanent: "117. If a man be in debt and sell his wife, son or daughter, or bind them over to service, for three years they shall work in the house of their purchaser of master; in the fourth year they shall be given their freedom."
I don't know if a slave was better of in Babylon or Israel.. it probably depended on the master becuase the rules (even if they ere always followed which is doubtful) aren't substantially different. In all probability most slaves in the AME were much better off than the planation slaves in the ultra-Christian ante-bellum Southern states of America.
I think it's obvious that the Hebrew's laws are not divine revelations but entirely typical of the norms of the age. How could it be anyhthing else becauase there are no gods!
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@SkepticalOne
I think that for many Americans Christian values = conservative values (and vice versa) is axiomatic. They have a point - it's only pinko atheist fags who say different.Agreed, but if America was founded on Biblical principles democracy is a bit of a head scratcher.
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@Stronn
@3RU7AL
If you are in space and a bucket of water flies by then it makes no difference if you take 'you' as stationary and the bucket moving or vice versa.
But now put a bucket of water on a turntable and spin it. The water surface will take on a concave shape.
But if you keep bucket stationary and you go round and round it then the surface will stay flat (and you will get dizzy!).
The point is that if the bucket is moving linearly then you can't tell if it the bucket or you that is moving, but in the case of rotation you can tell if it is the bucket or you that is moving. If it's the bucket moving then the surface is concave, if its you moving then you get dizzy.
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Their law demanding the showing of mercy, acting humane, etc. was the intent. It doesn't make sense to 3RU7AL, and for a good reason.
We atheists - or some of us - do like to point out that the God that Christians worship is not all sweetness and light! I think if you asked an ancient Hebrew to describe his god in one word, that word would not be 'Nice'!
In those times gods were beings of immense power who could use that power for or against individuals or a nation. They had to be kept on-side by performing rituals and sacrifice. If the rituals were performed correctly the god would avert disasters and bring victory in war. Convervsely disaster and defeat were due to laxness in the perfomance of those rituals - at least according to the priests!
Hence we get passages like this:
Joshua 10: 11 As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the Lord hurled large hailstones down on them, and more of them died from the hail than were killed by the swords of the Israelites.
Of course the writer of Joshua approves of that - it was the job of a tribal god like YHWH to 'smite enemies'.
It's imporant to bear in mind the Hebrews and yhwh are not exceptional - they are typical of the peoples and their gods of the peridand region. We have the law-codes of the babylonans and hittites and they are practically identical to the Hebrews.
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@Stronn
I'd say the real difference is that the earth-centred view is just that - it's a worldview that places the Earth in a very special and privileged position in the cosmos. The sun-centred view is a step (but the most important step) towards a worldview that de-thrones the Earth from being the centre and focus of 'creation'.
In that light, the earth-centred view is certainly not correct - our planet (and we on it) are not the hub around which everything revolves (literally and figuatively). Neither is the sun-centred view wholly correct, but merely by saying we are not the centre of attention it is less wrong. Psychologically, philosophically and theologically that is a huge step forward.
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@GuitarSlinger
Begs the Question, what does it mean to be "female" or "male"?
I think your father is the one that should be explaining that to you...
The difference between male and female animals must have been evident to the most primitve humans. Things only get complicated when it comes things like plants and non-mammals. The rule adopted - much later than the invention of the terms - is that the donor of the larger gamete is female and the donor of the smaller gamete is male. It's a good rule because it isconsistent with our informal notion of sex obtained from observing large mammals but can be appliedvery widely,
I have no idea how - or if - deities reproduce or the size of theirgametes (if any) and unless there are gametes involved, even that definition can't work for gods. However, in the Christian tradition Mary's sex was certainly female so a male sex is generally assumed toaplly to God.
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@Athias
I think you do, given that you manage to get through each day. When you wake up tommorow, will you eat a real breakfast or make do with imagining having breakfast? If the latter, why not stay in bed and imagine the whole day...?I don't subscribe to notions of "reality" and "imagination."
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@bsh1
I am not going to comment on the reasons for his ban. I will refer you instead to the site ban log..
.... where no reason is given either.
It's rather hard to judge the fairness of the ban, bsh1. Justice has not only to be done but seen to be done, they say.
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@RationalMadman
I had a dig at 'equality' and 'democracy' as 'American values' but not 'liberty'!
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