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Do you believe your prayers are heard? Do you believe you have an eternal soul? What is it that hears your prayers or judges your soul? You confuse 'God is real' with 'God is reality'. I can guess why you do that; I think it is because reality is undeniable: ergo God is undeniable. You think you have it all buttoned up.
Well, God is not the same thing as reality. God=reality/truth is just a word trick you use to convince yourself. You are constantly reminded that you are alone in your self-regarding delusion that you have an insight unavailable to lesser intellects!
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@Mopac
On the contary - the truth is all that matters. And the truth is that there is no god that hears or answers prayers, nor a deity to reward and punish the dead. It is not true that a conscious act by a thinking creator brought the universe and life into being.
Yes, there is an "ultimate truth", but it is nothing like the god you imagine it to be.
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@triangle.128k
i'm an atheist, but if I was religious I would be a protestant because I am British and Henry VIII broke from the catholic church. If I was French or Spanish I'd be a Catholic; if I was Indian I'd be a Hindu, and so on.
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I have said on numerous occasions that I do not think these stories were intended to be read as historical documents,
I think that if you went in a time machine back to 500 BCE and asked a Jew if they believed things happened exactly as it says in genesis they would say yes.
But unless you have a time machine we'll never know for sure!
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@Mopac
I would say it is, yes.
According to this site,http://www.friendsinternationalcenter.com/advice/the-swedish-education-act/
the Swedish Education Act mandates:
(Section 5) "The education shall be structured in accordance with basic democratic values and human rights such as the sanctity of human life, the freedom and integrity of individuals, the equal worth of all human beings, equal opportunities and solidarity between human beings.
The 'nice' aspects of religion are those where it forgets about gods and resembles humanism. Humanists believe - or perhaps know - that you don't need god to be good.
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@Polytheist-Witch
I'm not sure anyone isn't a bigot according you!
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@Polytheist-Witch
There is no one reason people write stories.
In the case of the bible I believe we are dealing with propaganda. In the OT it is nationalist propaganda, somewhat obscured by the way that 'nation/ethnicity/relgion' were barely seperated. The NT is more straightforwardly religious propaganda.
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@Polytheist-Witch
I agree - its untrue nonsense. Which prompts the question why did they write it down?
The standard atheist answer is that they were stupid and ignorant, but I think there is more to it. I think the writers of Genesis set out to write a vast saga of Hebrew/Jewish history, belief in which was required to be a 'good' Jew. That is Jews would be taught that it was yhwh that reated the world (not any other god) and it was yhwh that sent the flood etc. Once written down, what jews believed could not change so they would not be assimilated into Babyonian culture, as I wrote in #12. https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/1277/post_links/53964
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@Polytheist-Witch
They explain where the water came from and that it need to recede. Live in a flood plain and you would get it
The text runs: "11...all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights." (gen 7:11-12)
and
(Gen 8:1-3) "He [yhwh] sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth."
The writers of genesis could hardly have written any less in the way of detail!
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@Discipulus_Didicit
God could magic the water in and out of existence, but that would not be necessary in the cosmology of the firmament that the authors would have accepted as true.
I think the writers of Genesis had no interest in where the water came from or went to. From ch 1 v 1 the focus is on what yhWH does, not on how or why he does it. Those questions are nugatory because YHWH - it was supposed - is a god. Any lay Hebrew who had the balls to point out to the priests and scribes the logical flaws in their story would be asking for trouble! Deut 13:10 "thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God". Clearly it is not only Islam that commands death for apostasy!
I think a lot of this has to with the desire of Jewish nationalists to preserve jewish identity during the Babylonian exile. It would have been easy for the exiled Jews to have been assimilated, but by fixing and defining a YHWHist jewish identity in writing the priests could avoid it being diluted by foreign ideas. The truth of the genesis accounts of creation or the flood was not important to the scribes who wrote them; what mattered was the exiled jews identified with them rather than the Babylonian versions.
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I'm asking you. If gold has an intrinic value either inepiece is a fair reward or it isn't.
Of course it is not possible to say if it is afair wage - it depends on what it can be exchanged for. Society will establish an equibrium position but whetether tht equilibrium sets 6x6 hole digging at 1,2 or 10 gold pieces is not defined.
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@IlDiavolo
i don't tnk gold has intrinsic value. if I want you to dig me a hole 6 feet wide and 6 feet deep woud you do it for 1 gold piece or hold out for 2?
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@Tradesecret
God could create enough water and then make it go away again. All the 'problems' with the flood story can be avoided by giving God enough power - which is one of the reasons I don't care to argue over it.Is there enough water on our planet to cover it? I honestly don't know.
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@Ramshutu
If there is an absolute invariant time then it should be possible to synchronise a 'master clock' so it displays it. Moving clocks or clocks in a gravitational field could then be be shown to be wrong because they would display a time different from the master clock.
The problem is - where do you put the master clock? It would not only have to be away from any gravitational field but it would so have to be stationary. But 'stationary' is always relative to something. Something 'stationary' on earth is moving at thousands of miles an hour from a different pov.
A bit of thought reveals a 'master clock' is impossible, hence absolute time does not exist.
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@Mopac
The early church sought converts amongt the Jews - it wanted to present itself as a continution of judaism, not as a hetertical sect. Also typology gave the impression of a 'magical' element - it asked 'how could these prophecies be true if what we say isn't true?'. That tack is still used today - people are supposed to be amazed by inexplicable prophecies - it is a big selling point.
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@RationalMadman
It would be most unfair on the others to give you such an easy win.
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matthew was keen to make explicit refernces to the OT. Ican see 4 in the nativity story:
matthew 1:23 quoting isaiah 7:14
matt 2:6 refencing micah 5:2-4
matt 2:15 quoting Hosea 11;1
matt 2:18 quoting jer 21:15.
Apart from the Micah the context of the quotes makes it very unlikely they are actual prophecies. Matthew seems to have chosen verses that 'fit' only if one doesn't examine them too hard!
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And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
If nothing else that gave us one of te gretest pieces of music ever written!
I'm content Isaiah 9 is a messianic prophesy, but messiahs were a feature of Judaic mythos. The established pattern was that after disaster a messiah would ariseto return the Hebrrw/Jewish nation to their previous good state. I suspect Isaiah may be refering to Cyrus as a Messiah here, as he does explicitly in ch 45: "Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut".
unortunately the language of prophecy is always obscure and open to any number of interpretations.
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@RationalMadman
I am not telling anybody anything. I am putting forward an argument about why the comment section should be removed. Do you have an argument for keeping it or don't you?
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@RationalMadman
Whether I take part in formal debates is irrelevant to the question of whether formal debates should have a comment section or not so perhaps you'd care to defend having a comment section rather than indulging in ad hominems! A 'professional' debater should have no trouble crushing a forum amateur!
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@RationalMadman
I fully recognise the value of the 'social side of discussion' etc. However formal debating is defined by having a formal structure and specific criteria for voting and defining who wins. The comment section operates as a forum; yet fans of formal debating tend to be quite snuffy about forums! I am a fan of forums... and so - by their deeds but not their claims - are people who support a comment section in formal debates!
AFAICT the comment section does not have a real-world counterpart.
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@Mopac
We certainly believe it actually happened, as did the earliest church.
If it was believed by the earliest church, why is it absent from Mark, John and Paul? Of course it could be they didn't think it was worth mentioning, but that seems a trifle odd given that virgin births are not commonplace!
The discrepancies between Matthew and Luke show at least one of them made their nativity stories, and the natural thing to assume isthey both did. I believe Jesus was a remarkable man, but he was a man, born in the usual way and not a miracle working divinity.
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@Alec
I would argue ranking is irrelevant. What matters is willingness to abide by 'debate etiquette' even if you have lost every debate so far. Etiquette is hard to define by rules - to work the 'professional' group would have to operate according to the 'spirit' not the letter of its regulations.
That's fine...but it's for those who like to debate for debate's sake, which is not everyone. If it keeps pedants and sticklers away from the rest of ns having our fun I'm all for giving 'profesionals' a sandpit to play in.
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@Ramshutu
Are you sure you should be engaging with someone who says "They [viruses] have no legs, brains, eyes or ears so they are unable to attack humans"?
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@DebateArt.com
My argument is that a formal debate is supposed to be about the arguments presented as presented. Too often the comments become a continuation of the debate, negating the formal structure.
Remarks on conduct and content can be placed in the vote RFD. If people want a free-form debate on the issues beyond the material presented in the formal rounds then the forums is the place for it.
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@PGA2.0
I would say that the only clear instance of 'borrowing' is the virgin birth. it's not in Mark or John and Paul doesn't refer to it. Nor is virgin birth a featur of Judaic traditions. It looks very much that Jesus was given a miraculous birth by Matthew and Luke as part of their nativity tales because of an imported tradition that remarkable people had remarkable births.
A few gods die and come back to life, but that us usually in connection to the annual cycle of seasons - I don't see that as a very good parallel. I'm certainly not saying the miracle stories in the Gospels are true, but I don't think they are cribs from other religions.
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@IlDiavolo
Even if money was made of gold its value would only be what people agreed on. If civiliation collapsed then having a stack of gold would not be much use to you - you'd be better off holding a stack of baked beans or potato seeds or maybe even clean water.
Without money the only mean of trade would be direct barter.
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@DebateArt.com
if i understand it, the idea is to have a closed group of members who indulge in 'serious' competitive debating amongst themselves. I can see how that would appeal to a certain type of member and it doesn't prevent 'normal' members from carrying on as before.
There is only the matter of controlling the membership of the 'professional' sub-group unaddressed.
In passing, I think that commenting on debates should be removed. Voting should be on the arguments presented - what purpose do the coments serve?
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@PGA2.0
Do you see the prophecy as weeks or sevens (a heptad)?Why do the Jews understand the prophecy as 490 years?Why do those who have researched this verse believe it is 490 years?From the information that I have given is it reasonable to believe it is 490 years?
I'm sure it refers to 490 years, starting 'From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem'. Many events have been proposed as the start point - my current slight prefernce is for 538BC when Cyrus allowed the exiled Jews to return. Very possibly the refernces to events was clearer to 2nd century Jews than it is to us!
but I don't base my views on prophecy on the fit or other wise of the text to history but on my disbelief in the supernatural. If Daniel is a forgery then we can infer forgers existed in 2nd century Judea. If it is a genuine prophesy then we have to accept the reality gods, angels, 'seeing the future' and that everything we now about the physical world is wrong.
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@Mopac
You have taken it on yourself to explain things to us poor fools. So far you have only posted badly spelled platitudes.and complaints about our lack of intelligence, but we continue to indulge you in the hope you will improve.
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@PGA2.0
Do you consider yourself immune from confirmationn bias and cognitive dissonance?
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@3RU7AL
I hope he understands Orthodoxy better than he understands politics or there's no point listening to him. As it is what he says is so vague and obscure he uses a lot of words to say very little.
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@Mopac
YHWH refers to a particular form - YHWH allocated Israel to the Hebrews for instance. Even if one accepts the general principle that God=reality you are claiming more than that.YHWH refers to The Eternally Existing One.
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@Mopac
Um, no. You are mistaking faux-socialism for the real thing.The spirit of socialism is the idea that if you don't have anything but somebody else does, there is nothing wrong about robbing them.
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@3RU7AL
I disagree - I think socialism and capitalism are opposites but no actual society has ever operated either exclusively or in pure form. In the UK we have private ownership and landlordism but we also have the NHS.
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@thett3
IANAL! However it looks to me that thett is correct that the change broadens the conditions under which an abortion is non-criminal from only where the mother's life is threatened to a more general consideration of her health and well-being.
My own view is that 'life threatening risk only' is too restrictive, but I have grave doubts about late term abortions in principle. I'm fine with early abortion, but I think it is hard to justify very late term abortions but not post-natal killing.
My criterion is the Benthamite one:
"The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but rather, 'Can they suffer?"
I would err on the side of assuming a late-term foetiscan suffer. I would support making carrying to term mandatory after, say, 28 or 30 weeks, but there must be provision for the baby to be cared for by te state if abortion is denied.
However that might be too expensive or there may be other problems I cannot foresee, and I reluctantly judge that late abortion may be the lesser of two evils compared to forcing a woman to bear and care for a child she does not want. There is clearly no 'good' option - the least bad is all one can hope for.
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@thett3
The previous law allowed late term abortion if the mothers life was at risk
I am not sure that is correct. Previousy NY law defined homicide as "conduct which causes the death of a person or an unborn child with which a female has been pregnant for more than 24 weeks." with no mention of any mitigating factors regardig the mothers health in the cases of abortions afer 24 weeks.
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@Nd24007
Have you considered your local bar?When this site was first created I had high hopes for it but it seem like not many new people joined at all. The topics are Kinda boring and it’s not as interesting as DDO was nor do I think it will ever be. Can any one recommend some good site to join to chat and discuss thing? I just wanna join a place that more active.
i think all sites like this are much the same. 90% of posts are made by a handful of regulars and it all gets very predictable. I reckon its possible to predict what any given poster will say with fair accuracy after awhile.
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@disgusted
You have to ber in mind that the orthodox church suffered the sort of persecution under communism that the Jews did under Nazism. mopac is not likely to be well-disposed to the left.
Historically socialism has always mutated into totalitarianism. Every time socialism has been attempted it was hijacked by totalitarians who sold repression as a means to the end of establishing the socialist ideal; what happened next was that maintaining totalitarianism became an end in itself. The regime uses the rhetoric of socialism to ensure the masses cannot and do not challenge the power of the elite - the very opposite of the 'spirit' of socialism.
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@Castin
i think there would only be a probem if the right brain had enough independent self-hood to protest! I'd use the conjoined twin model to get a handle on the issue.
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@PGA2.0
We have 19 EXTRA-BIBLICAL accounts or mentions of Jesus available to us today. That is in addition to the biblical accounts and the accounts of the early church fathers.
I've done some digging to see where the number 19 comes from, and it seems that you must be including writings dating from hundreds of years after the death of Jesus. In general the writers are telling their readers what it is that Christians believe; the writer does does not believe it himself.
Typical is a letter written by Pliny the Younger to Trajan in AD 112 concerned with the treatment of Christians who recant. The existence of Christianity is not in dispute, but Pliny's letter does not imply jesus could raise the dead or turn water into wine. AD 112 is actually one of theearlier dates of such 'corroborative' material!
Without being sure what the 19 accounts are I can't discuss them.
As to OT prophesy, I think it is more reasonable to suppose that people can read (and copy from) the ancient texts than to suppose people could see into the future.
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@PGA2.0
Very reasonable and logical. I defy you to make sense of the universe without God, and I challenge you to find better testimony of an ancient historical person. There are 19 extra-biblical listings of Jesus and much information can be gleaned from these that collaborates the biblical accounts. Then you have the early church fathers who verify He is an actual person as well as 27 different NT accounts, plus many pseudo-accounts. Then you have the whole of the OT that predicts a Messiah, One anointed by God.
If we accept Markan primacy everything written about Jesus can be traced back to that single source. We don't have 19 independent lines of documentary evidence - we have one solitary contemporary source and 19 people copying it and copying copies of it for the next few hundred years.
I think it almost goes without saying that I am not impressed by claims of prophecy! We have a combination of Gospel writers deliberately making stuff up to give the impression of prophecy and 2000 years of partisan Chtistian quote mining.
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@PGA2.0
Is it reasonable to believe Jesus was a historical Person based on the evidence available = Yes!Is it reasonable to believe God is our Creator = Yes!Is it reasonable to believe the Bible is the Word of God = Yes!Is it reasonable to believe in Jesus = Yes!
Doesn't it depend on what is meant by 'reasonable'? It could mean 'just about possible' or it could mean 'very probable'.
The evidence for Jesus is that stories were written about Him and some people seem to have believed them. The evidence against is the lack of any physical objects, the lack of any independent written sources, the supernatural and fabulous nature of the stories and the fact that even more of the people alive in Judea at the time disbelieved the stories.
So how 'reasonable' is it to believe jesus was a historical person? Particularly if 'historical jesus' refers to an actual divinity rather than a human around which legends crystalised, such as happened with King Arthur or Robin Hood. Is an emphatic 'yes' really an adequate response?
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@Castin
Thinking on, I don't see split brains are more philosophically challenging than conjoined twins.... it's two brains in one body,although one supposes there is more unconscious communication in split brain situation...
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@Polytheist-Witch
My reading is the law changed from 'late term abortions are illegal, period' to 'late term abortions are illegal unless there are medical reasons'.
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@thett3
yeah I’ll come out and say that there is no medical or moral justification for administering a lethal injection to a viable baby and then inducing labor to give birth to a corpse instead of just inducing labor and giving the baby up for adoption
If you are right the new law wilh have no effect as it enables late/viable abortions only when there is a medical reason.
I would hope that late term pregnant women will be advised to and choose to go for adoption. But for those cases where there is a medical reason not to take the adoption route the undesirable process of late term abortion is now legally permitted when necessary which was not so before.
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@Fallaneze
Do you have a position at all on whether there's an intelligent creator of the universe?
I think it is almost certainly not so.
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@thett3
Further, what is the medical reason to ensure that a fetus capable of surviving outside of the womb is killed before the woman goes into labor?
I'm neither a clinician nor a lawyer.
However the new law does not mandate late abortion! It permits late abortion when it is appropriate, whereas before late abortion was prohibitted under any circumstances. I don't know what circumstances would justify a late abortion, but are you so sure that there are none? Possibly you are, but I am always suspicious people who claim to know things.
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@thett3
Very, very few late term abortions are due to pregnant women changing their mind about having a baby at the last minute. Almost all late abortions are performed for medical reasons. The old law defines: "conduct which causes the death of a person or an unborn child with which a female has been pregnant for more than 24 weeks." as criminal regardless of medical considerations.
The modified law recognises that sometimes late abortion is medically necessary. It does not green-light late term abortions 'on demand' - a medical need must exist for abortions beyond 24 weeks. The wording of the new law permits abortion in the following circumstances ONLY:
"According to the practitioner's reasonable and good faith professional judgment based on the facts of the patient's case: the patient is within twenty-four weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or there is an absence of fetal viability, or the abortion is necessary to protect the patient's life or health."
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@Ramshutu
DDO is unlikely to be source of revenue for the company, and my bet is there’s just some email that gets checked once In a blue moon when someone remembers. If that. I doubt you’ll get much more than the occasional patch, if your lucky - and that is presuming there is anyone who remembers the site even exists.
Someone is working on it to keep the debate and opinion topics up-to-date and there is some new functionality. I'd say it as about as busy as DA but Willow, Harikrish and Ethang5 have the religion forum pretty much to themselves. I'm not sure they've noticed or care!
It only takes a small number of (ie 5 or 6) good members or trolls to make or break sites like DDO or Dart for users. I don't know if they are ever money spinners for the owners.
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