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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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If God ordered someone in Bible to kill someone else doesn't mean we all should. Old testament is full of bloody events as God has tried many things to save his people till he figured out Jesus must come. But really, people were brutal back then (relative to today's standards) without God's orders as well, how were Biblical events more horrible than anything else that has happened outside it? People are actually still pretty brutal, WW2 was nothing better than anything that happened in Old testament so no, Bible depicts human nature as it is, not as what God has taught us.
@ elemental
You can't have your cake and eat it.
Your god commanded genocide, tortured a baby, gave young girls as slaves....he Ordered other crimes as reported in the bible . So how the fuck do you get its human nature? Maybe they wouldn't have done any of those things, those crimes would not have occurred to social animals unless ordered by your 'loving god?
How fucking silly are you ? You defeated your own moronic argument.
You want to hear something even more ludicrous Old Man?
When a theist talks about god's properties it is love, compassion, yadda yadda yadda, the typical hippy love stuff. But wander into the horrors god has committed, and all of a sudden, it is back to "oh, we can't understand how god works".
@Elemental: SPECIAL PLEADING IF EVER I HEARD IT.
Fuck your bible and fuck your god.
Elemenalenal, you asserted that, “God has tried many things to save his people till he figured out Jesus must come.”
You sure have me confused now! I thought your god is omniscient. But you’re saying he had to experiment because he didn’t know what would work?
No, I don't think God can do everything we can imagine in any way possible. His ubiquitous power is relative to humans, otherwise he would just snap his fingers and make all the people believe perfect believers would he not? Your claim means either your knowledge comes entirely from what people have said, which makes you quite useless in a discussion about Bible or you interpret it just as stupidly as people whose beliefs you criticize. Let's stop being so naive here, Bible is not that square. If it would be written in all literal sense, it would be in scientific language and we wouldn't understand shit.
@Elemenalenal: O Fuck, A wishy-washy half powerful, mentally crippled God. WTF are we having this discussion for? Absolute Bullshit!
@Elemenalenal
"No, I don't think God can do everything we can imagine in any way possible. His ubiquitous power is relative to humans, otherwise he would just snap his fingers and make all the people believe perfect believers would he not?"
You claim your god created everything, knows everything, and has incredible powers? Your god can reach into dreams, created us, yet cannot control us? Either your statment is pure contradiction or this god is incompetent.
"If it would be written in all literal sense, it would be in scientific language and we wouldn't understand shit."
Or Latin where just trained clergy can read it?
My interpretation of the bible is very simple. I am a literal person, anything else is playing mind-reader and guessing. What is interesting is that almost every atheist has the same interpretation. I submit that when the bible is read by anyone no totally gullible and indoctrinated, rather with a critical mind, the interpretation less loose.
From a book of approximately 1200 pages, there are over 33,00 interpretations. This is the greatest multiple choice books ever.
Again I come with an AI analogy, this time from an example someone else had made before me and people no matter their beliefs don't really call bullshit against - Westworld. A completely rational and realistic theoretical sci-fi (haven't watched most of it though, but the premise gives a great example). Now imagine the creator as a god character, he created their universe, everything around them and themselves from his own image. Now, he is relatively all wise and all powerful, but he doesn't control his creations directly. As I said before, it's very naive of you (and of many christians, you somehow lowered to their level) to imagine God's power as he can do everything we can imagine in any way we can imagine if it's clear in Bible that he doesn't control humans (that would defeat the purpose of such creation, he could just create dolls he could play with then), so he can't of course predict everything we do. He can certainly clearly see the way we might be heading and much else, but not everything. Just as I previously told, he can't snap his fingers and just make everyone perfect believers. He can't destroy our sin and Jesus was necessary as the only way to save us. Yes, God is incompetent if we look at it like kinder gardeners. I feel a bit weird I have to explain this :D.
That, of course, wouldn't really change much, as he can do everything Bible has promised us.
I agree that almost every single person who has read the Bible has their own interpretation of some stuff, but if you have read enough, there are very much certain things you can't disagree with, which are in the core of the message it provides.
Wow, another irony meter heads for the skip.
So when the deity in the bible instructed the Israelite to commit acts of ethnic cleansing he didn't really mean it?
This post is either a windup, or the dumbest post ever. Either way it's comedy gold, kudos.
@ Sheldon
Another Christian who pays lip-service to objective morality; yet is more than willing to appeal to moral relativism when it comes time for them to defend their mythology.
@Elemenalenal
You'd have to even dumber to think the bible doesn't roundly contradict itself on just about every claim.
Thou shalt not kill.
Kill all the Amalekites, even the women and children, and infants.
@Elemenalenal
"I'd say Egypt had one of the most harmony civilizations have had and no world wars were necessary there to archive it. "
Are you freaking kidding me? You obviously have zero knowledge of the history of Egypt, one with many wars with it's neighbors to the East and South. Those Pharaohs were warrior kings, they just didn't sit around and look pretty.
"I base my moral actions on the ten commandments, I hold them for objective."
And we went over those ten commandments, and you failed by a large margin to convince me they led to a better society. And any rules within those commandments do not require a god. For example, it's anti-societal to steal from others. No god required.
I study art, ancient Egyptian culture I have went through 5 times in different classes. They were happy and wars were mostly to expand their lands, not for well-being, but you could send me a source which proves otherwise and I'll consider :D
Commandments haven't lead to better society as nothing will. Humanity is going to shit as of course you know it's written in Bible. You know that stealing is wrong and refrain from it. I have seen many thieves around who don't really care if it's wrong and cultivate stealing anyway without much heartache (certainly not as a last resort to feed their families :D), now how does this ''thing'' that helps you not to steal work for them? We could back up a bit more and go back to objective reasons in atheism to not be selfish, are there any? I guess that's what I want to find most here.
@Elemenalenal
"Humanity is going to shit as of course you know it's written in Bible."
That is an assertion I disagree with. The data I have witnessed is trending towards an ever increasing quality of life. https://ourworldindata.org/exports/human-development-index-escosura_v3_8...
Please support your statement, and please be aware that in the last twenty years the news services have increased their scope and bad news sells. In other words, we get more bad news, but that may be as a result of the bias in news reporting.
@Elemenalenal: RE: Humanity is going to shit! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
“The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it” by Max Roser, an economist at the University of Oxford and the founder of Our World in Data, we learn that on virtually all of the key dimensions of human material well-being—poverty, literacy, health, freedom, and education—the world is an extraordinarily better place than it was just a couple of centuries ago.
We feed more people, crime is down, people live longer and happier lives, medical advancements cure diseases (diabetes and cancers, and polio is nearly eliminated.) People no longer die of tooth decay. Massive gains have been made in reducing extreme poverty, particularly in the last 50 years. More people attend universities than ever before. At first, the progress was steady: in 1950 75% of the world were still living in extreme poverty. But today, those living in extreme poverty are now less than 10%.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/11/30/why-the-world-is-ge...
You are demonstrably and laughably 'WRONG.'
@Elemenalenal
"I study art, ancient Egyptian culture I have went through 5 times in different classes. They were happy and wars were mostly to expand their lands, not for well-being, but you could send me a source which proves otherwise and I'll consider".
Where did you study Egypt? Sunday School? I suggest you read some real history, authored by real historians.
When I first read this challenge it seemed so ludicrous I initially was going to casually discard it. It is like challenging whether Hitler was responsible for doing anything bad.
Why is murder and rape wrong?
Why do you keep ignoring this question?
That is precisely what you're saying, and yes it is a completely unevidenced claim you're making, one of many.
Now that's fucking hilarious, it's also dishonest as I haven't done this, an of course it's rank hypocrisy, as this is what you have done from the start.
So you think slavery is morally justifiable, and you think rape, murder, genocide, incest, ethnic cleansing, and infanticide, as well as the sex trafficking of young women and girls is moral behaviour. What's more you must also believe that unruly children should be taken to the edge of town and stoned?
Or are you know going to cherry which parts of the bible you believe, after your hilarious lie about me cherry picking bad examples above?
So having dishonestly accused me of cherry picking, you're now cherry picking which parts of the bible to obey, hilarious.
I asked you why those actions are wrong, it seems you don't even know, that's some moral worldview, and the book you respect endorses slavery, genocide, ethnic cleansing, infanticide, rapine, murder, sex trafficking of women and girls, human sacrifice, etc etc, do you respect those actions as well? Or are you subjectively cherry picking which bits to respect? So much for objective morality...
You don't seem to know why anything is immoral, you're calming to be an amoral automaton. Not once have you mentioned empathy for the suffering of others, now to me that is demonstrably a dangerous basis for morality, as centuries of religious persecution and atrocities can attest. Blindly believing cruel and barbaric archaic religious texts are the reason theists have justified all manner of barbaric and immoral atrocities throughout human history.
So it's a blind subjective belief, nothing more. Again this lays bare the lie that your beliefs involve objective morality, or indeed any morality. The bible endorses vile and barbaric acts, including murder and rape, so how do you claim to know these are wrong?
@Elemenalenal
"What is the reason an atheist should do what is ethical if he doesn't feel like it at the moment?"
I can't turn off a personal empathy and concern for a fellow human being. And I am very sure many other people also possess this characteristic. If you do not understand this, then you do not possess it, and as I previously sated, please follow your religion and worship your god, because you are a psychopath or sociopath.
For some reason you are trying to make this conversation about me and yourself. It is not. Again I remind you of people we can all agree are selfish assholes and are quite many around. I assure you, they mostly do not believe in God and if they think they follow Bible, they can be referred to as ''posers''. Is it really just me here that sees danger in not having arguments against selfishness?
@Elemenalenal
Selfishness is linked to our desire to survive and prosper. But empathy and compassion are also linked to our desire to survive and prosper because we are social animals and can not live with out each other. The issue is that we must find a balance.
And morality (for me and many others) is that we do not blindly follow a set of rules, but rather assess each situation on it's own.
"I assure you, they mostly do not believe in God and if they think they follow Bible, they can be referred to as ''posers''."
Or referred to as "no true Scotsman"? You make me laugh when fall head-first into that fallacy. All by yourself.
I was just making my point that I don't justify people who are doing things in the name of God, they often are not really anything else than selfish deeds they hide behind a noble cause.
We are beings of society, I agree, but if one can decide he doesn't really care for it and no counter arguments for that are possible, something doesn't seem to be right (there are many such people around). I think that people shouldn't be able to decide that.
One assesses situation one way, other does differently, where to look for common rigorous ground there? All you seem to have is a hunch, because laws (only rigid system of right and wrong we'd have without beliefs) don't solve ethical problems.
@Elemenalenal
"I was just making my point that I don't justify people who are doing things in the name of God, they often are not really anything else than selfish deeds they hide behind a noble cause."
Like jesus? He had two bad days, then got promoted to sit at the right hand of god, destined to enjoy all the pleasures of heaven.
I really don't understand your comment or why such a brave assumption in context of this discussion. That's just claiming without argument, man, something that is clearly opposite the mechanic Bible provides (which I thought is very largely the point of all this). Is it starting to dumb down to just insults now? :D I still believe arguments can be kept respected here but oh well, not mi casa, really.
@Elemenalenal
"I really don't understand your comment or why such a brave assumption in context of this discussion. That's just claiming without argument, man, something that is clearly opposite the mechanic Bible provides (which I thought is very largely the point of all this)."
You are beginning with the assumption that your jesus died for you. I am not, but instead forming an opinion based on events. That is how one can properly investigate what happened and why.
Boo hoo hoo if I don't hold the same opinion on this jesus dude and project him as totally selfless and wonderful.
Ponder this: what if jesus was a self-serving con man?
This is a discussion that has no point if arguments are based on stuff that is assumed about Bible. What you said about Jesus just makes this conversation a dead end. If discussion is to be held further, well, then let's not stick to what we interpret in such drastic measures that twist the whole Biblical story.
edit: removed
@Elemenalenal
"This is a discussion that has no point if arguments are based on stuff that is assumed about Bible."
YOU are the one assuming the bible is accurate and valid, that jesus loved us. I am the one challenging it's veracity. If you know anything about the history of the bible, then my position is valid.
"What you said about Jesus just makes this conversation a dead end."
Why? Just because my opinion shines a completely different light on this jesus story? He took a bullet for mankind? That is an opinion, must like my opinion is that he was willing to suffer for two days so he could get promoted to the right hand of god and enjoy eternity having a good time.
You don't like my opinion? Tough.
It is more narcissistic than that because , as per trinitarian doctrine, Jesus is basically God so...
@Elemental: No true Christian fallacy.
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