Like I said the word of God is simply saying this:
and this:
The author of these books (Moses) know that these words of God are very important. And so they have their own way of describing it. God himself isn't using death as a method to get his point across. Like we've discussed earlier, the "tones" is a bit outdated and such an attitude is inapplicable today, but the messages still remain unscathed.

While you were responding to my post, i edited it by adding in a segment saying what I think would happen if we disobeyed such laws. I would also like to add that I believe both Moses and people today (or for ANY time period or society) believe the spiritual, relational consequences to be the same. That is probably the primary emphasis to what Moses was saying.

So God in this case is the underlying message behind the crude wording of the author? Are these people too incapable of coming up with these morals themselves? Hell, at the age of six I knew it was in my best interest to respect my parents, not to kill, and other things that keep me out of trouble without the Bible. Perhaps I can gain a better understanding of your belief if you tell me what exactly God is in your opinion.

If the Bible flew down from the sky and literally had the fingerprints of God and only God, things would be much much easier . However I believe God to be of a being that exists outside of our physical/earthly/materialistic senses (hence why people can't physically prove God exists. If such a feat were plausible, then IMHO God wouldn't be called God).

The relevance of God and/or the author's word to our morals now becomes a different issue altogether. A new topic should be made, because we've seriously been going off topic (shame on me ).

We're testing whether or not reading the Bible helps us believe there is (or isn't) a God, right? ["Read the bible to believe god exists?"] If I come up with my own morals that tend to be the same as the Bible—but without actually reading the Bible—then does reading the Bible support believing in a God, or does it mean that I have common sense (like don't murder, don't commit adultery, etc.)? I don't believe questioning the relationship between our morals and the words of the Bible is necessarily off topic.

KrayZee brought up this topic to discuss how he is displeased with the fact that there are christians out there who do not believe in science or evolution and how they always resort to "reading the bible" in their stances and everything, which is completely different from what we've been talking about for the past 20 or so posts.. This topic wasn't about the Bible and it's teachings itself, but the relevance the Bible had in the whole science religion clash (which IMO shouldn't even exist) hence the quotations in the thread title.

You asked what God is in my opinion. What I can do is PM it to you, perhaps it'll satisfy your want of having a better understanding of my belief.

How does anyone who's pro-Bible seriously believe that God made the writers write it? Couldn't the authors have easily claimed that they were getting their orders from God just to sound more impressive? I can do that. I bet you money that if I wrote a book that provided supernatural explanations for historical events, claimed that some kind of God told me so, and then campaigned and advertised heavily, I would pick up a few genuine believers. If the book came from God himself, that would make things "too easy," you say. Doesn't that just sound like a human author imploring that the reader probe no deeper?

I think the reason why people are attracted to religion as a moral center instead of plain common sense/empathy is because they need to believe that some supernatural being cares and will reward them for good behavior. A lot of religious people I know literally believe that God and Satan are having a war for their soul. How conceited, I must say, to believe that universe-altering beings are doing battle for your inner-most thoughts. I call that the narcissism of the everyman. Being good for no reason is too much to ask of most people, hence religion. On that note, I concede that religion might be a necessary evil in the world. Most people would be reduced to beasts if they weren't afraid of invisible characters judging them all the time. How brilliant of religion to take advantage of that primal self interest and convince everyone that the cosmos actually gives a flip about their personal successes. What puzzles me (and many others) is why do people that are intelligent enough to know better still need this ancient and agenda-laden code of morals when their own brains are good enough? Do they, too, need the ego stroking from God that the people who don't get the chance to really think about these sorts of things need?

In my opinion, if there is a God out there, it doesn't care about human affairs. On the flip side, I think that if there is a God, it's also possible that every detail (good, bad, boring, interesting, important, mundane) has been predetermined, and we're just living them out like characters in a finished story. Or there's no God.

No need to PM me, but I think we've made it clear already the Bible isn't a book of science and is more a book of philosophy.

So to wrap up you and HolySin's opinions, you guys are basically saying that you don't need the Bible or the teachings and morals presented within them to live out your lives. That is perfectly fine, you do what you want with your loving, happy, and frugal lives and use whatever you want when necessary. People choose to follow the teachings in the Bible by their own free will (and here is where the famous/notorious/controversial term comes into play; "faith.") Like i said, so long as people don't impede on the opinions of others or resort to coercion, everything is fine. This is where I end my time here, because the only reasons I've joined in on this discussion (besides responding to the original intent of the topic) is to discuss certain passages and quotations people have questions about in the Bible.

I agree, the Bible is not a science manual, it is a book of philosophy. It irks me when people only try to look at the "science" behind the bible and nothing else.

Do you have any idea how many more people died because of good ol' fashioned human greed & avarice as opposed to religion? WW1 - 20 millions casualties, WW2 - 40 million casualties, An Shi Rebellion - 30 millions casualties, the list goes on & on. The casualties of wars caused by religion is pathetically small in comparison. In addition, religious groups have done their part to clean up the mess & improve this world.

In the first post you said that you don't understand why they tell you to read the bible when you could read a history or science book instead. This implies that:
a) you think the bible is a collection of fairy-tales, which is fine, but if that was the case there would have been no need to make this topic.
b) you think that people are treating the bible as something that can offer 100% proof of god.

You did here:
Which says that they are obligated to give you proof that god is real, though I'm not sure what you mean by the second part; it reads as "theists' obligations are to ask for an agreement if god is real", whatever the hell that means. I'm sure your sentences make sense in your own convoluted mind, but I can't make sense of it.

In addition you said in the first post that Christians are wrong. Give me proof.

Because they think that the stories in there will inspire you to believe in a god, along with other evidence that there might be for god's existence.

No excuses dude. I don't care if you were talking about other people as well. You clearly stated that George W. Bush doesn't believe in evolution, even when the article says the opposite. In fact you didn't even have to read the article, you could have just look at the title: "Bush Says He Doubts Bible Literally True". But I guess that slandering our president doesn't bother you? (even if he deserves it)

I'm not going to go through 3000 comments, and even if I did, 3000 comments out of the 215000 voters are hardly indicative of anything. It's the statistics here that are important.

Yeah so I'm a lurker and I registered so that you wouldn't give theists (and frankly, atheists as well) a bad name. I might also want to use some of this site's other features as well.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 31 2008, 6:35 am by Dapperdan. Reason: Flamey McFlamey Had A Hissy Fit

It's like you never heard of religious wars, or ever heard of hundred years war at all.

a) I didn't say the bible is a collection of fairy-tales, and neither that is the reason to make this topic. You're making up words again.
b) Would you want redundant nagging from people saying that god is real 100% to 200%? The people that I'm talking about are trying to convert people.


By asking for an agreement if god is real, I just mean they want Christians added to their petty community. They just somehow find it an insult whether or not if people doesn't believe in god.

Neglecting people's rights of own beliefs?

And it does not. Your point being?

No excuses? What excuses? The MAIN argument are the polls and comments. I immediately skimmed through the article and went straight to the polls. Also, George W. Bush doesn't believe in evolution, he believes in evolution through the combination of creationism. He just doesn't think evolution is a fact without the combination of creationism.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 31 2008, 6:44 am by KrayZee.

Quoted for truth. That is exactly why I brought this topic. Though the quotation in the thread title was easily my assumption.

Oh how I wish more people in Religion were like you.

i have NOT read all the other posts but i must say, just think about this. I dont like the christian religion for a couple reasons. First, they are always so negative if your not a christian. They say "well you better become a christian soon if you dont want to burn in hell forever" thats just annoying. Next, i dont believe in religion in general because it just disputes people so much and makes us hate each other, dont get me wrong i respect peoples beliefs and they are entitled to there opinion but its just the start of SO many wars. Lastly, some christians ive met, and this doesnt apply to all of them, treat everyone else like dirt. One guy i met came up to me and asked me if i was christian, i said "no" and hes just like "wh..what? how dont you believe in it?" he was just AMAZED, as if it is impossible to not believe. After which he said "ill pray for you and your sinner friends..."

That just makes me mad.., very very mad.

OH i forgot, christians go around the world and make people feel bad about themselves if they arent christians, they recruit people. One guy on my bus was reading the bible, so he asked me what my favorite passage was. i said i haven't read the bible, and he offered to buy me a bible AND membership to his church free of price. This was a kind thing but when i denied he kept adding things to the table, he wouldnt leave till i was a christian. ill try to keep posted on this conv. And thx for reading my blabbering nonsense

Religion "disputes people so much"? What does that mean?

In addition to that, your grammar is atrocious. Please improve your posting quality as it is unfit for the Serious Discussion forum.

Your experience with the whole of christianity is limited, just as is mine, but I've never met ayone who's been like that to me. If we took the sum of all persons views with regards to christianity, what would be the end result? If you and I are to be viewed equally, then we might cancel out, since I have had a rather positive experience (with the christian people, not the religion itself mind you, this argument says nothing about the actual religion). If we took the sum of all persons over all time, who knows what the end result would be? Millions of positives and millions of negatives. The point here is it's very difficult to truly say anything about christianity based soley on our limited experience with it. Another key factor that supports this, is that the nature of the people who are christians may have been nasty whether or not they would have been a christian, though on the converse side, they may also be people who are nasty because they are christian. My point here is, it may be beneficial to you to not label the whole of christianity as "bad" but rather judge the individuals.

Ironic, because many Christian's criticize Joseph Smith or the other non-canon books of the catholic bible for this very reason, without any proof that the ones they read and believe are different. Christians can be a selectively logical bunch.


Second.

I've said that faith/belief just psychology, but never though of the exact motives. Your question made me think a bit more on the subject... My current take is the similarity of worshiping our parents (unless the parent figure abandoned/betrayed the child). Most of us like to think that our fathers/mothers are better than they actually are... in fact, we know that they're not as good as we want them to be in the back of our minds. The parent figures are the the most easily available source of bahavior patterns, so we want to idolize parents to think that behaving like them was a good bet. Same with God - we idolize him to reassure ourselves that acting by 'his' laws/morales is fine.

So this implies the greatest achievement of religion (christianity) is persuading people that morales are something created by God and that he is somewhat of a parent to all of us? As opposed to say... Greek mythology that had many Gods, which is not a close-to-life 'model' of parents.

Just some unfiltered thoughts here.

ADDITION: I considered all this only for Doodan's case of someone who has brains, but still worships God.

For the record: I don't worship, pray, etc., anymore. I haven't in a good while, and my levels happiness and success haven't changed. If anything, they're a little better, since I'm no longer counting on the heavens to pull strings for me. I've gotta figure this shit out myself!

But yes, I do agree with your assertion that religious tendencies may likely be linked to parental dependency, and many people carry that into adulthood.

I'm agnostic. i haven't made a decision of faith, yet. i have been studying Buddhism, Christianity and Islam They all appeal to me... and i practice the morals of all of them.

Looking at how small Earth is in the galaxy, and how small the galaxy is... it reminds me how small i am. I don't think there is any one acceptable answer to any giant question, any attempt to answer one of them is just self-pride. One single... tiny, insignificant, meaningless pile of carbon-matter cannot reveal the secrets of the universe with a single teaching or answer.

P.S. I do not have a fairy unicorn checking my spelling... FireFox does it for me

If you had what you believed was ultimate salvation from all of the world's problems, wouldn't you want to share it with everybody you met?