| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Marguerita" |
| Date: |
02 Apr 2004 07:28:56 AM |
| Object: |
Re: Crucified |
On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 17:26:29 GMT, Johnny Bravo <no@nospam.com> wrote:
On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 15:50:19 +0000, Marguerita
<marguerita@hottermail.co.uk> wrote:
On Tue, 30 Mar 2004 22:50:40 GMT, Johnny Bravo <no@nospam.com> wrote:
On Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:29:35 +0000, Marguerita
<marguerita@hottermail.co.uk> wrote:
When man chose to sin, that sin
entered his entire being, thus being passed to all generations.
So does the Church believe that one person must be held responsible
for the sin committed by another person?
DEU 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children,
neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man
shall be put to death for his own sin.
So what's all this stuff about 'original sin' and people carrying the
sin of ancestors who lived and died many thousands of years ago?
Don't ask me, they've been killing each other for hundreds of years
because they can't agree what that book is supposed to say. Reflects
rather poorly on the quality of the message if there are hundreds of
different interpretations and also telling is the intelligence of the
followers if they have to resort to murder to win the argument.
I did read a study that showed that atheists tend to be better
educated and have higher IQs, which the posts I've seen in here seem
to confirm. I find it hard to get my head around the whole faith thing
when so many people have pointed out the obvious contradictions, but
it's always interesting trying.
M
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| User: "Christopher A. Lee" |
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| Title: Re: Crucified |
02 Apr 2004 07:00:38 AM |
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On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 13:28:56 +0000, Marguerita
<marguerita@hottermail.co.uk> wrote:
I did read a study that showed that atheists tend to be better
educated and have higher IQs, which the posts I've seen in here seem
to confirm. I find it hard to get my head around the whole faith thing
when so many people have pointed out the obvious contradictions, but
it's always interesting trying.
That's only part of the story.
Mainstream theists partition themselves between religion and the real
world. It's like watching a movie: inside the theater the audience
suspends disbelief because they're in a sort of virtual reality where
the rules are different, eg hearing explosions in the vacuum of space.
When they leave the theatre they return to reality. And depending whom
they're talking with they switch between the partitioned contexts.
Evangelicals, fundamentalists, creationists, prosetylisers,
missionaries etc don't return to reality and have no idea how to
interact with people in the real world. Because the boundary between
the two contexts has been blurred, there is cognitive dissonance at
work so that contraditions between the two vanish. They prefer what
their religion says over reality, whether it's about other people, how
the world works etc.
It would be a good bet that eg Abdus Salim, the Moslem who won the
Nobel prize for physics in 1979, wasn't a fundamentalist.
But even sixteen centuries ago some of the Christian fathers realised
this. As in the famous quote from Augustine says:
Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram
libri duodecim) (translated by J. H. Taylor, Ancient Christian
Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41)
Book 1 Chapter 19 Paragraph 39
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth,
the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the
motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative
positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the
cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals,
shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as
being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a
disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a
Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture,
talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to
prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up
vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is
not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that
people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers
held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose
salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and
rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a
field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his
foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe
those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead,
the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they
think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they
themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold
trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in
one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by
those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For
then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue
statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof
and even recite from memory many passages which they think support
their position, although _they understand neither what they say
nor the things about which they make assertion_. [1 Timothy 1.7]"
M
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| User: "Biff" |
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| Title: Re: Crucified |
02 Apr 2004 11:56:42 AM |
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Nice post, Christopher.
Biff
"Christopher A. Lee" <calee@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:tqnq60houonbb4a0nstlmk8i54ldhah8t4@4ax.com...
On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 13:28:56 +0000, Marguerita
<marguerita@hottermail.co.uk> wrote:
I did read a study that showed that atheists tend to be better
educated and have higher IQs, which the posts I've seen in here seem
to confirm. I find it hard to get my head around the whole faith thing
when so many people have pointed out the obvious contradictions, but
it's always interesting trying.
That's only part of the story.
Mainstream theists partition themselves between religion and the real
world. It's like watching a movie: inside the theater the audience
suspends disbelief because they're in a sort of virtual reality where
the rules are different, eg hearing explosions in the vacuum of space.
When they leave the theatre they return to reality. And depending whom
they're talking with they switch between the partitioned contexts.
Evangelicals, fundamentalists, creationists, prosetylisers,
missionaries etc don't return to reality and have no idea how to
interact with people in the real world. Because the boundary between
the two contexts has been blurred, there is cognitive dissonance at
work so that contraditions between the two vanish. They prefer what
their religion says over reality, whether it's about other people, how
the world works etc.
It would be a good bet that eg Abdus Salim, the Moslem who won the
Nobel prize for physics in 1979, wasn't a fundamentalist.
But even sixteen centuries ago some of the Christian fathers realised
this. As in the famous quote from Augustine says:
Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram
libri duodecim) (translated by J. H. Taylor, Ancient Christian
Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41)
Book 1 Chapter 19 Paragraph 39
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth,
the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the
motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative
positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the
cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals,
shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as
being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a
disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a
Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture,
talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to
prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up
vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is
not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that
people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers
held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose
salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and
rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a
field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his
foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe
those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead,
the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they
think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they
themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold
trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in
one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by
those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For
then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue
statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof
and even recite from memory many passages which they think support
their position, although _they understand neither what they say
nor the things about which they make assertion_. [1 Timothy 1.7]"
M
.
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| User: "Johnny Bravo" |
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| Title: Re: Crucified |
02 Apr 2004 02:06:59 PM |
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On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 13:00:38 GMT, Christopher A. Lee
<calee@optonline.net> wrote:
Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram
libri duodecim) (translated by J. H. Taylor, Ancient Christian
Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41)
Book 1 Chapter 19 Paragraph 39
<snip quote>
It would have been interesting to have a chance for us to debate him
in the group. We hardly ever see Christians of this calibre in here.
<grin>
--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft
.
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| User: "Marguerita" |
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| Title: Re: Crucified |
02 Apr 2004 06:59:23 PM |
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On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 13:00:38 GMT, Christopher A. Lee
<calee@optonline.net> wrote:
On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 13:28:56 +0000, Marguerita
<marguerita@hottermail.co.uk> wrote:
I did read a study that showed that atheists tend to be better
educated and have higher IQs, which the posts I've seen in here seem
to confirm. I find it hard to get my head around the whole faith thing
when so many people have pointed out the obvious contradictions, but
it's always interesting trying.
That's only part of the story.
Mainstream theists partition themselves between religion and the real
world. It's like watching a movie: inside the theater the audience
suspends disbelief because they're in a sort of virtual reality where
the rules are different, eg hearing explosions in the vacuum of space.
When they leave the theatre they return to reality. And depending whom
they're talking with they switch between the partitioned contexts.
I like the analogy. The problem seems to be the fact that too many
take the rules from the theatre outside and try and persuade other
people that they apply in the real world. If the two were entirely
separate it would not be so much of a problem.
Evangelicals, fundamentalists, creationists, prosetylisers,
missionaries etc don't return to reality and have no idea how to
interact with people in the real world. Because the boundary between
the two contexts has been blurred, there is cognitive dissonance at
work so that contraditions between the two vanish. They prefer what
their religion says over reality, whether it's about other people, how
the world works etc.
It would be a good bet that eg Abdus Salim, the Moslem who won the
Nobel prize for physics in 1979, wasn't a fundamentalist.
Seems likely... apart from anything else fundamentalists are a very
small proportion of Muslims.
But even sixteen centuries ago some of the Christian fathers realised
this. As in the famous quote from Augustine says:
Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram
libri duodecim) (translated by J. H. Taylor, Ancient Christian
Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41)
Book 1 Chapter 19 Paragraph 39
That's a fascinating quote - I'd not heard it before. If he was so
convinced that so much of it was manufactured garbage, why did he pin
any importance to the book at all?
M
.
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| User: "Johnny Bravo" |
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| Title: Re: Crucified |
02 Apr 2004 07:32:19 PM |
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On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 00:59:23 +0000, Marguerita
<marguerita@hottermail.co.uk> wrote:
That's a fascinating quote - I'd not heard it before. If he was so
convinced that so much of it was manufactured garbage, why did he pin
any importance to the book at all?
There are quite a few christians who believe in the message of the
bible and understand that it is not a science book. They understand
it was written from the perspective of Bronze Age people, not 20th
century scientists.
--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft
.
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| User: "Johnny Bravo" |
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| Title: Re: Crucified |
02 Apr 2004 02:04:12 PM |
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On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 13:28:56 +0000, Marguerita
<marguerita@hottermail.co.uk> wrote:
I did read a study that showed that atheists tend to be better
educated and have higher IQs, which the posts I've seen in here seem
to confirm. I find it hard to get my head around the whole faith thing
when so many people have pointed out the obvious contradictions, but
it's always interesting trying.
For many in here it's a form of entertainment as there are so few on
topic posts. :)
--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft
.
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| User: "Johnny Bravo" |
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| Title: Re: Crucified |
02 Apr 2004 07:33:03 PM |
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On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 01:10:48 +0000, Marguerita
<marguerita@hottermail.co.uk> wrote:
On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 20:04:12 GMT, Johnny Bravo <no@nospam.com> wrote:
On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 13:28:56 +0000, Marguerita
<marguerita@hottermail.co.uk> wrote:
I did read a study that showed that atheists tend to be better
educated and have higher IQs, which the posts I've seen in here seem
to confirm. I find it hard to get my head around the whole faith thing
when so many people have pointed out the obvious contradictions, but
it's always interesting trying.
For many in here it's a form of entertainment as there are so few on
topic posts. :)
OK, so I'm guilty of churning out off-topic posts. I'm new around
here... :-)
I'm not new and I do it too, don't feel bad. The fundies start it
so I see it as self-defense. :)
--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft
.
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