please bare with me on this.. firstly, i do not intend to cause offence to anyone.
i apologise if what i am saying is blasphemous to some.
i appreciate your views and mine may differ.
Its a message of hope, freedom, mercy.
Apart from all the nasty bits of course.
Israel made a decision for the merciful god
Apart from all the killing and slavery of course.
how worldy things pull down and how holy things build up,
Apart from the fact that isn't true of course.
So apart from the facts you are spot on!
please bare with me on this.. firstly, i do not intend to cause offence to anyone.
i apologise if what i am saying is blasphemous to some.
i appreciate your views and mine may differ.
I think if you look at the bible from the point of view of an atheist the thing that first becomes obvious is that the books are clearly not all related. If you compare Ecclesiastes to the Psalms or to Revelation and if you compare the gospels to Paul's writings you can see that the different books of the bible have some very different messages.
I think your first conclusion is correct for most of the bible, the second conclusion I am not sure about. I think there probably was a figure that the biblical Jesus was based on but I don't think we can assume what that figure claimed for himself since the new testament was written so long after his life. The first mention of the gospels doesn't happen until the second century. But I would agree that he was certainly popular enough to give rise to Christianity even if I don't believe he was the son of god.
You are definitely correct that believing that you are the son of god would count as a mental illness today. We do have a resident poster who does think this but I don't know what username they use now or if he is still a contributor, he has some very strange ideas and regularly gets told to get help with his condition.
i've seen discussions here about how jehovah's witnesses seem to be prone to believing conspiracy theories... https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/04/05/why-more-highly-educated-people-are-less-into-conspiracy-theories/.
this last paragraph seems particularly relevant:.
importantly, van prooijen said his findings help make sense of why education can contribute to “a less paranoid society” even when conspiracy theories are not explicitly challenged.
The problem is that historically conspiracies fail, someone always gives the game away in the end. People are very bad at keeping secrets because we are social animals. I have no problem believing in real proven conspiracies. So for example I don't believe that Eisenhower knew about Pearl Harbour before the attack because it makes no sense. A thwarted attack would have had the same effect as a successful one. The previous poster seems unaware that for most people a brief search on the internet is not going to take them to some fringe website but to more traditional online encyclopaedias that make use of evidence rather than hearsay and conjecture.
As per usual, evidence is the thing that makes the difference to thinking people. Contrary to the previous poster I think a more educated person is much more likely to be sceptical than the sort of swivel eyed loon that believes in every paranoid fantasy out there.
evolution explains how everything descended from a common ancestor over millions of years.
creationists only seem to want to talk about what came before that common ancestor.
just for the sake of discussion let's pretend that the following is true.
Are you talking about the mirror test and/or the spot test? They're are very controversial.
They might be controversial to you but I am not aware of any particular controversy in scientific circles. It is a psychological test so it isn't a hard science but there are some very well planned empirical studies out there that show that some animals are aware they are seeing themselves in a mirror. Even human babies don't pass this test when they are young.
evolution explains how everything descended from a common ancestor over millions of years.
creationists only seem to want to talk about what came before that common ancestor.
just for the sake of discussion let's pretend that the following is true.
My view about the origin of consciousness is based on Catholic tradition and the Bicameralism theory from Julian Jaynes.
How do you square that with the really strong evidence of self awareness in other animals?
atheism = self defeating.
first may we define our terms.
the word atheism comes literally from the greek, alpha the negative and theos [for god], therefore “negative god” or there is no god.
Oh, missed that he has had his day! I wonder if he was a real believer or if he was just trying to make theists look bad?
atheism = self defeating.
first may we define our terms.
the word atheism comes literally from the greek, alpha the negative and theos [for god], therefore “negative god” or there is no god.
Supernatural stories have nothing to do with it. There are other factors that determine an ancient document credible, but as it pertains to copies.
So by that logic Hogwarts is real after all it doesn't matter what supernatural claims are made it's all down to the number of copies and that JK Rowling has sold a LOT of books.
mathematically measuring evolution.. when judging relationships in terms of morphological characteristics we will always be bound by the subjective.
morphologically one cannot exactly measure the distance between two organisms strictly in mathematical terms.
using the standard method of taxonomy we cannot quantify the difference between a horse and a mouse, or know which is closer mouse to cat, or mouse to fish.
WTM,
I'm not even sure you are here to preach since this thread doesn't exactly paint you and your beliefs in a good light.
Just here for the lols?
atheism = self defeating.
first may we define our terms.
the word atheism comes literally from the greek, alpha the negative and theos [for god], therefore “negative god” or there is no god.
I have just re-read it and it's clearly misleading and he is not clear they are still foxes, the paragraph makes it sound like they are now dogs.
The nearest he gets is the statement that they have dog-like features, how on earth do you read that as misleading? So just to be clear Dawkins does not make the claim that they became dogs and wolves, as I correctly surmised the problem was your mistake.
Animals can't go back up the evolutionary tree and then pop down an adjacent branch, the tree is metaphorical but it is also historical. What can happen is that populations of animals adapt over time as clearly happened in the example given and that there is possibly a link between some morphological features and tameness in some closely related animal species.
atheism = self defeating.
first may we define our terms.
the word atheism comes literally from the greek, alpha the negative and theos [for god], therefore “negative god” or there is no god.
What you failed to mention of course is the problems with the handful of references to christ (and even more rarely Jesus).
The fact that some lived long after Jesus supposedly lived, some were only to found in christian translations written long after the author had died. some were blatantly added to the original text.
So I have some serious doubts as to whether Jesus even existed, I have no doubt that even if he were real there is not a single shred of corroborating evidence that he resurrected and flew up to heaven.
The credibility of an ancient text depends entirely how many supernatural stories it tells.
