The God Who Wasn't There

Yeah, no problem. It is quite interesting... To some.

 

Like I said earlier it's all in the head man. Just an imagination created thousands of years ago from men that had too much time in their hands.

I personally believe that there is something (a force or whatever) that rules everything, but I don't believe that there is a god (and jesus, or mohamed) who will come with powers and help humanity, or whatever. Nor do I believe that they existed with such powers as named in the bible and quran. (and other religions for that matter)

 

I agree with you. There is something spiritual out there but I think Christianity has missed the nail...

 

Wonderful post. I think you just popped somebody's balloon.

 

believing jesus wasn't god has absolutely nothing to do with believing he may have taught some moral principals that are of potential social benefit. linking the two is apologetic excuse for "evidence" that jesus must have been god.

yup you've come to the conclusion that evolution is just an overblown theory and the earth is 6000 years old because you do a fair job of thinking for yourself.

specifics are irrelevant.

 

wishful thinking. there could be, but if you're claiming to be certain about it you're just as delusional as fundamentalists.

 

Denny, I was referring to the other claims in the film, not specifically to the questioning of the historical evidence for Jesus. Outside of the Bible, as far as I know, the only historical references to Jesus are in the writings of a few historians of the time: Josephus, Pliny the Younger, & Tacitus. These references are pretty slim and subject to dispute. Given the nature of the times, where historians primarily wrote only of royalty and famous warriors, it's not too surprising that there are so few non-scriptural references to Christ. After all, he was born to common people of a suppressed Jewish culture. The Romans had no interest in writing down anything that would aid in the spread of Christianity.

 

Than that must be the case then.

 

So those who believe in evolution are "thinking for themselves," and anyone who believes in creation is not? Do I have that right?

 

I always find this line of reasoning curious. You believe without any evidence that a universe can arise from nothing through strictly natural processes and you believe, again without any scientific evidence, that life can arise within that universe absent any external processes, and yet you deny as wishful thinking the thought that some power beyond what we can see could be a causative agent in these events.

 

that the earth is billions of years old isn't a matter of debate. outside of a vanishingly small minority with an obvious pre-set creationist agenda, the world's entire scientific community believes that, including almost all scientists who are theists. the significance of that should smack you in the face, but somehow you're choosing to ignore it. the evidence for an old earth is everywhere you look and it is overwhelming and undeniable.

if you're an educated person who believes the earth is 6500 years old it goes without saying that you're being influenced by religious fundamentalist propaganda and not thinking objectively for yourself. if you care that your belief is nothing but a joke to 99.99% of people that are well versed in specifics of the subject you're quite capable of dropping your propaganda-inspired preconceptions and researching those specifics objectively from both sides for yourself. if you don't care no point in me wasting my time arguing about it here.

what you claimed in this thread about the nature of jesus is self-refuting nonsense. it's not a matter of "theological" argument.

 

the former isn't necessarily true, no. obviously lots of people blindly accept what science tells them.

if by "believes in creation" you mean believes that speciation by descent with modification doesn't happen the latter is true however.

 

You know its amazing that you try and make it look like Hitler was killing the jews only because of his hunger for power. Its pretty obvious that he was doing it because of their religious views. Its also well known that his views which promoted that, were a twisted form of Christianity that promoted such behavior. So ignore it if you wish, but it was known. Why do you think they had a broken cross as their symbol?

While Mao and Stalin may have killed people based upon their religious belief in the name of power, part of the problem with your argument is that while those are mass killings, they don't hold a stick to the number of people killed in the name of religion over the years. How do they compare to numer of Shiites and Sunni Moslems that have killled each other in war? How about all of the centuries of the crusades? How about all of the wars in the area around Israel? How about the number of Christians that killed each other when the Protestants split from the Roman Catholic Church? How about the Sikh and Hindu's killing each other in India? Your arguments about the Warlords in africa is about as generic as it gets. Which Warlord(s) are you talking about, and we will be able to say why they are killing people? Are some killing for power? Yes. Are some killing over religioon? Yes. Once again, you throw them all in the same boat, and make a generic blanket statment of which can be only applied to a few of them.

Your generic arguments for what Christians do and do not stand for is not valid either. There are currently over 33,000 christian denominations. Chances are every single one of them will have a different answer to what you proposed up above, all depending on what their version of the interpretation of the religious text is. Some of them believe in pushing their religion. Some of them don't. You canot make a blanket statement that says what they do and do not believe, because it doesn't work. Also you seem to forget the fact that I am not pushing at just Christianity. I make this point with all religions.

Our government is not formed so much on the ideals you state. Our government is based much more on the ideals of the enlightenment, and Thomas Jeffersons ideas. Surely he learned as any scholar would, which is from the past. I would expect no less, and base our government on what has been learned. It does not make our government formed on the ideas of religion. In fact, I would go so far as to say, that Jefferson learned from the mistakes of the past and was smart enough to separate church and state.

Lastly, I could care less what all of those organizations would or would not allow to be said. I live in the fucking United States of America, where I can say what I want, when I want, as long as its not yelling "Fire" in a crowded movie theater. What was the point of that line anyhow? Was that some sort of veiled threat?

 

people who say jesus was a moral teacher but not god aren't saying they take their morality from jesus. all they're saying is had some moral insights that have proven through time to be of social benefit. there is no connection between that and whether he was god or not.

 

i don't believe anything. i'm not the one claiming to know anything specific about origins. for all i know "what exists" always has existed in some sense. if you think that can be true of god there's no reason it can't be true of the universe itself.

again, i don't "believe' anything. i think there is no evidence that indicates it couldn't happen and some evidence that indicates it might have, but i'm not the one claiming to be certain what happened.

i'm not denying the thought, i'm denying certainty. there's a difference between someone thinking it might be possible for there to be a higher power and someone saying they know there is. the former is speculation, the latter is delusion.

 

This has all happened before. This will all happen again.

Yup, I'm a believer in the Church of Cylon. Now I'm going to go listen to some All Along the Watch Tower.

 

Actually, the latter is called faith.

 

faith is just another name for self-delusion.