Religion?

[NineInchNall]

Poor kitty.

[Judging__Eagle]

1178755630[/unixtime]]No one's ever tried to save me.

Wanna go worship a jug of milk with me?

It will either 1) give you what you want, 2) not give you what you want or 3) tell you to wait.

Don't worry if it makes other people into it's puppets.

[PhoneLobster]

It is functionally impossible to go any further.

I think its fairly important to go far enough to say "Well then you are stupid."

No really, people wonder why that sort of stupidity is given such weight, ONE of the reasons is not enough appropriate labelling.

With this sort of thing labelling is half the debate, just ask all those "militant religious freedom hating secularists".

[Draco_Argentum]

1178752175[/unixtime]]Technically, a secularist could show their/its (:)) chosen philosophy; but the idea seems pointless simply because, was one satisfied with hearing without questioning, reading books would be much better - discussion is meant to be where people discuss, after all.

But reading a book won't tell me what Prak Anima believes, just what Satanists in general believe. Personally I find the actual beliefs of people I actually interact with more interesting.

[JonSetanta]

Yep, this whole thread is educational. No joke.
It's like a "schul" full of wacky priests each with their own interpretation, but in this case a menagerie of beliefs rather than Judaism...
I might be safe to assume most if not nearly all of us here in The Gaming Den are of above average IQ? Makes all the difference in non-argumentive discussion.
Filling fast, tho. Is there a post limit here?

Prak: Thanks! Save a Bavarian cream donut too. Keep it warm.

NineInchNail:
*Knowledge (Hebrew) check: 1d20 +2 ranks +2 INT mod, result: SUCCESS*
On elohim, the "el" part means "of God" or at least an approximation-to in our language. Angels such as Raphael are more like Rapha-el if you break it down, which gives new meaning to those assuming such a name isthe way it is simply for cultural style or something.

Next, compare that word elohim to a more familiar word, "nephilim", the fallen angels/titans/"b'nei elohim" sons of God(s). I've seen the word used for both singular and plural, unfortunately.
Yet another word for both uses, which may allude to the reality of beings that are both many and one at once (at least in consciousness, energy, solidarity, objective, classification and/or race), which is also found in some Eastern and tribal religions I have studied...
I'm also not discussing exactly WHAT the nephs were or are, as that will simply remain mystery until further research on my part is made (and I do believe the evidence for truth is there!)
Until then, let your imagination run wild.
I like to entertain thoughts of vampirism-like transformation through angelic possession, but hey...

[Prak]

1178766986[/unixtime]]Prak: Thanks! Save a Bavarian cream donut too. Keep it warm.

Lol, shouldn't be a problem, want me to order a drink for ya too? I'm sure I can get lucifer to turn down the thermostat enough to keep cold drinks bearable.

[Catharz]

1178738959[/unixtime]]I guess I'd go with that Chesterton guy and agree that judging a class/category because of the properties of some small percentage of its members might tend to be a bad idea.

Hell no! I'll take the availability heuristic any day! Some of my best reasoning is based on logical fallacies.

1178755630[/unixtime]]No one's ever tried to save me.

[Edit]

1178735414[/unixtime]]I...I have helped lead people to Christ before, and let me tell you, that is a truly beautiful experience.

I know how you feel, it's the same for me whenever I lead somebody to agnosticism.
[/Edit]

[JonSetanta]

Catharz, I hate your icon. It hurts.




CMON, CIELINGCAT! I'LL SAVE YA! HURRRRRR

[CalibronXXX]

1178745527[/unixtime]]If I were a stickler for scripture, and I am not, I would be quite upset at the vast majority of Christians (Catholic, Protestant, or crazy-town like Witness or Mormon) who don't believe in the divinity of Osiris. It's a major statement in the Bible that Jehova walked into Egypt himself and defeated the gods of Egypt in combat (that's Exodus, btw).

Buwuh? I've been reading through the bible(king james version) lately and I don't remember anything about a deific throw-down in exodus. Can you give me a the chapter number?

1178745527[/unixtime]] I'm really not even sure how people can look at he first commandment and walk away from it with the idea that there is only one god. That's not the point. The entire scripture says not that there is only one god, but that there is one god who is mightier than the rest and you should give Him praise first.

So the entire concept of monotheism as practiced today confuses me. Straight up the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not say that there are not other gods - only that followers of that faith should only give worship to the one.

Well sure there are lesser beings, lesser than God I mean, that are still way more powerful than us, but God created existence itself, including all those other beings; and don't forget that powerful spirits and demons were referred to as gods back in those days...and I guess that's still true in these days as well.

1178745527[/unixtime]] But of course, I'm not a stickler for scripture. Faith is something that I find insulting. It's dangerous, and I don't like it. A person who can accept things without question is someone who will accept things without question - and that's seriously scary shit.

That's not how it's supposed to work, though unfortunately that is far too often the case, the Bible tells that we should question things and try to grow in our understanding. Still though, this is an Infinite Being that exists outside of time, you just plain can't fully understand that. Any informed born-again Christian knows that to grow in faith you need to go through trials, and those trials sometimes require questioning some very core beliefs.

1178745527[/unixtime]]I no longer believe that faith can be recconciled with positive action for the betterment of society. The evidence to the contrary is simply too strong.

-Username17

I'm sure you have plenty of it, and I'm asking for a verbal beating, but could you relay some of that evidence? I'm curious whether its cause is faith or willful ignorance and human stupidity.

[PhoneLobster]

faith or willful ignorance

By definition those two things are the same.

[tzor]

1178744741[/unixtime]]I like how the current bible exists b/c someone decided to chop out a bunch of books. Since said books were ones that he didn't like.

That is definitely not true. (With one exception that Martin Luther once called the Epistle of James an epistle of straw and wanted it removed.) No one "removed" books ... they simply didn't include them in their list.

If you go back to the time of Jesus there was no such thing as the "Old Testament." Religious writings were divided into three types; the Law (or the Torah), the writings of the Prophets, and the other writings. Some sects did not recognize all three divisions as divinely inspired. Some sects (generally in the century after Christianity) did not recognize later writings that were written by people in exile in Greek and not in Hebrew as divinely inspired.

Any differences between Old Testament cannons of scripture can be traced to these early disputes. Generally it wasn't over content, but over source language and other subtle criteria.

[tzor]

1178800170[/unixtime]]

1178745527[/unixtime]]If I were a stickler for scripture, and I am not, I would be quite upset at the vast majority of Christians (Catholic, Protestant, or crazy-town like Witness or Mormon) who don't believe in the divinity of Osiris. It's a major statement in the Bible that Jehova walked into Egypt himself and defeated the gods of Egypt in combat (that's Exodus, btw).

Buwuh? I've been reading through the bible(king james version) lately and I don't remember anything about a deific throw-down in exodus. Can you give me a the chapter number?

I don't recall a specific example myself of a "combat" although there is the case of the dueling prohpets throwing various feats of magic. But that's not just in Exodus.

There are definite "evolutions" in the Old Testament. One of them is the notion is God (I'm not getting into a debate on the translation of hebrew letters and speulations on vowels) is the only god *you* are supposed to worship, to the notion that God is the only god there is. Another is the evolution of the heaven and the afterlife.

[Judging__Eagle]

I was referring to New Testament stuff mostly (2-4 books that were written at and 'shortly' after the time of Christ were removed from 'official' lists) and I think one book from the old testament (I think the Book of Enoch; it's the one where angels come down and have "giant-children" with human women).

I know how you feel, it's the same for me whenever I lead somebody to agnosticism.

I'll have you in the Atheistic legion soon enough.

[NineInchNall]

I'm pretty sure this has gone off-topic now.

[Judging__Eagle]

Hmm. Okay.

I was reading "The return of the Shadow" again (a book that goes over some of Tolkien's manuscripts for LoTR, and it's hilarious to see that Frodo wasn't the original name of Bilbo's 'nephew' (Bingo was the original name) and that Merry and Pippen and Sam had names like Frodo, Odo and Marmaduke; and those were changed a lot as well) and and realised that D&D is like watching a Documentary about adventurers.

The literal years between when Bilbo left on his 'birthday party' and when Frodo himself leaves to get rid of the ring are glossed over in about a page of paperback text.

The boring parts are skipped, while the exciting parts are what is focused on.

Of course, D&D can't really make the boring parts more interesting unless players have options as to what they can do at said times.

"Next time on National Geographic...

They travel all over this world and into others to find things that most don't realize exists. They are paragons of their people and can not only survive physical and mental trauma that would down others, they can also accomplish feats that defy the very laws of nature that we believe to be true.

They are Adventurers.

At 8:30 EST on Tuesday May 15"

[TarlSS]

..What happened to the adventuring groups?

Anyway, Chinese Literature is full of heroic equal screentime heroes.

-Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhung Fei from the Three Kingdoms. Also many of the other characters, such as Sima Yi, Lu Bu and Diao Chan. Practically an MMORPG.
-Water Margin- Stories about a bandit King and his 36 Companions
- The Monkey King- Monkey King, Monk, Pig guy, and Water Demon

Classical literature is -more- likely to have multiple characters because such writers tended not to focus on one character as introspectives were not as popular than as they are today- rather histories were much more often read and considered important.

[Draco_Argentum]

1178804313[/unixtime]]I'll have you in the Atheistic legion soon enough.

There are two groups of people: those who think the existence of god(s) can be (dis)proved and those who realise that the definition of god is so open that this is logically impossible. Atheists are in the former.

[NineInchNall]

Well, rightly, an atheist would say that actual definitions of God can be shown as logically inconsistent. It's when people refuse to nail down (heh heh) exactly what "God" means that difficulty arises in disproof. However, when someone uses a "definition" that is so wide open as to be useless in a logical argument (as is what you implying, or so I infer) then what does it matter? Such a term becomes irrelevant.

[bitnine]

1178802019[/unixtime]]

faith or willful ignorance

By definition those two things are the same.

Wait, are we still applying this strictly to the common religious conception of faith and instances thereof, or broadening it out to any notion of nonrational belief or behavior or internal truth?

Not that it matters all too much. I mean, anyone will have some level of nonrational leanings even in the way of preferences or - for example - an anthropocentric view on the value of life. But someone glib and intelligent will be able to develop a rational framework that will obscure their nonrational beliefs under layers of justification in a subtle enough manner that it could be held that the justification is the cause of those beliefs and no one can prove otherwise. For added fun, this isn't necessarily a conscious process.

So get ready for a harsh critique on antianthropocentric environmental philosophies that reference a biotic whole and an in-depth lecture on why blue is seriously and factually the best color ever. At least, that's how I roll.

I label what I believe in as "God" for lack of a better term, but I don't believe it's intelligent, benevolent, omniscient, or omnipotent. Just present.

'Tis not that uncommon. Some folk reference cosmological arguments that posit the existence of an uncaused cause or prime mover and stop there - certainly before building into anything theological. Such can be examined in a philosophical as well as (or in place of) a religious context.

[Cielingcat]

1178810140[/unixtime]]

1178804313[/unixtime]]I'll have you in the Atheistic legion soon enough.

There are two groups of people: those who think the existence of god(s) can be (dis)proved and those who realise that the definition of god is so open that this is logically impossible. Atheists are in the former.

How about people who say that, by definition, God is both unknowable and cannot interact with the world in any meaningful fashion, and therefore God is meaningless?

[Username17]

Or people who say that anything that can't be proved should be treated as if it doesn't exist?

Saying that I don't believe in gods is just like me saying that I don't believe that there are fish on Mars. I haven't seen the entirety of Mars (including subaarenean waters) simultaneously, so there could be some - I just have no reason to believe that they are there and choose to believe in their absence.

The gods prayed to by many Christians and Muslims are logically impossible, containing literal contradictions in their definitions. I can discount those faiths absolutely. But really, I have no reason to believe in any of the other gods that people bend knee to. I can discount those as being "vanishingly unlikely" and be done with it.

As a biologist, one is rarely allowed to deal in absolutes. But near certainties is certainly enough to not waste thousands of man hours on ereting pointless edifices of stone.

-Username17

[NineInchNall]

Russell's tea pot for the win!

[Username17]

Buwuh? I've been reading through the bible(king james version) lately and I don't remember anything about a deific throw-down in exodus. Can you give me a the chapter number?

Sure. It comes up every Passover:

For I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will smite all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am Jehovah.

Right. For me it's just a yearly cultural festival rather than a solem religious ceremony, and in our family we take the commandment that "whosoever enlarges upon the story of the escape from Egypt, those people are praiseworthy" quite explicitly. But that statement is totally there and is quite a centerpiece of the story: Jehova personally beats the living hell out of the other gods because he is the mightiest of the gods of war and the Jews are his chosen people. That's the whole deal.

I'm sure you have plenty of it, and I'm asking for a verbal beating, but could you relay some of that evidence? I'm curious whether its cause is faith or willful ignorance and human stupidity.

The problem with Faith is that if you have it, you can't tell the difference. Every system of "knowledge" begins with a set of assumptions and takes those assumptions and combines them with presented evidence to form opions and conclusions about the world around.

Classic assumptions include such basics as A = A, that experience corresponds to an existant external universe, and that memories correspond to real previous experience and a continuous flow of time. You can't really "prove" assumptions like these because they are actually required in order to make observations in the first place.

But when you start adding things, intengible things, to the list of assumptions, you've entered a dangerous territory. If you accept the existence of a perfectly wise, all powerful, all benevolent monarch who has given you commandments by which to lead your life that you had better follow at the level of assumptions - then you're putting "thou shalt eat no owl" on the same level as "Cogito Ergo Sum" - and that's scary stuff.

Some religious instructions and instructors are good people. Others aren't. But the point is that regardless of which is true for an individual the methodology is bad. Because you've set yourself to "certainty" before you've even asked a question, your conclusions are worthless.

Having faith and accepting religious dogma is like punishing criminals without a trial. Maybe what you're doing is ultimately the right thing, maybe it isn't. But because you've claimed to know before finding out, you'll never know for real and neither will anyone else.

-Username17

[tzor]

1178804313[/unixtime]]I was referring to New Testament stuff mostly (2-4 books that were written at and 'shortly' after the time of Christ were removed from 'official' lists) and I think one book from the old testament (I think the Book of Enoch; it's the one where angels come down and have "giant-children" with human women).

Well if I may quote the Catholic Encyclopedia for a moment ...

The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.

Off the top of my head there are four types of writings we can consider. There are the writings of the Gnostics ... they were never considered and never will be considered. There are the writings that were basically accepted almost as soon as people became aware of them. There were writings that were accepted early but went out of favor in the official canons. (The Didache comes to mind.) There were those writings that were not widly accepted at first but gradually got to be so. (Revelations comes to mind.)

This is the Catholic Encyclopedia Link.

Yup definitely so off topic that I fear the original topic would now be off topic.

[Prak]

1178819496[/unixtime]]Jehova personally beats the living hell out of the other gods

I find your choice of words quite amusing...

and now that I think to mention it, I remember hearing this in a reading at my parents' church(after I'd become a khmetic[egyptian paganism], pissed me the hell off...)