Existence of God (split from old thread)

[Farm Boy]

Well, there's a whole arm of the trinity to debate about if you want to get into it in earnest. Or you could go all unitarian about it! Fascinating stuff, I'm sure.

 

[Lexicus]

Well, there's a whole arm of the trinity to debate about if you want to get into it in earnest.

I don't, I prefer to joke about how ridiculously self-centered one must to be to think that the universe's creator actually cares what kind of food people eat or whether dudes bang dudes.

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, do those issues impact how happy and healthy people are? Have the ises changed such that maybe the oughts themselves have changed? Or maybe just that we re-evaluate the application of the theology behind them? Assuming you don't consider the careful consideration of ought to be useless because of the specific framing.

 

[Lexicus]

Well, do those issues impact how happy and healthy people are? Have the ises changed such that maybe the oughts themselves have changed?

I don't think the ises ever justified the oughts on this stuff.

 

[Farm Boy]

Possibly. But I hear an awful lot about what foods we should eat these days. Lots of it even deals with sin, word used or not. Sometimes the speakers are being arrogant and sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're well versed on the ises, sometimes they're not.

But, and I suppose I should be happy we reached an understanding on the principle point: if what you eat and how you eat it, if who you bang and how you bang them, impact how happy and healthy people are, if it impacts how they interact with each other, then yes: the word of God for the people of God will likely either have an approach for, or an interpretation dealing with, those issues.

 

[Lexicus]

But, and I suppose I should be happy we reached an understanding on the principle point: if what you eat and how you eat it, if who you bang and how you bang them, impact how happy and healthy people are, if it impacts how they interact with each other, then yes: the word of God for the people of God will likely either have an approach for, or an interpretation dealing with, those issues.

Hmm, well this is an...interesting...way to put it, but we are certainly not in agreement if you're suggesting there was ever a functional basis for the various prohibitions and rules found in the Bible. I see the various sexual prohibitions, for example, as props to a deeply unjust patriarchal social order.

 

[Farm Boy]

I like to think we progress, loosely, towards more optimal justice. As our circumstance in the world allows. We don't have to be in agreement. You are always free to be wrong.

Edit: Not direct enough. But in a world where our best guesses seem to be putting each instance of childbirth killing ~25/1000 women, where feeding children to adulthood was a communal and taxing endeavor, birth control was nonexistent, and the post-fact punishment mechanisms for predatory cowards were weak - I'd say the entire picture surrounding reproduction would be by necessity, different.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I am still waiting for some proof that it is a man made concept, and that you are not just putting thoughts into the minds of the ancients. There is no claim made in the Bible they were making stories up.

I'm hardly the one putting thoughts into the minds of the ancients. I'm giving them credit for imagination and creativity. It's quite easy to invent a religion or mythos. L. Ron Hubbard did it with Scientology. Mormonism is a made-up religion, invented by some guy back in the early 1800s. When Frank Herbert wrote Dune in the early 1960s, he was asked if he was trying to invent a new religion. Since one of Herbert's major themes in Dune was that of using religion to manipulate the masses and another was "beware of the charismatic leader, as even the most benign can become corrupted", Herbert was horrified at the notion that anyone would think he was trying to create a religion around that novel.

I believe you. That is not the issue. I never disagreed with your experiences. I do not agree with your notion of history.

My "notion" of history is based on years of study of classical history, cultural anthropology, archaeology, and common sense.

If thousands of cultures are going to claim that the universe was created by someone and you hold that it's an objective fact that the universe was created by some divine whatever, then why don't all these agree in the details? They can't all be true, so it's more likely that none of them are true and humans in these cultures are simply inventing their own explanations for the questions they can't otherwise answer because they have no data or standard method of figuring things out.

What I saw was Valka making the rather uncontroversial point that most Christians claim the Bible to be the word of God, and J engaging in his classic tactic of deceptive goal-post-shifting by saying "well no one says God literally wrote it."

Thank you, but I was making the point that some people claim that God literally wrote the Bible. Forget about the idea that God inspired Moses to write the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets; these people believe that God himself did it, like Charlton Heston's movie was a documentary instead of a Hollywood movie with amazing cinematography (for that time):

BTW, if anyone wants to see the parody version of The Ten Commandments, it's called Wholly Moses! and stars Dudley Moore as Moses' brother-in-law, Herschel.

In this movie it shows who really wrote the Ten Commandments...

 

[Lexicus]

Thank you, but I was making the point that some people claim that God literally wrote the Bible.

Yeah, I gathered that when I noticed this comment:

I have asked that. It's amazing how bizarre people can get when they're defending their religion on the Richard Dawkins/Lawrence Krauss pages on YT.

I think we can safely say tho that this "God literally wrote the Bible" thing is fairly idiosyncratic even with the fundamentalist currents of thought. The craziest Young Earth Creationist I ever encountered online, who literally argued things like "the speed of light has changed over the life of the universe and that's why there are stars light from which appears to have taken more than 6,000 years to reach us" just claimed the Bible was dictated by God and written by people, not actually written by God.

Anyway, carry on.

In this movie it shows who really wrote the Ten Commandments...

My guess: some patriarchal dudes. How coincidental, a violent, patriarchal god for a violent, patriarchal people.

 

[Akka]

Well, do those issues impact how happy and healthy people are?

Yes, I'm pretty sure religion has impacted QUITE A BIT on the lives of many people.

 

[Farm Boy]

No joke.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

My guess: some patriarchal dudes. How coincidental, a violent, patriarchal god for a violent, patriarchal people.

Aside from that, the movie is a comedy, albeit with a few serious moments. Hence the "mischief" smiley. In the movie, Herschel was another Hebrew baby sent down the Nile in a basket, but baby Moses knocked baby Herschel's basket into a different current, where he was found by a family of idol-makers. So Herschel grew up making idols, met Zerelda (one of Moses' sisters-in-law) while she was in town on a shopping trip, and they fell in love and married. Herschel overheard God talking to Moses, didn't know Moses was there, and thought he was the one chosen to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.

 

[Lexicus]

side from that, the movie is a comedy, albeit with a few serious moments. Hence the "mischief" smiley.

Yeah, I just chose to ignore the joke and roll with it seriously because I'm an utterly humorless nerd

In the movie, Herschel was another Hebrew baby sent down the Nile in a basket, but baby Moses knocked baby Herschel's basket into a different current, where he was found by a family of idol-makers. So Herschel grew up making idols, met Zerelda (one of Moses' sisters-in-law) while she was in town on a shopping trip, and they fell in love and married. Herschel overheard God talking to Moses, didn't know Moses was there, and thought he was the one chosen to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.

Might have to check it out, it kinda reminds me of Life of Brian!

 

[Berzerker]

if you're going to flag under "animate" everything that lead to life, then a) there is nothing "inanimate" and b) you're mangling the definitions of words just so you can shoehorn them into the conclusion you want to reach.

Are you referring to this?

But mixing it (h2o) with other elements under the right circumstances might produce life, so either the inanimate gave rise to the animate or the animate was present somehow in one or more of those elements. But for the sake of this discussion, yes...

'One or more of those elements' isn't everything...and for the sake of this discussion, water is inanimate.

That begs the question of why should there be life at that point and how did it get there. Since I already have a decent account for life's formation I don't see the need to appeal to some sort of life prior to the existence of the universe.

Yes... it begs the question. But why is your account so decent?

Well then for the sake of discussion yeah, animate can come from the inanimate. Just remember that the category "inanimate" can include some extrmely complex phenomena.

Point is I'd be very careful in stating that something very complex and beautiful must logically have an equally complex and beautiful origin. It could in fact be radically simpler.

Maybe formulas don't spring into existence by you writing them. Did the quadratic formula come into existence when it was written down or was it always there hidden in mathematics and we just came to know it?

If formulas 'govern' existence, they were 'written' before the universe

 

[El_Machinae]

The word the Bible uses about itself is God breathed.

It doesn't say that about itself

What you can get agreement on is the rest of the verse, profitable for doctrine, reproof, instruction, and training in righteousness. That is a practical way to deal with the Bible--it's useful, regardless who wrote it and how.

How can it be useful in training for righteousness? It spreads a great number of libelous statements about God. People who use the Bible to gain insight into righteousness very quickly fall into the trap the rabbi warned about. A house built upon sand cannot weather a storm.

How's it useful for reproof? People cling to the Bible when they have to choose between it and God. Not always. But often enough that I'd say that the Bible itself isn't really pulling its weight on that front.

 

[Perfection]

Yes... it begs the question. But why is your account so decent?

If formulas 'govern' existence, they were 'written' before the universe

Maybe they don't govern existence, maybe they describe existence, maybe they ARE existence. I'd be careful with intuitions here, we cannot rely on our commonsense notions of time and causality when it comes to these questions. In any case, I don't see that as a need to bring in God.

 

[Berzerker]

but you do need to exclude God?

 

[Perfection]

but you do need to exclude God?

I view that it adds unnecessary baggage to a worldview and would thus be prudent to unchain oneself from.

 

[Berzerker]

when did science identify the source of life?

 

[Perfection]

It hasn't definitively answered the chemical origin of life.