(August 30, 2013 at 11:26 pm)Creed of Heresy Wrote: Catfish, if it is not obvious, takes most of his stuff from the Old Testament, given what little he is willing to reveal about his stance (suggesting a severe self-consciousness about the potential frailty of his stance; nothing more transparently self-conscious than criticizing the views of others without explaining one's own). Given that he IS a cherry-picker, he takes no real accepted or vindicated point of interpretation, leaving him with no tenable ground to work from other than his own subjective stance, leaving his denial of others' . Common court-room procedure would show that cross-examining the witnesses by merely saying "you're wrong" without ever describing why would prove a very poor defense.
I do state that the case is flawed if not taken against Christianity and Islam; examining their source-material shows just how utterly inadequate, faulty, and contradictory their claims are, especially when taken in context of the time-frame of their establishment. However, if one is displaying this case against them, then it's quite relevant.
However, if we work against the Judaic, Old-Testament view, the case is faulty because the Old Testament never had an eternal punishment. Yahweh basically did just kill you for your transgressions and that was it. What happened afterwards is anyone's guess, of course. I mean, to be honest, the case against Judaism itself is ridiculously easy to completely toss out the window involving Yahweh's existence and the idea of heaven, anyway:
Quote:The term for heavens in the Tanakh is shamayim, located above the firmament (a solid, transparent dome which covered the earth and separated it from the "waters" above). The God of Israel (Yahweh) lived in Heaven or in the "Heaven of Heavens" (the exact difference between these two, if any, is unclear) in a heavenly palace. His dwelling on earth was Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, which was a model of the cosmos and included a section which represented Heaven.*sourced on Wikipedia, and sourced from there to the Tanakh, which is the canon of the Hebrew Bible*
This is simple enough to dismiss, given that the Temple of Solomon has no archaeological evidence for its existence. And it was apparently destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. Yahweh, for being omnipotent, sure didn't seem to be able to defend his home-on-earth. And let's just look at the whole firmament thing; a solid, transparent dome which covered the earth and separated it from the "waters" above. Because, you see, it was once thought that Yahweh opened the firmament to let the rain fall. But what with the whole rocketry thing allowing us to go into space, we understand, quite quickly, that there is no solid, transparent dome over the planet...nor is there any water above that, even if we are generous and allow it to be understood as the atmosphere, since rain forms WITHIN the atmosphere, not OVER it.
Overall, none of the religious views hold any water. If there WAS a court-case, it would be against religion's very validity, and would be a suit against false claims.
So, you strawman my "views" to refute them?
