(October 30, 2015 at 8:42 am)Rhondazvous Wrote: The problem with your argument is that we’re talking here about a god who set the original man up. Keeping from him the knowledge of good and evil. Putting that knowledge in the fruit of a tree then telling the man not to eat the fruit. Adam had no way to know that disobeying god was wrong. Yet god punished him.

(October 30, 2015 at 8:49 am)Hmmm? Wrote:

(October 30, 2015 at 12:39 am)Minimalist Wrote: I'll let you off the hook. Your god is as phony as a $3 bill.  Shit happens because shit happens.  No gods involved because there are no gods....and there never have been.

I had my hands on one of these awhile back, worth a lot more than three dollars.  I really love the emblem depicting an eagle fighting a heron (obvious underdog) with the motto "exitus in dubio est" ...the outcome is uncertain

I still think we're all ill-informed

(October 30, 2015 at 8:55 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote: So.. you do not think that you are responsible for your actions under a Christian worldview?   I would disagree.  

Also, this seems to be more of an emotional issue for you, rather than rational.  Should I be posting pictures of cuddly kittens.
If you just want to throw a melodramatic temper tantrum... I'm not really interested.

(October 30, 2015 at 8:56 am)alpha male Wrote: Note that Paul said that Eve was deceived, but Adam wasn't - i.e. Adam willingly sinned. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but did it anyway.

Steven Wilson Wrote:[...]I believe the curse of the human race is the knowledge of death. It’s why many people are unhappy a lot of the time. We are aware of our own impending death. No-one has managed to prove to me satisfactorily that animals are also aware of death. I think human beings are unique in that we are aware of our own mortality and it casts an incredible shadow over our whole existence. If we’re not happy, we measure our unhappiness against the fact that we have a finite amount of time on Earth in order to be happy. I would say that’s why we invented the myth of religion and God—to try and come to terms with the fact that we are mortal. We invented this whole kind of mythology and fairy tales about the afterlife and God. It’s all designed to make ourselves feel better and provide comfort. Now, that’s not the only thing we’ve done in order to get comfort. Alcohol, drugs, and one could even argue culture itself, are all things done to distract form being reminded about our own mortality. The irony with art is that a lot of it does the opposite. It reminds us exactly of our own mortality. I love that. It’s what draws me to lots of music—the whole spirituality thing, and sense of mortality, and that sense of the tragedy that is the gift of life. The gift of life is a wonderful thing, but it’s also a tragic thing. Life is but a blip. It’s just a moment, really. You have 80 years or so, maybe less, maybe more, to try and make some kind of sense of this random gift of life—this strange, cruel blip in time that is your life, your ego and your consciousness. Many years ago, I wrote an album called Signify for Porcupine Tree. The whole idea was to look at the ways we try to create some significance for our own life. So, even in my 20s, I was obsessed with that—the idea of making some kind of mark [...]

Continued under the hide tag:

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Steven Wilson Wrote:[...] I guess I am in some ways your archetypal atheist. I think the whole myth of religion is absolutely absurd. I say this with the caveat that I understand it brings happiness to people who would otherwise be unhappy. There is comfort in it for people who would otherwise be tortured by their own existence and all that stuff. I appreciate those reasons and arguments, but at the end of the day, I’m afraid it’s just a silly fairy tale that mankind has dreamed up because of our fear of death. It’s as simple as that. It seems so obvious to me that’s why we created this myth. Religion, lest we forget, is a relatively new thing. You can go back as far as the Stone Age to see that man has always worshiped something, such as the sun. But the contemporary idea of religion has been around for less than 2,000 years. I’m speaking as someone that grew up with the idea that if you’re going to be religious, you’re gong to be Christian. Well, the Bible was written 200-300 years after the events it supposedly depicts. That’s certainly true for the New Testament and The Gospels. People were employed by politicians and leaders of the church to write it and that says it all to me. I’ve done a lot of reading and research about religion, because it’s something that fascinates me. What fascinates me is the compulsion or need for many to believe in this nonsense. A great deal of us seem to have this need to fall back on this crutch of faith and belief. People say to me “Well, it’s all a matter of faith. You don’t need proof.” Well, faith for me in that sense becomes a synonym for believing a lie and that’s no explanation at all.[...]