(August 27, 2016 at 5:25 pm)robvalue Wrote: Personally I'd expect direct communication, requiring no other medium, and without any chance of misinterpretation. Not some bag of bollocks book written by a load of numpties, with other asswipes telling me what god "meant to say". Everything about it is truly laughable.

I mean, the guy could literally manipulate the brain states of everyone on earth, at birth, so that his communication came pre-installed, but nah, a bunch of contradictory and vague stories written by anonymous authors, dubiously preserved and arranged into a canon by other, unrelated people who had no idea what the original intent was or who the authors were, and did so for political reasons, is a much better way to communicate.

I actually struggle to think of many worse ways to communicate. Deliberately causing confusion seems to be big with deities.

Who gives a fuck, anyway? They had their chance to program us to do whatever they want. Why they got to be nagging at us too?

(August 27, 2016 at 5:25 pm)robvalue Wrote: What would we expect from a god communicating with us?

This heap of shit? That's a pretty lousy god and some crummy expectations.

Personally I'd expect direct communication, requiring no other medium, and without any chance of misinterpretation. Not some bag of bollocks book written by a load of numpties, with other asswipes telling me what god "meant to say". Everything about it is truly laughable.

Hey, lay off, pal. This Universal Truth is so important that it can only be entrusted to a game of Cosmic Telephone.

Besides, how else do you expect Hell to get stocked?

Quote:Why then do we call them Matthew, Mark, Luke, andJohn? Because sometime in the second century, when proto-orthodox Christians
recognized the need for apostolic authorities, they attributed these books to apostles (Matthew and John) and close companions of apostles (Mark, the
secretary of Peter; and Luke, the traveling companion of Paul). Most scholars today have abandoned these identifications


Lost Christianities,  Bart Ehrman   pg 235

Jesus freaks hate this stuff!

Which is why the next step is to attack the credibility of the scholar.

They try that all the time but of course it always comes down to a world class scholar who can read that bullshit in the original languages against some fucking moron with a bible who thinks zombies walked around Jerusalem.

It's a very uneven contest my friend.

(August 27, 2016 at 10:44 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(August 27, 2016 at 5:25 pm)robvalue Wrote: What would we expect from a god communicating with us?

This heap of shit? That's a pretty lousy god and some crummy expectations.

Personally I'd expect direct communication, requiring no other medium, and without any chance of misinterpretation. Not some bag of bollocks book written by a load of numpties, with other asswipes telling me what god "meant to say". Everything about it is truly laughable.

Hey, lay off, pal. This Universal Truth is so important that it can only be entrusted to a game of Cosmic Telephone.

Besides, how else do you expect Hell to get stocked?

Funny you should mention that. Most religious stories actually read to me like a being justifying to itself the fact that it's going to be extremely cruel to a nonstop stream of its hapless creations. Like the consciousness rationalising the subconscious.

(August 28, 2016 at 1:28 am)robvalue Wrote: Funny you should mention that. Most religious stories actually read to me like a being justifying to itself the fact that it's going to be extremely cruel to a nonstop stream of its hapless creations. Like the consciousness rationalising the subconscious.

Written by people in a cruel and barbaric time with severe consequences for screwing up.

Yup. It's a good thing Jesus came along to invalidate 99% of the bible so Christians can be non-barbarians now.

(August 28, 2016 at 1:47 am)robvalue Wrote: Yup. It's a good thing Jesus came along to invalidate 99% of the bible so Christians can be non-barbarians now.

The reformation continues.