(May 8, 2022 at 12:56 pm)brewer Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 11:22 am)Ahriman Wrote: Yeah that doesn't answer the question.

Actually it does.

Organized Religion has never been used as a means of manipulation or control. Some cult groups have used religion to control people, but that's its own thing. Every person (who is not in a cult) has the freedom to decide what they want to believe, when presented with certain information. Choosing to follow a religion, even while not being forced into a cult, is a deep choice that many people have made to their betterment.

So, you've met ahri, our resident lazy troll. Hopefully we can talk over the chatter of the little ones.

(May 8, 2022 at 9:31 am)Green Diogenes Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 8:07 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Are you aware that the authors of the papers that claim cited have roundly debunked that claim and repeatedly asked for a correction or retraction?
 
Outside of that, do you notice how you begin with the suggestion that magic book need not be literal - but default to psuedo-literalism anyway, as a conclusion, in the insistence that the story (and others, apparently) recount a historic event?  

Now..wholly within the context of just your own conclusion, and needing nothing other than your own critical thinking skills.  What sort of thing do you think would vaporize another human being circa 1500bce..within visual range of a witness, but leave that witness alive to tell the tale?

I do like your approach though.  Reading it with empathy, trying to feel for the human beings involved.  The trouble is that you're doing so in an implicitly literalist context.  What would you feel if you were a character in the story.  The authors, are not the characters.  It's the predispositions and messages of the authors that explain the narrative contents.  It's not a report from any front about a real event.  It continues on in this fashion to the very end.  With rebels, revisionists, polemicists, and pundits contextualizing their own life's experience, in their own time, through stories of an imagined past and characters familiar to their intended audiences.  In a word, mythbuilding.

I was aware that the site was claimed to be roundly debunked, but I never saw anything other than sophistic arguments based on mockery of religion, and using individual scientist's misinterpretations to rubbish their whole dataset, in the same way YECs rubbish everything from NASA just because of fish eye lenses in launch vehicles. 

Yes, I am completely aware of these different schools of thought. I'm trying to break apart the false dichotomy between them. The entire main point of my first post in this thread is that people are locked into a 'literal' reading which is just religious myths inserted on top of the Bible, and the text itself doesn't support that view. This effectively locks a huge area of study into the realm of "anti-science nonsense" which is avoided by anyone who wants to keep hold of a career, unless they want to go into the other lucrative business of pushing Anti-science nonsense, who are not concerned with truth. 


What do you mean by wholly within the context of just my own conclusion?

That is generally how you can understand religious stories, which have a lot of well documented patterns and a flexible relation to reality, yes. Understanding this is how you understand how specific "Bible Stories" and their surrounding cultural literature have been derived from a book which doesn't contain those stories.

BINGO! Your words, "That is generally how you can understand religious stories." <----- Stop right there, nothing to be said after. "Generally" yes, people like what they want to believe. That is what you are really saying, because you have nothing. "Just believe me because I like it."

"well documented patterns" < Again your words. 

Yes, there are well documented patterns humans develop that are completely false. The ancient Egyptians are documented as to believing in Horus, Osiris, Ra and Isis, but 3 thousand years of belief didn't make those gods real. Humans like following religion, and?

It is your own conclusion. No religion in human history is universal. Saying that words were written down only means they were written, but don't claim their is a "correct" way of interpreting those stories. Ask a million believers what they think the correct interpretation of a holy writing is, and you will get a million different answers. 

Think about all the reasons you rightfully reject all the other gods you don't buy into, and apply that scrutiny to your own biases.

Theists of countless religions use words and phrases like "the moral of the story is", "culture", "history" and "interpretation". And in reality all that does is allow them falsely claim to be the patent holder of morality, and even the seat of scientific discovery.

When the scientific world gains a vast majority consensus, they don't have to use words like "version", instead they use the words "method" and "model" and ethical scientists leave their religion out of the lab, if they have a religion at all. There is no overlap between science and religion, there is only the human false perception that religion and a god or gods handed human curiosity down to our species from above. 

And saying a story of empathy and compassion in a holy writing makes the supernatural real is narcissistic and absurd. Superman always saves Lois Lane, and isn't that a nice story? I like morality of the Yoda character, but I accept he is just that. God/god/gods are all mere human projections of our species desire to have control over our environments and a placebo to avoid facing our finite existence.

(May 8, 2022 at 1:23 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: So, you've met ahri, our resident lazy troll.  Hopefully we can talk over the chatter of the little ones.

My commentary always makes much more sense than yours.

(May 8, 2022 at 12:51 pm)h311inac311 Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 11:11 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Be good enough not to sign my name to your nonsensical drivel.

Boru

  "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."



Chris

 

(May 8, 2022 at 1:22 pm)Ahriman Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 12:56 pm)brewer Wrote: Actually it does.

Organized Religion has never been used as a means of manipulation or control. Some cult groups have used religion to control people, but that's its own thing. Every person (who is not in a cult) has the freedom to decide what they want to believe, when presented with certain information. Choosing to follow a religion, even while not being forced into a cult, is a deep choice that many people have made to their betterment.

So you think the Spanish Inquisition never happened??

(May 8, 2022 at 1:20 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 12:55 pm)Green Diogenes Wrote: The Literal Interpretation of the Bible says that Evolution cannot exist, because in Genesis, the vision of creation as described by Moses, uses the word 'kinds' which has the Ideological interpretation under Young Earth Creationism as "A singular unchanging form", which is of course not what it actually says. For another short example.

...?  Word selection is not, at all, the anachronism between a biological account of life on earth, and a biblical one.  They could have picked any word they wanted there, and it's not at all possible that any change to any one word in that huge mess of a story can salvage it with respect to biological reality.

However, if you think that could be done, I'd be very interested to see.

Ulterior motives need not be involved. Science is a tool, not an ideology. Conclusions varying around the central accepted view is normal, and I fully encourage every individual to do their own research into everything said by everyone. This is an attitude which has served me well personally. 

To get to a real discussion though needs the ability to look through the ideologies that are claiming for various narratives, and see what everyone is trying to say. You seem like you're trying to understand, but I'm struggling to put together a decent response because it feels like I need to dive into everything, but I need to figure out specifically. Been a bit busy today, unexpectedly, not had much time to think yet.

The reason I'm no longer an Atheist is from a deep and prolonged personal experience. I'm not speaking about one god out of many, but the one God, who can probably more easily described by the ancient Greek concept of Nous. It took me months to even put together the sudden knowing, after 20 years of considering religions a delusion. 

As for young Earth Creationists, it is about that simple. I picked one key example because I don't have infinite time, but words being given branches of meaning in other literature is the basis for the "Biblically Accurate" view, not the Bible itself. It's sophistry obscuring the truth, like all ideology. 

You are correct in your criticism of religion, which is the gatekeeper, and re-interpretter of the book.

(May 8, 2022 at 1:49 pm)onlinebiker Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 1:22 pm)Ahriman Wrote: Organized Religion has never been used as a means of manipulation or control. Some cult groups have used religion to control people, but that's its own thing. Every person (who is not in a cult) has the freedom to decide what they want to believe, when presented with certain information. Choosing to follow a religion, even while not being forced into a cult, is a deep choice that many people have made to their betterment.

So you think the Spanish Inquisition never happened??

I don't care about the Spanish Inquisition. That was such a long time ago.

(May 8, 2022 at 12:51 pm)h311inac311 Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 11:11 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Be good enough not to sign my name to your nonsensical drivel.

Boru

  "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."



Chris

There is no slander here.

Boru

(May 8, 2022 at 2:01 pm)Ahriman Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 1:49 pm)onlinebiker Wrote: So you think the Spanish Inquisition never happened??

I don't care about the Spanish Inquisition. That was such a long time ago.

Since you say that organized religion has NEVER been used for manipulation, I think you’d have to include the Inquisitions.

Boru