Eternal punishment is pointless.

[abaris]

Since you know so much about panbabylonism, you know that it was never widely accepted, confined mainly to Germany for a short period during the early 1900s.

Convenently you're leaving out this part.

The ideas presented within its framework still carry importance in mythological studies, due to similarities between myths in the comparatively young Bible and much older myths from ancient Mesopotamian mythologies.

And conveniently you haven't looked at the bibliography provided at the bottom of the page, which isn't about panbabylonism but about the actual myths in question.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sorry about that. And, by the way, I do agree that the floods in these stories could have been local. They could have been referring to "their" world and using hyperbole.

No more possible than the global flood, and no more in evidence. Unless you're talking "noah clung to the roof of his chicken coop while the local stream overran it's banks". Some flood....some god. It's a habit of mine to offer to run some numbers for people who really want to hold onto flood myths. Pick a point on the map. Give me depth and duration. I'll tell you why it didn't (and couldn't) happen.

I have an alternative hypothesis - it's just a story. Not embellishment, not mythicized tragedy, just a story. As an example, what do you think the size of the actual Death Star was, upon which the story was based? How big was the exhaust port that Luke Skywalker fired his torpedo into (I think we all know that no one could hit a 2m target in an xwing - especially at full throttle with Vader on his tail..no matter how many wookies gave the assist)?

[Mequa]

For an all-powerful God to eternally punish a human is not so much vengeance as just pure malevolent sadism. Like a child with an ant farm who enjoys roasting the ants in a fire, just for being ants.

An all-powerful God who would oversee eternal torture in Hell for finite offences, as "sin" somehow conflicts with his "holiness", is really a sadistically sick puppy and quite a psychopathic tyrant deity, when you really think about it.

Why oh why do so many religions worship and glorify a God like that, who sounds like a much worse asshole than the likes of Hitler?

[dyresand]

In fact I am the one to explain these things away, based on my knowledge of history and my interest in mythology.

Here's one of the easier sources pointing out the similarities between the older Sumerian myths and the later Torah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panbabylonism

Since you know so much about panbabylonism, you know that it was never widely accepted, confined mainly to Germany for a short period during the early 1900s.

---

Sorry bud, this is only my second post in this thread. All the content you had to work with when you wrote this accusation was represented in my post above; I never said anything about Sumerian myths, so you can't exactly be bringing this up as a double standard against me. You don't know my position on it.

Not that "you just explain those things away," is much of a rebuttal, more a statement of facts. Yes, I do explain them away, because there are more logical explanations for them.

Also? What I did say, did not even entertain the possibility of mythological copying. My point was that the worldwide flood idea was probably an exaggeration, not plagiarism, and that the actual physical evidence simply dos not even allow for the possibility of a real worldwide flood.

So to recap: you didn't address what I actually said, accused me of something I never even spoke about, and didn't so much as rebut that, but rather state what I was actually doing, as though it's inherently wrong.

Maybe try responding to me, the next time you respond to me?

Sorry about that. And, by the way, I do agree that the floods in these stories could have been local. They could have been referring to "their" world and using hyperbole.

nope and noway in a desert such as the middle east.

[Thumpalumpacus]

So when children do bad things we're to praise them, no wonder this country's going to hell in a hand basket.

GC

When my son made a mistake he didn't get praised.

He also didn't get thrown into the oven for eternity.

The idea that there is no middle ground is simplistic beyond belief and if you hold that, then that marks you as a mental midget of the first order.

---

If you notice your child is about to touch the fire, do you just let him do so because you "respect his freedom"?

Well, the only other option is to shoot him through the head. Right, GC?

Actually, you're supposed to pick him up and bodily hurl him into the fires so he burns for all eternity. That'll learn 'im!

---

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”

Man had gained understanding. Had his eyes opened. And it angered god. The only reasonable conclusion is that god didn't want creations that dared disobey, dared gain knowledge that he and he alone (through circular reasoning) deemed unworthy for them to obtain. He wanted them to be sheltered children in perpetuity.

And to point out a contradiction of sorts not often mentioned in this passage: death is one of the punishments received for the applebite (according to Genesis 2:17), which implies that before the sin, humans were immortal.

And yet when then see this curiously ignorant deity ("might"? Wasn't he supposed to know everything?) worried that humans might live forever.

If they weren't immortal before the first sin, then death was no punishment. And if they were immortal before the first sin, why should there be created a tree of life and death, and why should the deity worry that humans might become immortal?

---

Sorry about that. And, by the way, I do agree that the floods in these stories could have been local. They could have been referring to "their" world and using hyperbole.

No more possible than the global flood, and no more in evidence. Unless you're talking "noah clung to the roof of his chicken coop while the local stream overran it's banks". Some flood....some god. It's a habit of mine to offer to run some numbers for people who really want to hold onto flood myths. Pick a point on the map. Give me depth and duration. I'll tell you why it didn't (and couldn't) happen.

I have an alternative hypothesis - it's just a story. Not embellishment, not mythicized tragedy, just a story. As an example, what do you think the size of the actual Death Star was, upon which the story was based? How big was the exhaust port that Luke Skywalker fired his torpedo into (I think we all know that no one could hit a 2m target in an xwing - especially at full throttle with Vader on his tail..no matter how many wookies gave the assist)?

This is clearly a strawman ... it was a droid giving the assist.

You Aforcists will stoop to anything in order to push your false religion.

[Tonus]

I have an alternative hypothesis - it's just a story. Not embellishment, not mythicized tragedy, just a story. As an example, what do you think the size of the actual Death Star was, upon which the story was based?

That's the perfect example, IMO. Our myths and legends are always so much larger than life. Mankind makes bombs that can level entire cities, but in his stories he creates laser beams that can annihilate an entire planet. In the real world men can become strong enough to bench press half-a-ton. In our stories they are strong enough to lift buildings. And so on. Our most enduring legends are larger-than-life.

So if a civilization has seen its share of regional flooding, is it any surprise that one of its most popular cultural tales is of a flood that engulfed the entire planet? Or that such tales would be common among ancient societies? Your most successful ones were likely to be the ones that built their villages and cities near rivers, after all.

[Smaug]

That's the perfect example, IMO. Our myths and legends are always so much larger than life. Mankind makes bombs that can level entire cities, but in his stories he creates laser beams that can annihilate an entire planet.

This tendency to exaggerate and hyperbolize must be inherent in most cultures. Ancient hunters exaggerated the size of animals they've fought to make themselves look braver and more skilled. Warriors exaggerated the strength of enemies they fought for the same reason. Everything is still the same exept for how exactly the hyperbolization is carried out.
And there also has always been a widespred tendency to exaggerate things that happened in the past, especially in a manner of speaking of 'good old times'. It's kind of a psychic defensive mechanism called regression if I'm correct.
One of the roots of all this is probably a widespread and constantly present dissatisfation with reality.

[ManMachine]

Punishment can take on two forms. There is the kind that a parent might administer to a naughty child in order to teach them right from wrong and help them grow into a better person, and the kind that a parent might administer to a naughty child mostly because they are stupid and brutal people who can only soothe their own crippling emotional flaws by physically beating people who are too small to fight back.

The Abrahamic religions seem to take the view that there is no such thing as an unjust punishment, because the person who makes the rules cannot, by definition, break any rules. That is why I am curious to get the opinion of a follower or two, what is the justice in eternal punishment? When a person is dead and goes into the afterlife, what is the material (or immaterial) gain of subjecting that person to an eternity of misery and horror in revenge for whatever acts that allegedly justify it?

If there is no good here, and it is just revenge for the sake of revenge, if God is inflicting pain and anguish just because he got pissed off, how can this possibly be justified as anything other than the most petty and brutal sort of revenge?

I'm not sure I'd agree entirely with the first paragraph - which seems to be a bit leading - but OK, I see where you're going.

This 'punishment' is a feature of censorship that is central to the function of any system of belief, including 'science' - if you don't follow the censorship rules, you don't get to be in the 'club'. I attract a lot of negative posts from other atheists for not following what I see as scientific orthodoxies, concepts and ideas that to me make no sense but form the basis of a lot of people's thinking. I find people's behaviours towards me pointless. When I challenge scientific orthodoxies I am in turn attacked in exactly the same way Christians attack when Christianity is challenged, I find that incredibly fascinating and more than a little telling. For me, people who exchange science for religion are simply exchanging one system of belief for another, I have no problem with that, but the delusion that somehow science delivers a better 'truth' is absurd.

Let's not jump all over Christians for this, it has been a feature of our systems of belief since we have been able to record them. It's convenient to pin these notions onto abstractions like 'religion', but they are much more universal than that (in human terms). These systems are born of human nature, we must look to ourselves for the answers.


MM

[Whateverist]

Sorry about that. And, by the way, I do agree that the floods in these stories could have been local. They could have been referring to "their" world and using hyperbole.

That is an important concession. Would you go further to concede that the much ballyhooed omni powers of the Christian god were likewise hyperbole?

[Godscreated]

For an all-powerful God to eternally punish a human is not so much vengeance as just pure malevolent sadism. Like a child with an ant farm who enjoys roasting the ants in a fire, just for being ants.

An all-powerful God who would oversee eternal torture in Hell for finite offences, as "sin" somehow conflicts with his "holiness", is really a sadistically sick puppy and quite a psychopathic tyrant deity, when you really think about it.

Why oh why do so many religions worship and glorify a God like that, who sounds like a much worse asshole than the likes of Hitler?

If God is such a (as you put it,) sadistic being, why would He wait for people to die to torture them, what fun would it be to torture the dead when He could torture people while they are living.

Sin is not finite, unforgiven it last forever, thus the justified eternal hell.

GC