(September 21, 2014 at 12:24 pm)C4RM5 Wrote: I think the way to understand the true value of the Bible is to read and study it.
Fine, but unless you evaluate and compare it with the things claimed for it - actual historical events, real-world science etc - there's always the propensity to rationalise those claims presuppositionally. In other words, confirmation bias. You should always be seeking ways to falsify the thing under analysis.
As a starting example, borrowed from one of our number: try to reconcile the four gospels with each other and with what we know of actual history. Do this with an eye for falsification.
(September 21, 2014 at 12:24 pm)C4RM5 Wrote: It does seem a little extreme, but I am not really woreied about it. If I die and God does exist I know where I'll be.
I don't fear nor worry about my death either, for reasons that have nothing to do with any gods. But consider if you die and it's lights out. Will you have lived your life fulfilling your potential as the best human it was possible for you to be, or on your knees enslaving your mind to a vague promise of post-mortem reward just on the remotest of possibilities it might happen? Pascal's Wager is an horrendously flawed proposition on which to base one's life, and I am truly at a loss why anyone should even want to entertain such a horrible concept.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
