Richard Dawkins to Arrest The Pope
- Thread starter bobby_custard
- Start date
I would like to refrain from posting for soooo long but this tempt me so much.
It's not premarital sex that's the problem. I thought that way too when I was young and conservative. The opposite. It's prohibition of premarital sex.
Marriage rations females in equal share for everyone. That means those least able make money and attract women ended up getting laid too producing poor kids. That's the source of pretty much all problem. Somebody need to channel those useless genes. So we have war, terrorism, etc. Hell, I'd rather they do drugs. Really. But that's illegal.
If sex is truly free, women would be free to pick the rich. Most of them will. Poverty will be gone. Those women, who picked the poor? Well, they had choice right? It's easier to hold them countable for choices they do make.
So yap, Catholic church and all other religions, by prohibiting condom AND encouraging marriage, is causing poverty, aids, malnutrition etc.
For everyone agreeing with this point so vehemently, please explain to me why? This is, simply put, a terrible argument. Let's leave my personal religion out of this a minute, because my views are complicated, and just disect this one on what he's saying.
I'm unclear as to whether the original question was over the existence of a God, or of Jesus Christ, but my answer is the same regardless -- while you're correct that a library of reading material would provide compelling existence to the existence of a person, the existence of a person isn't really what's important here, is it?
Case in point -- My 300 post count on this forum is "a decent indication of someone's existence"; you can assume that, because I have written this much content, I am tangible and real and not a bot, nor am I some elaborate joke invented by Jon to further his own motives. But if there were 300 posts on this forum attributed to God -- I don't mean a user named "God", I mean if Wickedfire implied that God himself had written the 300 posts -- does that make you more likely to believe in the existence of a God, regardless of what you believed before? You'd see the messages, but as a sane homo sapien you'd have to assume that Jon, or someone else, was pulling the strings. And if, instead, the posts were attributed to Jesus Christ, you might even be more inclined to say "Jesus Christ, I've seen his posts, I believe he might exist", but it would be folly to thereafter assume that he must be divine, simply in light of evidence in favor of his existence.
My point is that having written content attesting to something that is otherwise considered impossible by science (I mean the existence of a higher power here) does not help it's case. The natural world follows very specific rules, many of which we've discovered, catalogued, and expressed in formal notation -- That's "science". Science does not say God does not exist, and it does not say Jesus Christ never lived; Science says that so far, there's been no natural phenomenon witnessed, recorded, and measured that is directly attributable to supernatural powers. 66 books might all indicate that Jesus lived, but no amount of literature will convince me he walked on water. I mean, if those 66 books had been about how earth-is-center-of-universe, that doesn't make the theory any less ridiculous in light of what NASA has physically witnessed in the last century, does it?
If you believe in God today, my hat is off to you, as you're faced with the challenge of reconciling a desire to put faith in something intangible and invisible against increasing external pressure from all sides decrying the possibility of a higher being. Every day, it seems there's another reason that "God cannot exist, because ______". For someone who still wishes to believe, all of this has to be taken with a grain of salt, because men are mortal and often wrong and probably still don't fully understand the weight of the situation and all factors involved, and there's still room for a God in even the most pessimistic of world views. Looking at it from a purely logical standpoint, it IS possible that a higher being exists, but most of what's been written on paper about him has already been proven impossible. I think it's admirable and desirable to go about life as a human believing in something bigger than you, even if only because it keeps the ego in check, but I cannot even begin to fathom the idea that a book with a chapter about a bush that catches on fire, speaks aloud, and then turns into a snake is still taken literally by some people, and that some of these people hold positions of power. Regardless of if you believe God is real, if you can't admit that the bible [and the rest of those 66 books] must be fiction, you fit my definition of insanity.
Actually, that's precisely what I was responding to. Someone said there was no clear indications of God's existence and I responded that the evidence was actually fairly sizable.
I'm going to assume you're simply confused here by the way you blatantly contradict yourself.
What is supernatural? That which you consider 'supernatural' could merely be undiscovered science. If you read the Book of Revelations, it sounds remarkably like modern warfare and yet to some thousands of years ago would have sounded like "supernatural powers".
It's like watching a magic trick - at first you don't understand it and it seems mysterious, but after you've seen how it's done, it becomes boring, almost obvious.
Me talking to someone in China would have seemed to someone 1,000 years ago like magic, yet with our understanding of modern technology it's boring and not even impressive anymore. And yet somehow you think we've discovered everything there is to know about how the universe works? That's it, pack up the books, we've learned everything we're ever gonna learn, boys.
You say it is impossible for Jesus to have walked on water, and yet according to the Bible, he was the product of a human and the Holy Spirit.
The "Holy Spirit" is merely a mystical term for another lifeform. You have no idea what kind of lifeform that is, or why the product of that kind of union couldn't physically float or walk on water. And there's sure as hell no way NASA could test that shit in a lab. Technically, Jesus was only half-human. We know next to nothing about the other half of his genes.
Except the Bible didn't say that. In fact, it said the Earth was a sphere during a time when most of the 'modern' world still believed it was flat.
If I debated you 1000 years ago, you'd be telling me since the 'flat earth science' directly contradicted the Bible, therefore the Bible was false.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. Maybe you feel that way, I'm not sure what 'increasing pressure' you feel or all the 'reasons' God can't exist. Most of what you've said so far is just flat out wrong, so I wouldn't put too much weight behind the rest of your 'reasons'.
That's actually not a Bible story, you're confusing two different stories together.
But it generally ties in with the overall theme of your post, it's a lot of indignation and chest-beating, all built upon a foundation of half-truths and outright fables.
You've already demonstrated you don't really know or understand the Bible, so why would anyone be interested in who you deem sane or insane?
But here's something to consider:
We've already established that Jesus was historical figure who walked the Earth roughly 2,000 years ago. That is accepted historical fact by virtually everyone, even the atheist Roman historians of Jesus' time chronicled his actions. There is not a single person alive who can actually make a convincing case that he was not an actual historical figure who existed.
And we also have volumes of extremely old texts containing over 300 prophecies predicting his birth, death, place of birth, resurrection, piercing of the side - in some cases, made over 1,000 years before he was born!
The odds of him fulfilling just 8 of those 300 prophecies is 1 in a trillion.
The odds of him fulfilling just 48 of the 300 is 1 in (1 trillion to the 13th power).
And he fulfilled all 300.
The only, final recourse someone like yourself or an atheist is left with is to say that all 300 were written after his life... and yet that's also historically false. Because of the type of parchment they were written on, dating methods, historical details, and other historical context in the texts, it has been unequivocally determined that they were penned long before he emerged on the scene.
So we have 300 predictions, in some cases written over a thousand years before fulfillment, all predicting the rise and fall of a certain person. And they are all historically verified to have occurred. That's fact.
Just something to think about.
It's disturbing, but look at the details - the majority is done by other students. Also consider :
K-12 teachers in USA = 3,900,000
priests in USA = 40,000
Technically speaking, you can't prove that it's impossible for me to fly, yet alone what a "higher being" could or couldn't do. Semi-related video :
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geBmlndUexA]YouTube - Physics of the Impossible[/ame]
I just want to point out the logic flaw in this.
If free will is the ability to make choices without divine influence, and we are to believe that the bible is God's message to humanity of how to live on earth. Then by reading the bible, you have been influenced by god, and therefore you no longer have free will.
I'm guessing though we're just supposed to make an exception in this case?
There is no need to disprove the existence of a historical Jesus. The onus lies on those who claim he existed to prove it.
Common fallacies
(See “proving non-existence”)
The writings by Tacitus for example are indeed accepted by most scholars. However since there is so little evidence beyond this, what has survived is far too thin to close the book and confirm that Jesus did in fact exist with certainty.
I found this video interesting. James Randi casts doubt on the authenticity of Jesus’ birthplace, Nazareth.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSzQC1zKesU"]YouTube - James Randi Speaks: Questioning the Bible[/ame]
Yes, but your criteria for good evidence was the number of authors and the length of time taken to write it. To this I ask you, do you care about how many authors the Vedas Hindu texts had? Does it matter to you how long it took to write them? Would some high number of authors and a long period of time make you any more likely to believe in Vishnu or any of the Hindu gods?
Due to belief in a god with a personality & a penis (i.e old fart up in the clouds) & a fictional cult; you are hereby diagnosed a retard.
Everything boils down to profit & rightfully so; Dawkins selling more copies of his books, the Pope & the Church getting their tithes etc...
Dawkins is narrow in his vision & philosophy, which is not a surprise considering his scientific background. He is consumed by the details with no room for abstract thinking. But at least he keeps things real.
The fucking pope & all the religious shits are annoying as hell. Since everyone who can see through the annoying lies is too much of a pussy to actually do anything like execute the pope or ban religion, I suggest we all get back to slinging berries & let the economy/world fix itself. Who gives a shit anyway
Davkins is a very smart guy if any of haters in the topic read any book of his they wouldnt doubt it
I think whatever your views on flying spaghetti monsters, men in white robes with beards or even Lord Vishnu himself - if someone is in a position of implied trust and moral authority then noncing a kid is even more despicable than it would be normally. For the christians here - isnt there something in your big book from that jesus bloke about harming children being the worst sin of all? Unless you're a priest it would seem and it gets dealt with internally instead of getting the law in straight away.