Religion, Scripture and logical thinking

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: Develo

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

More like religion became unnecessary when people realized that science and religion should be separate with science providing more answers.

Religion became more and more about spirituality only as science became more and more secular.

Today they are separated fields covering different spectrum. Science doesn't really care about psychological suffering or the desire of transcendence.

Science cares about what it can prove. So if science can prove it then it cares about it. It may not care about it currently because it doesn't have the means to prove it, but that doesn't mean it won't care about it later down the line. If it exists, it can probably be quantified, therefore science should be able to explore it.

Well religion will maybe disappear the day science will do that

In the meantime the world is still majorly religious/spiritual because science can't answer all needs of mankind.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
I still don't see it man. Pantheon worship was widespread back before Christianity and the people definitely believed that these gods were real. Athens is NAMED after Athena because it was believed that she protected the city from harm.

It's not because you believe that praying to gods will bring you luck that you believe they are literally people and that the myths are their factual history.

You take Greek mythology:

The titans, parents of the gods, are clearly personifications of natural phenomenons. Despite being represented in human form in the arts.

Anthropomorphism is common, but it doesn't mean people back then literally believed these gods had human figure.

I can understand someone thinking so living in fundamentalist America where literalism is a thing, but again, this does not apply to the rest of the world, please get that.


They believed the gods were real. They also believed these gods were personification of concepts, a way to talk about abstract things, not actual actors of a soap opera.

Of course myths are symbolic and not factual.


Even today there are new mythos created all the time (lord of the rings, matrix, x-files,...) that are culturally very important and yet everyone know they are fiction, despite generating huge following and "worshipping".

It is quite condescending to assume most people can't tell the difference between a story and a fact.

Since you consider most ancient Greeks where quite gullible and thought myths were facts, maybe the best would simply to read what they have to say on the subject:

"Phaedrus: Tell me, Socrates, isn't it from somewhere near this stretch of the Ilisus that people say Boreas carried Orithuia away?
Socrates: So they say.
Phaedrus: Couldn't this be the very spot? The stream is lovely, pure and clear: just right for girls to be playing nearby.
Socrates: No, it is two or three hundred yards farther downstream, where one crosses to get to the district of Arga. I think there is even an altar to Boreas there.
Phaedrus: I hadn't noticed it. But tell me, Socrates, in the name of Zeus, do you really believe that legend is true?
Socrates: Actually, it would not be out of place for me to reject it, as our intellectuals do. I could then tell a clever story: I could claim that a gust of the North Wind blew her over the rocks where she was playing with Pharmaceia; and once she was killed that way people said she had been carried off by Boreas..."

and maybe you should also read a bit on the following topics:

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Develo

it's dangerous to assume these are just fairy tales, particularly since the original argument used to relegate them to fairy tale status were things like "impossible" physics and medicine, such as virgin birth (artificial insemination), creation of new life via copying (cloning) and sky flight (see airplanes, helicopters, hang gliding, jets, rockets, space shuttles, space stations and so on), or the equally false criticism that the places and people named never existed.

it's also wobbly to claim that the whole thing is only applicable as spiritual (when pretty much everybody (yes, including fundies), know the text is dealing with both spiritual and literal themes). you're erecting strawmen to burn and it's not helping your case.

originally posted by: undo
a reply to: Develo

it's dangerous to assume these are just fairy tale

Then you haven't read my contribution in this thread. I said specifically myths can have different origins:

- Dramatization of historical accounts
- Symbolic representation of secret knowledge (scientific or spiritual)
- Personification of abstract concepts

and finally you have the most common of all myths, finding it's origins in the depth of the history of a culture: the creation myth.



I never said to consider the whole Bible as a spiritual thing. I said Catholics view the Bible as their spiritual guide book (also including the story of Jesus and the story of the Jewish people).

While fundies will spend most of their time trying to make actual sense of the most symbolic parts of it (Genesis, Revelations,...) trying to link these parts with actual and physical things (what for? what's the point?), Catholics recognize that the Bible contains a whole variety of texts, some vaguely historical, some symbolic, some clearly apocalyptic (it's a literary genre, not a prophecy), but in the end what they consider the most important is the teachings of Christ, not the meaning of Genesis or Revelations.

Just a different set of priorities... There are specialists in the interpretation of the Bible spending their whole life on it, I would never have the ambition to do a better job than them.

You will not be a better Christian by "cracking" Genesis or Revelations. Actually all those who try seem to end up crazy.

yes, the israelites were literally in ancient egypt (unless you're prepared to say that ancient egyptian history was also a fairy tale)

a reply to: Develo

ahhh okay. good. i get ya now. had me going there for a bit. i was like "sheesh, let's just toss 300 years of archaeology out the window, eh?"

thanks for clarifying

originally posted by: Develo

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: Develo

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

More like religion became unnecessary when people realized that science and religion should be separate with science providing more answers.

Religion became more and more about spirituality only as science became more and more secular.

Today they are separated fields covering different spectrum. Science doesn't really care about psychological suffering or the desire of transcendence.

Science cares about what it can prove. So if science can prove it then it cares about it. It may not care about it currently because it doesn't have the means to prove it, but that doesn't mean it won't care about it later down the line. If it exists, it can probably be quantified, therefore science should be able to explore it.

Well religion will maybe disappear the day science will do that

In the meantime the world is still majorly religious/spiritual because science can't answer all needs of mankind.

True, but that is the God of the gaps argument. While it can't be disproved, it certainly shrinks as more and more science is uncovered.

originally posted by: Develo
It is quite condescending to assume most people can't tell the difference between a story and a fact.

Looking at fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, and Jews of today I don't find in condescending at all. It just looks like a fact of human behavior. Look at pseudo-sciences. People believe fervently in ghosts, bigfoot, alien visitation, and other things despite no evidence to verify them. Confirmation bias isn't a new phenomenon among humans.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

originally posted by: Develo
It is quite condescending to assume most people can't tell the difference between a story and a fact.

Looking at fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, and Jews of today I don't find in condescending at all.

Thanks for doing again the only thing I've been trying to denounce all along the thread.

Take an extreme case (fundamentalism) and generalize it to everyone else reading and following the same texts.

a reply to: Develo

Everyone of every religion is fundamentalist to some degree. If you believe in god of any sort then you ascribe to an assumption without evidence.

Like I've been saying for a while now, people are superstitious. They will believe the easiest answer to their troubles regardless of evidence or facts. Fundamentalists didn't invent this mindset, they just abuse it.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

While it can't be disproved, it certainly shrinks as more and more science is uncovered.

actually, it's the opposite. during the enlightenment, they just pitched everything older than them, in the waste basket (except ancient egypt). since that time, the science of archaeology was created and discovered several things in the waste basket, shouldn't be there.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
If you believe in god of any sort then you ascribe to an assumption without evidence.

That's why like all mystics I chose to experience god rather than simply believing in it.

a reply to: Develo

How do you know what you are experiencing is god and not just some trick of the mind?

originally posted by: undo
a reply to: Krazysh0t

While it can't be disproved, it certainly shrinks as more and more science is uncovered.

actually, it's the opposite. during the enlightenment, they just pitched everything older than them, in the waste basket (except ancient egypt). since that time, the science of archaeology was created and discovered several things in the waste basket, shouldn't be there.

I don't see how that confirms the opposite of as scientific knowledge increases the god of the gaps argument decreases. Naturally as more and more science is uncovered, you can attribute less and less of these things to the direct involvement of a god.

Has anyone ever considered that the space around things is not separated in any way?
Things are noticed but the space is not.
Maybe the space is moving the things?

'The field is the sole governing agency of the particle'. Albert Einstein.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Everything you experience, see, hear, taste, feel is a trick of the mind.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

actually, you can direct more specific revelation. for example, when science discovers how some law of nature works, they can do away with the notion that it only works because god sits there all day, telling it to, but they still can't do away with the notion that an intelligence created it. you really should watch the video on enoch i posted. it's clear that he was witnessing a super massive black hole in active phase, first hand, and it's also clear that he did not entirely understand the answer he was given by uriel, nor likely did the translators. it went something like "god was mad at the stars because they disobeyed his laws by not rising punctually, and so he imprisoned them to circle the firey abyss in space, for 10,000 years."

you can fill in the gaps pretty easy: somehow, the stars he was seeing circling the black hole, had been knocked out of their original orbits and were trapped in the gravity well of the black hole, where they would continuously circle it for 10,000 years. why 10,000? i dunno, but maybe that's when some regular event happens in that vicinity (wasn't in our galaxy as it was an active super massive black hole (a quasar) as is evident in his description of the ascending and descending columns of "heavenly" fire).

but you can't rule out certain things till you have evidence they can be ruled out. and by the time you have that evidence, you will be genocided for being a white man (if you are a white man) (well unless you design a space ship and find an offworld colony that doesn't mind white homo sapien males). the closer we get to revelation of what all this means, the more they want to wipe whitey from the planet. guess we all need to pretend we're dumb, so we no longer look like a threat - like we might not be able to put the rest of the pieces together. then they can screw us over for another 6thousand years.

a reply to: undo

I don't ever rule things out completely. I'm an agnostic. I just find that certain things become increasingly more unlikely as scientific knowledge advances.

PS: I can't watch videos.

a reply to: Develo

True enough, but those tricks are consistent enough to quantify them. Spirituality, not so much. Here's a great article I like to post about confirmation biases and your brain lying to you.

Your brain lies to you