Actually, Jay, Jesus is just fine with me.  I think I could reason with him.  Is he the son of god?  Is there a god for him to be the son of?  In my opinion, the only honest answer is "I don't know for sure."  If having faith means pretending to know for sure something that I absolutely do not, I consider that to be a dishonesty.  That dishonesty is what I reject.

 

And the ONLY motivation I have for suspending uncertainty (aka being intellectually dishonest) and just taking the plunge and believing/accepting anyway is desire for heaven or fear of hell.  Should I die and the pronouncement of my damnation be made and should I be given an opportunity to say a last few words, they'd be "You know, on Earth, it wasn't all about me.  Your adherants said it was all about you, but when asked why it should be all about you, they would talk about your will and your heavenly kingdom and that they were getting to go.  It was all about worshipping you, but they never failed to tack on how the reward was "eternal salvation" for them.  And they'd talk about the awaiting hell fire for those that didn't fall in line.  Again, they did this because they felt they were supposed to according to your word, and once again, that made chances better for eternal salvation for them.  The clear message from them, your messengers, was that I should choose to believe something I couldn't sense with the senses you gave me in order to get something for me.  They all said it was all about you, but their observable words and actions said it was really all about them.  To make this more complex, there were MANY groups with similar ideas, all that had the same weight of "evidence" as their reasoning, and all with promises of a good afterlife or a bad afterlife according to what decisions the people made.  It seemed to be the only method to get anyone to believe anything - motivate them with a bottomless pocket full of gold, or threaten their safety.  My crime?  I sacrificed the gold and the fear until I could substantiate these differing claims with something I could objectively experience.  Like this conversation.  I repeat - it wasn't all about me in life, and it isn't all about me now.  Do what you have to do."

 

That's not really how the conversation would go, of course.  Bound for hell or not, I'd be too excited to find out a lot of things about science and how it all worked.  They'd throw me into hell asking questions.

 

No, not a fan of cigars.  I just put the quote here to direct a comment to your post.  It was outstanding - every word.  I want those quotes on t-shirts and bumper stickers.

 

Zoo:

 

Jay:

 

To me this is (and always has been) a vote of no confidence in what humans tell me.  My problem with reading the bible (or any other book for any other doctrine) for clarification is that I have no evidence to suggest it isn't just more humans telling me something.  If I am to truly believe anything, I therefore must come to that belief without outside influence.  If Eve had followed that line of thinking, maybe she wouldn't have eaten that apple, no?  Notice she didn't just say "Aw fuck it.  He said don't eat it, I'm eating it anyway."  Someone had to talk her into it, and instead of using her own rational mind to decide, she fell to persuasion of another (in what seemed to be some really irrational reasoning on the part of the Satan character, in my opinion.)  Yet no one takes that as a the lesson of the story, but is it not a valid lesson?

Thanks and yes, I want those quotes on a tshirt.  Except I think I'd probably get tired of explaining to some;

a. what the quotes really mean and,

b. these were actually said by a Jesuit Christian.

I'm not trying to argue with you here, Jythier, but I get the impression EoIC (please correct me if I'm wrong) hasn't actually gone after Jesus but more after some of his believers i.e. the overtly one-eyed, narrow-minded types. 

One of the major reasons the U.S. has been able to maintain a free society is the Founding Fathers recognized that everyone won't see eye to eye, and people of like minds usually cluster together.  That was the basis of "community standards" and the U.S. Constitution's 10th Amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.).

Community standards holds that, no matter how you want to live, there's a place for you.  If you want God central in your community, then there are places where the people choose that for themselves.  If you want a community where God is rarely mentioned in public, there is a place for you too.  There are even places where you don't have to have a community at all.

That still goes, but it has beem muddled a bit.  People who move from one place to another all to often do all they can to bring where they were to the new place... often without regard to those who have always lived there.  Federal incursion into local and state matters has further eroded the original intent.

So, what we are left with is communities of people who don't talk to each other, or band with people from other communities to force change. 

Some call that "segregation", but if it is done voluntarily, it's really "Freedom of movement" and "association".  Like "censorship", true "segregation" only occurs when the government forces it on the people.

As for what is "evil" and what is "good".  Good is what provides the most individual freedom possible in a community, evil is what impedes it.   Individual freedom is only maintained with the right balance of power between individuals (the people), community (family, neighborhood etc), and government.  If either exert too much "evil" on the others, it is personal freedom that suffers... and the freedom to worship according to the dictates of our conscience (including not worshipping at all) is among the most important parts of personal freedom.

Can I get an amen?

Perhaps a hallelujah?

A very inconvenient lesson.

 

I'll give ya both...Amen and a hallelujah!

  



Had an o-chem lab one that was rough. I suck at NMR spectra...well proton spectra anyway. I think I did well enough in the class, though...so I'm not too worried, but I wish they'd hurry up and grade it.

Got 4 finals next week...and tomorrow I'm going to dig into my ACS(American Chemical Society) guide and run through all the lovely organic chemistry stuff. I gotta work some stats studying in over the weekend as well. I don't think it'll be too bad...I just hate all the damn studying.

Ah well, c'est la vie.



Bleh, indeed. Good luck with that. Luckily I don't have any writing to do...unless you count my 4 essays on my economics exam, but they're not that long...like a paragraph each or so.



Ooh..proteomics? As in protein study? Heh, you can keep that...I hate learning proteins. Such a bitch to remember.

Congrats, though. Hope that turns out well.   

~Zoo

Lucky kids. I still don't have finals until the second week in June . . .

Umm...you're in Spain. I think that makes us even.   

~Zoo

The lesson is, do what God commands, regardless of whatever anyone else says. Satan used reason coupled with lies to deceive Eve. Logic is often used to deceive. You can use logic to prove anything, given the right parameters. But if the premise is wrong, the conclusion will be invalid, no matter how much sense each step makes.

Given that God exists, the Bible being a correct translation makes sense. Why would God let a human corrupt His message to the world in writing?

Given that God doesn't exist, the Bible is a mistranslated piece of garbage written by someone to control the population or something like that. I don't know what it would be. But I don't need to think about it because God does exist.

Also note that Eve used her own rational mind to choose between what God said, and what someone else said. Eve's rational mind, when used, told her the fruit was good to eat and was desirable to make one wise (or something like that). All Satan did was point out that there was a choice. The first real choice ever made, and it went really bad.

 

Well for starters, this shows that Eve was not, in fact, "perfectly smart" as I have seen her and her betrothed described.  Given objective experience of THE creator, who would make the same choice, atheist or Christian or otherwise?  Not one person I know.  Eve had objective experience of God.  He was there.  So she never had to have faith.  To choose the word of a snake over a God you had objective evidence of was anything but rational.  It was insane.

 

 

For exactly the same reason he'd let an angel corrupt his entire creation with an apple tree.

Unless she felt stifled by her ignorance and need to know, in which case the snake offered her an escape from the prison that was Eden, making it a thoroughly rational move. The big mistake many Christians continually make is in assuming that their Old Testament idols actually liked God. Feared and obeyed, sure, but liked? I think we can have some hefty doubts about that one.

Good point. Never said, "And Eve liked God, so they became friends."



She probably could have just made her concerns known to God if that were the case. But she decided to talk to a snake instead.

As Ock would do,

"God, I want to see the world!"

"What, you don't like Eden, Adam and Eve?"

"Well, Eden's nice and all, but I want to see everything that you've created, not just one garden..."

"But, Eve, there are dinosaurs out there! They have several billion years left to go before they turn into fossil fuels, and you won't want to go out there without a full tank of gas."

"Pleeeeeeease?"

"Oh all right. After all, if a woman would let her 9 year old ride the subway alone in New York City, who am I to keep you locked up in a garden?"

Hahaha.  I am honored and flattered, J

We should write a book and call it "Conversations with God (that we made up)"

Millions, actually. Life only began around 3.5 billion years ago...and that was just little anaerobic bacteria. It took awhile for dinosaurs to come along.

Science!

~Zoo

God's time is not our time, Zoo. God's time is not our time.

Unfortunately, this is exactly one of the main problems I have with religion. This is a parable about not questioning authority, about remaining uneducated and letting others tell you what to do and how to live your life instead of finding out for yourself or using your "free will".

 

Can't remember which singing comic sang this song, but it always gave me a chuckle.  This is paraphrased - it's been a while.

 

So the man said to God, "What's a million years to you?"

And God said..."A second."

So the man said to God "What's a million dollars to you?"

And God said..."A penny."

So the man said to God "Would you give me a penny?"

And God said "Sure...just a second."

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I love that.

Wonderful article Ock. I'm especially pleased to how well you outlined the dangerous of applying your beliefs to group coherance.

When you say God knows best, thats a really vague statement, as has already been demonstrated. The world is not full of everyone who agrees on what God believes in, thus such a mentality is not going to get you very far when say for example you are talking to someon that believes that God wants you to kill everyone who is not a believer.