Via Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, I see we have now stepped through the looking glass. Ozzy Osbourne is shouting in moral disgust at the antics of a Christian organization.
That last sentence only makes sense if I tell you that the organization is Westboro Baptist. It seems some of the Phelps clan quoted Crazy Train, and Ozzy is furious. From E-Online:
The British rock god released a statement saying he was “disgusted” by a Kansas-based church’s choice to perform his music on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday.
“I am sickened and disgusted by the use of ‘Crazy Train’ to promote messages of hate and evil by a ‘church,’” said Ozzy, referring to the iconic song off 1980′s Blizzard of Ozz.
Oddly, it doesn’t seem that the Phelps clan played the song at a protest. Rather, the two Phelps daughters chose to sing a bit of it outside of the Supreme Court, where their father is appealing a ruling that left him with a $5 million fine for causing emotional distress while picketing a military funeral.
There’s enough irony in this story to blow through a couple of well built irony meters. We can start with the actual lyrics of the song:
Crazy, but that’s how it goes
Millions of people living as foes
Maybe it’s not too late
To learn how to love
And forget how to hate
Just further proof that nut-cases like the Westboro Gang can, and will, use anything to justify their agenda.
i saw a documentary on westboro a while back in which they had a children’s choir singing an antisemitic parody of hey jude. i wonder what mccartney and julian lennon would think about that.
The Phelps´ are the only intellectually honest Christians out there.
“The Phelps´ are the only intellectually honest Christians out there.”
So you agree with their interpretation of the Bible? Interesting. You’re as psychotic as they are.
I agree that if you start from the position that the Bible is literally true, then you can only reach the same conclusions that they have reached… if you you are being rigorously honest. I don´t see anything particularly controversial there.
Been saying it for years, Burpy. They’re the only Christians I know of who don’t pick and choose the bits they want to obey and ignore the rest (i.e. let men decide which bits of “God’s word” is allegorical and which is literal). Any Christian who doesn’t believe as the WBC believe is being disingenuous to put it mildly.
They still pick and choose which bits to keep, they just don’t choose the best ones. It is virtually impossible to follow every commandment in Exodus and Leviticus alone, and that’s probably just half the laws you can find in the Bible.
Yeah, while I agree they are about as honest as Christians get when it comes to their dogma, they are still likely picking and choosing whatever suits them. I would be shocked if none of them has eaten a cheeseburger, and I am pretty sure I see them wearing the odd poly-cotton blend.
“if you start from the position that the Bible is literally true”
Something that only atheists and fundamentalists do. Good to know what company you keep. You see, atheists such as yourself are exactly the kind of filth that made me deconvert from atheism to agnosticism.
“Any Christian who doesn’t believe as the WBC believe is being disingenuous to put it mildly.”
Any atheist who doesn’t believe in Nietzsche’s will to power and moral nihilism is being disingenuous to put it mildly.
Stop with the insults Noen. I’m not telling you again.
noen I think you are in way over your head here.
Mmmm. Dunning-Kruger syndrome if ever I’ve seen it.
Yay! Something to look up on wikipedia!
“atheists such as yourself are exactly the kind of filth that made me deconvert from ”
Funny I converted because of the exact kind of arrogant yet insipid pandering Agnostics did in their tireless support of “maybe somehow someday in spite of any supporting evidence other than wishful thinking, there might actually be something, somekind of maybe”. That feeling of pressure you have on your Brainstem, that’s just one of fenceposts nudging you.
“Any atheist who doesn’t believe in Nietzsche’s will to power and moral nihilism is being disingenuous to put it mildly.”
Something only Fundies and Ex-Fundies and apparently slackjawed Agnostics believe. You see Nietzche didn’t invent athiesm or has a “bible” we’re supposed to follow.
From this and his past posts, I sincerely doubt the truth of Noen’s professed agnosticism.
I never said that Nietzsche invented atheism. I just said that is where you will end up. There are more than a few who are ok with that but most people cannot accept Nietzsche’s “morality”.
I would also just love it if “The Phelps´ are the only intellectually honest Christians out there” was made into a banner and put on the home page. Maybe broadcast far and wide. [Insult removed - Custador]
Noen, you are seriously pushing your luck. Please stop.
All I ask is that you apply your rules fairly. Will you do that? Will you also censor your own?
“I just said that is where you will end up.”
No you didn’t. But nice try, blaming others for your faults.
I once knew an atheist. He said that all (African-Americans) should be gunned down. Am I disingenuous because I don’t agree with that? Of course not.
The only difference between atheism and agnosticism is that agnostics like to feel superior to atheists.
Are you also agnostic about the easter bunny? ‘Cause, I mean, he could exist in another galaxy or something. We just can’t know.
As for your comment about only atheists and fundamentalists take the bible seriously, I think you’re misunderstanding.
I’m well aware that the VAST majority of Christians don’t stone disobedient children to death. I am also aware, however, that this is commanded in the old testament, by God. When I, and people like me, point it out, its a form of satire, we’re trying to show people how their book really is.
Christians say that the old testament is invalid, but then why do they still preach from it? Why does nearly EVERY bible contain the old testament in it? The ones that don’t have the old testament, they’re mainly done for economic reasons or as to not scare people away.
You need to drop your sense of superiority, dude. Not every atheist is aggressive. Not every aggressive atheist is a shitbag. In fact, most aren’t. We see people getting hurt by religion though, we see people’s lives and minds getting wasted, we experience prejudice and condescending words from the religious, and we retaliate. I don’t apologize for it at all. If you want to distance yourself from the word “atheist” then perhaps you should consider humanism. That’s what I usually tell people when asked about religion.
Any atheist who doesn’t believe in Nietzsche’s will to power and moral nihilism is being disingenuous to put it mildly.
Considering that Kaufmann was unsure if Nietzsche was even an Atheist, this is a conclusion pretty far afield of, well, anything sensible. First of all, classifying Nietzsche as a moral nihilist is controversial at best; it is unclear what moral paradigm Nietzsche himself entertained mainly because he wasn’t concerned so much with ethics as such as he was with metaethics: the genealogical history of the evolution of morality and the metaphysical principles that might undergird the justification for making ethical statements in the first place.
It is possible (I would argue, in light of his being heavily influenced by philosophers of the Socratic era, probable) that the difficulty in situating Nietzsche within modern ethical categories is due to his being an atypical Virtue Ethicist (especially in viewing his focus on the status of the ethical agent rather than on the moral valence of acts or rules), a classification that would gain him the company of Aristotle…and Jesus.
And seeing as how you seem to understand the will to power as a normative concept rather than a metaphysical one, I would hazard that you don’t have a solid grasp on Nietzsche’s work at all.
No. A person who claimed the writings of Nietzsche were holy and infallible and then denied the truth of his published statements would be “disingenuous”. Just being an atheist does not mean you are in any way bound to anything Nietzsche ever said, the way christians are inherently bound to the bible. Atheists do not claim to be disciples of Nietzsche the way christians claim to be disciples of Jesus. Atheists do not worship Nietzsche. But christians do claim to worship the judeo-christian god (a character who only exists in the bible), and follow the teachings of Jesus (their only source for Jesus’ teachings being the bible). So if a person calls themselves a christian while denying the bible they are in a position that could only be called disingenuous, as the bible is their only source for suspecting that Jesus ever said anything at all.
Most christians simply never read the bible. So they never have to confront the fact that the bible says certain things very clearly in black and white which often contradict observed reality and almost as often contradict modern christian teaching about what the bible says. When someone does read the parts you aren’t supposed to read, one of three things will generally happen. (A) They will decide that the whole thing is bullsh*t (atheism) (B) They will ignore the barbaric and stupid parts or claim “that doesn’t really say that” or “that part just applies to jews” (disingenuous), or (C) They will see that the bible clearly says “godhatesfags” and they’ll get to work making signs to that effect (phelps).
And I would also include snake handlers in this (the ones who literally use snakes as part of their religious services). Yeah, they’re insane. But if the book says handle snakes, and I see two billion people without snakes saying “we follow that book” and a couple hundred rednecks playing with snakes and saying “Jesus told us to do this”, then I call the ones with snakes True Christian(tm).
Allow me to simplify that for you:
Because clearly if you take anything he says as infallible you don’t understand what he says at all.
OK, so the HTML codes work but not ordinary angle brackets.
The problem I was having was with <q>.
Yes, Noen, the answer to all debates is increased wishy-washyness.
And the idea that there is an ideology attached to atheism that you rejected to become agnostic just shows that you don’t understand what the world atheist means.
@noen – your reading comprehension is for shlt.
Is the bible the literal word of god? A lot of people think so, and then they choose to liberally interpret it to mean what they want it to mean, which is the same as creating a religion, creating themselves what they want to believe is true, figuring the bible to be a puzzle they can figure out what god actually means, what pieces to believe literally, and which are metaphors, which can be disregarded, pretending to extract the true word of the same biblical god to reconcile with the modern knowledge they accept. Rather than reject this text because it’s a lot of obvious nonsense, they will use “reason” try to figure out what god might have meant instead. God, being the unknowable creator of all, including this book filled with nonsense, might have actually been sending a code rather than a literal pile of junk.
You can look at the literal word of god and take it completely as such, at least you’d be attempting to behold this text as holy and not just try to convince yourself some parts of it are true and good. It’s irreconcilable with reality, so you either go in with full faith of god and reject reality, or you are going about the business of making something up that makes you feel alright, or you reject that it is the word of god.
Atheists reject not just the biblical god, but all versions of any god. Agnostics “don’t know.” Atheists and theists are agnostic too, but atheists logically reject the notion that something supernatural is creating and controlling us and/or has something to do with souls or where we end up after we die. Theists don’t know but they pretend to know pretty well. They make it up as they go along, to feel good, or they adhere to some arbitrary book they think is literally the word of god. What do you go by? Feelings? The literal word of god does not “feel” right to a lot of people, and yet they insist they “feel” right when they get to the interpretations that sit well, and feel pretty confirmed there is a god who agrees with them.
You don’t seem to understand what an atheist is, you reject atheism as a “spirit” of being, an angry-at-god, or angry-at-Christians, just to be angry or reject something that’s real and obvious to so many people. You don’t get it. Nietzsche was a person. We believe he existed and he wrote some books, but nothing is required of us to believe what a person wrote in a book. He may have made some sense or been spot-on, or some people like to think he was right more than he was wrong, but he was a guy, not a god. We don’t believe in gods, you idiot. and that’s all there is to being an atheist. We do not believe in god because he’s impossible, and where any individual atheist goes after that is up to the individual. Some of us think there is too much Christianity imposing on our government policies. Some of us think there is too little acceptance of a rational observation of reality, as opposed to glorification of the imaginary, the spiritual, the cultish, the boogeyman, the end times, fear of the devil in everything non-biblical, some of us just don’t care to do much at all, we just don’t believe in god because god is impossible and imaginary, we go about our lives and let others go about theirs. We might push back against the imposition that Christianity or some other faith is “the way.”
Rejecting atheism to be agnostic – I mean, can you explain exactly what you mean by that? Do you in fact entertain some possibility of god, and why? Or do you just think atheists are too _______, that you use “agnostic” label to protect yourself from insults that you somehow feel are rightfully earned? To distance yourself from something you categorize as “extreme”? And why? What kind of god(s) do you possibly believe might exist? How sure are you that you’re not just making stuff up to feel like you have “the way” that atheists just do not? Why do you feel righteous to accuse atheists of being in camp with Nietzsche or otherwise being intellectually dishonest? Where does that feeling come from, that dishonest sorting that you do? Did you feel one day that you were an atheist, then you read Nietzsche and decided since you didn’t agree with him, that you could not call yourself an atheist? Or are you a pseudo-ex-atheist, like the random bible-thumper who used to be into self-destructive anti-Jesus things like smoking, pre-marital sex, and dancing, but you found a bible one day, and felt that “transformed” feeling? You can call yourself an ex-atheist, but you seem not to have a grasp of what atheism is, you only have a list of fallacious traits of which you reject, and make up a name for you, “agnostic” to distance yourself from that list of traits, a myth. You don’t know what an atheist is or if you are one or not.
You know that feeling you get when you want to express something, but can’t find the right words, then somebody comes along and says exactly what you wanted to say, but better? Yeah.
The weird thing is, insofar as anyone stacks “atheism” up to be some mythical list of severe traits to which they do not adhere, and thus rejects the myth, they are an atheist, just as anyone with a religion rejects all the other myths they do not believe. The problem is in the cultural myth of what atheism is, which I also reject, but where I can, I also try to correct.
It seems a lot of people, including possibly noen, are traumatized by their own deconversions because of what they are raised to believe atheism is in context with their religions. As far as I was raised without a religion at all, and exposed to atheism by my grandfather, I did once believe the myth also, it’s just part of the culture to be overly religious that really comes to light in retrospect for me. It (religion/Christianity/Catholicism-mainly) wasn’t really in my face where I grew up, as I recall, I never felt pressure to conform to a religious belief and existed mostly unaware of its impact on others, but there was a sense I had that atheism was loud and obnoxious, intrusive, rude – characteristics that one would never want anyone to think of you (“caring what others think of me” was as close to a religion in my family as it got); but I *did not* ever get the sense that atheists were devils, evil, bad, immoral, or wrong, or merely angry with god.
I did go through a stage where I started to call myself an atheist, because I honestly did feel that I don’t believe in god or gods, but I also felt that to admit I was an atheist, I also had to qualify myself as “not that kind of atheist, so people would not think I was going to “preach” at them. Without a religious upbringing or having many conversations about others’ religious upbringing, I had no idea until rather recently that people saw atheism as actually satanic, hopeless, dreary, negative, and immoral. I always thought of it as a valid point of view in society, albeit one with a reputation for being kind of loud and rude, which I again discovered post-adolescence that was just (for the most part) a social method of shaming people from speaking up, and excluding and invalidating their viewpoints, which noen still thinks is fair to do. Even without a religious background to escape from, I still had to push through a barrier I felt, to consider religions, gods, and atheism, to transition from a younger person who was brought up a certain secular way, within this culture that is selling god from everywhere, to the person I am now, who has considered those things and confronted what may be real or unreal about them, to be an atheist. I think of it like being brought up a Christian and going through the motions as an adult, say, well, I was raised Presbyterian, so I will raise my kids the same, and not really listen or think about it, or to consider it part of your blood, that you cannot change; I didn’t want to be that kind of atheist, brought up an atheist and just going along with it. I think of noen as someone who is superficially rejecting things just like the mythical atheist he doesn’t want to be, not really thinking it through.
Yeah, Danny, I’m feeling it now.
Very elegant
Kodie
“@noen – your reading comprehension is for shlt.”
My reading skills are just fine. In regard to your general comments on Biblical literalism. It is my contention that when atheists demand that the Bible be taken literally they are passing it through, along with other sacred texts, the same absolutist mindset that characterizes fundamentalism. It is exactly this demand that the world be divided into absolute black or white to which I am opposed. Whether I find it in religious fundamentalism or your secular variety, I think that this attitude, this ideology of yours, is dangerous or misguided at least.
“You don’t seem to understand what an atheist is, you reject atheism as a “spirit” of being, an angry-at-god,”
In my experience most atheists are just 14 year old internet tough guys getting their hate on. You’re just fanbois getting all worked up into a lather over someone who likes Playstation and not Xbox.
I reject atheism and embrace agnosticism because I have doubt about the absolutist claims of atheism. I reject your epistemic closure, your scientific positivism and your metaphysical absolutism. Since skepticism is the default, it is the systematic application of doubt, I took it and applied it to atheism and found that atheism could not withstand critical inquiry.
(must go, will comment further later)
I’m curious particularly what about atheism, you think, cannot withstand critical inquiry, so when you come back, please start with that.
Your estimation of atheists are 14-year-old jerky boys on the internet getting their hate on, I mean, I’ll point this out to you that is sheer prejudice on your part, so I don’t have a lot of hope for the rest of what you have to say, but you’ve obviously come here from somewhere with this chip on your shoulder, to tell us all what you really think of us, before you’ve absorbed any of the reading material and further comments, maybe what other blogs you’ve read to conclude this. I like to know where you got your attitude from, why you think you’re above it, why you think you come across as wiser than 14 years of age hating on something you don’t really understand, et cetera.
But I’m really curious what about atheism fails your critical analysis.
“what about atheism fails your critical analysis.”
Biblical literalism, scientific positivism, moral nihilism, absolutism, arrogance, bigotry, intolerance, the promotion of anti-religious hate speech, the promotion of neocon proto-fascist political ideology by leading atheists, advocacy of inherent genetic superiority by Dawkins (the “Brights” movement), advocacy of torture by Harris and Hitchens, racist hate speech by Pat Condell (he is almost certainly mentally ill but is revered by many atheists), anti-feminism by Hitchens, and a general smugness and elitism.
Theism is belief in god. Or in other words, if P is the proposition that god exists then Theism is the claim that P. Therefore Atheism must be the claim that ¬P. Or, atheism is the claim that god does not exist. This claim is just as unfalsifiable as the claim that god does exist. atheism and theism are two peas in the same pod, that pod being the belief that statements of absolute certainty are possible with respect to the existence of god.
Only propositions can be absolutely true or false. Or, true or false are properties that only statements can have. That a = a is true is true in all possible worlds. But I don’t think that the proposition that P (that god exists) is something that can be true or false because I don’t accept the fundamentalist concept of god as a really existing person. I am not even convinced that god is a noun, I think it is a verb.
The problem is that atheists accept the fundamentalist world view of absolute truth, absolute morality and an absolute literal interpretation of texts. This world view is practically by definition childish, adolescent and immature. With more emotional maturity comes a realization that outside of the sphere of analytic or propositional claims there really aren’t any absolute facts available. With a little social maturity comes the realization that people of good will can come to widely different views honestly.
It is not a sign of of an emotionally stable adult that you see those who disagree with you as utter enemies who must be destroyed at all costs. How could you not know this? Do you not know that evil is not “out there” personified in the people around you? Evil is in you. Evil is the gaze that sees evil all around. You become evil when all you see is your own evil projected onto and personalized in those who are different than you are.
Atheists do nothing but hate. They do not honestly engage the world or try to fit their beliefs to the world. They do the opposite. Like fundamentalists, atheists try to impose their absolute ideology onto the world. That is what fundamentalism nee absolutism is. You are just secular fundamentalist priests engaged in a schismatic dispute with other priests.
“Biblical literalism, scientific positivism, moral nihilism, absolutism, arrogance, bigotry, intolerance, the promotion of anti-religious hate speech, the promotion of neocon proto-fascist political ideology by leading atheists, advocacy of inherent genetic superiority by Dawkins (the “Brights” movement), advocacy of torture by Harris and Hitchens, racist hate speech by Pat Condell (he is almost certainly mentally ill but is revered by many atheists), anti-feminism by Hitchens, and a general smugness and elitism.”
None of which are included in atheism. Some people who are ALSO atheists may hold such positions, but none of those things are a characteristic of atheism itself. There is only one thing that atheism means. Just one.
Your position is like saying you reject the scientific method because some scientists are arrogant. It’s a nonsensical position.
Wow, you don’t know much about atheism. And you “think” god is a verb.
Sorry to say that you confront atheism as something you’ve imagined instead of what it really means. I can also figure out why you’ve reverted to agnosticism to distance yourself from this warped idea of what atheism is. You are ultimately what you despise – an absolutist moderately treading between things as an extremist avoider, hating much more than anyone I’ve seen in a while.
You seem to think agnosticism is the middle path, or something, to tolerate everyone in the middle, to be intolerant of any extremes, to call them all the same thing in ignorance. Religion is a cultural manifestation of belief in only imaginary things. What is wrong with rejection of those things, and of confronting people who would make political policy decisions out of a generalized assumption those imaginary things are true? How is that imposing our “beliefs” on the world, how does atheism or secularism not “fit” in the reality-based world, when that’s all it assumes? Hey, folks, instead of blaming or crediting imaginary powers, let’s all live in reality-based world! How is that hateful, immoral, or whatever junk you think it is?
How in your mind is god as likely to exist as maybe not? Given a lot of thought on the subject, all supernatural ideas or suppositions of a god or creator or intender or intervener can be disposed of, and you are left with none. That is not an extreme belief. If you reject a god, you know what it means to think it’s buIIshlt, and so one by one, none of them make any sense. That’s not an absolutist belief made out of hate, it’s just taking into consideration what is impossible and putting that in a category of things that should never determine how we are governed, and in a lot of cases, religion acts as a disease. We should not live in a world where people are mutilated or killed or molested or raped or left to starve and die because of what beliefs someone has or does not have. How is it hateful in a bad way to hate the abuses of many faiths upon humanity? It is a warped way to go about living in this “real world” that we’re imposing upon, hey Catholics, stop raping your altar boys, hey Muslims, stop mutilating the genitals of baby girls, and Jews stop mutilating the genitals of baby boys out of “tradition”. While you’re at it, let’s get out of this “holy war,” let’s not fear science in school, let’s not insist we spread your myths and call it education. Homosexuals are not ruining marriage for anyone, either.
The hate is coming from a place and it’s not atheism, we just hate the hate, abhor the lies and excuses for it. There is no reason to act as though there is a god, that your hands are tied, that you must protect “him” or “verb-deity” from criticism. If god were real, is this the world he’d make? Are these the kind of people he’d have talking him up? Where did these rules come from, if not an outright excuse to hate people who don’t worship something that can’t be proven, for the great gift of eternal joy in heaven? That’s some sick shlt.
All religion is a form of mass insanity, none of it stands up to critical inquiry, even getting away from the central, most popular religions. It’s all woo, but the worst of it is how it harms people, and I don’t see where you get the idea that hating religions comes from a sick untenable absolutist place. It reveals what is sick and hateful about believing your imagination and emotions over reality-based world. noen, you, though, you are just an extreme hater. You hate everything you don’t understand, and you assess things you don’t understand with a quality broad brush, assumptions, prejudice, ignorance, and pseudo-logic. Tolerating religions is something a lot of atheists do, too, which you don’t even see about. You are blind and living in imaginary-world, not reality-world.
Theism is belief in god. Or in other words, if P is the proposition that god exists then Theism is the claim that P. Therefore Atheism must be the claim that ¬P. Or, atheism is the claim that god does not exist. This claim is just as unfalsifiable as the claim that god does exist.
They are asymmetrical claims, in that while both may be unfalsifiable, only one requires justification, because it positively asserts an existence claim. A claim that invisible pink unicorns do not exist does not require a foundation until and unless there is positive evidence that such entities do in fact exist. Not assuming things not in evidence is a standard epistemological default.
Russell’s Teapot is pretty simple stuff.
These first. Atheists do not demand Biblical literalism, but many on this thread do demand a consistent interpretation. Scientific positivism is cool I guess, but I don’t really know what it means. It seems just an application of empiricism, which is common but not universal among atheists. Moral nihilism is generally regarded as objectionable by atheists and theists alike (and given your example of Nietzsche, he was especially opposed to it). Absolutism is usually only found among theists who believe they “know for sure” that God exists. I have never found this opinion among atheists, ever. You probably just perceive it exists because atheists don’t bend over backward to say “but maybe I’m wrong” at the end of every sentence.
Oh boy, so this is what you really think. Arrogance? Maybe some atheists come off as a little smug, but it’s hardly a common thread. Bigotry? Give me a fucking break, the bigotry atheists face is orders of magnitude greater than the bigotry they perpetrate and you know it. Give me an example of what you even mean there. Intolerance? Really? Because last I checked religion was the definition of intolerance, and atheists were opposed to those institutions. It’s like complaining that MLK was intolerant of racists. Anti-religious hate speech? What like chalking Muhammad on the sidewalk or something? Because that’s just free speech and it’s not hating on anybody. Saying atheists are “of the devil,” now that is hate speech. “Neocon proto-fascist political ideology . . . ” I have literally no idea what you are talking about. Like, you think atheists are in cahoots with the Aryan Nation or something? Seriously WTF? This is one of the most serious accusations you could possibly level and you are just throwing it out there. How can I feel anything but insulted at being called a “neocon proto-fascist?” You need to calm the fuck down, man.
You need to look up again what that means. From Wikipedia: “The Brights movement is a social movement that aims to promote public understanding and acknowledgment of the naturalistic worldview, including equal civil rights and acceptance for people who hold a naturalistic worldview.”
Note, there is no genetic component nor superiority component. I am beginning to suspect you are a massive troll.
Considering Hitchens has repeatedly spoken out in public against U.S. torture and interrogation techniques and has explicitly listed waterboarding as a form of torture, it would seem you are 180 degrees from the truth.
Sam Harris does defend torture in extreme circumstances, but believes those circumstances are unlikely to arise. That’s not an unreasonable position to hold, though I do disagree with it. Just read one of his articles on it.
Pat Condell is weird and kind of an idiot but I don’t think he’s a racist. If he is, keep in mind that he is a comedian, not an intellectual.
anti-feminism by Hitchens
Because he said women don’t have to work if they don’t want to?
That’s not a trait among atheists, it’s a trait among humans. But religion is so rooted in society that people see atheists as somehow uppity and extreme because they dare discuss it. It’s a shame really.
Just because you want to define atheism that way doesn’t mean it is the definition. Don’t fucking tell me what I believe. Even what people call “strong” atheism is a belief that God does not exist. Not a certainty. Nobody who embraces science could deal with certainties like that.
You are attempting to apply modal logic here but it doesn’t really apply. For example, the concept of an omnipotent God is self-contradictory, so it therefore is impossible in all worlds. The existence of anything somebody might decide to call “god” is of course perfectly possible, but that’s not relevant here. Atheists do not attempt to prove mathematically that no god exists, that would be a fool’s errand. Rather they notice that there is no evidence that any do and apply common sense to decide there is no reason to believe one does exist, and plenty of reasons to suspect one does not.
Nobody does this except in your mind. Listen to me. NOBODY DOES THIS. You are making up a class of atheists that fit your stupid stereotypes. This is not in any sense what atheism is about.
Personally I do not see all who disagree with me as enemies and I am fucking tired of you characterizing me. There is absolutely nowhere I can imagine you going that would give you these impressions about atheism except fundamentalist Christianity or Islam. Because frankly, we live in a world that is a large majority religious, so if we all hated everybody who believed in God, we would be mushroom-cloud laying motherfuckers. My own father believes in God. I suppose that means I see him as an enemy that must be destroyed?
And you are an asshole who makes no attempt to understand people before labeling them with your insulting, prejudicial, and increasingly inaccurate views. You have no problem telling people to be tolerant and not to hate and then turning around and describing their entire belief and community as atrocious, bigoted, fundamentalist, destructive, and generally unconscionable. You are the worst kind of hypocrite because you know what you are doing and you don’t even care. You are the kind of person I hoped I would never have to deal with on this forum.
I am not arguing with you again, as it is obviously pointless. But hopefully this post will serve to show anybody else reading it that I am not going to take this bullshit and nobody else should either.
Atheism is nothing but a lack of belief in a theistic definition of God. You cannot change the meaning of it and say “oh, I’m not one of those atheists”. Like I said, if you don’t want to be associated with atheists, well, tough. I don’t usually say I’m an atheist in person, I say I don’t believe in God or that I’m a humanist. There’s a negative connotation with atheists, but I think a lot of it is projection by the religious, both conservative and liberal, that atheists are somehow aggressive. Its socially acceptable to say that anarchists are delusional or naive, but when you say the same thing about the religious, then you’re aggressive.
As for agnosticism, a god(s) MIGHT exist but there is no reason to believe in him/her/them. I used an easter bunny example before, and its very relevant(though possibly disrespectful, I think its perfect).
The easter bunny was an idea created by humans. He might very well exist, a sentient rabbit that passes out colored eggs and treats to children. He might exist SOMEWHERE in the universe, and he might exist on earth, he just hides his existence.
The thing is, what is the chance that the myth humans created would be an accurate representation of the actual easter bunny?(assuming he exists). You could take any science fiction/fiction character from a book, movie or video game and be agnostic about it’s existence as well. Ring wraiths MIGHT exist, but what are the chances that Tolkien was correct in his portrayal of them in his book?
There is no reason to believe in God, or the easter bunny, than human-created fiction. There is no evidence of ANY divine intervention at all, and it has been tested time and time again. I suppose he could be hiding his existence or not omnipotent, but why should we assume he might exist? Why take the trouble to call yourself agnostic? Its redundant.
You’re clearly angry at atheists, either people like us, or hateful atheists. You are not using logic anymore, you are rationalizing your hostility towards us with shoehorned rants. You need to calm down, and re-examine your logic from a neutral point of view.
As far as the biblical literalism – why should anyone not demand the literal word of god be taken as such by people calling it the literal word of god? Is it meant for instruction or what? Where did it come from? If god did not write some of it, what sort of veracity could the rest of it have? If god did not mean some of the things in it literally, who can say that he didn’t? A person starts with the notion there is a god and then forms them from parts of a book while rejecting some of the book. Rather, reject that it is the literal word of god altogether, maybe it has some wisdom to live by, but it is no longer sacred then. I don’t think it is it the literal word of god, but if you are claiming that it might be or it is, you damn sure aren’t god, so what mere mortals can be trusted to decide which parts are the necessary parts and which parts are obviously nonsense? I do believe if you start with the premise of “there is a god,” and the bible is his work, then you have no business rewriting it or revising it for your own special version of god.
How does that stand up to the critical inquiry tests? It’s the word of god or it isn’t. Any excuse to interpret it non-literally, or to except parts of it as “unreal”, is a creation of a god you like better than the one who wrote the book, the whole book. One should reject the book in that case, but you don’t see too much of that. When you do, this person has either been born to another book they either respond to literally or interpret liberally, or seek a belief that corresponds better to one personally, or to reject belief in all gods on the basis of impossibility, to regard people who believe in gods as necessarily using their imaginations, or to consider some supernatural entity possible but undefinable.
And yet nothing that can be called god stands up to critical inquiry. All we observe is modern cavemen making sense of their world through dynamics called “fooling themselves” or the people who call a book sacred and mean it, whether that makes them insane by our standards or not. I don’t know why you have a problem understanding this.
Fundamentalists believe literally the word of god above all reason, they reject whole swaths of reality as planted by the devil. As soon as you start modifying this belief to reconcile with reality, you are beginning to reject that god, but not recognizing it within yourself, you are creating a god that fits your culture, above reason, while simultaneously, somewhat intellectually, applying reason to reject the parts of that god that make no sense. What is there to believe, if you can reject some of it based on what you can observe, and what you know? Why the insistence that this god is somehow knowable, or possible, within this crazy book, and yet at the same time, ignore the impossible parts in the same book, and say that’s not really god?
Reject the book! It’s just not holy at all if it’s so many parts crazy.
“why should anyone not demand the literal word of god be taken as such by people calling it the literal word of god?”
Because not everyone is a fundamentalist. That you cannot even conceive of how anyone could be anything other than an absolute literalist shows how deeply you accept the fundamentalist world view. Ask yourself “What would the world look like if not everything must be the literal truth?”
I was raised a Lutheran. I was taught that the Bible is not the literal word of god. I would imagine that this is utterly amazing and incomprehensible to you. I became an atheist as an adolescent but then I grew up and was sort of a general secularist for many years. Then came the internet and I saw the unrelenting hate and bigotry of atheism on full display. Since then I have been trying to formulate agnosticism as distinct from atheism.
“I don’t think it [the Bible] is it the literal word of god”
I don’t think it is either. The difference is that you think that to be a Christian one MUST believe in the literal Bible. This is false. Your fundamentalist frame is in fact quite new and is part of a larger reactionary movement against the enlightenment. All you’ve done is to replace idolatry of the text, which is religious fundamentalism, with idolatry of science. Your scientific positivism is an anti-enlightenment ideology.
“And yet nothing that can be called god stands up to critical inquiry.”
Sure it can. What do most theists tell you god is? God is love. Love exists, therefore god exists, done! Are you really unfamiliar with existentialist theology? My guess is that the only Christians you are aware of or debate with are the fundamentalists. Of course you do, you’re one of them. I would encourage you to expand your reading beyond the literalist frame you are comfortable with. Step out of your comfort zone!
Religion is a Heideggerean work of art and as such it contains truths that run deeper than mere correspondence with reality. This is not to say that religion is true as such. Only that it’s truths are not analytic truths. They are values and as values they are not “facts of the world”, they make the world. The error that atheists make is to disregard the Fact – Value distinction and to try to make matters of value matters of fact.
“I was raised a Lutheran. I was taught that the Bible is not the literal word of god. I would imagine that this is utterly amazing and incomprehensible to you.”
I think this suggests the core point where you and the rest of us are differing. You are wrong in your presumptions about what atheists actually think, and what their background is. We are well aware that plenty of Christians argue that the bible is not the literal word of god. The bible, however, says it is, in one of the most explicit statements it makes, and the bible is the foundation for all of them, every one of them, having any basis at all for believing in that god. There is no Christianity that I know of without the bible to inform its initial belief in Jesus. They’re using the bible to say why they believe in Jesus over Thor, and yet ignoring that exact same document when something comes up they are ethically uncomfortable with. That’s what makes the WBC at least somewhat honest with themselves, since they gleefully subscribe to what their book actually tells them (at least with regard to homosexuals).
Just to clarify, we know perfectly well not everyone is a fundamentalist, and to portray us as having argued that at any point is totally disingenuous. It’s just that fundamentalists at least stick [closer] to the source material.
You are dead on there, John. Noen is creating a straw man out of atheism so he can tell himself he’s better than it.
Noen, at least two of the atheists here actually trained as ministers. I’m one of them. At least three of the atheists here have advanced degrees in philosophy.
You are misinformed.
@ JohnMWhite
“plenty of Christians argue that the bible is not the literal word of god. The bible, however, says it is”
No it doesn’t. The Bible doesn’t say anything. That you think the Bible is speaking to you is what makes you a fundamentalist. For many Christians, especially Catholics, you are committing the heresy of idolatry. You think the Bible IS god or should be regarded as though it were god. Your inability to extricate yourself from this absolutist frame is what makes your brand of atheism an ideology. An ideology is a filter which one overlays on one’s perceptions of the world and which distorts the world. This is why people say that atheists distort or misrepresent religion. Because that’s what you do.
“Just to clarify, we know perfectly well not everyone is a fundamentalist, and to portray us as having argued that at any point is totally disingenuous. It’s just that fundamentalists at least stick [closer] to the source material.”
It is amazing how you contradict yourself in two sentences and yet are totally unaware that you do so. First you say that you know not everyone interprets the Bible literally and are offended that anyone would say you don’t know that. Then you turn around and say that at least the fundamentalists are honest. As if a literal understanding of a text is being honest.
Oh you’re a Poe. I haven’t seen an agnostic Poe before. Carry on.
More amazing to me, Noen, is how you can join a forum, get exceedingly offensive about other forum users, sling around a load of ad-hominem bunkum and then complain about how offensive we all are. I’ll admit that you’re being much more restrained about it this evening, and long may your restraint last, but every other day I’ve followed your postings you’ve been pretty horrible in your generalisation of atheists.
Ty
“You are misinformed.”
Appeal to authority fallacy.
I think we are at the end of this thread but in my experience this internet bravado of yours is all you have. If, instead of thumping your chest you actually put forward arguments that would be helpful. But since we are at the end of the replies that will have to wait I guess.
We see a lot of liberal Christians here and debate them and are not angry with them. I think you are missing the point, though. Once you start revising this sacred text of god to conform more closely to your personal beliefs, you are in the process of creating a more comfortable god for yourself. “God is love”? God is a myth. When you don’t know what god is, and you try to suppose what he might be, or what it personally means to you, you are no better than a caveman writing your own holy scripture. You can follow parts of the bible, you can infer more esoteric meanings from the parts you like, discard the parts that no longer apply – who is god then? I am no absolutist, I just wonder how you can suppose this book is only partially holy, and only then when you make up the definitions to mean what resonates more clearly with you than what is written. If you think there is a god, and that he had something to do with that book, then what is it up to you to lift parts of that book to design your own new god from it? Why not just admit you are making up a new religion, why not depart from the book and say you’ve made up a distinct new god who has nothing to do with that book?
Oh, because that would be obviously departing from the sacred book, rather than snatching up and picking out parts of it that “feel” like what you think god really meant. If he’s a god, he’s not a consistent or clearly defined god, going by the book; what he wanted once isn’t the same thing he requires now, and the language is sometimes quite nebulous – did he mean something literally in this line and figuratively in the next verse? Could we just skip this part because it’s obviously not true. How do you know, and if some of it is not true, how true is the rest of it, and when did god come by to tell you he’s no longer a stickler about such, but this here is just allegorical nonsense, turn to the back where I’m dead serious. God either wrote the book or he didn’t. I don’t see where any human being can make a plausible excuse for altering it or translating what they want to mean because they find that god a lot more plausible than the one who wrote the book. I don’t care if you’re born a Lutheran, it’s still made up as the first fundamental version, you just pretend that you don’t.
Departing from the book, you are defining whatever you want, and you are also being intellectually honest as calling the bible false, at least as much as a fundamentalist WBCer would adhere to as much of it as possible. Once you realize you are taking your reality-based world and inventing supernatural properties about it to suit yourself, touch all your buttons, satisfy your questions, you understand what I’m talking about, but with you, I’m not so sure. You are angry, misinformed, and prejudiced. It’s all imaginary. There is really not more than that to atheism, except recognizing that no matter what is believed to be right or known about god is invented, either out of whole cloth or from parts of a religion and modernized to co-exist and attempt to reconcile with all the scientific knowledge we’ve acquired since ancient times.
@ Kodie
“you are in the process of creating a more comfortable god for yourself. “God is love”? God is a myth.”
Myths are not falsehoods. They relate truths about man’s place in the world in narrative form.
“We see a lot of liberal Christians here”
I’m not a liberal Christian. I simply find that I must present that side as a counter to your fundamentalism.
“I just wonder how you can suppose this book is only partially holy”
I don’t think it is at all holy and yet… in a way it is. I think all sacred texts are works of art. Not that they are fiction though. I don’t agree with you that the world is divided into truth or lies.
“If you think there is a god, and that he had something to do with that book, then what is it up to you to lift parts of that book to design your own new god from it?”
I don’t think I am making a new religion. I doubt I am able to do that. I don’t know if there is a god or not.
“that would be obviously departing from the sacred book,”
Again with the Biblical idolatry. I’ll repeat myself. I was taught that the Bible is NOT sacred the way that fundamentalists believe it is. as a Lutheran, not that I am any more but, as a Lutheran it is not the text that is holy, it is God who shines through the text. That is not my belief now but it is a valid position that runs counter to your claim that a Christian can ONLY have a literal interpretation of Biblical truths.
But you think this is something “new”, a different religion than that of fundamentalism. It is not. I will again point out that you insist on asserting the fundamentalist world view as being primary to Christian faith, or to any religious belief I’d imagine.
This claim is false. I have demonstrated repeatedly that it is false and explained at length so that you may understand. Yet still you insist.
You’d better get your head around this. This is why you will ultimately fail in your quest for social legitimacy. I’ll repeat my claim at the top with the added explanatory texts that have followed.
You are exactly like the Westboro Baptists. You think like they do. You see the world through their eyes. You understand the Bible as they do. The ONLY difference is your disbelief in god. And because of this the larger culture will reject you and you will no doubt blame everyone but yourselves.
Good luck with that.
“That is not my belief now but it is a valid position that runs counter to your claim that a Christian can ONLY have a literal interpretation of Biblical truths.”
No one ever said that. You continually misrepresent the argument at hand here. Either you still don’t get it, after it has been explained numerous times, or you are trolling.
Plenty of Christians have a non-literal interpretation of the Bible. It’s just not an honest one. It would be like interpreting the US constitution to say that there should be no separation between church and state, but no gun control. There is in fact text in there that says the opposite for church and state and suggests that citizens be allowed to arm themselves to form militias for collective protection, but many people interpret this differently. Christians who believe in Jesus and his miracles but disbelieve in the idea of, say, stoning disobedient children, are not being honest with themselves in the same manner. Like those looking at the US Constitution and seeing a passage that allows them to have guns and ignoring the passage that forbids the mixing of the church and the state, they are looking at the one document and choosing to not see something which is plainly there.
True, the bible is actually more than one document, but the documents support each other, and Jesus clearly states that all of scripture is to be retained and obeyed.
“Myths are not falsehoods. They relate truths about man’s place in the world in narrative form.”
New Definition: Truth – Making stuff up in narrative form.
Yeah, the thought occurs that making deffinitions up as you go along is not a great way to argue.
Again, you are missing the point. At what point does the person get permission from god to “interpret” what he meant other than what he said? If millions of people are calling a single book holy, who has the precedence of calling their interpretation of that text “righteous” over another interpretation? The question was what is intellectually honest, and you took that to reconcile with your prejudice that atheists are equivalent with fundamentalist Christians.
Faced with the real world and a world created by the author of that book, some people choose to go with the creator, despite evidence that much of the book is hateful and spiteful and nonsense, the god it describes is angry and jealous and to be feared. They say, whatever you say, Lord, for they are feared to go against it. That’s extreme, and despite a reasonable real world, they deny the real world if it conflicts with their book.
Any attempts to reconcile that book with the real world, i.e. liberal interpretations, are little more than creating a religion from parts of a religion to cohere with their observable world rather than conflict with it, and while that sits well for many, it doesn’t sit naturally in any identical ways. It still all comes from the book and they all still think they have it correct vs. another interpretation, and they all have rejected some or much of that book. How do you figure it’s MORE intellectually honest than a fundamentalist would to consider the whole book still the sacred text coming from god, but not literally, and whole parts are actually mistaken or can be justified if we distort it through whichever lens we like, which can have little resemblance to another interpretation that also considers themselves Christians and the bible a holy text from god?
That was the only question, really, and you still pound on your one favorite, tired point. All religious beliefs are …. things I can’t explain must be from god, so what is god, defines god to require certain things or X or Y happens. I don’t see the positivity in this myth if people literally believe it in some form or another. If it were just a story, like a fable or a play or something, it might hold a kernel of truth, philosophically, or economically, or emotionally relateable, none of which proves the characters in the story rose from the dead to absolve you of your sin, or will meet you on judgment day, or cause you to get that job you applied for, or guided the surgeon’s hands to save the life of one you hold dear, or anything people attribute to supernatural manipulations.
There are no definitions of any deity in any book or description I could consider to be true and still hold to any reasonable definition of what a deity must be in order to merit the title, and nothing is sufficiently explained by a deity that can’t be explained or will be explained without one. That is why I’m an atheist. I don’t see what is immature about that. I think to suppose something is possible that is also supernatural, yet after so many years this god has not been detected except through feelings and inventions of imaginary maybes is quite immature. Logically, god can not be concluded, even if it can’t be disproven. Logically, god claims must be proven, and not disproven, but any possibility of god can be reasoned to be impossible. The barest fraction of possibility that merely cannot be disproven logically is not enough to go on, sorry. I don’t think there is anything hateful or illogical or any of your baseless assertions about that. There’s just nothing to go by except rumors that a lot of people feel like there’s a deity running things down here.
All the while, I could take parts of the bible itself and find sensible instructions within it, or uplifting verses by example, or as the myth it is, but that doesn’t make it holy, that doesn’t make me a liberal Christian if I think some of it can be useful. The difference is, to me, it is just one of many books with that kind of information, or similar to what I find interesting or entertaining. You can admire it for being “art” which…. I mean, it influences people, is that its art? It’s a lot of stories, some of which might give you what you’d read a book for. But it can’t be part holy, even if you like to think people can regard it as such and still be intellectually honest regarding its source. If god is eternal and wrote the book, and I’m not saying he did or exists, it remains intact or not at all. He couldn’t used to mean some things and then change his mind without telling anyone and still be the same deity. Interpreting it is to create a “new and improved” deity, to get with the times. If god needs to be improved and updated, then he wasn’t god a long time ago either, because he was obviously wrong about a bunch of stuff that he didn’t know until we figured it out for him and redesigned him to comply.
“Appeal to authority fallacy.”
Has anyone ever mentioned that you are terrible at reading comprehension? You are misinformed about what atheism is, and about what atheists believe. I was not making any appeals to authority there, just pointing out that the strawman you were building of “atheists don’t know the serious theological arguments!” is incorrect.
You are, once again, misinformed. No appeal to authority, merely a statement of fact.
@Kodie — no, it’s just… holey.
A few questions; If the Bible should not be interpreted by Christians as literal truth, how then should it be interpreted? If you reject Positivism, what tools do you use to decide what is true and what is false? When you say that you discovered that atheism “could not withstand critical inquiry”, what do you mean by that? Did you discover that a god or gods really do exist? I´m trying to understand where you´re coming from here and trying not to sound like a 14 year old internet tough-guy (which who knows, I might be).
“If the Bible should not be interpreted by Christians as literal truth, how then should it be interpreted?”
As a work of art.
“If you reject Positivism, what tools do you use to decide what is true and what is false?”
You are aware of course that logical positivism is non-falsifiable are you not? “True” and “false” are properties that only propositions may have. Synthetic truths, scientific facts, are not true in the sense of being necessarily true or true in all possible worlds.
“Did you discover that a god or gods really do exist?”
I don’t know, hence I am an agnostic. In addition I don’t know what the word god refers to. If you mean a corporal being in the sky then no, but no one believes this, it is an atheist strawman. If you mean that god corresponds to some existential truths that are functionally equivalent to “god” and that represent a higher order description of lower order processes then yes, that god most certainly exists. If you mean an transcendental god who exists beyond space and time then I don’t know and don’t see how anyone could know.
“If you mean a corporal being in the sky then no, but no one believes this, it is an atheist strawman.”
Yes they do, and no it’s not. If you’re going to play on the idea that Abrahamic religions don’t literally think of a flesh and blood human male in the clouds, then you need to go back and look at the bible. Jesus is described as a flesh and blood human male who is literally god and who ascends into the clouds to dwell there. He’s far from the only deity thought to literally live in the sky, but regardless you need to reflect on your definition of strawman, because you demonstrated it very well, just not in the manner you intended.
You still haven´t told us which tools you use in order to distinguish fact from fiction. Your previous post makes you sound like a relatavist, am I getting warm?
JohnMWhite
“Yes they do”
No they don’t.
“Jesus is described as a flesh and blood human male who is literally god and who ascends into the clouds to dwell there.”
Your Christology is grossly impoverished. So your reply to my assertion that not everyone imposes a literal interpretation is to simply reassert your literal interpretation. That isn’t even an argument.
Do you not understand that your literal interpretation is something that you impose on the text? You gaze upon the text and in it you see what you already believe it says. You think this literal vision of yours resides in the text. It does not. It lies within you and you then project your interpretation onto it.
Texts are underdetermined but not radically so. As someone once pithily put it, “words mean things”. At the time that these texts were written down, there exists ample supplemental evidence (such as theological commentary) that many of the fact-claims being made in the text were understood literally. To reject this *can* be legitimate in certain cases, but it must be done with the knowledge that it runs counter to the authorial intent, which raises all sorts of theological problems.
“No it doesn’t. The Bible doesn’t say anything. That you think the Bible is speaking to you is what makes you a fundamentalist. For many Christians, especially Catholics, you are committing the heresy of idolatry. You think the Bible IS god or should be regarded as though it were god. Your inability to extricate yourself from this absolutist frame is what makes your brand of atheism an ideology. An ideology is a filter which one overlays on one’s perceptions of the world and which distorts the world. This is why people say that atheists distort or misrepresent religion. Because that’s what you do.”
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” 2 Timothy 2:16. Not everyone believes homosexuality is wrong, but if someone doesn’t believe the bible is God’s word, then they are an EXTREMELY liberal Christian.
People interpret(shoehorn) verses to justify the scary parts, or they say that the old testament is the old God.
The problem with that is, interpretation’s have extreme difference, and the interpretations people come up with have real consequences. Morality and beliefs need to be founded on logic, not interpretations of ancient books. Its dangerous and harmful.
How many parents believe in “spare the rod spoil the child”, and spank their children only because they believe that God wants them to?
How many believe that people will go to hell if they don’t believe in God? How many people evangelize because of this, and lose friends and jobs? How many people abuse positions of power to evangelize?
How many people believe that homosexuality is a sin? How many children have been disowned for being gay? How many have killed themselves?
How many good teenagers think they are wicked, because they masturbate and look at porn?
How many women stay in bad marriages because they think God is against divorce?
How many children don’t get anything more than abstinence education, because God is against pre-marital sex?
I could go on for an hour.
None of these are extremists positions. These are mainstream Christian views. While a Christian who has ALL of the above beliefs is a fundamentalist, a Christian who has NONE of the above beliefs is EXTREMELY liberal.
I want to help the people who have the above beliefs, and are suffering from them. So do many other atheists. That’s the ultimate point of blogs, videos, books, satire, and ridicule. It puts social pressure on Christians, and they start to question their beliefs.
Apparently, you’re content to have everybody sit on their ass, just like you, and let people experience tremendous amounts of unnecessary pain. You don’t care if people waste their lives on things that aren’t true. You don’t care if good people feel worthless and evil for things that some ancient shepherds were uncomfortable with. You don’t give a goddamn. No, you have the nerve to strut around with a disgusting feeling or moral and intellectual superiority, when you would let billions of people live mental hells.
“words mean things”
Only if you read them. It’s as if words are in some sort of quantum flux and only go one way or the other depending on having been observed by someone, especially someone who is so stupid as to think ” the Word was God …. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” means the Word was God and the Word became flesh. How could I have been so foolish?
Noen, once again, I am not asserting my literal interpretation of anything. I was saying that people do believe in god as a corporeal being. They profess it frequently. Check out the Catholic Profession of Faith, which describes Jesus as having been made man, who ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father. All of that is based on biblical passages which say exactly what the creed says. Just because you don’t interpret it that way doesn’t mean that no one does.
@noen
“If the Bible should not be interpreted by Christians as literal truth, how then should it be interpreted?”
As a work of art.
The thing about art is that it’s purely subjective, and we each interpret it individually. Upon seeing a painting of a litter of kittens, I might say, “Awww, how cute!” You, on seeing the same painting, might say, “Meh, kittens. Whatever.”
If the Bible is a work of art, it is also, BY DEFINITION, a work of man — no God(s), no Muse(s), just… some very creative men, at a very primitive point in the time-stream, trying to explain Why Things Are.
Those who take the Bible as a How-To guide for life scare the living hell out of me. You can’t reason with them. It’s like… taking Twilight as a How-To guide for relationships. Mind-numbingly stupid.
OT: Twilight Meets Reality
Edward: “I watch you sleep every night.”
Bella: “DAAAD! I NEED A RESTRAINING ORDER! AND A WOODEN STAKE!”
“I was raised a Lutheran. I was taught that the Bible is not the literal word of god.”
“Again with the Biblical idolatry. I’ll repeat myself. I was taught that the Bible is NOT sacred the way that fundamentalists believe it is. as a Lutheran, not that I am any more but, as a Lutheran it is not the text that is holy, it is God who shines through the text.”
You do know that lutherans started with the position that the bible was the literal word of god right? That would mean any changes that later occurred in lutheran theology would still be built on the foundation of sola scriptura. So that would be category B from my earlier post. If a religion starts with the foundational belief that the bible is the word of god, then later disowns statements in the bible that they disagree with, then they are being disingenuous (which as I understand it was the point being made in the original comment that started this). It doesn’t matter if they drop some of the beliefs. Every belief that has ever been a part of lutheranism comes from the idea that the bible is the word of god.
I could go back to Martin Luther or the Augsburg Confession for this, but I predict you’d jump right to some form of courtier’s reply about the lutheran understanding of god evolving over time. But we can just skip that step since the lutheran church still officially teaches that the bible is inspired by god and is “the sole norm for all that is taught and confessed in the church.”
From the FAQ section of the website of The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod:
http://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=2519
Q: “Where in the Bible is the doctrine of sola scriptura taught? Are the verses of 2 Pet. 1:20 and 2 Pet. 3:15-16 contradictory to this doctrine?”
A: “The Latin expression “sola scriptura” refers to the authority of the Holy Scriptures to serve as the sole norm for all that is taught and confessed in the church. In numerous passages the Scriptures claim this authority for themselves as the inspired Word of God. For example, St. Paul writes in 2 Tim. 3:16, “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness….” (RSV). Likewise, the apostle Peter declares that “no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (2 Pet. 1:20-21; RSV). It should be remembered that acceptance of the Bible as the sole authority for teaching comes not from rational arguments or human traditions, but is a conviction produced by the Holy Spirit in the human heart. In other words, it is a matter of faith worked by the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures themselves (see 1 Thess. 2:13)! There is, of course, no contradiction between 2 Pet. 1:20 and what Peter says later in 3:15-16. That the Scriptures may be difficult for human beings to understand in certain places does not take away from their divine authority. In fact, St. Peter’s words underline the necessity and importance of praying for the Holy Spirit’s guidance to properly interpret Scripture as we “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18).
And another question I frequently find myself asking about Lutheran doctrine (this one from a person who is bitching because the lutheran church taught him that the bible was literally true and he went to a methodist church where he first encountered the concept of allegory):
http://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=2517
Q: “I was raised in the Lutheran church, believing that the Bible stories we learned were literally true. Since our transfer to Louisiana, I had been attending a Methodist church because there is no Lutheran church in this area. A lay leader has been telling us that the story of Jonah is a fictional story, not true. What does the Lutheran church teach with respect to this and other stories in the Old Testament?”
A: “It is true that there are different kinds of literature in the scriptures including such things as poetry, wisdom literature, historical narrative, apocalyptic literature and perhaps others. However, unless there is some reason not to, the words of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament are to be taken literally. With respect to the matter of Jonah, there is no indication in the text that the account is not to be taken literally. In fact, it would seem that our Lord, Jesus, took it literally as he spoke of his death and resurrection. He pointed out that as Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights, so the Son of Man would be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. While I see no reason for or indication of the fact that the account regarding Jonah as well as many other accounts of incidents in the Old Testament are not to be taken literally, it is perhaps best to concentrate on the purpose of the recording of these accounts. In the case of Jonah, it is clear that God was intending to point out that He is a God of grace and mercy who will forgive and spare those who turn to Him and that He is the Lord and Deliverer not only of the Jews but also of the Gentiles.”
Maybe you went to one of those east coast lutheran churches. Or maybe you just weren’t paying attention in sunday school, so just in case here’s the word from your guy himself.
“We know that God does not lie. My neighbor and I–in short, all men–may err and deceive, but God’s Word cannot err”
-Martin Luther
And Nietzsche wasn’t a nihilist!
Be glad Ozzy wasn’t a bit more Paranoid or he would send Iron Man after them. Maybe the two sisters think they can replace Ozzy just like Dio did.
One more reason to love Ozzy.
*salutes the Prince of fucking Darkness*
BTW, Ozzy and Dio are both gods.
I disagree with that! While Ozzy is undoubtbly a god, Dio is only a minor diety.
Well, he is the last in line.
I see it as an Unholy Trinity: Ozzy, Dio, and Dickinson.
What about Keith Richards? And Led Zeppelin.
The Westboro folks seem very well versed in pop culture for people who are trying to be pure. They also laugh along with some of their counter-protesters. I think it’s possible that the whole shtick is just a money-making racket. They seem to make money from suing people who get pissed off and attack them. It would be cool if Ozzy or Gaga could find copyright infringements grounds to sue them out of existence.
Sic Sharon on ‘em.
“Emptying your mind isn’t compatible with Christianity”
I disagree with that statement…
GFD, wrong post.
ROFL
Danny, you just made my day!
^_^