To religious people. Will atheists go to hell or heaven?

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Yes, but I think you missed the point, so if you can kindly correct me I'd appreciate it. Indeed, Pastors are trained for years in seminaries - not about the history of where their beliefs came from, but in the mystical rites and rituals that are part of their religion. While they may know how to lead a group of followers in their rituals, they do not understand where those rituals came from in the first place.

I think we both agree on the next part of your paragraph. Pastors aren't scholars, which I stated earlier, and Philologists don't have the ability to lead a group of worshipers in ritual. As I stated, and you seemed to have forgotten to address, is that philologists understand where the Bible came from, and the fact that it is not unique. Pastors are simply trained in how to lead their flock, and do not understand the roots in Greek mythology, Zorastrainism, etc.

When you understand these roots you can quite easily see the correlation between earlier forms of religion, which many times worshiped Sol, and the modern Christian faith. A pastor would never see that, though in much of the early artwork of Jesus it is obvious, due to the fact he was not taught critical thinking and investigation, but how to lead ritual.

Last edited by Kalister1 on 02 Jun 2008, 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Why is this so intolerable? And why would the Almighty confine Himself to the gaps? I would think His presence just blankets over everything. Mine is not a god-of-the-gaps, and I'm getting sick of that phrase. It suggests God is somehow incomplete and somehow less than omnipresent.

People who live in glass houses...

quit living like your opinion is universal fact. i could point out a lot of music to you that is not inherently beautiful. familiar with george crumb at all? maybe shoenberg? you'd say it's noise and not music but that's your subjective opinion of it. i think it's music and very engaging and very challenging music.

you're like bill o'reilly but, thankfully, you don't have his payroll.

Again, you seem to have misinterpreted something. God of the gaps is a phrase coined to describe the use of a divine being to describe phenomenon which we have yet to understand.

A divine explanation must be confined to that which is yet unexplained, as his presence has become redundant in those which we have. A poetic description of this can be found in "The Gay Science" by Friedrich Nietzsche, in a section entitled "The Parable of The Madman", in which Nietzsche describes the death of God, who has become obsolete in the face of modern critical thinking. This leads to the modern god of the gaps, where he must effectively "hide" as the towns people eloquently state, as he is a "dead" explanation for that which we have come to understand. Of course, Nietzsche probably didn't mean him to be hiding in this sense, though it is a very poetic way to describe the god of the gaps argument in a round about sort of fashion.

NO, you missed my point. I'm talking about relevancy. A pastor doesn't know al about ancient myth becayse he doesn't have to. And what religion today is not somehow derivative of past religions? If this is your big point, I missed it. EVerything today is derived from something earlier. Big deal. This is hardly just cause for debunking Christianty. The halo around Christ's head signifies His divinity. This, my understanding of halos, is not anulled by earlier symbologies.

Again, I disagree, but you see that as a blunder. How unfortunate, but not my problem. You give me no credit whatsoever. Keep it up and you'll hurt my feelings.

Yes, but the fact is that Christianity defined God as the "one true god", and he is unique and all powerful. This is contradicted by the fact that he is simply a literary figure, a fictional one. He is simply an evolution of a fable, which has added different things from different religions.

It is not a debunk, but it is certainly cause for doubt. If the miracles of the Old Testament were really meant as divine intervention, why could they not be unique ? Philologists have shown that they are simply new versions of old fables, nothing more.

This argument is not going to go anywhere new though. You will simply fall into an infinite loop, a "turtles all the way argument". Infinitely recursion is the only way to prove the legitimacy of the Bible. It goes something like this -

The bible is true- Why? - Because god said so - How do you know? - Because the Bible says so

This is the terminating point of many theological discussions.

Of course I give you credit. You seem like a very smart individual. I'm not trying to, I'm simply not smart enough to understand your arguments. If you could explain them more, I would be happy to agree with you when I see the undeniable argument behind them. I just have to be missing something, and am sorry.

This is your personal opinion you hypocritical asshat. You cannot state it as fact. Christianity does not owe its existence to philogists. Philogists do not run the church today, nor do we pray to them before we go to sleep at ight. We do not cry out to the philogists during the throes of passionate lovemaking, nor do we credit philogists for providing the food we eat. How about letting the damned philogists speak for themselves?

I would be delighted to give you a philologists opinion. They actually seem to know much more about the origins of religion than modern priests, though maybe you know some much smarter than the ones I know. The Geanology of Morality actually describes religion as being a defense mechanism against feelings of inferiority. Really awesome book on the origins of the Christian faith. The author believed it to originate out of weakness, spite, and lack of vital spirit. As he describes, it took portions from religions it liked, and rejected other portions it didn't care for. Here is a quote:

"For example, we should not fail to hear the almost benevolent nuances which for a Greek noble lay in all the words with which he set himself above the lower people — how a constant form of pity, consideration, and forbearance is mixed in there, sweetening the words, to the point where almost all words which refer to the common man finally remain as expressions for “unhappy,” “worthy of pity” (compare deilos [cowardly], deilaios [lowly, mean], poneros [oppressed by toil, wretched], mochtheros [suffering, wretched] — the last two basically designating the common man as a slave worker and beast of burden) — and how, on the other hand, for the Greek ear the words “bad,” “low,” “unhappy” have never stopped echoing a single note, one tone colour, in which “unhappy” predominates. This is the inheritance of the old, noble, aristocratic way of evaluating, which does not betray its principles even in contempt. (— Philologists should recall the sense in which oizuros [miserable], anolbos [unblessed], tlemon [wretched], dystychein [unfortunate], xymfora [misfortune] were used)."


I'm sure you'll enjoy it In this paragraph, he describes the language used by the Greeks to describe "higher culture" . He later begins to contrast this, and other early forms of language, with the language of the Bible, and more modern man.

Last edited by Kalister1 on 02 Jun 2008, 5:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'll pass. I didn't know philogy was a religion.

Actually its not. Its the study of ancient texts, though its much more than that. Its out of my field of study, but I like to keep an eclectic library.

re·li·gion Audio Help /rɪˈlɪdʒən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ri-lij-uhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

phi·lol·o·gy Audio Help /fɪˈlɒlədʒi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[fi-lol-uh-jee] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. the study of literary texts and of written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning.
2. (esp. in older use) linguistics, esp. historical and comparative linguistics.
3. Obsolete. the love of learning and literature.
[Origin: 1350–1400; ME philologie < L philologia < Gk philología love of learning and literature, equiv. to philólog(os) literary, studious, argumentative + -ia -y3. See philo-, -logy]

—Related forms
phil·o·log·i·cal Audio Help /ˌfɪləˈlɒdʒɪkəl/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[fil-uh-loj-i-kuhl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation, phil·o·log·ic, adjective
phil·o·log·i·cal·ly, adverb
phi·lol·o·gist, phi·lol·o·ger, noun


I am confused where you got those two definitions mixed up. Can you explain more?

and yet you do the same thing but with your specific god instead of his specific non-god.

Why does beauty being in the eye of the beholder make it any less real?

My position is that beauty is an emotional reaction to our surroundings. We have similar biological nature so we tend to see beauty in similar things.

You may not agree with this, but your argument nonetheless fails to address this position logically.

Because the Abrahamic theologies make no sense based on our scientific knowledge nor do they make any logical sense (The Christian and Islamic concepts of "Satan," for example, are Zoroastrian in origin and actually conflict with other aspects of Christian and Islamic theology), the only theologies that do make sense are Pantheism, Deism, Taoism, certain forms of Hinduism, and certain forms of Buddhism.