Do you know that the God of the Bible exists?

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I think that women are unfairly considered inferiors of men in society at large (including Biblical cultures) because of gender roles that sustain an almost prehistoric notion of sexual dimorphism. I don't think the greater pain in childbirth has anything to do with Eve being a woman, but only with her progeny having bigger heads because of the success of rational choice which I believe was the fall from not only innocence but instinct.

The scientific method doesn't require faith but if you want to have that level of skepticism then you should meet my friend David Hume . I have heard the argument "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" and it's very true and no one can be absolutely certain there isn't a god. You have to ask yourself though what is more likely; a supernatural entity created the universe and is responsible for what we are not able to explain through science or god was made up by the same humans who are very inclined to believe in him or her without any evidence. The only science that can be proven absolutely is math all the other sciences technically only state what is most probable.

You can interpret the bible to mean anything you want but taken at face value it is provably false (and by prove of course I mean you can be 99.9% sure). I've heard arguments that if you just replace the word "day" with "epoch" in the creation myth it makes it vague enough that you could interpret something similar to what science has confirmed I don't buy it though. The fact of the matter is it does say "day" and if you're going to go around changing the meaning of everything then it really is meaningless.

In a quantitative sense we are insignificant compared to just our own galaxy in terms of size especially but that was a philosophical point and I try to keep my statements rational.

You don't want to believe in God. That's your bottom line.

Right, and I'll add for clarity that although belief in God is non-rational, it is in no way irrational. Evidence for God is physical and all around us, but the will to believe is it's own area of a person.

That's what I thought this morning as I got out of bed and swung from my ceiling fan. OO! OO! OO!

Gb, I know you know that He cursed man just as bad, in a different way.

I have a BA in Philosophy and have met your friend on several occasions. As I said before in a previous post, all we choose with the question of God is our default position, and that we choose non-rationally before we even ask the question. You choose the default position that God does not exist and I choose the more unpopular one among "intelligent" people that, God does exist. As far as what is likely, I think that a person's thinking on that topic is drastically effected by ones default position. I don't really think you'll disagree with me on these points.

I do think that you may disagree with me when I say again that you do have faith in the scientific method. You state that all science other than math (and I agree with that) is a matter of probability not a matter of certainty. Any time there is an assumption of certainty where there really is none I call faith. By all means, I am not saying that I have faith in God to the exclusion of faith in Science, but that I have faith that if I take both together it might be better... which takes me to the next issue.



I'm not trying to be a smart ass when I say that I don't really get the feeling that you have really read much of the bible or really care what it says. I get that feeling because I feel you are being flippant here. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm not talking about the entire bible and don't claim to be because it isn't all one book, but if we just limit what we are talking about to the bit about Adam and Eve in the second creation myth (touchy subject, I know) then I think I can understand you better. You are talking about a different myth previous to the one I'm talking about with the word "day". There are two creation myths in the bible that are a little different to each other which is why I don't see how anyone could take either of them literally as you seem to suggest a serious Christian (oooo I hate that word) aught.

I'm not changing the meaning of everything by seeing the literature as the type of literature it is. I'm trying to see if there is any truth to the myths that we carry with us as a species. I'm trying to ask myself, is the point of the story of Adam and Eve, that we changed ourselves through making conscious choices into what we are today and what we are today is going to self destruct/die because of those choices, true. I think that it seems probable. I highly doubt that enough can be done retroactively to fix all the problems we've created for ourselves before one of them wipes our entire species out. I'm surely not saying don't try, but I'm not exactly hopeful in our own abilities to save ourselves.

On a spiritual level, the story explains to me WHY belief in God is always non-rational. It cannot be a rational choice for people to believe in God because our downfall would simultaneously then be our salvation which would be a paradox.

Last edited by spdjeanne on 03 Jun 2007, 12:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

How do I delete a double post?

click the x next to the quote and edit options then select delete post.

yeah but to say that the judeo-christian religions are more correct than any other religion is absurd. especially with proof that many of the stories have been around much longer than the judeo-christian versions of them (take abraham sacrificing isaac as an example...the same story is in multiple greek myths including the divine intervention of an animal appearing to sub in place of the human). this is generally quite compelling in the way of disproving much of the bible as nothing more than stories to say "my god is better than yours" and therefore just a creation of humanity rather than of divine origin.


this is not to say that there is absolutely no higher being...but the one of the bible, torah, koran, greek gods, roman, gods, persian gods, babylonian gods....those are made up by men.

it's impossible to say yes or no to there being a god....but it is possible to go "okay, these guys are just retelling this story which is just a retelling of this story which is just a made up story anyways" and through that process, eliminate man made religions. of course those involved in such religions would never stand for their world being pulled out from under them....but hey, if they could go along with it for constantine, the spanish inquisition, the crusades, the moorish invasions and so on....yeah...the world would continue on.

I want to believe in whatever I think is right.

I agree with you sopho well said.

Darth Vader is cooler than Jesus
Satan sucks compared to Darth Sidious

I think that you are assuming that a story doesn't exist until it is written down, and that the stories written first must have then been told first. I think much of what was written both in Greek literature and in Biblical literature came from more ancient oral traditions. I think it is obvious that what is recorded in the Pentateuch is a preexisting oral tradition. I don't think it is logical to say that because it was written first it was told first.

Also, it doesn't seem logical to me to say that because my beliefs have the same name (however different the content) as beliefs that others have used to do awful things, therefore I am somehow condoning those things. Saying that I somehow condone the crusades started by Christians in their time because I am called a Christian today is like saying if you are a Democrat today that means that you condone the the Vietnam war because a Democratic presidents started it.

I see your point here, this an example of why I started to question the Bible in the first place, because it says things like this. It was easy for people thousands of years ago to believe that becasue they didn't have scientific knowledge to explain more accurately things like this

I have to agree with skafather84, if you look at it in the anthropoligical or historical way it seems that many cultures have absorbed traditions and mythologies from earlier cultures, so judaism and christianity would not be an exception.

After the Babylonians conquered the Sumerians they adopted and transformed most things of sumerian culture including their religion.

The Romans absorbed and transformed the Greek mythology to their own after they conquered them, they did the very same thing with early christianity, which is actually the origin of the Catholic Church doctrine, Romans adopting, transforming and merging early christianity with some of their mythology.

Last edited by greenblue on 03 Jun 2007, 1:59 pm, edited 4 times in total.