My nearly two year long argument with Hambydammit have inspired this blog, he claims he has constantly been explaining his position and that I somehow don't grasp it seeing how "obvious" it is.


And according to him I must somehow disprove his claims or at least come up with an alternative explanation as to why religion is supposedly correlated with social ills.



Here I explain my position by arguing that religion isn't the cause of the behaviour, it's an expression of the behaviour.


If Bob builds homes for the poor and says that religion caused him to do it, it wasn't religion,  he was incorporating religion into his compassion.


If Joe throws rocks at a gay club and said homosexuality is a sin, it wasn't religion that caused his homophobia, he was incorporating homophobia into his religion.

In our last episode Rocky and Bullwinkle were tumbling down ... Sorry wrong series.

The last time I was speculating on the OT origins I was making the case there is no evidence for anything older than the Greek Septuagint. I was pointing out just how close the library at Alexander was to bibleland. I since realized there is a simpler narrative.

The Septuagint first appears in Alexandria. There was an enclave in the city of people from the eastern Med. Ex-phoenicians whose last empire vanished in the Punic wars. People from Palestine, a land ruled by Egypt only a few centuries earlier. People moved rather freely among the parts of empire left by Alexandria when they weren't fighting each other. These people all came to speak Greek as the common tonuge vice their native Aramaic. (Recall there is no evidence "hebrew" was ever a spoken language and it is written in Aramaic script and other points indicating it is an artificial language.)

About 300 hundred years ago, there was a little boy, but he grew up. This man's name was Jicardy, and he was known for his long greasy hair that he never washed. Well it wasn't long before he cut off his mullet, and the people of the old Georgia town of the thirteen colonies were very happy that he did so.

He lived on, and he became an exceptional horse-shoe player until he pulled eight-teen ligaments in his elbow when he tried to toss the world's largest horse shoe weighing in at 43.21 lbs. He became very lonely, and he lost a lot of his friends.

While he stayed in his crap-covered hut in the middle of Atlanta, a man came to see him with good news. The man told him that he would soon become a very rich Jicardy with a lot of friends. Well the next day Jicardy blew up from spontanious human explosion. His body parts were spread over a 1/4 mile radius.

10 reasons theists should not post on sites promoting atheism...well, maybe these are at least 10 things you should be aware of.

1.) You are generally outnumbered. Expect to be gang-banged.
2.) Not all theists believe the same thing, so you may spend as much time defending your own beliefs against other theists as you do atheists
3.) Unless the site is new, some theist has probably already posted your argument and atheists have purportedly ripped to shreds. And they have lots of practice too because there seems to be an endless supply of theists wanting to prove the existence of a god. So be kind, and do search before re-opening a can of worms.
4.) Atheists don't hang out on atheistic sites to necessarily talk about atheism or religion.
5.) Atheists will do a pretty good job making you feel an inch tall. If you do post, expect to be ridiculed.
6.) You may be violating copyright laws by copying and pasting text into forums from copyrighted sites. Besides, atheists have probably read more of it than you have.
7.) Gods are often compared to flying spaghetti monsters, a floating head smoking a pipe, and an invisible pink unicorn. If you can't take the blasphemy, you may be better off not posting.
9.) Atheists are generally well informed about science, so it may be good to take more than a high-school level physical science class.
10.) Lastly, if you do post, don't ask, "What if you're wrong?"...see #3 for details.
 

I don't know what I don't believe in...

There once was a 90 year-old man who had warts (but he got them removed - they were on his feet). This man was Japanese, and he liked to carve things, but he lived all by himself. He was so alone that he talked to his carvings. He lived in a little hut in the mountains. He decided one day that he would carve a giant dragon panda on the top of a great mountain overlooking a village. It took him 3 months to complete the carving, but eventually he was done after hard work and gallons of sweat (which isn't good for old people).

Well to his suprise, there was a horrible storm that broke the statue from the bottom, and it rolled down the mountain. It killed everyone in the village by squishing them with their guts flying out everywhere.

The old man was traumatized, and he went into his hut where he live 7 more years until he died - all alone with no one to talk to.

I liked the article because it reinforces the belief that we are outgrowing our need for "the g-word." Enjoy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574405030643556324.html

This is probably my last discussion topic before my blog post maybe next week.

Hamby's blog argued that faith is compounding, what if Bob's faith on man being sinful got him to build houses for the poor, but his faith on drinking being a sin caused unnecessary problems? If Bob takes sinful nature on faith, what's stopping him from taking that drinking or lusting is bad on faith?

But closer examination leads to some problems in this line of thinking.

If I went to Bob and said that playing sports is a sin, that football is the work of Satan and that it should be banished or our society will degrade.

What do you think the likely hood of Bob believing me is?

Or even take the example of drinking being a sin.

Who's more likely to think  so, Bob who lost his friend to a drunk driver, or Jeff who parties all the time? Jeff may be a  little reluctant to give up his booze, so he may just rationalize it.

After all, I know lots of Christians that get loaded, so why do they take the Jesus ticket to heaven on faith, but not the drinking/lusting as a sin?

The point is, is Christianity should be universal in the people it produces. Portugesse Christians should be like Canadian Christians, after all, it's the same religion right? [I'm talking the same denomination]

Hey, I'm taking a worldview class called speculative mind. I've only just started but i'm no stranger to the topic. We were talking about how you can determine with decent accuracy someoen's worldview based on how they answer the following 7 questions. Just curious how some of you would answer these.

1.)What is "prime reality?" what is really real?

2.)What is the nature of external reality, the world around us?

3.)What is a human being?

4.)What happens to a person at death?

5.)Why is it possible to know anything at all?

6.)How do we know what is right and wrong?

7.) What is the meaning of human history?

My short answers would be...

1.) God is real and we are his creation. God is sovereign, transcendent, immanent and personal.

2.)God created the universe out of nothing, there is both the spiritual world and physical world. dualism between soul and body.

3.)Humans are created in God's image. we are unique, male and female are equal in God's eyes, we reflect God's image though not perfectly because of the fall

4.)Eternal life in Heaven or eternal seperation from God in Hell

5.)General revelation- What we can observe, reason, science. Special revelation- Scripture

6.)Biblical ethics

7.)History is linear with an origin at creation moving towards an end time

Imagine the greatest debate of all time between theists and atheists.  Who represents your side?  I'll open up several different time periods.

A. Still living

B. In the last century, not necessarily living.

C. Of any time, living or dead.

Here's my ballot:

A. Atheist: Tough pick.  I'd say maybe Daniel Dennett.  I'm not a huge fan of Richard Dawkins, although he is funny, so he'd be good for that reason.  Theist: Alvin Plantinga and ?? Another tough pick.

B. Atheist: J.L. Mackie and Bertrand Russell.  Theist: Keep Plantinga, throw in C.S. Lewis.

C. Atheist: Voltaire, Hume, maybe Nietzche?  Theist: Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Lewis, Plantinga

I think atheism has fewer interesting choices simply because it has been a worldview for a much shorter period of time in the west. 

Anyway, what do y'all think?