How the Bible Actually Works

This is just another god apologist’s view of the correct way to read the bible. A bible with no more efficacy than a badly written fantasy.

It was a dark and stormy night and void was upon the deep. Except for Alex in A Clockwork Orange, who so loved the blood and sex scenes, there is not anything of importance or interest in either the bible or this review.

Ho-hum.

Except you get to be within the airport structure yourself when the next god arrives with his passenger.

This is one of those situations where familiarity challenges morality.

My personal morality allows for the killing of religion. Not the people or artifacts but the ideas. Might say my personal morality encourages the killing of religion. In reality my personal morality requires the killing of religion. Crush it. Stomp on its head. Kill it dead.

Then there’s Phat.

The ideal, at least in my mind, is that Phat let the scales fall from his eyes and embrace the reality of the universe and the humanist/science mindset it engenders thus motivating him to more realistically thus more effectively attack his health problems. That's not happening. A mountain of apologetics blocks his view.

He says he is doing what he is supposed to do (seriously, Phat, I sure hope this is true) but is leaning on God and his faith in Jesus to help temper the raging storm of angst in his soul.

Who is to challenge this? Is this touch of religious poison acceptable if it helps a friend in deep need?

But I will claim that I have at one time met Jesus and I am trying to return to my first love (Him) spiritually even as I try and save my life physically through proper medical attention and diet.

Gawd, that sucks. I can't accept this.

Do the health thing because it will keep you the fuck alive, Phat!

“Oh, but kind sir, I am a Christian and death has no hold on me.”

Remember Pascal? If he’s wrong then you just squandered the only experience at life you’re ever going to get. Let the scales fall, Phat. There is an entire universe for you yet to see, to experience, with a free mind and your time here is growing ever shorter.

Message number is nice.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

The ideal in *my* mind is that you stop all of this (unknowing) idolatry (weed ...

Weed is great for unknowing things like pain and depression, and is great for knowing new things that, like majik, pop into existence in the mind. It's also great for munchies. Gotta be real careful here. No chips/dips but lots of crudités, hummus. But weed is good in moderation (and some excess (or a lot of excess)) so I'll keep it.

... porn ...

Most wonderful for stress relief and prostate health. See what you get to do as an atheist? You can beat off without being watched by some perverted angel/demon thing.

... magical belief in cosmology as a universal answer ...

Pay attention, Phat. Not cosmology. Cosmology is just another emergent property. The universal answer is 42, which, if you understood the question means physics rules all. Physics is everything, literally. Physics is the be all and end all. It is the alpha and the omega. The cat's knees. The bee's meow.

Arizona vortexes, and mysterious caves and artifacts, and whatever else you inwardly feel better when employing.

We have a tendency to make these things too complex adding all this crap. Physics is all that is necessary and is quite sufficient, thank you.

Likely jar is right in that most of the goats will be Christians, but he seems to think that belief is unimportant and that behavior toward others is key.

And jar is right, isn't he. Since there is no god, or GOD, or God, or gOd to weigh each of your inner most motivations in the balance of doom on the shores of the lake of fire the only viable measure left is the humanity/cruelty we visit upon each other.

His idea of God and my idea of God are entirely different.

And you are both wrong. A big difference is that jar admits it.

In other ways, you ae blissfully unaware of the spiritual war and intrinsic evil in the world unless it is defined through Republicans.

Republican defined as intrinsic evil, I can accept as a truth of our political landscape, but this spiritual war is only being fought by the one side. No one else cares about you religionist's touting and pursuing this self-serving pseudo-war. And from the numbers year after year y'all are losing.

You don't believe in any sort of Original Sin...

Humanity's original sin could not be helped given the primitive brain structure. That original sin was in allowing religious thought to eat our brains and our humanity. That was early in our evolution so we may have just enough time to recover from that load of bullshit before we go extinct. Hurray.

As far as taking care of myself, I trust science and medicine first.

As it should be.

Now do so in ALL things.

You're crazy

Is there any reasoned argument to support the concept that at least one God should exist?

The only thing there is, jar, is the total lack of any evidence, other than negative, that such an entity exists. And, in this case, a total lack of any evidence for such a concept is the major fact in evidence against the concept.

Science is full of the philosophy that an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But we also hold that, without any evidence, there is no justification for such speculations. This is where science divorces fantasy. Show evidence to support the hypothesis or the consideration fails.

Physics is the only reasoned argument available. There is no reasoned argument for this concept that any can cite. Gods fail.

… is there any reason to think the initiator would continue to exist after the instant of initiating?

The initiations that we know of eventually, with study, yield the initiator. We might be able to answer that question if the evidence of initiation could be analyzed. We have a long way to go on that.

So, if god, God, GOD or gOd, initiated the universe, would it then just up and disappear? You could speculate that the case if the initiator’s entire being had to be dissolved into the creation. Or we could just speculate there is no god, God, GOD or gOd.

Frankly, I think the Matrix is exceptionally well coded and finding the user interface then the initiation command sequence is going to be tough.

Edited by AZPaul3, : title

I mean, come on, wave/particle duality? A standard model that stubbornly refuses to give up the secrets of the universe? Dark matter that throws its weight around but refuses to be seen? Dark energy that will eventually crack the universe apart? Time and space relative? Trillions of stars tantalizingly visible but with a speed limit that makes visiting them impossible.

If I may steal a thought from ringo in another thread, these aren't problems to be solved but gifts to the human intellect. Think of these as additional exercises in sharpening our understanding of the universe. Kind of advanced study modules from Brilliant.org.

And here on Earth, a dominant life form that would rather think itself right than live? That is destroying its home while denying all responsibility and ignoring solutions?

Sounds like the local apes got uppity after finishing their first few modules on Brilliant. We got the technology parts but skipped on the social responsibility parts.

Who can put a camera, a video camera, a phone, a video phone, and a powerful computer in a small thin rectangular disk that they use to rave like lunatics and share important information about yesterday's lunch and mining ethereal data bits in clouds.

You forgot to mention the cats. The initial killer app that made the internet. Sharing pictures of our cats.

Ok, so the depth of intellect is not uniform in the population.

Notice, no God.

Brain in a bottle has the same intellectual structure as god done it and carries a similar weight of evidence ... none at all.

If we must make up fantasies as creation myths I think a more interesting universe would be the Lewis Carroll worlds of Douglas Adams. Zebra crossings can be very instructive.

That is not a reasoned argument. That is religious apologetics

This is another one of those "obey or else" threats that are the cornerstone and the capstone of the christian power scam that has been in play for 2000 years.

Everything in the world that we live in centers around Jesus Christ. I'm not talking about religion, either.

Everything in the world that we live in centers around a molten iron core. I'm not talking about religion, either. There is no jesus down there nor anywhere else.

Your version of jesus is a charlatan.

By far the most dangerous poster here though is jar.

Oh, absolutely! He is a grave danger.

(jar: I'm going to put words in your mouth. Feel free to spit them back out)

jar is a believer. He won't fill in the detail because he knows he'd be wrong. He even admits that the basics of his belief are probably wrong. Yet, he feels the deep inner need to believe. He got hit in the head by religion that knocked a few screws loose but the intellect is intact. He hasn't crumbled into hopeless delusion as have you.

Such honesty is indeed a danger to your thoughts, Phat, because jar is right.

jar writes: Throw God Away. Phat writes: In my mind, a search for validating a belief does not involve the critically thinking step of attempting to falsify the search.

Well it should be. Testing the null set, the null hypothesis, is a vital step in any epistemology. To put it in your terms, failing to do so means you don’t care to search for truth.

I'm enjoying reading the discussion. And I get to stick my nose in periodically.

I'm all for we should give Phat as much joy as he can handle.

Yes, the bible has become so. Finally.

As each new generation sees and rejects the commercial/political scam the bible (and by extension all the other religious codices) represents, rebels against the millennia of abuse of religious privilege, then maybe, hopefully, god willing, we can have a new reformation, but, this time we throw out the very concept of supernatural thought.

We throw it out of government. We throw it out of politics. We throw it out of society.

I can’t share your pain, jar. We can absorb all of you, and your charge to help, into secular humanism. Then, we can finally free the human species from this disease.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Why is your claim more valid than theirs?

Because Phat got touched in the head harder than the others?

I'll let myself out.