Why believe in religion?

We owe it to them, and to ourselves to remember how they act when they have power.

I sense a tragedy

Where is the fascism you keep railing on about?

So, you have nothing? Still dont see fascism............

man, if you have zero reading comprehension ... and if you just quote me to Insult me, wow thats patehtic ... guess thats also the only reason I can still post ... you really have wasted your last 4 month I would say ...

Do you understand how statistics work?

They seem like nice normal people to me; not everybody is going to be a fundamentalist that follows a religion.

I have no idea what is going on.

What's going on is that we are all being nonscientifical dumbasses!!! lol. As if one needs science to critique religion.

You people need to consider the source when regarding the bible. And when I say source I don't mean the Bible itself but it's actual authors. These dudes[shepherds, farmers, fishermen, tent makers, etc.] were describing events and occurrences that were waaaaaay above their pay grade. And they were trying to describe it to the lowest common denominator. Everyone in this forum has at least a basic formal eduation in that we can read and [ahem] write.

That wasn't the case 2k+ years ago when the books of the bible were written. So what you have in several cases are marginally educated people who don't totally understand what is happening trying to explain to extremely uneducated people who don't understand anything at all. How would YOU write a book for that?

Centuries of scrutiny and criticism remove the veil and just call it allegory and fairy tales but in context it makes sense.

Yes, I have the facts, again.

1. Flavius Josephus is a fine source for historical evidence despite what some people would say.

2. Cornelius Tacitus

3. Pliny the Younger

It is like, all these early Christians sacrificed themselves, their very lives, for something they knew was a lie. People actually believe this.

the book enoch

Unless you can provide a scientifically reliable study what you are saying is a matter of opinion.

You and I have been through the above before so I'm going to skip right over it and ask a question. Why is it that no Christians ever comment on my points of language and origin as per the discussion @hillelslovak and I were having? Am I correct in assuming it's simply that most Christians don't go that deep into study or is it just a losing proposition on their end?

For one, I am not certain that every Christian who you have ever spoken with has refrained from responding. Secondly, there is no indication of the translations that you posted. Is it the authorized version, nicknamed the King James Version, the New International Version, or something else?

You said the "Greek" when citing a verse from Deuteronomy, and I assume that comes from the Septuagint of all things.

I'm not sure if belief is as simple as choice. To me it seems the circumstances lead you to think one way or the other. For example, I can't just choose to believe in religion, because I can't reconcile it with my worldview.

Joesphus is not reliable, considering The Antiquities was written in like AD 94. To claim Josephus, who only says Jesus was The Messiah, is trustworthy, is laughable. That is not trustworthy information. Tacitus and Pliny only ever reference Jesus in passing. Even if they did claim that Jesus was the messiah, their guesses mean nothing, since they were separated from Jesus by decades, AND they were both Roman, so the only information about Jesus they would have would likely be from Paul, or someone else who could not even read the language the texts they referenced were written in, and were extremely biased anyway. And once again, just because people would die for something they believe in, does not make the thing they believe in any more likely.

Also, I started to ask questions to my youth pastor, pastor, deacons, elders of my church, when I was like 14 regarding the origins of the Bible, contradictions etc, and nobody had an answer except to utilize faith, which is a non answer, and dishonest. And I find it hilarious that you seem to think br0kenrabbit's argument is not true because you cant find the things he is talking about in the King James or NIV versions. Do you have any idea how many thousands of times the Bible has been changed, edited, omitted, and added to? Christians have spent 2000 years blurring the meaning of folk tales in order to present a narrative to hide the fact that their Jesus failed at his Messianic goal.

@hillelslovak: Look, the only two opposing views worth discussing, now, about the resurrection of the Christ are the orthodox view and the existential view. That is really it at this stage in history.

Personally I think more of the problem is not so much as religion, its that too many people fall victim of being much too close-minded and try to hi-jack the religion and its beliefs and transform them into more nutty extremist and oppressive views.

Nope, you are 1000% wrong. We have historical contradictions. The writers who wrote about Jesus attempted to place him within history, and failed many many times. They tread on the ground of history, and history can be used to show how these people did not know what they were talking about. They made grievious cultural and historical errors too often to be ignored.

The choices are not orthodoxy or metaphysical nonsense. If you attempt to make claims on bad evidence, those claims, even if before science, tread on science, and therefore can be refuted and proven to be wrong in their own terms. Thats how it works. If you tell me the world is a bowl, the stars are screwed into place, and the sky is blue because its filled with water, these are claims about how the world works. These claims are false, along with thousands of others in the Bible.

Jesus says he will come back within the generation he is living in, he made a claim about when he would come back. He made a mistake, as this did not happen. No orthodoxy need be codified or believed, and no metaphysical pondering needs to be done.

You still have not addressed the fact that the orthodox view was created by people who could not correctly read the languages they were translating from, especially decades after the non events they fail to describe plausibly..........

Every Christian to whom I've attempted this discussion either changes the subject or leaves. IRL and online.

The 'From Greek' is my bad, it should read 'From Hebrew'. The KJV translates different words into singular words. This is why I prefer the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek (Koine) scripts. The translations on this page are my own, but can be supported. I do not translate proper nouns into pronouns as in common but rather keep the proper form.

For instance, in Deuteronomy 32:8

Elyon עליון

Is a distinct noun from

Yahweh יהוה

And yet in the KJV Yahweh is treated as a pronoun to Elyon (Yahweh is translated as 'he'). It is such translations that obliterate the meaning of the original script.

Sheol (the grave, literally the place your body is placed in) does not mean the same as Gehenna (an actual location outside of Rome), yet both are given the singular meaning "hell" in the KJV.

Do you understand how this is a problem? By the time the KJV rolled around, the idea of Christianity had already emancipated itself from the original Jewish Christian teachings. The idea of people going straight to heaven/hell after death is a late invention, as the original Jewish Christians understood the need for physical resurrection to experience the afterlife. This is all due to the confusion of the misunderstanding of Nephesh נֶפֶש, which is translated as 'soul' but really only means 'to breathe' as an aspect of being alive.

FYI: I can read Hebrew and Greek, need references for the Aramaic.

The core tenets of most religions are extremist and oppressive. What people believe actually matters, seeing how beliefs drive actions. There is a reason Christians tortured people for 5 centuries, based upon the beliefs of the people who wrote the Bible. Jesus says you shalt not suffer a witch to live. People believe in witches, therefore follow Jesus' teaching on the matter.

Why is it only Islam that is producing a Jihad like this today? Because of the tenets of Islam. What they believe informs the way they treat people here in reality.

@hillelslovak: If you are so sure of yourself, by all means, submit your findings for peer review in academic channels, though it seems to me that you are claiming scientism at best, and Nietzsche already disproved that with his famous quote, "Science does not equal truth." As much as I disagree with his "God is dead, and we killed him" statement, I find his statement about science accurate.

@br0kenrabbit: That is certainly interesting information. However, the idea of the trinity seems to support the original meaning with God in three persons. Further, I am not sure about the direct translations as I would like to study them more which I intend to accomplish, next semester. Something that I find interesting is that the pedigree of the translators was quite high. More than three or four languages, translators had a reputation for knowing even more than that then they came together to work on the King James Version. I find it interesting that the King James Version is considered unacceptable when such skilled translators came together for this singular purpose.

The trinity idea isn't unique to Christians and is an idea that appears in many other religions. It is not something that appears in the OT except by backward analogy with the New Testament. The OT supports, and indeed the Jews themselves assert, that God is indivisible.

About the KJV...keep in mind the political and religious situations of the time. If the common man was found with a Bible (it would have probably been the Latin version) he would be put to death. It was the church and the church alone who held the wisdom to read and understand. The KJV was an affront to the Catholic Church as much as it was a political statement.

The translators of the KJV practiced what is called "Literal Translation", as opposed to Transliteration. Transliteration is what I do: word-for-word. You have to throw a few new words in from time-to-time to make sense in English due to the differing syntax, but these words are mostly things such as "is, the" etc.

Literal Translation is different, as you're translating the idea of the passage. This is common when translating languages that have a far differing syntax than the language being translated to, such as Asian languages. However, this also means the translation is subject to the bias of the interpreter. This is the very reason the Catholic Church didn't want to common man to have a Bible to interpret himself, because they wished to read into the text their (the Catholic Church's) bias.

The interpreters of the KJV were already biased by their indoctrination into the faith and therefore read things like El Elyon (literally God of Gods) as a title of Yahweh (God most high, or just The Most High). This is why things such as Asherah, clearly named in the Hebrew text, became 'Pole'...she was represented as a wooden pole meant to suggest a forest grove. All references to other deities were either abolished or subdued.

But even with such translation, there are clear references to the existence of multiple Gods. Psalms is full of such references. Psalms 82:6 for instance.

The Bible, in whole, cannot be rightfully understood without clear knowledge of the religions surrounding the Jewish experience of the time. Everything from the Creation Story to The Flood of Noah is represented in whole or in part in earlier, polytheistic religions. To view The Bible as a self-contained mythos is to not truly understand the circumstances of its writing.

Science is indeed not truth, it is the search for the truth. Nietzche was silly to ever assume that there was a God, much less this god died. A simple quote does not invalidate anything, it's just a thing he said. I dont need peer reviewed paper on my own behalf. There has been 2000 years of evidence showing these are nothing but desert myths, like all the religions before and after them. It's the religious who dont have a leg to stand on, which is why they choose faith. Religious people dont submit peer reviewed evidence, they simply assert propositions, then behave as if all the logical and factual work has been done.

History is not science, it is part of the humanities. Science is not needed to poke holes in these transparent fables. This trinity stuff was an invention of christians long after christ was around. There is nothing in Jewish belief that could even be construed as trying to push forward the idea of a god man, or three beings in one person, which makes no sense (despite absurd christian analogies to the three forms of water).

On the translation: You forget that the men who translated these things were already devout christians, so an objective view of the Bible, especially in that time, was simply not possible. Their errors in scholarship, and mistranslations are almost too numerous to list. Look at Mary's virginity. The Greek, original rendering of Isiah 7:14 calls Mary a young woman with the word Parthenos. This was then translated into almah, which means a virgin. It's the same way someone could mix up maid and maiden. Simple mistakes abound in the book, and the denial of these facts is heinous, considering the book being pushed forward as the literal word of the creator of the universe.

@br0kenrabbit: I am aware of transliteration and somewhat of literal translation, but that said the resurrection of Immanuel has not been discredited which is what I have been focusing on since first posting in this thread.

Folks, if you feel strongly for or against spirituality or religion, I would suggest joining an academic forum and discussing this very topic. I am sure that people would like to read about views that are significant because they could be peer reviewed and published. What is stopping you?

What makes you think I'm not a member of several such forums? Nothing I've said here is new or unknown information, even if I did become aware of it through my own discovery.

As I said above, if you truly want to understand the text, you need to understand what was going on outside the text. The OT is a document of national identity as much as it is a religious one.

It's a complex web of interwoven cultures and histories and of the desire to be separate as a people. This is why, even though I am an atheist, I find it an interesting and informing study on an ancient peoples and their fears and desires. But since I study it in such a context, I cannot ignore the relevance of its relationship with other cultures.

The resurrection has not been discredited? Huh? That's like saying Muhammad flying to Heaven on a winged horse has not been discredited. Besides, if Jesus rose from the dead, and became a God man, he failed at being The Messiah. The Messiah is to take control over the lands of the 12 tribes of Israel, rebuild Solomon's Temple, have his 12 apostles rule each of these realms, then rule over them (King of Kings) in God's stead, at the right hand of the power as Jesus said, on God's behalf.

And that is the best you have? To simply say because we disagree with you, and your non convincing fallacious arguments, that we join another forum? please.............

The reason I say that is because there is not any remaining credible contention between anything other than the orthodox and the existential view. If there is, then I would think that I should be informed about it.

Again, all that remains are the orthodox view and the existential view. If there is something else, it would probably be widely publicized.

If, by orthodox, do you mean an orthodox christian interpretation? If so, the assertion you make between that and an existential view being the only options, are absurd. How about the rational position, that has been approached a long time before any of the Bible stories were even floating around the Mediterrenean. The idea that people cannot, through rational discussion, study of history, comparative religion, and scientific disproving of the Bibles pre scientific claims, see these are transparent fables, false like the fables of every other religion, is obscene to me.

I dont need to be an orthodox thinker like Aquinas, or a pseudo spiritualist like Deepak Chopra, to recognize the nature of these myths.

@hillelslovak: I have a difficult time taking this seriously when leading academics say otherwise. This is not only from the perspective of orthodoxy, but also from the secular side. Therefore, you are not only arguing against orthodoxy.

1. 37-100 CE
2. 56-117 CE
3. 61-113 CE

All non-contemporary sources (Josephus was born 4 years after Christ was allegedly crucified) that barely mention the man, let alone his supernatural powers.

Sorry, try again.

If Jesus were such an important man and did such incredible things, you'd think there would have been more contemporary sources of a man COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD.

There is quite the study of Biblical text outside the religious institutions. Few of them take the Bible as literal. There are many theories proposed for how the storm/war God and son of El, Yahweh, became the national God of Israel (the Kenite Hypothesis perhaps being the most famous).

Again, you cannot read the Bible as wholly self-contained. You must understand what was going on around it.

Edit: As an example, here is evidence of pre-isrealite existence of Yahweh.

Leading academics do not take the Bible seriously, as a historical document, or anything else factual. The only "academics" who support the Bible being anything but a fiction are people who are already christians, and themselves will often times even admit they entered the field to prove Jesus is/was God. An objective and honest reading of the book is not possible when you have already decided it's true from the jump.

And br0kenrabbit, Not only can someone see through the Jesus story by studying all the Gods like Jesus that existed before him, like Horus, Mithras etc, but knowledge of Rome at the start of the common era, The Jews and their culture at the same time, their beliefs, show that the people who wrote the stories did not agree at all, and did not know what they were talking about.

Not only that, but take a book like Genesis. Most Jews/Christians will tell you it was written by one man: Moses. However, a study of the language and style reveals a far more complex story. This is called the Documentary Hypothesis and is fairy well support both by evidence and by Biblical scholars.

There is obviously something real fishy when you get two unique stories of the creation of the universe within the first 2 pages, and it is asserted that both are true. Nobody had an answer for this when I was 14, and at 29, I have yet to hear any explanation that was remotely plausible.

They can't explain it because the evidence shows that rather than being a divine revelation to a prophet, it's an amalgamation of various works.

I believe in SJW. Best religion ever.

I think you would have to try again as you and hilleislovak both are ignoring the fact that people were expecting Jesus to quickly return and establish a physical kingdom on earth, so they did not think that there was a need to write down the events of his life.

Yes, the culture surrounding the events of the Old Testament and New Testament does matter which is why I am studying it.

I am not sure who you consider "leading academics" when in another thread you said that Liberty University is a "Christian quack diploma mill" when U.S. News and World Report, which is one of the most prestigious college ranking systems in the United States, ranks them in the top one hundred colleges in the south.

Liberty University | Best Colleges

yeah, that's because the more intelligent you are, the less happy you tend to be. As they say, "Ignorance is bliss."

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150413-the-downsides-of-being-clever

http://www.thecrimson.com/column/who-what-and-wyatt/article/2013/2/22/Wyatt-depression/

Liberty University has a faith based aviation program. If you are seeing that Liberty University, founded and maintained on the personal ethos of Jerry Falwell, maybe you should look at the standards of the rating systems that were used, and the criteria involved.

Their motto essentially says "Screw knowledge, the Bible is all you need!"

Any school that promotes young Earth creationism is an institution ran by quacks. Jerry Falwell was a heroic pos, a quack, and he surrounded himself with equally vicious bullyboy freaks.

So TC left the building when he couldn't recruit a single soul in this forum.

Always the case. They make broad proclamations, then when it is articulated to them that their beliefs are wrong or immoral, the just stop posting.

I'm not religious, and I'm still here, It's just hard to play devil's advocate when none of the religious people jump in to help.

@comp_atkins said:

@bforrester420 said:

@still_vicious said:

@foxhound_fox said:

Which is why so many religious people are always so angry about non-religious people, gays, transsexuals, atheists, etc, etc, etc.

Cause they think they're right.

They are more happy though. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/religion-is-a-sure-route-to-true-happiness/2014/01/23/f6522120-8452-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html

yeah, that's because the more intelligent you are, the less happy you tend to be. As they say, "Ignorance is bliss."

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150413-the-downsides-of-being-clever

http://www.thecrimson.com/column/who-what-and-wyatt/article/2013/2/22/Wyatt-depression/

1

I think it's more that they're able to form friendships and relationships with more people, and that they're bonding with others over a similar thing.

http://news.discovery.com/history/religion/religion-happiness-social-bonds.htm

Religions, Judaism more than most others, fosters in group, out group thinking. Xenophobia might have been an adaptive advantage to early religious communities. Today? Not at all.

Very random. But most outside cultures are awful, probably still beneficial.