I think you are all missing the point.

As Concerto pointed out, in what might be his must subtly awesome post ever, if you don't know exactly how sperm X made it from testicle to egg, you can't prove that God (the Christian one -- and of Concerto's denomination, I'm certain) didn't have a hand in it.

What an awesome and powerful god! As long as no one is looking or thinking too deeply about something, he might possibly have a hand in it.

Why didn't that kind of power ever take off in the realm of superheros?

Able to leap over tall buildings, for all you know... because you weren't watching, and you don't know how he got to the other side of it; yes, there are doors on the North and South facing sides of the building... but still, he might have jumped over that building.

You atheists are PATHETIC! Concerto gets to make another notch in his internet, for taking the atheists down one more peg.

Yeah religion has no bricks but Christianity isn't a man made religion.

It's the truth.

Yeah i know. But this discussion isn't just about Christainty. Its about all religions.

Aren't all "forms" of Islam based on the Qu'ran?

Quran (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them"

Aren't all "forms" of Christianity based on the bible?

2 Chronicles 15:13All who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman.

I'm struggling to see how any "form" of either of these religions could not be characterized as "a religion that encourage people to kill thousands of others."

So, please, feel free to show what "forms" of Christianity and Islam there are out there that aren't at all based on the bible or the qu'ran (and the subsequent verses above)?

You are trying to play both sides. Stop trying to be politically correct. Christianity does, in fact, encourage killing of others for non-belief. Islam does, in fact, encourage killing of others for non-belief. Reference the above verses again if needed.

Stop playing nice and deal with reality.

You're not struggling with this at all. You seem to find great pleasure in describing over and over again how all those billions of religious people are stupid and evil and violent. Every time you say this, someone points out that you fundamentally don't understand religion, and every time you ignore what they say.

Here, I'll say it again. Lots of religious people don't simply accept as literal commands for their lives today everything written in their holy texts. The most common verses that religious people don't accept in this way are the verses telling them to kill other people. It is you who thinks they are supposed to accept these verses as commands, not them.

More rhetorical games. I can base my life and worldview on a book or thinker while rejecting some of their views. Is that too nuanced for you?

If you weren't hopelessly biased against religion, you would realize that this is in fact what almost all religious people do. You accuse me of not dealing with reality, but it is you that has substituted your own understanding of religion in place of the actual religion practiced by people throughout history.

For instance, if you were dealing with actual American history you would know that some Christian sects, such as the Quakers, accept an explicit doctrine of nonviolence and were at the forefront of the most important movements for positive social change. How do you explain this if you think that because of a few passages in the Bible all forms of religions are inherently violent?

Right, I'm playing both sides because I don't think that all religious people are deeply immoral. You're correct that I'm not interested in playing a side in your grand psychodrama.

Very macho. The ladies must love you.

Wait, so they think that god wrote/inspired their holy text but that they know better what to do than god?

That's like saying "hey, I know you're a doctor and you have a Phd in medicine, and I came to your office and payed for your expertise, but...well, I'm just going to prescribe my own medicine and take my own advice. Thanks though!"

If god wrote/inspired the book and god knows everything, which Christianity and Islam say, then it makes no sense to pick out one verse to follow while discarding another. No sense, given the preceding.

Once you accept the idea that god wrote or inspired one of those holy books, and that he knows everything and has the best intentions for you, you are absolutely hostage to it's contents. To discard some of the holy books tenets in favor of your own while simultaneously continuing to hold these beliefs is a gross contradiction. If god exists, knows everything, and inspired this book and its tenets, on what grounds can they reject some of it and not other parts? It is picking and choosing to the extreme. Either the book was inspired by god and full of knowledge that needs to be followed or its not. It's not something in between.


You cannot believe that god wrote/inspired the holy book of the religion you hold to, think that that deity does in fact know everything, and then simultaneously take your own advice on topics that have been scaled over in said holy book. God exists and knows everything but instead of following his tenets and rules you're going to just make up your own sometimes, but not other times? Nice logic. You're very nuanced.

yawn

Theist: Oh god, how I love you. How smart you are. You know everything. You love everyone. Everything you do and say is out of love for us. Please, show me the best way to live in this life.

God: Quran (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them"

Theist: Uhm....nah.

Makes total sense bro. Tell me more about how it makes sense that people can believe god knows everything, has human interests at heart, and then just not adhere to his works because, well, whatever, they don't want to.

Yes, you could base your life on a book or thinker - IE "A brief history of time" - and reject some of the books claims, ideas, or tenets. Of course. Unfortunately, this is not analogous because you don't think that Stephen Hawking is god, or that he knows everything and loves everyone and knows objectively what's best for you and the world.

In fact, many religious people do not think that God wrote their scripture or that god is omnificent, so yeah, it is analogous.

Uhm, not many Christians or Muslims - which is who we were talking about, by the way. Not simply "religious people." Also, they don't need to believe that god "wrote" the holy book. The fact that they think he inspired it and is linked to it is enough.

Who cares whether it makes sense? You treat religious people and religious belief in a completely non-empirical way. You act as if we could logically derive the beliefs and practices of billions of people based on some words in books written hundreds or thousands of years ago. If you were interested in actual religious belief instead of propagandistic nonsense, you would recognize that people are often illogical, that their religious beliefs and practices are often attempts to fill in the gaps of the religious texts and traditions, and so religious people's actual beliefs and practices often diverge strongly if not outright contradict the prescripts laid down in their holy texts.

Cool - so why do you think we should "condemn forms of Islam (or Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc) that encourage terrorism or other forms of violence" then?

Millions of Christians believe this. And you're simply wrong about "inspiration," different views on inspiration lead to very different understandings of the authority of a holy text.

Blah, blah, the only possible way to be religious is to be a fundamentalist. How can you possibly think this is true? Do you know anything at all about religion? Fine, so you think that the fundamentalist views of the holy text is correct. Isn't it blindingly obvious that a) millions of actual religious believers don't accept this fundamentalist view and so everything you say is irrelevant to them and b) almost zero fundamentalists actually incorporate this view of the text in their practice or beliefs?

Once again, history is not a deductive science.

Wow, obviously you can. Either that or almost zero people believe that god wrote/inspired the holy book of their religion since almost zero people actually believe and practice everything said in their holy books.

Because terrorism is destructive of society.

The fact that people are too dumb to consistently follow what they claim to believe is not any sort of comfort for me.

It absolutely follows that if you think god wrote/inspired/sponsored the bible, that god knows everything, and that god has their best interest at heart, all of which are standard principles of Christianity, they should do whatever the bible says, regardless of their preferences or inhibitions.

The fact that they are either too dumb, scared, do not have the courage of their convictions or some unholy amalgamation of the 3 is not comforting since the we have seen that previous generations didn't treat it that way, and surely generations in the future won't see it that way, and we all know what that means.

I still want to know how you explain the Quakers. They have held an pacifistic, non-violent ethic for almost their entire history and they were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement, and the women's rights movement. Yet they are undeniably a Christian sect. How do you explain this? Should their "form of religion" be condemned as violent, sexist, and immoral?

If it's based on or makes use of the bible as a holy doctrine, yeah.

Can I write a book about hating ugly people and how they should be systematically slaughtered and then be lauded as a great non-violent luminary? That would make no sense would it?

Who cares? I'm not trying to comfort you. I'm pointing out that your arguments are crap because they are based on your fantasies about what religious people believe rather than their actual beliefs.

Furthermore, if you actually looked at religious history, you'd see that all generations have treated the holy texts in this "dumb" way. The crusaders were just as selective in their treatment of the Bible as modern-day Christians--they just selected different passages.

Dude, I don't give a **** that present day Christians largely aren't acting on the violent verses. They've used them as firepower before and they will use them again. The fact that I live in an epoch where they happen to not be is a non-sequitur as to whether the doctrine and it's followers are deserving of derision.

That's like saying, well racist people mostly don't act on their racism, so we shouldn't criticize it.

Yeah, see, your views just have no connection with reality. You think the Quakers, who have been largely pacifist for over 350 years, who were so highly regarded for their work in reconciliation and peace that the entire religion was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947, should be condemned as a violent religion. You are just hopelessly biased and unmoored from empirical evidence on this matter.

The Quakers didn't write the Bible and they certainly don't believe that some group of people should be systematically slaughtered, so I have no idea what your analogy is supposed to mean.

Here you say that you don't even care whether or not religious people actually are violent or not, the fact that somewhere and sometime some other group of religious people are going to act violently means we should condemn all religious people. Great story.

Your racist analogy doesn't work. My claim was not that these other groups think we should be violent, but just don't follow through. It is that many of these groups don't think we should be violent in the first place. A more accurate analogy would to condemn someone who doesn't have racist beliefs and doesn't act racist because some group of people in the future will be racist. Great story.

Also, I want to point out that you've essentially admitted that your continual quoting of violent Bible or Qu'ran verses as indicative of the actual beliefs of religious people is inaccurate since so many of them are too "dumb" to accept them. It is almost as if their actual religious beliefs are influenced by things other than some obscure passages that encourage violence.

I live my life based on Mein Kampf.

However, I am nice to all races and get an award for multiracial relations.

Make sense? Of course not.

It's obvious that I don't actually live my life based on what the book actually says and therefore cannot seriously be considered a follower of it.

If Quakers were serious followers of their bibles, they would violent in at least the specific situations where violence is endorsed in the bible. The fact that they weren't violent in those situations, IE they didn't kill a lady for not being a virgin on her wedding night or w/e shows they lived by some other standard most likely the standard moral zeitgeist of that time.

No, the fact that the holy books say things like the verses I've posted above means we should condemn the followers. Nobody ever needs to act on it for it to be condemned.

I don't ****ing care about other religions that don't have holy books or have holy books that don't talk about ****ing killing people and ****.

Once again, you're illustrating the point that it possible for religious sects to a) be religious, b) accept the Bible as a holy book c) be highly moral. Of course, you also think that this implies d) they're all really dumb.

As for whether the Quakers are followers of the Bible, as I said before, according to your understanding of following the Bible, almost no one actually follows the Bible. So why are you so worried? As defined by you, religion is a completely minor phenomenon, with only a tiny fraction of the population actually following their religion. For instance, almost no one in the U.S. is a Christian because almost no one in the kills non-virgins when they get married.

Or maybe you just use a really bad definition of what it means to follow a religion: slavishly obeying every single thing commanded in the holy text in the most literal fashion possible.