I'm conflating things a bit. The book is not about Christianity or debunking Christianity ... but a gnostic approach to spirituality in the lack of such supernatural beliefs. Nature based spirituality. From Jung to Nietzsche ... there is much to glean. And it's just exactly like the ribs thing when you get down to it. NATURE defines the path ... not supernatural belief.

If your claim is simply "there are a lot of breathtakingly ignorant people who say and do a lot of breathtakingly stupid things in the name of religion", I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

You seem to me to be making a rather more controversial claim that religion per se promotes ignorance and breathtakingly stupid beliefs and practices
I think history shows that religion can bring out both the best and worst in people. Millions have been rescued from despair via religion. Millions have been inspired to produce great art and perform great acts of charity owing to their religious beliefs. And, yes, wars, terrorism, and intolerance have also been a by-product of religious belief.

I believe all but two of first 120 or so universities in America were founded by Christians, including Harvard.

Broadbrushing religion is not especially helpful.

I can go along with all that, I think. But it has to be an axiom that dogma is bad news, even immoral, that the primary perpetrator of it is religion, that religions are a dime a dozen, that they are all fiction/mythological albeit sometimes with good offerings. They don't explain the nature of "reality."

Einstein's "three kinds of religion: (in the biblio)

1. Fear based (You are going to hell fire and might get smited at any time)
2. Morality based (a big improvement, trying to find goodness and nobility in mankind and redress the darkness)
3. Cosmos based: (IT ACTUALLY EXPLAINS THE NATURE OF THINGS, OR TRIES TO.)

Sue me. I graduated to number 3 somewhere along the line very recently.

On the docket tonight, keeping it fair and balanced, All That's Wrong With the Bible (Jonah Conner) and Shadowlands and Songs of Light (Kevin Ott).

"All That's Wrong ..." offers hundreds of contradictions, mistakes, manipulations of the text, etc. etc. etc. in the Bible. Most minor, don't concern me ... consisting of bad stats, wrong King, conflicting versions irreconcilable, absurdities, bullshyt inerrancy. It doesn't speak of any perfect inspiration, that's all those little details mean. But that's a lot. The bigger point for me is, "Is it real or fabulist and mythological?" My take is clear.

"Shadowlands ..." is a very cool little book, love the design, gonna love the spiritual aspect of the healing (described as "An epic journey into joy and healing"). I'm gonna love to see what the guy is doing in his psyche with the healing intonations of scripture. I am not going to believe the gawd dam borrowed snake fable as literal.

Delicious irony. There is literally nothing more "dogmatic" than an axiom. By definition, an axiom is accepted without proof. And that seems to be your main objection to religion! What's worse, you say it *has* to be an axiom that dogma is bad news.



Given that you have shown virtually NO evidence of understanding religion, I don't see how you can boldly proclaim this stuff. (I agree with the dime-a-dozen part).

Books showing alleged contradictions, historical errors, scientific errors, etc. in the Bible are a dime-a-dozen. As are the plethora of books answering those same alleged errors, etc.

Dude's got a book ... Ott. Super opening chapter. I like the triple synchronicity. I'm in a baseball mode, and we've got the good old Mel Ott. Recently I was referred to a Dr. Ott. Now this Kevin Ott and his "healing journey of joy."

So is it your position that there are no contradictions or inconsistencies?

Dogmatism is good news?

1. There are TONS of APPARENT contradictions, inconsistencies, and so on.

2. In my studies, there are plausible explanations as to why any given alleged contradiction is not really a contradiction, when the context and language are properly understood.

For two statements to be truly contradictory, it has to be logically IMPOSSIBLE for them both to be true. That's a very high standard to prove, and in my studies that standard has not been met.

Depends on what one is being dogmatic about.

Questions like that indicate a lack of nuanced thinking, in my opinion.

A better question might be something like, "Under what circumstances (if any) is dogmatism acceptable intellectually."

What are the thing(s) it is good to be dogmatic about?

1. The Law of Identity.
2. The Law of Non-Contradiction
3. The Law of Excluded Middle.
4. It's always wrong to rape a child for personal entertainment purposes.

I have more of you want.

An axiom is a self-evident truth, widely held, that exists in all scientific disciplines, but is always open to reconsideration upon discovery of an conflicting evidence. Dogmatism, on the other hand, is eternally true, never questioned and anti-evidence.

Those are axioms more than dogma. And ALL are undercut by quantum mechanics. They are not sacred, or ultimate, it turns out.

The above laws of logic are necessary for science. Unless your trying to say that science doesn't require logic.

And is the Bible on the list? There are some interesting rape laws and killing practices handed down by god in it.

The Bible is sort of a Meta-Dogma, in that God's revelation undergirds all preconditions of intelligibility, such as the laws of logic, uniformity of nature, and others.

We can discuss this aspect in my Proving Christianity thread, if you want.

Would be a major derail for this thread.

Why is the forgiveness of man more killing, bloodshed, torture and sacrifice? If you wanted to forgive your children, would this be the format you chose? If you did you'd be considered a sick, delusional monster.

Is this primitive man raising his sacrifice and barbarism mindset to the ultimate degree, or is it a god of love forgiving?

"Religious Junkies" - those with a powerful addiction to the beliefs and practices of a particular religious group or mindset. (Dylan Morrison, Jesus, Junkies & Abuse)

Of course that doesn't mean that one isn't right in believing that their group is the one true religion, and therefore adhering to it is right. But do you realize how many different groups are saying that right now, let alone in history?

Likely truth: it's just an addiction.

I know I'm a little late to this party, but to debate religion and its validity, you first need to understand what it is and what its functions (yes, plural) are. It's very large in scope, and I'm not qualified to introduce it, but the works of Joseph Campbell are a good place to start. The modern concepts of religion have evolved over a huge span of time, and to make staunch claims on either side, without understanding how and why it got to this point, is not going to be productive.

Well said.

Often both the religious and nonreligious folks talking about religion don't appreciate the history of religious thought. Many beliefs are often misunderstood due to a lack of understanding the historical context.

For example, critics of the OT often claim that the Bible condones slavery. That's only a valid characterization when one correctly understands the meaning and context of "slavery".

To the modern mind, slavery means chattel slavery. But the Bible explicitly condemns this type of slavery (which the KJV renders as "manstealing")

In the OT sense, we have slavery today in the U.S. We call them prisons.

There is a lot more to be said on this topic, of course. Just trying to give a specific example of historical context being important.

Good that you brought up Campbell: analysis of myths, humanist hero's journey, the virtues of the ancient world are vices of today (fundamentalism).

"The literalizing of myth into dogma is where a lot of religion comes from. Gnosis on the other hand - the gaining of knowledge about actual spiritual truths - is a path of wisdom."