it is so easy to make stuff up without posting links...........I hope you realize that the entire beginning of the Bible was pretty much copy pasted from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was a fiction story written long before the Bible.
No.
It's a fundamental necessity of "faith" and "belief" to believe that your version of shit is correct and if your version of shit is correct than someone else's different version of shit can't possibly be correct and as such those heathen bastards are going to hell while you enjoy the eternal bliss of heaven with your "merciful" creator.
No.
It's a fundamental necessity of "faith" and "belief" to believe that your version of shit is correct and if your version of shit is correct than someone else's different version of shit can't possibly be correct and as such those heathen bastards are going to hell while you enjoy the eternal bliss of heaven with your "merciful" creator.
What's wrong with the traditional Atheist meeting place?
Do you not have pubs to go to on a Sunday?
That's very much not true.
What you described is religious fundamentalism. However, most traditional religions are not the way you describe. Even Catholicism isn't as black and white as that (the Catechism of the Catholic Church specifically states that being Catholic is not a requirement to get in to heaven as long as the person has followed the basic guidelines.)
There's so much ignorance on the subject of religion and it's mostly from atheists. If you're going to decide that something is entirely wrong out of hand, it might do you well to actually understand what you're dismissing. It might help keep other people from dismissing you out of hand for being stupid.
Well what fun is that when you don't get to wear a funny hat?
That's very much not true.
What you described is religious fundamentalism. However, most traditional religions are not the way you describe. Even Catholicism isn't as black and white as that (the Catechism of the Catholic Church specifically states that being Catholic is not a requirement to get in to heaven as long as the person has followed the basic guidelines.)
There's so much ignorance on the subject of religion and it's mostly from atheists. If you're going to decide that something is entirely wrong out of hand, it might do you well to actually understand what you're dismissing. It might help keep other people from dismissing you out of hand for being stupid.
That's what I said.No.
It's a fundamental necessity of "faith" and "belief" to believe that your version of shit is correct and if your version of shit is correct than someone else's different version of shit can't possibly be correct and as such those heathen bastards are going to hell while you enjoy the eternal bliss of heaven with your "merciful" creator.
Interesting, but the commentary in the first 3 bullet points admits to not knowing how the stories are linked, but assumes they were copied somehow anyway.
Let me put a different spin on this to see how open you are to being possibly wrong, your response will be very telling:
I told 100 people about how I escaped a hungry pack of lions while hunting one day in Africa. I escaped by killing one of them with a shot gun blast, stabbed one in the eye as it was chasing me up a tree, killing it, and then the others decided to leave. These 100 people then moved to different parts of the US, and told this to their friends.
Upon returning to the US myself, I'm hearing stories ranging from me fighting lions with my bare hands, to dropping a grenade down a lions den to escape -- none of which are true. When people retell this, by the time it gets back to me, it's completely different than the original.
Does this mean a flood of any proportion happened? No. Does this mean any myth has even a little veracity? No.
All this means is that the similarities can, and are likely, a product of people retelling the same thing, but adding or exaggerating details.
Open your mind to other possibilities, then you'd have a more coherent and complete conclusion without a big of gap that I just exploited.
That's very much not true.
What you described is religious fundamentalism. However, most traditional religions are not the way you describe. Even Catholicism isn't as black and white as that (the Catechism of the Catholic Church specifically states that being Catholic is not a requirement to get in to heaven as long as the person has followed the basic guidelines.)
There's so much ignorance on the subject of religion and it's mostly from atheists. If you're going to decide that something is entirely wrong out of hand, it might do you well to actually understand what you're dismissing. It might help keep other people from dismissing you out of hand for being stupid.
Can you blame people though? It's not like each religion isn't interpreted in many different ways or where everyone in one particular religion acknowledges the "correct" or "truest" version.
And to me it's why I think religion is pointless. If different people interpret their religion differently then why bother subscribing to a religion in the first place? Why not just live your life the way you think is the right or moral way? Obviously there are exceptions, some people need the support from other people or have lost their ability to self regulate and need the guidance. But they could get that anywhere really. Some people join the military, some join support groups, others internalize it and self analyze and others turn to religion. The stories in the various religious text seem to be irrelevant to the larger picture which is learning about morals or being a better person. The only people I can think of that would benefit from such stories are those that aren't really capable of learning a lesson without visualizing via stories and contextualizing what they are being told.
I'm guessing it could be argued that if people stopped rooting for a religion and instead rooted for the lessons they taught we wouldn't have had so much religious violence in our short civilized human history. As I see it, religion is just another team sport looking for fans, which is great if you are looking for a community of people to bond with but I don't see it's benefit to society in the long term.
Anybody here an un-Pandagoulackian? I was musing over their similarity to atheists. Atheists don't believe in God and un-Pandagoulakians don't believe in the Master Engineer, the Divine Turtle on which the world rests. I was thinking that maybe the reason there's no large scale effort to create an un-Pandagoulakian church is that those who deny the existence of Pandagoulaki haven't developed sufficient ego about their disbelief. Maybe when they feel up to facing the Pandagoulakians in open intellectual debate, with all the proper memes, they will want to organize into one.
it is so easy to make stuff up without posting links...........
He can do nothing if you re afraid of the truth to the point of not even trying to google the relevant data...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
There s as much religions as there s human heads...
A lot of the bible has borrowed parts and themes from other, older works. I think it is really obvious. I'm not sure how people can know that in the case of the bible those stories are true... this time. The other times those stories are written, didn't happen though, those were fake gods.
Fuck yeah! Its about damn time, I want me some fucking tax exempt too! Can I turn my house into a church???
Whatever their geographic origins religions intellectualy originate from fear of death, it was the pathetic mean find by human beings to be comfortable with the idea that one day we ll die, an imaginary world was created for the purpose where the human, using auto suggestion and lying to himself, is finaly victorious against what he despise the most, that his, his end, all the rest are myths build to sustain this auto suggested propaganda, i mean , one does really need to be gullible to death, if i can say so, to believe such illogic stories that never end contradicting themselves.
Militant atheism is every bit a religion as Christian/Islamic/whatever fundamentalism.
They have all the same hallmarks, including intolerance and superiority complex.
What the world needs (and America in particular) is more people who just don't give a shit what other people think/do with their own time/energy.
At the end of the day, does it hurt anyone if some Christians go sing about Jeezuz for an hour on Sundays?
Does it hurt anyone if some Atheists go sing about whatever the hell they want?
What is harmful, though, is when people decide that their belief is the only one that should be allowed...even if that belief is simply the belief that all other beliefs are wrong (that's called Atheism.)
Maybe someone should start a religion that preeches tolerance and common sense rather than "we're right and they're wrong."
Or it could simply be that the group that makes up those beliefs are so small, that the opportunity cost is not worth the time.