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Truthtells
Genesis 6:13 ,'And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Genesis 6:17, 'And, behold, I, even, I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and everything that is in the earth shall die.

Genesis 7:19, 'And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

Maybe you should read Genesis again. The flood was claimed to be upon the whole earth.

No Robots

Great. Let's try this:

Here is some of what Spinoza has to say about the relativity of good and evil:

We have now perceived, that all the explanations commonly given of nature are mere modes of imagining, and do not indicate the true nature of anything, but only the constitution of the imagination; and, although they have names, as though they were entities, existing externally to the imagination, I call them entities imaginary rather than real; and, therefore, all arguments against us drawn from such abstractions are easily rebutted. Many argue in this way. If all things follow from a necessity of the absolutely perfect nature of God, why are there so many imperfections in nature? such, for instance, as things corrupt to the point of putridity, loathsome deformity, confusion, evil, sin, &c. But these reasoners are, as I have said, easily confuted, for the perfection of things is to be reckoned only from their own nature and power; things are not more or less perfect, according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind.

--Spinoza, Ethics I, App.

For Spinoza, man is only one part of nature, neither greater nor lesser than any other part. This is one reason why people do not like Spinoza. As Harold Bloom says:

What shocks me, what fascinates me, what endlessly engrosses me, is that 89% of Americans consistently say that God loves him, or her, on a personal and individual basis. Now that is extraordinary in the history of religion, and undoubtedly tells one too much about the American ethos and about the American psychology. It certainly tells one rather too much about American spirituality. I always like to juxtapose to this the great statement of Baruch Spinoza, the most un-American of all religious statements, which goes: 'We should love God without ever expecting that God will love us in return.' A piece of very powerful wisdom indeed, but I repeat, absolutely un-American.

patchy

I dunno about "best", but one pretty compelling argument against the bible is that its adherents are sufficiently stupid, rude, and obnoxious enough to keep getting banned from this forum while us immoral atheists are largely able to play nice with the other kids.

What say ye to that, truthtells? Oh, wait...you're not here any more.

Wads4

Have you not sen the recent news pictures of Tyre, which the Israelis are bombing?--why should they waste bombs on a pile of rubble? I believe the Tyreans re-occupied and re-built it after Alexander's departure.

Wads4

On the contrary, in the Old Testament the Jews very much accept the existence of other gods, Baal etc.They were henotheists. Have you not read the ten commandments, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"?

Wads4

I don't think so. The inference is that God sent a great flood to destroy all mankind. What would be the point of a local flood if he wanted to destroy everybody? God just thought it was a world -wide flood as he had never heard of America, China etc. It was of course only a local Mesopotamian flood. Mesopotamia was very vulnerable to floods which was why Noah kept a boat in his back garden for emergencies so he, familty and livestock could take to it when the Eurphrates/ Tigris burst their banks.

Why should he be bothered? He got his chosen people to slaughter plenty of innocents himself.

Johnny Skeptic

If you translate that into readable English, I might be able to comment on it.

Regarding "We should love God without ever expecting that God will love us in return", why is that?

For your information, my main interest is debating fundamentalist Christians because they frequently attempt to legislate their religious beliefs. Am I correct that fundamentalist Christians generally do not prefer to use Spinoza's writings in debates?

No Robots

Okay, here goes: God doesn't give a rat's ass about you or your problems.


Does Nature give a rat's ass about you? Then why should God? Do you hate Nature? Then why should you hate God? For Spinoza, God and Nature are one and the same.

I know that. I know that that is what many of the good posters here are doing. But you are frequently throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Naive people come here and read and think, "Wow, all this talk about Jesus and God really is bullshit." I'm here to show them that there is something very important underlying the misapprehensions of both believers and sceptics.

Absolutely. If you really wanted to demolish the fundies like you say you do, you would look into Spinoza. The problem is that reading Spinoza might also demolish some of your cherished illusions.

Pastor's Nightmare

I only provided three arguments.

1.)Internal Contradiction
2.)Bad Morality
3.)Psychological Coercion

The rest was evidence for these three arguments.

Asha'man

Um, guys? Truthtells isn't coming back to this debate. He was banned as the reincarnation of a previously banned user.