Wyz_sub10

I don't think theists are mentally ill, but isn't your above statement one of the driving forces of Christianity and Islam?

Every evangelical Christian I know thinks that I do not know the "truth" and that it is their duty to educate me.

Do you disagree?

Pseudonymph

No I don't disagree at all. It is wrong for theists or anyone else to act this way. That's what I was trying to say...we are supposed to be promoting tolerance and understanding of the different types of people that exist.

Who really knows the Truth(TM)?

HelenM

I know less about the evangelicals you know than you do so I wouldn't presume to comment. On the other hand, you don't actually know what they think so maybe you're going beyond what you can know in commenting on that.

There are clearly a range of possibilities and I doubt every evangelical is unaware of them. That a non-theist is unaware of what the Bible says is only one of them. Others include: the non-theist knows but doesn't believe it; the non-theist knows and secretly thinks it may be true but doesn't like the implications of it so he/she publically rejects it. Maybe there are more but all I wanted to do was show an awareness that not all non-theists are lacking information about Christianity. And I'm fairly sure I know evangelical Christians who share this awareness.

Then the other part to this is - Christians think it's up to God to some extent whether a person believes so - they aren't entirely responsible. At some point they pretty much give up saying things and pray that God would show the person the truth - so I would think.

Helen

Wyz_sub10

So you *do* presume to comment. Actually, I don't have to try and guess what they think - they are more than willing to tell me. JWs don't come to my door to get my opinion on what they think. They come to save me with the truth. Likewise, I have had evangelical friends over the years, and while we did not always discuss religion, when we did it was clear that they believed themselves to be saved, and me not saved.

You need only look to some theist posters on this board who have said that I (personally - but others have been told this too) don't know "the Truth".

Yes, but how does any of this change the meaning of my statement? Perhaps they think that I know the truth, but do not accept it. That does not change the fact that they feel "in the right" where I am "in the wrong." In the end, it is still arrogance and superiority.

Again, that doesn't change the meaning. Okay, I'll stop telling you about god and start praying that god tells you himself. Arrogance and superiority do not go away just because a person stops communicating outward.

My point to SirenSpeak was that Christians feel they know and accept the truth - they are right and others are wrong. That denotes superiority and patronization.

Living Dead Chipmunk

I asked this question back when I first started posting (under a thread titled "When Rational People Find God", forget where it is, tho) and was surprised to see how many participants of this board really DO believe religious devotion is a form of mental illness.

I retain my hypothesis that the unsupported mental illness claim is merely a distancing technique intended to make the speaker feel better about someone who may be just as intelligent coming to a different conclusion. "Well, if they're as smart as I am, there HAS to be some way I'm better than them, or they'd be an atheist too. Maybe they're just crazy."

Pseudonymph

Thank you...this is exactly what I'm saying.

And untill people who make this claim can come up with something better...this is as close to the truth of the matter as I think we'll get.

Celsus

Hi agapeo,

You said your god is love. Now how does love manifest itself? As anyone who's ever loved will tell you, both words and actions are important. You don't love people if you only tell them that you love them. You show your love. You act on it. God's promise to act is to answer all prayers. You have introduced qualifiers that were put in by Paul, not Jesus. That is why I did not quote verses like 1 John 5:14-15 which are even more unequivocal about prayer requests always being answered. This becomes a problem of knowing what God's will is supposed to be, and once all the excuses have been collected, the picture of a loving god is quite hard to discern.

Apparently, God is held to lower standards than we are. If you know that it is right to feed the starving, then why aren't you? (Or perhaps you feel that letting them starve is right) If you know that it is right to help the needy, why does your god have different standards? He appears to be a god of love who doesn't show it, a benevolent god with no desire to save people's lives (and in doing so, perhaps giving them a chance to hear the gospel) and an omniscient god who doesn't know what is right to do. What kind of god is that?

By the way, here's another verse you can try to explain:
This is the only verse in the Bible where God explicitly dares anyone to test him. Literal or metaphorical? Blessings for tithes - simple promise, no qualifiers. Works in the same vein as prayer, because sacrifice in the Old Testament was accompanied by requests to God.

I knew you would post this verse. That's why I used the idea of starving people, not poor people. You see, poor people still live on, starving people generally die. I haven't asked you about heaven and hell yet, but you can see where this will lead - uneducated, illiterate rural folk, starving to death, possibly never heard the word, or maybe haven't had the opportunity to analyse the evangelists' arguments, destined for hell. Some evangelists are willing to feed them if they convert, I suppose. God is neither meeting spiritual or physical needs, nor allowing for free will. BTW, I started a thread dealing with the unsaved <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=45&t=001414" target="_blank">here</a>. Perhaps you would like to share your opinions there as well.

The second problem with that passage is that it shows Jesus to be, in fact, a rather egotistic and wasteful person. I sympathise with Judas in passages like that - if the Bible picture is even half accurate, Matthew 26:14-16 paints an altogether different picture from what Christians usually like to think of their annointed one. Judas, expecting Jesus to be of the highest moral standards, instead realises that Jesus is not above being wasteful, and prefers to have perfume poured on his feet, writing off the poor as having no real hope (if he had said the same things in the context of perhaps teaching them more, instead of going out to help the poor, it be more understandable). It must have occurred to Judas that this "messiah" he was following was in fact abusing his charisma for temporal luxuries!

BTW, have you read the Robert Price's outrageous dismantling of the passion using Girardian "scapegoating" analysis which basically concludes that it was the disillusioned disciples who tried and executed Jesus? It's dealt with in Deconstructing Jesus - wonderful stuff, but I'm not sure if he's actually serious.

Another "BTW" - if Jesus really said that, why did the early church seem so keen to provide for the poor if their messiah had already told them it was a lost cause?

The Word of God interprets itself? What does that mean? All things require a mind for interpretation to take place... Cognito ergo sum and all that.

I am aware of that. A few things. Firstly, you have classically employed the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Secondly, there are plenty of errors for each case, and if you like, I'll present just one of each. If I can show you just one example of each, does it then disqualify the book as "God's true word"? After all, it was C.S. Lewis (he bats for your side) who set up the (false) dichotomy that the gospels must stand as a whole or fall as a whole. Regardless, given your own statement ("If it's God's true word IMO it won't"), you will be unable to unequivocally claim that the Bible (as we know it) is "God's true word". If you aren't sure about many parts of the Bible, will you still be sure about the rest of it? (#8 was put in the interest of making sure you can have your say, and that I am not setting up a false argument through straw men.)


Anyway, I've chosen some simple ones as a teaser - 2 or 3 of each:

1) Leviticus 11: Among other "facts", locusts have 4 legs, and have 4 different "kinds", while bats (constituting a quarter of all mammal species) belong to only one "kind", and are classified as birds. Don't like that one, try Matthew 4:8. If Jesus could see all the kingdoms of the world, we can only infer that the author had a flat earth in mind.
2) Daniel 5:11,18,22: Belshazzar being called Nebuchadrezzar's son by people who really should know better. Perhaps Daniel's too easy. Acts 5:37 mentions Judas the Galilean rising after the death of Theudas (died c. 45CE), while we know he rebelled against Quirinius (of the infamous census) 40 years earlier as a response to Quirinius' census, and certainly before Theudas died.
3) 1 Timothy 5:3-16: pseudo-Paul engaging in the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. If you don't think "No True Scotsman" is a logical fallacy, then try the contradiction of Matthew 10:10/Luke 9:3 vs. Mark 6:8: staff or no staff? If you don't think that is significant, then try Matthew 1:12 vs. Luke 3:27 vs. Jeremiah 22:30 vs. Isaiah 9:7: Is Jeconiah's (aka Coniah in Jer 22:30) line royal or not, and is he Jesus' ancestor or not? Is Isaiah referring to the same Messianic line as Jeremiah? etc.
4) Mark 9:38-40 vs. any verse about false prophets: For us, against us, or in sheep's clothing (against us but for us, but we really aren't too sure). Or John 3:16 and any of Paul's numerous diatribes about the non-applicability of works vs. James 2:18-26.
5) John 3:13: Elijah, Enoch and anyone else who'd died before this point hadn't been to heaven yet. If that can be explained by semantic reasoning, then try the more obvious 1 Timothy 5:19: Bad Biblical advice (look at the Catholic church, priests and paedophilia).
6) It's difficult to show human influence just by textual analysis (maybe 1 Timothy 5 again, since we're at it: misogyny and stereotyping women). But for proper analysis of human influence, look up "Documentary Hypothesis", "Deuteronomic History", "proto-Isaiah, deutero-Isaiah, trito-Isaiah", "Q and Synoptic problem", Gnosticism, pseudo-Pauline letters, etc. (this pretty much covers all the good bits of the Bible that Christians love)

If you think this thread is getting to long, we can either continue this via e-mail, or we can put up separate threads for each. I certainly think it is getting too long, and I won't have the time to deal with the minutiae of each post (my apologies for butchering your argument by snipping out a large chunk in the middle). Of course, there are many others here who could easily step in for me, but then there's only one of you to represent your case.

Joel

schu

Schizotypal: Weird in many ways. Show various oddities of thought, perception, speech, and actions but not severely enough to be considered psychotic. Often have many superstitious beliefs.



You don't really think that the psychobabblers are going to tell GW that he is wearing no cloths do you? After all, JC is his favorit philosopher.
His Attorny General is worse than he is.

I think the time will come here in the US as it already is in Europe when people will wonder how such a large part of the population could have deluded themselves about religion.

Schu

Pseudonymph

Schu...it's one thing to actually visit, understand, diagnose and treat a patient...and it's another thing to go to dictionary.com and search for "Schizotypal"...

For the last time, what is your conclusive evidence that a theist belief is universally and roundly to be considered a mental disorder?

schu

Xians SS xians. Would it make you all happier if I said I think they are a bunch of nuts because they claim to believe unbelievable things? Like JC ascending bodily to heaven. I've had grown men tell me they planned to do the same thing. If that don't fit the discription of Schizotypal I don't know what does.

Schu