Reactor

Also, I must ask. What is the strawman thing?

Polycarp

Quote:

Originally posted by Anunnaki: I for one am saddened AND sickened by such a hideous abuse of tax dollars. I personally would rather see that money go to someone who would kick me square in the testicles than have one more penny of it go towards the programing and assimilation of one more robot like yourself.

Geez, Annunaki… I thought we’d always gotten along rather well. I never knew you considered me to be a mere programmable robot. So much for high expectations and mutual respect…

You obviously have no concept of what happens at seminaries. Seminaries are as diverse as secular educational institutions. For you to presume that all seminarians are programmable robots only demonstrates the wealth of ignorance you possess on the topic.

Polycarp

Quote:

Originally posted by Reactor: Also, I must ask. What is the strawman thing?

“Straw man” refers to a faulty debating technique in which a person misrepresents the position of their opponent, thereby making it easier to refute the argument. Setting up a “straw man” is easier to knock down than defeating a real one.

Vorkosigan

Polycarp is not a robot. This is totally uncalled for.

Michael

Vorkosigan

Originally posted by Metacrock:
Don Morgan is the most dishonest rhetorician I've ever seen.

Hyperbole like this is uncalled for and does not advance your cause.

He does not have the right to determine what the Christian faith is about. He gave up that right when he gave up the faith. I am the only person who has the right to decide what my faith is about.

Meta, you put your views at risk when you showed up on this board.

Don has asked you a question of fundamental importance, and it is not meet of you to dismiss it as a strawman. Given that you believe not all of the writings you hold sacred are actually the immutable word of god, but at least some are human myth, what are the grounds you use to determine which words are indeed the words of god, and how are those grounds different from your mere arbitrary and personal preference?

Michael

lpetrich

I have ended up analyzing only a small part of Metacrock's recent postings, because his verbiage is almost too much to read, and because others have taken on parts of it.

Which god? And this ignores miracles with no deity in sight. Here, I'm inclined to agree with RyanS2 in finding no fundamental difference between the two.

News to me -- why not submit a paper describing these miracles to some leading medical-research journal?

I'm surprised that Metacrock has not converted to Isis worship, because in The Golden Ass Isis is represented as stating something like that view clearly and explicitly, and because the Bible does not.

I agree; why not?

I'm not sure what Metacrock thinks of the position that both Catholic and Protestant authorities had taken about the motions of the planets in the 1500's and 1600's -- to me, it's hard to distinguish from fundamentalism.

Or the Jesuit who had wondered about how sloths could have made it all the way form Mt. Ararat to South America.

Or the clergymen who thought that lightning rods are wicked because they keep God from striking people and punishing them for their sins.

Or the early-19th-cy. paleontologist Hugh Miller who wondered how carnivorous animals could have existed before Adam and Eve's great sin.

(a lot of Metacrock's other verbiage snipped...)

An interesting psychological quirk that does not prove anything. Sort of like being followed around by the Moon and the stars.

However, the God of the Bible is often pictured as a cosmic suzerain who wants to give dictation, however. Implying that the Metacrockian God is a different one. I wonder why Metacrock does not become a New Ager or something like that; he'd find more compatible views there.

Then why get bent out of shape about the Jesus-myth hypothesis? I'm surprised that Metacrock has not shown much interest in Freke and Gandy's The Jesus Mysteries, because it presents a very nonliteralist view of the "biographies" of Jesus Christ.

Then there is no need to get bent out of shape if someone discusses errors in it or suggests that Moses and Jesus Christ were essentially mythical.

Which is absurd. Traditional Catholicism and Protestantism have both had serious departures from Metacrockianity, such as fundamentalism and exclusivism. Did Martin Luther say about Copernicus that "sure, the Bible tells us that Joshua told the Sun to stop moving and not the Earth, but that was not meant literally, so I have no trouble with Copernicanism"? Did John Calvin tell us that "sure, the Bible tells us that the Earth is stationary, but the Earth only seems stationary to one's perceptions, so I have no trouble with Copernicanism"? Did the Catholic hierarchy celebrate Galileo's views on theology?

But who are the great loudmouths, the great activists?

Then a lot of what is passed off as Christianity is a fraud, right?

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

Anunnaki

I think the robot part might be debatable,but I should not have singled him out like that. It is theologians and their special schools in general that anger me,but his snide sounding comment "How does that make ya feel" about it being subsidized by tax dollars is what got my rant focused on him.


If we can subsidize seminaries,why not use tax dollars to subsidize special schools for Trekies who want to believe Star Trek is real?


Btw,My robot comment at the top was intended as a joke this time since just about everything said here seems to turn into a debate.

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]</p>

Polycarp

Quote:

Originally posted by Anunnaki: I think the robot part might be debatable,but I should not have singled him out like that. It is theologians and their special schools in general that anger me,but his snide sounding comment "How does that make ya feel" about it being subsidized by tax dollars is what got my rant focused on him. If we can subsidize seminaries,why not use tax dollars to subsidize special schools for Trekies who want to believe Star Trek is real? Btw,My robot comment at the top was intended as a joke this time since just about everything said here seems to turn into a debate.

My comment, “How does that make ya feel?”, was directed to Michael. We kid each other all the time and I was just trying to razz him a little. I don’t think he was offended by it, so I see no need to defend it further.

So then would you say the government should only subsidize atheistic education? Let’s close down all these schools: Duke, Notre Dame, Marquette, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and many others, since they all have divinity schools. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Oh wait, let’s just tell these schools that they can’t have any religious education that may promote the possibility of a deity. OK… We’ll only have schools that promote “free thinking” like that found right here at the Secular Web. Ahh, utopia is nearly at hand. We’d finally arrive at a society able to teach academics in a free manner. Right? Who's promoting academic freedom around here?

Equating the truthfulness of Star Trek with that of theism in a society in which about 90% believe one and .0000001% believe the other is downright laughable. You were trying to make a point, weren’t you? If so, what was it?

Anunnaki

Just because 90% of society ignorantly believe the "truthfulness" of theism does NOT in any way make it any more a reality than Star Trek. My point was that theres no difference between the bible and Star Trek. They both contain fictitious plot lines and should serve no other purpose in our society other than pure entertainment.
Although I`d hardly call Christianity entertaining...well OK,some of the apologetics and illogical reasoning as well as the bickering between the different sects can be quite entertaining to watch.

[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

That might be a bit too dismissive ...

<a href="http://www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/Archaeology_and_the_Bible_-_Part_2.asp" target="_blank">from This Site</a>