Rational BAC

Separaration of church and state??

I definitely believe in that. Even if it is sometimes overdone, that still does not really hurt anything. -----------When you consider the alternative.

What am I personally doing about it? Not really very much. I think things are going pretty much in the right direction==solidifying the separation of church and state. So I don't really see where I need to go out on the street to protest.

Look back on the history of the United States and you will see that the separation of church and state is as strong as it has ever been.----------------And Bush baby as our Pres is not really going to change a damned thing that way.

Starboy

Rational BAC, as a Christian you may think that everything is peachy WRT separation of church and state, however as an atheist I see room for much improvement in this area.

Starboy

Asha'man

I think you missed a little bit of history, which explains very nicely why Christianity is so big. Christianity managed to convince one important person: the emperor of Rome. Rome then conquered the rest of Europe, and Europe then colonized and conquered much of the rest of the world. The value of the message was not nearly as important as the sharpness of their swords (and later, the power of their guns).

If you want to figure out what really happened 2000 years ago, you need to spend some time in the Biblical Criticism & Archaeology forum. We certainly don’t say that nothing happened at all, that is a strawman. I think the theories and scholarship will astound you, and provide a far more probable origin for Christianity than the Bible ever suggested.

Sabine Grant

Salut Rational BAC.... It appears I fit your definition of a cherry picker though I would prefer the illustration to be a sort of fruit which is not as worm infested as cherries could be! ( sorry could not resist).

Actualy there is a lot to say about worms in the cherries we may pick as " selective christians". My criteria is to pick the healthy cherries and reject what I personaly consider unhealthy not just to myself but also the rest of mankind. For example, I consider it unhealthy to pick the biblical cherry which dictates murder of a disobedient child. Or a witch. Or any particular group of people. I look for what can promote in me a better behavior and character. I look for what can allow me to grow. I have no doubt I am a christian ( though the word is so stereotyped nowadays that being a christian implies all sorts of rather negative notions and thoughts I do not necessarly support). I consider Christ to be divine and indeed I entrust Christ with my life here and in eternity.

And I delight in that particular cherry. It is personal though. I do not feel the need to make my faith a law of absolute truth for all.

I fully agree with your observation that fundies tend to give us quite a bit of grief. If you browse thru christian theological sites where legalism prevails, the definition of Grace and challenging legalism with the words of Christ Himself do not seem to have any value. We are called then to be assimilated, " Borgerized", to comply to the authoritative dogma of one denomination or the other. In essence, the focus on Christ is neglicted.
You are not alone...cherry up then. Keep a vigilant eye on your own cherries for those wormies who justify the skepticism of our non theist friends.

Sabine Grant

Bonsoir Starboy! I think anyone who is a non christian is justified in feeling coherced by the present administration whose agenda has been to promote one particular religion..... that is christianity. I would prefer to qualify it as a parody of christianity IMO.
I find myself defending democratic principles which cannot survive without the separation of church and state when I was in fact a member of the NAR ( Nouvelle Action Royaliste) in France ! There you have it.... a monarchist christian who supports the separation of church and state.

Starboy

I salute you!

Starboy

Bumble Bee Tuna

WARNING! LONG, but worthwhile, post ahead. Proceed with caution.

BAC, you only scratched the surface of my post.
Questions:

Why does God allow his message to be corrupted? Why do God's messengers have such a tendency to lie?

Which parts of the Bible do you think are good and which are "garbage"? Is it per-book or per-chapter or per-verse?

But moving on to new issues, I think I am following your logic that makes you believe your position is "rational":
Assumption: A large number of followers implies some sort of truth.
1. Christianity has ~2 billion followers.
2. Therefore there must be some sort of foundation to Christian belief, it seems absurd that 2 billion people would follow a baseless religion.
3. Therefore, there most have been supernatural events going on 2000 years ago.
4. These events are only described in the Bible, so the Bible must have truth in it.
5. A lot of the Bible can be demonstrated to be complete garbage.
6. Therefore there is only some truth in the Bible.
7. I must now cherry pick the Bible to find that truth.
Assumption: The Holy Spirit is NOT part of the "garbage".
8. The Holy Spirit must guide my cherry picking, so I can be confident in it.

This argument can be undermined in a few ways. First, it is built on the argumentum ad populum fallacy. A large following does NOT imply truth. But, if you don't believe that, we can argue against point #1 with a standard argumentum ad absurdum: Show that your basic assumption that you base your argument on leads to absurd conclusions.

Case in point:

Islam has over 1 billion followers. Surely whatever arguments ad populum that apply for 2 billion people still apply for 1.3 billion people! That's nothing to shake a stick at. According to your premise, we must conclude that the Koran is true.
The Hindu religion also has a very very large population of followers. By your premise, the Vedas must also be true.

The Koran, Vedas, and Bible are all mutually exclusive, and cannot be true at the same time.
Your premise supports the conclusion that all three books are true.
Therefore, your premise is false.

QED.

But, if formal logic isn't your cup of tea (it's not mine, this was sort of a hack job effort of using it), perhaps you'd just like some basic reason.

People today are more skeptical than people in Biblical times. I don't think you will disagree with that.
People today still fall for new religions all the time. New Religious Movements spring up all the time. People fall for these false religions constantly. This is our modern information age. Now back in Biblical times, they had to rely on word of mouth. There didn't need to be a supernatural event! As they spread the Gospel, nobody could turn on their televisions to check if the zombies had walked the street at 3PM the morning prior. They juts had to accept what the missionaries told them. There was no way to confirm the story.
If there's no way to confirm the story...[i]It does not matter if the story has any factual basis whatsoever.[i] As a result, we don't need to assume an event happened to give Christianity a viable foundation. We can see that such a foundation was entirely unnecessary for Christianity's spread.
There's also the great point brought up about Emperor Constantine making Christianity the official religion. Certainly helped make Christianity huge.

Anyway I know I've just wrote down a long post and you don't like those, so I hope I didn't lose you. A breakdown:

1. Your whole argument is based on the idea that there must have been a supernatural event 2000 years ago.
2. There is no reason to believe that a supernatural event occured 2000 years ago.
3. Therefore, there is no reason to believe your argument.
4. Therefore, your argument is irrational, like any other Christian position.

Also as a minor issue here, your purpose with this thread seems to have been mainly to say "Hey you atheists, most Christians are cherry pickers like me, and it's the best way to be!"(another ad populum, by the way)...But you have not once in this thread EVER tried to provide evidence for that assertion. First, you have not provided any sort of statistics to show the demographics of Christian belief. We are just supposed to believe you when you say "Most people think the way I do, I swear!". We don't buy that kind of logic, sorry. Next, you would have to demonstrate how said beliefs are better than any others. You haven't done that, either. So you're sort of failing miserably at your stated purpose, though it's been a good discussion on other matters nonetheless.

And finally, some forum tips:

To read posts you are replying to as you reply, just scroll down the reply screen. The posts are displayed in reverse order and if you're replying to a recent one it will be on the same page. If it is not, you can click "review this thread" all the way at the bottom to open the thread in a new window to read anywhere. Or, if you're just replying to one persons post, and definitely if you are going to do a point-by-point response, simply use the "quote" button below that person's post.
When replying, look to the top left of the text box and click on "help" next to vB Code to learn how to use the quote tags properly, of you ever use them. Use the "Preview Reply" button to make sure you got it right.

To avoid double/triple posts, only click the submit reply button once!. It may seem like it did nothing the first time, but it did. Clicking twice equals a double post. If you really think the page messed up and isn't working and needs to be reclicked, highlight your post, copy it, reopen the thread to see if it did post your reply. If it didn't, then try again.

If you do double post, use the "edit" button. Only mods can "delete" posts, but you can at least edit out all text.

If you made it through all that, you deserve a cookie.

-B

Rational BAC

That was a long one. --------

Gonna eat my cookie and go to bed.

Tomorrow is another day, (or so Miss Scarlett said)

Jinto

The possibility of an entity that is 1000 times smarter than humans and has 10 senses? I have the blueprints for it on my pc, for hawking's sake. Unfortunately, it relies on some technology we haven't developed yet, so don't expect to be seeing it for about 40 years.

But, assuming some other extraterrestrial intelligence has already built such an entity (for which we have no evidence), what is your evidence for it having visited Earth, or that it would care about Earth if it had?

I've said it to many people over the years: possibility != reality.

As for the pure energy: no, that's simply not possible. Take a good look at maxwell's field equations.

lpetrich

Rational BAC:
I will admit I have a certain predisposition to Christianity. ...

Good to acknowledge one's limitations.

... deep down inside of me I thought there was something more to life than temporal life.

Not sure what that means.

I did decide at one point in my life, that it was quite logical to assume that there is a Supreme Being of some sort.

It seems more likely that there would be a whole community of such entities.

Otherwise you are stuck with the assumption that Man is the highest form of intelligent life in the universe. And that I find highly unlikely.

I'm sure that there are more capable species living on some planets elsewhere in the Universe, but we do seem to be the monarchs of our local hill.

Imagine an entity with way more than our very limited 5 senses. Is that possible? Of course. (Hell dogs and cats and birds and dolphins have more finely tuned senses than we do----and that just on Earth)

I decided to check that out, and here is what I found out:

* Sight:

Dogs and cats see only two colors: red/green and blue, which is much like the most common form of human color blindness. Also, their visual acuity is 6 - 10 times worse than ours. However, their night vision is better.

Birds: more advanced color vision -- three or four kinds of cones coupled with pigmented oil droplets makes for greater spectral resolution. Also, visual acuity is sometimes better than ours.

Dolphins: ?

* Hearing:

Dogs and cats: very good, with a higher frequency range than ours.

Birds: very good

Dolphins: very good; they are very good at interpreting echoes of their clicks.

* Smell:

Dogs and cats: much better than ours; by mammalian standards, our sense of smell is rather atrophied.

Birds: only a few species seem to have a good sense of smell.

Dolphins: they use their sense of taste instead; not sure how good it is.