Seeker196

Faith: (booty)So you believe things because it makes you feel
good, because you really want them to be true.

Reason (infidels):I believe things because of the weight of evidence, whether they seem to actually be true or not, not how I personally feel about them. It seems to work better than faith.

How can we ever have a meaningful discussion?

Stephen Maturin

I, for one, am not frightened by that which does not exist. Love, as I suspect you envision it, is no more real than the greedy, brutal, selfish, petty diety described in the Bible.

Booty

I once was lost. I prefer the alternative.

Genesis 3:3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'

Genesis3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.


Guests are given the house rules and instructed as to the consequences for violating same. Of their own free will they choose to violate the house rules with full knowledge of the consequences.

The owner of the house is thus "stupid, cruel, and arbitrary, therefore unworthy of my respect."

Interesting

ju'iblex

actually eve herself was never told not to eat the fruit, so those quotes fall down, as does your point.

bonduca

What has this to do with rape victims? Famine victims? Innocent children, abused? Because of some story from the Old Testament? Has a child dying of famine ever even heard of Adam and Eve?

Explain why your god allows this.

Explain why such a creature is even worthy of my spit.

[ April 20, 2002: Message edited by: bonduca ]</p>

Eudaimonist

And this alleged God imposes the same punishments on the children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, etc of those "guests", and is still supposed to be worthy of our respect.

Interesting.

Not Prince Hamlet

Booty,

Asking directions at a Shell station?

Ah ha! Booty has finally made a point. I mean, it's not a particularly good point, I admit, but at least it's a point of sorts.

But you've made an error. Adam and Eve didn't have full knowledge of the consequences. According to the Bible, all God said was that they'd die if they ate the fruit. He didn't say anything about booting them from Eden, or that their children and the children of their children would all die.


Yeah, and the Nazis (the owners of the house of Nazi Germany) only wanted the Jews to just go and die, thus "stupid, cruel, and arbitrary, therefore unworthy of my respect."

That's interesting, too, isn't it?

But more to the point, who says your god actually exists, and is the master of the house at all?

Prove to me that your god Jehova exists, and that my god, George the Giant Turnip does not.

Jeff

bonduca

Booty:

Prove that your god exists.

Prove that your god is NOT a callous, sadistic asshole who is pissed at Adam and Eve, and taking it out on the rest of us.

Explain why he allows women to be raped, children to be beaten and starved, innocent people to die of horrible diseases, mothers and infants to perish in famine.

And would you explain what this has to do with "love?"

[ April 20, 2002: Message edited by: bonduca ]</p>

Booty

Excellent question. Once again though, I prefaced the thread with this very point.

But you see you do act in faith every day of your life. You have faith that the building owner has properly serviced his lift, that the hack has working brakes and so on.

Just as I apply reason every day of my life, this is not the exclusive domain of infidels.
Perhaps the only way to have meaningful discussion would be to begin excercising mutual respect. I am no board virgin, I arrive with my scars. As I said previously some of the flames were rather humourous and others were pathetic. I can continue fielding the flames or we might try commencing discussion.

Seeker196

Yes, you've got it all except the really unfair part where the sin of these two people (who never existed) is somehow passed on to their offspring...that's like executing a murderers son because of his father...

So
1) It was a monstrously unfair punishment
2) The events and characters described are all fictional.
3) It showed God being a petty dictator and bully
4) The 'orginal sin' as laid out was also pretty unfair, imagine creating the first humans, totally new and innocent, putting them in front of a tree of tasty fruit and saying don't eat it cause I'm King Shit. Not very democratic is he. Then the serpent comes along and says eat it and you can be gods. Omniscient god didn't say boo during the serpents conversation with eve in our charming little fable. So what was gods motivation for cursing the human race?? He didn't want any equals to deal with!
5) Why the fork is a 12 century BCE myth still being discussed as if it were true??!! For the answer, see my last post.