A Christian becomes a nonbeliever

[CG Didymus]

Gee whiz, didn't God know there was going to be such screwups? That doesn't suggest to me that this "one true God" is very competent. If that's the case can we even trust what baha'u'llah claims came from God? All these problems you gloss over suggest serious problems with this God, and the messengers. And Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons, etc. don't agree with you, so why can't God fix his mistakes and set all these followers straight? It's a catastrophe

Really, TB quotes a verse from the gospel of John. As if that means every single religion wanted to say more but just couldn't because the people couldn't bear it yet? What we do know, by reading the basic beliefs of the different religions, is that they believed and taught very different things. Almost as if they came from different sources, rather than one source, the God of the Baha'is.

And also, I'm sure every new religion thought they fixed the problems. But by leaving nine men in control of the Baha'i Faith, no doubt, there will be problems. And by having to kick out all of the relatives, there already has been major problems. That one thing alone eliminated all the possible candidates to be Guardian of the Faith after their first and only Guardian died.

Not very helpful, unless God wanted followers more confused.

So, God has to keep his dazzlingness in a safe place so as not to fry his creation? Where is that place? Does that mean he's not everywhere? Or only a little glimmer of himself is in places like the Earth where too much God would be harmful? But then how are the manifestations perfectly reflecting God? Wouldn't his reflection be too much for us mere mortals? Or... in the future, the next prophet will say, "You idiots. You took all that stuff literally. Let me give you the straight scoop..."

 

[Trailblazer]

Really, TB quotes a verse from the gospel of John. As if that means every single religion wanted to say more but just couldn't because the people couldn't bear it yet?

That was just an example from one religion, but it is true that what was revealed was according to what the people could bear at the time of the revelation. Why would God reveal what the people could not bear? It would not be understood so it would fall on deaf ears.

What we do know, by reading the basic beliefs of the different religions, is that they believed and taught very different things. Almost as if they came from different sources, rather than one source, the God of the Baha'is.

The Baha'is don't have a God, there is just one God and many different religions. Of course religions are different, because what is revealed is according to the needs of humans at the time of the revelation. What would a new Messenger come just to repeat exactly what the previous Messengers said? That would make no sense.

But the religions are also similar in many ways since the spiritual teachings do not change over time since they are eternal.

And also, I'm sure every new religion thought they fixed the problems. But by leaving nine men in control of the Baha'i Faith, no doubt, there will be problems. And by having to kick out all of the relatives, there already has been major problems. That one thing alone eliminated all the possible candidates to be Guardian of the Faith after their first and only Guardian died.

There don't have to be problems with the nine men in charge and kicking out the Covenant-breakers was a way to prevent major problems. I guess you don't know the history very well. There were no candidates for Guardian within the relatives who were Covenant-breakers. @Truthseeker would know more about that than me since he is a history buff. You are stuck with me for now because I don't know where he went.

So, God has to keep his dazzlingness in a safe place so as not to fry his creation? Where is that place? Does that mean he's not everywhere? Or only a little glimmer of himself is in places like the Earth where too much God would be harmful? But then how are the manifestations perfectly reflecting God? Wouldn't his reflection be too much for us mere mortals? Or... in the future, the next prophet will say, "You idiots. You took all that stuff literally. Let me give you the straight scoop..."

Thanks, I just realized something from what you said, I have been interpreting this passage incorrectly. The Eternal Essence that is manifesting itself is not God showing up on earth, it is the Manifestation of God showing up on earth.

“That the Manifestations of Divine justice, the Day Springs of heavenly grace, have when they appeared amongst men always been destitute of all earthly dominion and shorn of the means of worldly ascendancy, should be attributed to this same principle of separation and distinction which animateth the Divine Purpose. Were the Eternal Essence to manifest all that is latent within Him, were He to shine in the plentitude of His glory, none would be found to question His power or repudiate His truth. Nay, all created things would be so dazzled and thunderstruck by the evidences of His light as to be reduced to utter nothingness. How, then, can the godly be differentiated under such circumstances from the froward?”​

Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 71-72​

God could have manifested all that is latent within Him in Bahaullah, revealing all His power and glory, but if God had done so it would have been obvious to everyone who He was,. However, the Divine Purpose is for Baha'u'llah to look just like an ordinary man so the godly can be differentiated from the ungodly. The godly are able to recognize Him from His character and deeds, just as the disciples of Jesus recognized Jesus, who looked just like an ordinary man.

So if Baha'u'llah had shone in the plentitude of His glory, all created things would have been so dazzled and thunderstruck by the evidences of His light as to be reduced to utter nothingness.

 

[Truthseeker]

And also, I'm sure every new religion thought they fixed the problems. But by leaving nine men in control of the Baha'i Faith, no doubt, there will be problems. And by having to kick out all of the relatives, there already has been major problems. That one thing alone eliminated all the possible candidates to be Guardian of the Faith after their first and only Guardian died.

We don't consider the nine men on the Universal House of Justice to be a problem. They are elected on the basis of, and I quote:

Hence it is incumbent upon the chosen delegates to consider without the least trace of passion and prejudice, and irrespective of any material consideration, the names of only those who can best combine the necessary qualities of unquestioned loyalty, of selfless devotion, of a well-trained mind, of recognized ability and mature experience.
Shoghi Effendi, "Bahá’í Administration"

There is no electioneering. This prevents people with ambitions of power to campaign for the job. If there happens to be someone with ambitions of power that slips through, the other eight are there to check him. Furthermore, the Universal House is not in control of the Baha'i Faith, they provide guidelines for the NSA's but they don't control the NSA's. In turn, the NSA's set guidelines for their LSA's but they don't control the LSA's.

I think @Trailblazer on the other issue of family covenant-breakers pretty well. I'll just add that analogous with royal families there can be people with ambitions of power and big egos that think that they can do better than Shoghi Effendi.

 

[Trailblazer]

@CG Didymus

I thought you might like this thread from another forum since you are always asking how we can know if the Baha'i Faith is true.
All Baha'is once walked this same path.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bahai/comments/13tzp71

 

[setarcos]

Hopefully, you have a good reason for that opinion.

I'm sorry I can't keep up here with faster responses, unfortunately the minutiae and necessities of day to day living/survival keeps me quite busy. Each one of our responses could probably carry over into hours of back and forth so I'll just have to respond to what I can when I can. Respond only to what you feel requires a response if you wish in consideration of time and worthwhile effort expended.

setarcos said:
"If the question of purpose to the universe arises, you seem to be saying, "So what, nothing meaningful can be gleaned from knowing its purpose if it has one so why pursue its answer?" I don't think that is the most prudent attitude to have."

In answer to the above...I'm not in the habit of spouting opinion without reason. Are you?
I said "...you seem to be saying..." not "You are thinking that..." It was a phrase meant to incite further clarification from you. A question not an affirmative opinion.
Why did I lean that way? Because of what you said in response to me asking if it would behoove us to know about a purposeful universe.
You responded with " Would it behoove the microorganisms living in us to know what our purpose is?" followed by " Those critters don't need to know that and wouldn't care if they could and did."
Since the comparison arose from your own mind its not a stretch to presume your using the microorganisms to represent our own condition. So we may presume a comparison of intelligence and curiosity about their environment.
I think your making a few mistakes here however.
First, your conclusions are based upon observational knowledge external to the microorganisms awareness. Your presuming to already know our purpose and relationship between themselves and ourselves (us and the universe) and have made your conclusions based upon what you already know. The microorganisms haven't that luxury unless they somehow gain this knowledge. Which would mean they cared to.
Second, your assuming that the organisms purpose isn't to pursue that relationship or that given an option whatever purpose they chose for themselves wouldn't effect that relationship and consequently themselves for the better or worse. None of which they could determine without further pursuit of knowledge.
Third, your assuming that they wouldn't care whether their future was better or worse than their current state.

My guess is that you have been convinced by others that what I call sterile lines of pursuit are fruitful.

Frankly I'm surprised at the air of superiority you present here. In my opinion anyone who is convinced they know better is often shown how negligible that better is. Myself included.
I mean, why should I consider your opinion superior to anyone else's? Simply because you've spent a considerable amount of time on a particular line of pursuit without finding the fruit you sought does not mean that you've successfully concluded that line of pursuit with a true opinion. Especially if its just an opinion. That would put you in the same boat as theists wouldn't it. Of course you may have solidified your opinion with solid evidence but then again not to share that evidence beyond "I've been there and I know better...yada yada yada..." as a critique of another's line of pursuit puts you back in that same boat until proven otherwise. If you've not got the time or energy to share your evidence/experiences then why speak of them? Why engage?
Time spent accumulating knowledge does not guarantee understanding nor does age guarantee wisdom.
To think that because you've found no fruit you've concluded there is no fruit for others to find is ridiculous.
I don't think those lines of pursuit you thought were sterile were actually fruitless. The fruit they produced for you was the experience you gained in the pursuit. What you do with that fruit will be a testament to the wisdom you've gained.

If I've been convinced I wouldn't need faith now would I ? Then again, I can still have faith because I haven't been convinced my faith is untenable as of the present time.

We don't all have the same purpose unless we want to be overly-broad and say that it's the pursuit of happiness as we understand that

And why should we be overly narrow in our considerations here when we are discussing things that are universal in nature?
Having individual purpose does not predispose those individuals to not having a collective purpose. There is a relationship there. Should we say the species has no purpose because each of its members has its own individual purposes. Shouldn't we consider there to exist at once immediate purpose and immutable purpose in kind as manifested by a collective drive to achieve a mutually beneficial purpose?

whatever it is, it's ours, it's not an alleged creator's purpose for creating us, even were that to enjoy seeing us pursue pleasure.

Are you saying we create our own purpose? As in we have the will to choose what purpose we wish to pursue for ourselves?
Since you went there, why do you think that if a creator created a purpose for us it wouldn't have been to be able to choose between good and bad pursuits to fulfill a purpose we wish to fulfill even if in opposition to the purpose God created man for?
I think that while man pursues purposes God determines purpose.

Disturbed? No. Many diseases have no known etiology, although they presumably all have causes and mechanisms. It's just another example of acceptance of the limits of knowledge.

That's not what I asked. No known cause is quite different from no cause. I would think that you cannot help but presume a cause for a disease since a disease with no cause would be quite disturbing wouldn't it? And wouldn't a good Doctor seek to diminish the disturbing nature of that disease by finding its cause?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

why should I consider your opinion superior to anyone else's?

That's up to you. I'm not asking you to do that.

I can still have faith because I haven't been convinced my faith is untenable as of the present time.

There are no requirements for belief by faith beyond the will to believe.

Shouldn't we consider there to exist at once immediate purpose and immutable purpose in kind as manifested by a collective drive to achieve a mutually beneficial purpose?

Yes, but not all human beings are included in that collective, although most animals are. I don't care about the purpose many if not most people have. I'm American, and I have seen firsthand that many Americans have no interest in me or you or anybody but themselves. What's MAGA's purpose? Owning libs?

I'm really only interested in the well-being of mutually tolerant people. Their purpose is mine, and I support them where I can. The rest I merely hope to avoid. I don't care what their purpose is for themselves.

Are you saying we create our own purpose? As in we have the will to choose what purpose we wish to pursue for ourselves?

I'm saying that we discover what motivates us.

why do you think that if a creator created a purpose for us it wouldn't have been to be able to choose between good and bad pursuits to fulfill a purpose we wish to fulfill even if in opposition to the purpose God created man for?

I don't know what that means, but once again, why should that matter to us? What if the creator's purpose for us was to go to war. Why would we do that if it weren't our purpose already?

I would think that you cannot help but presume a cause for a disease since a disease with no cause would be quite disturbing wouldn't it?

I don't know why you're discussing this.

 

[setarcos]

The god hypothesis adds nothing to understanding, so why hold one? I realize that that belief is comforting to many, but I'm not one of them.

I asked the following,
setarcos said:
"Question is why pick one version over the other If both are equally adept at explaining existence? I mean the apparent design in nature is more easily and simply explained by a creative intelligence than the current theories we have."
You responded with the above.

I'd say, why produce hypothesis about anything? In hopes of gaining further understanding of reality perhaps?
Before you go off on no "evidence" and what not, lets just agree to say for now that some people think there is evidence which lends itself to debate.
To clarify, the God hypothesis isn't meant to pave the way towards a proof of an existent God. Its meant to be a competitive model within which evidences in nature fit. Just like every other hypothesis made about reality.
That title is actually somewhat misleading. The God Hypothesis is actually a proposition of intelligent design and argues for purposeful design in nature. What that intelligence actually is is does not state. The hypothesis isn't even religious in nature by its proposition.
Now if your a die hard pragmatist where whatever hypothesis proposed must somehow produce immediately useful information about reality that mankind can manipulate to its benefit your not gonna care much about it. But then again why care about theories concerning the Big Bang, the beginnings of life, or evolutionary theory? Why study pure mathematics? Why hypothesize about anything whose practical return is not immediately apparent?
None of those theories can offer proof of true understanding so why hold them? Should it be simply because evidence points us towards a theory of reality we cannot prove is true?
How about the quantum mechanical theory of which Feynman famously quipped " I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." Are we pursuing the theory simply because we have figured out a way to run our TV's using its effects even though we don't understand the why of it?
Why hypothesize about aesthetics, morality, or justice? None of those add to our understanding of nature beyond speculation.
So what do you mean exactly by understanding and how did you conclude that the God Hypothesis can't ever add to our understanding?

I realize that that belief is comforting to many, but I'm not one of them.

What does comfort have to do with reality? Either it is or it isn't a part of reality. Your mental comfort or lack thereof is a matter of process not proof. So you don't find comfort in religion. And? Your comfort says absolutely nothing about the hypothesis being true or false.
I'm willing to bet - if your not some mindless automaton - that whatever you do find comfort in to keep you from going insane or completely incapacitated can be reduced at its core to simple faith. What you put that faith in is your decision but its still faith.

This is an example of the theist trying to restrict thought that contradicts his beliefs

And this is a typical example of an atheist tying to somehow diminish what follows that a theist has or had to say.
"This is a typical theist trick, a ploy, a theist attempt to..." etc.
Are those phrases supposed to add something to understanding the discussion? Like what? That theists are deceivious fools who care nothing for truth and only want to win debates? Unlike atheists of course.
What I said...

You must indeed be most intelligent and wise to be able to think on those cosmic scales.

That was in response to this....
It Aint Necessarily So said:
I'm satisfied with my ability to make that judgment.
...which was in response to judging a particular act as gratuitous or not.

Now, did I mean to restrict your thought here? Why would I need to restrict thought that by its very nature is already restricted?
I would ask -in justification of what I said - what makes your judgement superior to anyone else's questioning its being correct, especially when that judgment can only be based upon appearances and a limited awareness of all the factors which may be involved in the matter when we expand the case to universal considerations of reality?

It often manifests as the skeptic being unqualified to contradict the believer

How does claiming the skeptic to be wrong translate into claiming the skeptic to be unqualified to be right?

regarding the intelligence and moral fiber of his god.

By what criteria are you judging the intelligence and moral fiber of the Christian God? Define divine intelligence and divine morality then perhaps we can get on te same page for discussion.

In this case, you wish to disqualify my calling suffering gratuitous because I don't know everything.

I wish to disqualify? Nope, not how I do things. Your being way too presumptuous in this case.
That being said...the point is that we don't know everything! The nature of being human limits our capacities.
I said...
"Presuming gratuitousness and actually being gratuitous are two quite different things."
Everything to us is appearance. Our limited capacities can only present to us the appearance of truth not the truth itself.
And when we use the limitations of appearance as a categorically universal proof we make mistakes.
I think it is a mistake to reject the Christian God solely based upon our finite capacities to dictate appearances as proof.
I said...
"Especially when it comes to the complexities of understanding reality with the limited tools accessible to us."
The more complex the emotional factors involved, the higher the temptation is to act solely on appearances but the lower the probability of having an accurate opinion is such matters.

You said "...gratuitous suffering if this god existed as evidence that either it doesn't exist or isn't really a friend, and so reject the claims of those who say it exists and is good."
Fair enough. However, as I've said, it is apparent that humans can only act solely on appearances. But if we are to get to the truth of a matter we must somehow go beyond mere appearances. Since we cannot go beyond appearance even with our fancy instruments which supplement the limitations of our senses we can only limit the factors which must be considered in aligning what is apparent to us with what is actually the truth. What appears to be a better path with what is the best path for instance.

Many if not most people reject explanations of complexities in favor of acting solely upon the emotional interactions they have with appearances.
They can't or refuse to get past mere appearances to lessen the gap between appearances and the truth.
I'm not saying that appearances don't ever reflect the truth but rather that mere appearances are often mistaken for the truth.
What appears to be true on a local scale and what is true of reality are often two quite different things.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Now if your a die hard pragmatist where whatever hypothesis proposed must somehow produce immediately useful information about reality that mankind can manipulate to its benefit your not gonna care much about it.

OK. That describes me. I don't consider an idea knowledge until it has been demonstrated to be correct. A hypothesis is an imagined idea about what may possibly be the case in reality. Assuming that it is falsifiable, the next step is to consult reality for confirmation or discrediting the hypothesis.

why care about theories concerning the Big Bang, the beginnings of life, or evolutionary theory?

Those are not hypotheses. God is a hypothesis. The multiverse is a hypothesis. The universe and the life in it are facts.

Why hypothesize about anything whose practical return is not immediately apparent?

Correct ideas are distilled from the set of possibly correct ideas empirically. Hypothesizing is the creative part of science, but without empirical support, a hypothesis should not be considered correct. Knowledge comes from experience, not imagination alone.

Why hypothesize about aesthetics, morality, or justice? None of those add to our understanding of nature beyond speculation.

They don't? I disagree. They're integral aspects of the human experience, and intimately connected to that which matters most in evolved minds. Maybe you misunderstand my relationship with empiricism and what I call knowledge. These are tools for modulating experience, for maximizing the euphorias (feeling loved, feeling safe, feeling comfortable, experiencing beauty, the spiritual experience, self-respect) while minimizing the dysphorias (fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, humiliation, alienation, despair). We can call this the affective manifold, distinct from the cognitive manifold - the two aspects of mind that get to work evaluating any phenomenon that grabs our attention (evidence), one to tell us the implications of the evidence, and the other to tell us how we feel about it.

Think of the affective manifold as the pigments on the palette and the cognitive manifold (knowledge, reason) as the brush that selects among them and arranges them. It's the pigments that give life meaning, not reason. What happens when one loses the ability to feel pleasure, as with the anhedonia of major depression. If reasoning is all that remains - if one's colors have run dry - then that last bit of reasoning is often used to end life (suicide).

So what do you mean exactly by understanding and how did you conclude that the God Hypothesis can't ever add to our understanding?

Understanding means having useful knowledge - knowledge which allows one to more accurately predict outcomes and thus to control the affective manifold (the evolving state of the euphoric and dysphoric pigments).

What does comfort have to do with reality?

It's a potent motivator of behavior.

So you don't find comfort in religion. And?

I don't have one for that reason.

Your comfort says absolutely nothing about the hypothesis being true or false.

It speaks to its value to me. Since religions and god beliefs do nothing for me - meet no unmet needs - they have no value to me. In fact, I count myself fortunate to NOT take comfort there, just as I consider myself fortunate to not benefit from corrective lenses. If I needed glasses to read, I would wear them, but I prefer to not need them.

I'm willing to bet - if your not some mindless automaton - that whatever you do find comfort in to keep you from going insane or completely incapacitated can be reduced at its core to simple faith. What you put that faith in is your decision but its still faith.

I don't call it faith when an idea graduates to knowledge. The decisions I make every day are based in prior experience, which has proved to be a reliable means for navigating life comfortably.

And this is a typical example of an atheist tying to somehow diminish what follows that a theist has or had to say.

OK. Yes, I am often rebutting what a theist has to say. But I'll do it with a counterargument, not an attempt to silence or intimidate him. The theist toolbox incudes tools intended to do just that. The freethinker is chastised for freethinking. What else would be your purpose in informing me that, "You must indeed be most intelligent and wise to be able to think on those cosmic scales." This is a form of "If you don't know everything, you don't know anything." We see the puny-mind argument when skeptics are discussing the ethics or intelligence of the deity, as in, "Who do you think you are to second guess God?"

did I mean to restrict your thought here?

Restrict? I thought that you wanted to diminish my position, which is fine. That's what debate is about, but only if it is done using dialectic rather than using other persuasive measures.

How does claiming the skeptic to be wrong translate into claiming the skeptic to be unqualified to be right?

One morphs into the other. The belief that the skeptic is wrong is expressed not with rebuttal, but with persuasive measures as I just called them. I have a large collection of the efforts of believers to disqualify the opinions of skeptics about scripture. Here's a piece of it:

[41] You get your biblical passages from Atheist web sites.
[42] A copy/paste from Biblehub does not make one a biblical expert.
[43] Don't bother quoting Scripture to me, atheist. You don't even know what you're doing.
[44] Your lack of belief in God coupled with your lack of experience with God means you are not qualified to comment on God.
[45] He believes he is qualified on the basis that he has been inside a church and picked up a bible.
[46] The word of God can not be understood no matter how many times it is read without the help of the Holy Spirit.
[47] Out of context arguments are presented by narrow minds that refuse to take in the bigger perspectives and the greater all encompassing truths.
[48] You're cherry picking scripture.
[49] You can't just read the Bible to understand it, you need to study the scriptures.
[50] You don't know what Jesus was talking about. Typical atheist.
[51] If you are going to quote Scripture for support for your claims then you need to tell me what the context is.
[52] Your ignorance of the Bible, its laws and customs and what applies to Christians today is embarrassing. You should be red faced for making this comment in public.
[53] You have no biblical expertise, your word on the Bible is strictly a layman's opinion.
[54] You want to convince me you have knowledge of the Bible. 1) Provide 5 examples of slave liberation in the Old Testament. 2) King Saul was merciful to the merciless and subsequently merciless to the merciful. Explain.
[55] You are a heretic with little if any understanding of Scripture. If you did study the Bible it was in a Laurel and Hardy College in Tijuana
[56] Like I say there are no errors in the bible only skeptics that can't read and comprehend.

By what criteria are you judging the intelligence and moral fiber of the Christian God?

By my standards - an idea that upsets many of the faithful, who are trained to read that as arrogance and rebellion, as an immoral attempt at a power grab by a hedonistic upstart trying to usurp God's role. If that's your opinion, you don't need to express it. It wouldn't have any effect on me.

That being said...the point is that we don't know everything! The nature of being human limits our capacities.

Whenever I read that, I see it as an attempt to stifle freethinking. It translates to you don't know enough to have an opinion. It's a variation of, "If you don't know everything, you know nothing," which is seldom stated explicitly, but that's intended message.

if we are to get to the truth of a matter we must somehow go beyond mere appearances.

They're the same thing, if by appearance we mean evidence appearing before the senses. This is another attempt to redirect thought from empiricism to something else, to special ways of knowing that are said to transcend reason and evidence. It's the impetus for the use of words like "myopic," "scientism," and "materialist" to describe those who don't drink from the faith cup. I'll stick with interpreting appearance.

What appears to be true on a local scale and what is true of reality are often two quite different things.

We live at a local scale. Reality is only interesting to the extent that it impacts experience.

Think of Plato's cave. Reality is symbolized by everything outside the cave, and experience is limited to seeing shadows on the cave wall. Things outside the cave are irrelevant if they can't cast shadows or modify the shadows of things that do. The objects that don't affect the shadows in the cave are the unfalsifiable objects (the noumena unrepresented by corresponding conscious phenomena), which can be ignored for their lack of impact on experience (Popper's Razor).

 

[setarcos]

My apologies, I'm still trying to catch up here.

You probably should reserve your scriptures for those who consider them authoritative. I don't want to be rude to you, but how do I say nicely that what is sacred to you is meaningless to me?

I'm not one of those Christians who views scripture as some sort of talisman that once spoken will ward off all evil and ignorance.
Anything considered authoritative in scripture would obviously only be authoritative to those who believe in its authority.
However, there is more to scripture than mere religious significance. It also offers time tested wisdom, verified historical value and useful cultural advice apart from its revelatory declarations.
That being said you yourself mentioned teachings from the scriptures, like the below statement, so there is where we went.

That's not a rebuttal. That scripture doesn't falsify my claim about Christian scripture containing atheophobic hate speech.

setarcos said:
Atheophobia - vocabulary word of the day. That just goes to show that religious people are normal human beings just like atheists when it comes to being subject to judging others. However, you use the term as if its self evidently wrong and you seem to be saying that the phobia equates the atheist with the idea. There's nothing inherently wrong with hating an idea that seems dangerous or immoral. And its a natural progression from hating an idea to having an effect on the person who holds that idea. What Christians should do as scripture teaches and the saying goes....hate the sin, love the sinner. Alas that is often an unrealistic endeavor for too many.
Is sadism wrong? Is speaking against sadists hate speech? Perhaps justified hate speech? How about pedophiles? Is pedophobia wrong? The question is...is the phobia justified or irrational.

Just to be clear, it goes without saying that Christian scripture is definitely against some behaviors and those that commit those behaviors. It also goes without saying that anything scripture is against will be labeled by the so called "woke" generations of this age as "hate speech", phobic -fill in the blank-, or primitive ideations from an intellectually inferior and superstitious culture.

Today you have the luxury of touting "I'm an atheist!" as if by its mere utterance it establishes some intellectually superior point of view over any opposition to the viewpoint. Imperious and prideful exhortations with little thought of consequence beyond a passing amusement except when someone challenges the idea.

In the days of which scripture speaks such thoughts could have serious consequences for the survival of a people. Cultural practices were important. What you thought about God/gods was important for ones very survival as that people. Religion was a serious and necessary cohesive aspect of cultural life. It was a force multiplier.

Today one cannot oppose the fragmentation of sexual identification, the disintegration of the traditional family, the abuses of gender equality, the perversion of sexual fetishes, reverse racial discriminations, societies complacency with immorality,
etc., etc., without someone somewhere labeling it hate speech or phobia whose only result is that
while our technology increases and knowledge expands the people get worse and society is fragmenting. Never before in history has so few been capable of destroying so much in so short a time while respect for our fellow human beings and life stubbornly refuses to advance despite our claiming to be more enlightened to reality. I should fear less for the future than those so called "primitives" that came before me. But I wonder that I don't paradoxically fear more for the future while supposedly have more immediate security than the past.

It Aint Necessarily So said:
"The Christian Bible teaches that unbelievers offend its god and are immoral. I consider that teaching immoral, and atheistic humanists to be mostly good people. You probably feel the opposite."

This is what I said in response...expanded from what you quoted:
Note what I underlined.
"I think your wrong. Jesus said "...forgive them for they know not what they do." Those that know what they do but continue anyway are the offenders against God.
I'd say by definition it is immoral to offend God. Believers can offend God just as easily as unbelievers and presumably punished more harshly.
Hebrews 12:6
"do not take lightly the discipline of the Lord, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you. 6For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastises every son He receives.” 7Endure suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?…”"

The point of my rebuttal was to show that the bible doesn't just label unbelievers as immoral people who should be punished. That is too simplistic and ignorant of scripture. Immorality as I've said in this context is knowingly opposing Gods will whos will is presumably the best path to take.

Not all unbelievers are educated in what scripture says. You can't oppose what you do not know about. Its not immoral to not know what Christianity is about.
Now, if your saying here that "unbelievers" are those who have been educated and are still opposed to Gods will then punishment is imminent and is often self administered for not listening to wisdom. And again, its not just those kinds of unbelievers who are subject to punishment as scripture tells us.

 

[F1fan]

I'm not one of those Christians who views scripture as some sort of talisman that once spoken will ward off all evil and ignorance.

Good, as it is obvious that doesn't happen.

Anything considered authoritative in scripture would obviously only be authoritative to those who believe in its authority.

This is a similar issue in law regarding standing to sue, and in religious debate the question is:what evidence is there of any sort of actual authority behind the Bible, or any religious text valued by any given religious verson? That argument is demonstrating a specific God exists, and not just any god, but a specific God that backs specific texts and specific interpretations. In my many decades of debate no believer can come close to meeting that burden.

So the secondary question is: why should we be impressed that believers believe in what they do?

However, there is more to scripture than mere religious significance. It also offers time tested wisdom, verified historical value and useful cultural advice apart from its revelatory declarations.

And this opens the door to my question above, what wisdom does the Bible offer that can't be found anywhere else? We observe Christians acting in ways that seem to reject what jesus said on the sermon on the mount, so we critical thinkers wonder what purpose the Bible serves these believers if they ignore the lessons. Could it be the Bible, and other religions, offer wisdom in a sort of remedial set of lessons? I ask that because critical thinkers get along quite well without relying on religion and whatever wisdom it offers, and there's a reason why theists think they need the oversight.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

there is more to scripture than mere religious significance. It also offers time tested wisdom, verified historical value and useful cultural advice apart from its revelatory declarations.

I don't see wisdom there or anything else of value in scripture.

you use the term [atheop[hobia] as if its self evidently wrong

Biblical scripture on unbelievers is hate speech. It's bigotry. It's irrational and destructive.

Is sadism wrong?

You bring this up while arguing that atheophobia is not immoral.

Immorality as I've said in this context is knowingly opposing Gods will whos will is presumably the best path to take.

I consider that comment immoral.

 

[setarcos]

Those are not hypotheses.

That's why I called them theories. But anyways that's not relevant to my point. Every one of those theories were constructed from hypothesis with no immediately apparent beneficial return.

Correct ideas are distilled from the set of possibly correct ideas empirically. Hypothesizing is the creative part of science, but without empirical support, a hypothesis should not be considered correct. Knowledge comes from experience, not imagination alone.

I asked...setarcos said:
"Why hypothesize about anything whose practical return is not immediately apparent?"
I asked why? You gave me what/how.

They're integral aspects of the human experience, and intimately connected to that which matters most in evolved minds.

Precisely. And so is religious experience. That's why we pursue things like the God Hypothesis.

We can call this the affective manifold, distinct from the cognitive manifold - the two aspects of mind that get to work evaluating any phenomenon that grabs our attention (evidence), one to tell us the implications of the evidence, and the other to tell us how we feel about it.

I'm getting what you mean. I can agree with this model. From my viewpoint in this model religion is in the affective manifold. The God Hypothesis would be in the cognitive manifold. The overlap between the two is the human analysis of reality.

Understanding means having useful knowledge

You mean of course...knowing how to categorize and/or use the knowledge.

knowledge which allows one to more accurately predict outcomes and thus to control the affective manifold (the evolving state of the euphoric and dysphoric pigments).

Can one really control the affective manifold? I mean the evolving state of such "pigments" is initiated by factors beyond our control, the effects of which can only be tempered by the will which often ends in a failure to produce the desired result.
As for knowledge allowing for a more accurate prediction, we are still at the mercy of the process. We can neither know that we have enough accurate knowledge to make an accurate prediction nor can we know that a realized prediction was a result of our understanding of that knowledge or some other coincidental factor. Instead we act on faith in the process.

setarcos said:
So you don't find comfort in religion. And?

I don't have one for that reason.

I think you misunderstand religion. At least the Christian religion.
Christianity isn't supposed to provide you immunity from discomfort. Christ told us he didn't come to bring peace but strife.
Any religion that purports to alleviate mental or physical anguish in this world is a realistic failure.
Christianity isn't supposed to make you comfortable. Its supposed to stimulate you to action. To move, to take a journey towards truth and Its a hard journey. What comfort you do find in Christianity comes from hope and faith in the future.
One shouldn't forgo hardship simply because it may make your current comfort uncomfortable. There should be an analysis of the cost to benefit ratios involved.
I'm guessing you've either, as I've said, misunderstood the purpose of Christianity or have done that analysis and concluded the ratio to be too steep or invalid. Whatever path you've chosen it is yours. I think is wrong but it is yours.

Since religions and god beliefs do nothing for me - meet no unmet needs - they have no value to me.

This is an assumption. Unless you believe you are one of those mythic few who has done the analysis and "knows thyself" to such a perfect degree that you've concluded that nothing outside of your purview of understanding could possibly do anything of value for you?

If I needed glasses to read, I would wear them, but I prefer to not need them.

In this context I'd say you may not need glasses to read what you can and so think you are better off. But you might need them to see what you need to read.

I don't call it faith when an idea graduates to knowledge. The decisions I make every day are based in prior experience, which has proved to be a reliable means for navigating life comfortably.

The is that there is no reason, no proof, no inevitableness you can point to that declares that it must continue the way it always has. Even if you don't call it faith when you rely on prior experience you still cannot help but reduce your actions to faith in that experience to continue to produce the same expected results. Faith is at the core of all our actions. And its pretty telling that atheists do all kinds of twisting and turning to avoid using the term.

setarcos said:
And this is a typical example of an atheist tying to somehow diminish what follows that a theist has or had to say.

OK. Yes, I am often rebutting what a theist has to say. But I'll do it with a counterargument, not an attempt to silence or intimidate him.

My point was that what you said about typical theist tactics was pointless since atheists often employ their own tactics to denigrate and diminish what theists have to say.
Theists also use counterarguments -some of them good, some of them terrible - and theists are often intimidated and pushed to silence as swell. YOU may not do that - although your statement wasn't a counterargument it was an accusation - but some atheists do. And if your gonna use terms like "typical" associated with theists then I have every arguable right to us the same in association with atheists.

The theist toolbox incudes tools intended to do just that. The freethinker is chastised for freethinking. What else would be your purpose in informing me that, "You must indeed be most intelligent and wise to be able to think on those cosmic scales."

And so does the atheist toolbox. You don't think theists can be freethinkers? I'm thinking both sides often chastise the person not the freethinker.
My purpose for that statement was to be somewhat sarcastic in order to point out why I thought your statement was wrong. That is that you seemed to be saying that your knowledge was superior to anyone else's who disagreed with its conclusions. I was thinking that was a tad arrogant so I was being a tad sarcastic. I don't usually resort to sarcasm and am somewhat shamed. My apologies.

This is a form of "If you don't know everything, you don't know anything."

My line of thinking is ....we can't know everything but we often have to act regardless of that fact. However we err if while acting in that condition we think we know enough that we can't be wrong.
Its a logical fallacy of the form....If you know anything, you know enough to not be wrong so no one can call you on it without be accused of what you said.

We see the puny-mind argument when skeptics are discussing the ethics or intelligence of the deity, as in, "Who do you think you are to second guess God?"

Good question. Why should we discuss the ethics or intelligence of a deity as if it was a human? If we can't even conclude what is most Just but simply apparently Just then how do we condemn a God with human standards? If God exists WHO are we to second guess that God?
Nah, that's not what its about. What its about is the assumption that God doesn't exist and so who are believers to question the arguments of men against such a being existing? Fair enough. Or unfair enough...If your argument assumes a non existent God to begin with then any argument against such a Gods actions is a mute point. As a result any argument by theists in defense Gods actions is also a mute point and falls on deaf ears with atheists.
Now if people wish to debate God and its actions then one has to start from an axiomatic assumption that God exists and then see where the debate leads. Paradoxically if such debates lead to a conclusion that such a Gods actions are untenable with its described being then one might say that the axiom has been proven untenable as well.
Somethings are and will remain mysteries until revealed by God...according to Christianity that's the reality.
I have given my arguments for why it may be possible to have a good God existing in a reality that includes evil. I have given my definitions for what Gods attributes mean. Those I can debate. Whether or not the Christian God actually exists I cannot. That is a matter of faith.

The belief that the skeptic is wrong is expressed not with rebuttal, but with persuasive measures as I just called them. I have a large collection of the efforts of believers to disqualify the opinions of skeptics about scripture. Here's a piece of it:

I understand and affirm that you are correct in pointing out this grievance. You must realize though that many theists haven't the gift of expression that some do. They know what they feel. They may even know why and have good reasons but they find themselves incapable of putting into words their experiences and comprehensions. This often results in the use of, shall we say, less logical reasoning, parroting without understanding, or emotion lashing out.
Let me also say though that I've ran into similar remarks from atheists as well. Remove the atheist and bible and insert theist and science into many of those quotes and I've ran into it on here. In that respect there is little difference between the two positions or their adherents.
Personally I try to focus on the argument and call it as I see it. I think you took something out of context I say so. If I think your claiming knowledge you don't seem to have I say so.
One shouldn't just resort to claiming an unreasonable tactic as a refutation if the statement is accurate in its description.

 

[setarcos]

By my standards

I can only say that human standards are for humans and you must realize that applying those standards to God as a proof of assertion is a mistake.
God has told us in scripture..."My ways are not your ways.." etc. so why think they should be? I think that if we logically analyze what little we can define about God we can come to that reasonable, uncontradictory conclusion.
Concluding that a good God doesn't exist or doesn't care because evil does requires quite a large claim of confident knowledge in what God is and how reality works.

setarcos said:
That being said...the point is that we don't know everything! The nature of being human limits our capacities.

Whenever I read that, I see it as an attempt to stifle freethinking. It translates to you don't know enough to have an opinion.

No, not at all. Its actually the opposite. In knowing that we become wiser in our declarations. Its not meant to stifle freethinking. Its understanding is meant to temper it.

They're the same thing, if by appearance we mean evidence appearing before the senses.

I don't think so. Appearance tells us the desk is solid throughout. The truth is the desk is 99.99........% empty of what it appears to be for instance. The desk appears to be green. The truth is green is something much different than what appears to our senses. The appearance is that the person seems happy. The truth is what the person that seems happy actually is feeling.
Etc. etc.

This is another attempt to redirect thought from empiricism to something else, to special ways of knowing that are said to transcend reason and evidence.

Absolutely not. Its an attempt to explain how reality really works.
Besides, there are serious problems with empiricism. Start with some Kant. I think he's onto the truth.
Here are a few up for debate...

Empiricism ultimately leads to subjectivism, which not only denies the independent existence of subjective reality, but also completely ignores the dialectical relationship between the subjective and objective factors of knowledge. It cannot see how the objective enriches the subjective (Passmore, 1932).

"There are three essential objections to empiricism. The first objection is that associative principles are not sufficiently powerful to explain human cognition. The second is that there is no means to distinguish input from other cognitive phenomena. And the third is that associative inferences can never be justified." Mar 9, 2009

We live at a local scale. Reality is only interesting to the extent that it impacts experience.

Interesting? We live at a local scale but we have been given the capacity to transcend that locality by being aware of it.
That fact is an important component of religious faith.

Think of Plato's cave.

Remember. The shadows on the wall were only discovered to be only shadows of reality because of the one who freed himself of his shackles and ascended to the light. When he returned to tell of what he had seen he was destroyed by those who didn't believe. You keep your shadows. I'll take the real thing.

Have a good evening.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Every one of those theories were constructed from hypothesis with no immediately apparent beneficial return.

What's your point? I know the value of hypothesis.

Precisely. And so is religious experience.

I wrote, "They're [aesthetics, morality, or justice] integral aspects of the human experience, and intimately connected to that which matters most in evolved minds." None of those is religious experience, which is the belief that one's spiritual intuitions are the experience of something out there rather than creations of the mind. We receive many such messages - what's valuable, what's funny, what's good and right, what's beautiful. The apprehension that nature is sacred is not evidence of a god's existence, but rather, evidence that man makes such judgments.

Man's religious phase will have been the time between when he was first able to wonder about how his world works and when he got his best answers, which are obtained empirically. Other kinds of ideas aren't useful for anything.

You mean of course...knowing how to categorize and/or use the knowledge.

What makes an idea useful is that it can be used to successfully predict outcomes.

Can one really control the affective manifold?

Yes, to a large extent. One can affect it two ways. One is by understanding what kinds of situations lead to what kinds of affective experiences and managing one's environment to facilitate experiencing the desired ones. The other is through habit extinction, which comes about when one recognizes that he engages in a counterproductive routine habitually and agrees with himself in advance to cease indulging the habit as soon as he recognizes that he is repeating it. It's like quitting cigarettes.

As for knowledge allowing for a more accurate prediction, we are still at the mercy of the process. We can neither know that we have enough accurate knowledge to make an accurate prediction nor can we know that a realized prediction was a result of our understanding of that knowledge or some other coincidental factor. Instead we act on faith in the process.

I don't use the word faith to describe knowledge gained through experience, nor acting on it provisionally.

Christianity isn't supposed to provide you immunity from discomfort.

It must meet some need in its adherents.

This is an assumption. Unless you believe you are one of those mythic few who has done the analysis and "knows thyself" to such a perfect degree that you've concluded that nothing outside of your purview of understanding could possibly do anything of value for you?

That's pretty close to correct. I don't expect to gain new insights from here on out by any other means than observing what works and what doesn't, which has been my approach for over four decades now, so, it's pretty close to as complete as it will ever be, and I'm well satisfied by how this approach to navigating reality has performed like I would be a fully loaded automobile. It goes where I want it to, and the ride is comfortable, so there is little needing change and more ways to make things worse with change than better.

In this context I'd say you may not need glasses to read what you can and so think you are better off. But you might need them to see what you need to read.

"Need" to read? That's a variation of the "seeing further" claim - that one is missing something of value if he doesn't put on the Bible glasses on. I see where they take others - an unenviable place in my estimation.

My point was that what you said about typical theist tactics was pointless since atheists often employ their own tactics to denigrate and diminish what theists have to say.

OK, but how does that make my comment pointless? There is a culture war being waged in the West between the church and secular humanist values. The church has forced atheists into the closet until recently. Atheists have a voice now and an air of respectability commensurate with the respect the church has lost in the same period, and it's the church with back against the wall more often than not finding its opinions being met with the same fervent resistance and going on the defensive at long last.

My line of thinking is ....we can't know everything but we often have to act regardless of that fact. However we err if while acting in that condition we think we know enough that we can't be wrong.

OK. No argument here. But I think your message to me is to stand down, that I can't know enough to make an informed opinion about matters such as these, so I should just accede to the religious currents. There's a nice metaphor in marine biology. Plankton are the creatures like algae that float with currents. Nekton are the larger creatures that swim, walk, slither, etc., and in so doing, choose their direction and location. My position is, intellectually, be nekton, not plankton. Yours seems to be the opposite. Stop swimming as if you think you know where you're going or where you should go. That's the central message in Christianity - submit. Take the blue pill and let it substitute its will for yours.

Why should we discuss the ethics or intelligence of a deity as if it was a human?

We don't. I don't. Good, right, true - I use my standards for such things. I am also frequently chastised for that, but isn't this just another call to swallow the blue pill and float with the plankton? Stand down, o ye of a puny human mind.

One shouldn't just resort to claiming an unreasonable tactic as a refutation if the statement is accurate in its description.

So then you find biblical description of the character of unbelievers accurate?

I can only say that human standards are for humans

Human here. Count me in.

Appearance tells us the desk is solid throughout. The truth is the desk is 99.99........% empty of what it appears to be for instance.

The desk is solid. That's what solid is. You can't put your hand through it without breaking it. If you treat it like a hologram and punch it, you may experience pain.

Empiricism ultimately leads to subjectivism, which not only denies the independent existence of subjective reality, but also completely ignores the dialectical relationship between the subjective and objective factors of knowledge. "There are three essential objections to empiricism. The first objection is that associative principles are not sufficiently powerful to explain human cognition. The second is that there is no means to distinguish input from other cognitive phenomena. And the third is that associative inferences can never be justified."

Empiricism works. The word truth has no meaning divorced from any eventual decision-making process. The value of knowledge is to inform decisions and drive actions. Those actions then influence events in the external world, and those effects lead to objective consequences that modify experience, ideally in a predictable way.

We should expect similar decisions made under similar circumstances to lead to similar outcomes. All we need to know is that we have desires and preferences, we make decisions, and we experience sensory perceptions of outcomes. If a man has belief B that some action A will produce desired result D, if B is true, then doing A will achieve D. If A fails to achieve D, then B is false. Either you agree that truth should be measured by its capacity to inform decisions and produce results or you don't. If you agree, then we can have a conversation. And if we disagree about some belief, we have a means to decide the issue.

In other words, the ultimate measure of a true proposition is the capacity to inform decisions under the expectation of desirable consequences. Take away any of these elements and the word truth and knowledge refer to nothing more than an idea that one likes. And this describes both formal science and the empiricism of daily life, like looking both ways before crossing a street to effect the desired outcome of crossing safely. If your epistemology

 

[setarcos]

Well your accounting is way off. The Christian led witch trials of the 17th century murdered about 30,000 people in that alone, which would be about 420,000 people today if you adjust in proportion to population.

Hi F, hope this day finds you happy and healthy.
I was going through older posts that I've not caught up on and this one caught my eye.

I'm not seeing where my accounting was that far off, at least from what you've dug up here. I said possibly tens of thousands.
However from what I've be able to further research I will say that you actually are correct. I'd have to push those numbers probably above the million mark overall throughout the centuries.


In consideration of your answer here you’re accidentally or deliberately being misleading. What witch trials are you referring to? For instance the infamous Salem witch trials found 200 or so accused people (accounts vary on the exact #'s) with 30 individuals found guilty and 20 executed (Smithsonianmag.com 2007 article). There were witch trials in France, Germany, England, Switzerland, America etc. So where did you get your 30,000? I can only conclude you meant globally over that couple of centuries. If that's the case I'm not sure where you got 420,000 souls adjusted for population today?


If you’re considering global estimates, according to the Salem witch museum scholars generally agree that roughly 50,000 individuals perished in the 16th and 17th centuries globally due to persecutions of so called witches.

Now there were according to "Our World in Data" website about 500,000,000 people in the world in the 17th century. So that 50,000 translates to .01% of the global population. If we ignore all the other factors that could be considered when comparing population growth and say, the population in the 20th century with past events and its population that would translate to roughly 25,000,000 persecuted souls in the 20th century. That seems like a lot of souls until you compare those souls to those whose deaths were attributed to secular sources in the 20th century like those listed below...

Khmer Rouge -1.5 to 3 million
Mao Zedong 40 to 80 million
WW1 16 million plus
WW2 60 million plus
Marxism 100 million +-
Capitalism? Some put the number over a billion. I'll just let the communists and capitalists fight that one out. Let’s just presume it’s a lot.
African genocides and massacres between 500,000 to 1 million +-.

These alone would equate to .09% of total world population in the 20th century. Which in the 17th century would equate to 45,000,000 people out of the 500,000,000 if secularist powers were in charge according to your logic. Compared to the 50,000 that's orders of magnitude larger.

Of course we can manipulate the exact ratios this way and that till were blue in the face.
There's too many other factors to consider when comparing ratios to different centuries and populations.
Hopefully my little demonstration shows you why.
What we can know relatively for sure is that secular proclivities when it comes to killing people far outstrips religious ones.

That 50,000 happened over 2 centuries. Most secular mass killings happened over mere years if not months nowadays.
I must admit though as I've said that upon further review of the numbers I could find we can push those directly associated with some sort of religious motivation into the millions over the years and globally rather than the tens or hundreds of thousands. The estimates scholars give seem to vary quite a bit though. And we’ve no way of determining how many of those killings actually had secular motives covered with religion as an excuse. That seems to be the case for many of the accusations in the Salem trials.

In the crusades estimates vary widely since accurate records were a problem. From 1 up to 9 million over roughly 2 centuries. Most fatalities being incidentally associated with the cause but not directly. Illness, starvation, etc.

During the inquisitions? Again estimates vary widely. From a few thousand (most documented) to hundreds of thousands (least well documented). Even tens of millions (least evidenced of the least documented) of which most scholars agree is way over exaggerated.

Today most religiously, and I use religiously very loosely here, motivated killings have been relegated to the occasional cult or terroristic extremists . None of which have been condoned by mainstream Christianity to my knowledge. We are talking in the hundreds and thousands of victims. Yet we've got a major war and several minor ones going on right now having nothing to do with religious motivations who’s casualties to date are approaching 300,000 + with 30,000+ deaths in a single year.

No matter how you slice the cake. Secularism excels at killing far beyond religions.

 

[setarcos]

And although Hitler had no overt religious beliefs once in power he was an altar boy in his Catholic church. The Nazis that murdered the Jews were mostly Lutheran and Catholics. Rome even helped the Nazis in some ways despite knowing about the Holocaust.

You can't possibly believe that claiming to be a member of a religion somehow inoculates you against behaviors that don't conform to that religion’s beliefs? Hitler was an egomaniacal psychopath who picked on Jews not for religious reasons but for all too real secular and emotionally personal ones. Catholic Rome was and is a failure as a religious institution in my opinion. But that’s a different argument.


There are many good, well-meaning Catholics but I cannot agree with Catholicism as an institution or what it has condoned. Good lord if you condemned atheism for instance for every unethical action made by its adherents...well I'm sure you get what I mean.

Look at Manifest Destiny in the USA where Christians had little problem killing the indigenous people of North America. More Christians killed the indigenous people of South America.

That is a presumptuous and a simplistic view.


The coinage of the phrase "Manifest Destiny" and its use in justifying and defending the westward expansion of the United States was solidly political in use. James Monroe's invocation of the phrase was a political maneuver not a religious one.


The phrase wasn't ever debated in a religious context. Religious counter arguments weren't ever given. The phrase was never used outside of a framework of secular interests. The politicians used the phrase to give a fine patina of religious authority over what was definitely secular motivations. It wasn't religious behavior which conquered the natives. It was the secular need to find land for an expanding population. At the most it was a misappropriation of religious authority to achieve secular needs. At the very least it was a meaningless phrase meant to give a title of divine authority to what was thought to be a necessary move by a newly expanding nation.


The concept didn't give rise to the actions of a nation. The actions of a newly expanding nation gave rise to the use of the concept as an excuse to cover secular motives. It wasn't the first time secularist actions rode the coattails of religious justification nor will it be the last.

The number of deaths by religious people should be very low, but it isn't.

Why would you think that? This assumes that human action must always be attributed to what religion they claim to adhere to. Total adherence to a particular religion is hard and rare if at all possible.


What do you consider to be very low? In comparison to secularly motivated factors which have caused death it IS very low.

As for the Communists (BTW, Stalin was studying in a seminary with the Russian Revolution started) and Romans, well they acted through their own authority as dictated by ideological belief.

Who doesn't?

The Romans did have their own form of divinity and gods they used as symbols.

And? No empires peoples have been completely secularized. You'll find religion even in the most atheistic country on the planet - China.
The amount of influence religion has on the empires activities depends on those activities objectives and that religion’s beliefs.
The objectives of the Roman Empire were clearly politically secular and mainly dependent on the whims of its emperors. That was to conquer and establish their rule of law over the conquered.

The banners the Romans carried into battle were copied by the Nazis in their marches and rallies.

In both cases those banners were just that symbols. They were symbolic of authority and identification.
The Roman standard was a symbol of Roman honor. About as religious as the U.S. Flag today.
The Nazi swastika was coopted from an old Indian symbol of good luck and success though the symbol is ancient and reaches beyond India. Rome didn't use it. The Nazi eagle was loosely based on traditional German coats of arms though those coat of arms may trace their beginnings from the idea of the roman eagle representing imperial power - courage, strength and immortality. It is an ancient symbol of empire with it being a common symbol used among many nations representing attributes not a religion.
The Romans were so successful in their conquests that there is not a lot in the secular western world that hasn't been influenced by them in some manner.

Ideology and symbols has a way of occupying minds and if the dogma is immoral it will influence people negatively, religion is no exception.

Not sure what your point is here? First we have to identify a religion’s dogma as immoral. Then you have to identify the motivations of the people and how those motivations have been influenced. Is religious influence an excuse to falsely justify the motivation where that motivation may be unjust? Is the religions morality used to cover what would otherwise be immoral actions for secular gains? Etc.
Reason and religion should not clash when identifying human morality. Where the two apparently clash justification should be identifiable.

Theocracies do pose a threat to many more progressive societies.

There are no existent true theocracies today. Those that may pose a threat are pseudo-Theocracies not actual ones.
That's if you use its literal meaning from the Greek - Theo "God" and -kratia "power or rule.". Rule by God. By definition a theocracy would be realistically apparent, identifiable, and confirmable by everyone without the intermediation of human authorities. From a Christian point of view there can only be one real theocracy. That theocracy would be ruled by God whos authority would be unquestionably recognized by everyone. Even those opposed to Gods rule.

Progressive societies? I would argue...technologically perhaps. Human nature though...eh, not so much.

Some religions are hostile towards science.

Not Christianity. Not any of the so called Abrahamic religions. Any religion hostile to science would be hostile to Gods divine plan.

The Christian right has taken over the republican party, and driving draconian laws that ban abortion in ways that is threatening the lives of pregnant women.

I think those Christians are politically motivated more so than religiously compelled. Having stated that though, those Christians who are sincere in their faith based convictions have identified life as sacred. Something to be cherished and protected. That is their primary motivation which is testified to in scripture. I can’t imagine secularists should have a problem with that one.

However we live in a messy imperfect world where false dichotomies can arise which often cause emotional confusion.
In my opinion abortion is a matter of morals and ethics separate from rule of law.
As a matter of moral or ethical choice no law would change my actions or opinions in regards to my viewing abortion, outside of a physician’s decision that it was absolutely necessary to prevent the death of the mother or the untenable condition of the fetus to support a viably meaningful life, as morally wrong.

From a religious standpoint you can't force a person to view abortion as wrong simply because you've made a law prohibiting it. Central to Christianity - often forgotten, ignored or misunderstood by some Christians - is freedom of choice. God does not force humanity to worship it though he has the authority and capability to do so. God allows freedom to choose not to worship him.

We have laws against murder and robbery yet people still do both. In such cases laws may be a deterrent but they are not a preventative. Because of that as soon as a motivated individual determines the deterrent is negligible the law ceases to prevent anything.
The most successful laws would change the viewpoint of the person not just force the action. Alas that is not often a component of laws. Helping a person to understand why a particular law is moral and ethically necessary is usually not inherent in the law itself. All we know is that it is unlawful to run a stop sign. We must look elsewhere beyond the law to find out why.

Likewise you cannot force a Christian to accept abortion as okay because you've passed a law allowing it.
Simply because you've made exterminating all Jews a lawful national goal does not mean that it is morally or ethically fine and should be followed. A person whose actions are dictated by their moral standards will or should act according to those standards regardless of the law. In regards to morals I believe they are a core inherent component of the nature of humanity recognizably coherent with reason.

In my opinion if any law requiring a physician to perform an abortion upon request were established that physician would be justified in refusing to abide by that law if that law conflicted with that physicians morality.
Likewise any physician who has determined that an abortion is morally justifiable and necessary would be justified in performing that abortion despite a law prohibiting the practice.
Of course in such cases one would have to be absolutely steadfast in their moral convictions and comprehensibly reasonable in their decisions.

I don't think we should determine ipso facto that all abortion is wrong because abortion is an individual decision involving unique factors testifying to who that person is as a human in relation to reality. Some abortions are a matter of health, some are a matter of indifference to human life and some are motivated by fear or ignorance of what the future might bring.
Whatever the case, however the person handles it testifies to the character of that person.

It seems to me that there is two identifiable viewpoints involved.
One is religious. The other is effectual.
The religious side sees all abortion as absolutely immoral. Pro-life
The effectual side sees abortion simply as a means to an end. Pro-choice

Neither side seems capable of recognizing exceptions to this apparent dichotomy. That is, some abortions are necessary and some abortions shouldn't be allowed.
That fact makes for a complicated mess with neither side being wholly right or wrong.
I've given where I stand in the above...

 

[setarcos]

So now in the 21st century how is religion an advantage for societies everywhere?

The simplest answer I can give is religion from a Christian perspective gives people hope for the future. It’s a force multiplier for tolerance of the imperfect present. And, as science itself has shown in some studies, it’s just plain generally healthy for you to attend church or have religious convictions.

The question is if religion is to be the very best in humanity why is religion causing ANY harm?

I'm not sure what you mean by best in humanity? I would consider morals to be a good candidate for that.
Religion is the process whereby we relate to divinity. It is not the source of "the best in humanity". From a Christian perspective that would be God.
What makes you think its religion that's causing the harm and not the failures of its adherents?
Loosely speaking IF God exists....God is the cure, Christianity is the medicine, and humanity is the patient.
The cure will happen when God establishes his permanent ruling authority over humanity. In the meantime man should take the medicine he has been advised to take which is preparatory to the cure. Some take the medicine readily. Some halfheartedly. Some not at all - preferring other methods they deem as more worthy. In all three cases you’re still dealing with the same ill humanity.

The harm comes from the illness not the medicine.
And we all know that taken in the wrong way medicine can become poison. Unfortunately mankind is very good at doing that.

Religion at work. Where is the God keeping these people in line? Absent as usual.

I believe your misunderstanding what God is and how he relates to his creation. God’s essence cannot exist without the inevitableness of evil existing. A perfect creation is unjustifiable in reality without its defining antithesis. God’s authority over all of creation stems from its perfect justifiability which is made possible by Gods essence as the perfect judge of what is perfect justice.


God isn't absent. What is absent is our understanding of what is possible and necessary.

Is religion just another club that has a slightly lower murder rate?

No. Christianity doesn't condone murder. Christianity doesn't kill people. People kill people regardless of their affiliation. The numbers were solely meant to indicate those whose lives have been taken which was a direct or indirect result of the actions of those who claim a religion as the motivating factor. That factor is usually perverse or a misunderstanding of the religion. In those cases in which it is not it must be clearly justifiable. That being said...taking another's life is a serious and somber affair but it can be one sanctioned by the divinely given right of defending one’s own life or the lives of others against unjust killing. Murder has been and can be committed in the name of religion. But in name only. Such things are the failures of humanity not religion. A religion that purports to condone murder, which is unjustified killing, is not from God.

Most of the non-religious killing you cite are from wars in the 20th century, well into the era of secular governments, so your math really doesn't work.

That's a completely biased statement.

You picked the 17th century when religious institutions still held a vast influence over the governmental affairs of humanity.

I picked the 20th century when those influences had for all intents and purposes flipped. The intent was to show the percent increase in secular caused mortality versus religious caused mortality given the authority with the most influence over society at the time. Even at its most perverse use as an excuse to cause that mortality you would be hard pressed to to beat secularist motivations over religious ones in causing human deaths. Then there's the consideration of what religion got right in helping humanity. The first hospitals. The first templates for "public" school systems. The first rudiments of the scientific study of nature.
The first humanitarian aid systems for the poor. There is a lot of firsts we don't seem to care to recognize that had their beginnings, however rudimentary, in religious practices.

Notice I adjusted the number of people murdered for witchcraft from the 17th century number of approximately 30,000 to 420,000 today? That illustrates my point about your biased math.

Yes and I adjusted the ratios of those killed to the populations at the time. The percentages are still an order of magnitude larger for secular motivated killings. Pretty hypocritical of you to call my math biased when you seem to have picked a time when religious influence had peaked but you used no comparisons to when religious influence had plummeted.

In any event if religions are actually spiritual paths and guided by God and divinity, why are there any murders in the name of God?

I've touched on that above. This is actually a good question and demonstrates how the purpose of religion can be woefully misunderstood. For instance...Christianity isn't the end all and be all of Gods perfect society any more than the map is that shows you how to get from point A to B and what to expect when you get there.

Christianity isn't the goal. It is a survival kit for living in this corrupted world. If murders are committed in the name of God it’s because humans have failed to follow Gods plan.

 

[Kfox]

A man I met on eharmony told me that he was raised in a Christian church and he fervently believed in God, but as he aged and grew in life experience, he did not see the Hand of God at work in our world, although he still believed in God. Then when his wife got sick with cancer and he turned in earnest to God, praying for her suffering to be relieved for 3 ½ years while he was her caregiver, he never felt the grace of God, and then as a result he lost his belief in God. He said he felt like no deity capable of making a difference in a person’s life would let his wife suffer so much.

Here is how I responded to his message:

I was not raised as a Christian or in any religion or believing in God and I became a Baha’i during my first year of college. I can fully understand how you feel about God because I belong to a religious forum and many people feel that way. I have struggled to believe that God is loving, given all the suffering I have endured, long before my husband passed on of cancer. I have also struggled to believe that God is loving because of all the suffering in the world, but I never lost my belief in God. Through my religion and my own logical analysis, I have a belief about why God does not intervene to prevent suffering.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He said he was going to respond to my message but I have not heard back yet. What I will say if this conversation continues is that a person does not have to believe that God is loving in order to believe that God exists. I believe it is beyond human comprehension to understand ‘how’ God is loving because God’s love is not like human love since God is not a human. I think that some people ‘project’ what they believe a loving God would do but that is illogical, since they cannot ever know what a loving God would do. They can only have a personal opinion regarding what a loving God would do based upon what they consider loving, and if their opinion is based upon what a loving human would do under the same circumstances that is the fallacy of false equivalence, since God is not a human.

As a matter of religious belief, I believe that God is loving, but when thinking analytically I cannot understand how a loving God would create a world with the potential for so much suffering. The problem is not that God does not rescue people from suffering, since I think that is ludicrous, the problem is that God created such a world in the first place! Why would God rescue us from the suffering that he intended for us to experience all along? It makes no sense.

If you want to offer the religious apologetic that God created a world that is a storehouse of suffering for human benefit, save it for someone who cares, as that is not what this thread is about.

Love is a human word with a human definition, concerning specific feelings. If a non human has feelings that does not meet the human definition of this human word, we have no business calling it love.

 

[Trailblazer]

Love is a human word with a human definition, concerning specific feelings. If a non human has feelings that does not meet the human definition of this human word, we have no business calling it love.

So you think that if God feels love, God would feel love the same way a human feels love?
Do you think that if God demonstrates love, God would demonstrate love the same way a human demonstrates love?

God is not a human so to compare God to a human is the fallacy of false equivalence.
God's love is not like human love since God is not a human.
God does not feel the same way humans feel or act the same way humans act if they love someone.

On the other hand, you have a valid point. Since we cannot understand how God loves, I don't think we should say that God is loving.
I believe that religions that teach that have overstepped their bounds, claiming to know things about God they cannot really know. This is a real setup for disappointment, since people like the man I described in the OP expect things from God that they are not going to get.

 

[Kfox]

So you think that if God feels love, God would feel love the same way a human feels love?

I'm saying if God has feelings that are in accordance to what humans describe as love, then God feels love the same way humans feel love. If God has feelings that are different than what humans define as love, we have no business calling those feelings love, those feelings should be called something else.