Re:Religion: Perhaps not so false after all, just interpreted wrong.
« Reply #30 on: 2007-10-09 09:53:38 »
The development of modern society was marked by the codification of law and the recognition that some laws are so basic that not even kings or priests could change them. The myth that religion carries ethical truths runs deep, but is not valid. Not just for the theoretical reasons I addressed conclusively in, "The End of God Referenced Ethics" [ Church of Virus BBS, General, Philosophy & Religion, Virian Ethics: The End of God Referenced Ethics, Hermit, 2002-03-06 ] but also for pragmatic reasons. For example you misquote "Do not kill," when in fact the actual law was "Do not murder", and the context proves that engaging in genocide was not only acceptable, but was even encouraged by gods who participated in the gory practice. Thus some killing, popular in biblical times, was not regarded as murder at all. Do you really approve of religiously sanctioned genocide?
Even the ridiculous notion that e.g. modern US law is derived in some sense from Mosaic law fails when you realize that not only are the Protestant, Catholic and Hebrew versions of those laws very different, but that the commonly quoted ones allegedly written (Exodus 20), and later allegedly smashed by Moses were then replaced by ones allegedly written by the Hebrew God (Exodus 34) clearly different despite his supposedly having said they were "the words that were on the first", so being written later and being supposedly written by their God himself, as opposed to being written by a "mere" human, the latter should surely take precedence.
So lets look at them (Exodus 34):
1. Thou shalt worship no other god (For the Lord is a jealous god). 2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. 3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep in the month when the ear is on the corn. 4. All the first-born are mine. [ Hermit :And this is child sacrifice. If you didn't know it already, the bible is correct when it says, "This was the custom in Israel," but DNA analysis shows that it happened to male as well as female children. ] 5. Six days shalt thou work, but on the seventh thou shalt rest. 6. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, even of the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end. 7. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread. 8. The fat of my feast shall not remain all night until the morning. 9. The first of the first fruits of thy ground thou shalt bring unto the house of the Lord thy God. 10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk.
I find it incredibly far fetched to imagine that any of these laws have made it into US law in any way, shape or form, but anticipate that you have some way to substantiate the assertions you made about them in this post and look forward to you supporting your opinion. A simple citation of the relevant US Code will suffice.
Thanks in advance
Hermit
PS If you argue that religion makes people happy irrespective of reality, then you will also agree that opium makes people happy irrespective of reality, and so I wonder if you advocate the wider use of opium, and if not, why not? It is, after all, faster acting, longer lasting and as history shows, far less harmful to humans than any amount of religion.
PPS Water is dihydrogen oxide. Nothing more, nothing less. So if you find something that is not composed of two Hydrogen atoms and an Oxygen atom, it is not water. This isn't a theory. This is a definition. The atoms involved and their relationships not only can be, but have been measured, characterized and even photographed.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
For much more Sasquatch "work". Its eerie how he uses different accounts to answer himself as he plagiarizes different people from this CoV thread. He's apparently been doing this for quite a while. I can't say I've ever seen such wholesale plagiarism of multiple sides of ongoing conversations. It's wacky to say the very least.
PS apparently Sasquatch has a long history of this on Final Fantasy. One of the moderators griped him out for doing this about a year ago here.
And here "Lucifer" aka Nin' aka Sasquatch (he uses so many profiles and pseudonyms it causes one to wonder if he doesn't have some identity disorder -- schizophrenia?) actually talks about taking things from CoV sources,
Re:Religion: Perhaps not so false after all, just interpreted wrong.
« Reply #32 on: 2007-11-16 11:35:50 »
We seem to have stumbled on, not so much a can of worms, as a bucket of writhing (and horribly confused) snakes.Little wonder that Bass and Sasquatch appeared to be psychotic as well as being cognitively challenged. They didn't so much suffer from dissociative identity disorder as constituting the first confirmed case of multiple personality disorder.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Look, Bass, this 'what is evolution and how come apes are still around' stuff is kinda painful. That's all i'm gonna say on that as better qualified people than me from the sound of them have said enough on this. Also, while religion does say stuff like, do not kill, do not commit adultery(I'm assuming you're talking about only the Abrahamic ones, otherwise this is gonna take a looong time), that's not any reason to believe it is a force for good, or has been, in this world. Sure, some people do good things because of their religion. Some don't. As Hermit says, a hell of a lot of stuff in the Bible is total crap, morality-wise. It has also held humanity back for centuries, not just where scientific progress is concerned, but moral progress too. Take two examples: the treatment of homosexuals and the treatment of women. The ancients were perfectly happy with homosexuals. No-one had a problem until some book proclaiming itself as holy said, stone them all. Ok, so the ancients were pretty harsh on women too. But they had female deities; in Ancient Rome and Athens, women weren't just possessions, they could have high standing, though it was rare. I can't prove it, of course, but I reckon women would've had equality much faster if it wasn't for the Adam and Eve story, showing women as the source of all suffering.
Author
Logged
