Really Mike? The Bible is atheist. That’s your idea?
Telling people to get out of their box is just an insult. It has no place here.
Guy’s it is not that hard to figure out if you get out of your box and open your minds to the whole picture. The first problem is you don’t understand the history and evolution of “GOD". Therefore you are all trying to discuss facts using different understandings of god. And that’s not good and will end up wearing everyone out without accomplishing a darn thing. Therefore your arguments are going in circles and will always go in circles. I would think that you would want to fix that problem first. Or maybe you don’t see it as a problem. Example, if the idea/thought from the bible is stating that “god created man". And I for one completely agree with that line of thinking. It is a very atheist point of view when correctly viewed in a logical and scientific method. I did not always agree with that line of thinking until I research and got a better understanding of god in the timeline of history.You begin by discounting any contribution that people may want to make as "closed thinking" and "if only you open your minds". Ok, my mind is open. Now explain to me how god created man, if not through natural universal evolution. You can begin with explaining how long one of god's days is and don't come to me with metaphorical allegories. I can make those all day long. It is the language of ignorant minds. p.s. You may want to peruse this before you make any claim that any Scriptural account is the correct account. http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/
Guy’s it is not that hard to figure out if you get out of your box and open your minds to the whole picture.I would agree that is isn't hard to figure out for those who are incapable of giving the question much thought, simple solutions for simple minds. Perhaps now the rest of us can get back to digging a little deeper into the mystery.
If we're made in God's image, and presumably proper society is too, AND if we should strive to be like God and Jesus, then: - Was God married? To whom? - Since Jesus wasn't married, should I divorce my wife? - Since Jesus didn't have children, should I put mine up for adoption? To Whom? - If we're all God's children, does he love Muslims too? - If God loves some of his children more than others, like Christians more than Muslims or Commie Atheists, is it ok if I love one of my kids more than the other? And favor them accordingly? - If we are made in God's image, what about dolphins?The usual response to this is that "Image" refers to a spiritual image not a physical one, so all the descriptions by different races are out the window. As far as Dolphins, it is quite possible that they are also created in God's (spiritual) image, they are taking care of the environment better than humans are. The only dismissive thing I can say is that if Dolphins are so smart, why haven't they figured our how to avoid humans that want to catch and eat them, the same could be said of Whales.
Guy’s it is not that hard to figure out if you get out of your box and open your minds to the whole picture.I would agree that is isn't hard to figure out for those who are incapable of giving the question much thought, simple solutions for simple minds. Perhaps now the rest of us can get back to digging a little deeper into the mystery. What exactly is it that we can't figure out? And you might want to check your sentence, things are generally hard for those who are incapable. Sorry if I interrupted your mystery digging, Thelma and I will go meddle somewhere else now.
Guy’s it is not that hard to figure out if you get out of your box and open your minds to the whole picture.I would agree that is isn't hard to figure out for those who are incapable of giving the question much thought, simple solutions for simple minds. Perhaps now the rest of us can get back to digging a little deeper into the mystery. What exactly is it that we can't figure out? And you might want to check your sentence, things are generally hard for those who are incapable. Sorry if I interrupted your mystery digging, Thelma and I will go meddle somewhere else now. I would submit that 'it' refers to the thread title and God's image. I was not an English major, and I never claimed to be good at English composition.
Guy’s it is not that hard to figure out if you get out of your box and open your minds to the whole picture.I would agree that is isn't hard to figure out for those who are incapable of giving the question much thought, simple solutions for simple minds. Perhaps now the rest of us can get back to digging a little deeper into the mystery. What exactly is it that we can't figure out? And you might want to check your sentence, things are generally hard for those who are incapable. Sorry if I interrupted your mystery digging, Thelma and I will go meddle somewhere else now. I would submit that 'it' refers to the thread title and God's image. I was not an English major, and I never claimed to be good at English composition. @Lauston, It seems to me you were answering both MikeYohe and BreakUp in the same paragraph. MikeYohe proposed that, "it is not that hard to figure out" to which BreakUp agreed, but you responded with, "what exactly is it we cannot figure out?" Then Breakup qualified his agreeent with "simple solutions for simple (ignorant) minds, to which you responded that, "for those who are incapable (ignorant) things are generally hard to understand". As I see it, that was the point Breakup was trying to make. The Bible is written in allegories by cultures which communicated through allegories, because allegories draw on real life experience and are not as hard to understand as the concept of causal consequences and effects, such as the allegory contained in the fall from Eden, which is a "simplified" account of the evolutionary process of man becoming intelligent (eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge) and acquiring a sense of morality (knowing shame) and becoming seperated from nature (being cast out from Eden), because our emergent intelligence allowed us to break the laws of implaccable natural causality with an emerging ability to control and alter our natural environment. Even in science we use descriptive languages and narrative examples. How many people understand General Relativity, unless it is accompanied by real world examples of the relative nature of our subjective RW experiences? If I use the term "Doppler effect in the wave function", people say "what?". If I then use a narrative example of the changing pitch in the sound of a motorcycle approaching and receding, people say "ahhh yes, now I understand what you mean!" because they can relate to that from their own everyday RW experience. So it is with religious Scripture. The problem arises when allegory becomes the truth, the only truth, and nothing but the truth. That inherently leads to conflicting allegories and because of the exclusive nature of religions, will inevitable lead to conflict. And that is not allegorical, but fact as witnessed by the endless religious wars (against each other) throughout history. ISIS just outlawed pigeon breeding because pigeons flying overhead is offensive to Islam as it exposes the observer to the genitalia of the pigeons. I kid you not!!
The problem arises when allegory becomes the truth, the only truth, and nothing but the truth. That inherently leads to conflicting allegories and because of the exclusive nature of religions, will inevitable lead to conflict. And that is not allegorical, but fact as witnessed by the endless religious wars (against each other) throughout history. ISIS just outlawed pigeon breeding because pigeons flying overhead is offensive to Islam as it exposes the observer to the genitalia of the pigeons. I kid you not!!Well of course allegory becoming truth is the whole problem, that's exactly what religion is, if it's understood as allegory, we call it myth, religious people don't like having their stories called myth. As for what Breakup, you're probably right about the interpretation but his sentence is broken enough that it's hard to tell. If you're incapable, then things aren't easy, so he had to have meant something else. Either way, it's just another insult.
ISIS just outlawed pigeon breeding because pigeons flying overhead is offensive to Islam as it exposes the observer to the genitalia of the pigeons. I kid you not!!
Thanks for the good laugh! That caught my funny bone. :lol:
Ok, let’s talk about god. I respect the views of this thread and most of the views on this web site.
Let’s see what we can agree upon.
Of the 100,000 or so gods in history, we mainly want to talk about one or more of the gods used in the bible. Is that correct?
If that is correct, then may I suggest the next step is to see if we agree upon what the power of those gods is before we get into counting and dating the gods?
Lausten, I did not say the bible is atheist, I said that god creating man is atheist. It is a very atheist statement to an open minded way of thinking. But if religion is clouding or blocking the viewing of other ideas of thought, then I would think that it would be nothing but a statement requiring a deity. Which is not the case.
The question should be, what god and what were the powers of god at the time man was created?
Or simply put, “What was god at the time god created man?"
Just a note. At the time of the NT, the Roman senate could create gods and make the mother and wife gods also. Which is much different that at the time of Genesis.
The question should be, what god and what were the powers of god at the time man was created? Or simply put, “What was god at the time god created man?" Just a note. At the time of the NT, the Roman senate could create gods and make the mother and wife gods also. Which is much different that at the time of Genesis.That is the least interesting question you could have thought for this thread.
That's the kind of creationism atheists can believe in. LoisWhich brings us to the Real Question Did we create God in our own image? and that “god" itself has nothing to do with anyone it. Considering all the tailor-made God’s out there it seems a most logical assumption.Using deductive reasoning we arrive at the conclusion that, yes Homo Sapiens invented the gods and not the other way around. We have mountains of proof from cave art to cathedrals and folk stories to floppy, elaborately adorned books to prove man's yearning for a supernatural explanation for existence, but not one scintilla of evidence to prove that a god, any of them, actually existed. No Zeus, no Wotan, no Ra, no (drat) Athena ,no "Great Spirit", Jesus was just a man and not a three in one, and no provable miracles, yet. Notice how I left the door open just a crack. Sagan would be proud. Cap't Jack
I would agree that is isn't hard to figure out for those who are incapable of giving the question much thought, simple solutions for simple minds. Perhaps now the rest of us can get back to digging a little deeper into the mystery.And you might want to check your sentence, things are generally hard for those who are incapable. If you don't like my sentence structure, you are perfectly welcome to fix it.
ISIS just outlawed pigeon breeding because pigeons flying overhead is offensive to Islam as it exposes the observer to the genitalia of the pigeons. I kid you not!! Thanks for the good laugh! That caught my funny bone. :lol:Well, they have already executed 4 people and fined others for breakig this new law. I don't find that funy. I find that scary. Howeer I like Bill Maher's solution to the indecent exposure by pigeons. He proposed that rather than outlawing pigeons from the sky, they should provide burkas for all pigeons, (accompanied by a picture of a pigeon dressed in a burka). Did you know that dressing women in burkas is designed to shield men from temptation. Thus, men are the bad guys, but women have to pay the price for the males' baser instincts. Can you see what injustice literal interpretation of scripture can foster? Please understand that I don't view all religious people as fundamentalist fanatics. I am merely identifying the fact that fundamentalist religions are by their very nature exclusive and in my experience excluding groups of people because they have a different view of the world never has desirable outcomes. The bible advocates "love thy neighbor" but at the same time condones slavery and that is not allegorical but a real world problem. "Love thy slaves? Do you see the logical fallacy? OTOH, the scriptural identification of the 7 dealy sins is useful information which can be philosophically and scientifically defended. Almost all scriptures contain allegorical examples of secular values, which are then obscured by the invocation of Divine laws (which differ from religion to religion). Very confusing and conflicting to the "innocent believer", IMO. And that is why secular philosophies and values carry more weight than religious philosophies and values. They are "inclusive". IMO, the US Constitution is an example of a brilliant secular scripture, but also note that the authors recognized the potential corruption of these secular values by installing the "Establishment Clause" which protects secular (common) law from religious infringement through dogma and exclusivity. As a fairly intelligent and informed man, I have chosen to be an atheist, by the logic of Ockham's razor, especially when it can be demonstrated that belief in a god is not only unnecessary, but is actually detrimental to our understanding of how the universe really works. I consider viewing viruses as spiritual demons is not science fiction but fantasy fiction. Thank God we got rid of those little demon gods which we thought could be appeased by prayer or exorcised by bloodletting. Actually one can make an argument that "in those days" such crude nursing practices were the beginning of the science of medicine. Nice try, but today we know better. We vaccinate against those demons. In a metaphorical sense, the Universe is filled with greater gods and lesser gods, angels and demons, spirits and souls. Hence my assertion that Universe is God and all things are in the image of the Universe, galaxies, solar systems, natural laws, QM, GR. and those gods are based on empirical data and logical analysis of their functions. Those are the Gods of Cosmology..and they don't work in mysterious ways.
The title is God’s Image.
So yes, what was god when man was created?
This problem drove me nuts for a long time trying to figure out how man could be created by god, yet there were no deity gods. My first break came from trying to date and list all the gods. Talking to a Rabbi in Israel where the Dead Sea scrolls are kept I learned that all the gods had names in the Genesis of Torah. The bible took most of the names away and gave them only titles like “god". So the next step was to find out why the older Genesis stories replaced the names of the gods with titles. I never found that the Genesis gods ever had a name. Therefore, the older gods in Genesis were not the same type of god as the deity gods. Yet the stories say that man was created in the image of god.
The Age of Deities had not yet started when man was created in the oldest Genesis stories. And when the Age of Deities did start the deities were all mostly animals. The great thing about deities is that they evolved. Therefore when we are told of a type of god deity, then we have an idea of what time of history the god started in.
The oldest Genesis stories say that man was on earth before god. The levels of heaven existed but god as any type of deity was not yet around. And there was no hell at that time. So if god was not a deity. What was “God" to the first people?
So the oldest prehistory Genesis paints us a picture that the people were most likely atheists who did not believe in or ever heard of a deity or hell. But they had levels of heaven and a god that had no name. But not a deity god.
The problem to figure out now was how this none deity god that came on earth after man, could then created man. So what was the power of this god?
Deity gods all had different levels of power. The OT and NT are mostly based upon Egyptian religion. And Egyptian religion started with the Bull and Goat deity gods. Then evolved to the most powerful god “RA", the sun. Genesis of RA, Jewish and Christian tells us that the power of god is “The Word". And RA for example had all the knowledge. If you wanted knowledge, then you would pray to RA for knowledge and RA would send you knowledge by sun light to be kept in your heart.
This power of knowledge kept popping up. And when you read the bible in Gnostic terms, knowledge makes the most common sense. For example, Jesus tells us to seek the light (knowledge).
Now, take the prehistory Genesis and replace god with the word (knowledge). Then the stories start to make sense.
Now the question is, if man was on earth first, then knowledge came to mankind, then knowledge created man. Bingo. It fits. Because before the Age of Deities, mankind was in the Age of Domestication. Most of the protein we eat today was created in this age. Most of the tame animals we have were also created in this time period. Along with the fruits, vegetables and nuts we have today.
Most likely what Genesis is saying is that mankind came to be, then man’s knowledge (god) came to be and made earth a livable place for mankind. The cool point that Genesis is telling us, is that man was also domesticated.
That is how the creation of man by god can be an atheist thought. Note, in the space allowed I can only touch on points. But there is so much data that leads to this point of view.
Not that I made any attempt to understand what you’re doing Mike, but it sounds like the same kind of mental gymnastics that progressive Christians go through. They realize the Bible is full of contradictions and that it’s written by men, but they can’t let go of Jesus guiding them by magic, so they come up some wild interpretation to make it work for them.
What you’re talking about is our transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer. Obviously that changed things. It takes less energy to farm, so we had more time to develop language and writing and build cities and make beer. It also pitted one type of land use against another, some saying tilling the land was a curse. The reason for that story was lost, but the stories remained and people kept making them fit their current knowledge. It doesn’t. It’s what you’re doing and it will always fail. The value of ancient writing is to help us understand the thoughts of ancient people. period.
Not that I made any attempt to understand what you're doing Mike, but it sounds like the same kind of mental gymnastics that progressive Christians go through. They realize the Bible is full of contradictions and that it's written by men, but they can't let go of Jesus guiding them by magic, so they come up some wild interpretation to make it work for them. What you're talking about is our transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer. Obviously that changed things. It takes less energy to farm, so we had more time to develop language and writing and build cities and make beer. It also pitted one type of land use against another, some saying tilling the land was a curse. The reason for that story was lost, but the stories remained and people kept making them fit their current knowledge. It doesn't. It's what you're doing and it will always fail. The value of ancient writing is to help us understand the thoughts of ancient people. period.I hear you. The key to understanding this point of view is in understanding how the chicken and apples and other items we use daily came about and when they came about. Other things are items like blood type. The ape for example should have more types than man. But as it turns out, animals that have been domesticated end up having more blood types. The ape has 4, man has 36 for example. Then one should look at what reasons domestication of the animals was done for. The horse is a good example. The wild horse was small and of little use. Domestication created a larger horse, added one set of ribs and had an animal that was very useful for mankind. The cereal grains are another good example. If the story given to us by the church does not taste good. Then yes it doesn’t hurt to search and see what else might work. I am not saying that I am correct. What I am saying is that by researching and listening to other thinking that science might give us a better understanding of our past. The point to be made here is that man can be made in the image of god, and god does not have to be a deity. And this could have all been performed by atheists. Citizenschallenge made the point, “… what the hell about the rest of creation?" and did we create god in our image. Mid atlantic said “… but god isn’t supposed to be human." Deros brought up that there are thousands of gods. LoisL brought up the physicals problems of being created in god’s image. Write4U has found all kinds of problems with today’s god. Thevillageatheist agreed with the thinking that man created god. Lausten, I do not know where you stand. It is almost impossible to find an original idea or thought in the bible. And the bible is made up of many stories and books. You can find that the levels of heaven are mentioned in the Bible and Torah as items that did not need to be explained because they were understood by everyone. I think the same thing was true with creation. Then over time that general understanding got lost and changed. Another point I would like to make. In your statement “…our transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer." I do not see that is being stated in a scientific manner. I don’t agree that statement as being possible. I think science will show us that the transition was more likely from, hunter-gatherer to domesticator then to farmer. Because there was almost nothing to farm until domestication created the method and items for farming. Wheat for example, we are told by science to reach the levels it is at today took over 40,000 years to domesticate. How can we not include that in our understanding of history?
Another point I would like to make. In your statement “…our transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer." I do not see that is being stated in a scientific manner. I don’t agree that statement as being possible. I think science will show us that the transition was more likely from, hunter-gatherer to domesticator then to farmer.I guess it's because that would be history, not science.
Another point I would like to make. In your statement “…our transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer." I do not see that is being stated in a scientific manner. I don’t agree that statement as being possible. I think science will show us that the transition was more likely from, hunter-gatherer to domesticator then to farmer.I guess it's because that would be history, not science. History has given us clues as the direction to look. The Garden of Eden was most likely the center of the domestication process. In the news yesterday there was a new dna report out that stated that when Europe was being farmed the hunters and gatherers lived in the same areas for thousands of years without the hunters farming. And that the farming that was going on did not originate in Europe but came in from the East. This domestication process in not new. It was better understood in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe than in America today. The Jews also claimed to be one of the races created by god. We even see it being used in Germany when they were trying to purify the German race. Now we understand that the most power in Germany has been the Christian Party for many years. How come they never had a problem with the purification in Germany? Did you read in today’s news where the Israeli courts found no evidence that the tomb of Jesus is a fraud and awarded filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici some money for calling him a fraud? Yet I bet most of the Christian world still believes Jesus’s tomb is a fraud. I guess that’s why you hear the Christians referred to as the flock.
Before we begin a discusion of different blood types and any possible inherent superiority resulting from having more blood types vs fewer blood types, should we not first ask what the function of blood is and the necessity for different blood types for adaption to the environment?
Can we begin by acknowledging that different blood types are not magically bestowed, but a result of evolution and natural selection? It always seems to simplify the question of divine intervention.