By "new Atheists" I assume you mean primarily the Four Horsemen, e.g. Dawkins?
That is correct!
He has stated many time over that he is indeed an Atheist and has even attacked individual Biblical scriptures in his book. In fact I don't remember any one of them claiming to be an "agnostic" due to an interpretation or misinterpretation of any Biblical text.
He has no idea of the Biblical text or any other ancient texts.
As for being an atheist:
http://www.theweek.co.uk/religion/religion/45552/outspoken-atheist-dawkins-admits-he-agnostic#ixzz3bOwhMdkQ
Also, the reason for the claim "I don't know whether god exists or not" has to do with the scientific doctrine of falsifiability only. It's neither a dodge nor a wink in the direction of the clergy.
In my opinion falsifiability is a philosophical bs, as so many others, and that agnosticism is a cunning theological theory.
Nice speech! Pity you do not care enough for the subject being discussed to get at least the figures right. It is 40,000 years, the time the people left the Near East area for Europe and the Orient.
I was counting from the earliest bead makers (that we know of). I guess you missed those in your "study". Didn't you know about them? They were highly influential of the fat lady makers. I have some pictures and a paper on it. If it wasn't for the bead makers, the fat lady makers would have never got started. They are the real sources of the stories about god. They are the ones you should be focusing on.
Where is the link?
The tall, beautiful women manage to return home soon, while the ugly ones stay there for a long time before their duty, imposed by the law, is done. Some of them stay there for three and even four years!
A similar custom is known from several areas of Cyprus. (1,199)
But I know that we are (as are all organisms) naturally inclined toward engaging in superstitious behavior. Beyond that, as humans, we also have complex verbal behavior with which we often form narratives that fill in the blanks created by our limited and sometimes inaccurate perceptions. In addition to that, we all start out as infants who do not have complex verbal behavior, but who are taking in enormous amounts of information, while experiencing utter helplessness except for the mercy of some entity that is caring for us.
I would say that those factors, alone, can prime us toward eventually buying in to religious nonsense, as we develop further.
Nice assumptions, well expressed, but still assumptions.
I guess you know who Osiris is. The pure-blood god of the Egyptian pantheon or, according to your line of thinking, the entity that is caring for humans...
According to my line of thinking, now that I have developed to the point of being able to, generally, separate fact from fiction, there was no supernatural deity, ever, including Osiris, that cared for humans, or did anything else for that matter. But this does not negate that I and everyone else have inherent characteristics that can, as you say "prime" us toward religious thinking.
In your presentation of how your analysis of the ancient text reveals that it was about real life events that were subsequently transformed into a supernatural version, How do you think it came to pass that people bought into the supernatural version? Were they, perhaps naturally "primed" to do so?
Dimitrios Trimijopulos - 15 December 2015 01:01 AM
Sorry, but you have to read a lot more before you get the right to have an opinion on the origins of religion and the religion in general.
Does that mean you think you qualify, Dimitrios?
Dimitrios, I bet you feel like a firefighter right now trying to put out the up flares. I just wanted to say I think you’re doing a great job on keep your thoughts the center of the subject and not getting upset. It may not always seem like it, but the attacks on you do have good intentions and good people behind them. I know it probably does not seem that way. I just want to say that I am impressed.
Monotheism is an improvement isn't that right Father Dimitrios?
It certainly is! Monotheism does not demand from parents to kill their own children. Read the Bible!
Biblically, there was this one dude who was about to kill his own son at "God"'s direction, but was given an out at the last second. And "God" himself sent his own son to be martyred. I'm not familiar with the intricacies of the Old Testament, but I have heard there are some pretty bad practices in there, including genocide.
According to my line of thinking, now that I have developed to the point of being able to, generally, separate fact from fiction, there was no supernatural deity, ever, including Osiris, that cared for humans, or did anything else for that matter.
Osiris is a symbol, the symbol of the race of the gods, the pure-blood gods.
His brother, Seth, symbolizes the race of the non-gods.
Gilgamesh was, according to the relevant epic, god by two thirds. How can a person be god by two thirds?
Let us go back to Osiris. It is said of Osiris that he was creating new life in the great Harem of a city. That means that Osiris (the pure-blood gods) was impregnating the girls of the harem who were not female gods, not women of the race of the gods. The kids born were hybrids and could be either mostly gods or mostly non-gods or they could be demigods.
These things were not figments of the imagination of the ancients because they were events of the everyday life. Kids were born into human breeding grounds and if found to be not as expected they were killed.
But this does not negate that I and everyone else have inherent characteristics that can, as you say "prime" us toward religious thinking.
I only quoted the theory of Thomson endorsed by Dawkins. No one is primed for religion. Everybody is brainwashed towards religion.
In your presentation of how your analysis of the ancient text reveals that it was about real life events that were subsequently transformed into a supernatural version, How do you think it came to pass that people bought into the supernatural version? Were they, perhaps naturally "primed" to do so?
Good question, but to understand how these things happened you have to study the hieroglyphic a little bit. A good example is presented in the case of the transformation of a term, which originally named a person, to end up as the term denoting soul, as the name of the soul actually.
https://www.academia.edu/6940175/The_making_of_the_soul_concept
Biblically, there was this one dude who was about to kill his own son at "God"'s direction, but was given an out at the last second.
That is the story used to persuade the people tha the deity changed his mind and can accept an animal instead of a child. The same story exists in the Greek lore.
The killing of children is prohibited in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) on pain of death.
And "God" himself sent his own son to be martyred.
That is Christian nonsense.
I'm not familiar with the intricacies of the Old Testament, but I have heard there are some pretty bad practices in there, including genocide.
That is correct. The Tanakh ("Old Testament" is a fake Christian title) is not much of a theological text.
Why do you blame New Atheism for something an individual atheist may have said?
Because both New Atheism and the individual “atheist" are advocates of agnosticism.
They fight the clergy instead of depriving the clergy from its merchandise, God, and thus leave clergy to die out by itself. As long as they state that they do not know whether God exists or not, the clergy would be invincible.
I understand your strategy. Mine is just a little different.
You want to humanize sentient gods, by exposing their human frailties, so they lose their divine status. You are doing this
through following the history of the God Kings.
I want to mathematize gods, which alters their divine status from emotional functions to purely mathematical functions. It does offer an *understandable* alternate to spiritualism through meta-physics, the inherent potentials of the Universe.
Nice speech! Pity you do not care enough for the subject being discussed to get at least the figures right. It is 40,000 years, the time the people left the Near East area for Europe and the Orient.
I was counting from the earliest bead makers (that we know of). I guess you missed those in your "study". Didn't you know about them? They were highly influential of the fat lady makers. I have some pictures and a paper on it. If it wasn't for the bead makers, the fat lady makers would have never got started. They are the real sources of the stories about god. They are the ones you should be focusing on.
Where is the link?
Link to what? Haven't you read about the bead makers? If you aren't interested enough to do that, why should I waste my time on you? Are you one of those people who only believes something if it is on the internet? When you know more about the bead makers, then you can pass judgment on me. Lucky for me I wasn't corrupted by all of you fat lady figurine studiers on the internet.
The killing of children is prohibited in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) on pain of death.
I guess I'll just go and become a Hebrew then.
Now that I know what the right book is.
For an atheist you sure put alot of faith and sweat into these scriptures and myths.
History is important I agree, but I can't help but detect some righteousness in your pronouncement of these dusty old tomes.
Some fervor or something. I don't know...
Maybe your just a mythology enthusiast.
How did you come about atheism Dimitrios, if you don't mind me asking?
10.God kills everyone (men, women, children, infants, newborns) in Sodom and Gomorrah by raining "fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven." Well, almost everyone -- he spares the "just and righteous" Lot and his family. 19:24
Exodus,
40.God will kill the Egyptian children to show that he puts "a difference between the Egyptians and Israel." 11:7
41.God explains to Moses that he intends to "smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. 12:12
73."The firstborn of thy sons thou shalt give unto me." (As a burnt offering?) 22:29
Leviticus,
170.Two of the sons of Aaron "offered strange fire before the Lord" and "there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord." 10:1-2
171.Moses tells Aaron that his sons were burned to death to sanctify and glorify God. 10:3
195.God warns Aaron that he might have to burn him to death like he did his sons. (10:1-2) 16:1-2
Numbers:
261.God punishes the children for the failings of their great-great grandfathers. 14:18
296.Under God's direction, Moses' army defeats the Midianites. They kill all the adult males, but take the women and children captive. When Moses learns that they left some live, he angrily says: "Have you saved all the women alive? Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." So they went back and did as Moses (and presumably God) instructed, killing everyone except for the virgins. In this way they got 32,000 virgins -- Wow! (Even God gets some of the booty -- including the virgins.) 31:1-54
299.God killed all the Egyptian firstborn. 33:4
Deuteronomy;
313.At God's instructions, the Israelites "utterly destroyed the men, women, and the little ones" leaving "none to remain." 2:33-36
314.The Israelites, with God's help, kill all the men, women, and children of every city. 3:3-6
315."And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city." 3:6
343.In the cities that god "delivers into thine hands" you must kill all the males (including old men, boys, and babies) with "the edge of the sword .... But the women ... shalt thou take unto yourself." 20:13
344."But of the cities ... which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth." Kill the old men and women, the sick and the dying, the blind and the lame, pregnant mothers, nursing mothers, infants, toddlers, and babies. 20:16
346.If you have a "stubborn and rebellious son," then you and the other men in your neighborhood "shall stone him with stones that he die." 21:18-21
353.God commands the Israelites to "blot out the rembrance of Amalek from under heaven." A few hundred years later God orders Saul to kill of the Amalekites "both man and woman, infant and suckling." (1 Samuel 15:2-3) 25:19
"Thou shalt begat sons and daughters, but thou shall not enjoy them; for they shall go into captivity." 28:41
371. "All these curses shall come upon thee ... and upon thy seed for ever." 28:48-49
372.God will enslave you and destroy you with hunger, thirst, hardship, and all kinds of deprivation. 28:48-52
373."And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters." 28:53
"375.The tender and delicate woman" will be forced to eat her own children "that cometh out from between her feet." 28:56-57
There is more but do we need more of this? How does this utter horror escape notice from the very people who are supposed to follow these Commands or Actions, or who are Biblical scholars? For thousands of years??
TimB: But this does not negate that I and everyone else have inherent characteristics that can, as you say "prime" us toward religious thinking.
I only quoted the theory of Thomson endorsed by Dawkins. No one is primed for religion. Everybody is brainwashed towards religion.
And this is the essence of where you and I disagree. You flat out deny any inherent human predisposition towards religious, or supernatural thinking. I say that there is obviously some. Although, of course, I also recognize that religious and supernatural thinking can be learned, beyond any inherent tendency to do so. e.g., by brainwashing, as you say.
Just my 2 cents, but I think the brainwashing/cultural phenomena of religion is equal to the “religious” gene theory.
We’re predisposed to fear the unknown.
Are we predisposed to anthropomorphism? I think we are?
Are we pre-disposed to think things will act in a way that we would act?
In other words, millions of years ago did people think the rain didn’t come because the rain was angry at the people?
That’s thinking things will act the way we think. And perhaps it was very powerful thinking before people began to understand nature better.(science)
Some of that is still left over today. We talk to our cars sometimes. “Come on girl don’t let me down.” etc etc…
We project our self centered minds onto the workings of nature.
Is this a pre-disposition to religion…yes. It had to have happened that way. Way before science came along.
Dimitrios’ idea of a hoax is just not good enough. The hoax would have worn out long ago.
No. People believed that stuff, They believe it because it started along time before the Egyptians or the Sumerians.
I understand your strategy. Mine is just a little different.
You want to humanize sentient gods, by exposing their human frailties, so they lose their divine status. You are doing this
through following the history of the God Kings.
I want to mathematize gods, which alters their divine status from emotional functions to purely mathematical functions. It does offer an *understandable* alternate to spiritualism through meta-physics, the inherent potentials of the Universe.
The difference being that you offer a theory that no institution would be obliged to teach and promote, while I am revealing the untold human history which universities will be obliged, sooner or later, to teach.
Monotheism is an improvement isn't that right Father Dimitrios?
It certainly is! Monotheism does not demand from parents to kill their own children. Read the Bible!
So we boiled my son (setup. Lamentations 4:10, "The hands of the pitiful woman have sodden their own children"), and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son.]
In both cases, so much in 2 Kings 6:29 as in Lamentations 4:10, accounts of the misery of the people, dying of hunger inside cities under siege, are given. The people were killing the children to eat them.
What that has to do with the killing by the parents of their children in order to satisfy the gods?
Leviticus 18
21 And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 20
1And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.Let us be intellectually honest!