If anyone will address another concern I have about Christianity. The Earth was apparently created 6000 years ago while Jesus came to be 2000 years ago. If Jesus was the messenger of God in a sense and as such, the bible was created in his honour, and the bible speaks of obeying the ten commandments or you will go to hell if you don't pray for forgiveness, then would've all those that lived between 2000-6000 years ago be left in the dark about it all and since they had no knowledge of praying or of god then they would go to hell because everyone obviously sins.
I don't know much about the old testament, but did this book address this concern? What was the ancient peoples' beliefs regarding Christianity?
-Mephisto's Lament-, you're honestly being such a hypocrite. He called your argument bullshit, you threaten to ban him, you call mine bullshit and make your negative emotions very clear, should I threaten to ban you? Oh wait I can't, and whatever, it's not like I would care to do so. Get out of your high chair and debate like a man, not a little boy with more power than he knows what to do with.
All your negativity obviously stems from your firm beliefs in an afterlife. Whether this is a false hope or not doesn't bother you one bit, well fine, but I'm not going to bother arguing with such a closed-minded individual. And I know you'll surely have a problem with that comment so just ban me for it...
Hell was described in great detail as being so horrid we couldn't even fathom the pain it would bring to us. And for all eternity too? This seems like more than enough punishment for your sins on Earth in such a short lifetime. If this fear actually got through to everyone, then we would have no need for a justice system! It's because we have non-believers on both the good and bad sides of the law that we need one. It's the only logical way to punish someone because lets face it, if heaven and hell isn't real (I know you find that very hard to swallow, but it IS a possibility) then these sinners would have gotten off scot-free.
Sorry, I'm still not convinced. Translations are often tweaked to suit ones needs. For example, I have seen other translations that says the heavens are an expanse - not expanding. How easily this can be misleadingly translated, it's not funny.
And you seem to have also skipped any false predictions.
Sorry, not convinced. And why is it that in this case god can freely give us all the "correct" information about the Universe? It has been argued that the incorrect scientific facts in the bible is there because the perfection of god works in ways we can't perceive. Does this suggest the Islamic god(s) are imperfect, or are we going to be altering and re-altering our arguments to support each and every religion?
Or maybe the people that are writing these books are making vague predictions that can be interpreted in many different ways such that it fits with the current theories of science?
Are you serious? Man's definition of good deeds is exactly the same as god's definition, according to the ten commandments. But you're willing to suggest that man's definition of perfect, even with its many variations in different instances, is now different to god's definition of perfect?
The only reason I can think of lying as being a good thing (man's definition of good being the same as god's) is if the truth would bring harm to others. Please tell me what harm would come to us if we were given the truth about the universe. Or is this concept out of our reach?
So far, given that it is in our nature to question things, to question that maybe Jesus wasn't who he really claimed he was and the bible was just created by man in an attempt to bring peace to the world is a perfectly valid proposition to make in my opinion.
Can you please stop talking about Christianity and the Bible, and start talking about the Quran, and start giving me examples from those specific things, without retorting to Google? Wait, you can't? Thought so. You haven't read the Quran. You know next to nothing about it and about Islam, so stop defaming it.
Yes you're right, I don't know much if anything about it. But that's a pretty low blow to criticize me for not knowing about such a specialized topic.
I wouldn't have even made a single post in this thread if it was labelled "Quran Vs. Science" But since it's about religion, that I do know. And I was brought up in a Christian family, so you can guess which religion I am specifically going to be addressing.
Good luck proving to me that people were brainwashed thousands of years ago.
I doubt your grandpa or daddio were alive back then. They didn't "prove" anything, they just preached, and you were free to believe. Some performed miracles, some things were performed by God.
Take a look at the nature of people. They easily succumb to any rumours that seem to explain that which they do not know. It's not surprising that many people in the past believed in those stories, because belief spreads like wildfire - in other words, you would be shunned by the community if you opposed their belief. And what is critically important to note in this case is that no one had any reason to not believe in it. It was their only answer.
If you don't want to believe that kind of stuff, don't. I do. But don't start berating me for believing in what I believe, because I certainly am not doing that.
Feel free to believe what you want to believe, but I for one, will not live my life thinking that I'm just living life for the sake of living it, and that there's no endgame content.
What you believe doesn't concern me. I just want to ask you, if you're happy with your life then why do you need to be considering what will happen in your afterlife when you,
1) Aren't sure it even exists
2) Probably haven't even considered what you will do 10 years from now
Doesn't it occur to you that man could've made up that whole heaven-hell comparison just to try and make you and me a better person in life? The most effective tool in changing someone's attitude is fear, and this is what they're using against us.
But if heaven and hell exists, why would we have a justice system? Why don't they just leave it in the devil's hands to punish them for the rest of eternity? Sorry, I don't mean to sound rude, but justice systems were created because there are many logical minded people out there that can see passed this brainwashing scheme, and lots of them are bad people too.
Tell you what. Provide me with some of that hardcore scientific "evidence" proving that God doesn't exist, and I'll rest my case. Just as I can't actually PROVE that God exists, you equally CAN'T prove that he DOESN'T exist.
This argument has been used to death already...
You know that when Galileo gave some of that hardcore scientific evidence you're referring to about the Earth revolving around the Sun, he was tortured for it. Before this, if anyone questioned the Bible's facts then the same argument could have been produced: "Well then prove that it isn't true". Back then it couldn't, but what about now? Oh well now it's different. No one even thinks of arguing for the Bible's facts without coming up with some very crude and imaginative responses such as "the math was wrong".
The only evidence one can give for your query is of course limited to the discoveries Science has already made. I can say for one that if God is perfect, then he wouldn't be so imperfect as to create lies.
At the end of the day, this is just an argument with no end in sight. It's like two people arguing about The Lochness Monster. There's no proof that it exists, but there's no proof that it absolutely does not exist.
Notice your use of "absolutely". Evidence is swaying much more towards that it doesn't exist because proving/disproving that the Loch Ness monster exists is a much easier challenge and within modern Science's grasp than proving god doesn't exist. They were both based on the same principle though. Some people think they saw something and their imagination ran wild.
If ANY book, not just a religious one, were to include every single scientific piece of data, it would literally be too big to even conceive. Good luck having one of those in every household, nevertheless having everyone read them. Good luck driving people to "believe" in God when God gives you everything on a silver platter,
Right, it's so much better that he instead gave us lies to fill up his book with. If scientific fact would take up so much room, why would he even begin to fill up the empty space with incorrect data?
I think much of Christianity has broken away from these debunked facts because it's not helping their primary goal of recruiting more believers.
and just blatantly goes out of his way to prove his existence. Imagine the existence of a 20 megapixel camera back when the prophets/Jesus/whoever was present..that would certainly fuck up the entire concept of "faith".
What was Jesus then? Wasn't he out to prove something? Weren't all those "facts" there to give some kind of cheap evidence that god created the Earth and everything on it? When believers present this evidence (if you can even call it that) and then conclude with "so obviously god is real" then you know - without a doubt - that they are biased individuals that have been brainwashed.
Funny, my dad has a Master's in computer science and he's religious.
And some people that don't have any degrees aren't religious. There will always be overlaps but the majority of college educated individuals would vote against the Earth being created 6000 years ago and other facts from the bible. Take note that this doesn't include those that believe god could be the creator of the universe. That is, the initiator of the big bang.
I'm in college right now, the more I learn of biology the less I believe evolution makes sense.
I would like to hear your reasons as to why evolution progressively makes less sense. I only have a high school education on the theory of evolution and what I've been taught so far seems quite plausible, considering that evolution on small scales can be observed everywhere.
When will evolutionists realize they are merely following a fad and responding to a neurosis caused to them by their religious parents/school or whatever? Look at any teenage gathering, you're all the same, you're following a FAD. Bashing Inspectors, worshiping Dawkins or whoever it is you like to worship.
The same argument can be used against Christianity. Except in this case the theory of evolution has evidence to support it, and seems logical. What does Christianity have? The word of mouth passed on over 2000 years? And religion was a fad at one point too, but at least now science has finally been able to answer some serious questions and given that many more people are getting an education now, the fad is quickly creeping over to the basic foundations of human development and innovation, science.
There were innovated geniuses who made breakthroughs in math, started to understand crop rotation, and developed new weaponry, however these people were not the majority. For religion to spread it must appeal the the masses
You're making it sound as though Jesus is selling a product and only cares about the return, that is, to target the largest audience - which unsurprisingly was the uneducated.
Why would Jesus create the biggest lies in human history? So much for being perfect...
No really, this argument is moot because of the shear fact that Jesus never forced anyone to believe in him, it was their choice and he wasn't going to force their free will. To say that he changed the facts so that it would appeal to the masses sounds like an endeavour that would be made by humans, not Jesus or god.
What is much more likely is that when the prophets were writing the bible, they needed to answer the questions of where the Earth came to be, and since no one knew, they made up a story to answer it. It's a good ploy though, because there was no conceivable way of how humans could ever debunk this in any foreseeable future (I doubt they really cared if the religion were to survive into the 3rd millenium or not).
Mind you, they were the ones that created the number zero, the aqueducts, the chain and scale armors, the C-section, quick-dry cement, the calendar, indoor heating, socks, umbrellas, candles, magnifying glasses, etc., but yea, with all these inventions, they would not be able to swallow the idea that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the universe is 12 billion years old, or that the Earth revolves around the sun, not vice versa.
Jesus must've been sceptical even about using the number 6000 since that would take many minutes to count up to and people might lose count or grow bored of the challenge.
The people that invented all these things were the only ones that could conceive numbers so large, or think outside the box and question, even for a second, that maybe the universe doesn't revolve around us (Jesus must've been giving humans an ego-boost with this one).
The idea isn't so absurd as you may think though. Religious folk do tend to be the less educated and more narrow minded of the human populace, so conceiving numbers that big could have been out of their grasp. The prophets were smart though, they knew their target audience was huge, and still is today.
Until the day everyone gets an education right through to the end of college...
Yeah, I am full of stupid quotes. I suck at wording things, especially when I am tired, so when I try to explain my thoughts it always comes out weird.
It wasn't the way you wrote it, it's the idea that you brought to the table.
But do you think that if some prophet who said he talked to god tried to explain the concept of billions of years or evolution or anything like that to somebody thousands of years ago they would believe him? The would be too confused to even know what it is going on. It would be so much simpler for prophets to say (or for God to tell the prophets) "God created 2 people, they made the rest." That is something that people could accept and understand.
I'm studying for a Math and Physics major, and throughout my life I've learnt to understand and appreciate the intellectual power that humans possess. To say that no one would've understood what a billion is or to understand evolution is a mockery for all of mankind, since our intellectual capacity today has hardly changed since then. It's only a lack of education or a low IQ that would cause people to not understand such trivial things.
And it's a good argument you're posing. "Since humans were all dumb back then, the prophets went easy on them and turned the facts into nice little fairy tales that they could swallow". Humans were very dumb indeed, with their bows and arrows, iron and steel armors; infrastructure, agriculture, the math they knew that reached to an early college education today. Very dumb indeed.
I highly doubt most people back then knew what a billion was and they would have sounded crazy talking about numbers that people don't understand. Therefore God said 6000 years and I think he wanted people to go with science when it was proved to be older.
lol omg this is classic. This would be an epic quote :thumbsup:
Even if it was from the word of God, it was copied, translated and put together by man, making it no longer perfect. However the way I see it is Christianity needs to progress because (I am just going to assume Christianity is correct and Jesus was all-knowing) if he talked about science, genetics, evolution and other things that no one back then knew about, Christianity would not have spread. I think God was hoping that people could use common sense to not interpret the bible literally and understand the the earth is older than 6000 years by now. This is just my belief.
You're trying to explain why the bible is wrong with some crackpot theory. No Christian ever confessed that the bible was wrong since man's translation of god's word is flawed and thus not perfect. There is actually a quote (which I don't remember exactly) but it mentioned something along the lines of "the prophets that wrote the bible did so through god/jesus' guidance".
By the way, the Earth being older than 6000 years was not common sense for a very long. And if this wasn't translated correctly, then who knows what else wasn't translated correctly either! Maybe Adam and Eve were translated incorrectly too and god just expected us to eventually use common sense to understand that evolution is the correct theory. Do we stop there? Why not just say the bible is wrong altogether.
And it's a good accomplishment for the faith organization (even though forced it may be). As society progress, so too does religion need to
Why does religion need to progress? Since it was apparently from the word of god, it must be final. Seems like science called Christianity out on that one, but rather than accepting defeat, they took another more modernized approach to it all - by slowly pushing away some of the false predictions about how the Earth was created in the bible into the dark. I'm sorry, but if god's word is final, and we now have very strong evidence to counter it, isn't this a stab to the heart of Christianity and everything it is based on?
Every religion is subject to change, Christianity is just one of the most-recognized ones who is having a hard time to adapt.
Because Christianity wanted to become well known and stand out from the crowd. It went ahead and explained the unexplainable (some of which weren't answerable 2000 years ago but are today) as an act of god, and tried to seal the deal with proof, which is where jesus fits into it all.
Yes, this particular faith has done many wrongs in the past and I don't blame people for having stigma against them (when they don't transcend being more than a century's time), but one must learn from the past not dwell on it.
I have learnt from the past. Religion used to have power and it used this power for wrong-doing, it crucified non-believers. But with science's quick growth within the past few centuries, it too has become a religion of its own. The only difference is that this time it is based on logical reasoning and evidence beyond that of some stories that were scribed by a few men (and I honestly don't care what they claim that their inspiration came from. Lying wasn't invented yesterday).
Religion is outdated, and the only reason it still lives is mainly because not everyone can afford or has the intellectual ability to get a proper education in science.
Hmmm? The definitions I brought up was to counter Link's assumption of my improper word usage on the term 'discrimination', it was purely off-topic (which Puttah promptly signaled me out on, though I still stuck with the topic).
I signalled you out because I made a comment and rather than addressing my points, you started fiddling around with a non-issue.
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I found this hilarious and thought I might share it with you guys.
I don't know much about the old testament, but did this book address this concern? What was the ancient peoples' beliefs regarding Christianity?
All your negativity obviously stems from your firm beliefs in an afterlife. Whether this is a false hope or not doesn't bother you one bit, well fine, but I'm not going to bother arguing with such a closed-minded individual. And I know you'll surely have a problem with that comment so just ban me for it...
Hell was described in great detail as being so horrid we couldn't even fathom the pain it would bring to us. And for all eternity too? This seems like more than enough punishment for your sins on Earth in such a short lifetime. If this fear actually got through to everyone, then we would have no need for a justice system! It's because we have non-believers on both the good and bad sides of the law that we need one. It's the only logical way to punish someone because lets face it, if heaven and hell isn't real (I know you find that very hard to swallow, but it IS a possibility) then these sinners would have gotten off scot-free.
And you seem to have also skipped any false predictions.
Sorry, not convinced. And why is it that in this case god can freely give us all the "correct" information about the Universe? It has been argued that the incorrect scientific facts in the bible is there because the perfection of god works in ways we can't perceive. Does this suggest the Islamic god(s) are imperfect, or are we going to be altering and re-altering our arguments to support each and every religion?
Or maybe the people that are writing these books are making vague predictions that can be interpreted in many different ways such that it fits with the current theories of science?
edit: This debunking site might be of interest to you http://councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=4537.0
The only reason I can think of lying as being a good thing (man's definition of good being the same as god's) is if the truth would bring harm to others. Please tell me what harm would come to us if we were given the truth about the universe. Or is this concept out of our reach?
So far, given that it is in our nature to question things, to question that maybe Jesus wasn't who he really claimed he was and the bible was just created by man in an attempt to bring peace to the world is a perfectly valid proposition to make in my opinion.
... I have to go, I'll continue on later.
I wouldn't have even made a single post in this thread if it was labelled "Quran Vs. Science" But since it's about religion, that I do know. And I was brought up in a Christian family, so you can guess which religion I am specifically going to be addressing.
Take a look at the nature of people. They easily succumb to any rumours that seem to explain that which they do not know. It's not surprising that many people in the past believed in those stories, because belief spreads like wildfire - in other words, you would be shunned by the community if you opposed their belief. And what is critically important to note in this case is that no one had any reason to not believe in it. It was their only answer.
What you believe doesn't concern me. I just want to ask you, if you're happy with your life then why do you need to be considering what will happen in your afterlife when you,
1) Aren't sure it even exists
2) Probably haven't even considered what you will do 10 years from now
Doesn't it occur to you that man could've made up that whole heaven-hell comparison just to try and make you and me a better person in life? The most effective tool in changing someone's attitude is fear, and this is what they're using against us.
But if heaven and hell exists, why would we have a justice system? Why don't they just leave it in the devil's hands to punish them for the rest of eternity? Sorry, I don't mean to sound rude, but justice systems were created because there are many logical minded people out there that can see passed this brainwashing scheme, and lots of them are bad people too.
This argument has been used to death already...
You know that when Galileo gave some of that hardcore scientific evidence you're referring to about the Earth revolving around the Sun, he was tortured for it. Before this, if anyone questioned the Bible's facts then the same argument could have been produced: "Well then prove that it isn't true". Back then it couldn't, but what about now? Oh well now it's different. No one even thinks of arguing for the Bible's facts without coming up with some very crude and imaginative responses such as "the math was wrong".
The only evidence one can give for your query is of course limited to the discoveries Science has already made. I can say for one that if God is perfect, then he wouldn't be so imperfect as to create lies.
Notice your use of "absolutely". Evidence is swaying much more towards that it doesn't exist because proving/disproving that the Loch Ness monster exists is a much easier challenge and within modern Science's grasp than proving god doesn't exist. They were both based on the same principle though. Some people think they saw something and their imagination ran wild.
I think much of Christianity has broken away from these debunked facts because it's not helping their primary goal of recruiting more believers.
What was Jesus then? Wasn't he out to prove something? Weren't all those "facts" there to give some kind of cheap evidence that god created the Earth and everything on it? When believers present this evidence (if you can even call it that) and then conclude with "so obviously god is real" then you know - without a doubt - that they are biased individuals that have been brainwashed.
I would like to hear your reasons as to why evolution progressively makes less sense. I only have a high school education on the theory of evolution and what I've been taught so far seems quite plausible, considering that evolution on small scales can be observed everywhere.
The same argument can be used against Christianity. Except in this case the theory of evolution has evidence to support it, and seems logical. What does Christianity have? The word of mouth passed on over 2000 years? And religion was a fad at one point too, but at least now science has finally been able to answer some serious questions and given that many more people are getting an education now, the fad is quickly creeping over to the basic foundations of human development and innovation, science.
Why would Jesus create the biggest lies in human history? So much for being perfect...
No really, this argument is moot because of the shear fact that Jesus never forced anyone to believe in him, it was their choice and he wasn't going to force their free will. To say that he changed the facts so that it would appeal to the masses sounds like an endeavour that would be made by humans, not Jesus or god.
What is much more likely is that when the prophets were writing the bible, they needed to answer the questions of where the Earth came to be, and since no one knew, they made up a story to answer it. It's a good ploy though, because there was no conceivable way of how humans could ever debunk this in any foreseeable future (I doubt they really cared if the religion were to survive into the 3rd millenium or not).
The people that invented all these things were the only ones that could conceive numbers so large, or think outside the box and question, even for a second, that maybe the universe doesn't revolve around us (Jesus must've been giving humans an ego-boost with this one).
The idea isn't so absurd as you may think though. Religious folk do tend to be the less educated and more narrow minded of the human populace, so conceiving numbers that big could have been out of their grasp. The prophets were smart though, they knew their target audience was huge, and still is today.
Until the day everyone gets an education right through to the end of college...
I'm studying for a Math and Physics major, and throughout my life I've learnt to understand and appreciate the intellectual power that humans possess. To say that no one would've understood what a billion is or to understand evolution is a mockery for all of mankind, since our intellectual capacity today has hardly changed since then. It's only a lack of education or a low IQ that would cause people to not understand such trivial things.
And it's a good argument you're posing. "Since humans were all dumb back then, the prophets went easy on them and turned the facts into nice little fairy tales that they could swallow". Humans were very dumb indeed, with their bows and arrows, iron and steel armors; infrastructure, agriculture, the math they knew that reached to an early college education today. Very dumb indeed.
By the way, the Earth being older than 6000 years was not common sense for a very long. And if this wasn't translated correctly, then who knows what else wasn't translated correctly either! Maybe Adam and Eve were translated incorrectly too and god just expected us to eventually use common sense to understand that evolution is the correct theory. Do we stop there? Why not just say the bible is wrong altogether.
Oh wait, we already are...
Well I commend you for realizing this, but sadly this isn't the case for many millions of others around the world.
Because Christianity wanted to become well known and stand out from the crowd. It went ahead and explained the unexplainable (some of which weren't answerable 2000 years ago but are today) as an act of god, and tried to seal the deal with proof, which is where jesus fits into it all.
I have learnt from the past. Religion used to have power and it used this power for wrong-doing, it crucified non-believers. But with science's quick growth within the past few centuries, it too has become a religion of its own. The only difference is that this time it is based on logical reasoning and evidence beyond that of some stories that were scribed by a few men (and I honestly don't care what they claim that their inspiration came from. Lying wasn't invented yesterday).
Religion is outdated, and the only reason it still lives is mainly because not everyone can afford or has the intellectual ability to get a proper education in science.
I signalled you out because I made a comment and rather than addressing my points, you started fiddling around with a non-issue.