Religion. The evolution, creation and everything in between megathread

[Arnifix]

Lol, nice D. It's true, but then hell, it's a good chance for us all to brush up on our debating skills and keep the mind working.

[Fragin]

That's quite a narrow minded view assuming all religious people only believe in a creation myth.

I don't hold that view. I am aware that not every religious person believes in a creation myth.

I was responding to this from the Catholic Church:
"when man tries to eliminate God from his horizon, everything is reduced, made sad, cold and inhumane"

Maybe I didn't do it right.

Many religious people do believe in he truly amazing fact that life and intelligent beings could arise spontaneously from interactions among atoms.

IMO they aren't enjoying the true wonder of it. Even the ones who don't believe in a literal interpretation of the bible still can't quite comprehend that it could all happen without some sort of guiding hand. It's probably why they are religious in the first place. To me, it's sad that they feel that way.

[frog.]

the Lord's Prayer compared along side an Egyptain text, the Maxims of Ani(italics) now kept in a Cairo museum, a prayer to the sun god, Amen.

Our father which art in heaven
The god of this earth is the ruler of the horizon
Hallowed be thy name
Th god is for making great his name, devote yourself to the adoration of his name
Thy kingdom come
Give god your existence
Thy will be done
He will do thy business
In earth as it is in heaven
His likeness is upon the earth
Give us this day our daily bread
God is given incense and food offerings daily
And forgive us our debts
The god will judge the true and honest and forgive our debtors
And lead us not into temptation
Guard against the thing that god abominates
But deliver us from evil
Preserve me from decay
For thine is thy knigdom
God is the king of the horizon
The power and the glory
He magnifies he whoever magnifies him
For ever and ever
Let tomorrow be as today
Amen
Amen

just to add, the beginning of a prayer would start "O Amen O Amen who art in heaven"

[frog.]

the epic 10 Commandments supposedly written by god and received by Moses while on mount Sinai, has no doubt set the moral path for society.
it seems in my view these great 10 commandments were hand picked straight out of the 42 negative confessions of the Egyptain Book of the dead(Book of the coming forth by day), The jugdement of the dead.

I have not killed has become thou shall not kill
I have not fornicated has become thou shall not commit adultery
ect...ect...

two i cant seem to match "thou shall not make graven images" and "remember the sabbeth day, keep it holy"

[Black Heart]

set the moral path for society? monkeys have social / moral codes that they live by, how was that "set" ?
I find it perplexing that supposedly intelligent humans would need 10 simplistic rules spelt out to them so they can live together in a society, when fricken ants can do it no worries at all.

[frog.]

set the moral path for society? monkeys have social / moral codes that they live by, how was that "set" ?

the monkey god did it

I find it perplexing that supposedly intelligent humans would need 10 simplistic rules spelt out to them so they can live together in a society, when fricken ants can do it no worries at all.

the 10 commandments contain the most fundamental principles of a moral life(most of them). laws have been governed around them. why do we have laws, because we are not like your ants and your monkeys.

[Black Heart]

ahh but we are, and we would function as we do now without the ten commandments, because lets face it 99% of people have broken at least 1 commandment.

[frog.]

without laws we would not function.

Psalms 104 has numerous points of comparison to Akhenaten's famous Hymn to the Aten.

[Ngati_Grim]

without laws we would not function.

Are you talking legal laws, physical laws, quantum laws?
The religious laws were originally put in place as a form of control...some sense that order is better than the chaos, but that's a misunderstanding of chaos.
Essentially, we are the same as frogs and ants, we are here to ensure the survival of the species, anything else is superfluous, and there are a lot of human constructs to keep us together, 'moral', subservient etc...but just as they are human constructs, so is god.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

ahh but we are, and we would function as we do now without the ten commandments, because lets face it 99% of people have broken at least 1 commandment.

The 10 commandments were the legal laws of the time.

And a civilized society cannot simply function without a set of legal laws.

Imagine A world were to could just walk into a shop and steal a TV, and the police wouldn't care. Society would collapse.

The religious laws were originally put in place as a form of control

The same as legal laws are used to control people, to stop people stealing and stuff.

In essence the legal laws were have now and the religious laws back in the day are no different, they are both a set of rules passed down and enforced by a higher authority.

[cobra]

In essence the legal laws were have now and the religious laws back in the day are no different, they are both a set of rules passed down and enforced by a higher authority.

the pope?

[frog.]

from the few examples given we can see where the biblical authors may have got their inspiration from and it is my opinion that it was not from god. be it the Jewish Torah, Islam's Koran, Baha'i's what ever they have and the Cathlic or Protestant Bible ect... they all promote their work as inspired.
then here we read works which in some cases have been written thousands of years before the "inspired word of god" was conjured up, which are without doubt pagan in origin and strikingly similar to that of the biblical scriptures.

[frog.]

The Great Exodus.

there was a people in egypt
they were called Shepherd kings
distinguished by a side lock of hair which represented a priest of Heliopolis
wore earings
practised circumcision
their god resided in a sacred mountain
their pharaoh was named Yacoba
they were a warring dynasty and thus had a great army
they were involve in a war with the upper Egyptians(Thebans of southern Egypt)
while there was storms and darkness(from the Tempest Slate)
finally they were driven out of Egypt in a great exodus,
left from Pi-Ramesse(Avaris, Nile Delta region)
traviled to Jerusalem
they also destroyed Jericho

bet your not taught that in bible school huh, that there is a very similar exodus story that happend in egypt.

now that exodus is real history.....REAL histoy, not biblical history. this was the Hyksos dynasty of lower Egypt who invaded egypt ruled for about 100 years and were driven out by the upper Egyptian pharaoh because they were forenigers.
if people know their bible they will see the similarities (in bold) between the Hyksos and that of the biblical Israelites.

the biblical Israelites could be, in my view are, and there is very strong evidence for this, the Hyksos Dynasty of Egypt.

rant
how can wondering, rag wearing shephards, who have no home adrift in the desert for 40 years be suddenly raising great armies, Abraham had an army of 32,000 infantry, they are making idols out of gold. they get kicked out of Egypt, next minute they're making golden statue bulls, how? ill tell you how, because they were pharaohs, the biblical patriarchs were pharaohs, they were just as powerful and wealthy as the pharaoh who drove them out because they were pharaohs.
rant/

go to wiki for more on the Hyksos Dynasty.

[Black Heart]

without laws we would not function.

Psalms 104 has numerous points of comparison to Akhenaten's famous Hymn to the Aten.

without laws we would function perfectly well, simply differently. We're so conditioned to society that often we can't see there are alternatives.

Man lived as the animals do for many many centuries. There are all sorts of wierd and wonderful/aweful tales of marooned, or otherwise lawless communities.

If we truly had respect for our fellow man & enviroment, we could easily abandon a legal & monetary way of life, and possibly move towards the utopian ideals man has always dreamt of. The system we have now can't evolve any further and in many circumstances only rewards the self serving, greedy and cruel.

[frog.]

without laws we would function perfectly well, simply differently. We're so conditioned to society that often we can't see there are alternatives.

yes.

Man lived as the animals do for many many centuries. There are all sorts of wierd and wonderful/aweful tales of marooned, or otherwise lawless communities.

yup.

If we truly had respect for our fellow man & enviroment, we could easily abandon a legal & monetary way of life, and possibly move towards the utopian ideals man has always dreamt of. The system we have now can't evolve any further and in many circumstances only rewards the self serving, greedy and cruel.

yes. i agree with you 110%

what im trying to say is that because of mans state and situation. if we take away the laws midday tomorrow... tell me, will you not go out to obtain a gun.

with great suffering comes great awakening. maybe we do need society to callapse but do not think it will be without a dystopia.

[brucewillis2]

wow massive thread!! always a good argument. Personally I find the idea in believing in god crazy, or some wacko that walked the earth a few thousand years ago.

I don't mind people practicing to be a good Christian, love thy neighbour, be kind to one another etc. But all that Noah's Ark, water into wine, walking on water dribble. completely laughable. :chuckle:

[cobra]

.

[TofuEater]

Less religious idiots would certainly be delightful though. _b

Less idiots in general is what we should be striving for - whether they're religious or not.

On a side note, did anyone watch the program about Lloyd Geering the other night?

[KiLL3r]

So form some reason or another the other day i heard the national anthem and i thought to myself why do we need "god defend us" verses. i mean how useful is a god to defend us that doesnt exist?

Cant we have something like "Chuck Norris defend our freeland" instead?

the song mentions him 11 times in our anthem, is it really needed?


thoughts?

[Arnifix]

Creationists are dumb.

[benlav]

Creationists are dumb.

It's funny how you have no idea how much of a fool your are making yourlself out to be. Clearly there is no right or wrong answer, purely because there is no fucken way this thread can come to a conclusion, it's how you measure responses of an open minded nature. People have been trying to solve these mysteries for thousands of years, yet you make stupid comments like the one above.

Hey, I might agree with you, but I'd build a far more compelling arguement than saying stupid things you have said.

[cobra]

A fortnight ago, Christian zealots in America ritually burned the effigy of the famous Oxford scientist Professor Richard Dawkins. Dawkins was given a church funeral service and his life-sized dummy set aflame.

Before committing Dawkins' effigy to the flames, the US Christians called upon him to repent of his apostacism. No answer forthcoming, he was denounced as a shameless Antichrist, damned to burn for eternity in hell, and set alight in front of cameras to the accompaniment of agonised screams and canned laughter from an off-screen Devil.

A couple of days ago, the same zealots repeated their performance, but this time with "a Hitler named Hillary Clinton – the anti-God baby killer who plans to turn the United States into Sodom and Gomorrah". To see Professor Dawkins and Hillary Clinton go up in smoke, try Google for "Dawkins funeral" and "Hillary funeral".

ah christians - fighting Dawkin's logic with weird rituals - science +1

and +1 to removing god from our national anthem,

[ThaFleastyler]

Well, you wouldn't be talking about removing the word "God" from our national anthem; since its part of the traditional song we use as our anthem, that would be impossible. Instead, you're talking about changing the national anthem entirely. So, if you have better ideas, I'm all ears.

Frankly, to promote the entire removal of the word "God", from even the most trivial of situations, requires a level of intolerance I find surprising even from you K.

[SteddieEddie]

I haven't read all of this massive thread so forgive me if this has been said before.

 As we are social creatures we have in our essence an understanding of how to behave in a group to ensure our survival. The 10 commandments therefore are completely unnecessary as we already know right from wrong.

 Yes if you took away laws now there would be anarchy, but if they were never set out by the elite to control the peasants i believe we would have evolved in the general direction we have moved to now.

Of course because of over population people no longer care about their neighbours, so they can find another pack, which is why I believe NZ is getting more violent.

[Tiwaking!]

ah christians - fighting Dawkin's logic with weird rituals

Considering those 'Christians' are going to hell for not belonging to the one true faith, that is the Holy Apostolic Catholic Church of the Assyrian East, I think Mr Dawkis will be having the last laugh there.

Frankly, to promote the entire removal of the word "God", from even the most trivial of situations, requires a level of intolerance I find surprising even from you K.

We could replace it with 'Allah'. Seems all the rage these days