Atheist Teen Gets 49 Year Old Prayer Banner Removed From School: Receives Threats

[Errata]

You see, the reason I asked is that you had been talking about your god as though he was an impersonal force of nature, and sort of saying "Yeah there's this old guy with a beard and we have to keep on the right side of him" etc - but then you mention your people and it's clear that your people are actually defined by means of this god. So it seems to me there is a weird dichotomy here because on the one hand god is something you just have to put up with but on the other hand he's the very basis of your existence.

Kind of like my incredibly hostile and insane grandmother. I mean, I wouldn't be alive without her, but she was pretty abusive.

Yeah, there is a dichotomy. Relationships are messy. It's supposed to be complicated. At least I think it is. It's only easy if you just accept everything handed to you on a platter. And I'm one of those people who think Adam and Eve passed the test in the Garden of Eden, not failed. We're supposed to question, to challenge, to get pissed and give God the finger if we feel like it. He's at our core, and part of our history, but he's not part of our present, but he might be part of our future somewhere down the line. I can't tell anyone how to feel about that, anymore than I could tell my best friend how to feel when her dad wanted to walk her down the aisle but he hadn't seen her in seven years. (Not his fault. She was abducted by her mother) We all figure it out on our own, and really no answer is wrong. You get through the best way you know how. Everyone does.

[Robert]

Certainly I sometimes think that the Jews have the purest god of the lot. But he isn't totally unknowable - you still believe that he did/does things to help your people.

What if the "help" was a trick to lull you into a false sense of security?

[Limehouse]

I don't see your interpretation in what was stated. Jesus said he is the way and no one comes to the father except through him. That's not "You can come to god directly through me without an intermediary (although wouldn't that make him an intermediary?)", that's "if you don't come through me: you don't come."

If I say, "you cannot come in my house but that I open the door for you" that doesn't mean "you can come in the window, but it's easier to just go in the door".

Now again, I grant that all the stuff about Jesus being the one true and only path is solely found in John amongst the gospels, which is about the most dodgy book of the Bible there is, but it cannot be denied what is there.

Christianity is founded on the principle that Jesus Christ was the enfleshed embodiment of god, and he died for the sins of the world, the supreme sacrifice. If there are many paths to god, why did he bother doing that then?

Ally,

You have to look at the context of the situation when Jesus said these words. He was providing reassurance to his disciples about the future. He was describing the place prepared for them and asking them to follow him. Thomas asks 'how can we follow you if we do not know where it is you are going?' and Jesus replies as you have described ' I am the light, the truth, the way and so on.'

Incidently, you know, of course, that the Christian faith is very denomonational. For example, I was raised in the Baptist faith. Baptists do not Christen babies or small children because they do not believe they are born with the stain of sin. Anglicans, Catholics and Methodists do baptise children. So, even Christians take different paths towards God. However, each and every one of those Christians believe that Jesus died for them and that one day he will return. I do not think when that day comes that He will worry too much about these differences.

[Robert]

If I were to flip my lid, and ring up the Home Secretary and say "I am prepared to do Peter Sutcliffe's sentence for him. You can let him out now" I would get a negative reaction.

[Ally]

Ally,You have to look at the context of the situation when Jesus said these words. He was providing reassurance to his disciples about the future. He was describing the place prepared for them and asking them to follow him. Thomas asks 'how can we follow you if we do not know where it is you are going?' and Jesus replies as you have described ' I am the light, the truth, the way and so on.'

And he also said, NO ONE comes to the Father BUT through me. That's pretty damn definitive regardless of "context". But again, if you don't believe that Jesus is the sole path to salvation, what precisely did he go through all that crucifixion for? I mean was it really just for show and was completely meaningless and irrelevant?

Incidently, you know, of course, that the Christian faith is very denomonational. For example, I was raised in the Baptist faith. Baptists do not Christen babies or small children because they do not believe they are born with the stain of sin. Anglicans, Catholics and Methodists do baptise children. So, even Christians take different paths towards God. However, each and every one of those Christians believe that Jesus died for them and that one day he will return. I do not think when that day comes that He will worry too much about these differences.

Limehouse, I am sorry but everything you just said is wrong. Baptists do believe everyone is born a sinner, they just interpret what that means differently than Catholics do. The reason why they don't baptize infants is because they believe that Baptism is a rite that all true believers must choose for themselves and an infant lacks the capacity to make such a choice, therefore infant baptism is invalid. The do not believe that Baptism washes away original sin, and that dunking an infant in water somehow cleanses it without its fundamental participation in the act. They view Baptism as a rite the true believer undergoes as a profession of faith and that it has no inherent "saving" power of its own, which is the sole distinction between infant baptism and believer baptism. It has nothing to do with not believing that everyone is a sinner, and born in sin, it is a matter of, you must make the choice with full knowledge of what you are choosing. And before anyone gets on me for telling someone else the principles of their faith, I was raised Baptist also and attended religious schools that along with reading and writing taught revelations and redemption.

[GregBaron]

Eat me...

Oriana Fallaci "The Force of Reason."

"...my refusal to accept the idea of a creator who invented a world where Life kills Life, where Life eats Life. A world where in order to survive one has to kill and eat other living beings. Be they chickens or clams or tomatoes. If such an existence has been conceived by a Creator, I say, that Creator would be a very nasty one indeed."


Gnaw on that one boys and girls...


Greg

[Errata]

Certainly I sometimes think that the Jews have the purest god of the lot. But he isn't totally unknowable - you still believe that he did/does things to help your people.

What if the "help" was a trick to lull you into a false sense of security?

Yeah, don't think that hasn't been debated.

And I don't think God has to be unknowable. I mean, he might be, but my knowledge is limited because I choose to limit it. I also choose to limit my exposure to alternate dimension theories, because a: knowing the answer doesn't always make things better, and b: I have an anxiety disorder and some thing just weird me out past tolerance. That whole middle school thing where people started saying things like "What if this is some guys dream and when he wakes up we all disappear?" That had my hyperventilating every time I thought about it.

[Errata]

Oriana Fallaci "The Force of Reason."

"...my refusal to accept the idea of a creator who invented a world where Life kills Life, where Life eats Life. A world where in order to survive one has to kill and eat other living beings. Be they chickens or clams or tomatoes. If such an existence has been conceived by a Creator, I say, that Creator would be a very nasty one indeed."


Gnaw on that one boys and girls...


Greg

See I accept this reasoning. I mean one could argue that it's recycling at it's purest form, but that doesn't make it easier on the rabbit caught by a weasel.

But what I don't accept is that a Creator cannot be a bastard. Why can't God, or the Goddess, or Allah, Zeus, Odin, whoever be a colossal jerk? Where is that written? Mythology is not chock full of nice gods. Historically, especially in Pantheon situations, they have been petty, and cruel, and selfish, and their worship has been almost exclusively devoted to bribing them to leave us alone.

So why worship/praise/cozy up to a unreasonable deity? The same reason we put up with a whole lot of crap from and try and cozy up to North Korea and Iran. Because you do what crazy guy with a gun tells you to do. Or at least enter into potentially endless negotiations.

This is what I meant about limited atheists. If the argument is that there is no God because If there was a God, he would be a jerk, that does not equal atheism. Once you eliminate the notion that there might be a God who is in fact a jerk, or one who doesn't care about us in the slightest, or is powerless to affect our world, then you're an atheist.

[Robert]

I am no Biblical expert, but don't nasty things happen to those who claim to know the mind of god? (e.g. Job).

Don't worry about the dream - anyone who dreamt Barbara Streisand's singing would have woken in a cold sweat years ago.

[Errata]

I am no Biblical expert, but don't nasty things happen to those who claim to know the mind of god? (e.g. Job).

Don't worry about the dream - anyone who dreamt Barbara Streisand's singing would have woken in a cold sweat years ago.

I don't think Job claimed to know the mind of God. I think that's more of an example how bad things happen when your behavior becomes the deciding factor in a bet.

And knowing the mind of God is not so much the same as knowing him. There are any number of people I know well enough to reasonably guess what they would say on any given matter, but it's still incredibly rude to speak for them. I don't know the mind of God. Don't want to. When I said he was not unknowable, I meant more that he's not that subtle. Now that certainly doesn't prevent angels on the head of a pin debates, but when he says "Thou shalt not commit murder" there isn't a whole lot of mystery as to what his intent was. He says don't do something, it means don't do something. The only parts where is gets a little complicated is like, Numbers, where you have to understand context in order to understand the text. And even that's not because God isn't clear, it's that the authors weren't writing for people so far in the future that some basic realities would not be the same.

I mean, without context you're sort of left scratching your head about why on earth homosexuality ranks so much higher on the sin scale than bestiality.

[Robert]

Surely there is a problem with "thou shalt not commit murder" since god himself does just that, according to the bible?

[Ally]

God gets a special pass because he's god dontcha know. As does anyone who says they are acting on his behalf.

And yeah the trials of Job were more about god and Satan sitting down one day over coffee and god deciding to pick his most devoted follower for a round of "kick the bastard in the teeth and see if he still loves me".

God really is like the worst abusive husband ever.

That of course was the story that made me start doubting Satan as the great evil since apparently Satan only acts at god's request, and anything he does, god is telling him to do. So all the evil in the world that the christians say is Satan's fault really is both passively and actively at god's behest, so...

The Judeo-Christian God's a dick who likes tormenting the lessers. Not inherently praise worthy and I am certainly not giving my best cow to that azzhole. I'm out.

[Robert]

Hi Ally

Well, I neither believe in nor approve of gods. For those who must have one, maybe an aged god with Alzheimer's who says something, and then forgets what he's said, would fit the bill.

[Errata]

First of all, the Jewish God and the Christian God are two entirely different beasts. I'm not saying one is better than the other, just different. For the record.

And yes. God could be a dick. Or he could be a tough love parental type. Or he could be absent. Or dead. Or a hypocrite. Or a product of his environment. I mean, you think God is abusive, he's got nothing on his contemporary Molech "The Baby Eater". Yup. Baby eater.

God is not infallible. He admits when he screws up, which is in fact, more than I can say for my Dad. If you look at the pattern in the Torah, God starts out really super involved. Creation, Eden, the flood, Abraham. Sodom and Gomorrah. Then he starts seriously withdrawing from the scene. Isaac had essentially no contact, which had to sting after the whole offering thing. Jacob wrestled an angel, but other wise nothing... and that's it until Moses. Moses saw him twice, acted as his conduit, there was an angel of death, gave us the Ten Commandments. And never again was he seen. There were miracles and prophets, but God never appears on stage again.

Which is not so terribly different from the Deism of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. Their clockmaker God assembles the parts, gets them moving, and moves on. Our God is similar. He gets the Jewish Nation to the promised land like he said he would, and apparently moves on. Whether that was always his intent and his lessened involvement was to enable his withdrawal, or whether he got too involved in his own experiment and decided that we were better off without him, or some other reason, who knows?

So we can't really say that God is a dick. The most we can say is that he was a dick, and may still be, but no one has seen him in 4000 years.

And by the by, while I'm perfectly happy to answer as best as I am able about what and why I believe, it seems a bit one sided. I mean, theoretically we are adults who respect each others beliefs (or at least respect that the other believes) even if we don't share them. Why do you believe what you believe? Why not a God? Any God? What do you believe instead? I mean, clearly there are as many holes in scientific theory as there are in theology, how do you reconcile that?

[Robert]

Hi Errata

Just a quick point : I understood that god was never seen. It may seem a quibble, but it's important, isn't it? His voice is heard, there may be a fire, etc etc but he is never seen. I thought this was one of the things that so alarmed the Jews about Christianity.

I wasn't cross-examininbg you, just finding out what you think. You don't have to justify your beliefs to me. You would if you were trying to impose them on me, but such is not the case.