Is there a God of atheism?

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

After all, Jesus comes, what, 500 years after Abraham. Just to create a whole new set of rules and significances?

Given the millions of innocent people, including children, that these Islamo-Judeo-Christians have murdered due to those old commands, you really gotta wonder why they didn't just give out the Love your neighbor command earlier instead of all those draconian laws in the OT. I mean, why wait for millions to be murdered on Yahweh/Allah/Elohim's commands and then thousands of years later go "oh, yeah, hey just kidding. you didn't have to do all that."

 

[steve_bank]

1/3 Christian and the world is getting more or less crazy?

But wait, if we are all convert to Christianity and live IAW the bible the world will be just and peaceful, right?

You could technically apply that logic to all governing system types. Be it Hitler, Ghandi or Jesus. If everyone followed one of these individuals by the sincere conversion to their particular ideology. The world would be peaceful and right in the success of that system.
(Just using the 'technicality' method for arguments as often used by atheists)

Flawed apologetics. Since the time of Constantin Christianity has been intertwined with government power structures. Religion as an arm of government.

The Russian communists had good reason to reject religion.

Just look at the the American and British government for that matter. The Russian Orthodox Church is an arm of government policy. The UK has a state religion.

Historically Christianity has spawned bloody wars ad conflicts. North Ireland is still simmering.

Muslims did the same, and wars were fought between Christians and Muslims over who would dominate Europe. But for one or two key battles you might be quoting the Kpran instead of the bible.

When the Brits, French, Spanish, and Portuguese and otherdss colonized ad conquered. Christians clerics went along with them to convert the populations. Taht is established history.

 

[Jarhyn]

I gotta say, it's pretty fucked up no matter which way you cut it that Abraham was about to kill a child.

Like, at no point does the faith make sense there. Nobody ought listen to any voice inside their head telling them to kill a child, at any point, to any extent, because it cannot be faith if you do not go through with it to whatever extent the voice says.

We know that Yaweh is credited with killing children himself (ol' fluddie), of ordering others to murder children ("dash them upon the rocks"), with letting others who want to murder children to have their way (the Job job), and with the deaths of children in general (can anyone say "childhood leukemia"!)

I would say that's out of place in terms of godlike behaviors, but the fact is that I've watched plenty of people who create simulation environments so all sorts of bad shit with children, everything from forcing them to carry their dismembered, rotting loved ones to corpse storage piles, to just smashing them under drawbridges because it takes too long to train them to do useful work or because they saw too many rotting corpses and now like to play make believe in the corpse pile...

The result is that I can absolutely believe that a creator god would be exactly as fucked up as Yaweh, because I've seen it happen a time or two. It's just that very little of what we see even in reality is actually consistent with such a fucked up narcissistic creator.

None of this makes such conduct moral, though, and might does not confer authority. It's still fucked up to create an environment and make any of that happen on purpose and it's still wrong to ask someone to kill their kid.

If someone needs to test whether some subject has faith, you would ask them to do something completely nonsensical that had some practical effects... Like revealing unintuitive steps of the "tech tree" all at once to someone who would know what would happen before it happened without any other plausible means of them knowing (such as directions on how to make a generator and light source).

The test is whether they would spend years of their life acquiring, working, and assembling materials to implement something so far-fetched as putting together a box, filling it with vomit and lead, and wasting shiny, precious copper on stuff that isn't jewelry or bronze with no reason to believe that it will make anything happen at all. It's actually an EFFECTIVE test because the whole "kill your child" thing is just a raw coincidence.

Let me ask something then: if instead of Abraham being asked to kill his kid, he had been asked to build a lightbulb in the bronze age, and spent years beggaring himself to do it, would you believe that it had been an actual test of faith? I sure as shit would.

The issue is that every such "sign" in the bible is so ambiguous and weak it boggles the mind to think how people would fall for that shit.

 

[TomC]

I gotta say, it's pretty fucked up no matter which way you cut it that Abraham was about to kill a child.

Like, at no point does the faith make sense there. Nobody ought listen to any voice inside their head telling them to kill a child, at any point, to any extent, because it cannot be faith if you do not go through with it to whatever extent the voice says.

We know that Yaweh is credited with killing children himself (ol' fluddie), of ordering others to murder children ("dash them upon the rocks"), with letting others who want to murder children to have their way (the Job job), and with the deaths of children in general (can anyone say "childhood leukemia"!)

I would say that's out of place in terms of godlike behaviors, but the fact is that I've watched plenty of people who create simulation environments so all sorts of bad shit with children, everything from forcing them to carry their dismembered, rotting loved ones to corpse storage piles, to just smashing them under drawbridges because it takes too long to train them to do useful work or because they saw too many rotting corpses and now like to play make believe in the corpse pile...

The result is that I can absolutely believe that a creator god would be exactly as fucked up as Yaweh, because I've seen it happen a time or two. It's just that very little of what we see even in reality is actually consistent with such a fucked up narcissistic creator.

None of this makes such conduct moral, though, and might does not confer authority. It's still fucked up to create an environment and make any of that happen on purpose and it's still wrong to ask someone to kill their kid.

If someone needs to test whether some subject has faith, you would ask them to do something completely nonsensical that had some practical effects... Like revealing unintuitive steps of the "tech tree" all at once to someone who would know what would happen before it happened without any other plausible means of them knowing (such as directions on how to make a generator and light source).

The test is whether they would spend years of their life acquiring, working, and assembling materials to implement something so far-fetched as putting together a box, filling it with vomit and lead, and wasting shiny, precious copper on stuff that isn't jewelry or bronze with no reason to believe that it will make anything happen at all. It's actually an EFFECTIVE test because the whole "kill your child" thing is just a raw coincidence.

Let me ask something then: if instead of Abraham being asked to kill his kid, he had been asked to build a lightbulb in the bronze age, and spent years beggaring himself to do it, would you believe that it had been an actual test of faith? I sure as shit would.

The issue is that every such "sign" in the bible is so ambiguous and weak it boggles the mind to think how people would fall for that shit.

Here's the thing about getting all judgy about the OT. By modern standards, that story is awful. But in the context of the culture and conditions of the day it looks really different. Child sacrifice was a common thing. There were reasons for that. But Israelites didn't do that. This story explains that, and takes that teaching all the way back to Abraham. So it was actually an ethical improvement in the primitive culture of the day. Other things in the OT are similar.

Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

I gotta say, it's pretty fucked up no matter which way you cut it that Abraham was about to kill a child.

Like, at no point does the faith make sense there. Nobody ought listen to any voice inside their head telling them to kill a child, at any point, to any extent, because it cannot be faith if you do not go through with it to whatever extent the voice says.

We know that Yaweh is credited with killing children himself (ol' fluddie), of ordering others to murder children ("dash them upon the rocks"), with letting others who want to murder children to have their way (the Job job), and with the deaths of children in general (can anyone say "childhood leukemia"!)

I would say that's out of place in terms of godlike behaviors, but the fact is that I've watched plenty of people who create simulation environments so all sorts of bad shit with children, everything from forcing them to carry their dismembered, rotting loved ones to corpse storage piles, to just smashing them under drawbridges because it takes too long to train them to do useful work or because they saw too many rotting corpses and now like to play make believe in the corpse pile...

The result is that I can absolutely believe that a creator god would be exactly as fucked up as Yaweh, because I've seen it happen a time or two. It's just that very little of what we see even in reality is actually consistent with such a fucked up narcissistic creator.

None of this makes such conduct moral, though, and might does not confer authority. It's still fucked up to create an environment and make any of that happen on purpose and it's still wrong to ask someone to kill their kid.

If someone needs to test whether some subject has faith, you would ask them to do something completely nonsensical that had some practical effects... Like revealing unintuitive steps of the "tech tree" all at once to someone who would know what would happen before it happened without any other plausible means of them knowing (such as directions on how to make a generator and light source).

The test is whether they would spend years of their life acquiring, working, and assembling materials to implement something so far-fetched as putting together a box, filling it with vomit and lead, and wasting shiny, precious copper on stuff that isn't jewelry or bronze with no reason to believe that it will make anything happen at all. It's actually an EFFECTIVE test because the whole "kill your child" thing is just a raw coincidence.

Let me ask something then: if instead of Abraham being asked to kill his kid, he had been asked to build a lightbulb in the bronze age, and spent years beggaring himself to do it, would you believe that it had been an actual test of faith? I sure as shit would.

The issue is that every such "sign" in the bible is so ambiguous and weak it boggles the mind to think how people would fall for that shit.

Here's the thing about getting all judgy about the OT. By modern standards, that story is awful. But in the context of the culture and conditions of the day it looks really different. Child sacrifice was a common thing. There were reasons for that. But Israelites didn't do that. This story explains that, and takes that teaching all the way back to Abraham. So it was actually an ethical improvement in the primitive culture of the day. Other things in the OT are similar.

Tom

"Not killing one's own children out of fear" is not anywhere near approaching "wasting years of time and precious, exceedingly rare resources on what literally anyone in that day and age would consider absolute madness".

Not killing your kids is a single already-reasonable step.

An actual test of faith has to create an observable (edit: unambiguous) leap forward from a series of absolutely unreasonable steps.

 

[TomC]

"wasting years of time and precious, exceedingly rare resources on what literally anyone in that day and age would consider absolute madness"

That's clearly not true.

Child sacrifice was common in the day.
Tom

 

[unapologetic]

TomC said:
But in the context of the culture and conditions of the day it looks really different.

I have heard this before. Why should I give a shit about the context of a dead culture?
I don't live there. It won't do me any good.
Will I learn from their mistake?
I already know killing my own family is a terrible idea.
Do you want me to think it is an OK idea?
Do you think I might forgive Abraham? Fuck him, he is dead and gone.
Do you want me to forgive the cult? Hell no. I don't owe the cult the opportunity to convert me. (they had their chance)

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

"wasting years of time and precious, exceedingly rare resources on what literally anyone in that day and age would consider absolute madness"

That's clearly not true.

Child sacrifice was common in the day.
Tom

What difference does it make IN CONTEXT?

In context, we're hearing claims of a perfect god who can only do GOOD. That's the context.

From an atheist perspective, yes, we know that such culture is mediocre, i.e. did things other cultures did, like genocide, murder, stoning gays, etc... but there were probably also freer cultures that just didn't survive because they were too nice and moral.

A good moral upstanding culture wouldn't have laws to kill the gays, commands to genocide, or make some weird fixation on a thing called faith as a practice of irrationality in the face of morals and logic.

So, while it could be that some things were common or not, it's not really relevant to the overall context of the thread. It might be relevant to specific points, but not really the overarching theme of what is being argued about.

 

[ideologyhunter]

The world is about 33% Christian -- or professing Christian. According to the 'narrow is the way' teaching, doesn't this religion really teach that the vast majority of humans deserve eternal torture?

As I said to a previous post. I used to read it the same way (or not really reading).

The 'narrow gate' verse refers only to the believers, (walking through the wide gate)!

It looks to me like a general statement about humankind. (Actually, if I'm not mistaken, Jesus was preaching only to the Jews here.) If it is not, how does that change the basic Christian teaching that heaven comes only to those sinners who accept Christ?

Here we see in Mathew 7:13 -14
13 Enter ye in by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many are they that enter in thereby. 14 For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it...

* Then a few verses down we see to whom these verses are referring to.

...15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit...

I don't accept the linkage you assert. The Sermon on the Mount is compiled in a choppy manner, which to me seems like it is a compilation of sayings and teachings collected and written down as if it was a transcribed sermon. To me, it reads as if he is talking salvation and damnation in 13-14 and talking about false teachers in the next verses -- false teachers who might be heard by believers, non-believers, and the undecided.

...21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!

Exactly what I said in my post. The 33% of professed Christians will not all make the final cut.

No surprise corroborating with Revelation 7:9 which is 'often overlooked' when (some) atheists repeatedly suggest from their reading of bible, with the rhetoric, 'not many people get to heaven..." etc. contradicting the said verse obviously:

Revelation 7:9

9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb...

"Great multitude" is as vague as can be. Twenty percent of humankind would constitute a great multitude. So would one percent. If mainstream Christianity teaches that only the sinner who accepts Christ gets into heaven, then the rest must be the chaff that Jesus describes as being discarded and burned, and they must be the ones who are wailing and gnashing their teeth. How have you negated the idea that the outcome of the Christian narrative is the vast majority of humans going to hell?
(I have no stake in the argument, to be clear, because to me it's all imaginary. But that's how I understand the rules of the game.)

 

[steve_bank]

It will never happen. What we need is to replace religion with a pragmatic sensible secular philosophy.

 

[bilby]

"wasting years of time and precious, exceedingly rare resources on what literally anyone in that day and age would consider absolute madness"

That's clearly not true.

Child sacrifice was common in the day.
Tom

Was it?

I find that highly dubious.

Accusations that "they" sacrifice children are common even now; But actual child sacrifice seems like something that would have been exceptional even amongst those exceptional peoples who did do it.

Do you have any evidence at all that any ancient people routinely or commonly sacrificed children to their gods?

 

[Jarhyn]

"wasting years of time and precious, exceedingly rare resources on what literally anyone in that day and age would consider absolute madness"

That's clearly not true.

Child sacrifice was common in the day.
Tom

Except that they didn't consider that to be absolute madness back in the day. I fact people sacrificed things pretty regularly.

None of the resources for a child are particularly rare or precious, either, and there's no proof one way or another that it was actually a deity that asked you to do it.

The reality here is that it's just not a test in any regard, since following through is just "being a shitty psychotic person" and not doing it is "being an alright person"

"wasting years of time and precious, exceedingly rare resources on what literally anyone in that day and age would consider absolute madness"

That's clearly not true.

Child sacrifice was common in the day.
Tom

Was it?

I find that highly dubious.

Accusations that "they" sacrifice children are common even now; But actual child sacrifice seems like something that would have been exceptional even amongst those exceptional peoples who did do it.

Do you have any evidence at all that any ancient people routinely or commonly sacrificed children to their gods?

So, it makes more sense when discussing child sacrifice when contemplating that 1: children were not seen as people until they had lived for a while; 2: people often didn't want to be parents, and abortion wasn't necessarily available as an option; 3: it would be easy to mistake burning the corpse of a stillborn or child, especially by someone from a different culture that you already hate, for the burning and "sacrifice" of an actual child corpse; 4: lethal child abuse happens leading to a more problematic if occasional instance of 3, and 2.

The result is that children WERE "sacrificed" in various situations. Heck, even today the random Christian nutter will kill their own kid. My expectation is that this was primarily still births and people who didn't want to be parents, but it almost certainly has happened.

Whether this was 'common' largely depends on what you wish to consider 'common'; it probably wasn't "all the rage", but it wouldn't be unheard of, either.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It will never happen. What we need is to replace religion with a pragmatic sensible secular philosophy.

We already have that. Sadly, we are psychotic apes and are handicapped when it comes to sensibility on large scales.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

"wasting years of time and precious, exceedingly rare resources on what literally anyone in that day and age would consider absolute madness"

That's clearly not true.

Child sacrifice was common in the day.
Tom

Was it?

I find that highly dubious.

Accusations that "they" sacrifice children are common even now; But actual child sacrifice seems like something that would have been exceptional even amongst those exceptional peoples who did do it.

Do you have any evidence at all that any ancient people routinely or commonly sacrificed children to their gods?

It seems notable that Sodom and Gomorrah which were deemed wicked, weren't accused of such acts.

I wouldn't doubt that there could be very old origins of child sacrifice narrative resting within the odd tale of Abraham and his only wife born son. It is hard to grasp why this story exists. Jacob refers to Yahweh as the "Fear of Isaac", so is this Isaac's origin story. There isn't much to Isaac at all in Genesis. The tale, indeed is odd. Abraham was dedicated. Midrash can be a bitch and one can go into stories way too much. But I suppose if we were to ask a question, it is why is there silence in Genesis 22:9-10. In Genesis 22:7, Isaac appears wise enough to notice something is up and asks where the sacrifices are. But in Genesis 22:9-10, Abraham straps Isaac to alter, and aims to murder him for his sky daddy. And there is silence. No objection, no thoughts, just action. Is there a significance to this? We know it didn't actually happen, so the question is, is the silence important. What does it mean? Or is this just another "Abraham was tested and is great and god will on about how he is going to make a nation of him" bullshit narratives.

I suppose regarding TomC's note is that this is mercy is not repeated in the narrative of Jephthah... who does kill his daughter. And none of that seclusion BS... she could have wept in seclusion quite easily.

 

[TomC]

Do you have any evidence at all that any ancient people routinely or commonly sacrificed children to their gods?

It's been a long time now, but I believe I first got an understanding of this from an excellent book, Isaac Asimov's "Guide to the Bible".
Two main points:
For one thing, people knew almost nothing about the natural world. They attributed almost everything important to supernatural beings like gods. If your crops are bountiful it's a sign of divine favor. If a nasty illness starts destroying your livestock you've done something that made God angry. People made sacrifices all the time, sometimes little and sometimes big.

Also, children were valuable assets. You could start putting them to work while in single digits age. Nobody expected parents to supply 20 years of expensive support like education and health care. But adult children were also your best bet for support in old age. There were no pensions or anything.

So, sacrificing a child, especially a son, was a big deal sacrifice. Calamities and existential threats were an ordinary part of life, and people tried to curry favor with the gods, whether forgiveness or help, on a regular basis. Up to and including child sacrifice if the need was big enough.
Tom

 

[James Brown]

There are four Torah references forbidding child sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21, 20:3 and Deuteronomy 12:30–31, 18:10). It seems unlikely that so many restrictions would be placed on an activity that no one would dare commit.

 Child_sacrifice

 Child_sacrifice#Ancient_Near_East

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Killing children was often condoned by Yahweh., in fact, he encouraged it (see Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Samuel, etc...)... sacrificing them though... that was wrong.

 

[Jarhyn]

There are four Torah references forbidding child sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21, 20:3 and Deuteronomy 12:30–31, 18:10). It seems unlikely that so many restrictions would be placed on an activity that no one would dare commit.

 Child_sacrifice

 Child_sacrifice#Ancient_Near_East

To be fair, Jews have been accused with a blood libel a number of times, largely associated with the insularity of their culture. Having it in writing "we don't do that" might be a protection mechanism, if not a very effective one seeing as it is essentially accusing everyone else of blood libel.

Much of Judaism is the reproductive cult aspect.

Granted, as others have pointed out, the child sacrifice murder in the OT reminds us of how old genocide is and just how genocidal religion tends to be.

 

[bilby]

The result is that children WERE "sacrificed" in various situations.

Except that "child sacrifice" has a more specific meaning in this context - it means the ritual killing of an ordinary, healthy, and otherwise wanted child, as a "common" element of religious ritual.

I'm asking for evidence that this was a thing. I'm explicitly NOT asking for evidence of activities that could mislead an outside observer into a false belief that this was a thing; Nor for evidence of children being killed in ways that were NOT the result of religious rituals (in which their certain death played a central role).

If your examples were the only actual events leading to a belief that "Child sacrifice was common in the day", then that belief would be erroneous, and TomC's argument would be nonsensical - which I strongly suspect it is.

The whole thing reads like carefully crafted RCC propaganda to me. I don't believe it, and without actual evidence, nor should anyone else.

 

[TomC]

TomC's argument would be nonsensical - which I strongly suspect it is.

In what way do you think it nonsensical? Both of the two assertions I made are not hard to research.
Tom