The Pandemic And Religious Beliefs

[Rhea]

Just the top line...


Why are you confused (not just you it seems)? Who said only Christians were good?

Ummm, your bible? (Did you not know this???)


2 Corinthians 6:14
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?

(remember you said above, using your religion's imagery, "evil is like darkness, a byproduct of good.")

Even Jesus says many will come in His name. He will also say "I never knew you" when they are professing to do good. Many Samaritans in the world, Christians know this or should do.

You might be one of those, mightn't you? For all you know.

 

[atrib]

What claim do you think I made?

You claimed that this was, or had been at some point in the past, God's world. I asked you support this claim with evidence. In response, you go off on an incoherent rant that has nothing to do with my question. Your brain has been so addled by your faith that you are no longer able to understand plain English, and respond to simple questions. This should bother you, but you don't seem to care.

Best read the bible so you can get the gist of the theology (the belief as it's written)i.e. NO claim God will pop out willy-nilly just like that. That's a different belief system.

You assert largely there's no explaination, when it's ALL DESCRIBED and written in bible. Produce God willy-nilly...was never the claim theists could do...and it doesn't say in the bible that theists do that.

God exists because the Bible says God exists. That's all you have. If your brain was working rationally, you would understand why this argument doesn't work. But you don't, and that is the tragedy.

You can't do these things because your god doesn't exist. And you very likely understand this on some level, which is why you come up with brain-fucked, dishonest apologetics. Because religion is a disease that turns sane, rational people into mindless, unfeeling drones intent only on spreading the disease. For fuck's sake, if you believe that God gave you a brain, wouldn't it follow that God wants you to use this brain once in a while?

Not like abracadabra no.

Are you saying that God does NOT want you to use the brain it gave you? I suspect that is not what you meant, but your brain is so addled by your faith that you cannot form simple sentences and carry on a conversation. Just look at what you wrote next:

Your emotions expose you...where IS the dishonesty? will you point it out...is the question? I suppose "Delusional" could be more fitting. Besides you sort of contradict yourself: If God gave me a brain-I'd would be saying the same thing as I would now!

What does any of this mean? Calling it incoherent babbling would be too generous.

 

[atrib]

Things would have been so much better if God had not cursed all of humanity to a life of misery, disease and death for a transgression committed by an ancestor before any of us had been born. You claim that this world is God's creation and want to praise it all day long, but you are unwilling to hold this creature responsible for the senseless misery it inflicts upon us. This is so fucked up.

I accept an admit that if God didn't create this world there'd be no evil or suffering. Sounds as if you want me to say God created evil, phrasing it as if creating a seperate entity or deadly weapon for purpose...from my own mouth. A little like the ancient accuser, who would want that too (theistically speaking).

This is the story you believe:

God created this universe and everything in it. True or false?
God created Adam and Eve, and then cursed them to a life of suffering and death because they disobeyed his instructions. True or false?
God also cursed all of Adam and Eve's unborn descendants to a life of suffering and death. True or false?
God had a clone (Jesus) sent to Earth to be tortured and killed, so that it could bring itself to forgive humans for their sinful natures. The natures they had been created with. True or false?
God will roast us forever if we don't accept God, and it's undead clone, Jesus, as our lords and masters. True or false?

Where am I wrong? What did humans do to deserve this suffering? Why can suffering only be relieved through human sacrifice, and total obeisance to the God + undead clone combo? How does any of this make sense?

I have no expectation that you will even attempt to answer my questions. But I keep trying in the hope that there exists the remains of a healthy, rational mind in there somewhere which will overpower the religious programming that has broken it so badly.

 

[Learner]

No, I don't know.
That is not a known.
When I make a clay pot, I do not as a byproduct create a gun.

Ok I realise you didn't get the gist...

You have an interesting concept. I wondering how you come to think I was responding by the logic example you give here: "making a clay pot and creating a gun?"

I was trying to explain the context to two opposite or differing states...particular effects synonymous and related, depending on events, processes or actions, reflecting one with the other.

Evil is not a byproduct of anything. You will have to "show your work" on how you decided that.
When I created a baby, I did not also create a Satan. There is not some OTHER baby in the world who is evil just because I created one who is not.

Take this analogy concept; What if you make two babies - where one of the babies turns out later, not to be such a nice individual as the other turns out to be e.g. Cain and Abel?

Hint: Evil is NOT a conscious entity - not in the natural world and not in the bible.

When I make dinner, I do not accidentally create a bowl of poison on the table.

Perhaps, depending on how you see it, for example; you picked the right ingredients and you prepare carefully making a nice dinner, so all goes well. To DO otherwise like pick the wrong ingredients or your not carefully washing and preparing making your dinner, then all will not go so well.

And a shadow, I might add, is a BEAUTIFUL thing - my mother spent her entire career studying them and rendering them in watercolor, silk screen, batik and oils. This is a true story - her entire artistic milieu was about the study and beauty and depiction of shadows. (She is a lifelong Catholic, btw).

She know's why there are shadows, because of the relationship with light.

So, no I don't "know" any such thing. You will have to come up with a complete ground-up argument for why this ridiculous statement feels real to you.
Evil is not a byproduct of anything. It is only ever an excuse for why the god-myths don't actually work.

Ok fair enough. So what do YOU think evil is?

And also (to bring things back to target) for religionists to make excuses for their creator in times of pandemic.


So in your story, your god does not know enough to do a Potential Problem Analysis before he turns on a machine? Wow. We teach that to our third year engineers. Maybe your god should consider getting a college education?


Really, though? That's the excuse you provide to yourself? That your God doesn't know how to think things through before acting? Eek? You accept that?

No.. not your theory for "excuses" or that I take the viewpoint on biblical God or gods as you do.

God DOES seem to know enough. That's why there are these things called prophecies? The future e.g. end times and after and if we are to consider and entertain the idea ...the "Potential Problem Analysis" as you put it (which also means we're living in it now). Then the analysis has already been done! Conclusion resulting in the New Heaven and New Earth minus the problems.

No idea what that means or why you wrote it. Do you? Or is it a will o' the wisp intended to make us stop thinking about whjy your mythology doesn't know who created Satan or why? You should really ask yourself that. "Why did I make that statement. What was my intended effect?" and then let me know once you figure it out. Because I'm curious.

I beg to differ to the mythology bit as you'll expect. So previously... I referred to the verse in Genesis where God said " Let us create man in our image ...", because it suggests that God was not alone during the creation of the world. This was responding to your question asking "Did the angels exist before this world?"

Nope. I have no idea who you think created Satan. And I am not going to assume I know what you think. It's why I asked you explicitly and without subterfuge.
Are you saying that you have no answer?

Yes I do. Ok, I see you wasn't sure if I adhered to what the bible tells us. The answer: God created satan,as an angel. As mentioned above: Evil is NOT an (intelligent) entity! You could be raising your leg up on the wrong fig-tree.

God didn't create evil to THEN call it satan, if that's what you think theists believe (there were other angels that went against God BTW).

 

[DBT]

Rather than being an opposing power, Satan in Judaism is an angel of God acting out an adversarial role on behalf of God, the book of Job for example.

 

[atrib]

Ok fair enough. So what do YOU think evil is?

To me, evil is a father who stands by silently and watches his children drown when he has the ability to rescue them and save their lives from drowning.

To me, evil is a god who stands by silently and watches hundreds of thousands of his children die, and hundreds of millions lose their livelihoods to a virus that he could eradicate with little effort if he wanted to.

Do you disagree with my opinion? And how do you define evil?

 

[ideologyhunter]

The father who watches his children drown isn't really an analogy for the deity at work in Genesis 7. A better-fitting analogy for that deity is Andrea Yates, except that believers don't want this god to plead insanity.

 

[lpetrich]

The Culture Wars Have Jumped the Shark | Neil Carter

When I was in college and seminary, my professors were always sounding the alarm over the postmodern condition, warning us that the loss of a central guiding “worldview” in America would produce culture wars in which every group and cultural identity would spar with each other, fighting for greater control of the public sphere. Then would come, I suppose, the collapse of “western” civilization and maybe even of democracy itself.

They were always harping on “the loss of truth,” by which they meant that without privileging one epistemological framework (Christian theism) above all others, civilization as we know it would crumble in much the same way that the ancient Roman Empire did in the 5th century C.E.

Some of the remaining pagans claimed that it was because of the people of Rome turning their backs on worship of the gods of Rome's old-time religion, gods that their predecessors had worshipped as they made Rome go from a city-state to ruler of most of the known world. Augustine of Hippo wrote a book, "The City of God", to rebut that notion. ( Fall of the Western Roman Empire)

In the good old days, the culture wars were fought over things like feminism, teaching evolution, homosexuality, birth control, and school prayer. The church declared itself Protector of the Unborn, and they were on a mission to rid the world of pornography, rap music, and rock-and-roll. Today, however, evangelical Christians fight the good fight by refusing to trust public health officials and by calling on civic leaders to let our more vulnerable citizens die off so that we can get haircuts and can get back to having regular church meetings again. What happened?

It's almost like they have to be on the opposite side from whatever side the lib-buh-ruhls are on.

 

[lpetrich]

Neil Carter on his seminary days:

Back when the Roman Empire fell, the enemies were invading tribes. In our day, our professors warned, it would be the liberals and secular humanists infiltrating the ranks of higher education with their insistence that there are no absolute truths, only competing social groups, each one pushing their own central narrative onto everyone else in an attempt to grab power from those who have more than they do.

Yes, postmodernism.

Even today, as public health experts implore people to shelter-at-home and wear masks when they must go out, white evangelicals where I live are mocking the whole process, demanding we return to life as normal because they are convinced this is all much ado about nothing.

...
But what of the church? They’re the ones finding it the most difficult of all to figure out what is actually true and what is not. They fall for “fake news” and poorly constructed conspiracy theories faster than any other group in the developed world because they were so thoroughly taught to distrust any source of information that isn’t on a (very short) pre-approved list.

NC finds the least upsetting response to be escapism, expecting Jesus Christ to return any day now and clean up this mess.

I suppose this is better than the full-fledged “mask truther” response which argues that evil overlords are seeking to enslave us all, either by forcing us to wear masks as a symbol of our mindless obedience or else by subjecting us to vaccinations that will actually kill us all.

Evangelicals have fallen for Donald Trump, someone who is far from the Religious Right's ideal of family values. Barack Obama was much better, yet the RR hated him and was willing to believe birtherism.

NC: "Consider the barrage of misinformation I’ve seen shared by religious conservatives in my social media feed since we first learned that COVID-19 was about to shut down the whole world."

Trump and Rush Limbaugh first claimed that it was not much more than a seasonal flu that it will quickly go away. Trump even claimed that the virus's pandemic potential was a "hoax" for unseating him. A few weeks later, he claimed that he knew that it would create a big pandemic, and that he knew that long before anyone else.

Then the conspiracy theories, like it was some biological-warfare weapon. Created by the Chinese military or by Bill Gates. Then the anti-vaxxers came in.

How can this disease be both fake and also a weapon created by an enemy country? That doesn’t even make sense. Where is their sense of internal contradiction? It turns out humans aren’t naturally very good at detecting logical fallacies, and critical thinking is a skill that must be developed and honed over time and experience.

You would think that a subculture so committed to Truth would find it easier to detect lies and inconsistencies, but you’d be wrong.

NC has found only a few evangelicals willing to call out their fellow evangelicals on their gullibility. "Sadly, Christians seem to be disproportionately fooled by conspiracy theories. I’ve also said before that when Christians spread lies, they need to repent of those lies. Sharing fake news makes us look foolish and harms our witness." But he does not have much of a solution.

 

[Rhea]

Because evil is a by-product. You know... standing in the sun light you create dark shadows... Not doing good you create naughtyness.

No, I don't know.
That is not a known.
When I make a clay pot, I do not as a byproduct create a gun.

Ok I realise you didn't get the gist...

You have an interesting concept. I wondering how you come to think I was responding by the logic example you give here: "making a clay pot and creating a gun?"

I was trying to explain the context to two opposite or differing states...particular effects synonymous and related, depending on events, processes or actions, reflecting one with the other.

No, I don't get the gist.
No logical person would. It is an illogical and unsupported statement that bad things are a NECESSARY PART of good things.

They are not. Never have been.

Religionists like to say they are, because that advances the idea that it is not their benevolent god's fault. He can't help it when he creates things that hurt, kill, maim, torture and despoil. He has no power over evil.

And to them that is a satisfactory argument to make about their "all powerful" deity.

And, nope, I don't get that gist. It's absurd. An excuse, an equivocation. It makes no sense!

You keep going on about bad being a necessary byproduct of good, and it is an unsupported, childish excuse. Religionists use it a lot. They use it to claim that you need bad in order to recognize good. Which is absurd. I don't need poison to know that cherry ice cream is the best, I only need chocolate ice cream to decide that. Chocolate is good, and all, so is vanilla and mint - but having all those GOOD ice creams is all that is necessary for me to determine that Cherry is great. I don't need Bleach-and-Earwax ice cream to know that.

I can know that my friend Q is one of the most extraordinary people I know, incredibly good. And I don't need to know Jeffrey Dahmer to determine that. I only need to know my other friends - who are also good - to determine that Q is extraordinary.

Religionists don't understand this. Perhaps they are broken inside? They can only judge good against the "opposite" of good. They are binary. Incapable of nuance or judgment. Unable to describe a god who is "all good" without saying that it is also a creator of evil. It can't help itself. Unlike most of humanity, which does NOT create evil, you love, worship, fawn over! a deity that you say can't help but create pain and suffering.


It's weird and it doesn't make a single bit of sense. Not at all. Thoughtful and good people don't get the "gist" of excuses about monstrous acts.

 

[abaddon]

It's interesting that the bible-believers think all there is to explaining the bible to atheists is simply to re-tell the tale with some extra details thrown in ("interpretation", "context"). Even resolving the logical contradictions is, for them, simply more "things are like this, you either understand the gist or you don't".

It makes sense that a bible-believer's brain will work like that because that's the nature of myth. It has no concern for logic, it just tells a "Thus It Is" story and that's all. The "logic" of mythology is the intuitive-emotional logic of dreams, not of philosophy. That's how something utterly bizarre, like sacrificing a living being to atone for the "sins" of another, could make sense to anyone. The association between the utterly disparate things forms in a pre-logical level of the mind and nowhere else. If you don't see the sense it makes, that's because you don't think-feel at the pre-logical level of where one can interpret myths, fairy tales, dreams.

 

[Learner]

Quote Originally Posted by Learner View Post

What claim do you think I made?

You claimed that this was, or had been at some point in the past, God's world. I asked you support this claim with evidence. In response, you go off on an incoherent rant that has nothing to do with my question. Your brain has been so addled by your faith that you are no longer able to understand plain English, and respond to simple questions. This should bother you, but you don't seem to care.

I asked what claim I was making regarding your quote below:

Quote Originally Posted by atrib View Post

When has your god ever shown up? When was this planet God's planet? When has this world ever been an ideal place free from disease, misery and death? When did God ever show up to teach his children to love one another and be good people? When? Show us the evidence.

God exists because the Bible says God exists. That's all you have. If your brain was working rationally, you would understand why this argument doesn't work. But you don't, and that is the tragedy.

When you asked for evidence, I was trying to point out to you that theists can't make God appear just instantly like stage magic. I am assuming you must know this, so therefore, you were expecting I wouldn't be able to answer the question this way.

Unless... you are asking me to answer from the scriptural texts - i.e. asking me where its says 'This is not God's world any longer', like one asks, if being suspicious of someone who is making up scripture that's not in the bible(I don't think you are BTW).

From scripture:

2 Corinthians 4:4: Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe.

1 John 2:15: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

1 John 5:19: We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

Not like abracadabra no.

Are you saying that God does NOT want you to use the brain it gave you? I suspect that is not what you meant, but your brain is so addled by your faith that you cannot form simple sentences and carry on a conversation.

I meant, theists don't do instant magic, at willl, producing the evidence you're looking for (relating to the previous part above).

Fair enough if directly at me...my brain, but I have to say and remind you. There are tons of theists out there who are also scientists.

Just look at what you wrote next:

Your emotions expose you...where IS the dishonesty? will you point it out...is the question? I suppose "Delusional" could be more fitting. Besides you sort of contradict yourself: If God gave me a brain-I'd would be saying the same thing as I would now!
What does any of this mean? Calling it incoherent babbling would be too generous.

Ok ... I'll take that, it's generous enough. I was trying to say there was no dishonesty.

 

[Lion IRC]

When the presuppositional atheist asks for evidence that God has acted in the world (immanence) having already decided that there is NO such evidence - thats DISHONEST.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

When the presuppositional atheist asks for evidence that God has acted in the world (immanence) having already decided that there is NO such evidence - thats DISHONEST.

Not dishonest. Simply noting that this God thing never shows up when needed. In the Bible, God shows himself numerous times to the Israelites. Leading them to Canaan as a pillar of fire by night, a pillar of fire by day. God appears to 73 elders of Israel, and twerks for Moses. His voices booms down from the heavens when John the Baptist baptizes Jesus. But now, no more of this calibre of appearances for modern man. God never halted massive epidemics, like small pox, the plague, or covid-19. God, supposedly perfectly good demands massacres, murders. When as an atheist, I look hard at claims about God, and not just the mythological claims, but the deeper theological claims, God simply fails as a viable proposition. What we are left with is some fancy theological dancing to explain why the world resembles in all actuality a world without a God that is all powerful, perfectly good and is merciful, compassionate, loving, just and fair. In the thread The God Zoo, I listed a few atheological arguments that demonstrated this God concept is not viable. Nobody demonstrated that I was wrong in any meaningful manner. The Moral Nature Of Man Argument for example. If God creates all and is essentially omniscient, we lack free will and all moral evil that has existed, exists, and will exist is God's creation. We can observe the Universe, material, natural world, but not s sign of any supernatural world with thinking entities that are capable or being proven to exist. A God out of time, or the old Simple God without parts has too many problems with the basic claims about God to give it any credence. Revelation? Which revelation? So many revelations, that must be wrong we know mankind makes up supposed revelation by the boat load. So is it possible all revelations are nonsense? Yes. What evidence is their for Christianity and not say, Islam? The Bible has been demonstrated to be a pack of faux histories that archaeology has debunked as cruel and childish myths. Is that the best this omnipotent God could do as far as a revelation?

Theists just brush all of this off. Atheists do not.

 

[bilby]

When the presuppositional atheist asks for evidence that God has acted in the world (immanence) having already decided that there is NO such evidence - thats DISHONEST.

No, just rhetorical.

DISHONEST would be claiming that God has acted in the world while having only anecdotal evidence of this.

"I am NOT lying. I'm just quoting someone else who can't demonstrate that he's not lying" is pretty pathetic - but it's EXACTLY what quoting scripture is. Indeed, it's exactly what faith is.

 

[Rhea]

Quote Originally Posted by atrib View Post

When has your god ever shown up? When was this planet God's planet? When has this world ever been an ideal place free from disease, misery and death? When did God ever show up to teach his children to love one another and be good people? When? Show us the evidence.

God exists because the Bible says God exists. That's all you have. If your brain was working rationally, you would understand why this argument doesn't work. But you don't, and that is the tragedy.

When you asked for evidence, I was trying to point out to you that theists can't make God appear just instantly like stage magic. I am assuming you must know this, so therefore, you were expecting I wouldn't be able to answer the question this way.

And this is the profoundly ridiculous response of the theist.

Atheist asks, “when has your god EVER shown up,”
Theist responds to a completely different question that no one asked, “I can’t make him instantly show up!”
... thinking he has won a round or something.

But everyone notices that NO ONE asked you to make your god instantly show up, and you aren’t fooling anyone by pretending that was the question. Instead, we shake our heads with pity. Seriously? That’s your answer to the question of “when has your god EVER shown up?”

We pity you for thinking this is a sane answer.

 

[Rhea]

I beg to differ to the mythology bit as you'll expect. So previously... I referred to the verse in Genesis where God said " Let us create man in our image ...", because it suggests that God was not alone during the creation of the world. This was responding to your question asking "Did the angels exist before this world?"

Nope. I have no idea who you think created Satan. And I am not going to assume I know what you think. It's why I asked you explicitly and without subterfuge.
Are you saying that you have no answer?

Yes I do. Ok, I see you wasn't sure if I adhered to what the bible tells us. The answer: God created satan,as an angel. As mentioned above: Evil is NOT an (intelligent) entity! You could be raising your leg up on the wrong fig-tree.

God didn't create evil to THEN call it satan, if that's what you think theists believe (there were other angels that went against God BTW).

So, what I’m hearing here is that God was not alone when he created. He was with Angels. Who are apparently are more powerful than he is and take his lunch money. Your god is not capable of keeping evil out of his creation.

Including heaven, which he did not create, it existed already populated by angels, who are not all good.

So why does the bible claim that your god made the heavens and the earth and that there will be no suffering in heaven? Lies? Or just a shocking inability to keep the plotline whole?

 

[Learner]

It's interesting that the bible-believers think all there is to explaining the bible to atheists is simply to re-tell the tale with some extra details thrown in ("interpretation", "context"). Even resolving the logical contradictions is, for them, simply more "things are like this, you either understand the gist or you don't".

It makes sense that a bible-believer's brain will work like that because that's the nature of myth. It has no concern for logic, it just tells a "Thus It Is" story and that's all. The "logic" of mythology is the intuitive-emotional logic of dreams, not of philosophy. That's how something utterly bizarre, like sacrificing a living being to atone for the "sins" of another, could make sense to anyone. The association between the utterly disparate things forms in a pre-logical level of the mind and nowhere else. If you don't see the sense it makes, that's because you don't think-feel at the pre-logical level of where one can interpret myths, fairy tales, dreams.

Times seem to be a changing then. I used to hear expressions saying that "atheists know the bible better than many theists do", quite a few times from atheists themselves. This must perhaps mean the atheists have had an interpretation, contexts and the other details thrown in. But now contexts don't mean a thing. No wonder the confusion.

EDIT: Or perhaps there weren't any contexts with the atheist argument, so therefore, making somewhat useful "contradictions".

 

[Learner]

We pity you for thinking this is a sane answer.

I bet you say that to all theists.


(I don't want to jump past other previous posts. I'll get back to you)

 

[Rhea]

We pity you for thinking this is a sane answer.

I bet you say that to all theists.

Interestingly, I don’t. I have some friends who are real bible-reading, Jesus-loving, “Godly” people. But when you ask them a question, they actually answer it. And when they ask you a question, it isn’t a caricature of a question. And so I never say that to them.

(I don't want to jump past other previous posts. I'll get back to you)

I look forward to it.