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by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 3846 days ago

> I am tempted to be this proud at times, but I aspire to be more humble than that.

I guess I would want to encourage you to be a lot less humble, it's not particularly difficult to be better than the bible, at least as far as moral rules go. Just drop the slavery and you have a better moral guideline, to give a trivial example.

> 1. It has proven to hold a lot of counter-intuitive truth in my life. When I follow the teaching in the Bible, things go better for my and the people I love. Of course, you don't know me, so it's probably not a very convincing thing to hear from a stranger on the internet.

Better than what? I can well imagine that there are far worse books/doctrines/ideologies to follow than many forms of christianity--I would just question the suggestion that there aren't far better sources of life advice than the bible.

> 2. The teachings of the Bible are a very complete and internally consistent, which is a quality you would expect from a Holy Book, but is surprisingly absent from many (most?) life philosophies, in my opinion.

(a) What is your measure of completeness?

(b) Well, I am not particularly convinced of the internal consistency.

(d) "Holy book" isn't really a well-defined term to me that I could say what I would expect from one.

(e) There is one important thing that's IMO missing both from your list and from the bible: Consistency with reality.

> Of course. Though I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what your question means. Perhaps you are asking if I think the material world is important? The answer to that specific question is also yes.

Well, the problem is: What do you do if the consequences of actions the bible tells you are morally right that you can observe in reality turn out to be bad? Do you stick to the bible, thus causing harm, or do you dismiss the bible, thus acknowledging it can be wrong? Don't try to give me an answer, I have an idea what it would be, it's more important that you think about it, because that is the type of harm the article is talking about, where people cause harm with the intention to do good.

> I suppose you could also be asking if I think I'll get blowback for my opinions?

No, I would be far more concerned about other consequences for yourself. Living with a delusion (or similar, this is not a medical diagnosis) can have quite bad consequences once the affected person notices their state of affairs and the missed opportunities and all that.

> But if I let personal concerns take precedence over my loyalty to God, then how much do I really believe that God is real, powerful, and loving? I've been lonely and poor before. I'd rather go back to that than reject the person who means the most to me.

Seriously, and I am neither joking nor trying to be mean, but you possibly might want to seek professional help. If your religious belief means much to you, I wouldn't want to take it away from you unnecessarily, and maybe things aren't as they seem to me, but unlike real people, god does not actually exist, and you cannot expect anything tangible from god if you need help, so if your religion keeps you from having real social contacts, I would urge you to change that, it's probably not good for you in the long run. Other people will largely honor your loyalty with their support for you, god won't. If you have social contacts in a church or similar, my concerns might not apply, as long as it's not a church that tries to isolate you from the rest of society.

I hope you don't take this wrong, but the way you write in that last paragraph really makes me concerned.

1 comments

humanrebar 3846 days ago

1. Slavery

First, I want to emphasize that freedom is a very strong theme in the Bible (a) (b). It's frankly not true that the Bible condones slavery. When certain portions of the Bible describe slavery, it was more of a form of indentured servitude than the abomination we tend to think of. For various reasons, people would put themselves into lifelong work contracts. The Mosaic Law has very progressive laws (at the time) for how masters were to treat their servants.

In fact, the Mosaic Law specifically condemns forced slavery, under the penalty of death (c).

The Bible does encourage the forgiveness of debts (d), and in this context, masters releasing their indentured servants from their contracts was considered a part of this. The entire book of Philemon was basically about this.

Anyway, the American abolitionist movement absolutely had Christian underpinnings, as did the British equivalent (read up on Wilberforce). At a minimum, there are many modern and historical black ministers, like Theodore S. Wright and Dr. King, that would disagree with the idea that Bible says slavery is OK. That sort of thing clearly violates both the golden rule and the idea of imago dei.

Finally, black-market slavery is still a concern, especially sexual slavery. I don't see much in the press about this sort of thing, but I haven't been to a church in the last ten years that didn't make fighting it a special focus in its ministry (e).

2. Causing harm with the intention of doing good.

I absolutely think Christians do this. When this happens, they need to listen and be humble enough to ask for forgiveness and change their ways. The greatest two commandments are to love God completely and to love others as we love ourselves (f). If we're not willing to stop harming and start helping people, we're breaking the second most important commandment directly and the first most important commandment through disobedience.

You probably see people (in shallow understanding of scripture, IMO) justify themselves with Bible verses when people are hurt. This is not Biblical. In fact, the harshest things Jesus said were to religious hyprocrites (g). Jesus has been, and still is, extremely counter-cultural. And religion, in the Bible, is all about charity and doing the right thing (h).

Anyway, I see many, many more Christians deciding to sacrifice their time, money, and energy to help people than I see harm. It's hard to put to fine a point on the hypothetical premise, though.

3. ...if your religion keeps you from having real social contacts, I would urge you to change that, it's probably not good for you in the long run.

Yes. I agree. The Bible is fundamentally about relationships, so a Christian faith with no relationships is incomplete at best.

I actually have much better friendships and my relationships with my family are also better now that I take the teaching in the Bible seriously. With salvation and assurance of a meaningful future, I don't have to worry about myself (i) (j), so I can focus on others' needs, whether they're physical, emotional, spiritual, or relational.

I have never seen someone with worse relationships because of their obedience in the Bible. I have seen people oppressed, mocked, and attacked for their faith and insistence on doing what is right. That's what I was talking about. Sorry if that was not clear.

4. ...unlike real people, god does not actually exist, and you cannot expect anything tangible from god if you need help.... Other people will largely honor your loyalty with their support for you, god won't.

It shouldn't shock you that the Bible teaches the opposite.

And it probably won't impress you that I've found the opposite to be true. God has never let me down, but people let me down all the time. I don't hold that against them, though, since they're my brothers and sisters and they're not doing anything I haven't done before in some way. But God is always there. Often not in the way I want or expect, but God isn't a wingman or a genie that He's obligated to follow my mission and fulfill my wishes.

I will say that you are very assured that God doesn't exist, and logically you shouldn't be. There is no way to prove that the God of the Bible does not exist. There is no scientific experiment you could whip up to use matter to prove the immaterial isn't there. I've wrestled with atheism or perhaps deism before, and I've found that it takes a lot of... well, faith... to assume a negative.

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zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 3846 days ago

> 1. Slavery > > First, I want to emphasize that freedom is a very strong theme in the Bible (a) (b). It's frankly not true that the Bible condones slavery. When certain portions of the Bible describe slavery, it was more of a form of indentured servitude than the abomination we tend to think of.

I know that you can justify just about anything with the bible. Figuring out a justification for a given conclusion is not a reliable path to truth.

> For various reasons, people would put themselves into lifelong work contracts.

Which isn't moral either, and which doesn't change that the bible also condones slavery.

> The Mosaic Law has very progressive laws (at the time) for how masters were to treat their servants.

Yeah, god was very progressive for the time he lives outside of ... or whatever it is that you believe. Seriously, I have heard it all, and I have heard other people justify the opposite using the same book and just as broken logic.

> In fact, the Mosaic Law specifically condemns forced slavery, under the penalty of death (c). > > The Bible does encourage the forgiveness of debts (d), and in this context, masters releasing their indentured servants from their contracts was considered a part of this. The entire book of Philemon was basically about this.

See above.

> Anyway, the American abolitionist movement absolutely had Christian underpinnings, as did the British equivalent (read up on Wilberforce).

As did the supporters of slavery.

> At a minimum, there are many modern and historical black ministers, like Theodore S. Wright and Dr. King, that would disagree with the idea that Bible says slavery is OK. That sort of thing clearly violates both the golden rule and the idea of imago dei.

Yeah, just as supporters of slavery would agree very much, because <other reason from the bible>.

> Finally, black-market slavery is still a concern, especially sexual slavery. I don't see much in the press about this sort of thing, but I haven't been to a church in the last ten years that didn't make fighting it a special focus in its ministry (e).

Yeah, and it's great when churches to good deeds. But that neither justifies any supernatural claims nor does it depend on holding beliefs without evidence. The same people could just forget about the god stuff and continue doing good deeds, and often better deeds, as evidenced by lots of non-religious charities.

> 2. Causing harm with the intention of doing good. > > I absolutely think Christians do this. When this happens, they need to listen and be humble enough to ask for forgiveness and change their ways. The greatest two commandments are to love God completely and to love others as we love ourselves (f). If we're not willing to stop harming and start helping people, we're breaking the second most important commandment directly and the first most important commandment through disobedience.

You avoided the question.

> You probably see people (in shallow understanding of scripture, IMO) justify themselves with Bible verses when people are hurt. This is not Biblical. In fact, the harshest things Jesus said were to religious hyprocrites (g). Jesus has been, and still is, extremely counter-cultural. And religion, in the Bible, is all about charity and doing the right thing (h).

Yes, I still know that you can justify just about anything using the bible. It's great if you justify good things using the bible. It's just risky to use the bible as a source of justification, given how many bad things people have justified using it without realizing how bad it was, so chances are it could happen to you as well.

> Anyway, I see many, many more Christians deciding to sacrifice their time, money, and energy to help people than I see harm. It's hard to put to fine a point on the hypothetical premise, though.

Yes, they decide to. But do they actually help, or do they just decide to help, and then end up causing harm?

And if they do actually help (and I agree, many certainly do), that's great, of course, but, see above, doesn't need the bible or belief without evidence.

> 3. ...if your religion keeps you from having real social contacts, I would urge you to change that, it's probably not good for you in the long run. > > Yes. I agree. The Bible is fundamentally about relationships, so a Christian faith with no relationships is incomplete at best. > > I actually have much better friendships and my relationships with my family are also better now that I take the teaching in the Bible seriously. With salvation and assurance of a meaningful future, I don't have to worry about myself (i) (j), so I can focus on others' needs, whether they're physical, emotional, spiritual, or relational.

Except this assurance is actually worthless, so it's risky if you stop worrying about yourself because of that worthless promise.

Nevertheless, great to hear you have great relationships with real people, those do actually provide a certain assurance of a meaningful future.

> I have never seen someone with worse relationships because of their obedience in the Bible. I have seen people oppressed, mocked, and attacked for their faith and insistence on doing what is right. That's what I was talking about. Sorry if that was not clear.

Well, you are aware that there are churches that isolate their members from outside society, right? And that they justify that using the bible (or whatever, possibly related, holy book they are using)? And not only small ones either.

> 4. ...unlike real people, god does not actually exist, and you cannot expect anything tangible from god if you need help.... Other people will largely honor your loyalty with their support for you, god won't. > > It shouldn't shock you that the Bible teaches the opposite.

Well, no, books teach lots of things. Doesn't mean it's true, though.

> And it probably won't impress you that I've found the opposite to be true. God has never let me down, but people let me down all the time. I don't hold that against them, though, since they're my brothers and sisters and they're not doing anything I haven't done before in some way. But God is always there. Often not in the way I want or expect, but God isn't a wingman or a genie that He's obligated to follow my mission and fulfill my wishes.

You do notice that you start with the conclusion that god exists and then go and find excuses for anything that with any other entity besides god you would count as evidence against their existence, right?

> I will say that you are very assured that God doesn't exist, and logically you shouldn't be. There is no way to prove that the God of the Bible does not exist. There is no scientific experiment you could whip up to use matter to prove the immaterial isn't there. I've wrestled with atheism or perhaps deism before, and I've found that it takes a lot of... well, faith... to assume a negative.

You are misunderstanding my position. "<x> does not exist" is just a colloquial formulation people use for what epistomologically correctly would be expressed as "I don't believe <x> exists because I have not seen any convincing evidence for its existence". When people say "santa clause doesn't exist", they usually don't mean that they have proved that santa clause doesn't exist either, after all. I don't affirm the negative, I simply withhold belief on your claim due to lack of evidence, just as with myriads of other baseless existence claims you could make and people have made, and withholding belief does not require faith.

Also, either "the immaterial" has some sort of predictable effects that we can observe, in which case that claim can be tested scientifically (not the immaterial cause, but the effect and the supposed rules according to which it happens), or it doesn't, in which case the existent immaterial is indistinguishable from the non-existent immaterial, and in particular you cannot make any claims about its supposed effects on us.

In any case, you don't get to shift your burden of proof onto me. You made the claim that some particular god exists, so you are responsible for providing the evidence, it's not my job to disprove any claim you throw at me and to believe it until I have done so.

If you want to understand the standpoint of a skeptical/scientific atheist and what you can expect people like myself to reply to your arguments, I guess I would recommend this playlist to you as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOkwq0YkXJA&list=PL8U_Qmq9oN...

In particular the videos about specific topics. He is a former christian-nearly-became-minister, so I guess he might be better at putting things into words that make sense from your frame of reference? If you just repeat the same arguments that "we" have heard and refuted thousands of times, chances are pretty low you'll make much of an impression, so understanding those might help you have more productive conversations.

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humanrebar 3845 days ago

There are a lot of particular points to respond to here, but it seems your general critique is that treating the Bible as truth can be circular reasoning and that people are smart enough to twist any holy book to evil. The Bible actually agrees on these points and asks the readers to test groups and people against objectively good things to see if there is truth in action.

Look for: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, appreciation of truth. These things are sometimes disdained and derided, but they're never wrong. On the other hand, be suspicious of: hate, abuse, envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness, insistence on one's own way, irritability, resentfulness, and celebration in wrongdoing. It may seem odd to you, but a valid criticism of a Christian's ideas is pointing out where there out of line with these lists. A point delivered with irritability is a weak point for a Christian to make. And I guess you could extrapolate that to ideas and books... at least how they generally affect people.

Edit: Regarding who has to prove God exists... I think nobody does. I don't have to prove it. Neither does He. I think it's better for you if you accept it, but that's your choice. You could ask God to prove Himself before you believe, I suppose. But understand that He is the creator of the universe and He feels He has already gone above and beyond for us. But He has also done amazing things to prove to people that He cares for them. I don't see how it could hurt to ask.

There are good answers to your specific objections and concerns, and I'm interested in sharing thoughts on them, but there seems to be more contest than sharing here. I'm pretty sure continuing won't benefit you any, and I'm pretty sure there isn't an audience that would benefit from me responding to your points. But thanks for the discussion. If I didn't appreciate strong criticism, I would have some particular pride issues to work out.

I do think that perhaps you aren't exposed to orthodox Christians on a regular basis, so you may not really appreciate how the Bible really works on people. If you're interested in more diversity in what information you're exposed to, I'd recommend finding some friends who think the Bible is fundamentally true. If that doesn't interest you, I understand.

For what it's worth, I've prayed for good things in your future, and that God tries again to convince you that there are better things out there for you.

Enjoy your weekend.

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zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 3844 days ago

> Look for: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, appreciation of truth. These things are sometimes disdained and derided, but they're never wrong.

I disagree.

> On the other hand, be suspicious of: hate, abuse, envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness, insistence on one's own way, irritability, resentfulness, and celebration in wrongdoing.

I can live with that.

> It may seem odd to you, but a valid criticism of a Christian's ideas is pointing out where there out of line with these lists.

If there is anything odd, it's the idea that I should need a list to know what valid criticism of anyone is. I will criticize anyone who I perceive to be causing harm, whether it's on their list or anyone else's list or not. And maybe that you try to speak for all christians.

> A point delivered with irritability is a weak point for a Christian to make. And I guess you could extrapolate that to ideas and books... at least how they generally affect people. > > Edit: Regarding who has to prove God exists... I think nobody does. I don't have to prove it. Neither does He. I think it's better for you if you accept it, but that's your choice. You could ask God to prove Himself before you believe, I suppose.

Now you are being disingenuous. Just throwing out unsubstantiated claims and then refusing responsibility for substantiating them isn't how you conduct respectful conversations.

> But understand that He is the creator of the universe and He feels He has already gone above and beyond for us. But He has also done amazing things to prove to people that He cares for them.

Yet another bunch of unsubstantiated claims. I suspect you don't feel like providing evidence for these either?

> I don't see how it could hurt to ask.

That's my point. You don't see how your dogma causes harm, because you just assume that it can't cause harm. That's how much of the harm in this world is caused. Now ask yourself, how could it hurt if you spent the limited time of your life "asking" an imaginary entity for whatever? Like, how could it hurt to spend an hour every day asking superman for a relationship? Do you see at least the potential for harm there, in case your god might turn out to actually not be real?

> There are good answers to your specific objections and concerns, and I'm interested in sharing thoughts on them, but there seems to be more contest than sharing here. I'm pretty sure continuing won't benefit you any, and I'm pretty sure there isn't an audience that would benefit from me responding to your points.

Well, if you actually have good answers, I'd certainly be interested. But if you just repeat arguments that have long been refuted (and so far that's pretty much all you have done) and don't bother to first put in some effort to understand those well-documented refutations (just as I have done to understand those well-documented arguments of yours, which is how I happen to know why they don't hold up), I guess it's kindof pointless for me to just regurgitate them to you, which is why I gave you a reference to a good collection of explanations that could help you to get up to speed, so that you then maybe can avoid known-bad arguments in future discussions, and cut directly to good arguments where your "opponent" (for lack of a better word) doesn't just recite well-known refutations without having to engage their brains.

> But thanks for the discussion. If I didn't appreciate strong criticism, I would have some particular pride issues to work out.

Except you don't actually appreciate it, you just tell yourself that you do. That's an immunization strategy of your religion. If you appreciated it, you would try to actually understand the arguments.

> I do think that perhaps you aren't exposed to orthodox Christians on a regular basis, so you may not really appreciate how the Bible really works on people. If you're interested in more diversity in what information you're exposed to, I'd recommend finding some friends who think the Bible is fundamentally true. If that doesn't interest you, I understand.

I don't deny that the "bible [...] works on people", it sure does. There is just no evidence that there is anything supernatural about it, and the claims in it don't seem to be any more reliable than any other book, and often less so. What's difficult to find aren't people who think the bible is true--it's people who have any good evidence for it.

> For what it's worth, I've prayed for good things in your future, and that God tries again to convince you that there are better things out there for you.

Well, if you feel like wasting your precious time in this one life with that, I don't mind. But your chances of actually doing good would be higher if you used your time to do something with an observable effect in this world.

> Enjoy your weekend.

You too :-)

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