O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in school

[Kulindahr]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

If you really understand how the Law is referenced in the NT, this suggestion is laughable.

The law is edified by everyone, including Jesus, as a demonstration of God's justice and perfection. It is portrayed as the starting point to the divine revelation which ultimately led to Christ.

So if God stands or falls by the morality of the law, he most definitely loses on that point.

I most certainly "understand how the Law is referenced in the NT" -- I've written papers on the topic, and studied it the Greek.

Yes, it's set out as showing God's justice -- but that doesn't make it a moral code. There were things about morals in it, but as the prophets made clear, those weren't the final word -- and Jesus made that quite plain as well, with His "You have heard it said... but I tell you..." statements. He also showed where the Law was immoral -- by referencing an OT incident which demonstrated that very thing: David and his men eating from the altar bread, which was forbidden... as well as with His noting that even though it is "work", it is acceptable to save life or limb on the Sabbath. Those examples are where Paul gets his argument that the Law was inadequate.

So God doesn't "stand or fall by the morality of the Law" -- He stands or falls by the purpose of the Law, which is quite a different thing. That purpose was to teach mercy, love, and justice -- which is where the prophet gets off saying for God, "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice", when the OT says that God commanded those sacrifices.

That's something one should begin to suspect back with the addendum to the first 'commandment': God says no making images of things from the heavens or the earth, yet just a few chapters later He's giving instructions for making images of things from the heavens and the earth!
A guy could almost conclude that laws are made to be broken.... the truth is that those laws were made to be broken by rising above them, as Jesus did.

 

[smelter]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

^ another 'truth' is that Biblical scholars from ancient times till the present day have managed to perpetuate the greatest work of literary fiction, masquerading as truth, on mankind ever penned. IMO, the jury is still out .... probably never to return.

 

[EwanSF]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

I'd like to point out, yet again Kuli, that the Stalin comparrison is utter bullshit. It's not comparable with any religious atrocities, again, because ol' Josef didn't do the things he did because he was an atheist, he did them because he was a megalomanic, a tyrant, and a grade A cunt. His atrocities he nothing to do with his belief in a great big cosmic version of himself, or lack there-of.

 

[FirmaFan]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

I'd like to point out, yet again Kuli, that the Stalin comparrison is utter bullshit. It's not comparable with any religious atrocities, again, because ol' Josef didn't do the things he did because he was an atheist, he did them because he was a megalomanic, a tyrant, and a grade A cunt. His atrocities he nothing to do with his belief in a great big cosmic version of himself, or lack there-of.

It is very hard for people to understand this when they believe that atheism is a faith based belief equivalent to any religion. It is easy to make such accusations about atheism when they believe such. On the other hand, Stalin and Hitler both had mustaches, and, as mustache is just as much of a faith based belief as religion, mustache definitely causes the atrocities done by those people. Clean shaven provides the basis for morality that the mustache people will never have.

 

[EwanSF]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

True, true. I've never trusted those cunts...

 

[TX-Beau]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

1. Equating atheists with Hitler is just as fair as what people have been doing in this thread to religion.

Sure. Now we can all stop complaining about that. You too.

2. You'll never believe it's true until you accept it on its own terms and study it -- much like physicists looking at, for example, the math behind quantum theory: until they understand the math, they have no possibility of judging the truth. And just as we would call one of them foolish for rejecting quantum theory without doing the work of understanding it, so also is anyone who rejects the Bible without doing the work of understanding it.

Sorry, but it has to have some kind of validity to begin with. I have no interest in believing fantasies just to see if faith kicks in. Physics/religion, scientific method/faith, apples/oranges.

3. Atheism makes an equally fantastic claim that it can't prove, so why should atheists get any respect?

Atheists generally don’t ask people to respect their beliefs just ‘cause, It’s the religious who have kittens if anyone dares say that their religions sound like bunk. Then a lot of them get mad and call it repression, because I have the gall to refuse to respect them just ‘cause they can tell tall tales.

I’m, not an atheist btw, I’m agnostic leaning towards atheism, but not an actual atheist.

 

[TX-Beau]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

And it bears repeating - yet again - , Kuli your religion is making the absurdly improbable assertions, it lies on you therefore to provide the proof.

You'll never believe it's true until you accept it on its own terms and study it

this is just a roundabout way of saying that you will never believe it as long as you ask it real questions. Real questions like how do you know God exists, and if you can't provide any shed of evidence for that, why should I believe anything in your book.

 

[TX-Beau]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

I'd like to point out, yet again Kuli, that the Stalin comparrison is utter bullshit. It's not comparable with any religious atrocities, again, because ol' Josef didn't do the things he did because he was an atheist, he did them because he was a megalomanic, a tyrant, and a grade A cunt. His atrocities he nothing to do with his belief in a great big cosmic version of himself, or lack there-of.

I also think it's possible - and this is just a guess mind, I have nothing to back it up - That people like Stalin were atheists not because of some kind of principled position on religion, but simply because they didn't want the competition.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

I'd like to point out, yet again Kuli, that the Stalin comparrison is utter bullshit. It's not comparable with any religious atrocities, again, because ol' Josef didn't do the things he did because he was an atheist, he did them because he was a megalomanic, a tyrant, and a grade A cunt. His atrocities he nothing to do with his belief in a great big cosmic version of himself, or lack there-of.

It's compatible with all sorts of religious atrocities -- they weren't done because of religion, they were done because the perpetrators were megalomaniacs, tyrants, and grade A scum.

You wiggle and squirm, but the parallels are exact.

If burning people at the stake is representative of religion, then Stalin is representative of atheism.

 

[hotatlboi]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

Yes, it's set out as showing God's justice -- but that doesn't make it a moral code.

Ok, fine. Treat it as just a judicial code then. Is it surprising to you that a judicial code supposedly from a perfect being contains laws that sympathize with or expressly permit things like slavery, rape, killing of children, etc? Obviously not, but it certainly is to me. Tell me, how is it that God couldn't do any better than bronze age man with his judicial code?

The simple answer is quite obvious. It was bronze age man who wrote it.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

It is very hard for people to understand this when they believe that atheism is a faith based belief equivalent to any religion. It is easy to make such accusations about atheism when they believe such. On the other hand, Stalin and Hitler both had mustaches, and, as mustache is just as much of a faith based belief as religion, mustache definitely causes the atrocities done by those people. Clean shaven provides the basis for morality that the mustache people will never have.

FF, that is so intellectually lame it's disgusting.

By your own definition, atheism is a faith: there's no evidence for it.

 

[hotatlboi]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

atheism is a faith: there's no evidence for it.

Athiesm is a system of belief, not exactly a faith. Faith is believing in something without evidence. If you find evidence for a God lacking, then what you are saying is you are not going to believe in a God without such evidence. So a "lack of evidence" for athiesm is basically the same thing as "evidence for God".

Of course what one can call evidence for God is going to depend almost entirely on interpretation. Science can't really help us a lot with that, since the supernatural is not in its purview.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

this is just a roundabout way of saying that you will never believe it as long as you ask it real questions. Real questions like how do you know God exists, and if you can't provide any shed of evidence for that, why should I believe anything in your book.

No, it's a standard requirement for assessing any piece of intellectual material with its own worldview. Odd how people want Christians to actually understand evolution before they discard it, but they don't want to do the same thing themselves. It's as though you were one of the priests of Galileo's time, demanding that Galileo "prove" that there are moons around Jupiter before you'll look through that telescope, or one of the "scholars" who help to Ptolemy's model of the solar system demanding a mathematical and philosophical proof that orbits could be anything but circles before being willing to do observations.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

I also think it's possible - and this is just a guess mind, I have nothing to back it up - That people like Stalin were atheists not because of some kind of principled position on religion, but simply because they didn't want the competition.

The same would be true of an awful lot of "churchmen" -- just read the lives of a lot of popes and cardinals and bishops for the thousand years following 600 A.D. (when the papacy was really invented).

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

Ok, fine. Treat it as just a judicial code then. Is it surprising to you that a judicial code supposedly from a perfect being contains laws that sympathize with or expressly permit things like slavery, rape, killing of children, etc? Obviously not, but it certainly is to me. Tell me, how is it that God couldn't do any better than bronze age man with his judicial code?

The simple answer is quite obvious. It was bronze age man who wrote it.

It's a code that in most ways is a step up from the culture the Hebrews were in. For example, a father could kill one of his children for any offense at all; the Mosaic Code limits such killing to a narrow set of circumstances. The culture around them had no limitations on who could be a slave or how they could be treated; the Mosaic Code put limitations on both, as well on how long someone could be kept as a slave. I don't really know what you're referring to as far as rape goes, so I won't touch that for now.

If God had moved too fast, He wouldn't have had a people -- that was demonstrated by the whole "golden calf" incident, when the only command the people had to obey was "wait for Moses to come back"... and they couldn't even get that right!

Part of the whole business was making the point that God was to be obeyed -- something that wasn't really a requirement for any of the 'gods' around. Another was that God was interested in daily aspects of life -- another thing that wasn't part of the religion of the times.

In ethical terms, God was establishing a mandated set of rules for daily life, which is a very low ethical level. As things progress through the Old Testament, the ethical level is moved steadily toward self-motivation, toward acting correctly because of internal values and not external threat. Near the end of the OT, a summary is given: "He has shown you, O man, what is good; now, what does the LORD require from you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to live humbly".

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

Athiesm is a system of belief, not exactly a faith. Faith is believing in something without evidence. If you find evidence for a God lacking, then what you are saying is you are not going to believe in a God without such evidence. So a "lack of evidence" for atheism is basically the same thing as "evidence for God".

System of belief vs. a faith -- getting subtle, now.
But "faith is believing in something without evidence" is not a "faith" known to the Bible. A more accurate definition would be believing in something for which there is evidence, but not enough to call proof.

One thing that convinced me was reading books by several jurists at different periods in history, who started as non-believers and ended up believers when they assessed the case for the Resurrection. One sort of summed up the difference between the two levels of surety in the Biblical definition of faith when he said that he found sufficient evidence for the Resurrection to win a case at law (lawsuit), but not enough for a criminal prosecution.

Of course what one can call evidence for God is going to depend almost entirely on interpretation. Science can't really help us a lot with that, since the supernatural is not in its purview.

There is the key to this: most people in this thread aren't pushing just atheism, but materialistic empiricism, where the basic article of faith is that if it can't be measured, it doesn't exist. The obvious fallacy with that is that with each generation, things we couldn't imagine before become measurable.

That's also the crux of keeping religion out of science studies: to quote a rather sarcastic school administrator in my past, "Weigh me an angel, and I'll call it science". There's no need to belittle religion -- that doesn't belong in science, either; it's a matter for some other discipline, where matters of inconsistency between faith and action and similar things may be discussed.

It's odd to me that I advocate keeping religion out of the classroom as much as Dr. Miller in the video, and yet I'm getting virtually assaulted for thinking there's a place for religion anywhere at all in life. On a civic level, that's obscene, especially on a porn site: pornography doesn't belong in a science classroom, either, but is anyone trying to drive it our of all of life? Dr. Miller himself is an example of how things ought to be -- but I'm not even being allowed that much room here!

 

[FirmaFan]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

There is the key to this: most people in this thread aren't pushing just atheism, but materialistic empiricism, where the basic article of faith is that if it can't be measured, it doesn't exist.

I think you are greatly misconceiving my position. I do not take it on faith that if something can not be measured, it does not exist (faith is belief without rational justification for that belief), I, however, simply understand that if something has no evidence, if it has not been measured, than there is no rational justification to believe it is true. It is fine to speculate, hell, I am extremely fascinated by one of the greatest speculations of present time - string theory, but understand that it is not proven, has no real evidence at this point (it doesn't even have a method for laboratory experiment), and even I will admit the possibility of a god (in as much as the I'll admit the flying spaghetti monster, fairies, unicorns, etc have a possibility of existing), but until I see evidence, I will never believe there is a god...that's just plain irrational. It's the irrationality I have a problem with - and religion falls right in the middle of that irrationality. Just because you have filled the gaps of your understanding of the universe with a faith based belief doesn't mean all others do as well.

 

[EwanSF]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

I also think it's possible - and this is just a guess mind, I have nothing to back it up - That people like Stalin were atheists not because of some kind of principled position on religion, but simply because they didn't want the competition.

Interestin' point man. Well, given the personality cult, and the ritualistic asspects of certain soviet ceremonies, it's more than possible.

It's compatible with all sorts of religious atrocities -- they weren't done because of religion, they were done because the perpetrators were megalomaniacs, tyrants, and grade A scum.

You wiggle and squirm, but the parallels are exact.

If burning people at the stake is representative of religion, then Stalin is representative of atheism.

The Inquisition was done out of religious conviction first and foremost.

It's a code that in most ways is a step up from the culture the Hebrews were in. For example, a father could kill one of his children for any offense at all; the Mosaic Code limits such killing to a narrow set of circumstances. The culture around them had no limitations on who could be a slave or how they could be treated; the Mosaic Code put limitations on both, as well on how long someone could be kept as a slave. I don't really know what you're referring to as far as rape goes, so I won't touch that for now.

And we're back to the logical backflips. It doesn't fucking matter that it was comparatively "one step up" from the previous culture, it's still the premotion of ourtight barbarism at the hands of a cruel, jelous and ultimately human deity. Man creates god in his own image, and this is certainly a reflection of man at the time. Crude, violent, xenophobic, utterly, entirely mysoganistic, homophoic and totaly backward.

If God had moved too fast, He wouldn't have had a people -- that was demonstrated by the whole "golden calf" incident, when the only command the people had to obey was "wait for Moses to come back"... and they couldn't even get that right!

Part of the whole business was making the point that God was to be obeyed -- something that wasn't really a requirement for any of the 'gods' around. Another was that God was interested in daily aspects of life -- another thing that wasn't part of the religion of the times.

In ethical terms, God was establishing a mandated set of rules for daily life, which is a very low ethical level. As things progress through the Old Testament, the ethical level is moved steadily toward self-motivation, toward acting correctly because of internal values and not external threat. Near the end of the OT, a summary is given: "He has shown you, O man, what is good; now, what does the LORD require from you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to live humbly".

Can I ask, do you ever apply logic to this nonsense, from an entirely objective stance? Instead of twisting your own logic to try and make iron-age drivel work within the context of your own life, have you ever just pretended not to believe any of it for a second and looked at it from that standpoint?

 

[hotatlboi]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

It's a code that in most ways is a step up from the culture the Hebrews were in.

Your post was one of the most ridiculous thing I have ever read on this subject.

So God could only BARELY do better than what man of the time could?

What does that say about the holiness, righteousness, power, authority, et al of this God?

Your argument that he couldn't be too much better than man or they wouldn't have followed him is pure comedy. If a being really existed that actually performed the kind of acts described in the bible, he could have said anything he wanted and gotten people to follow him.

 

[TX-Beau]

Re: O'Reilly shows us we can't have religion in sc

No, it's a standard requirement for assessing any piece of intellectual material with its own worldview. Odd how people want Christians to actually understand evolution before they discard it, but they don't want to do the same thing themselves. It's as though you were one of the priests of Galileo's time, demanding that Galileo "prove" that there are moons around Jupiter before you'll look through that telescope, or one of the "scholars" who help to Ptolemy's model of the solar system demanding a mathematical and philosophical proof that orbits could be anything but circles before being willing to do observations.

No, because science and religion have nothing to do with each other.

Let's see if I can make this clear.

Your religion requires you to believe the impossible.

The scientific method is an investigative tool that requires that things be falsifiable.

See, one an irrational belief system, the other a tool. The scientific method asks you to believe nothing, indeed it requires you to remain skeptical of things with no evidence.

Your religion requires you to just believe, just 'cause.

Not the same.

Nope.

Not at all.

You're telling me that I'll never believe unless I just believe, that's a religious injunction that has nothing to do with science at all.

Science would require, not only that I do NOT take things "on their own terms," but that I actually have data, actively try to disprove it, then subject it to all my relevant peers who then will rip it to shreds. In an attempt to find any terms at all that will prove me wrong.

Your religion requires you to just believe, just 'cause. No proof, no data, no peer review, just 'cause.

And the reason I trust science over religion is that your car works, your computer works, planes fly, there are rovers on mars and a million other miracles that religion has never been able to produce.