2008-08-01, 22:15 | Link #1201 | ||
Gregory House
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2008-08-01, 22:31 | Link #1202 |
Senior Member
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Location: Canada
Age: 42
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I was probably jumping the gun a little. It is statistically proven and blatently obvious that the majority of humanity is raised from childhood with either some form of christian or other faith-based belief system, therefore I didnt think it would be a much of a stretch to state that possibly the majority (cant say how much of a majority) of current non-believers used to be believers at some point in their life.
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2008-08-01, 22:52 | Link #1203 | |
Gregory House
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If you'd ask me, the majority of human beings have too many stressful and immediate things to worry about (most of which are too far away from our grasp) to sit down and pose questions about the existence of the universe and their belief system. Either way, that's going off a tangent... but I don't think it still fulfills the question. Individual stances and developments on the matter are far too varied to track. It's not a statistically viable answer. Though, still, I agree that a non-believer *can* understand (doesn't mean they actually do) what a believer feels... but for other reasons.
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2008-08-01, 23:01 | Link #1204 | ||
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
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Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
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Many Christians view the context of Genesis as a poetic metaphor for creation - and the "history" of the early tribe of Jews as somewhat colorfully enhanced at the least.
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Here's an example: if I use the term "rush hour", what symbolic concepts does that cause your brain to bring forth? Only within the context of a automobile-dependent society does it mean anything other than "an hour of going fast" and then only if there are poorly designed urban centers. Another example: in the Tao Te Ching, (entirely metaphorical in ways incomprehensible without a lot of study), the concept of "change" is usually expressed with the “water” character, not the “change” character. (from the wiki To quote from the wiki: Quote:
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Last edited by Vexx; 2008-08-01 at 23:33. |
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2008-08-01, 23:15 | Link #1205 | |
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I just question why anybody would interpret the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for ancient Sumerian cities. Even if Genesis was written long ago, there's no reason to assign hidden meanings to everything when the writing itself doesn't hint at such things. You just believe it existed or you don't. If you do believe, hopefully because you believe in God, you should also believe that God preserves his work even through the centuries, including the Bible itself. If you don't, then it's just a myth to you. Either way, no need to see it as a metaphor of any kind. As such, I don't see how what Kyuusai said applies here. The fact that I believe the Garden of Eden to be a real place doesn't stop me from seeing the world as it is now. Those are not really two mutually exclusive things. |
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2008-08-01, 23:21 | Link #1206 | |
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To most atheist they call religion as an annoyance to their lives. But for people in these religions, it is their belief,life and their culture. |
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2008-08-01, 23:37 | Link #1207 | ||
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And the Garden of Eden is not just a term, it's a setting of a story whose character was referenced later on in the Bible to be as he was, and not symbolic of anything beyond the possible use as a typology. |
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2008-08-02, 00:44 | Link #1208 | ||
Moving in circles
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
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Sure, it's entirely possible for the blind man to feel the beauty of the moment, particularly if the sighted man is a great story-teller. More importantly, however, I suppose it begins with trust. If you don't trust the person giving the message, then there isn't much point in listening to him. To believe or not to believe is ultimately an individual choice. I'm only interested to see if the choice makes the individual a better person. |
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2008-08-02, 01:13 | Link #1209 | |
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Having atleast an educated guess of the general relgious makeup of your own society to me atleast seems like something that should be pretty obvious to anyone by the time you're a legal adult. Surely you should have atleast caught a news report or something over your life about the subject and hell in the internet age with such easy and constant access to information seems even less likely that you could be as completely oblivious to the subject to the extent that you appear to be. Last edited by Icehawk; 2008-08-02 at 01:24. |
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2008-08-02, 01:26 | Link #1210 | |
Gregory House
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Nothing's as obvious as it seems. Around half of the world's population lives under extreme poverty circumstances, and in those situations there's not much time to mull on the meaning of the universe, you know. Yes, perhaps they're religious... on the surface. But if you really stop to think about it, they have much more urgent needs, and thus they can't manage to form a concrete intellectual identity. Please limit first-world societal observations to the first-world, thankyouverymuch.
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2008-08-02, 01:28 | Link #1211 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
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Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
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@Icehawk: It really depends on how you define "belief" of "adherent". The religion you are raised as a child in .... well you really haven't made a conscious choice to believe --- you're just going along uncritically with what those big people say.
As someone put it ... that isn't a Muslim child... its a child being raised by Muslim parents. At some point in its life, it will (hopefully) make a conscious decision to either continue believing in the same sect as his parents, check out other sects, put Islam on hold and check out other ideas, etc. If the nature of local life is such that there's only time to seek shelter and food.... its unlikely that deeper questions get a lot of "brain cycles". The CIA fact book really just lists survey extrapolations of populations and doesn't really examine who is showing up to temple for socially correct purposes versus someone actually seeking spiritual guidance. And in many societies there's no separation between the culture and the religion (which makes aggressive incoming religions that much more disliked).
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Last edited by Vexx; 2008-08-02 at 01:42. |
2008-08-02, 01:34 | Link #1212 | |
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2008-08-02, 01:48 | Link #1213 | ||
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Location: East Cupcake
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God, though, has to be described in physical terms (such as describing God in similes and metaphors ("God is like the Sun...")), which makes it hard to truly argue for its existence (i.e. is it God or just the wind, or the sun, or some other natural occurance that does not necessarily need a divine force), or God has to be described in emotional terms (fullfilment, etc.) which is hard to convey to others (your example of trust). In the end, more than anything else, I can't help but think that "Belief" is self-acquired (as Vexx has mentioned), rather than taught to others, which is why it is hard to explain one's "belief" to others. Last edited by james0246; 2008-08-02 at 02:45. |
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2008-08-02, 02:37 | Link #1214 | |
Silent Warrior
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Netherlands
Age: 38
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2008-08-02, 03:30 | Link #1215 | ||
Moving in circles
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
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Still, it's amusing that you contradicted and supported my analogy at the same time. I wasn't trying to argue for the existence of the "Sun", but rather to describe the difficulty of expressing personal revelation ("the beauty of the moment") to someone else who doesn't share the emotion. I've come to my conclusions about the important things in my life through personal reflection on my experiences. It'd be impossible to convince others about why I believe what I do, not unless they attempt to see things from my perspective. Having realised this, I became aware how silly it is to bash theists for believing what they about God. Religion, when practised properly, is about a personal relationship with whatever god or entity you believe in. Having chosen not to share that relationship, I am in no position to criticise those who do. I can, however, evaluate the actions that result from those beliefs. And this I remind myself to do, everyday. Quote:
Belief, meaning and purpose are things that an individual creates, for himself. Whether or not it corresponds to "divine purpose" is besides the point. Without purpose, there is no motivation. In which case, you'd just be wasting your one and only existence in this reality. Of course, you could say that it's an aesthetic choice. I personally prefer to live a meaningful life than a life without purpose. In the end, that's all that matters to me. A simple choice. |
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2008-08-02, 11:49 | Link #1216 | |
廉頗
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Massachusetts
Age: 35
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I challenge individuals to look at some of their religious 'traditions' or rules and understand them from a historical perspective, including what kinds of food to eat or certain medical practices. It could have, at one point, been for the safety of these ancient peoples, used as religion so people would follow it; ancient health and safety codes, so to speak. |
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2008-08-02, 13:29 | Link #1217 | ||
9wiki
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The different books were copied so many times and spread out in so many directions that we have a pretty good idea of what the originals said and where/when inaccuracies were inserted. It's quite useful for proving and disproving claims of change. That still doesn't stop the nonsense. Whether due to copyright protection, scholastic arrogance, or general "rebel spirit", you still see people pointing to "the oldest" or "the best" texts to defend differing collections or interpretations, despite the condition of those texts (missing pieces, fraught with errors) and their disagreement with virtually every other text. Quote:
Many Christians and Jews, for instance, recognize many of laws, rituals and prohibitions given to the Hebrews as intended to protect them through better social structure, hygiene and safer diet. That isn't really an argument against the belief of the source. As they say, "Man was not made for the Law, but the Law was made for man."
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2008-08-02, 14:37 | Link #1218 | |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
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It will be interesting to see what happens when the Dead Sea Scrolls and other extant pieces are incorporated into 'official text' --- that should be some exciting debate
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2008-08-02, 16:34 | Link #1219 |
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I have some doubt that the Dead Sea Scrolls will ever be incorporated into the known "official texts". The stories described are just different enough that they will probably be left out (ex: parts of the newly revealed story of Abraham (God explaining himself to Abraham), other historical differences in regards to the stories of Enoch and Noah, not to mention many of the minor non-canonical prophets, psalms, etc that while not necessarily contradictory of the previously known information, the new stories are just different enough that they might be simply discarded as texts from an off-shoot sect, and not official "holy" text).
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2008-08-02, 16:42 | Link #1220 | ||
9wiki
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I used to love the New International Version for its many footnotes, but I quickly became disillusioned with it when I learned more about how it was put together. Agendas are found on any side of an issue, and the Westcott-Hort collection of text was a prime example of it: In the effort to make waves with a "better" collection than the Textus Receptus and translation than the King James version (really, ones that were controversially different and adhered to their personal theologies), it tremendously favored two particular texts, the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus, which were the oldest known texts at the time--and two of the worst (there's a lot of crap said to disparage them, but they are really pretty awful). The NIV gives extreme priority to the Westcott-Hort, to the point of ridiculousness. And, in my personal opinion, it loses the literal adherence while gaining little in terms of matching the colloquial tone, although it is more readable for modern folk. Collection controversy makes it easy to manage new copyrights and support religious debates, though, so the W-H had a lot of influence. Along the same lines, I tend to find that claims of conspiratorial changes in the KJV tend to be substantiated by references to the quirks of the Westcott-Hort collection. The Dead Sea scrolls have actually had an influence! Though there has been some correlation with the Textus Receptus in certain debated portions more than some would like to admit, later versions of the Nestle-Aland/United Bible Societies collections have reflected much of the textual insight thus far given by the Dead Sea Scrolls while departing from from the less-than-accurate uniqueness of the Westcott-Hort (although that hasn't been just due to the Dead Sea scrolls). The best English translation reflecting the newer collections and other discoveries is the New American Standard Bible. It does tend to be rather literal, but cross-referencing to something such as the very vernacular New Living Translation can actually be kind of fun. Quote:
Additionally, much of the content of the Dead Sea scrolls was apocryphal in nature--not part of any of the canon texts, so, interesting as it is, it wouldn't show up in a regular Bible.
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not a debate, philosophy, religion |
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