And Now For Something Completely Different

[Choobus]

Mods, you might want to consider changing the title of this thread to "and now for something completely familiar" as it's nothing but the same old godidiot bible bashing spoogefest we have seen so many times before.

[nkb]

Daystar wrote

Look. I would expect with your avatar you would have gotten the not so obscure reference, especially with the mention of Ann Elk in the first paragraph.

What in my post implied that I didn't understand the reference?

The biggest difference between you and Monty Python is that they actually followed up that statement with something completely different. Savvy?

Daystar wrote

Lighten up. The fact is if I had said I was an atheist that would be the end of it. But since I said I was a theist you have to see me in your own light, which gives you false sense of superiority, like a spellcheck.

Interesting projection. I do not seek a sense of superiority (although some would argue that not wasting my life trying to tease translations out of ancient texts to conform to my emotional needs for an afterlife would put me one up on you to begin with), but I have to disagree with you: If you were an atheist, and had posted the same subject, then delivered a tired retread of a slapdown of theists, I would have called you on it just the same.
I don't care if you worship mythical figures, or deny this figure's existence, or anything in between, if you come across as pretentious and condescending, you will get called out by me. I'm a man of principles, what can I say?

Daystar wrote

It also makes it easy for me to do what I am doing. To me, easy is boring. You are boring me.

The day it becomes my job to amuse you, is the day I will give a shit whether I bore you or not.

[Sternwallow]

Daystar wrote

In other words you would agree that secular history is pointless in establishing facts of any kind.

Of course I don't think all secular history is pointless. However, individual items usually have corroboration. So, if an ancient historian says in a single phrase in a paragraph concerning an entirely different topic, that there was a person known as a christ by his followers. It may be true but it is weak evidence for the existence of that person.

Give us an example of that.

Examples were included in the prargraph.

I don't believe in luck. Vastly entertaining? Like cable television? I would opt for the lobotomy.

Two strong egos each with certainty of their rightness and the vast stupidity of the rest of humanity make an energetic if not informative match.

Come on. Don't be obtuse. They knew better, and like I said elsewhere, none of what I say is new.

That is the problem, they certainly did not know better. Every source of information a believer could find said very plainly that dead people got up and walked through the town. Where would they have gotten the true information? They knew only what they were told and they knew it so completely that they would and did lay down their lives rather than say it might not be so.

The believers get what they pay for, namely, the clergy.

The clergy made sure that crap was all that they could get so it is not fair to blame the believers for believing.

The information I gave you was evident from the start.

If it was so evident, why did people so fervently believe the wrong version?

If they were loath to correct it and you are loath to accept it that is nothing to do with me.

Bullshit, if I may be so bold, sir.

Kindly note that I have not yet called bullshit on your offerings nor have I criticized them very much since I prefer a dialog where information is exchanged to an adversarial confrontation.

Take the case of Galileo. His heliocentric theory came into question by the politically powerful church only because Thomas Aquinas who was infuenced by, not the Bible but Aristotle who was influenced by Pythagoras. The Bible said the Earth was spherical about 1000 years before Pythagoras and what did Aquinas and the church have in scriptural support? The Bible used the term setting and rising sun.

You are mistaken. The Bible says the world is round like a dinner plate and does not suggest or imply that it approaches spherical shape. Several Bible passages can only be true on a non-spherical body. So now you can tell me how the translators got it all wrong again.

Some clergy certainly did as you say in Galileo's case. Many other clergy demanded that reality be re-examined as long as necessary if it did not conform to scripture.

Don't talk to me about discovery and observation in a discussion about the Bible and clergy if you want nothing more than more of the same.

I am in agreement that the clergy made the Bible into crap, that they did so with all the other "sacred" writ as well and that the origin of religions (as opposed to the natural human "transcendental temptation") is the clergy's lust for wealth and power.

The sad fact is, though, that the current Bible is crap, for whatever constellation of reasons, even if some parts of it were true and right originally (which itself is not at all certain) and should no longer be an influence on any one, no more than the Koran or the Book of Mormon or the I Ching.

L. Ron Hubbard said that "If you want to make a shitload of money, just invent a religion and invite a few celebrities."

[Captain Relativity]

Captain Relativity wrote

simi illiterate? I'm guessing you were going for 'semiliterate'?

Oh I get it, were you making a clever paronomasia on the word semi, as in partially literate trogloditic simians / atheists? Damn, if only I weren't simi illiterate, I'll bet I would have picked up on that.