CodeX

Government is not supposed to be a parental entity for society.The government should have no control over what content is on television, because YOU have control over what station your television is tuned to. If YOU don't want to watch certain content then simply do not watch that content, but do not force your ideals on everyone else who may not share them, that is a slippery slope and usually ends in further oppression of the population by the ruling authority, which in turn leads to violent revolt, upheaval of the corrupt government, and revolution.Again, the government is not there to babysit the people, adults are adults and can determine their own actions regarding what they watch on TV and at the movies, what they put into their bodies (in terms of drugs and alcohol), and how they act toward others. The only role government should play is the enforcement of laws against violence toward others, including physical violence, whether intentional or negligent, and theft.If you feel the government should act like a parental figure maybe you need to grow up yourself, because you shouldn't need a parental figure past a certain age.

This is a travesty.Women should have the same freedom as men in every regard. Implying that someones dress makes them at fault for becoming the victim of a violent crime such as rape is ignorance and irrationality in the highest regard.The RAPIST is the criminal, not the women with a low cut dress and high heels. The most beautiful women in the world could walk down a dark alley at 2 in the morning and if she were to be raped the rapist would STILL be 100% wrong. I don't give two shits what the woman is wearing or how she is acting it CANNOT be used to excuse a violent crime against her such as rape.What ignorance, it makes me ashamed to be a human being to hear people who actually believe this stuff.

It also represents an absence of writings that were rejected by the church because their accounts of jesus were more... down to earth, without all of the miracles and magic. The church determined what books the new testament would contain, in the churches best interest. Agreed. But the new testament is what is at question here, you cannot use it as evidence for itself, that is fallacious. The books of the new testament were written between AD 45 to AD 200. Scholars agree that the Jesus of these stories would have had to have been executed between 26 AD and 36 AD as this is the span of the reign of Pontius Pilate. So you see, even the earliest book of the the new testament was written at least 10 and up to 20 years after his death. Given the average life span of about 45 years its plain to see that either the authors of even the earliest books would have to have been no older than children when the witnessed the events the eventually wrote, while the vast remainder of the books would have been impossible to have been written by someone who actually observed these supposed events. I just did. The authors of most of the books of the new testament COULD NOT have witnessed the events they wrote of first hand, depending on the book in question they could not have been alive during the time of Jesus, or were no older than toddlers at the time. Thank you. That is what I was having trouble with, yes. Agreed. Even if they did not DIRECTLY choose the content of the new testament they DID determine what would and would not be believed as tenants of the church during the council of nicaea, which would have later determined what books would be included in the canon and which would be excluded from it. I left the source references in the text... I figured that was good enough. That website is one of the sources I have been reading from a lot lately, yes. I never intended to obscure that fact, which is evident by leaving the source reference in the text I quoted from there.

All you are doing is making the assumption that he bible is an accurate source of information... unfortunately to do that you have to dismiss almost all other writings from the time period, which is what my original post was demonstrating. So, my argument in the first post was basically that the bible is the only reference to these events from that time period, despite many well known works being written at the same time in the same part of the world with NO mention of jesus or any of the events surrounding him. In other words, in response to my criticism of biblical accuracy you present a counterargument that utterly depends on biblical accuracy Way to go, here is a hint: in order to discuss biblical accuracy you MUST look at sources outside the bible, which is what is in question. Maybe some courses on formal logic are in order... P.S. What is wrong with this forum? Each time I hit post I see some of the words in my post had been removed, I have to keep editing it until it is posted correctly Oh, you can't use bold... if you try to use bold on a block of words it erases the first couple of characters and adds the tags at the end... nice Seriously though, you cannot reference the bible as an accurate source of information when the accuracy of the bible is the question at hand... I mean come on. Try a little reading comprehension, I am talking about non-biblical sources, obviously. I didn't say they wrote them... again... reading comprehension! You spin a nice tale here, but let me tell you another one. The council of nicea met to formulate a concise representation of the christian faith, that part you have correct. However what you fail to mention is that the first council actually formed the beginning of the new testament (not the entire thing, the current version formed over nearly a century in various places and times) by cherry picking stories from the newly developed church, a church which did not exist until many years after the supposed death of jesus, whos holly book was concocted by selecting the most exaggerated and unbelievable folklore about the main character while discarding the stories that presented jesus as a normal guy, no miracles, no resurrection. Some of these discarded gospels exist to this day, I urge you to read them.

I grew up a christian, but lately I have been losing my faith so to speak, and in that process have been doing a lot of research about the bible and the stories it contains. I have found some surprising things, and this thread is to discuss one of them, the fact that there are no literary accounts of Jesus outside of the gospels and the fact that the books of the bible were written between 50-150 years after jesus was crucified.Philo of Alexandria is probably the most famous ancient author who spent much time in Jerusalem during the early first century, and it is surprising that he mentions nothing about Jesus nor any of the other figures of the early Christian movement. There are about 50 other such authors with no such mention. The earliest mention of "Jesus of Nazareth" is in the genuine Pauline epistles, but to this Paul, Jesus is an entirely heavenly figure, with no mention of the Gospel biography and no time assigned to His earthly life. The Gospel stories themselves, of course, date from much later. The earliest "mention" (if it can be called that) is a third or fourth century interpolation by an unknown but plainly Christian hand into the text of Josephus. If it were genuine it would date from about a century after Jesus, but the interpolation makes it impossible to know for sure if Jesus was really mentioned there. There are, dating from the second century, a few other non-Christian mentions, but none of such a nature that they need be taken as anything more than authors repeating the then-current Christian claims. The Pauline epistles are excellent sources for the understanding of the nature of the Christian movement in the middle of the first century. If read critically and without the encrustation of later developed notions. What they show us is a Christian movement largely limited to Hellenes of Asia Minor, a few scattered churches, actively expecting an upcoming upheaval where Jesus "returns" and sets up his kingdom. These Christians seem to have no notion of the "Jesus" of today as described in the Bible. He was considered, instead, a pre-historic figure who lived in mythic time. This is standard Greek mystery cultism, with a Jewish veneer, just as other Greek mystery cults took an Egyptian or a Thracian or a Persian veneer.One may surmise that, since this Heavenly Jesus never appears, that these churches evolved over time into the Christianity with the Gospels and the earthly Jesus story as later developments, which were then compiled into the modern day bible in 325 AD at the first council of Nicea.How is it that there are no writings about jesus during his lifetime, or even within one generation AFTER his lifetime (people lived much shorter lifes back then, 50 years was close to the life expectancy of the time)

Your previous statement was basically that prayers are answered according to gods will... I find it to be a huge coincidence that gods will in answering prayers coincides perfectly with the probability of the subject of those prayers coming to fruition through natural means absent of said god. Your failure in understanding is based on the position of authority you are taking in this discussion, you confuse my disagreement with you as a failure to understand you. There have been many large scale studies that have verified that prayer never does anything. I don't need you to describe it to me, I have observed it. Throughout my life I have prayed for many things, and the ONLY ones that were ever "answered" are the ones that had a decent chance of occurring naturally on their own. I fail to see how that is contradictory... I am assuming the existence of god for the sake of argument, did you not understand that? What you have described is nothing but conjecture with no supporting evidence. While my own personal experiences may be limited in scope and breadth at least my conclusion is based on evidence. The only prayers that are EVER "answered" are ones that had a decent chance of occurring naturally even if there were no god. God never heals amputees. God never answers prayers that violate any physical scientific laws. God never does anything to answer any prayer that cannot happen on it's own with reasonable probability. His will in answering prayers would appear to be directly in line the probability of natural occurrence. This is also not hard to understand. Perhaps I am looking for an answer, not an excuse. Saying that god does what he wants is not an answer for the question regarding the apparent correlation between prayers that are "answered" and the probability of natural occurrence of those "answered" prayers, it is only an excuse. You are taking an authoritative position here, perhaps I reject your answer... which would have been obvious if you hadn't immediately assumed authority in the discussion.

What word would you have used instead? From what you have said in the rest of that post it almost sounds like you are a Panentheist.

And if you are wrong and there is no afterlife? Would that not be the ultimate tragedy, to waste the only life you are given on the assumption of an afterlife which may or may not be true? I mean, if this is the only life we get we absolutely should place emphasis on it, be the best people we can be but also try to enjoy ourselves at the same time, don't you think? I just think that living a less rewarding and meaningful life on the assumption that the afterlife will make up for it is a very dangerous way to live. In addition to the above, this isn't really an answer to the question. See, I understand that god can choose to answer some prayers and not others, but in a normal statistical distribution the prayers that are answered and the ones that are not should not be so easily divided into two different categories, especially two categories that lend doubt to whether or not prayer does anything at all. Why would god NEVER answer prayers that do not have a chance to occur naturally on their own? For example, prayers asking for someone to regrow a leg or an arm that they lost in an accident. There has not been a single recorded instance of this happening and I am sure that almost everyone who suffers such an accident would have his or her entire congregation praying for their recovery and well being. Why does god answer prayers in accordance with the probability of natural occurrence? It doesn't make sense, and it indicates, quite simply, that god does not answer prayers at all. "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, continues to exist."... When I stopped praying I noticed no change in my life or in the probability of good things versus bad things happening to me.

I see. Maybe you can answer a question that has been bugging me about intercessory prayer. Why is it that god only seems to answer prayers when there is a reasonable chance for the thing prayed for to occur naturally anyway? For example, when I was in school I distinctly remember asking in prayer to do well on a test that I was worried about, and I did. There are many other examples of this, when I would ask for something that had a reasonable chance of naturally occurring on it's own my prayers would sometimes be answered and sometimes not be answered. However I also remember asking in prayer for some things that would not reasonably occur on their own, examples of this include when I asked for my brothers leg to be regrown after it was amputated due to injury from a motorcycle accident. Another example is when I asked for help while my car was rolling after being run off the road by someone who fell asleep at the wheel, I was praying for the safety of myself and of my passengers, but I suffered a back injury resulting in chronic life long pain and one of my passengers suffered massive internal bleeding and later died in the hospital. These are the two big examples from the two worst times in my life, but there are many other smaller examples where I would pray for something that had little to no chance of happening on it's own, and I cannot think of a single time that prayers like this were answered. I just don't understand why the likelihood of a prayer being answered has, for me, over the entire course of my lifetime, seemed to coincide exactly with the probability of that which I prayed for occurring naturally on it's own, without the intervention of god. Based on my experiences with prayer I have long ago come to the conclusion that it does nothing, after that car accident I stopped praying, entirely, and I haven't seen any difference in my life or in the chance of good things or bad things happening to me.

Are you implying that god's power is limited? That he/she/it can only nudge the circumstances of reality but not ensure specific outcomes?

Asking for proof is futile, but asking for evidence is not. Asking for evidence, or reason, if you have none, should be commended. Agreed, those two options represent the full set of possibilities and thus the statement is a tautology. What do you mean by "make sense out of what you don't know"? Because as far as I can tell the statement is an oxymoron, you cannot make any sense out of something that is unknown, by definition. You need to have knowledge of something to make sense of it. I would say that no one can make sense of something they do not know. Agreed. Making a statement such as "X religion is the worst religion" is meaningless unless you specify your criteria for the judgement of the quality of a religion. I do not believe that any religion holds THE truth, with respect to their core beliefs... they may each hold truths, but I don't think those truths have anything to do with god, the origin of humans, the origin of life, the origin of the universe, or any of the other "big" questions. As sure as they each hold truths they also each hold fallacies. Agreed, well put. Agreed, but with one caveat. Proof is not required to rationally believe in something, nor is it often even practical to ask for. All that is required for a rational belief is evidence. The strength and quantity of evidence should directly effect the veracity of the belief. This is reason, this is rationality. Agreed on all counts. I disagree. You do not have to "see" to belief, even if I assume that by "see" you meant experience. KNOWLEDGE requires experience, BELIEF only requires evidence. FAITH is belief without evidence, which is irrational and should be avoided. This is a good point you make about thinking for yourself and not simply following the crowd. I would only add that, on the position of god, one should strive to live life in such a way that the presence or absence of any god would be irrelevant, then you will truly be free, no matter what you believe.

I agree with the thread starter.Humans ARE animals, and if you think otherwise you have to ignore either the definition of the word, or all genetic evidence and common sense.Of course there are similarities and differences between the human species and other animal species... for there are similarities and differences between each species and indeed between individual organism that has ever existed on this planet, if there weren't they would not be called individuals and they would not be called species.The similarities that humans share with at least one other species of animal are far greater than the differences between us. Here is a partial list of our similarities with other animals, there are MANY more:We are biological organisms.We reproduce using genetic recombination.We have two sexes.We are a hierarchy of structures (atoms, molecules, cells, proteins, amino acids, DNA, organs), all of which are similar to that of other animals.We respirate, inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxideWe consume nutrient and excrete waste.We have a system for the intracellular circulation of said nutrientsWe have a system for the transmission of sensory signals from our appendages to our brain.Our genetic sequence is 98% identical to that of chimpanzees.We have two ears, two eyes, four appendages, each with many digits, one nose, two rows of teeth, one tongue, finger and toenails, hair, skin, a heart, lungs, a liver, intestines, a stomach, a brain, bones... which are all shared by other animals.We compete for resources.We have relationships.We have familial units.We have fears.We play.We fight.We love and help each other.We use tools to solve problems.We have disagreements.We feel pain.We enjoy recreation and relaxation.We protect our loved ones at risk to our self.We are attracted to certain aspects of the opposite sex.We can appreciate beauty.Now, some distinct differences between us and any other animals. These differences distinguish us as a species.We create technologyWe explore the nature of our reality through scienceWe have a sense for art.We have a more developed brain, capable of higher order thought (this explains the other three differences)So you see... the ONLY thing that separates us from other animals is that our brains are slightly more developed....Humans are more intelligent than other animals, but that is not to say humans are the only animals that possess intelligence. Things are not as polarized as a lot of people seem to think they are, what I mean by this is that intelligence is not something that either is or is not, it is much more complex than that and there exists many different levels of intelligence within the animal kingdom. Many animals fashion tools to accomplish specific goals, many animals have complex systems of communication, many animals exhibit all of the emotions that humans feel, and some animals have even learned to use our technology for their own means, such as a chimpanzee typing on a computer.In fact, it is this archaic way of thinking that has been expressed in this thread by many of you that has lead to the terrible treatment of animals in our society and in other societies. Other animals, especially higher order mammals, feel fear, love, pain (both emotional and physical), hope, and sadness in the same way we do as humans and the way that humans treat and have treated these animals is deplorable and is based on the ignorant notion that humans are inherently better than other animals are given "dominion" over them by god. If god can accept the suffering of dogs, cats, and other animals being experimented on and even operated on while alive and without anesthetic than I want nothing to do with him/her/it.

I am also a programmer, and I can tell you at least one way that the human brain is... more efficient than computers.The human brain is remarkable at recognizing patterns. An example of this is image recognition. If you have a folder on your computer with a thousand pictures and you look at them one after the other it would take the average human only a split second to determine if the current image contained a person... or a tree... or any other object. This same exact task is REMARKABLY difficult for a computer (or, more accurately, for a computer programmer to implement in software). It's not even a matter of time, like... it's not just that a computer is much slower at this task... it's that it often simply cannot do it correctly. Image recognition technology is advancing, and I think specifically facial recognition has gotten pretty darn good actually... but that is only because programmers have been working on solutions to this problem for a long time. The problem is, for every type of object we want to be able to identify in software we will have to spend a comparable amount of time to develop that solution. So, just because we have facial recognition working well doesn't mean that... for example... chair recognition would also work with the same solution.The nature of this difficulty, I believe, is the sequential nature of processing that computers use. A human looks at an image and can analyze the entire image as a whole entity all at once. A computer program can only examine a single pixel color at a time. Perhaps with the growth of parallel processing we will figure out how to overcome this difficulty, but it will certainly require a significant shift in the way algorithms are written, which will take time.

Why should one not criticize what is ridiculous? Actually, a better question is why do people think that religious practices are above criticism in general? Nothing should be above criticism, that is the hallmark of dictatorships. If people think something is wrong, or that something should be changed then those people should be heard, whether you agree with them or not. This is the only way to avoid dogma, which should be avoided at all costs. I understand that this conflicts with your religious views, and that is because you prescribe to a dictatorial system. Like I said, suppressing criticism is dictatorial, and believing that the words of god are inerrant makes god a dictator. Whether or not you like this has no bearing on the truth, but of course prescribing to a belief in an inerrant dictator leaves little room (or concern) for truth. But what is truth, lets talk about that for a while. Before we define truth we need to understand the difference between objective reality and subjective reality. Something that is objective exists independent of any person or animal or, more generally, any consciousness. Conversely, something that is subjective depends on the existence of a person, animal, or, in general, a conscious entity. Let me restate that, objective reality does not depend on the existence of a conscious entity, while subjective existence depends on the existence of the same. You might think that anything that you can detect with your five senses qualifies as objective reality, but this is not always the case. In fact, you cannot trust your own senses to tell you what actually exists in objective reality and what does not, this is because your senses are nothing but neural impulses interpreted by your brain, and they can be tricked. An example of this is the effect of hallucinogenic or psychedelic drugs, but there are many others. You might ask how we determine what is objectively true and what is not if we cannot even trust our five senses, and the strict, literal, answer to that is that we don't. HOWEVER, we can increase the probability that what we are sensing actually exists by the mutual experience of the thing in question. That is, the more people that can share in and thus independently confirm the experience of the object the higher the probability that the object actually exists. So if you see a chair, and can feel a chair with your hands, and can smell the wood of that chair, there is a reasonable probability that that chair actually exists, but you still cannot say FOR CERTAIN that it does, because you could be hallucinating those experiences. If you then invite a friend to observe the chair, and they agree with your perception of that chair, then you have just increased the probability that the chair exists because it would unlikely that both of you are having a similar hallucination at the same time. If you then invite the entire town over and they all agree with you then it is all but certain that the chair exists, but even now, even if everyone in the world agrees, there is still room for doubt... consider a matrix-esque scenario for example. So what is the meaning of all of that, you might ask. Well, philosophy is all well and good but to do ANYTHING in life you have to make some assumptions, and one of those assumptions that we make is that subjective experiences of things that are confirmed by others are considered to be objectively true. It is important to understand that we must make this assumption to learn ANYTHING about the nature of our own existence, but it is ONLY an assumption, it is not necessarily true. So let me take this understanding of the difference between objective and subjective and tie it back to the nature of truth. Just like objective and subjective experience there is also objective and subjective truth. Objective truth is that which is true regardless of the presence or absence of conscious entities while subjective truth is only true in the context of a conscious entity. An example of objective truth is the chair from the last example (remember, we are assuming it exists, despite the existence of the possibility that it does not.), while an example of subjective truth would be your feelings toward another individual. Your feelings toward, say, your mother, only exist in the context of your conscious mind. If you died, the feelings you have toward your mother would no longer exist, because you no longer exist. Here you can see the dependent relationship between your existence and the existence of your thoughts, this dependence is what makes thoughts and feelings subjective truths, they are only true to you, they only exist because you do. Speaking in tongues is a subjective truth. Not the action itself, but the motivation and the mental state that one must be in to partake in this ritual only exists in the brains of those who do so, the experience is only true for them, it is not objectively true. This is the nature of all such experiences, they are true to the people having them alone, and are the result of nothing brain chemistry. What I am saying, if you haven't really been following me, is that speaking in tongues (when not consciously faked, which I suspect it often is) is akin to a hallucination, there is nothing more to it, there is no mystical power involved, it is horseshit. No, what is harmful and dangerous is giving up control of your own mental faculties to the point that you would be subject to these subconscious hallucinations. It is like smoking peyote, only the hallucination is brought on by exciting chemicals that already exist in the brain (through delusions of grandeur, physical excitement and stimulation, and the release of adrenaline) instead of by introducing them from outside sources. It is also clearly written in the bible that you cannot beat your slaves to death, but if they get up after a day or two after the beating then you are okay.... oh you ignore that part of your holy book, just like the bishops at the first council of Nicea in the year 325 AD who decided which gospels would be put into the bible and which would be discarded and forever forgotten. Such freedom your god gives you, to choose which divinely inspired writings to pay attention to and which to ignore. Let me tell you a little something about the son. The son (henceforth referred to as the "sun"), dies on the cross and is later resurrected. Easter marks the date of the resurrection, while christmas marks the date of the suns birth. I am sure you know all that, but let me tell you the rest of the story. Lets start with christmas, which is a couple days after the winter solstice. If you don't know, the winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, for the prior 6 months (since the summer solstice, the longest day of the year) the days become shorter and shorter, with the sun spending less and less time visible in the sky each day. In the northern hemisphere the sunset moves further and further south each day starting from the summer solstice until it sets at its furthest southern point on the date of winter solstice december 22nd, directly beneath the southern cross constellation. The movement of the sunset on the horizon pauses here for a period of three days. After the realization of the shortest day of the year and the metaphorical death of the sun we witness its glorious rebirth on december 25th when the sunset appears to move one degree further north on the horizon, signifying the lengthening of days and the coming of spring. This event, the rebirth of the sun on the 25th, is marked by the brightest star in the sky, Sirius (also known as the star in the east), which is directly aligned with the "Three Kings" of the Orions Belt constellation to point to the exact location of the sunrise on the horizon. One more time: The sun dies on the cross (the southern cross constellation), and is resurrected after three days. The birth of the sun is marked by the star in the east (Sirius), which is followed by the three kings (of the orions belt constellation) to the exact location (on the horizon) of the birth of the sun. This is a remarkable coincidence.... if you are wholly ignorant of the history of religious tradition. In fact, these astronomical signs are directly responsible for the myths of several dozen different religions throughout ancient history, most notably is that of the egyptian god Horus and the Zoroastrian god Mithra, who share almost the EXACT SAME myth of birth, crucifixion, and resurrection as Jesus Christ. The holy ghost is not real, the idea is ridiculous and should rightfully be subject to ridicule.