Resigned said:
An irrational belief system is what has compelled you religious folks toward sliding swords into one another for over ten thousand years; burning at the stake those who don't agree with you, flying airplanes into buildings. All of this to prove that you, and only you, represent the true god(s). But you’re right, it’s just a label.
that is a massive generalisation and just as true of those who believe that they and only they have the right ethnic, tribal or national affiliation, class background or ideology - even removing any religious aspect from consideration. all those are "only labels" too. this is a great old chestnut of anti-religious thought and fails on close examination. in any case, at no time since the late biblical period has judaism waged religious wars; such behaviour is severely limited, to the point of impossibility for the last 2,500 years, in fact. in short, i think we've learned that particular lesson.
According to the very blueprint that introduces you to the very idea of the theism at all (let’s examine the bible) -- the only way to get to paradise according to the bible is you gotta accept Jesus. Everything else is revisionism and wishful thinking.
no. that is what it says in the new testament, not the "bible". it doesn't say it in my bible, because i'm jewish.
Use the bible as the source from where you heard about Jesus and God (or god(s) of your choosing) and salvation in the first place
as i've said elsewhere, our concept of "salvation" is completely different and, in any case, doesn't depend on theological orthodoxy but on ethical behaviour.
Well, I'm an atheist. I don't believe in gods or saviors or demons. But I live a good life. I've even saved some people's lives. But I don't embrace Jesus at all. So I should go to hell because I don't believe? Okay, since I have lived a good life, then to heaven I go. Well, then what need is there for Jesus? None. So why should anyone bother being a Christian or in fact any religion at all? Why not all be well-behaved atheists?
judaism doesn't have a problem with well-behaved atheists. this is only a problem for fundamentalist universalist religious. south american rainforest indians who've never heard of the Torah are not going to "hell", they're probably very nice people indeed. that's why clarity about universalist claims is so important and why we don't have missionaries.
Until there is a way to connect a supernatural being with the authorship of a book, it's safe to assume that the book is, in fact, merely written by men.
there cannot be such a thing without a control element that can identify to the satisfaction of the investigator what criteria the authorship of a Divine Text must actually fulfil. as you would
a priori exclude the possibility of such a control, which means a satisfactory experiment cannot be conducted. you need to read dan dennett's "breaking the spell" which describes a way to conduct such experiments which i think as a religious person would be able to buy into.
Although now, we may be edging into that really bizarre world of Theism where some things you believe as literal, others not, which is really your garden variety of pick-and-choose what you want to believe.
says you - but you don't get to decide that for others, this is mere assertion. it is a fundamental tenet of jewish thought that human interpretation is inherent and inextricable element in any relationship with the Divine. you can, if you wish, interpret this as "pick and choose", but i could say the exact same thing of the interpretation of any *data set*, literary or even numerical. either the data support your hypothesis according to your criteria for interpretation, or they don't.
If you can say, "Well, Genesis is true but Pauline rules on women is not" (or whatever), well, then I can -- with equal "authority" -- by your own standards, say "Well, the siege of Jericho is true, but the resurrection is not". Such game playing with one's beliefs is certainly your right to do, but it only strips your argument of credibility, it doesn't support your case at all.
nonsense. authority is relative to the person doing the interpretation. you could say such things and believe that you have equal "authority", but i would not believe that you have such authority, because you do not meet my criteria for giving an authoritative opinion. in the same way my authority to say what a medical textbook (or poem in chinese, if you prefer) is less credible than that of a doctor or chinese literature expert.
That's because faith isn't a tool-- it is a conclusion.
that's an interesting and, i think, correct statement. i didn't just believe stuff because it suited me, i concluded that it was the most logical concomitant to my experiences. interestingly, though, the word for "belief" or "faith" in hebrew is "emunah", which actually means "trust" - i.e. confidence in a system or an outcome, which implies that the confidence should be based on something tangible, which mine is.
Faith by definition is not a path to knowledge -- else, if the item is known, it no longer needs faith.
exactly. i don't need to believe in the postman, but i can have faith (trust) that the post will be delivered.
Enter faith, theistically defined as the substance of things "hoped for"; the evidence of things not seen.
not by me - as i said, faith for me is defined as the trust in a predicted outcome, based on my empirical experience and the evidence of history. this is why the survival of judaism against all reason over the millennia is both unarguable evidence (of course, one can naturally appeal to false positives) and a reason to have faith.
What I see are adherents of various faiths who tend to peel back the veneer of the faith as they interpret and re-interpret.
er, i'm not sure i understand this statement. certainly judaism is peer-reviewed, that is what the entire process of the Oral Torah is about.
Which means, we’ve looped back to the issue of interpretation and translation but then we’d get in the problems with shoddy translation and why god would allow that, etc. (and that is a different thread)?
well, you could if you wish read in the original, as i do. however, that can be challenged because even language is an interpretation of thought and thus a restriction and filter between mind and message.
Why not simply be clear and do not allow for such confusion?
because we wouldn't learn anything. we're not robots, nor are we expected to be.
Why is it that the theistic perspective offers a god who confounds us, but the materialist perspective offers one that makes sense-- a star is a million light years away because it's taken light a million years to get here. Simple. Explainable. Understandable. No need to assert mysterious beings using mysterious ways we can never know, precluding us from ever finding out.
you're talking the language of occam's razor, but that is only applicable if all the entities in play can be accounted for.
Let’s explore this a bit further – the tendency to interpret length of days in the Genesis tale because this puts believers firmly on a slippery slope. The story doesn't indicate anything is particularly metaphorical-- it seems to be in the context of "This happened, then this happened".
of course it's indicated - a "day" is, as everyone knows, defined by the relationship between the sun and the earth and if the sun wasn't created until day 3, that should be a bit of a fecking giveaway that we're not talking about days in the normal way! light also comes from the sun - so what light is G!D Talking about Letting there be? it's obviously not sunlight, so we're obviously in metaphorical territory. there are two ways right there that don't rely on interpretation, only on the text as it is. the fact is you don't understand how the text actually works or the assumptions it's predicated on.
Well, if you can play fast and loose with the term "day", then so can anyone with... oh, the parting of the Red Sea. The Flood.
well, of course - and judaism is founded upon what interpretation of this Text can teach us as a result!
If memory serves, there's biblical notation that the Jews did not initially reject the messiah, not until they discovered his way was not that of the sword.
not in my bible there isn't. perhaps you'd like to show me what this is.
muslimwoman - welcome to the wonderful world of simone-weil-knows-everything-about-everything!
b'shalom
bananabrain
Even if God was a self-emerging entity, that wouldn't make him less of a God, would it?