Spearthrower wrote:

John Platko wrote:

CdesignProponentsist wrote:Huckabee supports gay bashing. It's what Jesus would do.

I think not.

Isn't it a valid source of confusion how the creator of the entire universe can generate instructions to its followers sufficiently ambiguous to have believers take diametrically opposite positions?

Confusion is expectable given that we followers are left to imagine what "the creators instructions are". Which somehow reminds me of:

John Platko wrote:
Confusion is expectable given that we followers are left to imagine what "the creators instructions are".

Now now, the people pretending to speak for the imagined creator were quite clear: it is an abomination.

SafeAsMilk wrote:

John Platko wrote:
Confusion is expectable given that we followers are left to imagine what "the creators instructions are".

Now now, the people pretending to speak for the imagined creator were quite clear: it is an abomination.

Yeah, it's not like you ever hear a religious leader saying, "Now we could be wrong about this so you might want to take this with a pinch of salt, but God probably wants you to burn in hell for all eternity, and while I don't necessarily think that myself we're going to run with that anyway. How do you feel about that?"

John Platko wrote:
Confusion is expectable given that we followers are left to imagine what "the creators instructions are".

Exactly when, in all of recorded history, were followers just left to imagine whatever they liked?

This is revisionism.

The fact is that the majority of believers in organised religions have been told quite expressly what to believe, and had other beliefs permanently banned from being considered. Often by physical threat. Quite contrary to it being left to the imagination, it has been made law to believe X rather than Y - entire industries have been built around this authority of holy scripture.

Now, I understand that you personally, any maybe many of your friends, have your own nice, fluffy liberal versions of Catholicism and they may even be commendable, but you can't really hope to persuade that your position regarding say, the divine origin of scripture, is a common perspective by which such claims can be assessed. You are not representative of the norm.

Old style headline: Political wag gags on fag bags rags Frito Lay.

Spearthrower wrote:

John Platko wrote:
Confusion is expectable given that we followers are left to imagine what "the creators instructions are".

Exactly when, in all of recorded history, were followers just left to imagine whatever they liked?

This is revisionism.

I'm am quite certain, I've double and triple checked this, it is a fact that all religious ideas are the product of some human's imagination. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes not so much. But if you think they come from somewhere else, then by all means enlighten me. Where else could they come from?

The fact is that the majority of believers in organised religions have been told quite expressly what to believe, and had other beliefs permanently banned from being considered.

True enough, but that's just how some imagined it should be; sadly, it's the best they can do. I suspect we can agree that just being told what to believe and permanently banning ideas is not a very wise way to proceed.

Often by physical threat. Quite contrary to it being left to the imagination, it has been made law to believe X rather than Y - entire industries have been built around this authority of holy scripture.

From my observations and experiments and so forth, that kind of "religion" doesn't work too wel - although when you're new at anything a few good rules are helpful to get you started, as you gain experience you understand what the rules were trying to drive at. When It comes to Christianity it's completely bollocks to think rules can give much of a clue about what Jesus was going on about. It's about doing the right thing and you just can't make a list of rules to cover that.

Now, I understand that you personally, any maybe many of your friends, have your own nice, fluffy liberal versions of Catholicism and they may even be commendable, but you can't really hope to persuade that your position regarding say, the divine origin of scripture, is a common perspective by which such claims can be assessed. You are not representative of the norm.

Well, I do believe that I can put together a rather convincing argument that the Bible has errors. It's easy enough to show that it contradicts itself. And it's certainly easy to prove that official Catholic practice cherry picks the Bible - that's just a fact. And much Catholic doctrine comes more from metaphysics than scripture, and most Catholics don't know anything about metaphysics, so it's not much of an issue for them. True, some very deluded souls refuse to see a fact even when their nose is rubbed right in it, but I've noticed others give pause and think a bit. And young Catholics often see things rather differently than their parents did. I'm thinking some might find it helpful to hear how someone "not representative of the norm" has sifted through these issues.

THWOTH wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

John Platko wrote:
Confusion is expectable given that we followers are left to imagine what "the creators instructions are".

Now now, the people pretending to speak for the imagined creator were quite clear: it is an abomination.

Yeah, it's not like you ever hear a religious leader saying, "Now we could be wrong about this so you might want to take this with a pinch of salt, but God probably wants you to burn in hell for all eternity, and while I don't necessarily think that myself we're going to run with that anyway. How do you feel about that?"

Would you settle for an important Catholic Priest explaining that "roasting in hell is all gone- that's all finished."

Jesus would boycott Doritos because of their exploitation of Latin American farm workers.

Spinozasgalt wrote:

laklak wrote:Chucklebee sucks rent boy dick.

I guarantee it, just wait, he'll get caught eventually.

Oh ho no no! You guys can keep him. We don't want him on our team.

The rent boy team?

Aww, you knew what I meant, you foolish person. Don't be silly, you ridiculous individual. You're being nonsensical, you stupid being.

John Platko wrote:

THWOTH wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

John Platko wrote:
Confusion is expectable given that we followers are left to imagine what "the creators instructions are".

Now now, the people pretending to speak for the imagined creator were quite clear: it is an abomination.

Yeah, it's not like you ever hear a religious leader saying, "Now we could be wrong about this so you might want to take this with a pinch of salt, but God probably wants you to burn in hell for all eternity, and while I don't necessarily think that myself we're going to run with that anyway. How do you feel about that?"

Would you settle for an important Catholic Priest explaining that "roasting in hell is all gone- that's all finished."

Yeah, kind of embarrassing ain't it? Like seeing your high school photographs 30 years later: "Jeez! What a dickwad I was back then." kind of thing.

When they ran the show, the Catholics were quite happy to torture and burn people on Earth, never mind Hell. If you questioned their shitty religion, you ended up with your gonads in a metal clamp so there were few important Catholic priests explaining Jack Shit to anyone. Now the Catholic Church has lost its political power, they are reduced to polishing turds, something that the Anglicans have been practicing for a couple of centuries and are far more adept at. No burning in Hell? What's the point in being a Catholic then? Take away the fear, guilt and threat of eternal punishment and the extortion racket will end. Fine tightrope to be walking. The Vatican's accountants must be sweating.

John Platko wrote:

I'm am quite certain, I've double and triple checked this, it is a fact that all religious ideas are the product of some human's imagination. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes not so much. But if you think they come from somewhere else, then by all means enlighten me. Where else could they come from?

I'm just throwing this out as a possibility, but some religious ideas may have come from pre-humans, Neanderthals, or Denisovans, maybe even those hobbit-folk if they're real.

crank wrote:

John Platko wrote:

I'm am quite certain, I've double and triple checked this, it is a fact that all religious ideas are the product of some human's imagination. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes not so much. But if you think they come from somewhere else, then by all means enlighten me. Where else could they come from?

I'm just throwing this out as a possibility, but some religious ideas may have come from pre-humans, Neanderthals, or Denisovans, maybe even those hobbit-folk if they're real.

Or it may have grown from the common animal capacity for simple superstition as our brains grew, thus making any demarcation problematic.

John Platko wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

John Platko wrote:
Confusion is expectable given that we followers are left to imagine what "the creators instructions are".

Exactly when, in all of recorded history, were followers just left to imagine whatever they liked?

This is revisionism.

I'm am quite certain, I've double and triple checked this, it is a fact that all religious ideas are the product of some human's imagination. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes not so much. But if you think they come from somewhere else, then by all means enlighten me. Where else could they come from?

Obvious vacuous obfuscation, Platko. It's not me claiming that they have a divine origin, is it? It's not me saying that scriptures are other than the product of another human imagination, is it? Clearly that's not what I was saying - clearly, what I was saying is It's the religious authorities who declare this. But of course, you knew that I meant this already and decided just to spin a little obfuscating derail for the kicks.

John Platko wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:
The fact is that the majority of believers in organised religions have been told quite expressly what to believe, and had other beliefs permanently banned from being considered.

True enough, but that's just how some imagined it should be; sadly, it's the best they can do. I suspect we can agree that just being told what to believe and permanently banning ideas is not a very wise way to proceed.

Indeed you and I might be able to do that, but that's really not the subject being discussed, is it? The contention you made was that believers are just left to imagine what the creator's desires are, yet scripture explicitly states that scripture outlines the creator's desires, and the religious authorities enforce it.

John Platko wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:
Often by physical threat. Quite contrary to it being left to the imagination, it has been made law to believe X rather than Y - entire industries have been built around this authority of holy scripture.

From my observations and experiments and so forth, that kind of "religion" doesn't work too wel...

Seems to have worked very well for religions like Christianity, holding a monopoly on these spiritual truths for over 1000 years in Europe, even forcing kings and nobles to bend before the force of the authority of scripture as maintained by the Church.

John Platko wrote:- although when you're new at anything a few good rules are helpful to get you started, as you gain experience you understand what the rules were trying to drive at. When It comes to Christianity it's completely bollocks to think rules can give much of a clue about what Jesus was going on about. It's about doing the right thing and you just can't make a list of rules to cover that.

And yet that is exactly what happened. Trying to pin you down on things like this is akin to nailing spaghetti to the wall. It's easy to obfuscate points about what factually did happen by introducing what you think should have happened. Of course, I agree that scripture is man-made, that the religious authorities had no reason other than power to enforce their orthodoxies, and that no divine being is apparent via scripture.... but then none of these are what I am arguing, are they? Instead, I have rightly noted that these are claims made by the organised religions.

John Platko wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:
Now, I understand that you personally, any maybe many of your friends, have your own nice, fluffy liberal versions of Catholicism and they may even be commendable, but you can't really hope to persuade that your position regarding say, the divine origin of scripture, is a common perspective by which such claims can be assessed. You are not representative of the norm.

Well, I do believe that I can put together a rather convincing argument that the Bible has errors. It's easy enough to show that it contradicts itself. And it's certainly easy to prove that official Catholic practice cherry picks the Bible - that's just a fact. And much Catholic doctrine comes more from metaphysics than scripture, and most Catholics don't know anything about metaphysics, so it's not much of an issue for them. True, some very deluded souls refuse to see a fact even when their nose is rubbed right in it, but I've noticed others give pause and think a bit. And young Catholics often see things rather differently than their parents did. I'm thinking some might find it helpful to hear how someone "not representative of the norm" has sifted through these issues.

While I do not dispute that it would be wonderful if a skeptical approach became the normal behavior for religious people with regards to claims made about god's desires and intentions as expressed through scripture, it's clearly not the case either historically for the tens of millions of Christians in Europe and eventually elsewhere from the early medieval period on, and it's clearly not the case in other religions like Islam.

Quite the contrary to the notion that 'believers are left to imagine what the creators instructions are', believers are told in no uncertain terms both by those scriptures and by the traditions of the religious authorities that we can know the mind of the creator and the desire the creator has for human activities. This is the industry of organised religion - divining the divine.

ScholasticSpastic wrote:

crank wrote:

John Platko wrote:

I'm am quite certain, I've double and triple checked this, it is a fact that all religious ideas are the product of some human's imagination. Sometimes it's helpful, sometimes not so much. But if you think they come from somewhere else, then by all means enlighten me. Where else could they come from?

I'm just throwing this out as a possibility, but some religious ideas may have come from pre-humans, Neanderthals, or Denisovans, maybe even those hobbit-folk if they're real.

Or it may have grown from the common animal capacity for simple superstition as our brains grew, thus making any demarcation problematic.

There is that experiment, in probably all psych. 101 textbooks, with a bird, chicken or pigeon? I think, that develops weird, superstition-like behavior when its food delivery, initiated by a lever being pushed, gets set so it successfully delivered the food only at random time intervals. Much like the weird routines baseball players think they have to go through to be successful, the birds start doing twirls, dance steps, etc, whatever got reinforced by the random times food got delivered.

crank wrote:
There is that experiment, in probably all psych. 101 textbooks, with a bird, chicken or pigeon? I think, that develops weird, superstition-like behavior when its food delivery, initiated by a lever being pushed, gets set so it successfully delivered the food only at random time intervals. Much like the weird routines baseball players think they have to go through to be successful, the birds start doing twirls, dance steps, etc, whatever got reinforced by the random times food got delivered.

One of Skinner's more interesting and less disturbing experiments.

crank wrote:There is that experiment, in probably all psych. 101 textbooks, with a bird, chicken or pigeon? I think, that develops weird, superstition-like behavior when its food delivery, initiated by a lever being pushed, gets set so it successfully delivered the food only at random time intervals. Much like the weird routines baseball players think they have to go through to be successful, the birds start doing twirls, dance steps, etc, whatever got reinforced by the random times food got delivered.

Behavior + birds = Skinner

John Platko wrote:

THWOTH wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

John Platko wrote:
Confusion is expectable given that we followers are left to imagine what "the creators instructions are".

Now now, the people pretending to speak for the imagined creator were quite clear: it is an abomination.

Yeah, it's not like you ever hear a religious leader saying, "Now we could be wrong about this so you might want to take this with a pinch of salt, but God probably wants you to burn in hell for all eternity, and while I don't necessarily think that myself we're going to run with that anyway. How do you feel about that?"

Would you settle for an important Catholic Priest explaining that "roasting in hell is all gone- that's all finished."

That's one clause taken care of...

ScholasticSpastic wrote:

The_Piper wrote:There's a fucking brain surgeon in second place, and he seems pretty ignorant himself.

Well, it isn't rocket science.

No, as Don Cherry once said, "it's not rocket surgery!" I think of this every time I'm forced to hear what comes out of Carson's mouth.

Arcanyn wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

Alan B wrote:Since God makes rainbows - allegedly - does that mean He's Gay?

I think that's what fundies object to most -- God drowned all the fags in Noah's flood, and now here they are using the symbol of his covenant for their nefarious purposes!

Maybe he drowned everyone for not being gay enough?

Well, that's one way to look at it. It's open to interpretation.