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What's the difference between a schizophrenic and a religious person?

See sig; if this were true we'd be indifferent to our form of government or economic system or political philosophy, or any other sort of value judgement about the kind of system we prefer working with.

We make those comparisons because the values in question are neither arbitrary nor equal.



Yes I can because I know what the gods are and where they came from, and I can cite a mass of historical and literary evidence to that effect.

I can trace the gradual evolution of religion from ancient faiths and superstitions and forgotten gods that evolved into the ones we know today, I can cite how those ideas were carried and used by individuals known by name and deed to advance their own agendas, and I can identify the parallels between different instances of religious ideology in ways that preclude the material existence of the gods.

For example, I am of Jewish heritage. I know that my ancestors developed their beliefs by way of exposure to Egyptian and Zoroastrian beliefs during their exile in Egypt and later Babylon. And I likewise know that just as Judaism evolved from Zoroastrianism, Christianity evolved from Judaism. I also know that Greek and Roman stories share a heritage with Jewish beliefs, and in fact, after Jewish-Roman contact, some authors like Ovid based their stories on Jewish myths. Since I know where those beliefs came from, I know what they are, and I know that the gods played no role in the story - only man.

I know that God didn't actually come to my ancestors and tell them, "here I am", because I know that they got these ideas by being exposed to other people who had slightly different beliefs. Therefore, the beliefs they had in more recent times about the particulars of the nature of God are not inherently truthful, despite being the object of absolute faith, but rather derived from other, equally "absolute" beliefs.

I know that my ancestors were not truly monotheistic - they did not deny the existence of other gods, they merely believed that theirs was the one true god. In connection with my knowledge of history and ethnography, I know that they came to be truly monotheistic as their views were extremified by persecution by pagans, and the gradual evolution and spread of other monotheistic faiths. Since I know that monotheism as we know it is an invention of mankind in response to history, I know that it is not divinely ordained.

I know that the stories about Moses are very similar in many respects to the stories about Romulus. I know that Moses did what he did because he faced the same problem Romulus did, which was turning a bunch of nomads and former slaves into a cohesive society.

I know from reading history that religious policies that were considered sacred and absolute in their time are, with perspective and parallel, known to have been motivated by selfish personal drives. I know that beliefs held by the ancients in ways similar to our own have since fallen out of favor; therefore, there is no reason to believe our own beliefs any more correct. It is logical to conclude that as ours are built upon the same premise, they are equally faulty.

In short, I have great knowledge based on fact about the history of the gods, and I know that it is man, and not the factual existence of the divine, that has given rise to contemporary religious beliefs as we know them. And therefore, the gods were created by mankind, and are factually not extant.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

You have an understanding of man's recorded history of religion/god's (btw, you are aware that not all events in history were recorded accurately, or even at all, and every historical account ever has at least some degree of bias, right??).


In any case, you have evidence of man's attempts to explain the unexplainable and how our modern religions came to be. This is all well and good, and clearly gives you enough evidence to conclude that none of the current interpretations or explanations of god are true.


...but it does nothing to prove that there isn't some sort of supernatural deity or some powerful force (whether it be what drives nature, energy itself, or whatever) that exists in the universe that could fit the definition of a god.



I think this comes down to you believing you are right about an issue and being unwilling to accept that there could be other explanations. Do I think a Christian God exists? Nope. Do I believe a Jewish God exists? Nope. Do I think that it's perfectly possible that there's some benevolent force in the universe that doesn't necessarily control any part of it, but maybe started the whole thing? Yeah I think it's possible.

We can only make those value judgments and comparisons by honestly examining those systems, which is something we wouldn't be able to do if, as you suggest, we disregard the 'good' for a certain reason but do not disregard the 'bad' for the exact same reason. The standards you set for one must be the same as you set for the other, otherwise the results of your comparisons are arbitrary and unequal. That remains the case regardless of how you attempt to justify your bias.



You're simply citing part of the evidence, which neither proves nor disproves the existence of a deity. It only suggests that mankind is confused about the nature of any deity that may exist because of past events.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

The "bad" being mistruth, in what respect is the knowledge that the gods are human inventions a mistruth?



The knowledge does disprove the existence of a deity since it establishes the origins of the gods. What evidence is there to the contrary?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Do you have evidence that our primary sources as we know them (many ancient documents etc) are faulty?



Burden of proof is upon party making positive contention.

Contentions are presumed negative until there is reason to believe otherwise, because if this were not so, there would not be reason to entertain any random notion.



"See sig".

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

At one point people said that the world was absolutely flat. Since then we've made millions upon millions of discoveries that were otherwise unprovable at the time due to lack of understanding, technology or inability to observe. That doesn't mean things magically appear or manifest the moment they're 'discovered', rather it's just that we've gained the knowledge/ability to observe/prove which was unobservable/unprovable -- many of these things existed all along! To absolutely deny the possibility of a God is as stupid as absolutely confirming the possibility of a God since we can't know either way.

Let's play a game! I have a nightstand in my hotel room. It has a TV remote inside it. I challenge you to tell me I'm wrong with absolute certainty -- that the remote is not inside the nightstand.

The remote isn't in your nightstand because your wife cancelled your WoW sub and you're in a sodomistic rage.

Thus the remote is not in the nightstand, it is in your butt.

False. The ancient Greeks knew the world was round, and in fact they knew what the circumference of the world is within a margin of a few hundred miles. This knowledge was later forgotten and eventually obscured by Christian dogma.

The world's roundness is provable by simple experiments such as using a sequence of bright torches to demonstrate the time difference between nightfalls at lighthouses located a few hundred miles away, and even by merely gazing at the horizon.

If the world were flat, there would be (almost) no horizon. This can be demonstrated scientifically by placing a pole atop a high mountain then gauging the height of the mountain by dividing the length of the shadow of the mountain and the hill by the known length of the pole, then seeing how far away the pole is visible across flat terrain and dividing that figure by the perfect horizon.

There are also more intellectually sophisticated but technologically primitive ways to determine the world's roundness and size, such as observing the moon and the stars and noting that they move in a concentric and not linear pattern, and that their position changes with not only the day but also the seasons. The ancients managed to do all that, without space travel or electronics.

Anyway, again - burden of proof is on party making contention. You have evidence or you don't. Speculation that some sort of evidence might exist isn't valid because such a line of reasoning could be used to support any premise no matter how outrageous.



Waiting on the Day of Reckoning. Sure thing.



We can, for the reasons I described. We know where the gods came from.



False analogy.

I know that televisions have remotes.
I know that most hotel rooms are equipped with televisions, usually equipped with remotes.
I do not see a television remote within my field of view. Therefore, it is reasonable to speculate that the remote may be in the nightstand.

There is reason to believe that the remote exists and it is outside my field of view.
There is no reason to believe that the gods exist and are outside my field of view.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Do you people believe in unicorns too?

(Serious Question)

RETIRED.
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Mayonaise[/armory]
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Jerkonaise[/armory]

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Oh, we're doing this again, are we?

RETIRED.
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Mayonaise[/armory]
[armory loc="US,Bleeding Hollow"]Jerkonaise[/armory]

Jubber in his mind is thinking "no that's ridiculous" what he types will be some sort of middle of the road meaningless response saying nothing but taking up a lot of space.

contrary to popular belief, there were civilizations before the ancient greeks.

the world was round before the greeks proved it was round. asetu missed eturnals point before it was made.

Not gonna lie, that unicorn made me chuckle

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