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23 September 2008

Why do people beLIEve the bible, and by extension have religion?


So why is it that people still insist on believing the bible? That’s a question that just baffles me. Just read the damn book through, and tell me you don’t see glaring problems with such a so called perfect book. Even the seemingly familiar stories of the creation, the flood, the exodus, etc all break down on so many levels. The fables in them are so blatantly obvious, one wonders why a rational adult would still cling to those stories.

I’m not going to try to “disprove” the bible here. It’s been done so many times, and repeatedly, it would be a waste of effort to even type it up. Of course, for every argument against the bible, you have some mental contortionist that has explained their way out of it. Now, I gotta wonder, why would the perfect word or some perfect god need any explanation? Again, just seems so manufactured.

Then you look at sexism and slavery. These are concepts that we have come to realize are immoral. Yet nowhere does this perfect being of love say, “Slavery is naughty, don’t do it.” Or “Women are not property, treat them with respect.” Again, what the fuck is perfect about such an imagined creature. Oh yeah, it’s just a projection of our own wishes and desires when someone wrote this crap over 2000 years go.

Then look at the new testament, just for shits and gins… First of al, it was all written 80 to 150 years after the events… It was written in Greek as opposed to the native languages of the supposed authors. And again, no actually historical verification.

Sure, both the new and old parts mention things that happened around them, lists actual kings and such amongst the goofy fables. But that doesn’t make it true. That’s like asserting “Ghostbusters” is true because New York City is a real place… This is what passes for logic in a Christian mind I suppose. Although I do know a few folks that seem intelligent, that still hold on to these childish beliefs. Why is that?

Does the human race have so much invested in religion and irrational beliefs that we can’t put them aside? Sure, there would be a lot of child molesters, I mean priests out of work. Lots of useless buildings. Billions in assets would belong to imaginary friend societies… Can you imagine what good could be done if all that energy and money was poured into something actually worthwhile? Yet people will do anything to cling to these irrational ideas.

Is it something deeper? Are we psychologically programmed to believe these silly tales? We’ve been making them up since the dawn of time. Although we have less need of them as we come to understand more. I can only hope that as a species we’ll start to outgrow the need for any religion.

Oh well, just a random blog entry from 35,000 feet. I just see a lot of theitards around me with their crosses, and a book that says the bible is true because the bible says so. Sometimes I feel like I’m one of the few sane people left in this country.

4 comments:

James Redford said...

The Pentateuch is itself quite evil in many places. This has to do with mankind's evolution from ignorance into knowledge: early Judaism is a derivation from prior paganism. Indeed, some forms of human sacrifice for purely religious purposes were retained within Pentateuch Judaism, i.e., Judaic human-sacrifice rituals can actually be found in the Torah and early Nevi'im books, supposedly sanctified by God, though most of it was, thankfully, set aside. But then, the actual prophets (e.g., from Isaiah on) spoke out against much of the supposed Law of Moses, and a number of them were murdered by the Israeli priestcraft for doing so.

It's not called the New Testament for nothing.

For the details pertaining to the above matter, see my below post:

"Existential Truth," TetrahedronOmega, March 14, 2007 http://www.armleg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=118&mforum=libertyandtruth

For the political and social ethics of God, see my below article:

"Jesus Is an Anarchist," James Redford, revised and expanded edition, June 1, 2006 (first published at Anti-State.com on December 19, 2001) http://praxeology.net/anarchist-jesus.pdf
http://geocities.com/jrredford/anarchist-jesus.html

The above matters bring up another issue. For Jesus Christ's ministry itself necessitates the involvement of a super-intelligence, since mankind to this date is of a barbaric and primitive nature, and still a long way (morally speaking) from catching up with him.

Unfortunately, the inversion of that organization popularly calling itself the Christian church occured with the pagan Roman government's takeover of said group under Constantine I, himself a lifelong pagan, bloodthirsty tyrant, and unrepentant murderer of his eldest son Crispus and his wife Fausta, to say nothing of all the plebeians he murdered. Since that time, the organizations commonly calling themselves "Christian" have typically acted in the role of intellectual and spiritual bodyguards of the state, and hence have been hostilely opposed to actually applying Jesus Christ's teachings, since said teachings are incompatible with government and its frequent activities (e.g., taxes, war, the inversion of genuine moral understanding, the sowing of needless discord and strife among the populace [i.e., divide and rule], etc.).

For much more on the above, see the following article in addition to the above-cited articles:

"A Military Chaplain Repents," an interview of Rev. George B. Zabelka, the Catholic chaplain who blessed the pilots who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, conducted circa 1984, published on LewRockwell.com on April 13, 2007 http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/mccarthy5.html

Related to all of the above, the below matter is also of vital importance:

"God Proven to Exist According to Mainline Physics," TetrahedronOmega, May 6, 2008 http://www.armleg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=122&mforum=libertyandtruth

Unknown said...

If it's the NEW Testament, why is the OLD part even included? Sadly, most of the actual good parts of the New Testament is stolen straight from many other religions that were around much longer than this christian cult. All of today's religions will hopefully be tomorrow's mythology.

You keep pointing at the "god was proven to exist" paper... If it was actually a solid proof, wouldn't there be a bit more peer review supporting that assertion you seem to insist on making?

James Redford said...

Larian LeQuella, your second question is peculiar. Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory has been published in many peer-reviewed physics and science journals, including a number of the leading physics journals:

- Frank J. Tipler, "Cosmological Limits on Computation," International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 25, No. 6 (June 1986), pp. 617-661. (First paper on the Omega Point Theory.)

- Frank J. Tipler, "The ultimate fate of life in universes which undergo inflation," Physics Letters B, Vol. 286, Issues 1-2 (July 23, 1992), pp. 36-43.

- Frank J. Tipler, "The Ultimate Future of the Universe, Black Hole Event Horizon Topologies, Holography, and the Value of the Cosmological Constant," arXiv:astro-ph/0104011, April 1, 2001. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104011 Published in Relativistic Astrophysics: 20th Texas Symposium, Austin, TX, 10-15 December 2000, edited by J. Craig Wheeler and Hugo Martel (Melville, N.Y.: American Institute of Physics, 2001), ISBN 0735400261; and in AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 586 (October 15, 2001), pp. 769-772.

- Frank J. Tipler, "Intelligent life in cosmology," International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (April 2003), pp. 141-148. http://geocities.com/theophysics/tipler-intelligent-life-in-cosmology.pdf Also at arXiv:0704.0058, March 31, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0058

- F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers," Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964. http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything," arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3276

- Frank J. Tipler, Jessica Graber, Matthew McGinley, Joshua Nichols-Barrer and Christopher Staecker, "Closed Universes With Black Holes But No Event Horizons As a Solution to the Black Hole Information Problem," arXiv:gr-qc/0003082, March 20, 2000. http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0003082 Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 379, Issue 2 (August 2007), pp. 629-640.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in which the above April 2007 paper was published, is one of the world's leading peer-reviewed astrophysics journals.

Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's above 2005 paper was selected as one of 12 for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website." (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, "Highlights of 2005," Reports on Progress in Physics. http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.highlights/0034-4885 ) Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain's main professional body for physicists.

Further, Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal's impact factor reflects the importance the science community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own papers. (And just to point out, Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper could not have been published in Physical Review Letters since said paper is nearly book-length, and hence not a "letter" as defined by the latter journal.)

Regarding your first question, as I said, a number of the Old Testament prophets spoke out against much of the supposed Law of Moses, and a number of them were murdered by the Israeli priestcraft for doing so. As well, many of these prophets prophesied the coming of Jesus Christ and the End Times. So there is a lot of value to be found in the Old Testament. For much more on this matter, consult the resources I provided in my post above.

In answer to the last sentence of the first paragraph in your reply, properly speaking, theology is now a branch of physics.

Unknown said...

I think you are making the paper fit your definition as opposed to what it really represents. If your god were somehow PROVEN, there would be a lot more discussion about it. You are projecting your wishes and desires onto the conclusions as opposed to what it really shows. His paper may have some interesting math and discussion in it, but to call it a proof is stretching it.

Besides, your link is just to another post YOU made on a random forum... Exactly HOW circular is that?