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Best!

Brett

Monday, March 28, 2011

A bit late for Sunday...



Sorry I had nothing for Sunday, but I got this today so it's close enough;)

 Sent to me and Jess (or is that Jess and I?) from Retrieverman.

It's pretty much one of my biggest problems with Christianity, original sin. The video does explain why they needed, or thought they needed Jesus him being a 'perfect' being. But that thing at the end... a life for a life? NO life was taken, it was a fruit! So according to Christian morals... if someone steals a fruit, the punishment for that is killing someone else! Makes perfect sense! Yes, I know about this supposed taint that Adam passed down to everything else (seriously?!) but to demand a life for a fruit... WOW. That's some of that fancy religious logic I've head talk of. I still can't understand why people still believe this stuff...

Best,

Brett

12 comments:

steve said...

At the root of every sin is telling God no, I prefer my own way. The only sin we ever commit is disobedience, it just takes different forms. So if I eat forbidden fruit or kill a child it is disobedience to doing God’s perfect will. If you examine disobedience it is a form of idolatry; we are to obey God, but we put our own wills before God’s so we are putting ourselves before God. Come on Brett, this is basic Christianity 101, you had to pick at least something up in all your trips to the church. If you are going to refuse to believe something you should attempt to at least accurately comprehend what you are rejecting.

Even if you don’t buy original sin everyone admits they have at least violated their own flimsy moral code, so if we know we don’t live up to our own standards it is a pretty small step to figure out we haven’t lived up to God’s moral standard either.

You do get Dawkins has absolutely no credentials to discuss religion right? He is an ethologist and evolutionary biologist. You know how you always say I don’t know science because I don’t use biologists as my reference (which is a pretty odd, I guess you just never bother to read their credentials.) Dawkins constantly discusses philosophical matters as if they were part of his field. He has the right to discuss them, but he is sharing an opinion and not a very well though out one at that.

Brett said...

Steve,

THAT'S why I rejected your religion! I picked up that your religion DOESN'T make any logical sense. It's just smoke and mirrors to control you.

YOU have decided that all sins are equal. But normal people can see that this isn't the case. Stealing a loaf of bread to feed your kids is TOTALLY different than killing someone. I don't care about pissing off Gods moral code because he doesn't exist. My moral code is MY code, I try to live up to it. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't and sometimes it needs to be modified to fit a new situation. God never enters the equation.

And isn't disobedience just expressing FREE WILL? If we can't express it then it doesn't exist.

I don't particularly like Dawkins but I agree with him here. But if he doesn't have the right to discuss religion then the religious don't have the right to discuss science.

Best,

Brett

Fatboy73 said...

Sin was created by humans(not god) to be the ultimate selling point in perpetuating religions propaganda.
Christianity went a step further and said not only is there sin which you will go to hell for,but an original sin...nothing you can do about it...your born a sinner.being all inclusive as it is,everyone needs Christ/Christianity(how clever)
I may have stated this before but sin is to religion like Nike is to saying everyone is born a crappy runner,therefore everyone needs our product to make you a great runner.If you don't buy our product,not only will you be a crappy runner and lose every race you compete in during your life,you will also when you do die,
go to were all the crappy runners go,be tortured,suffer shin splints,ACL tears,hairline fractures and be in excruciating pain for all eternity.
Oh and Dawkins is more of an authority on religion than a lot of the faithful out there.That being said,Christianity/faith is NOT science and you only need a rudimentary knowledge of it's doctrines to dispute it at all.
It helps to have a working knowledge of the bible so as to dispute the random BS that Christians pull out of their asses/bibles to try and validate their ideas,but I don't see it as necessary.

steve said...

No fatboy, you are wrong. Man did not create sin.

Sin is looking out at the world and realizing something is not right. It isn't a lack of education, it isn't a lack of resources, and it isn't a small group of people trying to manipulate others.

Sin allows us to say "That is not right. I recognize a discrepancy between how things are and how they should be."

If you were honest with yourself, you would realize there is no other worldview which allows for recognizing right and wrong. Science can say absolutely nothing about morality. zilch.

Brett and I have gone rounds and rounds about this (as have most religious and secular debaters.) The result is always the same disagreement, but the idea of moral sin in never disproved.

Brett said...

No Steve, you are wrong. Man DID create sin. He created your religion and thus sin, OR according to your religion he created the first sin by taking that fruit. Either way, man did it.

Morals allow us to to say that is not right. Sin is a creation of religion. I don't call stealing a sin, I call it breaking the law. THAT is a worldview, that is what laws are for. You will notice that most of your precious religious morals are actually at odds with the laws. You must also notice that when the there are no laws your religious morals never seem to come into play. There is no hand of god that comes down to spank you when you screw up. It's all done after you're dead, where it can't actually be observed were there is no way to prove or disprove it even happens.

It IS a small group of people trying to manipulate you to do as they say!!!!! Are you that blinded by your religion? Who is trying to to make being gay a crime? The extreme religious right, who is trying to stop them for getting married? The extreme religious right. They are not the majority, they are a vocal minority, Tying to manipulate you to do as they say.

You seem to see everything as black and white when there is an awful lot of grey in the world. Just because you don't like something does not make it wrong or a sin. Look up Kin Selection, that helps explain alturism, it also explains where morals come from, morals being rules a society creates to live together, that's all they are. Rules that monkeys and wolves and elephants have so they can live in groups, they are not some divine creation, but a simple mechanism to help animals survive. Science can explain it, you just refuse to listen because you've already made up you mind that God did it.

Moral sin has been disproved, you guys just cover your ears an ignore it. There is no evidence to support your religion and thus no moral sin. You've said it yourself, 'God' is outside reality so there will be no evidence for him.

If you don't like the actual answers science provides you make up some lame attempt to refute it and then claim it's been refuted, even though no one actually agrees with your findings, you keep claiming them. Like you claim evolution had been dis-proven, when it has not and in fact has been strengthened repeatedly. You say things like 'most scientist now disagree with evolution' which is a bold face lie. You refuse to see these religious people lying and quote mining things to serve a purpose, isn't that a few people controlling you?! Come on man THINK for yourself!!!!! The fact that they have to lie to try to win the argument... doesn't that bother you? How can you expect people to trust what you say when it's all based on lies? How can you even talk about morals and sins when you are allowing them and supporting them?

Sorry, got on a bit of a rant there. But how can you explain away all the lies your religion propagates? All the falsehoods it tries to force on everyone? How can you tell me your religion and God are superior when all I see in it are the lies?

Best,

Brett

Fatboy73 said...

Sin and it's alleged consequences ARE the ultimate manipulation used by religion,without them religion has no leverage.Sin is not not looking at the world and realizing things are not as they should be,it's taking the value system that our society has already set up for us and trying to enforce it to the Nth degree.By telling us that we'll be punished for all eternity for a finite lack of moral judgment on top of the consequences your society already puts on you,is deplorable and it's just plain bullying and outright manipulation of the human race.

Science doesn't come up with our morals but it sure as hell does have something to say about them.
It can definitely study and observe the fact that morals and societal rules have existed independent of god/gods for quite some time.
As Brett stated morals and a value system are essential for any group to live in a society and are created independent of gods and religion,otherwise they would not observably exist within groups of animals.What religion tries to tell us is that without a divine being there to tell us what is wrong and right,what is selfish and what is beneficial to the group as a whole,humanity would never be able to figure it out by themselves and we would rip each other apart.Frankly I find that VERY insulting and you should as well.
Knowing that we don't NEED religion as a moral guidepost,there can be only one other reason for such a blatantly
unnecessary institution and that is control. The need to exert control is one of those base desires mankind has.We spend our lives desperately trying to maintain control over the few things we can and dreading the things we can't.We have spent a millennia and countless fortunes devising ways to gain control over each other and religion my friend is the fruition of those expenditures.

BorderWars said...

What are you fellas talking about? An omnipotent God that can somehow still sacrifice who demands belief without proof and worship from that which he created makes _perfect_ sense.

An omnipotent being can not sacrifice, by definition. To die is not payment when you can control life and rise from the dead at will. Worship is meaningless if you are both all powerful and all knowing.

In fact, if we didn't wave our hands because it's God, the actions in the good book are perverse to the extreme. God violates nearly every sin he holds his creations to. And the entire exercise is rather voyeuristic, munchausen by proxy, and perverted.

And good works are sin, only belief will save you? Psh. Religion is the perfect scam. Buying obedience in this life by selling real estate in a non-existent next life.

M.O.R said...

I'm a bit puzzled why neither clarified the fact that there was no apple on the tree of knowledge. It is never said what the fruit on the Tree of Knowledge is, it is not an apple, the fruit is never described. I remember some comic book artist about 10 yrs or so ago did a series about Adam and Eve, fully painted, where he design this fruit to look like nothing that has or ever will exist.

This was the more interesting debate, to be honest, because there was no anger or animosity towards one another, it was just a clear debate. Too often, and this is referring to any debate in general, not just religion, but too often there is an enormous amount of shouting and spewing their agendas, without actually listening to either speaker. Pity.

At least the guy here, is not one of those "I am right, you are wrong" kinda guys, and he seems to get more respect from Dawkins for doing so.

Thanks for posting this Brett. It was interesting.

M.O.R said...

By the way, Brett, if you are short of material for Sunday-er, whatever day blasphemy, try this video for size.

"What Would Jesus Do?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKmh-0E5BjU


It's by an australian comedy team called Axis of Awesome. The comic book references are pretty cool too.

Fatboy73 said...

there was no apple on the tree of knowledge

I believe(and I could be wrong)that the general consensus is that if Eden did exist and there were indeed a "tree of knowledge"that it would most likely be a fig tree.This was based off of the knowledge that fig trees are very prevalent in the area and they have found fossilized figs
dating back to way before genesis was supposed to have happened,so they know figs were abundant and local to the area.(history channel,gotta love it ;)

Brett said...

I've heard the fig idea before and according to the TV a pomegranate.

but I'm guessing that since that kind of tree might have been a one off, who knows what the fruit was;)

Best!

Brett

Brett said...

Just watched the video M.O.R. very funny! The Kiss being hit or miss line was really funny! Thanks!

Best,
Brett