What a crazy week. That pretty much sums it up. I'm sure this is pretty incoherent, my mind tends to jump around a lot. Sorry about that.
So what happened? Well, I basically tried to force and answer to a question that I never get an answer for. It's always turned away or ignored. The funny thing is that I actually got PART of an answer though email. It only took 2000 words to tell me what it was. Basically, all that Leviticus stuff was only for those really religious Hebrews…. I didn't ask or want all the other information I got with it as it was just god loves you, moral from god and that love the sinner hate the since stuff they always peddle but don't actually follow. And that 'answer' leads to even more questions. Like why do you use it condemn the gays then? Why is it even in the Bible then is it's not for you? It's not an answer, it's just something you're told that you are supposed to accept. That's how religion works. When I ask why 2+2= 4 to science I get an actual answer, I don't get because God deemed it so. (we get that answer because number icons are what we assigned to amounts.) religion can't tell me why the sky is blue or the grass green. Or why may hair is brown and my beard is mostly red. It's can't tell me why I feel, or why I need to eat or why the Earth rotates or anything that's actually real.
Again, I got a partial answer, and we were conversing through the email… then for some reason the old Christian martyr complex popped up and then basically tried to turn the opposition (me in this case) into he bad guy, for censorship of all things, on the blog. Never mind that I had to pull out the big guns because a simple answer was not forthcoming. It's only something I've been asking said person for over 10 years…. what they had to say could have been summed up in a very short comment, but that of course doesn't give them the opportunity to preach how good their religions it, how right it is and how EVERYONE should follow it because it's 'God's word.'
Back to the 'answer'. I glanced at it, then I went and read parts of it again… and you know what I got out it? Insanity, babbling and magic. Not Merlin magic, but smoke and mirrors magic. Just all sorts of stuff that's there to give comfort to the Christian writer, it doesn't explain shit. What did I get from this? That it really is just absolutely pointless to talk to the uber-religious about their religion. I knew this already, all the science bloggers say it, but thought maybe, just maybe some of the religious were different, I mean they have changed their creationist views to follow ID, MAYBE they can set aside their religion a bit? Man was I fucking wrong. I have tired to get a few people to actually think about other religions in the hopes that they might be able to use that thinking to examine their own religion. And what did I discover? A complete unwillingness to even do so. They have no interest in learning about anything outside of their religion. If this is what they are bringing to the table and then accusing me of not wanting to 'truly understand' their religion then it's a complete waste of my time to even talk to them. So I decided to stop.
It's actually just fricken unbelievable to me that people can actually think like this… To completely shut out any new or differing ideas… I mean sure, most new ideas are complete BS but some have merit and indeed they bring us forward as a species… But to ignore these ideas that explain how things work or show were we come from, or how we might expand our knowledge in the future, all to stay stuck in the past… a past that is full or death and oppression… It boggles me. But isn't that what I'm doing? By ignoring their claims am I tossing out what might be valuable information? Well I didn't ignore them, in fact I was part of their religion. But then I think about this. Their religion has been around in various forms for around 3,500 years. There is still not evidence to really support it, sure a few of the people might have been actual people and the places might be real in some parts of the book. But there is still no actually proof that the actions and deeds of these people and their god actually exists. We know parts are not true, there is no evidence for this mass migration of Hebrews out of Egypt, or of a great flood or even of an actual Jesus. All we have are stories in a book that say it's real. That's all. Conversely we have an actual scientific theory that makes predictions and have been proven to have merit for the last 150 years. It's something we can trust and has enabled us to move forward, to make vaccines and gene therapies. It's proven it works over and over again. And that's just ONE of the many parts of science that have shown us the world, parts that have been proven to work. Yet the proof of the truth of any religion has yet to be shown… it just makes people feel good but taking away their responsibility and telling them everything is gong to be OK. I'm not a child and while that might make me feel good it's not something that will in fact help me in the real world. So like my childhood dreams and fantasies it was cast off.
I'm still having problems with this inability of the religious to understand that I have no interest in following their book. That it means nothing to me, so why should I follow it's rules? It's fine if you want to, just don't expect me to just because you do… I'm beginning to think religion is sort of like the army and your individualism is the first thing they have to rip out of you… One of us… One of us… So they can't understand why you don't want to follow it. They simply can't process it. And when you try to point it out they simply reboot back to their 'original' happy place that religion is good.
I'm kind of happy I don't have any kids now… for them to have to deal with this…. insanity, this cancer of humanity… agh… Really I'm just disgusted, disgusted that people think that religion is a good thing when it oppresses so many people…. it tuns my stomach to think we let any children be forced into this, and its seen as a good thing… We truly are a fucked up species, that clings to it's ancient past of monsters in the dark and boogymen in our imaginations. We just call it something different now… like Job creators… problem solved. Gah!
I just can't do it anymore… I can't keep having the same conversation without he same person who has nothing new to add. It's pointless. So I asked them to not post on the blog anymore. We'll see if they respect my request. And no it's no censorship. You can post whatever you like on your blog. I simply won't go there. Simple.
Brett
7 comments:
I share your sentiments Brett. I don't think I could have put up with it as long as you did. Looking forward to more of your work!
-Nathan
I agree Brett. While I did enjoy some discussions with said individual and I'm sure he's a very pleasant individual in person. After a while it was the proverbial beating your head against a wall.
The conversation could never be had from the Atheist point of view, it always had to be on the grounds of entertaining the individuals belief that the biblical God actually existed or else you weren't having an honest discussion.
From there it(always)quickly degraded into the same old "well you simply don't understand Christianity well enough" or The religion and God you're making points against isn't the REAL Christianity and certainly isn't the God described in the bible.
From my perspective, that's where the honest conversation stopped, the blind rhetoric and dogma kicked in, and there was no point in even trying to have a meaningful discussion
anymore.
Hi Nathan,
It's always good to have someone play devils advocate... until their argument becomes gibberish...
Should have the 0 issue cover up later today:)
Fatboy,
Yeah, I saw a few glimmers of reason, but they quickly faded away. He had gotten a bit better, our first encounter was him telling me all the hominid fossils were just really old people, that's why they looked like apes!
The good old days;)
haha I can't stand biblethumpers, or religous nut jobs. EVEN If you are on their side and agreeing with you, the only reason they spoke to you is so they can preach. It's always been a be with us or be against us.
Had the same thing happen in a catholic confirmation class where the teachers said if you aren't Catholic you don't go to heaven. After many long hours of arguing back and forth we just walked out of the room.
There's just too much that contradicts itself to make it into a rulebook.
Brett,
There's actually a crackpot dentist who peddles the lie that the Neanderthals were just people who lived to be 900 years old. He claims that certain bones in our skulls don't stop growing, and if we lived that long, our skulls would have that shape.
He's one of Kent Hovind's experts, of course.
I won't say that Christianity hasn't done any good. Rome became more civilized once it became Christian. The anti-slavery movement around the world was essentially Christian in character.
However, the bible still condoned slavery, even Jesus did, and although we may not have had gladiatorial sports in Rome, we still had the Inquisition.
The truth is the West is civilized because it is secular. When Islamic Civilization was relatively secular, rational, and tolerant, it had a Golden Age-- which happened during our Dark Ages, when we were superstitious and intolerant. The ideals that were the precursors of the Enlightenment came out of the secular, rational, and tolerant society that was the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century. Without the Dutch Republic's intellectual framework, it is doubtful that we would have had the Scottish Enlightenment, which is the basis for modernity as we know it now.
Two hundred years ago, the average lifespan was about 35 or so. Disease was rampant. Lots of children died of diseases. Women died in childbirth. Communication was very slow. We fought the Battle of New Orleans after the Treaty of Ghent ended the war.
Now, the average lifespan is double what it was two hundred years ago. We have clean water. We have good nutrition. Disease in Western civilizations is mostly the result of poor diet and lifestyle choices, not contaminated water or unhygienic practices. We now know what's going on in wars almost as it is happening.
Science made all of these things possible.
Science has made life better for the vast majority of people on this earth. Religion's record hasn't been anything like the record of science in the past 150 years.
Science and reason can solve the problems of humanity. Religion cannot. Indeed, in many cases, it makes them worse, breeding irrational bigotry and hatred and leading some people to believe that the resources of this planet can be exploited with abandon-- because when Jesus comes back, it will all be restored.
Science just has a better track record of describing reality and making advances than religion has. It's not even close.
Science can also give us a better understanding of what morality ought to be.
Science has shown, from an evolutionary perspective, why some individuals are homosexual or bisexual or transgender. Science shows us that it's not a choice.
If it's not a choice, then why on earth would we have laws discriminating against them? We do, and that's very much in violation of the constitution.
And it also leads to another question:
If the best science we have shows that it's not a choice, then why would a loving God allow people to be born with a sexual orientation that will condemn them for hell forever?
That makes no sense.
This was my initial problem with Christianity. Even when I was Christian, I had very real issues with that question.
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