But maybe we should be polite and warn the easily offended, when we are about to challenge their deeply held beliefs...

WARNING! VERMIN, INCOMING!1!

He was also a street preacher when he was a kid in Arkansas--I'd love to see someone debating religion with him accuse him of not understanding it. They'd get torn to pieces.

Unfortunately.

K&R

The Varieties of Religious Experience - William James

What is it that you understand?

what it is they believe in.

How and why they hold onto their beliefs.

What religion can do to people and cultures.

What does it mean to believe?

What do they believe in?

How and why do they hold their beliefs?

As an organized force... The Horror! I will give you that one.

You did not answer my original question - ?

I haven't read that James tome.

I think the term woo is childish - do not think I woo -

Want to talk about the book or sling crap

I find your definition of atheism narrow and bigoted so I really don't care if you're offended by my use of the word 'woo'.

That's weird. It's a safe haven group and a small thread.

In an effort to make you happy Ed, I will take some care to stay away from your safe haven

Be well

I was just surprised that this little thread would make it out of this forum.
The safe haven comment was that I thought threads from those forum did get out into general membership.
Sorry if it sounded like I was chastising.

"It's not worth looking into the bullshit, just to see what the bull ate"?

Why don't you go and play with your Faitheist friends, they'd be thrilled to see you.

I have no faitheist friends. Not interested in faith.

You have jumped off a big cliff of assumption.

Your silly analogy about bullshit shows me that you have not used your critical thinking abilities when it comes to this subject.

Bullshit is very useful in my garden. Likewise a book like the one I mentioned gives incite into the subject.

I think it is nice that the people in this group have taken a step to understanding. I hope that the energy is used for making meaningful changes when confronted by religious insanity.

More than that I hope you can grow to understand more about the mind and what Einstein was hinting at when he spoke about the cosmic religious experience.

Last edited Thu May 28, 2015, 04:50 PM - Edit history (1)

It's a means of providing comfort when sad things happen (however wrongheaded it may be).

It's a crutch that people use to explain things they can't explain (or do not want to accept).

It's a crutch that people use to make them feel better when nasty shit happens (because they are unwilling to or incapable of grasping science).

It's an excuse a lot of people use for bad behavior - the devil made me do it! The devil is loose inside him!! (it keeps things very simple)

It's an excuse people use to explain their bigotry and misogyny.

It's a tool people use to exercise control over others.

I believe I understand it. It deserves to be ridiculed, bashed and banished.

Sorry, it's the "religous" folk who have to do the justifying.

I really do not understand how you heathens can not believe when the Flying Spaghetti's Creation is all around you, beautiful and bountiful.

And how could you have objective morality without pasta cookbooks?

...than it is to justify your positions.

I see it all the time. They act like we were all born atheists, or that we were all raised in the "wrong" religion. No way we could possibly understand what they're talking about.

That's what happened to my dad. The more he learned about Christianity, the more he realized it was a big lie and he became a UU minister.

The one person who had the most influence in developing early Christianity wasn't Christ, but rather Paul the self-appointed apostle who never even knew Jesus. Jesus and the actual 12 apostles were observant Jews and never wanted to be anything else. The religion they developed was simply a segment of Judaism. Paul sold (literally) the promise of eternal life to the gentiles, who were for the most part Romans and had more wealth than the Jews. The problem he had was Jesus' real apostles knew that in order to be an observant Jew, one had to be circumcised per Genesis. This was part of the covenant with god. Paul abandoned the covenant out of necessity because he knew his followers weren't going to get circumcised and in the process created a whole new religion that suited his circumstance. Out went the requirements to follow god's law and in with the new singular requirement of accepting Christ as your "lord and savior". The idea of worshiping Christ was abhorrent to Jesus' real apostles because it breaks the first 3 commandments. Jews don't worship the Messiah, which is exactly what Jesus claimed to be(with a very poor Messianic claim, but that's another story). This put him at odds with the real apostles, but eventually he won out because he was recruiting a lot more people to this new religion. The rest is history.

Mark et al got their info.

At the very best they are 3rd hand accounts of Christ and are probably more like 5th hand accounts.

there is the speculation of the Q document which the gospel writers used, but who knows where that came from, if it existed.
Besides Paul, we don't know their sources. Except each other, of course, since the latter three followed Mark.

The Greeks didn't get circumcised. It's possible those gospels were authored in Greek by a Jew, but at the very least it shows they were trying to appeal to a Greek audience. Paul was recruiting almost exclusively gentiles which consisted of the Greeks and the Romans. The Jews were a conquered people and didn't have much money compared to those two groups. So Paul was no doubt bringing in large sums of cash compared to other 1st century church leaders. This gave him far more influence over the direction of early church dogma and policy which was moving from a sect of Judaism to something completely different. It's just another nugget that shows Paul had a huge influence on the development of the early church and he took it in a radically different direction. Paul never met Jesus. He claimed he had a hotline to the holy ghost. There's lots of evidence that there were serious divisions between Paul and the real apostles. At best Paul was a huckster and an opportunist. At worst he was a Roman agent sent to take what was seen as a seditious movement in a direction that favored the Romans.

was motivated by money? I've never heard such a thing!

Most likely both.

it was cause he was following the God's will and truth.

So basically almost the whole of Christianity was developed by a guy that was either a huckster or was hearing voices in his head (or both).

Good one.