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It is a book that shouldn't exist, powerful enough to found a civilization and turn the world upside down, and to turn individual people upside down and inside
by Dove 3y ago
It is a book that shouldn't exist, powerful enough to found a civilization and turn the world upside down, and to turn individual people upside down and inside out in an astonishing range of contexts.
The same tome is the battle cry of warriors and the song of martyrs and salve for paupers and satisfying to high powered intellectuals. How?? It is the best thing ever written by a wide margin, which was the first and strongest evidence to me. Is anything else like it? 1500 years in the making, dozens of authors, three continents, multiple languages, one story that hangs together and still changes the world. If God didn't write it, it must have been aliens.
Violence, slavery, moral horrors? Aye, absolutely - and sex, too, shocking sex. Even a little swearing. ;) It is a book about sin and evil, after all. But if you pay attention, all the evil things are defeated in the end.
Would you like to know why there are instructions for how to keep slaves in the old testament? Because humanity was an absolute bunch of moral toddlers in 1200 BC, and regulating the practice and giving slaves rights was a massive step forwards. The ideas that eventually flowered into abolition come from the Bible. The idea that all men are equal is an astonishingly counterintuitive one, given how obvious it is (and always has been) that they are not.
Would you like to know why there are instructions on how to be a slave in the new testament? Because the truly righteous man can thrive and live rightly in any circumstance - even that one - and it is glorious to prove it, and that is how. Don't mistake those instructions for an endorsement of injustice. Rather, and astonishingly, it is possible to be righteous in am abjectly broken, monstrous, unjust world. You don't have to fix the world. You can do brilliant good right where you are. In a way, the ultimate middle finger to injustice is to not even care when it affects you.
But I expect none of that makes any sense to you. :D
It is notable to me that you say I provided zero evidence. I actually sketched quite a lot, and I linked to more. I expect what you mean is that I provided zero evidence that you think counts. No evidence "counts" for my electron-denier, or for my pandemic-phobic either. Biblically speaking, Jesus' opponents asked for a sign that he came from God and then wrote it off when he rose from the dead. Which really makes you wonder what he was supposed to do.
It sounds like you are expecting to detect God in a lab. But that sort of comes full circle to what started the discussion. The experiments that are supposed to detect him would hardly be expected to work on your dad, let alone the almighty king of kings creator of the universe. I mean, he sees you. He knows what you're doing. He's very capable of doing what he wants.
Or, let me put this another way. If someone were to propose to me that fairies existed, but were hiding, and I said, well I don't see them in my lab experiment, I sound pretty idiotic. I mean, duh. They're fairies. They don't want you to see them. If I were to propose the same experiment to disprove the existence of space aliens, I sound like a loon. But for some reason, the idea that The Almighty doesn't exist if he won't get in a cage with the lab rats and rabbits doesn't seem crazy to you. I mean, true or false, doesn't that entirely fly in the face of the concept?
- angoragoats 3y agoYou are making excuses for the being who I assume you claim is the literal moral arbiter of the entire universe. If the all-powerful god couldn't be bothered to say "don't own people as property," that alone is reason enough for me to treat him with disdain, especially when he _does_ make proclamations about mundane things such as which foods I should eat and which clothes I should wear. I have faith (see what I did there?) that deep down you are better than this. Your morality has been corrupted by years of religious brainwashing. I'm going to stop engaging with you further. I seriously hope you are able to recover from whatever mental harms have been done to you in the name of religion.
- Dove 3y ago> treat him with disdain That's the pride and anger I was expecting to find. Your commentary towards God and his works is hostile, quick to judge, to the point (I would say) of even being unfair and hasty. Any excuse for an insult! Any reason to reject! That's really common among atheists. I knew a young lady, an atheist, who - after you peeled all the layers off the onion - was fundamentally angry at God that her mother had died. Lee Strobel's atheism was founded in a broken relationship with his father. C.S. Lewis', for all its intellectual styling, was based on a lot of personal tragedy and a broken world. I know it's patronizing to psychoanalyze, and I apologize for that. But it really does astonish me - you can almost set your clock by it. Uncertainty can make an agnostic or an unaffiliated, but atheism seems to call for something special. If you want a citation that belief is about emotion and not evidence... I mean, you're kind of providing one. No insult intended, impossible as that might be to believe. It is a condition common to all humanity. The type I see a lot of among Atheists is just one flavor. For what it's worth, I have benefitted a lot from conversations with atheists over the years, and I bear you all a great deal of affection. Take care.
- angoragoats 3y agoIn the case of slavery, my disdain for god is exactly equal to the disdain that I would have for any thinking, sentient being that condones owning other thinking, sentient beings as property. Please don't misrepresent what I'm saying as being generally hostile to god. It's also dishonest of you to call me hasty or unfair -- I've spent decades researching and debating this topic and my views are the result of that work.