3 ms·

You mean what? That if we sin (like you know all that giant list of outdated ways to sin like touching a woman when she is menstruating) there will be a giant r

You mean what? That if we sin (like you know all that giant list of outdated ways to sin like touching a woman when she is menstruating) there will be a giant rain and we will drawn? So did you made your giant boat or first you need to wait for God to tell you to do it in a dream? Sorry , but some people will not follow those outdated rules and also worship a extremely cruel genocidal inhuman God, if my sin will cause you to have to build a boat to save yourself sorry but I don't care.

its_ethan 3y ago
I think if you gave an honest effort at interpreting what he said, you'd find that he's saying there's a reason religion has survived as long as it has. He's not claiming that your actions are going to cause a biblical flood - that's something you're projecting on to him and, in my opinion, just feels like mockery for the sake of mockery. He's suggesting that there are generation-spanning lessons that had been learned, both ethical and practical, that made their way into scriptures. Not all the lessons in the Bible (or other religious text) are going to be pertinent to the modern day. To say it contains nothing of value, and that nothing can be learned from, it proves his point exactly.
- simion314 3y ago
  So your point is that there is a chance that soem microscopic parts in the Bible contain good lessons? I agree, some children stories also have good lesions. The fact that religion survived or spread does not prove what you imply it proves, it was an useful tool for the powerful to keep the poor in check like 1 Bible says to pay your taxes 2 Bible says that is OK to be poor because you will be rewarded later 3 Bible says that violence is bad so do not attack your lord and try to make justice on Earth, you will get your justice in the next realm. And so on, a very good tool to manipulate people.
xyzelement 3y ago
I think you're misreading what I am saying and injecting some extra anger. To use a simple example of what I meant - in the west, the secular section of society has below-replacement fertility. In other words, for whatever reason that group is slowly dying off. I hate to say this as someone who was secular most of my life but I think it's objectively true (do you disagree?) Meanwhile religious folks live in the same world as we do yet somehow are able to maintain 2.5 to 3.5 fertility rate (this is in the US) depending on which version of the "homicidal inhuman G-d" they believe in. This suggests to me that somewhere in that "religious" operating system is encoded immunity to things that are slowly killing off the unreligious right now. That's the kind of thing I was talking about in my post - we should be very careful about discarding that.
- martinpw 3y ago
  > To use a simple example of what I meant - in the west, the secular section of society has below-replacement fertility. In other words, for whatever reason that group is slowly dying off. Except that the secular section is also replenished by children of the religious becoming secular, which currently seems to be outweighing the relative birthrate differences and is causing that secular section to be increasing as a percentage of the population.
- MeImCounting 3y ago
  "Looking at the U.S. public as a whole, however, the answer to the question of whether more education is correlated with less religion appears to be yes. Among all U.S. adults, college graduates are considerably less likely than those who have less education to say religion is “very important” in their lives: Fewer than half of college graduates (46%) say this, compared with nearly six-in-ten of those with no more than a high school education (58%)." I am sure you know of the correlation between affluent people having fewer children and highly educated people tending to be more affluent. I dont think its particularly mysterious or confusing why secular populations have a lower fertility rate. It should be pretty obvious at a glance. Religion is a lot like conservatism in that it provides a self affirming world view that relies on ethics from centuries past. I am sure there are many highly democratic, rich and ethical conservatives and religious types but generally these traits are indicators of the opposite. There is a reason the past century of progress has allowed such great leaps in education, quality of life etc while being accompanied by an ever decreasing level of religiosity.

its_ethan 3y ago

I think if you gave an honest effort at interpreting what he said, you'd find that he's saying there's a reason religion has survived as long as it has. He's not claiming that your actions are going to cause a biblical flood - that's something you're projecting on to him and, in my opinion, just feels like mockery for the sake of mockery. He's suggesting that there are generation-spanning lessons that had been learned, both ethical and practical, that made their way into scriptures. Not all the lessons in the Bible (or other religious text) are going to be pertinent to the modern day. To say it contains nothing of value, and that nothing can be learned from, it proves his point exactly.

simion314 3y ago
So your point is that there is a chance that soem microscopic parts in the Bible contain good lessons? I agree, some children stories also have good lesions. The fact that religion survived or spread does not prove what you imply it proves, it was an useful tool for the powerful to keep the poor in check like 1 Bible says to pay your taxes 2 Bible says that is OK to be poor because you will be rewarded later 3 Bible says that violence is bad so do not attack your lord and try to make justice on Earth, you will get your justice in the next realm. And so on, a very good tool to manipulate people.

xyzelement 3y ago

I think you're misreading what I am saying and injecting some extra anger. To use a simple example of what I meant - in the west, the secular section of society has below-replacement fertility. In other words, for whatever reason that group is slowly dying off. I hate to say this as someone who was secular most of my life but I think it's objectively true (do you disagree?) Meanwhile religious folks live in the same world as we do yet somehow are able to maintain 2.5 to 3.5 fertility rate (this is in the US) depending on which version of the "homicidal inhuman G-d" they believe in. This suggests to me that somewhere in that "religious" operating system is encoded immunity to things that are slowly killing off the unreligious right now. That's the kind of thing I was talking about in my post - we should be very careful about discarding that.

martinpw 3y ago
> To use a simple example of what I meant - in the west, the secular section of society has below-replacement fertility. In other words, for whatever reason that group is slowly dying off. Except that the secular section is also replenished by children of the religious becoming secular, which currently seems to be outweighing the relative birthrate differences and is causing that secular section to be increasing as a percentage of the population.
MeImCounting 3y ago
"Looking at the U.S. public as a whole, however, the answer to the question of whether more education is correlated with less religion appears to be yes. Among all U.S. adults, college graduates are considerably less likely than those who have less education to say religion is “very important” in their lives: Fewer than half of college graduates (46%) say this, compared with nearly six-in-ten of those with no more than a high school education (58%)." I am sure you know of the correlation between affluent people having fewer children and highly educated people tending to be more affluent. I dont think its particularly mysterious or confusing why secular populations have a lower fertility rate. It should be pretty obvious at a glance. Religion is a lot like conservatism in that it provides a self affirming world view that relies on ethics from centuries past. I am sure there are many highly democratic, rich and ethical conservatives and religious types but generally these traits are indicators of the opposite. There is a reason the past century of progress has allowed such great leaps in education, quality of life etc while being accompanied by an ever decreasing level of religiosity.