The Righteous and Religious Debate

posted on November 6th, 2007, 9:42 pm

very well since we are adamant on talking about this.

First of all, let's be clear that christianity today is not the word of Christ. It is the consolidation of the works of saul - vis a vis Paul. Ironically Paul never met Christ in his life.
Nonetheless, Gentile Europe accepted Christianity primarily due to the proselytization of Paul.

A very interesting aspect aspect of Paul's proselytization is his stance towards Gentile Christianity as opposed to Judaic law. In his discussion with the true apostles of Christ (the ones who actually met and subsequently denied Christ) a debate arises as to the abandonment of Judaic law for Gentile customs and the over-emphasis on Christ. It was argued by the apostles that Chrsit was the Moshiach that was sent to the Jewish community as THEIR saviour. Paul did not disagree with this, but added that the Gentile world would certainly benefit from knowing of Christ. In effect in this short dialog it was historically recognized that Christ came for the Jews and not for gentiles, but the Gentile populace of the roman empire would certainly benefit from Christ's message.
It is this idea that was actively marketed as "through Christ shall you attain salvation" - a very shallow statement that over years of misunderstanding has acquired much fanfare.
Paul's own dichotomy in dealing with his Hebrew companions and his gentiles companions as regards the enforcement of judaic law reinforced this approach.
Paul himself was educated in Greek philosophy. When attempting to relate to the gentile populace it was considered norm to relate to the target audience - much like how evangelists today "gear" their sermons to appeal to the understanding and mindset of the target audience.
This again is deonstrated in several misconceptions that have arisen in Christianity throughout the ages, and particularly after Athenagoras' apologeticism towards the roman Emperor.
The idea of a son of God is a direct derivative of Greek exoteric philosophy's Perseus, Hercules, and the like. Certainly, how else would Paul explain emaculate conception, except to draw an analogy with that which teh target audience believed. In the Bible god is referred to as the father of mankind, and even in the translation (ironically the oldest surving Bible is the 6th century greek version - aramaic is all but lost), Christ's call of Father when referring to the One is not any indicator of a Father-son relationship.
Given this premiss, one then needs to read into Greek philospphy as propounded by Aristotle and Plato. The triad is the foundation of Greek principles with the number 3 being considered holy.
The trinity itself was first instituted by Athenagoras, a greek philosohphy in his dialog with the Roman Emperor. This was the first instance where the idea of 3 as one -fatehr, son and holy ghost are ever mentioned. This is a direct structural derivative of the Greek philosophical concept of the Triad.

But the metamorphosis did not even stop there. A subsequent change from Aramiac to Greek to Latin and then English has itself resulted in a great loss of meaning in the book.  a good example is the English - she lay at his feet the full night; in Hebrew it implies spending the night in coitus.

Finally we come to Theodonius' violent imposition of Christianity in Europe which stamped out non-Christian belief taliban-style. Subsequently we have the Christian crusades, and edicts throughout Europe, slavery, inquisitions, colonialism, genocide of native peoples in hostile land-grabs in Australia and America.

So when we speak of Christinaity today, and people as Christians try to have a "Righteous and Religious debate" on the Abrahamic religion, it would be better to first understand the history behind modern exoteric religions, and sit back to evaluate one's beliefs before trying to broadcast righteousness and religiosity without even knowing the context of their religions.
Succinctly put, righteous and religious derive from "righteousness" and "religion" in their true forms, and not from what the local Preacher or Televangelist tells you they are.
After all, a hindu who worships stones today, would "believe" it is the right and religious thing to do. But if the Hindu looks at his oldest religious texts, one gets a completely monotheistic view. So then, what is right and what is religious?

posted on November 7th, 2007, 12:15 am

To be sure, many modern versions of Christianity are nothing like the first century practice, with the exception of the literalist ones which are (a) principle target of mine.

To be honest, I did not choose the title of this thread, and it is not representative of why I continuously fight against the idea of religion. I am not concerned with biblically derived words such as righteousness, and such as word is meaningless unless it has been defined. The various religious denominations provide their own definitions, none of which agree so this is not helpful. On the other hand, I can take the word "religion" as representing something even though it's definition is still not clear. In the modern context, religion is division. It is taking a stand in one pocket of society, and invokes an "us and them" mentality, where the only thing you need to do to feel superior to outsiders is dip youself in water or equivalent.

All those extraneous historical details are nice, but the essential message of religion is the same, and it involves a smug certainty that no scientist would ever try to claim about life or the universe. Even Epicurus, who existed before all the historical developments, was forced to put forth arguments about why God wold allow suffering, which the fledgling Christians ignored. The situation today is no different, except in scale because we live in the information age. I'd caution against making this sound more complicated than it really is serpicus. It's always been straightforward. The "religious" folk give credit to a deity who may not even be there (or care), and they ignore reason whenever they hear it.

A good example is that all my opponents on this thread have skated around my points. The points I raised in my first post here have not been tackled yet!! Preaching against a much faster population rise is ridiculous and I'm unquestionably right, yet the person who responded just went into a narrative about how Christians are victimised. I've mentioned all kinds of things from redundant biological features to bible atrocity, but you guys won't listen, or it goes in one ear and out the other. I pick apart other people's posts, the least you could do is the same.

A truly honest person who has ever looked at the evidence cannot possibly do anything but revise their beliefs substantially. It's plainly obvious that the bible itself is uninspired and even dangerous. The historical details do not affect this conclusion. If the modern incarnation is so watered down and traditionalised, then what is its value? Morality is a poor argument here and I've heard it before. In fact I've heard everything everyone has said so far.

posted on November 7th, 2007, 4:18 am

I REALLY wish I could've read the entire thing up to this point, so please don't shoot me if this has already been noted, BUT...
Earlier (ie, page 2 or something), auxilio (sp?) said that nothing was impossible for God, and Dr. Lazarus said stuff about omnipotence that made sense, etc. etc.
Anyways, I'm just here to note that nothing is technically impossible, what with quantum and stuff. Since reality is based on our perceptions, it is always possible that a sudden change in our brain chemistry or eye damage will in fact render the sky red, or due to a lot of incredibly lucky not-collisions one is able to actually walk through a wall (or, conversely, and I almost hate myself for bringing this up, on water).
Okay, I'm not saying this is what I believe God is, but if a person had absolute control over their own atomic structure and was omniscient with regards to the atomic structure of everything else, would that render them omnipotent?
Of course, you'd have to assume that one is able to control their own particles, which would be rather difficult. Meh, too confusing, gonna shut up now. Just wanted to point out that nothing is impossible, and got lost on a tangent.

posted on November 7th, 2007, 4:57 am

Hmmm... so what you are saying essentially is that this deity is a consequence of extremely improbable events (but still possible, albeit veeeeeeeeery, very unlikely) 

This kind of sounds unprovable to me... which leads us back into circular reasoning. 
(but good thoughts 8 of 11 )

posted on November 7th, 2007, 6:59 am

There is also the possibility that the cup in front of you jumps into the air without any reason. There's also the possibility that the cup, once back on the floor and broken, stacks itself into the original shape and all the atomic links fused again... each of them as it was before.

[Dr. Lazarus]

posted on November 7th, 2007, 1:11 pm

Last edited by Dr. Lazarus on November 7th, 2007, 1:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have to disagree on some points here. Quantum mechanics does not declare that impossible scenarios are possible, it simply refines our poor understanding of physics that we had in the ninteenth century. If you take electron tunnelling as an example, in which a particle has to have a finite chance of penetrating its energy well in order to satisfy its wavefunction, we simply add this rule into our "bucket" of what is possible. The same goes for phenomena such as Quantum entanglement in which particles may have coupled spins over vast distances. Granted, our "bucket" of what is possible is growing in size, but it is a gross error to suddenly conclude that anything is possible.

If you're missing my point, consider that there is nothing in Quantum mechanics which violates the basic laws of logic, and in fact the tunnelling effect is not just logically sound but mathematically appropriate, and you can see this by solving Schrodinger's equation for a particle trapped in some a potential well. On the other hand, trying to make grandiose claims such as omnipotence requires violating logic so basic that it barely needs describing. It's a simple paradox, and the omnipotence idea is forced to collapse like melting ice. Put simply, an omnipotent God would be capable of destroying his own omnipotence. It's absurd, and no scientist or philsopher will take seriously a debater (such as some earlier in the thread) who tries to claim that.

In order for anything to be possible, we would need an insane revision of basic logic that can allow for contadictory paradoxes. Even though we can expect phenomenal technological progress over the next few decades, with many revisions of our understanding, remember that the whole process which allowed for this progress has it's basis in logical reasoning. To mess with that foundation is like removing the bricks from the first floor of a building. Advances can be evolutionary or revolutionary, but even revolutionary ones such as General Relativity do not violate logic, or even earlier physics for that matter. With Einstein, we all went "ooh" and "aah" and recognised it for the towering intellectual achievement that it was, but it's sobering to realise that the Newtonian mechanics it supposedly replaced is still valid as a limiting case. Newton's understanding was not wrong it was just incomplete.

As for the cup jumping up thing, yes you are right, there is a finite (but unbelieveably remote) chance that a smashed cup can reassemble itself, but I encourage you Jan to plug some numbers into Boltzmann's equation for statistical entropy and you'll find that the probabilty is so small that even the best calculators can only display it as zero. What you are talking about is not anything to do with Quantum physics, just thermodynamics. Boltzmann died a long time before the Quantum theorists started their stuff.

posted on November 7th, 2007, 4:31 pm

Understood: not everything is "possible", as of yet (we always need to find more data and determine what hypothesis these lead to....). I went the route of over simplifying in light of time management  .... woops, I just simplified it again (but I have to run anyway.)

I need something I can debate, darn it! (not something that I agree with, aaargh!) 

[Dr. Lazarus]

posted on November 7th, 2007, 6:09 pm

Last edited by Dr. Lazarus on November 7th, 2007, 10:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sorry Dom, I'll try to say something that'll provoke you next time  .

I think people should exercise caution as far as the Quantum stuff is concerned. As an example of why, you can find legitimate websites about say, Quantum chemistry, but the Google Ads bring up all sorts of garbage about "Quantum healing" or "Using your Quantum mind". It seems that con-artists and manipulators have jumped on the Quantum bandwagon, whilst simultaneously demonstrating that they do not understand what the word Quantum means. There will always be people who fall for this stuff.

Actually, just to be sure, the other day I tried to bend a spoon with my mind. When I failed, I attempted to refocus my "Quantum energy", and yet I still failed. I tried to tell myself, "There is no spoon", but I failed thrice more. So I went back to my room and studied for my Quantum chemistry exam. Worked wonders.

Seems the universe works in a rational way after all, even if it sometimes goes against our intuition.