The great and all powerful religion thread!

[Matt]

Facts suck crab grass!

 

[Evil?]

Liar.

 

[zoidberg]

Facts suck crab grass!

thats your opinion, not a fact.

 

[Hatebreeder]

Anyone who says the Bible doesn't contain mythical creatures has obviously not looked through it enough. The behemoth and leviathan are both Hebrew inventions, as is the lesser-known sky creature Ziz. Not to mention the hordes of different demons that inhabit the earth in different forms like dragons and pigs.

 

[Rabid Headbanger]

I didn't know they had snakes who could talk and walk.

 

[AchrisK]

The man who has no idea of a god or a lack of a god already has a belief one way or another?

Yes. This has been seen throughout history. People throuout history, including those in remote areas, typically have a belief in a diety of some sort. It looks a lot like an idea that man is born with, kinda like the Bible says. You can explain it away as this or that, but it's there. And it wasn't just there then. It is there now.

Actually I cited cases that I have read up on, though mostly through internet research and probably a few years ago at this point. I don't feel the need to continually read the same thing over and over again, namely that there is no evidence to suggest that Biblical tales regarding the many amazing feats of a man named Jesus have ever occurred. There simply is no evidence that can prove that a miracle has occurred. But if you ever do stumble upon something that is actually accepted by a secular organization as evidence pointing to the occurrence of a miraculous event, I would be more than happy to take a look at it. I'm not one to refute cold hard facts.

But did you read sources that believed in these things, or only ones that were out to refute them?

You're obviously not going to find a miracle of Jesus or see the resurrection. To even begin to examine these claims, you have to study based on the type of evidence is used to try to determine historical things. Things like historical accounts, and taking into consideration if there are more than one record of the things, and how close the writings are to the supposed events and stuff like that. You can't expect to get a historical miracle in a test tube, and you can't expect to be able to verify it scientifically.

 

[AchrisK]

Anyone who says the Bible doesn't contain mythical creatures has obviously not looked through it enough. The behemoth and leviathan are both Hebrew inventions, as is the lesser-known sky creature Ziz. Not to mention the hordes of different demons that inhabit the earth in different forms like dragons and pigs.

Isn't it the Leviathan that was said to breath fire, in the Bible? In Job.

 

[skeptik]

Yes. This has been seen throughout history. People throuout history, including those in remote areas, typically have a belief in a diety of some sort. It looks a lot like an idea that man is born with, kinda like the Bible says. You can explain it away as this or that, but it's there. And it wasn't just there then. It is there now.

I was speaking in hypotheticals.

But did you read sources that believed in these things, or only ones that were out to refute them?

You're obviously not going to find a miracle of Jesus or see the resurrection. To even begin to examine these claims, you have to study based on the type of evidence is used to try to determine historical things. Things like historical accounts, and taking into consideration if there are more than one record of the things, and how close the writings are to the supposed events and stuff like that. You can't expect to get a historical miracle in a test tube, and you can't expect to be able to verify it scientifically.

I read whatever sources that I came across, actually, though most seemed to have been against them having occurred.

As far as the latter point goes, obviously a miracle can't be verified scientifically, that would be contradictory to what it is to be miraculous. I'm not looking for any specific type of proof, just anything at all that can legitimately tell me "this points to the likelihood that something beyond the realms of this world as we understand them has taken place." I have not seen anything of this sort that was not heavily biased or later disproven.

 

[Rabid Headbanger]

Does everyone want to know why christianity and Islam made it to the top?

Because they are both monothiestic religions. The one flaw in a polythiestic relgions is that there is more then one god, making it possible for the integration of other pantheons. To the followers of polythiestic religions, many of them would encounter the other cultures with a different set of gods and would revere them as well. This is because that there is the possibility that those gods might exist aswell, and pissing them off is a bad idea.

However, with a monothiestic religion, there is really just one god. Said god is all powerful and all knowing, in just about every case. So both the christians and muslims could, infact, ignore the gods of other pantheons completely, because they only have one absolute god. Then, the could persecute and make war against other cultures of "infidels" without having limits.

That is why monothiesm always rises to the top over polythiesm. An excellent comparison is between democracy and dictatorship. In the dictatorship, things get accomp-lished much faster because all the power derives from one "all-powerful" figure.

 

[skeptik]

Well there's also the fact that their doctrines were spread at the end of the sword, but yeah.

 

[Hatebreeder]

Isn't it the Leviathan that was said to breath fire, in the Bible? In Job.

Yep. Additionally, the terms behemoth and leviathan were attributed to the ox and general sea creatures, respectively.

 

[Hatebreeder]

Don't forget the giants.

Yes, and the Nephilim, who are usually synonymous with Biblical depictions of giants.

 

[AchrisK]

Yep. Additionally, the terms behemoth and leviathan were attributed to the ox and general sea creatures, respectively.

There's no way the Behemoth is describing a flippin ox. More like one of them big long dinosaurs.

 

[Thoth-Amon]

There's no way the Behemoth is describing a flippin ox. More like one of them big long dinosaurs.

Biblical scholars are pretty much unanimous that its referring to a Hippo.

 

[Hatebreeder]

Biblical scholars are pretty much unanimous that its referring to a Hippo.

Just read this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behemoth

A hippo does sound pretty likely based on the Biblical description.

 

[cookiecutter]

However, there isn't any hard proof that God doesn't exist, just that he didn't create the Earth, and most of the stuff in the Bible didn't happen.

This is an extremely flawed argument. You don't believe in something because it can't be disproved. You believe in it because it can be proved. You can't offer any hard proof fairies don't exist. They might be invisible like God, however you'd have to be retarded to believe in fairies. Do you understand my point?

But other questions arise like, "How was the Nothing created?" And who created the almighty Mother Nature that is responsible for evolution and all the wonderful things science specifies?

These little questions that have yet to be answered hints at the existence of God, but no-one is sure if there's a God, or what type of God we have. That's why we have religion.

Hmm, we haven't figured something out. I know! It was a magic man in the sky!

If you don't have an answer you can't make one up. Again, any reason why we should believe that God did it?

There is no evidence that can be given to someone who has made up their mind. You don't have to present the untouched man anything, he automatically believes.

This is ironic. You are the one who has made up their mind and believed on faith. We are just saying where we think you went wrong.

Yes. This has been seen throughout history. People throuout history, including those in remote areas, typically have a belief in a diety of some sort. It looks a lot like an idea that man is born with, kinda like the Bible says. You can explain it away as this or that, but it's there. And it wasn't just there then. It is there now.

Until science came along, most people thought the Earth was flat. Oops...

You're obviously not going to find a miracle of Jesus or see the resurrection. To even begin to examine these claims, you have to study based on the type of evidence is used to try to determine historical things. Things like historical accounts, and taking into consideration if there are more than one record of the things, and how close the writings are to the supposed events and stuff like that. You can't expect to get a historical miracle in a test tube, and you can't expect to be able to verify it scientifically.

The problem is the only historical mention of these miracles is the Bible, and that is so fraught with inaccuracies and contradictions that it cannot be taken seriously as a work of fact.

Don't forget the giants.

Remember the Titans?

 

[Thoth-Amon]

Just read this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behemoth

A hippo does sound pretty likely based on the Biblical description.

Actually I agree with that... I was laughing at the fact that he thought that the bible writers in their "divine" inspiration were describing dinosaurs millions of years after their extinction. Everyone knows it's a hippo.

 

[cookiecutter]

Wasn't there some Christian guy who said humans rode dinosaurs?

 

[Sigma]

 

[CaGeD iN]

so a band as brutal as behemoth is named after a hippo?