Are Atheists just close minded Agnostics?

[Trimijopulos]

No more than I have ever wondered why there is no consensus among the scientific community about the existence of aliens, nor a consensus among the scientific community about politics, tastes in literature or what beer is best to have with steak. It's because these issues have nothing to do with science - currently.

Humanity’s past has a lot to do with science and it is humanity’s past we are talking about.
Gods predate religion by thousands of years.

Except for the fact that there is the exact same amount of evidence for any of them. That is, none. The number of people who believe a proposition does not make that proposition true. As said before, if the entire world believes something that is wrong, it does not make it right.

You still do not get the point! And the point is to be able to find out why people all over the earth came out with stories about gods and giants (the giants giving birth to gods as, I assume, you know).

What garbage. If stories about Gods were all the same, why are there so many religions? So many different Gods? Why do some people believe in singular Gods and others in multiple? Why do some believe God to be an intelligent agency while others prefer to define God in a more deistic fashion? Why do people go to war and kill or torture others for believing in the "wrong" God or Gods?

Because the history of mankind is the story of the gods.
There is a lot of reading one has to do before deciding whether the gods’ issue is a real or a philosophical one and you seem to be convinced that it is a pure philosophical one, a grave mistake.

Religion did not spontaneously appear out of thin air. It was born out of a simple monomyth, and that monomyth has deformed over time. It was not miraculous - just the result of primitive minds trying to make sense of a Universe that they had no idea how to contextualize.

That is an assumption based on lack of information. No layman ever felt the need to know about the universe, or the nature, or the depths of his soul. That is what the philosophers and thinkers have been doing and they never had primitive minds.

Can you prove that they did?

Yes, as regards the absurd concepts of immaterial souls, judgment after death and afterlife, I can bring forward evidence and show to you how it happened and they appeared, if you are willing to listen.

I asked why there was no answers for the following questions:

How did it happen and the idea of gods appeared for the first time?
How did it happen and the absurd ideas of immortality and afterlife appeared for the first time?

And you answered:

Because the questions are based on presuppositions and baseless assumptions. Various ideas about God did not appear simultaneously, nor did morality precisely coincide with the appearance of such notions. I very much doubt you could produce even the slightest trace of evidence for either claim.

Morality has nothing to do with the stories about gods, giants and men. You cannot bring yourself to separate gods from religion.

That the ideas of gods, souls, immortality and afterlife appeared some time in the history of man is a fact. What presuppositions and baseless assumptions are talking about?

So you believe that there's a conspiracy among the world's scientists to uphold the BB Creation Myth?

How do you know it's a myth if you can't even understand it?

To understand what? That they only know what happened after the occurrence of the BB and nothing prior to it?
That is a pure “Out of Nothing Creation Myth”

Someone said he found traces of a reciprocating universe. That I can accept as a theory because it is complete. The BB theory is more like a crutch offered to religion by science.

 

[riley2112]

We know that none of the modern English red-lettered ones are his, and those are the only words I'm capable of examining.

.

What would make you think that those are not the words of Jesus? just wondering. And please understand that at this point in time I am not disagreeing with you nor am I agreeing, I am still undecided..

 

[riley2112]

Humanity’s past has a lot to do with science and it is humanity’s past we are talking about.
Gods predate religion by thousands of years.

You still do not get the point! And the point is to be able to find out why people all over the earth came out with stories about gods and giants (the giants giving birth to gods as, I assume, you know).

Because the history of mankind is the story of the gods.
There is a lot of reading one has to do before deciding whether the gods’ issue is a real or a philosophical one and you seem to be convinced that it is a pure philosophical one, a grave mistake.

That is an assumption based on lack of information. No layman ever felt the need to know about the universe, or the nature, or the depths of his soul. That is what the philosophers and thinkers have been doing and they never had primitive minds.

Yes, as regards the absurd concepts of immaterial souls, judgment after death and afterlife, I can bring forward evidence and show to you how it happened and they appeared, if you are willing to listen.

I asked why there was no answers for the following questions:

How did it happen and the idea of gods appeared for the first time?
How did it happen and the absurd ideas of immortality and afterlife appeared for the first time?

And you answered:

Because the questions are based on presuppositions and baseless assumptions. Various ideas about God did not appear simultaneously, nor did morality precisely coincide with the appearance of such notions. I very much doubt you could produce even the slightest trace of evidence for either claim.

Morality has nothing to do with the stories about gods, giants and men. You cannot bring yourself to separate gods from religion.

That the ideas of gods, souls, immortality and afterlife appeared some time in the history of man is a fact. What presuppositions and baseless assumptions are talking about?

To understand what? That they only know what happened after the occurrence of the BB and nothing prior to it?
That is a pure “Out of Nothing Creation Myth”

Someone said he found traces of a reciprocating universe. That I can accept as a theory because it is complete. The BB theory is more like a crutch offered to religion by science.

I can separated God from religion, I know that God or Gods predated man, how else could He have created man? So where do I start my journey to knowledge about such things?

 

[Trimijopulos]

In post 770, you link an article from the BBC on recent discoveries of Neanderthal DNA in the modern human population, and its implications for the strong version of the Out Of Africa theory which denied any crossbreeding between Neanderthals and Cro Magnons....and it has nothing to do with sons of gods marrying daughters of men!

The Out of Africa theory is for anthropology what the Bing Bang theory is for cosmology.
Homo sapiens sapiens came out of Africa, no objection here, but the world at that time was full of Homo sapiens something. Only in the Near East there were Homo sapiens Neandertalensis and Early Homo sapiens living there before the arrival of the African guys.

As regards sons of gods and daughters of men, be informed that the description of the Mother of gods and men which is found in the Egyptian Pyramid texts (written 4,500 years ago) matches the sculptures of the women in the Venus figurines made by Cro Magnons, freshly arrived in Europe from the Near East, 40,000 years ago.

Modern people were created in the Near East and from there they proceeded to Europe, Asia and the Americas.
The myths, and especially the OT, inform of the creation of people and their diaspora.

The link that seems to exist between OT and human prehistory creates problems for theists and atheists alike. I am a little bit sorry for both but that does not prevent me from enjoying heartily the new situation emerging!

 

[Trimijopulos]

I can separated God from religion, I know that God or Gods predated man, how else could He have created man? So where do I start my journey to knowledge about such things?

I suggest that you start by reading Roman, Greek, Norse, Celtic and Jewish mythology. Then you should read about traditions from Africa, Asia and the Americas which are not so much contaminated with philosophical / theological ideas in order to be able to discern what elements of the European mythologies originated with popular tradition and what elements were added later by the philosophers and theologians.
Lastly, you have to read ancient and archaic texts all the way back and into the Egyptian funerary texts.

It takes time… With me it took more than twenty years!

Here is an abstract of the story that tradition, mythology and ancient texts reveal which will help you to decide if it is worth to spend time and money on it:

A race of rather tall people (gods) enslaved a race of a bit shorter people (men) and by using the women of the latter produced hybrid god-men some of whom they used to increase their population and some they used as slaves.
Thus, a social system based on slavery and racism was created that led to the revolt of the hybrid slaves which forced the hybrid by then masters to retreat to a safe place up in the mountains.
Behind, with the people, were left some “representatives” of the ex masters, either members of the previous regime or members of the new one who realized that it would be to their benefit to keep the social system as it was.

The “representatives” were known as “messengers” because they were supposed to carry messages from and towards the masters in exile up in the mountains (which most probably were actually doing some time). Messenger in ancient Greek is “Angel.”
When eventually the ex masters were obliged by the new ones, the angels, to leave the area entirely, the people was told –by the angels of course- that they were not to be seen anymore because they climbed a ladder up to the heavens and went to live on the clouds. Thus the immaterial gods were born!

The angels turned into priests, the gods into God, but the story will only end when our respected scholars decide that it is time to tell it to children at school.

Please note that there is a strong possibility that the information regarding the ascend of the gods to the skies may had been told initially as a joke. In which case the whole issue about the God is not but an immemorial, monumental Joke!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

 

[Caladan]

Can I take a stab? To me, it doesn't mean that we should accept any particular ideas, but that if a good, or even valid, case can be made for two sets of ideas that are apparently contradictory, an open mind would automatically dismiss neither.

I'm opened for plenty of things. within reason.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

To understand what? That they only know what happened after the occurrence of the BB and nothing prior to it?
That is a pure “Out of Nothing Creation Myth”

So you are refusing to answer my question?

Here it is again: Do you believe that there is a conspiracy among the world's scientists to uphold the Big Bang Theory?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

What would make you think that those are not the words of Jesus?

My comment about the red-lettered words was a little vague, Riley. Sorry for that. What I mean is that since Jesus did not speak English, we can know for certain that any KJV red-lettered words are not his. They did not come from his mind or mouth.

Let me know if you want to discuss the process of translating a guy's meaning from one culture/language/place/time to another. Meanwhile I'll just state my certainty that -- barring a miracle -- Jesus' meaning could not possibly have survived from his time to ours.

And please understand that at this point in time I am not disagreeing with you nor am I agreeing, I am still undecided..

While I appreciate your motivation for saying such a thing, you've got the wrong guy. I yearn for you to disagree with me. Fiercely, thoroughly, unflinchingly, unflaggingly. It's what a forum's for.

The only way to search for God is to leap into the fray, I think.

 

[Trimijopulos]

So you are refusing to answer my question?

Here it is again: Do you believe that there is a conspiracy among the world's scientists to uphold the Big Bang Theory?

Not necessarily a conspiracy. Indifference will have sufficed and besides, as far as I know, that is not the only theory.
Do you have an idea what is going on with the translation of the Egyptian funerary texts? Two hundred years after the hieroglyphic script was deciphered scholars realized that their translations were wrong and now they have virtually stopped translating them. Certain crucial terms are represented in the translations by a transliteration of the Egyptian term which means that he who reads the translations understands nothing.

What is going on here? They simply do not know what the funerary texts are about or they know but they do not dare to come out and say what they know because it would be no good for religion?

How about the same reason for not saying in public that the BB theory is ridiculous?
(And I do not mean by that that the theory of the expanding universe is ridiculous. The occurrence of the BB is ridiculous as long as no explanation is furnished).

 

[Trimijopulos]

My comment about the red-lettered words was a little vague, Riley. Sorry for that. What I mean is that since Jesus did not speak English, we can know for certain that any KJV red-lettered words are not his. They did not come from his mind or mouth.

Neither the words in the gospels are his.

The authors of the gospels made an unforgivable mistake by writing the gospels in the Greek language (supposing that they were speaking Hebrew). The gospels should have been written in the language that Jesus was supposed to have been speaking.

The gospels were written mostly for the common people to know the words of Jesus and the common people did not understand Greek, only the scholars and the aristocracy did.

 

[Willamena]

I'm opened for plenty of things. within reason.

If a case for something is good or valid, you are the one to say so.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

So you could have similar views (to that of Jesus, if such a person existed) and not be aware of it.

Oh sure. There's always a chance that he was as smart as me.

My views are always changing. However I find that as my views change, towards whatever, it was something Jesus was already teaching about.

I think we can interpret any person as having meant anything -- just as we can interpret any text as meaning anything.

Good place to expose one's ideas for criticism.

Yeah. You can't make a fine statue without allowing the chisel and sandblaster into the room.

I don't know that God is conscious in any sense of what we think is conscious.

That makes you as weird as me, Godwise. I suspect that 99% of all Americans would consider you to be misusing the word 'God' if you mean by it a non-conscious thing.

I suppose you are right. The four gospels make Jesus out to be a magician of some kind. I suspect he was just a healer, using natural remedies. There are stories as such but that's all external to the Bible.

It was the old days. A guy had to make some miracles to get any attention at all... just to get his foot in the door.

It'd be like Paul on the road to Damascus. It was a real experience to him. Something he perceived like you'd perceive sitting in front of a desk. The same sense of reality.

That would lean me toward a diagnosis of hallucination -- meaning a thing happening in the brain itself rather than in the natural or supernatural world -- but I'd want to hear more.

You say a brain disorder but then how would you know any experience you had was not the result of a brain disorder?

I don't know it. It is very possible that I'm misperceiving reality because of a brain disorder.

Have you ever heard the concept of brains in a vat? Disembodied brains being fed electrical signals being led to believe they had a body. That could be us and we wouldn't know it.

Sure. How could we possibly know otherwise.

We are subject to our perceptions to determine what is real. If one can't trust their perceptions then what are we left with?

If God ever comes to me and speaks to me in a real way, I'll have no choice but to believe that God has come to me.

I'd be a hard sell. He'd need to let me test Him repeatedly. But there'd come a point where I'd have no choice but to believe.

 

[Trimijopulos]

If a case for something is good or valid, you are the one to say so.

Exactly!
“Within reason” means that you reject automatically the theory which is “without reason.”

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Humanity’s past has a lot to do with science and it is humanity’s past we are talking about.

But the question of an all-powerful, supernatural deity deity has nothing to do with science (currently). Hence the word "supernatural".

Gods predate religion by thousands of years.

Evidence?

You still do not get the point! And the point is to be able to find out why people all over the earth came out with stories about gods and giants (the giants giving birth to gods as, I assume, you know).

I've already explained that. Re-read my post.

There is a lot of reading one has to do before deciding whether the gods’ issue is a real or a philosophical one and you seem to be convinced that it is a pure philosophical one, a grave mistake.

Then prove it's not.

That is an assumption based on lack of information. No layman ever felt the need to know about the universe, or the nature, or the depths of his soul. That is what the philosophers and thinkers have been doing and they never had primitive minds.

I would argue that philosophers are no better than laymen in answering any of these questions. The only people in the world who have discovered real, incontrovertible facts are scientists - not philosophers. Also, you've not even remotely attempted to respond to my refutation. All of the evidence indicates that all world religions are derived from a monomyth that was held by our ancient forefathers.

Yes, as regards the absurd concepts of immaterial souls, judgment after death and afterlife, I can bring forward evidence and show to you how it happened and they appeared, if you are willing to listen.

I asked why there was no answers for the following questions:

How did it happen and the idea of gods appeared for the first time?

I already answered that one: humans, who were developing brains capable of finding explanations and links between things, found themselves in a world that they needed to contextualize in a simple way, making it easier for them to process. For primitive man, the idea that there was another man in the sky throwing down lightning bolts made sense, since they could only contextualize the world around them in simplistic terms. They weren't to know anything about chemistry, physics or biology, so implicating some kind of agency that expressed intelligence like they did simply made more sense to them. It's nothing but a primitive way of understanding the world around you, which is the natural result of our brains developing that requirement for knowledge.

How did it happen and the absurd ideas of immortality and afterlife appeared for the first time?

See above.

And you answered:

Because the questions are based on presuppositions and baseless assumptions. Various ideas about God did not appear simultaneously, nor did morality precisely coincide with the appearance of such notions. I very much doubt you could produce even the slightest trace of evidence for either claim.

Morality has nothing to do with the stories about gods, giants and men. You cannot bring yourself to separate gods from religion.

You brought up morality when you claimed that the arrival of morality exactly coincided with the rise of belief in God. Now you're saying that it has "nothing to do with them"? You just refuted your own previous statement.

That the ideas of gods, souls, immortality and afterlife appeared some time in the history of man is a fact. What presuppositions and baseless assumptions are talking about?

That they all appeared simultaneously to multiple people around the world. I explained that about five times.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

The authors of the gospels made an unforgivable mistake by writing the gospels in the Greek language (supposing that they were speaking Hebrew). The gospels should have been written in the language that Jesus was supposed to have been speaking.

I think that the gospel writers created Jesus from whole cloth – that there was no man whose words could be recorded. So the gospel-writers were entirely free to write in Greek.

Just my opinion, obviously.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Not necessarily a conspiracy. Indifference will have sufficed....

So scientists spend their entire lives studying the BB Theory, running costly experiments, publishing papers, teaching their graduate students the BB Theory -- all the while being indifferent to the BB Theory? That’s what you believe?

Any minor-league mathematician could walk up to the Big Bang Theory and show it to be in error – winning a Nobel Prize in the process – but no one can be bothered to actually do that? That’s what you believe?

Or am I misunderstanding you?

How about the same reason for not saying in public that the BB theory is ridiculous?

OK. Your idea is that scientists are keeping quiet about the BB Theory’s fakery in order to protect religious sensibilities, meanwhile working their lives away at studying and building the BB Theory. Yes?

In my opinion, that doesn't pass the Straight-Face Test.

But we all see things differently.

 

[Trimijopulos]

But the question of an all-powerful, supernatural deity deity has nothing to do with science (currently). Hence the word "supernatural".

The concept of the supernatural being and the story of its appearance and development is by itself a part of the human history. The supernatural does not exist but the concept does and therefore it is a subject for science to investigate.

Evidence? (that gods predate religion by thousand of years)

There are no myths about gods that mention priests.
You yourself said that: “For primitive man, the idea that there was another man in the sky throwing down lightning bolts made sense,...” and therefore it was the primitive man who is responsible for the idea of the gods and not the non-existent at that time theologians.

Religion appeared when the gods became immaterial beings living in the heavens. I would say 15,000 years ago. The so-called Venus figurines depicting Great Mother are almost 40,000 years old.

You brought up morality when you claimed that the arrival of morality exactly coincided with the rise of belief in God.

Do me the favour and quote the passage in question.

I already answered that one: humans, who were developing brains capable of finding explanations and links between things, found themselves in a world that they needed to contextualize in a simple way, making it easier for them to process. For primitive man, the idea that there was another man in the sky throwing down lightning bolts made sense, since they could only contextualize the world around them in simplistic terms. They weren't to know anything about chemistry, physics or biology, so implicating some kind of agency that expressed intelligence like they did simply made more sense to them. It's nothing but a primitive way of understanding the world around you, which is the natural result of our brains developing that requirement for knowledge.

As you understand there is not even a shred of evidence for the above. It is pure conjecture and, please forgive me, it indicates lack of proper information.

The gods who throw down lightning bolts were produced by the philosophers and there is not the slightest doubt about this being a fact because it has been recorded in the ancient Greek literature as a fact.
The description of the traditional gods of the Greeks, which derives from the monomyth that you mentioned, is a description of some unethical beings who rape and kill people and it is found in the epic poems attributed to Homer and Hesiod.
The philosophers did not like Homer’s description of the gods and invented the allegorical interpretation of the myths (the philosopher Theagenes of the 6th century BC is regarded as the father of the allegorical interpretation). They said that, for example, when in the poems we read that Zeus was raping women the poet meant to say that Zeus was opening holes in the ground for the grass to emerge!!

Plato, however, as you most probably know, did not buy the allegorical nonsense and forbade the teaching of the epic poems in his imaginary Republic. People should not know the truth. People should be taught about good, ethical gods in order to behave properly themselves.

The Old Testament describes gods (Elohim) of the quality that we find in every people’s traditions: the gods of Homer and the gods of the Norse mythology but you, obviously, chose to believe the philosophical allegoric fantasies.

 

[Trimijopulos]

So scientists spend their entire lives studying the BB Theory, running costly experiments, publishing papers, teaching their graduate students the BB Theory -- all the while being indifferent to the BB Theory? That’s what you believe?

If you tell me that the hard working scientists found out what happened just before the BB, then I’ll stop considering it an “Out of Nothing Creation Myth” and I would accept it as a scientific theory.

As to indifference, I did not mean indifference towards the theory but as regards the information conveyed to the public.

 

[Tristesse]

If you tell me that the hard working scientists found out what happened just before the BB, then I’ll stop considering it an “Out of Nothing Creation Myth” and I would accept it as a scientific theory.

As to indifference, I did not mean indifference towards the theory but as regards the information conveyed to the public.

The phrase "before the big bang" leads me to believe that you don't have an understanding of the theory. Since time as we percieve it may not have existed prior to the big bang, so, to talk about "before" is non-sensical, since the term before is an application of time. But regardless of any of that, what difference would it make if they postulated an explanation for "before the big bang?" The theory still stands whether or not they have a current explanation for before the planck time.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

If you tell me that the hard working scientists found out what happened just before the BB, then I’ll stop considering it an “Out of Nothing Creation Myth” and I would accept it as a scientific theory.

Many Creationists declare that the Theory of Evolution is false, since it can't answer the question of how life began. But I think they're just confused about the nature of scientific theories. A theory isn't required to answer each one of our questions in order to be a functioning scientific theory.

As to indifference, I did not mean indifference towards the theory but as regards the information conveyed to the public.

Maybe the world's scientists are conspiring to pretend that the Big Bang is a scientific theory, even though they know it to be simply a creation myth.

But I don't think so. It sounds far-fetched to me.