[maro]

Gem Windcaster, on 19 January 2010 - 12:21 AM, said:

How can you respect something that you clearly haven't got the first idea about.

OK then,

You haven't proved anything Gem, apart from the point that Religious (As opposed to people with Faith) people are argumentative and love to post reams of paragraphs to back up their faith.

Nice of you to gloss over the Bible quote from Judges. To hard to defend?

Pax

[HoosierDaddy]

maro, on 19 January 2010 - 01:43 AM, said:

Gem Windcaster, on 19 January 2010 - 12:21 AM, said:

How can you respect something that you clearly haven't got the first idea about.

OK then,
You haven't proved anything Gem, apart from the point that Religious (As opposed to people with Faith) people are argumentative and love to post reams of paragraphs to back up their faith.

How are the atheists and agnostics in this thread different?

Quote

Nice of you to gloss over the Bible quote from Judges. To hard to defend?

I've read enough of Gem's posts to state that she does NOT interpret the Bible literally. There is a difference between a literal interpretation, and the interpretation of mortal men as to the word of God. The first equates to basically that the Bible is divine code. Show me a non-insane person who believes that. The second is that God's word is interpreted through disciples, and thus it is not a divine code and a secondary source. Readings then become interpretive rather than definitive.

Quote

Pax

What did you just rock out? I don't agree with Gem, but I do most certainly agree now that you called most religious people characters of "blind faith." Look at Morgoth's breakdown of blind faith, and you are insulting any person of organized religion in the world. There IS a reason to have faith, you simply refuse to recognize any semblance of it if you so view it.

There is a book, perhaps you have heard of it. You see, in that book, and in other books written about that book, the Christian faith is dogmatic and from it indoctrination flows. That is not "blind," faith. A blind faith would tell you that if you write something on the internet, then say it is going to happen because you BELIEVE it will, that is blind faith.

This post has been edited by H.D.: 19 January 2010 - 06:42 AM

[Darkwatch]

Maybe this should be in another thread?

[maro]

H.D., on 19 January 2010 - 06:25 AM, said:

maro, on 19 January 2010 - 01:43 AM, said:

Gem Windcaster, on 19 January 2010 - 12:21 AM, said:

How can you respect something that you clearly haven't got the first idea about.

OK then,
You haven't proved anything Gem, apart from the point that Religious (As opposed to people with Faith) people are argumentative and love to post reams of paragraphs to back up their faith.

How are the atheists and agnostics in this thread different?

They aren't but we tend not to personally attack - as Gem has done. Read her statments in reply to me pointing out she had misinterpreted me.

Quote

Nice of you to gloss over the Bible quote from Judges. To hard to defend?

Quote

I've read enough of Gem's posts to state that she does NOT interpret the Bible literally. There is a difference between a literal interpretation, and the interpretation of mortal men as to the word of God. The first equates to basically that the Bible is divine code. Show me a non-insane person who believes that. The second is that God's word is interpreted through disciples, and thus it is not a divine code and a secondary source. Readings then become interpretive rather than definitive.

I was responding to Tiste Simeon's post on the first page originally. He certainly stated that he did follow it literally. By Non-insane, I take it you mean Sane?

As mentioned before, even if the Bible was written about real events, 2000 years of transliteration would have garbled that message, notwithstanding translation into English. Schisms have occured within the Church over what is correct. It's ludicrous to treat it as anything other than a collection of parables.

Quote

Pax

Quote

What did you just rock out? I don't agree with Gem, but I do most certainly agree now that you called most religious people characters of "blind faith." Look at Morgoth's breakdown of blind faith, and you are insulting any person of organized religion in the world. There IS a reason to have faith, you simply refuse to recognize any semblance of it if you so view it.

There is a book, perhaps you have heard of it. You see, in that book, and in other books written about that book, the Christian faith is dogmatic and from it indoctrination flows. That is not "blind," faith. A blind faith would tell you that if you write something on the internet, then say it is going to happen because you BELIEVE it will, that is blind faith.

It's just a Gif chap. Why get all shirty over that? You do know what Pax means don't you?

Knickers still bunched I'd say.

[Terez]

maro, on 20 January 2010 - 01:05 AM, said:

They aren't but we tend not to personally attack - as Gem has done.

I don't know that atheists are any more or less prone to personal attacks than anyone else.

maro said:

As mentioned before, even if the Bible was written about real events, 2000 years of transliteration would have garbled that message, notwithstanding translation into English.

Not necessarily. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, showed that the books of the Old Testament didn't change a bit in 2000 years.

[Cougar]

H.D., on 19 January 2010 - 06:25 AM, said:

I've read enough of Gem's posts to state that she does NOT interpret the Bible literally.

I've read enough of Gem's posts to know that she does NOT interpret anything literally, or possibly inhabit the same reality as the rest of us.

Anyhow that aside, stop baiting each other.

[stone monkey]

Small interjection for the purposes of accuracy...

The Old Testament is not, and has never been, an unchanging document. For instance, the version that Catholics read is a bit different to the version that Protestants read, which themselves are slightly different from the version Jews read. You may also want to read about the various Biblical Apocrypha

Also, textual analysis would seem to indicate that the OT was redacted at least four times before the advent of Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls are actually one of the reasons we can glean this. Both Old and New Testaments have also been altered by both translation and editorialising a number of times since; the most notorious recent attempt being Conservapedia's Bible Project to "correct" the "Liberal Bias" of the KJV)

Islam asserts btw that no-one has truly read The Koran until they've done so in the original old Arabic, as translation can only serve to introduce errors. There is a very significant number of Muslims who learn old Arabic for precisely that purpose.

None of this digression would seem to have much to do with the topic at hand. But if you're going to argue, you might as well at least do it with the correct information to hand...

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 20 January 2010 - 03:26 PM

[Gem Windcaster]

maro, dude, I certainly take your posts as an attack, but I definitely do not take it personally - your view of the religious is so different from mine that it would be ridiculous for me to do so. But you are definitely attacking, man, no matter how many 'pax' or rocking you put in your posts.

I didn't comment on your bible quote because I have no clue what you were trying to say - apparently asking you what you mean isn't good enough to get an answer - how am I supposed to answer an unknown question? I don't really need to defend anything, man, least of all to you.

And for the seventh time, I am not taking it personally - that doesn't mean I can't respond to your attacks.



And I disagree that the topic of people of faith being stupid is off topic. I think it has a valid influence when discussing the topic of this thread.

[Terez]

stone monkey, on 20 January 2010 - 03:19 PM, said:

.....if you're going to argue, you might as well at least do it with the correct information to hand...

What I said was what I was taught in a religion course (which was taught by an agnostic Jew, incidentally). I never looked all that deeply into the subject, but do you know of an account of the differences? I assume they were relatively minor differences, or there would have been more noise about it in the churches.

[maro]

Gem Windcaster, on 20 January 2010 - 06:45 PM, said:

maro, dude, I certainly take your posts as an attack, but I definitely do not take it personally - your view of the religious is so different from mine that it would be ridiculous for me to do so. But you are definitely attacking, man, no matter how many 'pax' or rocking you put in your posts.

I didn't comment on your bible quote because I have no clue what you were trying to say - apparently asking you what you mean isn't good enough to get an answer - how am I supposed to answer an unknown question? I don't really need to defend anything, man, least of all to you.

And for the seventh time, I am not taking it personally - that doesn't mean I can't respond to your attacks.



And I disagree that the topic of people of faith being stupid is off topic. I think it has a valid influence when discussing the topic of this thread.

Gem, if you're calling it an "Attack" (which you do twice), you are definitely taking it personally. Likewise your reference about "Defending" as well.

Heat, Kitchen etc

[Gem Windcaster]

maro, on 21 January 2010 - 02:05 AM, said:

Gem Windcaster, on 20 January 2010 - 06:45 PM, said:

maro, dude, I certainly take your posts as an attack, but I definitely do not take it personally - your view of the religious is so different from mine that it would be ridiculous for me to do so. But you are definitely attacking, man, no matter how many 'pax' or rocking you put in your posts.

I didn't comment on your bible quote because I have no clue what you were trying to say - apparently asking you what you mean isn't good enough to get an answer - how am I supposed to answer an unknown question? I don't really need to defend anything, man, least of all to you.

And for the seventh time, I am not taking it personally - that doesn't mean I can't respond to your attacks.



And I disagree that the topic of people of faith being stupid is off topic. I think it has a valid influence when discussing the topic of this thread.

Gem, if you're calling it an "Attack" (which you do twice), you are definitely taking it personally. Likewise your reference about "Defending" as well.

Heat, Kitchen etc

Excuse me?

Dude, look, it's possible to reqognize something as being meant as an attack while not taking it personally, but maybe that is too difficult a concept for you to grasp. And you were the one that mentioned defending, while I explained to you that I do not feel the need to defend myself. That is not taking it personally. Do I need to go slower?

[Powder]

I do have some level of expertise as to the condition of the text as we have received it today. We have thousands(lit) of manuscripts of the Bible. Of those copies, they are remarkably similar--the changes that have occurred do not effect anything of doctrinal significance. Mostly it is in the form of spelling, or adding information to clarify historical places. There are a few editorial glosses which are unhelpful, but thanks to modernity and higher criticism these glosses can be removed in order to gain a clearer reading of the text in question.

As to translation, yes the message does always suffer a bit in translation both of culture and language. I assure you that every effort has been taken to ease the transition and there are numerous commentaries which provide sufficient cultural data to gain a clear reading of the text in question. I feel confident that MOST translations of the text are sufficient to convey the message inherent within it to the average reader.

-powder

[Hetan]

I've just had to read through this thread as it has been brought up in the mod lair.
Why do these discussions on religion always degenerate into a school-yard squabble?

Maro and Gem - both of you back off from this thread and each other's throats. I'll communicate with you further by PM.

If this topic degenerates further it will be closed, which is a shame as it was a good subject for discussion.

[rhulad]

Back on topic, I am not sure that there is a correlation between fantasy readers and their religious beliefs. One could argue that it has something to do with intelligence, but I don't buy that. There are many very intelligent people whom are adamant believers in both God and Religion. I would say that it has more to do with the complexity of the works of sci-fi/fantasy which draws in a crowd of geeks/nerds. I would also say that more often then not a geek/nerd will be an atheist/agnostic rather than religious, as most would like to see proof of something's existence rather than belief based on faith alone.

I don't really have anything to back any of this up, just my opinion.

[Adjutant Stormy~]

Old thread is old!

The problem is indeed more centered around dumb people.

[Tiste Simeon]

I forgot about this thread. Amusing to read through though. It seems that there are people attacking from both the atheist side and the "religious" side (how I hate the term religious...) It reminds me of good old Richard Dawkins who spends most of his time preaching in a very religious way about how preaching in a religious way is responsible for just about everything ever...