[Editor’s Note: It was my intent to have a reply ready before posting this, but I’ve found myself putting it off due to a busy weekend so I’m going to go ahead and post it as is. I’ll address it properly in the comments as soon as I have the opportunity though I’m sure there are several regulars who will probably be more than capable of addressing it first.]
I’ve heard repeated here several times that Horus, an Egyptian god, is carbon copy of Jesus. The obvious implication by those that have made this statement is that Jesus is a copycat version of an earlier Egyptian deity. The purpose of this entry is to disembowel that proposition once and for all.
When I first heard that Horus was the inspiration for Jesus several years ago, I didn’t give it much credence because I couldn’t establish any source material for the claims. I still can’t, but the internet is as adept at allowing anybody and everybody to pass on misinformation.
Upon further research, I’ve concluded that this theory originated with Gerald Massey, an English poet, born 1828, died 1927. He published primarily poems, but had an interest in Egypt. He parlayed that interest in Egypt into several books and lectures in which he set forth the proposition that Horus was in essence the first Jesus, and Jesus was a cheap imitation. The primary basis for his writing is the Egyptian Book of the Dead. This is available on-line and you can easily look it up to read it yourself. Be forewarned that forced reading of this would be an extremely efficient form of torture.
It should be noted that Massey’s actual proposition was that Jesus was a copycat from more than just Horus. According to Massey, Jesus was a compilation of an innumerable number of Egyptian deities. There were over 2,000 deities who had every human and godlike characteristic one can think of, excepting Superman’s power to stop a speeding bullet.
Since Massey, there is a dearth of anybody with any credentials that has adopted a straight Horus=Jesus theory. There is a one individual that has adopted some of Massey’s thoughts and incorporated them into a book-The Christ Conspiracy. This appears to be the basis for the claims that I see. The author is Acharya S. Her website is http://www.truthbeknown.com I note that Richard Price, a noted Christ Myther, and one that I take much more seriously then Acharya, said the following:
“Those of use who uphold any version of the controversial Christ Myth theory find ourselves immediately the object not just of criticism, but even of ridicule. And it causes us chagrin to be lumped together with certain writers with whom we share the Christ Myth butt little else…..
His other criticism, like mine, is that she uses very dated sources (19th Century) who were in Price’s words “eccentrics, freethinkers, and theosophists.”
Les, I am using your post from 1/3/05 as an example of the claims because you carry more credibility than most. That said here are the claims and what I have found:
Claim #1-Horus and Jesus are born from a virgin.
Horus’s mother is Isis. Isis was married to Osiris. We do not know for what length of time, but presumably the marriage was consummated. Whether it was or wasn’t doesn’t matter though. After Osiris is killed, Isis puts him back together again (he was hacked into 14 pieces) except for his penis which was tossed in a river or a lake. Iris fashions a substitute penis for him, humps him and here comes Horus. There is nothing virginal about that.
Claim #2-Both Horus and Jesus were born to a Mary and Joseph. (Seb)
As noted Isis is Horus’s mother’s name not Mary. In addition, Seb is not Horus’s father, Osiris is. Seb is Osiris’s father. Further, Seb is a distinct name from Joseph. Putting them side by side does not make them synonyms, and that appears to be what was done here.
Claim #3-Both were born of royal descent.
This is accurate.
Claim #4-Both births were announced by angels and witnessed by shepherds.
I can find nothing that mentions that the birth of Horus was announced by an angel or witnessed by shepherds. I have found that Horus was born in a swamp, which is a pretty unlikely place for shepherds. In addition Acharya mentions that Horus was born in a cave. Massey makes no mention of this, although he does represent that Mithra was born in a cave.
Claim #5-Both were heralded by stars and angels.
There is no star that heralded Horus’s birth nor is there any angel announcing it. Archarya in a footnote in The Origins of Christianity indicates that that there are three stars named the three kings in Orion and then relates this to the birth of Jesus. When we look to the stories regarding Horus, we find no star or angel announcing his birth. To the extent that Acharya S relies upon Massey and Massey relies upon what is depicted in the panels at Luxor see (from an atheist) further regarding virgin birth and pronouncement by angels http://www.frontline-apologetics.com/carrier_luxor_inscription.htm
Claim #6-Both had later visitors (Horus-3 deities and Jesus-3 wisemen.)
There is no indication that there ever were 3 wisemen. The bible never mentions the number of wisemen, nor is there any document that reflects 3 deities at the birth of Horus. See the website referenced in Claim #5.
Claim #7-Both had murder plots against them.
There is mention that Seth did want to kill Horus, and Herod wanted to kill Jesus. so this is accurate.
Claim#8-Both came of age at 12, were baptized and their baptizers were executed.
There is no indication that Horus was preaching in a temple when he was 12. In fact, Massey indicates that Hours the child was depicted as a “weakling.” That doesn’t jive with story of Jesus preaching in the temple. Again this appears to have been a confabulation from Acharya and repeated by others.
Horus was never baptized in any of the Horus stories. In addition, Acharya mentions that John the Baptist is actually Anup the Baptizer. This individual is never mentioned anywhere in any Horus account. There is not even a footnote in Archaya’s on-line work The Origins of Christianity to support this. There is nothing.
Claim #9-Both had 12 disciples.
According to the Horus accounts, Horus had four semi-gods that were followers. There is some indication of 16 human followers and an unknown number of blacksmiths that went into battle with him. Horus did not have 12 disciples. Jesus reportedly did. Acharya failed to give a footnote to support this.
Massey points to a mural in the Book of Hades in which there are twelve reapers. Horus is not present in this scene. For Massey to make this connection he goes to a different scene within the same mural. In this scene there is a picture of a god whose name is the Master of Joy. Horus is never depicted although in other murals the artists do depict Horus. Had the artists ascribed 12 reapers in any relation to Horus all they had to do was put Horus at the scene. They did not.
Claim #10-Both walked on water.
Horus didn’t, or at least there is no record that I can find that he did. Massey does not maintain that Hours did. Massey uses wild conjecture to connect the story of fish man, Oannes, not Horus, to Jesus. Oannes came out of the sea during the day, and went back into the sea at night. Massey makes the two analogous because by his calculations, Jesus walked on water during the day.
As to Acharya, she as usual provides nothing to substantiate this.
Claim #11-Both performed miracles.
This is true although the miracles were different in scope and nature.
Claim #12 Both exorcised demons and raised Lazarus.
The actual claim is that Horus raised Osiris from the dead and that the name Osiris morphed to Lazarus. It doesn’t matter because Horus did not bring Osiris back to life. There is no mention of this in any document regarding the story. Horus did avenge Osiris’s death, but that did not raise Osiris from the dead.
Claim #13-Both held a Sermon on the Mount; both were transfigured on a mountain, died by crucifixion along with two thieves and were buried in tombs where they paid a quick visit to Hell and then rose from the dead after 3 days time, both resurrections were witness by women, and both will supposedly reign for 1,000 years in the Millennium.
These are the most damning claims if they were proven true in my opinion. Yet, I can locate none of this. No sermon, no transfiguration, certainly no crucifixion w/ two thieves, no trip to hell and no resurrection. There was an incident in which Horus was torn to pieces and Iris requested the crocodile god to fish him out of the water he was tossed into, which was done, but that’s it. I am at a loss to refute this because I can not find anything to support it.
Massey does compares a story about the Autumn Equinox related to Osiris, not Horus, as the symbolic crucifixion. There is no indication that Horus is involved in any way. There is no mention by Massey of any Sermon on the Mount. No mention or any actual crucifixion, no two thieves, no burial in a tomb. Massey does not maintain that anything of the sort occurred with Horus.
In short, of the claims outlined in this entry, I find the comparison between Horus and Jesus to consist of the following: they were of royal descent, they allegedly worked miracles and there were murder plots against them.
Lee:
To me history is little more than something to speculate on, it doesn’t predict the future but you can notice trends from it. The bible has had so many oppertunities for manipulation by translators and the like that it’s bound to have inacuracies, and there will also be highly questionable stuff (morally and scientifically as you pointed out), however you can conclude that at least one of the people who wrote the bible had good intentions, because there are bits where the intention is kind, and also it does try to give people food for thought, so I think that writer(s) wants it to be questioned so as to understand the point they’re trying to make. Of course, this is somewhat masked by all the bad stuff but, like all things, it’s efficient to break it down into individual points to be considered for what they’re worth.
Who cares who wrote or even if it’s true so long as it gets people to think? This is why i think theist fundies misinterpreted the intention
A religous theory that couples with science has to accept science’s explanation for everthing that science can explain, and only comes in when it can’t. Any theist theory that contradicts science won’t be able to couple with all of it, and hence must find it’s own explanation for what it doesn’t agree with, and for that it must be complete, self-explanitory and logical.
There is something in quantum mechanics known as the uncertainty principle, this is (as I see it) one of the only places where divine manipulation can occur without magically creating/destroying enthalpy. By manipulating the uncertainty principle you can alter the position of electrons in an atom’s valence shell , if you do this you effectiviely change the atom’s shape, such that when it collides with another atom the angle it bounces off at will be different, allowing you to control the collision path (think of billiads) of tha atom. Since some atoms can be charged (call them ions), this method allows the distribution of charge in, say the brain, to be controlled, which would in turn allow control over what nerve signals built up (which is necessary for physical actions), hence a possible link between the mind and an outside infulence. This method would require enormous micromanagement, but either way, if some god from another dimension interacted with the world it would need some link into the physical world
Still if it’s jiggered to fool you, you won’t know any different and it would be completely able to thwart any attempt to disprove it being a dream by producing results that you’d expect to happen. It’s one of those things you can’t prove either way so you have no choice but to accept it as a possibility, because otherwise how would you feel if it turned out to be exactly that? Even if we did discover this world is imaginary after we die we wouldn’t know if the realm we’d be in after would be another layer of dream or not, indeed the only way to prove that you’re at the top of reality is to find an infinite source of data, this is because every higher layer of reality needs to completely contain the data of the one below, and if one is infinitely large it cannot be contained, so it must be at the top. This universe has a very large quantity of data, but it’s not infinite, quantisation puts limits on the smallest units of energy, and the pauli exclusion principle puts limits on physical space and creates the need for electron shells. Even irrational numbers which have an infitite number of decimal places can be calculated from rational numbers (those with a limited number of decimal places) using certain models (such as pi=circle perameter/2r) which is how something like a computer, with finite storage capacity, is able to print any number of digits of an irrational number.
Richard dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, I agree with evolution because it makes statistical sense. What i’m adressing is physics. Laws of physics apply to the world, there is no explanation for why, just that they do, and we have an effect much like langton’s ant where we are trying to predict the outcome of simple rules but don’t have an explanation for those rules themselves. Laws of physics detemine things such as gravity, the amount of kinetic energy an object of certain momentum has, and the extent to which electrical charges interact, however the extent to which these laws applies always depends on an arbitary number called a physical constant, changing this (if that were possible) would change, say, how fast the universe expands or how strong your magnet is, and setting it to a negative would invert that law, so that for example you could make gravity repelling or like charges attract, and setting the constant to zero stops the law from existing. Why should it be that these arbitary numbers are constant? that is completely improbable. Indeed you could ask why it isn’t so that there isn’t an infinite number of laws of physics because the probability of having a constant of zero (as with any number) is infinitely small because there is an infinite number of possibilities.
The doctrine itself has nothing to do with pollution. There is no bible passage to my knowledge saying anything like ‘thou shalt use gass guzzling 4×4’s and smite the energy efficient’. It’s a seperate decision whether or not someome does something polluting. The reason why bible bashers tend to be more polluting is because what makes them a bible basher is also what makes them a polluter (namely the inability to think that something they don’t like could be true), also these people tend to ally with those who say something that furthers their cause for so as long as they do so. We should both agree with this, I’m no friend of the xians because they need to question their own material. Cult does serve a purpose though because you need to be brainwashed at least once to understand that (dark) side a little better.
I was thinking of a law of physics. Natural selection isn’t a law to me, but a statistical trend that you would logically expect from what we know of genetics. Evolution doesn’t care what the species thinks so long as it reproduces and it’s habitat is sustainable. If makind wipes itself out then that will be evolution eliminating the species that caused global warming, among innocent ones too.
Maybe some, granted, but there are a helluva lot who don’t want this even if they don’t feel too worried about it or doubt it’s happening, most still want eath to support life. Only the fundies take it to the extreme of believing against all logic at all costs
You can’t choose to live under (or avoid) natural selection, it applies to every living thing whether they like it or not as the probability of producing fertile offpring, the best you can do is increase your chances of surviving according to the habitat you live in. ‘Increasing the chances of survival by living in an eco-friendly way’ is what you meen by ‘practising natural selection’.
If greed is a trait that makes a culture less likely to survive, then given time that culture will disappear by process of evolution. Others will die too, but so long as the offender goes evolution doesn’t care, even if that meens a sterile planet.
If all civilizations that preceeded us have fallen, what does that tell you? Does this tell you that the current civilizations are exempt? This is what the “future” is telling us. Not IF we will, fall, be about when it will happen. If history excludes the story about the time Cesar slipped on his ass, at least this part we know and can SEE is true.
If the “Good” intention of Moses was to accumulate religious and political power is seen as something good, then I would have to disagree on the “good” motives of the authors of the bible.
From reading the bible and it’s plagerism, the only motive I can see in any of the writers is deception in order to fool people into following them. How can this be good?
Right, obviously you are talking about the good ol’ teachings of Jesus on “loving your neighbor” and how can that be evil? The truth is, a teaching like that can be worse than the greatest evils you can imagine. Just stop and think about that teaching for a minute. “What if people loved each other?” Well, the world would probably be much worse. There would be no animals because that law was never applied to animals. So here we have a world of humans farming the whole world to lovingly feed each other. The result? No balance. The world will be filled with human tribbles until they have exhausted their food supply and finally put themselves into extinction. So Jesus’ law DOESN’T WORK and defies the balance of nature.
How’s that for a breakdown?
Think about what? How they were put here to be rulers of the earth and conquer and subdue it? I don’t think the fundies are misinterpreting that teaching.
But they don’t. When scientific evidence shows the bible in error, most religions dismiss science in favor of faith in the bible.
If something isn’t immediately explainable to them, they should perhaps wait instead of filling that “gap” with Easter Eggs.
I’m not going to pretend I know physics as much as you do. I don’t. What you seem to be saying is that there is no evidence God is controlling every raindrop and piss we take.
Despite what you speculate or say, you are still here and you accept this reality and follow it’s laws. If you didn’t, you would be dead. You would say “That speeding bus doesn’t exist” and walk right in front of it.
Are these phenomenons greater or lesser than the idea of an all-powerful God? Are you saying because they are constant, that it needed a superior, controlling, “constistant” intelligence?
The doctrine has everything to do with pollution. Building civilization is polluting in itself. And the doctrine of breeding without limit in order to “fill the Earth” with as many worshippers as possible is the pinnacle of pollution. Population controls goes against the principle of “loving your neighbor” and respecting his “human” rights. Religions live as if no other species is as important as they are. 6.7 Billion humans creates an enormous amount of garbage. If it were just 10 million humans, pollution would be barely noticed. A trillion earthworms would not even come close to the pollution one human makes.
Natural Selection is a law if you want to keep living. Physics applies just the same, but that’s a deeper story that doesn’t need to be explained in great detail. I’m sure the effects of physics is just as important, but we are, nevertheless, following that law because it’s a little more obvious that we MUST follow that law and it works as long as we don’t meddle too much or do something stupid, like trying to split the atom. The species you see today would not exist without Natural Selection. Nothing would evolve. The strong as well as the weak would not survive. So what would there be left?
Hey, it doesn’t matter that we’re destroying the earth, we’re SAVED by grace. We’re going to heaven.
I strongly doubt a god so well versed in science and natural selection would welcome a bunch of jackasses because they “love him” out of terror.
I agree that you can’t avoid natural selection. But what is happening is people are under the illusion that they are exempt from the laws of Natural Selection. If they have a heart problem, they’ll transplant an new one (so they can pass their bad genetics to their offspring later) never thinking that these traits will show up later in their children, who also don’t practice natural selection.
Eco-friendly is a bit different than what I was thinking. This sounds to me of a controlled environment.
In the rawest terms, the native americans are examples of people who practiced natural selection. They were hunters and fought other tribes. The effect of this was an evolving human that wasn’t so stupid as to believe that clear-cutting forests was a good idea like their European counterparts did.
Is this what evolution is all about? A goddamned sterile, lifeless planet? I would rethink that.
I’m not talking about fair – I’m talking about a values assessment – you argue that religion is bad, and you’re claiming that, from reason, people should lower the standard of discourse to be more willing to fill the gaps where evidence is absent. The merit of an idea is measured on the evidence of it’s truth, not on the degree of faith required to fill those gaps. The idea that Jesus=Horus is without merit. The idea that Horus was a forerunner to Jesus has some merit.
Btw: if they allow you to use subtraction, they allow you to use addition.
Got a basis for that claim?
Actually, yes, I would. I’m not above saying that human beings are easily crafted into monsters, which is, in part, why I disagree with the idea that humans are the vehicle for religion – the religious simulacrum acts as a vehicle for human motivations, which lead to the intentional actions above. However, this is also true of many other things – the concern is not the religion, it is the weakness inherent to playing as an agent to said simulacrum. In other words, everyone has sympathies, and can be manipulated through them. It is merely that, for some sympathies, a large number of people sharing them is a bad thing. I contend that religion plays on existing sympathies in adults and imparts the sympathies in children. This leads to the pervasiveness of religion.
That speaks for the manipulators; what of the subservients? What of the masses of people that listen, act, and are manipulated? How does this serve them?
But see, there are many, many, many religious beliefs that respect the earth, and elevate its welfare above that of humans. They generally see the Earth as a life-bearer or mother, that it should be nurtured, protected, and preserved. If I’d read the Bible, Koran, and TNK cover-to-cover, perhaps I’d find that they, too, ask that we preserve the planet, somewhere (though they’d doubtless go on to contradict themselves). Your concern, I suspect, sits with influential leaders of these religions, who are corrupt, wasteful mongrels. But wait a sec – so are most people, religious or not. Don’t get me wrong, I think asking people to use their heads instead of buying into some fairy-tale garbage is asking very little – but people in general aren’t down with thinking. Thinking leads to questioning, which leads to change. It may even lead to responsibilities. The prospects are terrifying!
Religion is a problem, but it’s not that problem. That problem is that, admidst our excessive sense of entitlement, our pursuit of a career, house, picket fence and 2.5 puts an artificially large number of degrees of seperation between individuals and the problems they cause. Same reason we aren’t in Iraq helping rebuild the infrastructure – we really don’t care that much, and the obstruction of those other goals really isn’t worth the investment.
Seriously rethink your position: you’re so caught up in green-think that you’ve turned into exactly the type of alarmist that has set back progress on this matter for decades. People like you are the reason that tenured professors disbelieve global warming – they were there for the global cooling of the early 80’s, they were there for every apocalypse prediction, every oil exhaustion that never came to pass, they were there for everything.
Now, being that you can give it, I hope you can take it, cos I’ll look like an ass if you just disregard this.
If you actually give a shit, shut the fuck up, and let someone who knows how to present evidence to ley men do the talking for you. You want people to care for this planet, you have to convince them, not alienate them. Trust me; people, in general, will not listen to you if you’re abrasive; they would sooner attack you because you offended them than listen because you had something important to say, somewhere amidst the condescension, anger and insults.
The welfare of the planet is a recurring theme of your perspective: bear in mind that religion bears only some of the culpability in the matter.
Lee, you mean this Bembine Tablet? I’ll drop everything and get right on it.
How about a fair value assessment?
No, not that people should lower their standard of discourse where evidence is absent, but to dispell myths for truths.
I’ve already said that the spelling of JESUS does not equal HORUS and the whole argument was as reasonable as claiming steel=iron. Steel does not equal iron but is related to it, just as I’ve stated Jesus is related to Horus. How many times do you want me to rephrase that? You need to talk to Consigliere about his unreasonable standards he imposed on the debate from the start.
Not in this case. Consigliere won’t allow any additional evidence to build on the idea that Jesus is descendant from Horus.
I would think the Son of God could get all the money he wanted from the mouths of fishes, wouldn’t you? Unless of course, he wasn’t the son of God at all and was just some con artist.
Biblically speaking, he was out to make money. It says it in the bible.
What you don’t understand is that humans are the inventors of religions. From the Mayans to Judiasm to Christianity, they are all evidently stem from human authorship. In fact, as I have stated from the get go of people like Moses, that it was corrupt from its very beginnings.
Of course I agree that they are collabarators. But, as just about any person from a cult will tell you, reading stuff from any different belief is frowned upon. Mabye people want to be controlled like that. But it’s unhealthy for the planet.
I agree that even in the bible it mentions god as destroying those who destroy the earth. The problem here is the readers inevitably think it’s always the other guy. Not to mention that, the other scriptures they are following are the teachings that are causing it’s destruction.
A person may think that by buying a car that uses less fuel and giving to charities to “stop” extinction is good and he is saving the world. But when he practices the other teachings where farming is considered a trade from God and proceeds to farm the rainforests, have lots of children, and build houses on it, he is doing more harm than good.
Remember the alarmists who were around talking about a growing crisis in Germany before World War 2? Gee, all the signs were there. There were people who were alarmed and there were people who were calm. Remember that war was not all that long ago. What were the reasons for that war? Are they being repeated? Some “alarmists” are saying that they are. Some say everything is peachy-fine.
I only need to point to you that failure in the economy, agriculture, and political unrest are the catalysts for future conflict. Alarmist? I think the problems in the world have been understated.
It’s funny that you hurl insults at the person hurling insults in order to stop the insults. But whatever floats your boat. It’s about kind of the same thing the Christians did when they got to the new world. It was “You Indians had better start loving your neighbork, or we’ll kill you.”
Where is this evidence you want to show me? Is it buried somewhere under all this philosophy? You should let ley men do the talking for you or shut up.
Sigh, you really don’t understand at all, do you? You haven’t a clue.
I though that all those nice men in white suits were collecting for Jesus. Isn’t that what they tell their viewers?
If Jesus came back to earth he could collect Trillions of dollars. The Catholic Church, Protestants, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hare Krishnas, Salvation Army, and just about every religious franchise would have to owe up for using his name to make money.
If they refuse, he could always just take his followers out of their churches and leave those churches bankrupt and exposed. After all, they have high overheads and couldn’t use his name anymore. However, I believe the name “Satan” would still be available, but that’s really going to take a miracle to get people to buy into that.
I rest my case, your honor.
Lee:
Every civilisation that has a beginning must have an end (that’s a condition of it starting), but that’s not the context that I meant – rather things where there is more than one possible outcome
Moses accumulating power was not one of those good intention things, I’m referring to what messages of love and peace there are. Seperate and discard the bad stuff for the moment, try to look for what good there might be and you’ll find something. Indeed you address this later so I’ll quote that next
You may say there’s more bad than good, maybe so, but that doesn’t rule out the validitiy of what was good. I’ll use the analogy of a mass murderer that saves a baby, they are a person who’s done a lot of bad stuff but also some good, good and bad don’t cancel out to give some overall net sum, just as saving the baby won’t bring anyone back. To me good and bad are 2 seperate scales. When you are able to recognise the bad, you have the option of seeing past it, or discarding it, I find that helps when dealing with people anyway because people are also mixtures of good and bad, they are not some total.
If people really thought about ‘love thy neighbour’ i’m sure they would apply it to animals, because they would recognise similarities between animals and people, such as feelings, and genuinely good people also tend to like animals. If there was risk of starvation people would be less inclined to have children anyway, they would, again, love them enough to put that ahead of their own personal satisfaction of having children. I think ‘love thy neighbour’ meant more than anything have a basic level of care for everyone regardless of who they are or what they’ve done, with this everyone will be ok because people would look out for each other and nobody would abuse the system because they would care too much to want to abuse. This might seem idealistic but whether god exists or not it’s how I’d like earth to be, and we can make at least some progress towards that ideal in our everyday life.
Think about why care for people? why uphold the spirit of the law? why look for the best in people (JC admiring the teeth of a dead dog)? what constitutes ‘sin’ (or general wrongdoing) in your opinion and why? would a loving god punish people eternally? why not?, etc. These are often a little hidden but it is something people can get something out of, particularly thinking about the psychology behind a hypothetical ‘god’, why does this universe exist? either way something happened, but why if there was nothing beforehand to give any reason. The bible makes an interesting specimin for philosophical and psychological study, and everyone is in some respects a student of everything as I see it.
Then those who you’re talking about have work to do before they have a watertight theory. This does require knowledge of science. But crappy christian theories suggest nothing about what god would actually be like, it’s just human-created theories and interpretations. No human theory is necessarily suggestive of reality.
Btw by self-explanitory I mean explains it’s own existence. Neither god nor science does this for me because both hit a most fundamental point and go no further. I don’t understand why anything should exist at all, but at least something must do for us to exist in the form that we do, be that the universe or god. There is no reason for anything to exist if beforehand there is nothing else and no rules. The best I can do is resort to the anthropic principle
Because if there was it wouldn’t be possible to not believe, and in that case knowing of the existence would deny people the oppertunity to fully question it, as atheists do. There is also nothing ruling it out, and I illustrated a loophole in physics that might allow divine interaction. As I said, to create a credible theistic theory you need to know science. I can explain anything you need to know, anyone can learn anything and nothing is beyond comprehension, this is something that I disagree with a lot of theists about, because a lot of them suggest that it’s not worth bothering thinking because from their view it’s beyond comprehension, but I have yet to come across something truely incomprehensable, all you need is the motivation and ability to break it down, that works with everything.
I’d be dead because death would be the result me and everyone else involved (those, if any, that are more than puppets) would expect to observe, and to maintain it’s integrity the system would need to kill me because otherwise it would be questioned by either myself or other observer.
By this point we can only speculate, we don’t know enough to do better. Best to be ok with any possibility, and for that you need to extrapolate on each, and for that you need to speculate in all possible directions, I’m ok with oblivion too, because it’s a possibility so i needed to be ok with it were it to happen.
Every house of cards needs a table to support it, physics is no different. Something is keeping those numbers constant, and that needs to be explained. God is one possibility but then you have problems explaing what holds that stack of cards up. The only other explanation I’ve been able to come up with is that maybe the constants somehow interdepend and set each other’s values, though how this is set up needs to be explained
I doubt a reasonable, kind, god would put people in a planet where we don’t know he exists and expect us to worship him, indeed why would he really care if we did or not? I think the xians got it wrong when they think god wants worshiping, this is one of the food for thought things of the bible, it’s just the reader has to be ready and willing to think about it
And as I said earlier, love and care should limit human population because people won’t want to put children through starvation, etc. It’s not a condition of belief to love and care, and it’s not a condition of belief to pollute.
Regarding physics if it’s possible, then the laws allow it. Splitting the atom without control may well be stupid and kill us, but it’s just as possible and within the boundries of science as committing suicide is. My concept of scientific law is defining what is possible because at the quantum level something’s either possible or it’s not, there is no varying extent of possibility.
If global warming spirals out of control earth would be sterile of life, much like venus. That’s only a bad thing if you consider the existence of life a good thing, but there is no neccessity to. If global warming kills stuff but doesn’t spiral out of control, it will simply kill people (+other animals) until some equilibrium is reached and human population will be capped off at a certain maximum, much like animal/plant populations reach a ceiling level when competing for food or light. Thing is it’s possible that global warming does spiral out of control because water is a greenhouse gas, and as that evaporates the process accelerates, but we can prevent that happening by dumping something like cetyl alcohol in to form a layer that makes evaporation more difficult, this is done at resevoirs
100% agreed, fundies got the meaning of things wrong
And so natural selection will eliminate them, given time and enough drive to do so, if there’s a genetic tendancy to not believe in natural selection that is
Sustainable logging – more responsible in the long term, and so long term you’d expect the natives to have the upper hand. They weren’t given the oppertunity because the european short-term rush yields quick rewards at a time when the effects had no effect on the future of anyone you knew. Given time and all other factors put to one side we’ll end up more like the natives if the european-styled of us are wiped out, but the problems come with nature being indiscriminate and the effects being worldwide, but if the effect is more localised such as an economic advantage to those who still have trees by the year x the selection will be more discriminating and taking an economic form
Evolution is about killing what doesn’t abide, such that we tend to observe an improved average. It’s not always as selective as one might like, especially when the effects are widely spread. If the species of earth as a whole are incabable of maintaining their planet then they might be eliminated. Keep in mind there may well be life on other planets far away, so evolution is not restricted to one planet, we’re talking about all the species of all the planets (and maybe moons) of the universe
True, but he’d also be killed by someone simply for being who he is (fundies of other faiths might…) also as LH said nobody’s going to seriously believe anyone claiming to be JC, even if they were, he’d be institutionalised unless he could do a lot of miracles, on demand. JC could come back as another identity, hence you have lotsa peole claiming to be him, or at least thinking they are
I’m just going to jump in here a moment to comment on something Lee said earlier in the thread. Specifically…
The quickest way a True Believer™ will raise my ire is by demanding, as Lee does above, that they know my thoughts and intentions are contrary to what I’ve stated in my entries. Lee, you don’t know Consi from Adam’s cat and while you may be able to draw certain assumptions about him based on his comments here and some of his stated beliefs, to claim to literally know as though you could read his mind just puts you in the same category as the endless parade of True Believers™ in my mind.
Be obnoxious if you wish, it’s not like I’m not obnoxious from time to time as the name of this site should attest, but if you’re going to insist on putting words in other people’s mouths instead of dealing with what they’re saying then I’m going to consider your comments worth ignoring.
Well, it seems we already know these civilizations will fall as soon as we build them, so why do we keep building them? It looks to me like there is always the same tragic outcome everytime they do it. This is hardly evolutionary, so it must be some other reason.
We aren’t cherry-picking the bible, are we? Actually, a lot of these civilization leaders are convinced that they are doing “good” and have the best intentions. It’s funny that they would turn around later and say “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Was the babies name Adolf Hitler?
As for good and bad. Is stealing wrong? Why is it wrong for me to steal food from a farmer? Because he “owns” the land and food? Says who? Who makes up these rules? Every year good and bad is determined by central governments, but does this make them so? Aren’t they the mass murderers? THESE people are defining right and wrong? I beg to differ.
The utopian dream. Of course this was the dream of the builders of civilization. It relied on the idea that people could be made better. (Read Daniel Quinn-My Ishmael). But it never worked. It didn’t work because this planet is a planet with limited resources, and in many cases, those resources are fought over.
Competition over those resources is part of evolution. The utopian idea of loving your neighbor goes against the evolutionary rule or limited competition. If one were to practice the Jesus rule, he would find even the cockroaches eating right out of his mouth.
Competing for food is part of natural selection. The competitors that are better at it tend to climb the evolutionary ladder. The utopian ideal plans to get rid of that concept.
It’s a ridiculous fairy tale concept that paints a world where lions eat straw and everyone is beating their swords into plowshares in order to farm the planet (Farming the planet is what is causing extinction, here, the bible promises more of it)
The idea about caring for fellow humans evolved from intertribal relations. Again, I believe Richard Dawkins explains this in his book. It’s just a self-preservation strategy that has evolved into a twisted form of moral code. Tribes would tend to love their own people then kick the asses of other tribes in low-level attacks to keep them on equal footing.
This culture does the same thing but in a more monsterous way. They’ll demand people be civilized, then they’ll take the whole planet to war and butcher millions.
The gap in the differences between religion and science get larger, not smaller, with each passing day.
To know what this “God” would actually be like you could look at nature and science. Apparently a god would tend to be more scientific and even reasonable, as opposed to the bloodthirsty demanding worship-obsessed tyrant the bible says he is.
Apparently, different creatures are also allowed to live different ways. The rabbit lives his way, the fox his way, the eagle his way, the eskimo his way. It would be silly to think based on nature that all humans should be monogamous farmers given the observation of the diversity of life and lifestyles in other species.
What does it matter why you exist? Are squirrels asking the same questions? They are far too busy searching for food and living. The same is true of the native north american indians. They weren’t all concerned about life after death and living the right way. They had no real estate to divide or reason to make laws over land. That’s a feature of our culture.
Is the bible and the description of their god consistant with what you see in nature and the world around you? Are we really exempt from Natural Selection as the bible indicates? I don’t need a book written by a prophet to understand and appreciate the workings of nature.
Ah, more speculation. There is only one way to find out for sure. But I am in now way suggesting you do that.
I’m ok with hell, myself.
Er, ok. Works for me.
I dunno, why aren’t the beavers bowing in prayer to Mecca 5 times a day? Why aren’t they building houses of worship for this God? I would think based on observation of other species, that this God doesn’t much care for churches or church music. Much less expect to be worshipped. Much less existed or cared if you knew he existed in the first place.
Love and care is what is causing the human population to explode. You can’t even get a decent abortion with all these baby-caring people.
Animals that don’t have enough food reproduce less. But we have said that a loving God wouldn’t apply those rules to US. We’re above the law of limited competition. We’re not.
The laws don’t allow you to split the atom no more than humans should control the DNA in crops. What possible reason could any creature have for doing such a thing? Obviously a few people think they are gods themselves.
I dunno, are these species of life a bad thing? Would you rather look at a rock? I don’t think that it’s our duty to destroy all life on this planet simply because we can’t stop ourselves. That’s what revolutions are for, to stop nonsense.
Haha, doesn’t it make you sick to hear these people cling onto their unfounded beliefs like cowards? I can’t respect people like that.
You mean “natural selection will eliminate US.” I don’t agree that this is the only alternative we have. I believe we can evolve to a higher state of mind and devise an evolutionary strategy to save ourselves as well as the other fading species.
Sustainable logging is bullshit. What they do is go into areas and say that they are only going to target certain trees (usually the biggest ones), then they set up a lumberyard in the native territory and get the natives hooked on working making them dependent on the lumbermills. Next thing you know the whole forest is gone. Just in time for the next wave, the farmers. It’s a trick to get people to destroy the environment to support First World civilization growth.
Well, until I see these other planets, I’m only going to be concerned about this dying planet. It’s probable that there may be life out there, and it’s also likely that there isn’t. Right now, I’d like to see this planet’s life survive.
How can you kill a man-god? No one could kill the real Jesus. He would simply come back to life on the second day proving he is the Real Jesus!
He could wave his halo and spring any institutional bars. He will also show you the nail marks on his hands. I meant the REAL JESUS!
What were you thinking?
My MY Les, aren’t you quick to jump at figures of speech and exaggeration as literal belief? Maybe I should have said “I can PRACTICALLY read his mind?” Does that make you feel all better now? Do you want a nice swirly lollipop?
It seemed to me that you were being quite adamant in your belief to already know what Consi’s thinking. You made several comments that indicated as much.
Does it make me feel better that you can sarcastically acknowledge that you don’t truly know what Consi is thinking? No, not really. It’s more a sense of disappointment than anything else. We are, ostensibly, on the same side and yet you manage to instill the very alienation others have told you about. Let’s put it this way, if you’re turning off people on your own side then how the hell do you expect to convince people on the other side of the debate?
I’m all for blasting trolls and idiots, but Consi really isn’t either one of those things. As much as I often vehemently disagree with him on his views and opinions, I at least respect the fact that he participates here in an honest and sincere manner.
Trillane? Is that you Trillane?
Well, what would make you feel better? Apparently, you have no sense of humor sir. For that, I’ll have you shot.
You don’t seem to understand how it all works. Historically, You could make the same argument against Galileo and ask yourself, “Why did this guy alienate the church with his attitude?”
From my brief read of Galileo, he wrote a book that basically blasted the church’s position on the Sun and the Moon.
Now, from your perspective, Galileo could have approached the whole matter differently. In a less alienating way.
But the fact of the matter is, the world eventually agreed with Galileo despite his alienating manner.
Don’t ask me to change. I won’t and can’t. You could take a different approach though, but what fun would that be fore YOU?
Is Lee what they call a Militant Atheist?
Thanks Lee.
I’m a bit militant myself in some places BUT if I’m anything like you I’d imagine my attitude would drive Theists deeper into their Theism cos they wouldn’t want to be like you.
You come across as a real self-righteous prick – as annoying as any fundie I ever heard.
I didn’t ever think we’d be lectured by an Atheist.
Lee,
With regard to the comment to Les, it wouldn’t matter whether I called bullshit or not – it’s on you to present your case. You can’t fault anyone else when you do it terribly.
I was fully aware of the irony of being abrasive to someone equally abrasive. It does not, however, detract from my position – you claim that we’re all fucked because of religion, and that the planet will be destroyed, and we along with it. The onus is on you to provide conclusive evidence for your positive claim.
The alarmists talking about a potential genocide in Germany, during the rise of Hitler, had strong evidence, strictly material, incidental, and historical, that the holocaust was going to happen. The man wrote a fucking book filled with incoherent hatred of Jews; he had anti-Jew propoganda made, he dissolved the public fucking assembly and made himself dictator.
You don’t have any of that – there’s barely any appropriate comparison. In your next post, I want to see: a) Jesus=Horus, strictly, b) Religion as a whole is destroying our green earth and c) we’re gonna die in 60 years. I want hard evidence, not some hand-waving assertion. Any blowhard can say “You’re just too dumb to get it” – elsewhere, the discussion of the Philip Stein Teslar Watch remains testimony to how often that gets used when there is no evidence at all.
This is what Consi was pointing out. That was the whole point – Jesus != Horus. The rest was never part of the argument to begin with. You persist, though acknowledging that Consi is correct. I can only guess that you want to talk about all the similarities, to say that there exists some interpretation of Horus which makes him just like Jesus if you treat this and that and the other thing as metaphor, and not exactly as it says, then yes, sure, go ahead. Different line of argument, and one which destroys your credibility as virtually any message can be given with a large enough volume of words and the selective application of metaphor.
I can’t even tell if this is bad sarcasm or an honest statement, so I’m going to hit them both.
First, philosophy != evidence, not even in the strictest, most rational sense.
Second, if on the other hand you are serious, I don’t need ley people to speak for me because I know my position and the position adopted by Consi, which is where this started from. You have managed to duck and dodge a reality that is apparent to everyone else, which is…. you’ve not presented any evidence. At all. Ever. Anywhere.
You get on that, and we’ll have something to talk about.
Thanks, and you’ve come accross as the most judgemental intolerant snob as I’ve ever met.
Actually, what maybe driving the theist further into theism is the trick? Who knows? I can’t say what works at this point. You’ve all been nice to Consi, has that worked? Has he moved an inch on his position? You tell me what works. But I would like to see some results.
What does that mean, “Militant atheist?” Is that like a Leninist or Marxist?
Lee babbles once more…
If you think I don’t have much of a sense of humor then I can only assume you’ve not spent much time in the archives.
Bzzzt. Try again. Galileo pissed off the church, but he didn’t necessarily piss off people who were on his side in the debate. That’s one of the differences between you and Galileo.
For that matter, Galileo wasn’t trying to piss off the church whereas pissing off others regardless of how sympathetic they may be to your comments seems to be your only goal.
You’re making assumptions of what my perspective happens to be as well as what Galileo’s was. He didn’t “blast” the church’s opinion on the position of the Sun and Moon. He took it upon himself to ass-kiss the Church on more than one occasion in hopes of convincing them not to ban his ideas and most historians say his intent was never to alienate the Pope at all. The fact that he managed to do so is in spite of his efforts, not because of them.
You, sir, are no Galileo.
I suppose if you insist on being an ass then you have every right to do so, but don’t expect anyone else to take you very seriously as a result.
DING DING DING. Congrats, sir, you win the incredible dick of the week award and it’s only thursday. Hell of an acomplishment.
I’ve never seen anyone manage to insult both John and Consi (both decent blokes, though John’s the more sensible of the two, even though Consi pretends to be) in the same post.
And saying Les doesn’t have a sense of humor?
BWAH-HA-HA-HA
That’s what they call irony – right there – pot and kettle stuff.
But, cute; I’ve never been called a snob before – is this what it feels like?
I remember I called mum a snob once and she said: I’m not a snob, Schatje (that’s darling in Dutch); I’m just choosy.
And you’re right Lee, I am choosy.
Intolerant? I reckon on balance I’m probably one of the most tolerant in this playground … except when it comes to fools and morons; I can’t seem to hide the fact they shit me a bit.
For all Consi’s faults, and we’ve had a number of spiteful spars, I’d rather drink Vodka with him than you.
Right now Consi’s back there larfing – aren’t you, mate?
I wouldn’t be too far off the mark in assuming Consi never felt so good; I’d even bet that he didn’t think something like this could happen even in his wildest dreams.
You’re real value for money, Lee.
You’re a shining beacon to ME; you’re everything I don’t want to be.
If anyone could turn me into a THEIST you could … and I’ve been a non-believer ALL my conscious life from about aged seven.
I think I’ve got it all off my chest; it’s time I had a shave and a shower.
Lee offends me as well. It’s disheartening, to say the very least, to see someone with such potentially positive goals go about realizing them in such an abysmally ineffective manner.
You watch the news, don’t you? Would you say that Polar bears going extinct, Pandas, Manatees, frogs, rhinos, and millions of others not even mentioned, a sign that something we’re doing is very wrong?
Would you say that governments threatening each other with nuclear weapons a sign that something we are doing is very wrong? Is this proof enough for you? And whose doing all these things? Well, mostly religious people. It’s true you’ll find an atheist here and there involved, but it’s usually as a response to the religious right and it’s certainly not based on any religious belief that they do the things that they do.
These religions sure rely on real weapons to fight with. Of course prayer only guides the bullets, SILLY!
Apparently, some in the US didn’t take it all that serious until Pearl Harbor was attacked.
You don’t see anything like Hitler’s book today? You don’t see any comparisons? What was the population of the world back then? 2 Billion? That many people stressed the planet back then. 6.7 Billion today couldn’t possibly be a BAD sign.
I already told you Jesus is a descendant of Horus. Now I see you’re being as unreasonable and just as bullheaded as Consigliere.
The basis for planetary collapse is based on many things, the first being overpopulation. The CIA was making predictions of possible wars over water in the areas like the Ethiopia and Egypt. But those are just predictions based on the availiblity of water, population growth, and the geograhpic locations of Ethiopia and Egypt sharing the same river. Plus the army size of both countries. Do a search on Ted Koppel 2015 CIA predictions transcript.
Consigliere’s original question could have been made simpler if he had just said at the beginning that he wanted the same spelling in both names. He was misleading the whole group.
Well, I’m waiting then.
We were talking about evidence, but you still insisted on bringing up the spelling of Jesus and Horus as if it were the backbone of your argument. Get over that and we can start looking at the roots of Jesus, which is Horus.
Well then, make me laugh now.
How do you know that? I think I remember something about Copernicus not wanting anything said against the church. Something about keeping his own books from being seen. Something like that. I’ll have to look it up. Anyway, no doubt someONE in Galileo’s (probably religious Catholic)group may very well have been offended by the idea of such a book. Think of the surroundings Galileo was in. For him to even suggest such a book in that religious environment would probably have shocked and, alienated most of his friends and family. It would probably be the equivalent of writing bible porn in the Vatican today.
Who else was there at his trial to support Galileo?
You don’t know that this is my goal. If you’ve noticed, I’m only responding.
And Galileo MUST have known the church was surely going to get upset. That’s why he wrote the book as a conversation between a few friends discussing the nature of the Sun and the Earth in the third person rather than a blatant textbook. He was trying to get away with stuff.
It was the blast heard all around the world. Sure, he may have tried to get away from being burned at the stake by being nice nice to the pope, who wouldn’t?
He could have stopped it at anytime. He must have seen them coming from him. A diplomat, he wasn’t.
Maybe he was just being who he was.
Like I said, he tried to pull a fast one on the church in his writing style because he KNEW how pissed the church would be. He knew what he was doing.
Are you sure about that?
Well maybe I need a fine upstanding example like yourself who doesn’t stoop to the level of people like me?
Sometimes irony just writes itself, doesn’t it?
Wow – well spotted; thanks for showing me how good Consi is at the setting up The Sting.
Did Consi ever provide a link to the Horus story he used as a source for comparison? I’m too lazy to reread the thread or to google it myself.
As far as I read, Galileo was alone in his dealings with the church. It doesn’t mention ANYONE accompaning him to even talk to the church officials.
In fact, he had prior problems with his findings and was banned from the pulpit of a church:
Wikipedia:…from the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella, Father Tommaso Caccini (1574–1648) denounced Galileo’s opinions on the motion of the Earth, judging them dangerous and close to heresy. Galileo went to Rome to defend himself against these accusations, but, in 1616, Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino personally handed Galileo an admonition enjoining him neither to advocate nor teach Copernican astronomy
So he was forewared before meeting even the pope and this must have automatically given him a stigma from his friends who probably didn’t want any trouble. So their not being mentioned must have been a result from them alientating themselves from Galileo and his dangerous position.
He had lots of indications that he wasn’t going to be readily accepted by the church but went ahead anyway. To this day, I hear people blaming Galileo’s handling of the conflict on him.
Lee again spews forth with the following…
I can’t, I’m too busy laughing at you to come up with anything that could possibly top it.
Because I’ve done a fair amount of reading on Galileo’s history and it’s quite clear that he was anything but antagonistic in defending his views. When the church first warned him about his teachings he proceeded to shy away from the more controversial aspects for several years. There’s nothing in his writings that would indicate he was anything other than cautious in promoting his views.
You seem to forget that the ideas Galileo was promoting weren’t new even when Copernicus first brought them up. One of the oldest references to a heliocentric universe shows up in a 7th century BCE Vedic Sanskrit text in ancient India. The ideas weren’t unheard of before and had popped up at various points in history, Galileo helped to bring them to greater attention and unintentionally pissed off the church in the process.
You are apparently unable to read properly as I said that pissing other people off SEEMS to be your goal. I never claimed to know what your goal is I only stated what I thought it might be based on your responses so far.
The fact that you’re only responding makes no difference in whether or not you’re intentionally trying to be an ass about it. Most trolls who show up start by jumping into a thread already underway.
Blast heard all around the world? Hardly. You make it sound like after Galileo everything changed, but the truth is not only did it take time for heliocentrism to spread it also ended up being wrong and supplanted by geocentrism and then eventually modern geocentrism.
Galileo was important to promoting the discussion that led to the current model and notable for his persecution, but your suggestion that he was antagonistic about it or that it created some sort of revolution in science are unfounded.
To borrow a question you posed earlier: How do you know this? Historians say he was “blindsided” by the church’s reaction to his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Doesn’t exactly sound like he saw it coming to me.
There’s nothing in the history books to support your claim, but I’d be happy to consider any proof you can provide for it.
If your comments here in comparison to Galileo’s writings are anything to judge by, then yes, I’m pretty sure.
I never claimed to be a fine upstanding anything, I just pointed out the obvious. If you want me to stoop to your level I’ll be happy to oblige: Fuck you.
How’s that?
Well, you must have missed some parts. If he was so cautious, as you say, they what was the whole hubbub about? Huh? He didn’t seem that cautious to me. He kept on doing it until they had to lock him up in his home to shut him up.
I agree, they weren’t new. So what was the church bitching about then? They already knew about those other writings, obviously. I don’t see how this man who had repeated warnings did anything unintentionally. He was warned not to do it. He knew what could happen to him. Those days were not like our days. Obviously he was either crazy of bold to go as far as he did.
Well, you “seemed” wrong. Get over it.
Aren’t you glad this is not me?
Everything did change. Not at internet or celphone or even telegraph speed. But for what it did, it was a blast heard clear to our modern era. It’s been talked about and talked about and has an immense impact EVEN NOW.
Yes, it did create a revolution. He is one of the martyrs of science. He is a shining example for all scientists from around the world to look at and a model to aspire to. That a single man possessing of courage can revolutionize the thinking of the world. You understate and insult his importance.
What was he blindsided by? The reaction to an error in his book where he conspired with Pope Urban VIII and getting ridicule?
He was warned from the pulpit as I stated above not to advocate certain teachings from the church and had to face charges more than once.
Besides, “Most historians agree Galileo did not act out of malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to his book” is third party heresay.
Oh? Who am I then?
Oh yeah? Well FU 2 muthafucka!
As usual nothing much new in Lee’s latest ranting…
You’re someone other than Galileo. Thought that’d be obvious even to you.
Someone wake me when this yahoo has moved off to pollute other waters.
Haha, he couldn’t take it. So much for your argument. It was weak and you know it.
Now that this thread has devolved to the “nyah nyah” level, I feel right at home.
Lee, you are a textbook example of how to present ideas that are good (or at least worthy of serious consideration) in such a way that you work for the opposition. Are you sure you’re not a fundie Neocon trying to make atheist environmentalists (such as myself and many others here) look bad? You remind me of Frank Walton, whose blog Atheism Sucks! is so repellent that many suspect him of being a mean-spirited atheist trying to make Christians look stupid.
Lee (in response):
I think people band together and form society because they consider it a worthwhile deal to work in exchange for a cushier lifestyle than being a self-supporting hermit. I guess we all have the option of leaving society if we choose we’d rather live outside civilisation, i’d like to try it once for the simplicity
Cherry pick to find whatever’s most thought provoking, probably the way to identify what is good so that you can put it to some use, taking advantage of what there is. True, people often think they’re good when they’re causing hurt, it’s just a case of them realising what effect they’re having and re-adjusting their method, which they will want to do if they have good intentions. Good intentions are at least a start.
The person saving the baby wouldn’t know what they baby would turn up to be like, and that has no bearing on the morality of his decision to save it because you can’t factor in what you don’t know, and you can’t blame him for not knowing what he had no way of knowing.
Your point about good and bad is good, so I’ll progress the concept. The law doesn’t make something good or bad, it just sets up consequences for doing things, it’s up to the perpetrator to decide good/bad, and nobody but the perpetrator is really in a position to judge their own intentions, knowing the situation intimately and why they did it. Hence something is only good or bad if the perpetrator considers it to be. For me ‘good and bad’ doesn’t really even exist, it’s just a matter of consequences, where if you do something, you have to accept what consequences there may be, I think of it like agreeing to a deal, where something like risk of prison or negative backlash or even death is something you agree to withstand in exchange for what you might be able to steal/kill, etc.
So it needs universal practise before people can go all-out on the idea. For now we can only afford to do certain shades of it to stay alive, in fact though we might be able to vastly improve things with universal practise we are limited by physical needs, as you said, but those other shades are still an improvement and worth doing if we want earth to be even remotely like the utopia
People wouldn’t do this if they cared for all people, and if they knew the other tribes were the same and wouldn’t attack for the same reason so as to remove the need to attack out of fear of letting the enemy get too powerful. Stuff like building embassies and trade routes are modern day modes of displaying some level of acceptance because they’re putting some of their own in a vulnerable position saying to the other country ‘i’ll trust you’
Hopefully so, we don’t know if life itself is a good or bad thing, certainly the presence of bad things, or at least the need to improve is suggestive that he isn’t both 100% good and 100% powerful because otherwise he’d make people innately perfect, if he made people at all. I think to myself is existance a good thing necessarily? Especially if it was eternal, eventually you’re going to run out of stuff to do, maybe that might explain life as a dream to keep occupied – you make yourself forget you did stuff so when you do it again it won’t seem boring, or that ‘evil’ might exist like the antagonist in video games that is just there to keep you occupied and give some substance to the game
Survival-wise no, but for my sanity yes. I’ve said before that curiosity and the need to know is a strange and not always productive force. Some feelings don’t make much evolutionary sense, or at least you’d expect evolution to eliminate them, like sadness which causes suicide which decreases chance of survival, though if it’s a gene everyone has (so can’t be removed), suicide might in some ways speed evolution by removing those who fall below a certain level of likelihood of reproducing, as a gene watching over everyone waiting to kick in should they need to be eliminated
The bible is not a credible theistic theory, I was describing the requirements of what would make a credible theistic theory. All genuine possibilities must be recognised as such.
It’s the only conclusion I can find by eliminating all other possibilities, and it fits in with other ideas
Me too, because we need to be
As I said, I doubt he expects us to worship him, especially when he knows we don’t know about him. It would also be a shallow self-satisfaction to create people only to worship you, what kind of mindframe would god need to be in to do that i wonder. But still, it’s possible i guess.
Those that deny others abortions don’t care enough for those having the abortions, they are not respecting their rights, this is why people need to love and care for all and not just some. It does seem questionable that a loving god would put us in a world with problems and physical needs like this, but maybe it’s a learning thing, a kind of bitter pill for our own benefit, people certainly need to go through hardship in order to find the need to love and care, and this is also a place where people can experience first hand the effects of certain actions, it’s up to them to decide whether something’s good or bad, I don’t think even god would have that right to judge without knowing your situation and motives intimately.
This isn’t a subject of principle, nature won’t stop you doing anything so long as it’s possible. Again, it’s a matter of personal judgement whether or not you’re ‘playing god’ in doing these things and the morality of that, but you are still, as a mortal, bound by certain laws like gravity and time
Depends on how much you like the idea of a planet with life, I don’t know whether life is a good thing because with it comes suffering, you could end all suffering if you could end all existence, but would ending all life end all existence? Don’t know yet.
The last bit was interesting about revolutions. Indeed, revolutions are society’s in-built self-correction mechanism. If things get too bad, then so long as society has enough of the militant type it will self-adjust. This would look to conflict with having a world where everyone cared about everything because you would always need some militant in the mix, but war wouldn’t be necessary if everone loved and cared for all, and I suppose it’s possible that the loving could be siphoned off after death when they nolonger need this world, allowing more of the other to be fed into the mix and given a chance, allowing earth to look like it’s in constant composition despite what changes there might be on a personal level
Well it might eliminate those who don’t, if it’s selective enough
I doubt it’s done much too but it’s the ideal we need to work towards
Care for your own is understood. Given the number of stars out there, and the number of planets to each, it’s highly likely that there are others capable of supporting life, however I don’t know the chances of life actually forming. Even if life came from some asteroid life would have had to of started somewhere, it’s just crossing that barrier that’s necessary. Interestingly self-replicating molecules like dna or rna are necessary before you can have self-replicating life, as the information storage thing
I dunno, are two Rams butting heads morally wrong? Does it look bad when people are butting heads in order to find the truth? Or would you have me use a more monotone feel and bore people? I find Walton’s site interesting and at least he’s willing to talk about it and put himself out there. It was interesting enough for you to take note of it. I believe Walton met his objectives and his methods seemed to be successful in getting you to go to his site.
I noticed that he posted an interview with Richard Dawkins that I have never seen before. Thank you Walton.
If you do a little research on the beginnings of the Christian movement, they used to ridicules and scoff at the gods of the Romans, the effect which made them feel self-conscious about their beliefs. Christianity shamed a lot or Rome into becoming Christians. You might say their scoffing at the Romans had an “alienating” effect. Yes, it did. It alienated people from their gods.
Dawkins himself is accused of many of the things you complained about me doing by fellow scientists. Being to blunt, arrogant, rude, and even self-righteous. But he’s out there much like Socrates and Galileo, unafraid to debate people on their home turf.
Lee,
Sign that something’s wrong? Yeah, polar bears dying because they have to swim 60 clicks to find habitat sucks, and it’s an indicator of global warming. Stop dodging – I want that 60 year time frame; I know something’s wrong. Everyone in the fucking world knows something’s wrong. When you make specific claims, back them up, don’t just revert to a generalized “oh, well it’s obvious, isn’t it?”. Put up or shut up.
No, there’s nothing wrong with governments threatening each other with nuclear weapons. They’ve been doing it since the nuke was invented – hell they’ve even used em twice. Before that it was trains, planes, and automobiles, and before that it was muskets and bayonets and cannons…. and so on. People threatening each other with the strongest weapons available to them at the time is nothing new, and not a sign that something new is wrong – it’s not even a sign of religious influence, since, with or without religion, many civilizations have done the same.
Ahmadinejad is an excellent example of a contemporary Hitler. He should be kept in check, but unfortunately, the USA, who is being the heavyweight in this affair, can’t do a damn thing cos they’ve already over-committed in the invasion of two other nations at once. That’s why he’s there now, in fact.
Are you seriously trying to equate the rise of Hitler with population growth? Evidence, please. Cut the hand waving bullshit out. Having a population of 6.7 billion people couldn’t possibly be a GOOD sign, right? Oh, wait – it powers all labor – and in nations with social economic policy, sustained growth is necessary to offset the loss of labor at the end of a generation. Canada manages that with immigration, but we’re running out of that, too, and we need to get some fucking going on. The only reason why you see 6.7 billion people as a bad sign is that you refuse to see any reason why it might be a good sign.
Just hypothetically, bear with me, here; if a doom asteroid about the size of Texas comes along and decides it’s going to impact India, how are we going to stop it? The reality is, some things are NOT FEASIBLE without the resource gathering, production, and manpower to carry it out. It takes a huge number of people and a well-developed economic infrastructure to perform some tasks. In fact, developed economic policies do more to keep civilizations in check than weapons, because the reality is, trade is more beneficial to participating nations than annexation. The only nations to fear are the nations with weapons that do not have strong economies. To get high economy and a developed infrastructure you need what? Population.
The pot calls the tea kettle black – again. This was never Consi’s claim. You want to make a specific claim, then do it – to say that Horus and Jesus were identical if we wax metaphorical over everything that disagrees is to say that you know how to pull shit out of your ass – it offers nothing material. So Horus could be considered a fore-runner to Jesus, because they share some similarities. So what? All that says is that they shared a few things in common. That’s it, that’s all. Jesus and I share a few things in common – does that make it any more important?
Which we are nowhere near. This planet is capable of supporting 11 billion people with infrastructural changes, with current technology.
The CIA is looking at this as an opportunity to expand north, too; a lot of the governments of the world are looking to Global Warming as a weapon.
No, I don’t think he mislead anyone, at least not intentionally. Yes, he could have made it simpler – but people on these boards have, in the past, made several of the claims that he lists above – he debunks them when he has the opportunity. It’s perfectly understandable why he didn’t just attack their names, but attacked specific ways in which it is claimed that they are the same. An attack on just the name would be superfluous, so he, actually, y’know, backs up his argument.
No wonder things are so difficult with you – that whole substantiation thing is confusing.
On my evidence? Tough shit – I’m not making claims about Jesus=Horus. You, on the other hand, make particular positive claims about the planet, the threshold of overpopulation, and humanity’s shelf-life, so cough it up.
You have yet to cite a single reference other than Ted Koppel. I was talking about evidence. You were waving your hands in the air talking about how we’re all going to die very soon and the end is at hand. The spelling of Jesus!=Horus was never my position – all names aside, that there are several ways in which they are NOT alike, according to the authorities on each figure, not just what they’re called. Therefore, they are not equivalent. That was Consi’s claim, too, which he details at the start of every page you post on. My position on that is ALREADY well-defended.
Once again – cough up your evidence. Start citing sources.
Wow, Lee, you have the largest ego on the planet if you think you rank anywhere NEAR Dawkins or Galileo. Jesus christ, man, how big is your head?
It would be nice to “leave” civilization, but I think it’s set up so there is pretty much no where to go.
But if you study the beginnings of civilization, you will see that it was more about POWER than anything else. The lifestyle draw was also a means to enslave people.
I find the cherries in the bible about ethnic-cleansing, religous wars, rape and slavery the most thought-provoking. I take the “Thou Shalt not Kill” commandment and try to understand why they commited the atrocities they did despite this command. Turns out, this command didn’t apply to pagans.
Actually, you do know that having billions of more human babies is unhealthy for the planet. You know this planet can’t handle another 10 Billion people or even another 2 Billion. You know it based on science and ecology and current data.
And who decides these “consequences?” Usually the way they pass such laws is because they claim to know what is good and bad. We actually don’t know what is good and evil. We only know about “What Works.” People have existed for hundreds of thousands of years as hunter-gatherers and weren’t destroying the planet like we are. Their way of life worked. Our way doesn’t and we are on our way out. It’s not about good or evil, it’s about the evolutionary process of what works and what doesn’t. Civilization just doesn’t work.
It has shown itself never to work. The experiment has been tried and tried thousands of times by many different types of government and civilizations. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is called insanity, right?
Again, the utopian dream. People will not just be better just because some dick invented a law. You can count on them to be disruptive, violent, and hungry. Look at how many people break biblical law on a daily basis. Look at how many times they hate their neighbor and act badly. Look at their “virginal” pious lives and you’ll see a lot of them are far from reaching their ideal behavior. In many cases, the behavior is just exported.
Embassies are just a way for the bigger countries to control the smaller countries through political intrigue, corruption, and in some cases, spies in the embassy. Hardly a model for “I’ll trust you.”
Yeah, that’s another thing. Life gets really boring after a certain point. I can’t imagine living for a goddamn eternity. The idea is ridiculous and unsustainable.
The reason you’re here is to ensure the continued survival of life on earth. If you refuse such action, the evolutionary branch has stopped in your case, but will continue with others.
Funny thing about suicide, if a depressed person survives and has children, he’ll probably have depressed suicidal children. Where’s the logic in that? Maybe they should have just let this guy take himself out of the gene pool!
If the bible is not credible, then it should be discarded, right? All things that don’t work, must be discarded or harm will come.
Still, the remaining idea is unprovable in itself.
This is really good. I like this.
Yes. I mean, if these people were to stop an abortion, would they guarantee to financially take care of the unaborted child? They’ll tell you not to do something but damned if they’ll pay for it.
And the reason these people are having abortions is because they can’t take care of the child. So why force them to have a child if they are unfit or because of the lack of resources?
Splitting the atom is evolutionary an unstable idea. So even though you CAN do it, doesn’t mean its in line with the laws of evolution. Maybe it’s in line with the laws of physics and if the goal here is to turn the earth into a sun, it might work.
Life is here. Why not leave it alone and let it continue? If I perhaps “decided” for myself that all life is “not good”, then should I kill everything? What’s wrong with suffering? That’s part of growing.
I think it works like this “If the utopian ideal of love is not working, the revolutions will come in and fix it until something does work, by force and violence if neccessary.”
Why is this an ideal? Why not just have less people instead cutting down more trees to feed a growing population? The very idea of a growing population makes the idea of sustainable logging a lie. Logging can never be sustainable as long as the populations of people are growing and doubling.
We travel the stars looking for any life that may be out there. At the same time, we destroy the life that is here on earth.
You don’t think I could be another Dawkins or Galileo? Maybe we should have high goals like that. I think those guys are people to emulate or even surpass. Do you think those guys were the end of human evolution?
I’m not dodging, those things are part of the complete picture. The formula is very simple in this case. Because there are only a few thousand left of POPULAR species, this is an indication that 6.7 Billion humans are too many humans. Something had to give way in order to add billions of humans more, and it’s usually the animals.
Since 6.7 Billion is too many people, then double that will be twice as bad. That would put us at 13.4 Billion people.
By doing simple mathematics based on the growth rate history of the human population, we know about how many years it’s going to take to reach 13.4 Billion.
In 1960 we had 3 Billion. About 40 years later, we doubled to 6 Billion. Now, at that rate, what’s the population going to be in 60 years from the year 2000?
You do the math.
Are you saying that the current governments are 100% religious free and are just doing this out of normal behavior?
Not all cultures were bent on wiping out their neighbors like the European Christian settlers were. We find many tribes that attacked each other, but weren’t out to massacre every other tribe or put animals into extinction as policy.
I think another leader far more dangerous is a better example of a contemporary Hitler. Of course, to the ordinary Nazi citizen, they didn’t see their leader as a monster, but as a liberator.
Germany was starving, they elected a leader who fed them. Apparently population growth does have something to do with going to war. In the simplist terms, there are two of you starving and only one banana. And neither of you are willing to share.
If 6.7 Billion people are a good economic sign, then 100 Tillion people must be a GREATr sign. Do you mind if I stand on your head? There’s no room here.
IF what you say is going to happen, then there are just going to be more people dying.
I agree with you that the economy is attached to population growth. That’s the problem, there’s no such thing as unlimited growth on earth.
By high economy, you mean a more luxurious lifestyle. But at what costs?
They share a common lineage. That’s notable. That’s important. It shows plagerism and a source other than a divine one. Once again, the way he set up the debate was ridiculous. The spelling of both names is not exactly the same. He seemed to be hoping that we wouldn’t notice, but I did.
Actually, we are closer to that number than you think. Do the math.
Isn’t it odd, that with all this technology, we still rely on the honeybee for agriculture? I’m sure their loss will just mean we have to eat more corn (and our economy destroyed).
As a weapon to destroy themselves, it could be very effective.
The structure in which he set up the debate was based on the same idea of the names matching equally, just in different words. It was his trump card as long as no one noticed what he was doing. You may be right, he may not have started up that way, but that is the way he ended up.
I have.
Again, you’re splitting hairs. The very equation JESUS=HORUS is a challenge also to the spelling if you look at the obvious.
Your argument is JES¹HOR, but US=US actually shows some relation in spelling. But your demanding a total equation as proof that Jesus is not related to Horus is unreasonable.
You want proof? First you need to get over this so you can be reasoned with.
No, I’m saying you’re not Dawkins or Galileo. Be a real scientist and not a talking head, and you’ll start earning my respect.
In the entirety of your response to me, full of self-serving bullshit as it is, you fail to cite a single work. Not even one.
You have sufficiently proven that you are not Dawkins or Galileo – for that matter, you long ago proved that you were not worth my time. As you said, however, I’m the bull-headed sort.
Why should I cite a single source? You’ll just pull out your “JESUS=HORUS and it must be strickly but I don’t mean the SPELLING but actually do” trump card.
Besides, you can look all that stuff I mentioned in any book that mentions population growth history, World War II, and Ecology.
Go to Wikipedia or this thing called the Internet and type it in. There’s also a thing called a Library.
There’s your sources.
These subjects are common knowledge subjects. I don’t think I need to research and explain who Adolf Hitler was unless you really didn’t know or need special help finding out who he is.
The Polar Bear problems were also headline news. If you really truly missed those reports, then I would be happy to cite a source. But I am assuming you have access to the internet.
The population data is available online at the Census. I believe the UN also has population data, however, it’s been argued that their projections are understated, but that’s another story.
I am also assuming that you know basic math and don’t need sources for that. Do you?
Other than that, I can’t really help you.
I might not be on the same level of Galileo or even Dawkins for the type of persons they were. But in history we find some of the most common of people making all the differences in the world. Some of them whose names have been forgotten but what they did is seen all around us. To make judgements about what a person can and cannot do could be an assumption to godhood, a serious underestimation, or even the plain truth.
You just don’t know for sure.
Lee writes…
You mistakenly assume you’re helpful at all.
Why? Because I don’t fit into your mold of what an atheist should be?
I noticed you don’t respond to my real answers, just pick some little vague line. If that’s the best you’ve got, then I can’t help you either.
Perhaps Lee has been taking the “How to be a crank” manual a bit too literally. Especially this part:
“I don’t believe in false modesty” -J Jonah Jameson.
“Or any other kind” -Peter Parker
If you notice, I only “restated what you said already, restate it slightly differently,” in response to the same old JESUS=HORUS insistance that has already been shown to be unreasonable.
Apparently, some people won’t let go of their bullshit “Trump card” because it would mean that they would actually have to move on to see the origins of Jesus.
All these trifles really don’t phase me. What would REALLY embarrass me if someone actually had a good argument, like Bahamat has attempted.
Here is more stuff about Galileo to show what kind of guy he was:
Surely his behavior in this fanatically religious culture would have alienated people. Apparently he didn’t think too much about how people would perceive him. There he was, having 3 illegitamate children. Of course, this would have not alienated ANYONE from him. Obviously, he had no way of knowing that having children out of wedlock would cause people to be alientedfrom him. It seems more like he didn’t give a shit about what people thought about him and screw ‘em if they didn’t approve of his lifestyle.
This is far from the idealistic picture that is drawn of him here. What would it have mattered if he hadn’t alienated the people around him? It turned out he didn’t need them anyway.
Mate, it’s blindingly obvious to me you’re far too smart for anyone here.
I mean, I mean, the way you just waved your hand and said ‘oh, look it up’ to the request for a source was truly masterful.
This is what a true teacher says: Look it up. Educate yourself. I’m far too important to waste my valuable time pandering to a request for a documented source to back up what I say.
I mean, I mean; I don’t lie; everything I say is true and correct; trust me.
Trust me.
Mate, you’re a fucking boring ‘tard who is INTENTIONALLY doing more for the Theistic side than any Atheist has ever done.
You are a THEIST in sheep’s (a skin) clothing; a typical lying theist no less.
Lee- you say
Nope.
Just butting heads might show who has the thicker skull, but is unlikely to lead to any other truths.
Here, I agree with you, Lee. But there are different ways of being interesting. For instance: there’s being interesting because your ideas are interesting, and there’s being interesting because you are so wacky and juvenile that it’s hard to believe you’re not a parody. If you have any doubt which category Frank Walton belongs to, check out this post, entitled “Who’s uglier: Brian Sapient or Rook Hawkins?”
I also agree that Walton meets his objectives with his website. But his objectives seem to be not the logical discussion of ideas (any comments that cut too close to the bone simply don’t get posted- believe me, I’ve tried), or spreading the Gospel, but merely getting attention by being outrageous.
In the case of Walton, it’s no big loss that he is a clown, since his ideas are standard fundie fare. But in your case, it’s a pity. Now, I don’t have a dog in the Horus/Jesus fight, partially because there’s simply not enough knowledge about general features of religions that evolve independently to say for sure what’s copied and what’s simply a “good idea” in the context of fitness in the ideosphere.
But our accelerating destruction of our Earth (which I agree with you about), and how religion relates to these problems, are pressing and interesting problems. But your highhanded dismissal of criticism and arrogation of the moral high ground make fruitful discussion of the topic with you impossible. A pity.
As usual, Zilch sums things up quite nicely.