Philosophy Religion, science, and the problem of moral edicts made by the scientifically ignorant.

[Bacle]

So this is an underrated aspect of examining the tenents of different religions, as it looks at how their ignorance of modern science and knowledge could/can account for some rather backwards beliefs.


I'll start by pointing out two large cases of where this impacted religious tenents of major religions.

First, we have Judaism's and Islam's prohibition against pork. This seems silly to people today, because it doesn't actually have an real relevence to any supposed moral or ethical dictates outside of itself. However, when we account for the lack of knowledge about Germ Theory and the very real risk of trichinosis in undercooked pork, the prohibition makes more sense.

Would Judaism and Islam still have the prohibition against pork if their founders know safely eating pork was a simple matter of cooking it at hotter temps for longer? Personally, I think they wouldn't

The second is example is the edicts against masterbation.

These edicts, at the time they were written, assumed men had a limited sperm supply, just as women have a limited amount of eggs. There are other arguments against masterbation that have been used to buttress that edicts; arguments about hygiene, about wasting energy/resources used to produce the sperm, and about denial/delay of gratification/satisfaction are all ones I've heard bandied about. But none of that changes the fact that the edicts were written when we were ignorant of the fact men can produce new sperm throughout their life.

So, those are just a couple examples of religious edicts and writings that were done with an ignorance of the actually scientific realities they entailed or involved. There are plenty of others, but I think these were the two easiest examples off the top of my head.

 

[Laskar]

So this is an underrated aspect of examining the tenents of different religions, as it looks at how their ignorance of modern science and knowledge could/can account for some rather backwards beliefs.

Really? I thought it was a favorite pasttime of the fedoratheist. I remember the oughties when the New Atheists made a cottage industry out of pointing how the tenets of Christianity were based in ignorance and stupidity. Even among people who aren't rabidly anti-Christian, there's a common brain bug that Jews, Christians, Muslims, and much of the western world simply never sat down with a homosexual and asked him why he's gay.

And it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Let's look at your two assertions:

1. The Jewish people didn't know you had to cook pork hotter and longer than other meats.
2. Jews, Christians, and Muslims thought that the body had a limited supply of sperm.

First of all, I want you to prove that the Jews didn't know you had to cook pork hotter and longer. Also, I want you to prove that "The body has a limited supply of sperm" had any currency back then. I'll wait.

...
...

Of course the Jews knew that you had to cook pork hotter and longer. They lived near and among cultures that ate pork, shellfish, rabbit, and a lot of other non-Koscher foods. But before ovens with modern temperature control and modern disinfectants, it was still a risky process. The threat of cross-contamination was very real, especially in the large kitchens set up to feed entire households.

So, if you ascribe to the secular explanation for Koscher law, the Rabbis looked at the world around them and decided that access to certain foods simply weren't worth the risks. I mean, it's not like we believe that driving over seventy miles per hour is going to automatically kill you, but we still set the highway speed limit there.

Or if you subscribe to the biblical viewpoint, keeping the Israelis healthy was only a byproduct of Koscher law. God gave commandments to his people on how to live and what to eat, so that they might be set apart from the other peoples of the land. It's the same reason why the High Priests don't wear their holy vestments to the marketplace, or why they don't hold the family barbecue in the Holy of Holies.

And as for "The body has a limited supply of sperm", have you ever run into large families? I mean, really large families. The kind of families that Catholics are infamous for. I mean, a woman is in the hospital giving birth, and her mother is in the next room over pumping out her thirteenth or fourteenth kid. I have, and that's not a recent phenomenon. Those families existed in biblical times, and the bible has figures like King David siring a gadzillion children, so it's not like they were under the impression that sperm was a precious commodity.

There are other arguments against masterbation that have been used to buttress that edicts; arguments about hygiene, about wasting energy/resources used to produce the sperm, and about denial/delay of gratification/satisfaction are all ones I've heard bandied about. But none of that changes the fact that the edicts were written when we were ignorant of the fact men can produce new sperm throughout their life.

You come so damn close to realizing that something else is going on here, it's a tragedy that you fall back to "The only reason that the Bible mandates X is that people back then were unobservant and stupid."

I mean, re-read what you just said there. "There's some pretty good arguments against masturbation, but since the law was written when I think people were ignorant that sperm production continues throughout a man's life, that undercuts every other argument one can make."

So, those are just a couple examples of religious edicts and writings that were done with an ignorance of the actually scientific realities they entailed or involved. There are plenty of others, but I think these were the two easiest examples off the top of my head.

Try some more examples. Really, try some more.

 

[The Name of Love]

So, those are just a couple examples of religious edicts and writings that were done with an ignorance of the actually scientific realities they entailed or involved. There are plenty of others, but I think these were the two easiest examples off the top of my head

You are actually misrepresenting the religions in question.

The prohibition on pork found in Islam and Judaism was not put into place because the pork caused disease, but because of divine command given to God’s chosen people. Religions often impose such prohibitions on people in order for it to be an outward sign of their commitment. Think of it as being part of a contract between God and his worshippers.

The prohibition on masturbation is not there because people thought you’d run out of semen, but because the act itself is inherently immoral and would be immoral even if God didn’t exist. The solitary vice contradicts the telos of sexuality, which is procreative and unitive. Thus, any sexual act that does not end in the man ejaculating his sperm into a woman’s vagina is inherently immoral. You might disagree with the premises of classical natural law theory, but you can’t misrepresent older thinkers on this.

Bacle, you ought to approach topics like religion or ethics with far more humility. You seem to understand neither in any kind of serious depth.

 

[Bacle]

Really? I thought it was a favorite pasttime of the fedoratheist. I remember the oughties when the New Atheists made a cottage industry out of pointing how the tenets of Christianity were based in ignorance and stupidity. Even among people who aren't rabidly anti-Christian, there's a common brain bug that Jews, Christians, Muslims, and much of the western world simply never sat down with a homosexual and asked him why he's gay.

And it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Let's look at your two assertions:

1. The Jewish people didn't know you had to cook pork hotter and longer than other meats.
2. Jews, Christians, and Muslims thought that the body had a limited supply of sperm.

First of all, I want you to prove that the Jews didn't know you had to cook pork hotter and longer. Also, I want you to prove that "The body has a limited supply of sperm" had any currency back then. I'll wait.

...
...

Of course the Jews knew that you had to cook pork hotter and longer. They lived near and among cultures that ate pork, shellfish, rabbit, and a lot of other non-Koscher foods. But before ovens with modern temperature control and modern disinfectants, it was still a risky process. The threat of cross-contamination was very real, especially in the large kitchens set up to feed entire households.

So, if you ascribe to the secular explanation for Koscher law, the Rabbis looked at the world around them and decided that access to certain foods simply weren't worth the risks. I mean, it's not like we believe that driving over seventy miles per hour is going to automatically kill you, but we still set the highway speed limit there.

Or if you subscribe to the biblical viewpoint, keeping the Israelis healthy was only a byproduct of Koscher law. God gave commandments to his people on how to live and what to eat, so that they might be set apart from the other peoples of the land. It's the same reason why the High Priests don't wear their holy vestments to the marketplace, or why they don't hold the family barbecue in the Holy of Holies.

And as for "The body has a limited supply of sperm", have you ever run into large families? I mean, really large families. The kind of families that Catholics are infamous for. I mean, a woman is in the hospital giving birth, and her mother is in the next room over pumping out her thirteenth or fourteenth kid. I have, and that's not a recent phenomenon. Those families existed in biblical times, and the bible has figures like King David siring a gadzillion children, so it's not like they were under the impression that sperm was a precious commodity.


You come so damn close to realizing that something else is going on here, it's a tragedy that you fall back to "The only reason that the Bible mandates X is that people back then were unobservant and stupid."

I mean, re-read what you just said there. "There's some pretty good arguments against masturbation, but since the law was written when I think people were ignorant that sperm production continues throughout a man's life, that undercuts every other argument one can make."


Try some more examples. Really, try some more.

You are actually misrepresenting the religions in question.

The prohibition on pork found in Islam and Judaism was not put into place because the pork caused disease, but because of divine command given to God’s chosen people. Religions often impose such prohibitions on people in order for it to be an outward sign of their commitment. Think of it as being part of a contract between God and his worshippers.

The prohibition on masturbation is not there because people thought you’d run out of semen, but because the act itself is inherently immoral and would be immoral even if God didn’t exist. The solitary vice contradicts the telos of sexuality, which is procreative and unitive. Thus, any sexual act that does not end in the man ejaculating his sperm into a woman’s vagina is inherently immoral. You might disagree with the premises of classical natural law theory, but you can’t misrepresent older thinkers on this.

Bacle, you ought to approach topics like religion or ethics with far more humility. You seem to understand neither in any kind of serious depth.

And these are the sort of overtly hostile and defensive responses I expected, for daring to question the knowledge base of their religious leaders and figures.

Show me that the people who wrote those examples knew cooking pork at higher temps would make it safe, and that sperm was a replenishable resources. Please, show me where they had knowledge that the rest of the world didn't have till the last century or so.

And The Name of Love, you have no place lecturing me or anyone else about morals after showing you'd destroy our Constitution to push through a porn ban.

 

[The Name of Love]

And these are the sort of overtly hostile and defensive responses I expected, for daring to question the knowledge base of their religious leaders and figures.

Show me that the people who wrote those examples knew cooking pork at higher temps would make it safe, and that sperm was a replenishable resources. Please, show me where they had knowledge that the rest of the world didn't have till the last century or so.

And The Name of Love, you have no place lecturing me or anyone else about morals after showing you'd destroy our Constitution to push through a porn ban.

First, you didn't read my objection. Your objection to mine is a complete non-sequitur. In fact, your entire "argument" is a complete non-sequitur because the "scientific" reasons you gave for why religious prohibitions on eating pork and masturbating exist were not even part of the fundamental reasons why they were implemented in the first place!

Let me be clear: there is no place where the people who wrote religious texts knew eating cold pork made you sick because that wasn't the justification for that prohibition in the first place. They did so because the Old Covenant, God's contract with the Jews, said "you follow these rules, and I'll make you my chosen people." The Covenant's purpose isn't to prevent Jews from getting sick, but to prepare the way for the Messiah. Where in this argument for pork prohibition is the premise "cold pork makes you sick?"

There is similarly no place where they knew sperm was a replenishable source. Even if you went to a Christian philosopher like St. Thomas Aquinas and said "masturbation is okay because you can have plenty of sperm left over," he would've said, "that doesn't change the nature of the act; the act, by its very nature is immoral regardless of how much sperm you have." He'd then point to the nature of man's sexual faculty, which is ordered towards procreation and unity between the sexes, and demonstrate from natural law theory the objective immorality of masturbation (I've written about natural law theory here and about the problems with alternative metaphysical and ethical theories here, btw). Where in this argument for the immorality of masturbation is the natural law predicated on the assumption "sperm doesn't naturally replenish?"

In short, your arguments against these moral prohibitions are based on non-sequiturs. You aren't addressing the actual religious traditions in question. To prove the prohibition on pork is wrong, you'd have to prove that God didn't really make a covenant with the ancient Israelites. In order to prove the prohibition on masturbation is wrong, you'd have to prove that such fornication does not actually contradict the nature of the sexual act. You have done neither. Again, I implore you to be more humble in your approach to religious philosophy and ethics, as you don't appear to have much of an understanding of either.

By the way, you haven't beaten me in that argument on porn prohibition, and you know it. That's probably why you stopped replying to me on that thread and are content to snipe at me with non-sequiturs and bellyaching about "muh Constitution!" on an unrelated thread. I hate to say it, but the Constitution is pretty much malleable at this point. I mean, the Supreme Court was able to find the rights to gay marriage and abortion in there using reasoning pulled from their collective assholes. In modern day America, the Constitution is whatever the Supreme Courts says it is by this point. I don't like this. And, if you are an actual constitutionalist, you probably don't like it either. But there's nothing you or I can do about it because neither one of us decides what is or isn't illegal anymore.

And if you want to restore the original intent? Well, none of the Founding Fathers would have claimed obscenity is protected under the First Amendment. Furthermore, if we look at the traditional justification for free speech rights in English law, it was to protect people from charges of slander or libel. The traditional justification for freedom of speech is based on the principles that a person ought not be punished for doing something good, and that telling the truth is always a good thing. Since obscenity does not have as its purpose the telling of truth but titillation, obscene materials aren't protected by ones' freedom of speech in a moral sense, at least going by the definition of free speech rights the Founders would recognize.

The best I can tell, the only way you can morally condemn all porn prohibitions is under a libertarian philosophical framework. But I've refuted libertarianism time and again in that very anti-porn thread, as you can see here and here. So until you prove philosophical libertarianism to be true, you have no rational grounds to morally condemn me. In fact, I, as a Thomist, I could say that, due to your disordered sexual lust, you are afflicted by blindness of mind and hatred of God, leading you to draw the wrong conclusions in areas like religious philosophy and ethics, so we ought not to take you as a moral authority in any regard. Or, to use your own words against you, "you have no place lecturing me or anyone else about morals" given your own, personal immorality.

 

[Bacle]

First, you didn't read my objection. Your objection to mine is a complete non-sequitur. In fact, your entire "argument" is a complete non-sequitur because the "scientific" reasons you gave for why religious prohibitions on eating pork and masturbating exist were not even part of the fundamental reasons why they were implemented in the first place!

Let me be clear: there is no place where the people who wrote religious texts knew eating cold pork made you sick because that wasn't the justification for that prohibition in the first place. They did so because the Old Covenant, God's contract with the Jews, said "you follow these rules, and I'll make you my chosen people." The Covenant's purpose isn't to prevent Jews from getting sick, but to prepare the way for the Messiah. Where in this argument for pork prohibition is the premise "cold pork makes you sick?"

There is similarly no place where they knew sperm was a replenishable source. Even if you went to a Christian philosopher like St. Thomas Aquinas and said "masturbation is okay because you can have plenty of sperm left over," he would've said, "that doesn't change the nature of the act; the act, by its very nature is immoral regardless of how much sperm you have." He'd then point to the nature of man's sexual faculty, which is ordered towards procreation and unity between the sexes, and demonstrate from natural law theory the objective immorality of masturbation (I've written about natural law theory here and about the problems with alternative metaphysical and ethical theories here, btw). Where in this argument for the immorality of masturbation is the natural law predicated on the assumption "sperm doesn't naturally replenish?"

In short, your arguments against these moral prohibitions are based on non-sequiturs. You aren't addressing the actual religious traditions in question. To prove the prohibition on pork is wrong, you'd have to prove that God didn't really make a covenant with the ancient Israelites. In order to prove the prohibition on masturbation is wrong, you'd have to prove that such fornication does not actually contradict the nature of the sexual act. You have done neither. Again, I implore you to be more humble in your approach to religious philosophy and ethics, as you don't appear to have much of an understanding of either.

By the way, you haven't beaten me in that argument on porn prohibition, and you know it. That's probably why you stopped replying to me on that thread and are content to snipe at me with non-sequiturs and bellyaching about "muh Constitution!" on an unrelated thread. I hate to say it, but the Constitution is pretty much malleable at this point. I mean, the Supreme Court was able to find the rights to gay marriage and abortion in there using reasoning pulled from their collective assholes. In modern day America, the Constitution is whatever the Supreme Courts says it is by this point. I don't like this. And, if you are an actual constitutionalist, you probably don't like it either. But there's nothing you or I can do about it because neither one of us decides what is or isn't illegal anymore.

And if you want to restore the original intent? Well, none of the Founding Fathers would have claimed obscenity is protected under the First Amendment. Furthermore, if we look at the traditional justification for free speech rights in English law, it was to protect people from charges of slander or libel. The traditional justification for freedom of speech is based on the principles that a person ought not be punished for doing something good, and that telling the truth is always a good thing. Since obscenity does not have as its purpose the telling of truth but titillation, obscene materials aren't protected by ones' freedom of speech in a moral sense, at least going by the definition of free speech rights the Founders would recognize.

The best I can tell, the only way you can morally condemn all porn prohibitions is under a libertarian philosophical framework. But I've refuted libertarianism time and again in that very anti-porn thread, as you can see here and here. So until you prove philosophical libertarianism to be true, you have no rational grounds to morally condemn me. In fact, I, as a Thomist, I could say that, due to your disordered sexual lust, you are afflicted by blindness of mind and hatred of God, leading you to draw the wrong conclusions in areas like religious philosophy and ethics, so we ought not to take you as a moral authority in any regard. Or, to use your own words against you, "you have no place lecturing me or anyone else about morals" given your own, personal immorality.

Oh yay, going on about with that 'liberalism/libertarianism is false' farce again. Yeah, done wasting my time engaging with you, period.

Congrats, you're going to be the first person I put on ignore on TS.

 

[The Name of Love]

Oh yay, going on about with that 'liberalism/libertarianism is false' farce again. Yeah, done wasting my time engaging with you, period.

Congrats, you're going to be the first person I put on ignore on TS.

God bless you, Bacle.

 

[Laskar]

And these are the sort of overtly hostile and defensive responses I expected, for daring to question the knowledge base of their religious leaders and figures.

My reply? Yeah, that was probably hostile. @The Name of Love's wasn't. And pointing out holes in your logic is hardly being defensive.

Show me that the people who wrote those examples knew cooking pork at higher temps would make it safe, and that sperm was a replenishable resources. Please, show me where they had knowledge that the rest of the world didn't have till the last century or so.

You made the assertion, it is up to you to prove that those ideas had currency back then. But if it helps, some cursory googling shows that pork has been cooked for thousands of years from Asia to Europe. I can find no mention of how people cooked pork back in the day, but the USDA requiring that pork be cooked to 160 degrees Fahrenheit (And then walking it back to 145 degrees recently) is relatively new.

As for the sperm theory, another quick Google search turns up nothing. And "Knowledge that the rest of the world didn't have until the last century or so" is a non-argument. Even if you don't know how the Human body works, you can observe what it does. Pre-industrial families were huge, and men are quite capable of siring children well into their old age. Basic observation would have told the Hebrews that sperm is not a limited quantity, and "The body has only so much sperm" never comes up in the Bible or the Torah. Prove otherwise.

 

[The Name of Love]

My reply? Yeah, that was probably hostile. @The Name of Love's wasn't. And pointing out holes in your logic is hardly being defensive.

I don't think he even read my response to him. I think he just saw the long wall of text, and then said "oh shit, I can't refute this," and then made some lame excuse to not discuss the ideas with me. I think he's a man you'd be better off ignoring.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

So this is an underrated aspect of examining the tenents of different religions, as it looks at how their ignorance of modern science and knowledge could/can account for some rather backwards beliefs.


I'll start by pointing out two large cases of where this impacted religious tenents of major religions.

First, we have Judaism's and Islam's prohibition against pork. This seems silly to people today, because it doesn't actually have an real relevence to any supposed moral or ethical dictates outside of itself. However, when we account for the lack of knowledge about Germ Theory and the very real risk of trichinosis in undercooked pork, the prohibition makes more sense.

Would Judaism and Islam still have the prohibition against pork if their founders know safely eating pork was a simple matter of cooking it at hotter temps for longer? Personally, I think they wouldn't

The second is example is the edicts against masterbation.

These edicts, at the time they were written, assumed men had a limited sperm supply, just as women have a limited amount of eggs. There are other arguments against masterbation that have been used to buttress that edicts; arguments about hygiene, about wasting energy/resources used to produce the sperm, and about denial/delay of gratification/satisfaction are all ones I've heard bandied about. But none of that changes the fact that the edicts were written when we were ignorant of the fact men can produce new sperm throughout their life.

So, those are just a couple examples of religious edicts and writings that were done with an ignorance of the actually scientific realities they entailed or involved. There are plenty of others, but I think these were the two easiest examples off the top of my head.

"Holy shit guys, if you divorce ancient rules from the context they made sense in, they don't make sense anymore!"

Stop jerking off and have a kid already.

 

[Laskar]

I don't think he even read my response to him. I think he just saw the long wall of text, and then said "oh shit, I can't refute this," and then made some lame excuse to not discuss the ideas with me. I think he's a man you'd be better off ignoring.

No, I'm not placing him on Ignore. My requirements for ignoring someone are pretty high, and breaking out the ignore list on a forum this small is an exercise in futility.

I'm kind of bummed that he hasn't trotted out more examples. I was looking forward to shooting down those too.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

Oh yay, going on about with that 'liberalism/libertarianism is false' farce again. Yeah, done wasting my time engaging with you, period.

Congrats, you're going to be the first person I put on ignore on TS.

No, I'm not placing him on Ignore. My requirements for ignoring someone are pretty high, and breaking out the ignore list on a forum this small is an exercise in futility.

I'm kind of bummed that he hasn't trotted out more examples. I was looking forward to shooting down those too.

Ignore is idiotic on every level, it's just a loud public admission "i'm scared of this person's meanie words".

I cant even imagine being so ass blasted.

 

[FriedCFour]

Show me that the people who wrote those examples knew cooking pork at higher temps would make it safe, and that sperm was a replenishable resources. Please, show me where they had knowledge that the rest of the world didn't have till the last century or so.

Can you prove, like, any of this? The world knew you didnt have some kind of a limited supply, or if it was limited it didn't matter because people have known for 10,000 years+ men can keep popping out kids well into old age. That has nothing to do with masturbation, that is centered around the fact you should be having babies, not blowing your load to anime titties and contributing to the decline of the west in hedonistic debauchery as you die out with nothing to live past you revelling in self love.

So, those are just a couple examples of religious edicts and writings that were done with an ignorance of the actually scientific realities they entailed or involved. There are plenty of others, but I think these were the two easiest examples off the top of my head.

Masturbation is declared to be wrong because lust is wrong. And it is easily secularly arguable to be wrong. Science isn't some perfect way at developing morality, and much of secular morality is certainly and absolutely backwards. See the mass abortion, devastation of our birth rates, the absolute degeneracy allowed to flourish. Yes, secular morality is truly something special and so much more enlightened than religious morality.

The simple fact is you cannot escape god, faith, and religion. All you can do is choose your god. See all the secular atheist environmentalists. Their god is Gaia, their prophet Greta. They are as fanatically religious as any bible thumper.

 

[Terthna]

Can you prove, like, any of this? The world knew you didnt have some kind of a limited supply, or if it was limited it didn't matter because people have known for 10,000 years+ men can keep popping out kids well into old age. That has nothing to do with masturbation, that is centered around the fact you should be having babies, not blowing your load to anime titties and contributing to the decline of the west in hedonistic debauchery as you die out with nothing to live past you revelling in self love.


Masturbation is declared to be wrong because lust is wrong. And it is easily secularly arguable to be wrong. Science isn't some perfect way at developing morality, and much of secular morality is certainly and absolutely backwards. See the mass abortion, devastation of our birth rates, the absolute degeneracy allowed to flourish. Yes, secular morality is truly something special and so much more enlightened than religious morality.

The simple fact is you cannot escape god, faith, and religion. All you can do is choose your god. See all the secular atheist environmentalists. Their god is Gaia, their prophet Greta. They are as fanatically religious as any bible thumper.

Forgive me for interjecting, but whether or not one can escape god, faith, and religion, I can still reject yours regardless; and I do.

 

[Bacle]

Forgive me for interjecting, but whether or not one can escape god, faith, and religion, I can still reject yours regardless; and I do.

Yeah, the simple fact is Christian morality is NOT the only morality there by is in the public sphere, nor should it be.

I used to consider myself an atheist, but that ended a few years ago. Now, I have no doubt about the existence of a spiritual world beyond our own. However I'm not convinced that any religion has it right, or at least right enough to make their doctrine the center of my life. Frankly I think it's the height of arrogance to assume any human has ever truly understood the spiritual world or what it wants. Which is why I keep my morals based in the secularly-based world.

And as for another point where religion is completely full of bunk, the whole myth of Jesus being born on Dec 25th. That was something where Christianity co-op'd Nordic Yule celebrations to their own purpose, and yet actually celebrate that as the day Jesus was born. This despite Jesus most likely being born sometime between later spring to late summer.

 

[Terthna]

Yeah, the simple fact is Christian morality is NOT the only morality there by is in the public sphere, nor should it be.

I used to consider myself an atheist, but that ended a few years ago. Now, I have no doubt about the existence of a spiritual world beyond our own. However I'm not convinced that any religion has it right, or at least right enough to make their doctrine the center of my life. Frankly I think it's the height of arrogance to assume any human has ever truly understood the spiritual world or what it wants. Which is why I keep my morals based in the secularly-based world.

And as for another point where religion is completely full of bunk, the whole myth of Jesus being born on Dec 25th. That was something where Christianity co-op'd Nordic Yule celebrations to their own purpose, and yet actually celebrate that as the day Jesus was born. This despite Jesus most likely being born sometime between later spring to late summer.

Actually, as far as I understand it, Jesus being born on Dec 25th has its roots even further back; it was an attempt (a successful one at that) to co-opt a rival cult's (Mithraism, who worshiped an "Invincible Sun God") celebration back in ancient Rome, during the early days after Constantine I allowed Christians to practice their faith.

That aside though, you and I seem to share similar beliefs. I too think it's the height of arrogance for anyone to assert they they know what god is or wants, if anything; and most of it appears to be nothing more than people taking the words of other men long dead as the word of god, with them either parroting those words unthinkingly, or attempting to use circular logic to try and "prove" that they're correct. Neither of which is very convincing to those who do not believe as they do.

 

[FriedCFour]

And as for another point where religion is completely full of bunk, the whole myth of Jesus being born on Dec 25th.

Checkmate, Christians. You chose a day to celebrate a holiday on a day it probably didn't happen. You've well and truly destroyed christian morality. Now you should feel comfortable in your deism jerking off to anime.

 

[Bacle]

Checkmate, Christians. You chose a day to celebrate a holiday on a day it probably didn't happen. You've well and truly destroyed christian morality. Now you should feel comfortable in your deism jerking off to anime.

How strong is a religion's morality if it has to co-op the holidays of other faith's?

And Christmas isn't the only example of this, either.

Frankly if I was looking for a religion to teach me morality, rather than holding the secular views I do now, the first thing I'd look at is how well does it mesh with following the Constitution, and the second thing would be how big a body count has it racked up to get where it is.

But hey, keep pushing Christian fundie ideology and alienating people in the middle. Then you can watch the coalition Trump has built evaporate when he's out of office.

 

[FriedCFour]

How strong is a religion's morality if it has to co-op the holidays of other faith's?

How fast is a car if its painted red?

Frankly if I was looking for a religion to teach me morality, rather than holding the secular views I do now, the first thing I'd look at is how well does it mesh with following the Constitution, and the second thing would be how big a body count has it racked up to get where it is.

Everything has a body count attached to it. America has quite a big one.

But hey, keep pushing Christian fundie ideology and alienating people in the middle. Then you can watch the coalition Trump has built evaporate when he's out of office.

You don't even know what a christian fundamentalist is nor am I one. Enjoy the death of Western Civilization.

 

[The Name of Love]

Ignore is idiotic on every level, it's just a loud public admission "i'm scared of this person's meanie words".

I cant even imagine being so ass blasted.

I only ignore people on here who consistently lie about my positions and insult me.

Also, on Bacle's point about Christmas being "stolen" from paganism. Not true.