Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by Greatest I am, Jul 29, 2015.

  1. Greatest I am

    Greatest I am Well-Known Member

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    Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

    My mind set is close to Daniel Dennett as far as what religious people / theist should become after they grow up.

    Personally, I like a lot of the social functions and appeasement of our need for fellowship, hivishness and tribalism offered by religious institutions.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5tGpMcFF7U

    So I do not want to kill all religions but just encourage them to be more moral, tolerant and give equality to women and gays.

    Having said the above, People and recent trends to read scriptures literally have cause many to forget that religions were invented as theatre and myth and were never meant to be read or taken literally.

    http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

    Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

    Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.

    "Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

    As you can see from the following, religions and temples have always been about entertainment and fellowship.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7BHvN6rZZA

    If we could return to the old way of seeking God instead of idol worshiping false Gods, perhaps jihadists and other fundamental believers might chill and get along the way they have at some points in our history.

    Religions are fairy tales for adults. If this is a truth, we should encourage religions to grow up and return to their better past of seeking God stead of idol worshiping Yahweh and Allah, both mythical and manmade Gods.

    Regards
    DL
     
    DennisTate and (deleted member) like this.
  2. Lucky13

    Lucky13 New Member

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    Sure, religion may be just a fairy tale, but it's a fairy tale that people believe is real.
     
  3. Greatest I am

    Greatest I am Well-Known Member

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    That is what religious people say but because of the conditions you see in this presentation, I think that most are just following custom, culture and tradition. Otherwise, people would be choosing by other means and there would be more who would reject the family inherited Gods.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV2VjdpVonY

    There is also the fact that in some countries, notably Finland, where 95% of the population call themselves Christian, yet only 4% ever step into a church. Numbers vary for other countries but you get the idea.

    Regards
    DL
     
  4. Lucky13

    Lucky13 New Member

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    And why shouldn't they follow tradition and culture? In my personal experience, to go against religion is to go against family. It is not a very easy choice in many fundamentalist places, because sometimes family is all we have.
     
  5. Greatest I am

    Greatest I am Well-Known Member

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    Why should we not blindly follow tradition and culture?

    Because you then end with situations like in Hitler's day where good people will do horribly evil things because they do not have the moral fortitude to fight whatever evil pops up in their culture.

    I do understand that it is hard to be a black sheep or goat when surrounded by sheeple. That is why so few of us break out of our molds and become free thinkers.

    More and more of us are doing it these days. Thank all the Gods for that. That is proven by the fact that the fastest growing demography is non-believers.

    Our recognition of the immorality within religions are helping us reject them. Few of our young are interested in becoming homophobic and misogynous and are quickly leaving mainstream religions that are as described.

    Regards
    DL
     
  6. Goomba

    Goomba Well-Known Member

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    No, I think the real fairy tales are the stuff atheists make up concerning how the universe came into being. They legitimize their nonsensical beliefs by calling it "science" and acting intellectual superior.
     
  7. Jonsa

    Jonsa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    They are intellectual superior as they have overcome their superstitions and demand that any explanation conforms to the observable laws of nature.

    Its true that some people who have no clue as to the science behind the big bang theory, make crap up about what it actually says. You might want to consider that the theory does not in anyway postulate what came before, or what initiated the process in the first place. there are other speculations wrt to this, but they are not at all part of the theory. From the first instant the "science" offers a cohesive explanation of the process of the creation of our universe that conforms to those natural laws we have observed and documented.
     
  8. Greatest I am

    Greatest I am Well-Known Member

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    At least they do not create a God of the Gaps that men need to listen to or end in a hell for not believing in his invisible ass.

    Imagine the outcry if science said to believe in evolution of some God will send you to hell.

    They may or may not be intellectually superior but they do not threaten you with imaginary harm for not believing them.

    Which group do you think has the superior morality?

    Regards
    DL
     
  9. Goomba

    Goomba Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, have fun "documenting" and "observing" something coming from nothing.
     
  10. GraspingforPeace

    GraspingforPeace Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, have fun proving that something came from nothing in the first place, or that nothing even exists as a state of being.
     
  11. Goomba

    Goomba Well-Known Member

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    I certainly don't believe that.

    Is there not such a thing as ignorance? Can knowledge come from ignorance? Similarly, how can material things pop out of nowhere?
     
  12. Greatest I am

    Greatest I am Well-Known Member

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    ??

    You think God came from ------ always being here.

    Now that is dumb.

    Regards
    DL
     
  13. Goomba

    Goomba Well-Known Member

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    It's not dumb at all. God by definition is eternal.
     
  14. Greatest I am

    Greatest I am Well-Known Member

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    Here is how you think our universe was created.

    [video=youtube;RmD9ZWDUsNY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmD9ZWDUsNY&feature=youtu.be[/video]

    Regards
    DL
     
  15. Greatest I am

    Greatest I am Well-Known Member

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    Your book says that God is unknowable, unfathomable and mysterious, so how can you possibly know that God is eternal?

    Regards
    DL
     
  16. Goomba

    Goomba Well-Known Member

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    Derp. Standard atheist response.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Er, I don't know what books have to do with the existence of God.
     
  17. Greatest I am

    Greatest I am Well-Known Member

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    A damned site more plausible than your genocidal son murdering God.

    Regards
    DL
     
  18. Greatest I am

    Greatest I am Well-Known Member

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    If you do not believe due to what you have read or been told, then tell us please what makes you believe in a God who looks quite a lot like the bible God?

    Regards
    DL
     
  19. Goomba

    Goomba Well-Known Member

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    Because only God could have created the universe, or something from nothing.
     
  20. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    Based on what?
     
  21. Jonsa

    Jonsa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Ah, but they speculate the "something from nothing". It is simply a description of the starting point and means that what went before is unknowable at this point. The big bang theory does address the nature of "something from nothing" nor does speculate on what was before.


    However from the first instance in the birth of the universe, the big bang theory describes the processes involved and is backed up by experimentation, observation and mathematics and at each stage of the evolution of our universe, makes accurate predictions.
     
  22. Jonsa

    Jonsa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    NOTHING, of course.
     
  23. Greatest I am

    Greatest I am Well-Known Member

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    IOW. A God of the Gaps.

    Thanks for showing us your faith. Not your belief.

    Beliefs are on facts. Your faith is on nothing tangible.

    So which God do you have faith in?

    Regards
    DL
     
  24. cupid dave

    cupid dave Well-Known Member

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    Religious people and atheists both avoid what Genesis describes in each verse.
    Religious people refer to what their ancient churches or mosque or synagogues have been saying since the Middle Ages or worse.
    Atheists merely attack the "book reports" of the OT/NT/Koran/Mormon/JW's reports.

    The reading of scripture is supported when we read it afresh today:

    Gen 1:1 says a Big Bang beginning did happen.
    Gen 1:2 says the formless disk of rocks rotation the Sun was void of global shape, which was true.
    Gen 1:3-5 says the Dark Cosmic Age existed before there was any light in the Universe.
    Gen 1:6-8 describes the forming of an atmosphere above and waters below.
    Gen 1:9-10 describes "all the waters under heaven gathered together into one place," which was a Pangea-like truth.
    Gen 1:11-13 explains that the Plant Kingdom came before the Animal Kingdom, which was true.
    Gen 1:14-19 tells us that God assigned the Sun and Moon and Stars to keep time on Earth. ("made" in Hebrew means "assigned.")
    Gen 1:20-31 explains about the animals diversifying into herds of mamals, and finally, man, made to image "Reality," mentally, in the form of Truth inside his mind.


    Chapters 4, 5, and 10 explain the correspondences of the Genealogy with the species of Paleontology:
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]


    Genesis 6,7,8,and 9 tells that a great "flood" out-of-Africa took place when all other mankind went extinct, as did happen not 40 "days" ago, but 40,000 years ago.

    [​IMG]

    he Noah story ends with the factually correct events which say all huumans except our own species went extinct over the 40 to 60 millennia that had past, leaving only the off spring of Modern Homo sapiens alive in three different breeds, which correspond to Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid stock.
    This idea of three breeds derived from one Noah is now supported genetically,as described in the following statements from The National Geographic magazine:

    "While the most recent male common-ancestor, identified through the y-chromosome, lived @ 60,000 years ago."
    [This would correspond to a Noah-type entity, one which was father to all in the present population of the whole world.]
    "The most recent female common ancestor traced through mitochondrial DNA lived around @ 150,000 years ago."
    [This very nicely suggests that the common-female mother... (Gen5:31)... to these same breeds of stock took place initially when Noah and his wife gave birth to Ham, Japheth, and Shem, 100 millienia before the "flood" of Modern man Out-of-Africa, again around 100,000 + @ 40-60,000 years ago.]
    (Whether an individual can be identified as our single common-ancestor is open to debate.)
    "There's almost certainly not an Adam or Eve," said Tishkoff.
    "Each of our genes have their own history, which could be passed on from different ancestors. It's more likely that a lineage can be traced back to a population of 50, 100, or even several thousand people."
    [Or, can be traced back to 4 men, Noah, Shem, Japheth, Ham.]
    "The fact that one man apparently gave rise to the y-chromosome genes of all moderns does not mean he was our only male ancestor," said Stringer, a paleontological archaeologist. "What it means is that his male progeny were more prolific breeders or luckier, and their Y genes survived while those of his contemporaries didn't. But those contemporaries could have passed on many other genes to present-day peoples."
    [And those contemporaries were Neanderthals which went extinct.]
    http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/12/1212_021213_journeyofman_2.html
     
  25. cupid dave

    cupid dave Well-Known Member

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    Reality has always been here.
     

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