I’m always having iffs. You can’t disprove an unfalsifiable proposition.
that’s a big “IF”. and everyone assumes that’s it’s so polarized. heaven or hell. Atlas stone, or 72 virgins. it’s all just a bit far-fetched to me.
I love the Islamic martyr’s concept. most religions state that it’s a sin to murder and you’ll be dispatched to hell. But to a jihadist, blowing yourself up and murdering a group of people is a good thing that will get you to heaven.
religion is just soooo blasphemized. I keep going back to the concept behind the movie Stigmata:
Jesus said… the Kingdom of God is inside you, and all around you, not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood… and I am there, lift a stone… and you will find me
I look at how the indigenous peoples have been able to find harmony with their surroundings, and feel like the world would be much better off if we spent our time trying to find that balance with nature and a better understanding of our place in this world, other than being pure consumers of resources on this planet. want to worship something? go find peace within yourself.
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Isn’t the virgins thing a mistranslation anyway?
Nope. It wasn’t.
I maintain that you aren’t supposed to take everything in religious books literally , whether it is the Gita, Bible, Quran etc. But this is coming from an agnostic/athiest. Believers I suppose can read the books for themselves and figure out for themselves which is most appropriate for them and which verses aren’t.
Either they are the divine word of god or they’re not. If they are then they absolutely should be taken literally. Presumably an omnipotent being can get his / her message right first time? If not, why bother?
Exceptional.
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my parents LOVED West Wing. I may end up watching it myself someday.
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I agree. Just that religion offers a large chunk of the population some personal happiness and motivation. Religion is a part of society as such so I wouldn’t object if it helps people find their way in life. As long as it’s kept as a personal matter and not used (as it is often used as it’s being used now)
@Mascot please tell me more about the journey from chemistry to life.
I am genuinely interested in how you understand the world.
Also, is anyone doing that in a lab anywhere? If so I’m all ears. And if not, why not?
The thinking is that life took around 500-1000 million years to come about after the planet formed - some 4.5 billion years ago. To expect that a couple of cooks can replicate in a 100 or a 1000 years the exact sequence of events of how life came about is hard to envisage or expect. Indeed the tools to truly tackle the conundrum have only started to come about in the last 10-15 years - and they really need to develop a lot further before we can get at the answer. However, there are many (many, many) observations and experiments that have been made and carried out, respectively, that have been put forward on how life (or at least its building blocks) might have kicked off.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07212-y
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/an-evolutionary-perspective-on-amino-acids-14568445/
The state of play - basically we may not know now but we will eventually. It is ok to not know - right now - but the research goes on.
For me, out with of how things kicked off, between the shellfish gene (Dawkins R) and gun germs and steel (Diamond J), the frayed tapestry of life is pretty much writ. We, all about us and of us, are a consequence of geography/the environment and that we will likely not escape those shackles until we engineer Hs1.1, Hs1.2… and so on - which will happen.
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So, nobody’s willing to answer my questions? I asked politely 
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Again, over-simplistic binary thinking. You know there are many people who don’t take their holy books literally but still find light, meaning and purpose to their lives. But you don’t seem interested in hearing other perspectives
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You’re saying turning water into wine wouldn’t benefit humanity? I beg to differ 
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I heard a rumor that the “New Testament” (aka the re-writing of the King James Bible) is the best-selling fiction book of all time.
does that cover it? 
No, it’s just an awkward question that I ask theists.
If Jesus was the son of God, why did he not use his status to perform miracles that were of long term benefit to humanity as a whole instead of performing party tricks like turning water into wine or conjuring up loaves and fishes?
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A typical Christian response to this might be that Jesus did perform a miracle that is of long term benefit, the most useful thing he could have done in fact, by defeating death itself. Christians have hope for eternal life, and the resurrection of Jesus is the miracle that is tied to this.
Beyond that, calling the other two miracles mentioned ‘party tricks’ wouldn’t be what Christians would say. Water to wine first. Usually the best wine was served first at the wedding, but here the best wine was last. The miracle is recorded in John’s gospel, who famously called miracles signs - not just miracles to alleviate some condition or problem, but a sign pointing to something greater. In this instance, this is the first miracle Jesus performed, at the wedding in Cana, Galilee, and the sign it points to is that Jesus is greater than what came before, the best was saved until last, God is doing a new thing here…
The loaves and the fishes, again in John’s gospel. The miracle is that thousands were fed, but the sign points to something greater… Jesus called himself the bread of life, able to not just satisfy physical hunger but also spiritual hunger.
If there really is an all powerful supernatural being, why would it allow all the pain and misery in the world?
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We’ve touched on this in the thread at several points. One thing I don’t think has been said so far is that God’s will is being challenged, left, right and center. The Christian worldview includes the doctrine of the Fall; briefly, initially God created and it was paradise, paradise was lost (that’s the paradigm we live in now) and paradise will be regained. In the paradise lost paradigm we are living in now, the will of God is being challenged and there is pain and misery in the world. Some of it is due to the choices we have made. Some of it is due to the nature of the world as is. The Christian view would also be that God might be doing something redemptive, even in the midst of suffering. Also, he is not uninvolved, but through Jesus he came and got involved with the worst that humanity could do.
What kind of sadistic being could watch all the pain and suffering of not only humans, but animals over millennia and do nothing?
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The usual Christian worldview is that God did do something, and he sent Jesus to intervene. Jesus took on himself all the pain and suffering of the world on the cross, and through his resurrection, there is the promise of life to come beyond the grave.
Why are whole sections of humanity, and aeons of natural history absent from the bible?
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It is not a world history book. The first half (actually more like three quarters) is the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, and by and large it traces the history and happenings of the Israelites, up to a few hundred years before Jesus came. God made a covenant with them, they had kings, prophets, and generally numerous times where they fell away. The Bible does give a creation account, and while some people do try to take this literally, I do not (and many others too). I have faith in God, but I read early Genesis in the style of poetry, rather than a scientific manual. Essentially it is telling me that God is the one who is behind creation, and that’s what I believe, though in terms of how, I’m on board with the Big Bang (not quite in the same way as some others, but I don’t have a problem in reconciling science and religion, personally).
Why is the bible full of contradictions and instructions that are inherently inhumane?
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Some of the contradictions are errors of copying, for example a number here or there, might be 70 in one manuscript, or 75 in another. It doesn’t change the story of the point of the story.
As for inherently inhumane instructions, yes, some of these things are challenging, for sure, and plenty has been said about it in the thread so far.
As a follower of Jesus, I would stick to the covenant and teaching that is primarily applicable to his followers, I.e. the New Testament.
Even so, it is a mistake to characterize all of the OT as barbaric or inhumane. One example, the famous eye for an eye teaching. This has been criticized as inhumane but it is actually a means of limiting suffering and human pain. If someone did to one of yours, the usual convention was to make sure you got them back, with plenty of interest. The eye for an eye teaching was actually designed to say knock it off, and don’t be unreasonable or go too far in the payback. This was actually quite countercultural, in the context it was given.
Edit:
I love Craig Johnston. Made the absolute most of himself as a player. Did very well for us after a long and difficult journey to get there. Got at out the top for family reasons. Then as a high achieving fella became an inventor, developer, and I had some of the early Predator boots, that looked a bit like I had Stegosaurus skin on my feet.
My answers aren’t the most detailed, and they are far from the best ones possible, but in good faith I’ve tried to give you a typical solid Christian view on the things you raised.
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It maybe sounds clever in your head but this question has been discussed for centuries, and within this thread people have given you their own reasons. You don’t seem interested in the responses to your ‘awkward’ questions so what was your rationale in starting the thread?
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@tesh thank you for info.
Thank you for the article. I did read it.
It still seems that we are quite a way away from even getting a first foundational step, even though we have ideas about the global, local, and microscopic conditions that would have been needed to form the first boundary structures.
Still, I will watch with interest.
One comment I often hear from people is that it all happened 4.5 Billion years ago, over a period of 500 million to 1 billion years ago. In other words, so long ago, and so therefore it is unreasonable to expect things to be replicated by experiment now… but we will get there one day.
So my comment is just one of frustration at the lack of progress.
We live in the computer age! Back in the day we had slide rules and so on, but now we have advanced computer modeling, and you always hear stuff about how computers can perform billions of calculations a second, and so on.
The point I’m making is this: why don’t they hurry up with it then?
I would love to see scientists create life from whatever assortment of chemicals they put into the primordial soup they are cooking up. Chop chop lads!
The other comment I have is this: is there a place on earth today where where life can be observed as coming into existence from chemical compounds? Or was it a one and done sort of thing? It happened once, giving rise to a evolutionary chain of events, and that was it? Never to be repeated again?