Santa V God

[Operacast]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

• God's existence is important to His believers. This is not universal to all people so how can it be deemed a truth? If God wants me to believe then why wont he tell me. Why did he only give this message to patently corrupt churches?

This has not just been a stimulating but a highly rigorous debate from everyone. Hence I'm surprised and disappointed at the sudden sloppiness here. Lugal-Shag-Egur, Urukagina, Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Christ, Mohammed and Bahá’u’lláh would all be exceedingly startled to find out that they are "patently corrupt churches" rather than individuals -- and countercultural ones at that. To be brutally candid, next time we have anyone sling "facts" around here, how about getting them straight first? IF God exists at all, IF, then s/he much more likely communicated with these individuals first. Any "patently corrupt churches" come later in the process when the claims for direct communication from God become infinitely more dubious.

Sincerely,

Operacast

[seattlegal]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

The original OP cannot be approached from a scientific/investigative perspective?

Tao

In a repeatable manner in which God can be proved or disproved?

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by Operacast

This has not just been a stimulating but a highly rigorous debate from everyone. Hence I'm surprised and disappointed at the sudden sloppiness here. Lugal-Shag-Egur, Urukagina, Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Christ, Mohammed and Bahá’u’lláh would all be exceedingly startled to find out that they are "patently corrupt churches" rather than individuals -- and countercultural ones at that. To be brutally candid, next time we have anyone sling "facts" around here, how about getting them straight first? IF God exists at all, IF, then s/he much more likely communicated with these individuals first. Any "patently corrupt churches" come later in the process when the claims for direct communication from God become infinitely more dubious.

Sincerely,

Operacast

Interesting. The first on the list I have never heard of and neither has google.

The 2nd is a Babylonian King who is cited as introducing the first judicial system but according to wiki " Although the actual text has not been discovered yet, much of its content may be surmised from other references to it that have been found. " Yet this is cited : "Urukagina's code limited the power of the preisthood" Wiki makes no reference to any claim of divine revelation, in fact it seems he was sceptical of religion.

Buddha, Confucius and Socrates all notably do not claim to have been given a divine message from God.

Who Christ was and what he said or did not say are all conjecture. The scripts we have closest to the time all share the common thread that they are other people interpreting what Christ is said to have said but none of them heard him say it. And certainly Christ himself left nothing to indicate the authenticity of any word attributed to him.

Muhammad the warlord and the council of regional power that came after him, and gave us the Q'uran we know today, most definitely fall into the 'corrupt religion' brackets.

Bahá’u’lláh, he founded the all things to all men religion and made a nice dynastic living out of it. I am as cynical about its founding as I am Scientology.

Going through the list we can see that it is only the last two names that can truly have claimed to have started religions. I see this as no coincidence but as evidence of the evolution of religion in society. And those two were inspired by the man who started modern Christianity. The pagan Emperor Constantine who introduced it as the European 'state' religion for the purpose of controlling both the priesthood and the people. Muhammad and his group copied this example as did Vladimir the Great in making Russian orthodoxy the state religion. Though Bahá’u’lláh was no state leader I believe he was acutely aware of what I illustrate and he attempted to create an evolution of the same principle. To unify and standardise the way people think makes controlling them, taxing them and spotting the tell tale signs of the trouble maker much easier. As a leader you only have to control one church head, not a dozen or more. In summary, it is about power, not belief. Mass religion was not given to us by God nor by individuals with a hotline to God, but by powerful state leaders who recognised the immense value of being in control of peoples beliefs.

Tao

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by seattlegal

In a repeatable manner in which God can be proved or disproved?

Well you can repeatably look at all the evidence and from the different perspectives then draw conclusion from them. Is there more evidence that the idea of God was born of the human condition and evolution or because there is something outwith man that gives us this idea. For me the evidence for the former is compelling.

Tao

[Operacast]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Interesting. The first on the list I have never heard of and neither has google.

He initiated the worship of Ningirsu in Lagash as the deity who inspired a peace treaty between Lagash and Umma.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

The 2nd is a Babylonian King who is cited as introducing the first judicial system but according to wiki " Although the actual text has not been discovered yet, much of its content may be surmised from other references to it that have been found. " Yet this is cited : "Urukagina's code limited the power of the preisthood" Wiki makes no reference to any claim of divine revelation, in fact it seems he was sceptical of religion.

Urukagina established new temples free of the corrupt priesthood of the time and designed to replace the temples then in "business" and was actually mourned by a reform priest in an extant lament upon Urukagina's being slain in battle. Urukagina claimed that his god Ningirsu mandated his looking out for the "widow and orphan" (the earliest written use of this expression) instead of the well-heeled whom the priesthood of the time had been befriending.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Buddha, Confucius and Socrates all notably do not claim to have been given a divine message from God.

That may be true of Confucius. But Buddha, in one of the earliest extant sermons of the earliest sermon collection, Digha-Nikaya 13, provides a virtual autobiography of his own odyssey of attaining enlightenment:

"(from time to time) a Tath¤gata is born into the world, an Arahat, a fully awakened one, abounding, in wisdom and goodness, happy, with knowledge of the worlds, unsurpassed as a guide to mortals willing to be led, a teacher of gods and men, a Blessed One, a Buddha. He, by himself, thoroughly understands, and sees, as it were, face to face this universe -- including the worlds above with the gods, the M¤ras, and the Brahm¤s; and the world below with its Sama¼as and Brahmans, its princes and peoples; -- and he then makes his knowledge known to others."

And Socrates in one of the earliest-written Plato Dialogues, Apology, describes his visceral experience of deity this way:

"Some one may wonder why I go about in private giving
advice and busying myself with the concerns of others, but do not venture to come forward in public and advise the state. I will tell you why. You have heard me speak at sundry times
31d
and in divers places of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign, which is a kind of voice, first began to come to me when I was a child; it always forbids but never commands me to do anything which I am going to do. This is what deters me from being a politician."

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Who Christ was and what he said or did not say are all conjecture. The scripts we have closest to the time all share the common thread that they are other people interpreting what Christ is said to have said but none of them heard him say it.

And the same is true of plenty of other texts concerning plenty of other figures of the B.C.E. Do we throw all of them out as well? If we only throw out the Jesus accounts, then we're not being scientific or consistent. We're only doing an unscrupulous and arbitrary airbrushing of history. If we throw out the other figures whose documentation is even further away from the time they lived and even sparser than that for Christ, then we throw out well over three fourths of all history before 50 C.E. Which is it going to be? Pleast list all the figures of the B.C.E. that are better documented than Christ and cite the specific source texts and the presumed date of each and every text.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

And certainly Christ himself left nothing to indicate the authenticity of any word attributed to him.

Muhammad the warlord and the council of regional power that came after him, and gave us the Q'uran we know today, most definitely fall into the 'corrupt religion' brackets.

You're being inconsistent. You didn't say "corrupt religion" before. You said "patently corrupt churches". Answer me: Is Mohammed a church or an individual?

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Bahá’u’lláh, he founded the all things to all men religion and made a nice dynastic living out of it. I am as cynical about its founding as I am Scientology.

Same question.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Going through the list we can see that it is only the last two names that can truly have claimed to have started religions.

But in your first offhand remark about deity giving out messages, you didn't address the matter of those who started religions. Instead, you addressed strictly the matter of those to whom deity gave a message, pure and simple. After all, even Christ didn't start a religion. Paul and Constantine did.

Sincerely,

Operacast

[Tao_Equus]

Opera,

I see it as materially irrelevant who claimed what, such schizophrenic hallucination today would get you heavily medicated (or the Presidency of the US). To base whole religions on what people hallucinated or made metaphors of 100s or even 1000s of years ago is to put it mildly a bit daft. All you have to go on is your faith that there were people who were somehow specially selected to get a message. I cannot believe that. Its just not a credible.

Tao

[Operacast]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Opera,

I see it as materially irrelevant who claimed what, such schizophrenic hallucination today would get you heavily medicated (or the Presidency of the US). To base whole religions on what people hallucinated or made metaphors of 100s or even 1000s of years ago is to put it mildly a bit daft. All you have to go on is your faith that there were people who were somehow specially selected to get a message. I cannot believe that. Its just not a credible.

Tao

You asked

"If God wants me to believe then why wont he tell me[?] Why did he only give this message to patently corrupt churches?"

Whether the early accounts of individual seekers having personally encountered deity are daft or not, there are at least those accounts. We're all perfectly free to scoff at them.

There are, however, NO early accounts of such encounters concerning churches as a whole, and you've made a big rhetorical gesture here dependent precisely on the misconception that there are. But that's what it is: a misconception, yours. There are an average of half a dozen accounts each for each of the six or seven figures for whom personal encounters are claimed. There is only ONE "account" that assumes that some church or other had a similar encounter. That one "account" comes from some 5000 years after Shag-Egur lived, some 4500 after Urukagina, 2600 after Buddha, 2400 after Socrates, 2000 after Christ, 1500 after Mohammed and 200 after Baha'ullah. That one "account" is in a twenty-first century forum on the Internet entitled Interfaith Forums at http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum

It comes from a poster called Tao_Equus.

If the early accounts of individual encounters are bogus, then any twenty-first century "account" that assumes a similar claim for such an encounter between deity in any form and some church is a hundred times as bogus.

You made a mistake in assuming such a claim. Admit it.

Operacast

[China Cat Sunflower]

I gotta do this.

Here's the Merriam Webster entry for god:

Main Entry:1god
Pronunciation:*g*d also *g*d
Function:noun
Etymology:Middle English, from Old English; akin to Old High German got god
Date:before 12th century

1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe b Christian Science : the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit : infinite Mind
2 : a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality
3 : a person or thing of supreme value
4 : a powerful ruler

Please specify which God you mean. I flat don't believe in 1a. I'm more flexible as you head south.

Chris

[Netti-Netti]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

I will make it simpler than that. Just show one piece of evidence that can without doubt be shown to prove divine interference.

Some would say that miracle healings constitute evidence. Would they meet your "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of evidence?

[wil]

Namaste CCS

I'd say 1b is close to my understanding sans the 'ruling over' (unless a law like gravity rules), but I'll just leave it as 1 as the closest, no a.

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by wil

Namaste CCS

I'd say 1b is close to my understanding sans the 'ruling over' (unless a law like gravity rules), but I'll just leave it as 1 as the closest, no a.

Yeah, somehow "ruling over" seems to imply less than all encompassing preeminence. As if the Ruler has derived status from wresting power away from near equal rivals. Or as if the Ruler rules from some specific location and must extend it's authority out and away from itself, consolidating power through the expansion of it's franchise, it's "brand."

Chris

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by Operacast

You asked

"If God wants me to believe then why wont he tell me[?] Why did he only give this message to patently corrupt churches?"

Whether the early accounts of individual seekers having personally encountered deity are daft or not, there are at least those accounts. We're all perfectly free to scoff at them.

There are, however, NO early accounts of such encounters concerning churches as a whole, and you've made a big rhetorical gesture here dependent precisely on the misconception that there are. But that's what it is: a misconception, yours.

No I have not. All I have done, at worst, is poorly used language to explain myself. And I posit that you are as aware of this as I am. Without these, "patently corrupt institutions" to put the individuals on the pedestals very likely they would have faded to the footnotes of history, if they were remembered at all. Iconographical versions of texts copied from other texts narrated by someones uncles uncle 100 years after the death just do not impress me.

Tao

Tao

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

Some would say that miracle healings constitute evidence. Would they meet your "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of evidence?

As far as I am aware there has not been one scientifically confirmed case of miracle healing. Many subjective claims. No evidence.

Tao

[Operacast]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Without these, "patently corrupt institutions" to put the individuals on the pedestals very likely they would have faded to the footnotes of history, if they were remembered at all.

..........O.K. <shrug> -- I disagree, but at least that makes a little sense, if not much. It just strikes me that, at the least, the accounts we have of such figures are somewhat more detailed and circumstantial with a more identifiable historical milieu than anything purportedly biographical about Santa Claus!

Of course, I don't take any of the later texts surrounding the rather fanciful details on Buddha's death, or the passages covering Jesus's post-crucifixion appearances, which most modern scholars take as being clearly a later stratum than Jesus's actual sayings, with as much seriousness as the early texts of Buddha's actual sermons or the parallel Jesus sayings themselves in both Matthew and Luke -- just to recall two examples where rigorous modern scholarship is essential to removing the chaff from the wheat.

But cases like that do not cancel out the curiously cross-referencing nature of earlier and extremely different, discrete texts confirming more mundane and credible biographical details duplicated in the earliest strata of the earliest accounts surrounding all six or seven of these startling communicators.

Sincerely,

Operacast

[juantoo3]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

We have quite recently discussed the 'origins' of belief in supernatural deities on another thread. We agreed there that every ancient way of life was essentially shamanic and that they all used powerful hallucinogens in their rituals. This is the setting for the genesis of all religion. Now while I would state that such Shamans had a wonderful, rich and deep understanding about many aspects of their physical environment, (the where, the what and the when), they were ignorant of the facts of science as we are today. This is fundamental for the explanations they gave for the why and how are the metaphysics that gave rise to religion. We know their explanations for the why and how to be wrong so the whole root of religious belief is built on false reasoning. I know exactly what hallucinogens do and I am sorry but they are powerful and impressive but they are no gate to another realm. They get you high or terrify you, highten some senses, dim others, change your vision and your thought processes so you can see what is not there and imagine with great lucidity. But that is the effect of the drug not a proof of a spirit realm. And the similarity of experience in far flung corners with every other states this is an effect of the drug, (which was always the same alkaloid).
Humans are naturally curious. We want to know why!! If we dont know why we will make a theory that best fits what we can observe. Our ancestors did not know what we know about the things that they used to explain their metaphysics. Yet we still hang on to their explanations. Modern knowledge shows a complete dearth of evidence for any supernatural interference anywhere in nature, from us to the dance of galaxies. Yet we still cling desperately to the idea that it does.

Yes we explored the impact of psychoactive chemicals on the human psyche in the development of religion in neolithic times. I don't recall coming to the same conclusions on the matter. I think you are still evading a crucial point of circumstantial evidence, that of widespread cross cultural cohesion on the subject. I still fail to see how many multiples of differing cultures, races, even species within Homo (Neandertal) could come to remarkably related conclusions, particularly when the experiences I have had and have had related to me of psychoactive chemical experience shows an extremely wide variety of expression. To argue that all exposed to the same substance have the same "trip" is a bit like saying every child handed a box of 64 crayons will all draw substantially the same picture, which is quite evidently *not* the case.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Hmmmm... I am tempted to go off on a tangent and give the biological explanation of what love is. But that deserves a thread of its own.

Please do. I think you will end up finding it will provide the same scientific verity that G-d does within the brain...that is, proof of one ultimately leads to proof of the other, biochemically speaking. I'll be happy to point to scientific findings to support this, if you would like to see them:

http://www.comparative-religion.com/...or-6115-2.html
particularly posts #26 and 30

Originally Posted by Paladin

I'm not sure I addressed the practical and may I add utilitarian aspects of religion and belief in deity(s) though it is an interesting invitation. It would seem from the above that you are arguing that God is merely a symbol and has no independent reality? Hmmmm very interesting indeed.

Not quite. "G-d" in the sense of an old grey beard in the sky floating around on a cloud with a handful of lightning bolts looking for some hapless n'er-do-well to strike, or some essential equivalent, is a symbol. Symbols do not have to be factual to make sense, they simply have to convey a message. I can go into a long litany of "why is G-d represented as this here and that there," but it would cloud the issue here. Cultural relevance is the shortest way to explain. The explanation is about something that is inherently unexplainable, at least in totality. What I find so intriguing is why we collectively still seek this unexplainable "IT" that we all seem to intuit on one level or another if there is nothing really there, and have done so as far back as humans have been making tools and carving stones and painting ourselves in ochre and carving egg shells and painting cave walls. And burying our dead with honors.

Originally Posted by Netti-Netti

We were talking about the existence of G-d. It makes no sense to apply an empirical standard of evidence to a matter of faith. Wrong level of analysis.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Only a theist would make such a statement. One rule for faith...another for logic.... you really think that valid?

Ummm, Tao, are you aware that an eminent atheist, Stephen J. Gould, made the very same claim? By the way, he was an evolutionary biologist and paleontologist by trade.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy not anything real or solid. But empirical science can study metaphysics and its claims and confirm or deny them.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, as I have been using this term a bit recently. I have been using it to denote the spiritual aspect of reality.

Since science can't hold, dissect or analyze spirit, nor submit it to tests, I doubt the claim that science can study, confirm or deny the spiritual aspect of reality. The closest I have seen, and even then this is conjecture on my part, is quantum mechanics. Particularly the subject of neutrinos.

Originally Posted by DrFree

There are important differences, especially between Santa and the Jesus/God that has emerged through two millennia of Christianity:

• God requires us to believe in Him.
  Santa does not.
• God's existence is important to His believers.
  Santa doesn't have to exist to be real.
• God requires us to do what He says.
  Santa's love is unconditional.
• God teaches us to love by punishing us if we don't.
  Santa teaches us to love by loving us without expectation.
• A child who is taught the birth of Jesus on Christmas learns duty.
  A child who is taught about Santa on Christmas learns to love and give.

However you worship as an adult, the message of Santa is right for children.

I certainly agree there are differences between G-d and Santa, but I think both (as traditionally presented) are charicatures, and culturally stylized symbols. They are both symbols pointing to something realized but unseen.

I think there is a underlying parental love symbolism with G-d, even in the bloodlust and vengeance aspect, it is always to protect "His" (culturally focused) children. Santa is a bit more broad spectrum, but still essentially an expression of the love concept, in the cultural context of the birth/death/rebirth cycle of Paganism.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

Since the central pillar of the religion in question is belief in God, to establish the religion to be fake may not destroy that metaphysical idea but it most certainly removes it as a credible proposition.

What? Removes G-d as a credible proposition? I beg to differ, good sir.

If I am reading you correctly here (and elsewhere) it seems the argument offered is that if a portion can be shown faulty, that fault extends to the whole. In secular terms, this is broad brush stereotyping. "One is lazy, so they are all lazy. That religion has some issues, so all religions have issues, therefore G-d doesn't exist." That is not logic, and it is not logical reasoning.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

If you look at my contentions on religion throughout my history here at CR they present science based evidence but I do not present a scientific theory. What I do is much more closely related to the presentation of evidence at a trial.

If you look at my contentions on G-d throughout my history here, you will see I do not argue from "the top down" with the assumption that G-d exists. I argue from the bottom up, building my case from circumstantial evidence, predominantly outside the boundaries of religious texts. I pull from psychology, anthropology, biology, history and assorted other scientific fields.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

I do not discount the possibility that the Universe itself is a living thing. Even if it is I still do not believe it a God to be worshipped, feared, loved and paid for via men wearing decidedly funny clothes.

So what's the argument?

We have been here before, you and I. How can you say there is no G-d when you clearly see there is a G-d? But you don't want to call it G-d, so it doesn't exist? Or it does exist, but it isn't G-d? Because you say so?

"Atheist" is just another label. Labels are irrelevent. Besides, you act more like an agnostic anyway, which to my way of thinking is far more respectable.

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

I see it as materially irrelevant who claimed what, such schizophrenic hallucination today would get you heavily medicated (or the Presidency of the US). To base whole religions on what people hallucinated or made metaphors of 100s or even 1000s of years ago is to put it mildly a bit daft. All you have to go on is your faith that there were people who were somehow specially selected to get a message. I cannot believe that. Its just not a credible.

All who consume grain in their diet labor under a schizophrenic hallucination. I would guess that probably includes virtually every hero of atheism, past and present. Point being, civilized humanity has been laboring under this so-called schizophrenic hallucination for several thousand years. Indeed, civilization is predicated on this grain diet induced schizophrenic hallucination, without which we would all still be chipping stones into arrowheads. So the argument here is just a bit daft.

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

I gotta do this.

Here's the Merriam Webster entry for god:

Please specify which God you mean. I flat don't believe in 1a. I'm more flexible as you head south.

I'm with you and Wil on this Chris.

Some references:
http://www.comparative-religion.com/...sion-6048.html

http://www.comparative-religion.com/...-for-3481.html

http://www.comparative-religion.com/...html#post80509
specifically post #12

http://www.comparative-religion.com/...tube-6049.html

http://www.comparative-religion.com/...od-6039-7.html
especially post #91