Religion, Scripture and logical thinking

originally posted by: Cogito, Ergo Sum

originally posted by: chr0naut


The original text was the Torah, which was already ancient before Christ and was written in Biblical Hebrew.

and how old is the oldest copy we have?

Torah's were written on high quality treated leather with indelible high chromium ink. It was forbidden to touch the scrolls with your hands so special metal tools were used to read and follow lines of text. In use, master scrolls had an average life of 800 years. So from the time of Moses, to the time of Jesus, there were only four or five master copies required.

The oldest original scrolls we have are the Dead Sea Scrolls which are approximately 2,215 years old.

a reply to: chr0naut

And the story it contains is nothing but a compilation of ancient summerians stories among others ...

originally posted by: undo
a reply to: Develo

so are you catholic? if so, why do they teach that the eucharist is literal? and that the pope literally becomes christ during communion? i'm not criticizing, btw, i'm trying to figure out where the literal line stops and ends, in catholicism and why they would be literal about those things but not about the text itself

I'm not religious.

Do you seriously believe Catholics literally think they drink the blood of Christ? Like, really? And they they eat his corpse? Like cannibals?

All these things are spiritual, you keep seeing them as material because you were conditioned to do so by your education and culture.

a reply to: Develo

you just switched that around on me, just like the other accusations. this is like the 10th time you've done that to me today. back off.

originally posted by: theultimatebelgianjoke
a reply to: chr0naut

And the story it contains is nothing but a compilation of ancient summerians stories among others ...

it really isn't. semites lived in sumer. it's a shared history, not a copy.

a reply to: undo

Lol, you are the one claiming Catholics could literally be vampires and cannibals drinking literal blood and eating literal flesh.

I switched nothing.


Everything in the bible is subject to critical interpretation. Everything.

It's part of a discipline called exegesis.

originally posted by: Develo
a reply to: undo

Lol, you are the one claiming Catholics could literally be vampires and cannibals drinking literal blood and eating literal flesh.

I switched nothing.


Everything in the bible is subject to critical interpretation. Everything.

It's part of a discipline called exegesis.

no, i asked you if you were catholic and if so, why the literal interpretation of eucharist. if it wasn't true, i assumed you would tell me (if you were a catholic) that it wasn't.

you're trolling me and it's kinda irritatin'

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: Cogito, Ergo Sum

originally posted by: chr0naut


The original text was the Torah, which was already ancient before Christ and was written in Biblical Hebrew.

and how old is the oldest copy we have?

Torah's were written on high quality treated leather with indelible high chromium ink. It was forbidden to touch the scrolls with your hands so special metal tools were used to read and follow lines of text. In use, master scrolls had an average life of 800 years. So from the time of Moses, to the time of Jesus, there were only four or five master copies required.

The oldest original scrolls we have are the Dead Sea Scrolls which are approximately 2,215 years old.

Impressive, but aren't they "partial copies" and "fragments" (the only complete extant copy is circa 1000) ? Would be interesting to see how it compares to the Vulgate in translation. Afaik the old testament was copied into Latin from Hebrew. Apparently, St. Jerome had specialists in Hebrew to help him with it.

originally posted by: undo
you're trolling me and it's kinda irritatin'

No you just have no understanding of a culture that isn't yours, and you are not capable of seeing things through a different lens than your own beliefs.

The Eucharist can be both literal and spiritual. It's not mutually exclusive.


Catholics usually see the Bible as a spiritual book, something you don't seem familiar with given how you read it as a story about genetic modifications and all.

a reply to: Develo

ah i see. well been interesting talking to ya.

just out of curiosity, since you claim i don't take an interest in other people's beliefs (lol!)
how do you interpret the genesis creation verses?

originally posted by: Answer

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

However, I am willing to bet there are two different mythology tales being told here. The embellished "true" history myths and the allegory to teach a lesson myths. The problem is that over the ages we've lost the ability to tell which ones are which.

That's exactly why the Holy Bible has stood the test of time. It combines just enough verifiable history with the allegorical tales to convince impressionable people that everything contained within is valid.

It should be firmly in the category of "Fictional Alternate History/Mythology" just like Homer's Iliad and The Odyssey but the difference is that no one is building massive buildings to tell people how factually accurate Homer's stories are.

Well they used to, that is until Rome put a stop to that when it decided that the whole empire was to be Catholic.

originally posted by: Develo
Such a label is too constraining.

o.O If you say so.

Like I said. Transformative process. The basis of all spiritual traditions. There is the golden rule as a basic philosophy yes, then there is all the rest.

Which I find useless. Take for example the Ten Commandments. Right off the bat I can discard the first 4 because they have to do with worshiping god and have no relevance on my day to day life. The last 6 are covered under the golden rule. In fact, I kind of think even the Golden Rule is lacking because it isn't really a rule but more of a guideline. For instance if someone LIKES to get beat and cut themselves, does that give them the right to beat and cut others? No, of course not.

The hidden truth was usually only unveiled to a few, only after being initiated into the mysteries. It's on purpose that the message isn't self-evident and hidden beneath a mythical story.

That's dishonest and shows that the religions were really meant for other purposes. Namely control. If religion truly wanted to do what it claimed to then there would be no hidden meanings at all and any layperson would be able to decipher them. Why are intelligent people in the know able to know the truth, but everyone else has to believe a bunch of lies?

Your assumptions. If they had no idea, the original hidden meaning would most likely be lost as the writer would focus more on insignificant details as well as getting the symbols wrong. Most of the time it's not the case.

For example there is a chance that Homer isn't a single person, but an anonymous collective of initiates into the mysteries.

There is also a chance that these "hidden meanings" are really just bullspit that have occurred when people read too deeply into these texts.

If you truly want to understand these texts you have to put yourself in the shoes of someone from that time. A time were people, far from being more stupid than today, were actually very bright, with less time spent in distraction and more time contemplating the mystery of existence. A time where people knew they descended from very long and very old traditions and cultures, millenias old.

I never claimed that people were less bright than today. They certainly weren't as educated as we are today though. So in other words they spent all this time wondering about things that just turn out to be assumptions at the end of the day.

A time where the knowledge of plants could make a difference between life and death, where knowledge of astronomy could help feed a whole village, where knowledge of mathematics could make you erect monuments like never seen before.

Knowledge of plants still does make a difference between life and death. Where do you think modern medicine comes from? By knowledge of astronomy, do you perhaps mean the changing of the seasons? Because knowing about constellations means little towards feeding a village. Also, engineering is powered by mathematics as well. We STILL erect monuments like never seen before using math.

None of those things is religion though. They are sciences.

To the man of that time, there was no difference between the divine and the universe. And thus there was no separation between the sacred and the scientific. In order to master the creation, you had to humbly listen to the teachings of the ancients because there were no libraries nor internet. In order to speak the language of the myths, you had to master the symbolic alphabet.

Knowledge was incredibly valuable, and scholars and priests were one and the same thing. Glorifying the divine, knowing the secrets of the universe.

Yes, I know these things, but that doesn't mean that their beliefs were correct. That is an appeal to tradition fallacy.

That's why they were the keepers of the myths; to keep the knowledge of when to sow, of how to build, of how life and the universe work. The myths were their way to keep the knowledge alive in the minds of all, and yet only dormant if you did not have the key to unlock it, if you weren't deem to be worthy of the power of knowledge. Because who has knowledge has power. It's not a gift people were giving lightly back then. You had to deserve it.

Then writing was created and it changed a lot of things. At first it was still reserved to a priest caste, but later it allowed for knowledge to be stored and disseminated through the world and for all. The myths became much less useful, and as cities grew, religions bevame more and more tools of social engineering. But their mythical and spiritual roots are still very present and alive.

More like religion became unnecessary when people realized that science and religion should be separate with science providing more answers.

If you can understand that and imagine you were a man living in a certain place, context and period, then you can unlock the mysteries of the myths, of all myths from all cultures and all times.

A myth is just an ancient story that today would wind up in the fiction section of your local book store. They certainly CAN teach you lessons and certainly CAN help guide you in real life, but they ARE fiction.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Well they used to, that is until Rome put a stop to that when it decided that the whole empire was to be Catholic.

It's not because the Roman empire wanted to create a new syncretic religion to avoid religious troubles inside its territories that it considered the text to be factually correct.

Or do you mean Romans also considered their own god's stories as literal things that happened too?


It's incredible how much this misconception that the Bible and other religions are considered as majorly factual by their followers is common on this board.

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

How does the saying go, "Repeat a lie enough times and eventually people will believe it." or something like that.

The problem with how defensive people get with when religion is questioned has to do with ego. Most people have been believing these lies their whole lives then when you tell them that they are wrong, they don't want to admit that their whole life has been a lie so they get defensive and aggressive. Such is the trap of believing confirmation biases. You can see it on these forums all the time, even for things that aren't religion like pseudo-sciences.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
They certainly CAN teach you lessons and certainly CAN help guide you in real life, but they ARE fiction.

Where have I claimed differently?

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

More like religion became unnecessary when people realized that science and religion should be separate with science providing more answers.

Religion became more and more about spirituality only as science became more and more secular.

Today they are separated fields covering different spectrum. Science doesn't really care about psychological suffering or the desire of transcendence.

originally posted by: chr0naut
Your assumption that this is the case for Tipplers Omega Point is that you are assuming that the 'arrow of time' cannot be overcome.

The crux of the Omega Point argument is that God is atemporal. God can 'reach back' in time and ensure that the conditions necessary for His existence are all in place. He is not stuck at the end of time, or bound by it.

No, THIS god must work under the confines of the universe's physical laws since it was invented within this universe. Therefore if time travel is impossible, then no this god would be unable to do that. YOU are making the assumption that time travel is possible. I am just using Occam's Razor and saying that since we can't prove that it exists, then it doesn't.

Time in Physics is a tangible. It can be ascribed a value and manipulated (one second is equivalent to a distance of 299,792,458 meters in Special Relativity).

This means that no new universe is created at the Omega Point, instead, this universe has being/is been created.

But I was really only saying that there is sane math for proving the existence of God.

Well, you showed that a god could be created, not that the universe had a creator.

originally posted by: Develo

originally posted by: Krazysh0t

More like religion became unnecessary when people realized that science and religion should be separate with science providing more answers.

Religion became more and more about spirituality only as science became more and more secular.

Today they are separated fields covering different spectrum. Science doesn't really care about psychological suffering or the desire of transcendence.

Science cares about what it can prove. So if science can prove it then it cares about it. It may not care about it currently because it doesn't have the means to prove it, but that doesn't mean it won't care about it later down the line. If it exists, it can probably be quantified, therefore science should be able to explore it.

originally posted by: Develo
It's not because the Roman empire wanted to create a new syncretic religion to avoid religious troubles inside its territories that it considered the text to be factually correct.

Or do you mean Romans also considered their own god's stories as literal things that happened too?

My point was that up until the Romans decided that Catholicism would be the religion of the land, people would build monuments around the Greek myths like they do with Christianity. There certainly were temples dedicated to worshiping various Greek gods. The temple at Delphi comes to mind.

It's incredible how much this misconception that the Bible and other religions are considered as majorly factual by their followers is common on this board.

I still don't see it man. Pantheon worship was widespread back before Christianity and the people definitely believed that these gods were real. Athens is NAMED after Athena because it was believed that she protected the city from harm.