Neon Genesis

While I agree there's a problem in society with too much consumerism, it's not really a new problem that's only came into existence because of technology and science. The god of capitalism has always been worshiped but in ancient times, native tribes slaughtered each other over land or the right to control the food population in their local area, so I don't think it's fair to blame it all on technology and I think we who are dissappointed in modern society have a tendency to over-romaniticisize the "Noble Savage."

Meyers suggested that if they profile at all, they should profile for suspicious behavior, not for what clothing they wear or what religion they believe.

How do they translate the unknown Greek word that usually gets rendered as homosexuality in 1 Corinthians 6:9?

I think PZ Meyers has some good tips on how to properly profile for terrorists in his rebuttal of Sam Harris' article: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/04/30/no-racial-profiling-please/

I enjoyed his book, The Moral Landscape, but when it comes to Islamophobia, Sam Harris is the atheist version of Ann Coulter.

Do they still mistranslate Isaiah 7:14 and 1 Corinthians 6:9?

I think I would much rather live in our modern society with all of our problems than go back to ancient times where we sacrified children to the gods because people thought that would give us better harvests.

Someone explain to me how this isn't an incredibly racist statement or why Sam Harris is taking talking points out of the Pamela Gellar Islamophobia playbook: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/in-defense-of-profiling Of course Sam Harris denies that he thinks we should profile based on race but then turns around and says we should profile based on their ethnicity which somehow magically makes him less racist: So we won't profile everyone who's dark skinned but we'll treat everyone from Iraq like they're terrorist suspects or something? Is this the kind of person who Harris thinks we should profile?

I don't think it's wrong to think of God as either exclusively feminine or exclusively macsuline as long as it is understood that these are only symbols of God and not truth claims.

There is actually archealogical evidence that the ancient Israelites were originally polytheiststic pagans from Canaan who worshiped both male and female deities. Biblical archealogicalists have found pottery of the ancient goddess Asheraha that belonged to the Israelites and this pottery indicates the Israelites saw Asherah as Yahweh's wife. Even in the final version of the OT, evidence still survives in the scriptures themselves that the Israelites worshiped Asherah and various scriptures refer to her as the Queen of Heaven. So the ancient Israelites may have believed Yahweh had masculine attributes, but there's also a great deal of evidence showing they worshiped female deities and belief in a single male deity was a later development in their history. Karen Armstrong discusses this in her book, A History of God.

It's a fiction book but it's surprisingly been pretty popular with the Christians at my parents' fundamentalist church: The Shack by William Young.

Yet the same religious organizations that want to ban abortion and force women to give their children up for adoption want to ban gay couples who want to adopt from being able to do so.

I've had warts removed too. It's called zit removal. This post is flagged as not appropriate. Posters position on this subject has already been stated and this remark adds nothing to the conversation for this forum when considering Tea's post above it . Neon will not be posting for 7 days. JosephM (as Moderator)

I thoght Richard Carrier was also a trained scholar and mythicist?

I think we should focus on getting more liberals and moderate Republicans elected into office instead of trying to create a third party who could be just as easily lead into corruption once they become elected like any other party can be. I think the problem lies with the candidates we elect and not the party system. A third party just seems redudant to me. My thoughts on Obama is that I voted for him both in the primaries and in the national elections because I wanted somebody different in office besides the Clintons and the Bushes and I liked a lot of the poliicies he was promoting while running. I'm a lot more critical of Obama's policies now and I wish he would be more principaled in his beliefs, but I don't regret voting for him and I'll probably vote for him again this time unless somebody more liberal comes along. But I'm pleased with Obama's health care reform even though I think he could have went further and he's probably the most gay-friendly president we've ever had and he's done lots of progressive things for gay rights, like passing the Matthew Shepard Act which would make killing somebody for their sexuality a hate crime and repealing DADT and also no longer defending DOMA. I wish Obama would hurry up and "evolve" his beliefs on gay marriage already, but I understand he's in a critical position now of trying to win the next election and not wanting to jepordarsize his chances by making controversial stances before the election though I think coming out in support of gay marriage would be a big energy boost to the Democrats to get out and vote if he did come out in support of it.

Does Ehrman address the Christ myth arguments of Robert Price in his new book, George? Although I don't agree with his conclusions, I have a great deal of respect for Robert Price and his vast amount of knowledge about the bible and I think he's the only one who's made the most convincing argument in favor of the Christ Myth theory. But I think his argument still has some flaws in it and I would be curious to see what Ehrman thinks of Robert Price and his multiple messiah hypothesis.

I find it ironic that the same right wing politicians who try to use the bible to force their religious extremism on everyone else accuse Obama of being a secret Marxist radical leftist for his support of health care reform and the health care mandate yet Obama has stated himself that his support for health care reform comes from his belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ. Obama's comments about the teachings of Jesus remind me a lot of what Marcus Borg has said in his books about how the teachings of Jesus call Christians to participate in radical social justice: http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/obama-i-pushed-dodd-frank-and-health-care-reform

It seems like we don't really discuss current events here as much as we do politics in the abstract so I thought it would be interesting to see what everyone here thought about President Obama, particularly in regard to his religious beliefs and how he stands in the progressive Christian community. You have some people who think Obama is a far left ultra liberal communist who is trying to take away our religious freedoms. Then you have other people who like Obama but think he could be a little more progressive and more principled in his beliefs and then you have the cynics who think Obama's policies are no different than George H.W. Bush's were. Where do you stand on this? Do you like Obama or hate him? Do you think he's the most progressive Christian president we've ever had or do you think there's someone who could do the job better? Will you be voting for him or for somebody else in the elections this year?

But if the study showed the opposite results and showed a positive result for prayer on health, Christians would be jumping all over it and trumpeting it to the skies as proof of God's existence and would suddenly change their mind on science and objective proof. Relativism is only popular in religious circles right now because there's no proof on the theistic side.

There have been studies done on the power of prayer and they showed that not only did prayer fail to heal the patients in the study, but the patients being prayed for had worse results than the patients who weren't prayed for at all.

Fraud in itself doesn't disprove faith healing yet neither does sincere belief prove it as it is possible to be sincere in your belief and be mistaken at the same time. Creationists sincerely believe the book of Genesis is a literal scientific account of the origins of the universe and that doesn't make them right and evolution wrong just because they sincerely believe it nor does that mean they should be protected from criticism just because they're sincere in their mistaken position. But if you go through years of scientific research and extraordinary claims and the best you have is either frauds or some "inward" placebo effect healing, shouldn't that make you at least a little bit skeptical?

It's not arrogance; it's the truth that the church throughout history has tried to hide criticism of the bible from its flock through censorship and fear mongering and have discouraged Christians from reading anything not written by a bible believing Christian. In one of his books, Ehrman relates a story about a lady at a church he gave a lecture at once and the lady told Ehrman she was upset not by what Ehrman said but she was upset that the church never told her anything about mainstream biblical scholarship. Bishop Spong has described encountering this problem of ignorance among the flock in several of his books. In any case, Bishop Spong has given his support of Ehrman and his books but some people think any non-believer challening the church is being "arrogant" no matter how mild their critique is.

I find it offensive to categorize an entire group of people of having no basis for morality just because they have different metaphysical views than you do. I also think it's contrary to point four in the eight points of the site which says Imagine if somebody had said that all Jews do not have a basis for understanding right and wrong because they didn't accept Jesus Christ into their hearts and you would be accused of antisemitism but for some reason it's ok to make the same accusation about atheists. The only reason why it's still acceptable in polite circles to say atheists have no basis for morality but it's not ok to do the same towards Jews is because atheists are the most hated minority group in America and there have been numerous surveys done that show that the majority of American Christians hate atheists the most and there was even a survey done that showed Christians trust rapists more than they do atheists. As someone who considers themselves a spiritual atheist, I find it rather insulting when a moderator accuses me of not having a basis for morality and demanding to know how I know right from wrong on a site that claims to be open and accepting of non-believers when they wouldn't dare do the same for any other minority group in America.

I also find it interesting that the modern day concept of faith healers doesn't match up with how they're portrayed in the bible. In the bible, the only ones who could pass down the ability to faith heal were the original apostles and while the disciples they baptized could perform faith healings, they couldn't pass the power down themselves to another person. Since the original apostles are all dead now and only the original apostles could pass the power to faith heal down to others, if modern day faith healers really performing miracles, where did they get their power from?

But why is it faith healers only heal "internally" but never "externally?" Isn't this just moving the goalpost? It's like the people who claim to have proof UFOs are real and are coming to Earth and there's a government conspiracy to cover up the truth but the only "proof" you ever see of it are hoaxes, grainy video footage of natural phenenomen, or cheesy UFO shows on the Non-History Channel at 3:00 a.m. in the morning. Why is it ok to demean skeptics and secular people but faith healers deserve this special protection from criticism no other profession gets?