“Genesis” is crap, start to finish.
Only in an age of no books could this religion flourish; only the Black Death broke their stranglehold of Europe.
Still tax free! So that’s nice.
He’s a brave kid to turn his back to a Catholic priest
The gnostics figured out an explanation for this 2000 years ago.
According to them, the “God” who created the material world and is talked about in the Old Testament is an evil and/or ignorant lesser deity and that’s why the world sucks.
The “real” God rules over the immaterial (souls, knowledge, and the likes) and is called “the Invisible Spirit”.
Both the snake and later on Jesus were agents/emanations of this “Invisible Spirit” sent to bring knowledge (“gnosis” in Greek) to humanity in order to help them break free from the prison that is the material world.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter how logical and internally consistent your ideology is, the one who is more organized wins out in the end. This doesn’t have anything to do with any currently ongoing political situation. 🫠
You’re awesome. I came here to drop some Gnosis and here you’ve done all the heavy lifting.
Fuck Saklas!
Also, prior to the old testament being in the form it is today, the character that would become the one god was just a minor god within the Canaanite pantheon. A lot of the old testament makes more sense when read with that context.
Yep, Exodus 34:14 : “For thou shalt worship no other god; for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God”
This strongly implies that (in this theology) there are multiple gods if Jehovah/Elohim can be jealous.
Tangentially related, but specifically the religious people who are sure that you need religion to know good from evil and act morally genuinely scare me.
They’re just admitting they believe noone really tries to do the right thing for the right reasons. You know, like, these are the conventions we set so living in a society can even work. Some are coded in laws. Lots of them are implicitly agreed on.
But no, according to them instead we’re supposed to do it for fear of “bad afterlife” or of a spank from sky daddy.
That tells a lot more about what “moral” means to them than anything.
“What’s stopping you from murdering and raping if you don’t have religion?”
"Absolutely nothing. I rape and murder exactly as many people as I want to. The number just happens to be 0. "
I’ve been saying this for years. If you are “being good” in order to appease a deity or to secure a comfortable afterlife, you aren’t a moral person. Goodness should be for its own sake. Do unto others isn’t about ensuring better treatment of yourself, its about treating people the way you wish to be treated yourself without the expectation of quid pro quo.
They’re just admitting they believe noone really try to do the right thing for the right reasons. You know, like, these are the conventions we set so living in a society can even work.
Worse, it suggests they have no empathy.
Sure, that too. But empathy is a rather complex matter.
I just can’t trust someone who can’t see any other reason than “because divine retribution” to treat others well.
See I always thought of the apple as being like Pandora’s box, to mix theologies. People were innocent and ignorant before it, living very simple, short, worry-free lives. Eve taking the apple is what opened the possibility for humanity to grow and ascribe meaning to our lives, to form societies and create great works, enabling the best of us to make and do so much more for the world but also enabling the worst of us to do far more terrible things. That’s the way I always interpreted that tale, as an expansion of humanity’s potential and responsibility
Here’s the thing that doesn’t often get noted with this story - the Serpent tells the truth. God lies. And, again, the Serpent is the bad guy?
Most people won’t go beyond the “sepernt = bad” logic ingrained in human brain.
It’s almost as if the priest is suggesting that God wants us uneducated to be better subservient to him, and that seeking knowledge is punishable (by death technically).
Monotheistic religion formed in a dialectical relationship with the state. Obedience to God reinforces obedience to the King. No gods no masters is quite literal. Monotheistuc religion is a superstructure created by the material conditions of nascent monarchical statehood that reinforces the conditions that created it.
Kinda the point of Satanism.
I’ve heard many an atheist suggest God is bad for not making us uneducated and subservient to Him and giving us free will in the first place.
Does free will exist in heaven?
Depends how you define it. You’d have free will but the temptation to sin is gone. The temptation to sin comes from Satan.
This is not true according to the Bible.
It says we are “born in sin” and unworthy of God, only by accepting baby Jesus do we become pure enough for God to tolerate us.
Also, God created Satan, with full knowledge of what he would be, so even if you were right, God would be the source of Satan (and sin).
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” ~Isaiah 45:7
That’s blame shifting. God as the creator of everything is responsible for everything. He could have created humanity in such a manner that they weren’t prone to sin. He could have created Satan in a manner that he wouldn’t fall and tempt people to sin.
It’s not free will if he knows what will happen.
Atheist here, interestingly he doesn’t!
God is bound by linear time apparently since he regretted making man as revealed to Noah before the flood.
You can’t regret things if you knew it would happen and you’re all knowing.
So he is demonstrably not all knowing and not all powerful.
But this does mean free will exists under christian logic. Which you can also just completely ignore since its not real anyways.
God can act. That doesn’t mean he’s ignorant. The book is written from the perspective of humans and we’re gullible.
The apple was just sex-ed. They just over-euphemized it to make sure kids could read it, and now everyone gets confused. The apple probably wasn’t an apple originally, it was probably a pomegranate, a fruit known for dripping red all over you like blood, and the woman was the one who ate it. So to remove some of the whitewashing of the story, imagine a fully naked Eve with pomegranate juice dripping all over her body, kinda paints a different picture, right?
That’s very insightful.
So in other words the pomegranate dripping blood is allegory for her getting her starting her menstrual cycle, hence becoming a woman and being sexualized from now on?
I can see that. I had learned that most of Genesis shouldn’t be taken literally anyway. They’re mostly allegories or parables.
That bonus panel has layers
The bible taken literally is madness. Even new testament. If I were to be religious, I would assume everything is a metaphor.
The Bible literally says it should be taken literally.
That’s what makes it so funny.
Even the name says “take me literally”.
Back in the day, a man would take an oath on his testicles, “I swear on my balls it is true”
Old and New Testament means “Old and New I swear on my balls this is true”
Im not religious at all.
But if I were, I would believe these were written by flawed humans that were inspired by god, but absolutely filling in blanks with their personal beliefs and stories.
All religions are mental illness adjacent.
Gonna come at this from kind of a scholarly angle here… Yes. Yes absolutely.
And just for fun, I’ll use the Bible to argue in your favor.
You raise the point that even the New Testament (the half that pivots from “follow these rules” to “don’t be a douche”) shouldn’t be taken literally. Some might argue that that’s the only part that should be taken literally, but let’s take a look at how Jesus chooses to illustrate that message: by doing miracles and relating parables. He’s not regaling crowds with true tales of history, he’s telling them made-up stories to convey a point about morals.
Hm… Made-up stories to convey a point about morals…
Stories, perhaps, like someone turning into a pillar of salt because they chose to dwell on the past instead of moving on? Or about the value of perseverance and solidarity in the face of continued adversity? Not giving up hope, even when you’ve lost everything? How murder is just straight up bad?
Lot’s Wife, Moses & the Pharaoh, the entire book of Job, Cain & Abel; all from the Old Testament, and all far less believable than the Good Samaritan… But somehow, those stories are to be taken as truth, while a story about a nice guy existing in Samaria is an allegory for the goodness in all of us? It’s all parables, all the way down. The New Testament is just parable-ception - it’s a made-up (or at least, very heavily embellished) story about a nice guy who tells stories about nice guys.
Depends how literally you take it. Ironically, generally the people who take Genesis the most literally take Jesus saying “this is my body” and “this is my blood” the least literally
Imagine believing the earth is 6000 years old but that transubstantiation is bullshit.
Squint real hard and take the beginning of Genesis as a tale of solar/planetary formation followed by evolution, closest origin myth I know of.
“Let there be light.” Solar ignition. Let’s go!
They got the order of life mixed here and there, but at least it started in the sea. Adam and Eve’s curse is by far the most interesting bit.
They eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Let’s say they were apes before that event and look at the curses laid down.
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Now we know good from evil. Bit hard to argue animals are terribly moral, having a concept of good and evil. Other mammals are close, especially emotionally, but nothing like humans.
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Now our heads are swole with brains, painful childbirth follows. Don’t know of any mammals that have such painful, risky births.
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We’re cursed to labor all our days to bring food forth from the ground, when before we were swinging from trees, eating fruit and the occasional howler monkey baby. The invention of agriculture anyone?
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Cast out of the Garden, we can never get any of the above back.
If you really want to confound Christians, point out there’s a second creation myth 3 or 4 pages later, which disagrees with the first.
The seven day creation myth usually gets folded with the Adam and Eve myth in most tellings. Christian preachers can get away with it because nobody reads the Bible.
Not sure what you mean. We talking about the two slightly different creation myths?
Pretty hilarious reading along and the book just starts repeating as if the first couple of chapters didn’t happen. 😁
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There’s no apple in this story.
Doesn’t say it wasn’t an apple!
Yeah, yeah we all know how dumb all religions are. Such a boring topic.
We have cool indigenous religions in Australia
Oh, we all know? Do tell.
Huge strawman, so many flaws here:
It wasn’t an apple. If you’re trying to be an atheist and argue against God, then how can you argue that strangling a cat is immoral. Sure, because of the curse, we can be moral, but you cannot believe in objective morality as a concept. Secondly, if another animal strangles a cat, it’s generally not seen as immoral as animals cannot commit immoral actions. Humans were likely in a comparable situation according to the narrative. They did know that eating the fruit was bad. They were told not to. It’s essentially the first instance of someone being told “you had one job” and blowing it. Hurricanes and other natural disasters are a product of sin and evil being unleashed into the world. Did you know that the poor and marginalised are usually hit worst by natural disasters? And it’s not God who’s impoverishing or marginalising them. In fact, we have enough resources on the earth to share.
but you cannot believe in objective morality as a concept
Yes you can… but even if you couldn’t, that’s not problematic in the slightest for atheists.
Morality is subjective. Some people think invading other countries and killing civilians is fine because their leader convinced them it’s a good thing, and others see that as evil. Some people think eating pork is a sin, some couldn’t care less. Some people think eating ANY meat is cruel, and many others think it’s necessary to live healthily.
But you can objectively measure morality by applying objective measures. For example, if we agree that someone’s well-being is an objective measure to consider when determining if an act is moral or not, then you can make all kinds of objective moral claims. Punching a person/cat in the head? That’s immoral because it negatively impacts their well-being. Shooting a cat/person in the head? That’s immoral because they will cease to “be” entirely. Treating someone’s wounds? Moral, because it positively impacts their well-being. Donating to charity? Moral, positively impacts people’s well-being.
They knew […] is bad. they were told not to.
If they didn’t know what is good and bad, how would they have known that listening to the rules and following them, would have been good, and not doing so bad.
but you cannot believe in objective morality as a concept
Of course you can. It is only psychopath theists who think otherwise. They would happily go out strangling, raping and murdering if not for their god (and they will happily do it anyway in the name of their god).
If there’s no objective morality, then how could you claim such a thing is wrong?
Also the only person who I found would do that was Dr David Wood who is a literally and self confessed psychopath who converted in prison.
The argument for why atheists can be good but not have good is because everyone has the knowledge of Good and Evil
Sin causing hurricans is absolutely insanity. The fact you believe it blows my mind.
it blows my mind.
Like a… hurricane?
What do you believe?
Meteorology
Broad question. As regards to hurricanes, I believe they are a natural weather event caused by the interactions of heat and pressure in the atmosphere.
Yes, but those natural conditions wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the fall of man.
How could you possibly know that? How could it possibly be true?
There is nothing to “believe”. We know how hurricanes are created.
