agreed speveO.
the first thing thing that should have given anyone pause before watching this video----tucker carlson.
while i found mr harris argument as a whole vapid and totally lacking imagination,he did bring up an interesting point that maybe guitarwolf was trying to point out to us all.and that is many "liberals" don't understand religious fundamentalism.that there is a percentage of the human population that
believes the "bible" "torah" or the "quran" are the literal words of the creator,
and that the dogma of the semetic triad is absolute in it's perfection and righteousness.
this kind of zealotry may explain the execution of a cartoonist,or an abortion clinic doctor,these incidents,while getting huge amounts of attention,are fairly small in scope relative to the bigger picture.
religious fundamentalism may be the rationalization of suicide bombers and other geurrilla war tactics,but it is the seeking of social justice for those who have been given no other option.for those who have been oppressed,brutalized,tortured while the world largely looks the other way.
religion is not the REASON,its the rationalization.
fundamentalism at its core is a stagnation of the mind,stifles growth as a society and leaves people open to manipulation and exploitation.
and as long as the world looks the other way and dismisses the impoverished,these people will always be vulnerable to indoctrination of many forms,religious fundamentalism being only one facet.
take away the voice of those who are being exploited,oppressed and abused.
they WILL find a way to fight back,and be heard.
religion is only one small part of the dynamic,take it out of the equation and there STILL will be violent reactions from those who have had hope stripped from their lives.
mr harris quantifying his argument on "liberals" misunderstanding of "fundamentalism" by premising his entire argument on religion is laughable.
because his argument is one big straw man,and totally ignores the very REAL threats of the world today.
mr harris should hang his head in shame for such a pathetic argument.
that being said,and those being my feelings.
mr harris is selling his book,and he really just echoing a premise that has been used by many,for many years.
this fact is something i find saddening,because it just re-iterates a faulty premise to excuse those who have allowed the silencing of so many and are the ones truly responsible.
truly heartbreaking,and mr harris is guilty of keeping the "status-quo" narrative going.
and so the cycle continues........................................
till next time...peace

Hmm... Reading the contest details for non-Evangelist Christians...

Answer this question without contradicting yourself and take home $5,300

Is the God that has revealed Himself in your religious text infinitely just and infinitely merciful? Yes or No. Please justify your answer from the text on which you consider to be ultimately authoritative (Koran, Torah, Book of Mormon, Council of Trent manuscripts, etc.).

Hints: For all of you who believe in purgatory and think that this helps your case, you are very mistaken. For if your God is infinitely merciful, then there would be no need for purgatory since all of your sins have already been forgiven. If you are working off your sins in purgatory, as some individuals interpret it, then you have not received infinite mercy. For if you had received infinite mercy, then there would be nothing for you to work off.

It looks like the hint tells you exactly how to win the $5300. Simply answer 'no', find a passage regarding purgatory and copy-paste the hint.

>> ^rottenseed:
I would like to know all the quotes about hell in the bible...
I am pretty sure the idea of hell came as a sort of social control. The idea of hell has been used for this for a long time before Christianity. But, the idea of hell certainly didn't come from the Jews.


You are right, it didnt come for "the jews" as you put it, nor from the torah, or Old Testament as Christians call it, the Old testament God was a terrible, vindictive, sadistic God, but once you were in the ground, he was done with you, but the so-called New Testament mentions and describes hell several times.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hel_bibl.htm

>> ^spoco2:
>> ^thepinky:
Cheap shot. Why make this movie? I'll tell you why. So that all of you "intellectuals" can feel fulfilled and pat yourselves on the back for being enlightened. No thanks.

So, you enjoyed 'Expelled' then? Really, to say 'cheap shot' is pretty weak, think about it... by saying cheap shot, you're really saying 'Yeah, it's obviously stupid, you're just picking the really obviously stupid points of religions'... like... oh, most of it.
He's pointing out the insanity of believing in the bible/Koran/Torah etc. as literal truth. To believe there really was a snake that talked to Eve, to believe there really was Adam and an Eve in an idyllic garden in the first place. To believe there was a boat, made by one guy, who held two of EVERY SPECIES ON THIS EARTH TODAY (and all the thousands that have become extinct in the last 2000 years).
It is insane.
They're parables, stories, fables, they're meant to teach lessons, not to be taken literally and taught as FACT in schools.
So saying this is some 'intellectual' breast beating movie is ridiculous. It's (hopefully, obviously I haven't seen it, but I've listened to him talk about it a lot) a demonstration of what's wrong with religion today.
In my mind the core teachings of most religions are great, tolerance, treat others as you would be treated, don't covet what other people have etc. These are good things to live by, but it's twisting and corrupting of that core acceptance teaching and turning it into a shunning and hatred of others and pushing for religious doctrine over proven scientific fact.
It's a horrible state to be in, which is why movies like this DO have a place.


Didn't see it.

The thing that I find amazing is that atheists take it for granted that no one could possibly give a compelling argument that atheism is irrational. Can you tell me what happened 3 millionths of a second before the big bang?

Tell me, do scientists believe in uncaused events? No, to do so would be irrational. So...has the universe always existed and will it always exist? No. That's an uncaused event and irrational. Alright, then. Did it come from nothing? NO WAY! That's an uncaused event and irrational. Well, then, what is the only solution left to us? An unmoved mover is the only other possible solution. In other words, a supernatural cause. In other words, we're all searching for answers to questions that we cannot possibly answer with our infantile understandings of the cosmos.

It's called cosmogony. You strike me as an educated individual and you've probably heard of it.

>> ^thepinky:
Cheap shot. Why make this movie? I'll tell you why. So that all of you "intellectuals" can feel fulfilled and pat yourselves on the back for being enlightened. No thanks.


So, you enjoyed 'Expelled' then? Really, to say 'cheap shot' is pretty weak, think about it... by saying cheap shot, you're really saying 'Yeah, it's obviously stupid, you're just picking the really obviously stupid points of religions'... like... oh, most of it.

He's pointing out the insanity of believing in the bible/Koran/Torah etc. as literal truth. To believe there really was a snake that talked to Eve, to believe there really was Adam and an Eve in an idyllic garden in the first place. To believe there was a boat, made by one guy, who held two of EVERY SPECIES ON THIS EARTH TODAY (and all the thousands that have become extinct in the last 2000 years).

It is insane.

They're parables, stories, fables, they're meant to teach lessons, not to be taken literally and taught as FACT in schools.

So saying this is some 'intellectual' breast beating movie is ridiculous. It's (hopefully, obviously I haven't seen it, but I've listened to him talk about it a lot) a demonstration of what's wrong with religion today.

In my mind the core teachings of most religions are great, tolerance, treat others as you would be treated, don't covet what other people have etc. These are good things to live by, but it's twisting and corrupting of that core acceptance teaching and turning it into a shunning and hatred of others and pushing for religious doctrine over proven scientific fact.

It's a horrible state to be in, which is why movies like this DO have a place.

^you never said that about me

If you look at Judaism in terms of faith in the Judeo-Christian god and the practice of what's taught in the Torah (whether taken literally or as parable), then it's ABSURD to think that if you don't believe in god, you can still be Jewish. This comes from the Christian's "accept Christ as your savior" mentality where it's an apparent choice.

If you understand Judaism as a culture (not a race of its own), it'd be easier to understand one's ability to disavow God and still be a part of that culture in ritual, but not in belief.

If he doesn't believe in God he is not a Jew. If he doesn't believe in the stories of the Torah, he is not a Jew. Judaism is a religion. There is no Jewish race, nor has there ever been. It is simply a faith among others. As for the reference and hope for a god who wants us to treat each other as we like to be treated, I kindly refer to the new Roman god Jesus Christ. He might not like the concept of hell and purgatory though.

Furthermore, if he was really brave he would renounce his faith and become a fellow atheist.

It takes very little courage to shut your eyes, far more to open them.

That's my two cents(EURO) anyway...

While you are entirely right that a bible-thumping god fearing follower would never sit down and willfully watch this movie I don't think it's entirely preaching to the choir for all of it's points.

For example, I was convinced that the bible had nothing good to say about homosexuality and you had to twist the words in the bible/torah amazingly well (as well as many of the primary principles of most forms of christianity) to make homosexuality even close to okay. This documentary proved me quite wrong; it's rather easy to read the bible/torah and find homosexuality pretty low on the sin scale.

The documentary does a pretty good job of looking at the commonly understood to be anti-homosexuality passages in the bible/torah one by one and contextualizing them.

As an atheist I was thinking there would be a lot of anti-religion within the movie but actually found it to be very pro-god. I still loved it even though it was pro-god which I think is pretty telling.

same thing happened to my uncle marvin at temple, when they took out the torah -- don't look at it, we told him. He didn't listen.

Not only is he off a couple of years with some of his predictions, he also wrong about some of them. Of course, he's right about some, but that doesn't make his guessing revolutionary is any way, it only makes them pretty good guesses.
I've talked to people who for years before it happened said the US would feel the ramifications of their actions in the middle east, but I'm not sure we should start calling them prophets even if they started to claim they managed to decipher their predictions in the bible.

The Isaac Newton thing was funny I thought. He devoted more than half a entire century to the bible, eh? They make is sound like he did nothing else, which of course is complete boulderdash.
Also, the skipcode thing made laugh out loud. Conspiracy theorize much? Seriously, we've covered this in the sift before with the video that showed that the versions of the bible we have today is far different from the original ones. I mean look at the printed torah page of their Chanukah code. Good job on finding two words by doing two different skipcode keys, one of the words being backwards. This might just be me being sceptical, but it does reek a bit of conspiracy theory, wouldn't you say? Especially when they show us the Saddam thing. Taking a couple of letters here and there and then putting them together to make "fire on the third of shevat" is creating a meaning that isn't there in my mind. To close this part of my arguments, I'll quote the holy man from this clip, talking about his so called discovery "When you analyze in the proper way..." Analyze in the proper way indeed, and add proper meaning to the proper analyzation.

Finally, what would the reason be for writing a coded message in the bible? Did they do it for laughs or perhaps to make sure it couldn't be rewritten differently? It has been changed, however, so scouring it for hidden messages is a waste of time unless you've got the originals, or the version of it when the alleged code was entered in.

"President Kennedy appeared once" Hehe, what are the odds of the word Kennedy appearing once when taking loosely connected letters randomly from a huge chunk of text?
Sadly, the people "working" on this are probably too far gone in this to possibly see the absurdity of it. I just hope this thing will die out in the coming decades, with the people currently pushing it onwards. We don't need more this sort of madeup coincidence.

Upvote for the fun of rampant conspiracy theories and their use of music. Also the end results. But perhaps the experts and sceptics didn't "properly analyze" the data

persephone said:

If you are an atheist feeling oppressed by religious communities, you are paying far too much attention to other people's business.

First of all, I want to make a clarification of terms. A "religious community", in my mind, is just a group of people with (roughly) the same faith. As I said above, I generally do not point the finger or lash out at the average Joe. I respect the right of these people to believe whatever they want. As Condell says, I may find it silly, stupid, distasteful or any thing else, but as long as you leave me to my beliefs, you are welcome to yours. My main problems are further up the hierarchy.

Consider the following small sampling of current issues (at least in the US): Gay marriage, stem-cell research & abortion. These are issues which the Church has strong stances on, and that's fine. If the Church wants to say these are blasphemous and forbid them, that's also fine. But, as a person who does not follow the Church, I take offense when they start trying to apply their rules to me. If I want to live by their rules, I will join their club. So long as I'm not a member, I expect to be left alone.

To further illustrate, the Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays, most take issue with blood transfusions and saying the Pledge of Allegiance is considered idolatry, but I've never heard of the JWs trying to pass laws against birthday parties or blood transfusions. They keep it "all in the family".

nedtheundead said:

in an atheist world view there is no reason whatsoever to believe that there is anything wrong with taking an axe to condell's head yet i'm sure he believes very firmly that this would in fact be wrong.

This is just asinine and it's a perfect example of what I referred to in my original post about people believing atheists are without morals. Morality does not come from the Bible, the Torah or the Qur'an. Morality is defined by your environment. It is perhaps the perfect example of a zeitgeist.

What is right and wrong, and to what degree (there's a lot in the grey areas), is defined by where you live, how you live and when you live. All of us (presumably) believe that slavery and murder are wrong. Why do we believe this? Not because we once read it somewhere, but because we understand the emotional pain and trauma that they cause and we believe everyone's lives would be better without them. As George Carlin once pointed out, religion has never really had a problem with murder. The 5th commandment may be "Thou shalt not kill.", but most, if not all, of the holy books go on to condone killing in various ways and circumstances. So don't tell me I need a book from 2000 years ago to tell me what's right and what's wrong.

For example, many people who profess that they are Christians say that they believe in the Bible, yet also believe in evolution, that the world is as old as this generation believes it is, and that the creation account mentioned in Genesis is just a bunch of fairy tale stories that are not to be taken at face value. Basically, they want to please the world and get esteem from men because they're somehow more "intelligent" and not like all those ignorant fools who believe that the Genesis account that the Israelites preserved over thousands of years for us to read is actually true. First off, where does the Genesis account ever suggest that it's not to be taken literally, as a historical account? Whoever wrote it down after having been passed down orally obviously thought that it was important enough to put at the very beginning of the Torah. If this is just some mystical, made-up account, then why doesn't it say this ANYWHERE? No, it was not made up, and it's quite saddening to increasingly see so-called "intelligent" people professing that it is not to be taken at its honest word. YOU'RE DISCREDITING GOD!!

"Atheism - A belief system that condemns all others as wrong and works fanatically to destroy those who oppose their beliefs even to the point of trying to pass legislation outlawing their constitutional right to free speech and constitutional right to freedom of religion."

Please. Your talk of persecution is the kind of thing said by someone who hasn't actually experienced it. No one is trying to outlaw Christianity, not in Europe or the Americas.

The only thing, in fact, that people are trying to do is maintain the seperation of church and state. I'm sorry you can't have the Ten Commandments in front of your school, courthouse, or other institution, but that's kinda how things were written to begin with. The US is not a Christian country, my friend - it is a country of multiple religions, and the only way you're getting your Ten Commandments is if others get their Wiccan Ried, or quotes from the Koran, or the words of the Torah, or even L. Ron Hubbard's words on Scientology up there as well.

I don't have a problem with Christianity. I have a problem with Fundamentalism, be it Christian, Islam, Buddhist or Shinto.

Ok, here is the VERY FIRST GODDAMN SECTION in the Qur'an:

SECTION: 1
Alif L'am M'im.[1] This is the Book in which there is no doubt. (Since its Author, Alla
the Creator of this universe, possesses complete knowledge, there is no room for
doubt about its contents.) It is a guide for those who are God conscious,[2] who
believe in the Unseen, who establish Salah (five regular daily prayers) and spend in
charity out of what We have provided for their sustenance;[3] who believe in this
Revelation (the Qur'an) which is sent to you (O Muhammad) and the Revelations
which were sent before you (Torah, Psalms, Gospel...) and firmly believe in the
Hereafter.[4] They are on true Guidance from their Lord and they are the ones who
will attain salvation.[5] 2:[1-5]
In fact, as for those who reject Faith; it is the same, whether you warn them or you
don't, they will not believe.[6] Allah has sealed their hearts and their hearing, their
eyes are covered, and there is a grievous punishment for them.[7] 2:[6-7]

Would you look at that, we infidels are doomed right from the outset, I better go indoctrinate my kids with this crap.

This is the recurring theme of the whole fucking book.(as is the case with most religious books.) Anyone who doesnt see this, I guess Allah must have blinded them as much as he has blinded me. (BTW seeing as he has blinded me already, why should he then punish me further? guess I'm just too blind to understand this flawless logic)

I think it's satire. Between the oddly sketchy list of "suspect" bands and the lyrics telling men to get down on their knees, I sense some leg-pulling.

I looked at the site, and I'm not convinced it's sincere, either. The design is too clean (and the code comments are too conversational and knowing about web standards and the like) to feel like a true amateur job. The clumsy homophobia of the song lyrics don't fit with the professional site at all. The random capitalization feels like literate people trying to disguise themselves.

They even quote from Rabbi Hillel on this page.

The full Hillel quote and more:

If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? (Pirkei Avot 1:14)

That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn. (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Shabbat 31a. See the ethic of reciprocity or "The Golden rule")