Thursday, August 17, 2006

as if i needed more reasons...

not to believe in organized religion- this article by pravda came to my attention via cap'n dyke. thank ye cap'n fer the educatin'. aargh!

6 comments:

Boo said...

I'll admit to not having read the whole article... BUT that's because I noticed headlines at the top of the page for "drug test lead to the birth of baby cyclops" and "Pentagon's secret cream protects from chrmical and biological weapons". Not to mention 'Traces of aliens on earth".

Anyone who takes this kind of crap as being even remotely based in truth isn't worth the powder to blow them to hell... as we used to say.

This one sliiiides off my teflon coating!!

Boo

billie said...

boo- perhaps- but there really is a crater in jordan. that is reality.

Boo said...

Just a minute here... there's craters all over the place!! (you're talking to a geologist here, dear!!)

I think you need to put this into perspective. The people the article refers to were around 10,000 years ago. Its no surprise they had that interpretation - there was no science to explain these types of things.

Now, fundamentalist christians will take scripture literally - so I suppose they wouldn't believe there was even an Earth around for that (God's testing us y'know!!), and the rest can see the science and understand that the bible is a STORY full of symbolism.

That being said, I agree that organized religion is a huge mistake (as lightening takes her out...), but I guess I don't agree that Sumerians perceiving meteors as angry gods is a reason to add to the list.

Here's a fun site for you... www.evilbible.com

G_in_AL said...

I've got to note that none of them could have written that they were watching the end of the world, and if I saw a meteor hit earth, but didnt die, and none of my family did, and the world didnt end..... HOW WOULD THIS BE THE INSPIRATION FOR HOW THE WORLD ENDS?

Essentially, this is saying that when a meteor came in and crashed, but didnt end the world or kill everyone, it became what people thought the end of the world would be like.

Better yet, I like that part where researchers flat "assume" what people 10000 years ago were thinking. That's some neat science that can tell you that one.

People want to discredit things like the Biblical Revelations over this, fine, you're opinion, but actually read the book. There is much much more that goes into the end of the world than the actual physical destruction of things. People that try to use stuff like this ignore that part because it's not easy to point to something in the past and say "thats where they got it!"

G_in_AL said...

I guess something I should have said above to help get to the actual point I was making:

If you were going to make up a phrophesy of the end of the world, on the hopes of fooling everyone into believing yours... would you make it so specific and timelined? Would you make it so finite that it could only happen under very specific and special circumstances?

WOuld you leave it THAT open to debunking? Or would you make it something very vague that could happen at any time, thus increasing people's desire to be right with God before it came?

Use simple logic when approaching these things, and you'll find most of the "debunkers" out there can be debunked.

Boo said...

G. -and for those of us that don't think the end of the Earth has anything to do with a God at all??

Do you really have a hard time accepting the archaeological/ anthropological idea that some such thing inspired stories like the one they quote in the article? I don't think that's an off-the-cuff declaration by researchers. There's a great deal of evidence pointing at past cultures and beliefs - many of which existed WELL before the Bible tells us Earth was created. Or at least how and when fundamentalists believe it was created.

The whole being "right with God" thing suggests that those who don't believe in a specific god are condemned. Now we had this talk before - you said if I don't believe it why worry - well I worry because that's what I call intolerance. It suggests that no one else is as "good" or that we're all sinners - and that, in its extreme, is what's spawning Islamic Terrorists.

I don't know. Maybe thats a huge leap, but I HAVE read the book G. Its a great story. But thats it - its a story. I'll take my textbooks and research journals as the truth of the matter.

"Science" has to have evidence before claiming anything is the truth. Religion claims truths and then invents the evidence to back it up.

As soon as religion goes beyond the "personal", it's problematic and intolerant.