Penn & Teller on the Bible

I am not going to address your whole post because I am entirely to lazy and dumb to do so. I will address this last part.

No it isn't. And only a small minority of Christians hold it as such. Maybe as few as 150 million of the 2.5 billion Christians in the world. What Penn and Teller were quoting from came from the Old Testament. Particularly the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These books were written for the ancient Jews specifically. While these books contain the root of Christian theology they are not the end all be all of it. In fact the Apostles infallibly decided that the Gentiles were not subject to the overwhelming majority of the law.

 

Could you give me some examples?

The Bible itself was written for believers, those who accept Jesus as their savior. There is no man who seeks God, so for a 'non-Christian' to read the Bible, it comes across as rubbish.

Much like if I try to read a Chinese dictionary, I can't understand it, because I am ignorant to it. The symbols seem illogical and unreadable, yet that doesn't mean what is in the dictionary is not true. It was not intended for me, but for those who know Chinese.

This could get nasty.

 

Are you hinting around with the old convenant and new covenant? This could also take forever.

 

again, this is simply a misunderstanding of the word on your part. for the billionth time, the prefix a means "without". without belief doesnt mean denial of, or a positive belief that something does not exist.

here is a quote from wikipedia that i hope will help you out:

"most atheistic philosophers and groups—define atheism as the simple absence of belief in deities[6][7][8] (cf. nontheism), thereby designating many agnostics, and people who have never heard of gods, such as newborn children, as atheists as well.[9][10] In recent years, some atheists have adopted the terms strong and weak atheism to clarify whether they consider their stance one of positive belief (strong atheism) or the mere absence of belief (weak atheism).[11][12][13]"

you are refusing to understand the difference between strong and weak atheism, even though i have explained it and defined it for you repeatedly. even the dictionary definition makes it simple by using an "or" to make it clear there are two types of ways people can be defines as atheist. lack of belief, or denial.

"strong" atheism is a stupid view and i have honestly never heard of anyone who holds that view. nobody really means they know that no god exists in a mathematical sense. they mean that all claims are submitted without evidence and they belong on the scrapheap of ideas.

you believe in the possibility of god in the same way einstein does, which is to say you are a weak atheist, just like everyone else who has any critical thinking skills. however, you avoid like the plague any view which is determined by the mainstream to be extreme.

here is a quote from douglas adams which i think applies to you:

"There’s just a slight twinge of discomfort about people strongly expressing a particular point of view when maybe a detached wishy-washiness might be felt to be more appropriate - hence a preference for Agnosticism over Atheism."

(from a great interview here: http://www.americanatheist.org/win98-99/T1/silverman.html)

it would be nice to have company!

(also i really apologize for again being so presumptuous as to tell your views to you, i do just like to hear myself speak)

 

Only sort of. I'm mostly saying that Penn and Teller's point is stupid because not very many people interpret the Bible the way they do. My biggest problem with their argument is how they try to paint the whole of Christianity as Bible thumping Fundamentalists.

 

Did you watch the video? It lists a few of them.

Your analogy is poor. It is more like if I can read chinese, but am not chinese myself.

I have read about half the bible (when I was younger), but don't really have any reason to finish it. At the time, I was like many Christians - sort of like how martin described Tirk, just kind of accepting what everyone told me because everyone else believed it. I didn't have complete faith or acceptance in Jesus, but I still accepted it.

None the less, what part of the bible do I have to be a believer in order to understand? I can analyze it for what it is without believing it for myself. I really don't see your point, except that you'd like to believe that you somehow understand the bible better than me because you have faith.

 

Aghhh... this old discussion again. I'm inclined to agree with both of you. See, martin is absolutely right about why Red choses to call himself agnostic with the douglas adam's quote, but at the same time martin refuses to admit the relative context of the word "agnostic". According to his definition (and perhaps its original & latin meaning) it means the same thing as atheism, but by using a different word it implies the "soft" atheism that martin is mentioning.

 

but doesnt the issue of credibility cross your mind? how are you to place absolute faith in a book you are conceding is flawed (from your perspective, maybe not for ancient jews or whatever) and not meant to be taken literally?

nevermind i guess that answers it. man, that makes things easy when you decide something infallibly.

you got that right, bub.

 

IMO, you are overstating how much they are doing that. I can see that they do take a more fundamentalists view of Christians, but that doesn't mean that their argument is not relevent to less fundamental Christians.

I'll get into why tomorrow.