if we define anything as a diety, including animals and trees, it makes it something less than a startling coincidence that many cultures believe in them. given a confusing scenario that cant be explained without imagining magic was involved, people imagine magic was involved. not sure why you think that means magic might be true or whatever you think. not sure which part of the modern myths you think merits close scrutiny and evaluation or why the modern myths are any less absurd than the ancient ones that i am certain you dismiss and mock to the extent they deserve. you and everyone else, all brainwashed to have an irrational amount of respect for faith. we have had it beaten into our heads since childhood that we must respect a man's faith, because it is his personal thing or whatever. well, that is truly ridiculous. faith is something all adults should be ashamed of having. there is a double standard with regard to the various faiths. sam harris has some comments: "A politician who seriously invokes Poseidon in a campaign speech will have thereby announced the end of his political career. Why is this so? Did someone around the time of Constantine discover that the pagan gods do not actually exist, while the biblical God does?"
On man's magic is another man's technology. You have no imagination at all, do you? No natural curiosity at all? Again, you think you have it all figured out and can't comprehend why anybody would want to explore mythology. You project your personal emotions into this with vehemence. You have a desperate need to deny faith, even when it is being discussed in analytical, theoretical, or even comical terms. The very notion seems to enrage you. You are crying for help, martin. It's a good thing that Jesus loves you. :grin: Thor doesn't. :angry:
are you asking me why i am not so frustrated with our lack of knowledge of the world that i make up fairy tales and believe them? 1. again, i dont have it figured out. religions do. please listen. 2. i know why people "explore" mythology. i know more about religions, than most people who follow those religions. i am also obsessed with mythology and legends and know more about them than anyone. i am not anti-curious. i am anti-portraying-myths-as reality. 3. uour use of the word mythology is disrespectful to the faithful, as you shouldnt really deny that their beliefs are true so flippantly.
No. I asked why you have so sense of imagination or curiosity that makes you want to explore these matters. I don't have to believe something to have fun with it. i don't have to disbelieve something just to be as dogmatic as you are about atheism . . . that you cannot stand the very notion of any discussion the usefulness of oral traditions. Then stop informing me that I'm wrong if you don't have it figured out! You are certainly obsessed with something here. Seek help. And when have you known me to do so? You are crafting a straw man to debate.
not sure what hell you think you are gonna explore. there is no evidence. is there evidence i have heard about? did i miss a headline? again, i have the same attitude about modern myths that everyone else has about ancient myths.
Open your friggin' mind and listen better. You are so eager to argue against religion that you are tilting at windmills, Don Quixote. You twisted a comment about oral traditions into your usual diatribe, only there is no one on the other side. You refused to consider where my comment about oral traditions was going and instead went off on a tangent against faith, belief, and religion even though you know very well that I'm not religious at all. Your blind ideology robs you of the capacity for abstract thought. Pity.
oral traditions are interesting. i can imagine how important they were before written language and even a few hundred years ago before literacy was common. it is difficult for me to accept their accuracy for something as important as religion, which i believe is what the christian religion (and especially the jewish religion) generally requires. this is particularly the case in light of all the obvious manipulations of the written word. it is sad in many ways that oral tradition, even that of 50-100 yrs ago has been replaced with fb, internet forums and law and order reruns.
not sure what you mean. red. i am probably the greatest student of oral traditions you have ever heard of. i have read extensively about myths and legends, both modern and ancient. i studied folklore in college and even wrote quite a bit about it. i even kept a journal with urban legends told to me as fact. once i published it on the web for tirk to read. nobody cares more or is more interested in oral traditions than me. what you dont seem to want to concede is that these traditions tell us nothing about the cosmos, about god, about the universe. they tell us about human nature. that is actually interesting, that is something there is actually evidence about. all discussions about god or whatever are basically pure nonsense, literally the equivalent of random noise presented without any evidence. any claim made about god has literally zero truth value and is pointless. you can make any claim you want, and it no more likely to be true than random words generated by a computer and placed in random order. what i really want people to understand is there is not really such a thing as arguing against religion, because religion is nothing, it is non-information. it is cognitively meaningless jibberish without any basis in anything.
this is more extreme than my views. what is the minimum evidence that would be required for you to believe, assuming the christian story is true? original texts of a hostile witness--say, some jewish or roman historian, that corroborate the nuts and bolts of the gospel? corroboration of numerous hostile witnesses? video? god tapping you on the shoulder?
