There is no god

[OldKingCole]

Inspired by another thread … I was surprised by the level of atheism professed … as I always though I was in a tiny, tiny minority.
would be interested to see the MN response.

IABU - there is a god
IANBU - there is no god

Loving watching a believer in imaginary sky guy trying to use logic to refute those who don't.😁

I'd say the opposite, in that there is no logic in a universe that created itself. If there was we'd have had an explanation by now.Its why a lot of atheist astro physicists turn towards a Creator.

That's Stephen Fry's personal take on God. People constantly quote his bitter rant as gospel. I liked him even less after that.

Paul was actually referencing earlier scriptures from the Old Testament, namely Leviticus.
Arsenokoitai is a general term for male same-sex sex. It's pairing with malakoi indicates that Paul is addressing both the active and passive partners in homosexual sex.
We also know the etymology of koitai-Latin coitus. It's clear what is actually implied By Paul.
www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/nas/koite.html
However.
In the bible, the only sexual relations permitted were between married males and females. The rest is all condemned as fornication.
I still cannot understand why this is so controversial.
This isn't my opinion, it's in black and white in the Bible.
That is not bigoted, it's just supplying information.
So according to the bible, I'm a fornicator.
And just to point out I'm NOT a practicing Christian.

Believing something as amazing as the human body came from chance takes more faith than believing in God.

And where did the energy for the big bang come from?

And where does life come from? If we gave someone a heart transplant after they died, we couldn't breathe life into them.

Where does our sense of morality come from?

I think we have really over complicated all this - isn’t it just that we have our physical side ( our animalistic appetites) and another side that can think beyond our immediate needs once certain conditions are met?

So, a lot of this stuff is about how we create the inner temple - the space inside us that can carry concern and live for others beyond our immediate self.

The ‘sins’ as such are really behaviours that are not the best thing for oneself - gluttony, lasciviousness, etc - no one would disagree with that surely ? They set up discontent in our feelings and lead to lack of control, envy, greed etc that can then lead to us losing sight of what’s really important. They are sins against the self and our full potential.

In modern day language, we would just say count your blessings, comparison is the thief of joy and use terms like self control or self esteem but the underlying behaviour and correlated rewards are the same - a sense of inner peace, benevolence, compassion, kindness, thoughtfulness, concern for those who are vulnerable - a genuine desire to help and share skills to benefit each other.

Isn’t it about getting our own lives in order so we can then look after each other this building communities, etc.

Re: homosexuality- don’t know where scripture for this fits in - maybe it was like the milk and meat thing - seen as unclean due to bodily functions/ hygiene.

Arsenokoitai is a word Paul made up that he never explained the meaning of. You cannot definitely say what it means and it's something Greek language scholars still debate themselves

Koitai means bed but can be used euphemistically for intercourse. But there are very compelling linguistic studies which show it could mean pedastry not homosexuality

I appreciate you think you know what it means. I am not saying I know what it means. I am saying there is more than one way to translate the word and your argument for what it means is not as compelling

Malakoi meanwhile means effeminate. Its only in the 1900s that the word came to be associated with gay sex. Prior to that it mean soft or effeminate and in the time it was written referred to men who followed an effeminate Greek custom of shaving their face. Malakoi at the time was actually used to refer to Greek men who shaved their hair and painted their faces specifically to attract women. So assuming Paul used it to refer to gay men is a very modern interpretation

Meanwhile if Paul was just condemning fornication outside of marriage, there were same sex marriages in roman times, so that would only include gay sex outside of marriage. Marriage didn't used to be the province of the church so it's a more modern tradition that marriage is a church matter and they have the right to refuse to do same sex marriages.

As for leviticus

1. Jesus told us we are not living under the laws of the old testament any more but his teachings which is why you can wear mixed fibres clothes and have a mortgage
2. A lot of scholars are fairly certain that the passage about homosexuality was added about a century later than other parts of leviticus
3. Jesus did not ban homosexuality
4. some scholars translate the meaning to homosexual incest not all gay relationships
5. Other Hebrew scholars believe it refers to various forms on rape (in a similar way to Paul using it to refer to pedastry in a time where adult men having sex with teenage boys was common and that was the behaviour being condemned, not the act of gay sex itself)

There is a lot more study into this which I am not going to take up space with here but which shows there is plenty of evidence by scholars that the rather simplistic explanations around homosexuality is banned in the bible are not that straightforward.

I'm not a fan of JP, but anyone really interested in a philosophical discussion about life, humanity, death and evil, might enjoy this.

static1.squarespace.com/static/53bb3a37e4b0819b35797cec/t/58471c4d725e25b805b00457/1481055310088/basic_hermeneutical_principles.pdf

Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture.
The bible cross references itself, academic rigor, and statements are not made in isolation. Paul was reinforcing what had already been written.
The literal sense of Scripture was defined as the plain and evident meaning. The moral sense was that which instructed humans how to behave.
The Bible sets out clear guidelines and laws surrounding human behavior. It is very judgemental when condemning. It's interesting that sex (Outside of marriage between m-f), drunkenness, lying, etc, were all classed as grossly sinning.

Ooh that’s really interesting thanks. Translation, cultural context and amendment of the Bible over the centuries is very interesting. Have you got any links to the research?

Those are rational questions we can ask and which we may be able to answer. Maybe the answers are beyond the grasp of human minds and technology, as algebra is beyond that of a dog.

Whereas positing 'god' as an alternative is frankly a cop out. Can you answer 'where did god come from'? How the heck is inventing a being of enormous power and intelligence an acceptable answer to those questions? Wittering about 'god' being outside of time and space or whatever is no answer.

Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture

How convenient. The Bible is true because it says so in the Bible. That's pretty much the standard of debate you get from most believers.

There’s no logic in any of it. Why does the god ‘logic’ (or illogic) trump the science one? It’s all more than our brains can untangle but that doesn’t default to ‘there’s a god’ does it?

If the human body was created by an omniscient god, how come it is flawed in so many ways?

Because humans sinned and so death and sin entered the world.

🙄😣
www.gotquestions.org/Biblical-exegesis.html
Biblical exegesis involves the examination of a particular text of scripture in order to properly interpret it. Exegesis is a part of the process of hermeneutics, the science of interpretation.
The Synthesis Principle. The best interpreter of scripture is scripture itself. We must examine a passage in relation to its immediate context (the verses surrounding it), its wider context (the book it’s found in), and its complete context (the Bible as a whole). The Bible does not contradict itself. Any theological statement in one verse can and should be harmonized with theological statements in other parts of scripture. Good Bible interpretation relates any one passage to the total content of scripture.

This principle is why I brought up the fact the bible cross-references itself. Then the ideas become self-evident.
These standards are accepted and apply to all formats of studying.
This is the literal meaning of critical thinking.

Honestly I've probably looked at about 20 or 30 different sites whilst on this thread, some by churches, some by language scholars some by theologians.

I think ultimately the point I'm trying to make is that if the churches, scholars and theologians are still undecided on the actual translations and meanings its quite egotistical for some posters to say 'it definitely means this'.

Especially when 'this' at times is a later translation (homosexual didnt appear until 1958 in english versions) by people who are seeing it through a filter of their own bias.

(sorry only the first bit of that applied to your question @OMG12)

There is debate about the translation of the Hebrew and the translation of the Greek.

So it could be that leviticus banned homosexual acts, and Paul followed that up

Or it could be that leviticus banned sexual assault and Paul followed that up by banning pedastry, a form of sexual assault

I'm not denying the cross referencing, I'm pointing out that if the translations are not universally agreed on then someone reading an English copy of the bible, where the translations have changed over the years anyway, cannot definitely say they are accurate.

If you had been born a 100 years ago your Bible wouldn't even have the word homosexual in it in corinthians.

The Bible does not contradict itself.

But it very obviously does. There may be explanations for some of the inconsistencies but it's simply untrue to say that it doesn't contradict itself.
What even is 'the Bible'? Different sects have quite widely varying canons.

Well really god loved incest, so it's their fault for the gene pool getting messed up.

Just because people can't answer all the questions doesn't give you right to make any old shit up to explain it does it.

And the human body isn't that amazing it's due to evolution not god and it's a mess in a lot of ways, but a good god wouldn't have made a body that could get cancer mnd would they and don't go blaming sin for it as anyone who does is a moron.

Unfortunately Letitrainletitrainletitrain you're not following basic principles.
We must examine a passage in relation to its immediate context (the verses surrounding it), its wider context (the book it’s found in), and its complete context.
The example we have been debating fornication was mentioned first, this covers the WHOLE condemnation of sexual human behavior. This is why it's clear what Paul meant.
"Polykoites" means "man who has sex with many."
"Metrokoites" means "one who sleeps with their mother.
These are other made-up words as you claim. No, they are not.

I really think the critics want to reduce the credibility of the Bible so that they are free to live their own life without it condemning them.
Ultimately that is the crux of the matter.

No one has even begun discussing the laws of thermodynamics.
Another crushing blow for the deniers.

@PrincessConstance given that Biblical and other translations of the Classical era are still very much up for constant debate among scholars, it's impossible to say with certainty that a particular passage means one thing and not another.

Using a method whereby the only scrutiny of a text is against itself is just plain unscientific. @Letitrainletitrainletitrain has pointed out the absence of the words used by Paul in contemporaneous texts - those texts constitute the complete context that is necessary for rigorous academic work. Referencing a document only against itself is poor practice and as a method it means you can write anything and justify it using the text you have just written. Alice in Wonderland has good internal consistency, but nobody is claiming it is anything but a work of fiction.

@Citylab your argument is no more than the 'God of the Gaps' argument, which basically goes 'we don't know so it must have been God'. It's a fallacy. In prehistory archaeology (the field I trained in) we were taught to admit it if we could not interpret a find and its context rather than say 'we don't know so it must have been ritual'.

Questions 1-3 are wonderful questions. They are worthy of much research by scientists. The answers can be found with enough time.

question 4 is the one that once again gets to the heart of this discussion for me. People are not moral because of some external power. Morality comes from empathy. We see it in humans and we see it in animals. It is a function of the biological computer that is a brain to observe someone other than yourself and extrapolate how a particular situation would make you feel. People who claim that function comes from a god or even that we need to listen to that function because of a god, make me question the quality of their own morality.