Abe99 - 04 March 2012 03:19 PM

Write4U - 04 March 2012 03:13 PM

and for a theist to insist that it is impossible to live a moral life without ritual is false and therefore immoral in itself.

Are you saying that all or most theists insist that “that it is impossible to live a moral life without ritual”?

That would be equally judgemental, unfair and immoral.

Not the same, but similar to saying all Muslims are terrorists.

No, I am not saying that theist individuals insist that “that it is impossible to live a moral life without ritual”. Their books do (with some exceptions). I judge people by the actions. But it is scripture which demands an “exclusivity”, i.e. “only through me shall you have access to god” or “slay the infidel”.
The difference between science books and bibles is that science is subject to modification as we learn more more, while scripture is written in “stone” and not amendable, even as 90% of scripture is based on primitive unscientific thought. The very demand of exclusive adherence to scripture makes them all suspect as to “truth”. They are indeed “dead” scrolls, not living, evolving documents as all other things in the universe are subject to.
They are stuck in time and that time was long ago. Fortunately most people have evolved and have begun to interpret scripture to fit current knowledge.
I fear the fundamentalists, who will defend “their” book to the death and take with them as many non-believers as they can in the process.

What I would love to see is a world convention of all theist scholars, taking the best of their scriptures and create a single book of secular morals, without proscribed ritual or belief in a “specific god”, which oddly enought seems to be a different god for each religion. I asked a christian once, “If there is only one God, is the christian God the same god as the muslim Allah?  The proper answer should have been, “it is the same god viewed from a different viewpoint”, but to my astonishment he said, “no it has to be a different god”. Thus there were two competing gods, or three, or four, or 200? This makes no sense by any rationale. At least science views the universe as one (or possibly more) “being in reality”, having different aspects and properties, that does make sense.
Any exclusive viewpoint is self serving vanity and hubris and inevitable leads to conflict.

Both atheists and theists have differences in their beliefs and interpretations of the Bible/textbooks they hold dear or dont hold dear. Differences can be major or minor. No two atheists’ or theists’ opinions are identical.

Abe99 - 04 March 2012 04:56 PM

Both atheists and theists have differences in their beliefs and interpretations of the Bible/textbooks they hold dear or dont hold dear. Differences can be major or minor. No two atheists’ or theists’ opinions are identical.

Yeah, but the atheists’ disagreements (say, on which parts of the Bible are beautifully written) are interesting, whereas the disagreements of the theists are mostly meaningless drivel.

Abe99 - 04 March 2012 04:56 PM

Both atheists and theists have differences in their beliefs and interpretations of the Bible/textbooks they hold dear or dont hold dear. Differences can be major or minor. No two atheists’ or theists’ opinions are identical.

I disagree with that statement. Atheists and theist agree on all the secular truths in scripture, i.e. “as you sow so shall you reap” and other such “neutral” statements. But one thing is clear that no one, atheists and theists alike exactly knows or agrees on what god is. Atheists reject the notion of a supernatural being altogether and theists only know what god means to them personally and emotionally. It is a vague fictitious concept, which can be interpreted in so many ways that the only truism reportedly spoken by god is “I shall confound their language”. Therein lies the real problem as such a statement might just as well have been written by the devil or any other charlatan!