Reminds me of the oral tradition of (missing accents) The Tain, an irish Celtic tale I took in medieval lit class. The storyline had so many threads in the various circulating versions, that the editors of the modern version of the original saga had to piece ‘em together by picking and choosing.

Can’t imagine how much wrangling it must have taken to get all the various copies (which needed to be destroyed) of various books that were voted in as canon (word of god can be vetoed by committee, it seems!), and translated from various ancient languages (before punctuation was invented! God’s law might be missing a comma or semicolon that could change the whole meaning!), and then once that was ironed out, trying to ram the doctrine into people’s heads overriding their free and critical thinking capacities, usually under threat of some kind of punishment or coercion–> this was probably the easier part.

@pikeamus: a favourite one I’ve heard is that if future archeologists uncover remnants of the City of Manhattan, does that prove the Spiderman story is real. I hope no fans of this story start crying if I mock the writing or the logic of the plot.

Free will exists indeed, in the sense that we can think whatever we want and do anything we want within the bounds of the laws that govern the physical universe (gravity etc.) it is so inmportant because without free will, the meaning of love is eliminated.

Pets “love” their humans only because their instict tells them that if they don’t they won’t get the food, water, warmth, and protection that they need. This isn’t true Love, this is obedience and loyalty based only on necessity.

As humans, we have free will and the intelligence of mind to be able to live independently of God if we so choose. How precious is it then when we do indeed choose to live our lives striving to be with God even though we don’t really have to? It is infinitely precious. It’s like the joy a parent would feel if their children willingly come and take care of them when they’re old. As adults, human’s don’t need their parents to survive anymore so there’s no real logical reason to help their parents as they get old. However, if we love our parents we we help them out anyway. This should give the parents the greatest joy as long as the children have not legal obligation or natural reason of necessity to serve them.

A large part of human suffering was directly inflicted by this same god. If god feels so bad about it, why doesn’t he do something about it?

So my belief is that while Jesus’ physical suffering at his crucification was horrific, it wasn’t much worse than others before and after them. You know, they still do it today some places, such as Cameroon on the west coast of Africa. His real sacrifice was to inherit God’s heart and feel the same pain and sorrow that God feels every moment a single human suffers.

Presumably in Heaven you get your boredom gland excised.

We can’t know when the “holy days” end without knowing what, if anything, is holy to the Author. If the Author is a pantheist, the “holy days” may go on forever!

Dick M: More interesting imho than who made the sacrifice — to whom was the sacrifice made?

Ketil G: You and William the Bloody Awful Poet.

Sarge084: One still prefers that fiction make sense.

Hobbes: Most of my gun-nut friends are atheists.

Hobbes: Most of my gun-nut friends are atheists.

grouchy-one: I know someone whose father was raised in a strict Christer community in rural Arizona, then took a comparative religion class at Stanford. When he heard the words “Many cultures have a resurrection myth” his faith went kablooey.

Jane&imChristian: You need to distinguish between ignorance and non-belief.

Colonel Leisure: You remind me of something that (i think) C S Lewis said: “When I became a man I put off childish things, including the fear of being thought childish.”

Uncle Roger: You need to distinguish between legal rights and moral rights. By the way, the First Amendment doesn’t actually say “the gov needs to stay out of the whole fairy tale business”; as written, it forbids FedGov to establish or disestablish any churches – the last state churches weren’t disestablished until a generation later. — Be fair, wolves would likely leave some bones behind.

pzdummy: Do you happen to know what drugs (other than faith) this “Nostradamus” favors?

John The Geologist: Blasphemy? Huh?