The leader of the catholic showed himself early and him and I had a heated debate about the actions which should be taken. He was of the opinion that punishing them wouldn’t cause them to change their behaviours and could possibly make them martyrs of sorts and also that they had suffered enough because their daughter died.

Whilst I didn’t disagree that punishing them wouldn’t change their future actions, nor absolve them of their past ones, I still thought that some kind of legal action should be taken against them. If only from the point of view that just because you’re religious it doesn’t mean you can neglect your children under the guise of faith. Of course such a court case would come under attack by religious people everywhere, Damned atheists.

No religious belief should make you immune to the law.

People of faith may believe they’re the only ones with morals, but you don’t need a degree to see that they killed their own child with their stupidity and ignorance.

I have skimmed several of your posts in the last couple of days and I’m curious as to whether or not you have a link to a website that might explain your general set of beliefs. I have gleaned a few things but to be honest most of your posts are fairly socratic, as in asking a lot of questions but not giving a lot of answers. I’m not necessarily saying this is a mistake or a flaw, I’d just like to see something a bit more cut and dry. I’m talking proofs, just a set of beliefs or ideas.

Do you always speak literally? Do you always speak figuratively? Why would either be a general rule of them when interpreting any book? Is this how you would treat Shakespeare or Whitman?

I don’t always speak from the standpoint of giving instructions for future generations on how to avoid eternal damanation. It’d be nice if those who were would not muck up their instructions with poetry.

I’d love to get my hands on the secret decoder ring you have that has the definitive guide to what’s literal, metaphor, allegory, and other categories of the Biblical texts.

So would I, but even if it existed it probably wouldn’t do much good. The Bible was still written by a bunch of classical Middle eastern religious fanatics between 1900 and 2800 years ago.

Now you’ve shot your argument in the foot. If you don’t have the decoder, how can you say my interpreation is wrong and yours is right?

I definitely agree with you that the myths of the Bible are just that. I’m far too used to arguing with theists who take the Bible literally.

And yes, there are conflicting ideas about prayer in the scripture (just like everything else).

That’s what I’ve been trying to get at. I will concede that I could be wrong regarding the Lord’s Prayer. But you can’t deny that the Bible has examples of prayer having real, physical effects on the world. I would hardly call criticism of prayer’s efficacy the knocking down of a straw man, then. Especially when so many believers hold to such a view (as an aside, one cannot knock down a straw man provided by one’s opponent, as the definition of a straw man means you supply a modified version of your opponent’s view). Even ignoring this view of prayer, I have yet to see any form of it that I find compelling.

Is that also hyperbole or metaphor? Or are we supposed to pray for and expect God to steer us clear of tempation and evil?

Do you always speak literally? Do you always speak figuratively? Why would either be a general rule of them when interpreting any book? Is this how you would treat Shakespeare or Whitman?

I’d love to get my hands on the secret decoder ring you have that has the definitive guide to what’s literal, metaphor, allegory, and other categories of the Biblical texts.

So would I, but even if it existed it probably wouldn’t do much good. The Bible was still written by a bunch of classical Middle eastern religious fanatics between 1900 and 2800 years ago.
Leopardus,

So just what are you an apologist for? Your own personal view of a deity is all. Why bother? Make your imaginary deity in your own image (with no external source of revelation or authority) and leave other folks’ to do likewise.

As I recently answered Yurka – I am a nontheist. It is my own personal view of a deity, but it is shared by many other neo-deists and liberal Christians based on the philosophical and natural evidences around us. Why bother? Why bother to believe in anything? Why bother to be a Democrat or a Republican? Why bother to be a backwater creationist or a cutting-edge geneticist? Because it is human nature.

Jeffrey,
The gospel of John offers a blatantly proto-gnostic theology, of which does not coincide with the more historical teachings of the synoptic gospels.

Christian disunity is an excellent reason to disbelieve.

Sure, if you want it to. There are much better reasons that that to disbelieve without touching something that can be readily explained away by most conservative Christians.

SnugglyBuffalo,

No, I don’t. They would have been living in a time where having basic needs was much less certain than it is today. Praying for God to provide seems a pretty natural assumption there.

That is to bad, as it is the consensus of most religious scholars (not theologians, but secular academics). The majority of Jesus’ sayings, as well as the rest of the New Testament, offer nothing positive about money and/or the need for it. The people of the day, in Palestine and the rest of the empire, prayed to all sorts of gods on a regular basis for everything and never thought twice about it. It was simply assumed that everything came from the gods – even if it was through natural means (yes, that is reaching). However, when it comes to Jesus’ teachings it is recorded in every gospel (even Thomas) that he taught through the symbolism of bread and water. It was not Jesus’ purpose to put food on everyone’s table, but rather give spiritual fulfillment.

So, when Jesus fed the 5000 from a handful of food, or the woman and child whose flour and oil continually re-filled in whatever old testament story that was from, etc. were just writers seeing miracles where there were none?

And these miracles actually happened and the writers of the text actually believed them to happen? Probably not. While primitive in our eyes, the writers of these texts were not delusional or crazy. Many scholars have shown that at least two, if not all four, of the gospels are written in a Midrashic fashion as an attempt to give the new Christian religion a supplement to the older Jewish testament. In their early liturgy, the early Christians would have likely read the story of the feedings along with the scriptural reading of manna from heaven, etc.

When Elija prayed and God sent a pilar of fire to burn his offering to show up the Baal prophets, that wasn’t God directly answering prayer?

Are the stories of the OT not simply Jewish myths analogous to that of the Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks?

Would you care to actually set out what you think prayer achieves? So far, all I’ve heard from you is how we and most Christians have our concept of prayer wrong.

Well you don’t have to hear it from me. It simply doesn’t work. And yes, there are conflicting ideas about prayer in the scripture (just like everything else). I happen to believe that Jesus was a historical figure who was a little bit wiser than the majority of population of humankind and that how he treated his deity should be listened to a little bit more than some others.
So what does prayer do? Who knows. I think we might have to define prayer more. Personally, I think prayer is likely more placbo than anything else, akin to eastern meditation… but if God is Being itself and we are aspects of that Being, perhaps there might be something more to the whole prayer thing.

Living in a time with much less than what we have now, and within a paradigm that obviously suggested that living without worry for the material things, don’t you think it would be more accurate to say that Jesus was speaking about spiritual bread?

No, I don’t. They would have been living in a time where having basic needs was much less certain than it is today. Praying for God to provide seems a pretty natural assumption there.

Based on a primitive understanding of God, of course the various writers of the Bible thought answers to prayer were everywhere and worked on a serve-me type system. Whether it is impotent today goes back to whether you believe in the natural/supernatural dualism of primitively-based religious systems or not.

So, when Jesus fed the 5000 from a handful of food, or the woman and child whose flour and oil continually re-filled in whatever old testament story that was from, etc. were just writers seeing miracles where there were none? When Elija prayed and God sent a pilar of fire to burn his offering to show up the Baal prophets, that wasn’t God directly answering prayer?

Would you care to actually set out what you think prayer achieves? So far, all I’ve heard from you is how we and most Christians have our concept of prayer wrong. The best we’ve gotten from you so far is “The effectiveness of prayer is to center around the tenets of universal love for God. . . and others . . .” which doesn’t really tell us what you think the effect actually is.

Jesus gave us another example of prayer in John 17:21:

“that they [who believe in me] may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

First off, note that Jesus is praying for something that acts outside his mind.

God said “no.” In fact, not only has God failed to make Christian unity a good argument to believe like Jesus asked for it be, Christian disunity is an excellent reason to disbelieve. I don’t just mean due to fighting, but due to the specific content of the significant theological differences among Christians who are attempting to be biblical. Whether or not they are killing each other over it, the problem of theological diversity shows very clearly that the Bible communicates very poorly and the Holy Spirit doesn’t step in and pick up the slack.