Fallen From Grace (Creationism Related)

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2006-03-18 08:03pm

I have a couple of questions. Are there any people on the group who who used to be Creationists who found fault in Creationism and "Fell From Grace" as a result.

My curiousity is (if you know / remember) what was the revelation which caused you to turn from creationism?

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2006-03-18 08:06pm

If they can't find fault in a person coming back from the dead, a sea parting, a global flood, a magical sky fairy, etc., I seriously doubt creationism is going to stand out.

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2006-03-18 08:11pm

Well I was reading Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus" and his in a religious sense (He was a Born Again) was simply too many mistranslations in the bible to still consider it the word of God.

Ryushikaze · Post by **Ryushikaze** » 2006-03-18 11:19pm

It happened early for me. I was always a rather rational child, and quite simply, it didn't add up.

Genesis one being in blatant contradiction with Genesis 2 was about enough for me to recognize that something was off kilter.

Cos Dashit · Post by **Cos Dashit** » 2006-03-19 12:02am

I cannot even remember when I started going to Church. My mom was "born again", so I went once a week, every week. I was young, so during the Pastor's sermon, I would read the Bible. I had accepted it at the time, and read quite a chunk. When I was older I started going to Bible classes. This is where it all came apart. How these people analyzed and translated the Bible was so warped in my mind; and the fact that they took it literally. I stopped going to Bible classes, and then I stopped going to Church, especially now that I could wrap my mind around the Pastor's rants. I never did stop reading the Bible though, I'm not Christian, but I find the book interesting.

I just wanted to clear something up; it wasn't only one Church I went to, I remember three we went to regularly, and a couple other we visited. So it wasn't a biased opinion.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-03-19 12:04am

Cos Dashit wrote:I never did stop reading the Bible though, I'm not Christian, but I find the book interesting.

Oh yeah, it's a great read. Bit archaic, but it was the first novel

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-03-19 12:36am

Since when is the Bible a great read? It's the most repetitive, poorly edited, badly written piece of shit in all of literature. Once you get past Exodus, the pace of the story slows down to a crawl, or at least seems to because it's the same fucking theme over and over and over. God smites your enemies, you piss off God afterwards, he lets your enemies smite you, you come back to God, God smites your enemies again, rinse and repeat. For almost the entire remaining Old Testament.

Then we get to the New Testament, which tells the same fucking story 5 times in a row, followed by Paul's repetitive ravings at great length, topped off with the LSD trip that is Revelations.

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2006-03-19 12:46am

Darth Wong wrote:Since when is the Bible a great read? It's the most repetitive, poorly edited, badly written piece of shit in all of literature. Once you get past Exodus, the pace of the story slows down to a crawl, or at least seems to because it's the same fucking theme over and over and over. God smites your enemies, you piss off God afterwards, he lets your enemies smite you, you come back to God, God smites your enemies again, rinse and repeat. For almost the entire remaining Old Testament.

Then we get to the New Testament, which tells the same fucking story 5 times in a row, followed by Paul's repetitive ravings at great length, topped off with the LSD trip that is Revelations.

Agreed; the interesting shit is all apocrapha anyways.

Metatwaddle · Post by **Metatwaddle** » 2006-03-19 02:59am

Darth Wong wrote:Since when is the Bible a great read? It's the most repetitive, poorly edited, badly written piece of shit in all of literature. Once you get past Exodus, the pace of the story slows down to a crawl, or at least seems to because it's the same fucking theme over and over and over. God smites your enemies, you piss off God afterwards, he lets your enemies smite you, you come back to God, God smites your enemies again, rinse and repeat. For almost the entire remaining Old Testament.

Then we get to the New Testament, which tells the same fucking story 5 times in a row, followed by Paul's repetitive ravings at great length, topped off with the LSD trip that is Revelations.

I couldn't decide whether to hate or love Revelations. It's batshit insane and it gave us the trash that they call the Left Behind series, but then again, literary LSD trips aren't always a bad thing. Overall, I thought it was sort of interesting. Genesis and Exodus weren't bad either. The rest is toilet paper.

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2006-03-19 08:21am

Darth Wong wrote:Since when is the Bible a great read? .

Well some of the songs do have saucy bits

, such as the love song [song of songs] with the girl inviting her lover (a metaphor for g-d) to "Romp through the fields of her body like a deer and silver perfumed towers of her breasts".

Or Ruth which has the king killed by a stake through the head after being fucked 7 ways to sunday.
Or Yonah which shows the stupidity of running from a near omnipotent being (I may write a culture based story using it as an inspiration if I have the time one day).

Their are a very few interesting stories, it's just that they're a tiny minority, and the language was badly edited (Comes from spelling mistakes and added words being considered equally holy and non-editable)

The Guid · Post by **The Guid** » 2006-03-19 08:32am

Darth Wong wrote:Since when is the Bible a great read?

I'd suggest that it is an interesting read more for the insights it gives into humans, their myths etc. rather than through artistic merit. This does not make the Bible stand out in a particular one to any other creation stories etc. but it is written down & incredibly influential in this day and age.

CaptJodan · Post by **CaptJodan** » 2006-03-19 09:50am

My immediate parents were never super super religious, but my grandparents are. My parents when I was really young would take me to church such as to "give me the expereince" so that basically later in life they could say that they didn't deprive me of said church going or God. I strongly suspect pressure from their parents.

Nevertheless the feeling in the house has always been somewhat God centric. Too lazy to go to church every week, but there is a God and the Bible is literal. So I believed it too.

I'd have to say that the issue that got me ready to listen to the idea that God was not around, or at the very least believe that he was an asshole was when I came to accept that I was gay and that I couldn't change it. It was several years later before I found the evidence that helped to break reason into me, but once I started to look at some of the other insanity of the Bible (as Wong always says, many like me are people who didn't actually READ the Bible. No one wants you to do that. They want you to read it THROUGH someone else, taking their conclusions), I pretty much abandoned the whole thing.

Long before this, though, I always had nagging things I couldn't get over. Things like "If the stars are millions of lightyears away and we can see them, how is the Earth young?" and "If we have technology that can date stuff from 10,000 years ago, why can't that stuff be right for 1 million years ago, like the fossils of prehistoric man."

Sadly, my parents are still YECs. Science, to them, is simply wrong when it comes to the young Earth. Which is stupid, because on most things they are pretty intelligent people. I think they just suddenly shut off their brain when it comes to the 10,000 and beyond mark for Earth existance.

OmegaGuy · Post by **OmegaGuy** » 2006-03-19 09:57am

I thought YECs believed the earth was 6000 years old, not 10000.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-03-19 10:05am

I was YEC when I was ten. Then, I learned about science, and I didn't think about creationism again until biology class. At that point, there was really no contest between evolution and YEC, though I remain a "theistic evolutionist".

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-03-19 11:35am

The Guid wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Since when is the Bible a great read?
I'd suggest that it is an interesting read more for the insights it gives into humans, their myths etc. rather than through artistic merit. This does not make the Bible stand out in a particular one to any other creation stories etc. but it is written down & incredibly influential in this day and age.

If an alien civilization read the Bible, especially the OT, it would conclude that we are ornery jackasses who kill each other how we want, when we want, for whatever reason we want. That's the kind of "insight" it gives into human nature, and frankly, you don't need the Bible to know we're assholes. Besides, much of it is heavily based in Israeli tradition, and won't relate to us, especially the pointless wasting of meat in animal sacrifices. How did that become such a popular religious tradition, anyways? Wouldn't it die out as groups that do waste meat and lives lose to groups that don't?

TheBlackCat · Post by **TheBlackCat** » 2006-03-19 12:33pm

OmegaGuy wrote:I thought YECs believed the earth was 6000 years old, not 10000.

The 6000 year date was an earlier, apparently flawed flawed analysis of the geneology in the bible. Apparently 10,000 is the "correct" figure. Not that it really matters, we are talking being .000046% of the correct figure versus .000077%. It may seem like a big difference to us short-lived humans, but not to the universe.

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2006-03-19 01:47pm

especially the pointless wasting of meat in animal sacrifices.

Actually it has sacrifice's only using the fat and useless parts of the meat and ate the leftovers in a communal feast(Unlike religions that believed that the gods ate the meat and burned all of it, or just sacrificed babies (Bal for example).

Wouldn't it die out as groups that do waste meat and lives lose to groups that don't?

Apart from the aforementioned point, many jewish laws were hygenically based, the forbiddance of meat+milk is a health based tradition with no real roots, and the pig thing is also due to the greater health dangers involved with pig meat and some fish,

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2006-03-19 02:27pm

Darth Wong wrote:Since when is the Bible a great read? It's the most repetitive, poorly edited, badly written piece of shit in all of literature. Once you get past Exodus, the pace of the story slows down to a crawl, or at least seems to because it's the same fucking theme over and over and over. God smites your enemies, you piss off God afterwards, he lets your enemies smite you, you come back to God, God smites your enemies again, rinse and repeat. For almost the entire remaining Old Testament.

Then we get to the New Testament, which tells the same fucking story 5 times in a row, followed by Paul's repetitive ravings at great length, topped off with the LSD trip that is Revelations.

It's definitely a chore to read for so little material of actual value, but I happen to find it a lot more readable and charming in LEGO format.

Manus Celer Dei · Post by **Manus Celer Dei** » 2006-03-19 05:28pm

It was when I was about twelve at a Jehovah's Witness's "bible study". We were studying Revelations, and there's a part about a "great and purple beast" or something, which JWs beleive to represent the United Nations because it was attempting to bring peace to the earth.

I was sitting a room of people making comments about how stupid and presumptuous it was of the UN to try and do something which they should know only THE LORD can accomplish. That was what made me start noticing how stupid and, frankly, disgusting, aspects of the religion was. It wasn't long before I stopping going altogether.

Metatwaddle · Post by **Metatwaddle** » 2006-03-19 05:42pm

Utsanomiko wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Since when is the Bible a great read? It's the most repetitive, poorly edited, badly written piece of shit in all of literature. Once you get past Exodus, the pace of the story slows down to a crawl, or at least seems to because it's the same fucking theme over and over and over. God smites your enemies, you piss off God afterwards, he lets your enemies smite you, you come back to God, God smites your enemies again, rinse and repeat. For almost the entire remaining Old Testament.

Then we get to the New Testament, which tells the same fucking story 5 times in a row, followed by Paul's repetitive ravings at great length, topped off with the LSD trip that is Revelations.
It's definitely a chore to read for so little material of actual value, but I happen to find it a lot more readable and charming in LEGO format.

Uts, that has to be the best thing ever.

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-03-19 06:16pm

Actually, if they made a movie of the OT, it'd be pretty cool. A Porno-Action flick. You get gratuitous gore, tits and smitage. It's just the dull prose of the Bible that ruins it.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-03-19 06:28pm

wolveraptor wrote:Actually, if they made a movie of the OT, it'd be pretty cool. A Porno-Action flick. You get gratuitous gore, tits and smitage. It's just the dull prose of the Bible that ruins it.

It would only be "cool" if they cut out most of the OT, because it's not just the prose. The story itself is incredibly repetitive once you get past Exodus. I wasn't really joking when I summarized it earlier as an endless cycle of Godly protection, anger, punishment, and reconciliation. That's what it is, throughout 90% of the Old Testament. If you put the OT in movie form without massively cutting down the later chapters, you'd have 5 minutes of Genesis, 5 minutes of Exodus, and then 2 hours of God's mood swings. Even the blood and gore wouldn't redeem such a mess; why do you think most Biblical "epics" focus on one tiny portion of the story? The whole story is just plain awful, even leaving aside moral or logical problems.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2006-03-20 08:05am

Darth Wong wrote:
wolveraptor wrote:Actually, if they made a movie of the OT, it'd be pretty cool. A Porno-Action flick. You get gratuitous gore, tits and smitage. It's just the dull prose of the Bible that ruins it.
It would only be "cool" if they cut out most of the OT, because it's not just the prose. The story itself is incredibly repetitive once you get past Exodus. I wasn't really joking when I summarized it earlier as an endless cycle of Godly protection, anger, punishment, and reconciliation. That's what it is, throughout 90% of the Old Testament. If you put the OT in movie form without massively cutting down the later chapters, you'd have 5 minutes of Genesis, 5 minutes of Exodus, and then 2 hours of God's mood swings. Even the blood and gore wouldn't redeem such a mess; why do you think most Biblical "epics" focus on one tiny portion of the story? The whole story is just plain awful, even leaving aside moral or logical problems.

Seems like a good way to show just what a fucknutter the OT god is.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2006-03-20 09:37am

TheBlackCat wrote:
OmegaGuy wrote:I thought YECs believed the earth was 6000 years old, not 10000.
The 6000 year date was an earlier, apparently flawed flawed analysis of the geneology in the bible. Apparently 10,000 is the "correct" figure. Not that it really matters, we are talking being .000046% of the correct figure versus .000077%. It may seem like a big difference to us short-lived humans, but not to the universe.

It's still pretty funny, aside from all the dinosaurs and human fossils and such, the biblical site of old jericho is older than 10,000 years!

Itô Doeblin · Post by **Itô Doeblin** » 2006-03-20 09:39am

Darth Wong wrote:
wolveraptor wrote: Actually, if they made a movie of the OT, it'd be pretty cool. A Porno-Action flick. You get gratuitous gore, tits and smitage.
It would only be "cool" if they cut out most of the OT, because it's not just the prose. The story itself is incredibly repetitive once you get past Exodus. I wasn't really joking when I summarized it earlier as an endless cycle of Godly protection, anger, punishment, and reconciliation

Wolveraptor, I believe you're thinking of the wrong medium. Obviously, a television show is the way to go. If people can watch a decade of MASH, NYPD Blue or Baywatch, (read: the same episode again and again), they'll eat this up. Repetitiveness is a base of a classic television. Audiences will actually expect to see the same stuff over and over again because, I think, it gives them comfort.

And you could end every season with a cliffhanger: God's people have pissed him off (yet again), he has punished them (yet again), they beg for forgiveness -- fade out, to be continued... Will God forgive them one last time? (That is, one last time until next season's cliffhanger)

As to the original topic, never was a YEC. I was a regular church goer until I was about ten, but even then, as somebody above put it, "something didn't add up". For me it wasn't the logical contradictions -- I was told to view the stories as allegories anyway -- but that, despite the priest's best effort to spin the stories into "God is love", the message of the text always seemed to be "God is a powerful bastard."

Have a nice day,
Itô