Recent Religions: Hallucination or Lies

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Dinosaur, Aug 26, 2015.

  1. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    We can never determine exactly what was said/claimed by religious leaders from 2000 or more years ago.

    For example: Did Christ’s contemporary followers actually claim that he walked on water or performed other miracles?

    Did contemporaries actually claim that Ezekiel saw some mechanical device (a wheel) in the sky?​

    Prior to being written, biblical beliefs were maintained for centuries by oral stories. Oral traditions are known to be grossly distorted in the retelling.

    There are some more modern religious beliefs which have been documented: Are these hallucinations or deliberate lies?


    From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormons

    Mormons trace their origins to the visions that Joseph Smith reported having in the early 1820s while living in upstate New York. In 1823, Smith said an angel directed him to a buried book written on golden plates containing the religious history of an ancient people. Smith published what he said was a translation of these plates in March 1830 as the Book of Mormon​

    I think that Smith was alleged to have been given magic spectacles which allowed him to read the tablets before they were taken from him.

    From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emanuel_Swedenborg, circa 1745.

    In Earths In The Universe, it is stated that he conversed with spirits from Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Venus, and the Moon, as well as spirits from planets beyond our solar system. From these 'encounters' he concluded that the planets of our solar system are inhabited, and that such an enormous undertaking as the universe could not have been created for just one race of people.​

    Might Smith & Swedenborg deliberately lied, expecting to be believed? Might they have deluded themselves?

    I suspect deliberate lying.
     
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  3. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Why are you so obsessed about religion , if you don't believe so this is your prerogative, If their religion is true and they believe in miracles let them be. Apparently you are a nonbeliever so be it
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    They don't let us be. Beliefs have consequences for society.
     
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  7. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    No, you are thinking of false beliefs. Which may or may not have consequences for society.
     
  8. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    The consequence of people who do not have fear of God . I can se the increase in murder and divorces since 1960 statistics,
     
  9. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Not really. Even false beliefs have consequences. They influence politics and laws. Like closing stores on Sundays or outlawing porn...
     
  10. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Actually the reverse is true. Murders have plummeted since 1970 due to the legalization of abortion.

    Murder rate per 100,000 people:

    1960 5.1
    1970 7.9
    2013 4.5

    http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
     
  11. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    This post has been removed by the moderator staff. Reason: flaming.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 30, 2015
  12. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    This post has been deleted by the moderator staff. Reason: insufferably stupid.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 30, 2015
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  13. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Thank you for the site you should have shown the figure for 1980 10.2 , 1990 9.4 murder per 100.000 ,
     
  14. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Right, that was the crack cocaine epidemic.
     
  15. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Probably. The ancients believed that they were surrounded by extraordinary events and wonders all the time. They expected strange things to occur, especially in distant foreign places, on the ocean far from land, or in contexts associated with religion, magic or anything they considered odd or uncanny.

    The point is that the ancients lacked modernity's (and Sciforums') faith in physicalism, a 'clockwork universe' and natural law. They imagined the regularities of nature as being filled with unknown loopholes and exceptions.
     
  16. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Contact with the Stone Age tribes that had survived into the Age of Exploration made it clear that mythology predates the Bronze Age technology of written language. In Earth's regions where agriculture and metallurgy had been discovered and writing was widely used (at least by the wealthy who could afford to send their children to schools), artifacts left by their distant ancestors strongly suggest that mythology had been commonplace in Stone Age societies.

    So much of the natural universe was impossible to understand, that it's hardly remarkable that people invented their own explanations for death, disease, gravity, weather, the motion of the moon and the (apparent) motion of the sun and the stars--and everything else that was explained to you and me in elementary school.

    Humans hunger for answers and if we can't find them we just make them up. Honest people try to reason it out; others simply make up stories that they can use to control people and enrich themselves. When Bronze Age technology finally made writing into a practical medium of communication (carving symbols in stone is a rather slow process and the results are a bit too heavy to pass around

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    ), the priests were overjoyed with the new, wider range of communication they could use to spread their whimsical tales.
     
    Last edited: Aug 30, 2015
  17. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    From TimoJin Post #2
    Religion is an organized form of superstition & I believe that it has had a net detrimental effect on individuals & society.

    BTW: Note the remark I have made blue in the above. What religions do you consider to be true? What criteria did you apply to come to that conclusion?

    For circa 5000 years, only the Society of Friends (Quakers) protested slavery, which was almost universally considered acceptable.

    If there were no religions, we would have no religious terrorists. There would have been no Spanish inquisition nor Salem Witch Trials.

    I think most of us could come up with other examples of religious misdeeds.

    BTW: I consider Catholic priests, Protestant ministers, Jewish Rabbis, & the lowest officials of other religions to be sincere in their views & ethical. In higher levels of any religious hierarchy, I believe that most individuals are motivated by prestige & other benefits rather than religious sincerity.

    To me, the TV evangelists are motivated by the amount of money they can get from contributors. Note (for example) that Jimmy Swaggert used to get circa 10 million per month in donations. Maybe he is still active.
     
  18. Dr_Toad It's green! Valued Senior Member

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    This post has been deleted by the moderator staff. Reason: completely off topic.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 31, 2015
  19. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Religion that honors the Creator and honors man is a true religion.
    There is no free man . We are all slave and we sell ourselves to gain the bread for survival.
    Slaves imported to the American Continent , were prisoners of tribal wares, and not necessary enslaved by religion.
    Religion leadership should not have hierarchy, Jesus showed by washing feet of the apostols , the highest in the faith should be the servant .
    Zoroaster said if priesthood is established the system will get corrupted.
     
  20. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Jimmy Swaggart (born 19350315), is still alive. He was involved in a scandal involving prostitution in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This resulted in many organizations severing relations with him. He no longer has affiliates and his empire is much smaller than it once was, but his ministry is still active on radio and television in 105 countries, and also on the internet.
     
  21. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    This is "true" only if there is, indeed, a Creator.

    This is a place of science and we try to enforce the Rule of Laplace, one of the cornerstones of the Scientific Method:
    • An extraordinary assertion must be supported by extraordinary evidence before anyone is obliged to treat it with respect.
    To assert that the universe was created by a living creature with astounding powers, whom no one has ever seen (except when intoxicated), when modern physics and mathematics have come rather close to identifying a purely natural origin of the universe (the whimsically named Big Bang) is sheer lunacy.

    I can ask you at least twenty very important questions about this so-called "God" that you cannot answer except by speaking in the ridiculous drivel of the Bible--which presents dozens of questions but no answers.

    You have no ordinary evidence to support your claim; much less the extraordinary evidence which the Scientific Method demands.

    Therefore, you are hereby instructed to take your foolish fairytale to the Religion subforum. This is the only place on this website where it is permitted. If you refer to it again on one of the genuine science subforums, you will be subject to discipline, which could ultimately result in being banned from this website.

    Fraggle Rocker
    Member of Moderator Staff
     
  22. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    NOTE ; I did not started this post . I only reply to the question and the position of the poster . So you should direct your instruction to the poster. Yo as a Member of Moderator Staff should not reinforce to the poster initiator.

    Now I challenge you to the 20 important questions .
    What do you mean ordinary evidence ?

    I can also ask several question that Science can not answer .
     
  23. Bells Staff Member

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    Moving to Religion sub-forum.
     

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