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Believing in god doesn't explain the beginning

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    #32
    rockbeer
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,422 ✭✭✭rockbeer


    maoleary wrote: »
    You should not judge all religion by one wishy-washy "We can't explain it, thus its a mystery" crackpot group.

    The trouble is - and I don't mean this to sound snide or arrogant or superior - that all religions suffer from this problem on some level or another. I've never met a religious person who didn't dismiss some aspect or another of a competing faith's belief system as irrational or inconsistent, only to resist having the irrational inconsistencies of their own beliefs pointed out.

    To paraphrase somebody: there's one thing that all religions are right about - all the others are wrong.


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    #33
    Malari
    Registered Users Posts: 18,150 ✭✭✭✭Malari


    mehfesto2 wrote: »
    There seems to be a definite belief in some here that those with faith are somehow lesser people.

    I think you would in general find that atheists tend to come around to this way of thinking becuase they are inquisitive and have challenged what they have been taught regarding religion and found it to be an insubstantial way to explain things.

    If you accept that many atheists place a great level of importance on scientific method and inquiry, then naturally they have less respect for people who don't question. Namely religious people. I don't think it's personal much of the time, it's genuine curiousity. Religion has the by-product of stifling inquiry a lot of the time.


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    #34
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,417 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    maoleary wrote: »
    Hell was never described as a real place in true word for word translations of scripture.
    Actually, it is. In the original greek, "Hades" is the word translated into English as "hell". It's the same word which the pre-christian, classical greeks used word for the underworld, which certainly was believed to have a real existence.

    Incidentally, there's also a lively and long-lasting urban legend about hell being discovered some miles beneath Siberia's taiga. Belief in the truth of this seems to be quite widespread and a recording of the tormented screams is available on youtube -- enjoy!


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    #35
    PDN
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,686 ✭✭✭✭PDN


    robindch wrote: »
    Actually, it is. In the original greek, "Hades" is the word translated into English as "hell". It's the same word which the pre-christian, classical greeks used word for the underworld, which certainly was believed to have a real existence.

    The King James Version of the Bible does certainly mistranslate Hades as 'hell'.

    However, I believe that Hades, when referred to in the Bible, is different from the place of everlasting torment.


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    #36
    Fanny Cradock
    Registered Users Posts: 10,245 ✭✭✭✭Fanny Cradock


    What do you believe it to be, PDN?


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    #37
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,417 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    PDN wrote: »
    The King James Version of the Bible does certainly mistranslate Hades as 'hell'.
    Not a mistranslation, but rather a word which is difficult or impossible to translate correctly into English, since the cultural context of the authors in first/second century Palestine is gone and we're left with little more than educated, or uneducated, guesses concerning their intent.

    It's not clear to me why the original authors use the word Hades in the first place. The idea of "hell" that's prevailed for most of christianity is much closer to the torment of Tartaros than the tedium of Hades, and perhaps that's the idea that the KJV was reaching for. A fiery hell will certainly tend to encourager les autres rather more than a dull, gray one. More recent translations certainly do translate the word as 'Hades', but at the expense of suggesting to the classically-educated reader that the authors of the NT simply lifted the notion straight out of Greek mythology and plonked it into theirs.

    In any case, the parallels between Plato's Georgias with its description of the brief or eternal torment of the wicked in Tartaros, and the synonymous christian belief, are easy enough to see. In the limited context of the depiction of the suffering, little more than the name has changed and I suspect the KJV translators should be given some credit for translating the idea arguably more accurately than the original word.


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    #38
    Galvasean
    Registered Users Posts: 30,746 ✭✭✭✭Galvasean


    robindch wrote: »
    Actually, it is. In the original greek, "Hades" is the word translated into English as "hell". It's the same word which the pre-christian, classical greeks used word for the underworld, which certainly was believed to have a real existence.

    Incidentally, there's also a lively and long-lasting urban legend about hell being discovered some miles beneath Siberia's taiga. Belief in the truth of this seems to be quite widespread and a recording of the tormented screams is available on youtube -- enjoy!

    Sounds like my local pub when a football match is on.
    Wouldn't hell need to be much bigger than that to fit in all the damned?


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    #39
    An Fear Aniar
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,377 ✭✭✭An Fear Aniar


    Standman wrote: »
    Its is hard to comprehend a place where time does not exist, and it is equally perplexing to imagine how from absolute nothingness came the Universe.

    Well, it is hard to comprehend, but the entirety of everything that exists is all a word uttered by God. Beautiful, isn't it?



    .


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    #40
    calahans
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 225 ✭✭calahans


    An Fear Aniar wrote: »
    Well, it is hard to comprehend, but the entirety of everything that exists is all a word uttered by God. Beautiful, isn't it?
    .

    Thats a very nice bit of whimsy


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    #41
    Dades
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    An Fear Aniar wrote: »
    Beautiful, isn't it?
    Beautiful like the ending of "Cinderella".
    All pumpkins and glass slippers and happy-ever-after.


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    #42
    CerebralCortex
    Registered Users Posts: 3,809 ✭✭✭CerebralCortex


    An Fear Aniar wrote: »
    Well, it is hard to comprehend, but the entirety of everything that exists is all a word uttered by God. Beautiful, isn't it?



    .

    Get the f**k outta here.<ala Beverly hills cop 3>








    ..


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    #43
    Pompey Magnus
    Registered Users Posts: 5,406 ✭✭✭Pompey Magnus


    robindch wrote: »
    Not a mistranslation, but rather a word which is difficult or impossible to translate correctly into English, since the cultural context of the authors in first/second century Palestine is gone and we're left with little more than educated, or uneducated, guesses concerning their intent.

    As far as I am aware there was no word for hell in Aramaic, the nearest comparable word was "Gehenna" which was a place of purification, not everlasting torment, and was named after a burning rubbish dump outside Jerusalem. When Jesus spoke about Hell in in his native Aramaic this would have been most likely the term he used. The idea of Hell that we have in modern Christianity bears little similarity to the Jewish version that Jesus and his followers would have been aware of. The image of Hell we have today is a result of poor translation from Aramaic to Greek and pagan additions to it.


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    #44
    An Fear Aniar
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,377 ✭✭✭An Fear Aniar


    CerebralCortex wrote: »
    Get the f**k outta here.<ala Beverly hills cop 3>








    ..


    Hey! Stop copying my dot thing.







    .
    (That's my foible, not yours).


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    #45
    Canis Lupus
    Registered Users Posts: 9,893 ✭✭✭Canis Lupus


    CerebralCortex wrote: »
    Get the f**k outta here.<ala Beverly hills cop 3>








    ..


    heh heh

    No I will no get the **** out of here.


    Love that line.


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    #46
    Pompey Magnus
    Registered Users Posts: 5,406 ✭✭✭Pompey Magnus


    An article on the BBC today about what might have been around before the Big Bang.

    Physicists studying Microwave radiation which was created soon after the creation of the Universe now believe that this radiation hints that our Universe "bubbled off" from another Universe, being created spontaneously out of empty space. This would have be an unremarkable event in the parent Universe. An interesting implication of this would be that similar Universes could have spawned off from our Universe, in fact it could happen right in front of us and we would never know. It still is just a theory, but it has some supporting evidence at least.

    Who needs the Bible when you could have a Universe(s) as cool as that?


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