What good does religion offer the world today?

Bump

for the A2K hidden post bug - anyone home in Admin?

It can be annoying the "bump bug", but consider how annoying toenail fungus ads are... This site is provided free of advertisements, I'll take the bump bug any day over the toenail fungus ads.

Rather we should thank A2k for an advertisement free place to have our discussions.

It's not a bug, it's something that happens to all threads of a certain length. I don't think it's a quick fix either, if it was it would have been sorted long ago.

If you're questioning my grasp of the word "metaphor," rest assured, I'm fully familiar with it's meanings.

What I am asking is for you to explain that particular metaphor, the metaphor used in Psalm 34:8, in the context of my question.

The metaphor of the word "taste" is quite interesting as a Bible study.

This metaphor of taste is written into many allegories in the Bible.

One may try and lump them all together each specific verse using taste and get some sort of ultimate understanding or one may also think that they are isolated in their use and are not interconnected.

Taste is used as in "to taste death"...

When we die, do we taste death? ...or do we taste, chew, swallow, digest and excrete it?

Then there is taste in light of the understanding that it is one of our five senses. A sense that can lead one to a desirous passion and convince one to eat something that may "look" appealing to the eye, and sweet to the sense of "smell" and even taste good but ultimately can do harm.

This is where religion comes in and uses this fear of the senses to say you are not knowledgeable enough to know what is good for you, so let the church tell you, because God only speaks though us and God knows the future and what is safe to eat...

Thus people develop a mistrust of their own senses, or "common sense" and are taken for a ride by clergy claiming to know what is best for a person or people.

Superstition and parables are used to reinforce this fear of the self.

Eve did not know what was good for her and thus neither do we know.

Only the kings, prophets and priests whom God speaks through know what wisdom is. The adversary uses taste to lead us astray (they claim).

Thus our human nature is deemed "evil" and we are separated from others who have not received the "new nature", the "holy spirit"...

All based upon the faulty assumption that taste is a gateway to our own demise.

That we do not know our own preference and that our bodies cannot alone guide us to a way of holiness. While God speaks to the clergy, they, at the same time, deny the rigors of evidentiary science. This is most perplexing.

We must have the will of God as "they" see it imposed upon us in order to walk in the path of righteousness.

The hilarity of this is, one priest will pick one scripture and say it is the immutable and perfect word and will of God and another priest will pick an opposing scripture and emphatically declare the same, all depending on their own, erm... "taste".

That's what's nice about the internet. No freak'n clergy to dictate anything here.

Let reason be the standard

Neologist offered Psalm 34:8 as a test to God's existence.

Something so nebulous as taste in reference to "experience," which seems to be what you're getting at, is a poor test of God's existence because these experiences are subjective. Also, neologist arrives at his conclusion from a point of apriority, i.e. before the fact. He begins by believing that God exists and then offers "taste" as proof.

What empirical, naturalistic, a posteriori, i.e. after the fact, tests are there in regard to God's existence?

Science often begins with an unproven hypothesis so I don't understand your objection to starting with assuming a God.
It might not turn out to be true, but there is no reason to reject it as a starting point before that first 'taste'.

But science doesn't sit on its hands for multiple centuries believing in myths.

As I just said to the cobbler a few posts ago:



It's just us guys talking here. You got anything to say?

Yup. To repeat myself.

But science doesn't sit on its hands for multiple centuries believing in myths.

Religion and a belief in dog is all myths. Why would he have shown his hand so many times back in the mists, but never in modern day?

Religious belief and scientific hypotheses are not equatable unless you think of your belief as a hypothesis.

Subjective "taste," in the sense of experience, is not the same as empirical experience.

Ummm.... That means it's a bug.

(Although I've never had trouble reading and responding to the "hidden" posts at the start of a new page.)

Perhaps some of the big events of the past were faked or exaggerated.

Perhaps if there is a God, he or she was just as hands off back in ancient times as in modern times.

Perhaps there is no God, but the spirits of our ancestors go on to an afterlife, and it is those spirits who hear and answer our prayers.

Perhaps there is a God, but he or she doesn't care about humans and we have no afterlife awaiting us when we die despite God's existence. Perhaps <shudder> this uncaring God even answers to the name Nyarlathotep.

There is a valid scientific theory that we are all part of a computer simulation. Perhaps our descendants will hack their own software and go Skynet on our creators. Perhaps our descendants will then modify the simulation code to bring past generations back to life. Maybe each of us has a future as the controlling software of a terminator robot in the "real" world as our descendants wage war on our creators.

Ultimately we have no way of determining what any of these answers are.

Personally I hope that there is an afterlife awaiting us. The idea of ceasing to exist is rather terrifying to me. I would also prefer it if the very wicked faced punishment for their wickedness.

But I don't claim to know what the truth is.

If wishes were horses than beggars would ride...

You do that all the time without a shred of evidence.

All we really have are wishes and hope. None of us know the truth.

How deeply disingenuous, how sickenly disingenuous.

We know the truth about what the US has done, murdering tens of millions just to steal their wealth. Leaving hundreds of millions with destroyed lives , , grieving for their loved ones blown to smithereens, fried with napalm, "shaked and baked" [US trademarked] with phosphorus bombs, cluster bombs and mines, raped and tortured, thrown out of helicopters, beheaded, dismembered alive, gold teeth cut out of living beings, and myriad other savory US practices.

How is that helping people with "wishes and hopes"?

First, on behalf of the US I plead innocent to that ludicrous accusation.

Second, I think it was pretty obvious that my post was on topic, which means that I was specifically addressing the questions "is there a God" and "is there an afterlife waiting for us when we die".

You may want to always change the subject to these untrue allegations against America, but that doesn't mean you should read posts about unrelated topics as if they are intended to address your own pet topic.