In fact it is my position that the YHWH of the Torah is an utter cunt.
Beginning as a petty war god, he evolved as his believers evolved, and became Lord of the universe and loving father creator.
In order to study say the history of christianity and Judaism, atheist scholars will speak of god(s) as if they exist or did once.
For Example, in the book “Did God Have A Wife” the atheist archaeologist writer says something like “Yes, YHWH originally had a wife called ‘Asherath’ who was part of the Canaanite pantheon”
I can’t possibly disagree. Page after page after page after page of that trashy, x rated, gore filled, book of horrors the Christians worship attests to the fact that the Yhwh character is a piece of shit.
Not only did God abandon his wife, but he is a “Deadbeat Dad.” The asshole claims to have only “ONE” son. And what in the fuck did he do to that son??? He sent the poor sod out to be tortured to death. What about all of God’s other sons???
Jacob is God’s son and firstborn: “Israel is my son, even my firstborn” Exodus 4:22.
Solomon is God’s son “He shall build an house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son”: 2 Samuel 7:13-14.
Ephraim is God’s firstborn: “for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn” Jeremiah 31:9 (who is God’s firstborn? Israel or Ephraim?).
Adam is the son of God “Adam, which was the son of God” Luke 3:38.
Common people (you and me) are the sons of God: “Ye are the children of the LORD your God” Deuteronomy 14:1.
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God” Romans 8:14.
“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name” John 1:12.
“That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;” Philippians 2:15.
“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: … now are we the sons of God” 1 John 3:1-2.
“When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Job 38:7.
“Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD,” Job 2:1.
“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD,” Job 1:6.
“when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men,” Genesis 6:4.
That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they [were] fair" Genesis 6:2
That passage has bothered the devout and various crackpots for centuries. Some have even posited that the sons of god were angels who fathered half-angel humans. I wonder if they had wings like dad? That would be really peachy.
Whitefire is an Atheist… Don’t kid yourself. Either God Exists or it does not Exist. The proposition is a true dichotomy. A genuine (true ) dichotomy is a set of alternatives that are both mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive.
You either believe in a God or you do not believe in a god. There is no third option. You might be confused at times and find yourself waffling back and forth, but you are either a believer or a non-believer. You are an Atheist or a theist an any given point in time.
Everyone is Agnostic. Simply ask the most devout Christian what he actually knows based on evidence and facts. If he is talking to you at all, when it gets right down to it, he will tell you… finally… “Well, you just have to have faith.” This is the exact same thing as saying “I don’t fucking know. I have no good reasons. If I did I would share them with you but I want to opt out of this thumb you have me under so I am using the Christian escape clause… . You gotta have faith.”
Pascal’s wager is based on 'Not having faith and believing anyway." The Bible encourages you to “Not have faith and believe anyway.” “Blessed is he who has not seen …” John 20-29.
Agnostic Atheists do not believe based on the lack of evidence (knowledge available,)
Agnostic Theists believe based on the threats, emotional appeals, gooey feelings, or some personal revelation that has no evidence behind it at all,
Agnosticism is about what you actually KNOW. What you know has nothing at all to do with what you BELIEVE. BELIEF is what you accept to be true, whether or not you have any knowledge at all about the topic at hand.
Pascal’s wager also misrepresents the dichotomy, where all the risk is assumed to reside in atheism, but none with theism. Point by point here are some flaws in that rationale.
The wager is presented as a lottery, that if you don’t enter you will definitely lose (the risk), but there is no evidence for this lottery, so the risk is unevidenced assumption.
There are literally thousands of “lotteries” to choose from, so there’s clearly an inherrent risk in belief, as you may easily be entering the wrong one, a risk the wager ignores.
Each “lottery” has virtually limitless choices in what you need to win, so the risk extends even further, and beyond which “lottery” you enter.
The wager implies that you can trick a deity with limitless knowledge and power, that your belief is genuine, a demonstrably erroneous idea.
The wager ignores the risk to this life, the only thing that requires no unevidenced assumptions, and the risk of entering the wrong “lottery” or the wrong version of the one you choose is both extensive and can involve a very real risk to life and limb, and to those you love, throughout human history, and even now. Again the wager ignores this risk.
Bottom line there is plenty to lose in believing in a deity, even if it turns out there is a real deity, and many of those risks associated with belief don’t go away if no deity exists, despite the wager claiming the opposite. The wager also implies a risk to non belief that is never evidenced, or even questioned, given the wager is wrong to claim there is no risk in belief, this is a substantial flaw in its core assumption that you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain from belief in a deity.
As Cog points out, anyone claiming to not be an agnostic is making a claim to knowledge about the nature and existence of a deity, yet despite millennia of relentless navel gazing, no such knowledge has been objectively evidenced.
If a claim is unfalsifiable then by definition we must all be agnostic about it, if we choose to believe such a claim then what is our criteria for disbelieving all other unfalsifiable claims? The only open minded position is to withhold belief from all unfalsifiable claims, or to believe them all, which I find absurd, believing one, and not all the others is an inherently biased position, so closed minded by definition.
Nope, because at that moment, I subscribed to the existence and reality of God, which was a bad mistake back then. Now, the whole notion of a supernatural being or entities, including God, Gods or Goddesses, no longer makes any sense to me.
To whit, Pascal’s Wager is a bunch of ho-ha nonsense by theists, to try to get us to believe in such Higher Power or Supernatural Being, which theists have time and again failed to prove, in terms of both its existence and its reality. And yet, they continue to insist that their God is real and exists. SMH
You want me to believe in God? Which God are you referring to? And what do you mean by God?
