To Be Humble Before God? Or just Humble

This post arose out of a twitter discussion related to faith-based beliefs and being humble...

I know enough to know there are billions of things I don't know and many more that I cannot know. I know enough to know that a skeptical position is usually more correct that one constructed of unsupportable beliefs. And I know that even well-supported propositions can still be wrong in light of future evidence.

I know enough to be able to read scientific papers and make some little sense out of them so that I can evaluate the truth value of claims.

I know enough to know that I should NOT mutilate a child's genitals out of my own ignorance. Or murder people because someone burned a book.

Humble absolutely! Which, for me, includes a rejection of religious dogma as the tripe that it is. It is the claims of religions that utterly fail at being humble.

"I KNOW the mind and WILL of god and you will do as I say - murder your first born child (Genesis 22), commit genocide against the nations who occupy this land that you just happen to want (Deutronomy 7), scapegoat your sin by this human sacrifice of 'my only begotten son' (2 Corinthians 5, et.al.), subjugate women, don't allow them to speak (1 Timothy 2), beat your child into submission 'spare the rod, spoil the child' (Deuteronomy 21:18-21), believe Genesis even I give absolutely not a single technical detail that creation happened exactly like this"

Is this your idea of Humble?

The bible fails the humble test AND it fails every scientific test of its supernatural claims (prayer, etc) AND it fails the history test (no contemporaneous historians cover Jesus or the MANY claims of the bible like saints rising from the dead, all NT books written far too late, not even eye-witness accounts, etc).

All you have on the side of "God" is the argument from ignorance. "Well, you don't know how it started so let's believe in God" and oh my GOD did they ever - what happened after 'Christians' got in power in the 4th century? Was it all peace and love? - I don't think so. And we only JUST get the Christians to stop murdering everyone and then Islam comes along to take it's place.

There are some spectacular 'secular' failures as well but I suspect only for lack of numbers and technology on the part of the earlier Christians (maybe it's a GOOD thing they were so anti-science for so long).

So evil people will do evil things - but non-belief doesn't COMMAND that you commit genocide after genocide as is clearly in the bible.

And I'm not saying that religion CAUSES evil - only that it has CLEARLY supported them in some cases and not just allowed but COMMANDED some pretty horrible things to go on.

Hilter (who was no atheist) and Stalin (raised with religion, but later turned savage and brutal - of course, he was abused by his father which doesn't generally create happy adults) were certainly horrible people and did horrible things. But they didn't do those things BECAUSE they rejected some god-claim.

And more importantly, where are they now? But (for example) Catholicism does horrible things and is allowed, not just to continue but is ACCEPTED. THAT is why religion is more dangerous to me.

The neo-Nazi's and KKK still exist in small pockets - but imagine if they were widely accepted! That is EXACTLY how I feel about the major religions. They are just as revolting to me. Doing a few things to try to make up for the evil you have done doesn't cut it for me - that goes for the KKK, the Holy See, and Hamas equally in my book.

You just don't get to buy your way out of your past crimes.

I could care less if there is some unknowable/unknown power that created the universe. The Humble position is leave the unknown as the unknown - not pretend to know some answer that clearly has it's origins in blood, superstition, and ignorance.

Why People Believe: Ignorance

Just read this post from some guy who says his belief in the bible is cemented by the facts that:

A. the bible has never been wrong
B. says things people didn't know until later one
C. like us only being able to live 120 years [reference: Genesis 6:3 ...his days shall be one hundred and twenty years]
D. the oldest man ever was 119
E. in biology he learned human cells live to 120 years old

Ok... really?

#1 Jeanne Calment lived to 122 years 164 days

#2 no credible biologist would claim human cells live only or exactly 120 years.

#3 ergo, the bible is wrong

#4 you haven't shown anything that was actually in the bible before it could have been known

Nevermind the basis for these beliefs are ridiculous from the outset:

#1 People knew how to measure years for thousands of years

#2 People observed how long people lived for thousands of years

#3 it is therefore reasonable to assume that the authors would have had some idea about maximal lifespans - this is not 'things ppl didnt know'. And they guessed WRONG, if this guy can claim it as proof the bible is accurate before, then I can now claim it as irrefutable evidence the bible is a fraud.

And the bible has never been wrong? Oh, please. I think he means the bible is never wrong if you assume that all the incorrect portions are metaphorical and you redefine many words.


Now, I'm not calling this person Ignorant - but rather his beliefs are based on Ignorance. That isn't an insult, it is just a fact. My point is to show the dangers of two main things: #1 he clearly doesn't have reliable evidence supporting the facts he claims to believe and #2 he is also basing several arguments on gaps in knowledge (e.g., has anyone lived be greater than 120 years old) - these are called Arguments from Ignorance (I don't know of anyone who has, therefore it must be true).

I'm really up on numbering things today apparently.

Do you REALLY believe everything in the Bible?

Are you guilty of Cherry Picking the bible?

• Why believe in a biblical god that ordered Abraham to murder his own son?

• Why believe in a biblical god that orders genocide at Jericho in Joshua 6 and orders the genocide of the nations of Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, AND Jebusites "the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them...nor shew mercy unto them" in Deuteronomy 7?

• Why believe in a biblical god that murders all the first born of Egypt (which would have included suckling babies who could not have done anything wrong) -- and if they were GOING to do bad things in the future then why would God have created such an existence where he would later have to murder them?

• Why believe in a biblical god that fails so badly at creation that he must wipe out nearly all of creation, causing untold amounts of suffering of humans and animals, in a massive flood -- which he then regrets and promises never to do it again by having sunlight refract as per the laws of physics that surely already existed?

• Why believe in a biblical god that allowed his alleged church to rule for 1500 years (until the Protestant Reformation) committing atrocity after atrocity: murdering, raping, enslaving, torturing and selling passage into heaven for obscene profits to the church? A Religion which even turned on itself, resulting in escalating violence over what in reality boils down to money -- who would get the money, the control, and the power.

The Crusades and Inquisitions were not accidental byproducts of the Christian belief system, they were CAUSED by it. If you TRULY, FULLY and HONESTLY believe that someones eternal soul is on the line in this life why would you NOT go to ANY lengths, including torturing to death, that person in order to save them? You would be a committing a sin if you failed to do absolutely everything you could to save them. Wouldn't you?

History speaks extremely clearly on the false claims of religion.

If religious people would stop at 'love one another' that would be fine, but they don't. They pretend to know the mind and will of the universe and use it to abuse and control others and THAT is what makes religious beliefs dangerous and often evil.