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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24279 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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The rational arguments for the existence of god are first steps towards atheism. Admitting the need for rational arguments obviates the need for faith. Christian debate bros are in the middle of the bell curve meme with "I just have faith" being on both extremities.

I do remember feeling jealous in my younger years of the characters in the Bible who got to test their God against the other gods in a battle of miracles. Burning soaked wood was one of the challenges in the Old Testament, I believe. YHWH won. How much faith do you need to believe in that? Similarly, witnessing the lame man walk, or the blind man see, after being touched by Jesus wouldn't require much faith at all.

YHWH won. How much faith do you need to believe in that? Similarly, witnessing the lame man walk, or the blind man see, after being touched by Jesus wouldn't require much faith at all.

That is contradicted by the Bible in many different places. The Old Testament has the Israelites turning away from God time and time again, despite all the miraculous things they saw. The Gospels tell us that plenty of people (most notably Judas) doubted Jesus despite having seen him do miracles. So if the Bible is to be believed at all, even seeing miracles happen is not enough for everyone to believe.

The Old Testament has the Israelites turning away from God time and time again, despite all the miraculous things they saw.

Isn’t this because originally Judaism was a polytheistic religion that then became based around monolatry, then monotheism? Turning away from Yahweh would have originally been like some Greeks turning away from Zeus to worship Poseidon.

I couldn't begin to tell you; I know nothing about secular accounts of history in the ancient near East. My point was more that, if you accept the Bible's accounts of those miracles as true, then you shouldn't necessarily envy the ancients for having been present for them. Because those accounts also talk about how even those who saw the miracles weren't necessarily convinced.

The Pharaoh had magicians that could do cool supernatural things; YHWH's feats were simply superior. The Tanakh implicitly accepts the existence of other gods.

Another example is the prohibition on sacrificing to Moloch. Presumably this would not have been necessary unless people were actually being tempted to do such a thing. Why? Because it worked! (See 2 Kings 3)

Those things exist as rhetorical devices. See these people were shown miracles and still doubted, how foolish of them, what retards. The people around you who don't believe? Retarded like them. Don't pay attention to the trick and it works.

That depends on what we mean by "believe"; I don't think Judas is suggested to have become an atheist. When the Israelites turn away from God, they turn to foreign cults and superstitions - they become opportunistic henotheists instead of monotheists - but they do not disbelieve in the supernatural itself. Indeed, I don't think they stop believing in Yahweh's existence, just in whether the clearly-real supernatural entity they'd pledged themselves to really is the omnipotent creator of everything. Biblical characters inhabit a very different epistemic landscape from us.

I do remember feeling jealous in my younger years of the characters in the Bible who got to test their God against the other gods in a battle of miracles.

Oh, it's much worse than that. I've always been jealous of the angels.

Supposedly, they get to make an informed decision about whether to serve God or not. Even if you say humans have it better because they can be forgiven and reconciled to God while angels never can, I prefer to make a single informed choice for all eternity over the fuzzy uninformed choice most Christian churches implicitly claim I must make.

Supposedly, they get to make an informed decision about whether to serve God or not.

Well, it's a sticky point. On one reading of it, angels don't have free will because they are not able not to believe in God and make a choice. Humans are free in that sense, and most pop culture when it depicts humans faced with the undeniable existence of God have them choosing to go the non serviam route because we're big enough and old enough to make our own decisions and our own destiny, dang it! We don't need no gods!

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