YHVH's Wife (What, You Didn't Know He Was Married?)

[Recusant]

Though the evidence isn't conclusive by any means, a theologian named  Francesca Stavrakopoulou has put forward the idea that there's a good chance that YHVH at one time in the mythology of his believers was married to Asherah. This is in line with the idea that he started out as one god in an original pantheon who at some point became the "one God."

"GOD'S WIFE EDITED OUT OF THE BIBLE -- ALMOST" by Jennifer Viegas at Discovery News

[OldGit]

Francesca Stavrakopoulou has recently done a a three-part series, Bible’s Buried Secrets on BBC TV.
The one on Jahweh's wife was very good; bags of hard evidence in the form of less-known Bible quotes and inscriptions found by archaeologists.  Right or wrong, she was convincing.

[Ulver]

I think I've just crossed into 7 territory...

[Too Few Lions]

Francesca Stavrakopoulou didn't come up with the theory that Yahweh had a consort called Asherah, archaeological evidence to suggest that was the case was first unearthed in the 1970s. She said nothing new in that documentary that people interested in Biblical archaeology hadn't known about for decades. The plus side is at least these theories have finally made it onto mainstream TV.

[Recusant]

Francesca Stavrakopoulou didn't come up with the theory that Yahweh had a consort called Asherah, archaeological evidence to suggest that was the case was first unearthed in the 1970s. She said nothing new in that documentary that people interested in Biblical archaeology hadn't known about for decades. The plus side is at least these theories have finally made it onto mainstream TV.

I agree that little if anything which Dr. Stavrakopoulou presented in her mini-series is news to Biblical scholars.  Even I, who am not a Biblical scholar (though I've read the Bible and also some Biblical criticism) was aware of the polytheism, likely origin of YHVH, and had heard mention of Asherah. Still, I'm going to watch this now that it's escaped from the confines of the BBC i-player, which is only available to you lucky sods in the UK.  Stavrakopoulou is easy on the eyes, and the programs should be interesting.

Part 1 of Episode 1 ("Did King David's Empire Exist?"):
[youtube:205xcrw4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGXemCRNNH4[/youtube:205xcrw4]


Part 2 Episode 1
Part 3 Episode 1
Part 4 Episode 1

Part 1 Episode 2 ("Did God Have a Wife?")
Part 2 Episode 2
Part 3 Episode 2
Part 4 Episode 2

Part 1 Episode 3 ("The Real Garden of Eden")
Part 2 Episode 3
Part 3 Episode 3
Part 4 Episode 3

[Stevil]

So if there was once many gods, including YHWH's wife and now YHWH is the only god then it must stand to reason that YHWH went on a frenzied killing spree.

Pretty consistent with YHWH's treatment of humans.

[Tank]

So if there was once many gods, including YHWH's wife and now YHWH is the only god then it must stand to reason that YHWH went on a frenzied killing spree.

Pretty consistent with YHWH's treatment of humans.

Not so. Terry Pratchett explains why Gods disappear; nobody worships them anymore. YHWH just had better PR, Marketing and Sales forces than His competitors. Mohamed took YAWH and lowered the entry barriers so anybody could join and raised the exit barriers so if you left you 'died'. He was just a shrewd business man who knew the value of a good sales pitch and re-branded YAWH/Christ as Allah so people could attach themselves to the shiny new Arab meme of Islam.

[Stevil]

So if there was once many gods, including YHWH's wife and now YHWH is the only god then it must stand to reason that YHWH went on a frenzied killing spree.

Pretty consistent with YHWH's treatment of humans.

Not so. Terry Pratchett explains why Gods disappear; nobody worships them anymore. YHWH just had better PR, Marketing and Sales forces than His competitors. Mohamed took YAWH and lowered the entry barriers so anybody could join and raised the exit barriers so if you left you 'died'. He was just a shrewd business man who knew the value of a good sales pitch and re-branded YAWH/Christ as Allah so people could attach themselves to the shiny new Arab meme of Islam.

So Gods are like Peter Pan or Freddy Kruger, if we cease to believe then they cease to exist? Is there any evidence to that effect? Given the enormity of the consequences of non belief then why don't the gods work harder at providing evidence?
Does YHWH blame human kind for the loss of his wife? Is that why he caused the great flood?

How did god create the Universe when there weren't any physical beings at the time to believe him into existence?

[Tank]

So if there was once many gods, including YHWH's wife and now YHWH is the only god then it must stand to reason that YHWH went on a frenzied killing spree.

Pretty consistent with YHWH's treatment of humans.

Not so. Terry Pratchett explains why Gods disappear; nobody worships them anymore. YHWH just had better PR, Marketing and Sales forces than His competitors. Mohamed took YAWH and lowered the entry barriers so anybody could join and raised the exit barriers so if you left you 'died'. He was just a shrewd business man who knew the value of a good sales pitch and re-branded YAWH/Christ as Allah so people could attach themselves to the shiny new Arab meme of Islam.

So Gods are like Peter Pan or Freddy Kruger, if we cease to believe then they cease to exist? Is there any evidence to that effect? Given the enormity of the consequences of non belief then why don't the gods work harder at providing evidence?
Does YHWH blame human kind for the loss of his wife? Is that why he caused the great flood?

How did god create the Universe when there weren't any physical beings at the time to believe him into existence?

Terry Pratchett posits in 'Small Gods' that the power of a God is proportional to the worship they receive.  Thus YHWH didn't necessarily have to go on a killing spree to be the last God standing as it were. Gods die for many reasons but the most common is that somebody sells the people that worship God a better one. Of course the Gods can't do anything about this as they are just artefacts of wishful thinking and an over active imagination!

[Stevil]

I find when I give theists the benefit of the doubt and run with their ideas that a god or gods exits, I always run into issues with the lines of thinking

[iSok]

Mohamed took YAWH and lowered the entry barriers so anybody could join and raised the exit barriers so if you left you 'died'. He was just a shrewd business man who knew the value of a good sales pitch and re-branded YAWH/Christ as Allah so people could attach themselves to the shiny new Arab meme of Islam.

  Can I mark this as the type of waffeling creationists tend to have?

[Tank]

Mohamed took YAWH and lowered the entry barriers so anybody could join and raised the exit barriers so if you left you 'died'. He was just a shrewd business man who knew the value of a good sales pitch and re-branded YAWH/Christ as Allah so people could attach themselves to the shiny new Arab meme of Islam.

  Can I mark this as the type of waffeling creationists tend to have?

No. You can pay attention and attempt to learn something for a change rather than just preaching a mythological world view created by a greedy merchant out of pure political self interest. iSok, or should that really be KeDa! (Knows everything, Don't argue!). In my opinion you are a victim of the Islamic meme, just another variation of institutionalised superstition that has arisen not from knowledge but the deep, deep ignorance our ancestors have struggled against for millennia.

I apologise if my comments are in anyway upsetting but I'm not going to sugar coat my opinion of institutionalised superstitions. They are, without excepting, based on the false premiss that the supernatural exists. They are the result of human ignorance, fear and frailty when faced with the absolutly ambivalence of reality to the existance to  humanity.

People like to feel in control yet the reality is we live or die at the whim of the natural world where we live. The recent loss of life in Japan and prior to that the much greater loss of life in Indonesia brought about by the structure of the Earth's crust are perfect examples of this. Unless of course one subscribes to the view that there was some sort of supernatural intervention in these events. Do you think there was supernatural intervention in these events?

The fact that theists cannot agree on one God is one of the best reasons not to believe in any of them. While theists squabble and in extreme cases kill and rape each other based on the excuses and encouragements of their particular institutionalised superstitions I will continue to see none of them worthy of consideration. When all theists ascribe to a homogeneous view of the supernatural I'll give it a sceptical look, but until that point I will consider preaching theists as con-men and carpet baggers and I'll consider the best of them simply victims of irrelevant mythical memes.

If, hopefully when, humanity grows up and addresses the issues of reality head-on we will be in a much better place than any of our ancestors as we will be facing the fact of our imperfect/pragmatic evolutionary heritage rather than wasting our time placating one of thousands of non-existent myths. One can't truly progress or solve a problem until one understand the problem and adding mythology and wishful thinking into reality does nothing back hold back human progress.

People who spend their time promoting worthless institutionalised superstitions do nothing but waste time and effort that could be better spent addressing the real issues facing humanity, poverty, ignorance, etc. But for the foreseeable future I think humanity will suffer from the ingrained mythology we have inherited from our deeply ignorant ancestors.

[iSok]

No. You can pay attention and attempt to learn something for a change rather than just preaching a mythological world view created by a greedy merchant out of pure political self interest.  In my opinion you are a victim of the Islamic meme, just another variation of institutionalised superstition that has arisen not from knowledge but the deep, deep ignorance our ancestors have struggled against for millennia.

Learn what? What you think about the world. I think you suffer a bit from wishful thinking; I'll die and there will be nothing.
About the Prophet, the 'greedy merchant'. I don't think you will accept my view, since I'm brainwashed by what you call so beautiful 'institutionalised superstition'.
So I'll quote a few western scholars with an unbiased view, some of them are Christian.

Reverend Bosworth Smith in 'Muhammad and Muhammadanism,' London, 1874.
Head of the State as well as the Church, he was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without the Pope's pretensions, and Caesar without the legions of Caesar, without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a police force, without a fixed revenue. If ever a man ruled by a right divine, it was Muhammad, for he had all the powers without their supports. He cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life.
"In Mohammadanism every thing is different here. Instead of the shadowy and the mysterious, we have history....
We know of the external history of Muhammad....while for his internal history after his mission had been proclaimed, we have a book absolutely
unique in its origin, in its preservation....on the Substantial authority of which no one has ever been able to cast a serious doubt."

W. Montgomery, Mohammad at Mecca, Oxford 1953
"His readiness to undergo persecutions for his beliefs, the high moral character of the men who believed in him and looked up to him as leader, and the greatness of his ultimate achievement â€" all argue his fundamental integrity. To suppose Muhammad an impostor raises more problems than it solves. Moreover, none of the great figures of history is so poorly appreciated in the West as Muhammad."

Annie Besant, The Life and Teachings of Muhammad, Madras 1932
"It is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the great Prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how he lived, to feel anything but reverence for that mighty Prophet, one of the great messengers of the Supreme. And although in what I put to you I shall say many things which may be familiar to many, yet I myself feel whenever I re-read them, a new way of admiration, a new sense of reverence for that mighty Arabian teacher."

The Prophets primary trademark was his honesty and integrity. Long before he became a prophet, the arabs admired him for his nature of being honest.
After he became a prophet, his enemies never accused him of lying. They thought he was possesed.


(Alfred, Guillaume. The Life of Muhammad, A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasu Allah. Oxford University press, 2002. PP. 131-132)

(A pagan went to Muhammad to ask him to stop preaching)
O my nephew, you are one of us as you know, of the noblest of the tribe and hold a worthy position in ancestry. You have come to your people with an important matter, dividing the community thereby and ridiculing their customs, and you have insulted their gods and their religion, and declared that their forefathers were unbelievers, so listen to me and I will make some suggestions, and perhaps you will be able to accept one of them.'

The apostle agreed, and he went on:If what you want is money, we will gather for you out of our property so that you may be the richest of us; if you want honour, we will make you our chief so that no one can decide anything apart from you; if you want sovereignty, we will make you king, and if this ghost which comes to you, which you see, is such that you cannot get rid of him, we will find a physician for you, and exhaust our means in getting you cured of it', or words to that effect.

The apostle listened patiently, and then said: ?Now listen to me, In the Name of God, the compassionate and merciful, H.M., a revelation from the compassionate, the merciful, a book whose verses are expounded as an Arabic Quran for a people who understand, as an announcement and warning, though most of them turn aside not listening and say, ?Our hearts are veiled from that to which you invite us.'''' Then the apostle continued to recite it to him. When Utba heard it from him, he listened attentively, putting his hands behind his back and leaning on them as he listened. Then the prophet ended at the prostration and prostrated himself, and said, ?You have heard what you have heard, Abu Al Walid; the rest remains with you.' When Utba returned to his companions they noticed that his expression had completely altered, and they asked him what happened. He said that he had heard words such as he had never heard before, which were neither poetry, spells, nor witchcraft. ?Take my advice and do as I do, leave this man entirely alone for, by God, the words which I have heard will be blazed abroad. If (other) Arabs kill him, others will have rid you of him; if he gets the better of the Arabs, his sovereignty will be your sovereignty, his power your power, and you will be prosperous through him.' They said, ?He has bewitched you with his tongue.' To which he answered, ?You have my opinion, you must do what you think fit.'

Like I said: Can we mark this a type of waffeling? Or is this all a complot, just like evolution is from the devil?
Honestly Tank, is there a difference?

About me being a victim: What makes you think that? I certainly may believe in 'superstition' as you call it. But it wasn't 'institutionalised'.

People like to feel in control yet the reality is we live or die at the whim of the natural world where we live. The recent loss of life in Japan and prior to that the much greater loss of life in Indonesia brought about by the structure of the Earth's crust are perfect examples of this. Unless of course one subscribes to the view that there was some sort of supernatural intervention in these events. Do you think there was supernatural intervention in these events?

Yes I do think that and I explained that in the other topic but the only reply I got from you was: 'Waffle on'.

The fact that theists cannot agree on one God is one of the best reasons not to believe in any of them. While theists squabble and in extreme cases kill and rape each other based on the excuses and encouragements of their particular institutionalised superstitions I will continue to see none of them worthy of consideration. When all theists ascribe to a homogeneous view of the supernatural I'll give it a sceptical look, but until that point I will consider preaching theists as con-men and carpet baggers and I'll consider the best of them simply victims of irrelevant mythical memes.

I don't really care about your belief, it's your own responsibility. But you do like to respond when a creationist comes and says the earth is 6000 years old. I also like to respond when
in my eyes a respond comes which is no different then that from a creationist who suffers of wishful thinking.
'Muhammad was a greedy merchanct and he wanted money, so what he says can't be true, I'm save, lets carry on'

According to your logic, when there are multiple theories on a scientific phenomenon, none of them can be true....
Monotheism can be very easily proven and also why people tend towards Polytheism even if it's false. But my guess is that you won't be interested.

If, hopefully when, humanity grows up and addresses the issues of reality head-on we will be in a much better place than any of our ancestors as we will be facing the fact of our imperfect/pragmatic evolutionary heritage rather than wasting our time placating one of thousands of non-existent myths. One can't truly progress or solve a problem until one understand the problem and adding mythology and wishful thinking into reality does nothing back hold back human progress.

Now Tank, you have to tell me this. What is the purpose for the human race, what is the purpose of the world? What do you want to achieve by finding out everything of the world?
What do you define as a better place? How do you see that world? What do you mean if you say: 'Progress'?
What should humanity achieve by science?

People who spend their time promoting worthless institutionalised superstitions do nothing but waste time and effort that could be better spent addressing the real issues facing humanity, poverty, ignorance, etc. But for the foreseeable future I think humanity will suffer from the ingrained mythology we have inherited from our deeply ignorant ancestors.

You seem to be fond of this word: 'Institutionalised superstition'. Hmmm..let's see. Somehow you blame religion for the problems that are in the world.
Can you give a few examples on where religion causes a lot of problems?

iSok, or should that really be KeDa! (Knows everything, Don't argue!).

Before I forget, can you explain a bit more?

[Tank]

No. You can pay attention and attempt to learn something for a change rather than just preaching a mythological world view created by a greedy merchant out of pure political self interest.  In my opinion you are a victim of the Islamic meme, just another variation of institutionalised superstition that has arisen not from knowledge but the deep, deep ignorance our ancestors have struggled against for millennia.

Learn what? What you think about the world. I think you suffer a bit from wishful thinking; I'll die and there will be nothing.

There is no evidence for life after death. Why would it be wishful thinking.

About the Prophet, the 'greedy merchant'. I don't think you will accept my view, since I'm brainwashed by what you call so beautiful 'institutionalised superstition'.

Of course I don't accept your view iSoK. That's why I'm an atheist.

{snip meaningless apologetics rubbish}

Like I said: Can we mark this a type of waffeling? Or is this all a complot, just like evolution is from the devil?
Honestly Tank, is there a difference?

The difference is very simple iSoK, I think for myself, you think as you have been trained to think. Your mind is corrupted by the ignorance of your ancestors. Because I was fortunate not to be brainwashed from childhood by brainwashed parents I can see the world through eyes that don't have to believe in the supernatural on pain of eternal damnation. I think you're a lost cause iSoK I don't think for one nanosecond that anything anybody types here will make any difference whatsoever to what you think. I only reply to you to illustrate the absurdity of your position as a fundamentalist (and I don't use that term in a derogatory manner I'm just stating a fact about the way you view the world) theist.

People like to feel in control yet the reality is we live or die at the whim of the natural world where we live. The recent loss of life in Japan and prior to that the much greater loss of life in Indonesia brought about by the structure of the Earth's crust are perfect examples of this. Unless of course one subscribes to the view that there was some sort of supernatural intervention in these events. Do you think there was supernatural intervention in these events?

About me being a victim: What makes you think that? I certainly may believe in 'superstition' as you call it. But it wasn't 'institutionalised'.

Religion is institutionalised superstition, you follow Islam which I believe is a religion? Any one individual, or tribe, can have a unique set of personal/tribal superstitions. This is a very common situation in isolated tribes in the jungles of South America and Papua New Guinea. These beliefs tend to be pantheistic and animist in nature due to the ignorance of how the world really works. When humans gained the ability to record information in the form of oral traditions and written language there developed an ability to create an orthodoxy of thought. Gradually the superstitions became 'institutionalised'. This is exactly what happened in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The elders sat down and created a single book and a single orthodoxy and orthopraxy to surround there superstitious beliefs, they firmed up their ideas and institutionalised them.

So you do follow an institutioanlised superstition iSoK whether you like it or not.

Yes I do think that and I explained that in the other topic but the only reply I got from you was: 'Waffle on'.

So you consider Allah a murderer then?

The fact that theists cannot agree on one God is one of the best reasons not to believe in any of them. While theists squabble and in extreme cases kill and rape each other based on the excuses and encouragements of their particular institutionalised superstitions I will continue to see none of them worthy of consideration. When all theists ascribe to a homogeneous view of the supernatural I'll give it a sceptical look, but until that point I will consider preaching theists as con-men and carpet baggers and I'll consider the best of them simply victims of irrelevant mythical memes.

I don't really care about your belief, it's your own responsibility. But you do like to respond when a creationist comes and says the earth is 6000 years old. I also like to respond when in my eyes a respond comes which is no different then that from a creationist who suffers of wishful thinking.
'Muhammad was a greedy merchanct and he wanted money, so what he says can't be true, I'm save, lets carry on'

According to your logic, when there are multiple theories on a scientific phenomenon, none of them can be true....
Monotheism can be very easily proven and also why people tend towards Polytheism even if it's false. But my guess is that you won't be interested.

Monotheism is just a world view that is based on the false premiss that the supernatural exists and then for their own personal gain preachers exploit the gullibility of the majority of humanity to gain 'Alpha Male' status in there tribe. It's not rocket science to see how our evolutionary origins would lead to the subjugation of females by males and to support a world view that a male can have many wives. Just as Islam does.

If, hopefully when, humanity grows up and addresses the issues of reality head-on we will be in a much better place than any of our ancestors as we will be facing the fact of our imperfect/pragmatic evolutionary heritage rather than wasting our time placating one of thousands of non-existent myths. One can't truly progress or solve a problem until one understand the problem and adding mythology and wishful thinking into reality does nothing back hold back human progress.

Now Tank, you have to tell me this. What is the purpose for the human race, what is the purpose of the world? What do you want to achieve by finding out everything of the world?

There is no purpose to the human race. There is no purpose to the world. If you think there is that is because you have been told there is by fools, charlatans and the gullible, based on the fear and fragility of life as perceived by our ancestors. The ignorance of our ancestors knows no bounds. What they did know was corrupted by superstition. It is only in the last couple of centuries that our understanding of the universe has become free of the need to fit what we find into a superstitious context.

Charles Darwin grew up a creationist. His training as a geologist showed him the concept of 'deep time'. His curiosity and observational skills allowed him to posit that the process of natural selection lead to evolution. He stopped believing in creationism because he saw for himself what was really going on. His theories are now the absolute bedrock of Biology. But nothing Darwin found revealed any sort of purpose and that is the way the world works. As I have noted humans are evolved to recognise cause>effect and when they see life (an effect) they demand a cause.

The fact that life is caused by a mindless process of natural selection is extremely emotionally unsatisfying. Believing that there is some sort of great sky daddy that knows what's going on is much more emotionally satisfying. Particularly when there are a bunch of ego-maniac highly evolved apes, with just enough brains to be dangerous, sitting around a camp fire debating the meaning of life in a state of almost complete ignorance of how the world really works. It's no surprise they came up with a garbage explanation that suited their own emotional needs to feel wanted, loved and special, the exact same emotions they evolved to feel towards their own mothers so they stayed close to them and didn't die.

What do you define as a better place? How do you see that world? What do you mean if you say: 'Progress'?
What should humanity achieve by science?

There is no better place, only that which we wish our children to live in. The world is an evolved ecosystem currently being unbalanced by a psychotic ape. Progress is what any one person perceives it to be. Science does one thing and one thing only, it discovers what is really happening. What humanity does with that knowledge is anybodies guess.

People who spend their time promoting worthless institutionalised superstitions do nothing but waste time and effort that could be better spent addressing the real issues facing humanity, poverty, ignorance, etc. But for the foreseeable future I think humanity will suffer from the ingrained mythology we have inherited from our deeply ignorant ancestors.

You seem to be fond of this word: 'Institutionalised superstition'. Hmmm..let's see. Somehow you blame religion for the problems that are in the world.
Can you give a few examples on where religion causes a lot of problems?

Strawman. I do not blame religion for all the problems of the world. People are responsible for all that is wrong and right in the world. I am of the opinion that Religion amplifies the behaviour of people because it gives them a support framework to exploit. Thus a basically good person will behave better when exposed to a religion that supports doing good. I think it is equally true that a bad person will become worse when exposed to a religion that supports bad things. Whether you like it or not some brands of Islam do cause extreme behaviour that is bad. The trouble is that we don't see much good done by Muslims, and I concede the point that that is probably an issue with biased media reporting as bad news 'sells' while good news does not.

However as all religions are based on the false premiss that the supernatural exists and they are all also institutionalised superstitions religions can offer nothing useful to our understanding of the world and the way it really is. They should be put away like childhood comfort blankets and fairy stories. They have no place in this world any more.

iSok, or should that really be KeDa! (Knows everything, Don't argue!).

Before I forget, can you explain a bit more?

I don't like the way you preach here. I don't think you're here to learn at all. I don't believe you are here 'In search of knowledge' at all. I think you're here to hone your debating skills at our expense so you can preach more effectively elsewhere.  You behave as if you 'Know everything, Don't argue!' This is why I don't engage with you often as I feel your stated reasons for being here are disingenuous. If you were here to learn you wouldn't keep on asking leading questions that are simply intended to garner responses that allow you to preach. You display all the behaviour traits I see as in bad theists. You don't greet new members at all. You only take part in threads and create threads that satisfy your own needs and desires for self aggrandisement. You type one thing but do another.

[iSok]

There is no evidence for life after death. Why would it be wishful thinking.

If there’s no evidence, does not mean that it won’t happen. It is wishful thinking
that you’ll get away with whatever you do now.

The difference is very simple iSoK, I think for myself, you think as you have been trained to think.
Your mind is corrupted by the ignorance of your ancestors. Because I was fortunate not to be brainwashed from childhood by brainwashed parents.
 I can see the world through eyes that don't have to believe in the supernatural on pain of eternal damnation.
I think you're a lost cause iSoK I don't think for one nanosecond that anything anybody types here will make any difference whatsoever to what you think.
 I only reply to you to illustrate the absurdity of your position as a fundamentalist (and I don't use that term in a derogatory manner I'm just stating a fact about the way you view the world) theist.

You don’t know anything about me Tank, yet you plot your idea’s on me, like you know everything about me.
I was an agnostic during my teenage years, then I gave the concept of God a try and found Islam the most logical and rational religion, as it gives an answer on every possible question.
It’s not blind faith. I don’t believe because I’m afraid of death, eternal life is more terrifying.
I believe is because I’m convinced that this is the truth.

About my parents: My father served as a major-general during the cold war against the mujahedin, he gave up his career after he was ordered by the communists to retaliate civilians.
He was never into belief, and is an agnostic now (I think). Most of my aunts and uncles on both sides all went to university and some of them have a PhD in chemistry, physics, medecines or engineering.
Some of them are devout believers, others are more agnostic theists.
My nephew received his PhD last year on his research about thromboembolic diseases and is now a researcher at John Hopkins university for two years.
He’s also a devout believer by choice, his parents don’t believe.  My sister is studying medecine and she’s hoping to become a cardiothoracic surgeon in the near future.
I’m studying structural engineering and soon I will start on my MsC.
My intention is to make you understand that I’m not of the typical family that brainwashes their children into faith like you wish to believe.
Education is highly encouraged within our family and we have an open mind to almost everything. I’m willing to discuss everything.

It’s your wishful thinking that every theist somehow must have a corrupt and close mind and be somehow a victim of abuse.

Religion is institutionalised superstition, you follow Islam which I believe is a religion? Any one individual, or tribe, can have a unique set of personal/tribal superstitions.
This is a very common situation in isolated tribes in the jungles of South America and Papua New Guinea.
These beliefs tend to be pantheistic and animist in nature due to the ignorance of how the world really works.
When humans gained the ability to record information in the form of oral traditions and written language there developed an ability to create an orthodoxy of thought.
Gradually the superstitions became 'institutionalised'. This is exactly what happened in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The elders sat down and created a single book and a single orthodoxy and orthopraxy to surround there superstitious beliefs, they firmed up their ideas and institutionalised them.
So you do follow an institutioanlised superstition iSoK whether you like it or not.

Actually, once again your wishful thinking pollutes your rational mind. You are connecting dots with no connection so it’ll suit your idea, nothing more than wide speculation just to confirm your idea’s.
You wish prophets to be greedy merchants, you wish that religions started with elders sitting down and writing a book. History however Tank is very different than your wishful fantasies of being ‘right’.

So you consider Allah a murderer then?

I discussed this in the other topic but you never gave a sound reply. God gives life and takes life when your time is up. A murderer is someone who takes life without having the right. Since God has given you life, He has also the right to take it. Life is not eternal, it must end at some place.

Monotheism is just a world view that is based on the false premiss that the supernatural exists and then for their own personal gain preachers exploit the gullibility of the majority of humanity to gain 'Alpha Male' status in there tribe. It's not rocket science to see how our evolutionary origins would lead to the subjugation of females by males and to support a world view that a male can have many wives. Just as Islam does.

I see you talking all the time about how the supernatural existence is a false premise.

Once again you’re a victim of wishful thinking. If you have at the least opened a book about religions and read about any of it’s founded. You’d come to the conclusion like every other scholar that what they preached, they really believed. They were never interested in power or wealth.
The question here is: Were they in confusion with their own mind or was there really a supernatural?

There is no purpose to the human race. There is no purpose to the world. If you think there is that is because you have been told there is by fools, charlatans and the gullible, based on the fear and fragility of life as perceived by our ancestors. The ignorance of our ancestors knows no bounds. What they did know was corrupted by superstition. It is only in the last couple of centuries that our understanding of the universe has become free of the need to fit what we find into a superstitious context.

There’s no purpose, yet you are fascinated by science, and you humiliate everyone that happens to believe in God. No purpose, yet you talk like there’s a purpose.

You want to get rid of religions in the world, clearly there's a purpose for you. Then why do you deny immediatly when I ask you what the purpose for you is.
If you have a goal, you have a purpose, a vision, I want to know what your vision is, what your purpose is for mankind, you clearly see a goal.

Don't deny that, come with your purpose and give arguments instead of denying.

Charles Darwin grew up a creationist. His training as a geologist showed him the concept of 'deep time'. His curiosity and observational skills allowed him to posit that the process of natural selection lead to evolution. He stopped believing in creationism because he saw for himself what was really going on. His theories are now the absolute bedrock of Biology. But nothing Darwin found revealed any sort of purpose and that is the way the world works. As I have noted humans are evolved to recognise cause>effect and when they see life (an effect) they demand a cause.

The theory of evolution is not something that Charles Darwin started or came up with.
I’ll give you a few examples:

Animals engage in a struggle for existence; for resources, to avoid being eaten and to breed. Environmental factors influence organisms to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful characteristics to offspring. â€" Al Jahiz (8th century)

Such humans [probably anthropoid apes] live in the Western Sudan and other distant corners of the world. They are close to animals by their habits, deeds and behavior. [...] The human has features that distinguish him from other creatures, but he has other features that unite him with the animal world, vegetable kingdom or even with the inanimate bodies. â€" Al Tusi (13th century)

Evolution is not an argument in favour of atheism, but in my opinion it’s in favour of theism.
The whole ‘choice’ or ‘free will’  gets more clear in the light of evolution.

People who spend their time promoting worthless institutionalised superstitions do nothing but waste time and effort that could be better spent addressing the real issues facing humanity, poverty, ignorance, etc. But for the foreseeable future I think humanity will suffer from the ingrained mythology we have inherited from our deeply ignorant ancestors.

The problems that exist today is because people in the modern world tend tot hink that they will get away with everything. There will be no responsbility.
Pollution, wars, poverty and such are all caused by western secular countries out of materialism.
Where religion absolutely does not play a role. I don’t know wether you are really blind or deliberately looking  the other way.

Strawman. I do not blame religion for all the problems of the world. People are responsible for all that is wrong and right in the world.
 I am of the opinion that Religion amplifies the behaviour of people because it gives them a support framework to exploit.
Thus a basically good person will behave better when exposed to a religion that supports doing good.
 I think it is equally true that a bad person will become worse when exposed to a religion that supports bad things.
Whether you like it or not some brands of Islam do cause extreme behaviour that is bad.
The trouble is that we don't see much good done by Muslims, and I concede the point that that is probably an issue with biased media reporting as bad news 'sells' while good news does not.

Yes that might be true, but actually if we see what happened when governments deliberately tried
to introduce a structure based on atheism it lead to devastation. Russia and China are good examples for my argument.
There’s always a choice and an intention on what people do.
 I certainly agree that religious people in the past did a lot of wrong things.
But should we blame religion for that? Can you blame air for the lies that are spread?
What happened in China actually lead to far more devastation compared to a total combination of every religion in the history of mankind.
We tend to point more towards religion since it was common in history.

On a side note: Because of the Muslims the ‘enlightnment’ during the dark ages came to Europe.
The reason that you have free speech today is because of the Muslims, or you would have been burned at the stake.

I find it very dissapointing that you say such things as: 'The trouble is that we don't see much good done by Muslims.'

Let's see Tank.

1. The Muslims helped the west by storing Greece humanist sources and adding material to it, which helped the west to leave the dark ages behind.
2. West comes back and starts to colonize Islamic countries for centuries
3. West leaves after centuries and sets up puppet regimes to suit their needs
4. West invades Islamic countries for the sake of war and oil under the mask of 'we want to bring democacy.'
5. Muslims grow angry because of all of this
6. West: Oh God they are going to kill us! They want to wage Jihad against us, let's strike now!

The ironic thought is that Islamic countries rarely have invaded western countries or almost never have.
But the west has invaded countless times a muslim country and now muslims are accused of Jihad...

Who are the real Jihadi's here?
Even more ironic is that the Jihad the West wages is out of self-interest, they don't care about other countries.
The fantasy Jihad that muslims supposedly wage according to the west has nothing to do with self-interest, it's actually a loss for muslims.

Do you understand that I fully lose faith in humanity when you say such things?
Do you really think for yourself as you claim?

However as all religions are based on the false premiss that the supernatural exists and they are all
also institutionalised superstitions religions can offer nothing useful to our understanding of the world and the way it really is.
They should be put away like childhood comfort blankets and fairy stories. They have no place in this world any more.

It’s a false premise that you say that religions oppose science, that might be the case for
some religions but not for all. Within Islam, there never was a problem.
As I pointed earlier out that even in the 13th century, in an Islamic Khalifa, where the ‘bloodthirsty’ Sharia ruled.
A muslim scientist pointed out that humans must have evolved from apes and life must have started with minerals.
Everybody just shrugged their shoulders and thought; ‘ok.’.

Religion has almost dissapeared in the west, but somehow the problems that came into existence have increased tenfold.
Wars, massive depression, exploitment of third-world countries,the desire for more and so on… are all symptoms when religion dies.

I don't like the way you preach here. I don't think you're here to learn at all. I don't believe you are here 'In search of knowledge' at all.
I think you're here to hone your debating skills at our expense so you can preach more effectively elsewhere.  You behave as if you 'Know everything, Don't argue!'
This is why I don't engage with you often as I feel your stated reasons for being here are disingenuous.
If you were here to learn you wouldn't keep on asking leading questions that are simply intended to garner responses that allow you to preach.
You display all the behaviour traits I see as in bad theists. You don't greet new members at all.
You only take part in threads and create threads that satisfy your own needs and desires for self aggrandisement. You type one thing but do another.

A theist wouldn’t be a theist if some of his content wasn’t of a nature of preaching.
But I’m trying to limit this and asked Whitney to point out whenever I’d preach.
The thread here is about religion, where I’m mainly active. I’m pointing out to what I believe and why I think what I believe is right, that’s what I’ve done so far. I don’t think it’s fair that people claim here all sort of stuff without any resources, but they just claim it since it confirms their worldview.

And no I don’t greet new members. Most of you, I will never meet nor will I ever know you well.
I’m not here to start a social network, primary  reason I’m here is to improve my English and to understand why atheists don’t believe (lack of proof I assume). Religion is a good thread, because of the difference, a debate can start easily. My intention is not too convert people here, I am of the opinion that it simply is not possible. With all the resources you have to counter religion, I don’t stand a chance.

I created here two threads, one of them was because you asked me too. I usually respond to issues which I find interesting, I’m not going to participate in threads like.
‘Let’s find random horrors..’.
If I happen to transgress a limit then I can be banned, so if you don’t like me, you can complain, if others do the same I can be banned.

But let me tell you what I think of you Tank. I think you are also some type of fundamentalist.
You view evolution as the ultimate answer, the materialistic universe is your ultimate reality.
If you have studied a bit of antrophology, if you are really fair to this issue. Then you have to conclude that the belief in a Higher Power is natural to human beings. You may toss with words like ‘institutionalised superstition’, but you can delete the word supersition and insert there materialism.
That is what antrophology agrees on. In societies when there was no religion, people did believe in God(s)

I might be a victim according to you of ‘superstition’ but I see you as the victim of ‘institutionalised materialism’, since this is not your natural state.
We live in a world that encourages on institutionalising materialism, which causes severe depression and misery among population, yet we are continuing this trend thinking that it's the best way for man.
You are the victim in my opinion here Tank.

Modern society has stripped away every intellectual faculty of your mind and only left analytical reasoning, like a machine.
The whole society is focused now on to  say that belief is something backward, intelligent people don't believe.

Yet people seem to turn away from Atheism and embrace Christianity, Islam, Judaism here in the west by choice.
Are they victims or are you a victim of what I will call from now on 'institutionalised materialism'.
Clearly belief in God is natural so you have been thought by society to disblief, a form of indoctrination.
You expect everyone else to do the same, or else they are stupid. Are you not a fundamentalist?
I fortunately was lucky enough to escape and not let myself get brainwashed.

Every issue that cannot be explained  is answered in two ways today by fundamentalists.

- God did it.
- It somehow must have evolved.