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Permalink Reply by Mario Rodgers on April 27, 2010 at 1:02pm

Daniel's comments made me wonder if all of history is empirically testable. I may believe in the existence of George Washington, but what if I doubt some things written about him?

However I disagree with the assessment that everything boils down to belief. There's a difference between faith and trust, even if it's just semantics. One doesn't "believe" in accepted aspects of science. We arrive at conclusions based on studying the evidence. In fact, science should always be looking for its own falsehoods and correcting them. I "trust" that the acceleration of gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared for planet earth. I don't have "faith" that it'll always be there.

But back to the topic on hand, the whole of Christianity is set up around the mythology of waiting for the return of a person who may not even exist on the worst case scenario and who may be just a dead person on the best case scenario. It may not be the point of Christianity, but it's one of the cores of the religion.

When I was a Christian, I knew that Jesus would return to undo the imperfect systems of mankind from capitalism to the idea of currency to even democracy. I saw the increasing woes of the planet as proof that something was escalating. I didn't realize how flawed that way of thinking was.

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Permalink Reply by Mario Rodgers on April 27, 2010 at 1:15pm

This problem also highlights the ultimate egotism of monotheism, as evidenced by our very own David, who can't take a break from insisting upon the truthfulness of his badly written and vague prophecies from his instructional book of the fictional and abhorrent. It's inherently egotistical for a society to think only their prophecies will come true and not the other societies'. This perpetuates the "us verses them" mentality through a twisted world view of "This will all come true and you're going to get it." Prophecies don't win friends. They create enemies. The society in question sees themselves as being a part of something grand and important and they're the heroes. It's always about the individual.

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Permalink Reply by loona on April 28, 2010 at 7:59pm

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh also in islam they have this thing ... waiting for Jesus ... and the new news he will be muslim and lead muslims all around the world
religions make up such great stories even a kid couldn't make like them lol

thanks

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Permalink Reply by Gaytor on April 28, 2010 at 11:29pm

Oooo! That raises a good question that I don't know the answer to. So Jesus is seen as a great teacher and most Muslims even add PBUH in deference. But they don't believe he was the Son of God. So are all Muslims waiting for Jesus? Is Jesus going to be their savior as well? Please correct me where I'm wrong but that just complicates matters. So this Jew says he's brought about a new law if he can just fulfill the prophecies the Son of Man will come and peace will be brought to all that follow him. 600 years later a guy in a cave starts a new religion that rejects Christianity, Hates the Jews, wars with the Christians but this Jewish teacher who started Christianity is coming to save them as a Muslim? Correct me where I'm misunderstanding this, please. I think that you need to write a blog or start a discussion about this. I'm duly charging you with the duty of laying out this non-sense so that I may learn it!

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