Comment by Bruce Campbell on May 22, 2011 at 4:08am

Jared,

You are correct, the one youtube you're looking at does not state 'Lyn is a Christian and she killed her children'. The polic did report Lyn tried to kill her children as she believed the 'Tribulation' was coming. I think it is far to draw that, considering she is American, the Tribulation referred to is the is the Christian one.

Whether you believe she has a poor understanding of Christianity or not is the crux of the matter. There is the concept of the trib in the religion, it has been the focus of lots of rubbish predictions and for some reason, is actually more of a focus of christians in the US than elsewhere.  

We have recently seen what (IMHO) the largest PR for the end of the world ever. $3M in advertising it! Some unfortunate events such as Japan only adding fuel to the fire. 

The evidence points to a woman suffering a mental illness has found justification within the dominant religion in her society to justify her actions. These were further supported by some terrible real events and a nutjob with a lot of money to advertise his personal rubbish.

Whether it is the correct view of christianity or a contorted one, her motivation has origins in the religion.

Comment by Bruce Campbell on May 22, 2011 at 4:19am

In response to hypothetical curiosity & logic:

Yes, if a being that created the universe and all in it, it would not be far fetched to believe that this being could communicate with its creations.

However, there is no evidence of either.

But when we look at the development of civilisation, we see strong patterns. Animism, polytheism, monotheism etc So, we can see that our ideas have changed and evolved over time. 

Ok, So when Zoroaster turned up, we invented monotheism. Then Yahweh. Then we get the splits from there. Then within the major abrahamics, we get splits. Then more... and more... and more. Of course, none of these were global, so there are still plenty that don't believe any of this and have their own sets of gods.

All that kind of works against an all-creating God talking to us. If it were the case, we'd have got it right first go, been global and would have been able to maintain consistency since, wouldn't we?

So apart from lack of evidence at all, the evidence suggests strongly otherwise.

 

Comment by jared huffman on May 22, 2011 at 4:35am

Agreed okay you can partially blame religion in this story. On the other not sure if I agree in your order of development of religious ideals, and yes we would have "gotten it right the first time globally" unless people decided to leave or disobey that god and and stop communicating with that god and started doing things however they wished, then they would have children who knew less of the original truth and so on and so on and it would be like the game in school where one person is told a sentence then they whisper to the next and so on until it gets to the last person and its totally different than when it started

Comment by Heather Spoonheim on May 22, 2011 at 4:41am

@Jared - again, for an all powerful deity a pen should not be that much to ask for.  Every person claiming to represent a deity offers an equally implausible message, reinforcing my argument that if such a deity existed then cosmic incompetence would have to be considered an inherent attribute.  As far as personal messages being received, it seems to be a real game of arrows in the dark that, when they do find a target, seem to recommend behaviors that are identical to mental illness.  How can anyone believe in this?

Comment by jared huffman on May 22, 2011 at 4:57am

I guess when it came down to it you would just have to meet that God for yourself in order to believe huh? Not the mental illness kind of stuff but i mean if there actually was a good natured one. Otherwise, like you said yyou couldn't trust all the different messages and you never would know what to believe. Like I suppose if Jesus was a real person and you lived with him for awhile saw him die and then saw him alive a few days later you would probably believe him i guess.

Comment by jared huffman on May 22, 2011 at 5:06am

Like I said I probably disagree with your order of religious ideals. I'm familiar with the historical timeline of evolution of belief systems and I'm saying i fundamentally disagree with that timeline and that monotheism was first. However, its okay we can disagree im sleepy now lol, goodnight everyone nice talkin to you.

Comment by Akshay Bist on May 22, 2011 at 5:11am

@Jared - One of the problems with all of the religions is that many of the explanations they give & claims they make have been debunked by science. In light of that, I'd say believing in any religion is ignorant & believing even after you have studied science is stupid.

Comment by Heather Spoonheim on May 22, 2011 at 5:12am

Even then, I've seen people 'die' but I was mistaken - it's amazing what people can live through.  Had I actually seen him walk on water and stuff I might have been more persuaded, but then again, Chris Angel can do all that stuff.  It was a superstitious world at that time and it sounds like Jesus was half nuts in the sort of way that intrigues people.  I started out believing, or was 'indoctrinated' to those beliefs early, but the story just holds no water.  I pushed my mind to try to figure out loopholes as to how parts of the story could be figurative while other parts could still be taken as literal but the book eventually just faded into a fairytale and unanswered calls to god returned nothing - mean while everyone else who clung to the beliefs had to either wallow in ignorance of the real world or lose their damn minds.  Islam wasn't any better and Judaism, well that whole mishna concept proved to me it was a crock.  If anyone can ever present some story that stands on its own as something I can see reason to believe in then ok, but I've yet to hear anything that makes the slightest bit of sense.

Comment by jared huffman on May 22, 2011 at 5:21am

well regardless you know what i meant by dying and coming back to life. also, thanks for telling stories about your life. goodnite

Comment by Bruce Campbell on May 22, 2011 at 5:40am

Jared, 

You can disagree with them but they are real. Thats how our ideas on religion developed. Go back 2,500 years and you will find nothing about monotheism. You'll find lots about polytheism tho.

The argument of 'chinese whispers' precludes a god that actively communicates. If you think that a rock has a soul and animals are embodiments of gods, then god, if it wanted to be acknowledged, would have corrected that pretty quick. At every point in history, it could have been corrected. Yet instead of consistency, the real world offers the opposite.  

Lets have a quick look at the bible. Jesus. I'm sure he lived. That isn't exactly an unlikely event. What is, is that he is the son of god. We have a world were superstition and ignorance prevail. We don't have a clue about how the world works and are inclined to believe in the supernatural because we don't have anything else. Also, the jews seemed to be particularly troublesome to the romans. 

The events that transpired as recorded in the bible are supposed to fill us with awe. A crucifixion. As horrible as it was, do you have any idea of how many people were killed that way? Of course, with the details of Jesus, no-one outside the bible corroborate any of it. In fact, the gospels themselves can't get the story straight all the time. In the 5th century, we have the council of Nicaea. They came together and decided, 400 years after the events, what was canon and what wasn't. Gnosticism went out the window as did a number of other unpopular views in christianity.

So, in summary, we have a real, recorded 'evolution' of thought in regards to religion. We have a situation which the claims are within the believable in the context of their time. We have an organised group deciding, many hundreds of years afterwards what is and what isn't the real story.

So supporting your argument of chinese whispers, how do you know any of it at all its gods idea? Particularly when we live in an age where we have a much better understanding of the world and we can see much more mundane explanations for all of it.

 

 

 

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