About the Holy Bible (part 2)

I continue in my reading of Robert G. Ingersoll's lecture "About the Holy Bible". (First video was posted on my channel "TheMathGuy" to attract more views)

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• agnostic
• atheist
• agnosticism
• atheism
• bible
• critical
• thinking
• superstition
• intellectual
• freedom
• liberty
• Robert
• Ingersoll

[Ex0dus111]

InPursuitOfTruth Wrote: "The idea that it's all symbolic and can be "interpreted" to match the scientific understanding of the time is highly suspicious."

So u want it to be simple?

No, religion is not simple.

[InPursuitOfTruth]

No, I don't need a theory to be simple, just right. Science has a way of pushing itself forward by constantly questioning itself and changing it's mind when a hypothesis was clearly wrong. Religion requires people to swear allegiance to it's teachings (or face hell) and when finally backed into a corner by overwhelming scientific evidence, it "reinterprets" it's falsehood and says it was true all along but just in a different way, refusing to let go even after it has clearly been proven wrong.

[mohfoz77]

Thank you for reading.

[hiswayornoway]

The ideal is not the problem, but its abstract and poorly defined nature. Don't you think that placing any abstract concept before reality is dangerous?

Whether it's some nebulous deity or some nebulous notion of liberty doesn't really make much difference.

[TheMathGuy]

Perhaps he was willing to clarify his definition of "liberty" if someone were to ask it of him. I don't know. I know that liberty as not so simple as everyone just being free to do whatever they want. Such a situation would actually DECREASE people's liberty because they would live in fear of the powerful. I don't think being open-minded means you have to give up having ideals.

[hiswayornoway]

What is Ingersoll's conception of liberty? When he says liberty is my religion, what kind of liberty is he talking about? (Intellectual liberty, I recall).

As Burke puts it, "Am I to celebrate the liberty of a murderer freed from prison?"

Setting aside for a moment his rejection of the Bible, is not his unqualified belief in an abstract concept, that he is willing to extol but does not define, as bad as the worst and most closed-minded of the believers in God? Or do you disagree?

[Brotoi]

You do realize, don't you, that Ingersoll has zero reliable historical evidence for his thesis?

Well... Other than Freemason and Rosicrucian "secret" histories, that is. Not that I'm claiming some massive conspiracy, I'm just pointing out that many of the ideas in this video parallel the "revealed" histories of two secret societies popular among educated men both in Ingersoll's time and in our own.

Both "secret histories" are now online, by the way. Just Google them.

[elvismilk]

mathguy, loved the video, I have loved Ingersoll since college. The Huxley agnosticism though needs to go, take a side, jump in the baptismical"made up like agnosticism" water of atheism and make the theists prove their vile, slave allowing, widow making, infinite universe creator exists. I am satisfied like Ingersoll that this theist monster of the Jews and Christians does not.

[Matur1n]

"And yet God waited until Revelations (or the New Testament at least) in order to mention this?"

To mention what? Satan? Satan is talked about in all of the gospels, Acts, Romans, both Corinthians, both Thessalonians, etc. Demons are as well. There are a lot of powerful entities that could be worshipped as Gods, and make the real one unhappy.

Psalms 106:37 "They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons."

[InPursuitOfTruth]

And yet God waited until Revelations (or the New Testament at least) in order to mention this? Modern interpretations of scripture happened as religious people were forced by discoveries of science to give up literal interpretations of the Bible. The idea that it's all symbolic and can be "interpreted" to match the scientific understanding of the time is highly suspicious.