new thread
...This is not a religious question,
consider it to be about a fable if you like.
WHY was Samson's strength in his HAIR?
Was an explanation ever given?
He gets his beautiful hair chopped of by a woman...
and then loses all his strength!
What's the story?
Samson is no different than...
Jack, of Beanstalk fame
Alice from Wonderland
Dorothy, who visited Oz
All are mythical characters that never existed. All have the same fairy tale story line.
It's nothing more than a fairy tale. Strong man loses hair and becomes 98 pound weakling. You may as well be reading about the little old lady in the shoe.
Your post which said:
Religion, the church, your god...they all belong in YOUR home and at YOUR church. Not in a public place with people who have diverse views.
vs. your present post:
That's exactly my point. Religion doesn't belong here. It's no different than discussing Mother Goose, Hansel and Gretel, or the three pigs. It's crap. It's also more divisive.
Rokker, please give it a rest with your attitudes against religion. The poster was just referring to Samson who HAD LONG HAIR.
You think you have all the answers with your execrable denunciations against religion. Please, let those who want to believe, believe.
If someone can post about religion, why shouldn't I be allowed to reply?
You're essentially saying someone can post anything they want about religion, but how dare I disagree. Doesn't sound rational to me.
Either you don't see the point, or you are purposely avoiding it. The whole problem is that the post was not about religion.
Religious topics are, in fact, welcome here, as long as they pertain to long hair on men.
So, about Rapunzel...
So what your saying is, if Hansel or one of the three pigs had long hair, that just because you see it as a fairy tale, no one should comment on it?
All I was trying to say was that your attitudes and pronouncements against religion are not in keeping with the diversity of views that you advocate. Because you don't believe, or because you don't understand, or because something does not fit into your scheme of reasoning, does not necessarily make it false. History has given the lie to many rejectional statements based on then available "scientific evidence" regarding a diversity of things, including scientific matters.
"All I was trying to say was that your attitudes and pronouncements against religion are not in keeping with the diversity of views that you advocate."
I can see why you think that. My point, however, is that if you bring up the topic of religion, why shouldn't I be allowed to bring up my rebuttal or my viewpoint in disagreeing with it?
Is that fair?
"Because you don't believe, or because you don't understand, or because something does not fit into your scheme of reasoning, does not necessarily make it false."
Believe me, I've studied the Bible thoroughly. That alone has convinced me tat most "followers" haven't! I understand quite well. There are many things that don't fit into my "scheme of reasoning" that I can accept as valid. However, some things are blatantly false.
"History has given the lie to many rejectional statements based on then available "scientific evidence" regarding a diversity of things, including scientific matters."
Exactly! Science is based on proving things and often times disproving things. Religion is not at all like that. All religions are by nature "backward thinking". Christians consider the existence of their God to be an obvious truth that no sane man could deny. I strongly disagree with this assumption...not only because evidence for the existence of this presumably ubiquitous yet invisible God is lacking, but because the very nature Christians attribute to this God is self-contradictory.
I am often asked by those who have read or heard my strong opinions about religion that my opinions are harsh and how dare I express them! Just as you stated in your reply.
Again...why should someone come here and do Bible talk and it's permitted...yet I shouldn't be allowed to express my belief in reply?
I am not asserting the truth or existence of anything. My only responsibility in this regard is to examine critically the views presented to me, subject them to rational scrutiny, and either accept them or reject them on that basis. And after careful study, I have rejected the claims made by all religions.
I offer an experiment that you can use to test whether reading about your religion will in any way change your attitude. First, you should read the Bible (many Christians don't) and develop at least a fair understanding of what is in it. I've read the Bible and studied it and know it better than most preachers! After you have REALLY read it in its entirety....take your time and read these books:
The Seven Mighty Blows to Traditional Beliefs by A. J. Mattill, Jr.
The Myth of the Resurrection and The Forgery of the Old Testament by Joseph McCabe
Is It God's Word and Forgery in Christianity by Joseph Wheless
Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman
The Story of Christian Origins by Martin A. Larsen
Out of the Desert by William H. Stiebing, Jr.
Gospel Fictions by Randel Helms
The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth by S. G. F. Brandon
The Case Against Christianity by Michael Martin
Beyond Born Again by Robert Price
I could make the list much longer, but these would be enough to keep you busy for at least a year if you read them as carefully as I would want you to. Books like these will give you a perspective of the Bible that is very different from what you will ever hear at church. The reason why so many people still cling to those old and discredited religious views is that 1) they don't even read the Bible, and 2) if they do other religious studies, they rely on books usually published by their own churches or people like the television posers like Pat Robertson.
Your comments, just like your earlier posts, are basically flawed, because you have jumped to the conclusion (a) that I have not read the Bible, (b) that I have never considered the arguments against the Bible. For your information, I have studied the Bible from the age of 10, in depth, along with commentaries of different shades of opinions. I have also read arguments against the Bible and the message it brings. And (surprise, surprise) I have not been convinced that the Bible is not true.
On the other hand, have YOU read books like Josh McDowell's "The evidence that demands a verdict", Paul Little's "Know what and why you believe", just to mention 2 titles, with an open mind?
Science has yet to disprove the Bible, or its basic message. Neither has it proved beyond reasonable doubt that there is no God. In your posts you have talked about Jesus, and the stories in the Bible being a myth. But have your read the records of Josephus, among others, extra-Christian sources which testify to the existence of Jesus? Are your aware that science, or to be more precise archaelogy, has through the ages proven several accounts in the Bible that were previously scoffed at as impossible/unlikely?
Look, I am not denying you the right to say what you believe (or don't believe). As you rightly say, if someone can come and talk the Bible, why can't you state your views? BUT my argument with you is that you need to bring your views even into those questions which were specifically introduced as not being brought for their religious nature?
Finally, I appreciate your point of view, and would urge you, just as you urge me, to seek with an open mind, and more so, an open heart. Not just as an academic exercise. Seek with all your heart, and you will surely find.
Every blessing
You said:
"On the other hand, have YOU read books like Josh McDowell's "The evidence that demands a verdict", Paul Little's "Know what and why you believe", just to mention 2 titles, with an open mind?"
Yes, I have.
More from you:
"Science has yet to disprove the Bible, or its basic message."
Is that so? Then explain this to me....
What scientific "facts in the Bible have been proven wrong? The list is endless! Let's see...
The flat earth...it has shrunk to become much smaller than the sun, and has taken to circling the latter, instead of vice versa, as originally established. Furthermore (confirming its sinful nature), it has floated up off its pillars or foundations, lost its four corners, and become a silly ball, on which there just is no possible mountaintop from which one could see all nations of the Earth.
The Earth is much older than the Bible says it is.
All those embarrassing laws, like decay rates of isotopes, the non-decaying speed of light, the refraction of light to produce rainbows, etc., which have to be ignored, twisted, or denied to defend Genesis.
Somehow, surprisingly, bats changed from "fowls" to mammals between the time Moses wrote the Pentateuch and now.
The mind, that with which we use to THINK...just for the f**k of it...has moved from the heart, where it resided through New Testament times, into the brain, where it is today.
Stars somehow have grown a lot bigger...and moved much farther away, so that by now it seems foolish to expect a sizable fraction of them to fall to Earth, as predicted in Revelation.
Pi (remember that from Algebra?) has inexplicably changed its value from a nice, neat 3 (reflecting the trinity, no doubt) in Solomon's time, to a messy 3.14159... today. Despite some legal attempts in some state legislatures to return it to the divine purity of 3, pi remains a very strange and messy number!
Why did micro organisms have to show up? They're never mentioned in the Bible at all, so religious people and Bible scholars have to do some creative rewriting of Genesis to account for their day of creation, and their presence or absence on the Ark. Oh and speaking of the Ark, what about the great big flood? Egyptians didn't seem to notice a world-wide Flood, though they were around at the time and had a liking for writing everything down. They'd even write down what people wore to parties, darn it. So why would they fail to note a Flood that covered the entire Earth? Oh, and they were there before and after the time of the Flood. Or how about the Asian Indians, or the Chinese, or any of the other cultures that also possessed written histories, yet failed to note any of the cataclysmic acts of the Judaeo-Christian god?
Ever heard of Dendrochronology? That means tree-ring counting. Dendrochronologists, by matching patterns in annual growth rings, can establish a sequence in living, dead, and long-dead trees in certain areas of the world. In some areas, ring sequences extend back through the supposed date of the Flood (think Noah's Ark here), showing no evidence of it ever happening, and indeed way past the usual creation date of the earth itself. One of the conundrums of creationism is that the Earth was apparently created complete with evidence of a past that never happened, including tree rings, other annual layering phenomena, fossils already in the ground, and light from distant stars already most of the way here. Hmmm. Does this mean these cosmic events that never really happened?
The sky has evaporated. In Adam's time it was clearly a solid dome, a "firmament", which could separate waters above it from those below on the Earth. By Noah's time it was still solid enough to have windows in it that had to be opened to let the rain through. Religious folk try to rationalize their way out of this one by calling it "poetic metaphor". But hey, isn't the Bible really literal, in the true sense of the word? The sky was a hard firmament with windows in it...but some time since then it evaporated. Anybody who says different is a mealy-mouthed evolution-sympathizer. By the way, as backup for this statement, the word "firmament," according to Strong's Concordance (word 7549) is a translation of the Hebrew word "raqiya." "Raqiya" means a canopy, as in "Hast thou with him spread out the sky?", and "that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in."
The Order of Creation is a bottomless can of worms for the religious people I've spoken to. Especially if one takes literally and in their most obvious meanings both Genesis 1 and 2, which don't match in many particulars. Consider just a couple of minor difficulties in the first chapter. For starters, the light of day is created before the sun from which it comes. If we can assume it was some divine form of light which required no material source, then why do we need the sun? In the same curious order, plants were created before the sun, which is needed for photosynthesis. Hmmm. Explain that one to me.
More from you:
"Neither has it proved beyond reasonable doubt that there is no God."
You are the one with the burden of proof, not me or anyone who doesn't believe. You say there's a god. Now prove it! You can't! The burden of proof is on you, not me!
You said:
"In your posts you have talked about Jesus, and the stories in the Bible being a myth. But have your read the records of Josephus, among others, extra-Christian sources which testify to the existence of Jesus? Are your aware that science, or to be more precise archaelogy, has through the ages proven several accounts in the Bible that were previously scoffed at as impossible/unlikely?"
Your statements are blatantly false. Provide even one example to me.
The fact remains that through all of written history, not one society mentions Jesus at the time he was around. Nothing is written of him until hundreds of years later. If he had existed, and was this great man, the written history OF HIS TIME would mention him. Yet not one single society anywhere mentioned Jesus at the time he was supposedly around.
You said:
"BUT my argument with you is that you need to bring your views even into those questions which were specifically introduced as not being brought for their religious nature?"
In my opinion, if you bring up something of a religious nature, and state it as fact, I will debunk it. Period. There was no Samson just as there was never an Alice who visited Wonderland.
You said:
"Finally, I appreciate your point of view, and would urge you, just as you urge me, to seek with an open mind, and more so, an open heart. Not just as an academic exercise. Seek with all your heart, and you will surely find."
The question of whether or not there exists some sort of god is not one which should necessarily preoccupy the minds of atheists, but it is one to which I unfortunately return to from time to time. Theists...especially Christians...regularly challenge me with all sorts of arguments and ideas which supposedly demonstrate that some sort of god definitely exists. I always hope that someone will come along with an original idea and manage to convert me, but here I am, still waiting! Instead, I get the same tired old arguments and, if I'm really lucky, I might even get them in new wrapping. Unfortunately, you didn't even offer that.
to your newsletter... i need something to kindle campfires. you use all that bandwidth and i can't do anything with it- at least i can burn paper.
You're more proof that religious people can't explain their reasoning. Instead of a reply that shows any merit, thought, or intelligence, we see this.
Entirely expected. You can't argue with truth, and I speak the truth.
Thanks for the laugh though. Much appreciated. I'll be sure to share this!
actually i don't recall any specific intent to cast controversy on what you said, but that you chose not only to use this forum to air your views against christianity but in the manner that you choose to air them. i'm not exactly a fan of organized church myself but i'm not going to offend some people here buy using victor's board for my personal anti-church crusade. some time you should read one of your posts... substitute something you believe in for the church references and think about how that might come across.
Again I say...why is it people can talk about religion, to the point of Christians knocking on my door at home and disturbing my dinner to tell me about their savior...and it's okay? Yet when I reply and say something they don't agree with, it's mean, or not okay.
There are many things I believe in. But unlike the religious folks, I don't get upset when someone disagrees. And I certainly don't take offense to it. I'm confident enough in my beliefs to where I don't need to get upset. Also, my beliefs are based in fact and something that can be empirically proven. I'm not one to go on blind faith for anything.
I realize quite well how I come across. I'm a very blunt, direct, and honest person. I'm not trying to get religious people to stop being religious, I'm just mentioning the double standard that is so pervasive in society in general and this board in particular...that being that it's perfectly fine to bring up religion and discuss beliefs but not okay to voice a dissenting opinion. Are people who disagree supposed to just shut up and accept it? Some seem to think so.
I'm being as polite as I can while still getting my point across.
...don't come knocking at your door to disturb you. i seriously doubt they go door to door to spread their beliefs. if you wish to be mean to religious people then do so toward the ones presenting you with your watchtower... call their belief system a big fairy tale... ask if their god lives in a gingerbread house- do your worst.
as far as a double standard here.... by whom? and how does this disturb you? i don't see any regulars here posting how we're all going to a bad place if we don't ascribe to their theology- how our sinful long hair will condemn us to eternal explosive diarrhea. so what is it to you? why do you find it so necessary to be so blunt here? you're smart enough to know that what you say will deeply offend some people here. that you choose to continue to rattle on says alot more about you than it does about the church.
Well said Rokker.
Science is a tool to study the world with and it's purpose is not to debunk every god that people dream up...that is for the skeptics (skeptic.com). Anyone with real evidence about a god(s) should know that there are people offering large sums of money as a reward for it. No one has collected yet.
I'm not picking on you, specifically, Rokker, but I felt I needed to reply the the thread. Evidently some people read my remark yesterday and read only part of it. I will now repeat my remark and add emphasis to the part that seems to have been missed:
Religious topics are, in fact, welcome here, as long as they pertain to long hair on men.
The thread has drifted far afield and needs to end now. A debate on the merits of religion or the Bible is NOT appropriate here.
Sorry, Victor, I should have corresponded privately with Rokker. However, please bear with me just for a while.
Rokker, Thanks for the stimulating reply. Please tell me:
1. Where in the Bible does it say that the earth is flat?
2. Where is the age of the earth given?
It is possible that people have ignored, twisted or denied as you say. That's their fault, not the fault of the Bible. I do not think these laws contradict the Bible.
The Flood - there are accounts of the flood in the stories of the Babylonians, aboriginals, the people of Papua New Guinea, the Chinese etc. I would like to look into the Egyptian writings before commenting on their view.
Existence of Jesus, outside of the Bible - Josephus, Pliny, Suetonius, Tacitus, Thallus, Lucian, the Koran etc. (Just checking - by your scheme of reasoning was there really a Julius Caesar, a Prophet Mohammed, a Siddharta Gautama?)
Archaeological proofs - the pool where Jesus healed a (crippled) man.Then there was a time when they said that the stone tablets of Moses were a fake because there was no writing at that time. Until they found evidence for writing that predated this. Then major excavations in the past 90 years have found support for the account of the destruction of the wall of Jericho.
We can go on and on arguing, but as Victor points out, we are deviating from the purpose of the board. I probably haven't convinced you, nor have you convinced me. But to refer to your last paragraph - keep hoping. There are many scientists who have sought and who believe, sceptics like CS Lewis, Frank Morison etc who believed.
To get back to the topic of the board - let's hold onto what we have in common - HAIR, and plenty of it!!!
God bless you
Sorry, forgot. You might like to check out www.answersingenesis.com. It may help, but on the other hand...
This is why it continues Victor, don't put it on Rokker.
Here is a better site: http://www.geocities.com/church_of_hank/
At least it has a long hair website link.
they do... they don't- this isn't a religious discussion forum so none of it belongs here except where it pertains to attitudes toward long hair. as far as whether or not religion belongs in a place of diverse views- i think it does as such a place would be defined by its inclusion of ideas & opinion rather than exclusion. denegrating religious beliefs by comparing biblical figures to fairy tale characters shows a bit of narrow-mindedness from someone who otherwise espouses diversity (of views) so i'm not sure how much weight i'd give what he posts about religion.
....hmmmmm...but I DID state in the original post that...
...'This is not a religious question,
consider it to be about a fable if you like.'
I was just wondering WHY strength was associated with LONG Hair
....Lots (not all) of wrestlers seem to sense this.
Oddly I feel my personality is stronger.
i was more responding to rokker's rhetoric as quoted or paraphrased by sam. perhaps your perceived extra strength comes from the extra shot of self-confidence one gets when one goes against the herd and does something just for oneself- like growing your hair out.
[quote] "perhaps your perceived extra strength comes from the extra shot of self-confidence one gets when one goes against the herd and does something just for oneself- like growing your hair out."
...Hmmmmm...good point!
And right now it seems that I have no choice but to be
in people's FACES! Though, nobody ever says a single word.
I believe that he made a pact with God, where basically he'd have God's strength behind him as long as he didn't cut his hair. I read somewhere that Samson was a Nazirite from birth. Nazirites wouldn't cut their hair, I guess as a tribute to God.
Ya, no explanation or reasoning provided, as usual.
This is something mythologically older than the Bible. The hair represents the rays of the sun god, and somehow this allows the longhair (or nazarite, or whatever) to participate in the strength of the god. I think the operative part about Delilah is that she is not Hebrew, rather than that she is a woman. It's been a long time since I read about this stuff, so the details are hazy.
[Quote] "The hair represents the rays of the sun god, and somehow this allows the longhair (or nazarite, or whatever) to participate in the strength of the god."
...hmmmmm...ya, that makes sense...
...ALSO, if somebody CUT OFF my hair right now...
...I'd definitely feel weaker--though I couldn't EXPLAIN WHY!
the ONLY reason i'd feel weak after someone cut my hair is that i would have just finished beating the living shyt out of whoever did it.
Same here, brother. I'd give 'em a piledriver.
because he took a Nazarite vow,
if you took this vow you werent allowed to cut your hair
(don't think they were allowed to drink wine or eat grapes either)
the fact that they werent allowed to cut their hair was just a way to SHOW there commitment to God
he got his strength from hs devotion to God so when he cut his hair he was BREAKING his promise so he lost his strength (but later got it back)
PS: not trying to offend anyone, just answering the question that was asked of what it SAID in the Bible :-)
[quote]"...if you took this vow you werent allowed to cut your hair...(don't think they were allowed to drink wine or eat grapes either)"
....NO GRAPES?!! ...Good GoD!
.
It was Samson's parents who took the Nazarite vow. I don't think Samson was old enough at the time the vow was made (maybe even before he was born) to have made the vow himself. That's not to say he didn't have a vow of his own....