R & R Ninja or any of the true believers,
Most of you just keep proclaiming that you believe. I don't doubt that. Why don't you dicuss some of the questions I asked a little more specifically?
It will be fun
Now what gave you the idea that I believe? maybe I just spent 12 years being taught in Catholic schools and know the rules & procedures like the back of my own hand, while at the same time becoming so enraged at the school of forced indoctrination that I rebeled and have spent my life as a member of a Satanic cult. Or maybe I just gave up and became an Agnostic after the "run over puppy" episode. Or maybe I just read the back of a
Hosties cereal box. Maybe I'm a member of some militant alien group (like the Raelians) and use my knowledge of a "normal" religion to blend-in with you simple country-folk.
But if you insist......
Why are humans so special?
We are the only terrestrial species with the mental capacity required to support a belief system. I am currently unaware of any religion established by cats or dogs. Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal (assuming you aren't a creatiuonist) did leave some ritual-like trinkets for us to find 40,000 years later, but we kinda killed them all and never got to write down any ancient corn dances.
I'll ask the question again. If you believe in god, do you also believe in Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth fairy? Why not?!?!?!?!?
Santa, aka. St. Nicholaus is a Catholic saint and Catholics are supposed to believe in his work, the red-suited commercial bastardization of Saint Nick is largely a product of the Coca-Cola company. The Easter Bunny is a six foot tall rabbit thats craps milk chocolate, what kind of retard would believe that. I've never heard a plausible backstory for the tooth fairy, and don't remember believing it as a child, so I can't explain that one either.
If a lie is 2000+ years old and billions have believed in it, does it make any more true?
No. What happened happened. However no two people can ever remember anything the same way, for an example, watch the excellant Kurosawa film
Rashomon
As far as the Jericoh(sp) reference I think its especially dangerous to treat the bible as a history book. Do you think that really happened?
Hmmm.... loud noise and a wall collapsed. You think maybe some pro-God copyman perhaps chalked-up an unrelated earthquake to "divine justice". I bet you $20 that evangelists 500 years from now will tell the story of Jane the abortion protestor who prayed for an angry God to smite some sinners, and how that exact same day a Hurricane destoryed New Orleans and killed all of its evil homosexual/sinful/abortioning/Satanic inhabitants. Sombody somewhere prays to God at exactly the same time something happens anywhere in the world and thus it can be attributed to "The handiwork of God".
I think the bible used as a fictional peice of literature is valuable. It can teach how to treat the world in a generally good way. It should be no more special than any other fictional work for illuminating the human condition.
It doesn't matter if you pray to a bearded old bodybuilder in the clouds, a flying spaghetti monster, sentient trees, or a space alien with a cephalopod for a head. The point is that the Bible lays out the rules for a working society, wrapped in creation myths, superstitions, and everything else needed to answer the unanswerable questions thatmankind might ask himself when he has time to think about it. Yes science may have proven that the world is more than 8000 years old, it may prove the sun is the center of the universe, it may even prove mankind evolved from KY*Jelly, the fact of the matter is that 99.9% of the world will live and die never needing to know enough science beyond "wash your hands" and "cook chicken all the way". Christianity, and any other religion teach enough to get people through an entire lifetime alive, and give them something to think about while the chickens cooking.
How bout the religion of the Tourtise and the Hare?
Aesopians