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I am religious and believe in free will

70 (27.6%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

113 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249

[Bohandas]

Regarding the whole Jesus vs. Thor thing, it should ve noted that the Church of the SubGenius teaches that they are actually both the same entity, as are Jehovah and Odin (who is also Amon-Ra). Though this is mainly to get a reaction from people.

[Bohandas]

Pretty much, except for the parts with legitimate allegorical philosphical points and the parts designed to sell books and DEVO albums

EDIT:
Also, identifying a deity with Jesus allows Christians to be drawn in more easily

[Rolepgeek]

Original sin makes everyone irredeemably evil forever, regardless of action.

I get almost exactly the opposite impression, unless you mean 'regardless of action that isn't returning to God'.

When you define Good and God as being the same, yes, it's convenient, but it's also consistent, more or less. Devil and Evil are fairly similar too, in fact.

As for the electrons thing; from what I know of quantum physics, they're never in a single place for longer than literally an instant. Perhaps we will find the Planck-space of time to be the amount of time an electron spends in a single location. And in any case, that's rather missing the point and arguing in bad faith ('well what about this specific instance that technically fulfills your definition's wording without fulfilling it's spirit').

And I only realized after typing that, the irony of arguing in bad faith on a religious thread.

Still, I like where the discussion's gone. Norse mythology is far more intuitive to me than Christian mythology.

I blame fantasy books.

[Orange Wizard]

I would love to see Samson in the Avengers. He killed a thousand Philistines with a donkey skull. How is that not awesome?

[scrdest]

I would love to see Samson in the Avengers. He killed a thousand Philistines with a donkey skull. How is that not awesome?

And cracked a one-liner at the end.

[That Wolf]

Donkey punch?
ass to meet you?
Ive been thinking of making an rpg set within a biblical setting.
I think it would be neat

[scrdest]

Donkey punch?
ass to meet you?
Ive been thinking of making an rpg set within a biblical setting.
I think it would be neat

'With an ass jawbone I made asses of them'.

[Arx]

With the jawbone of an ass, I have made asses of them. Stone cold.

Samson was a bit of an idiot, though.

[That Wolf]

My last name is derived from thor.
The reason norse mythology is more intuitive is cause it doesnt stem away from true humanity, we are all killers and animals and norse mytho is like that christian mythology came later and evolved from it but declared being a humam is wrong and easy to debunk. but a god that came from a comic bovine that came from the abyss is hard to disprove.
Nobody truely owns anything but its a sin to steal?... ok sure sure buddy, sounds like a paranoid bunch of somethings wrote it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

DONT LOOK AT MY WIFE, DONT STEAL MY DAUGHTER OR MY PLOW... hssss... mine all mine

[Orange Wizard]

christian mythology came later and evolved from it

Not the case. In fact, much of what we see as being classical Norse mythology is in fact heavily influenced by Christianity. It wasn't written down much (if at all, I'm foggy on the details) before Christian missionaries arrived, and even then they did the classical Christian thing of commandeering local culture as part of the liturgy to make converting the heathens a little less onerous. We can't even know for sure if stuff like Ragnarok is purely Norse or born from Christian end-times influence.
Course, that's what happens when the only people who can write are heavily biased. History is written by the victor, and all that.

[TempAcc]

Norse myth wasn't even consistent or unified untill christian scholars compiled the exerpts from runestones and folk tradition into what we know today as norse mythology. The Golden Bough, the Edda and etc were all written a long time after worship of pagan deities in scandinavia died down.

I would't say norse mythology is ~more intuitive~ really. It was just built around the social values of the peoples that used it as a guideline for their lives, but had its own share of weirdness and contradictions. Worship of Odin, in fact, was very much counter intuitive in regards to old norse culture. Keep in mind that the peoples we know as "vikings" very much valued manliness and domination through sheer power, which is why Thor was easily the most popular god, since he epitomized strenght and manliness. Odin, on the other hand, despite being Thor's father and the unquestionable leader of the gods, was way more subtle, making constant use of subterfuge and magic (something considered very unmanly by known viking standards, magic was very much the domain of women in old norse culture, and wizards were often considered effeminated), showing himself as meek and inferior when it favoured his plans. In that way, Odin was very much a more powerful, less dickish Loki, a god who was almost universally reviled in norse tradition due to being an effeminated trickster, and was very often the butt monkey of many a tale.

This was considered okay, however, because it was Odin doing it, and not anyone else, a concession that wasn't made to any other god.

Hell, even Thor himself did some questionable things in his adventures with Loki, going as far up to crossdressing, something near unthinkable to your average norse warrior.

In regards to christian morals/the ten commandments, you have to take into consideration that it very much intended as a basic (emphasis on basic) set of rules to maintain a peaceful society. Its intended to work against the natural inclinations of people and make them better. Its even illustrated in the bible just how easy it is for people to fall into idolatry and chaos, as seen in the scene in which Moses comes down from the mountain with the ten commandments and finds his people worshipping a golden bull, doing orgies and all that fun stuff just because he left them to their own devices for a while, even though they had witnessed miracles and listened to Moses before.

[That Wolf]

Isnt Odin the god of war as well as magic and most other things.
He was held in great esteem because of his valhalla ticket and being one of the first 3 gods but to get there you had to die in battle or somesuch. So that could be why wizards were treated lowly, and since magic probably never worked the warriors and farmers would have stayed away from it or be subject to humiliation during mead drinking times.
Women however are chaotic and have a stronger sense of intuition than men and could have a higher 'divination' sucess rate, men being men after all would have respected an old woman to some degree. Times arnt really any different now than they have been and will be.
Manly men will always look down on subtlty.
Stealth on the other hand, people fear a good shadow artist.

If a man wants to wear a dress, let the man wear one!
"Thor.. I see your hammer"

[Cthulhu]

I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out what you're trying to say.

Mosaic law is about exclusion, about establishing who is God's people and who isn't through the ritualized creation of boundaries.  Menstruating women are separate, sins are ritually cast out via scapegoat, customs associated with non-Yahweh tribes are prohibited and new customs like circumcision are created to distinguish Hebrews and Pagans, etc. etc.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

It's like if you invented a nanobot that could give any animal human-level intelligence, human-like vocal cords, and the ability to speak, and you injected said nanobots into a fruit. Then you sat it on the table, told your dog not to eat it, and walked away. Then, when you come back and it's gone, you throw a fit, tell him you only had ONE RULE and he BROKE IT, so that's it, he's OUT! FOREVER! Oh, and you're cursing the whole earth, and the plants, and him too, because you're just that furious. (For simplicity, I didn't try to include two dogs, fig leaves, or a fruit tree, although one expects they would go for the fruit tree just as well and it's just a matter of one dog not keeping the other dog from eating any )

This analogy would work better if you replaced the fruit with cheese. Dogs can easily be commanded not to get fruit, but they'll show A-grade parkour skills to get cheese.

Also:

As for the electrons thing; from what I know of quantum physics, they're never in a single place for longer than literally an instant. Perhaps we will find the Planck-space of time to be the amount of time an electron spends in a single location. And in any case, that's rather missing the point and arguing in bad faith ('well what about this specific instance that technically fulfills your definition's wording without fulfilling it's spirit').

Electrons are in only one space for only one instant when decoherence happens. After that, they're back to existing in a wide variety of spaces, determined by the waveform. Of course, this is only the Copenhagen interpretation, which leaves a lot to be desired.

Also, since people are talking about which religious character they think is the coolest, I think Quetzalcoat is pretty cool. Requirements: butterfly net, hot chocolate, peppers. Personality: the laid-back, relatively peaceful one of his pantheon, but still capable of severe badassery when needed. Looks: ridiculously adorable (look at the infamous happy thread snake picture (snaek) if you are foolish enough to disagree). All he asks for is the death of members of the horrible abomination that is Lepidoptera.

[Rolepgeek]

So what does everyone think of Austin 3:16?

My favorite biblical passage, personally.