In a cult, there is someone at the top that knows that it is all a scam.
In a religion, that person is dead.

That is true, only if you think it is an unquestionable fact that all religions are scam. :B Perhaps you really believe in what you have just said but it makes you no different then the cult leaders you have mentioned.

If we want to be honest here, the answer is not that all religions are scam or one religion is true... The answer is simply we do not know... Perhaps not yet?..

I once met a devout anglican (who had trained to be a priest but didn't finish) who didn't believe in literally believe in God. He was almost an atheist Christian. To him what was important the metaphors, the values and the rituals.

No offence intended, but that sounds so British. :D Traditions without god(s).

Some things are so clearly metaphorical it seems strange that they are taken in any other way. Only in a lopsidedly materialistic culture would the religious insist that they were historical fact or an atheist/agnostic insist that it is the only way they have meaning.

What do you mean by "lopsidedly materialistic"?
Most atheist don't have a problem with metaphors, but rater when religious people insist their stories are objective facts (ie not metaphors. For example the world really is just 4000 year old).

Yes, greyson, could you elaborate?

@spyman some do (read the beginning of this thread) I did not mean all and as for stories being objective facts that is part of what I was criticizing. So I'm with you on that.

I think the question to ask here is not at what point does religious history (as described in corresponding tomes) become too watered down to justify continued adherence to a given theistic religion/philosophy but whether such history is required for adherence, and if it is, what that says about the merits of that particular religion/philosophy.

First , if I misunderstood what you were getting at dubmdell, I apologize. But in a materialistic society objective reality is given the preponderance of value. Many religious, being part of that culture, believe it as well so the only way they can reconcile religious truths and objective reality is to make them one and the same. Many non-religious have the same preconceptions of objective value and thus find religious texts a pile of rubbish, as many of the events described our fantastical when viewed in that light. It would seem, then, that stepping away from the literal truth of the Bible would be a "watering down" of the faith.
I don't know if that was what you were looking for....

I remember listening to an interview of Karen Armstrong many years back and she was making what I believe was a very interesting and important point. (And one that I'm basically treating as true because she said it - I'm not enough of a literary or religious scholar to evaluate it myself.)

Her argument was that religious books written millennia ago - and in fact all literature written that long ago - were not in fact written to be taken as literal accountings of events. The very concept of written history as a accurate chronological recording of events is itself a relatively modern construct. (Last 500 years maybe.)

The point of recording and remembering great historical events, whether religious or otherwise, was to convey the important themes, morals, and fundamental "truths" of the events. It was to convey the important things one should learn from those events, not to record the literal details of the events.

Her point was reading the Bible (or anything else) as a literal accounting of events is foolish, because the very concept writing it for that purpose would have been foreign to the authors. If the author wasn't writing a document for the purpose of recording a chronology of events, it's foolish for us the reader to read it that way.

That why the Bible (and I'm sure most religious texts) will contain contradictory accounts of important events. (i.e. contradictory accounting of the death of Judas) The author didn't care and likely didn't know what literally happened. It didn't matter. They were simply trying to convey the important things we should learn about the events, not record them for posterity.

I think I remember hearing that.

Dys, there's good evidence of this where authors take the same myth and tell it differently to evoke different ethics and morals (see the Greek tragedians). However, in Christianity, Paul is using the OT "history" as fact (I can cite examples, if I must, but this should be standard knowledge) and the gospels use the lineage described in the OT as fact (even though they differ and Matthew cannot count). So while that argument may work for Judaism, Christianity believes differently.

Grey, yes, you've understood the question. I am not limiting my openness to response to Christianity, but I am supposing we only have TWA as our pagan and the rest are Christian and atheist/ agnostic? Anyway, the point is not so much "how do we reconcile belief with reality" as it is "how much metaphor can we take before we say this is rubbish?" For example, TWA the resident pagan is getting harassed for his beliefs, but what makes his "history" worse than Christian "history?" or if you prefer, what makes his metaphors worse than Christian metaphors? (is this making sense?)

What is OT and TWA? O.o

dub, in assuming they are actual history I would say both of them would be making the same mistake. In so far as metaphors are concerned I would say they would be equally valid though they do seem to have different purpose and, as such, had a different effect on the societies in which they were present. Pagan mythologies were descriptive in that they laid out the way things are where as the current world religions have a more teleological aspect to them in that they refer to a purpose for existence and implied moral imperative. I am not saying this makes either better or worse. It did reflect in the way the faiths interacted. Religious wars in the ancient world were, more or less, unheard of. The existence of one did not threaten the other. We all are, however, aware of religious wars of the contemporary era.

Nebu I'm awefully tired of people making the argument that disbelief in organized religion is the same thing as organized religion. That is patently untrue, as the structure of the beliefs are entirely different.

If A poses to B that, "all magic is just sleight of hand," that does not give B the right to (logically) respond that, "A is a magician," or "A's argument is sleight of hand."

Now, as an agnostic, I'm actually inclined to agree that atheists are overstepping the bounds of logic to go so far as to reject the possibility of the divine, however, the conclusion that "every religious leader is a scam artist or a madman" is a far more reasonable answer than those that religion provides. After all, I don't reject the possibility of flying unicorns either, but I'm not going to split hairs with a rational person who just comes out and says they don't exist.

Has any body on this thread made that argument?

Grey, I'm not really sure what you're trying to get at here. How do religious wars tie into the answer?

Grey, yes. Nebuchandnezzar said that those who have a blanket belief that religious cult leaders are scam artists are no better than the religions they are talking about

It was merely an exploration on how those myths/metaphors effected societies in each of these two distinct times. While it may not relate to the central argument per se it does account for the antagonism that sometimes arises in contemporary times in that world religions today are more judgmental about beliefs and behavior than their ancient counter parts. It was a tangent...sorry.

To be clear, religions aren't judgmental. Certain adherents of religions are judgmental, and honestly, I don't think that adherents today are more or less judgmental than their ancient counterparts, only that this being judgmental manifests itself in different ways (not to say that non-religious people aren't also judgmental in certain cases).

1st Commandment is pretty judgmental.

Gods are not religions, Putin.

The whole point of religion is god, and the god didn't make itself and its commandments.

No, religions are based around a set of tenets, as not all religions have gods, and others have gods but focus on other things.

Yellowjacket, I didn't see the post, and I don't know what his point was, but I'd certainly urge that "as bad as" and "the same thing as" are completely distinct concepts.

The commandments would be a 'set of tenets'. I know of no religion that lacks a deity. Indeed it's sort of a requirement otherwise the word religion (reverence for god(s)) makes no sense.

Well all the commandments are judgmental in they lay out the difference between good and bad behaviors. This is not necessarily wrong. Most people would agree with many of them. But your right, Mario, that certain adherents take this a step further beyond which, some would argue, past the point of what is intended.
"The whole point of religion is god, and the god didn't make itself and its commandments." both of those are judgment calls depending on what you believe. But since all cultures until contemporary times have had a religion and different gods then it follows that some psychological need is involved. It can't be simply control as primitive cultures with very little hierarchical power relationships still possess vibrant religions.

The 1st commandment has nothing to do with good/bad behaviors. It simply declares that other gods are unworthy of worship.