Very cool. However when you swear to uphold the Constitution with your hand on a book full of lies does that not permit a certain degree of lying while fulfilling the duties you swore to uphold?

i never got why people get sworn in on bibles, where's the separation of church and state.

and why bibles why not a book of american history or something like that.

Good point. If you don't believe in the bible, it's no more relevant than placing your hand on MAD magazine. And there's nothing in the Constitution about placing your hand on the Babble, either! It's another of those things (like the pledge and "In God we trust", that seems to hint that non-christians are 2nd class citizens.

Because then they would be swearing on a book of lies.

Who says the Bible is full of lies, you. Who are you? Can you prove they are lies? Just as I do not have physical evidence that there is a God, you do not have physical evidence there is not. 

George Washington

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion, and Morality are indispensable supports.—In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.—The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.—A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity.—Let it simply be asked where is security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.—Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure.—reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.—

When the people who wrote can't get their stories straight and contradict themselves...

Actually, you can also raise your right hand and 'affirm' that your testimony will be 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth', without invocation of a higher power. The idea is not that the court holds God to be binding, but that the court wants the witness to swear an oath the witness feels is binding.

Same thing with politicians. The government feels the oath itself is the binding agent. The symbolism is optional, and chosen by the oath taker, to represent what they feel is binding upon them. As such, no matter how flawed their symbolism may seem, I can't find fault with the concept: providing a mental reinforcement of the seriousness of the oath.

Sadly, so many of them don't truly find anything to be binding upon them.

Perhaps lies is the wrong word. How about misrepresentation, misperception, misconstrued reality, perversion of history, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, delusional, an abomination, malevolent, degenerate, wicked, vicious, immoral, diabolical, or simply evil.

Bibles should be  required to have a warning label on the cover informing the reader it contains, violence, murder, perverse sex, unsubstantiated claims of relevancy and should only be read by someone 18 or older with a stable personality. Further it should read "Warning- The reader is hereby warned the following material has been shown to cause property destruction, violence, murder, war, pogroms, and ethnic cleansing. It is not unknown for readers to subject themselves or others to harm including their own children. Please exercise care in use around children as instability of mothers has been reported where children are murdered to save them from perceived possession by Satan and other mythical entities."

If that is the case then all books, video games, movies, organizations, governments, etc. Should have the same labels.

And it is Mythical in your eyes not everybodies. Stop labeling I could do the exact same. Stating Mythical is antagonistic. That is like me stating not believing in God is Mythical. Whatever labels you want to give theists or their beliefs I can turn around and state the same thing about yours.

George Washigton's farewell address:

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion, and Morality are indispensable supports.—In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.—The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them.—A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity.—Let it simply be asked where is security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.—Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure.—reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.—

Well, technically, there's C)The Bible contains numerous errors, but no-one ever knowingly asserted those errors were true, but IF the Bible contains errors, at some point, someone wrote it, or came up with the stories, so they would know they weren't right.

But basically, yeah. 100% true, contains lies, or contains honest mistakes is pretty much applicable to all statements.

Go for it. Tell me my beliefs are mythical. Lemme spell 'em out for you:

1)I know that I exist in some form, because something must exist to question my existence.

2)I don't know anything beyond that, because I can't conclusively prove that all of my awareness of reality isn't a lie fed to my mind by my senses, or a massive delusion conjured up within my mind.

Now, be prepared for Paisley to jump in here with both feet screaming "AH-HA! YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING!", despite the fact that we've gone around and around many times over 1 being a foundational axiomatic fact, and thus superceding belief, and 2 being an admission of ignorance, and not a claim or assertion of knowledge (ie: a belief).

But please, do demonstrate how you can label that as 'mythical'.

Indeedy! Here, lemme pick 'em out for you!

Any imaginary thing or event, any imagined, invented, or made-up story... is an intentional untruth; a falsehood.

As I said, it need not be malevolent. It need not be a BAD THING. But it's a lie.

Well, the Bible doesn't explicitly state 'This is the Bible, it is the inerrant Word of God', but at the same time, The Bible as such didn't exist at all until the ecumenical councils of the early Christian church. The individual writings in it, however, have been taken to be the inerrant Word of God, and such belief had to have an origin somewhere. So the initial assertion, whenever it was made, still holds as binding. In fact, given that 'The Bible' still technically doesn't exist (there are many different versions, using different translations of different source material), it can be argued that the assertion of the believer is the relevant issue.

Edit to add: Keep in mind, the authors of the tales, when originally composing them (likely in an oral tradition), would have known whether they were composing fiction or not, which, as demonstrated above, is still a lie, though not any indication of malevolence.

Mythical

It would be mythical to not believe in a God.

It is a matter of perspective.

I would probably argue that

Depends on how they were created IMO.  For instance, if a person see's lightening, calls it "god lightening"--meaning, to him, that god's only attribute is seen in lightening.  Tells his son, that is "god lightening."  That son calls it "zeus," just for the sake of shorting the name.  Tells his son, "that is zues."  That son connects certain practices he does with the the arrival of lightening, i.e., an honest mistake that correlation equals causation; says "if I sacrifice, zues won't send lightening."  The last assertion wouldn't be a lie IMO--nor any of them.

If all mythology was created in such a piecemeal way.. it's possible that no one really knew that they were composing fiction or not.

Here we go with another idiot linking atheism to communism.

16th century Spain was a Christian state. The US as the extreme right would like it to be would be a Christian state - read the 1980's book "The Handmaidens Tale" to see what a Christian State would be like.

I am well aware that there are religious states in the Middle East. Why do you want to bring one here?

It seems that all the things that you list as bad "over there" those politicians who are beholden to your side want to make happen here.

We don't need to list them as "Judeo-Christian" laws here. It's a given.

Sharia law is not universally followed in Islamic countries - just the ones that want God to rule them. Does this seem familiar to you? If it doesn't, you don't have a grown-up interest in the news.

A truly "Christian" country would be just as bad as an Islamic one. I'd rather live in a country where none of the laws are based on religion.

Possibly true for religious practices, but not the underlying beliefs, ie: God created the earth in seven days. Athena sprang fully grown and armored from the forehead of Zeus, etc. The 'myths' of any religion have to be created somewhere, not simply aggregate misinterpretations of observed coincidence. The first guy to say 'And THE LORD said "Let there be light", and there was light. And THE LORD looked upon the light and saw that it was good.' was fabricating that whole cloth.

I would stop my communist regime, but I don't have one.

Are you sure? Check under the bed again.

Oh, sure he's lying. He's presenting a falsehood, an invented story. But again, he's not doing it maliciously. He doesn't intend it to harm anyone, just as I'd feel comfortable saying that authors of allegorical tales that became mythology didn't intend to harm anyone. But they're presenting an untrue invention, nonetheless.

The problem comes with awareness. If the audience knows the presentation is untrue, they can either enjoy it for entertainment value, or take the allegory as presenting the message it's supposed to convey. When they don't know it's untrue, then things get difficult, because they often decide that anyone challenging the veracity of the tale is challenging the validity of the tale.

I don't believe that the third human being ever to exist killed the fourth human being ever to exist in fit of pique because God liked Abel's offering better. I strongly doubt the veracity of that story. I do not, however, doubt the validity of the warning the tale conveys: If you murder someone, we will drive you away from our society. (Or, more broadly: If you act out of selfishness and spite, you will lose the benefits that society gives.) It's a perfectly valid lesson, and a good use of allegory. But that doesn't make the story true. Unfortunately, when people make emotional investments into the belief structure built upon the specific tale (as opposed to the lesson of the tale), then when you challenge the veracity of the tale, they feel like you're challenging the validity of it, and through that, the validity of the belief structure they've chosen to live their lives by... which is ironic, because I think that setting aside the myth, the lessons taught by most of those myths are pretty universal ones.

But you are presenting a falsehood. You're just being honest about doing it. But like I said, as long as the audience knows, no harm, no foul.

The events he's portraying are the falsehood: an invented thing. Even if he's portraying actual events, he can't ever be 100% accurate to every motion and timing. But yeah, it's definitely arguable. Otherwise, we couldn't be arguing it! (damn, I'm brilliant... heh)

Expressing false ideas is not equivalent to lying. Honest mistakes aren't lies, nor are fables. Lying is the act of expressing a falsehood with the intent to deceive.