Really Rational?[moved to AvT]
Offline I'd like to paint the big picture here. This site is called 'rational,' in response to God and theism. The fact is that belief in God is in fact irrational, but wouldn't the One who created us and is larger and more powerful than anything we could imagine transcend all 'rational' thought?
This, of course, is a hard concept to swallow, and why not? The problem with most disbelief is that we often try to make God 'believable' and put Him in a box. He is often judged by man's laws and restrictions, which reduce him to an unbelievably lower level than what He actually is.
Another major cause of disbelief is the fact that it liberates people of guilt and judgement. If there's no God, that's an amazing convenience because there's no reason for behavior modification or following any kinds of guidelines. Though most people will willingly follow the laws of an institution or state, the laws required of those who faithfully follow God and His Word are much harder to believe and follow.
This is by no means a judgement on those who don't believe in God. It's only our own selfishness and sinful nature that causes us to refuse God's existence. God can show us the Truth, but we have to be open to It.
- Login to post comments
This epistemological claim is utter nonsense.
Logic completely underlies the way we think, is therefore completely universal, and acts with total, structured constraint whether we like it or not.
Logic is not, repeat, not a way of knowing. It is a construct which is necessary for ways of knowing. As todangst pointed out, little axioms are not running around existing in some extant mind, or waiting to be discovered the way we do empirical propositions!
This misunderstanding causes people to consider logic as existing alongside other ways of knowing. In reality, logic is an intrinsic construct which is extremely pervasive, probably even more so than actual physical constraints! That confusion leads some people to dichotomize ways of knowing such that they say things like “I did not reason it, I knew through emotion”. Whilst this is entirely possible, and indeed, an everyday occurances, there is no corollary which says the proposition is “beyond logic”. Indeed, as we shall soon see, such is an impossibility! In reality, the construct of logic is a priori to epistemology. Also, logic is not an empirical construct. Obviously, to comprehend the ideas and to have thoughts which have their base in logical construct requires experience, but as Kant pointed out, whilst all knowledge comes from experience, not all knowledge is derived from experience. We don't gather any knowledge via logic, we gather knowledge through our experience, our intuition, our emotion, our senses, and anteceding all of this is the structure without which our thinking process would make no sense...logic.
From the foundations of logic come the tautologies, the axioms. These are wholly a priori to proof and epistemology, because epistemology cannot exist without them. From them we construct all statements in logic, all propositions, all first-order statements, all valid propositions and syllogisms are necessarily derived from tautology. Furthermore, these tautologies are intuitive. We never think about them, but our reality would fundamentally break down without them! Since they are so utterly intuitive and we almost never think about them when they are being employed (if we had to stop and consider every proposition by deriving its tautological foundations, our brains would lock up and die of oxygen starvation very quickly), we find that all of our ways of knowing, including emotion, language and empiricism necessarily only make sense because of these tautologies. But the tautologies themselves are not ways of knowing, and cannot be considered in relation to the ways of knowing that thence derive from them.
This being the case, it should be rather obvious to point out that when such people make the silly claim that their belief cannot be reasoned, they are not making an epistemological claim that was derived from anything, but rather they are making a simple accusation: That their interlocutor is thinking too much. Obviously this claim is not particularly suprising coming from faith heads but it is still an irritation. The claim that God is beyond reasoned discourse is a nonsense epistemological claim which simply discourages critical reflection and therefore is all but certainly a poor patch to cover a vapid claim.
This is begging the question.
Specifically, if the theist cannot demonstrate God exists, more specifically, that their God exists, then they have no epistemic justification for saying an atheist “cannot be moral” or has “no reason to do bad thing X”, because they, in turn, have failed to justify why they are following anything more than arbitrary rules which are man-made, like laws, save that they have been projected onto the illusory notion of a deity for the purpose of elevating them in the minds of followers. Unless they can specifically demonstrate that these tenets which they claim to have come from a deity which they claim are the reason inhibiting them from being amoral, actually come from a being such as God, then they have no epistemic justification for making the claim that an atheist should be amoral because they follow arbitrary rules, specifically because they have failed to demonstrate why their rules are anything more than arbitrary, they just assert it.
If they assert that they have “faith” that the rules are non-arbitrary, they are merely begging the question…
If not (ie they cannot demonstrate it), they are shooting themselves in the foot by crying moral relativism, specifically because the word relativism in this context refers to rules and such being arbitrary, relative only from culture to culture. But in turn, unless it is demonstrated that the proclaimed rules are anything more than arbitrary, ie a proof of the assertion that these rules come from a source which we have a necessary obligation to obey, then all they are doing is engaging in a psychological projectionalist defence, because they are taking arbitrary rules, and elevating them to higher standard by means of an assertion which simply reflects the cultural Zeitgeist…which is kinda the definition of moral relativism. It would be like if I decided to worship The Complete Works of Shakespeare as having been written by God and thence that should be obeyed, and in turn proclaiming that anyone who doesn’t believe this is simply following arbitrary rules which are arbitrary because they were not written by God…see the problem? I’m trying to justify rules which, under the definition de facto assumed for the argument, are “arbitrary”, and then attempting to justify them in an absolutist sense by making an assertion which, well…is arbitrary, because it has no justification. Nearly every culture in history has done this, Christians and their ilk are no exception. Its second-order relativism. There is no better way to implant laws and a culture's moral principles than to insist that it is absolute because it has divine decree behind it. Thence, whining that your opponent subscribes to "moral relativism" because they do not believe in a divine lawgiver is to betray a fatal flaw: Second-Order Relativism. They constitute merely one of countless sets of decrees validated by the assertion that they are divine. But none of these assertions hold water, so, in that sense, the theist is appealling to (savour the irony)...relativism. Epistemilogical relativism is not a justification for a moral absolute. Its a non sequitur. Specifically (it's a Special Pleading fallacy.
Do you know this or are you guessing?
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
I was a Christian (Roman Catholic flavor) for years. This includes years, even decades, after the discovery of my sexual orientation. The main reason I had for continuing on with religion was my desire to make certain that I was *not* making excuses for myself. Think about it: if God really did exist, more or less as Christians and/or Muslims say, then there certainly won't be any escaping the consequences of conscious self-delusion. So regardless of your third paragraph, I was specifically *avoiding* precisely the kind of "convenience" you speak of. I became an atheist because my religion collapsed around me. The, for lack of a better phrase, articles of faith kept being disproven--when my efforts were intended to demonstrate them as being true.
As for your first issue, yes, if God existed, then he would be greater than human thought. But here is precisely the problem: allegedly, he left evidence of himself, so that not only would people believe in his existence, but that they would also seek out the best way to relate to him (i.e., which doctrines are to be believed, how is worship properly conducted, etc.) When these are examined, they invariably collapse under their own weight. (This is the voice of experience talking.)
So the question to you is: since you are obviously a Theist of some sort (and your handle indicates some kind of Christian,) to what specific theology do you suscribe? Baptist? Pentecostal? Something else? You tell me that, and I'll do whatever work I can to show you the collapse of your own beliefs. It's the best way I know to save you a lot of grief.
Conor
________________________________________________________________________________________
"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII
"But it should!"--Me
Nope, it's the lack of evidence.
geezz, why don't the religious trust god ?
Damn sad it is , fear not friends ....
I find just the opposite to be true. If there is no god, then there is no 'apologize to the universe and be forgiven, slate wiped clean, just before you die'. If there is no god, no afterlife, then all we have is now, and it is even more important to be a good and moral person, because your guilt is immediate, and your chances to be forgiven for your offenses end with the person whom you have harmed leaves your life, by death or other means.
No god means there's no safety net. You get one shot, don't fuck it up.
And this... wow. This demonstrates a really telling mindset from the poster, and is one of the things that worries me the most about proponents of a deity and an afterlife.
If your reason for 'behavior modification' is 'God', then all of your virtue and all of your goodness are lies. You aren't being a good and moral person, you're being a scared child who obeys daddy not because he understands the rules and agrees they're right, but because he's afraid of getting spanked. You're being good because you want the reward at the end, and want to avoid punishment. Just like Santa Claus, it's a subversion of virtue in favor of bribery. Do what God wants, and you'll get the manilla envelope full of eternal payoff. Don't, and he'll break your knees for all time.
Examine your motivations for being good. Examine your motivations for virtue. I choose to live a moral life because I believe that moral actions are their own reward, that being good and virtuous lets me look at myself in the mirror and meet my own eyes without shame or worry. I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. I hurt people... but I try my best... and I do it because I want to try my best.
What about you? Why do you hold to the morals you follow? Fear? Greed? I hope that you find your answer to be deeper than the kindergarten-level motives you've presented here.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
I find it interesting how often people treat disbelief as an active state. "The problem with disbelief", "major cause of disbelief". These statement gives some kind of quantity to disbelief, and I think that's probably the wrong term.
It's a lack of belief. I don't acitvly go out of my way to not believe in god, I just don't see any reason TO believe. There's no proof, no evidence, no nothing that would indicate a reason TO believe something.
I find it a gross error to assume that there is something specifically that acts towards disbelief rather than a lack of something. I have a lot of somethings that contribute to my opposition of religion, but it is hte lack of anything at all that contributes to my inability to believe in a god.
I'm kind of going off topic, but I just hate always seeing disbelief being seemingly phrased as a quantitative state.
Once again, your thinking is based on man's own laws and limits. With all due respect, your following paragraphs are filled with even more nonsense. Now, I may not understand everything you say, but it appears that you view logic as the authority over all things when, in fact, logic is simply what we often think as the right answer, or the one that makes sense based on what we know.
Also, atheism is a much more easier path than belief in God. This isn't some way for Christians to feel 'better' as in being more moral than others. This is our way of life as a result of our belief, faith and gratitude. It is gratitude because it is, in fact, Christ who saves us and not ourselves. True Christianity does not teach that our actions and lack of sin that saves us. True Christianity is defined by God's amazing Love and Grace brought about with Christ's death and resurrection. The acceptance and belief in this event is the only thing that brings about Salvation. The rest comes from gratitude to God. True Christians obey God because they want to, not because they have to.
This brings about another topic. Many people don't want to believe in God because they get the wrong ideas from people who claim to be Christian but don't have true faith and have the wrong idea about God. Atheists often think that God is a 'Sin Cop' or someone who wants to take our fun away. God is not a 'killjoy', He wants to bring us joy; the joy of new life in Him and many people refuse to see it.
The Christian life is certainly a hard one, mainly because it comes with persecution and because it causes one to ignore his own needs and human nature.
NOTE: Conor, I don't know what happened to you and your faith, but maybe you can clarify what you mean by 'collapsed around me' and perhaps I could help you.
Also, I don't consider myself belonging to a denomination. I follow and worship God according to His Word, and not according to what any particular church tells me. That leads to following religion, not God.
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
-Jesus Christ
Then dont respond, if you dont understand, learn.
Later, AdamTM
- I'm the guy that gets called when the other guy is not around-
- I didnt feel the love! ...Wait...was that something? ...no, no its gone -
TWATWAFFLE FOREVER
BM,
If you do things morally for yourself, your reasoning is far off. Being moral or good for that good, butterfly feeling inside you get when you do something is just another form of selfishness. Even someone who donates his entire fortune to charity so he can feel good about himself is being selfish. As I said, belief in Jesus and the resurrection is all that saves us. The rest is just gratitude. He gave His life even though He was sinless, so we should give our lives because we are sinful.
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
-Jesus Christ
/mod AdamTM
for the record, doublepost deleted
How is doing things because YOU don't want to be sent to hell or YOU want to go to heaven less selfish than doing things for the bettement of society because you and the society will benefit?
It makse sense that you would use Jesus' "sacrifice" as the reason why you do good deeds. He gave up absolutely nothing and got the maximum reward.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Being good to others is self beneficial. If it wasn't, no one would help others. He gave his life? He is immortal and knew that heaven is a better place. That's the problem with believing in heaven, nothing here matters because the afterlife is better.
Jesus didn't give up shit, he created the a shitty world and wanted out of it and back into his own superior way of life which is the afterlife in Heaven.
What a jackass to create a testing ground so he can make humans and send the vast majority of them to hell. What a selfish dick to not forgive everybody regardless of what they did.
But would you not say that you are good so you can go to heaven? We all do good things to benefit ourselves, theist or not.
Jesus didn't give anything. See the following thread -
http://www.rationalresponders.com/would_you_go_on_the_cross
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
And Jesus sacrificed what, exactly? Even if we accept the entirety of the gospels as, well, gospel truth, then he endured a particularly painful and humiliating form of torment, but the essence of what makes a sacrifice a sacrifice is the loss of something that cannot be replaced. That is why animal sacrifices had values: because material objects can be replaced, but life, once taken, is gone. The very concept of the Resurrection renders the 'sacrifice' moot: what was lost was restored, and more importantly, as presented, it was known ahead of time that it would be restored.
Abraham's test where God told him to sacrifice Isaac was valid precisely because he had no idea that he would get a reprieve. So, an all-knowing, eternal entity that sacrifices itself to itself and then restores its own life... that's not a sacrifice.
Now, if you go ahead and toss out the idea of Jesus Christ as divinity (an assertion never made by JC in the gospels), instead casting him as a faithful servant willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, then it gains meaning. But then you're denying a central tenet of Christianity, now aren't you?
As for me being 'selfish', is this the part where I'm supposed to be supposed to be shocked and shaken at the revelation, and go ahead and do a huge amount of soul-searching only realize how right you are and that I've been wasting my life? Got news for ya, bunky, I was raised Catholic, attended religious school for a number of years, and at one point bought into the whole deal. But in the end, I've found enough to make me decide that no, I don't believe it. I don't actively disbelieve, I simply have no beliefs in any direction.
I've never denied that I'm acting out of self-interest. I challenge you to admit the same: you're doing it for your own self-interest. The difference is, in my case, the action is its own reward. I seek nothing beyond the ability to continue to act morally. You, on the other hand, are hoping for an eventual reward, and until you can be honest enough to admit that your actions are fundamentally motivated by self interest, that, in my opinion, greatly cheapens your moral standing.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
Oh my parrot wants to show off, I'll keep it short .....
It is the atheists who will bring peace to the world, if that's possible. I consider Jesus as an early pioneer of atheist thought, and look what the fundy's did with that ...... ask a wise buddhist. ( mine
If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that's okay, he's God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality, decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching the opposite. Dennis McKinsey
I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
- Bertrand Russell
Incurably religious, that is the best way to describe the mental condition of so many people. - Thomas Edison
All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete possession of their intellectual powers.
- Mikhail Bakunin
Man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. -Albert Einstein
It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. -Carl Sagan
"Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him [Jesus] by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being". -Thomas Jefferson
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."
Thomas Jefferson,
.... abstracting what is really [Jesus'] from the rubbish in which it is buried, [is like separating] the diamond from the dung hill… Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Short
as written in the newspaper back then.... regarding Tom Jefferson
Surely, Christians, your cause must be growing desperate, when, to sustain it, your needs must claim for its support so bitter an enemy as Thomas Jefferson -- a man who affirmed that he was a Materialist; a man who recognized in your religion only "our particular superstition," a superstition without "one redeeming feature;" a man who divided the Christian world into two classes -- hypocrites and fools; a man who asserted that your Bible is a book abounding with "vulgar ignorance;" a man who termed your Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, a "hocus-pocus phantasm;" a man who denounced your God as "cruel, vindictive, and unjust;" a man who says that your Savior was "a man of illegitimate birth;" a man who declared his disciples, including your oracle, [born again torcherer murderer bible] Paul, to be a "band of dupes and impostors," and who characterized your modern priesthood as "cannibal priests" and an "abandoned confederacy" so against public happiness.
I have examined all the known superstitions of the Word, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the world ... The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind ... to filch wealth and power to themselves. [They], in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ. Thomas Jefferson
"Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus." (All references not listed here, can be found in Christianity Betrayed) Thomas Jefferson
"No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus." George Bernard Shaw
Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins ... and you will have sins in abundance. I would not dare to dishonor my Creator's name by [attaching] it to this filthy book [the Bible]. Thomas Paine
John Adams, the country's second president, was drawn to the study of law but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he found among the lawyers 'noble and gallant achievments" but among the clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces".
"The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean; I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again this side of the grave." Mark Twain
okay , that's enough .....
Christians might enjoy, Atheists for Jesus http://www.atheists-for-jesus.com/index.php
Atheism Books.
I can't believe any of you can say that Jesus did not sacrifice. He was whipped, spit on, humiliated, carried His cross and suffered even more for six hours on the cross. Dragged and beaten, he thought of nothing but love for those who persecuted Him. He was even abandoned by those closest to Him. Thought the truth is debated, most believe that Christ spent those three days in Hell, which is as bad as an eternity. Christ gave His life and so much more even though He was blameless.
Don't ever tell me that Christ didn't give a sacrifice.
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
-Jesus Christ
Christ didn't give a sacrifice.
Christ didn't exist.
Then answer the question - what did Jesus lose?
He supposedly went on the Cross knowing that he would rise again in about 3 days... ok, didn't lose his life.
He supposedly came down from heaven and relinquished some of his Godhood. Afterwards, he returned to heaven and got that Godhood back...ok, no loss there.
He knew that if he "died" on the cross (knowing he wouldn't stay dead), millions of people would build a religion around the event...ok, nothing but gain there.
If I got that kind of deal, I'd go on the Cross in a heartbeat because I'd be sacrificing nothing and gaining so much more.
I know Gibson made a really nice snuff film that made you feel like Jesus actually did something but that film wasn't even Biblical, let alone close to the facts.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Firstly, if you don't understand, you shouldn't have responded, and second, if you don't understand, you cannot accuse me of nonsense.
Now, if you would be so kind and address my arguments instead of whining...
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Again, I don't deny that he suffered, but that's not the same thing.
Nonsense. a)the jewish religion at the time had no concept of 'hell'. When first-century writers referenced anything, they used 'hades', referring to the greek concept of a general 'place where the dead go', not 'tartarus', the hell-analogue. b)even in Christian tradition, the dead *sleep* as per Revelations. "Hell", or more properly, Gehenna (the fire that burns for an age) does not exist yet. It will not exist until the Judgement, at which point The Beast and those who lived selfish lives (note: NOT those who did not believe in Christ, but those who did not feed the hungry, clothe the destitute, shelter the homeless) will be cast into the Fire for a thousand years, and then destroyed entirely. Until that time, the dead sleep, awaiting Judgement. Until that time, there is no "Hell", and no eternal reward.
No, that's just it. He didn't give his life. He knew he'd rise, unless you're prepared to deny the divinity of Christ. And if he knew he would rise, if he knew he would continue beyond the pain and suffering, then how is that any different than taking a three day nap?
Christ, if divine, made no sacrifice. He gave up nothing he could not immediately regain, indeed, he knew beforehand that he would regain it more or less immediately (what's 3 days, compared to the entire scope of time?). It's like me giving you a stick of gum, knowing you're about to buy a pack and give me a stick right back. What am I sacrificing?
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
I'll quote Todangst from his brilliant article first:
Now I'll have my say. Three days, huh? Some sacrifice. And how is it that it's the same as eternity when he's now apparently in heaven? He didn't die, he's still alive, just like the song says, "he's alive, he's alive and i'm forgiven"....Jesus sacrificed nothing. We all are abandoned by those close to us, we all suffer pains. Once again I'll quote Todangst:
Now tell us what it is that Jesus sacrificed, and I'll give you some serious respect. For now though, the error in your logic still stands.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
Jesus Freak, you said, "If you do things morally for yourself, your reasoning is far off. Being moral or good for that good, butterfly feeling inside you get when you do something is just another form of selfishness."
You're right about it being another form of selfishness; however, I think you're wrong when you say the reasoning is off. Morality necessarily involves selfishness. If you remove selfishness from the equation, there's no possible justification for doing something or not doing something. Ethics is primarily concerned with the attainment of happiness in others as well as in one's self and the attainment of happiness in one's self necessarily involves helping others attain happiness. As Baron d'Holbach once said, "In short, man should learn to know, that happiness is simply an emanative quality formed by reflection; that each individual ought to be the sun of his own system, continually shedding around him his genial rays; that these, re-acting, will keep his own existence constantly supplied with the requisite heat to enable him to put forth kindly fruit."
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!
Sorry, jesusFREAK, but I'm not buying the whole "I don't have a religion" line. Anybody's "faith" (if that is the term you prefer,) has *content.* In other words, sooner or later, you get around to saying that on topic X, the Bible means Y. For example, most people who on some level believe the Bible believe that it says (among other things,) that Jesus is divine. A few do not believe this. What I am asking you for is *your* *understanding,* at least in the basics, of what the Bible means. In this sense, every Christian certainly has religion, and at least loosely, a "denomination," (in the sense of a group of like-minded folks who worship together.) So, are you, say, an Evangelical Protestant?
Sorry, but it just isn't enough to say "according to the Bible/God's Word. *All* Christians, Catholic and otherwise, think that they do this. The fact that there is spectacular disagreement among these Christians is what the intra-Christian arguments are all about.
As for what happened to me personally...well...that's a *very* long story. The broad outline of it would be that in high school, I became very convinced of a fairly conservative understanding of Catholicism. In college, I majored in theology in an effort to deepen my faith, and instead I became disturbed by what my own theology courses were teaching. All through this time, and even subsequently, I had the occasional run-in with Evangelicals who thought that I needed to stop being Catholic, invariably for very poor reasons. I more-or-less abandoned theology to enter the Navy, where I began a period of intense Bible study, the better to answer the Evangelicals who would be (and did) cross my path. This Bible study led me to become outraged because (so I thought at the time,) Evangelicals, in the name of trying to save my soul were in fact (so I thought) trying to condemn it. In retrospect, I think I spent all of my anger here; my subsequent steps just did not have any anger that I recall attached to them. Part of the way I expressed this was to join a Catholic-Fundamentalist debate list. (It always struck me as odd that the Fundamentalists on the list didn't seem to have much to say about the Bible notes I posted.) Of course, I continued researching, eventually coming across some information that eventually led me to reject Catholicism. For a brief while, I thought of joining Judaism...but slowly came to the conviction that I just didn't really believe (at the time) in anything that rejected Jesus. Which left me with a problem: if Christianity is true, where is Christ's Church? I had already found Evangelicalism to be unbiblical, and Roman Catholic Christianity to be false on even its own terms, so...what? My mind raced through the possiblities: Eastern Orthodoxy can only justify the operation of the Pentarchy through historical happenstance, and besides, *every* idea that early Christianity rejected as heresy got started in Eastern Christianity. Anglicanism was the church founded on divorce (for which, see Lk 16:18 and Mal 2:16.) My earlier research on the Bible had led me to reject such basic Protestant doctrines as sola Scriptura, and sola fide, so even mainline Protestantism was out. I reasoned that if the Church did somehow go "off the rails" then only someone who literally speaks on behalf of God--a prophet--could set things right. So I briefly joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Trouble is, I ran into the same sorts of, ahem, discrepancies between official doctrine on the one hand, and Church history on the other that I ran into with the Catholic Church. The major difference was, that where the Latter-Day Saints were concerned, I only needed one or two such instances to see that that road led to the exact same place.
For the longest time, I kept a small hope that these difficulties would somehow be resolved. That hope faded day by day. What now seems obvious--that religion is a sham--slowly dawned on me. Even then, I still didn't identify as an atheist, because I still believed that I was not quite capable of rejecting the divinity of Jesus. However, when I got home from the Navy, I did something which, in retrospect, may well be the most atheistic thing I've ever done: I threw into the trash most of my Bibles, almost all of the Bible notes I could find, and all of my conservative Catholic apologetics books. (I kept some stuff in case I needed to document something, and a couple of things were kept by sheer accident--but what I kept was nothing compared to what I had.)
It was only with time, more reading, and eventually encountering this website that I began to call myself an atheist. While I haven't kept track of just how much time was involved, I *do* know that my deconversion is quite recent--a matter of weeks at most, and not very many weeks, at that. So far, no looking back. Although I'm sure you will be skeptical of this, jesusFREAK, I personally feel like a new man. So with all due respect...I don't think I need your help. I think you need mine. I think you need to stop and take a good, hard, look at the Bible's unsavory passages (Ex 21:17, 2 Kng 2:23-24 Hos 13:16 and Rom 9:15-22 are good places to start.) Bear in mind that *all* the Bible is said to come from God, and that neither you nor anyone else gets to edit it (for which, see Matt 5:17 and Rev 22:18-19.) So, in other words, you are effectively commanded *by* *God* to stone children who talk back, consider being eaten alive by bears to be a just punishment for a mild insult, regard God as good and loving even when he deliberately causes pregnant women to be ripped open and babies to be "dashed to pieces;" you must even accept that those who go to Hell in the afterlife were created specifically for this by...the God of love. And that's just the tip of the biblical iceberg.
I hope that someday you have the same realization that I did: namely, that Christianity (and every other religion, as well,) is unworthy of your faith, your time, and your efforts.
Conor
__________________________________________________________________________________________
"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII
"But it should!"--Me
Just to interject: This simple fact is why the 2005 statement by the Archbiship of Canterbury expressing the Church's official disapproval of Prince Charles' divorce was so damn funny. "Maybe we exist to approve of the monarch's divorce, but you're not King yet!"
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
Yeah jesusFREAK41, because doing good so your invisible Sky daddy won't send you to hell is much better than doing good because you want to improve the world around you.
So how is that a sacrifice?
Speaking of "sacrifice"
http://russellsteapot.com/comics/2007/martyr-con-07.html
rofl
I can't try to reply to all your posts individually, so Ill try my best to do so in one post.
It seems a lot of you are saying that Christ didn't sacrifice anything because he came back to life just a few days later. Funny coming from you, actually, but it seems Atheists are acknowledging the Resurrection, which is an example of Divine power. The point is, Christ, in fact, did NOT know he would come back to life. As far as He knew, death on the cross was going to be the end for Him. Though He was God, he was also a man, a very nervous man at that (He prayed to God not long before His death, asking Him to "take this cup" from Him, meaning His Death). Now, though His pain may have not been the worst the world had ever seen(though He did suffer in agony), He still was a perfect man who paid a sinner's debt.To be realistic, no one knows how much He suffered. Do realize that Christ had the weight of the world's sin as he died. The Bible tells us that when Jesus was stabbed after His death, blood and water came pouring out of His body. Modern- day physicians conclude that this is a result of a ruptured heart. We're talking about every sin ever committed by every person that ever existed. That's a whole lot of sin. Enough to have a physical effect on somebody. That's what Christ died for. And he DID DIE. It wasn't like "OK, I'm going away for a while, but I'll be back in three days." No, He went up on the cross, died, and was dead. As dead as anybody ever was. Like I said, the wide- held belief is that He was in Hell(Nobody knows for sure, its never outlined in the Bible. Also, this is held by scholars of the Bible, not the people then, as someone said). Also like I said, three days in Hell would seem like an eternity, because there's no concept of time in Hell. Like I've said, you try to use reason and logic around this too much. Our concept of the way things "should be" does not contain God's Power. Nothing does. He's unbelievable, and that is what makes Him so great.
Conor, my point in saying I don't have a religion wasn't exactly to be taken literally. You see, a lot of people think of religion as going to church, following rules, and simply going through the motions. Religion is usually seen as more like something you do sometimes and try to cooperate with. Christianity is more about a relationship with Christ, rather than following rules. Also, I am surprised that one who spent so much time in the Bible does not realize that those passages in the Old Testament are in fact OLD. Though God does not change, His people do change. those specific outlines were for God's people back then. There was no Christ back then, and therefore, no salvation. After the Resurrection, the laws of those who followed God were turned upside- down. As for the encounter of Elijah with the youths that cursed him, the circumstances of the event aren't exactly clear. The children may have had malicious intent, and God's judgement on those who are against His people have always been harsh. Also, your problems with Protestantism don't seem to have merit. Interpretation of the Bible can be done by an individual, of course through the help of God to discern the real meaning. My guess is you didn't incorporate the help of God in your 'search for answers,' so your interpretation and understanding weren't exactly complete. And, salvation is by faith alone, as I mentioned earlier. As it says in Ephesians, "For it is by GRACE you have been saved, through FAITH, NOT BY WORKS, so that no man can boast." I would attribute your failure to understand to your lack of faith in God to assist you in interpretation of the Scriptures, and the need for absolute, undisputed truth.
This brings me to a point I should've brought up in my first post. Most people don't believe because they have a never- ending need for EVIDENCE. Faith and Christianity is not a science. There is never going to be irrefutable evidence either way; that's why God is accepted by FAITH. Easy faith at that. Just stick with me here, Ill explain. The Bible tells us that the universe is evidence of God's existence. Everything, the mountains, the ocean, the very stars in the sky are results of God's presence and creation. Now, you can say that this was the source of the 'Big Bang' or whatever, but what happened before that? Where did that stuff come from? I'm sorry, but believing in a God I can't see seems so much easier than believing everything just 'happened.' That's why I call it easy faith. Besides that, God works in peoples' lives every day. I have heard hundreds of testimonies of those who have been changed by God's extant presence. I know a guy who was deep in the Catholic faith (not saying that Catholics are completely wrong, but in this guy's church they were) whose live was missing a huge part. He talked to me about converting to Christianity, and now he lives for Christ. I heard a story about a man who slaughtered Christians on behalf of this sort of Muslim secret police(Much like Saul of Tarsus). On one raid, he found a Bible and started reading it with the intentions of using the texts to show how Christianity was wrong. Instead, God moved his heart and the man converted himself. Unfortunately, his conversion was discovered and was soon tortured and put to death. Still, he trusted God to his death. These are just a couple of stories of the amazing way that God works.
I pray that you all will be open to the truth, accept Christ and see who He truly is.
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
-Jesus Christ, who did live and sacrifice His perfect life
Also, as another note, just because you don't understand a few short passages of the Bible and they don't seem to make sense to you, you can't discount the entire record of the Bible. Like I said it takes the intuition and assistance of God and many times reading over and over passages, and even then you may not get it. That's where FAITH comes in.
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
-Jesus Christ
jesusFREAK41 wrote "I can't believe any of you can say that Jesus did not sacrifice. He was whipped, spit on, humiliated, .... "
Not according to a couple billion? muslims.
Are you really sure about your claim ?
.... never mind, I forgot you have "Faith".
btw, I am a jesus/buddha/krishna/confucius freak
these gods I also worship, all others are imposters! Notice 'god of abe' ain't in the list .... he better not be anyway .....
Atheism Books.
Fail. Jesus is part of the triune of God. God is all-knowing. Therefore Jesus is all-knowing. Therefore Jesus knew he wasn't really going to die.
Now...don't give us crap about actually believing your fairy tale. We're saying all this for the sake of argument.
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
He did not sacrifice anything because he had nothing to lose. If Heaven exists and he knew he would go there, then there was no sacifice because his afterlife is greater than that of his actual life. Much like a suicider bomber. He is not 'sacrificing' his current life, because he believes he is being rewarded. It is not a sacrifice if you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Actually it's just trying to show that your fairytale is not only false, but it doesn't even make sense if it was to be evaluated.
So much for omnipotence and omniscience.
He didn't know of that there was an afterlife? That's just silly.
He prayed to himself to kill himself? God wasn't a very good at creating himself in human form if he had to beg himself...oh fuck it this is just wacky.
God was a pretty big dick according to the Old Testament. He surely had to be the biggest sinner of them all.
I masterbated a world of sin out the other night. I experienced "Le Petite Morte" or "the little death" I died for the wold's sins too.
Um, you believe in an afterlife right? So that means jack shit since death is just a doorway to much longer and more significant afterlife. What is the death of a 30 year old life when compared against the 6000 years of the world before it?
Depends who you ask I suppose. But a lot of sects of Christianity don't believe in the concept of Hell at all. The fact that he was there is pretty meaningless considering Lucifer couldn't keep him there. And really by the time he was in Hell was he back to being full-on God or was he still the nerfed version of God?
I love this next line.
Hahahahaha holy god that's funny.
It is great. The greatest joke ever told.
I got bored of the rest of your crap. Been said a million times and doesn't address anything. You wont' convince anyone with this trash. The fact that you believe it should be seen as nothing less than a shame that you are wasting your life, energy, time, and precious brain power on this pitiful excuse of a reality.
You have latched on to one interprestation from a faith re-hashed thousands of times over thousands of years. You don't base it on original texts, on the oldest interprestations, you base it on the one that suits you best. Your entire faith is based on what makes you feel good and not what is real, or could even be interpreted as real within the confines of your own religious history.
Even if you were to believe all of it, you clearly are going to ignore the chunks of history that were chosen to be removed. What about the gospels that were removed? What about original translation? What about the golden tablets?
At the end of the day your faith likely does not even line up with whatever sect you claim to be from. Odds are you have your own unique faith system setup and you don't honor any of your religions history. Then you take your own personal religion and try to unload it on a bunch of people that you know full well before posting aren't goign to believe a shred of it.
If you want to have someone stroke your ego for you I recommend going to church and spouting off and seeing if someone will play along.
Caught me at a bad time. I'm sufficiently bored now. Thanks.
Brace yourselves, because you probably won't hear this again:
My mistake. I was mad and got too caught up in my argument, I was trying to make a point which, in fact, was not a point at all. Christ DID know he would die as the Master Jedi so aptly deducted because He WAS part of the Trinity. Just know that my mistake does not discount the rest of my argument. Also know that this wasn't a mockery of anyone, but a sincere apology.
Also, don't read much into my sarcastic point in the beginning of my post.
One more note: I don't call Atheism any kind of delusion, disease, or imaginary notion. I believe I even mentioned its only part of human nature to not believe. So please, for the sake of respect please refrain from calling my beliefs and what Is ultimately the Truth a 'fairy tale.'
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
-Jesus Christ
Don't call it a fairy tale? Then prove that it's anything but. If you are going to try to push your wacky beliefs on people then you should at least be able to answer the call for information, which you are not. There is no more information out there to justify your belief than there is that of Peter Pan.
Your religion is nothing more than a fairy tale. Let me say that again.
You believe a fairy tale is true. Let me rephrase that.
God is not real. Let me put that another way.
There is no such thing as Heaven or Hell. Let me find another way to explain this.
You have been duped. Let put this in a different wrapper.
You have been lied to all your life, have bought into the lie, and are now spreading it further just as those before you have.
a)no, we are saying that within your framework, you make inconsistent claims. We are not acknowledging the Ressurection, we're simply not taking the trouble to disclaim our statements with 'if this were true...' and such.
b)Christ didn't know he'd be raised? Mark, 14:18-28, the account of the Last Supper, in which Christ tells the Twelve that one of them will betray him, and he will be put to death AND WILL RISE: "14:28 Howbeit, after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee."
Wanna maybe rethink that claim of ignorance on the part of the omniscient?
Actually, many believe he was referring to the suffering, not death.
No, modern physicians will tell you that this is because if you are forced to hold your arms up in that position for even an hour, your lungs begin fill with fluid. That's what killed folks who were crucified that way and died in a relatively short time: they drowned. It sure wasn't blood loss, and dying from exposure would've taken DAYS. You do remember your lungs, right? Those big sacs just chock full of blood vessels that run almost the entire length of your rib-cage? Stick a spear in one, you'll get blood. Stick a spear in one after they begin to fill w/fluids, and you get 'blood and water' (though the water is really lymph and plasma).
Except, once again, the Bible pretty explicitly states "hell", ie: Gehenna, The Fire That Burns For An Age, will be created AT THE JUDGEMENT. All those die before that are simply "asleep". No torment yet. That doesn't come until after the end of time. And then it lasts 1,000 years before final obliteration.
I haven't even gotten to 'reason and logic', I'm just using the very book you claim to be pulling this information out of. Your understanding of the Bible wouldn't stand up under examination by a 2nd grader at St. Gregory the Great Elementary in Virginia Beach, much less someone who actually has studied this stuff critically.
I'm sorry, I can't do it. You've put the damn ball on the tee... someone else can knock that one out of the park.
Yeah. It's wonderful lines like this that should tell you that PAUL WAS FULL OF SHIT. Allow me to refer you to another figure in the New Testament who directly contradicts Paul, Jesus Christ:
No mention of faith there. None. Instead, it is ACTIONS, it is charity and compassion, expressed through ACTIONS, that makes the difference.
So, do you follow Jesus, or Saul the Usurper?
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
Oh, good, someone else already did hit it out of the park.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
jesusFREAK,
For the record, I *know* that you didn't mean the statement about not having a religion in a strictly literal way. You are hardly the first Evangelical that I have encountered. I will admit: my choice of the phrase "don't have a religion," was quick-and-sloppy (and infelicitous, it would seem.) You *do,* however, use this concept to distinguish between your version of Christianity, on the one hand, and everything else, on the other. My point was that this is an invalid dichotomy. The reasons are twofold: first, you most certainly *do* have a religion (...the doctrinal content of which you *still* have not described for me, even in the basic manner which I requested...) and second, because every religion is a relationship. Catholicism, for example, is a relationship with Christ, at least in concept. It looks different from your version of Christianity, and on a doctrinal level, it is different (judging from your comment about "salvation by faith alone"--which I will address further, later. In fact, I know of no religious group or belief system on the planet which absolutely could not be described in terms of "relationship." Even Scientology could be said to involve a "relationship,"--one of teacher and disciple--between any given Scientologist on the one hand, and L. Ron Hubbard (via his books and teachings,) on the other. My question was about how do you understand this "relationship?"
Re: the Old Testament teachings; saying that they are "OLD" is simply not good enough, jesusFREAK. In the first place, plenty of Old Testament verses talk of "eternal," "everlasting" or otherwise permanent situations. One example: the covenant of circumcision in Genesis is specifically said to be "everlasting" (Gen 17:7, NRSV) Remember your geometry from school? The concept of a "ray," which does have a starting point, but no ending point? That's "everlasting." The covenant of circumcision between God and his people was said, in this verse, by God, to never have an end. The trouble is, God seems to have changed His mind--He apparently inspired St. Paul to write that this "everlasting" covenant....was irrelevant (Gal 5:6) Not only that, but if you would bother to read the New Testament sometime, you would find that there are quite a number of Old Testament quotations therein. Apparently, it's not "old" in the sense of irrelevant to the "inspired" authors of the New Testament.
You also said that there was no salvation in the Old Testament. But this is simply false. Check out, for example, Ps 34:4-6, which speaks of God saving from every trouble...and doing so in the present tense. Bear in mind that "present" tense for any given OT text is, by definition, before Christ...ergo, there was salvation, according to the Bible, before Christ. In fact, you might take a concordance, sit down with whatever translation of the Bible you prefer, and see for yourself just how often the Bible speaks of God saving...in Old Testament "present" time.
You said that "God's judgement on those who are against His people have always been harsh." I wonder whether Kelly or Mr. Sapient might care to weigh in on this: since they have defeated the Ray Comfort/Kirk Cameron team on national television (by, I might add, using a grand total of two sentences versus Comfort's lengthy speech,) have they experienced a "harsh judgement" of some sort? Regardless of their answer, stop and consider: you yourself said that this is God's judgement. This means that God sees fit to punish a very mild insult (in effect, calling a prophet "Baldy,"
with being eaten alive by wild animals. What...God couldn't simply send the prophet a personal message along the lines of "It's okay, I'm still with you?" He couldn't have a lightning bolt strike the ground near the children, without hurting them? Did He not know that children can behave in manners which are far from wise?
This leads to another remark of yours: that the interpretation of the Bible requires the help of God. (I'm also including your unflattering implication to the effect that I did not pray for divine help in understanding. Here, you are simply wrong; I did exactly that.) What I wish to point out here is, that if the Bible is so arcane that it may only be understood by divine aid...then what becomes of the doctrine of Biblical perspicuity? You can't have it both ways. Furthermore, what good is such a Bible? Even if one did receive enlightenment, and did understand it correctly...there is no way on earth that that enlightenment could be communicated from one person to another. Which means that any given interpreter might be right, even if they wholly disagree with you...and every interpreter will feel confident that they are, in fact, right. This is pure subjectivism: there are no objective standards operating here, so that the right (or wrong) interpretation of the Bible could be publicly established. Perhaps you yourself are closer to Hell than to Heaven....
Lastly, you said that salvation is by faith alone. Aside from the obvious fact that the Bible itself rejects your stance (see James 2:24,) your own quote only rejects "works of the Law" (...a phrase which Paul nowhere adequately defines...) as being the only thing which may not be coupled with faith for salvation. So...if someone believes that the "works" which are *demanded* by the Bible for salvation, in James are a different thing from the "works of the Law" which Paul scores...why...their interpretation of the Bible is just as good as yours...especially since you seem to be able to adduce no publicly-available evidence that your interpretation should be preferred.
It is this concept--the demand for evidence that everyone, in principle, can look at--that is the basis for science. Science has defeated diseases, not merely for one or two lucky souls who encountered a geniune prophet of God, but for millions. For example, polio and malaria are largely things of the past. Science, which may not be properly divorced from technology, has given us modes of transportation such as the airplane, which relies on the idea that the earth is round, which we would never know from the Bible. Science has given us calculators and computers which *rely* upon the principles of quantum mechanics.
And what has faith given us? Hospitals, schools, charities? Certainly, it has. Unfortunately, it has also given us crusades, Inquisitions, 9/11, airline highjackings, suicide bombings, witch trials, persecutions of various sorts, suspicion of scholarship, destruction of artworks, religious wars, ignorance of human suffering in the name of God's wishes, and the creation of human suffering for the same reason. Kelly, elsewhere on this website, calls religion a mental delusion...and it is getting harder and harder for me to think of a reason that she might be wrong.
Your religion, and every other religion, is unworthy of your allegiance, jesusFREAK. The good it does can be done in other ways. And we certainly don't need the nonsense that seems to come with it.
Conor
______________________________________________________________________________________________
"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII
"But it should!"--Me
Ironically, its the other way around. Reasoned discourse does not conform to our notions of what ought to be. THat would be an ad consequentiam fallacy. Note that you are trying to construct a logical argument, hence refuting your own premise:
P1: God is not logical
P2: Reasoned discourse can only apply to what is logical
C: Reasoned discourse does not apply to God
This is a problematic assertion. For one, by constructing an argument in this If-Then-Therefore fashion, you are undermining your own conclusion by referring in your premise to something which is not logical! Second, the concept of "beyond logic" is simply incoherent. Also, P1 is simply an assertion, there is absolutely no epistemological justification for the statement that the belief in X cannot be reasoned. Ironically, any such attempt at justification would be inherently self-refuting as such an attempt would inherently affirm the necessity of reasoned argument to demonstrate a proposition. You have locked yourself in an absurd, intractable paradox, an internal contradiction from whence you cannot rescue yourself by declaring an Epistemological Safe Zone by which reasoned argument cannot touch (such a claim would be inherently self-undermining). You may as well jsut admit you came up with this nonsense by virtue of the fact that it is a euphemism for claiming your opponent should not think too much.
Lastly, as I said above, from an epistemological point of view "you are using reason to much" is tantamount to declaring your interlocutor is thinking too much, which should serve as surely an excellent indicator that your own position is idiotic.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
First, let me say thank you for having the courage and intellectual honesty to admit that you made a mistake. That really doesn't happen very often here. Well done, and keep it up.
Not true. Your mistake invalidates any reasoning you did based on that mistake, so your claim that Jesus made a sacrifice is not supported by your assertion about his lack of knowledge about the afterlife.
You can't call atheism any of those things, because (as has been pointed out previously, but maybe not in this thread) it's not a belief, it's a lack of belief. A lack of belief that shoes can talk is not delusional. A lack of cancer is not a disease.
As for the concept of respect, I am curious: if you owned a restaurant and I wrote a review recounting how you'd burnt my chicken, would you ask me to not say negative things "for the sake of respect"? In short, which is it you don't like: criticism, or criticism of things you happen to believe, enjoy and identify with?
(P.S. Calling something the big-t truth doesn't make it any less baseless.)
--
maybe if this sig is witty, someone will love me.
Don't bother responding to this post because this is my last. This argument is going nowhere because none of you will answer the real question here.
First of all, for Conor, I attend a Baptist church, but my doctrine is strictly from the Bible, and its the only authority on what I believe. I also said that the Old testament has some old concepts, but it is the entire context of the Old testament that is "God- breathed." In fact, since the OT was the only scripture known when Paul wrote, so it was the OT that he was talking about. I also meant Salvation by Christ, not entirely, as God was still a merciful God in the OT. Also, I didn't say that God seriously judged ALL of those who where against him, though he eventually will. And again, we don't know the circumstances of the she- bear incident, and we certainly don't know the context of the "Baldy" reference (Do realize this was thousands of years ago, and went through a series of translations.) And still, you're missing the point:
I mentioned that it was funny that all you are acknowledging the resurrection because your arguments are all petty. The one argument that can encompass them all for you is your basic belief that there is no God. Provide a good response to the point I made of God's evidence on Earth and even beyond, and maybe I'll listen. Instead you want to argue that Jesus knew he was going to die, and what really is logic, and so much more CRAP. The only reason I am posting these is to convince you that God does exist, and leaves proof of His existence throughout the universe. The thing is, atheists want to see true tangible evidence, which hardly anyone has ever seen or will see, the most of which were already believers. All I see is: "God's not real," "you believe in a fairy tale," "your wrong," blah blah blah. Show me something. Give me a reason to believe otherwise. Answer the REAL question. I say God's illogical by using logic because that's the only way to iterate it. You can't say that something is illogical by illogical means, especially if you're dealing with people who only think in logic. Perhaps this doesn't make sense to you, but that's the only way I know how to say it. Even once you do accept Christ, you still won't completely understand Him; no one does or ever will, so don't be thrown off by minor misunderstandings and discrepancies. Millions of believers enthrall in the Mystery of God, and there's no reason not to.
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
-Jesus Christ
Your silly questions have been answered repeatedly, open your delusional eyes and read.
Why bother? Anyone who discounts logic as you do doesn't WANT to be convinced...you've already swallowed the blue pill.
Without logic and rational thought, what's to stop us from believing that "Rufus, The Lactose Intolerant Teddy Bear" isn't the creator of the universe and that "Elsie, the Borden Milk Cow" isn't evil incarnate? After all, Rufus and Elsie lie outside the realm of logic, so there's no reason NOT to wallow in the Lactosian Faith!
Your appeal to illogic is nothing but nebulous spew.
"He who has a brain to think, let him think...logically."
-HC Grindon
HC Grindon--
I was all set to reply...but you did a better job of saying what I wanted to say.
Ah, well...maybe we gave jesusFREAK some food for thought. Maybe that's all we can do.
Conor
______________________________________________________________________________________
"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII
"But it should!"--Me
"Resurection of Jesus" conflicts with RIGOR MORTIS, go do a google search on that medical term and you should, if you have any brains, be able to see the absurdity in such a claim.
BTW "POOF, ABRACADABRA...GOD DID IT" does not pass muster here.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Thats right, run with your tail between your legs. You wouldnt want to get the "think for yourself cooties" from us kitten barbaquers. Thats ok, we didnt have much hope for you anyway.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Thank god he's gone.
I'd like to take this time to thank both Capt Pinnaple and Wavefreak for standing the heat in this kitchen. I may dispise your deist or panthiest claims, but you have tons more balls intellectually than this pussy who ran when asked hard questions and faced blasphemy.
If someone is going to postulate anything on this forum, they should not expect passive "isnt that nice" responses. Some atheists here take a more fanesse aproach, while others like me are the atheist monster truck out to crush you in a debate.
I would almost bet that even though Jesusfreak41 said he has left, he is reading this. I hope he has the courage to intellectually defend what he claims without fear. We wont eat your children and we dont drink blood. But I personally cant stand hit and run preaching especially when it isnt even your home turf.
I hope you come back and are brave enough to make the attempt to defend what you claim. However, I susspect, like most who do what you do, you are not intrested in challenging yourself intellectually, you are merely intrested in gaining new club members based on a "warm fuzzy feeling". I do hope I am wrong, but unfortunatly most of the time, I am right and intellectuall pussies never come back.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
The fact that you still don't acknowledge that, to point out the internal inconsistencies and incoherence of a position, in no way implies any level of acceptance of that position, makes you either dishonest or stupid.
It is still up to you to provide positive evidence, not for us to 'prove' your postion wrong, altho pointing to internal inconsistencies IS evidence against your position ('out of context' is not a refutation in itself).
Once you abandon logic about some belief, you inevitably acknowledge that you have absolutely NO justification for your belief in favour of the infinte number of other speculative possibilities that are just as coherent and plausible, and mostly more so, than your particular set of ideas.
You are free to believe them, and draw comfort from them, but if you insist that other people are being blind or ignorant or whatever for not taking them seriously as assertions about the nature of reality outside your head, we are fully justified in calling you out on it.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
HC, I just had a thought...
...are we in the process of developing an atheist pantheon, here? So far, there are:
Russel's teapot
The Invisible Pink Unicorn
The Flying Spaghetti Monster
and your new additions: Rufus, the Lactose Intolerant Teddy Bear, and Elsie, the Borden Milk Cow.
I wonder what other flights of fancy await....
Conor
_________________________________________________________________________________________
"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII]
"But it should!"--Me
Don't forget about my almighty purple snarfwidgit who can fart a full sized Lamborginni out of his ass.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Well, I will, just in the hopes that you continue reading.
No, I don't believe there's no God. I just don't believe there is one. There's a difference.
You mean where you said we have a pathological need for evidence, and faith doesn't need any, but if it did, the entire universe is evidence of God?
Ok, here's the thing: If the universe is evidence of the existance of God, and God is the ultimate cause of all that is, then science, which is ultimate the search for an understanding of mechanism and causality should ultimately point back to God in undeniable terms. Thus, the search for understanding of the universe is ultimately a mechanism, if God exists for finding exactly the evidence you criticize us for looking for.
Except you're claiming 'hardly anyone' will ever see this proof, and you take us to task for wanting to see it. Why?
Except, as I said, if your claims that God is the ultimate cause are correct, then the search for causality would eventually yield that evidence.
So you consider Paul saying 'By Faith alone will you be saved' and Christ saying explicitly that only actions make the difference between salvation and damnation to be a 'minor' discrepancy?
Millions of believers enthralled in the Dionysian Rites and Bachannalie of the Greek pantheon. So why don't you? As far as there being 'no reason not to'... how about 'because I prefer to think for myself rather than accept as truth the self-contradictory words of a bunch of dead guys'?
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid
I'm offended that you should put the Teapot before the IPU (pbuh)!!! So offended!!! How dare you! May reason have mercy on your soul!
-Triften
I'd like to not only support Brian's Lamborghini-farting snarfwidget, but nominate on behalf of weak atheism He/She/It/They-Who-May-Or-May-Not-Be-Kelhain, who claims to either be or not be the Supreme Being.
"You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons." - The Waco Kid