*sniffle*

Here's what I don't get. The basic understanding about this forum is that it is infested with atheists. Keeping that in mind, how does it seem logical to come into this den of sin and quote the bible? I mean, quoting the bible is only relevant if you go under the assumption that it is self-evident. What are the odds that a bunch of atheists hold the bible to be true, simply on it's own insistance that it is?

I don't get it. I must be an idiot.  

I'm not. I said if I'm right, you are screwed. I didn't say, you should take that as reason to fake belief in Christ. But maybe to consider it a little more seriously than you may have considered it before.

If I'm right, you're screwed but there's something you can do about it.

If you're right, we're both screwed and there's nothing either of us can do about it.

I'm trying to bring the world a message of hope.

You are trying to bring the world a message of hopelessness.

What a depressing cause to take up. Even if it's true, what is to be accomplished by destroying people's hope? If there truly is no hope, they will find it out one of these days. At least they can be happy until then.

And then... 

Of course, I guess if your whole worldview is inherently self contradictory to say such a thing probably doesn't seem absurd at all. 

Becuse these people aren't capable of keeping their hope out of everyone else's business as is made evident by the fact that you are here quoting scripture and hoping to 'save' people. Beliefs don't exist in a vacuum and religious people's beliefs are unnecessary, dogmatic and dangerous and they try and infect the entirity of society with them.

If you believed you had some knowledge that could save someone's life, would you keep quiet about it? If you knew that speaking it would cause you to be ridiculed, would you be quiet then? If it only cost you a little ridicule to save someone's life, would you do it? That is the situation I'm in. If one single person on this board stops and thinks to himself "maybe this Christian stuff is worth checking into, and just because these people think it's wrong doesn't necessarily mean it is" then it was worth the effort to me.

My motivation for spreading my beliefs is not only to save lives, but to save people's eternal futures. I think that is a just cause. All the evil things you accuse religion of, you cannot rightly accuse me of. I speak for the bible, not religion.

If the bible really is God's word, I may save a few souls with me. If it's wrong, then I have given a few people false hope, and motivation for loving and respecting others. What does that hurt? Nothing.

So though your hatred for religion may be well-founded, your hatred of Christianity is nothing but ignorance.

As I said about 5 posts ago, this is useless. Later people.

There are other forms of human perception besides rationality, ya know.

For those of you honestly looking for the truth, I hope you find it, whatever it may be.

I agree that, given your belief in an all mighty god, you are doing what you should do. Thanks for this as it is a perfect illustration of the reason I oppose theistic belief systems.

Now, in order to be perfectly honest you must admit that if someone managed to convince you that this god, who in your bs (abb. for belief system) holds the eternal fate of all in his 'supernatural' hands, wanted you to torture and kill people in an attempt to save as many souls as possible it would not be wrong. I mean, in the big picture, what would it hurt?

Your belief system dictates that you follow the commands of this entity no matter what the might be. Your illustration, that you truly think you are saving people's eternal souls, makes it obvious that no matter what is asked of you there is nothing that is not acceptable in the name of your god. What finite deed could you possibly consider to be too heinous to commit in the goal of an offering of eternal bliss?

Nice try. You show me one "heinous" deed I've ever done in the name of God, and I'll eat my words. You have me confused with a Muslim.

My bible does not command me to kill anyone, nor infringe on their rights, nor harm them in any way.

Before you start citing the old testament, I would remind that was a different time, a different people, and a different dispensation.

If you pose the question, if God asked me to kill someone, would I obey? The answer is I don't know. I think I probably would. But is He going to ask me to do that? No. You can't assume every word in the bible is directly applicable to you. It must be taken in the original languages and in context, and in dispensations. The equivalent would be for me to have a slave, and be taken to court over it. Then for me to cite early American slavery laws to justify my actions. I would say "but weren't these laws written by the American government?" To which the judge would say "but that was a long time ago, and those laws have since been done away with."

Whether you have or haven't is irrelevant. And no, I don't have you confused with a Muslim. I see no difference in the potential of the two belief systems (Christianity and Islam) to cause harm as they are both theistic. That is they both have the same major flaw, the ability to justify removing responsibility for human acts to a higher authority than humanity.

At least not until someone interprets it to. 

There is no more reason for me to cite the Bible than there is for me to cite The Sound and The Fury.  

Ding, ding, ding!! Give that man an honesty medal.  

Is he freewilled? Are you omniscient? Did Sylvia Brown tell you so? If such an entity were to exist you would have no basis on which to make this statement. If your god is freewilled then he can ask you to do anything. Even if he isn't, unless you are privvy to his programming you have no ability to say with any confidence whatsoever what he will and will not ask you to do.

Or taken as the obvious fiction that it is. 

This is irrelevant to the fact that within a theistic belief system any act can be justified and responsibility placed in a higher authority to which obedience is not only mandatory but unquestionably so. I have not envoked, nor do I have any intention of envoking your scripture to support my position. This sidetrack into your holy book does not go to the issue at hand.

Ruminating on Pascal's wager... even if one were to make the proper "choice" to be a Christian, it begs the question, "What KIND of Christian?" What if the true "right" answer is to be a Jehovah's Witness, and I've spent my life in Christ as a Lutheran? Again, screwed. When every sect claims theirs to be the One True Path, no matter what, it's a crap shoot with far more probability of losing than winning.

I'll stick with what I know to be true, and real.

Then perhaps you should have better ethics, no? My ethics seem fine without without being commanded by anything to act any way other than the way a human being acts within a society if he wishes for that society to be a safe and enjoyable one. 

Unless they convinced you otherwise and then you would believe that they were interpreting scripture correctly and those who said torturing people to turn them to god, or ushering in your savior with a few little atomic booms, or beating heretics (those who intepreted the scripture as peaceful) or heathens to death is what your god desires according to the correct interpretation of scripture. 

When one holds a belief in an ultimate and unquestionable authority that is the only acceptable  justification for all acts this is always a possibility no matter how much they may protest that it is not. There is no reason for one to assume that at any given moment the will of any given god will not be revealed to actually explicitly command the destruction any given thing. At that point the true believer will have no good reason to not follow the command and, in all honesty, within the confines of his belief system, would be being completely unreasonable if he did not.

Your god doesn't have the ability or the freewill to change its written word if it desires?

I can't keep reading this and not responding. Too hard-headed, I guess. So I'm going to quit reading it.

None of you are saying anything that has not already been said and refuted by me or someone else. Get a new argument, and then I'll get a new answer.

The futility of arguing about the nature of God with someone who doesn't believe there is a God is slapping me in the face, and I keep turning the other cheek (pun intended.) I've run out of cheeks, and patience.

Hard-Headed = Not agreeing with you?

Maybe won't even see this, but my parting words for you are "Musicdude!  In all you do in life, in all you learn, in all advice you receive... seek EVIDENCE."  If those telling you something are not able to give you evidence, or if they are offended that evidence is being demanded, then seek more evidence.  Our 5 senses are the ONLY tools our mind has that have proven historically to have any reliablilty in detemining truth... but since sometime we see things that aren't there, or think we are hearing thing, they aren't 100% reliable.  So test reality.  Always keep testing.  Challenge your presuppositions.  If you find yourself somewhere (a church perhaps) where everyone agrees on something, still challenge it.  Look for evidence.  Ask questions, and don't decide what the answer is before you find it.

It may seem like "we all think the same way" on this website."  But I can assure you, that if we discussed an issue besides the logic of theism, you would see a wide variety of opinions and different views.

 Good luck.

Fine, here's a shiny new situation for you to explain your position in the face of...

Let's say...

a) I am a regular world citizen who is within earshot of people preaching the good word to me, but then I'm involved in some accident that isolates me from society and affects my memory so that I have no recollection of ever being preached to.  Does my isolation from the word condemn me to Hell if I actively haven't made a choice to reject it?  After all, I wouldn't know about it as a viable option.

b) A similar situation.  What if I were a member of some remote tribe of people who will never be reached by Christian missionaries in my lifetime.  Am I condemned to Hell?  How could I come to Christian conclusions and save myself without a Bible or a teacher? 

I know your rhetoric about all of mankind being born into the same deal with God.  Now, explain to me how the deal retains its just nature if you'll never even know about the deal.  Isn't that taxation without representation?

Irrelevant.

Nobody is asking you to switch faiths (not that I remember seeing, anyway), but rather to ditch faith altogether.

Why believe things you don't have evidence for?

The argument isn't necessarily about whether god can be proven of disproven, but whether the evidence we see in the universe, through the lens of our limited epistemological perspective, is sufficient to rationally accept the proposition that a god exists. That is, is belief in god rational?

I say no. Further, I don't hold such a belief in any god, whether rationally or irrationally. 

Shaun

To say that there is no evidence of God is a statement of ignorance. I didn't agree with every word that came out of Kirk and Ray's mouthes at the debate, but one thing I will give them credit for is they provided plenty of evidence of God's existence. There is source after source of theistic apologetics online, available if you only look for them. More evidence than you can imagine. Proof? No. Evidence? Plenty.

Thank you for being respectful and polite.

I am mainly frustrated because it's a little exhausting arguing with about 8 people at once.

Oh, well that settles it then. Well said.

Again, look online. There are countless websites which offer tons of evidence.

The creation implying a creator was fairly compelling evidence I thought. It was feebly argued by your people, but I think the point held true.

The whole chair example was a little lacking, since as your guys said, you can go to the chair factory and see the build record. But let's take Stonehenge as alternative example. There is no stonehenge factory. There are no records of who built it and when. There are no other stonehenges to compare it to. But most of humanity assumes that it was built by someone. Why? Because of organization that is far too unlikely to be coincidence.

The 'evidence' presented by Ray and Kirk was purely in the form of absense of information. All the lack of information proves is that there is a lack of information. To make the leap that this MUST be proof of "god" is anything but logical. This is merely a plea to ignorance.