Addressing Misconceptions of Christianity on PWI

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
161

I apologize for not responding to this; I had seen it, but just forgot to address it.

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]honest_lifter wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

You mean other than the enthusiastic sacrifice of his own son?[/quote]

Oh brother…[/quote]

Bigflamer, Jesus was a full grown adult, not a child. Did you have another example in mind?[/quote]

You’re right, Jesus WAS the grown child of god at the time of his torture and execution. That would just be regular murder and torture…of your son. My bad. lol

But seriously, even though I’ve had this discussion at length already in another thread, I’m happy to revisit it.

Now, in the case of Abraham, he was not only ordered to sacrifice his son by the knife, but he was also to BURN him in a pyre. An act that Abraham, according to christian mythology, was more than willing to do. Crazy shit, right!? But in the end, god was all “PSYCH!..I was just fooling around to test your faith, man! Now burn me a ram!!” LOL

“Take your son, your only son - yes, Isaac, whom you love so much Ã?¢?? and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you.” (Genesis 22:1-18)

Then we have the story of Jephthah:

[i]"At that time the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he went throughout the land of Gilead and Manasseh, including Mizpah in Gilead, and led an army against the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD. He said, “If you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will give to the LORD the first thing coming out of my house to greet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”

“So Jephthah led his army against the Ammonites, and the LORD gave him victory. He thoroughly defeated the Ammonites from Aroer to an area near Minnith Ã?¢?? twenty towns Ã?¢?? and as far away as Abel-keramim. Thus Israel subdued the Ammonites. When Jephthah returned home to Mizpah, his daughter Ã?¢?? his only child Ã?¢?? ran out to meet him, playing on a tambourine and dancing for joy. When he saw her, he tore his clothes in anguish. “My daughter!” he cried out. “My heart is breaking! What a tragedy that you came out to greet me. For I have made a vow to the LORD and cannot take it back.” And she said, “Father, you have made a promise to the LORD. You must do to me what you have promised, for the LORD has given you a great victory over your enemies, the Ammonites. But first let me go up and roam in the hills and weep with my friends for two months, because I will die a virgin.” “You may go,” Jephthah said. And he let her go away for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because she would never have children. When she returned home, her father kept his vow, and she died a virgin. So it has become a custom in Israel for young Israelite women to go away for four days each year to lament the fate of Jephthah’s daughter.” (Judges 11:29-40 NLT)[/i]

And I still contend that the example of Jesus is valid, regardless of the age of the child sacrificed. According to christian mythology, he sacrificed his child. I don’t think that age is relevant, do you?

Now, these are a few examples of child specific sacrifice. There are many other examples of murder, rape, torture, slavery, and other such shenanigans in the christian good book. Google it.[/quote]

I will address the Jephthah story, first of all it does not describe what you think it does. I had the same misconception for most of my life as well but it actually turns out that because of that vow that his only child his daughter was not to be married and thus was consecrated(set apart) to the Lord and thus no one to carry on his name and his daughter obtains his inheritance after he dies. This is strongly supported by the text you just quoted(the bewailing of her virginity). This vow would have been made by the city gate so that it would have been public knowledge even such that his daughter most likely knew about this before hand.[/quote]

I can only go on what is written in the bible, what the bible actually says. In this story, Jephthah makes this vow: "I will give to the LORD the first thing coming out of my house to greet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering " The story concludes with her death as a virgin. I think it’s a reach to claim what you’re claiming, and more than likely an attempt to clean up a story that christian leaders know will be looked upon with scrutiny. Why would Jephthah offer up a “burnt offering”, and then not follow through? I think that the text clearly says that he followed through on the solemn vow that he’d supposedly made to his god, and his daughter did indeed die as a burnt offering as a virgin.

Good thing the whole story is just that, a story.

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
Secondly just because the bible records some things doesn’t mean that God approves of such acts.[/quote]

This is where I’m compelled to throw the BS flag. Anything that happens, happens with the knowledge and blessing of your god, am I correct? He is the creator and mover of all things right? The Alpha and the Omega? I’m always hearing believers say “gods will be done”; do you believe that? Do you believe that there are events that your god just didn’t see coming? Is god not all knowing and all seeing?

Do you think that god sits up there getting recon reports from the saints, and flies off the handle saying something like “curse those sinners and their shenanigans!..Now I gotta go clean all this up!” lol…

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
The Son and the Father were in one accord. Ive already explained to raj that what makes taking a life wrong for us is that it is not ours to take. With Jesus being God I don’t see the problem.(John 10:17-18 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.)[/quote]

Ahh, but if god commanded you to take a life, it would be alright? No…it would not. Otherwise any christian sitting on a jury, facing a person accused of killing someone in the name of god, would be compelled to free them. How would you KNOW that your god didn’t really command them to do it?

No, I’ve heard this line before many times, and am compelled to always call bullshit. Your premise is based on the false belief that there is actually a god, and that Christianity isn’t something more than just one of the current religions.

“The religion of one age, is the literary entertainment of the next”.

162

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:
Now, God does exist because existence itself demands it and cosmology proves it.
[/quote]

LOL. Must be nice to be able to make up anything to prove a point, yet anything we make up is wrong since it contradicts your made up stuff.[/quote]

Then you should have no problem proving me wrong… So, prove me wrong. This ought to be good…[/quote]

And I’m actually an extremely advanced alien life form from the Alpha Centauri system. I’m here on vacation.

You should have no problem proving me wrong… So, prove me wrong. This ought to be good…
[/quote]

You can’t even prove you exist, much less what you are. I can make a better argument for God’s existence then you can make for yourself. In that sense, God is even more real than you are.[/quote]

Bullshit, of the lowest grade.

Your argument for god’s existence is based on your faith, which is based on nothing more than feelings. You have no quantifiable proof of any god. Your faith is crap, as all faith is, since it needs no proof of anything in an effort to believe in anything. Dawkins is spot on when he rails against the concept of faith as dangerous. It teaches us to believe in what’s not real, and THAT, is a problem for the human race.

[quote]Pat wrote:
There’s an argument on the table, I put it out there, I understand burden of proof. If all you can come up with is this alien garbage, are you really sure about your atheism? Sounds like a weak basis to me.[/quote]

I was using a ridiculous premise, to highlight the ridiculousness of your premise. You have no proof of any god, not even yours.

[quote]Pat wrote:
At least most Christian can claim some sort of personal interaction with the almighty, which is more compelling then ‘prove I am not an alien’. Hell, I can’t prove your not a figment of my imagination.

Based on this I can say you have a lot of faith in your atheism…[/quote]

There are many psychologically disturbed people who can claim to have personal interactions with all sorts of imaginary friends. Your arguments are laughable, and based entirely on blind faith in some creator that NOBODY has any proof of. You believe because you’ve chosen to disregard the fact that there’s zero proof or evidence to support your belief. I choose to not believe based on the fact that there’s no evidence AT ALL to support any of the gods that have been worshiped throughout history, not even the christian god.

You once again show that you do not understand atheism OR faith.

163

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

Right, the fact that your god was only putting him to the test and maybe “fooling around a bit”, that makes the story loving.

Still a very, very, very fucked up story. You have to do a whole lot of equivocation to make that anything but fucking evil. Although, I’m sure you’re up to the task.
[/quote]
It may have been a little mean, but it was not a story of God asking Abraham commit child sacrifice. Which is what you claim and I refuted.

Whoptie do. God has not been detected by scientific measures? I am underwhelmed. Is this what these books taught you? Technically, if you want to get nitty gritty, your simply introducing another strawman, but I’ll let it stand in that I love discussing science in the realm of cosmology. Science not detecting God doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist. Science tells us many things about the world but the scientific method simply ends the process of discovery once a correlation is established and a conclusion draw. Science, tells us only of the physical world, anything outside of that, is beyond the scope of science. So is would make sense that science cannot discover that which sits outside of it’s realm.
Further, technically speaking, even science itself is a contingent existence. And science is a metaphysical construct.
Since science deals with

Also, as for ‘other gods’, there’s evidence for them, people have made statues and wrote stories and all kinds of stuff to demonstrate their existence. So that’s actually evidence, whether it’s valid evidence or not is another matter, but evidence it is. Whether they exist or I don’t really care. I am only concerned with the Creator of existence, that on which all existence depends.
I cannot prove one way or another that those other gods exist or not, but I can prove they are not the creator the non-contingent being. They just simply don’t make that claim.
That claim is all I am interested in. Proof for it, is existence itself…Didn’t that Hitchens guy cover that?[/quote]

The cool thing about science is, that it’s real whether you believe in it or not.

164

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Atheism is the only true belief (or lack of belief). Every religion is only a result of being told from others what to think and believe.[/quote]
So tell me is it a proposition one holds to be true or just a physiological state?[/quote]

I don’t expect most atheists to get that religion isn’t the result of brain washing… This idea that the Christian experience is either a collective lie, or a collection of mass stupidity based on group-think is a position I expect them to hold. I mean, it’s a stretch to think that about 2 billion people are delusional and/ or stupid. Because if it’s just that, then it’s unreasonable, and it’s an easy dragon to slay. This I can only imagine is the catalyst to the hubris, arrogance and apparent smugness of the typical atheist. They have been programmed to dismiss us as dumb or crazy. The fact there is no basis in fact, does not seem to stop this misconception.
Again I have to exclude Kamui from this as he has not expressed this view in anyway and does not dismiss the whole Christian experience.[/quote]

Atheists are programed to no such thing. Believers are the ones who are programed from a very young age, just as their parents were, just as heir parents were, just as their parents were. See how that works? Atheists choose not to believe based on the fact that there’s no evidence whatsoever to support any god or creator. I think it’s funny to watch believers really struggle with the concept of not believing. It must be such an alien concept to them, that they simply cannot wrap their heads around the fact that atheist have no belief in any sort of god. One does not need faith in order to not believe.

Many people believing in different forms of the same delusion, does not make it less of a delusion. If it’s marketed well, whatever it is, people WILL buy it. Especially if they’re taught from a very young age that if they don’t buy it, they’ll burn forever in a fiery pit of hell.

165

[quote]bigflamer wrote:
I apologize for not responding to this; I had seen it, but just forgot to address it.

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]honest_lifter wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

You mean other than the enthusiastic sacrifice of his own son?[/quote]

Oh brother…[/quote]

Bigflamer, Jesus was a full grown adult, not a child. Did you have another example in mind?[/quote]

You’re right, Jesus WAS the grown child of god at the time of his torture and execution. That would just be regular murder and torture…of your son. My bad. lol

But seriously, even though I’ve had this discussion at length already in another thread, I’m happy to revisit it.

Now, in the case of Abraham, he was not only ordered to sacrifice his son by the knife, but he was also to BURN him in a pyre. An act that Abraham, according to christian mythology, was more than willing to do. Crazy shit, right!? But in the end, god was all “PSYCH!..I was just fooling around to test your faith, man! Now burn me a ram!!” LOL

“Take your son, your only son - yes, Isaac, whom you love so much Ã??Ã?¢?? and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you.” (Genesis 22:1-18)

Then we have the story of Jephthah:

[i]"At that time the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he went throughout the land of Gilead and Manasseh, including Mizpah in Gilead, and led an army against the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD. He said, “If you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will give to the LORD the first thing coming out of my house to greet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”

“So Jephthah led his army against the Ammonites, and the LORD gave him victory. He thoroughly defeated the Ammonites from Aroer to an area near Minnith Ã??Ã?¢?? twenty towns Ã??Ã?¢?? and as far away as Abel-keramim. Thus Israel subdued the Ammonites. When Jephthah returned home to Mizpah, his daughter Ã??Ã?¢?? his only child Ã??Ã?¢?? ran out to meet him, playing on a tambourine and dancing for joy. When he saw her, he tore his clothes in anguish. “My daughter!” he cried out. “My heart is breaking! What a tragedy that you came out to greet me. For I have made a vow to the LORD and cannot take it back.” And she said, “Father, you have made a promise to the LORD. You must do to me what you have promised, for the LORD has given you a great victory over your enemies, the Ammonites. But first let me go up and roam in the hills and weep with my friends for two months, because I will die a virgin.” “You may go,” Jephthah said. And he let her go away for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because she would never have children. When she returned home, her father kept his vow, and she died a virgin. So it has become a custom in Israel for young Israelite women to go away for four days each year to lament the fate of Jephthah’s daughter.” (Judges 11:29-40 NLT)[/i]

And I still contend that the example of Jesus is valid, regardless of the age of the child sacrificed. According to christian mythology, he sacrificed his child. I don’t think that age is relevant, do you?

Now, these are a few examples of child specific sacrifice. There are many other examples of murder, rape, torture, slavery, and other such shenanigans in the christian good book. Google it.[/quote]

I will address the Jephthah story, first of all it does not describe what you think it does. I had the same misconception for most of my life as well but it actually turns out that because of that vow that his only child his daughter was not to be married and thus was consecrated(set apart) to the Lord and thus no one to carry on his name and his daughter obtains his inheritance after he dies. This is strongly supported by the text you just quoted(the bewailing of her virginity). This vow would have been made by the city gate so that it would have been public knowledge even such that his daughter most likely knew about this before hand.[/quote]

I can only go on what is written in the bible, what the bible actually says. In this story, Jephthah makes this vow: "I will give to the LORD the first thing coming out of my house to greet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering " The story concludes with her death as a virgin. I think it’s a reach to claim what you’re claiming, and more than likely an attempt to clean up a story that christian leaders know will be looked upon with scrutiny. Why would Jephthah offer up a “burnt offering”, and then not follow through? I think that the text clearly says that he followed through on the solemn vow that he’d supposedly made to his god, and his daughter did indeed die as a burnt offering as a virgin.

Good thing the whole story is just that, a story.

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
Secondly just because the bible records some things doesn’t mean that God approves of such acts.[/quote]

This is where I’m compelled to throw the BS flag. Anything that happens, happens with the knowledge and blessing of your god, am I correct? He is the creator and mover of all things right? The Alpha and the Omega? I’m always hearing believers say “gods will be done”; do you believe that? Do you believe that there are events that your god just didn’t see coming? Is god not all knowing and all seeing?

Do you think that god sits up there getting recon reports from the saints, and flies off the handle saying something like “curse those sinners and their shenanigans!..Now I gotta go clean all this up!” lol…

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
The Son and the Father were in one accord. Ive already explained to raj that what makes taking a life wrong for us is that it is not ours to take. With Jesus being God I don’t see the problem.(John 10:17-18 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.)[/quote]

Ahh, but if god commanded you to take a life, it would be alright? No…it would not. Otherwise any christian sitting on a jury, facing a person accused of killing someone in the name of god, would be compelled to free them. How would you KNOW that your god didn’t really command them to do it?

No, I’ve heard this line before many times, and am compelled to always call bullshit. Your premise is based on the false belief that there is actually a god, and that Christianity isn’t something more than just one of the current religions.

“The religion of one age, is the literary entertainment of the next”.
[/quote]
If you want to pursue this Jephthah thing more I pasted two links on page six the first of which has a short video clip and also describes what the words literally mean in the passage and which you can verify with a concordance, otherwise I won’t bother.

What I really see in your second response is more related to the problem of evil and suffering. I guess a response would be something like “how could such a God if he is loving allow etc to happen, how could you believe in such a God.” And I would further guess that you would say that evil exists as a real feature of our world and is inconsistent with an all loving God.

As for your third response wouldn’t that be predicated on whether God exist. Your claim is certainly stronger than others here just claiming a physiological state of mind while you make a truth claim. Any argument or evidence for that claim?

166

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

Bullshit, of the lowest grade.

Your argument for god’s existence is based on your faith, which is based on nothing more than feelings. You have no quantifiable proof of any god. Your faith is crap, as all faith is, since it needs no proof of anything in an effort to believe in anything. Dawkins is spot on when he rails against the concept of faith as dangerous. It teaches us to believe in what’s not real, and THAT, is a problem for the human race.
[/quote]
If it were based on faith, you could refute it, it’s not it’s based on pure logic. If you can refute it, I will personally send you a cookie. I will present the argument in a link, because I written is so many times, I can’t do it any more…
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

This is the cosmological argument of which you are unfamiliar. All your rantings and calling it bullshit, doesn’t make it so. It just means you can’t refute it or beat it.

The argument is really a form of argument, as this article explains. It’s a good overview of the argument without getting to technical.

The Kalam argument I already agree is garbage, the aregument from contingency (3.1) is what I am claiming and defending. It’s not a perfect form of the argument, but it’s good enough.

By the time your done, you should be able to see why I said the I can make a better argument for God than you can for yourself. Only your ego can prevent this epiphany.

Oh cry me a river, you’re whining about how mean God is in the OT is hardly compelling. Refute the argument, I don’t need scripture to prove God exist.

167

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

Right, the fact that your god was only putting him to the test and maybe “fooling around a bit”, that makes the story loving.

Still a very, very, very fucked up story. You have to do a whole lot of equivocation to make that anything but fucking evil. Although, I’m sure you’re up to the task.
[/quote]
It may have been a little mean, but it was not a story of God asking Abraham commit child sacrifice. Which is what you claim and I refuted.

Whoptie do. God has not been detected by scientific measures? I am underwhelmed. Is this what these books taught you? Technically, if you want to get nitty gritty, your simply introducing another strawman, but I’ll let it stand in that I love discussing science in the realm of cosmology. Science not detecting God doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist. Science tells us many things about the world but the scientific method simply ends the process of discovery once a correlation is established and a conclusion draw. Science, tells us only of the physical world, anything outside of that, is beyond the scope of science. So is would make sense that science cannot discover that which sits outside of it’s realm.
Further, technically speaking, even science itself is a contingent existence. And science is a metaphysical construct.
Since science deals with

Also, as for ‘other gods’, there’s evidence for them, people have made statues and wrote stories and all kinds of stuff to demonstrate their existence. So that’s actually evidence, whether it’s valid evidence or not is another matter, but evidence it is. Whether they exist or I don’t really care. I am only concerned with the Creator of existence, that on which all existence depends.
I cannot prove one way or another that those other gods exist or not, but I can prove they are not the creator the non-contingent being. They just simply don’t make that claim.
That claim is all I am interested in. Proof for it, is existence itself…Didn’t that Hitchens guy cover that?[/quote]

The cool thing about science is, that it’s real whether you believe in it or not.

[/quote]

Deductive reasoning is more real that science will ever hope to be.
And science has spent most of it’s history being wrong.

168

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
Here’s another really good video debunking William Lane Craig

[/quote]
Tell me raj do you ever check out what someone has to say without filtering it through some youtube atheist?

Forget for a moment that you are derailing the topic of this thread. If you want to continue this, start a new thread about cosmology.

Anyways, the creator of this video has terrible grasp of law of logic and comes up with a terrible analogy to somehow prove deductive logic wrong. I peer lead/(teach) fields and waves at a university. Ill just quote myself where I responded to Olena(which I think is where she got that terrible argument as well).

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]Oleena wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

If the conclusion is valid and the premises are valid, then the conclusion i necessarily;y true.

[/quote]
cannot know whether your deductive argument’s premises are in fact true unless they fall within the realm of scientifically known information .

[/quote]
Wrong the premises in a deductive argument need not fall within the realm of “scientifically know information” in order for it to be valid and sound although science can certainly play a part in some of the premises of some deductive arguments. Nor could science test the premises in the Argument from Contingency that Pat usually presents because science presupposes them and in fact those premises are necessary for us to even do science in the first place.

Your poorly constructed argument to show that science determines the validity(not soundness) of a deductive argument is a misunderstanding of what a deductive argument and science is.

This is a valid argument.

  1. A particle of mass M mass’s is a constant independent of any reference frame it is in.
  2. Force is equal to the product of its mass and acceleration.
  3. This situation occurs in R ^3 space
  4. A particle subjected to a constant force greater than zero will experience constant acceleration while the velocity will increase linearly with time.
  5. The velocity this particle can attain is any member of the set of real numbers m/s including greater than 3x10^8m/s if subjected to a force for a long enough period.

Now suppose there exist a hypothetical universe in which those premises are true, the conclusion is inescapably true. It just so happens that in our universe, from the inductive inferences we get through science give good evidence that the first three premises happen to not be true and thus the argument isn’t sound in this universe thought valid. It seems that the mass of a particle is function of its rest mass and velocity in a given reference frame, that force is equal to the derivative of momentum(where the momentum is the product of mass and velocity) which Newton originally said force is so that there is no contradiction between him and Einstein and that the reason for this is that space may not be R ^3 as we normally perceive it.

The premises of the Argument from Contingency are far more basic than the ones used to conduct science in the first place.

http://tnation.T-Nation.com/free_online_forum/world_news_war/physics_of_the_afterlife?id=4694416&pageNo=5

Read where I start on page 6 till page 12 where me and Pat explain and answered any objection to the argument, if you have any objections I will be happy to discuss them with you.
[/quote]
Do you go to a university raj? If you do you can easily read his book for yourself online.[/quote]

Yes, but my background is not in science.

I’ve caught so many lies from Christian apologetics, that I’m very skeptical of believing anything they have to say. WLC stuff has been debunked and he refuses to debate Matt (Guy in the video).

I’m still waiting for you to explain to me the strawman in the 1st video I posted.[/quote]
I have already explained the strawman. Look in this thread again.
Edit:on page 4
Since you go to university type “The Blackwell companion to natural theology” on your library data base and you should be able to access the ebook and you should be able to read the argument he presents and other good arguments in full. Or maybe you want to start a new thread relating to the topic?[/quote]

I’m going to spend more time looking into it first. WLC refuses to debate a bunch of prominent atheist activists and they’ve all refuted his points.

I also graduated from uni in 2009. Not access to it. Do you have another link?

169

[quote]pat wrote:

I want to know what lies Christian apologetics told you?
And second, have you dropped the cosmology discussion as we were about to start it, or are you going to yet get to it?
You said it was false, I want you to prove it wrong. But please no more links unless they are really, really relevant. I don’t have time to chase every link and video somebody posts to argue for them.[/quote]

Read anything Ray Comfort says.

If you want to spill out the cosmological argument go nuts.

170

[quote]bigflamer wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:

[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Atheism is the only true belief (or lack of belief). Every religion is only a result of being told from others what to think and believe.[/quote]
So tell me is it a proposition one holds to be true or just a physiological state?[/quote]

I don’t expect most atheists to get that religion isn’t the result of brain washing… This idea that the Christian experience is either a collective lie, or a collection of mass stupidity based on group-think is a position I expect them to hold. I mean, it’s a stretch to think that about 2 billion people are delusional and/ or stupid. Because if it’s just that, then it’s unreasonable, and it’s an easy dragon to slay. This I can only imagine is the catalyst to the hubris, arrogance and apparent smugness of the typical atheist. They have been programmed to dismiss us as dumb or crazy. The fact there is no basis in fact, does not seem to stop this misconception.
Again I have to exclude Kamui from this as he has not expressed this view in anyway and does not dismiss the whole Christian experience.[/quote]

Atheists are programed to no such thing. Believers are the ones who are programed from a very young age, just as their parents were, just as heir parents were, just as their parents were. See how that works?
[/quote]
No, that’s some deluded bullshit you choose to believe it has no basis in real actual fact. It’s just a hubris on the part of atheists to believe something like that. All kids are a product of their environment to some degree. Being raised a certain way does not mean that all people who don’t think like you are brainwashed robots.

Ignoring or disregarding evidence isn’t the same as ‘no evidence’. Can’t do anything about willful ignorance. Second, Whether you like it or not, most of your life revolves around things you aren’t certain of, which makes you operate on faith.
You don’t know if you be alive tomorrow, you don’t know if all the scientific theories you believe in (which is a kind of faith) will fall apart. You believe history based on hearsay, etc. I can go on and on about all the things you don’t know but believe. It’s not a spiritual faith, but it’s a faith nonetheless.

I didn’t say it did, I said it’s unresonable to suspect all of the people are either delusional or stupid and that, that is the only catalyst for their faith. If you think that because people are taught Christianity from a young age is the means by which they are programmed just means you don’t really know the very basics of developemental Psychology. People don’t work that way or you would be that way too.
I hope you have more basis for your ideals than anger and vitriol. It seems to me you are an emotional athiest. You’re athiesm is more based on angst than fact. The fact that you claim to have read all these books and you don’t even know the core arguments of the theist seems to support this fact.
Being angry, belittling, and crying bullshit doesn’t prove those core arguments wrong. Hating the bible, a book you never read, doesn’t make God suddenly disappearâ?¦.

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[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

I want to know what lies Christian apologetics told you?
And second, have you dropped the cosmology discussion as we were about to start it, or are you going to yet get to it?
You said it was false, I want you to prove it wrong. But please no more links unless they are really, really relevant. I don’t have time to chase every link and video somebody posts to argue for them.[/quote]

Read anything Ray Comfort says.

If you want to spill out the cosmological argument go nuts.[/quote]

Who the fuck is Ray Comfort and why would I read him?

Here is the argument, I’ll post it as many times as it takes…

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/

The argument from contingency (3.1) is what I support. The Kalam argument is garbage. The link even has counter arguments for you to use if you wish.

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[quote]pat wrote:

Who the fuck is Ray Comfort and why would I read him?
[/quote]

He’s a Christian apologist. I was giving you an answer to your question.

Have you not seen this?

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[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

Who the fuck is Ray Comfort and why would I read him?
[/quote]

He’s a Christian apologist. I was giving you an answer to your question.

Have you not seen this?

Well, I have never heard of him. And I can’t really watch videos at work and I likely won’t unless there is something very, very compelling to watch. Otherwise, I’ll take the Cliff notes.

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This guy talks about a fruit that has evolved from it’s natural inedible state to a lovely piece of fruit fit for human consumption through selective breeding, as if god’s intention lead to it growing curved to fit our human hands just right.

The guy’s a moron.

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[quote]ephrem wrote:
This guy talks about a fruit that has evolved from it’s natural inedible state to a lovely piece of fruit fit for human consumption through selective breeding, as if god’s intention lead to it growing curved to fit our human hands just right.

The guy’s a moron.[/quote]

Oh, I have seen this before and yes I agree, this guys is a moron. I get what I think he’s trying to say, but it’s an epic fail. In scope and size of this universe a one in trillion chance is actually a pretty high probability.
I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘monkey and the type writer’ thing.

176

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
This guy talks about a fruit that has evolved from it’s natural inedible state to a lovely piece of fruit fit for human consumption through selective breeding, as if god’s intention lead to it growing curved to fit our human hands just right.

The guy’s a moron.[/quote]

Oh, I have seen this before and yes I agree, this guys is a moron. I get what I think he’s trying to say, but it’s an epic fail. In scope and size of this universe a one in trillion chance is actually a pretty high probability.
I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘monkey and the type writer’ thing.[/quote]

And soon you will come to realise that the chance of life evolving spontaneously in such an immense and vast universe has a pretty high probability too.

[i]Excellent![/i]

177

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]honest_lifter wrote:

Matthew 5:28 is a great scripture. I can also appreciate your reasoning.

Try looking at it a different way. What Jesus was showing us is that all our sins we commit start in the heart, or start with a wrong desire.

Notice what it says at James 1:14-15 "But each one is tried by being drawn out and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then the desire, when it has become fertile, gives birth to sin; in turn, sin, when it has been accomplished, brings forth death.

He is warning us to guard our heart. Adultery is a sin committed when you are a married person. Therefore, you have made a vow to another individual to keep the marriage bed clean. By dwelling on, or keeping the thought of adultery, in one’s heart, and individual is running a risk of letting that desire turn into action if given the right situation.

Let me ask you, is it not loving to your mate to guard your eyes from longing after other women?[/quote]

How can you possibly stop yourself from being attracted to other women? I’m not married, but I can tell you that even if I were, it would be impossible for me to not look at other women lustfully.

Secondly, why is it only a man looking upon a woman lustfully? Why not a woman looking upon a man? It sounds like nothing more than a misogynistic bit of language.
[/quote]

Ok, so I really don’t have a desire to enter this thread heavily at the moment, but I’ll say this:

  1. Your misogynist statement is a pretty superficial and quite lame bit of word gaming with a moral precept. I think that particular “why not a woman looking at a man?” fails the common sense rubric.

  2. I’ve been in 2.5 relationships that I can honestly where I never so much at looked at another woman, no matter how little she was wearing. 1.5 of those were long term relationships (I say “.5” because the second long term relationship did not start out with me being wholly focused on the the one chick, it took a bit into the relationship). I could have been locked in a room for a month with her doing the naked salsa and been totally uninterested because she was not who I wanted. If somebody knows me in real life, they also know how remarkable that statement is ;P.

Regardless, I think it’s perfectly possible, though not particularly certain to happen. I know other people who have expressed the exact same sentiment. The problem with most people is they start relationships of any kind based on superficial motives of immediate self-gratification. Note the temporal modifier here–I am not suggesting one should not be gratified in a relationship: clearly it is a relationship instead of a one-way servitude. I am also not suggesting that physical attraction should not be part of a relationship, or of starting one. I am, however, saying that people get into stupid shit based on thinking with their small heads (note I did not say “having sex” as in the action. I am talking about motives and thought process). And while it may not be a 100% guarantee, starting a relationship based on something OTHER than your small head’s talking points is a good way towards fixing that problem.

  1. This scripture can also be easily read to be teaching the concept that “all have sinned and fallen short”, ie: that no matter how good you are, you’re not good enough, and therefore the Grace of the new way (Jesus) is what saves. Which is pretty much exactly what the New Testament is about, and that should be pretty obvious to Christians and non-Christians alike.
179

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

…Studying theology as an atheist is like studying evolution as a creationist. What’s the point if you don’t believe in the core tenent.[/quote]

There is a very good reason.[/quote]

We agree on something?!?!?!?

180

I just ordered Darwin’s Black box by Michael Behe.