Brutally eloquent and I'm not really one to mock anyone's faith but he does ask some quite pertinent questions.
Religion, what's the point?
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Brutally eloquent and I'm not really one to mock anyone's faith but he does ask some quite pertinent questions.
Accept Christ as your saviour!
So you can do anything you want, ridiculously abhorrent and disgusting, but if you accept Christ as your saviour, then it's fine?
Absolutely. Tough questions, but ones that can be answered.
Jesus...
Granted. You can't be defined as atheist. My point about your belief in other gods stands though.
You and I have the exact same belief in thousands of gods. Our only disagreement comes when it comes to your specific god. Obviously, you are confident in the existence of your god. But to me, your belief is as foolish as someone who believes in Odin or Thor. I understand that that doesn't matter to you. And that's fine.
But my point all night hasn't been to ridicule the religious. It's been to dispose this myth that not believing in god is a belief system. Your belief in god requires you to believe things that are ridiculous in the natural world. Noah's Ark being an example. My atheism is looking at all the evidence available in the natural world and coming to the conclusion that there is no evidence for a god.
To equate the two is insulting to anyone who looks at the world logically and with an open mind. And I know you think this makes me anything but open minded. But I was raised catholic. I went to a catholic primary school. I received all the sacraments. I have given Christianity a chance. But it is illogical to believe any of it is true.
Without vague intangible rhetoric?
No. and no. Atheism is the lack of a belief so can we please stop saying that it is?
How do you know that your god can't be proven?
Also, atheists don't seek anything and we don't have any motives regarding anything that concerns religion. You put a lot of words in our mouths there and it seems as if you are painting us all with the same brush as well which is a pretty shitty thing to do.
Still, no god has an effect on my life or my thoughts whatsoever, because I don't believe that gods exist and I could just as well replace the word god with Santa claus or Spiderman. i.e I don't feel any accountability towards Spiderman because I don't believe that he exists.
Yes, I found that idea unpalatable too. But Christ died for all our sins, not just for small ones.
There's been quite an extended discourse on previous pages about the definition of atheism, Zlaatan.
Then what you believe is abhorrent. The idea that someone lives a good life, but will find themselves unable to enter paradise, or even worse condemned to damnation, but someone who is a murderer and a rapist can go to heaven as long as they embrace the cop-out of embracing Christ...then, yeah, it's appalling.
What you highlight is again the problem with religious belief, though, because most major religious figures currently would argue that anyone who is decent and loving can go to heaven. Your belief isn't concrete...it's just the one you've chosen so you can feel superior in the belief that even if you say/do horrible things, you'll be fine in the end because you believe in Jesus.
But an infant in Ethiopia who died of hunger after living for mere days can't get in because he hasn't been baptised.
(Oh sorry, I forgot, that's not the case anymore. Since it became such an unpalatable idea, that once got scrapped. Of course they get in)
I appreciate the feeling behind your words. However, you import into your post certain ideas that I'd question - what defines a good life? A good life with respect to what? And why is embracing Christ a cop-out? When one wants to make amends with their maker, why is that a cop-out?
Well if God is infinitely just, one would expect His justness to prevail in such situations?
The atheists are actually right when they say no amount of evidence will persuade them of God's existence, because faith and unbelief is an attitude of the heart. If we look at the bibles interpretation of what faith is, we read.....
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
The Hebrews writer tells us that faith is the substance and evidence of what is not physically tangible. And so the atheist looking to be persuaded by physical tangible evidence, will never find it according to the bible.
The Hebrews writer goes on to say.....
Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
Notice he doesn't say, "by science we understand"? The bible says that the only way you can know that any invisible God created a visible universe, is by faith. And what do atheists require? Observable evidence. Something that cannot be seen unless the heart is humbled with an attitude of faith.
On a basic level? Aiming to help others, be charitable and loving when you can, don't kill people, don't cheat people or feck them over, and don't deliberately aim to be hurtful to others.
What you say is a cop-out because anyone can just decide to embrace Christ as their saviour and then be free from consequence. That's...dreadful. A God who will prioritise someone who believes in him over someone who does what he asked them to in the 10 commandments is a narcissistic one, fueled by a desire for recognition over a desire for decency.
Do you believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible?
I don't know what kind of evidence would be needed for me to believe, but it would have to be pretty extraordinary. Something like the heavens opening up and a big bearded man descending down and performing a miracle right in front of me while explaining that he is the christian god etcetc would be awesome. A quick trip to heaven with a sneak peak at the gates and a hug from friends and family who's passed away would be pretty decent as well.
I honestly would not believe anyone who said that they wouldn't believe even with mountains of evidence. That makes no sense at all.
Why are all those things you mentioned Good? From where do you get your concept of Good?
That's fine that you believe that, but unfortunately that answer has a sort of 'only for believers' stamp on it, just like the other answers I was complaining about earlier tonight.
If we're talking in a religious context, there's this nifty little thing called the 10 commandments God came up with. A fair bit of what I'm saying above is pretty much what he asked people to do. A good six of the points indicate what a 'good' life would be. The rest are mostly kind of narcissistic, though.
1) If that did happen, would you not put it down to be a vivid hallucination?
2) If it was enough to convince you of His existence, how would you live the rest of your life? Would the way you acted, for example, mirror in any way the behavior described of His disciples/Paul?
Yeah, problem with his answer is that it's something which could quite easily be applied to Big Foot or Spiderman if I wanted it to.
No I mean where do You get your concept of Good from?
If what you were saying were true, it would also be the lack of belief in scientific theories seeking to disprove the existence of God. You can't have it both ways
It's correct.
This describes atheism. You are very confused.
I'm not really sure, to be honest. Mostly a general sense that it's a good thing to try not to hurt others, and help them when I can.
A cartoon character isn't an immaterial, timeless, all-powerful being who created the universe. Big Foot is material. So no, they're not the same.
Says who?
So by this definition, you couldn't do Good in the absence of others? There is no Good without humans?
Are you trying to make a not-so-clever argument that a cartoon character, created by humans within the universe, created the universe?
Well, no. You could help animals, too, or nature in general. I'm not really sure what you're trying to argue here, though. Concepts such as empathy and sympathy are fairly universal, far from new, and have largely led us into living in a more prosperous, developed time than in any other period.
No. What I'm saying is that the argument that it's impossible to prove God doesn't exist, or that we are all given the evidence we need, is no more credible with God than it is with any other silly character or concept. It's a cop-out because you're unable to give genuine, tangible prove as to God's existence.
Yet all of his most loyal followers disagreed for nearly 2000 years an for only recently decided he was just enough to allow them in.
When I was in school, so 20 or so years ago, the church taught us that infants who died before they could be baptised were sent to limbo. Now we had Christian parents and still couldn't get in. What Hope had a child who does with parents of some other faith.
Yes, but why would that be Good? Who decides if it is Good? You? What if someone disagrees?
I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning about cartoon characters.
Moral of the story: follow Christ, not Christians.
Then you can feel free to disagree. In the same way I'd imagine most prominent religious figures disagree with your assessment of who gets to go to heaven/paradise and who doesn't.
My reasoning is more of an analogy; you argue that you can't disprove the existence of God, but that's a cop-out. If it's impossible to disprove the existence of God, then it should also be impossible to disprove the existence of any other fictional figure or idea because none of them have any less proof of their existence than God.
Is this the Euthyphro Dilemma? Because the correct answer is you're talking about a fictional character. It's like talking about Wolverines emotionally stability, get a life you nerds!
Yes it could be a hallucination, as I said I'm not really sure what evidence I would need. But I think you get the gist of it.
I would probably not change anything about how I live my life in the greater sense of it. I'd still look at naked women on the internet from time to time I think..
Also, and more importantly, I would not pray to god. I would not worship him in any way whatsoever because if he's up there and can't be more bothered about all the horrible things that are happening to his own children then he's not worthy of my attention.
He could stop the suffering of billions of people in a second if he wanted to, yet (if he exists) he is deliberatily not doing anything. Apparently the concept of free will is more important to him than stopping all the attrocious acts happening daily to innocent people. The things you speak of, that we need to find him and build a relationship with him on our own, is more important to him than stopping religeous wars that have raged again and again over centuries, it's more important than wiping out every single dicease, stopping every natural disaster etcetc. He's evil and egoistic beyond comparision, period.
I could go on but I believe that was a rant and a half and that's enough of that..
Haha. I won't. Christ didn't say anything that hadn't been commonplace already. If he existed and said all that he supposedly said, he was undoubtedly a good bloke. But he was hardly a revolutionary. He preached the golden rule that you should treat others as you wouldn't like to be treated. An idea that had been around for thousands of years before him.
What about his Pops though? The just one who wiped out all of humanity, bar 7 (or 9?) people and two of every animal because people were wicked. A stern warning from a voice in the sky would undeoubtedly have worked. Like there are so many ways an all powerful god could get his message across. He chose mass murder. The just one.
Even if a creator existed there is no evidence that that creator is in anyway interested in us at all. Nor is there any evidence that anyone knows what we should do about it.
The idea that there is an objective good which people can live by is destroyed be human interpretation to such an extent that no religion purporting to hold the truth about the creator's plan has managed to hold together without dissent and schisms for very long.
The idea that there is an objective good which people can live by is destroyed be human interpretation to such an extent that no religion purporting to hold the truth about the creator's plan has managed to hold together without dissent and schisms for very long.