Forums → WEPR → The Religion Debate Thread
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So yeah, our threads on religion have long since died out, so I figured it would be time to start afresh here!
Do you believe God exists (I know almost all of you don't)? Do you feel religion is important today? Is it a force for good? Discuss everything related to that here!
I'm going to start the ball rolling:
We all know about the rise of ISIS and the terrible acts it perpetuates. Does that show that Islam and religion in general is an awful concept? Is it the people who twist it? Or is it fundamentally an evil force?
Roping in the WERP frequenters
@MageGrayWolf @Kasic @Hahiha @FishPreferred @Doombreed @09philj
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But that savior does not love us despite our sin unconditionally. He loves us if we love him. The rest can burn in Hell, quite literally.
He dies for everyone's sin though. It's up to us to accept His love.
By that logic, me and HahiHa and the rest of the atheists/agnostics here who feel that religion and the way God is described and depicted in The Bible is absurd, can 'tell' it's wrong based on God's law which is 'written in their hearts'.
They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them
(Romans 2:15 ESV)
I just meant that everyone has morals and morals come from God.
Take a wild guess as to why your example did not work. No? Let me help. It's because what we believe is right or wrong differs sometimes radically from person to person. From disagreements about the efficacy of the Death Penalty to whether cold blooded unjustified murder is 'right or wrong'. Morality is not fixed for everyone.
It doesn't matter. Everyone still has a sense of right and wrong. If not from God, where do morals come from?
Everyone has God's law written in their hearts and that's how they know right from wrong.
Without any clue of Jesus, many people are indifferent about their sins. In fact, people are oblivious of their sins because they don't even know the way God works.
OK. So, first, you tell me we all have a choice because we all have God's law written in our hearts - only to tell me a second later that we are oblivious to God's law to justify the need for a saviour? Clearly, you have not made up your mind about it yourself, yet.
My point is simple.
A) A person that does not possess belief in a deity is not presented with a choice, since there are no valid options from that person's point of view. What you believe to be true, is not necessarily what they hold to be true, and so they will find their own justification for their moral values - even if they're the exact same as yours.
B) A person that does believe in God has no choice either, since one option is considered right by default.
He dies for everyone's sin though.
He is immortal. He cannot die. He is not all-loving if he cannot forgive without making a meaningless sacrifice to himself.
It doesn't matter. Everyone still has a sense of right and wrong. If not from God, where do morals come from?
Empathy and altruism in social animals.
Then, I suspect that the alternatives are to design us to be perfect but without a free will or to not create us at all. Or God could remove all temptation and we would praise Him for being loving to us that way.Or He could choose not to take offence to something He knew was coming and could have easily prevented.
Everyone has God's law written in their hearts and that's how they know right from wrong.No, they don't. Nobody has ever been able to establish a universally agreed upon moral ruleset. Therefore, not everybody knows right from wrong.
Without any clue of Jesus, many people are indifferent about their sins. In fact, people are oblivious of their sins because they don't even know the way God works. Even I commit sins that I don't know are sins until God reveals them to me. Some people aren't even threatened with eternal ****ation. This is exactly why we need a Savior who loves us despite our sin.No, it isn't. That doesn't relate in any way to the preceeding statements, nor does any of it justify the ****ation of anyone.
If you kill someone in a perfectly just world, you would die with the same amount of pain inflicted on your victim.No, because that isn't even approximately just. Harming one person in reprisal for harming another person is only adding to the total amount of harm. Trying to equalize the perpetrator and victim is both petty and vindictive. It is exactly and unequivocally what "eye-for-an-eye" means, so barring cognitive dissonance, I can't really see why you would object to the term.
If you choose a lifestyle contrary to the preceptive will of God, you will get a life separate from God, therefore separate from His blessings.Being in a situation that prevents you from meeting God's demands should not be causing Him harm. It certainly shouldn't be a punishable offence.
I get what you're saying. I assume you are referring to the laws that mean you can't say God's name in vain or laws that say you must put God first in your life. Basically the first 4 10 Commandments, right?No. I am referring to your claim that it is justifiable for Him to condemn us for failing to do exactly what He wants, despite our inability to bend reality to His will.
1 You can disregard the makerSo? It's still the maker's fault.
2 It requires a skilled technician, a SaviorSure, or anyone competent enough to correct the mistake or prevent it from happening (like, I dunno, an Almighty God, or something?).
You said it was about sin. Even after I defined sin. Even so, our ethics are based on moral laws which God gave us, the ones He has written in our hearts.That line of discussion was about conscience; something I explicitly said has absolutely no bearing upon sin.
But if we are not independent of causality, then our choices have consequences.Yeah.
A capricious god is not a just god.If the rules are made and enforced through arbitrary and inconsistent whims rather than reasonable goal-oriented decisions, they aren't going to be justifiable rules.
Why not?
Here the point was that if we were to regard our earthly authorities in this way, we should do so a lot more for the ultimate authority.The point fails, however, as treason doesn't carry a high penalty "because they deserve worse for attacking an authority". The penalty is high because endangering the highest authority over a nation is liable to endanger the nation itself. If an almighty being controls the universe with the highest authority, nothing we ever do could possibly endanger either.
No where in this definition says justice is a deterrent to crime.Preventing crime or other wrongdoing is the sole and entire reason for its existence. That's what makes it justice, and not spite.
It doesn't matter. Everyone still has a sense of right and wrong. If not from God [of the gaps], where do morals come from?From the fact that living peacefully in a social group requires behavioural conformance.
I submit XD. Your debating skills are well beyond mine. I'm worn out, but I wanna thank you for really testing my faith. At this point, I just don't have the energy or time to debate, so instead of just leaving you hanging, I wanted to congratulate you. I'm not sure if I even put up that much of a fight considering how fast you guys responded lol. Anyways, here are the arguments that stumped me:
Empathy and altruism in social animals.
No, they don't. Nobody has ever been able to establish a universally agreed upon moral ruleset. Therefore, not everybody knows right from wrong.
Harming one person in reprisal for harming another person is only adding to the total amount of harm. Trying to equalize the perpetrator and victim is both petty and vindictive.
Here are the arguments that I made that I can't justify or probably shouldn't even have brought up:
God stays inconsistent. He decides to be merciful sometimes and wrathful other times. But He doesn't promise to be merciful. He also doesn't promise to punish us for all of our sins. God does promise to forgive when we trust in His sacrifice.
Without any clue of Jesus, many people are indifferent about their sins. In fact, people are oblivious of their sins because they don't even know the way God works.
So that's it from me. I hope you find someone new to debate though. And I'll be praying for you guys if that means anything at all to you haha. Don't worry. You'll probably find me on the forum games from time to time. Thanks again! And goodnight.
Hahaha honestly I personally dropped arguing because lozerfac3 never answered me x'D
My point was according with them both but I couldn't tell it like they said x'D
Congrats to @FishPreferred, @Hahiha and to you too @lozerfac3 it's not easy to trying to defend your convictions against many people ^^ !
@Hahiha Maybe Fish deserved the debate quest ? He had provided a lot of good argues through the wepr thread so it will be fair to give it to him. Atleast it's my opinion ^^
A specific event are you sure Fish ? I've never really understand that one x'D
Mmh exchanging and counter arguing here it's a kind of debate for me but I'm maybe wrong.
@Last4Skull that particular quest is handed down by Moe mostly, and is only reserved for winners of 'The Great Debates!' It has nothing to do with participation in the rest of the WEPR. There's been 6 rounds but Moe, our philosopher and judge of the contest ran into complications of his time schedule and personal life and the final round is still not resolved. Probably will take very long considering that it's been this way for over a year. Don't expect the debates to return any time soon
Anyway, off-topic, just answering your question. If you have any more, let's take it up somewhere else
Oh yeah. I wanna thank you @Last4Skull and everyone else I had the opportunity to talk to. Sorry if I forgot you too.
I personally am an atheist but I appreciate the values religion teaches to people.
@The_Empirezz I think I know what you mean, but would you mind expanding on the subject a bit? For instance, what values are you speaking of exactly? I'm asking this because most values taught by religion that I find positive, I can find them in a secular humanist society as well.
I missed this honestly. There really aren't many Christian users on this site who like to debate huh? I just feel like this is a good way to strengthen my faith. I agree with @HahiHa on this one, but I want to resurrect this thread if that's cool. Pun intended
Well, @lozerfac3 there are good points unanswered from the last time you were here you could either respond to those or make new ones if that's what you'd like
Hmm thank you @Doombreed. I kinda need to get back into the groove with it naamsayin. Let's start off with something small. I feel like I'm more on the defensive side and I don't want to assume what you believe, so I'll let someone ask a question for me. One question please, then we can expand on it.
I'm reading a book (A History on Christianity) and whilst I'm atheist (Or an agnostic half the time), I can understand why some people are religious seeing that most of my friends are Christians.
However, what I sometimes am curious about is how Christians (Or other religious groups for that matter), square their religious texts. For example, the Gospel of Matthew and Luke have ancestor lists of Jesus so as to trace his lineage as the Son of David via Jesus' father, Joseph. Yet they then defeat this purpose by stating that Joseph is not Jesus' father due to Mary being a virgin. Matthew does this by labeling Joseph as "Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born", instead of labeling him as "Joseph, father of Jesus" (As was done for Joseph's ancestors, e.g "Jacob, the father of Joseph" ). Luke simply calls Jesus as "the son (as was supposed) of Joseph". However as we know, both Gospels clearly enunciate the idea that Mary was a perpetual virgin. This seems like a very clumsy attempt at fitting a square peg into a round hole!
Furthermore, this does not square with the fact that the Gospels state that Jesus' had brothers and sisters (James, Joseph, Judas, Simon etc), although the early church did debate over whether "brother" meant a full-blood brother or simply a cousin, nephew, step-brother, etc. However, the existence of the debates in itself shows that the Bible, or the Gospels at least, are potentially riddled with discrepancies and should lead to a few eyebrows being raised.
This is perhaps only just one of the many hundreds or thousands of discrepancies that has came down the millennia due to the constant mis-translations, misquotations, fragmentation of the original Greek/Hebrew into various languages, not to mention the cacophony of voices and opinions in the early church when it struggled to pin down an official collection of texts into the Bible whilst stamping out what it felt was heretical.
How does one square the Bible within its own texts? (Aside from the existence of God, which is another discussion). What is curious too, is that many of my friends do not seem to spot, or just gloss over such discrepancies, which on second glance are quite glaring.
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