I am a christian, i and i strongly belive in my lord jesus christ, and i also belive that if you belive in him and except him as your savior, u will go to heaven. and i also believe that he created the world, not the big bang, or that we came from stupid apes.
Which would you rather have, die not believing in God and find out that there is a God and there is heaven and hell, or believe in God, die, and find that there isn't a God? Would you rather have the safeguard of believing in God or take the risk that there isn't?
Thats known as Pascal's Wager. Its quite a famous dilemna. But surely if you only belived in God as an insurance policy, you would either not fully belive and not get into heaven or God with his omnipotent knowedge would know you arent a true believer.
These are all good points, and you are right, woody, to point out that Ithikhar is a watered down version of Pascal's Wager. At it's core, however, it's still compelling. More compelling, I think, is the issue of morality and religion. People argue that without religion to instill these moral guidelines, we would be morally anarchistic. Parsat (I think) brought up the point that evolutionarily it makes more sense to mate with many females for propagation regardless of any moral consequences. At first, this argument is quite compelling, but certainly morality existed before Christianity did. Now, if we accept that the Christian god handed down these decrees as how He wanted humans to behave then the argument seems a bit strange. Think about the 10 commandments; these weren't exactly novel ideas when Moses introduced them. People weren't running around killing anyone they wanted and suddenly stopped once the commandments were handed down. My point being that morality existed well before the Christian god was conceived of, and I would argue well before the concept of "religion" was ever created. We also have new moral standards that have nothing to do with religion - such as cruelty to animals, and certain local customs and rituals. It really seems to me that while there is some congruency between morality and religious doctrine, it is a result of already accepted moral standards being incorporated into religious doctrine upon it's creation; not the other way around.
@Ithikhar You know I agree, but I believe that you should at least believe in something much higher than yourself, i.e. a god, without question believe.
Also don't believe what people say if they say they speak the words of god, because in the end it is the actions of that man (and yourself) that truly show they understand the words of their lord/lords/flying spaghetti monster (<-- JK people)...
At first, this argument is quite compelling, but certainly morality existed before Christianity did. Now, if we accept that the Christian god handed down these decrees as how He wanted humans to behave then the argument seems a bit strange. Think about the 10 commandments; these weren't exactly novel ideas when Moses introduced them. People weren't running around killing anyone they wanted and suddenly stopped once the commandments were handed down. My point being that morality existed well before the Christian god was conceived of, and I would argue well before the concept of "religion" was ever created.
If the Christian God really is eternal and that he had a hand in creating things, it should be expected that he was the one who instilled the basic concept of morality. However, it's also expected that new social mores come and go.
i believe religions to be as people wanting answers for the things unanswerable
now, there is no proof that evolution actually happened and there is no proof of the bible to be a fictional story such as the lion the witch and the wardrobe
just theories
i happen to stand with whichever i believe would be most probable
a giant godlike male creating everything or genetic codes altering to become the best possible
Technically, Buddhism in its core is nontheist, in that it does not need a God. Nontheism can include atheism, agnosticism, theological incognitivists, etc. However, in some different types Buddhism can be theist, especially those types practiced in Japan and China which do revere deities.
Why it isn't theism vs. atheism I don't know. I brought it up that atheism is so broad and Christianity much more narrower that either you broaden one or narrow the other for the sake of debate, or you do a question/answer type debate, where one side asks questions of the other and the other answers, then they switch positions.
Because the debate is so usually centered on Christianity and atheism, generally it's hard to find other threads. We could debate Christianity vs. other religions if you so desire. Apologetics does not limit itself against atheist barbs.
Extremely debatable topic. Well I'm a Baptist (Christian), therefore I don't judge other people based on their relogion, but for who they really are. I disagree with the title completely...it makes it seem like we are fighting over which religion is better.
