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thepyro222
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thepyro222
2,150 posts
Peasant

I grew up atheist for 16 years. I had always kept an open mind towards religion, but never really felt a need to believe in it. My sister started going to a Wednesday night children's program at a church. Eventually, I was dragged into a Christmas Eve service. Scoffing, I reluctantly went, assuming that this was going to be a load of crap, but when I went, I felt something. Something that I've never felt before. I felt a sense of empowerment and a sense of calling. Jesus called upon my soul, just like he did with his disciples. he wanted me to follow him. Now, my life is being lived for Christ. He died on the cross for my sins, and the sins of everyone who believes in him. He was beaten, brutalized, struck with a whip 39 times, made to carry a cross up to the stage of his death. This I believe to be true, and I can never repay him for what he has done.
I still have my struggles with Christianity, but I've found this bit of information most useful. Religion is not comprehensible in the human mind, because we cannot comprehend the idea of a perfect and supreme being, a God, but we can believe it in our heart, and that's the idea of faith. Faith is, even though everything rides against me believing in Jesus, I still believe in him because I know that it's true in my heart. I invite my fellow Brothers and sisters of the LORD to talk about how Jesus has helped you in your life. No atheists and no insults please

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master565
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master565
4,104 posts
Nomad

From wiki


Okay then, not much else to say about that.
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
9,462 posts
Farmer

What exactly are the dead sea scrolls? I would like a good explanation please-DT07


They are the oldest copies of the old testament that we have.
Darktroop07
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Darktroop07
3,592 posts
Shepherd

http://armorgames.com/image/armatar_110_35.35_c.jpg

They are the oldest copies of the old testament that we have.

Thanks for saying all that with one sentence, and where is it currently being displayed at like a museum?
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
9,462 posts
Farmer

Thanks for saying all that with one sentence,


There is more detail then that. That's just the general gist of them.

and where is it currently being displayed at like a museum?


I'm not sure where or even if they are being displayed right now.
ShinyCowBeast
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ShinyCowBeast
120 posts
Nomad

The Ten Commandments explicitly forbids killing. Yet God has proven himself a genocidal monster, for example by ordering the killing of the Caanites. Also, list of people God killed. Apparently, so on one hand, God forbids killing, but He condones it too? Double standards.


there are some cases where by killing them, they got to go to Heaven. Is it really a bad thing when they get a better, Eternal life?
In some cases God saved the lives of many by killing someone. a matter of an opinion whether this is justified or not.
Obviously I cannot go through each scenario for you.

Fantastic. God certainly is very morally lax


forgiveness

Because the people in this thread are REAL


I haven't seen real evidence that God dosen't exist
Chances of the universe being created by God VS. chances of the universe being created by atheists:

The universe has such a high degree of co-ordination and the values are so critical that such a universe could not have come about by chance.
Ardent atheists say that there is an error in this thinking: they say that, if something has a probability, however small, then it can come about, and therefore the universe exists simply because it can.
The proponents of Intelligent Design, on the other hand, say that if the probability of the universe existing is almost impossible then, ipso facto, the probability of it existing because it has been designed is almost inevitable.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gary.h.turner/SciRel/anthropic.htm

Sure we are


*gasp*

I think an atheist just agreed with me

Humans have no free will


I have chosen to be typing right now= i have free will

I would say the same to you. There is enough proof in science that things were done naturally and without divine intervention to prove that the bible is wrong on many fields. Providing the large gaping hole of doubt surrounding his capabilities and existence


the same gaping holes of doubt involved with evolution, big bamg, etc? glad we have established that there are doubters to both sides, despite given (&quotevidence(&quot.

In this same respect you can't claim that God did anything. Claiming faith isn't going to cut it either. You're trying to believe in fantasy and support something unsupportable. You want to do otherwise you have to lose the faith and find facts


while there may not be much recent proof we can certainly claim that He did something (create the universe). I don't think you need to be bored by the repeated facts we give you that you ignore

No you don't get to hind behind ignorance here. No there possibilities aren't endless there are no justifications for it. Saying otherwise is just kin to the battered wife syndrome of Christianity where you try to excuse any number of negative actions. Finally no, claiming that requiring someone to die when it wasn't needed is not going to fly as a defense and is far from a "better way" then not using such methods. Even if we were to accept it as such this still doesn't excuse the countless animal sacrifices this God requested only out of the sheer enjoyment he got from it.


it looked like you said a lot here, but i was disappointed when there was nothing to support it.

In many of these cases we don't need to. According to your God's own codes of what is and is not a sin, this God has broken many of them. He can be held up to his own standards and fails.


addressed above

How is it better? Given your response to my points it seems you don't know. Unless you can give an answer you don't get to use this argument, which appears to be based on faith, which is nothing.


..really? because this way Heaven is sinless

Which makes your God incredibility petty displaying qualities found in narcissistic personality disorder and even possibly what could be referred to as malignant narcissism.


it doesn't make Him petty, it makes Him practical and merciful because no one is without sin.

These were regarded as perfect beings in a perfect word. Even with the free will to choice to do wrong a perfect being would still make the correct choice. Sin is regarded as wrong, a wrong choice. A perfect being could not doing that. So out of this perfection we get imperfect beings. This as is said is in contradiction.


still, without free will this would not have happened.

I was going to skip over this one, but what the hell. Given the same powers I wouldn't be surprised if he could do better.


covered by macfan1

Tell that to the millions of Jews slaughtered in the holocaust. Or the countless people that died in the first war. Or the people who survived Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I can go on forever.


sorry, i believe you meant to say "the millions of people who went to Heaven." and the Jews are still existant, so God didn't let them go extinct

So he just let all those manic killers and dictators and what-not to have free wills, so they can kill a LOT of people?


yep.

And where you see bad, you see 10X the amount of good. I, personally, savor the ability to love, which woul not be possible without free will

Well, the bible was written by humans. I'd say we are the ones that proposed what's a sin and what's not.


Written by humans, inspired by God. ultimately, the Bible came from God, and humans wrote it down for Him.

Hitler was Christian (part Jewish too, ironically enough). Does this mean he was accepted into heaven, even after the countless lives he ended?


I doubt Hitler was actually a Christian. I know he said He was, but this was probably to help break away part of the resistance. Pretty much all Hitler did contradicted the virtues of Christianity

Which basically renders the concept of free will useless in regard to sins, don't you think?


I don't believe I claimed free will was supposed to be useful in regard to sins.

Give me magic man fictional powers and I will. I'll come up with all sorts of interesting stuff.


obviouly i don't have these powers to hand out, but if you had them, are you saying you would go above and beyond the creation of DNA, which modern scientists admit has barely begun to be understood by them?

Well there are some arguments that put into question the existence of free will, but they are a bit beyond the scope of this topic.


just thought i'd copy this down for chuckles

Anyways, for those who think that the Bible got corrupt over the long period of time...well let's compare the dead sea scrolls that were found to the ones we have today. They match. So it hasn't changed.
[quote]Okay first line if Genesis, just to point out one simple one.
(KJV)
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Dead sea scrolls Hebrew translation
in the beginning Gods created the sky and the earth. (heaven and sky is interchangeable)
[/quote]

Bible.
Hebrew Old Testament.
Can anyone tell me how much this sounds alike?

From wiki


I really haven't looked into the earlier languages of the Bible, so i'm not going to say your wrong about anything, but i cringe to see wikipedia used as a source in any kind of debate.
Avorne
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Avorne
3,085 posts
Nomad

I haven't seen real evidence that God dosen't exist

Nor have you seen any real evidence that He does - or, for that matter, that it isn't an entirely different God from the Christian one. It could even be a whole pantheon of them for all you know.

Also, if you're assuming that the existence of the universe was caused by God, then this means that everything must have a cause - right? So what caused God?
goumas13
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goumas13
4,752 posts
Grand Duke

I haven't seen real evidence that God dosen't exist

That's because there is no evidence that God does not exist.

Anyway, don't shift the burden of proof. The burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims.

Time for Russell's teapot:
Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of skeptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Nobody can disprove God, does it mean God has to exist? No. Frankly, science by it's very nature cannot -completely-prove the non-existence of a magic man who doesn't have corporeal form and lives somewhere in an alternative dimension.
Likewise, for example, you cannot prove the non-existence of tiny invisible magic unicorns in my office, does this make them real? Nope.
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
9,462 posts
Farmer

there are some cases where by killing them, they got to go to Heaven. Is it really a bad thing when they get a better, Eternal life?


Special pleading, where God doing is a good thing but in any other case this would be considered wrong.

In some cases God saved the lives of many by killing someone. a matter of an opinion whether this is justified or not.


Shifting blame to the victim, where the person being killed was evil in some way and "deserved it". Again Christianity showing it's battered wife syndrome.

I haven't seen real evidence that God dosen't exist


Argumentum ad ignorantiam, argument from ignorance fallacy. ;Something must be true, purely and simply because it has not been proved to be false.

A claim not supported by evidence can not be disproven. There must first be positive empirical evidence for us to work with.
If you want to go and point to your holy book we can say the God described there does not exist, as many described event clearly never took place. However I won't even give you that much as that holy book is not evidence, but claims requiring evidence.

In short the absence of evidence of a God, on it's own, does not support there is a God.

The universe has such a high degree of co-ordination and the values are so critical that such a universe could not have come about by chance.
Ardent atheists say that there is an error in this thinking: they say that, if something has a probability, however small, then it can come about, and therefore the universe exists simply because it can.
The proponents of Intelligent Design, on the other hand, say that if the probability of the universe existing is almost impossible then, ipso facto, the probability of it existing because it has been designed is almost inevitable.


This is called the fine tuned argument and you're using odds wrong. Now if we didn't have a universe and you want to apply the odds to one springing forth, then you might have something. As the event already took place and we only have a sample size of one the odds and 1in1 of it happening.

the same gaping holes of doubt involved with evolution, big bamg, etc? glad we have established that there are doubters to both sides, despite given (&quotevidence(&quot.


I can't tell if you're failing to understand what a scientific theory is, what constitutes evidence or both here.

while there may not be much recent proof we can certainly claim that He did something (create the universe). I don't think you need to be bored by the repeated facts we give you that you ignore


No we can't say this with certainty as we can come up with possible way it can happen without a God. Also your religion doesn't have facts on it's side, it has faith, the absence of fact. If you had a fact it could then be taken into consideration and evaluated. That of course doesn't mean we would come to the conclusion of "God did it" but it would be a place to start.

it looked like you said a lot here, but i was disappointed when there was nothing to support it.


What part of that do I need to support? the comparison to the battered wife syndrome and Christianity? How killing is not a better way or the part of God requiring/requesting animal sacrifices? That last one you should already be aware of.

addressed above


It seems at this point you're just dismissing things you have no argument against.

..really? because this way Heaven is sinless


If all this was real you could get that just as the same without the sick blood sacrifice. This is no excuse.


still, without free will this would not have happened.


Free will would not have mattered, as they would choose to not do the wrong things if they were perfect. Your argument is invalid.

covered by macfan1


No he didn't. I already covered how that was an "if" point which it seem you seem to be willfully ignoring.

And where you see bad, you see 10X the amount of good. I, personally, savor the ability to love, which woul not be possible without free will


Can you explain how this is so about love?

Written by humans, inspired by God. ultimately, the Bible came from God, and humans wrote it down for Him.


Claim that requires evidence.

obviouly i don't have these powers to hand out, but if you had them, are you saying you would go above and beyond the creation of DNA, which modern scientists admit has barely begun to be understood by them?


Sure I will, magic man fictional powers comes with omniscience last I checked. So having full understanding of DNA won't be a problem.


On the claims of God I think can be address with a Hitchens quote.

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." -Christopher Hitchens
HahiHa
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HahiHa
8,256 posts
Regent

I don't believe I claimed free will was supposed to be useful in regard to sins.

Maybe 'useless' and 'useful' aren't the best word choice for what I meant.. you did say however:
ShinyCowBeast said:
He can, but He chooses not to because He wants us to have free will

ShinyCowBeast said:
and for future responses to this, I believe you get to heaven by believing in Him, not by having no sin

ShinyCowBeast said:
it was not perfection that bred sin, it was free will that bred sin

macfan1 said:
No, they do. God didn't create humans like slave robots that he controls. No. He gave us free will, to follow Him, or the devil. He gave us free will to sin.


I think I get the basis of what you believe in, but I still see some problems with it:

- The decision (god or not) is more important than sin. Basically sin is a byproduct of free will, and we are all marked by it since our birth. So why is sin seen as such bad at all? God gave us sin, why did he punish us by taking us Eden away? It's not our fault, even if we decide not to sin we still sin. It's totally arbitrary and imo, it's the churchs way to gain new members by inculpating everyone with something they didn't do, and offer an apparent miracle treatment. Not different than your average door-to-door salesman, or sect.

- The decision is seen as THE important thing, it's what makes you go to heaven or hell. But it's not even a real decision, it's not real free will; we are just too much influenced by everything, by our environment, our life history, the church putting a dagger at our throat and smilingly telling us we're free to decide to get killed or not...
and most importantly, belief is supposed to be innate, it's supposed to be honest; but no honest belief can come from a simple decision. That's where the whole argument falls apart.

- the decision is seen as a decision between following god or the devil; but this requires belief in both. If someone is lacking the belief, for whatever reasons, one cannot make any decision. Yet we're automatically thrown together with those who 'decided' to follow the devil, although we never decided to follow the devil; maybe we would have 'decided' to follow god if we would have been blessed with belief?
This is also a major inconsistency in that whole argument.

- Having no complete free will doesn't mean we're robot slaves. Having no free will means we can still make decisions, but our decisions are influenced, they're not independent. Having no free will means god takes responsibility for our actions and allows us to be happy.
Giving us free will basically shoves the responsibility entirely to us, giving us the possibility to suffer and make people suffer, it gives us the possibility to bring people down of the 'right path'; having free will comes at a high price and doesn't offer anything.
'Ignorance is bliss', or so some believers say. But having free will contradicts this. Ignorance is bliss, and so is happily living in paradise making influenced decisions without noticing or caring.

- I was sure I had another point, but I forgot about it.. maybe I'll come back to it later. Seems this is it for now.

Important Note: I didn't just write all that simply to annoy you; I put too much time in it for that. I really want to discuss about it, I want answers; and I'd rather have them be honest and civilized. If I formulated something in a slightly offensive way, please don't follow my example
master565
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master565
4,104 posts
Nomad

I have chosen to be typing right now= i have free will


If God knew everything that was going to happen, he knew that you were going to choose to type, and therefor you had no choice if it was already known what the choice was going to be. If you look at it from an atheist perspective, it isn't fully known if there is such thing as free will. If the ideas of Casual Determinism are correct, then free will is just an illusion, and everything you're going to do could have been predicted based off the conditions at the beginning of the universe and time. If Casual Determinism isn't correct, than free will can still exist because nobody can know what you will choose.
HahiHa
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HahiHa
8,256 posts
Regent

While people are punished in Hell for all their sins, there is only one sin that actually causes people to go to Hell. Rejecting Christ as Savior is not a temporary sin; people die while rejecting Christ. In that sense, it is not a temporary sin; it is a continuous sin.

Btw, you're also kindly invited to reply to my points on the previous page, it's not restricted to ShinyCowBeast only. It's about free will and sin, so it's related in a way to what you've been replying right now.
HahiHa
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HahiHa
8,256 posts
Regent

Thanks for taking your time ^^

God didn't give us sin. What sin is, is disobedience to God. If God tells you, "Go across the bridge," and if you go around, under, to the side of, or over the bridge (anything other than what God told you to do), that would be disobedience and sin.

But god gave us free will, and free will breeds sin, as ShinyCowBeast said. So god gave us sin, gave us the opportunity to sin. Why is disobeying god bad if he wants us to be able to disobey him?

"It's not our fault, even if we decide not to sin we still sin." -- I'm not sure what you mean by this? Are you saying that deciding not to sin is a sin? Or that even if someone decides not to sin, that person will still sin, due to human weakness?

I'm talking about the christian notion that humans are sinful by nature and constantly have to repent. The only good thing we seem to be able to do in gods eyes is kneeling down, bowing down before him and ask for repentance for everything. And this although he gave us the opportunity to do all these things.

But you still possess the ability to make your own decisions, regardless of being helped or hampered by your upbringing.

Yes.. I just have a hard time believing that an all-loving god would hold us accountable for a decision we cannot possibly make objectively. And in the same time simply ignore what a good/bad guy you are.

Those who have heard of God, Jesus, and Satan have made a decision, depending on how much they have heard. If they heard only the names "God, Jesus, Satan", then they could decide to ask and investigate who/what these things are; or they could not, due to laziness or apathy. If they heard the entire plan of salvation from beginning to end, they could believe and decide to accept Christ as Savior; or they could put off the decision; or decide not to accept Christ at all. (And then there are levels of knowledge in between those two, with corresponding decisions in between those two.)

But what about me, for example? I've heard enough of christianity to be able to make that decision; I simply lack any kind of belief, so for me there's no decision to be made. What would god do with people like me?

1). If we have no free will, then we can't make decisions. We can make actions, but decisions require a choice: "Shall I do this or that?" If God had not given people free will, then there wouldn't be a choice.

The way I see it, what is required to make decisions is will. If we lack a will, then yes, we're mindless robots.
Free will is about making decisions without influences, which is basically a neurological impossibility since consciousness is built and formed by intrinsic as well as extrinsic factors. Only the concept of a soul could make free will possible, and since I don't think souls exist, well...

2). I agree with the second paragraph...until the last half of the last sentence, "having free will...doesn't offer anything." Free will offers real love. This is why God risked His creation in order to allow humans free will. He wants to love His creation and to be loved in return.

Well ok, but.. He makes a lot of people suffer just to share a bit of true love? Doesn't that sound really petty, as admirable as the actual purpose may be?
Kasic
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Kasic
5,552 posts
Jester

For God and man to be "at one", sin must be removed, for holiness and sin are polar opposites.


And to remove sin it requires something innocent to die? This is the problem. Not the fact that Holiness and sin can't coexist (even though he's a supposedly omnipowerful being so there's no "can't" involved) but that sin is required to remove sin.

Taking this a step further, God created the universe as is, right? This would mean he also created what sin is. He could have, in his omnipowerful ways, created it so that there was no such thing as sin.

accepting His blood as payment


What are we, vampires? Why must blood be the medium of atonement? A loving God wouldn't make this so.

God is a judge, and a human is a defendant. The human has not only committed sins but also possesses a nature that guarantees that the person will commit more sins in the future.


Except the argument falls to a pitiful pile when we take in the fact that the "judge" here created man as he is, and man HAS NO CHOICE in the matter because it is his nature to sin. So you're punishing the fish for swimming, the monkeys for climbing, and the birds for flying. That is not fair, it is not just, and it is NOT loving.

God pronounces sentence: the person is guilty and the punishment is death. Jesus stands up and proclaims that He is willing to take the person's punishment. God accepts.


Which is, quite frankly, stupid. So any mass murderer can get off the hook at the expense of an innocent's life? That's insane.

(anything other than what God told you to do), that would be disobedience and sin.


So much for free will. All God did was give us the option to eternally **** ourselves. That, again, IS NOT LOVING.
macfan1
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macfan1
421 posts
Nomad

So much for free will. All God did was give us the option to eternally **** ourselves. That, again, IS NOT LOVING.


God is just. He is also loving, but don't forget he is fair and just.
Avorne
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Avorne
3,085 posts
Nomad

Do you have any proof of this?

I've seen only a bare minimum number of actions, supposedly committed by your God, that could be described as just/fair/loving.

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