BrazenPenguin

Why do you think I got in on this forum? Why do I want to study other beliefs and read other holy books and the like?This is the reason why mon chi chi started this thread. However he is not really a good example! But I have been trying to do what you are saying.I cannot claim to be doing this, because of my presupposed belief. However, another atheist on another thread said that all people are born atheist. This I can arguably agree with. If all people are born atheist then what you are saying isn't true. Is this the argument that is, if there is no God, it makes no difference, however if there is a God then it sucks for you and is good for me?[/B][/QUOTE]

BrazenPenguin

Haha thanks but I meant was that I don't have to understand something to trust or believe in it.

Starboy

As far as I know that is it. I have always thought it was a silly argument. It presumes that if there is a god that the particular religion espoused by the presenter is the right one for god. What if none of the current religions is even close? What if the supposed god preferred people that didn't kowtow to it? What if you note that god doesn’t appear to be hanging around and that perhaps it prefers to be left alone? What if god is like gravity and will work the way it works whether you believe in it or not. It’s an iffy proposition no matter how you slice it with no possible way to resolve it. I say screw it. Whatever god is, it is irrelevant.

Starboy

BrazenPenguin

Since my dad was in the Navy, i didn't really grow up in just one church. We moved a lot when I was kid, so we went to many different churces. All of them were christian of course but they were different denominations. I didn't really start going to the church im at now until almost 5 years ago. It is true that I haven't been exposed to very many other religions. By exposed i mean interacting with real people ( though I do know a few). Now that Im old enough to go around on my own. There aren't really any other religios here. I live in the bible belt for crying out loud. There are like 50 churches in my small city and not one mosque or synagogue(we used to have one though, now it is a house).If you don't mind, I am just a little curious as to what these habits are. Go to a Christian school? hahaah, i would never. Some of my church friends go to a christian school here, and i would never join them. I would never to go a college/school where everybody believes as I do (i know that this is not always the case). I wouldn't go to a school to learn about my religion, that is what church is for. School is for the unbiased learning of the subjects. (the exception is seminary, obviously). I would rather go to a school that had a variety of people, even if i was the minority. No, I would rather go to a college where people would tell me to my face that I am wrong.

BrazenPenguin

yeah, like a lot of religous arguments it can be used both ways. i was just throwing it out. I didn't mean beliefs like the you mentioned. I was talking about beliefs that an atheist has to believe in in order to be considered an atheist. A christian exmample, god and the virgin bith. However atheist only are required to agree to only one thing. The absence of gods. Apart from that, atheists can believe whatever they want too.A tangent, but similar. I think atheists should have "churches." where they could go and play ping pong and eat food and play video games and make fun of christians. They could go on sunday mornings or nights. If they did this i would go, for the food and ping pong They could also have trips to theme parks and cook-outs on the beach. Just a thought.Im sorry, when i used "you" i was not refering to you personally. I was just using "you" in a general form, more like "one." Sorry about that. yes, how unfortunate that whatever wrote the Bible did not have his atomic clock handy. another thing is that Jesus was not born exactly on dec the 25th. Im pretty sure that think that he wasn't even born in the winter at all, more like 3-4 months ealier or later. I don't think 4 years is that much of a mistake considering the mistakes that scientists have used when carbon-dating things. How old do they say the earth is now? what ever it is it is a whole lot more than a four year difference from their last estimate. When did humans become homo sapiens sapiens? they are changing that number all the time. Interesting, i saw a postcard once. It said - Mosquito, the Louisiana state bird.

BrazenPenguin

No, I would be guilty, so would the other person. Yet, i don't know where it is a crime for God to send an evil spirit; if he can wipe out an entire world (you have already mentioned how you think this is a sin, so don't bother), he can have an evil spirit torment sombody.
1- he sacrificed animals, they paid his debt 2- could you imagine this world if christians still sacrificed animals ?(if there was no jesus, they would be jews, but thats not important) 3 - there has to be repentance before forgiveness, yes, if the people of Sodom and Gomorrah genuinely repented and asked for forgiveness, there wouldn've been some forgiving. obviously, this was not the case. 4 - that is what some people do, oh, it is okay if I sin, God will just forgive me anyways 5 - how do you know that Lot wasn't punished? how do I know that he was?
[/B][/QUOTE] Adam and Eve were unaware of the difference between good and evil until they ate from the aptly-named "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," so their free will was morally neutral. They did not know that disobeying God was evil.[/B][/QUOTE] I have always heard of it as the tree of knowledge, without the part of good and evil. Of course they knew it was wrong to eat from the tree, God told them not too! Wouldn't that make it wrong/evil? Does wrong=evil? IMO, yes.
First of all, congratulations on raising such seemingly fine children. But, I think that you closed this argument when you admitted that you were not God(divine). Just because a behavior is normal, does that make it right/okay/acceptable??

BrazenPenguin

I don't think that it is such a silly argument. It seems perfectly logical to me (but not as a basis for converting to christianity). What does seem silly to me is when people use christianity soley as a fire insurance policy! " I better go to church or else i will burn". These are not real chirstians.
This is not true if any of the theists religions are correct!

Wayne Delia

Hoo boy. Where do I start? The Roman Catholic Mass consists of many reflexive mannerisms, standing, kneeling, sitting, and so forth, at various points in the service. The "sign of the cross" ("North, South, West, East") is performed whenever the priest tosses a blessing out. A small cross is traced on the forehead, then the lips, then the heart when the Gospel was read, if I remember correctly. To this day, many Catholic expressions remain in my vocabulary, usually when the kids are not within earshot, i.e. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" after hitting the thumb with a hammer. Anyway, having sat through many Catholic Masses, I pretty much knew the routine years after I discarded my faith. Once, my wife's best friend was getting married with a full High Mass, and she was the matron of honor, so I sat in the pews with the in-laws, who were astonished at how much I had remembered, through sheer rote and repetition, in Latin as well as in English. At the point where the priest said "Let us stand and profess the mystery of faith," as I was standing up, I banged the camera into the pew in front of me. So, my brother-in-law whispers "Let us stand and make a doofus of ourselves," which was one of those wise-ass remarks in church which causes one to try to suppress hysterical laughter for about twenty minutes.

WMD

Wayne Delia

Judging from your first post, you got in on this forum to reprimand Rational BAC for not taking an inerrantist position on the Bible. That's a good question which only you can answer. If you presuppose the Bible is inerrant, then conflicting or contradicting non-Christian religions cannot possibly be valid. This you know without the need to crack open any other holy book. So why bother?That's where most of the frustration in weak Christian apologists come from: the objective is to establish and justify those same beliefs, which you presuppose and others don't necessarily hold as assumptions. The name of the logical fallacy is "circular reasoning."Are you sure you understand what I'm saying? The statement of mine to which you are responding is "We evaluate them WITHOUT a presupposed belief in what you are supposed to be providing evidence for." The fact that everyone is born without any belief in gods, and must acquire that belief in order to become a theist, has nothing to do with atheists not sharing the same presuppositions you have about God. Yes. There are about four or five different logical fallacies involved in it, and due to them, it is not useful as a conversion tool for skeptics, atheists, and (especially!) non-Christian theists. The reason Pascal set up the false dichotomy of the Roman Catholic God and no god at all is that he held a preconceived belief in the Roman Catholic God, and felt that if a god existed, it must be the one he believes in. Further, Pascal misstates the losses incurred in believing in a God if it turns out that no gods exist: large parts of the one and only available lifetime was wasted on unnecessary rituals and fantasies. Suppose the Roman Catholic God is the one that exists. Sections in the Bible clearly state that God is seeking honest believers, so a believer persuaded by Pascal's Wager is simply "hedging his bet" or adopting the belief in God not out of pious faith, but of selfish opportunistic greed. Also, the logical conclusion to Pascal's Wager is to include all non-Christian gods, and simply believe in the god of the religion with the worst hell. But looking at other posts of yours, apparently you were impressed by what turned out to be nothing more than Pascal's Wager. What's the big deal? I suspect that it appealed to you because it reinforced what you already believe.

WMD

Wayne Delia

The point isn't whether it's a crime for God to send an evil spirit; the question is whether God is evil. It is hard to shake the "evil" description when He's busy sending out "evil spirits." You used the Mafia hit man "murder by proxy" as an allegory to try to show that God was not being evil even though He sent out evil spirits. So many mistakes in just one short paragraph! 1: If sacrificing animals was sufficient for Jews before Jesus was born, then there was no need for Jesus to be sacrificed by being crucified. All a person would have to do would be to follow the proper sacrificial ritual. 2: A world in which Christians still sacrificed animals would be very much like pre-first century Hebrews. That's irrelevant, though; you're trying to explain why people don't sacrifice animals any more by asserting they don't sacrifice animals any more. 3: The reasons why God wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah are irrelevant. The question was why did God allow Lot and his daughters to survive and prosper despite incest which produced two half-brother/half-son persons, but God turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for simply looking back at the firestorm? 4: This is a typical stereotype of a hypocritical theist (general, not specifically you): condemning other's sins, but feeling that their own sins will be automatically forgiven due to their professed beliefs. You're doing nothing to explain or justify it, if you are characterizing Lot and daughters' behavior in Genesis. 5: The Bible does not even mention any criticism, let alone punishment, for the incest that happened between Lot and his daughters. In fact, the hybrid offspring were said to have grown up to be the leaders of nations. Speculating on what might have happened which was left out of the Bible does you no good.

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Quote: Adam and Eve were unaware of the difference between good and evil until they ate from the aptly-named "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," so their free will was morally neutral. They did not know that disobeying God was evil. I have always heard of it as the tree of knowledge, without the part of good and evil.

God states that after they both ate from the tree, they became like gods, knowing good and evil.

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Of course they knew it was wrong to eat from the tree, God told them not too!

So what? They couldn't tell the difference between good and evil, until after the disobedience was done.

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Wouldn't that make it wrong/evil? Does wrong=evil? IMO, yes.

They were unable to determine that disobeying God was wrong, because they did not know the difference between good and evil until after they ate from the tree. So, God is punishing them for doing an evil offense, at a time when they had no ability to distinguish good from evil. Sounds very much like God set them up.

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First of all, congratulations on raising such seemingly fine children. But, I think that you closed this argument when you admitted that you were not God(divine).

More precisely, I demonstrated why your analogy between God and a human parent was invalid. God is omnipotent/omniscient, human parents are not.

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Just because a behavior is normal, does that make it right/okay/acceptable??

Are you suggesting that I should kill my children, or condemn them to an eternity of punishment in hell, if they disobey me or disrespect me through "normal" teenage behavior? How very Christian of you. As I tell my eight-year-old daughter every night, every night as I tuck her into bed, "I will always love you, no matter what." It seems that God Himself can't even manage that.

WMD