sonofone

Hey thanks for the vine George I have the site bookmarked and will enjoy reading it.I will also discuss whatever I find noteworthy here when ready.

George S

"...only true faith will sustain you." That is exactly what Khomeini says.

The problem of course is that the paradigm of faith is this: {} --> Truth.

This is identical to: From nothingness comes truth.

And yet anything at all can be claimed true by faith. Anything at all.

Yes we should search for truth. How about starting with "I experience change" which cannot be denied by any consciousness and draw further true conclusions from that like philosophers have done throughout history.

Johnny Skeptic

What do you mean by natural conditions?

Whether or not I was a Christian, and whether or not you are a Christian, is irrelevant. All that matters is whether or not fundamentalist Christianity is a rational worldview, and since you admitted that the Bible contains errors, and since the Bible says that God is perfect, both of those claims cannot possibly be true. If God is perfect, and he inspired the Bible, it would not contain any errors.

That is false. First of all, you do not have any credible evidence that your faith is true. Second of all, since you would reject the Bible unless you believed that it would ultimately benefit you, that proves that your emotional, perceived self-interest has caused you to reject any claims that you do not believe will ultimately benefit you, not because you are actually impressed by multiple Gospels and multiple eyewitness. One Gospel a just few eyewitnesses would be sufficient for you, but only as long at the texts said that Christians will one day enjoy a comfortable eternal life.

As that is explained by your emotional perceived self-interest. The same is true of the followers of other religions.

On the contrary, any believed claims, whether they are true or false, can transform lives, as the many non-Christians theists can testify. In addition, many atheists and agnostics have had their lives tranformed to. For instance, some former atheist and agnostic drug addict have overcome their drug addition and now live transformed, healthy, happy lives.

That has not been reasonably established.

That has not been reasonably established. Today, millions of Christians disagree regarding what constitutes a miracle healing. There are not any good reasons for anyone to believe that it was any different back then.

That is obviously false since I quoted some scriptures that said that some people were not convinced by faith alone, and were convinced only by faith plus tangible, firsthand evidence. As I showed, on one occasion Jesus told some stubborn skeptics that if they would not believe on his words, meaning that if they would not believe entirely by faith, to believe on the miracles that he performed. I would never be able to accept a God who showed preferential treatment toward some people. In addition, I would never be able to accept a God who claimed that he is merciful, and planned to send skeptics to hell for eternity without parole. No merciful God would ever send anyone to hell for eternity without parole. The only reason that you rubber stamp actions by God that you would not rubber stamp if any other being did what God sometimes does is, yet again, because of your emotional perceived self-interest. You emotional self-interest is the only basis for you faith.

It is not just that I have rendered the Bible totally unreliable. It has rendered itself totally unreliable because the Bible says that God is perfect. If the Bible contains even one error, God is not perfect. If God is not perfect, why do you love a liar? The simple truth is that you would accept a comfortable eternal life from a liar, or even from a murderer if you believed that there were not any other available options.

Since millions of people died without knowing anything about the Bible, what good did the Bible do for them? It is my position that if it was fair and reasonable for God to cause some people to have access to the Bible, it wold not have been fair and reasonable for him to refuse to provide everyone with access to the Bible.

It is far beyond a reaonable possibility that God spread the Gospel message entirely by the secular human means of communication, transportation, printing, and translation of a given time period, thereby micmicking the way that the Gospel message would have been spread if the God of the Bible does not exist. If God exists, and if no one has heard the Gospel message except if another human told them about it, that means that God is more interested in HOW a person hears about the Gospel message than he is in THAT they hear the Gospel message. No rational person would accept that. We have a similar situation regarding the distribution of food. James says that if a man refuses to give food to hungry people, he is vain, and his faith is dead, and yet God has refused to give food to millions of people who have died of starvation, and has even on many occasions deliberately destroyed food supplies with droughts, locusts, other insects, and hurricanes. This means that God is more interested in HOW a person gets enough food to eat than he is in THAT a person gets enough food to eat. No rational person would accept that either.

If the God of the Bible does not exist, that explains why we find so many things that we would expect to find if he does not exist. Aside from what I have already said, if the universe is naturalistic (I am not saying that it is), all tangible benefits would be indiscriminately distributed at random according to the laws of physics without any regard for a person's needs, worldview, or requests. The only benefit that any Christian could ask God for and expect to receive would be subjective spiritual/emotional benefits. One problem with that is that all theists claim that God provides them with spiritual/emotional benefits. It appears that that is the case.

Of course, even if a God did inspire the Bible, and even if the Bible is inerrant, you still lose. If a God created the universe, there is not any credible evidence that he has to be good. In addition, if God breaks his own rules, which he sometimes does, he is not worthy of being accepted. Further, no decent person is able to accept a God who claims that he is merciful, but endorses eternal punishment without parole.

sonofone

Natural conditions is an abbreviated form of your claim that a persons culture and upbringing causes them to believe as they do.As for miracles the point remains valid faith alone saves not believing on miracles.

There are any number of reasons why a person is drawn to the gospel message but only true faith will save and sustain.

As for fear and punishment I am sure you are aware there exist those Christian brothers that God will save all.which if correct sort of knocks your whole argument of God being sadistic out the box. I for one do not need this to be true in order to have God garner or have my worship.

Cege

The "fundamentalist" Christians I know personally who claim that the bible is inerrant as it exists today are basically ignorant of the history of the bible as well as it's contents.

I know a very few Christians who say they believe the "original autographs" to have been inerrant because they were inspired by God, but what has survived until today after multiple coping contains minor errors and slight contradictions, neither of which affect the overall message that God intended for humankind to receive. They believe the original writings were inspired by God and perfectly inerrant, but that the bible as it exists today is not without errors.

I have come to accept that the bible contains multiple errors and contradictions and therefore is not an inerrant message about the history of creation, the history of the world, or God's perfect intended message to the people of earth. I don't believe, even, that the original writings were inerrant but were only the best that some writers could offer, as they believed were inspired by God.

sonofone

I neglected to share something in my post.After reading the book who wrote the bible I found myself thrust unintentional as it was into a critical examination of scripture. I have no background in theology I was a nineteen year old Christian still tender in the faith.

To my dismay I was confronted with the loss of innocence,as I faithfully believed that the bible was straight from the mouth of God.When at last I discovered that the bible was riddled with errors and contradictions,I was at a major crisis of faith.

I felt lost,I had no way to verify with any amount of reliability who God was or is.So I can sympathize with those of you who really desire to know what is true and have found that you can place no confidence in the bible.

I struggled with this very reality myself and I was a rather devout Christian.After a few months of inner turmoil,I just put the blinders on and kept going.But having read that book had a lasting impact on me.It changed everything,it was the proverbial fruit that opened my eyes.

Over time I made a choice,to continue to believe in the God of the bible despite this.To be certain this is not a choice which came or comes easily.It is however a choice that I have come to have peace with,although I pay a hefty price for it indeed.It's a little hard to unring a bell.

I am not like most of my Christian brothers,I don't think or respond to things like they do.So in many ways I am sort of in a no mans land.I consider myself Christian and associate myself with Christians,but I am not the Christian I started off being. I feel strangely like I'm better off for it.As I'm more tolerant and accepting of others than I was then.

When I thought I had it all figured out,if your theology did not match mine I wrote you off.I no longer operate like this.I'm less judgmental,I've come to accept that I don't have all the answers and quite frankly might be wrong about everything I hold to be true.But I choose to believe in the God that I originally found through Christianity.

makerowner

I want to say first off that I'm very encouraged by your story and I respect your kind of faith much more than the inerrantist, literalist, etc. form that seems to predominate in the US today. I'd like to question your beliefs, but please don't take that as a personal affront.
How did you make your decision to continue to believe in God? What factors did you weigh in making that decision? How can you know which parts of the Bible to trust since parts are so inaccurate and contradictory?

sonofone

Quite simply I would have to deny my experience with God as invalid.It would be like loving your wife then finding out she cheated on you.It would certainly change the nature of the relationship,maybe even end it for some.Yet you go on because there did exist love which was genuine.

As for the bible I see the it being true in it's basic composition,with some errors and apparent contradictions throughout.I guess I don't throw out the baby with the bath water.

angelo

A very interesting story sonofone. But how do you choose which parts of your bible are literal, and which parts are not?
It's like a word salad, you only eat the words you like and leave the rest to be placed in the rubbish bin. Perhaps the words you throw away are perfectly
made and taste better than the words you ate. Unless you eat the lot, you may never know what your missing.

rhutchin

Why not? God has said that a person can spend eternity with Him in heaven or outside heaven in what is called hell. If a person says that he does not want to spend an eternity in heaven with God and would prefer to stay outside, why would you object to that? Do you really want to spend an eternity in heaven with a God that you despise?? As bad as hell might be, it would not be as bad as the oppression you would incur in heaven with God, would it? In hell you will be free from God. Isn't that your desire? Shouldn't you be pleased that God will give you that which you desire?