Nowhere357

Okay, we are assuming a god created everything.

Why is that, exactly? I don't see how it follows.

Actually, there is. People violate standards of right and wrong all the time, regardless of what the source for these standards may be.

Also, are we obligated to accept the standards of the creator god, if in fact this god is evil, unjust, bigoted, hateful, cruel, and maybe a dozen other terrible things? How about if this creator god tortures people for eternity for no good reason? I've yet to meet a Christian willing to actually answer these questions.

Well, how about if I mix some basic elements together in my lab, zap with electricity, create living cells, and assemble them into a creature. A person, even. Living, breathing, sentient. I created the person, do I now have the right to do as I please with this person? No Christian has ever been willing to actually answer this question, either.

So how about this: since the standards are objective, the creator god must obey them, correct? Now, if the creator god happens to be the Christian God, how do we explain the fact the Bible claims God has violated these standards repeatedly and extremely?

He doesn't have to follow them, because he's God? But then the standards are subjective, not objective, and so we are under no obligation to follow them! Because we only have to follow the objective standards, and they don't exist!

Heh. I like debating myself - I always win!

long winded fool

The book of Romans is pretty much a book telling what many people would call "Christians" just how wrong they are. (See my post above. Oops, I forgot the chapter. Romans 2:12-16.) You do have to believe for salvation. You just don't have to believe what religious people tell you to believe. God doesn't speak any particular language and doesn't look like a blue-eyed hippie in sandals. (unless those features are symbolic of immaterial things.) God is Love and Truth. Jesus flatly states "I am Truth." God invites his followers to use reason. (Isaiah) These are recurring themes that people are continuously admonished to have faith in. The context of the NT is "believe and be saved" and then it goes on to tell the "pious" religious people who say they believe how stupid their own beliefs really are. As Jesus says, they worry about the splinter in their heathen neighbor's eye without noticing the two-by-four in theirs. Religious idols aren't just material things. The Gospels are "the good news," not the collective ticket into heaven. Reading the Gospels objectively ought to set one straight. Not reading them does not automatically make one crooked, nor does never saying "I love Jesus." (A name the original apostles probably wouldn't have recognized anyway.) Of course if you interpret the poetry of the Bible at literal face value, as Jesus constantly rebuked the Pharisees for doing, then you can laugh at all the ridiculous logical contradictions. But you can do that with pretty much any work of art.

Just pick up a contemporary language translation of the NT and read it from a totally open-minded and critically intuitive standpoint as you would an intensely allegorical piece of poetry. You'll find so much ammunition against stereotypical christian dogma that you'll be ashamed for people who believe so zealously and so erroneously things that are so clearly not the case when taken into context. It is no small thing that the person whom Jesus said he'd found to have the most faith in all Israel was a pagan. (Matthew 8:5-12)

Deacon Doubtmonger

My experience trying to be a Seventh-Day Adventist in my misspent youth, as well as my encounters with various born-agains and their tracts, revealed their position: Maybe you didn't hear the Gospels yet, but the minute you do you can't claim ignorance of the Law as an excuse anymore and are headed for hell.

Which leads to my vote for the most heinous, horrendous, stupid and egregiously bad unintended pun ever written: One of the newer Jack T. Prick tracts says of the issue, "You really got nailed when you read this!" :banghead:

Deacon Doubtmonger

"War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption and the Ice Capades ... Results like these do not belong on the resume of a supreme being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude!"

--George Carlin

trekbette

The idea that peole who have never been exposed to christianity are going to hell is yet another reason I don't believe in a god. No god. No hell. We live. We die. The end.