Stephen T-B

My only follow-up comment is that your 95 per cent certainty means that from your point of view, something is staring us in the face, and yet I refuse to acknowledge that it�s there. I must then, have made a free-will choice not to see it?
That choice puts me in a state of sin which, if I don't repent, will take me to Hell. God doesn�t have anything to do with it. As I get burnt if I walk on red hot coals, so I go to hell if I choose the path of sin.

Is that a fair summary of your point of view?

Division By Zero

Okay, and can this spiritual problem be resolved in any way without accepting the Sacrifice? If not, I don't think the difference matters much.

Quote:

No, you cannot accept such a preposterous notion from where you stand now. You have many intellectual and emotional objections that are stumbling blocks to acceptance of such a claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. I can appreciate that.

Yes, I have a pile of intellectual objections a mile high. But where did you get "emotional objections" from?

Quote:

Ardent atheists, in particular, must come the farthest to get to where the Christian is. The two are diametrically opposed. Conversely, a man who is at the end of his rope, has gone his own way to his detriment, has been humbled, easily takes Christ and finds him personally satisfying and needs no more convincing.

So emotional and mental damage helps a person believe in Christianity? So what?

Quote:

So you had doubts and fed your doubt some Biblical criticism and some Cosmology from Hawking in order to awaken from the "lie?"

Come now, you don't think I find Christianity unbelievable just because of a few Biblical contradictions I found on some web site, do you? I know the claims of Christianity, and find them impossible to believe without serious evidence, of which I have found none. That's all there is to it.

Quote:

If you can still conceive that atheism may be the lie then you can continue to seek the truth. Whatever that is. How so?

I doubt that many atheists here are dogmatic in believing that gods don't exist. It's possible that I'm wrong. If I were to find evidence tomorrow that I was wrong, and interdimensional super-beings do exist, I would think back to today and say to myself "Given the evidence available, I believe my conclusions were the best ones."

But Jobar has already dealt with this. Atheists have sought the truth, and find no evidence that the Bible is it.

Quote:

So your decision is not whether or not to take Jesus but whether or not you have decided upon enough evidence. This is your "falling off the mountain" point. If you think you've seen enough, well, ok. But realize that you freely and arbitrarily set this threshold for yourself...no one else did it for you.

Now we're back to the "free will to believe" argument. I don't freely and arbitrarily decide, for example, whether I believe Jesus rose from the dead or not. The evidence failed to convince me, and I can't do anything about it. If you disagree, try believing in Odin for a day or two, while believing that the Bible is entirely fictitious.

What do you make of atheists who claim they want to believe in God and heaven and eternal life and so forth, but can't?

Normal

If you want to argue over the semantics of the word "attempt", find someone else to argue with. All that is required is that it is possible for Mageth to believe a god exists through an act of will.

Normal

The real question is: Does the god you assume does not exist punish for disbelief?

Normal

Can you explicitly state where the error in logic is?

DMB

Normal, you were the one who introduced the word "attempt", not I. If that wasn't really what you meant, why don't you rephrase your question to Mageth?

As far as I can see you have done nothing to show that belief can follow as an act of will. I will let Mageth answer you yet again on his state of mind, god experience etc.

You posted:
No dear. There is no single god that I assume does not exist. There are thousands of them and, according to their followers, they exhibit different properties. So I was asking you as one such follower to clarify something about the god in which you believe. Even among people who are nominally followers of the same religion, there can be vast differences of opinion, so it's as well to sort these things out. Please answer my original question.

Mageth

It's not, as I and others have explained, so where does that leave you?

Normal

OK, maybe "attempt" was the wrong word to use. How about "made it possible for Mageth to believe or not believe based on an exercise of free will".

I must again state that whatever I believe is currently irrelevant to this discussion.

Normal

It leaves me to ask you where my error in logic is in the above quote that I took from you. It should be easy to point out if you indeed spotted it.

DMB

I don't see how it can be if we don't understand what qualities you are ascribing to a god.