Great discussion here.
But maybe the wrong man read it:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle5572617.ece

I said w/e because the goalpost was suddenly shifted from "bible" to "specified belief". I never thought you were right or that you had disproven anything. I also saw very little to be gained from further debate...so w/e it was.

Now that this is clarified I don't see why a silly interpretation of the bible should somehow manage to beat another silly interpretation of the bible to death. The problem with fundamentalism is hardly lack of imaginative interpretative abilities as much as it is their direction.

Because it's an acceptable alternate spelling. It is also consistent with how the word 'shipping' is spelled.

I don't feel that he made that point, and even if he did, I don't see how that's relevant to this thread. From reading his post, he made it sound like someone that spends too much time worshipping God wouldn't spend enough time trying to save souls. That's why I made the comment I did.

Yes, I am a Christian. A significant number of posters don't believe in God on this board, so I'll sometimes use that word.

After looking at his post again, I don't know if he realized that or not. So it looks like you're right and that I did make a big jump there.

I'm not sure what your point is here unless you're suggesting that it consumes too much time to praise God, or that people should wait until they are in heaven before they start praising him. Even a prayer that takes about 8-12 seconds should be enough. I'm not suggesting that someone should tell God how wonderful he is around 50 times a day or anything like that.

I don't know. Saving souls is a part of worshipping God, so it feels awkward to try and separate the two things and guess with percentages. Also, worshipping God can include things like loving him and praising him, and as you can see from what I posted above, praising him doesn't need to take a lot of time. I certainly don't think people need to spend hours praying every day or anything like that.

I never said that and I'm not even sure that I believe it.

This is weird now. I mean, what's the relationship between a person's soul and that person? If the soul is interchangable between people (one of whom would have grown up Christian and one of whom would have grown up athiest), then in which body a soul ends up is a complete lottery. Also, if a soul goes to hell, but that soul was previously in a different person, well then all I can say is... "I'm sorry, soul" because surely that soul isn't me as it is completely interchangeable between people. So if it's the soul that goes to hell, and the soul is seperate from me, then I just die and get buried.

But we're getting off topic here. The important thing to realize is, that even with reincarnation, you should still be killing babies.

An atheist's child has a much smaller chance of believing in Jesus than the child of Christian parents (if you accept this, you need to really think hard about where all of your beliefs really come from. We're so easily influenced to believe things, and anyone who knows this can try to manipulate our beliefs for their own personal gain).

So if dead babies go to heaven, you should kill babies, but if dead babies get reincarnated, you should still kill babies, but not necessarily the same babies.

I've read more of this thread and was shocked to not find a single argument against the premise. Well not shocked really, because it sounds solid. But why not just agree with it instead of changing the subject, which is what most of the comments hostile to the OP are doing.

Also, killing babies isn't the right answer. There's a much simpler way. After all, a fetus has a soul, right? It seems to reason that instead of doing missionary work or trying to convert friends and loved ones, Christians should focus on promoting unprotected sex and abortions.

Heaven for everyone! Hooray.

All of this is based on a possible alternative life. That alternative reality did not and could not exist, so every thing that you said means nothing.

That would be a no on either account. I will let you figure out why.

I completely disagree. As I have said before, everyone starts with the same chance of getting into heaven.

I did not bother to respond to the OP because it is a ridiculous argument. It is the equivalent of a theist starting a thread about why all atheists should go around killing because they cannot possibly have any morals.

No point in raising your kids to be Christians then. A Muslim upbringing would be just as good.

The alternative life in which reincarnation exists? It was your example I was responding to. Why is this impossible?

sigh.

Can you expand? I provided reasons for why I don't think this is true, but you have provided none to the contrary.


If it's a ridiculous argument, why not just present the obvious counter-argument that shows it to be ridiculous instead of forcing those of us that can't figure it out to speculate?

Nothing wrong with a thread that starts with the premise that atheist should go around killing because they cannot possibly have any morals since through discussion we can debunk or confirm the premise.

You prove nothing by refusing to "dignify" an OP.