I don't understand. If your nature is changed due to what you believe then isn't this exactly the case?

I'm saying that at birth you are easily manipulated into doing anything. Obviously it is going to take quite some conversion later on but what you were capable of was a pretty wide range of things. Like most people are capable of murder if they are properly brainwashed. Circumstances create a personality more than what that person chooses to believe.

For example Russia after WW1. They lost literally like 20M people so every family was almost guaranteed to have lost multiple members. Circumstances allowed a dictator to take over, regardless of what his world view was.

Bear with me here, but I would say that we are born into a sinful nature and a world that is systemically and fundamentally corrupted by sin. Jesus offers a way out of that by changing our very nature, so I would say that someone who is truly changed by the holy spirit is not going to have the same inclinations or desires than someone who is not. I mean I simply don't want the same things that I wanted before. Speaking in the broader sense of humanity in general I would say that yes we are capable of being utterly manipulated. And yes I can see the irony that a skeptic might see in what I'm writing.

Well the fact that you feel like you have changed simply means people can follow a person or ideology. In other parts of the world people feel the same way you do about Islam.

And maybe atheists are more easily manipulated into a new ideology because they generally lack a strong leader or authority. Basically instead of the religion their parents had they can be manipulated into a wide range of ideologies later in their lives because it is easier to pick it up the first time rather than being converted. In that sense, the more atheistic a society is the more easily a maniac can take power by a revolution. In fact this is what a few data points actually suggest.

TS, you see what happened here? I explained your "evidence" with a hypothesis what fits the same data points. People are basically sheep and atheists generally don't have an authority figure yet and when such one appears they might be more vulnerable. Note that this is not the same as saying that atheists are inherently less moral and will automatically commit genocide because the lack of belief in a soul.

Didn't Jesus say (according to the bible): "judge ye not" and "resist not evil"?

Seems to me is more amoral than moral (that is a compliment, btw).

What's important is what you think right now as an individual, and in a comical sense is where the war starts for people like me (who feel a great need to evangelize).

I think we're supposed to discern between right and wrong and help people, not go around judging people unfairly. By "resist not evil" I take it to mean that we are meant to endure the evil that is done to us so that we can reach those people that want to hurt us.

No. I was interested in your position on the "biological unit->no inherent value" / "soul->inherent value" topic, as I originally asked.

So your almighty God actually has you born in a world of sin and corruption? Like I said a million times, he is either a sadist or Satan himself, he can not be a real God, period. What kind of monster would do that to his own children?????????????? ANSWER!!!!!!!!

Unless you're born into heaven, God is a satanist or sadist?

It's always astonishing to me that people who believe in absurdly comical fairytales (Jesus/God) are better at philosophy than people who realize those fairytales are false.

God as the devil.

I know not the same. But it kind of is when you add in that Eden was heaven on earth until the fall.

Yes. It's the consequence of sin being introduced into the world through the fall of Adam and Eve. The God who allowed us to suffer these consequences is the same God that gave his life on the cross so that we could be saved. We're the failures, not God, and He is constantly trying to reach us even though most reject him time and time again. Even when He was on his way to the cross people were mocking Him. That is sin. You don't think an all knowing God who understands what sin is intimately and completely has the right to punish it?

Can you give an example?

It's funny how you think you are winning this discussion and run away when confronted with your own lies, that you believe to be true btw!

As for your first quote: "Unless you're born into heaven, God is a satanist or sadist?"

Are you saying God isn't a sadist for putting us all through hell? Assuming he is real in this example, he has a choice to either A. not put you through hell or B. put you through hell. He choose B. to put you through hell, hence he is a sadist.

No go run away again and continue to think you are right.

Stop with the ****ing bull**** already. You are just muppeting what the bible says. Think for yourself for a damn second will you!

Stop making excuses for God, he is either GOOD or BAD, and we both already know the answer to that but even in the 21st century we have muppets that still want to claim his innocence! No wonder the world is this corrupt! When you have sheep that will plead their masters innocence to the end of their death!

Let me ask you a question: If Satan would come to you, how do you think he would present himself to you? This guy is the master of trickery and deceit. This we can all agree on, even christians, right?

So the master of all trickery and deceit, how will he present himself? I'd of thought if he wanted to deceit me to the maximum he'd simply present himself as God, the polar opposite of himself.

It starts to make sense when you think about things, because even if you believe in God (Satan)nothing good ever happens, and that only makes sense if God is indeed Satan himself. In fact those that believe when misery strikes yet again, they are told to not be superficial and go read the bible again to seek strength.

This is probably one of my favorites because God(Satan) knows you can't find any proof for this, it goes like this: When misery strikes yet again for umpteenth time, you shouldn't look in this life for compensation or for something good to happen, no no no, the good life will come in the afterlife, that's when things will go your way! My goodness and you sheep lap this up like nobodies business!!!

It makes sense for a fake God to say such things because truth be told he is Satan the sadist and he'll rather just put you through hell and pretend it's some bs character building bs whenever you ask! Always with the excuses this and that, afterlife blah blah.

Truth be told a good God, lets say for example your parents, grand parents, somebody that loves you dearly, would they really put you through misery time and time again if they had a choice??????? If you answer yes to that then there is indeed no hope for you and Satan has you firmly in his cult power called Christianity!

One last thing: You can train a dog to protect his master, period. The dog is not aware if his master is good or bad but he will defend his master regardless. That's kind of how I view religious people, they are like dogs in this example, they don't think for themselves but just parrot whatever their master tells them!

That's not true at all.

When I go to get a splinter removed, it hurts like hell. I can choose
a) to not go through the pain
b) to go through the pain
I chose (b). Therefore, according to you, I'm a masochist.

Do you ever consider the possibility that's there's more to consider than your false dichotomy? A world in which everyone sits in the perfect eternal bliss is not a world, it's lifeless and creepy. Yet you're claiming that without that world, God is the devil, or at a least a sadist. This is just terrible philosophy, and lacking in even basic wisdom.

Suffering, struggle, the mismatch between desire and outcome, desire and possibility, the motivation toward growth, all require pain. It is far more creative and loving and wise and good to spawn infinite worlds according to different impersonal rules, and let them flower and die and win and lose and have joy and suffering as they will, as their inhabitants make free choices, rather than press the bliss mode button for eternity and be done. That's not even a good Sims game, why would be a good God mode?

I truly don't understand. This world looks like it would if there was a benevolent God who created universes where life could flower and prosper. Where entities have free will. Free will requires evil to even exist.
Well I am right (at least on this one).

So there is no free will in heaven?

Sure. This is kind of hard to explain but my desire to be opportunistic with other people has dropped off a cliff. This manifests itself in a lot of different ways. I also want to be more fair with people. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt (so to speak) in situations where before I would not have done so so easily. My capacity for these actions and behaviors has gone from where it was naturally maybe a 10 out of 100 to something much much higher. When I was going back and forth between faith in Jesus I noticed how quickly these things changed in me to the point where I couldn't credit the changes to myself anymore.

I am thinking for myself, and of course I'm repeating what the Bible says because I think what it says is true.

I read the post you made following this and I don't really know how to respond to it. You're working off a lot of preconceptions that I would have to challenge and you probably have a lot more to say than what you wrote. I'll try my best though.

First, God has no need to trick you or deceive you. In fact, He tells you plainly that if you don't do certain things you will be destroyed. He can do this because He is sovereign. With that said God is justified in saying what He has to say and is justified when He follows through on it. You can say that I'm muppeting what the Bible has to say when I say this, but I believe that it's true. Further on this point I have something to tell you and it might be a hard pill to swallow. You were made for God's pleasure. That being said God is a good God and a personal God. He desires what is good for you (in fact, what is best for you) and He desires a relationship with you. We are far past the point to expect these things as they were originally intended for us in the garden. In fact the ground is cursed because of us and we are told we would spend our lives in toil trying to scratch a living from it. God didn't lie to us when he said this to us. Like I said in my last response though, He has made a way for salvation and we're given the freedom of whether or not to take it.

As for your last point, Jesus is my LORD. I mean that in every sense.

How did you decide that the bible is true? How do you conclude that the bible and god are moral?

Human beings are bringing love and its counterpart freedom into the spiritual worlds, this developed on the earth. Our future and our work as the development of individual beings , this future manifested through , but not only, recurring lives.

Can't walk( no materiality) in the supersensible but movement is ever present. yada,yada,yada

I am not sure your analogy fits with mine. (Could be fundamentally flawed logic on your part) With my analogy God has a choice to hurt you or not to hurt you.

With your's you are getting that splinter removed and having it removed will hurt therefor you will be in pain, it's not the same.

If you have the choice of having the splinter removed another way without pain then we have an analogy that fits with mine.

I hope you see your error now!
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Lets move on to my next point: How do you know that the afterlife is creepy and lifeless? You are in complete contradict btw, anything that is perfect can not ever be creepy/lifeless, unless perfect means something completely different to you??? I hope you see your errors!

If you sit in a perfect eternal bliss then there's no need for anything like suffering, pain and the excuses I already hinted too in my previous posts. Else it would not be perfect!

How can there be eternal bliss without hookers and coca cola?

You see the excuses you bring up, I hinted at those in my previous post. I'll point them out:
We are made for God's pleasure.
The ground is cursed because of us etc.
We were told we would spend our lives in toil.

All excuses, when you ask yourself why the **** you are living in misery, you got the book telling you (Satan's words), well I already told you you'd spend your life in toil, scratching your head why you are living in misery. Again you say he is a good God but would a good God really have you live in toil, trying to just survive, always worrying, knowing you need so so so much more, yet never having enough! Does not sound like a very good god to me, sounds more like Satan to me!

Now I ask you again does this sound like a good God? Logical? Adam and Eve did something wrong, fine but why is everybody else suffering for their mistakes? Logic? If I commit a crime, should you be punished?

Sounds more like Satan talking to us, when you write here what you got from the Bible.

I am 100% certain that God is not a good God and that he does not want me to have what I want. He also can't provide me with what I want, else he would of done already, as the good God you claim him to be, right?

The Bible (more accurately, what Jesus said) grabbed my attention many times. I had a lot of very specific questions and sites like gotquestions.org helped me understand what the Bible had to say in a very straightforward way. That site helped me get the broader sense of what the Bible was about by addressing the specific things that lead me to doubt. This was a process that lasted for years and is still ongoing. It got to the point though where I could say with confidence that the Bible is true.

There's also a pastor named Doug Batchelor that I found when I was first beginning to get curious about Christianity. I found him to be very logical when explaining the history of the Bible and the context of what is being said in it. There are a lot of things he believes that I have serious doubts about though, namely his beliefs surrounding Ellen G. White being a prophetess of God (he is a Seventh-Day Adventist). I would advise extreme caution when he goes into topics that leave what the Bible actually says. I think he is an absolutely remarkable preacher though when he is talking about the Bible.

As for why I believe the Bible and God are moral, the reason is very similar as to why I believe the Bible is true. A process of experiences lead to the point where I could say in faith and in confidence that it is true. To speak personally though, I knew I was doing things that were immoral and the Bible convicted me of those things, and the reasons for why those things were immoral made sense on the deepest levels when in the Biblical context. The flip side was also true. Salvation made sense to me and the idea that God was good made sense to me. There was a logical underpinning to the Bible and my walk as a Christian has thankfully confirmed those things for me. Hopefully that makes sense.