I don't know what the question above was, my question is standalone i.e. something I'm interested in knowing an answer to. I'm merely quoting your post because of the things from the Bible quoted in it.

I do not understand why I provoked such an aggressive reply.

This is one of my favorite criticisms of atheists. If we ask how we can become believers we are told to pray, read the bible, go to church, and talk to believers. In essence we are told to become obsessed with their religion. Then when we do we are told to gtfo. Its beautiful.


As far as your op and Pascal's Wager. I have a hard time believing in any God who would reward me based on belief.

Furthermore, why do you think God would want you to believe in Him?

(Think YOU. Not for his sake.)

If there is a God i dont think he would want me to believe in him (for my sake) with the current information i have about him and the universe. Which is next to nothing.

wager against allah bitch.

same thing DUCY

How do you know you would know of any of these virtues without God?

People are made in God's image but without God's intervention through Judaism and Christianity we'd still have infanticide today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanti...ncient_history

How do you know these virtues come from a god?

We do still have infanticide today.

I have always found it interesting and curious that skeptics pose (what they think are) seemingly difficult questions or objections, and assert outright that there are no answers, and of course, christians here then come up with answers. What is curious is the determination not to think, not to open up their closed minds and attempt some speculation or another.

I propose that believing in God by faith is important for the same reason believing that your dad's word must be honored is important when you are a child.
If you do not trust in your dad's wisdom, will you listen to his wisdom?

Also, there is much pride and arrogance that has arisen in man (as is evident here daily), and what better way to teach a man humility than to have him search out his Father-God?

This creation has separated itself from God by aligning itself with an adversary. In a way, those who would easily be taken again by rebellious pride can be weeded out by this system of belief/non-belief, as they only believe in themselves.

Maybe that is the whole point, really: to get you to see that you are not all there is. To get you to see that your ways are not good ways. If you have to reach far outside of yourself for instruction and wisdom, that itself is a lesson in humility, and a form of chastening.

If nobody ever died, would we ever consider existential questions concerning eternity?

Now, I'm not saying "thus saith the Lord" here.

I'm just showing how you might start.

We were made in God's image.

Infanticides are in the minority compared to ancient times where it was the norm.

skeptics are skeptics because they attempt to approach and understand the world through reason (generalization of course but close enough to make the point.) Christians come up with answers that are not reasonable. So of course they're rejected. Christians are of course also close minded since all of them reject any reasons given from any other faiths other then their own.

Ha. Incredibly flawed analogy. For starters, its an arbitrary assertion that could be replaced with any god. Second, believing your dad's word as a child is not a universal truth. There are many children who would be better off not trusting the word of their dads. Finally, the child doesn't have to take it on faith that his dad exists. Its perfectly reasonable for the child to believe that there is a real person who is his dad; he can see him, touch him, etc.

Finally, any child who grows learns that there dad is not infallible. That they are incredibly flawed. Most children most likely learn that much of what their parents told them was wrong or misguided. And they can see this because they actually get to see the results of what their parents taught them and compare them to the real world.

This is meaningless unless you've already taken the jello. Though everything you can do to diminish the arrogance of the Christians is certainly a step in the right direction. We can probably all agree that its pretty arrogant how the Christians believe on faith that they have the ultimate answers in these areas and all others who base their beliefs on faith but come to different conclusions are wrong (and many say going to hell.) That their faith transcends science, reason, evidence, etc. That is the epitomy of arrogance.

how do you know we are made in God's image (other then a book written a few thousand years ago says so)?

Regarding your rathar vague assertions about infanticide... you're really to vague to really agree with or counter. The practice has varied throughout history and at different times in different cultures. There were cultures/religions that preceded Christianity that forbade infanticide.

And there's really nothing you have supplied that shows that Christianity changed the practice.

Amusingly enough... one can see that the Christian God wasn't opposed to infanticide since he practiced it himself.

I have a lot of problems with Pascal's Wager. But one problem I have with OP's specific presentation of it is that it seems to me that there's an unbridgeable gulf in orthodox Christian doctrine between the version of the wager that says you pretend to have faith in God and the version OP puts forth that says you try to live a good life because there may be a God.

Trying to live a good life because there may be a God may not be, in my mind, a first order justification for living a good life, but if the person actually does this, I can't really condemn him or her-- after all, he or she IS trying to live a good life. But the problem is, orthodox Christianity says that if you try to live a good life, you go to hell. "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." "No one goes to the Father except through me." Etc.

The only way to get to heaven is to have a sincere belief that Jesus is your savior, and by definition a Pascal's Wagerer can never form that sincere belief. So it seems to me that Pascal's Wager cannot get anyone to heaven under OP's scenario who wasn't already going there anyway.

Does this sound normal?

I think Doggg meant self-evident, but I don't want to put words in his mouth.

What is a "self-authenticating walk with my God"?

What is a "personal relationship with Him"?

How is that different from hearing voices, or delusion?

Hmm, to be honest, 'self-evident walk with my God' doesn't sound much better. I prefer the 1st version - if nothing else, at least 'self-authenticating walk' sounds cool.

How do people read something like that and "respect his religious beliefs"?

OP, the wager can just as easily be applied to Islam and LSD wizards.

I take your earlier post to mean you're immune to other variants of the wager because you and god take romantic walks in the park. That completely misses the point. Other people aren't Christians, e.g. the people you directed your original post at. You can't tell someone to consider the argument "Paschal's wager imo, read the bible and live like Christ" and expect them to ignore that the same reasoning applies to other religions.

It only gets classed as delusional when it reaches the threshold of having the potential to harm oneself or others.

Plus i think it is possible to be perfectly rational in every other aspect of life but be delusional about a specific part of it and it does not have to be religion, one can be delusional about his marriage for example.

I would wager my mind is more opened to the possibility of A God then yours is to the possibility that there is not one.

Not Yahweh of course. We would probably be tied in our closed minds on that subject.


Also i wouldn't call myself a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic since i do believe in some things without strong evidence.

And i propose if there is a God he might not want me to believe on faith. Why are you so close minded and skeptical to that idea. Maybe God wants us to use the faculties and information he gave to each of us and since mine tell me i dont know whats going on in this universe he wants me to think that.

If searching for God does provide humility. Would that mean old atheists who search for the answers to existence are the most humble? Do old atheist physicists win the most humble humans reward?


But more seriously could you tell me how long someone should search for Yahweh/Jesus. A decade, two, their whole life?

Say there was a former Christin believer who searched for Yahweh/Jesus for two decades in vain after they lost their faith. Now say like some endless searches it had severe negative consequences on their life. Should they stop or should they keep searching?

Btw this isn't me because i like endless searches. Just asking.

This must be directed to someone else because i dont only believe in myself.

Same as the above. I dont believe im all there is.

If good ways means obeying or trying to obey the moral message's of Yahweh and Jesus. Some of my ways must be good ways since i agree with them on quite a few moral views and try to live up to those morals views.

This again doesn't address me since i do search outside myself for instruction and wisdom, even form the bible. I like a lot of what Jesus says.

Id imagine the people in a Heaven would stop asking existential questions concerning whether there is an eternity or not. Does that mean they are as humble as they are ever going to get. Idk. If i was in heaven i would hope not since i think being humbled sometimes is a good thing.

I don't think most of your post applies to me (its more directed at an atheist caricature) other then not searching for the biblical God and being close minded to him.

As far as that. I did search for a while after i lost my belief. I prayed to Jesus/God with a humble heart and got no feedback (i know imposable). I talked to believers. I read the bible more to try and find out why The Book of Revelations was so implausible. Found out most of the bible is implausible to my brain. Nothing worked. What are you going to do, try forever?

I think this is worth emphasizing. It seems to me that dogg eventually starts talking to this caricature rather than the atheists on this forum in almost all of his conversations with them. It is an example of that weird way that some Christians have of preaching to the unconverted when they are in a group of mostly Christians, where the real intention seems to be to confirm themselves in their own biases about who they are and aren't. I say weird because I always want to say something like, "Hello...I am right here, and I'm an atheist, you can just ask me about my values and beliefs instead of telling me." Mostly it makes me feel like I am invisible to these people, who supposedly care about my eternal soul.

And before the inevitable, yes I agree that many atheists also use similarly misleading caricatures about theists and so fail to talk with the actual theists around them as well.

Exactly my thoughts on theists. They try hard to not listen.

Comparison is a bit lame. I trust my dad coz I see him and know that he's my dad. Can we say the same about your God? Except a fiction book, the "God" has nothing to show as a proof. Christianity is starting to look a bit like Scientology, ain't it? (Hint:Both are based on a book!!)

There are 3-4 major religions in this world. All the followers are very very arrogant and have too much pride in their faiths. They think that their religion is the best and all non believers are going to hell. Hmm...Not much humility there, I guess.My advice would be to look in the mirror.

I have tried to tell this many times in many different ways. There is no God. You are born as any other animal is born. Fortunately you have a brain, use it. Man up and learn to live on your own.

As do you.
I think it is almost self-evident that many of the other religions available are false or purely mythological.
Some are no more than an ethical philosophy.
Christ has a strong historical foundation.
Christ has a long, deep ancestral prophetic heritage in the scriptures.
Even Muslims recognize Christ as a great prophet and messiah.
Unfortunately, most of the Muslim world is guarded and shielded from the New Testament words of Christ.

This is an issue I have dealt with on this forum before in a few spots:
That most of the alternatives to Christ can be handily dismissed as to having serious truth claims, and the fact that atheists and skeptics have to construct hypothetical alternatives proves this point, and makes this evident.

Dogg, Muslims don't recognize a Christ. They do believe that Jesus was a messenger of God.

As for the rest of your comment, you are just expressing a preference for traditional religions. It can just as easily justify faith in Zeus or Ameterasu or Inti.

I would actually argue the opposite: that ignorant people who didn't know basic facts about the universe and ewho often recorded legends and myths that clearly never happened are much less reliable than some event that happened now would be. Be that as it may, there is at least nothing special about tales that have been passed down for many generations that would increase the probability that they were accurate statements about God.

This post is self-authenticating.