I think you are kind of on the money with this. The more faith i have, the more i see, which gives me even more faith. Keeps going and going. Of course atheists will chalk that up to just being more delusional or something.

Really? You think that if someone doesn't believe that something happened 2000+ years ago then theres no way they'd believe in God if God suddenly showed up right in front of them and started performing a ton of miraculous acts?







Yeah, I guess this is what I was trying to say in my above post.




Do you not think its possible that our understanding of "good"(and "evil") is much different than God's? Do you not think its possible that our world has been created perfectly but you just don't understand why that is?




It seems to me like most people instantly realized this, but when they called OP out on it he denied doing that.

Also regarding #1....is it not possible that God does indeed desire for everyone to follow him, but that desire takes a backseat to his overwhelming desire for justice? And while we may not understand why it is so, perhaps unrepentant humans really do deserve Hell(I'm pretty sure thats exactly what the bible teaches).



I disagree. I don't think most Christian are "atheist" towards other Gods; I think they believe that those "gods" are works of the Devil to mislead us.


I'd be interested in reading it. In the meantime, can you give me the cliff notes on how everything supposedly got started? For example, if the Big Bang caused our universe to form then what created the gasses that caused the Big Bang? Basically what caused "existence" to begin?

I do think its possible for a god to exist and evolution have occured. Does the book give reasons why this can't be so?



I think you're the one misusing the word atheist. Being a monotheist means that you believe in one God and not in any others....so a Christian isn't being an atheist towards other Gods, hes just being a monotheist towards them.


Thinking about it from a EV perspective, it does make a lot of sense to be a casual non-churching going Christian rather than an atheist. But I wonder if that would be enough to truly change someone's beliefs.




For the record, I grew up as a strong Christian, but now I'm not sure what I believe. I do definitely want their to be a God, but I can very much see how it could all be bogus.

But regarding your above post, the reason I was always attracted to Christianity over other religions(other than the fact I was born here in America, which I will easily admit is probably the #1 factor on the religion I chose) is that most other religions seem to be about man doing enough to gain God's approval, and that never seemed right to me. On the other hand, Christianity seems to be about submission, admitting you can't reach God on your own, and letting Him do the work.




As I said, I'm really not sure if God exists. However, if God does exist then I think we greatly underestimate the gap between God's knowledge and ours. I mean, I would have to think that God trying to explain his reasoning to us would be worse than a person trying to explain algebra to a cat. Theres just no way the cat would ever be able to comprehend it. So if a god does exist, then I find it pretty funny that people can say what God "should" do.




Perhaps He is showing you(over the course of your life)....perhaps thats what the meaning of life is: A time for us to gradually understand God and his purpose for us. Perhaps your wanting for God to suddenly come down to you and instantly explain everything isn't how he wants it to work.




In my personal experience, I've found the average atheist to be much smarter than the average Christian. Now if faith(and not knowledge) is the way to God, then do you think its possible that when many atheists try to "search for God" they are too intellectually arrogant and they refuse to consider using faith over reason? It does make sense that dumber people would be more willing to forego reason and logic than people blessed with strong intelligence.





I don't think Christianity calls for "genuine belief", I think it calls for faith based belief.

No frankly. God giving people any measure of convincing evidence of any nature would be tainting free will, and were supposed to have absolute free will. Where's your faith, son? You don't need God to give you evidence. You don't need evidence to believe. Just have faith and believe in The Truth of The Lord Your God.

I tried bringing this up and was basically told i am an idiot, the gasses were just there...

Yeah, this is a good argument imo. I do think that the more I am honest about things, the less I believe in God. At this point in my life, I'm really on the edge. But I definitely do hope their is a God.





A theistic argument I've heard before says....

Atheists constantly complain that theistic views are absurd, but if theres a box in a room then isn't it more absurd to believe the box magically appeared rather than believing someone put it there?


Kinda tying this in with one of my above points, I think its possible that some atheists commit the "sin" of intellectual arrogance and reject the concept of a faith-based religion being correct in favor of stimulating their own desires to feel smart about themselves.



Can you back that up with bible verses? Exactly how much about Jesus does someone have to hear before he is held accountable? If I went to these foreign countries and yelled "Jesus Christ!" and then left, would they be held accountable? What if I talked to them for 30 seconds about Jesus and his message? What about 30 minutes?

These two don't work together vary well. If im a cat i can't really have understanding of God or his purpose for me. And in a way you are telling God what he does or should do also. He does and should Give his knowledge in the way you describe, with a perhaps which good.

Plus i really have no understanding of God or his purpose for me. I don't even know if he is real so im more like an ant with a blindfold on and learning nothing about God.

I dont want God if there is one to come down and explain everything to me, i like mystery. I only want God to show himself and tell me his rules if he wants me to believe in him and follow his rules. I don't see how i can believe without him showing himself and i dont know how i can follow his rules if dont know them.

Im pretty dumb and intellectually lacking so idk....

But in any case when someone says to me i just need to have faith there's a problem. How do i go about getting faith in God because i honestly don't know? In a way its like saying just choose to believe and you will believe.

IMHO, you should hope there is not. Because it would be so unjust, unfair, and cruel that existence itself would be the worst nightmare conceivable. The only goal in such a meaningless existence is to make your entire life one long act of begging a monstrously malevolent force not to be cast into a pit of torture for eternity, just like the rest of the majority of your entire race, all of which have committed no acts that truly warrant such a fate (as if any mortal act could possibly warrant eternal torture-think about that carefully).


The fallacy in this is that "someone put it there"/God did it is basically saying it "magically appeared"/was magically created. God is a "magical" force by every account.

Also, nobody in science is claiming anything was "magically created". They claim that synergistic complex natural forces of various kinds created the universe. That's not magic, because there is scientific evidence to suggest that these forces exist.

That is kind of strange to me. It was when i started being honest with myself that i was shown God exists. Of course, there were other steps i was taking like turning from sin, and seeking Him. By the first part of this post, seems like you are in the beginning stage.

I agree, but at what point are you going to be honest with yourself and realize there are no real answers outside of God? Yea you will find an answer to something, but it is not the least bit satisfying and ends up with way more questions.

14:12

If you are held accountable for everything, how can you be held accountable for not hearing about Jesus? Unless of course, God might of planned for that person to learn of Jesus if that person lived a more righteous life. I don't know, this is just what i perceive using common sense. Obviously this could be a much deeper issue.

You are not a cat.

Try reading His rules...

Your words say you want to know God exists, but your actions say otherwise.

[QUOTE] Just because you think you are hopeless doesn't mean you can speak for others.

Your words are off.

Reading his word and rules is what made me stop believing in the Biblical God and his words and rules keep me not believing in him. The God of the bible makes no sense to me.

And i would like to know if there is A God or if there isn't but i don't. I would also like there to be a God over there not being one.

Oh, I'm not saying that they do work together well. I'm beginning a lot of my statements with "perhaps" because I really don't know what exactly i believe right now. I'm just throwing out different possibilities, some of which won't work together very well with other possibilities I throw out.



I know thats what you want. But perhaps in order to fully teach you about the truths of the universe, God can't do it that way. Perhaps the struggle between man/God, faith/knowledge, religion/logic is necessary. What you want is often what is best and easiest for you. I think its possible that God uses pain/suffering to produce ultimate good in our lives, so the easy way isn't always optimal.


Yeah, this is one of the issues I"m struggling with right now




When I earlier said that perhaps the atheist's "sin" is intellectual arrogance, this is what I was talking about. I'm perfectly fine acknowledging that theres a distinct possibility that there is no God. But if there is a God, then His understanding of the universe is simply miles and miles above yours, and any attempt you make to judge God is too uninformed of an opinion to matter.

I mean, if some supernatural being is actually powerful enough to create and maintain life as we know it, then I'm pretty sure my knowledge of His world is absolutely minuscule compared to His knowledge of it.


I find this very hard to believe.


I've been a very strong Christian for the great majority of my life. I've looked for answers through God. I'm not so sure that I found them. Regardless, if there is a God then I have can have faith that my current struggles with my faith will ultimately result in me coming closing to Him.

As for "not the least bit satisfying".....I realize that, but as I try to learn more and more, the more and more I start to feel that we simply aren't that important and there are no "satisfying" answers. I was just watching Joe Rogan's theory about the purpose of human life, and while I don't necessarily agree with it, I do think its refreshing to find a view of ourselves that doesn't make us out to be ultra-important in the grand scheme of things. So many views seem to make humans out to be extremely important, and I think we may be prone to think that way because we want it to be that way rather than because it is the truth.

Everything I stated came from his own supposed word, the Bible, about the nature of existence. If he can't be judged by his own word, what can he be judged by? We have nothing else on the nature of God? Or are you asserting we just can't judge God at all no matter what he says? Well that's ridiculous. I don't see how It's reasonable to, at the same time, interpret the Bible claiming to judge what God is and what God wants, and not be able to also judge the nature of the morality proposed in the Bible (which is indeed part of what God is also). It's a self contradictory double standard for judging. And we judge other Gods, you have no problem judging Allah, why not this God too? And wouldn't it matter what God said? If God said to rape children in his honor would you still say "we cannot Judge his universe"? All of the books of the Bible have God saying and doing even worse things than that, along with also damning most of humanity in an obviously unjust fashion (infinite torture for finite crimes).


Naturalistic explanations already account for the creation of Earth, the solar system, the galaxy, all of the other galaxies, and everything else (known) in the universe going back 13.7 billion years. That's far enough for me to establish that nature could have solely created us. Were just a pale blue dot of a planet in a near endless cosmos already, as it is. It's not much of a stretch to say the universe could have also been created naturally. Even without all of this information, I find God a lot harder to believe, anyway.

Congratulations on being honest with yourself. It's more than we can hope for for a lot of this forums posters.

/golfclap

Everything you stated came from the bible? What????

The bible speaks about following God as just the opposite of unjust, unfair, and cruel. How is this from the bible?


The bible speaks about a ton of goals of life, many of which are supposed to be very fulfilling. Worshipping God, interacting with other humans, getting married and living a life together with your spouse, etc. According to the Bible, all of those things are parts of life. So when you say "the only goal" you surely can't be getting your facts from the bible here.

And the bible clearly states that sinful man deserves a lifetime in hell.



So basically every one of your statements is refuted by the bible. How exactly are you claiming that your statements were biblical?



HTF is that proof to you that nature created us? That makes no sense whatsoever to me. Science can tell us that man came from apes, that the universe came from some mysterious gasses that exploded, that those gasses came from something else, and so on and so on. But eventually you'll go back far enough where something has to come from nothing. And at that point, science has yet to provide me with an answer. You wrote in your first post that there is scientific evidence that suggests that certain forces exist which created the universe. When I asked you to specify you then hid behind "well we know as far back as 13.7 billion years, so thats good enough." No, thats not good enough! Because eventually you get to the point where something comes from nothing, and that is the point which I'm interested in learning about.


Option #1: Nothing existed, one day somehow something magically began to exist

Option #2: Something always existed.

Option #3: Only God always existed(otherwise, nothing existed). God created the universe.

Tbh, all three options are quite difficult to comprehend. I really don't see a strong argument for favoring one over the other, and if I was forced to chose one I think I'd go with #3 because the concept of something always existing or something coming from nothing is just completely inconceivable to me.





I'm sure you're talking about the theists who refuse to consider any option other than their own religion. However, I do think that many of the atheists have that same level of close-mindedness when it comes to the issues of faith vs reason. And I do think your OP definitely came across as trying to "win an argument" rather than trying to objectively seek truth.

Asking questions that theists don't happen to have the answers to means I'm trying to win an argument and don't care about truth.

Nevermind, theists you guys can keep him

Thats fine there is nothing wrong with speculating about God.

I shouldn't of used the word want there i should of used need. If God wants me to follow cretin rule i need to know those rules. If God wants me to believe in him i need knowledge of him.

I dont really struggle with trying to get faith in God anymore then i struggle with trying to get faith in disbeliveing in God. Its not a struggle it just is and i dont know either way.

I think I've had a pretty open mind throughout this thread. I've recognized good points from both sides of the argument, and that makes me a minority in this thread. Imo both sides are quite close minded, and both sides accuse the other of being close minded while ignoring what they're doing themselves. Imo your posts in this thread have come across as more of an attempt to "win an argument" rather than an attempt to find objective truths. I'm not the only one to feel this way, so rather than instantly cast me aside and say "nevermind, theists you guys can keep him", perhaps you should consider what I'm saying.

You were basically using a form of the Socratic method to try to prove a point. When called out on this, you became hostile and started posting in a mocking and condescending nature. To me that demonstrated that the pursuit of truth was not your primary objective with this thread. I don't know why you continue to deny this, as its very obvious to everyone reading that you didn't make this thread because you were truly curious about Christianity and desired to give faith a legit shot.

As for your questions that "theists don't happen to have the answer to", I don't think you ever responded to what I said in post #300:




From reading your posts, it seems as if you have built the entire foundations of your worldviews upon logic and reason. Often times your logic and reason is sound. However, I have yet to see you once accept that there is non-zero possibility that faith is the way to God and not logic and reason. Your entire set of philosophies ignores this possibility, and therefore I believe you have some flaws in your basic philosophies, as one's basic philosophies should never prevent him from reaching any type of possible truth be it through faith, reason, knowledge, or anything else.

I've met and debated with a lot of great philosophical minds during my life(philosophy major ftw). And one common trait that all of them had was that they were very open minded and constantly willing to rethink their own basic philosophies. When someone came along and questioned them, they looked at it as an opportunity to improve themselves. Yet when people question you, you seem to look at it as another debate that you have to win. I don't think your way is optimal. I think every one of us should welcome critique and criticism because that is what helps us improve our own thoughts. This close-mindedness is the enemy of intellectual growth. Stop going into debates with theists with an attitude of "these guys are all idiots, watch how dumb I make them look" and start going into debates with an attitude of "let me learn as much as I can and reshape my own views until they're the very best I can make them." If everyone did this, philosophical growth would occur much more quickly.





I fully believe you RIGHT NOW. I think that for you to accept God RIGHT NOW that is what you'd need. However, don't ignore the possibility that God has a plan for your life and that plan includes undergoing changes which may eventually lead you to a point where you can do it God's way(through faith) and not your way(through knowledge).

I know that most people think that their current worldviews are the best and that they'll most likely never change, but if you go and talk to some older philosophers you'll realize just how much a person can change over the years.



fair enough

I mean, just look at these posts. Do these posts come across as a guy trying to honestly learn or do they come across as a guy trying to make theists look stupid and put them down? I have absolutely no clue why a philosophical discussion would be handled with such immaturity or result in ad hominem attacks. If both sides were honestly pursuing truth, it would never come to that.

the OP got caught up in superficial bickering, but he did make it clear he was talking about the nature of god as specifically claimed by fundamentalist christains.

you are doing the very thing i was posting about - confusing the issue, which is not coming up with speculative philosophical justifications for gods nature or actions. presumably most atheists would agree that if god existed he could pretty much do whatever the hell he wanted without being obliged to justify his actions to humans.

the issue is that the tenets of fundamentalist christianity fit a pattern of inconsistent incoherent crowd control man-created mythology, and thus have as much chance of being factual as any other human religion and can be safely ignored.


that was my point. atheists disbelieve because of evidence (or lack of). christians who believe via faith defintionally believe without sufficient evidence (which equates to self-brainwashing). there is no comparison between methodology. atheists do not have "faith" god doesn't exist.

I still dont know what you mean by know what God wants through faith or what you mean by believe through faith.

To me it seems like faith in Gods laws is a guessing game were i would just be pulling out the morals i believe in and forcing them onto a God whos morals idk. And that doesn't seem right to me to "speak" for God like that if there is one.

And as far as faith in believing there is a God. Like i said i dont know how to go about getting faith but if God wants to change that the ball is in his court.

I dont think like that. My worldviews are ever changing and im opened to challenging them and opened to the idea of a creator.

Are you opened to the idea faith might be misplaced and God might actually be found and want to be found through knowledge of his creation and not faith?

This sounds like Pascal's Wager, which has been analyzed ad nauseum and there are several problems with the argument (that wiki link could get you started in case you aren't familiar with it).

So if the only options were Christianity and atheism, where the Christian doctrine is understood as infinite reward in the afterlife for believers vs infinite punishment for unbelievers, then as long as there's a nonzero probability of Christianity being true, it would be +EV to be a Christian. Which still isn't a reason to believe Christianity is true. That is, if your best estimate is that the doctrine of Christianity has a 1% chance of being true, you aren't going to believe Christianity is true (you don't believe something if you only think it has a 1% chance of being true). You might want to believe so as to soak up the +EV conferred by belief, but unfortunately for you, you'd still consider "Christianity is false" to be far more likely than "Christianity is true". And if the Christian God required your assessment of Christianity's truth to be > 50%, off to hell you'd go. You can't choose to believe whatever you'd like to believe. You believe whatever it is you consider to be the actual truth, for which the EV calculation isn't relevant.

But further, Christianity and atheism aren't the only two choices, so it isn't even clear that belief in Christianity is +EV. You have to factor in all the other religions too (at least, all the other religions that have a nonzero probability of being true). If you pick Christianity but the one true religion turns out to be something else, you go to hell anyway (at least if the one true religion happens to send believers in other religions to hell). And why stop with the traditional, well known religions? Why are they any more likely to be true than obscure religions that you've never heard of, or even a bizarre hypothetical religion based on the divinity of cardboard boxes that some local pothead made up while he was high?

So there would seem to be an unlimited set of non-falsifiable religious belief systems one could imagine - no matter how unlikely each one may be you can't absolutely prove any of them to be false. Without some sort of evidence for one religion over the others, you'd have no basis on which to choose (from among an infinite set of candidate religions that include the infinite reward / infinite punishment duality). You can even imagine religions that send only Christians to hell and everyone else to heaven, or only atheists to heaven and everyone else to hell (God exists but wants us to believe he doesn't exist). So much for religious belief being +EV - without some type of evidence we just have no idea which beliefs might be advantageous.

If an all-powerful all-knowing being exists, his mind is infinitely more powerful than ours. Agreed, our minds are useless by comparison and we can't even begin to understand the mind of God, if he exists. We're still going to use our minds in an attempt to make sense of our world because it's the best we can do. If we're working with inadequate tools, so be it. What's the alternative?

I don't know what it would mean to "use faith". Why should I have faith in one thing and not another? What are the criteria? Imagine my neighbor John says he's a powerful sorceror. I've never seen him do anything impressive, and he refuses to demonstrate his powers. Is there any reason that I should apply faith to the existence of God, but shouldn't apply faith to my neighbor John's sorcery claim? A few of my other neighbors tell me they have faith in John's sorcery (they haven't seen any proof either, but they all have faith and want me to have faith too). At what point, or on what basis, should I have faith in John's sorcery claim?

I agree with most of your post. I do think that Christians would be quick to point out certain aspects of Christianity that they believe separate it from other religions. I'm also not certain that your conclusion of "can be safely ignored" logically follows from your statements. Certainly you'd agree that if there was one true religion and if there was a devil trying to deceive others with a bunch of fake religions that those fake religions would appear to be very much similar to the real one at first glance, no?




If a god exists and if he is pleased through faith, then I would think that finding such faith would come through an honest pursuit of truth. I think that far too often, some atheists' main goal is to make themselves look smart, make theists look dumb, or to "win the argument." I certainly don't believe that these types of goals are sufficient for helping one find such faith. I think that we must begin with the realization that its a possibility that logic is leading us astray and that faith is the answer.



I agree with a lot of what you say concerning Pascal's Wager. However, I do think that tons of people convince themselves of certain "truths" in part because those truths are good for them. For example, on average if you took a rich white guy from Beverly Hills, hes going to have much different political views than a poor minority from inner city New York. Both sides may truly believe in their hearts that they are unbiased in their political views, but realistically I think its pretty obvious that they were influenced by what political view would be personally best for them.

Also as for "you don't believe something if you think its 1% true", the Bible does have a verse(sorry don't remember the reference) that says something along the lines of faith as small as a mustard seed being enough to move mountains....basically meaning that you don't need a ton of faith reach God, but rather just a tiny bit.



I want to make it clear that I'm not arguing for Christianity in this thread. I'm honestly just throwing out different possibilities and trying to encourage discussion. With that said, I would have to think that having faith would be a trial and error process. I do think that Christianity promises that God will supplement a person's faith with just enough "proof" to allow their faith to grow. But all too often, I think people hear that and think "Well fine...I'll go to church for one day just so I can prove to those dumb Christians that it really didn't work" and to that I would say thats not what real faith is. I think that above all you have to be honestly trying to find truth. Really thats my main message I'm trying to convey here: Everyone needs to stop with the intellectual arrogance and stop trying to 'win the argument'. Rather, just make your life an honest pursuit of truth even if the truth isn't always what you want to hear....I have to think that doing this would ultimately lead one to God if He does indeed exist.

all religions and cults have unique details that their followers find significant from an internal perspective. from an external perspective details are irrelevant.

it can be safely ignored in the sense that all of human mythology can be. i doubt you lay awake at night worrying that ancient greek, norse, egyptian etc. gods are real and are judging you. i'd bet you don't spend a lot of time worrying if you should be following the koran or vedas.

it is trivial to demonstrate that is false. humans can and do convince themselves of many different mutually exclusive, as well as empirically false things through the honest use of faith as a means to truth. whatever your definition of truth is faith is obviously not a reliable tool in finding it.

nothing personal but the stuff you are spouting is just sophmoric religious apologist babble, not stuff i would expect to be coming from a philosophy major.

Disagree. Religious apologist babble says "Christianity is the only way to God and I know so because of my faith." What I am saying is that "there is a non-zero possibility that Christianity is the only way to God." I'm surprised that you don't see and understand this as an enormous difference.

As for being a philosophy major, I graduated 7 years ago and haven't studied much since....I certainly don't claim to be an expert of any kind, nor do I take offense to your statement. More than anything, I'm trying to learn through discussions such as these, and I think learning begins through humility often.




agree with the first sentence, disagree with the second


After being a strong Christian for much of my upbringing, I now find myself unsure of what I believe. I do think its quite likely that I hang on to my Christian ideals or at least the hope provided by such(perhaps Pascal's Wager being the biggest reason why). But I can also see myself becoming convinced of certain atheistic views. And then theres alternative views such as Deism or Agnosticism. I do think its a long shot that I end up following the koran or vedas, but I disagree with your implication that I wouldn't be willing to listen to the arguments for them.



So do you 100% reject the possibility of a God who is pleased by faith? Don't get me wrong...I fully understand what you're saying here about how its extremely possible to delude yourself through what you call faith, but I don't see why that necessarily means that a God pleased by faith can't exist.




basically, I'm the guy who isn't ruling out anything. I'm trying to be very open minded about EVERYTHING because I believe that an open mind and a willingness to learn is the very best way to educate yourself. So I'm not going to say "Well I could possibly delude myself by trying to believe in God through faith, therefore I better not even bother considering if there is a God who is pleased by faith."

The only hard stance I've taken in this thread is against those who I believe are being close minded or who are arguing just for the sake of winning an argument. I certainly don't think I deserve to be grouped in with the rest of the religious crowd which spouts "sophmoric religious apologist babble" all the time.