old jesus said "sell all your possessions, give them to charity, and follow me."

new jesus says "here's 500 bucks"

Furthermore, what if you believe one belief and want to believe it, but come to believe that the other belief is actually the 'correct' belief?

there isn't an old jesus....unless you mean OT and NT.

And I responded. You haven't really addressed the points I made.

It's the other way around. I don't believe in god because there is no evidence. There are other things I also don't believe in because of a lack of evidence. What I can never do is suspend my critical thinking and simply accept on faith, I see it as a weakness.

You haven't found any evidence at all. That's why you have faith, it takes the place of evidence. If there were evidence, faith would not be required.

Yes I encounter these types a lot. I love to play them at poker.

And I think that this is in large how religions survive, it's like a huge pyramid scheme.

This is the bit I find truly offensive. I have goals without needing faith. I do good, because it's the right thing to do. I'm a moral person, because it's the right thing to do. I don't need to be told to do it or fear eternal damnation, I just do it.

Yes, the uneducated, the poor, the sick, the needy. Those are prime targets for religions. There's a reason that there's a negative correlation between level of education and religiosity.

Where the hell did that come from Also, whether or not religion is a net positive is long way from proven.

It's all about you isn't it, which was kinda my point earlier. Absolutely nothing you've said has been proof of any kind, just wishful thinking and feel good acceptance.

I can only imagine how little value you must feel my godless life has. On the other hand, I feel sorry for people who blindly accept what they're told whilst believing that everyone else who is blindly believing what they are told, are wrong. Well, I do find the irony mildly entertaining.

Unfortunately, the points you make are often not addressed at what I say, but at what you think I believe.


I don't believe you are being honest with yourself.

If you truly follow evidence, then there is no need to ask stupid questions or make "gotcha-type" responses to believers. For example, if I am following evidence on some matter, or debating some question, I will look at the evidence for, and the evidence against. I do not simply look at the evidence for, and then run to message forums and challenge 'those stupid ignorants who are against' and then actively defend my position to the death until my position is so tied up with "who I am" that I will never relinquish it, because to do so would bring shame, because I identify myself with it, and others do too. No. I will calmly and coolly consider both positions.

And when I present the "for" argument, I will also present the "against" argument, and seek to debunk that argument in advance, if it contains inherit weaknesses.

For example, I've often bemoaned the fact that some atheist objections that I encounter here are just a simple google-search away from being debunked. "Oh no. Not this again."

Is it that the person making the objection is just stupid, and cannot think creatively enough to solve the problem on his own? Or is it that "if my position is going to be overturned, it will have to be toppled by someone else."

This is not the behavior of a truth-seeker, but someone whose position is hardened, and only an act-of-god would move them off of it.

This, to me-- is you.


Again, you just ignore what I say, and if by rote, just repeat your premise and conclusion over and over. If that works for you, by all means, keep on keeping on, dawg.

Not really, because I don't know what you believe, only what you say and I've only been addressing things you've said. For example, your reliance on your personal experiences, which is the primary point I raised that you have failed to respond to. I think it's an important issue because it seems to be very common with both Theists and people who have spiritual beliefs generally. The ones you mentioned in passing were in the context of faith healing.

I asked if you had considered why you place so much importance on them, given how unreliable they are, you haven't really responded.


You talk about yourself and your thought processes more than anyone else I've encountered on here. It doesn't really advance the discussion.

Let's backtrack to my question about how you can so confidently trust your own personal experiences (and why they have led you to your current beliefs, that would be interesting too), do you have anything to say about that?

HU for rollz?


This is almost pointless. I said nothing about eternal damnation. Why you have couched all expressions of faith within that context is beyond me.

You have goals. I have goals. You have no faith that you will reach your goals. I do.

Who is more likely to reach them?

Wtf does eternal damnation got to do with that point?

Talk about offensive.

Those are just the groups that that Christ came to turn the world toward. 'The healthy have no need of a physician.'

Again, you just constantly do this. How you cannot see this is astounding to me. You already know what I "really" believe and who I "really" am, and in the end, no matter what I say or do, your predetermined bias will trump in the end, and you will return to it like a dog returning to his vomit.

I am not here trying to offer you proof of anything. If you really wanted proof, why would you come to me? I'm just an uneducated Christian, a mindless yahoo and a religoid Yankee. You -- on the other hand-- are a great intellectual mind, and you could do a much better job of providing evidence and proof for God's existence than I could...isn't that so? So, prove it, then.

You'd first have to demonstrate that they are unreliable. But even given that-- my point was that faith-healing and miracles are not necessarily rock-solid evangelistic tools, and not necessarily going to change anyone's mind. Therefore, I don't feel a need to defend them as such... you see what I mean?

I'm not going to willingly take up a position that I think is weak, no matter how much you try to prod me into it.




I wasn't really talking about myself, there. That portrayal, honestly, doesn't represent anyone on this forum, including me. Though, whenever I create a thread or a long post, I always try to keep in mind forthcoming objections while I am typing it out, and so I am careful in how I word things-- and what I have found is that it doesn't matter at all how carefully I word my ideas-- objections and rebuttals come that still attack contexts, ideas and concepts that I never even inferred in any way. They are not attacking my ideas, but their perception of what I believe or who I am.

Revelation 3:17-18
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

Still waiting on Tom getting back to me. Looks like he's able to make legs grow but not hands. I wonder why?

Much easier to grow little, stubbly toes than long, pointy fingers, ldo.

Poor Jeremy Beadle. There's no hope for him

Not to discuss them individually, but just to clarify what you mean by For and Against arguments, what were the top 5, say, on each category re: your religion? I'm not so interested in the Fors as I am the Againsts, but so we do not misrepresent or misunderstand your views it would help to get an idea of them.

I ask this because I can't think of any other 'Does entity X exist?' type questions where I would start with anything other than looking for reasons and evidence as to why we could accept it as possible, or probable. It seems odd to start with looking for reasons and evidence as to why an unseen entity does not exist (we might discover such things as we proceed, ofc).

IOW, I don't see 'Does X exist?' as a two-sided argument. You could later examine the For evidence that the entity exists and see if they are good reasons, but these aren't Against reasons, they are examinations of the For reasons. The only Against reason necessary is that there are, as yet, no convincing For reasons.

I'm taking this verse to be that people [don't know] their spiritual condition? What does this have to do with the Wisdom of God? If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent then [2] major problem arises. The first being do we actually have free will? The second being that why is there evil [the classic problem of evil].

If this "unseen entity" you refer to is God, you are approaching the question from the wrong attitude. I don't know about you brilliant, erudite scholars, but my life and the questions of it are not made or answered in a vacuum.

I don't believe in the kind of rational, unclouded objectivity that so many here believe that that they are beholden to. I don't see evidence of this pristine objectivity in anyone-- including myself.

So, I am not all that interested in the mental gymnastics of the philosopher. I'll leave the tedious, rabbit-hole debates to others (we know who they are).

God is not simply "an unseen entity." To say so is to be facetious, purposefully demeaning, and quite frankly-- strange. If your son comes home one day and tells you that he has turned his life over to God in some way, are you going to pull out a rule pad and paper and start scribbling down calculations and drawing flow charts? Is God then an 'unseen entity' in your life, or is "HE" now something more?


To be honest, I believe that all of the objectivity-worship done here is simply an act. It is mere dressing, mere smoke. And it makes the pretender who fancies this kind of idiom appear egotistical and silly, if not airy and incompetent.

I simply laid out a practical course of answering the bigger questions. The main thing most people lack is a good, old-fashioned sense of you-can-get-off-your-ass-and-do-it instruction. There is nothing wrong with practical, and simple things. Christ said that the mysteries were hidden from the wise, and delivered to the babes. Quite honestly, they are hidden to the learned and the wise because they are blinded by their own incandescent egos. If you are blinded in this way, you just cannot see anything -- nevermind a God who is everywhere.

I'm not chasing down questions until I find myself frozen in the face of the enormous complexity of the machinery that I myself have created. This would bring about a state of impotence, where, unfortunately, much of the elite reside. At some point you just gotta choose to have faith, or not.

In the mean time, you seem to have chosen to try to be as much a dick as you can.

God bless you, sir.

I don't know what you are trying to say, so I'll ask some specific Q's:

If I'm "approaching the question from the wrong attitude", what is the right attitude? Please bear in mind that this is not something I chose to believe suddenly, in a vacuum, but the conclusion I came to from decades of my lifes experiences. It doesn't require brilliance or scholarly study, why do you think it does?

Perhaps there is something relevant with the way you describe objectivity. Since I hold a minority opinion in the US, you might understand why it is so interesting to me that others don't see it the same way as me, when it appears such an easy conclusion. I expect you feel similarly from your position. But I can assure you, there are no mental gymnastics going on in my brain. I am not educated in Philosophy, in fact I find the particularly religious and apologists to be much more familiar with academic philosophy than I am likely to be. But when you describe objectivity so disdainfully, perhaps that is a clue about some differences between our ways of thinking?

The "is this true?" question is something I can ask about religion without any emotional considerations, I don't have family / friends that might stop talking to me if I do not believe the same way as them (you know this sometimes happens). I don't have to treat the God topic any differently than any other "is this true?" question. Don't you think that could be beneficial? And when you suggest that my position was "facetious, purposefully demeaning, and quite frankly-- strange", I wonder if you are at all aware of your Christian Privilege showing up in full force? If I don't believe what you believe, not that I am rejecting your God, or making derogatory comments (all I said was "unseen") and you called this "demeaning." Isn't this an emotional response?

I can't even tease out any questions about the paragraph about "objectivity-worship" and that you think objectivity is being faked. All I can ask is why do you think it is faked, for what purpose? The rest of that paragraph is basically littered with attempted insults, but the obvious point about those is that it says much more about you than it does about your supposed "egotistical, silly, airy, incompetent pretender" target. But hey, perhaps you're just having a ****** day (I thought you had been sounding in a better mood recently, despite this part of your reply ).

btw, you didn't answer my original Q about what you consider to be the main For and Against evidence, or reasons. Nothing in detail is necessary, and obviously I am more interested in what you considered as being in the Against column.


Perhaps that is all it comes down to. I just couldn't "choose to have faith" (about anything really, but certainly not something that is actually important), and for whatever reason, I am interested in why someone else sees faith as a good choice.

Also,
Huh?
First, what kind of calculations and flow charts do you imagine being drawn in this example?!
Second, if my son suddenly believed in god, how would that make it real, if millions of strangers believing now has not made it real? Why could I not ask the obvious: "what do you believe, and why?"

HI,
thanks for providing bible words..it makes me take right decision in my life..it makes cool and calm..i have read this at right situation....