So do you believe in God?

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Spare me the double standard. You say that your assumption is reasonable, but mine isn't? Sorry, you don't let me have that, therefore I can't let you have that point either.

Physical evidence can say whatever the lawyers want it to say. Sure the Bible can say whatever the preacher wants it to say, but we all have a degree of common sense to filter out the BS.

Someone called my murder example ridiculous, but nobody called that ridiculous? Is that another double standard?

And just how many power hungry nations tried to exterminate or enslave the Lord's people? When groups tried to erradicate these religious teachings, the Lord had to resort to more direct means to protect the righteous. Now, the sins that our detractors indulge in are more destructive, so our detractors will destroty themselves. Another thing to consider is that the people in the Old Testament were less socially developed, so they needed more rigid laws with stricter enforcement. With the New Testament The people were deemed ready for the higher teachings (the why to do as the Lord commands, not just do it or be stoned), hence the more difficult teachings in the New testament.

God is bound by his own laws as well. Though he delights in mercy, he also is bound by justice. Man was given freedom to choose to do as they please, but the consequences are linked to them. Through the atonement of Jesus Christ, that mercy can be extended while justice is satisfied.

A total of 12 witnesses actually. You haven't had too many facts straight so far, why should I have expected any different...

The truth is that Mother Theresa is so rare because what she did is much harder than it sounds. She was able to successfully overcome pride, greed etc to live a life that is a shining exemple to all.

I thought it was better then the purple Ninja monkeys...

No, I believe that there is evidence, but it comes personally, not publicly. That's what I'm being slagged for.

By sharing my personal experiences, I hope to enter them as testimony, and ask those of you who wish to test them to examine them. If you insist on discounting them, that's your choice. It does not relieve me of my obligation to share these experiences.

If God could simply set aside his own rules when he desired but expect us to follow them, then it would be hypocritical. As mentioned, God was bound by the law of justice meaning that he could not straight up forgive our sins. By living a sinless live and dying in a painful manner, Jesus Christ made mercy possible, therefore the sins of the faithful can be forgiven.

Man's logic is finite, and thus limited. Omnipotence is not something we can readily comprehend at this time.

 

If jesus made mercy possible...how come that samaritan showed mercy earlier?

And if jesus died for our sins, how come we are sinning even more now adays than back then?

How come blood spilled from jesus wound some time after he was dead? The blood stops pumping when people dies so his blood shouldn`t spill out.

 

The claim that there is something that so far has been expressed as impossible to prove since by its very nature it's not supposed to be proven because if it was proven it wouldn't be what it is... now THAT isn't reasonable. Saying that to assume a possible murder because there WAS a person and now that person can't be found however IS reasonable. Why?Because there is at least some physical evidence of a person exsisting, photos, possible video footage from the local 7-11, people who claim to have seen the person before, know the person and can prove they knew the person.

Actually, lawyers don't decide on what the physical evidence says, the police do and we can all filter out the BS there also. However signs of struggle (knocked over house plants, broken windows, scuff marks on the carpet, torn curtains, damage to walls etc.) can't be simply ignored by any reasonable person and can be agreed by pretty much anyone that something violent happened.

As for the purple ninja monkeys... it IS rediculous, that's the POINT. The fact is you can not DISPROVE they aren't there and it's a very very bold claim to make without hard evidence. The reason why we're talking about them is because we draw parallels between gods and ninja monkeys via the argument that you can't disprove something doesn't exist then it must exist.

As for the transition between old and new testaments, sounds totally bogus. One day stone them, the next day forgive them. Less socially developed my arse, God simply changed overnight in his governing of them - he realised he screwed up if anything, something an all-seeing, all-powerful being would never do. Simply put, if he was all powerful he wouldn't have needed to do any of this, he would have seen it coming and planned accordingly with no chance for error since he is, as everyone seems to claim, perfect.

I don't see how God killing his son to cleanse the sins of others is any kind of justice when before justice, according to God, was whoever sins pays for it, not somebody else. Again a complete 180 turnaround in his policies, talk about leaving your subjects confused and bewildered.

One man, twelve men, who cares. The point is he destroyed the evidence because it was "supposed" to happen or something bogus like that. More like "I'm making something up because I'm delusional and this is just my cop-out from having to come up with any hard facts. Hey, you 11 guys over there! Want to start a religion? I'll pay you a shiny dollar!"

A claim made without proof can be dismissed without proof. Your personal claim of God talking to you in your sleep or whatever can't be proven by you or anyone else. I claim to have a harem full of beautiful naked women in my basement and you can't prove me wrong. You should believe me. Don't slag me and call me a lier. I'm not delusional.

There is no other way to compare without making extraordinary claims as examples to how religion sounds to those who have not had these experiences. God doesn't talk to athiests or agnostics, that's not our fault. If he is so just and caring why would he talk to one person and not another? You go to heaven, I don't because he couldn't be bothered to talk to me? Yeah, that's just, that's fair, that's somebody worth worshipping.

 

One question to who ever is willing to answer it.

If person A lead a perfectly good life. He was always friendly to people, gave pleanty to charity, helped out in different community services, never broke any laws and lived to a good moral standard. Yet he knew there was no god. Let's say it turned out he was wrong. When he died would he be sentenced to hell, for not believing (and refusing to do so), disipte the good life he lead? Or would he be granted a place in heaven, dispite not believing in god?

 

Oooh ooooh! Let me answer that one:

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/mk/16.html#16

Jesus speaks for himself; Person A would go to Hell.

 

So the answer is a definate maybe?

 

Under Redform Judaism, Rotku's Person A would be granted a place in heaven. What really matters to Jews is how every person acts and works to make LIFE better for everyone. If you look closesly, you'll notice that any sort of afterlife is omitted from the Torah. Descriptions of Jewish heaven come from folklore.

The closed-mindedness of Christianity in this regard is a big part of the reason I left the fold.

 

Jesus made it possible for God to show mercy without violating the law of Justice. The Samaritan was merely a good example of how we ought to behave.

Two words: Free will. We all make our own decisions and choose our own actions, be they right or wrong. Further, Satan is continuing to tempt the people towards sin, and has had 6000 years of experience since the departure from the Garden of Eden.

Wouldn't the blood drain out of the dead body if he hung for another 24 to 36 hours after he died?

Okey I'll accept this parallel if AND ONLY IF, you can priovide me someone who has actually seen or had some other experience with these Purple Ninja Monkeys. Otherwise, I will just write this off as a weak arguement...

Permit me an analogy. I promise it will be better than my last attempt at one. You have a child learning mathematics. You hand them an advanced calulus text book. They won't be able to make sense of it. They learn math line upon line, precept upon precept. First they learn to recognize numbers and hiow to count. Then to add and subtract. From there multiplication and division. Order of Operations, Exponents, Algebra all need to be learned before they can learn Calculus. The same goes for Trigonomitry, probability and other higher end mathematical operations. Likewise, with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Frist they need to learn obedience anf faith before they can learn charity, love and forgiveness.

Jesus Christ willfully submitted himself to this so that He may forgive the sins of those who will believe in him.

The Mormons did not prosper until several decades after the founding of the church. Joseph Smith was murdered by an angry mob in Illinois. I do not believe that he was particularly wealthy. Further, if there was no truth behind what was done, then how come there are over 12 million (or is it 13 million now?) members worldwide?

Okay, but I reserve the right to call you a lucky bastard

You are right, I have no proof, but I am not the only one claiming these things. Every devout Christian has had some personal experience that convinces them that what they are doing is right.

He does, but you either don't recognize it or refuse to believe it. Under His direction, the Bible was left as a book of history and a book of instructions, as well as a means to share His wisdom.

To return to the presence of the Father, there are ordinances you have to go through and you have to live worthy of that priviledge. If you live worthy, you will better recognize when the Lord speaks to you. At the last day, any failure to qualify to return to the Father will ultimately fall on your own head, and you will have a perfect knowledge of this.

At death, he would find himelf in a spirit world, where the souls of the dead await resurrection, following the return of Jesus Christ. There, those who have received the necessary ordinances during their life go to those who have not and teach them the truth so that they may still convert and be saved. It is only through faith in Jesus Christ that our sins may be forgiven, but I believe that Hell itself is reserved for the most evil or the most adamant of those that will not believe. I would conjecture that his eternal fate will be a world similar to this one or slightly better.

 

I still come back to the fact that it is impossible to know who to believe because you're all saying different things! By ANY stretch of logic, most people must be WRONG about how religion works! No matter who is right, the majority will be wrong! So can you possibly know who has guessed correctly? It's a complete lottery. What a nightmare.

 

HB, that same sentiment crossed my mind long ago. I've come to believe that spirituality is how people reconcile themselves to the unknown and/or the infinite, and religion is what happens when people who share the same basic spirituality worship together.

Unfortunately, fundamental human nature makes people want to feel superior to their fellows, and that turned something that could and should have been a beneficial thing into something ugly.

 

Hmm, write a major religion on each side of a 20 sided dice. Roll said dice and follow the religion that you rolled. Who knows, you might roll a natural 20 and get into heaven or roll a 19 or lower and fail your spirit save.

 

Well, it is good to see you don't stick by the predetermination doctrine. But do we really make our own decisions and choose our own actions? Aren't these all caused by chemical reactions in our brain, which the only control we have over is by other chemical reactions? Free will is far from a given, so probably shouldn't be used to argue another case - infact, as far as I'm aware, most philosophers will argue against it. But then they'd probably argue against religion as well, so I guess their opinions don't mean anything

I'm no medical expert here, but I would imagin that as the veins started break, the blood would seep out (espcially with gravity helping), but would probably remain in the body - atleast for a fairly long time. The skin is thick and fairly hard, I don't think it will have rotted enough away for the blood to train out so soon.

But I could very well be completely wrong about that.

Do a google search for Purple Ninja Monkey and let me know what you find. I see movies on YouTube about ninja monkeys and someone who says that their occupation is trying to take over the world with a legion of puprle ninja monkeys. There's even an online t-shirt store run by purple monkeys!

I find this line of argument very curious. It leads to the question : would they have related these experience to the Christian God if there was another dominate religion? What if Purple Monkeys were the common belief around - prehaps then people would be "hearing" purple monkeys talking to them instead of a god.

I would ask how you know that it is the Christian god talking to you, instead of some other god, but I fear I know what the answer will be to this already.

Couldn't I argue along the same lines that we have been visited by aliens? I can find you many cases where people claim to have been visited by aliens / seen UFOs / etc. Does this make the line of argument valid? What about Big Foot? Or the Lock ness Monster? Infact, for the Lock ness monster, check this website - there's even video evidence! Much more than has ever been supplied about a god.

[Edit] Just found a list of Yeti sightings, going back to 1832. Impressive, aye? It must exist http://www.occultopedia.com/y/yeti.htm

Ashame he wasn't foresighted enough to provide some personal translators with it. Or prehaps some solid proof. Think how much blood shed would have been prevented.


And thanks Rally for the answers. Seems very reasonable and like you've given this a lot of thought. *tips his hat*

 

Hey, I'm not saying that I'd be a philosophist, or a philosopher either, but I'm arguing against religion!

And I can't help but opining that philosophers who argue against religion have opinions on that matter that are extremely relevant! Anyone wanting to know anything about religion and religious thinking should seriously analyze religion as a concept...

 

Iku-Turso, I didn't mean any offence. That line was meant to be in jest (hence the at the end and the fact that I'm arguing against it as well).

 

I'm reminded of the story of the six vlind guys and the elephant. Each one had limited understanding because they could only discern a part of it (as in how much they could feel). Each examined a different part and thought it was something different. Basically it translated as this:

Tusk=Spear
Ear=Fan
Leg=tree
Trunk=snake
Body=wall
tail=rope

It is the same creature, diffetent understanding of the thing. Competing religions each know there is a God, but have different understandings of it based upon differing teachings.

Could "people sharing the same basic spirituality" be supporting testimonials of their spiritual experiences? Could enough such witnesses be evidence that there really is something behind it?

That's pride for you. It seems great when things are going well for you, but it makes the fall that much harder to live with when you get knocked down a peg.

LMAO. In some ways, it is a crap shoot, but once the decision is made, go balls to the wall in this service and you have your best shot at making the afterlife all it can be. I'd say that true and total damnation will actually be quite rare in the final judgement...

Chemical reactions in the brain may influence the choices you make, but they are still choices. I say this also from personal experience. In my younger, more rebellious days, I drank and used marijuana. The alteration of brain chemistry did impact my decisions, but all I did was still my own decision (mind you of lower quality...).

But are they trying to pass these purple ninja monkeys off as real things that live on the dark side of the moon or are they openly acknowledged as fiction? God is not considered to be fictional by those who believe.

It is logical that those of other religions have similar experiences, but as I know little about their faith, I do not consider myself able to properly comment.

This is where faith comes in. I have to have faith that it is the Holy Ghost and not some demon/delusion. It takes a considerable degree of faith to obey despite other alternatives that may be seen as desirable. It takes faith to remain morally pure instead of having sex. It takes faith to decline alcohol or weed. If you did not have faith then you would see no reason to decline sex, booze or drugs (other things being equal. This doesn't take into account whether she has a boyfriend or if you're driving that night).

I would not oppose investigating these claims. I have seen where they've looked more closely at this video evidence and shown it to be false. It was deliberately blurred, but when cleaned up it was revealed to be a hoax. Lack of evidence trumps debunked evidence...

Actually it is provided, but it must be prayerfully sought and you must humbly accept the answer given and not seek to pridefully exploit it for your own gain.

Even those who claim to be faithful can still screw up. They can allow their pride/wrath/envy/gluttony/greed to overrule their judgement and start a war. When this happens, they could even twist the words of the almighty to call the people to rally behind their selfish cause.

As a concept, it has its good points and its bad points. The Good, it provides a means of socializing a common morality within the populace and can bring comfort to a troubles spirit. The bad, it relies on faith which grants some degree of power, which can corrupt those ill suited to wield it, and the abuse of that trust can have devastating consequences. The Ugly, The higher up that abuse occurs, innocent lives can be ended or ruined, leading to a contempt ot even hatred of what ought to be a good thing. This is not to be a condemntion of religion, but rather a call to those who would hold this power to use it righteously...

 

Nice analogy, but if the guy holding the tail says that everyone must praise the rope and that anyone who says anything bad about the rope will be hung from a gallows, and the tusk guy says the same thing but the other way around, then one of them must be wrong.

I get your concept, but that does not take away from the fact that many religions (and non-religions) are blatantly contradictary in what they proclaim so there is no chance of them all being correct.

 

Uh, Gnarff... you do realize, don't you, that I'm saying that all you fundamentalists who claim to have the only pathway to heaven are the one who are guilty of being too proud?

Not in the way I look at things, no, it can't.

 

Your decisions yes, but whether or not you had a choice in making those decisions; once again, debatable. To push foward this argument you really need a meta-physical state. Which as you are trying to argue the presence of a meta-physical state (ie. God), using X to try and prove the existance of X isn't a viable approch. Unless of course you want to claim that God is a physical being

Then following this line of thought, is it not just as logical that these other religions could indeed be true as well?

There was a reason I didn't ask

Now here I must disagree. Faith most often described as a belief in something that trancsends scientific reasoning. In the common sense of the word, I have no faith, yet I have never done drugs, simply because I know the bad (scientifically proved, I might add) effects of them. Your statement above is forgetting one of the main things that makes humans so great - the ability of logic and reason.

If evidence is proved to be false, this leads to there been no evidence. No evidence is exactly the same as no evidence. Anyway, I am sure there are many examples where people have tried to supply proof of a divine entity which have proved to be false.

But of course, what about those claims regarding yetis? UFOs? And even the lockness claims before videos were avalible?

I'm drifting slightly into the realms of fantasy here (but I guess that's what we're talking about) but wouldn't if one day massive, 100 metre high letters, written in fire, appeared across the sky saying "This religion is the real one. Anyone who claims otherwise I will personally smite down. Have a good day. God" save a lot of needless pain?

I am going to assume you are using spirit here in the vaguest of terms, not necessarily meaning the religious spirit but more someones attitudes or disposition (eg. "His spirit was broken"). If I have assumed right, then cannot both of these things be replaced by non-religous substitutes? There are countries where over half the population is not a member of any religion, yet I'm sure there moral are none less than yours. And cannot a psychiatrist help restore a persons spirits?

And all of these things can be had without needing the bad and ugly that you listed.

 

@Rotku: None taken, I should've added a there as well

Now let's make that 'belief in something that transcends all reasoning' and that pretty much sums up what I think about the subject.

The problem with organized religion, and I think that there is no religion that could be called as such without being organized and having fixed hierarchical systems, is that they cannot help themselves but to try to reason what they practice. That, and the fact that they're hierarchical.

Hierarchies aren't about having faith and reverence, they're about having power. A religion without hierarchies is no religion. There is no religion. The idea of a religion as a thing in itself is an arbitrary rational human construct.

All ways of thinking about the transcendental have some merit, but it's still thinking. You cannot rationalise what goes beyond human experience.

However, in order to have power you make up words and artificial constructs in order to have control over other people. It's not necessarily something planned, it happens because people yearn for power and positions of power. The history of the christian church is mainly a history of the use of power over other people. The same applies to any organized religion.

 

My point is that nobody has a perfect knowledge of God. In many cases, such sword point conversions are done out of pride, not out of spirituality.

Point taken, but I have yet to see a religion that includes sit down and shut up in it's core doctrine. Rather, many of them teach some form of missionary activity to spread the word. At some point, I am required by my faith to show some guts and stand up for what I believe. This is not pride per se, but rather sharing our beliefs.

That's why Logic does not totally satisfy matters such as this. Evidence suggests that there really is something there, but logic tells us sweet squat all about it. But then again, Logic is the fine art of being wrong with cinfidence

Some truth, yes, but I have more confidence in my own religion.

So your faith is in logic, science and reasoning in matters where such things may be innadequate. Where is the difference between us?

Quite possibly, yes, but that won't happen until the second coming of Jesus Christ...

Of course. Words such as spirit and soul come more readily to me than other, more scientific terms.

It can, but I question how effective it can be compared to religion...

The Lord's house is a house of order. That order comes from a form of hierarchy. There are those who lead and teach. It is by this that such things are taught from one generation to the next.

But what if those in the Hierarchy are chosen, not by seeking that authority, but by spiritual consideration? It becomes more about doing the will of God as opposed to personal power and glory.

Religion is the means of teaching these spiritual beliefs, and an organized means of worship in accordance with these beliefs.

Then why must those who do not believe insist that we, the faithful do just that?

These "words and artificial constructs" as you call them (I am excluding God from this, as he is from my perspective, very real) enable a shared spiritual experience. GFranted, power is a side effect, and some will abuse this (as has happenned in many religions, please don't target only Christianity), but that is not about religion, but individual sin.