Post Your Tough Questions Regarding Christianity

I noticed you first changed the subject,then tried to make this about me

Lots of intelligent people believe in god, some of them good scientists.
There is nothing incompatible about science and religion.



The fundamentalists who think there really was a flood,and the world is only 6000 yrs old, evolution is the devils lie.... those are the people i am talking about. Stone ignorant, and given to lying without compunction.

You care to try to defend them as being educated?
.

 

The term you're looking for is "reject"; to deny something, you have to know it's true.

So... I offer you evidence that most atheists are former Christians (and most of them have a college education), and you offer me anecdotes? Aww, that's cute. ^_^

Man, that'd be a funny assumption.

If.

You know.

It were at all true.

We call you "fundie" when you push your beliefs into the public square, beyond your own private property, and posit things which seem insane in favor of your belief. We call you "extremist" when you claim that your beliefs are the only ones worth taking note of, and that those who disagree should be tortured forever. We call you "anti-science" when you try to push your fairy tales into science class, espouse ideas we know to be false, and teach them as though they were fact.

 

What EVIDENCE did you provide that atheists are primarily well-versed in scripture?

You saying "gosh I know some atheists who have read the bible" is not this "evidence" you claim you have offered up.

 

You obviously have no idea what a fundamentalist is.

You are just using the term as a derogatory, bigoted reference meant to demean. Sorry, I'm not demeaned by your (incorrect) use of the term.

 

A capricious dictator. Hitler's upper echelon enjoyed a fine standard of living.

At absolute worst, a finite amount of punishment for finite harm done by sin. As for not accepting YHWH's supposed son: why should an eternal, infinite deity care that much about what is, in all finality, a rather shallow concept such as the acceptance or denial of a certain religious precept? Why should the very Christian Klansmen and slavers of yesteryear be accepted into the pearly gates while Gandhi gets thrown into Hell? That's not the sign of a benevolent deity, but a capricious and malevolent monster.

If YHWH is that petty and capricious, then why does YHWH deserve worship? It doesn't cleave to any sincere moral standard to believe in a deity because to do otherwise would mean eternal punishment. That, again, is capricious malevolence.

Again, still no worthwhile theodicy shown. Your proposition is literally nearly identical to the concept of a racket; payment in exchange for protection. That's a gangster deity, not a loving deity. If YHWH were real (almost certainly not, but just for argument's sake), then in order for YHWH to be just, it would have to follow the tenets of universalism.

Which, by the by, was very popular with the early church. Though, not among those who had an agenda when compiling the early church canon. Hence, the exclusion of the Gnostic gospels and everything that didn't conform to ideas of the early hierarchy of the church which was following the Roman model of hierarchy and thus only chose books that confirmed the validity of that branch, to the detriment of the numerous other Christian cults in existence at the time.

 

How astute. :v

I was, how do you know, and because I like debates, respectively.

How do you know you're following the true version of Christianity? The early church was far more diverse than what's around today, and Gnosticism was a very popular branch until the early hierarchical church stamped it out. How do you know Gnosticism isn't the Way, the Truth, and the Light and that you're being deceived by the Demiurge?

 

Born and raised Catholic, went to a Catholic junior high school and high school, and got nothing but A's in theology classes. I also took a religion course in college about the Abrahamic faiths. I've also read plenty on theodicy, Trinitarian and Unitarian doctrines, some on Gnosticism, and so on and so forth. One of my two majors in college was history and my senior thesis was a 50 page paper on the Byzantine Empire's relation with the Zoroastrian Persian empires and the Muslim Arab, Persian, and Turkish empires from the splitting of the ERE and WRE until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. So, yes, I'm thoroughly familiar with Christianity and know of such movements as the Iconoclasm, the Great Schism,Jan Huss's proto-protestant movement in Bohemia, the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin's dictatorship in Geneva, the Bogumils, the Cathars, the numerous Crusades, the Reconquista, the Inquisitions (and how they were primarily targeted, at least in the Iberian Peninsula, against conversos and moros), Martin Luther's antisemitic ravings (his most famous work being On Jews and Their Lies), and on and on and on and on.

I'm well aware of the basic tenets and doctrine of Christianity.

Proof plz.

Except, you know, I am. Most Lutherans are unaware, for instance, of the antisemitic nature of their religion's progenitor. Or most people of a Calvinistic bent are unaware of the tyranny spread by John Calvin. Most Christians are also completely unaware of Gnosticism, Unitarianism, Universalism, how much of their eschatology was "liberated" from Zoroastrian beliefs (Zoroastrians were teaching about a final battle between good and evil, the appearance of a Messiah, eternal paradise for the saved and the destruction of the doomed somewhere between 500 BCE and 1500 BCE, well before the appearance of such beliefs in Judaism), and so on and so forth.

I always find it interesting how many Christians tend to completely ignore Jesus' advice on not hiding their lights under bushels and not being like the Pharisees and praying loudly in the streets. But, hey, it's not like Christians believe Jesus is part of the Godhead or anything.

 

Most of them are former Christians. So, basically, the average atheist is likely to be at least as well-versed as the average Christian is. Unless you're willing to say that most Christians know next to nothing about their own religion, then your argument is moot.

No. But pointing out that there are a great number of atheists who have, and that most atheists were Christians before rejecting the faith completely sinks your argument that most atheists are ignorant about the bible and Christianity. And I mean, how could we be? We get it shoved in our face every time the subject comes up (which is often).

 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...gnostics-know-more-about-bible-than-religious

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html?_r=0

 

Here's the problem with your rationalization: If the Great Flood caused all the fossils that we see today, then fossilization must be ridiculously easy.

You can't have it both ways. Either fossilization is extremely hard and there is no way that a single flood event could have made all the fossils we see, or fossilization is extremely easy and therefore we should see fossils from all the animal migrations away from the Ark.

Either way, the literal Flood stroy is idiotic.

 

So we should just believe that the life, the teachings from His ministry, the miraculous miracles He performed like raising the dead, bringing sight to the blind, healing the cripple, walking on water...etc., the death and resurrection of our Lord Savior Jesus Christ was just a hoax concocted by evil men?

You continue your life believing that, while I'm going to continue believing in our Lord Savior Jesus Christ as the only way to redeem myself, to be forgiven for my sins and be saved from the punishment I deserve and instead be rewarded with eternal life in paradise and live happily ever after.

What is insane is not wanting to have eternal life in paradise and live happily ever after.

We all know life exists, why can't it exist elsewhere and not only be confined to what we know of it as we experience it here on earth?

 

What do you think that there is some Pew Forum on Religion survey that shows this? Saying that christians read the bible is not evidence either. Most professed born agian christians cannot even tell you the 4 Canonical Gospels...

http://www.christianity.com/print/1270946/

So before you go spewing these falsehoods you really should take a look at the condition of your own religion and just how stupid its adherents really are about the Bible and Christianity.

 

I don't follow a religion, or a "version" of Christianity. I follow Christ. I know gnosticism isn't the way, the truth, and the light because the bible, and Christ, have said so.

 

No, there are a large amount of fossil bison from about 300 years ago to several million years ago. Then, fossils for buffalo drop off sharply in the 1800s. However, we know why this is: it's because every single buffalo skeleton that could have been found was sent to a fertilizer plant to be broken down into phosphorous and bone meal.

There's been continuous human habitation in the region for 10,000 years, with intensive agriculture and building regimens for about that long. Lion remains would generally have been broken by plows, destroyed by the building of various stone or clay-brick structures, irrigation ditches degrading/destroying lion remains, and so on and so forth. There's also the matter of hyenas that frequented the region at the same time, who eat bones.

I'm wondering why animals that live in similar conditions (wild donkeys, buffalo, aurochs, wildebeest) didn't go forth ahead of the wave of wallabies and kangaroos and outperform them. Marsupials generally can't compete as well as placental mammals, due to the limitations of marsupial development patterns (marsupials must retain fingered, claw-like forelimbs in order to climb from the birth canal to the nipple in the marsupium; placental mammals can evolve numerous limb configurations because their limbs aren't constrained by such developmental limitations). There's also the matter that modern invasive species are incredibly disruptive; why wouldn't, say, there already be raccoons in Europe? Starlings in North America? Nutria in North America? Beavers in South America? Rats and mice everywhere outside of central Asia? Why did they all have to be introduced in the 19th and 20th centuries instead of migrating straight out of the Ark?

Except there are absolutely NO instances of this sort of thing, at all, upon the earth. Not a single, solitary animal out of place that wouldn't be predicted by a combination of evolutionary theory and plate tectonics.

 

What falsehoods? I think we've established that you are telling falsehoods (for example, saying you'd provided 'evidence' when you hadn't. Please state what falsehoods I've presented; and prove that they are falsehoods.

Remember, you saying it doesn't constitute evidence or proof of anything except that you have an opinion. It doesn't justify or support anything we're discussing here.

 

Given that there is virtually no contemporary evidence (and believe me, someone raising the (*)(*)(*)(*)ing dead? KIND OF A BIG DEAL), and that this story is couched in a book known to contain many contradictions and flat-out errors, with a god figure that claims to be all-knowing and perfectly benevolent, yet would (*)(*)(*)(*) humanity to - look, the point I'm trying to get at is that the god figure presented within the bible is ludicrous.

Great. Just follow Matthew 6:5, will ya?

Oh, I'm sure we want it. We just don't believe in it. It's like if a homeless man gave you a piece of paper that he drew a crude lottery ticket into, and said, "For 10 bucks I'll enter you into a ten trillion dollar sweepstakes" - sure, we'd love that $10,000,000,000,000, but we're pretty sure the homeless man is just talking out of his ass. In the words of Matt Dillahunty: "The reason I can't just believe is because I care about the truth".

Maybe it does! But if I were to tell you that I knew that there was life on Io, and if you gave me all your money you'd go there after you die, would you just take it, or would you say, "hang on, can you prove it?" Because if you wouldn't demand proof, then you're a gullible fool.

 

Keep being in denial, one day you are going to be out of denials and shall see the truth!

 

That Atheists know nothing about the Bible is a falsehood. Your talking out your butt because your mouth knows better. What evidence did I say I provided? I posted a quote from a Fundie site citing christian ignorance of the Bible and did not SAY it was evidence. Take your meds and a nap you need it....your starting to read things that are not there. Anyway some one else entertain this Fundie I am tired.

 

Do you know what a Dufflepud is?

Atheists remind me of them.

 

Yeah, the Bible that was assembled by a group of Christians with an agenda to keep Gnosticism out of the Bible and out of people's reach. Have you even read a Gnostic gospel? Jesus says a lot about Gnosticism in the Gnostic gospels. Why should you trust your Bible when it was assembled and written by people with an agenda to push? After all, the only extent Biblical writings that are larger than a few fragments were written hundreds of years after the first publishing dates, and enormous amounts of propaganda and "orthodox" were likely written in to appease the Church fathers who choose what was canon by 400 CE, well after the original writings of the New Testament; how do you know that they chose correctly and you aren't being deceived by the Demiurge? You can't appeal to the same book that may be deceiving you, as that is rather silly. So, aside from deep feelings likely inculcated by your childhood and how you were raised, what do you have to say that you are actually following anything that is truth?

 

More important for understanding the bible is learning about its history, not picking a particular translation..

 

Pink Unicorn alert.

 

Good grief.

- - - Updated - - -

I suppose it's natural that you are as ignorant of literature as you are of Christianity.

 

No response? Why should you trust the Bible? The only Old Testament books we have were written after the Jews were exposed to Zoroastrianism and its tenets of eschatology (which remarkably resemble Christianity's, but predate it by at least half a millennium, if not 1,500 years), while the oldest known Old Testament books tend to show Sheol as being a state of infinite sleep (from which the dead can occasionally be raised for the purposes of necromancy, as some of the OT prophets engage in), while other Semitic religions (such as the Canaanite religion) had no afterlife and were very similar to old Judaism (which was polytheistic; hence Asherah). Christianity, conversely, has no surviving written records prior to 125 CE, and nothing substantial (as in, more than a few scraps and fragments that have a scattered words) until after the canon was established.

So, again, how can you trust your Bible's correct besides gut feeling? And if all you have is gut feeling, why should that be trusted over the gut feelings of Muslims, Buddhists, or Hindus?

 

I don't see the analogy, first off nobody is asking for all your money to believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord Savior.

I haven't read any Scripture that tells us that...lol

And so I don't demand any proof when it comes to Jesus Christ, what I have is faith and so what do I have to lose?

And just for argument sake suppose Jesus was all a lie, God doesn't exist, then when I die I won't have any conscience whatsoever and will never know that I was so gullible to believe such a story...lol

But on the otherhand if Jesus is Real, God does exist, then when I die, I will be aware that Jesus is Real, God does exist, and I'm in heaven (paradise) and living happily ever after!...wow! such a beautiful story!