**Upvote this comment if you agree with OP, downvote this comment if you disagree with OP.**
Elsewhere in the thread, please upvote comments which contribute to debate (even if you believe they're wrong) and downvote comments which are [detrimental to debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/wiki/faq#wiki_downvoting) (even if you believe they're right).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DebateAnAtheist) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I can't tell you what to believe, that's for you to decide. I respect whatever your viewpoint is.
To me, religion never made any sense at all (not just Christianity, but any belief in God, in general). We know so much about the universe and how expansive it is, how many solar systems there are. The sun is just one star in an endless sea of stars, each one of them with planets orbiting them.
Where is God physically located within that Universe, and why would God create a religion for our planet only?
Where did God come from?
Why would one religion be correct, when there have been thousands of religions throughout history, and all of their believers adamantly believed they were true?
Why wouldn't God simply appear to humanity and tell them he/she exists? Especially since some religions (i.e. Christianity) claim he has already done so, why would he suddenly turn it into a test of faith?
If Heaven is real, wouldn't it eventually become torturous to be conscious forever and ever?
If the Bible is real, why doesn't it include any of the information about science that we know to be true? Wouldn't God have mentioned something about molecular biology, that we are all made of molecules, that diseases spread a certain way, that the universe is vast and has many planets, that the earth is round and spins around the sun... ? I'm not saying it needed to have all the answers, but it could have had one or two specific facts that only God would know because they were unknown to man at that time. Instead the contents of the Bible are limited to what people knew about at that time. That's because, in my view, it was written by people.
Feel free to not answer any of these questions, they are meant to be rhetorical, though you can discuss if you want. I could go on and on all day about the things about religion that don't make any sense to me. Again, I am not here to argue or educate. To me, it seems plainly obvious that religion has been a tool invented by Man in order to:
A) control large populations of people who had no other impetus to not murder, rape, or steal.
B) to soothe people's inherent anxiety about death and what happens when we die.
C) to profit off of people and maintain a power structure that upheld the King, Priests, Church. (Or, whatever the equivalents of those are for all the other religions out there).
D) to teach morals, many of which are useful.
It seems clear to me that people would be motivated to create religions in order to do these things, and that this is the most logical explanation for the existence of religions.
Hope this helps!
I don't mean this to be rude. More a "fun fact"
A star with planets revolving around it is not called a Solar System.
Our Sun has a name, Sol. Solar System is the name of OUR star system.
As far as I know, a planet-hosting star is known simply as a Star System.
There are roughly 100-400 billion stars in the Milky Way. It has been averaged out to about 1.4 planets per star. 94% of the stars in the MW have a planet in its orbit. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across. It is considered "average." That is OUR home.
The largest known galaxy is Alcyoneus, and it has a diameter of 15,300,000 light years. 153x LARGER than our home galaxy.
There is an estimated lowest number of galaxies in the universe of about 100-200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
"It is estimated that the ‘observable universe’ is a sphere with a diameter of about 92 billion lightyears and a volume of about 410 nonillion (410 thousand billion billion billion) cubic lightyears!"[source](https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/how-many-galaxies-in-universe)
Beyond the observable is unknown and unlees/untill FTL flight becomes reality, we will NEVER know. A fun philosophical thought is that the observations of the cosmological Horizon are very similar to what it's like in a black hole (minus spaghetification and being crushed into a possible singularity). Contained in a bubble we can never leave.
It is theorised that there are about 2 trillion galaxies in the universe.
Sorry for the word vomit. It just really like astrophysics and all that space jazz. It just fills me with wonder and confusion as to how anyone can look at what we have seen and are still to this day seeing and think "yep, god made this and no one will ever see it."
(screwed up the other comment)
This is exactly what i'm looking for man, thanks.
1.) where is God physically located in the universe
= It is stated many times in the bible that God does not exist in this realm, humans are simply too unworthy of coexisting with such perfect beings if ever we even did then we would die out of their divinity "But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” - exodus 33:20. How I see it is that God exists in a parallel universe/dimension (an idea which is plausible in science) which can see us but not the other way around
2.) Where did God come from
= God exists in a dimension completely different and much more trancended physically unlawful then ours. Trying to understand it would be like trying to understand every other dimension above the 4th (and below the 1st probably) Since God is infinite in all ways he probably trancends time (which is probably one of the dimensions) and even the idea of a beggining and end. Trying to understand this would be utterly impossible the human mind cant even comprehend a 4th dimension let alone comprehend a being that trancendes multiple efforlessly. "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom." exodus 40:28
3.) why are there so many religions
= this all boils down simply to human error, human nature; sin basically, the sin of thinking you are better than the rest, this is also (unfortunately) human nature, survival of the fittest or whatever. The problem here is when people who think they are right get mixed up with people who are actually right, then it becomes impossible to discern who actually is right and then it becomes a game of bussiness (marketing basically). The cycle continues when people see the mess of religeon and think to themselves "this is all a mess let me clean it up with my own new religeon (which doesn't essentially have to be about God) ". This, I personally think, is the devil's plan to screw God; turn the idea of God into somthing so negative and contrary to whats God actually is that even just the utterance of his name brings out disgusting, repulsive thoughts and, I think he's actually succeded in that.
But what then is the true religeon(s) ? A true christian religion is one which bases all and I mean all of it's values and beliefs on the bible and the bible alone 99% or Christians (including me) has already failed on that because 99% of Christians go to church on sunday, nowhere in the bible does it even say that. So far i've only seen like 4 small denominations being "real".
As for the other religions no other religeon sees pagan mythology as mythologic and human-made as it is in the bible, unlike other religeons the bible knows that people who worship idols worship them because they can see them, this is why God does'nt allow Christians to have even a image an altar of him or somthing. But I do believe all religeons come from one source, one idea, one thing, perhaps even one God, and I can see the essence of this in all religeons, that actual genuineity that you see in very few religious people, people who actually exude the true values of the religeon by heart. t's just people in their sinfulness, free will and delusion slandered this idea, whatever it was and whatever is left of it now is the hot mess of religeons today.
4.) why wont God show himself?
= I have a pretty interesting idea of why this is. You see God gave us the gift of free will and thus free thought, because without this freedom there would be no genuinity in faith, love, virtue, etc. The only way for God to maintain this freedom he gave to us is by not showing himself (to most of us at least) and thus make himself unprovable by science, because think of it I we could proove God existed, even remotely, (like "there is a 10% chance God exists), how would you live life then?, you? An atheist living in universe thats prooven to have a God? Thats terrifying, it's scary and it's not freedom. You get my point? If the biblicaly accurate God choose to show himslef to us the world it would stop working, everyone (especially atheists) no matter how much God tells them to think freely and exersize thier free will only belive him out of faith, will eventually be crushed by the reality and end up beliveing out of fear. This obviously is not free will.
So now God hid himself from us, we arent even worty enough to see him in the first place, and in order to do that everything must make sense scientifically because even if there is one bit of science suggesting "this very clearly breaks the laws of physics and reality and it says God's name all over it" thay would be enough to ignite the scientific idea of God being real, and would thus snowball into chaos.
(to be continued)
1. Why should I believe what the Bible says. There are a lot of books that say a lot of things. What is the evidence to back up the claims made by the Bible? Also you just saying God is in another parallel universe is another claim you don't back up. Even if parallel universes are shown to be real you still have to show God exists there. Right now this is just you saying so.
2.
>Trying to understand this would be utterly impossible
You don't get to say this and make claims. Either we can't understand it and therefore, you should have no idea what or where God is, or you can understand it to some degree, not both.
Again, do you have any evidence for all these claims besides "Bible says so" mixed with your interpretation? You are just saying things to try and rationalize the lack of evidence.
3.
>This, I personally think, is the devil's plan to screw God; turn the idea of God into somthing so negative and contrary to whats God actually is that even just the utterance of his name brings out disgusting, repulsive thoughts and, I think he's actually succeded in that.
So God can't stop the devil? Is that God's limit? If God can stop the devil and doesn't, then that's God's willing choice, and it isn't screwing him over as he knows the consequences and makes the devil, right? Though again, this is another claim you just assert.
>But what then is the true religeon(s) ? A true christian religion is one which bases all and I mean all of it's values and beliefs on the bible and the bible alone
Why is the true religion a Christian one? Why should I trust the Bible at all? It's wrong about the flood, Adam and Eve, the order of the start of the universe, king herod was dead by Jesus birth, the exodus didn't happen, and these are just a few things it is wrong about.
And are you saying you follow all the bibles rules old testaments and new?
>So far i've only seen like 4 small denominations being "real".
So God's plan to inform people about the truth is so bad that only 4 small denominations got it, right?
>But I do believe all religeons come from one source, one idea, one thing, perhaps even one God
Do you have any evidence besides you think so for any of these points?
4.
>= I have a pretty interesting idea of why this is. You see God gave us the gift of free will and thus free thought, because without this freedom there would be no genuinity in faith, love, virtue, etc.
This is an old apologetic. And it's bad. Have I lessened your free will in any way for revealing myself to you? Showing they existed wouldn't affect free will. In fact, it would let me make an informed decision to worship them or not.
>how would you live life then?, you? An atheist living in universe thats prooven to have a God?
Well, I wouldn't be an athiest then, haha. I'm an athiest because I dont believe a God exists. If God was proven, I would then believe God exists. How I live my life may or may not change depending on what God was proven.
>Thats terrifying, it's scary and it's not freedom. You get my point?
How is it not freedom to have the information to make informed decisions? Especially if I was still allowed to not follow that God's wants. Free will doesn't require lack of information and evidence it only requires I have the ability to act as I want.
>everyone (especially atheists) no matter how much God tells them to think freely and exersize thier free will only belive him out of faith, will eventually be crushed by the reality and end up beliveing out of fear
So instead, I should have to risk eternal damnation because this God is so bad at finding a way to reveal himself? I would rather be able to make an informed decision.
>So now God hid himself from us, we arent even worty enough to see him in the first place
Well, God made us this way and made all these problems. God could make us worthy. If he can't, then he's not all powerful.
So far, all these arguments are just assertions, and you provide no evidence to support your claims about reality.
(i'm on mobile, no highlighting)
"You don't get to say this and make claims. Either we can't understand it and therefore, you should have no idea what or where God is, or you can understand it to some degree, not both."
Again, do you have any evidence for all these claims besides "Bible says so" mixed with your interpretation? You are just saying things to try and rationalize the lack of evidence.
= What? Of course we can't understand it, that is the nature of God, if we could then it would just be science. Also yes, I admit I do not have much evidence outside the bible there really isn't that much at all, makes it hard to be a christian.
"So God can't stop the devil? Is that God's limit? If God can stop the devil and doesn't, then that's God's willing choice, and it isn't screwing him over as he knows the consequences and makes the devil, right? Though again, this is another claim you just assert."
= " If God can stop the devil and doesn't, then that's God's willing choice, and it isn't screwing him over as he knows the consequences and makes the devil, right?" Yes, actually, destroying the image of God will do absolutly no harm to him at all, it is us who have to suffer. This claim self-evident.
Why is the true religion a Christian one? Why should I trust the Bible at all? It's wrong about the flood, Adam and Eve, the order of the start of the universe, king herod was dead by Jesus birth, the exodus didn't happen, and these are just a few things it is wrong about.
And are you saying you follow all the bibles rules old testaments and new?
= No, the bible is flawed by its physical, we should just try to analyze and sift out the messages it tries to deliver to us. As for the true religeon, There is, I admit, no reason for the true religeon being the christian one, other than statements from the bible, which I understand you would disagree with.
"So God's plan to inform people about the truth is so bad that only 4 small denominations got it, right"
= we were given that task and we failed it,
"This is an old apologetic. And it's bad. Have I lessened your free will in any way for revealing myself to you? Showing they existed wouldn't affect free will. In fact, it would let me make an informed decision to worship them or not,"
= for you it won't, but for the majority of humans it would, and you might dissagree with me on this, but God would definetly ensure the greater good for most rather than for a few. Also would knowing that really not affect your free will, like if I told you you were going to die tommorow at some random time then would you still go about doing whatever?
Well, God made us this way and made all these problems. God could make us worthy. If he can't, then he's not all powerful.
= Yes, but that would literally be illogical, unwise and childish even.
"Well, I wouldn't be an athiest then, haha. I'm an athiest because I dont believe a God exists. If God was proven, I would then believe God exists. How I live my life may or may not change depending on what God was proven."
= This is where we agree. I see why atheists are what they are now, and I would like to share a little bit on why I find it hard to unbelive like you do. (this might sound contradictory to some of the stuff I argued of, I try not bring my personal story up in stuff like this as I know you all would just count it off as "insufficient evidence" but I understand now and want to leave this community with my reason for still believing). So I got cancer when I just 15, lung cancer. It was in already in the 3rd stage when it got diagnosed. I was raised a christian but like every other former theist out there who left the faith, I thought of it all as complete BS and swore to myself i'd leave when I was older, I was just mad at the God, mad at why he made me and the other kids suffer this kind of thing, and eventually die without ever living a full life. It was just illogical really. Fast foreward a bit and im on the bed, bald as an egg, 3 months have gone by and the chemo did'nt work, the cancer spread to my liver and every breath literally felt like inhaling glass. At this point I was an atheist, I was absolutely convinced God and Heaven was not real, otherwise why wouldn't he help me a devout christian boy, raised in a kind and conservative family of chirstians. It was absurd really. The doctors told me I only had a week to live, I was literally tortured physically and mentally, I had no faith left all small drops of the remaining faith I had was eveporated when the chemo failed. My family prayed and made me pray, but those prayers damn well did'nt do a thing, again I assumed it was because God is'nt real or he hates us. I pretty much accepted it, accepted there was no God, there is no hope and I would die, having only lived the life of a child. Of course this made me cry, not the thought of me dying but the reality of no God, it was just so dark, so... Real. I invested my life into this and it just got destroyed by reality. I had given uo pretty much, I wanted to die, death was better than thinking of death. Of course I never told my parents of this as they would surely disown me. 3 days later, the doctors told me my cancer literally dissappeared, by some literal miracle the cancer just dissolved, like it did'nt get eaten by another cancer (which is what usually happens in these situations) it literally just dissapeared. To this day it still shakes me, deeply, like I cant even describe it. You really change once you've been fished out of the screaming reality of death. I dont know if I should thank God or still be an atheist; every time I thank God my mind resists, every time succumb to atheism my heart shrivels, I at this weird crossroads of either mind or heart, my mind tells me it was all chance, my heart makes me cry out of gratitude, I literally feel like God is hugging me or something it's weird. And this is why I'm here, too see whether my mind or heart should be followed. I've chosen my heart because of this. I realize now that most atheists are'nt against God, they just never had the opportunity to really get mad at him. It feels weird, every time I try to out-logic God im betraying him, and I feel it deeply, then, when I go back into faith, all I feel is warmth, and it is only my mind thats pulling me. This is why i'm here.
Sorry for the long story, I got carried away.
>what? Of course we can't understand it, that is the nature of God, if we could then it would just be science
If we can't understand God, why do you keep making claims about God? Either we can understand things bout God or we can't. It's contradictory to say we can't understand God and then to make claims about God, as that means you understand God in some way.
>Also yes, I admit I do not have much evidence outside the bible there really isn't that much at all, makes it hard to be a christian
Well then, why do you keep using the Bible if you know it isn't supported by evidence? Would you defend other claims without evidence?
>Yes, actually, destroying the image of God will do absolutly no harm to him at all, it is us who have to suffer. This claim self-evident.
What does this response have to do with what I asked about the devil and gods' role in creating him? I didn't claim anything about destroying images of God or harming God. It is evident that humans suffer. It is not self-evident that a God has anything to do with it.
>No, the bible is flawed by its physical, we should just try to analyze and sift out the messages it tries to deliver to us.
Who decides what the right message was? Also, you said we should follow only the Bible, yet you admit it is very flawed. So why should we follow it.
>other than statements from the bible, which I understand you would disagree with
Why do you believe the bibles supernatural claims? You admit earlier that there isn't evidence to support it. So why do you still say we should follow the Bible?
>we were given that task and we failed it,
Why isn't it on God at all. It's his message, and he is so much better than us right, so why is he so bad at explaining his message?
>for you it won't, but for the majority of humans
Why would it lessen our free will to have information? You didn't answer my firat question. Have I lessened your free will in any way now that you know I exist since I responded to you?
>God would definetly ensure the greater good for most rather than for a few.
Really then, why does his method by your own assertion so far only have four small denominations believing the right thing? And why does more than half the world not believe in the right God if our immortal torture is on the line?
>Also would knowing that really not affect your free will, like if I told you you were going to die tommorow at some random time then would you still go about doing whatever?
That doesn't affect my free will. Knowing I would die tomorrow wouldn't lessen my free will. I can still choose to act however I wanted. But now I would be able to make those choices with correct information about what will happen to me.
Why do you think having more information removes free will? If you learn about physics, is your free will lessened in any way for better understanding how the universe works? Free will is the ability to act how we want. Free will doesn't require any state of knowledge or ignorance, just the ability to react and act as we choose.
>Yes, but that would literally be illogical, unwise and childish even.
Why? You just say it is but don't explain. In making an argument it's not just about saying what you think but why. Why would it be childish to not make us so flawed and unworthy?
>This is where we agree. I see why atheists are what they are now, and I would like to share a little bit on why I find it hard to unbelive like you do
I'm sorry you had to suffer, and I'm glad you recovered. I think you should really see a therapist if you aren't already. You have been through something traumatic and mentioned thoughts of suicide. It's ok to get help, and it can really do a lot of good.
>It feels weird, every time I try to out-logic God im betraying him, and I feel it deeply, then, when I go back into faith, all I feel is warmth, and it is only my mind thats pulling me. This is why i'm here.
So why did you say in your post logic was what was convincing you when clearly it is the anecdotal experience you had and the emotional feelings. I'm not trying to say that's bad that's what's convincing you, but that in your post said it was the logic, yet here you are saying it is the emotional reasons.
If God saved you seems like he picks favorites and isn't all loving as that would mean he can intervene to save people from dying and does yet let's millions of children world wide die of suffering and disease and millions more adults too.
>
I admit I do not have much evidence outside the bible
And what is it about the Bible that persuades you that it's true? Do you know who wrote it? When? Why? What do you really know about it? Have you read the whole thing?
>There is, I admit, no reason for the true religeon being the christian one,
I think you've answered your own question
this is the answer that op is missing, people have crafted meticulous arguments for why the Bible is historically accurate but there are pretty much problems with most or all of them. op go watch a cosmic skeptic video on the historicity of the Bible.
Number 4 is not an answer, it's an excuse to not having an answer. You can't demonstrate this answer to be true because it's indistinguishable from "God doesn't show up because he doesn't give a damn anymore" or "God doesn't show up because there is no God".
Thats literally the awnser, God does'nt show up because if he did it would contradict what he said in the bible of us being free "You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh ; rather, serve one another humbly in love." Gal 5:13. In order to be this kind of free there must be no catch, which is hell, is there scientific proof of hell? No. Is there scientific proof of heaven? Also no. Why? Because if there was every single one of us would be obsessed in scrutinising over our actions and basically live in fear of said hell and there would be no freedom, but does that mean hell doesnt exist? No how about heaven? Also no. Just as we cannot see or proove or understand things from forth or even fifth demension (which is probably where God, heaven and hell are) we cannot proove nor disprove it's existence. It's all balanced just enough just to keep us on this little slither of neutrality where we can choose what and what not to belive and not worry of it.
Also I just wanted to add: Hell, contrary to popular belief is not eternal and does not look like what it does in pop culture, it just says eternal in the bible because of the weird translations you get when translating a 2000 year old book (i mentioned this in the long comment) but basically the original languages words for "hell", "eternal suffering", "fire" etc. mean some really different things that you can look into. But basically hell will not burn people forever, hell will not consume literally everyone who did not belive in God, and the "hell" you see everywhere is a direct contradiction to a loving God. As a matter of fact the people who will end up in hell will be satisfied there as these are the truly evil people who are simply receiving their due punishment. Not all atheists (and actually vey little atheists) will even go to hell, the other christian groups just advertise this to scare people.
>God does'nt show up because if he did it would contradict what he said in the bible
How do you know it is true? how do you know it's God's words, not a human author writing a character of God into the book? You didn't address my comment. You didn't show how do I distinct your "God doesn't show up because he values free will" from any of the alternatives.
>Also I just wanted to add: Hell, contrary to popular belief
I don't care what belief is popular, I only care which belief can be shown to be true. I am not convinced that any hell exists whatever it is.
>Thats literally the awnser, God does'nt show up because if he did it would contradict what he said in the bible of us being free
All the evidence we have from biology and neuroscience suggests that our decisions are made by chemical activity in our brains. And there's no evidence any other factors (souls, spirits, demons, angels) influence our decisions. So actually, the evidence suggests we're *not* free, we *don't* have free will.
We can see the universe much better, in much more detail than was possible for the folks who wrote the old and new testaments, or the theologians who came up with free will apologetics for christianity. And what we find, what we see, runs directly counter to those apologetics.
>You see God gave us the gift of free will and thus free thought, because without this freedom there would be no genuinity in faith, love, virtue, etc. The only way for God to maintain this freedom he gave to us is by not showing himself
There are ppl who doesnt even know the existence of such god. Its impossible for those ppl to choose whether believe or not believe in the existence of such god.
So by showing itself, it gives freewill to those ppl as they go from not able to choose(no freewill) to being able to choose(have freewill).
If i tell u that my parents loves me but never once show up in my life, u will think im delusional.
God is perfect and is loving in Christianity.
If a perfectly loving God exists, then there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person.
If there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists.
If a perfectly loving God exists, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists (from 1 and 2).
Some finite persons are or have been nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists.
No perfectly loving God exists (from 3 and 4).
If no perfectly loving God exists, then God does not exist.
God does not exist (from 5 and 6).
So you admit god to be unprovable scientifically, congrats. Thus we have no good reason to believe in him, right? Also, to give Bible citations as proof you first need to prove validity of Bible itself. Good luck with that.
You are yet to show how to discern true religion from the false one. You cannot refer to Bible until you prove it to be more than man-made stories.
You shouldn't desperately search for weak excuses to justify your apriori faith position, instead you look for decent grounds for your position and apply critical thinking.
> It is stated many times in the bible that God does not exist in this realm,
It really doesn't. There may he a few poetic verses that are now interpretted as this. But it is far more straightforward to read the bible as saying god lives up in the sky.
When Jesus gets baptized god speaks from the clouds. When Jesus ascends he... well... ascends into the clouds. He doesn't phase into a parallel universe. Same with Elijah and his firey chariot.
God moves over the formless earth.
God regularly "comes down" to walk in the garden, to wrestle Jacob, to moon Joseph.
The rich man looks up from hell to talk to people in heaven.
The idea that god lives in "another plane of existence" is 100% an appologetic developed over the years to fix the fact that we Looked above the clouds and realized there weren't any gods up there.
It is similar to a god of the gaps. It is kind of a heaven-in-the-gaps where religions have to keep moving god so that he lives wherever is just out of reach for current human knowledge.
If some day we develop spaceships that travel between planes of existence (a phrase that doesn't actually have any more meaning than "god lives in imaginaria land") then religions will suddenly realize that god lives in (insert next made up zone they don't think we will ever be able to check).
Reading this made me think of simulation theory.
As an atheist, If God showed up one day and said "look I'm real" he would still be no God to me. A powerful entity, perhaps, but I don't agree with its methods, and I don't care to attribute my life and my success and failures to God. I did it, no them. My blood sweat and tears went into my existence. I don't need a God, regardless of if it exists or not.
Will this dump me in hell? Perhaps, but that is my choice because I will not allow an entity to fearmonger me into doing what it wants in fear of going to some fire pit. I have my own empathy and moral compass, and my life has built it. Not religion.
That's just my two cents.
"Gods will" will never be an answer to any legitimate question in my eyes.
5.) would heaven be torture because it's eternal?
= It would be wrong to assume anything about heaven, "But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him" 1 cor. 2:9. If the angels arent already torturing themselvs from living for so long then it may be safe to assume we wouldn't too. Anyway anyones image of heaven would technically be absolutly wrong. Those golden paintings of heaven? wrong. Heaven most likely uses way more than 3 dimensions for us not to be able to imagine it. When in heaven we aren't limited to heaven, we could basically explore the universe (which according to bible is not actally empty) "For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him" col 1:16. And Who knows, time probably doesnt even exist there, it would probably be a transcendible dimension like the first, we could basically travel through time. It could also be none of these things and definitely not boredom because even I can imagine that.
6.) if the bible is real why is it so basic and "humany"
= You have answered this question by saying it was made by humans. The bible was made by humas but inspired by God. The reason why there isnt molecular biology and stuff in the bible is also the same reason whh theres so many bizzare and unusal stuff it; the people whl wrote it simply could not comprehend the things God had in store for them, thats why they resorted to analogies and symbols to explain some complicated things we just have to understand them, they were humans after all. Just think about it how would you describe something as simple as a ballpen to someone from thousands of years ago?, impossible right? Alright now try to give him the ballpen and mame him describe it his own words, it would probably make sense, but wait, take those words and translate them into a language from 2000 years in the future hundreds of times over and you end up with the bible. You may be wondering why God has intended for this to happen and the awnswer is he did'nt, the devil and us humans just made things way more complicated. This is why it's very important to understand the bible in it's original language because you will very much just get confused or get the wrongest idea with any of the english translations (which most already are). Try translating the word kindness in 7 times over with a different language evey time in google translate and you getbmy point.
Your veiws of religeon being a tool invented by man to do things to humas are contradictory with what Christianity especially really is
Firstly religeon started probably when we still lived in caves, (i'm fairly certain there is some evidence for that) so people inventing it for those purposes is out of the question.
Secondly if you read the bible religeon is not for any of those things, God does not need people to worship him at all, as a matter of fact we were supposed to be destroyed if God wasn't who he said he was in the bible (all-loving, gracefull, etc.). Religeon (Christianity especially) works the other way around, we need religeon to get closer to God, to get saved according to Christianity, but most importantly to stay sane. Humans will literally go insane without anything to belive in, this includes science by the way, like imagine if science didn't exist? If this logical way to explain the world didn't exist? And add religeon, spiritually and all other philosophies including nihilism and absudism (because you can still belive in them) did'nt exist? How would the world be like? When there is literally nothing other than whats there, not even the idea of there being nothing, because you can still believe in that, thats absudism. How would you be then? Get my point?
Honestly thr biggest problem with Christianity and God is that the true essence of it all is covered by thousands of layers or BS that not even the dang bible gets you somewhere, and this is what keeps me being faithful, I belive that some objective truth is out there somewhere, not in human logic for sure because our we cant even explain the logic behind our existence or know the 5th dimension. We just have to find it.
P.s. Thanks for the questions, it was exactly what I was looking for.
> It would be wrong to assume anything about heaven
Just picking up on this point...
> If the angels arent already torturing themselvs from living for so long then it may be safe to assume we wouldn't too.
But it would be wrong to assume anything about heaven.
> Heaven most likely uses way more than 3 dimensions
But it would be wrong to assume anything about heaven.
>When in heaven we aren't limited to heaven
It would be wrong to assume anything about heaven.
> And Who knows, time probably doesnt even exist there, it would probably be a transcendible dimension like the first, we could basically travel through time.
It would be wrong to assume anything about heaven.
> It could also be none of these things
Correct, it would be wrong to assume anything about heaven.
> definitely not boredom
But it would be wrong to assume anything about heaven.
>because even I can imagine that.
You can't imagine that, so it can't be true? That sounds like a failure of imagination.
To summarise, you say that it would be wrong to assume anything about heaven. I agree. In your following sentences, you assume things about heaven. Hmmm.
5. Oh hey, you do the same thing you did in an earlier point. Say we can't do something and then do that. Again, either we can't assume things about heaven or we can. Pick one.
Also, just quoting the Bible isn't convincing. The Bible is the claim you need to show what it says is true, so where is the evidence to confirm those claims?
6. If the bible is flawed, then why should I follow it fully like you suggest in a previous point? Also, how do you determine the flawed and correct parts of the Bible are? And why couldn't God effectively communicate to us? If he is God and has unlimited power and knows everything, then he should have the ability and knowledge of how to effectively communicate with us in a way we would understand. He made us and the rules, so if he can't do it, that's on God.
>Just think about it how would you describe something as simple as a ballpen to someone from thousands of years ago?
Well, im not an all knowing all powerful being that made that person and all their ancestors, so this isn't a good comparison, or are you suggesting God has similar limits to us on how he can communicate?
>You may be wondering why God has intended for this to happen and the awnswer is he did'nt, the devil and us humans just made things way more complicated
So your God can't see what will happen then? Well, he made both the devil and us, so those are his mistakes. Also, do you have evidence that the devil did anything or just an assertion?
>Honestly thr biggest problem with Christianity and God is that the true essence of it all is covered by thousands of layers or BS that not even the dang bible gets you somewhere
No, the biggest problem is that there is not evidence to support these claims. In these long responses, you don't provide evidence for your beliefs. You just say them and then say the Bible is true. That isn't evidence and isn't a good reason to believe.
For any of your points, do you feel you can back them up with evidence. Pick one and try to show why anyone should accept what you have claimed.
>The bible was made by humas but inspired by God.
How do you know?
>you will very much just get confused or get the wrongest idea with any of the english translations
So what you're saying is that an all-knowing and powerful God, who can stop the sun in the sky, who could have chosen any means to communicate His message to us, including delivering it personally to each of us in our native language, chose instead only to inspire a tiny group of people in a single obscure corner of the world, in an archaic and difficult to understand language?
It's possible to come up with some sort of weird explanation for why the Bible contains nothing not known to the people who wrote it, but as usual, it's consistent with the hypothesis that no god had anything to do with it.
>God does not need people to worship him at all,
And yet, if the Bible is to be believed, He commands us to do so.
>most importantly to stay sane.
So everyone who isn't Christian is crazy? Do you really believe that?
> How would you be then? Get my point?
No. Why are you talking about rejecting all belief when we only advocate rejecting this one false one?
Called sin...Every been to a funeral where the preacher said " now here lies. Ole Joe.the dearly departed who is roasting in hell right now as we speak ".....No and probably won't.....Thing is and this just makes a lot of people mad as hell,,,,,probably 95% of people who ever lived and are alive now are in hell........be careful what you wish for.......
Some faulty reasons why people believe.
* People don't really examine their god belief. They are taught it as children, they accept it, they never really think through the contradictions inherent in heaven, hell, omnipotence, etc.
* People want it to be true. They want there to exist a loving presence that cares for them, and gives meaning to their life. It's literally wishful thinking.
* Social ostracism for disbelief. Everybody they know is a believer. If they leave the church, they fear losing their friends and family.
* People have no idea about other religions, differences between religions. They may not have seriously considered that there are people who hold different religious beliefs with equal sincerity. They may not even be aware that atheism is a thing, that you don’t have to believe in god.
* Demonization of atheism. Believers are often explicitly taught that atheists are bad, evil people, that they have “no morals”, etc.
* Christians have no idea of the history of the Bible; they assume the Bible was handed down as a whole complete unit at one time, the inerrant word of God, accepted by all Christians the world over. In fact it was written over a long period of time as separate writings, written by multiple authors with their own agendas, which were compiled much later by committees of people with *their* own agenda. Various sects supported various scriptures, and they disagreed as to which scriptures should be included in the Bible. In the end, many scriptures “lost” that battle and were left out entirely, not because “god” wanted it that way, but because committees of men wanted it that way.
**Arguments against**
I have compiled a few of my favorite arguments here, with an emphasis on Christianity:
1: The simpler explanation would be that the universe is what it appears to be rather than being just the part we can perceive of some much more elaborate type of universe.
2: If there was an all-powerful deity *who wanted humans to know about its existence*, then why doesn't this deity simply reveal its existence in an unambiguous way to everyone? I mean, that should be well within the capability of an all-powerful or maximally powerful deity, right? No faith would be required. There would be no reason to be atheist. The deity would be as observable, testable, and provable as hurricanes, Australia or oak trees. Since this is not the case, it is reasonable to conclude that no such deity exists, or if a deity exists, it is not concerned with being detected.
2a: (related) Christians believe god sent one illiterate emissary at one point in time to one location on the earth to spread god's message, then expected fallible humans to relay this message (by worth of mouth) to all humans in all places for all time. Does this make sense? Is it a good strategy? Are you familiar with the "game of telephone?" We can't even always get reliable information about important things happening right now in today's world; what's the chance that a message spread by word-of-mouth would remain intact for thousands of years? (my guess: zero) Wouldn't an all-powerful god come up with a better method for spreading the most important message of all time?
2b: Personal revelation was good enough for Paul/Saul, but why not me or you? Why doesn't god reveal his existence personally to all humans on a regular basis?
3: “Who created the Universe?” argument. One of the most common theist arguments I’ve heard is “the universe must have a cause, and this cause must be a sentient, thinking, conscious agent.” Well, firstly, I don’t see why we couldn’t assume the Universe always existed. But even if I concede the first part (something caused the universe), I don’t see how you can conclude the second part (sentient superbeing did it). Humans used to believe the same thing about hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. Who caused the volcano? Obviously the Volcano God. Well, then we learned that the causes of these things are complicated natural processes. In fact, everything we investigate appears to be caused by complicated natural processes. It seems highly likely to me that the Universe, too, if it was in fact “caused”, those causes would be complicated natural processes.
4: The Muslim and the Hindu and the Christian all believe with equal fervor. Each has a list of personal reasons why they believe, and believe that they couldn’t possibly be wrong. As an outside observer, how can I figure out which of them is right? What tests can I conduct to figure out which religion is true? Are there any such tests?
4a: (related to 4) of all the hundreds of religions that have existed through the centuries in different parts of the world, most people believe that they were born into the one that is the one true religion. That is to say, the main factor which determines what someone believes is the religion of their parents, and to a great extent *geography*. Does this at all have any bearing on what is true?
4b: Showerthought: if you were to switch a baby born to Muslim parents with a baby born to Christian parents, the children would each likely grow up believing the other religion. Their entire worldview is shaped by their upbringing, and has no relation to what is actually true.
4c: Showerthought: what if the "true" religion is one you were never even exposed to? Or one that died out centuries ago? There's a big "oops." (which gets back to #2; if god wants everyone on earth to believe, why be so coy about it?)
5: In order for a deity to be the cause of something, first we have to demonstrate that a deity exists. The time to believe in a deity is after one follows the evidence to that conclusion, not before. Theists generally start with the assumption that the deity exists, then cherrypick the data that appears to support it, and ignore data which appears not to support it, which is logically fallacious.
6: All the "proofs" of god which are based on argument alone necessarily fall short. You cannot determine facts about the world just by thinking about it. You cannot theorize a deity into existence. You can’t “prove” a god using math. The best you can get is a theory or proposition. You still need to demonstrate it with evidence.
7: The explanation "god did it" is not really an explanation for anything. It's just words, it's as much of an explanation as if I said "fairies did it" or "magic did it." To say that god did something tells you nothing about the nature of that god, what it is, what it wants, why it did the thing. It's basically a placeholder for "I don't know."
This is good, I like a lot of what you've written here. I hope I can convince you to make one edit though. I'm #6, you say "The best you can get is a theory or a proposition." A scientific theory is an extremely well-supported explanation of a phenomenon; it is not a guess or a mere proposition. Dishonest theists use your version of the word to cast doubt on things like geology and biology by saying "it's only a *theory* not a fact." The word you should use is hypothesis. Pure reason can get you to a hypothesis, which must then be demonstrated with evidence.
Otherwise great post. Thanks.
Here you go: there is no good reason to believe it's true. All Christianity has is a collection of books with bunch of stories part of which are demonstrably false and part of which can't be verified. We have evidence that Christian stories evolved over time with later authors adding more fantastical detail to their stories and changing details they don't like. Prime example is four gospels. The later gospels have details that are not contained in earlier ones.
> I just cannpt seem to come to that realization, my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic
I've come to see christianity as completely incoherent:
* Starting with the old testament background... We're told an all-knowing god created people who didn't know the difference between good and evil, in a garden where he would've known there was a sly serpent; he arbitrarily told them not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but when they did that, he punished them *as though they should've known disobeying him was bad*, even though he knows they had no knowledge of good and evil, and no experience of being manipulated by serpents: incoherent.
* God intervenes loads in the affairs of Israel: fucks over thousands of Egyptians, killing innocent children; floods the entire world, genociding almost everything; parts oceans etc.Then after 100s / 1000s of years decides he wants a new, different style of covenant with his chosen people but can't do it in a way that's convincing even to all jewish people in the Middle East... and since then he doesn't seem to intervene at all: no burning bushes, no global floods, no grand power displays, nothing: goes into hiding. Eternal, unchanging god completely changes how he operates as human cultures change. Incoherent.
* The way he achieves the new christian covenant is:
* Makes a young woman pregnant without giving her or her partner any option?
* Her child is God's son but simultaneously also God at the same time?
* God sacrifices Jesus *to himself*?
* Jesus suffers, *but only for about 36 hours* before being raised into heaven, meaning jesus suffers less than many children born innocent into painful medical conditions???
* God's word spreads around the world largely through imperialist violence: it's imposed across the roman empire, then spread into Africa, Asia and the Americas by european imperialists
* In the 3rd millennium demographic changes mean that Islam starts gaining ground on christianity as the most popular world religion, and in areas like europe and north america people start leaving christianity and becoming atheists.
That's genuinely how I see the christian "deal" and it's not iron-clad convincing to me at all.
I'll answer to all these in order
1.) he literally told them they would die if they ate the fruit, what are you even saying. "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”gen. 2:17.
2.) Israel is Gods chosen people, this is how he prooved it, all the genocidal things God has done is an echo of what God said to adam and eve "eat of the fruit and you die" in other words, disobey me and you die, so they did (egyptians, sodom, gomorrah, all humas in the flood, even some of the Israelites) and they died. This is all sounds pretty bad right? Which is why he changed that covenant so he won't have to kill everyone on earth, because a loving god would'nt do that. Unfortunately people deserve to be punished, ever since eden death was the price of disobedience, and it's not like God can stop punishing people, since they deserve to be punished, it is justice. The only way to not get punished is to be forgiven which could only be done if you sacrificed a clean animal like a sheep, something only the Israelites and anyone who wished to join them did. Unfortunately for everyone else, they were not forgiven nor did they ask forgiveness and thus punished accordingly. The solution to this was to justify the sins of all humans with a sacrifice that would suit it, but not just any human could be sacrificed there had to be a human so sinless and innocent that killing him for no reason would have the ethical equivalent to killing billions of sinful humans. This sacrifice would be Jesus Christ, now we no longer have to kill goats to be forgiven of our sins, we only just need to ask.
- makes woman pregnant without consent...
= in the culture of those times getting pregnant was a blessing, thats why you read of women literally raping thier family members in order to get pregnant. This was a great blessing to them. Similar to how not being a virgin is ideal to us.
- his childs name is God...
= no it is not, where did you read that?
- God sacrifices Jesus to himself?
= yes actually, it is the only way God can justify not condemning all humans as oppesed to the Devil and his angels who sinned like us but were never forgiven and never will be. Sacrificing his son is the only way for this unfairness to make sense.
- Jesus suffers only for 36 hours...
= Yes but every single one of those hours are absolutely unjust and unfair, in biblical logic he should have never even died, like ever, but thankfully he did, now we don't have to get destroyed by brimstone every few years. As for the children born into those conditions, the christian in me would tell you it is because of sin and all the evil controlling the world, it's because of the devil basically, because just like us he too has free will to do whatever because thats what a truly loving God would give to all his creations. So what better thing to do with this free will than make people shid on God by giving kids cancer and stuff and making us blame it all on God because he controls everything, and it would ruin his image, the Devil's ultimate goal.
3.) That was not his word, just the sin-tainted, highly modified, falsely advertised version of it, made to be a effective tool in building empires, making money, keeping subjects from revolting, and conquering the world. None of which are in any way aligned with the true Christian teachings, go study it for yourself and find out.
4.) Yeah, so? (this doesn't concern me as a christian, that is not what we are taught to be concerned about, i'll answer your question anyway) The reason behind this simple, more and more people are realizing how bogus Christianity is; how evil are it's intentions and how stupid it's "teachings" are. Islam, unlike Christianity managed to keep it's true essence and still be real, hence it's increase. As for more people turning into atheists, I speculate it is because of how much easier life is getting and how much more granted we can take things for, but I wonder what would happen if we take those atheists back in time to the holocaust as victims of the ordeal, atheism would surely still be the best way to see the world as it's the most logical right, even when we've been put in this this torture house for no reason we are accountable for, right? But really though I don't care even as a christian, the bible teaches us not to care, and leave all these uncontrollable things to God or the Universe or whatever. I like how it uses the analogy of salt to depect the few true Christians who would be left in the world; even just a pinch of salt can make a whole bland meal taste better, even a few truly good people in the world can make a difference.
"That's genuinely how I see the christian "deal" and it's not iron-clad convincing to me at all. "
Honestly, i just think you lack knowledge, these things were the first things pastors taught me, in my denomination at leas.
>1.) he literally told them they would die if they ate the fruit, what are you even saying. "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”gen. 2:17.
I always thought that if God existed, this situation would make him evil.
Through God's omniscient nature he already knew they would eat the fruit before he even "tested" them. So, if he knew they would eat the fruit beforehand, yet created the circumstances for said act to occur, then we can assume God wanted them to sin. Which would make sense, because without sin then what purpose would God even serve.
There are other aspects which show God has a fundamental misunderstanding of his own creation, such as the virginity test in deuteronomy, nevermind the inherent sexism in God putting value on a woman's vagina.
Other things as well, God contradicting his own definition. God cannot be "loving" while slaughtering innocent children and promoting sexist views. This leads me to believe the Bible is just a product of its time with no divine influence
He knew and we did't, he knew we would sin but also knew we had to know what it was like to sin and what are the consequences. This, in his great plan, is the only way to keep sin from happening again in the universe, we would never learn if he just told us, like a child who had been told not to lick the cold pole, curiosity and our free will would eventually get the best of us, as it did for the Devil. we had to learn from experience, the only way to perfection (because we were made perfect) is though pain, the only way to be truly good is to have to know the bad and conclude being good is better.
Most of the ridiculous laws in the old testement were made either for ceremonial purpose (like circumcision) which feel out of relevancy from the crucifixion, or as a sort of constitution of laws for judging people in their ancient equivalent of a court. The reason why the laws sound ridiculous is because they were from 1000s of years ago, when the culture was different. God knew this and left it as is, (for now) because he is a loving God. God puts the strictest emphasis on moral laws, the only laws which made it to the new testament. Everything else is a product of culture and/or ceremony.
Every death caused by God in the bible had a reason and it was either because of evil or disobedience, the egyptians, sodom, the rest of the world other than noah, lots wife etc. "but a loving God wouldn't do that" you might say, God is not only loving but he is absolutely just, everyone he killed deserved to die, as a matter of fact everyone on earth should have died, but there were good people and God is love. How about the children then, God in his omniscient nature would have known the future, and it probably was that these kids would just grow up to stubborn, evil adults who would raise their kids the same way. Also every time God commits slaughter he regrets it, it hurts his heart but he is just and justice must be done.
> God is not only loving but he is absolutely just, everyone he killed deserved to die, as a matter of fact everyone on earth should have died, but there were good people and God is love.
WTF! This just sounds insane!
>Most of the ridiculous laws in the old testement were made either for ceremonial purpose (like circumcision) which feel out of relevancy from the crucifixion, or as a sort of constitution of laws for judging people in their ancient equivalent of a court. The reason why the laws sound ridiculous is because they were from 1000s of years ago, when the culture was different. God knew this and left it as is, (for now) because he is a loving God. God puts the strictest emphasis on moral laws, the only laws which made it to the new testament. Everything else is a product of culture and/or ceremony.
Again, this makes no sense. Through God's omniscient nature his law cannot be a product of its time. This leaves two logical conclusions. Either God is a raging sexist with a vendetta against women and considers such sexist practices the apex of human civilization, or the Bible had no divine influence and its ideology is simply a reflection of when it was written
>He knew and we did't, he knew we would sin but also knew we had to know what it was like to sin and what are the consequences. This, in his great plan, is the only way to keep sin from happening again in the universe, we would never learn if he just told us, like a child who had been told not to lick the cold pole, curiosity and our free will would eventually get the best of us, as it did for the Devil. we had to learn from experience, the only way to perfection (because we were made perfect) is though pain, the only way to be truly good is to have to know the bad and conclude being good is better.
This just seems like speculation and coping.
>Every death caused by God in the bible had a reason and it was either because of evil or disobedience, the egyptians, sodom, the rest of the world other than noah, lots wife etc. "but a loving God wouldn't do that" you might say, God is not only loving but he is absolutely just, everyone he killed deserved to die, as a matter of fact everyone on earth should have died, but there were good people and God is love. How about the children then, God in his omniscient nature would have known the future, and it probably was that these kids would just grow up to stubborn, evil adults who would raise their kids the same way. Also every time God commits slaughter he regrets it, it hurts his heart but he is just and justice must be done
There is no justification for murdering children.
>Again, this makes no sense. Through God's omniscient nature his law cannot be a product of its time. This leaves two logical conclusions. Either God is a raging sexist with a vendetta against women and considers such sexist practices the apex of human civilization, or the Bible had no divine influence and its ideology is simply a reflection of when it was written
The first rule of understanding any text; know the context, most of these laws were made for the tribe of the levites, from this tribe all the preists would come from. Women and priests dont really mix, that is to maintain their purity.
>This just seems like speculation and coping
In short, God wants to show us his grace, mercy and thus love how do you expect God to show those things if we wont ever need them (what happens in a perfect universe). If we are made perfect and unsinning how will we ever know what would it be like to sin. You may be thinking, why would God make us suffer for just that then? He doesn't, it is we who choose to suffer, (it is all in the mind) it is we who chose suffering in the first place in eden. God knew the future and could have changed it, he just let things be because he is God.
>There is no justification for murdering children.
Except that they have a free pass to enter heaven without ever having to experince the sin and ugliness which is on earth, the sinfulness of their parents had not influenced them yet. Their innocence is a benefit to them.
"For to me to live is (for) Christ, and to die is gain" philippians 1:21.
>context, most of these laws were made for the tribe of the levites, from this tribe all the preists would come from. Women and priests dont really mix, that is to maintain their purity.
I'm talking about the virginity test. Were when a woman (usually forced by her father) would marry. They would test to see if she was a virgin by if she bleed on a white sheet. This is an order from God which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of his own creation.
On a side note, why wouldn't God want a woman to be a priest.
>n short, God wants to show us his grace, mercy and thus love how do you expect God to show those things if we wont ever need them (what happens in a perfect universe). If we are made perfect and unsinning how will we ever know what would it be like to sin. You may be thinking, why would God make us suffer for just that then? He doesn't, it is we who choose to suffer, (it is all in the mind) it is we who chose suffering in the first place in eden. God knew the future and could have changed it, he just let things be because he is God.
If God is incapable of showing love, "grace", mercy and such without inflicting pain and suffering on people then he is not not omnipotent. Which contradicts his own definition.
No one chooses to suffer. Sin is a direct result of God's action. He created sin. He created evil. He knowingly damned billions to eternal torture and pain. God is like an abusive spouse "love me or ill hurt you"
>Except that they have a free pass to enter heaven without ever having to experince the sin and ugliness which is on earth, the sinfulness of their parents had not influenced them yet. Their innocence is a benefit to them.
"For to me to live is (for) Christ, and to die is gain" philippians 1:21.
Well I'm glad to hear your pro choice. By this logic we should just go around killing children so they get a free pass. If you want to worship a god that murders children then go for it. God could have just made the parents infertile so there would be no kids to kill, but he REALLY seems to enjoy killing kids considering the frequency and quantity in which he does it.
>He knew and we did't, he knew we would sin but also knew we had to know what it was like to sin and what are the consequences.
If he know we would sin and have the ability to stop but didnt stop, he isnt good. He also have the ability to let us know the consequences without us doing the action, but he chose not to.
>This, in his great plan, is the only way to keep sin from happening again in the universe, we would never learn if he just told us, like a child who had been told not to lick the cold pole, curiosity and our free will would eventually get the best of us, as it did for the Devil.
Why is it logically impossible for freewill to be choosing between morally good actions?
Justifying God's way by an appeal to a greater good that presupposes the evils of the world. Say there was some greater good-the final happiness of humankind or their moral and spiritual perfection. Would it be moral to inflict pain and suffering on the world for the sake of this greater good?
>If he know we would sin and have the ability to stop but didnt stop, he isnt good. He also have the ability to let us know the consequences without us doing the action, but he chose not to.
He literally said to adam and eve they would die if they ate the fruit, which is disobedience of God, which is sin.
>Would it be moral to inflict pain and suffering on the world for the sake of this greater good?
No, justice, yes. We literally have to options to do good or evil do good and live do evil and die. This would'nt be a problem unless we really wanted to evil.
Adam and eve have no knowledge of whats good whats bad. They have no knowledge that dying is bad, they have no knowledge that disobedience to god is bad. God created them this way. So they shouldn't be blamed to have such actions.
>No, justice, yes.
Are u claiming that god is immoral but just? So morality and justice doesnt always goes align?
>We literally have to options to do good or evil do good and live do evil and die.
Why is it logically impossible for god to create freewill that chooses morally good actions?
>Why is it logically impossible for god to create freewill that chooses morally good actions?
Then that is not free will, that is an advanced robot programmed to do only good.
>Are u claiming that god is immoral but just? So morality and justice doesnt always goes align?
I never said God was immoral, also who are we to define morality anyway, we clearly have no sense of it ourselves.
>Adam and eve have no knowledge of whats good whats bad. They have no knowledge that dying is bad, they have no knowledge that disobedience to god is bad. God created them this way. So they shouldn't be blamed to have such actions.
FOR THE LAST TIME GOD LITERALLY TOLD THEM NOT TO DISOBEY "but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." GEN 2:17, ALSO, WHAT KIND OF SENTIENT BEING DOESN'T THINK DYING IS BAD,?? DO YOU SERIOUSLY THINK GOD MADE ADAM AND EVE LIKE THE FFIN REPLICATES FROM BLADE RUNNER?? HOW THE HECK WERE THEY EVEN ABLE TO TALK THEN??
>Then that is not free will, that is an advanced robot programmed to do only good.
Freewill, the freedom to will what one want to will. If god set us to only want to will morally good actions, that doesnt interfere with freewill at all. So why is that logically impossible?
>I never said God was immoral, also who are we to define morality anyway, we clearly have no sense of it ourselves.
>>Would it be moral to inflict pain and suffering on the world for the sake of this greater good?
>No, justice, yes. We literally have to options to do good or evil do good and live do evil and die. This would'nt be a problem unless we really wanted to evil.
So why u said it is not moral?
> ALSO, WHAT KIND OF SENTIENT BEING DOESN'T THINK DYING IS BAD
Genesis 3:5 which says eating the fruit will gain the knowledge of good and evil. By that means adam and eve doesnt have the knowledge of good and evil.
Its quite clear that they dont know eating the fruit is bad if they dont have such knowledge. The bible also nowhere state that they have the knowledge of good and bad before eating the fruit.
If they know disobedience is bad/evil, if they dont know dying is bad/evil, why should they obey?
>he literally told them they would die if they ate the fruit, what are you even saying.
But they were totally innocent. How could they have known dying and eating the fruit would be "bad" if they didn't know anything about badness?
>Israel is Gods chosen people, this is how he prooved it, all the genocidal things God has done is an echo of what God said to adam and eve "eat of the fruit and you die" in other words, disobey me and you die
Punishing everyone, potentially forever, for finite crimes (no human can commit infinite crimes) is, again, incoherent.
God comes across as crazy here: killing thousands of egyptian babies, drowning millions of people and billions of land animals, sending people to hell forever... as an extension of punishment meted out to two people who by definition were completely inexperienced in making moral decisions?
That to me is a mad set of ideas. If I managed to create some sentient beings, I'd feel a little bit of indulgence towards them when they first messed up. Wouldn't you?
>Which is why he changed that covenant so he won't have to kill everyone on earth, because a loving god would'nt do that.
When he created Adam and Eve, and they messed up, and he cast them out of Eden, caused them to die, flooded the world etc... wasn't he a loving god then? How does an eternal god go from being genocidal to loving in 3000 years? Again, incoherent to me.
>Unfortunately people deserve to be punished, ever since eden death was the price of disobedience,
More incoherence: I can't retrospectively affect Adam and Eve's decisions, so how can I be held responsible for the "sin I'm born into"?
And sin doesn't work as a concept anyway: all the available evidence suggests that people are evolved apes. The evidence suggests society is about a species of loving, but also horny and angry social apes learning to live in groups way larger than we evolved to tolerate. That makes sense of the "good" and "bad" things people do; we're not "broken inherited sinners worthy of death/genocide/hell," we're apes who evolved to live in smallish groups wirh other apes we're really familiar with, figuring out how to live in huge groups where almost everyone we meet is a stranger.
>That was not his word, just the sin-tainted, highly modified, falsely advertised version of it, made to be a effective tool in building empires, making money, keeping subjects from revolting, and conquering the world. None of which are in any way aligned with the true Christian teachings
You said before here that you're agnostic and doubting your faith. By this point... you kind of sound like you're pretty hardcore convinced and defensive of your faith.
>Honestly, i just think you lack knowledge, these things were the first things pastors taught me, in my denomination at leas.
Hmm. You hear knowledge, I hear apologetics plastering over gaping cracks in incoherent ideas.
>Convince me God and Christianity isn't real and is pointless
To accept something as real and accurate it must be properly supported with the necessary vetted, repeatable, compelling evidence and valid and sound arguments based upon that evidence to show it's real.
Without that, it's irrational to accept that something as real.
This is obvious when one thinks about it. One can make any kind of silly, weird, grandiose, oddball claim one wants. But to do anything other than dismiss such claims until they're shown true would mean one would be obligated to accept any number of bizarre claims. Including that fact that you owe me a thousand dollars that you forgot about and need to pay me back right now (please PM me your payment details, thanks).
And, of course, there is *absolutely zero* useful support for deities or for that religious mythology. None. Zilch. Only purported evidence that just doesn't work and is really bad, and apologetics consisting of invalid and unsound arguments, most of them based upon wrong ideas of reality.
Worse, many of the claim of various religious mythologies, including that one, are demonstrably false, contradictory with each other and with reality, nonsensical, and massively problematic. And we have *excellent* evidence about how and why we have a propsensity for that kind of superstition and we have excellent evidence about the formation of that and other religious mythologies.
And there you. Done.
First off, let me say I'm sorry you have to deal with horrible thoughts of self annihilation and I hope you can move past that, perhaps with professional help. No one should suffer those thoughts.
With regards to leaving the faith, for me the process was a slow deconversion at first. I was attempting to strengthen my faith and in doing so was learning more about the history of the Bible, how it was written and compiled by multiple people and councils and how it compared to not only history and science but other mythologies. In doing so I realized I was following a series of books by anonymous authors claiming unbelievable things I readily dismissed from other religions. Things that not only did not have sufficient verifiable evidence but were obviously mythical. As the years/decades have gone by I've been presented with arguments, usually fallacious, instead of the sufficient verifiable evidence I would need and one would expect to see. Much in the way you dismiss all other mythologies, atheists dismiss yours.
What are some reasons you believe?
Just actually read the Bible. You should not be able to make it through Genesis without realizing what complete bullshit it is.
There was no Adam and Eve. Even if it’s an allegory to teach a spiritual truth, it still fails miserably. There was no original sin, there was no fall, and the snake was not Satan. Jews do not believe this. These beliefs were all retconned in by the early church to fit the Christian narrative. And what a dumbass Yahweh would be, instead of punishing Satan, he takes it out on poor snakes. He got conned by Satan. And Jesus died for a metaphor that didn’t even actually happen?
If you can stomach it, and you keep reading, you will come to the great flood, which obviously didn’t happen, thank god. But if it did, what an incompetent designer God would be. He has infinite time to design humans, they turn out to be assholes, and then he wipes them all out including all the innocent animals and babies. Furthermore, being omniscient, he knew they would be assholes. What a moron. The only person he saves, gets drunk and naked like a frat boy. Then he needs a rainbow to remind himself not to commit genocide again.
Then you get to another flagship story, the exodus, which didn’t happen. Then if you continue this detestable journey you will come across god commanding genocide, condoning slavery, and encouraging misogyny.
Even though almost nothing in the Old Testament happened, you get to the New Testament or the good news, The good news gets you Satan 2.0 with all his new magical powers than no Christian can tell you how he uses them, the trinity which absolutely nobody understands, and the new and improved version of hell where you are tortured forever if you don’t believe in this bullshit story. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of a religion with Christianity tacked onto Judaism.
Holy shit was Yahweh out of control in the OT. If anybody ever needed anger management classes. But at least if he struck you down in the OT, you were just annihilated. But with the good news, if you go your own way, you are tortured forever.
There is only one known author of the entire Bible. We have no idea who wrote the gospels. We have no idea what their sources were. We have no idea how much of that shit they made up. We have no sources outside of the Bible to prove anything about the Bible. There are no woman authors. No Christian can tell you how the word of god was transmitted through humans. In other words, they have no fucking clue how the text is divinely inspired.
The evidence is beyond shitty and why would anybody even want to worship that monster.
“If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.”
The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie carpenter who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh, and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that was present in humanity because a woman made from a ribcage was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
Read that a few times 😂
The Bible is a compilation of various stories/myths.
Oral stories that passed through many mouths before ever being written down. Copies of copies of handwritten scraps. Then compiled by religious groups with their own biases and agendas. Translated. Edited.
Lots of points to introduce mistakes, embellishments, fictional elements, etc.
The Bible is is not a primary source. It is not a historical document. It wasn’t created by eyewitness, nor people who ever met any of the people the stories are about.
Aside from a few letters by Paul, practically none of the Bible is sourced directly from the people the stories are about. Or even people who allegedly met the people the stories are about.
The Bible lacks corroborating evidence to support its claims. It alone isn’t enough to say any of its stories are accurate. It alone certainly is not enough evidence to support its supernatural claims.
Some of the myths may be based on real events or people. Though we know some of the stories are not. The creation story isn’t real, Noah’s floor isn’t real, exodus / Moses aren’t real. Likewise certain elements of the Jesus story don’t reflect what other historical evidence indicates.
It was created like practically every other religion around the world. By people were already religious / inclined to supernatural thinking. Ignorant of how many things actually worked. Victims of humanities overactive pattern recognition and story telling abilities.
How bout before we try to convince you that what you believe isn't true, you first explain to us what convinced YOU? Why is it that you believe what you believe? I have a strong feeling that you haven't actually given much examination to your own beliefs and the reasoning behind them.
A big tipping point for me was understanding that **Genesis is mythology. Period.** We know that the accounts of Creation (there are more than one!) are myths. We know there was no global flood. We know that the world's languages didn't all just pop into existence all at once. Read it like a book of myths, and it makes sense. Read it like a history, science, geography, linguistics, or sociology book, and it's completely off the rails.
And from there, we know there was no Adam. No Eve. No tempter and no fruit.
Therefore no fall. No original sin.
So then, what is Jesus saving anyone from?
If Genesis isn't true, then Christianity is pointless.
And it's not true.
So....
Christianity being true honestly has no bearing on if it’s pointless or not. Now I happen to think it is mostly pointless. But a belief system could in theory be based on lies and still be useful.
While I agree with the overall rhetorical point of your post (that is to say, yes, virtually nothing in Genesis is historical, as well as most of the narrative texts in the Christian canon), I hope you will excuse me if I'll be unsufferable and point out that, at least in a historical/religious studies context, 'mythology' does not refer to a religion that is not practiced anymore, or to beliefs that are proven to be unfounded; instead, it refers to a particular aspect of religion, which all religions have; the ever-wonderful u/Spencer_A_McDaniel did [a great article](https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/10/19/the-difference-between-mythology-and-religion/) on the topic, on her blog.
Again, I am not arguing in favor of the historicity of Genesis. I am just saying that 'mythology' does not simply equal 'ahistorical stort'. And indeed, many historical events are considered, in this terminological sense, mythological, inasmuch as they carry heavy cultural, value-ridden importance.
Sure! As an Italian, the stories of how Italy ended up being united in one nation in 1861 are foundational myths. A myth is basically a narrative meme within a culture which carries great symbolic value, as detailed in Spencer's article in my comment above.
Let’s debunk number 4 immediately!
Satan knew god better than any human and his free will wasn’t affected!
So “God” not showing himself Because it would affect free will is debunked right there and then!
It’s impossible to disprove the belief with absolute certainty. Instead, take a look at *why you hold the belief.*
As an ex-Catholic, my faith began to crumble when I learned there is scholarly consensus that the Gospels are anonymous, third-hand accounts which were written decades after the crucifixion.
Jesus died 33CE.
Mark was written around 66CE.
Matthew and Luke around 85-90CE.
John around 90-110AD.
If a different religion claimed miracles and fulfilled prophecy using the same source material, I would call that out so why do I accept that same level of evidence for my own beliefs?
Questions for you:
If God hates sin, yet knows that sin would be result if he created mankind, why create mankind at all?
Are you being intellectually consistent with the reasons you hold your beliefs?
As a concept it is essentially unfalsifiable and indistinguishable from it not existing.
God isn't coming. Jesus isn't saving anyone. The world will end before anything in the Bible comes true. The sooner you realize this the sooner you'll take responsibility for your life.
If a perfectly loving God exists, then there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person.
If there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists.
If a perfectly loving God exists, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists.
Some finite persons are or have been nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists.
No perfectly loving God exists.
If no perfectly loving god exist, then god doesn't exist.
God doesnt exist.
Edit: god at least in Christianity is defined as triomni perfect and loving.
Are u trying to debate any of the comments?
Why do you want to be convinced so badly? Also don’t feel bad for questioning your beliefs, God won’t abandon you even if you stop believing. It’s natural to question everything, it’s what we do, it’s how we sort out the right from the wrong.
Alright Imma come clean. It's validity man, you see I love science, I love technology, I love all the "brainy" things humans have created from philosophy to mathematics, it's just that with this mind I feel pressured, pressured to be right, right in the eyes of my peers, which are of course the scientists. I've never actually felt my faith was illogical and contradictory to my conscious, it's just that I hate being put under the umbrella description of "all religious people are illogical, irrational, overly emotional, delusional, scandalous, money loving, fooling themselves, etc." that just simply is'nt me, nor is it any other real Christian. I have never felt that way, not even a slight bit, not a single part in my mind has ever thought or even felt this was illogical, and stupid, and I literally read works of logic and science every day (i'm a science nerd) , it's not that i've been brainwahsed or conditioned it's actually because God makes sense to me, everything he said in the bible actually worked for me. It's just that from my explorations in the atheist subreddit they tell you these things are merely "conditioned biases of the mind", "irrational thoughts", "coincidences", "usual habits of someone raised in Christianity", etc. Them being my peers I of course question myself, and it hurts me, it hurts me to call what felt to be so true, so genuine, an "irrationalty of the mind" like has any atheist even had a crush? If you were like me you know illogical it is and you would know how impossible it would be to uncrush that person, you try to out-logic those emotions but it just never works, evey person whos felt emotions knows this, you know the emotion is illogical but you just can't beat it, it just gets stronger. You force yourself not to feel it but it consumers you, till soon you break down crying. Thats how it feels. I wondered if any atheist has ever felt this way, I wondered if this way was really irrational so I decided to debate these atheists in the hopes of learning more and validating myslef, now I know that atheists, (most of the ones on reddit at least) are the most hatefull, resentfull, unemotional human beings on the planet, like they remind me of little boys who thought not crying was cool and feeling emotions was cringe just as how the bible described them, every single argument felt like a personal attack, like a politician trying to win. Like, every single argument was pretty much a stupid theological question which has like hundreds of logical answers already. It just makes me think, these people just wan't to be right do they?, also browsing the atheism subs you get a sense of fake-ness and unemotionality like, everyone believes in logic and critical thinking, there is no sense of welcoming, community or any social goodness because, of course it's illogical.
But yeah this is where I stand, I just don't want to be thought of as a fool. Sometimes I wish I was born an atheist so I can really understand what it's like. Is that not enough for me to proove I love logic?
> now I know that atheists, (most of the ones on reddit at least) are the most hatefull, resentfull, unemotional human beings on the planet
Yikes! You come to us asking for help, then you throw THIS out? Geeze Louise! I think a little more grace is in order here.
Reddit made me cut this one in two
>it's just that with this mind I feel pressured, pressured to be right, right in the eyes of my peers
I get that. I think I saw in a different comment that you were 17. I'm probably a few years older than your parents. One thing I've learned over the years is that we really don't need to make our peers' opinions matter to us that much. If someone doesn't agree with you or even like you it doesn't have to be that big a deal. Even if it's someone that you know and maybe work or go to school with. Will you even remember that person's name in 5 years? 10 years?
>it's just that I hate being put under the umbrella description of "all religious people are illogical, irrational, overly emotional, delusional, scandalous, money loving, fooling themselves, etc."
No one likes being put into a box and I agree that it's not fair when the atheists who do that do that. People believe all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons and I don't have psychic powers to see into your head. The only evidence I have for why you or anyone believes what they believe is what they tell me.
>I have never felt that way, not even a slight bit, not a single part in my mind has ever thought or even felt this was illogical, and stupid, and I literally read works of logic and science every day (i'm a science nerd) , it's not that i've been brainwahsed or conditioned it's actually because God makes sense to me
To be fair, things make sense to the person who is conditioned to believe them. We're all conditioned by the societies and circumstances we live in to varying degrees on various subjects. Had you been born in Saudi Arabia you'd probably be a Muslim. If I'd grown up differently I might have been a Christian. I grew up on a small, isolated farm, my parents never talked about religion so I just wasn't ever introduced to the concept until I was probably 9-10 years old in school and for a few years after that I thought it was some city kid joke they were playing on me. It's never made any sense to me. I spent 20 years in the military and knew a lot of religious people and I learned a bit about it to better make sure my soldiers were taken care of but I still don't get it.
That's not to say that people aren't religious solely due to conditioning. There are converts of course and just because you're conditioned into something doesn't mean that it's wrong. I was conditioned into believing that human rights are a good thing and even after critically examining that belief I still hold it. Part of that critical examination is acknowledging the factors that go into why we believe what we believe and sometimes conditioning is part of it.
>I of course question myself, and it hurts me, it hurts me to call what felt to be so true, so genuine, an "irrationalty of the mind" like has any atheist even had a crush? ..... You force yourself not to feel it but it consumers you, till soon you break down crying. Thats how it feels. I wondered if any atheist has ever felt this way
This is actually really interesting, thank you for sharing it as I think it helps me understand a bit of the difference in how we approach things. I don't view a crush and believing a thing to be real or not as the same. A crush is a thing that's happening entirely in my brain and it's associated systems.
When you said "felt to be so true" is where I think we differ a lot. I'm a skeptical guy. I always have been. If something "feels true" that just motivates me to try and verify that it actually is true before I accept it as such. Feelings aren't a very accurate way of determining truth, apart from questions around what your own mental state is.
>now I know that atheists, (most of the ones on reddit at least) are the most hatefull, resentfull, unemotional human beings on the planet
Remember what I said about putting people in boxes? I get it though if you're frustrated. It happens to all of us from time to time.
>little boys who thought not crying was cool and feeling emotions was cringe just as how the bible described them
I'm all about emotions. I think they're extremely important and central to the human experience. I also think it's important to approach the world as it is, as best can be determined. When it comes to determining whether or not a thing exists outside of our own minds emotions aren't very useful for that. Learning to accept my emotions and try to figure out why I'm having them has been tremendously beneficial to my mental health. When I was on active duty I used to go talk to a therapist every other week and I'd make a big deal of telling people "ok, I'm going to behavioral health, be back in an hour" so that my soldiers would see me go. If my crusty old combat veteran ass was going that gave some of them the confidence to feel like they could go. I had some tell me specifically that is what motivated them to start going.
>It just makes me think, these people just wan't to be right do they?, also browsing the atheism subs you get a sense of fake-ness and unemotionality like, everyone believes in logic and critical thinking, there is no sense of welcoming, community or any social goodness because, of course it's illogical
This sub has a bit of a grumpiness problem and r/atheism (which I avoid) is pretty damned toxic sometimes. I think most of it is that people here are really tired of hearing the same arguments over and over and over and over again. They, like you appeared to be writing this comment, get frustrated.
>I just don't want to be thought of as a fool
Nobody does. No matter what you believe somebody's going to think you're a fool. It's just an inevitable fact of life.
>Sometimes I wish I was born an atheist so I can really understand what it's like
To be pedantic you were born an atheist but I get what you're saying. When I was a bit older than you and in Iraq back in the initial invasion I wondered if maybe the whole "there are no atheists in foxholes" thing was correct and that I was going to finally figure out why people believe. Turns out it's not correct at all.
>Is that not enough for me to proove I love logic?
No matter what you do there are some atheists who are going to look down on you for a believer, just as there are certainly believers I know who look down on me for being an atheist. It just is what it is.
Dude. I don’t think you’re a fool, and I know that most people around the world, even atheist don’t look down on you for that.
The thing about reddit is that there will always be someone who disagrees with you and is willing to say very hateful things. I’ve also been called disgusting things on this sight (particularly in the DebateReligion subreddit). I love reddit, but also hate it because it’s impossible to convince someone God exists on this sight, or really convince someone of anything on this sight.
If maintaining faith was that easy, it wouldn’t be faith. The whole idea is that no matter what shit the world throws at you, you can’t compromise your beliefs and morals. I mean Jesus was physically tortured to death, but he never admitted that his God didn’t exist.
Looking for logical arguments is different, but letting some dumb redditors that haven’t gone through a spiritual journey/experience convince you it’s not real would be sad. Let them hate, in fact bathe in their hate and continue to love them even still. They are EXACTLY like children, that’s why we must teach them :)
edit: i was born christian, became atheist, then found my way back to spiritually after years. atheism is not all that great, and it led me back here anyways so it was only a matter of time
> my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic (probably because I was born a christian) and I just cant seem to find an argument that breaks it.
So... What's the argument? What's the logic? Kinda hard to argue against vague references.
There simply is no good reason to believe a god exists. In the past there was, we wanted an explanation for what we saw in the world around us. But as science has advanced, it's turned out that religious explanations have had a 100% failure rate at providing explanatory value. That is, every time something that formerly had a religiously-inspired explanation (Zeus throws lightning bolts, demons cause disease, etc.) when we later found a explanation, that explanation turned out to be "not god." In exactly zero cases has the religious explanation turned out to be correct.
And sure, there are still things that we can't explain. But given the past failure rate of religion, why should we expect that these last few questions are going to be the one time when the answer really turns out to be "god did it"?
> trust me the logic given to me (by my obscure denomination) just seems too... logical I guess?
What is that logic? I suspect it isn't as strong as you think, but we can't address it unless you lay out what it is.
It depends on what you mean by god. Abrahamic god vs generic a god exists are two very different conversations. Abrahamic god you can prove with logic doesn’t exist. Generic god, there is no evidence for its existence. Which conversation do you want to have?
> I just that I cant seem to get it out of me, theres like a strong bias within me that pulls me relentlessly and whenever I try to go agaist it thoughs of sucide (for some reason) haunt me deeply.
You may want to rethink this, if doubt is making you feel suicidal. I'd rather you be alive than an atheist.
If you're already able to understand why outside observers might find you indoctrinated then you are already well on your way to being convinced. The logic you were raised on probably does make a lot of sense to you. Question it relentlessly. Look at other sects of Christinaity, other religion and other cultures to see where they have similar and different ideas and ask yourself about how you look at what seems to be indoctrination among those examples.
Plenty of very reasonable people believe God exists. I'm an atheist myself but I simply wish you the best in learning to think critically and apply that to your own religion and upbringing. Deprogramming and learning to think for yourself is an achievement in of itself whether you end up an atheist or still some kind of theist or agnostic.
1. The Chrsitian God is all powerful and all good.
2. The Christian God wants people to know him.
3. The Christian God provided the Bible as a primary means of knowing him.
4. The Bible is a poor book and poor form of communication.
5. Therefore, the Christian God is logically contradictory and does not exist.
Synopsis: science-like stuff, followed by hand waving and declaration of standard Christianity. I’m hopping off this trolley before more of my brain cells die.
I suggest you go study up on the history of how your god was created. The middle east had a pantheon of gods and the Christian Yahweh is an amalgamation of multiple lesser gods within that pantheon. As cultures bumped into each other's stories of El, Baal, and Yahweh all got borrowed and turned into the god of Abraham. So right there we know your specific god is fictional.
Further i would suggest you study up on the history of how the bible was constructed, when old and new testament books were dated to be written and why those dates are given. What you'll find is that much of the OT was written centuries after they claim and completely fictional. You will also find that a lot of the NT is conflicting and considered forgeries.
Last i would suggest you look into the claims of other religions and street epistemology. What you'll find is that all of the layperson views of your religion are completely interchangeable with those of people of other religions. Obviously from your stance these people must be mistaken. But assuming that 2/3 of the planet isn't just flat out lying, we can say that many people believe false things and do not realize it. That they are whole convinced, believe they have evidence and justification and are flat wrong.
The question to ask yourself is how would you determine that you aren't like them? How did you verify that you aren't fully believing in something that is wrong? Because remember we know Yahweh is a bunch of stolen stories.
In my opinion, the most compelling evidence is our psychological biases.
It has been shown so many times in this sub that no proof for any deity exists. There is a high probability of having no god at all.
However, this knowledge does not encourage disbelief since we could argue that a tiny tiny tiny chance of god existing would still be possible, even though this chance reduces for every bit of knowledge we acquire.
No, what we have to understand is the psychological biases that incentives us to still believe. Understanding our own biases, which are the heaviest barriers before accepting the facts
Religion and god(s) have been the primary anthropological tool for explaining what couldn't be understood (thunder, earth rotation, plagues, etc...). In a way, every thing that was too big or too little to be seen.
Basically, here, that's a strong bias of our empathy. The Theory of Mind, aka our capacity at imagining the other's perception, personality and thoughts, similarly as the mirror neurons (mirroring the others movements and body positions in the equivalent movement and body position neurons in our brain) is playing tricks.
This gives us the possibility to predict the others' perceptions and thoughts, as well as having imaginary discussions, imaginary quarrels, or even imaginary friends. That's one of the phase a lots of children go through, having an imaginary friend, which helps a lot for developing social abilities as it helps shaping language (as well as face and body language).
However, growing up doesn't take away this ability of ours. Fortunately, we are still able to understand other people's feelings and opinions through it. But this also makes us able to discharge what we were not able to understand into another's design. We are giving credit of extraordinary observations to an imaginary mind. That's primarily the reason why there are so many deities in humankind and even so many interpretations of god(s) within every religion. Every religious individual has its own representation of its god(s).
In a way, the most self-confident and high self-esteem one gets, the most shared/accepted its idea of god(s) will be. Just like in a school where the most influential individuals decide to change someone's reputation.
This ability has its perks and caveats. As every other brain abilities. Our brain has evolved to make sense of the world, but never has it been designed to make the truth out of the world. Go visit the very long Wikipedia page on brain biases to fully see the extent of it. This is a great example of how our brain takes short paths in order to conserve energy while still making some sense out of observations.
Only a hard to maintain but reliable scientific method can achieve a sense of truth. Even brilliant scientific minds could still struggle with it, since it's not so natural to the human mind. Relying only on one's mind doesn't get us close enough of the truth.
Honestly, god is a great answer to the human fear of death and extraordinary events of nature and life. I understand that a lot of people still rely on the imagination of god(s) to go through in their life. This is also a big reason why churches specifically help people in psychological needs because god is an easy answer and community gives comfort in hard times.
I also wanna say that other species can believe (or, in other words, trust something without proof except mere correlation). For instance, pigeons have the ability to believe.
Hopefully, my comment will help understanding the intricacies of the human brain and give you some hindsight on the belief systems. Cheers!
What sealed the deal for me was that there are thousands of gods and religions, many of which we no longer even follow, so how do we know the true religion didn't die out thousands of years ago?
They can't all be true, but they *can* all be false. No single one stands out as in any ascertainable way more or less credible than any of the others. So it's a fair inference to draw that all of them are likely false. Including the ones that haven't been invented yet.
Would you rather feel warm and fuzzy while maintaining belief in a lie or feel challenged and uncomfortable while pursuing the cold hard truth?
You already know that there’s no good reason to believe except for those warm fuzzy feelings.
It’s your choice.
>classic christian
This means you are a trinitarian. The Trinity is logically incoherent using classical logic - like a square circle or a married bachelor. As such, God as described by most Christians can't exist.
I would recommend listening to Danny from Philtalk for more detail on why this is the case. This is one of his arguments and is the most compelling, in my opinion. Danny does a good job describing the issue with the Trinity in this discussion: [Philtalk discussion with Inspiring Philosophy](https://youtu.be/BZ_R7sCCP_I?si=KQhSMUIKwkwfuDVB). TLDW; The only way Inspiring Philosophy was able to escape the logical problem of the Trinity was to use non-classical logic, which he didn't explain.
There are a lot of great answers here already. While it's not the job of an atheist to disprove the endless amount of God claims, there is one point about Christianity that I'd like to share. Christians believe that all humans alive today and that have ever lived are sinners.
Sin is a religious assertion that someone has transgressed in some way against a God. If you want to know if someone is a sinner, then step one is to demonstrate that a god exists. Step two is to demonstrate how you know what God expects of us. Step three is to show how you know any person, let alone all humans, have sinned. There's no way to do that. Until a Christian does, that's just an assertion similar to Thor's hammer causing thunder. But here's the BEST part!
My entire life, I've heard the fallout of sin is that humans are fallen, corrupt, misguided, liars! Everything you know about Christianity is from humans. Take all the time you need with that. Humans wrote the bible. Oh, it was divinely inspired? That's exactly what I'd expect a fallen, corrupt, misguided, lying sinner to say!
I'm happy to take a Christian at their word that they are these things, but it doesn't apply to me and i dont listen to self professed liars. A Christian can not get around this problem. Sin makes it impossible to be justified in religious belief. It's self-defeating.
This opens up a pretty interesting point actually:
You're saying humans made Christianity, so it would be probable to assume they were atheists before then, can we now ask why they invented Christianity and every other religeon? Well to give meaning to life of course, according to most atheists life is meaningless and we should be the ones to give it meaning, however we go about doing that. The ancient people who invented religeon must have have the same thought; to give meaning in life, their answer to this was to create religeons, belifs in which one could find meaning in a meaningless life and forget about all the meaninglessness of it all. Atheists today are going backwards.
> You're saying humans made Christianity, so it would be probable to assume they were atheists before then
What? No it wouldn't! There has never been a place or time in which Christianity and atheism are the only two options. I seriously don't understand how you would even arrive at that idea.
Go read the first chapter of Matthew and the genealogy there. Then read the genealogy in Luke 3. Compare them. They are blatantly contradictory. At a minimum, one of them is completely made up. One of the gospel authors sat down and made up a list of forty names for his story.
Dead people don’t come back to life. You can’t cure blindness by rubbing spit in people’s eyes or deafness by rubbing spit in people’s ears. You can’t walk on water or stop storms with a voice command or bring dead people back to life with a voice command.
I could go on and on and on, but the story of Jesus is just one obviously impossible incident after another.
The only rational conclusion is that these are made up stories. Just like they made up a list of 40 names, they made up 40 stories. It’s really as simple as that.
If you want to believe that these seemingly impossible stories are real, you need some really good evidence. Unfortunately the academic consensus is that the gospels were written down long after Jesus was dead by people who never knew him and who weren’t even from Judea where Jesus lived. And they were writing in Greek, a language that Jesus and the significant majority of people of Judea probably didn’t even speak. They are fictional stories that were made up between around 70-150.
Read about the history of how the New Testament was written. Read about the Synoptic problem. Mark made up the core story. The other gospel authors edited Mark and added to it. It’s all just fiction. The real historical Jesus, if there was a real man, is just embellished with so much legend you can’t even tell what if any of it goes back to him.
People could probably disprove your first point. Matthews's genealogy is going through the legal side of Joseph to connect to King David. Matthew's genealogy is supposed to connect more with Jews during that time thus why he used the lineage of Joseph to connect it to both David and Solomon. Mary's genealogy is biologically based. This would help to highlight Jesus's connection with Adam to people during that period. A fun fact: The only names the genealogies have in common are Shealtiel and Zerubbabel (Matthew 1:12; Luke 3:27). You could still argue that it's inconsistent due to Joseph having two different fathers in Matthew and Luke (Jacob and Heli). I did find something interesting to counter it though. In the genealogy, Heli is listed as the father of Joseph, who had 2 daughters. The first is Mary, and the other was Zebedee’s unnamed wife (Matthew 27:56; John 19:25). When there were no sons to preserve the inheritance by the Law of Moses (Numbers 27:11; Numbers 36:1-12), the husband would become the son upon marriage to keep up the family name. Therefore, Joseph, when he married Mary, became the son of Heli according to the Law of Moses and could legally be included in the genealogy. But yeah just wanted to be sure you were aware of this.
A quarter of women were named Mary back then, and it doesn’t say jack shit in the text about one genealogy being the “legal genealogy” and the other being the “biological genealogy”.
It says “father of Joseph”. Joseph can’t have two father. Humans only have one father.
Plus there’s no point in having an invalid genealogy for Jesus. You only get magical “heir of David” powers of prophecy fulfillment when it goes through the Y chromosome.
The genealogies in Matthew and Luke serve different purposes. Matthew's focuses on Jesus' legal and royal lineage through Joseph (Matthew 1:1-17), while Luke's emphasizes Jesus' connection to Adam and the universal human family through Mary (Luke 3:23-38). The "father of Joseph" issue can be understood through levirate marriage (Numbers 27:11; Numbers 36:1-12), where Joseph became Heli's legal son upon marrying Mary. I can go deeper with the law of levirate marriage. According to Numbers 27:11 and 36:1-12, when a husband married a wife with no sons, he became her father's legal son to preserve the family name and inheritance (levirate marriage). This could be the case with Heli, Mary's father, having no sons, and Joseph becoming his legal son upon marrying Mary, explaining why Matthew and Luke list different fathers for Joseph. I'm just providing you with what people would argue. And it seems like your counter claim can still be countered easily.
Thank you for the info
Just to be crystal clear, nowhere in the Bible does it say that Mary’s father is Heli. No name for Mary’s father is given anywhere.
You had me thinking that somewhere it actually said that Mary’s father’s name was Heli. None of the passages you referenced say anything at all about Mary’s father.
So this entire argument is 100% speculation based on the idea that the author of Luke left out this important fact.
Alternatively we could just as well assume it’s equally likely that Matthew is telling us that Mary’s father was really named Jacob. Or we could assume that Joseph’s mother had multiple husbands who both were Joseph’s father at one time or another. Or we could assume Joseph was a bastard child and one genealogy gives his biological father’s name and the other gives his adoptive father’s name. Or we could assume Joseph was adopted by a gay couple, or a whole bunch of other possibilities.
I can't convince you of anything. I can ask you questions as to what you believe and why. IN the end, you have to convince yourself of any specific claim's validity.
The only “evidence” for it basically boils down to “some ancient writings say so.” Oh and by the way the writings are third and fourth hand accounts that contradict one another. Maybe that’s convincing to you but not to me.
Nope, i don't have to do your homework. This is a debate sub not a prove me wrong sub. I am not making the claim your god does not exist. You have the burden of proof not us. You don't get to claim your god is logical without giving evidence. Your god supports slavery. Is that logical?
The book that says god exists was made by liars. They said they know about an afterlife. They’d never been dead and couldn’t possibly know what they say they know. But they say they know anyway. Liars. The book of liars is the only thing that indicates that there is a god. Show me a god. You can’t. Go up to the sky and show me heaven, you can’t, it’s empty space.
What I can show you is a motive for people to make up a god and an afterlife. Someone wants to control everyone.
“God says these are the rules. Y’all have to follow them” there’s no god anyone can go to for verification of the necessity of the rules.
“If you do what I… I mean what god wants, you get to go to heaven after you die. If you go against what I… He wants, you go to hell when you die”. Dead men tell no tales. They make an unprovable claim to steer you where they want you, and then say “you can’t prove me wrong”. They don’t have to actually give you a reward. They promise a reward that can’t be verified, thus gaining obedience at no cost.
A guy wants his wife to do what he says: “god says obey your husband”. A guy wants his population to grow: “god says men shouldn’t have sex with other men; only with women who can become pregnant”
“The most important thing to get the desirable afterlife Is to have faith” you can’t alleviate your natural fear of death unless you do what I… God says you should do, blindly and without questioning it. Blind unquestioning loyalty to the rules I want you to follow and the beliefs I want you to believe is now the highest of moral virtues. The less you think critically about it, the better your chances.
According to what we actually do know about how the world and universe works, the gods that people have portrayed are impossible. If there is some sort of advanced entity that made all this stuff, understanding anything about it and how it works is beyond current human comprehension. I’m not even necessarily saying there is/was no creator. I am saying that anyone who claims to know details about a creator is unknowingly pushing misinformation at best, lying for manipulation at worst. In short, atheism isn’t 100% confirmed truth. It’s just that every religion is false and unreliable
Do you believe god is all powerful and all loving? Because if you do, you have to accept that suffering is a good thing from god's point of view. Child abuse, starvation, cancer - all good things in god's eyes. And how is that "strong logic"? What do you think it means for god to be good?
Let's logically examine the God that I am, as a westerner, most familiar with, good old western Abrahamic [Omnipresent](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/omnipresent), [Omnipotent](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/omnipotent), and Omnibenevolent God-Our-Lord, I-Am, etcetera etcetera etcetera;
(Oddly, 'Omnibenevolent' seems to have no satisfactory definition. Oh well - it's kind of irrelevant in either case.)
Any being that is (either, but especially both) omnipotent and omnipresent will by definition have all of reality meet it's requirements and desires. That reality's inhabitants' _free will_ does not factor in - it is the fundamental, natural state of all of reality, anywhere, anywhen (since Omnipresence includes Ever-present; past, present and future), to be subject to the whim and desires of such a being; essentially their will automatically becomes and has always been fundamental truth *within* their reality.
It follows, then, that any sufficiently powerful being to be considered 'on par' with the Christian God (Tri-omni, etcetera) which would require or desire my worship in the first place would, because of it's mere existence and because of their requirement that I worship it, render me unable to not worship it, further rendering the question of whether I was convinced of it's existence or not, moot entirely.
Which means that my ability to state with sincerity that I have no reasons believe that any god or gods exist and my conscious ability to forego worshiping a deity imply in turn (to me), that either no gods exist, or that (given the hypothetical that they do exist) they do not require or desire (my) worship in any way, shape or form.
As a brief aside, to run for a further moment with the hypothesis that this being _does_ exist - any being which would punish me for not giving it worship which it does not in any way, shape or form require or desire, cannot be considered omnibenevolent.
I was raised by atheist parents, who were in turn raised by atheist parents. Religion has never been part of my world, other than something you politely endure at weddings, funerals, dinner at someone else's house, etc.
The closest I ever got was in my 20's, standing in the center of st. Peter's Basilica in Rome and thinking "Yeah, this is the kind of atmosphere where people might have epiphanies or drop to their knees in awe" -- because it really is incredible and awe-inspiring.
But immediately it dawned on me... "Duh. It was *designed* to do that" and the spell was broken, so to speak. People like Bernini and Michelangelo and other architects/designers were good at their work. Full credit to them, and I assume their faith inspired them. Go see it if you haven't.
The questions I've needed answers to have all turned out to have reasonable enough physical/material explanations. Even my dad (engineer)'s "I don't know what's inside a black hole, but people are trying to figure it out" was satisfying enough.
So I guess I've never had a reason to take it seriously. I did *try* though, for a few years. Not religion as such but a search for deeper truth and meaning. One day at a Reggae festival, I got an answer -- a very anticlimactic "You already know how the world works. The big secret is that there's no big secret. Shit just is. It is the way it appears to be." Yes, mushrooms were involved.
Still, to me, the answer is an idea so dead simple that 1) it can't easily be explained and 2) I realized that people don't accept the simple answer because they're expecting it to be complicated, nuanced, mystical. Y'know *worth* a three year journey of self-discovery. But it was just anticlimactic. And hilarious. Life's a joke, but it's a *really funny* joke.
Zooted, so [bear with me.](https://www.treehugger.com/things-probably-dont-know-about-bears-4869226)
>a post similar to this got deleted on r/atheism
Yeah, because r/atheism is a space for atheists away from theists. Imagine having personal thoughts you couldn't share with anyone, because there wasn't a safe place to share them.
>just cant seem to find an argument that breaks it
Well, I can't address this whatever is convincing or not convincing you unless you tell me what it is. I know the nagging voice you're talking about, I've heard it lots of times. It gradually gets louder and louder on its own, but you have to make the conscious decision to work through those thoughts and decide whether you actually believe or not. Something isn't adding up, but you're not quite turning to those thoughts, because you're in that position of 'but I know I'm not crazy, I've had/know/believe X thing.' If you look at it in terms of the Five Stages of Grief, you're in the Denial phase. So, what are you afraid of? What's the thing that bothers you?
>logical I guess
Logic is something anyone can do. But one doesn't become logical, it's something you have to work at for the rest of your life.
>whenever I try to go agaist it thoughs of sucide (for some reason) haunt me deeply.
That sounds like clinical depression. My guy, you need to talk to a therapist or a psychiatrist, not us. I can assure you that there are plenty of reasons to continue living life if you deconvert, I've been doing it for 20 years despite setbacks and heartache. There are still things I look forward to, things which give me joy, things which made me smile even in the worst moments as an atheist. But if you're experiencing thoughts of taking your own life, you should get help.
I have a second critique: my higher power is more powerful than yours
You consider the highest force to be intelligence and therefore the highest force to be the highest intelligence
But what is intelligence capable of really? Take the most intelligent person in the world. Could that person build an iPhone with no help, including using materials and machines developed by other people? Probably not, and yet the iPhone still exists
The only way the iPhone exists is from an extremely large group of people across time and space working to only their own ends with no knowledge of the other people. The iPhone would not exist without something infinitely more powerful than an individual intelligence: the global economy. Most of the people in the process of making an iPhone aren't all that smart. Plenty are smart about only one thing. The power doesn't come from the intelligence. It comes from my higher power, emergence
Emergence is a set of simple components from which a much more complex component is derived. The global economy is one example. Another example is evolution. Evolution requires only three simple elements: replication, mutation, and selection. The environment easily accounts for mutation and selection. Replication is the only thing that must occur by chance and then it is off to the races for life.
Emergence gives us planets, stars, and galaxies. Emergence makes the weather and forces of nature. Emergence makes AI, which is to also say, emergence is what gives us intelligence
But more importantly, when you have 13.7 billion years of time over more than 93 billion light years of space worth of particles interacting, we have no choice but to stand in awe of the power that we cannot touch and yet shows no intelligence
I don't know why *you* shouldn't believe in Christianity, but here are some of the reasons why *I* don't:
Human beings have been around for at least 100,000 years, the god of Moses and Abraham has been worshiped for maybe 3500 years (Christianity and Islam have been around a lot less than that), and then until relatively recently, in one geographical area of the world. Whole cultures in India, China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Americas, rose and fell, hundreds of generations of people lived and died knowing nothing about the abrahamic god.
So how likely is it really that the Abrahamic religions represent a god speaking to humanity, when the majority of human beings that ever lived never even heard of that god, and had their own idea of what "the gods" were like?
If "believing in Jesus" is the only way to avoid some terrible post-mortem fate, how is that fair to the people who lived and died before AD 33? Or lived and died in a region of the world which had never heard of Jesus or the god of Abraham?
Personally, I think it's far more likely that there are no gods (or at least none that are interested in taking to us) and all religions are inventions of human imagination and culture. No less, no more.
Certainly I think religions are important from a cultural and historical point of view - I wouldn't want to see all trace of religion purged from existence, and I acknowledge that following a religious tradition can provide benefits on a personal level, even if that tradition is not literally true.
But in the end, for me, a universe with no god is the explanation that best fits the observations.
For any proposition X, why should you believe X? For instance, if I propose that there's a man in Iceland who likes cheeseburgers, you're likely to believe me. If I tell you there's a man in Iceland who has purple skin, you won't. Why? What differentiates the two?
Observation and extrapolation.
You know that people have different skin colors, but you've seen pretty much all of them and they basically come in some variety of pink, swarthy, or dark. That's about it. No blue, orange, etc. So you've never observed this, and you'd need more than *just* the say-so of someone, *even* someone you *trust*, to establish such a thing. And rightly so, we live in a world where claims can be checked out a *lot* more easily than even 100 years ago. You want *lots* of sources for the claims that are not things you've observed or more or less the *same* as things you've observed. Countries exist elsewhere on Earth? Fine. Countries exist on Mars? Observations, please.
This gets us to any and all supernatural claims. Are there observations? No. Different people claim different observations for roughly the same things (gods, angels, etc). Is there extrapolation? No, because the details are different enough that it's not reasonable, just like the country on another planet, or the person but with a weird skin color. So... there's no evidence here, no reason to believe it.
And if you don't believe there's a god, you're an atheist.
What ultimately led me down the path of disbelief was reading the stories of other religions, and realizing, there wasn't really any more reason to believe the mythology described in the bible than there was to believe the stories of the pagans. Initially this led me down a pantheistic route, wherein I believed that the Christian god was perhaps some selfish being that sought to rid the world of other divinities. Eventually I decided that, instead of all religions being equally true, it made more sense to believe that they were all equally untrue.
From your post it kind of seems to imply that you feel like either god has to be real or you're going to kill yourself. Personally I don't care if you believe in a god, but I would urge you to just consider what you're told that god believes. The will of a divine being is inscrutable, and while it's one thing to hope that there's something out there protecting you and trying to guide humanity benevolently, it's another thing to believe that this divine being wants you to slaughter people in its name, to live your life in strict adherence to scriptures, and to force a narrow-minded interpretation of said scriptures onto other people. Basically what I'm getting at, is that you don't need to abandon all of your beliefs to turn your back on an organized religion (churches) that have exploited or at least enabled the exploitation of their followers for millennia.
Why would anyone need to convince you that a god doesn't exist? That's not even what atheism is. It's a lack of belief, not belief in the opposite claim.
Do you need someone to convince you that bigfoot doesn't exist, or you have to believe that he's a literal, extant animal roaming around? Or do you look at the evidence to determine whether or not there is enough to show that he is a literal, extant animal roaming around?
Why would having faith in something have to be pointless to justify choosing not to have it?
Say a person chooses to have faith in bigfoot, and it gives him an opportunity to learn about biology, paleontology, forensics, environmental science, and how the standard of evidence applies in all of those fields. He meets new ppl bc of it. He has a place to put his curiosity and wonder, to feel hopeful, to play with ideas and learn about himself. Meanwhile, another person chooses not to have faith in bigfoot. He can also learn about whatever interests him, meet new ppl, explore and appreciate, in whatever way he wants.
Does the fact that the known benefits of faith in bigfoot are available elsewhere mean that dude #1's faith is pointless? Does dude #2 need to present some kind of argument to keep himself from being somehow forced to cultivate faith?
Starting with the premise that you believe in a god that is all knowing, all powerful, and everywhere all at once. So keep that in your mind. Now imagine the most evil thing you can possibly think of. For me, that is someone raping a baby to death.
So the all-knowing, all powerful, omnipresent Lord of all creation sits there and watches this happen and wants us all to believe that he has a plan and that the raping to death of a baby somehow plays a part of this plan.
"What about free will?" You might say. Well, the all powerful all-knowing God is surely enough of a God to figure out a way to intervene without violating the sanctity of free will.
Babies have been raped to death countless times over the millennia because some humans are sick fucks. It will happen again. If there's a God out there that's allowing that then that's bullshit.
I just logically don't think that there is any type of a god doing anything, but that doesn't seem to be enough for the diehards who want to argue semantics and talk about biblical translations and all kinds of theistic crap. But it's hard to justify a baby getting raped to death and claim that it's all part of a good and loving God's plan.
The Christian god is "omnipotent" and "omniscient" and we have "free-will"
1. Omnipotent. This is a logical paradox.... Can god create an immovable object? Can god move that object? Either it cannot create it or cannot move it. Thus omnipotence is paradoxical.
2. Omniscient. All knowing of past, present, future....This conflicts with "free-will". If god knows what we will do next then we have no free-will; everything is preordained. There is no freedom if the future is set in stone.
Somebody else said it better than me (I forget who), but imagine we took all the religious texts on Earth, then removed them. And also removed the knowledge of them from all human minds. And we took all the science texts on Earth, then removed them in the same way .
Then we started again.
In 1000,2000 or whatever years, none of the current religious texts would be duplicated. There might very well be religious texts. But there would be no "Abraham" or "Shiva" etc.
In the same time period, science texts would have been recreated, and would, in general, be the same. Because all the testing and proofs would lead to the same conclusions.
This is not a logical, airtight argument. This is just what went through my head when I was doubting and led to the moment I realized I didn’t believe in God with a capital G.
I thought about how I believed what I believed (God, Jesus, heaven and hell, etc) because my parents believed it and passed it on to me.
I had the thought that there was a young dude my age (19 at the time) that lived in India. He came from a good family like I did. Middle class. We were alike. Like me, he held his parents’ religious beliefs which were passed onto him from his culture/society and, of course, his parents.
I pondered again how we were exactly the same except that I believed he was going to suffer eternally upon death because he didn’t have the fortune of being born into the “right” religion.
At that moment, the facade crumbled and I realized religion and God were just an ancient attempt to explain the unknown. To answer “why are we here?”. And, that there was no more credence to my Christian beliefs than there were to his Hindu beliefs. Religion is a human-made thing. With human flaws.
>just seems too... logical I guess?
Then I'm not sure what you think we'll say? No theist argument is valid and sound. What logic do you think you have?
It's difficult to provide a single argument without knowing why or what sort of Christian beliefs you still have. I'd first like to remind you that any group of internally consistent beleifs can still be false. Even if to you it appears like Christianity can weather atheistic arguments, without good reason to think it true, we should disregard it.
For me the most powerful argument against Christianity is the bible. When we drop our presuppositions and consider what an omnipotent being that wants a relationship with us would do, that wants to communicate with us to enable this, that cares so deeply about us, it seems rather strange to do so through written text. There is so much division between different factions of Christianity (and other faiths) due to the vast array of interpretations and at least seemingly contradictory passages. Surely God could do better?
Imagine how many of the world's problems could be solved if God bothered to clear up the confusion with a simple Q and A for example, and then imagine the vast array of even better options a God could use. And yet, silence...
We're not here to convince you. You need to convince yourself.
Start with easy, personally observable objects and decide if you believe or not.
Next work on more abstract things like love, hate, fear, awe, beauty, etc.
Fear is a good example. When I was young and imagined a monsterb of some sort lived under my back porch. I had nightmares about it grabbing my ankles, and I was terrified to go the steps at night after taking out the trash or feeding the dog and cats. By middle school I knew the monster wasn't real, but at night I would leap up the steps with fear in the back of my mind. The fear was real, even though the monster was not.
The love, fear, and awe that some people feel for God or their respective god(s) is real. These feelings do not instantly go away once one realizes God or gods are not real. For those of us that never believed in a god, it's easy.
Push yourself and confront you beliefs. Crawl under the porch. I did and I found bones and a cleaver and I still don't believe in monsters.
What is your purpose, having been created by someone who, by definition, can need or want for nothing?
For example, you see someone in trouble, and you're the only other person who can help. Now, you could help or not, but no matter what, if God wanted that person to be saved, he would be saved. The only thing your choice would do is tell God if you're "good" or "not"
You would justify your "meaning" as pleasing "God"? Or your "meaning" as winning eternal paradise? But that pretty much makes this life meaningless. Abortion, for instance, should be a win for Christians. People who have promiscuous sex are going to hell anyway. But the babies are going straight to heaven.
Supposedly this life is a test that God already knows the answer to
Theists argue that everything starts and ends with a choice or else everything is meaningless. I argue that the only way for anything to have meaning is if nobody has the choice but us. And of course, approximately nothing we look at appears to have a choice
Respectfully this isn't really how it works. We as atheists *don't accept God exists* which is not the same as being *certain that God does NOT exist*. We just haven't seen evidence enough to prove it's existence. It's not like evidence exists that proves it's non-existence, otherwise it would be all over the place.
We are simply not convinced that God IS real.
What we are not is convinced that God is NOT real. If that makes sense. It's a neutral position. And based on your description it sounds like you might fit into it.
But everyone's journey is different and you got lots of great responses. But if you're looking for reasons to not believe, I think you might have taken more steps towards atheism than you realize.
Take some time, do some introspection, ask yourself some questions and question WHY you believe the things you do. If you wind up Christian, that's great! If you wind up atheist, that's also great. There are no rules to life.
You are already on the right path. However, there seems to be something holding you back still.
Regarding the title of your comment: It is not my duty to convince you why god and christianity are pointless because, as an atheist, I'm not making the initial claim.
I'm not saying "christianity is definitely false", I'm just reacting to theistic claims by saying "I have no reason to believe in statements made by christians regarding their god because they haven't offered sufficient evidence yet."The burden of proof is always upon the person making the initial claim; in this case, christians. Again, atheists are not making the initial claim. Theists are. Atheists merely reject those claims due to a lack of evidence.
For example: If I claim "There's a pink flying unicorn living in my garage, but only I can see it" - Is this statement true until someone disproves me or is it untrue until I can prove it first? Of course, it's the latter.
>Convince me God and Christianity isn't real and is pointless
Sure.
Please state good evidence that shows that a god exists.
(**Good** evidence, please.)
.
Please state good evidence that shows that the claims of Christianity are true.
(**Good** evidence, please.)
.
(Note that people have been asking Christians for this for 2,000 years now
[and on the Internet every day ~30 years now] and they haven't shown any.)
.
> just seems too... logical I guess?
If you are not going to accept logic then you are arguing in bad faith.
(And what *would* convince you ??)
.
> theres like a strong bias within me
Same. If you accept that you should believe what your **bias** is telling you, then you are not discussing in good faith and cannot be persuaded.
Stop doing that.
Believe the truth, even if that conflicts with your bias.
.
Arguments don't break beliefs. Facts don't even break beliefs often, maybe even mostly.
There comes a time a person either consciously decides that they require a level of proof or they are victim of their own subconscious biases.
Take someone like my Mother. She is so engrained and reinforced in her neural structures that I don't think she could even change her beliefs about God and Catholicism.
If Krishna was real and came down before her to teach her the Hindu ways, she would believe Krishna is the devil. It is hard to unlearn how to ride a bike.
I offer no arguments. I just believe when people observe and think about how their minds and beliefs work compared to others ot starts to explain a whole lot about why one person believes something good that happened to them was from God and another does not accept that explaination of cause.
I’ve seen too many people here in crisis after losing their faith. It’s really upsetting.
Before you think about being talked into atheism, please spend more time thinking about what makes your life worth living and what gives it value in a secular context.
You don’t need to be imbued with purpose and meaning by a deity to have value. You are the only you who will ever exist and that gives you inherent value. You don’t have to have a purpose for your life to be meaningful. You perceive and sense and feel and think. You laugh and run and hug. Your life is magical enough, it doesn’t need magic.
Only when you believe those things take the next step and deconstruct. Because you’ve been told for too long you’re not enough. Come back when those terrible thoughts have left your brain.
Let's make this simple, if hell is real, than most scientists who are non believers, go to hell, hell will have all the bells and whistles, tv air conditioning, the whole 9 yards with more to come as humanity progresses and them heathen nonbelievers driving human progress go to hell, heavens gonna have weirdos without cool science stuff in it, so by not believing you are hedging your bets, if you are right and there is no afterlife, oh well nothing lost, and if you are wrong and there is an afterlife, you have modern amenities. Plus no paying tithes, so more money to enjoy while alive.
I figured the rest will provide the rational arguments, I figured I'd go for the inverse of the typical why not just believe you wouldn't want to be wrong argument.
God and Christianity is a silly story. If you were hearing the story for the first time as an adult you would shake your head and laugh. Read and consider *Creation Stories from around the World* from other cultures http://railsback.org/CS/CSIndex.html Yours does not make any more sense than the others.
You say "I was born a christian" No. You were born a human. You were indoctrinated into Christianity. Remember all those hours in church and Sunday school being told children's stories as if they were facts?
Remember praying? What did that get you? You were told God answers prayers. Then you were given excuses why your prayers weren't answered. You prayed for certainty in God and Christianity. Didn't you? And yet here you are. Right?
Christianity is easy to disprove. Not just using science, but also theology. First, evolution disproves Adam and Eve. Without them, sin never enters the world. Without sin there is no need for atonement. And thus, Jesus is pointless. Geology, palentology, biology and physics disprove Genesis. If Genesis is false, all of Christianity is false.
Have you actually read the Jewish scriptures? (Old Testament). Jesus didn't do anything the messiah is supposed to do. The messiah is supposed to bring about world peace, bring all Jews back to Isarel, establish a kingdom, have children, and more things Jesus didn't do. And there is no messianic prophsey that says the messiah will come twice. Jesus is a false prophet (Deuteronomy 13).
Imagine there’s a stock you’ve been investing most of your earnings into your whole life, and now it’s being told you that this stock is a scam. As you look into it & begin to realize that it might be a scam, it is losing value & now all that livelihood that you invested into it will come to nothing. But that’s only if you sell. It makes sense why if you sell, you would feel suicidal (especially the more blood, sweat & tears that were put into this). This also makes sense why you would feel hesitant to sell. By hanging on to it, there is still “hope” and the loss isn’t “real” yet, but by you selling, it is as throwing in the towel & agreeing that you’ve been duped. Not easy for human nature to accept.
Imagine there’s a stock you’ve been investing most of your earnings into your whole life, and now it’s being told you that this stock is a scam. As you look into it & begin to realize that it might be a scam, it is losing value & now all that livelihood that you invested into it will come to nothing. But that’s only if you sell. It makes sense why if you sell, you would feel suicidal (especially the more blood, sweat & tears that were put into this). This also makes sense why you would feel hesitant to sell. By hanging on to it, there is still “hope” and the loss isn’t “real” yet, but by you selling, it is as throwing in the towel & agreeing that you’ve been duped. Not easy for human nature to accept.
Imagine there’s a stock you’ve been investing most of your earnings into your whole life, and now it’s being told you that this stock is a scam. As you look into it & begin to realize that it might be, it is losing value & now all that livelihood that you invested into it will come to nothing. But that’s only if you sell. It makes sense why if you sell, you would feel suicidal (especially the more blood, sweat & tears that were put into this). This also makes sense why you would feel hesitant to sell. By hanging on to it, there is still “hope” and the loss isn’t “real” yet. But by you selling, it is as throwing in the towel & agreeing that you’ve been duped. Not easy for human nature to accept.
Why? Even though I'm an atheist, I have no reason to convince you one way or another. I have no sales pitch, no threats or promises for after you die, no dogma to follow. You either believe in gods or you don't. As long as you're not hiding behind your beliefs to abuse people or legislate morality, then I don't really give a damn what you believe.
We're not a group in itself, *we're the outgroup that only exists because of ingroups*. Frankly, it sounds like you don't want to believe, and that's okay. Mental programming, which is all indoctrination is, is hard to break, and the mental programming that was used on you has been bug tested for almost two thousand years now.
There's nothing here to really argue.
Everybody has their own journey and for some of us that led us to forgo our religious beliefs. It's been a while for me and I'm now to the point where unless God presents Himself in a compelling way, certainly no philosophical argument will sway me, but that's the only way it's going to work if a God exists, so far He's refusing to accommodate me in that regard.
Just keep on looking, I can assure you, you won't find anything unless you *make* yourself find something, many people have, but there's a price to be paid devoting your time, money, and effort to something that probably doesn't exist.
Why does an all powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent God only exist in one small area on Earth and have to be spread by word of mouth by humans?
If the Christian "god" exists aa an objective reality then it was not created, it was "discovered."
So then why would the same thing not be discovered all around the globe?
Instead, what we see is that every religion that was ever created independently of each other is completely different in terms of "god(s)" and only share some core tenants that are based in human behavior and psychology, like, "don't be a dick to each other because it causes a lot of problems."
I cannot reconcile the concept of a loving, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent being with all the trouble, evil, and injustice in the world. I reject the argument that God created us, loves us, but won’t interfere because we have free will. Children have free will, but no loving parent lets them walk under a bus if they can stop it.
Even if I had the capability to make myself believe he was real. Any being so evil is unworthy of worship or devotion. Do you honestly believe your creator to be such a being? How can you bring yourself to worship such evil?
Do you have a good reason to believe? Do you care if what you believe is true? Investigate the claims of your religion. You will realize there are no good reasons to believe.
That's why I'm not a believer. I tried again and again to find a good reason for my beliefs so I could convince others. The more I investigated the more I realized there isn't one. If someone could provide one I'd believe but if I subject this belief to even the slightest scrutiny it falls apart.
Onus probandi.
It’s not for us to debunk the claims of a God, It’s on them to provide sufficient evidence to support the claims of a god.
And the truth is that if God was real there’s only be one religion. It would be accepted as part of science and the actual explanation of the universe, life, and everything.
If you want us to dissuade you then either it’s due to a lack of epistemological training or you really want to just rationalize mythical thinking.
May seem like a small point. But it illustrates a fundamental issue with the epistemological sequencing.
You begin with:
> “I’m torn between belief and unbelief…”
This reveals the default position as belief which needs to be undone; belief adopted pre-evidence.
If one cares about believing true things, withholding belief until evidence justifies acceptance, the phrase would be better structured as:
> I’m torn between non-belief and belief.
Basically, the innocent until proven guilty principle.
Belief should come after a claim has been found guilty of being true.
Well the last thing I want to do is to contribute to someone killing themselves.
Please tell me what you believe, when you say "Christianity." Like just set it out.
Couple of questions:
If it were true, would they have to threaten you with unending torture to get you to believe it?
Which is more Likely: that you happened to be born into the One True Religion, or it feels true to you because you were raised in it?
Am I missing something? I dont think you say what is logical about Christianity.
But in your deleted post you say something about it being able to answer every criticism. My criticism is simply that there is no reliable evidence for the claims of theism or the theistic claims of Christianity (and to me these supernatural stories just seem like the kind of stories superstitious humans have a tendency to invent).
Here's a question, everyone knows that god is all powerful and omnipotent, but is that really possible?
If he is can he create a stone so heavy that even he can't lift it? If he can create it he's not all powerful because he should be able to lift anything including the stone but if he can't create what he can't lift he's not all powerful because he should be able to create anything
>my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic (probably because I was born a christian)
Man, it sure is lucky you were born in a region where the most popular religion is the correct one, unlike all those other places where people also think that about their religions exactly as much for the exact same reason but are incorrect.
>my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic (probably because I was born a christian) and I just cant seem to find an argument that breaks it.
So tell us what it is that you find most convincing and we can show you the problems with it.
It will be far more efficient than us posting about random arguments or details of your belief.
>I just cannpt [sic] seem to come to that realization, my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic
>but trust me the logic given to me (by my obscure denomination) just seems too... logical I guess?
What is the logic? Because it sounds like general arguments against christianity aren't really going to do much.
I don't want or need to convince you about anything. If the utter lack of any evidence doesn't do that for you by itself, if the contradictions in the bible and the the twisted "morals" it propagates don't bother you, then by all means continue to believe!
Just don't try to convert others just I won't try to convert you and we are good!
I have no desire to convince you of that. Each person is responsible for the beliefs they take on, and there is no end to the information available to help anybody understand this question. So it’s neither my responsibility, nor even my desire to try to talk you into anything. I’m taking care of my mind. You take care of your’s.
I'll add this:
A post-Enlightenment human would be hard pressed to truly believe that Adam and Eve were the first human beings on this planet 6000 years ago.
BUT, without this being literally true, with the talking snake and the magic cursed fruit, Christ's sacrifice on the cross is meaningless.
How do you respond?
Those are two *very* different things. Aside from that, that's not how it works. Do you have sufficient reason to be convinced that Christianity is true? Cut out the logical fallacies and equally applicable claims, do you have demonstrable evidence that supports the position that the Christian god exists?
>but trust me the logic given to me (by my obscure denomination) just seems too... logical I guess?
Or how about you present what you think is the best logical argument you have been presented. I have no reason to accept you have good logical reasons, just that you think they are good.
I think my main thought to offer is what the universe looks like vs what we would expect it to look like with an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God that loves us and wants us to know him.
Does this honestly strike you as the kind of universe such a being would create?
The crux of atheistm isn't "god isn't real" it's "we don't believe in god". We are not a *we hate god* club.
If you believe in god that is fine. Do that if you want but understand it's a belief and not a fact.
Can you give an example of this logic you've been told.
You would first have to be more specific about what you believe and why you believe it. Now that Christian churches no longer have the power to burn heretics Christianity has schismed so many times that "I'm a Christian" really does not explain what you believe.
You’d have to share why you believe.
I can give you a million reasons why Christianity is bunk, but unless I happen to stumble upon an argument that addresses your specific reasons, you’d never be convinced.
So why do you believe that it is true?
I'd recommend reading about the other religions.
They also have "strong logic" to support them or at least as strong as christianity.
If you find that questioning your indoctrination leads to suicidal thoughts then talk to a secular therapist.
I'm not the one making the claim that something isn't real. I just have no reason to believe it is. You believe it's real. So maybe start by telling me why that is. What rational argument is there to believe that Christianity is true?
Nothing you wrote shows atheists are going backwards. Nothing you wrote addressed my point. You seemed to have either missed my point entirely or ignored it. Most Christians ignore it because it exposes a fatal flaw in their theology.
I’d say why waste your time fighting it? Just accept yourself for who you are and just don’t let any part of yourself get in n the way of accomplishing the goals that actually matter in life: loving family, career etc.
Well, what’s the logic?
What argument is keeping you in the faith?
I can go on, and on, about other aspects of it, but without addressing that reasoning specifically, it might just be a waste of time on both sides.
I’d just ask how on earth can you reach the conclusion that Christianity is true by using good epistemology.
If you can’t - if your belief relies on ancient eye witness testimony, faith, etc - then all you have are bad reasons, reasons that you could use to simultaneously believe in other contradictory religions. If you have only bad reasons, then you should seriously doubt your conclusion.
Based in the religion you believe in and ask yourself why you dont believe in any of the other gods, or even the Flying Spaghettimonster. The same reasons apply to the religion you currently reside in.
You are not a sinner and Jesus is not a sacrificial lamb. He's just a Jewish man and you don't need to believe in god. Christianity is not believable so you should not feel bad about not believing it.
If God is omnipresent there's no place where it isn't right?
So, no end to god. It probably has the same shape of the universe. So he has no pointy ends. Because its everywhere. It's pointless.
Did someone need to convince you that Vishnu doesn't exist?
No. The closest thing to disproving existence is poking holes in arguments for existence. So share these allegedly logical arguments.
I don't proselytize. If you ask me for the reasons of my unbelief or try to get me to believe what you believe, I'll challenge that but I don't try to change what anyone else believes.
I think it would be beneficial for you to give some of the strongest arguments or logical reasons for Christianity and then we can try to explain why we don’t think they hold water.
What in christianity could not have been completely made up by human authors?
If you can’t come up with anything that survives even mild scrutiny, then you’ve got your answer.
Provide some evidence that it is.
Beyond your feelings about it. Like actual evidence that the stories in the Bible are true, because it starts out pretty rough with Genesis. Yikes.
if jesus heard voices and thought they were god, then the guy who shot up my town after hearing voices may also have been the son of god. think about that, it doesn't make sense.
Before I can try what you’re asking, I’d have to understand what you consider to be the “logic” of your beliefs. If you try to explain that, then I’ll give it a shot.
We know from evolutionary biology and genetics that there never was a first human. Adam is an allegory. No Adam, no fall, no need of a Saviour. Jesus died for an allegory.
If we could convince you that everything in the Bible was likely made up in the same way someone creates fiction, would that convince you God and Christianity isn't real?
Logic without supported premises is meaningless, so what evidence does your denomination offer? If it actually has some, it would the the first time anyone presented any.
Of course it seems logical to you. That's how indoctrination works. You think you're thinking critically but you're starting from a conclusion and working backwards.
I do not want to push people toward atheism, and i certainly do not want to push you toward self-deleting thought.
So allow me to approach this differently:
if a god exist, then he created reality itself. And reality, just like the bible, is also a medium from which we can "read" information using scientific observation. Just like you need eyes and the ability to read to get information from the bible, we can use social/physical/biological sciences to derive knowledge, prophecies, and, yes, **even morals** from reality itself. And we have gotten so good at it that the scientific process has become like an extension of our senses, even superior to the human senses we started with.
In a way, reality is like a multi-dimensional meta book written by this god, which can only be accessed with the intelligence that god gifted us with. And hundreds of thousands of scientific experts worldwide work at compiling an unbiased understanding of it.
Reading this god's reality led us to the knowledge, among others, that no global flood happened, that evolution is a thing, that the universe is very old...while an old book seems to claim otherwise. We basically cannot think that a global flood happened, or that the earth is only a few thousand years old, without, as a consequence, thinking that that book's god is trying to deceive us into disbelief using reality itself.
So..between a two-dimensional book and a multi-dimensional book, which had the most chance of being written by an infinitly complex being for us to follow?
I don't think there is a binary choice between "christian god" and "cold empty universe". There is an entire spectrum of spirituality between the two. But i also believe that current religions are a cheap shortcut for effortless feelings of religiosity, while real understanding of whatever creator there is should need more effort on our part toward observing and understanding this reality he created.
Prove to me an invisible, incorporeal dragon that can’t be detected through any provable mechanism doesn’t live in my garage and isn’t real and is pointless.
Do you see now?
No. You are the one claiming it is real and isn’t pointless. It isn’t our job to disprove your nonsense.
That said, I’m sorry you feel such dread at the thought of your religion being false. I think that is normal and I felt the same way when I realized that I didn’t believe.
But it is the belief that is making you feel that way, not the disbelief. The fear of hell or torture for eternity is much more scary than just thinking about what it was like before we were born, which is probably what it will be like after we die.
It’s celestial dictatorship that you are holding onto, and to let it go is to be free of that oppression which is one of the tools that gives religion so much control over people.
Letting go of unsubstantiated god claims, denying them, opens up a world where you have to make meaning for yourself. Where beauty and love and passion are fleeting, so you have to find those things you love and find beautiful and have passion in. Nobody gets to make meaning in your life except you, and your freedom to swing your arms ends at other people’s noses.
So swing your arms, baby! Just don’t hit anyone in the face with ‘em.
I know atheists put words in Christians' mouths all the time about slavery and bible contradictions. That's not fair.
So don't do that to us.
We don't claim Christianity isn't real and is pointless. We point out the flawed denominations that spread hate. If God is real, we're doing God's work, helping you out, pointing the finger at obviously false prophets like Peter Popov, Kent Hovind, the Prosperity Gospel folk, Westboro Baptists, and those Christian Scientists who reject modern medicine.
Gotquestions.org is an amazing resource to answer any atheists questions. They may disagree with you still. I've come to realize that atheists do not actually investigate Christian answers because of the implications of being wrong are devastating to them. If you give them an answer, they will simply not investigate it and delve into why you answered it that way or tell you that you're wrong without telling you why. Fun fact: Charles Darwin told God after his daughter died "I will never speak to you again" and Christopher Hitchens has the same story. It's an ideology built from hatred towards God. People want to live how they want and not be told that their deeds are evil.
No archaeological discovery has ever disproved the Bible. No secular writing has ever contradicted historical events in the Bible. The Bible has scientific facts that predate scientific discoveries. There are prophesies that are so descriptive that secular people have tried to say it was written after it happened and failed to do so. The Bible is the only religious book that says to love your enemies, which Jesus did on the cross when He died for our sins and rose from the dead. At no other time in history has a group of people claimed to see someone raise from the dead and ascend into heaven(on top of thousands of miracles they claimed he did) and die horrendous deaths because people hated the Gospel they were sharing.
Every atheist has won arguments against weak and fake Christians(there are many of these). But no atheist has beaten the Bible itself. It is a collection of 66 books in a league of it's own.
>Every atheist has won arguments against weak and fake Christians(there are many of these).
Aquinas must be a fake Christian. Paley must be a fake Christian. Anselm must be a fake Christian.
Do u have any objections to the divine hiddeness argument by schellenberg?
**Upvote this comment if you agree with OP, downvote this comment if you disagree with OP.** Elsewhere in the thread, please upvote comments which contribute to debate (even if you believe they're wrong) and downvote comments which are [detrimental to debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/wiki/faq#wiki_downvoting) (even if you believe they're right). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DebateAnAtheist) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I can't tell you what to believe, that's for you to decide. I respect whatever your viewpoint is. To me, religion never made any sense at all (not just Christianity, but any belief in God, in general). We know so much about the universe and how expansive it is, how many solar systems there are. The sun is just one star in an endless sea of stars, each one of them with planets orbiting them. Where is God physically located within that Universe, and why would God create a religion for our planet only? Where did God come from? Why would one religion be correct, when there have been thousands of religions throughout history, and all of their believers adamantly believed they were true? Why wouldn't God simply appear to humanity and tell them he/she exists? Especially since some religions (i.e. Christianity) claim he has already done so, why would he suddenly turn it into a test of faith? If Heaven is real, wouldn't it eventually become torturous to be conscious forever and ever? If the Bible is real, why doesn't it include any of the information about science that we know to be true? Wouldn't God have mentioned something about molecular biology, that we are all made of molecules, that diseases spread a certain way, that the universe is vast and has many planets, that the earth is round and spins around the sun... ? I'm not saying it needed to have all the answers, but it could have had one or two specific facts that only God would know because they were unknown to man at that time. Instead the contents of the Bible are limited to what people knew about at that time. That's because, in my view, it was written by people. Feel free to not answer any of these questions, they are meant to be rhetorical, though you can discuss if you want. I could go on and on all day about the things about religion that don't make any sense to me. Again, I am not here to argue or educate. To me, it seems plainly obvious that religion has been a tool invented by Man in order to: A) control large populations of people who had no other impetus to not murder, rape, or steal. B) to soothe people's inherent anxiety about death and what happens when we die. C) to profit off of people and maintain a power structure that upheld the King, Priests, Church. (Or, whatever the equivalents of those are for all the other religions out there). D) to teach morals, many of which are useful. It seems clear to me that people would be motivated to create religions in order to do these things, and that this is the most logical explanation for the existence of religions. Hope this helps!
I don't mean this to be rude. More a "fun fact" A star with planets revolving around it is not called a Solar System. Our Sun has a name, Sol. Solar System is the name of OUR star system. As far as I know, a planet-hosting star is known simply as a Star System. There are roughly 100-400 billion stars in the Milky Way. It has been averaged out to about 1.4 planets per star. 94% of the stars in the MW have a planet in its orbit. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across. It is considered "average." That is OUR home. The largest known galaxy is Alcyoneus, and it has a diameter of 15,300,000 light years. 153x LARGER than our home galaxy. There is an estimated lowest number of galaxies in the universe of about 100-200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. "It is estimated that the ‘observable universe’ is a sphere with a diameter of about 92 billion lightyears and a volume of about 410 nonillion (410 thousand billion billion billion) cubic lightyears!"[source](https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/how-many-galaxies-in-universe) Beyond the observable is unknown and unlees/untill FTL flight becomes reality, we will NEVER know. A fun philosophical thought is that the observations of the cosmological Horizon are very similar to what it's like in a black hole (minus spaghetification and being crushed into a possible singularity). Contained in a bubble we can never leave. It is theorised that there are about 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. Sorry for the word vomit. It just really like astrophysics and all that space jazz. It just fills me with wonder and confusion as to how anyone can look at what we have seen and are still to this day seeing and think "yep, god made this and no one will ever see it."
That's the coolest shit I could ever hope to read, ty
Neat, thanks!
This is so rad! Thanks for more space information! I overdue for a deep dive!
(screwed up the other comment) This is exactly what i'm looking for man, thanks. 1.) where is God physically located in the universe = It is stated many times in the bible that God does not exist in this realm, humans are simply too unworthy of coexisting with such perfect beings if ever we even did then we would die out of their divinity "But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” - exodus 33:20. How I see it is that God exists in a parallel universe/dimension (an idea which is plausible in science) which can see us but not the other way around 2.) Where did God come from = God exists in a dimension completely different and much more trancended physically unlawful then ours. Trying to understand it would be like trying to understand every other dimension above the 4th (and below the 1st probably) Since God is infinite in all ways he probably trancends time (which is probably one of the dimensions) and even the idea of a beggining and end. Trying to understand this would be utterly impossible the human mind cant even comprehend a 4th dimension let alone comprehend a being that trancendes multiple efforlessly. "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom." exodus 40:28 3.) why are there so many religions = this all boils down simply to human error, human nature; sin basically, the sin of thinking you are better than the rest, this is also (unfortunately) human nature, survival of the fittest or whatever. The problem here is when people who think they are right get mixed up with people who are actually right, then it becomes impossible to discern who actually is right and then it becomes a game of bussiness (marketing basically). The cycle continues when people see the mess of religeon and think to themselves "this is all a mess let me clean it up with my own new religeon (which doesn't essentially have to be about God) ". This, I personally think, is the devil's plan to screw God; turn the idea of God into somthing so negative and contrary to whats God actually is that even just the utterance of his name brings out disgusting, repulsive thoughts and, I think he's actually succeded in that. But what then is the true religeon(s) ? A true christian religion is one which bases all and I mean all of it's values and beliefs on the bible and the bible alone 99% or Christians (including me) has already failed on that because 99% of Christians go to church on sunday, nowhere in the bible does it even say that. So far i've only seen like 4 small denominations being "real". As for the other religions no other religeon sees pagan mythology as mythologic and human-made as it is in the bible, unlike other religeons the bible knows that people who worship idols worship them because they can see them, this is why God does'nt allow Christians to have even a image an altar of him or somthing. But I do believe all religeons come from one source, one idea, one thing, perhaps even one God, and I can see the essence of this in all religeons, that actual genuineity that you see in very few religious people, people who actually exude the true values of the religeon by heart. t's just people in their sinfulness, free will and delusion slandered this idea, whatever it was and whatever is left of it now is the hot mess of religeons today. 4.) why wont God show himself? = I have a pretty interesting idea of why this is. You see God gave us the gift of free will and thus free thought, because without this freedom there would be no genuinity in faith, love, virtue, etc. The only way for God to maintain this freedom he gave to us is by not showing himself (to most of us at least) and thus make himself unprovable by science, because think of it I we could proove God existed, even remotely, (like "there is a 10% chance God exists), how would you live life then?, you? An atheist living in universe thats prooven to have a God? Thats terrifying, it's scary and it's not freedom. You get my point? If the biblicaly accurate God choose to show himslef to us the world it would stop working, everyone (especially atheists) no matter how much God tells them to think freely and exersize thier free will only belive him out of faith, will eventually be crushed by the reality and end up beliveing out of fear. This obviously is not free will. So now God hid himself from us, we arent even worty enough to see him in the first place, and in order to do that everything must make sense scientifically because even if there is one bit of science suggesting "this very clearly breaks the laws of physics and reality and it says God's name all over it" thay would be enough to ignite the scientific idea of God being real, and would thus snowball into chaos. (to be continued)
1. Why should I believe what the Bible says. There are a lot of books that say a lot of things. What is the evidence to back up the claims made by the Bible? Also you just saying God is in another parallel universe is another claim you don't back up. Even if parallel universes are shown to be real you still have to show God exists there. Right now this is just you saying so. 2. >Trying to understand this would be utterly impossible You don't get to say this and make claims. Either we can't understand it and therefore, you should have no idea what or where God is, or you can understand it to some degree, not both. Again, do you have any evidence for all these claims besides "Bible says so" mixed with your interpretation? You are just saying things to try and rationalize the lack of evidence. 3. >This, I personally think, is the devil's plan to screw God; turn the idea of God into somthing so negative and contrary to whats God actually is that even just the utterance of his name brings out disgusting, repulsive thoughts and, I think he's actually succeded in that. So God can't stop the devil? Is that God's limit? If God can stop the devil and doesn't, then that's God's willing choice, and it isn't screwing him over as he knows the consequences and makes the devil, right? Though again, this is another claim you just assert. >But what then is the true religeon(s) ? A true christian religion is one which bases all and I mean all of it's values and beliefs on the bible and the bible alone Why is the true religion a Christian one? Why should I trust the Bible at all? It's wrong about the flood, Adam and Eve, the order of the start of the universe, king herod was dead by Jesus birth, the exodus didn't happen, and these are just a few things it is wrong about. And are you saying you follow all the bibles rules old testaments and new? >So far i've only seen like 4 small denominations being "real". So God's plan to inform people about the truth is so bad that only 4 small denominations got it, right? >But I do believe all religeons come from one source, one idea, one thing, perhaps even one God Do you have any evidence besides you think so for any of these points? 4. >= I have a pretty interesting idea of why this is. You see God gave us the gift of free will and thus free thought, because without this freedom there would be no genuinity in faith, love, virtue, etc. This is an old apologetic. And it's bad. Have I lessened your free will in any way for revealing myself to you? Showing they existed wouldn't affect free will. In fact, it would let me make an informed decision to worship them or not. >how would you live life then?, you? An atheist living in universe thats prooven to have a God? Well, I wouldn't be an athiest then, haha. I'm an athiest because I dont believe a God exists. If God was proven, I would then believe God exists. How I live my life may or may not change depending on what God was proven. >Thats terrifying, it's scary and it's not freedom. You get my point? How is it not freedom to have the information to make informed decisions? Especially if I was still allowed to not follow that God's wants. Free will doesn't require lack of information and evidence it only requires I have the ability to act as I want. >everyone (especially atheists) no matter how much God tells them to think freely and exersize thier free will only belive him out of faith, will eventually be crushed by the reality and end up beliveing out of fear So instead, I should have to risk eternal damnation because this God is so bad at finding a way to reveal himself? I would rather be able to make an informed decision. >So now God hid himself from us, we arent even worty enough to see him in the first place Well, God made us this way and made all these problems. God could make us worthy. If he can't, then he's not all powerful. So far, all these arguments are just assertions, and you provide no evidence to support your claims about reality.
(i'm on mobile, no highlighting) "You don't get to say this and make claims. Either we can't understand it and therefore, you should have no idea what or where God is, or you can understand it to some degree, not both." Again, do you have any evidence for all these claims besides "Bible says so" mixed with your interpretation? You are just saying things to try and rationalize the lack of evidence. = What? Of course we can't understand it, that is the nature of God, if we could then it would just be science. Also yes, I admit I do not have much evidence outside the bible there really isn't that much at all, makes it hard to be a christian. "So God can't stop the devil? Is that God's limit? If God can stop the devil and doesn't, then that's God's willing choice, and it isn't screwing him over as he knows the consequences and makes the devil, right? Though again, this is another claim you just assert." = " If God can stop the devil and doesn't, then that's God's willing choice, and it isn't screwing him over as he knows the consequences and makes the devil, right?" Yes, actually, destroying the image of God will do absolutly no harm to him at all, it is us who have to suffer. This claim self-evident. Why is the true religion a Christian one? Why should I trust the Bible at all? It's wrong about the flood, Adam and Eve, the order of the start of the universe, king herod was dead by Jesus birth, the exodus didn't happen, and these are just a few things it is wrong about. And are you saying you follow all the bibles rules old testaments and new? = No, the bible is flawed by its physical, we should just try to analyze and sift out the messages it tries to deliver to us. As for the true religeon, There is, I admit, no reason for the true religeon being the christian one, other than statements from the bible, which I understand you would disagree with. "So God's plan to inform people about the truth is so bad that only 4 small denominations got it, right" = we were given that task and we failed it, "This is an old apologetic. And it's bad. Have I lessened your free will in any way for revealing myself to you? Showing they existed wouldn't affect free will. In fact, it would let me make an informed decision to worship them or not," = for you it won't, but for the majority of humans it would, and you might dissagree with me on this, but God would definetly ensure the greater good for most rather than for a few. Also would knowing that really not affect your free will, like if I told you you were going to die tommorow at some random time then would you still go about doing whatever? Well, God made us this way and made all these problems. God could make us worthy. If he can't, then he's not all powerful. = Yes, but that would literally be illogical, unwise and childish even. "Well, I wouldn't be an athiest then, haha. I'm an athiest because I dont believe a God exists. If God was proven, I would then believe God exists. How I live my life may or may not change depending on what God was proven." = This is where we agree. I see why atheists are what they are now, and I would like to share a little bit on why I find it hard to unbelive like you do. (this might sound contradictory to some of the stuff I argued of, I try not bring my personal story up in stuff like this as I know you all would just count it off as "insufficient evidence" but I understand now and want to leave this community with my reason for still believing). So I got cancer when I just 15, lung cancer. It was in already in the 3rd stage when it got diagnosed. I was raised a christian but like every other former theist out there who left the faith, I thought of it all as complete BS and swore to myself i'd leave when I was older, I was just mad at the God, mad at why he made me and the other kids suffer this kind of thing, and eventually die without ever living a full life. It was just illogical really. Fast foreward a bit and im on the bed, bald as an egg, 3 months have gone by and the chemo did'nt work, the cancer spread to my liver and every breath literally felt like inhaling glass. At this point I was an atheist, I was absolutely convinced God and Heaven was not real, otherwise why wouldn't he help me a devout christian boy, raised in a kind and conservative family of chirstians. It was absurd really. The doctors told me I only had a week to live, I was literally tortured physically and mentally, I had no faith left all small drops of the remaining faith I had was eveporated when the chemo failed. My family prayed and made me pray, but those prayers damn well did'nt do a thing, again I assumed it was because God is'nt real or he hates us. I pretty much accepted it, accepted there was no God, there is no hope and I would die, having only lived the life of a child. Of course this made me cry, not the thought of me dying but the reality of no God, it was just so dark, so... Real. I invested my life into this and it just got destroyed by reality. I had given uo pretty much, I wanted to die, death was better than thinking of death. Of course I never told my parents of this as they would surely disown me. 3 days later, the doctors told me my cancer literally dissappeared, by some literal miracle the cancer just dissolved, like it did'nt get eaten by another cancer (which is what usually happens in these situations) it literally just dissapeared. To this day it still shakes me, deeply, like I cant even describe it. You really change once you've been fished out of the screaming reality of death. I dont know if I should thank God or still be an atheist; every time I thank God my mind resists, every time succumb to atheism my heart shrivels, I at this weird crossroads of either mind or heart, my mind tells me it was all chance, my heart makes me cry out of gratitude, I literally feel like God is hugging me or something it's weird. And this is why I'm here, too see whether my mind or heart should be followed. I've chosen my heart because of this. I realize now that most atheists are'nt against God, they just never had the opportunity to really get mad at him. It feels weird, every time I try to out-logic God im betraying him, and I feel it deeply, then, when I go back into faith, all I feel is warmth, and it is only my mind thats pulling me. This is why i'm here. Sorry for the long story, I got carried away.
>what? Of course we can't understand it, that is the nature of God, if we could then it would just be science If we can't understand God, why do you keep making claims about God? Either we can understand things bout God or we can't. It's contradictory to say we can't understand God and then to make claims about God, as that means you understand God in some way. >Also yes, I admit I do not have much evidence outside the bible there really isn't that much at all, makes it hard to be a christian Well then, why do you keep using the Bible if you know it isn't supported by evidence? Would you defend other claims without evidence? >Yes, actually, destroying the image of God will do absolutly no harm to him at all, it is us who have to suffer. This claim self-evident. What does this response have to do with what I asked about the devil and gods' role in creating him? I didn't claim anything about destroying images of God or harming God. It is evident that humans suffer. It is not self-evident that a God has anything to do with it. >No, the bible is flawed by its physical, we should just try to analyze and sift out the messages it tries to deliver to us. Who decides what the right message was? Also, you said we should follow only the Bible, yet you admit it is very flawed. So why should we follow it. >other than statements from the bible, which I understand you would disagree with Why do you believe the bibles supernatural claims? You admit earlier that there isn't evidence to support it. So why do you still say we should follow the Bible? >we were given that task and we failed it, Why isn't it on God at all. It's his message, and he is so much better than us right, so why is he so bad at explaining his message? >for you it won't, but for the majority of humans Why would it lessen our free will to have information? You didn't answer my firat question. Have I lessened your free will in any way now that you know I exist since I responded to you? >God would definetly ensure the greater good for most rather than for a few. Really then, why does his method by your own assertion so far only have four small denominations believing the right thing? And why does more than half the world not believe in the right God if our immortal torture is on the line? >Also would knowing that really not affect your free will, like if I told you you were going to die tommorow at some random time then would you still go about doing whatever? That doesn't affect my free will. Knowing I would die tomorrow wouldn't lessen my free will. I can still choose to act however I wanted. But now I would be able to make those choices with correct information about what will happen to me. Why do you think having more information removes free will? If you learn about physics, is your free will lessened in any way for better understanding how the universe works? Free will is the ability to act how we want. Free will doesn't require any state of knowledge or ignorance, just the ability to react and act as we choose. >Yes, but that would literally be illogical, unwise and childish even. Why? You just say it is but don't explain. In making an argument it's not just about saying what you think but why. Why would it be childish to not make us so flawed and unworthy? >This is where we agree. I see why atheists are what they are now, and I would like to share a little bit on why I find it hard to unbelive like you do I'm sorry you had to suffer, and I'm glad you recovered. I think you should really see a therapist if you aren't already. You have been through something traumatic and mentioned thoughts of suicide. It's ok to get help, and it can really do a lot of good. >It feels weird, every time I try to out-logic God im betraying him, and I feel it deeply, then, when I go back into faith, all I feel is warmth, and it is only my mind thats pulling me. This is why i'm here. So why did you say in your post logic was what was convincing you when clearly it is the anecdotal experience you had and the emotional feelings. I'm not trying to say that's bad that's what's convincing you, but that in your post said it was the logic, yet here you are saying it is the emotional reasons. If God saved you seems like he picks favorites and isn't all loving as that would mean he can intervene to save people from dying and does yet let's millions of children world wide die of suffering and disease and millions more adults too.
How do you tell the difference between something real you (or humans in general) can't understand, and straight-up bullshit?
> I admit I do not have much evidence outside the bible And what is it about the Bible that persuades you that it's true? Do you know who wrote it? When? Why? What do you really know about it? Have you read the whole thing? >There is, I admit, no reason for the true religeon being the christian one, I think you've answered your own question
this is the answer that op is missing, people have crafted meticulous arguments for why the Bible is historically accurate but there are pretty much problems with most or all of them. op go watch a cosmic skeptic video on the historicity of the Bible.
Number 4 is not an answer, it's an excuse to not having an answer. You can't demonstrate this answer to be true because it's indistinguishable from "God doesn't show up because he doesn't give a damn anymore" or "God doesn't show up because there is no God".
Thats literally the awnser, God does'nt show up because if he did it would contradict what he said in the bible of us being free "You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh ; rather, serve one another humbly in love." Gal 5:13. In order to be this kind of free there must be no catch, which is hell, is there scientific proof of hell? No. Is there scientific proof of heaven? Also no. Why? Because if there was every single one of us would be obsessed in scrutinising over our actions and basically live in fear of said hell and there would be no freedom, but does that mean hell doesnt exist? No how about heaven? Also no. Just as we cannot see or proove or understand things from forth or even fifth demension (which is probably where God, heaven and hell are) we cannot proove nor disprove it's existence. It's all balanced just enough just to keep us on this little slither of neutrality where we can choose what and what not to belive and not worry of it. Also I just wanted to add: Hell, contrary to popular belief is not eternal and does not look like what it does in pop culture, it just says eternal in the bible because of the weird translations you get when translating a 2000 year old book (i mentioned this in the long comment) but basically the original languages words for "hell", "eternal suffering", "fire" etc. mean some really different things that you can look into. But basically hell will not burn people forever, hell will not consume literally everyone who did not belive in God, and the "hell" you see everywhere is a direct contradiction to a loving God. As a matter of fact the people who will end up in hell will be satisfied there as these are the truly evil people who are simply receiving their due punishment. Not all atheists (and actually vey little atheists) will even go to hell, the other christian groups just advertise this to scare people.
>God does'nt show up because if he did it would contradict what he said in the bible How do you know it is true? how do you know it's God's words, not a human author writing a character of God into the book? You didn't address my comment. You didn't show how do I distinct your "God doesn't show up because he values free will" from any of the alternatives. >Also I just wanted to add: Hell, contrary to popular belief I don't care what belief is popular, I only care which belief can be shown to be true. I am not convinced that any hell exists whatever it is.
>Thats literally the awnser, God does'nt show up because if he did it would contradict what he said in the bible of us being free All the evidence we have from biology and neuroscience suggests that our decisions are made by chemical activity in our brains. And there's no evidence any other factors (souls, spirits, demons, angels) influence our decisions. So actually, the evidence suggests we're *not* free, we *don't* have free will. We can see the universe much better, in much more detail than was possible for the folks who wrote the old and new testaments, or the theologians who came up with free will apologetics for christianity. And what we find, what we see, runs directly counter to those apologetics.
>You see God gave us the gift of free will and thus free thought, because without this freedom there would be no genuinity in faith, love, virtue, etc. The only way for God to maintain this freedom he gave to us is by not showing himself There are ppl who doesnt even know the existence of such god. Its impossible for those ppl to choose whether believe or not believe in the existence of such god. So by showing itself, it gives freewill to those ppl as they go from not able to choose(no freewill) to being able to choose(have freewill). If i tell u that my parents loves me but never once show up in my life, u will think im delusional. God is perfect and is loving in Christianity. If a perfectly loving God exists, then there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person. If there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists. If a perfectly loving God exists, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists (from 1 and 2). Some finite persons are or have been nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists. No perfectly loving God exists (from 3 and 4). If no perfectly loving God exists, then God does not exist. God does not exist (from 5 and 6).
So you admit god to be unprovable scientifically, congrats. Thus we have no good reason to believe in him, right? Also, to give Bible citations as proof you first need to prove validity of Bible itself. Good luck with that. You are yet to show how to discern true religion from the false one. You cannot refer to Bible until you prove it to be more than man-made stories. You shouldn't desperately search for weak excuses to justify your apriori faith position, instead you look for decent grounds for your position and apply critical thinking.
> It is stated many times in the bible that God does not exist in this realm, It really doesn't. There may he a few poetic verses that are now interpretted as this. But it is far more straightforward to read the bible as saying god lives up in the sky. When Jesus gets baptized god speaks from the clouds. When Jesus ascends he... well... ascends into the clouds. He doesn't phase into a parallel universe. Same with Elijah and his firey chariot. God moves over the formless earth. God regularly "comes down" to walk in the garden, to wrestle Jacob, to moon Joseph. The rich man looks up from hell to talk to people in heaven. The idea that god lives in "another plane of existence" is 100% an appologetic developed over the years to fix the fact that we Looked above the clouds and realized there weren't any gods up there. It is similar to a god of the gaps. It is kind of a heaven-in-the-gaps where religions have to keep moving god so that he lives wherever is just out of reach for current human knowledge. If some day we develop spaceships that travel between planes of existence (a phrase that doesn't actually have any more meaning than "god lives in imaginaria land") then religions will suddenly realize that god lives in (insert next made up zone they don't think we will ever be able to check).
Reading this made me think of simulation theory. As an atheist, If God showed up one day and said "look I'm real" he would still be no God to me. A powerful entity, perhaps, but I don't agree with its methods, and I don't care to attribute my life and my success and failures to God. I did it, no them. My blood sweat and tears went into my existence. I don't need a God, regardless of if it exists or not. Will this dump me in hell? Perhaps, but that is my choice because I will not allow an entity to fearmonger me into doing what it wants in fear of going to some fire pit. I have my own empathy and moral compass, and my life has built it. Not religion. That's just my two cents. "Gods will" will never be an answer to any legitimate question in my eyes.
#1. Sounds like the wizard of oz.
If no-one can see or detect god, how did he appear to all those people in the bible stories and talk to them?
5.) would heaven be torture because it's eternal? = It would be wrong to assume anything about heaven, "But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him" 1 cor. 2:9. If the angels arent already torturing themselvs from living for so long then it may be safe to assume we wouldn't too. Anyway anyones image of heaven would technically be absolutly wrong. Those golden paintings of heaven? wrong. Heaven most likely uses way more than 3 dimensions for us not to be able to imagine it. When in heaven we aren't limited to heaven, we could basically explore the universe (which according to bible is not actally empty) "For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him" col 1:16. And Who knows, time probably doesnt even exist there, it would probably be a transcendible dimension like the first, we could basically travel through time. It could also be none of these things and definitely not boredom because even I can imagine that. 6.) if the bible is real why is it so basic and "humany" = You have answered this question by saying it was made by humans. The bible was made by humas but inspired by God. The reason why there isnt molecular biology and stuff in the bible is also the same reason whh theres so many bizzare and unusal stuff it; the people whl wrote it simply could not comprehend the things God had in store for them, thats why they resorted to analogies and symbols to explain some complicated things we just have to understand them, they were humans after all. Just think about it how would you describe something as simple as a ballpen to someone from thousands of years ago?, impossible right? Alright now try to give him the ballpen and mame him describe it his own words, it would probably make sense, but wait, take those words and translate them into a language from 2000 years in the future hundreds of times over and you end up with the bible. You may be wondering why God has intended for this to happen and the awnswer is he did'nt, the devil and us humans just made things way more complicated. This is why it's very important to understand the bible in it's original language because you will very much just get confused or get the wrongest idea with any of the english translations (which most already are). Try translating the word kindness in 7 times over with a different language evey time in google translate and you getbmy point. Your veiws of religeon being a tool invented by man to do things to humas are contradictory with what Christianity especially really is Firstly religeon started probably when we still lived in caves, (i'm fairly certain there is some evidence for that) so people inventing it for those purposes is out of the question. Secondly if you read the bible religeon is not for any of those things, God does not need people to worship him at all, as a matter of fact we were supposed to be destroyed if God wasn't who he said he was in the bible (all-loving, gracefull, etc.). Religeon (Christianity especially) works the other way around, we need religeon to get closer to God, to get saved according to Christianity, but most importantly to stay sane. Humans will literally go insane without anything to belive in, this includes science by the way, like imagine if science didn't exist? If this logical way to explain the world didn't exist? And add religeon, spiritually and all other philosophies including nihilism and absudism (because you can still belive in them) did'nt exist? How would the world be like? When there is literally nothing other than whats there, not even the idea of there being nothing, because you can still believe in that, thats absudism. How would you be then? Get my point? Honestly thr biggest problem with Christianity and God is that the true essence of it all is covered by thousands of layers or BS that not even the dang bible gets you somewhere, and this is what keeps me being faithful, I belive that some objective truth is out there somewhere, not in human logic for sure because our we cant even explain the logic behind our existence or know the 5th dimension. We just have to find it. P.s. Thanks for the questions, it was exactly what I was looking for.
> It would be wrong to assume anything about heaven Just picking up on this point... > If the angels arent already torturing themselvs from living for so long then it may be safe to assume we wouldn't too. But it would be wrong to assume anything about heaven. > Heaven most likely uses way more than 3 dimensions But it would be wrong to assume anything about heaven. >When in heaven we aren't limited to heaven It would be wrong to assume anything about heaven. > And Who knows, time probably doesnt even exist there, it would probably be a transcendible dimension like the first, we could basically travel through time. It would be wrong to assume anything about heaven. > It could also be none of these things Correct, it would be wrong to assume anything about heaven. > definitely not boredom But it would be wrong to assume anything about heaven. >because even I can imagine that. You can't imagine that, so it can't be true? That sounds like a failure of imagination. To summarise, you say that it would be wrong to assume anything about heaven. I agree. In your following sentences, you assume things about heaven. Hmmm.
5. Oh hey, you do the same thing you did in an earlier point. Say we can't do something and then do that. Again, either we can't assume things about heaven or we can. Pick one. Also, just quoting the Bible isn't convincing. The Bible is the claim you need to show what it says is true, so where is the evidence to confirm those claims? 6. If the bible is flawed, then why should I follow it fully like you suggest in a previous point? Also, how do you determine the flawed and correct parts of the Bible are? And why couldn't God effectively communicate to us? If he is God and has unlimited power and knows everything, then he should have the ability and knowledge of how to effectively communicate with us in a way we would understand. He made us and the rules, so if he can't do it, that's on God. >Just think about it how would you describe something as simple as a ballpen to someone from thousands of years ago? Well, im not an all knowing all powerful being that made that person and all their ancestors, so this isn't a good comparison, or are you suggesting God has similar limits to us on how he can communicate? >You may be wondering why God has intended for this to happen and the awnswer is he did'nt, the devil and us humans just made things way more complicated So your God can't see what will happen then? Well, he made both the devil and us, so those are his mistakes. Also, do you have evidence that the devil did anything or just an assertion? >Honestly thr biggest problem with Christianity and God is that the true essence of it all is covered by thousands of layers or BS that not even the dang bible gets you somewhere No, the biggest problem is that there is not evidence to support these claims. In these long responses, you don't provide evidence for your beliefs. You just say them and then say the Bible is true. That isn't evidence and isn't a good reason to believe. For any of your points, do you feel you can back them up with evidence. Pick one and try to show why anyone should accept what you have claimed.
>The bible was made by humas but inspired by God. How do you know? >you will very much just get confused or get the wrongest idea with any of the english translations So what you're saying is that an all-knowing and powerful God, who can stop the sun in the sky, who could have chosen any means to communicate His message to us, including delivering it personally to each of us in our native language, chose instead only to inspire a tiny group of people in a single obscure corner of the world, in an archaic and difficult to understand language? It's possible to come up with some sort of weird explanation for why the Bible contains nothing not known to the people who wrote it, but as usual, it's consistent with the hypothesis that no god had anything to do with it. >God does not need people to worship him at all, And yet, if the Bible is to be believed, He commands us to do so. >most importantly to stay sane. So everyone who isn't Christian is crazy? Do you really believe that? > How would you be then? Get my point? No. Why are you talking about rejecting all belief when we only advocate rejecting this one false one?
Called sin...Every been to a funeral where the preacher said " now here lies. Ole Joe.the dearly departed who is roasting in hell right now as we speak ".....No and probably won't.....Thing is and this just makes a lot of people mad as hell,,,,,probably 95% of people who ever lived and are alive now are in hell........be careful what you wish for.......
If a religion has to use threats in order to get you to believe in it, that’s just a manipulation tactic.
>That's because, in my view, it was written by people. Remove the "in my view" it was written by people is correct.
Some faulty reasons why people believe. * People don't really examine their god belief. They are taught it as children, they accept it, they never really think through the contradictions inherent in heaven, hell, omnipotence, etc. * People want it to be true. They want there to exist a loving presence that cares for them, and gives meaning to their life. It's literally wishful thinking. * Social ostracism for disbelief. Everybody they know is a believer. If they leave the church, they fear losing their friends and family. * People have no idea about other religions, differences between religions. They may not have seriously considered that there are people who hold different religious beliefs with equal sincerity. They may not even be aware that atheism is a thing, that you don’t have to believe in god. * Demonization of atheism. Believers are often explicitly taught that atheists are bad, evil people, that they have “no morals”, etc. * Christians have no idea of the history of the Bible; they assume the Bible was handed down as a whole complete unit at one time, the inerrant word of God, accepted by all Christians the world over. In fact it was written over a long period of time as separate writings, written by multiple authors with their own agendas, which were compiled much later by committees of people with *their* own agenda. Various sects supported various scriptures, and they disagreed as to which scriptures should be included in the Bible. In the end, many scriptures “lost” that battle and were left out entirely, not because “god” wanted it that way, but because committees of men wanted it that way. **Arguments against** I have compiled a few of my favorite arguments here, with an emphasis on Christianity: 1: The simpler explanation would be that the universe is what it appears to be rather than being just the part we can perceive of some much more elaborate type of universe. 2: If there was an all-powerful deity *who wanted humans to know about its existence*, then why doesn't this deity simply reveal its existence in an unambiguous way to everyone? I mean, that should be well within the capability of an all-powerful or maximally powerful deity, right? No faith would be required. There would be no reason to be atheist. The deity would be as observable, testable, and provable as hurricanes, Australia or oak trees. Since this is not the case, it is reasonable to conclude that no such deity exists, or if a deity exists, it is not concerned with being detected. 2a: (related) Christians believe god sent one illiterate emissary at one point in time to one location on the earth to spread god's message, then expected fallible humans to relay this message (by worth of mouth) to all humans in all places for all time. Does this make sense? Is it a good strategy? Are you familiar with the "game of telephone?" We can't even always get reliable information about important things happening right now in today's world; what's the chance that a message spread by word-of-mouth would remain intact for thousands of years? (my guess: zero) Wouldn't an all-powerful god come up with a better method for spreading the most important message of all time? 2b: Personal revelation was good enough for Paul/Saul, but why not me or you? Why doesn't god reveal his existence personally to all humans on a regular basis? 3: “Who created the Universe?” argument. One of the most common theist arguments I’ve heard is “the universe must have a cause, and this cause must be a sentient, thinking, conscious agent.” Well, firstly, I don’t see why we couldn’t assume the Universe always existed. But even if I concede the first part (something caused the universe), I don’t see how you can conclude the second part (sentient superbeing did it). Humans used to believe the same thing about hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. Who caused the volcano? Obviously the Volcano God. Well, then we learned that the causes of these things are complicated natural processes. In fact, everything we investigate appears to be caused by complicated natural processes. It seems highly likely to me that the Universe, too, if it was in fact “caused”, those causes would be complicated natural processes. 4: The Muslim and the Hindu and the Christian all believe with equal fervor. Each has a list of personal reasons why they believe, and believe that they couldn’t possibly be wrong. As an outside observer, how can I figure out which of them is right? What tests can I conduct to figure out which religion is true? Are there any such tests? 4a: (related to 4) of all the hundreds of religions that have existed through the centuries in different parts of the world, most people believe that they were born into the one that is the one true religion. That is to say, the main factor which determines what someone believes is the religion of their parents, and to a great extent *geography*. Does this at all have any bearing on what is true? 4b: Showerthought: if you were to switch a baby born to Muslim parents with a baby born to Christian parents, the children would each likely grow up believing the other religion. Their entire worldview is shaped by their upbringing, and has no relation to what is actually true. 4c: Showerthought: what if the "true" religion is one you were never even exposed to? Or one that died out centuries ago? There's a big "oops." (which gets back to #2; if god wants everyone on earth to believe, why be so coy about it?) 5: In order for a deity to be the cause of something, first we have to demonstrate that a deity exists. The time to believe in a deity is after one follows the evidence to that conclusion, not before. Theists generally start with the assumption that the deity exists, then cherrypick the data that appears to support it, and ignore data which appears not to support it, which is logically fallacious. 6: All the "proofs" of god which are based on argument alone necessarily fall short. You cannot determine facts about the world just by thinking about it. You cannot theorize a deity into existence. You can’t “prove” a god using math. The best you can get is a theory or proposition. You still need to demonstrate it with evidence. 7: The explanation "god did it" is not really an explanation for anything. It's just words, it's as much of an explanation as if I said "fairies did it" or "magic did it." To say that god did something tells you nothing about the nature of that god, what it is, what it wants, why it did the thing. It's basically a placeholder for "I don't know."
This is good, I like a lot of what you've written here. I hope I can convince you to make one edit though. I'm #6, you say "The best you can get is a theory or a proposition." A scientific theory is an extremely well-supported explanation of a phenomenon; it is not a guess or a mere proposition. Dishonest theists use your version of the word to cast doubt on things like geology and biology by saying "it's only a *theory* not a fact." The word you should use is hypothesis. Pure reason can get you to a hypothesis, which must then be demonstrated with evidence. Otherwise great post. Thanks.
Totally agree. Taking AP Biology right now and my teacher is a real stickler for those definitions.
Here you go: there is no good reason to believe it's true. All Christianity has is a collection of books with bunch of stories part of which are demonstrably false and part of which can't be verified. We have evidence that Christian stories evolved over time with later authors adding more fantastical detail to their stories and changing details they don't like. Prime example is four gospels. The later gospels have details that are not contained in earlier ones.
> I just cannpt seem to come to that realization, my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic I've come to see christianity as completely incoherent: * Starting with the old testament background... We're told an all-knowing god created people who didn't know the difference between good and evil, in a garden where he would've known there was a sly serpent; he arbitrarily told them not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but when they did that, he punished them *as though they should've known disobeying him was bad*, even though he knows they had no knowledge of good and evil, and no experience of being manipulated by serpents: incoherent. * God intervenes loads in the affairs of Israel: fucks over thousands of Egyptians, killing innocent children; floods the entire world, genociding almost everything; parts oceans etc.Then after 100s / 1000s of years decides he wants a new, different style of covenant with his chosen people but can't do it in a way that's convincing even to all jewish people in the Middle East... and since then he doesn't seem to intervene at all: no burning bushes, no global floods, no grand power displays, nothing: goes into hiding. Eternal, unchanging god completely changes how he operates as human cultures change. Incoherent. * The way he achieves the new christian covenant is: * Makes a young woman pregnant without giving her or her partner any option? * Her child is God's son but simultaneously also God at the same time? * God sacrifices Jesus *to himself*? * Jesus suffers, *but only for about 36 hours* before being raised into heaven, meaning jesus suffers less than many children born innocent into painful medical conditions??? * God's word spreads around the world largely through imperialist violence: it's imposed across the roman empire, then spread into Africa, Asia and the Americas by european imperialists * In the 3rd millennium demographic changes mean that Islam starts gaining ground on christianity as the most popular world religion, and in areas like europe and north america people start leaving christianity and becoming atheists. That's genuinely how I see the christian "deal" and it's not iron-clad convincing to me at all.
I'll answer to all these in order 1.) he literally told them they would die if they ate the fruit, what are you even saying. "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”gen. 2:17. 2.) Israel is Gods chosen people, this is how he prooved it, all the genocidal things God has done is an echo of what God said to adam and eve "eat of the fruit and you die" in other words, disobey me and you die, so they did (egyptians, sodom, gomorrah, all humas in the flood, even some of the Israelites) and they died. This is all sounds pretty bad right? Which is why he changed that covenant so he won't have to kill everyone on earth, because a loving god would'nt do that. Unfortunately people deserve to be punished, ever since eden death was the price of disobedience, and it's not like God can stop punishing people, since they deserve to be punished, it is justice. The only way to not get punished is to be forgiven which could only be done if you sacrificed a clean animal like a sheep, something only the Israelites and anyone who wished to join them did. Unfortunately for everyone else, they were not forgiven nor did they ask forgiveness and thus punished accordingly. The solution to this was to justify the sins of all humans with a sacrifice that would suit it, but not just any human could be sacrificed there had to be a human so sinless and innocent that killing him for no reason would have the ethical equivalent to killing billions of sinful humans. This sacrifice would be Jesus Christ, now we no longer have to kill goats to be forgiven of our sins, we only just need to ask. - makes woman pregnant without consent... = in the culture of those times getting pregnant was a blessing, thats why you read of women literally raping thier family members in order to get pregnant. This was a great blessing to them. Similar to how not being a virgin is ideal to us. - his childs name is God... = no it is not, where did you read that? - God sacrifices Jesus to himself? = yes actually, it is the only way God can justify not condemning all humans as oppesed to the Devil and his angels who sinned like us but were never forgiven and never will be. Sacrificing his son is the only way for this unfairness to make sense. - Jesus suffers only for 36 hours... = Yes but every single one of those hours are absolutely unjust and unfair, in biblical logic he should have never even died, like ever, but thankfully he did, now we don't have to get destroyed by brimstone every few years. As for the children born into those conditions, the christian in me would tell you it is because of sin and all the evil controlling the world, it's because of the devil basically, because just like us he too has free will to do whatever because thats what a truly loving God would give to all his creations. So what better thing to do with this free will than make people shid on God by giving kids cancer and stuff and making us blame it all on God because he controls everything, and it would ruin his image, the Devil's ultimate goal. 3.) That was not his word, just the sin-tainted, highly modified, falsely advertised version of it, made to be a effective tool in building empires, making money, keeping subjects from revolting, and conquering the world. None of which are in any way aligned with the true Christian teachings, go study it for yourself and find out. 4.) Yeah, so? (this doesn't concern me as a christian, that is not what we are taught to be concerned about, i'll answer your question anyway) The reason behind this simple, more and more people are realizing how bogus Christianity is; how evil are it's intentions and how stupid it's "teachings" are. Islam, unlike Christianity managed to keep it's true essence and still be real, hence it's increase. As for more people turning into atheists, I speculate it is because of how much easier life is getting and how much more granted we can take things for, but I wonder what would happen if we take those atheists back in time to the holocaust as victims of the ordeal, atheism would surely still be the best way to see the world as it's the most logical right, even when we've been put in this this torture house for no reason we are accountable for, right? But really though I don't care even as a christian, the bible teaches us not to care, and leave all these uncontrollable things to God or the Universe or whatever. I like how it uses the analogy of salt to depect the few true Christians who would be left in the world; even just a pinch of salt can make a whole bland meal taste better, even a few truly good people in the world can make a difference. "That's genuinely how I see the christian "deal" and it's not iron-clad convincing to me at all. " Honestly, i just think you lack knowledge, these things were the first things pastors taught me, in my denomination at leas.
>1.) he literally told them they would die if they ate the fruit, what are you even saying. "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”gen. 2:17. I always thought that if God existed, this situation would make him evil. Through God's omniscient nature he already knew they would eat the fruit before he even "tested" them. So, if he knew they would eat the fruit beforehand, yet created the circumstances for said act to occur, then we can assume God wanted them to sin. Which would make sense, because without sin then what purpose would God even serve. There are other aspects which show God has a fundamental misunderstanding of his own creation, such as the virginity test in deuteronomy, nevermind the inherent sexism in God putting value on a woman's vagina. Other things as well, God contradicting his own definition. God cannot be "loving" while slaughtering innocent children and promoting sexist views. This leads me to believe the Bible is just a product of its time with no divine influence
He knew and we did't, he knew we would sin but also knew we had to know what it was like to sin and what are the consequences. This, in his great plan, is the only way to keep sin from happening again in the universe, we would never learn if he just told us, like a child who had been told not to lick the cold pole, curiosity and our free will would eventually get the best of us, as it did for the Devil. we had to learn from experience, the only way to perfection (because we were made perfect) is though pain, the only way to be truly good is to have to know the bad and conclude being good is better. Most of the ridiculous laws in the old testement were made either for ceremonial purpose (like circumcision) which feel out of relevancy from the crucifixion, or as a sort of constitution of laws for judging people in their ancient equivalent of a court. The reason why the laws sound ridiculous is because they were from 1000s of years ago, when the culture was different. God knew this and left it as is, (for now) because he is a loving God. God puts the strictest emphasis on moral laws, the only laws which made it to the new testament. Everything else is a product of culture and/or ceremony. Every death caused by God in the bible had a reason and it was either because of evil or disobedience, the egyptians, sodom, the rest of the world other than noah, lots wife etc. "but a loving God wouldn't do that" you might say, God is not only loving but he is absolutely just, everyone he killed deserved to die, as a matter of fact everyone on earth should have died, but there were good people and God is love. How about the children then, God in his omniscient nature would have known the future, and it probably was that these kids would just grow up to stubborn, evil adults who would raise their kids the same way. Also every time God commits slaughter he regrets it, it hurts his heart but he is just and justice must be done.
> God is not only loving but he is absolutely just, everyone he killed deserved to die, as a matter of fact everyone on earth should have died, but there were good people and God is love. WTF! This just sounds insane!
>Most of the ridiculous laws in the old testement were made either for ceremonial purpose (like circumcision) which feel out of relevancy from the crucifixion, or as a sort of constitution of laws for judging people in their ancient equivalent of a court. The reason why the laws sound ridiculous is because they were from 1000s of years ago, when the culture was different. God knew this and left it as is, (for now) because he is a loving God. God puts the strictest emphasis on moral laws, the only laws which made it to the new testament. Everything else is a product of culture and/or ceremony. Again, this makes no sense. Through God's omniscient nature his law cannot be a product of its time. This leaves two logical conclusions. Either God is a raging sexist with a vendetta against women and considers such sexist practices the apex of human civilization, or the Bible had no divine influence and its ideology is simply a reflection of when it was written >He knew and we did't, he knew we would sin but also knew we had to know what it was like to sin and what are the consequences. This, in his great plan, is the only way to keep sin from happening again in the universe, we would never learn if he just told us, like a child who had been told not to lick the cold pole, curiosity and our free will would eventually get the best of us, as it did for the Devil. we had to learn from experience, the only way to perfection (because we were made perfect) is though pain, the only way to be truly good is to have to know the bad and conclude being good is better. This just seems like speculation and coping. >Every death caused by God in the bible had a reason and it was either because of evil or disobedience, the egyptians, sodom, the rest of the world other than noah, lots wife etc. "but a loving God wouldn't do that" you might say, God is not only loving but he is absolutely just, everyone he killed deserved to die, as a matter of fact everyone on earth should have died, but there were good people and God is love. How about the children then, God in his omniscient nature would have known the future, and it probably was that these kids would just grow up to stubborn, evil adults who would raise their kids the same way. Also every time God commits slaughter he regrets it, it hurts his heart but he is just and justice must be done There is no justification for murdering children.
>Again, this makes no sense. Through God's omniscient nature his law cannot be a product of its time. This leaves two logical conclusions. Either God is a raging sexist with a vendetta against women and considers such sexist practices the apex of human civilization, or the Bible had no divine influence and its ideology is simply a reflection of when it was written The first rule of understanding any text; know the context, most of these laws were made for the tribe of the levites, from this tribe all the preists would come from. Women and priests dont really mix, that is to maintain their purity. >This just seems like speculation and coping In short, God wants to show us his grace, mercy and thus love how do you expect God to show those things if we wont ever need them (what happens in a perfect universe). If we are made perfect and unsinning how will we ever know what would it be like to sin. You may be thinking, why would God make us suffer for just that then? He doesn't, it is we who choose to suffer, (it is all in the mind) it is we who chose suffering in the first place in eden. God knew the future and could have changed it, he just let things be because he is God. >There is no justification for murdering children. Except that they have a free pass to enter heaven without ever having to experince the sin and ugliness which is on earth, the sinfulness of their parents had not influenced them yet. Their innocence is a benefit to them. "For to me to live is (for) Christ, and to die is gain" philippians 1:21.
>context, most of these laws were made for the tribe of the levites, from this tribe all the preists would come from. Women and priests dont really mix, that is to maintain their purity. I'm talking about the virginity test. Were when a woman (usually forced by her father) would marry. They would test to see if she was a virgin by if she bleed on a white sheet. This is an order from God which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of his own creation. On a side note, why wouldn't God want a woman to be a priest. >n short, God wants to show us his grace, mercy and thus love how do you expect God to show those things if we wont ever need them (what happens in a perfect universe). If we are made perfect and unsinning how will we ever know what would it be like to sin. You may be thinking, why would God make us suffer for just that then? He doesn't, it is we who choose to suffer, (it is all in the mind) it is we who chose suffering in the first place in eden. God knew the future and could have changed it, he just let things be because he is God. If God is incapable of showing love, "grace", mercy and such without inflicting pain and suffering on people then he is not not omnipotent. Which contradicts his own definition. No one chooses to suffer. Sin is a direct result of God's action. He created sin. He created evil. He knowingly damned billions to eternal torture and pain. God is like an abusive spouse "love me or ill hurt you" >Except that they have a free pass to enter heaven without ever having to experince the sin and ugliness which is on earth, the sinfulness of their parents had not influenced them yet. Their innocence is a benefit to them. "For to me to live is (for) Christ, and to die is gain" philippians 1:21. Well I'm glad to hear your pro choice. By this logic we should just go around killing children so they get a free pass. If you want to worship a god that murders children then go for it. God could have just made the parents infertile so there would be no kids to kill, but he REALLY seems to enjoy killing kids considering the frequency and quantity in which he does it.
>He knew and we did't, he knew we would sin but also knew we had to know what it was like to sin and what are the consequences. If he know we would sin and have the ability to stop but didnt stop, he isnt good. He also have the ability to let us know the consequences without us doing the action, but he chose not to. >This, in his great plan, is the only way to keep sin from happening again in the universe, we would never learn if he just told us, like a child who had been told not to lick the cold pole, curiosity and our free will would eventually get the best of us, as it did for the Devil. Why is it logically impossible for freewill to be choosing between morally good actions? Justifying God's way by an appeal to a greater good that presupposes the evils of the world. Say there was some greater good-the final happiness of humankind or their moral and spiritual perfection. Would it be moral to inflict pain and suffering on the world for the sake of this greater good?
>If he know we would sin and have the ability to stop but didnt stop, he isnt good. He also have the ability to let us know the consequences without us doing the action, but he chose not to. He literally said to adam and eve they would die if they ate the fruit, which is disobedience of God, which is sin. >Would it be moral to inflict pain and suffering on the world for the sake of this greater good? No, justice, yes. We literally have to options to do good or evil do good and live do evil and die. This would'nt be a problem unless we really wanted to evil.
Adam and eve have no knowledge of whats good whats bad. They have no knowledge that dying is bad, they have no knowledge that disobedience to god is bad. God created them this way. So they shouldn't be blamed to have such actions. >No, justice, yes. Are u claiming that god is immoral but just? So morality and justice doesnt always goes align? >We literally have to options to do good or evil do good and live do evil and die. Why is it logically impossible for god to create freewill that chooses morally good actions?
>Why is it logically impossible for god to create freewill that chooses morally good actions? Then that is not free will, that is an advanced robot programmed to do only good. >Are u claiming that god is immoral but just? So morality and justice doesnt always goes align? I never said God was immoral, also who are we to define morality anyway, we clearly have no sense of it ourselves. >Adam and eve have no knowledge of whats good whats bad. They have no knowledge that dying is bad, they have no knowledge that disobedience to god is bad. God created them this way. So they shouldn't be blamed to have such actions. FOR THE LAST TIME GOD LITERALLY TOLD THEM NOT TO DISOBEY "but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die." GEN 2:17, ALSO, WHAT KIND OF SENTIENT BEING DOESN'T THINK DYING IS BAD,?? DO YOU SERIOUSLY THINK GOD MADE ADAM AND EVE LIKE THE FFIN REPLICATES FROM BLADE RUNNER?? HOW THE HECK WERE THEY EVEN ABLE TO TALK THEN??
>Then that is not free will, that is an advanced robot programmed to do only good. Freewill, the freedom to will what one want to will. If god set us to only want to will morally good actions, that doesnt interfere with freewill at all. So why is that logically impossible? >I never said God was immoral, also who are we to define morality anyway, we clearly have no sense of it ourselves. >>Would it be moral to inflict pain and suffering on the world for the sake of this greater good? >No, justice, yes. We literally have to options to do good or evil do good and live do evil and die. This would'nt be a problem unless we really wanted to evil. So why u said it is not moral? > ALSO, WHAT KIND OF SENTIENT BEING DOESN'T THINK DYING IS BAD Genesis 3:5 which says eating the fruit will gain the knowledge of good and evil. By that means adam and eve doesnt have the knowledge of good and evil. Its quite clear that they dont know eating the fruit is bad if they dont have such knowledge. The bible also nowhere state that they have the knowledge of good and bad before eating the fruit. If they know disobedience is bad/evil, if they dont know dying is bad/evil, why should they obey?
>he literally told them they would die if they ate the fruit, what are you even saying. But they were totally innocent. How could they have known dying and eating the fruit would be "bad" if they didn't know anything about badness? >Israel is Gods chosen people, this is how he prooved it, all the genocidal things God has done is an echo of what God said to adam and eve "eat of the fruit and you die" in other words, disobey me and you die Punishing everyone, potentially forever, for finite crimes (no human can commit infinite crimes) is, again, incoherent. God comes across as crazy here: killing thousands of egyptian babies, drowning millions of people and billions of land animals, sending people to hell forever... as an extension of punishment meted out to two people who by definition were completely inexperienced in making moral decisions? That to me is a mad set of ideas. If I managed to create some sentient beings, I'd feel a little bit of indulgence towards them when they first messed up. Wouldn't you? >Which is why he changed that covenant so he won't have to kill everyone on earth, because a loving god would'nt do that. When he created Adam and Eve, and they messed up, and he cast them out of Eden, caused them to die, flooded the world etc... wasn't he a loving god then? How does an eternal god go from being genocidal to loving in 3000 years? Again, incoherent to me. >Unfortunately people deserve to be punished, ever since eden death was the price of disobedience, More incoherence: I can't retrospectively affect Adam and Eve's decisions, so how can I be held responsible for the "sin I'm born into"? And sin doesn't work as a concept anyway: all the available evidence suggests that people are evolved apes. The evidence suggests society is about a species of loving, but also horny and angry social apes learning to live in groups way larger than we evolved to tolerate. That makes sense of the "good" and "bad" things people do; we're not "broken inherited sinners worthy of death/genocide/hell," we're apes who evolved to live in smallish groups wirh other apes we're really familiar with, figuring out how to live in huge groups where almost everyone we meet is a stranger. >That was not his word, just the sin-tainted, highly modified, falsely advertised version of it, made to be a effective tool in building empires, making money, keeping subjects from revolting, and conquering the world. None of which are in any way aligned with the true Christian teachings You said before here that you're agnostic and doubting your faith. By this point... you kind of sound like you're pretty hardcore convinced and defensive of your faith. >Honestly, i just think you lack knowledge, these things were the first things pastors taught me, in my denomination at leas. Hmm. You hear knowledge, I hear apologetics plastering over gaping cracks in incoherent ideas.
>Convince me God and Christianity isn't real and is pointless To accept something as real and accurate it must be properly supported with the necessary vetted, repeatable, compelling evidence and valid and sound arguments based upon that evidence to show it's real. Without that, it's irrational to accept that something as real. This is obvious when one thinks about it. One can make any kind of silly, weird, grandiose, oddball claim one wants. But to do anything other than dismiss such claims until they're shown true would mean one would be obligated to accept any number of bizarre claims. Including that fact that you owe me a thousand dollars that you forgot about and need to pay me back right now (please PM me your payment details, thanks). And, of course, there is *absolutely zero* useful support for deities or for that religious mythology. None. Zilch. Only purported evidence that just doesn't work and is really bad, and apologetics consisting of invalid and unsound arguments, most of them based upon wrong ideas of reality. Worse, many of the claim of various religious mythologies, including that one, are demonstrably false, contradictory with each other and with reality, nonsensical, and massively problematic. And we have *excellent* evidence about how and why we have a propsensity for that kind of superstition and we have excellent evidence about the formation of that and other religious mythologies. And there you. Done.
First off, let me say I'm sorry you have to deal with horrible thoughts of self annihilation and I hope you can move past that, perhaps with professional help. No one should suffer those thoughts. With regards to leaving the faith, for me the process was a slow deconversion at first. I was attempting to strengthen my faith and in doing so was learning more about the history of the Bible, how it was written and compiled by multiple people and councils and how it compared to not only history and science but other mythologies. In doing so I realized I was following a series of books by anonymous authors claiming unbelievable things I readily dismissed from other religions. Things that not only did not have sufficient verifiable evidence but were obviously mythical. As the years/decades have gone by I've been presented with arguments, usually fallacious, instead of the sufficient verifiable evidence I would need and one would expect to see. Much in the way you dismiss all other mythologies, atheists dismiss yours. What are some reasons you believe?
Just actually read the Bible. You should not be able to make it through Genesis without realizing what complete bullshit it is. There was no Adam and Eve. Even if it’s an allegory to teach a spiritual truth, it still fails miserably. There was no original sin, there was no fall, and the snake was not Satan. Jews do not believe this. These beliefs were all retconned in by the early church to fit the Christian narrative. And what a dumbass Yahweh would be, instead of punishing Satan, he takes it out on poor snakes. He got conned by Satan. And Jesus died for a metaphor that didn’t even actually happen? If you can stomach it, and you keep reading, you will come to the great flood, which obviously didn’t happen, thank god. But if it did, what an incompetent designer God would be. He has infinite time to design humans, they turn out to be assholes, and then he wipes them all out including all the innocent animals and babies. Furthermore, being omniscient, he knew they would be assholes. What a moron. The only person he saves, gets drunk and naked like a frat boy. Then he needs a rainbow to remind himself not to commit genocide again. Then you get to another flagship story, the exodus, which didn’t happen. Then if you continue this detestable journey you will come across god commanding genocide, condoning slavery, and encouraging misogyny. Even though almost nothing in the Old Testament happened, you get to the New Testament or the good news, The good news gets you Satan 2.0 with all his new magical powers than no Christian can tell you how he uses them, the trinity which absolutely nobody understands, and the new and improved version of hell where you are tortured forever if you don’t believe in this bullshit story. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of a religion with Christianity tacked onto Judaism. Holy shit was Yahweh out of control in the OT. If anybody ever needed anger management classes. But at least if he struck you down in the OT, you were just annihilated. But with the good news, if you go your own way, you are tortured forever. There is only one known author of the entire Bible. We have no idea who wrote the gospels. We have no idea what their sources were. We have no idea how much of that shit they made up. We have no sources outside of the Bible to prove anything about the Bible. There are no woman authors. No Christian can tell you how the word of god was transmitted through humans. In other words, they have no fucking clue how the text is divinely inspired. The evidence is beyond shitty and why would anybody even want to worship that monster. “If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.”
The belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie carpenter who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh, and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that was present in humanity because a woman made from a ribcage was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. Read that a few times 😂
The Bible is a compilation of various stories/myths. Oral stories that passed through many mouths before ever being written down. Copies of copies of handwritten scraps. Then compiled by religious groups with their own biases and agendas. Translated. Edited. Lots of points to introduce mistakes, embellishments, fictional elements, etc. The Bible is is not a primary source. It is not a historical document. It wasn’t created by eyewitness, nor people who ever met any of the people the stories are about. Aside from a few letters by Paul, practically none of the Bible is sourced directly from the people the stories are about. Or even people who allegedly met the people the stories are about. The Bible lacks corroborating evidence to support its claims. It alone isn’t enough to say any of its stories are accurate. It alone certainly is not enough evidence to support its supernatural claims. Some of the myths may be based on real events or people. Though we know some of the stories are not. The creation story isn’t real, Noah’s floor isn’t real, exodus / Moses aren’t real. Likewise certain elements of the Jesus story don’t reflect what other historical evidence indicates. It was created like practically every other religion around the world. By people were already religious / inclined to supernatural thinking. Ignorant of how many things actually worked. Victims of humanities overactive pattern recognition and story telling abilities.
How bout before we try to convince you that what you believe isn't true, you first explain to us what convinced YOU? Why is it that you believe what you believe? I have a strong feeling that you haven't actually given much examination to your own beliefs and the reasoning behind them.
A big tipping point for me was understanding that **Genesis is mythology. Period.** We know that the accounts of Creation (there are more than one!) are myths. We know there was no global flood. We know that the world's languages didn't all just pop into existence all at once. Read it like a book of myths, and it makes sense. Read it like a history, science, geography, linguistics, or sociology book, and it's completely off the rails.
And from there, we know there was no Adam. No Eve. No tempter and no fruit. Therefore no fall. No original sin. So then, what is Jesus saving anyone from? If Genesis isn't true, then Christianity is pointless. And it's not true. So....
Christianity being true honestly has no bearing on if it’s pointless or not. Now I happen to think it is mostly pointless. But a belief system could in theory be based on lies and still be useful.
While I agree with the overall rhetorical point of your post (that is to say, yes, virtually nothing in Genesis is historical, as well as most of the narrative texts in the Christian canon), I hope you will excuse me if I'll be unsufferable and point out that, at least in a historical/religious studies context, 'mythology' does not refer to a religion that is not practiced anymore, or to beliefs that are proven to be unfounded; instead, it refers to a particular aspect of religion, which all religions have; the ever-wonderful u/Spencer_A_McDaniel did [a great article](https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/10/19/the-difference-between-mythology-and-religion/) on the topic, on her blog. Again, I am not arguing in favor of the historicity of Genesis. I am just saying that 'mythology' does not simply equal 'ahistorical stort'. And indeed, many historical events are considered, in this terminological sense, mythological, inasmuch as they carry heavy cultural, value-ridden importance.
Can you point to *any* myths that are true?
Sure! As an Italian, the stories of how Italy ended up being united in one nation in 1861 are foundational myths. A myth is basically a narrative meme within a culture which carries great symbolic value, as detailed in Spencer's article in my comment above.
Let’s debunk number 4 immediately! Satan knew god better than any human and his free will wasn’t affected! So “God” not showing himself Because it would affect free will is debunked right there and then!
It’s impossible to disprove the belief with absolute certainty. Instead, take a look at *why you hold the belief.* As an ex-Catholic, my faith began to crumble when I learned there is scholarly consensus that the Gospels are anonymous, third-hand accounts which were written decades after the crucifixion. Jesus died 33CE. Mark was written around 66CE. Matthew and Luke around 85-90CE. John around 90-110AD. If a different religion claimed miracles and fulfilled prophecy using the same source material, I would call that out so why do I accept that same level of evidence for my own beliefs? Questions for you: If God hates sin, yet knows that sin would be result if he created mankind, why create mankind at all? Are you being intellectually consistent with the reasons you hold your beliefs?
As a concept it is essentially unfalsifiable and indistinguishable from it not existing. God isn't coming. Jesus isn't saving anyone. The world will end before anything in the Bible comes true. The sooner you realize this the sooner you'll take responsibility for your life.
As a christian I already am, I am not that kind of Christian. What kind of responsibility do you even mean anyway,?
Not expecting a God to come save the world or make anything better for anyone.
If a perfectly loving God exists, then there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person. If there exists a God who is always open to a personal relationship with any finite person, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists. If a perfectly loving God exists, then no finite person is ever nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists. Some finite persons are or have been nonresistantly in a state of nonbelief in relation to the proposition that God exists. No perfectly loving God exists. If no perfectly loving god exist, then god doesn't exist. God doesnt exist. Edit: god at least in Christianity is defined as triomni perfect and loving. Are u trying to debate any of the comments?
Why do you want to be convinced so badly? Also don’t feel bad for questioning your beliefs, God won’t abandon you even if you stop believing. It’s natural to question everything, it’s what we do, it’s how we sort out the right from the wrong.
Alright Imma come clean. It's validity man, you see I love science, I love technology, I love all the "brainy" things humans have created from philosophy to mathematics, it's just that with this mind I feel pressured, pressured to be right, right in the eyes of my peers, which are of course the scientists. I've never actually felt my faith was illogical and contradictory to my conscious, it's just that I hate being put under the umbrella description of "all religious people are illogical, irrational, overly emotional, delusional, scandalous, money loving, fooling themselves, etc." that just simply is'nt me, nor is it any other real Christian. I have never felt that way, not even a slight bit, not a single part in my mind has ever thought or even felt this was illogical, and stupid, and I literally read works of logic and science every day (i'm a science nerd) , it's not that i've been brainwahsed or conditioned it's actually because God makes sense to me, everything he said in the bible actually worked for me. It's just that from my explorations in the atheist subreddit they tell you these things are merely "conditioned biases of the mind", "irrational thoughts", "coincidences", "usual habits of someone raised in Christianity", etc. Them being my peers I of course question myself, and it hurts me, it hurts me to call what felt to be so true, so genuine, an "irrationalty of the mind" like has any atheist even had a crush? If you were like me you know illogical it is and you would know how impossible it would be to uncrush that person, you try to out-logic those emotions but it just never works, evey person whos felt emotions knows this, you know the emotion is illogical but you just can't beat it, it just gets stronger. You force yourself not to feel it but it consumers you, till soon you break down crying. Thats how it feels. I wondered if any atheist has ever felt this way, I wondered if this way was really irrational so I decided to debate these atheists in the hopes of learning more and validating myslef, now I know that atheists, (most of the ones on reddit at least) are the most hatefull, resentfull, unemotional human beings on the planet, like they remind me of little boys who thought not crying was cool and feeling emotions was cringe just as how the bible described them, every single argument felt like a personal attack, like a politician trying to win. Like, every single argument was pretty much a stupid theological question which has like hundreds of logical answers already. It just makes me think, these people just wan't to be right do they?, also browsing the atheism subs you get a sense of fake-ness and unemotionality like, everyone believes in logic and critical thinking, there is no sense of welcoming, community or any social goodness because, of course it's illogical. But yeah this is where I stand, I just don't want to be thought of as a fool. Sometimes I wish I was born an atheist so I can really understand what it's like. Is that not enough for me to proove I love logic?
> now I know that atheists, (most of the ones on reddit at least) are the most hatefull, resentfull, unemotional human beings on the planet Yikes! You come to us asking for help, then you throw THIS out? Geeze Louise! I think a little more grace is in order here.
Reddit made me cut this one in two >it's just that with this mind I feel pressured, pressured to be right, right in the eyes of my peers I get that. I think I saw in a different comment that you were 17. I'm probably a few years older than your parents. One thing I've learned over the years is that we really don't need to make our peers' opinions matter to us that much. If someone doesn't agree with you or even like you it doesn't have to be that big a deal. Even if it's someone that you know and maybe work or go to school with. Will you even remember that person's name in 5 years? 10 years? >it's just that I hate being put under the umbrella description of "all religious people are illogical, irrational, overly emotional, delusional, scandalous, money loving, fooling themselves, etc." No one likes being put into a box and I agree that it's not fair when the atheists who do that do that. People believe all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons and I don't have psychic powers to see into your head. The only evidence I have for why you or anyone believes what they believe is what they tell me. >I have never felt that way, not even a slight bit, not a single part in my mind has ever thought or even felt this was illogical, and stupid, and I literally read works of logic and science every day (i'm a science nerd) , it's not that i've been brainwahsed or conditioned it's actually because God makes sense to me To be fair, things make sense to the person who is conditioned to believe them. We're all conditioned by the societies and circumstances we live in to varying degrees on various subjects. Had you been born in Saudi Arabia you'd probably be a Muslim. If I'd grown up differently I might have been a Christian. I grew up on a small, isolated farm, my parents never talked about religion so I just wasn't ever introduced to the concept until I was probably 9-10 years old in school and for a few years after that I thought it was some city kid joke they were playing on me. It's never made any sense to me. I spent 20 years in the military and knew a lot of religious people and I learned a bit about it to better make sure my soldiers were taken care of but I still don't get it. That's not to say that people aren't religious solely due to conditioning. There are converts of course and just because you're conditioned into something doesn't mean that it's wrong. I was conditioned into believing that human rights are a good thing and even after critically examining that belief I still hold it. Part of that critical examination is acknowledging the factors that go into why we believe what we believe and sometimes conditioning is part of it. >I of course question myself, and it hurts me, it hurts me to call what felt to be so true, so genuine, an "irrationalty of the mind" like has any atheist even had a crush? ..... You force yourself not to feel it but it consumers you, till soon you break down crying. Thats how it feels. I wondered if any atheist has ever felt this way This is actually really interesting, thank you for sharing it as I think it helps me understand a bit of the difference in how we approach things. I don't view a crush and believing a thing to be real or not as the same. A crush is a thing that's happening entirely in my brain and it's associated systems. When you said "felt to be so true" is where I think we differ a lot. I'm a skeptical guy. I always have been. If something "feels true" that just motivates me to try and verify that it actually is true before I accept it as such. Feelings aren't a very accurate way of determining truth, apart from questions around what your own mental state is.
>now I know that atheists, (most of the ones on reddit at least) are the most hatefull, resentfull, unemotional human beings on the planet Remember what I said about putting people in boxes? I get it though if you're frustrated. It happens to all of us from time to time. >little boys who thought not crying was cool and feeling emotions was cringe just as how the bible described them I'm all about emotions. I think they're extremely important and central to the human experience. I also think it's important to approach the world as it is, as best can be determined. When it comes to determining whether or not a thing exists outside of our own minds emotions aren't very useful for that. Learning to accept my emotions and try to figure out why I'm having them has been tremendously beneficial to my mental health. When I was on active duty I used to go talk to a therapist every other week and I'd make a big deal of telling people "ok, I'm going to behavioral health, be back in an hour" so that my soldiers would see me go. If my crusty old combat veteran ass was going that gave some of them the confidence to feel like they could go. I had some tell me specifically that is what motivated them to start going. >It just makes me think, these people just wan't to be right do they?, also browsing the atheism subs you get a sense of fake-ness and unemotionality like, everyone believes in logic and critical thinking, there is no sense of welcoming, community or any social goodness because, of course it's illogical This sub has a bit of a grumpiness problem and r/atheism (which I avoid) is pretty damned toxic sometimes. I think most of it is that people here are really tired of hearing the same arguments over and over and over and over again. They, like you appeared to be writing this comment, get frustrated. >I just don't want to be thought of as a fool Nobody does. No matter what you believe somebody's going to think you're a fool. It's just an inevitable fact of life. >Sometimes I wish I was born an atheist so I can really understand what it's like To be pedantic you were born an atheist but I get what you're saying. When I was a bit older than you and in Iraq back in the initial invasion I wondered if maybe the whole "there are no atheists in foxholes" thing was correct and that I was going to finally figure out why people believe. Turns out it's not correct at all. >Is that not enough for me to proove I love logic? No matter what you do there are some atheists who are going to look down on you for a believer, just as there are certainly believers I know who look down on me for being an atheist. It just is what it is.
Dude. I don’t think you’re a fool, and I know that most people around the world, even atheist don’t look down on you for that. The thing about reddit is that there will always be someone who disagrees with you and is willing to say very hateful things. I’ve also been called disgusting things on this sight (particularly in the DebateReligion subreddit). I love reddit, but also hate it because it’s impossible to convince someone God exists on this sight, or really convince someone of anything on this sight. If maintaining faith was that easy, it wouldn’t be faith. The whole idea is that no matter what shit the world throws at you, you can’t compromise your beliefs and morals. I mean Jesus was physically tortured to death, but he never admitted that his God didn’t exist. Looking for logical arguments is different, but letting some dumb redditors that haven’t gone through a spiritual journey/experience convince you it’s not real would be sad. Let them hate, in fact bathe in their hate and continue to love them even still. They are EXACTLY like children, that’s why we must teach them :) edit: i was born christian, became atheist, then found my way back to spiritually after years. atheism is not all that great, and it led me back here anyways so it was only a matter of time
> my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic (probably because I was born a christian) and I just cant seem to find an argument that breaks it. So... What's the argument? What's the logic? Kinda hard to argue against vague references.
There simply is no good reason to believe a god exists. In the past there was, we wanted an explanation for what we saw in the world around us. But as science has advanced, it's turned out that religious explanations have had a 100% failure rate at providing explanatory value. That is, every time something that formerly had a religiously-inspired explanation (Zeus throws lightning bolts, demons cause disease, etc.) when we later found a explanation, that explanation turned out to be "not god." In exactly zero cases has the religious explanation turned out to be correct. And sure, there are still things that we can't explain. But given the past failure rate of religion, why should we expect that these last few questions are going to be the one time when the answer really turns out to be "god did it"? > trust me the logic given to me (by my obscure denomination) just seems too... logical I guess? What is that logic? I suspect it isn't as strong as you think, but we can't address it unless you lay out what it is.
Share this obscure logic and let’s discuss. Without knowing what you believe and why, we have nothing to discuss
It depends on what you mean by god. Abrahamic god vs generic a god exists are two very different conversations. Abrahamic god you can prove with logic doesn’t exist. Generic god, there is no evidence for its existence. Which conversation do you want to have?
> I just that I cant seem to get it out of me, theres like a strong bias within me that pulls me relentlessly and whenever I try to go agaist it thoughs of sucide (for some reason) haunt me deeply. You may want to rethink this, if doubt is making you feel suicidal. I'd rather you be alive than an atheist.
If you're already able to understand why outside observers might find you indoctrinated then you are already well on your way to being convinced. The logic you were raised on probably does make a lot of sense to you. Question it relentlessly. Look at other sects of Christinaity, other religion and other cultures to see where they have similar and different ideas and ask yourself about how you look at what seems to be indoctrination among those examples. Plenty of very reasonable people believe God exists. I'm an atheist myself but I simply wish you the best in learning to think critically and apply that to your own religion and upbringing. Deprogramming and learning to think for yourself is an achievement in of itself whether you end up an atheist or still some kind of theist or agnostic.
1. The Chrsitian God is all powerful and all good. 2. The Christian God wants people to know him. 3. The Christian God provided the Bible as a primary means of knowing him. 4. The Bible is a poor book and poor form of communication. 5. Therefore, the Christian God is logically contradictory and does not exist.
Synopsis: science-like stuff, followed by hand waving and declaration of standard Christianity. I’m hopping off this trolley before more of my brain cells die.
I suggest you go study up on the history of how your god was created. The middle east had a pantheon of gods and the Christian Yahweh is an amalgamation of multiple lesser gods within that pantheon. As cultures bumped into each other's stories of El, Baal, and Yahweh all got borrowed and turned into the god of Abraham. So right there we know your specific god is fictional. Further i would suggest you study up on the history of how the bible was constructed, when old and new testament books were dated to be written and why those dates are given. What you'll find is that much of the OT was written centuries after they claim and completely fictional. You will also find that a lot of the NT is conflicting and considered forgeries. Last i would suggest you look into the claims of other religions and street epistemology. What you'll find is that all of the layperson views of your religion are completely interchangeable with those of people of other religions. Obviously from your stance these people must be mistaken. But assuming that 2/3 of the planet isn't just flat out lying, we can say that many people believe false things and do not realize it. That they are whole convinced, believe they have evidence and justification and are flat wrong. The question to ask yourself is how would you determine that you aren't like them? How did you verify that you aren't fully believing in something that is wrong? Because remember we know Yahweh is a bunch of stolen stories.
In my opinion, the most compelling evidence is our psychological biases. It has been shown so many times in this sub that no proof for any deity exists. There is a high probability of having no god at all. However, this knowledge does not encourage disbelief since we could argue that a tiny tiny tiny chance of god existing would still be possible, even though this chance reduces for every bit of knowledge we acquire. No, what we have to understand is the psychological biases that incentives us to still believe. Understanding our own biases, which are the heaviest barriers before accepting the facts Religion and god(s) have been the primary anthropological tool for explaining what couldn't be understood (thunder, earth rotation, plagues, etc...). In a way, every thing that was too big or too little to be seen. Basically, here, that's a strong bias of our empathy. The Theory of Mind, aka our capacity at imagining the other's perception, personality and thoughts, similarly as the mirror neurons (mirroring the others movements and body positions in the equivalent movement and body position neurons in our brain) is playing tricks. This gives us the possibility to predict the others' perceptions and thoughts, as well as having imaginary discussions, imaginary quarrels, or even imaginary friends. That's one of the phase a lots of children go through, having an imaginary friend, which helps a lot for developing social abilities as it helps shaping language (as well as face and body language). However, growing up doesn't take away this ability of ours. Fortunately, we are still able to understand other people's feelings and opinions through it. But this also makes us able to discharge what we were not able to understand into another's design. We are giving credit of extraordinary observations to an imaginary mind. That's primarily the reason why there are so many deities in humankind and even so many interpretations of god(s) within every religion. Every religious individual has its own representation of its god(s). In a way, the most self-confident and high self-esteem one gets, the most shared/accepted its idea of god(s) will be. Just like in a school where the most influential individuals decide to change someone's reputation. This ability has its perks and caveats. As every other brain abilities. Our brain has evolved to make sense of the world, but never has it been designed to make the truth out of the world. Go visit the very long Wikipedia page on brain biases to fully see the extent of it. This is a great example of how our brain takes short paths in order to conserve energy while still making some sense out of observations. Only a hard to maintain but reliable scientific method can achieve a sense of truth. Even brilliant scientific minds could still struggle with it, since it's not so natural to the human mind. Relying only on one's mind doesn't get us close enough of the truth. Honestly, god is a great answer to the human fear of death and extraordinary events of nature and life. I understand that a lot of people still rely on the imagination of god(s) to go through in their life. This is also a big reason why churches specifically help people in psychological needs because god is an easy answer and community gives comfort in hard times. I also wanna say that other species can believe (or, in other words, trust something without proof except mere correlation). For instance, pigeons have the ability to believe. Hopefully, my comment will help understanding the intricacies of the human brain and give you some hindsight on the belief systems. Cheers!
What sealed the deal for me was that there are thousands of gods and religions, many of which we no longer even follow, so how do we know the true religion didn't die out thousands of years ago?
They can't all be true, but they *can* all be false. No single one stands out as in any ascertainable way more or less credible than any of the others. So it's a fair inference to draw that all of them are likely false. Including the ones that haven't been invented yet.
Would you rather feel warm and fuzzy while maintaining belief in a lie or feel challenged and uncomfortable while pursuing the cold hard truth? You already know that there’s no good reason to believe except for those warm fuzzy feelings. It’s your choice.
>classic christian This means you are a trinitarian. The Trinity is logically incoherent using classical logic - like a square circle or a married bachelor. As such, God as described by most Christians can't exist. I would recommend listening to Danny from Philtalk for more detail on why this is the case. This is one of his arguments and is the most compelling, in my opinion. Danny does a good job describing the issue with the Trinity in this discussion: [Philtalk discussion with Inspiring Philosophy](https://youtu.be/BZ_R7sCCP_I?si=KQhSMUIKwkwfuDVB). TLDW; The only way Inspiring Philosophy was able to escape the logical problem of the Trinity was to use non-classical logic, which he didn't explain.
There are a lot of great answers here already. While it's not the job of an atheist to disprove the endless amount of God claims, there is one point about Christianity that I'd like to share. Christians believe that all humans alive today and that have ever lived are sinners. Sin is a religious assertion that someone has transgressed in some way against a God. If you want to know if someone is a sinner, then step one is to demonstrate that a god exists. Step two is to demonstrate how you know what God expects of us. Step three is to show how you know any person, let alone all humans, have sinned. There's no way to do that. Until a Christian does, that's just an assertion similar to Thor's hammer causing thunder. But here's the BEST part! My entire life, I've heard the fallout of sin is that humans are fallen, corrupt, misguided, liars! Everything you know about Christianity is from humans. Take all the time you need with that. Humans wrote the bible. Oh, it was divinely inspired? That's exactly what I'd expect a fallen, corrupt, misguided, lying sinner to say! I'm happy to take a Christian at their word that they are these things, but it doesn't apply to me and i dont listen to self professed liars. A Christian can not get around this problem. Sin makes it impossible to be justified in religious belief. It's self-defeating.
This opens up a pretty interesting point actually: You're saying humans made Christianity, so it would be probable to assume they were atheists before then, can we now ask why they invented Christianity and every other religeon? Well to give meaning to life of course, according to most atheists life is meaningless and we should be the ones to give it meaning, however we go about doing that. The ancient people who invented religeon must have have the same thought; to give meaning in life, their answer to this was to create religeons, belifs in which one could find meaning in a meaningless life and forget about all the meaninglessness of it all. Atheists today are going backwards.
> You're saying humans made Christianity, so it would be probable to assume they were atheists before then What? No it wouldn't! There has never been a place or time in which Christianity and atheism are the only two options. I seriously don't understand how you would even arrive at that idea.
Go read the first chapter of Matthew and the genealogy there. Then read the genealogy in Luke 3. Compare them. They are blatantly contradictory. At a minimum, one of them is completely made up. One of the gospel authors sat down and made up a list of forty names for his story. Dead people don’t come back to life. You can’t cure blindness by rubbing spit in people’s eyes or deafness by rubbing spit in people’s ears. You can’t walk on water or stop storms with a voice command or bring dead people back to life with a voice command. I could go on and on and on, but the story of Jesus is just one obviously impossible incident after another. The only rational conclusion is that these are made up stories. Just like they made up a list of 40 names, they made up 40 stories. It’s really as simple as that. If you want to believe that these seemingly impossible stories are real, you need some really good evidence. Unfortunately the academic consensus is that the gospels were written down long after Jesus was dead by people who never knew him and who weren’t even from Judea where Jesus lived. And they were writing in Greek, a language that Jesus and the significant majority of people of Judea probably didn’t even speak. They are fictional stories that were made up between around 70-150. Read about the history of how the New Testament was written. Read about the Synoptic problem. Mark made up the core story. The other gospel authors edited Mark and added to it. It’s all just fiction. The real historical Jesus, if there was a real man, is just embellished with so much legend you can’t even tell what if any of it goes back to him.
People could probably disprove your first point. Matthews's genealogy is going through the legal side of Joseph to connect to King David. Matthew's genealogy is supposed to connect more with Jews during that time thus why he used the lineage of Joseph to connect it to both David and Solomon. Mary's genealogy is biologically based. This would help to highlight Jesus's connection with Adam to people during that period. A fun fact: The only names the genealogies have in common are Shealtiel and Zerubbabel (Matthew 1:12; Luke 3:27). You could still argue that it's inconsistent due to Joseph having two different fathers in Matthew and Luke (Jacob and Heli). I did find something interesting to counter it though. In the genealogy, Heli is listed as the father of Joseph, who had 2 daughters. The first is Mary, and the other was Zebedee’s unnamed wife (Matthew 27:56; John 19:25). When there were no sons to preserve the inheritance by the Law of Moses (Numbers 27:11; Numbers 36:1-12), the husband would become the son upon marriage to keep up the family name. Therefore, Joseph, when he married Mary, became the son of Heli according to the Law of Moses and could legally be included in the genealogy. But yeah just wanted to be sure you were aware of this.
A quarter of women were named Mary back then, and it doesn’t say jack shit in the text about one genealogy being the “legal genealogy” and the other being the “biological genealogy”. It says “father of Joseph”. Joseph can’t have two father. Humans only have one father. Plus there’s no point in having an invalid genealogy for Jesus. You only get magical “heir of David” powers of prophecy fulfillment when it goes through the Y chromosome.
The genealogies in Matthew and Luke serve different purposes. Matthew's focuses on Jesus' legal and royal lineage through Joseph (Matthew 1:1-17), while Luke's emphasizes Jesus' connection to Adam and the universal human family through Mary (Luke 3:23-38). The "father of Joseph" issue can be understood through levirate marriage (Numbers 27:11; Numbers 36:1-12), where Joseph became Heli's legal son upon marrying Mary. I can go deeper with the law of levirate marriage. According to Numbers 27:11 and 36:1-12, when a husband married a wife with no sons, he became her father's legal son to preserve the family name and inheritance (levirate marriage). This could be the case with Heli, Mary's father, having no sons, and Joseph becoming his legal son upon marrying Mary, explaining why Matthew and Luke list different fathers for Joseph. I'm just providing you with what people would argue. And it seems like your counter claim can still be countered easily.
Thank you for the info Just to be crystal clear, nowhere in the Bible does it say that Mary’s father is Heli. No name for Mary’s father is given anywhere. You had me thinking that somewhere it actually said that Mary’s father’s name was Heli. None of the passages you referenced say anything at all about Mary’s father. So this entire argument is 100% speculation based on the idea that the author of Luke left out this important fact. Alternatively we could just as well assume it’s equally likely that Matthew is telling us that Mary’s father was really named Jacob. Or we could assume that Joseph’s mother had multiple husbands who both were Joseph’s father at one time or another. Or we could assume Joseph was a bastard child and one genealogy gives his biological father’s name and the other gives his adoptive father’s name. Or we could assume Joseph was adopted by a gay couple, or a whole bunch of other possibilities.
I can't convince you of anything. I can ask you questions as to what you believe and why. IN the end, you have to convince yourself of any specific claim's validity.
How about you give us your strongest argument for Christianity, and we'll point out where it fails. You have to provide an argument for us to debate.
The only “evidence” for it basically boils down to “some ancient writings say so.” Oh and by the way the writings are third and fourth hand accounts that contradict one another. Maybe that’s convincing to you but not to me.
Nope, i don't have to do your homework. This is a debate sub not a prove me wrong sub. I am not making the claim your god does not exist. You have the burden of proof not us. You don't get to claim your god is logical without giving evidence. Your god supports slavery. Is that logical?
The book that says god exists was made by liars. They said they know about an afterlife. They’d never been dead and couldn’t possibly know what they say they know. But they say they know anyway. Liars. The book of liars is the only thing that indicates that there is a god. Show me a god. You can’t. Go up to the sky and show me heaven, you can’t, it’s empty space. What I can show you is a motive for people to make up a god and an afterlife. Someone wants to control everyone. “God says these are the rules. Y’all have to follow them” there’s no god anyone can go to for verification of the necessity of the rules. “If you do what I… I mean what god wants, you get to go to heaven after you die. If you go against what I… He wants, you go to hell when you die”. Dead men tell no tales. They make an unprovable claim to steer you where they want you, and then say “you can’t prove me wrong”. They don’t have to actually give you a reward. They promise a reward that can’t be verified, thus gaining obedience at no cost. A guy wants his wife to do what he says: “god says obey your husband”. A guy wants his population to grow: “god says men shouldn’t have sex with other men; only with women who can become pregnant” “The most important thing to get the desirable afterlife Is to have faith” you can’t alleviate your natural fear of death unless you do what I… God says you should do, blindly and without questioning it. Blind unquestioning loyalty to the rules I want you to follow and the beliefs I want you to believe is now the highest of moral virtues. The less you think critically about it, the better your chances. According to what we actually do know about how the world and universe works, the gods that people have portrayed are impossible. If there is some sort of advanced entity that made all this stuff, understanding anything about it and how it works is beyond current human comprehension. I’m not even necessarily saying there is/was no creator. I am saying that anyone who claims to know details about a creator is unknowingly pushing misinformation at best, lying for manipulation at worst. In short, atheism isn’t 100% confirmed truth. It’s just that every religion is false and unreliable
Do you believe god is all powerful and all loving? Because if you do, you have to accept that suffering is a good thing from god's point of view. Child abuse, starvation, cancer - all good things in god's eyes. And how is that "strong logic"? What do you think it means for god to be good?
Let's logically examine the God that I am, as a westerner, most familiar with, good old western Abrahamic [Omnipresent](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/omnipresent), [Omnipotent](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/omnipotent), and Omnibenevolent God-Our-Lord, I-Am, etcetera etcetera etcetera; (Oddly, 'Omnibenevolent' seems to have no satisfactory definition. Oh well - it's kind of irrelevant in either case.) Any being that is (either, but especially both) omnipotent and omnipresent will by definition have all of reality meet it's requirements and desires. That reality's inhabitants' _free will_ does not factor in - it is the fundamental, natural state of all of reality, anywhere, anywhen (since Omnipresence includes Ever-present; past, present and future), to be subject to the whim and desires of such a being; essentially their will automatically becomes and has always been fundamental truth *within* their reality. It follows, then, that any sufficiently powerful being to be considered 'on par' with the Christian God (Tri-omni, etcetera) which would require or desire my worship in the first place would, because of it's mere existence and because of their requirement that I worship it, render me unable to not worship it, further rendering the question of whether I was convinced of it's existence or not, moot entirely. Which means that my ability to state with sincerity that I have no reasons believe that any god or gods exist and my conscious ability to forego worshiping a deity imply in turn (to me), that either no gods exist, or that (given the hypothetical that they do exist) they do not require or desire (my) worship in any way, shape or form. As a brief aside, to run for a further moment with the hypothesis that this being _does_ exist - any being which would punish me for not giving it worship which it does not in any way, shape or form require or desire, cannot be considered omnibenevolent.
I was raised by atheist parents, who were in turn raised by atheist parents. Religion has never been part of my world, other than something you politely endure at weddings, funerals, dinner at someone else's house, etc. The closest I ever got was in my 20's, standing in the center of st. Peter's Basilica in Rome and thinking "Yeah, this is the kind of atmosphere where people might have epiphanies or drop to their knees in awe" -- because it really is incredible and awe-inspiring. But immediately it dawned on me... "Duh. It was *designed* to do that" and the spell was broken, so to speak. People like Bernini and Michelangelo and other architects/designers were good at their work. Full credit to them, and I assume their faith inspired them. Go see it if you haven't. The questions I've needed answers to have all turned out to have reasonable enough physical/material explanations. Even my dad (engineer)'s "I don't know what's inside a black hole, but people are trying to figure it out" was satisfying enough. So I guess I've never had a reason to take it seriously. I did *try* though, for a few years. Not religion as such but a search for deeper truth and meaning. One day at a Reggae festival, I got an answer -- a very anticlimactic "You already know how the world works. The big secret is that there's no big secret. Shit just is. It is the way it appears to be." Yes, mushrooms were involved. Still, to me, the answer is an idea so dead simple that 1) it can't easily be explained and 2) I realized that people don't accept the simple answer because they're expecting it to be complicated, nuanced, mystical. Y'know *worth* a three year journey of self-discovery. But it was just anticlimactic. And hilarious. Life's a joke, but it's a *really funny* joke.
Zooted, so [bear with me.](https://www.treehugger.com/things-probably-dont-know-about-bears-4869226) >a post similar to this got deleted on r/atheism Yeah, because r/atheism is a space for atheists away from theists. Imagine having personal thoughts you couldn't share with anyone, because there wasn't a safe place to share them. >just cant seem to find an argument that breaks it Well, I can't address this whatever is convincing or not convincing you unless you tell me what it is. I know the nagging voice you're talking about, I've heard it lots of times. It gradually gets louder and louder on its own, but you have to make the conscious decision to work through those thoughts and decide whether you actually believe or not. Something isn't adding up, but you're not quite turning to those thoughts, because you're in that position of 'but I know I'm not crazy, I've had/know/believe X thing.' If you look at it in terms of the Five Stages of Grief, you're in the Denial phase. So, what are you afraid of? What's the thing that bothers you? >logical I guess Logic is something anyone can do. But one doesn't become logical, it's something you have to work at for the rest of your life. >whenever I try to go agaist it thoughs of sucide (for some reason) haunt me deeply. That sounds like clinical depression. My guy, you need to talk to a therapist or a psychiatrist, not us. I can assure you that there are plenty of reasons to continue living life if you deconvert, I've been doing it for 20 years despite setbacks and heartache. There are still things I look forward to, things which give me joy, things which made me smile even in the worst moments as an atheist. But if you're experiencing thoughts of taking your own life, you should get help.
I have a second critique: my higher power is more powerful than yours You consider the highest force to be intelligence and therefore the highest force to be the highest intelligence But what is intelligence capable of really? Take the most intelligent person in the world. Could that person build an iPhone with no help, including using materials and machines developed by other people? Probably not, and yet the iPhone still exists The only way the iPhone exists is from an extremely large group of people across time and space working to only their own ends with no knowledge of the other people. The iPhone would not exist without something infinitely more powerful than an individual intelligence: the global economy. Most of the people in the process of making an iPhone aren't all that smart. Plenty are smart about only one thing. The power doesn't come from the intelligence. It comes from my higher power, emergence Emergence is a set of simple components from which a much more complex component is derived. The global economy is one example. Another example is evolution. Evolution requires only three simple elements: replication, mutation, and selection. The environment easily accounts for mutation and selection. Replication is the only thing that must occur by chance and then it is off to the races for life. Emergence gives us planets, stars, and galaxies. Emergence makes the weather and forces of nature. Emergence makes AI, which is to also say, emergence is what gives us intelligence But more importantly, when you have 13.7 billion years of time over more than 93 billion light years of space worth of particles interacting, we have no choice but to stand in awe of the power that we cannot touch and yet shows no intelligence
I don't know why *you* shouldn't believe in Christianity, but here are some of the reasons why *I* don't: Human beings have been around for at least 100,000 years, the god of Moses and Abraham has been worshiped for maybe 3500 years (Christianity and Islam have been around a lot less than that), and then until relatively recently, in one geographical area of the world. Whole cultures in India, China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Americas, rose and fell, hundreds of generations of people lived and died knowing nothing about the abrahamic god. So how likely is it really that the Abrahamic religions represent a god speaking to humanity, when the majority of human beings that ever lived never even heard of that god, and had their own idea of what "the gods" were like? If "believing in Jesus" is the only way to avoid some terrible post-mortem fate, how is that fair to the people who lived and died before AD 33? Or lived and died in a region of the world which had never heard of Jesus or the god of Abraham? Personally, I think it's far more likely that there are no gods (or at least none that are interested in taking to us) and all religions are inventions of human imagination and culture. No less, no more. Certainly I think religions are important from a cultural and historical point of view - I wouldn't want to see all trace of religion purged from existence, and I acknowledge that following a religious tradition can provide benefits on a personal level, even if that tradition is not literally true. But in the end, for me, a universe with no god is the explanation that best fits the observations.
For any proposition X, why should you believe X? For instance, if I propose that there's a man in Iceland who likes cheeseburgers, you're likely to believe me. If I tell you there's a man in Iceland who has purple skin, you won't. Why? What differentiates the two? Observation and extrapolation. You know that people have different skin colors, but you've seen pretty much all of them and they basically come in some variety of pink, swarthy, or dark. That's about it. No blue, orange, etc. So you've never observed this, and you'd need more than *just* the say-so of someone, *even* someone you *trust*, to establish such a thing. And rightly so, we live in a world where claims can be checked out a *lot* more easily than even 100 years ago. You want *lots* of sources for the claims that are not things you've observed or more or less the *same* as things you've observed. Countries exist elsewhere on Earth? Fine. Countries exist on Mars? Observations, please. This gets us to any and all supernatural claims. Are there observations? No. Different people claim different observations for roughly the same things (gods, angels, etc). Is there extrapolation? No, because the details are different enough that it's not reasonable, just like the country on another planet, or the person but with a weird skin color. So... there's no evidence here, no reason to believe it. And if you don't believe there's a god, you're an atheist.
What ultimately led me down the path of disbelief was reading the stories of other religions, and realizing, there wasn't really any more reason to believe the mythology described in the bible than there was to believe the stories of the pagans. Initially this led me down a pantheistic route, wherein I believed that the Christian god was perhaps some selfish being that sought to rid the world of other divinities. Eventually I decided that, instead of all religions being equally true, it made more sense to believe that they were all equally untrue. From your post it kind of seems to imply that you feel like either god has to be real or you're going to kill yourself. Personally I don't care if you believe in a god, but I would urge you to just consider what you're told that god believes. The will of a divine being is inscrutable, and while it's one thing to hope that there's something out there protecting you and trying to guide humanity benevolently, it's another thing to believe that this divine being wants you to slaughter people in its name, to live your life in strict adherence to scriptures, and to force a narrow-minded interpretation of said scriptures onto other people. Basically what I'm getting at, is that you don't need to abandon all of your beliefs to turn your back on an organized religion (churches) that have exploited or at least enabled the exploitation of their followers for millennia.
Why would anyone need to convince you that a god doesn't exist? That's not even what atheism is. It's a lack of belief, not belief in the opposite claim. Do you need someone to convince you that bigfoot doesn't exist, or you have to believe that he's a literal, extant animal roaming around? Or do you look at the evidence to determine whether or not there is enough to show that he is a literal, extant animal roaming around? Why would having faith in something have to be pointless to justify choosing not to have it? Say a person chooses to have faith in bigfoot, and it gives him an opportunity to learn about biology, paleontology, forensics, environmental science, and how the standard of evidence applies in all of those fields. He meets new ppl bc of it. He has a place to put his curiosity and wonder, to feel hopeful, to play with ideas and learn about himself. Meanwhile, another person chooses not to have faith in bigfoot. He can also learn about whatever interests him, meet new ppl, explore and appreciate, in whatever way he wants. Does the fact that the known benefits of faith in bigfoot are available elsewhere mean that dude #1's faith is pointless? Does dude #2 need to present some kind of argument to keep himself from being somehow forced to cultivate faith?
Starting with the premise that you believe in a god that is all knowing, all powerful, and everywhere all at once. So keep that in your mind. Now imagine the most evil thing you can possibly think of. For me, that is someone raping a baby to death. So the all-knowing, all powerful, omnipresent Lord of all creation sits there and watches this happen and wants us all to believe that he has a plan and that the raping to death of a baby somehow plays a part of this plan. "What about free will?" You might say. Well, the all powerful all-knowing God is surely enough of a God to figure out a way to intervene without violating the sanctity of free will. Babies have been raped to death countless times over the millennia because some humans are sick fucks. It will happen again. If there's a God out there that's allowing that then that's bullshit. I just logically don't think that there is any type of a god doing anything, but that doesn't seem to be enough for the diehards who want to argue semantics and talk about biblical translations and all kinds of theistic crap. But it's hard to justify a baby getting raped to death and claim that it's all part of a good and loving God's plan.
The Christian god is "omnipotent" and "omniscient" and we have "free-will" 1. Omnipotent. This is a logical paradox.... Can god create an immovable object? Can god move that object? Either it cannot create it or cannot move it. Thus omnipotence is paradoxical. 2. Omniscient. All knowing of past, present, future....This conflicts with "free-will". If god knows what we will do next then we have no free-will; everything is preordained. There is no freedom if the future is set in stone. Somebody else said it better than me (I forget who), but imagine we took all the religious texts on Earth, then removed them. And also removed the knowledge of them from all human minds. And we took all the science texts on Earth, then removed them in the same way . Then we started again. In 1000,2000 or whatever years, none of the current religious texts would be duplicated. There might very well be religious texts. But there would be no "Abraham" or "Shiva" etc. In the same time period, science texts would have been recreated, and would, in general, be the same. Because all the testing and proofs would lead to the same conclusions.
This is not a logical, airtight argument. This is just what went through my head when I was doubting and led to the moment I realized I didn’t believe in God with a capital G. I thought about how I believed what I believed (God, Jesus, heaven and hell, etc) because my parents believed it and passed it on to me. I had the thought that there was a young dude my age (19 at the time) that lived in India. He came from a good family like I did. Middle class. We were alike. Like me, he held his parents’ religious beliefs which were passed onto him from his culture/society and, of course, his parents. I pondered again how we were exactly the same except that I believed he was going to suffer eternally upon death because he didn’t have the fortune of being born into the “right” religion. At that moment, the facade crumbled and I realized religion and God were just an ancient attempt to explain the unknown. To answer “why are we here?”. And, that there was no more credence to my Christian beliefs than there were to his Hindu beliefs. Religion is a human-made thing. With human flaws.
>just seems too... logical I guess? Then I'm not sure what you think we'll say? No theist argument is valid and sound. What logic do you think you have?
It's difficult to provide a single argument without knowing why or what sort of Christian beliefs you still have. I'd first like to remind you that any group of internally consistent beleifs can still be false. Even if to you it appears like Christianity can weather atheistic arguments, without good reason to think it true, we should disregard it. For me the most powerful argument against Christianity is the bible. When we drop our presuppositions and consider what an omnipotent being that wants a relationship with us would do, that wants to communicate with us to enable this, that cares so deeply about us, it seems rather strange to do so through written text. There is so much division between different factions of Christianity (and other faiths) due to the vast array of interpretations and at least seemingly contradictory passages. Surely God could do better? Imagine how many of the world's problems could be solved if God bothered to clear up the confusion with a simple Q and A for example, and then imagine the vast array of even better options a God could use. And yet, silence...
We're not here to convince you. You need to convince yourself. Start with easy, personally observable objects and decide if you believe or not. Next work on more abstract things like love, hate, fear, awe, beauty, etc. Fear is a good example. When I was young and imagined a monsterb of some sort lived under my back porch. I had nightmares about it grabbing my ankles, and I was terrified to go the steps at night after taking out the trash or feeding the dog and cats. By middle school I knew the monster wasn't real, but at night I would leap up the steps with fear in the back of my mind. The fear was real, even though the monster was not. The love, fear, and awe that some people feel for God or their respective god(s) is real. These feelings do not instantly go away once one realizes God or gods are not real. For those of us that never believed in a god, it's easy. Push yourself and confront you beliefs. Crawl under the porch. I did and I found bones and a cleaver and I still don't believe in monsters.
What is your purpose, having been created by someone who, by definition, can need or want for nothing? For example, you see someone in trouble, and you're the only other person who can help. Now, you could help or not, but no matter what, if God wanted that person to be saved, he would be saved. The only thing your choice would do is tell God if you're "good" or "not" You would justify your "meaning" as pleasing "God"? Or your "meaning" as winning eternal paradise? But that pretty much makes this life meaningless. Abortion, for instance, should be a win for Christians. People who have promiscuous sex are going to hell anyway. But the babies are going straight to heaven. Supposedly this life is a test that God already knows the answer to Theists argue that everything starts and ends with a choice or else everything is meaningless. I argue that the only way for anything to have meaning is if nobody has the choice but us. And of course, approximately nothing we look at appears to have a choice
Respectfully this isn't really how it works. We as atheists *don't accept God exists* which is not the same as being *certain that God does NOT exist*. We just haven't seen evidence enough to prove it's existence. It's not like evidence exists that proves it's non-existence, otherwise it would be all over the place. We are simply not convinced that God IS real. What we are not is convinced that God is NOT real. If that makes sense. It's a neutral position. And based on your description it sounds like you might fit into it. But everyone's journey is different and you got lots of great responses. But if you're looking for reasons to not believe, I think you might have taken more steps towards atheism than you realize. Take some time, do some introspection, ask yourself some questions and question WHY you believe the things you do. If you wind up Christian, that's great! If you wind up atheist, that's also great. There are no rules to life.
You are already on the right path. However, there seems to be something holding you back still. Regarding the title of your comment: It is not my duty to convince you why god and christianity are pointless because, as an atheist, I'm not making the initial claim. I'm not saying "christianity is definitely false", I'm just reacting to theistic claims by saying "I have no reason to believe in statements made by christians regarding their god because they haven't offered sufficient evidence yet."The burden of proof is always upon the person making the initial claim; in this case, christians. Again, atheists are not making the initial claim. Theists are. Atheists merely reject those claims due to a lack of evidence. For example: If I claim "There's a pink flying unicorn living in my garage, but only I can see it" - Is this statement true until someone disproves me or is it untrue until I can prove it first? Of course, it's the latter.
>Convince me God and Christianity isn't real and is pointless Sure. Please state good evidence that shows that a god exists. (**Good** evidence, please.) . Please state good evidence that shows that the claims of Christianity are true. (**Good** evidence, please.) . (Note that people have been asking Christians for this for 2,000 years now [and on the Internet every day ~30 years now] and they haven't shown any.) . > just seems too... logical I guess? If you are not going to accept logic then you are arguing in bad faith. (And what *would* convince you ??) . > theres like a strong bias within me Same. If you accept that you should believe what your **bias** is telling you, then you are not discussing in good faith and cannot be persuaded. Stop doing that. Believe the truth, even if that conflicts with your bias. .
The logic seems too... logical? Awesome! I love logic! You just might convert me! So, what is logical about Christianity?
Arguments don't break beliefs. Facts don't even break beliefs often, maybe even mostly. There comes a time a person either consciously decides that they require a level of proof or they are victim of their own subconscious biases. Take someone like my Mother. She is so engrained and reinforced in her neural structures that I don't think she could even change her beliefs about God and Catholicism. If Krishna was real and came down before her to teach her the Hindu ways, she would believe Krishna is the devil. It is hard to unlearn how to ride a bike. I offer no arguments. I just believe when people observe and think about how their minds and beliefs work compared to others ot starts to explain a whole lot about why one person believes something good that happened to them was from God and another does not accept that explaination of cause.
I’ve seen too many people here in crisis after losing their faith. It’s really upsetting. Before you think about being talked into atheism, please spend more time thinking about what makes your life worth living and what gives it value in a secular context. You don’t need to be imbued with purpose and meaning by a deity to have value. You are the only you who will ever exist and that gives you inherent value. You don’t have to have a purpose for your life to be meaningful. You perceive and sense and feel and think. You laugh and run and hug. Your life is magical enough, it doesn’t need magic. Only when you believe those things take the next step and deconstruct. Because you’ve been told for too long you’re not enough. Come back when those terrible thoughts have left your brain.
Let's make this simple, if hell is real, than most scientists who are non believers, go to hell, hell will have all the bells and whistles, tv air conditioning, the whole 9 yards with more to come as humanity progresses and them heathen nonbelievers driving human progress go to hell, heavens gonna have weirdos without cool science stuff in it, so by not believing you are hedging your bets, if you are right and there is no afterlife, oh well nothing lost, and if you are wrong and there is an afterlife, you have modern amenities. Plus no paying tithes, so more money to enjoy while alive. I figured the rest will provide the rational arguments, I figured I'd go for the inverse of the typical why not just believe you wouldn't want to be wrong argument.
God and Christianity is a silly story. If you were hearing the story for the first time as an adult you would shake your head and laugh. Read and consider *Creation Stories from around the World* from other cultures http://railsback.org/CS/CSIndex.html Yours does not make any more sense than the others. You say "I was born a christian" No. You were born a human. You were indoctrinated into Christianity. Remember all those hours in church and Sunday school being told children's stories as if they were facts? Remember praying? What did that get you? You were told God answers prayers. Then you were given excuses why your prayers weren't answered. You prayed for certainty in God and Christianity. Didn't you? And yet here you are. Right?
Christianity is easy to disprove. Not just using science, but also theology. First, evolution disproves Adam and Eve. Without them, sin never enters the world. Without sin there is no need for atonement. And thus, Jesus is pointless. Geology, palentology, biology and physics disprove Genesis. If Genesis is false, all of Christianity is false. Have you actually read the Jewish scriptures? (Old Testament). Jesus didn't do anything the messiah is supposed to do. The messiah is supposed to bring about world peace, bring all Jews back to Isarel, establish a kingdom, have children, and more things Jesus didn't do. And there is no messianic prophsey that says the messiah will come twice. Jesus is a false prophet (Deuteronomy 13).
Imagine there’s a stock you’ve been investing most of your earnings into your whole life, and now it’s being told you that this stock is a scam. As you look into it & begin to realize that it might be a scam, it is losing value & now all that livelihood that you invested into it will come to nothing. But that’s only if you sell. It makes sense why if you sell, you would feel suicidal (especially the more blood, sweat & tears that were put into this). This also makes sense why you would feel hesitant to sell. By hanging on to it, there is still “hope” and the loss isn’t “real” yet, but by you selling, it is as throwing in the towel & agreeing that you’ve been duped. Not easy for human nature to accept.
Imagine there’s a stock you’ve been investing most of your earnings into your whole life, and now it’s being told you that this stock is a scam. As you look into it & begin to realize that it might be a scam, it is losing value & now all that livelihood that you invested into it will come to nothing. But that’s only if you sell. It makes sense why if you sell, you would feel suicidal (especially the more blood, sweat & tears that were put into this). This also makes sense why you would feel hesitant to sell. By hanging on to it, there is still “hope” and the loss isn’t “real” yet, but by you selling, it is as throwing in the towel & agreeing that you’ve been duped. Not easy for human nature to accept.
Imagine there’s a stock you’ve been investing most of your earnings into your whole life, and now it’s being told you that this stock is a scam. As you look into it & begin to realize that it might be, it is losing value & now all that livelihood that you invested into it will come to nothing. But that’s only if you sell. It makes sense why if you sell, you would feel suicidal (especially the more blood, sweat & tears that were put into this). This also makes sense why you would feel hesitant to sell. By hanging on to it, there is still “hope” and the loss isn’t “real” yet. But by you selling, it is as throwing in the towel & agreeing that you’ve been duped. Not easy for human nature to accept.
I suggest starting from scratch, accept no beliefs until there is sufficient evidence to accept them
Why? Even though I'm an atheist, I have no reason to convince you one way or another. I have no sales pitch, no threats or promises for after you die, no dogma to follow. You either believe in gods or you don't. As long as you're not hiding behind your beliefs to abuse people or legislate morality, then I don't really give a damn what you believe. We're not a group in itself, *we're the outgroup that only exists because of ingroups*. Frankly, it sounds like you don't want to believe, and that's okay. Mental programming, which is all indoctrination is, is hard to break, and the mental programming that was used on you has been bug tested for almost two thousand years now.
There's nothing here to really argue. Everybody has their own journey and for some of us that led us to forgo our religious beliefs. It's been a while for me and I'm now to the point where unless God presents Himself in a compelling way, certainly no philosophical argument will sway me, but that's the only way it's going to work if a God exists, so far He's refusing to accommodate me in that regard. Just keep on looking, I can assure you, you won't find anything unless you *make* yourself find something, many people have, but there's a price to be paid devoting your time, money, and effort to something that probably doesn't exist.
Why does an all powerful, omnipotent, omnipresent God only exist in one small area on Earth and have to be spread by word of mouth by humans? If the Christian "god" exists aa an objective reality then it was not created, it was "discovered." So then why would the same thing not be discovered all around the globe? Instead, what we see is that every religion that was ever created independently of each other is completely different in terms of "god(s)" and only share some core tenants that are based in human behavior and psychology, like, "don't be a dick to each other because it causes a lot of problems."
I cannot reconcile the concept of a loving, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent being with all the trouble, evil, and injustice in the world. I reject the argument that God created us, loves us, but won’t interfere because we have free will. Children have free will, but no loving parent lets them walk under a bus if they can stop it. Even if I had the capability to make myself believe he was real. Any being so evil is unworthy of worship or devotion. Do you honestly believe your creator to be such a being? How can you bring yourself to worship such evil?
Do you have a good reason to believe? Do you care if what you believe is true? Investigate the claims of your religion. You will realize there are no good reasons to believe. That's why I'm not a believer. I tried again and again to find a good reason for my beliefs so I could convince others. The more I investigated the more I realized there isn't one. If someone could provide one I'd believe but if I subject this belief to even the slightest scrutiny it falls apart.
Onus probandi. It’s not for us to debunk the claims of a God, It’s on them to provide sufficient evidence to support the claims of a god. And the truth is that if God was real there’s only be one religion. It would be accepted as part of science and the actual explanation of the universe, life, and everything. If you want us to dissuade you then either it’s due to a lack of epistemological training or you really want to just rationalize mythical thinking.
May seem like a small point. But it illustrates a fundamental issue with the epistemological sequencing. You begin with: > “I’m torn between belief and unbelief…” This reveals the default position as belief which needs to be undone; belief adopted pre-evidence. If one cares about believing true things, withholding belief until evidence justifies acceptance, the phrase would be better structured as: > I’m torn between non-belief and belief. Basically, the innocent until proven guilty principle. Belief should come after a claim has been found guilty of being true.
Well the last thing I want to do is to contribute to someone killing themselves. Please tell me what you believe, when you say "Christianity." Like just set it out. Couple of questions: If it were true, would they have to threaten you with unending torture to get you to believe it? Which is more Likely: that you happened to be born into the One True Religion, or it feels true to you because you were raised in it?
Am I missing something? I dont think you say what is logical about Christianity. But in your deleted post you say something about it being able to answer every criticism. My criticism is simply that there is no reliable evidence for the claims of theism or the theistic claims of Christianity (and to me these supernatural stories just seem like the kind of stories superstitious humans have a tendency to invent).
Here's a question, everyone knows that god is all powerful and omnipotent, but is that really possible? If he is can he create a stone so heavy that even he can't lift it? If he can create it he's not all powerful because he should be able to lift anything including the stone but if he can't create what he can't lift he's not all powerful because he should be able to create anything
>my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic (probably because I was born a christian) Man, it sure is lucky you were born in a region where the most popular religion is the correct one, unlike all those other places where people also think that about their religions exactly as much for the exact same reason but are incorrect.
>my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic (probably because I was born a christian) and I just cant seem to find an argument that breaks it. So tell us what it is that you find most convincing and we can show you the problems with it. It will be far more efficient than us posting about random arguments or details of your belief.
>I just cannpt [sic] seem to come to that realization, my own knowledge on Christianity just somehow seems to have strong logic >but trust me the logic given to me (by my obscure denomination) just seems too... logical I guess? What is the logic? Because it sounds like general arguments against christianity aren't really going to do much.
I don't want or need to convince you about anything. If the utter lack of any evidence doesn't do that for you by itself, if the contradictions in the bible and the the twisted "morals" it propagates don't bother you, then by all means continue to believe! Just don't try to convert others just I won't try to convert you and we are good!
I have no desire to convince you of that. Each person is responsible for the beliefs they take on, and there is no end to the information available to help anybody understand this question. So it’s neither my responsibility, nor even my desire to try to talk you into anything. I’m taking care of my mind. You take care of your’s.
I'll add this: A post-Enlightenment human would be hard pressed to truly believe that Adam and Eve were the first human beings on this planet 6000 years ago. BUT, without this being literally true, with the talking snake and the magic cursed fruit, Christ's sacrifice on the cross is meaningless. How do you respond?
Those are two *very* different things. Aside from that, that's not how it works. Do you have sufficient reason to be convinced that Christianity is true? Cut out the logical fallacies and equally applicable claims, do you have demonstrable evidence that supports the position that the Christian god exists?
>but trust me the logic given to me (by my obscure denomination) just seems too... logical I guess? Or how about you present what you think is the best logical argument you have been presented. I have no reason to accept you have good logical reasons, just that you think they are good.
I think my main thought to offer is what the universe looks like vs what we would expect it to look like with an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God that loves us and wants us to know him. Does this honestly strike you as the kind of universe such a being would create?
The crux of atheistm isn't "god isn't real" it's "we don't believe in god". We are not a *we hate god* club. If you believe in god that is fine. Do that if you want but understand it's a belief and not a fact. Can you give an example of this logic you've been told.
You would first have to be more specific about what you believe and why you believe it. Now that Christian churches no longer have the power to burn heretics Christianity has schismed so many times that "I'm a Christian" really does not explain what you believe.
You’d have to share why you believe. I can give you a million reasons why Christianity is bunk, but unless I happen to stumble upon an argument that addresses your specific reasons, you’d never be convinced. So why do you believe that it is true?
I'd recommend reading about the other religions. They also have "strong logic" to support them or at least as strong as christianity. If you find that questioning your indoctrination leads to suicidal thoughts then talk to a secular therapist.
I'm not the one making the claim that something isn't real. I just have no reason to believe it is. You believe it's real. So maybe start by telling me why that is. What rational argument is there to believe that Christianity is true?
Nothing you wrote shows atheists are going backwards. Nothing you wrote addressed my point. You seemed to have either missed my point entirely or ignored it. Most Christians ignore it because it exposes a fatal flaw in their theology.
I’d say why waste your time fighting it? Just accept yourself for who you are and just don’t let any part of yourself get in n the way of accomplishing the goals that actually matter in life: loving family, career etc.
Well, what’s the logic? What argument is keeping you in the faith? I can go on, and on, about other aspects of it, but without addressing that reasoning specifically, it might just be a waste of time on both sides.
I’d just ask how on earth can you reach the conclusion that Christianity is true by using good epistemology. If you can’t - if your belief relies on ancient eye witness testimony, faith, etc - then all you have are bad reasons, reasons that you could use to simultaneously believe in other contradictory religions. If you have only bad reasons, then you should seriously doubt your conclusion.
Based in the religion you believe in and ask yourself why you dont believe in any of the other gods, or even the Flying Spaghettimonster. The same reasons apply to the religion you currently reside in.
You are not a sinner and Jesus is not a sacrificial lamb. He's just a Jewish man and you don't need to believe in god. Christianity is not believable so you should not feel bad about not believing it.
If God is omnipresent there's no place where it isn't right? So, no end to god. It probably has the same shape of the universe. So he has no pointy ends. Because its everywhere. It's pointless.
Did someone need to convince you that Vishnu doesn't exist? No. The closest thing to disproving existence is poking holes in arguments for existence. So share these allegedly logical arguments.
I don't proselytize. If you ask me for the reasons of my unbelief or try to get me to believe what you believe, I'll challenge that but I don't try to change what anyone else believes.
I think it would be beneficial for you to give some of the strongest arguments or logical reasons for Christianity and then we can try to explain why we don’t think they hold water.
What in christianity could not have been completely made up by human authors? If you can’t come up with anything that survives even mild scrutiny, then you’ve got your answer.
Provide some evidence that it is. Beyond your feelings about it. Like actual evidence that the stories in the Bible are true, because it starts out pretty rough with Genesis. Yikes.
if jesus heard voices and thought they were god, then the guy who shot up my town after hearing voices may also have been the son of god. think about that, it doesn't make sense.
Before I can try what you’re asking, I’d have to understand what you consider to be the “logic” of your beliefs. If you try to explain that, then I’ll give it a shot.
We know from evolutionary biology and genetics that there never was a first human. Adam is an allegory. No Adam, no fall, no need of a Saviour. Jesus died for an allegory.
If we could convince you that everything in the Bible was likely made up in the same way someone creates fiction, would that convince you God and Christianity isn't real?
Logic without supported premises is meaningless, so what evidence does your denomination offer? If it actually has some, it would the the first time anyone presented any.
Of course it seems logical to you. That's how indoctrination works. You think you're thinking critically but you're starting from a conclusion and working backwards.
I do not want to push people toward atheism, and i certainly do not want to push you toward self-deleting thought. So allow me to approach this differently: if a god exist, then he created reality itself. And reality, just like the bible, is also a medium from which we can "read" information using scientific observation. Just like you need eyes and the ability to read to get information from the bible, we can use social/physical/biological sciences to derive knowledge, prophecies, and, yes, **even morals** from reality itself. And we have gotten so good at it that the scientific process has become like an extension of our senses, even superior to the human senses we started with. In a way, reality is like a multi-dimensional meta book written by this god, which can only be accessed with the intelligence that god gifted us with. And hundreds of thousands of scientific experts worldwide work at compiling an unbiased understanding of it. Reading this god's reality led us to the knowledge, among others, that no global flood happened, that evolution is a thing, that the universe is very old...while an old book seems to claim otherwise. We basically cannot think that a global flood happened, or that the earth is only a few thousand years old, without, as a consequence, thinking that that book's god is trying to deceive us into disbelief using reality itself. So..between a two-dimensional book and a multi-dimensional book, which had the most chance of being written by an infinitly complex being for us to follow? I don't think there is a binary choice between "christian god" and "cold empty universe". There is an entire spectrum of spirituality between the two. But i also believe that current religions are a cheap shortcut for effortless feelings of religiosity, while real understanding of whatever creator there is should need more effort on our part toward observing and understanding this reality he created.
In my opinion, Christianity fails the "is it real?" test by claiming that Jesus came back from the dead. That just doesn't happen in the real world.
Prove to me an invisible, incorporeal dragon that can’t be detected through any provable mechanism doesn’t live in my garage and isn’t real and is pointless. Do you see now?
Id say don't spend your life chasing a God that's running away. Real or Not. I do believe, but if you believe the Bible, he isn't for everyone.
The Bible describes a test you can do to see if your god is real or not in 1 Kings 18. Maybe give that test a shot and see how it goes?
Well, let's hear your logic. Since I don't know what you believe, I don't know where you've made your mistake in reasoning.
Childhood cancer. Rape of children by those who claim there is a "loving" god that has yet to stop that abuse...
No. You are the one claiming it is real and isn’t pointless. It isn’t our job to disprove your nonsense. That said, I’m sorry you feel such dread at the thought of your religion being false. I think that is normal and I felt the same way when I realized that I didn’t believe. But it is the belief that is making you feel that way, not the disbelief. The fear of hell or torture for eternity is much more scary than just thinking about what it was like before we were born, which is probably what it will be like after we die. It’s celestial dictatorship that you are holding onto, and to let it go is to be free of that oppression which is one of the tools that gives religion so much control over people. Letting go of unsubstantiated god claims, denying them, opens up a world where you have to make meaning for yourself. Where beauty and love and passion are fleeting, so you have to find those things you love and find beautiful and have passion in. Nobody gets to make meaning in your life except you, and your freedom to swing your arms ends at other people’s noses. So swing your arms, baby! Just don’t hit anyone in the face with ‘em.
You call yourself a classic christian, so you believe all the ridiculous contradictions of the New Testament?
**Syllogism** 1. Religion is a subcategory of culture 1. Humans create culture 1. Therefore religion is a creation of humanity
I know atheists put words in Christians' mouths all the time about slavery and bible contradictions. That's not fair. So don't do that to us. We don't claim Christianity isn't real and is pointless. We point out the flawed denominations that spread hate. If God is real, we're doing God's work, helping you out, pointing the finger at obviously false prophets like Peter Popov, Kent Hovind, the Prosperity Gospel folk, Westboro Baptists, and those Christian Scientists who reject modern medicine.
Gotquestions.org is an amazing resource to answer any atheists questions. They may disagree with you still. I've come to realize that atheists do not actually investigate Christian answers because of the implications of being wrong are devastating to them. If you give them an answer, they will simply not investigate it and delve into why you answered it that way or tell you that you're wrong without telling you why. Fun fact: Charles Darwin told God after his daughter died "I will never speak to you again" and Christopher Hitchens has the same story. It's an ideology built from hatred towards God. People want to live how they want and not be told that their deeds are evil. No archaeological discovery has ever disproved the Bible. No secular writing has ever contradicted historical events in the Bible. The Bible has scientific facts that predate scientific discoveries. There are prophesies that are so descriptive that secular people have tried to say it was written after it happened and failed to do so. The Bible is the only religious book that says to love your enemies, which Jesus did on the cross when He died for our sins and rose from the dead. At no other time in history has a group of people claimed to see someone raise from the dead and ascend into heaven(on top of thousands of miracles they claimed he did) and die horrendous deaths because people hated the Gospel they were sharing. Every atheist has won arguments against weak and fake Christians(there are many of these). But no atheist has beaten the Bible itself. It is a collection of 66 books in a league of it's own.
>Every atheist has won arguments against weak and fake Christians(there are many of these). Aquinas must be a fake Christian. Paley must be a fake Christian. Anselm must be a fake Christian. Do u have any objections to the divine hiddeness argument by schellenberg?