WTF is this forum coming to? Awesome discussions on life, the universe & everything!

Truth hurts I guess- don't forget about the gay-prostitution thing though either. Christianity has been corrupt in the past, is corrupt now, yet continues to preach at people as though the church was the be-all & end-all of how to live life in the best possible way.


Doesn't matter though, the church is ran by people, people are fallible, corruptible and liable to say & do silly things; same is true of people from all faiths. The argument is about proving or disproving the existence of god, which no one can categorically. Even when the flaws in the 'for' argument are exposed time & time again the discussion goes back to 'I believe..' & ignores all other points of discussion raised about why belief isn't good enough, especially when that belief is the result of an upbringing. If you were brought up in an environment free from all religion then exposed to the world, you wouldn't even think or say such things as 'god damn' or 'thank god'; something which I as an enlightened ( but vile... ) atheist still do constantly, due to the ~12 years of brain washing endured in my formative ( think about that for a moment ) school years.

It's the same the world over:



good part starts at 3:36- you cannot deny that faith is just a case of early humans creating stories to make sense of a confusing world; the story evolves and becomes more complex, but every part of the world has their own story; it's just luck or persistence that certain stories spread around more and then started being taken at face value...

 

Good arguments around.

However, this has some very good points.
Some, mainly the lean-far-side-ists (sp?) are being hypocritical. Say one thing in a positive situation, but turn around and say the exact opposite in a negative.

Let me bring myself onto an equal field of understanding.
I understand that some rely on science because they can't see the existence of a superior being, literally or figuratively. As for me, I feel that there is a "grand master". I can't help but feel that life wasn't just some big accident caused by proteins and lightning.
I don't mean to sound "Preachy", but what is the best way to have questions answered? Simple: ASK.\




...You know what? I can't believe I haven't just come out and said it right away. I shouldn't be ashamed to say it. (which I wasn't, but...)

I am LDS.

*phew*

Go ahead, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I'll try to explain things.
I'm not going to be all "you'll be burned" and all that, so, please, don't try to be "you're wrong here" on me. I'm just trying to get you some clarification and get misunderstanding out of the way.

 

And that is where the inconsistency comes in. A "necessary" evil is still evil.

Sure: if I think slavery, violent conquest, killing people for having sex outside marriage and the subjugation of women was wrong, I'm just not seeing the whole picture and my moral reasoning is flawed. "It was OK 'cause God said so." How do we know He said so? Some dudes wrote it down thousands of years ago in a culture and context we barely understand now. No possibility of artistic licence here? Political or personal agendas? Cultural bias? Abusing His word to justify doubtful behaviour? Which makes me wonder: what will Christians make of the writings of Rev. Phelps 2000 years from now? Or the videos of Jimmy Swaggart doing his thing? Or the publications of prosperity evangelists? How will they decide who is proselitising the true word of God and who are the nutters and con-artists?

Sorry, but it does not work for me. My moral compass may not be externally validated, but at least it is coherent, consistent and based in reason.

 

The inconsistency is in your perception - you're completely avoiding the "actions derived from nature" premise and continuing to isolate God's actions from his nature and trying to squeeze them into your own moral framework... it can't work that way. That you call God's actions "evil" shows that you are misunderstanding them; you're judging them by your standards, not his.

Let's change that to make it more accurate: nobody sees the whole picture, and everybody's subjective moral reasoning is flawed - you said yourself earlier in the thread that all human reasoning is fallible, so that must entail logically that your moral reasoning is also fallible. Furthermore, the things that you oppose are not necesssarily what they appear to be; people who object to God's actions often take things complelety out of context to serve the depiction of a barbaric God who is inconsistent with himself; it's too easy to do.

By faith. The authority of scripture is THE backbone of the Christian faith; the Bible is God's revelation of himself to humanity throughout the years, and if we do not accept that the Bible is authoritative then we have no standard by which to judge what is truth and what is whimsy. Why do we believe that God is perfectly just? because the Bible teaches that he is; why do we believe that there is only one God? because the Bible teaches that there is... and so on.

Based on fallible human reason - sorry, must try harder! Part of the Christian worldview - arguably, the part that most nonbelievers struggle with - is humility: accepting that we can get things wrong (and do), and accepting that scripture cannot get things wrong. There is a very profound trust required here, and people who are unwilling to trust in God's goodness and justice will never understand nor believe it.

 

Scripture is the word of God as related by humans, and therefore must be subject to the same fallibility.

OK, analogy: is maths fallible? Nope, it is logically consistent. We may make errors in applying maths but maths itself is perfect (it is also self-referential, like God). So when 2+2 = 4 today, but yesterday it was calculated to be 5, then we know someone screwed up somewhere. Checking your calculations against all the rest that maths says, 2+2 must be 4, not 5; the former is a logical and consistent fit while the latter would make the whole thing unravel. Ergo, yesterday's mathematician cocked up.

Faith should not be blind. No free will without informed choice, remember?

 

The fact that God inspired the writing of his word means that human error was wholly eradicated; the human component in the writing of scripture is not fallibility, otherwise we cannot hold to the infallibility of scripture and the Christian idea of objective truth falls down. Like I said, backbone. To say that any element of human authorship introduces fallibility is not logically coherent - it's possible for human fallibility to be overcome by God's guidance, which is what we believe.

And your analogy supports my position - it's the mathmatician not the maths that is at fault. God's morality is perfect; our understanding of it is not, nor can it be, hence why we must trust.

And faith is blind... go back to what I said about fundamental reality - we all have blind faith that what we perceive to be real is in fact real. We cannot verify it empirically; we simply accept it and get on with our lives.

 

Aha, but what if you've been trusting the wrong mathematician all along? Math (god's morality) might be correct but the mathematician (the word of god in the bible) might have got it wrong.

You can't know unless you (like Nexxo) do the math and see that despite 2+2 being written as 5 in the (incorrect) book, it is in fact equal to 4.

 

So how do we know it is the human-error free word of God, if all we have is the scriptures of fallible humans to claim that it is? It's sort of like having an error-checking program check itself. If it checks itself to be correct, how do we know that is the correct assessment by a correct piece of code, or the incorrect assessment by a flawed piece of code?

If the mathematician says: "2+2=5. It may make no sense to you, but maths is perfect, so it is", how do I know that he doesnt just have a bad understanding of maths? I know: maths is perfect, so if he followed its rules his calculations should be correct. But how do we know that he did and they are? We only have his word for it --unless we learn and understand maths for ourselves. That understanding may also be fallible, of course, and --here is the catch-- we may end up drawing the same conclusion that 2+2=5. The mathematician must have been right! His is the correct word of maths! Except that, of course, it isn't.

In the end you are having to place your faith in the author, not God. I know: "God would eliminate human error". How do you know He would? We only have His word for it --from the same author.

No, we check against other facts to look for logical consistency.

If faith is blind, what's the point of free will? You cannot make a valid choice if it is not informed. "Trust that I am perfect and just" does not lead to informed choice or understanding. There is no possibility of learning, growth or enlightenment. If I have free will that also means I am responsible for my choices --I have to be able to account for them. Saying: "God says it's OK so I trust it is" is an abdication of responsibility and again violates free will.

 

Can you define "We" here please because stating that the scripture of the bible is infallible from what I remember goes against quite a lot of Baptist, Methodist and Anglican dogma and teaching? Quite a lot of the bible old and new is not Gods word but an apostles interpretation of what they believe (Pauls letters, Corinthians being a biggy where he even states god does not say but I believe this ...), Psalms in worship of god, historical account written after the events. And as they are not the word of god they are quite liable to fallibility by the writer and definitely fallibility from constant translation, transcription and copying of works at the very beginning. Its where Christianity differs quite a lot from the Muslims’ Quran which to them is the verbatim word of God

 

Some good arguments in here, I always enjoy discussions such as these because I learn new angles all the time.

I have an interesting question to ask the believers in here. If you had been born in India or China rather than the US or UK, you would more than likely follow Hinduism or Buddhism instead of Christianity. If you had been born around 2000BC somewhere the Nile you would have been raised a polytheist.

Do you agree that whatever the source of religion, it is fair to say that indoctrination (reword this as you please*) is the reason that it is practised?

Whatever the underlying ethos of a religion may be, nobody would believe unless most or all of the people around them also believed the same thing.

I ask because if you were raised by chimps with no human contact, you would have no concept of any sort of deity. That's not to say you wouldn't invent your own of course - the sun is a scary thing when you don't understand it, as is darkness.

*Whilst indoctrination implies that the target should not be expected to question the "truth", I am well aware that much Christian teaching positively encourages critical analysis of beliefs. But the goal of that encouraged analysis is not to debunk the belief - rather to understand it.

 

It's a holistic thing - we determine consistency from our personal conversion experience, fellowship with believers, and teaching from the Bible by ordained ministers. The Bible claiming that it is the inspired Word of God is circular, but that alone does not invalidate the claim... it's still logically possible and entirely reasonable, and experience does not contradict this at all; in fact it verifies it, like Kayin said.

Nope - our faith is in God alone; the Bible tells us very plainly not to place our faith in men, which can be interpreted as a vow of inerrancy as far as scriptural authorship is concerned.

Most evancelical Christian denominations accept the inerrancy of the Bible; there are some who do not, and like I said before, they are the ones who drift far and wide from biblical principles.

It's true, and it's purely coincidental - where a person was born and what they believe has no bearing on the truth of that belief; if there is one truth, as Christians believe there is, then it makes no difference where you were born or what religious teachings you subscribe to...either you believe the truth or you don't. This is a Richard Dawkins pseudo-rebuttal which pretends to invalidate religious belief but actually achieves nothing other than sounding impressive to an arena-full of militant atheists who are unaware that Dawkins is a hopeless philosopher.

 

So do you believe that had you been born into a different religion you would have been worshipping the wrong deity?

 

So because a text written by people says: "Don't take people's word for it, only God's" it is an endorsement that this people's account of the word of God's can be trusted? Contradictory much?

 

Absolutely - I believe in objective truth, which is the truth of scripture.

Missing the point there dude; the Bible is not "a text" - it's a collection of 66 books written over a period of thousands of years. The Old Testament was endorsed and used by Jesus himself for teaching, and the New Testament books are considered consistent doctrinally and theologically with the tenor of the Old Testament which is why they made it into the canon, but it wasn't a quick or easy decision (and it's not one that is agreed upon by all denominations, hence differing Bibles and different opinions of divine revelation).

Furthermore, you keep twisting the facts to suit your argument - the Bible does not claim to be "people's account" of God's word; it claims to be God's Word, so you need to address it on that premise. Does the fact that God used people to write it preclude him from guiding them to relate his words inerrantly? Nope. The contradiction is in your misunderstanding.

 

Proves my point again, "You don't like it" If you looked into Christianity further you'd see why God instituted that law.

Red herrings.

In this society it's not realistic because of a large amount of different factors, but just because it's hard doesn't excuse you. If so then any act of sin can be excused and lastly you're attacking a denomination of the Church again instead of what you found in the Bible.

Once again can you show me this in the Bible? I know what you're referring to and I know from reading the Bible why some parts of the Church have these "rules". I don't agree with them either because they're not supported by the Bible, but your main gripe with this is "I don't like it" once again.

We already live in a world where people can't live their lives as they want to...that's why we have laws and prisons.

Have you read the entire Bible or substantial parts of it? Then inquired of someone who's studied it about these books of "pure self-contradictory fiction".

I find it hilarious Atheists think Christians accept the Bible blind to any supposed contradictions, all of the ones you guys see that have been regurgitated over the years, I've come up against too and lots more and I can say the Bible does not contradict itself despite how many times it may seem so at first. (Don't bother with one of your link bombs on this stay on the topic.) Not saying I can answer everthing that seems to be contradictory, I base this assertion on track record.

I agree with you on hypocrites, but to the man that says the Church is full of hypocrites I have to reply, " We could use one more "

I agree.

Neil overall you've just repeated the same mistake made in your first post by attacking a denomination of the church and not showing quotes from the Bible itself relation to the initial topic...

Demonstrate how I do this please.

 

Considering that god killed several million people in the bible, compared to satan's ten, I suggest that the god of love hires a PR agent.

 

I know that the scripture is a collection of carefully selected and translated works, but in the end they are all written by humans. I understand that you take it to be the word of God on faith, but my point is that you do this on the basis of what is written in that scripture. Basically you believe it is the word of God because it claims to be.

I can dig that is all about faith and trust but it feels kind of arbitrary. It has to make sense to me. Jesus' quotes about love and forgiveness and not judging others make sense to me. Leviticus does not.

 

Oh, hai!

 

Lucky you were born into a Christian environment then! You must feel a deep sense of sorrow for those to whom the truth can and will never be revealed.

 

I am not a Christian myself (which most members will know by now) but I am somewhat familiar with the teachings of Christ, and the love and forgivness he spoke about did not give carte blanche for immoral behaviour or support such behaviour or allow for it to continue to thrive unchallenged.