(February 3, 2016 at 11:07 am)RobbyPants Wrote:(January 31, 2016 at 5:23 pm)Nihilist Virus Wrote: But if you already believe in Christianity, then you have to answer to the atheist version of your own wager. You should sell all that you own and give to the poor, then wander the world doing good works and preaching the gospel. There is clearly a 100% chance you'll get into heaven if you do this (provided your heart is right and all that jazz), but there is NOT a 100% chance that Jesus will accept you into heaven if you sit on your wealth while children starve to death. Jesus did say that many will do good works, thinking they're Christian, but yet will still be cast into hell. So if you live like a king in your Western world, occasionally going to church and giving a manageable tithe, there's no guarantee you will get into heaven.
Ah, the old "put your money where your mouth is approach". Very nice. I'm sure most Christians will just dismiss this or will come up with justifications why they're allowed to hoard material wealth, but his is good. The goal isn't to prove yourself 100% right; just that there's the chance that you'd be right.
(February 3, 2016 at 11:10 am)robvalue Wrote: Well, either your bible/quran is the perfect word of god or it isn't.
If it is, you're not following it, bucko. Not even close. If you were, you'd be DEAD, in jail, or in ISIS.
If it isn't, it should be subjected to the same scrutiny as any other man made book. And it fails instantly as being obvious fiction. At absolute best it's primitive man's description "of god", using their extremely limited language and knowledge. I wish people would use this latter description for it, so they could at least be honest about why they ignore most of it.
(February 3, 2016 at 11:19 am)Rhythm Wrote: My thoughts exactly. I;m gonna go out on a limb here and state that whenever anybody talks about what they believe, with respect to those "great books"....theyre only referring to what they know of them. Likely a small portion no matter who they are. They don't believe in the rest of the shit they don't know about, or haven't yet considered. Those chapters left to be memorized. Or even those chapters ignored.
It's a point of commonality between atheists and theists, really.
And yet, when Christians point out the examples of St. Francis or Mother Teresa or countless MILLIONS of priests, monks and nuns who have done EXACTLY as you claim EVERYONE should do by selling all they have, giving to the poor and following him, your response is not to say, "Wow. Some of these Christians are serious about following Jesus...maybe I should look into His teachings more closely."
Instead, you look at those who fail to follow your interpretation of scripture as justification for continuing to do what you were never going to stop doing anyway.
Do you not see the flaw in your reasoning?
It's easy to mock those who struggle to live up to the high ideals of Christianity and then go your merry way.
It's not so easy to admit that there are some Christians who do accept the challenge of the faith, embrace it and live it to a high degree by giving to the poor, caring for the sick, sheltering the homeless and so forth.
