Open Letter To Christians

[Redbeard The Pink]

Here is what the NIV actually says:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se...ersion=NIV
13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

You are right about the NIV being a Trinitarian text. However as you can clearly see above you did not quote from it. Your either mistaken, or maybe no one here has warned you about me yet, and you think you can get away with the typical atheist dog and pony show, of just trying to come off like you know what your talking about as a means of trying to intimidate the Christian into silence.

Save yourself the time and don't post unreferenced BS. The reason it takes me so long to respond is I check everything that I say as well as everything you say EVERY time. x10 years in this format of answering questions/debate plus another 10+ in study. Again save the song and dance for someone else, because I have no issue calling you on obviously wrong/foolish posts.

Oh, I see what you did there. I quoted from Matthew, while you're jumping back over to Luke. That doesn't really help your argument that much, by the way. If the story says the same thing, then why doesn't it say the same thing? If the text from Matthew is also talking about the holy spirit, why aren't they both translated that way? Why have the other translation in god's infallible word if that translation isn't also a valid one that we're supposed to use and interpret from? In fact, why have dissenting versions of the story at all? If you're all-powerful and can select humans who will record you perfectly, why not get it down to one book? Instead we have 4, all with different agendas and different versions of events.


In any case, whether we're arguing about which translation to use, how much context to use, or which book to read from, the point is the same: we could go back and forth endlessly, quoting and re-quoting and arguing about which text is newer, better, more reliable...all to lend credence to our arguments where there basically isn't any, since we're basically arguing over what Gandalf did or did not say. Gandalf says whatever you want him to. That's the beauty of a fictional character.


Let's see...skipping a bit because it's more translation-mongering...

Again, The passage Identifies the HOLY SPIRIT Specifically, not Good gifts, Unless again you are quoting from a non Trinitarian/doctrinally specific translation of the bible.

Not the passage in Matthew. The passage in Matthew says good gifts. Plural. Even if the holy spirit is one of the gifts, Matthew implies there are still more, and that we should ask for them.

Again you have FAILED to correctly identify a translation that portrays the term "Good gifts." Therefore at best you are Mistaken about 'your translation.'

NIV. Book of Matthew. Pay attention. It's the same translation I've been using. I can't help that it doesn't agree with what Luke says. Not my book, not my problem. If you're gonna say that Luke is correct and they both say the same thing, with Luke being more specific, I'd say that's arbitrary speculation and mental gymnastics to make your texts agree.

IF You Had Actually Provided a legit source for your quote I would ask to see or simply look up the Greek/codex in which your translation was created from. Then would move to validate the codex. (because obviously it did not come from the codex sinaiticus which is where Christianity gets it's bible's translated from)

I've been quoting the book of Matthew from the NIV this WHOLE TIME. The same story does seem to appear in Luke, and I might have even mentioned that for reference in the original quote, but that's not relevant to your argument. The quote appears in the book of Matthew (NIV), which is the exact text I copied and pasted it into my post.

If you can not provide the source material/bible you supposedly quoted from then I would move to identify your 'good works' translation as a personal textual fabrication. then to drive the point home I would show two or three more different literal translations, and maybe even go to another concordance/lexicon to collaborate what I have said... And depending on how obstinate you were to get us to this point would determine whether or not I would draw attention to your intellectual dishonesty you have displayed to this point and call into question the fabric of your character.

Matthew. Fuck. We're in Matthew, here. If you wanna argue about Luke, we can start arguing about how not even your gospel writers could get their fucking story straight.

Uh, no.. Again. Prayers and petition are not the same thing. Answered prayers are unique as they Ask god to Change the nature of our character to align ourselves with Him. This transformation is a long and rough road, that most bail out on. not a self full filling prophesy


This statement is why I believe you have confused Prayer with a petition/supplication. Again prayer = change my nature to match what God wants for us. Petition/supplication As God for 'stuff.' The more one Prays the less one asks for 'stuff.'

You're wanting to redefine prayer, now? Jesus, dude, the semantic bullshit is practically bottomless with you people.


Prayer: a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship.


Whether you're asking for god to take away your sody-pop addiction because Jesus didn't drink soda or asking him to give you a mountain of pussy and a pile of candy, you're still praying. End of story. Any answer that comes is the equivalent of people reading meaning into their horoscopes and tarot cards. You might as well pray to your Magic 8 Ball...at least those answers are immediate.

This is a dishonest representation of my argument. If this is not the case then I ask you which translation are you saying I have said is better than another?

This is a failed attempt at a 'pink herring.'

Well, the bar does seem to keep moving on exactly what you don't agree with (a problem complicated by the fact that we were talking about two different passages, yet now we're on 3). At first it seemed like it was the context, then it was the translation itself, maybe, and now it's that we don't agree on which gospel has a "more correct" version of the teaching.

...Again Mat 18:15 through the end of the chapter is about sin and forgiveness NOT about getting petitions granted. Where do you see it differently? Where in Mat 18:15 thru the end of the chapter beside '19' is Jesus speaking about how to pray or petition God?

Now, because 19 mentions prayer/how to pray and the surrounding context is about sin and forgivness then that means the passage that speaks on prayer is directly speaking about how/what to pray inorder to forgive and receive forgiveness. Verse 19 is not a stand alone mid paragraph appeal to group wishing/petitions. It just does not read correctly in context.

Again pinky I meantion verse 15 to the end of the chapter because It directly speaks to sin and forgiveness. I am well aware of what the start of the Chapter speaks to.

Now you're trying to cherry-pick those verses out of the context of the rest of the story. Jesus is talking specifically about how to gain favor with god throughout this story. Perhaps asking for forgiveness is a part of that, but that part is in a passage that is clearly labeled and clearly falls after the verse you're lumping in with it. Even if the gifts they're talking about asking for are heavenly gifts for after you die, that doesn't change the fact that, one way or another, god gives good gifts to those of his children who ask him, especially if two or more agree on it.

This is exactly what I meant. You had a corrupt understanding of God. So much so He could not support it with the 'evidence you sought.' Again why would God positively support a understanding of him He did not want you to have? So when you grew up you tested what you thought was God and found out there was nothing there.

Now just because your understanding of God failed to pass, how is it in your mind you can say God can not exist? What if God exists outside of your limited/broken understanding?

Where do I even begin with this? It looks like a version of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, with a smattering of "Argument From Ignorance" thrown in (because, let's face it, it always is). What you're basically saying is that my lack of belief is evidence that I just didn't "really" understand god or the concept of god in the proper way.


The problem with this argument is that it has no provable basis, as we could argue all day about what a "corrupt understanding" of god entails, or how you'd assume to lump your presumptions onto my belief system (oh yeah, I forgot "Straw Man"). I could as easily turn the argument around and say that the reason you concluded there is a god is that you have a corrupt understanding of what evidence is.


Furthermore, the existence of something is a non-falsifiable claim. This means that to prove or disprove it, you have to approach the opposite claim (that there is no god). This claim of non-existence is the null hypothesis and is the only claim in the equation that can be proven wrong (as all one would have to do is show evidence that god exists and the hypothesis becomes false). This means that until evidence surfaces to the contrary, non-existence of god is the most scientifically sound claim based on the level of evidence at hand. That's not to say that it definitely is true, that's just to say that there's no reason to assume the opposite is true (that god does exist), until this claim is proven false.


So, I'm not saying that the gods do not exist. I'm just saying that there doesn't seem to be any evidence that they do exist, and until that evidence arises there is no reason to believe that they do. The burden of proof is not on me to prove that god does not exist, it's on you to prove that he does. Until then, you can't tout my lack of understanding as a victory for you because my lack of understanding isn't established.

"Evidenced reality" is a subjective term isn't it? It is based on what You personally believe to be evidence. The problem with that? what if what you believe is incomplete?

Example: 600 years ago 'evidenced reality determined the earth was flat. Because of said evidence and pop culture's support this 'evidenced reality was understood to be 100% truth, and all of the evidence we now use to support a spherical planet was ignored.

The question here then becomes how can you say for sure your 'evidenced reality' is not really a biased reality similar to the reality of those who lived 600 years ago and believed the world was flat? How do you know your 'reality' is not limited by what you can perceive? This at it's core is exactly what made men think the world was flat.

What I personally believe to be evidence is irrelevant, and no, material reality is not subjective. It is very much objective. Perhaps I should be more clear about "evidence" and specify that I like to rely on "empirical" evidence. To me, evidence has to be observable and peer-reviewable. Anecdotes and personal experience are not evidence, consensus belief is not evidence, and 2,000-year-old claims about miracle-men are not evidence. If you want to accept such minimal evidence for such extraordinary claims, be my fucking guest. Your standard of evidence just isn't as high as mine.

The only way one can foolishly assume God is fictional is if one believes that our ablity to explain how the universe works somehow superceeds God.. I went into greater detail in my piano/mouse thread, but the bottom line was, that god is the God/Creator of the natural Universe, So why would be Limited to only move through it supernaturally?

Even the term 'Supernatural' only describes what we perceive to be natural, it does not actually mean an event or happening must be beyond all scientific explaination. If you look up the word it means an event is currently beyond our scientific understanding. It is the unknown not the unknowable. So as our understanding of the universe around us grows, what in the bible or in your mind/perception of god says that He must remain beyond all explaination?

"There's still so much we don't understand, so god could still be out there, un-proven and un-discovered, in something we don't understand yet." That's basically what you're saying, right?


This is a flat-out "God of the Gaps" argument, and it's the core of most Theist apologetics. We don't know, therefore: GOD!


Are you sure that's how you wanna play that game? Because if it is, there's a whole laundry list of scientific phenomenon throughout history that we used to blame on god and have since come to understand as being self-perpetuating (weather, life, the cosmos, etc.) This means that if that's how you define god, then god is an ever-shrinking pocket of scientific ignorance that is literally and obviously just an excuse we throw out when we don't know something.

Again, no. My post said your lack of understanding did not come from a lack of Scripture, it came from silence from God. 'Scripture' is the tool we use that points us in the direction of God and the tool we use to verify what we found is indeed God. Failed belief is almost always the direct result of God not supporting a broken understanding of Him/Religious belief of Him.

Regardless of where you think my alleged lack of understanding comes from, it is a groundless assumption that you cannot prove; all I have to do is claim the contrary, and we're at a standstill. We could argue all day about who really understands god better, and neither of us would be able to prove anything because that's not a testable claim.