Why are you (still) a Christian?

[LinuxGal]

There's all sorts of total nonsense "according to the Bible".
It's not really a very reliable standard for validating what is true.
https://lifelessons.co/spirituality/bible/

What? Are you truly surprised that it takes wisdom to understand profound things and some fools get it wrong? Like the way fools justify nonsense by appealing to principles of quantum mechanics.

Typically they omit the standard bra ket notation when they frame their nonsense in quantum terms.

[Foxaèr]

Good thing no one needs QM to know religious concepts are nonsense.

[Bucky Ball]

There's all sorts of total nonsense "according to the Bible".
It's not really a very reliable standard for validating what is true.
https://lifelessons.co/spirituality/bible/

What? Are you truly surprised that it takes wisdom to understand profound things and some fools get it wrong? Like the way fools justify nonsense by appealing to principles of quantum mechanics.

As yes "wisdom" .... don't read it the way it says, read it the way the religionists who actually know nothing of the culture it came from. 
I didn't know QM was a subject you were interested in. LMAO

[Bucky Ball]

What? Are you truly surprised that it takes wisdom to understand profound things and some fools get it wrong? Like the way fools justify nonsense by appealing to principles of quantum mechanics.

As yes "wisdom" .... don't read it the way it says, read it the way the religionists who actually know nothing of the culture it came from. 
I didn't know QM was a subject you were interested in. LMAO

There is one thing  a Jewish scholar "teased out", of Genesis, which I consider wise. 
In "Good and Evil" Part II Martin Buber talks about his concept of "evil". A lot of Christians have been pointed to his "I And Thou" by their leaders, 
and I don't remember thinking is was compelling). But when talking about evil he makes an interesting connection and says where the (mostly missed) concept 
of evil in Genesis comes from, which was, as with a lot of Babylonian myth content in Genesis, directly from the Babylonian creation myth and mostly from the "Marduk Slays the Dragon of Chaos". Chaos and Order" is what Genesis is talking about. That's one thing I can agree was wise, even though as most of the Bible myth, was syncretic "borrowing".
Paul Tillich (20th Century Theologian) agrees with him in "The Courage To Be".

[tackattack]

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Thank you for those.

All bar 2 sound very much like they could easily be psychological or coincidence.

I'd be interested to hear more about experiences like 2 if you could share more cases of God seemingly affecting the material world in response to prayer.

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There are plenty of Biblical answers to prayer. There are tons of message boards and podcasts and channels dedicated to prayers and answered prayer. If I interpret what you're implying it's that prayer is mostly confirmation bias or wishful thinking, and I agree for most people this is true for most of their prayers. Most, if not all of my effective prayers have been about not seeing a solution, and then one presents itself or about surrendering and waiting. I could list countless actual personal prayers of mine: My brother surviving Birth and growing up to be the pain in the ass he is today, my God mother living in stage 4 pain free and content, my God sister surviving 25+ years longer than any doctor thought was conceivable. I've unloaded a lot of personal information to the masses here over time, and I've been around the block a few times. You'll forgive me if I ask a couple questions, Why do you want to know? What's your point? What will be enough? I appreciate your conversational tone, but it usually belies a less than kind purpose, from the perspective of a Christian on an Atheist forum.

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After getting my booze and food, I walked back stopping at the bowling alley with a headache. Sat there trying to clear my head looking around at the situation I was in and the environment, I heard someone calling "you don't need that" as they approached.

So you were drunk and heard a voice. That's not a miracle. What about all the Christians who are drunks and never get that voice? I guess you were special.

Also, your friend was irreligious but called you to go to church.

Went back to the chiropractor to the very same Xray machine it had shown up on twice and it was gone.

Since when do chiropractors have X-ray machines? Needless to say, they are not real doctors. They are quacks who use pseudoscience.

Sometimes gifts from friends, sometimes ird tax refunds or refunds from overpaying medical bills or something.

That is the god of the Bible, alright. Thousands of people die of starvation every day, but he sends some well-fed guy tax returns and pays his food bills.

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I was hungover and heard my friend incorrectly. I never claimed it was a miracle. He probably said "who dat juvat" (common greeting in our squadron) and because of the distance, hangover and the wind I misheard. It sounded pretty close and clear when I heard it though. Yup he had never been to chapel on base and was headed there to check it out and invited me along.  He was not as irreligious after that.

I was a new patient and they typically do Xrays there as part of intake. It's not at all uncommon for chiropractors.

I believe He takes care of me so that I can better take care of others. It is a shame that the world is full of hurt people in need of help and that more people aren't willing to help.

So your god acts when he is threatened.   Got it.

 I'm not sure there is anything I could do that would threaten God.

[FrustratedFool]

I'm an ex-Christian. My prayers weren't answered when I was a Christian. I never saw any of the promised miracles, healings, angels, prophecies, signs, wonders, visions, etc when I was a Christian. I never saw anyone else have them either. That failed set of promises was part of why I lost the faith.

I guess I'm interested to see if some Christians really recueved what was promised, or if they just over-interpreted normal life to not have to deal with the issue of God's silence.

I don't really have a sinister ulterior motive. I am biased, and skeptical, and I dislike religion, but I think I'm upfront with all that.

I expect a part of me wants Christians experiences and evidence to turn out to be weak and feeble so as to better justify my apostasy to myself. I guess another part of me wants some truly outstanding, convincing evidence that God and the supernatural is real and give me hope that I too could have my prayers answered. Another part of me just wants to talk out of curiosity. Another part wants to mock out of bitterness. There's likely other more hidden motives in the mix too. But all of that is a given and normal, I think.

[The Grand Nudger]

 I'm not sure there is anything I could do that would threaten God.

-and yet, you tell us that this is exactly what you did and you claim that your god responded to it.  Mystifying, really. This is why people have enduring questions. Because the answers we get from one breath to the other never make a lick of sense.

If you believed, or wanted us to believe, that you couldn't actually do this and didn't think it could work - then why tell a story about doing this and having it work? Further...if you really believed this sort of shit wouldn't work wouldn't you..then, even if those events you described before actually happened - and I'm sure they didn't- come to the conclusion that they were unrelated..not because you're a skeptic, but because you don't think that's how god works?

Which version of your belief do you want us to accept as genuine and accurate? The first, the second, or the third - where your beliefs are genuinely incoherent?

[Bucky Ball]

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Thank you for those.

All bar 2 sound very much like they could easily be psychological or coincidence.

I'd be interested to hear more about experiences like 2 if you could share more cases of God seemingly affecting the material world in response to prayer.

---

There are plenty of Biblical answers to prayer. There are tons of message boards and podcasts and channels dedicated to prayers and answered prayer. If I interpret what you're implying it's that prayer is mostly confirmation bias or wishful thinking, and I agree for most people this is true for most of their prayers. Most, if not all of my effective prayers have been about not seeing a solution, and then one presents itself or about surrendering and waiting. I could list countless actual personal prayers of mine: My brother surviving Birth and growing up to be the pain in the ass he is today, my God mother living in stage 4 pain free and content, my God sister surviving 25+ years longer than any doctor thought was conceivable. I've unloaded a lot of personal information to the masses here over time, and I've been around the block a few times. You'll forgive me if I ask a couple questions, Why do you want to know? What's your point? What will be enough? I appreciate your conversational tone, but it usually belies a less than kind purpose, from the perspective of a Christian on an Atheist forum.

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So you were drunk and heard a voice. That's not a miracle. What about all the Christians who are drunks and never get that voice? I guess you were special.

Also, your friend was irreligious but called you to go to church.


Since when do chiropractors have X-ray machines? Needless to say, they are not real doctors. They are quacks who use pseudoscience.


That is the god of the Bible, alright. Thousands of people die of starvation every day, but he sends some well-fed guy tax returns and pays his food bills.

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I was hungover and heard my friend incorrectly. I never claimed it was a miracle. He probably said "who dat juvat" (common greeting in our squadron) and because of the distance, hangover and the wind I misheard. It sounded pretty close and clear when I heard it though. Yup he had never been to chapel on base and was headed there to check it out and invited me along.  He was not as irreligious after that.

I was a new patient and they typically do Xrays there as part of intake. It's not at all uncommon for chiropractors.

I believe He takes care of me so that I can better take care of others. It is a shame that the world is full of hurt people in need of help and that more people aren't willing to help.

So your god acts when he is threatened.   Got it.

 I'm not sure there is anything I could do that would threaten God.

Learning the history of how they cooked him up, threatens him every day.

So your god can answer all kinds of prayers, but not fix one amputated limb ?
Can't do one coronary bypass, cure one pancreatic cancer, cure even one baby today, dying from any number of cancers ?
You're problem, is you don't actualy know what's going on in the real world, today.

[LinuxGal]

So your god acts when he is threatened.   Got it.

 I'm not sure there is anything I could do that would threaten God.

So yesterday at 9:23 am when you wrote: "Made a list of eevery single horrible thing I did, and was done to me, and everything I deemed bad in no particular order, just as I remembered them. I threatened God to prove this was His will and why" that didn't really happen.  Got it.

[Mister Agenda]

The question is would you get your prayers answered at the same rate no matter who or what you prayed to? What's the hit/miss ratio? Is it statistically significant deviation from expected results if the occurrences were completey random?