So God's a necrophiliac. It all makes sense now.

Can anyone at the thread starters church demonstrate any of the Scriptural ways the rest of us can discern as proof of their faith ??

Like swilling poison ??

Laying of hands on the lame and infirm and healing them ??

Handling deadly serpents ??

(September 22, 2015 at 8:08 pm)Crossless1 Wrote: Let's start with something simple.  Have you actually read the Bible?

I'd like to say yes, but if I'm 100% honest, I'm not sure if I've read all of the Old Testament prophets. If I have, then it's been quite awhile.

(September 22, 2015 at 8:44 pm)drfuzzy Wrote: That's a big question, you know.  Why not start with a simpler one?  Such as . . . oh, do you believe the Jesus of Nazareth died to redeem humankind and stop people from going to hell?  

Have you read Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great"?  Or Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion"? You'll get opinions on both authors here, positive and negative, but it's where a lot of folks start.  Have you seen Bill Maher's "Religulous"?  Have you searched YouTube for "the Atheist Experience"?


You ask a very broad question.  Most people who come asking that question in this forum are just waiting for someone to answer, so they can try very hard to prove the answer wrong.

I'm sorry that the question is so broad. Bringing it to this forum before spending more time figuring it out on my own might have been a mistake. I guess I'm not entirely sure where to start, which is why I brought it here.

Of those books, which do you think would be most useful/a good start? I heard that The God Delusion wasn't very well liked by atheists or theists, neither of which found his arguments compelling enough. Would you say that I should read it, or is there a better book (is "God Is Not Great" (one of) the best books in this regard?)?

(September 22, 2015 at 8:48 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: Let me get this straight...

You're asking a bunch of people who you think might be former Christians with experience at debating Christians to give you the arguments that you need to go out and ambush your Christian friends who may have NO experience arguing with atheists.

Then, when - surprise, surprise - they fail to respond to your pre-meditated attack adequately (as measured against your own subjective standards), you'll feel good about giving up on Christianity altogether?

Seriously?



Why bother? It seems to me that you're already there.

I'm very sorry, that isn't my intention at all, at least, I don't think I'm doing what you seem to think I am. I'm not doing this in order to attack other Christians and make myself feel superior. Honestly, I don't want to convince them that Christianity is wrong, because I don't see it doing any harm in their lives. The reason I would want to bring these arguments to them is because I don't trust myself to figure this out on my own without someone else pushing back (I hope what I'm saying makes sense, I can be somewhat inarticulate at times).

Almost everyone I know is a Christian, which means that they'll all be biased in favor of Christianity. A lot of the people here, on the other hand, will be biased against it. I'm hoping that by talking to both groups, I'll be able to find the truth. The Christians in my life aren't the sort who don't give a second thought to their beliefs. I know that they'll do their best to give counter-arguments and to break down the arguments I get here (if they didn't, there would be no point in bringing the arguments to them).

Sorry, I don't mean to be mean or rude to anyone. I just want to figure this out, hopefully with the help of some of the people here.

(September 22, 2015 at 8:51 pm)Beccs Wrote: Can't disprove your religion.

Christians exist therefore Christianity exists.

The claims of the religion, however, can be disproved.

The existence of a deity, however, cannot.  And that includes ANY deity.

I'm sorry if I worded things incorrectly. I don't mean to disprove the existence of the people, but rather, figure out if the beliefs within Christianity are contradictory and false. I also don't mean to disprove the existence of a deity. I apologize if I didn't make that clear before.

(September 22, 2015 at 9:21 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Whether hell exists or not, is irrelevant to Christianity.  Even if no religion is true, hell maybe true. Therefore you should investigate if it's logical concept in itself.  However, a lot of morality is properly basic, and what of it that is not properly basic relies on properly basic assumptions. 

So what you are asking is a spiritual/moral question. Do evil people deserve hell?

It never really occurred to me that there could be a hell without a religion. I'm apologize if I'm being obtuse, but how do you investigate it without the two tying together? It seems that the last question could have an entirely different answer depending on whether or not hell and a religion were intertwined. Forgive me for not understanding, but what do you mean by morality being properly basic?

(September 22, 2015 at 10:21 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: What reason do you have to believe that?  It is entirely possible for them all to be false.  Given that most of them come from primitive people who were ignorant of the way the world works, we can be pretty sure that they got things wrong even before we start looking at the particulars.

If you were serious about wanting someone to convince you that your religion is false, you would want to tell us what your specific type of Christianity is.  The approach one would take with a Catholic is different from what one would take with a fundamentalist Southern Baptist.  And even within a specific type of Christianity, individuals have different beliefs.  It is very common, for example, for people who call themselves "Catholic" to disagree with official Catholic doctrine in many instances (e.g., the morality of using birth control, etc.).  So you would want to start by telling us the beliefs that you regard as important to your specific religion.

However, we can say that there isn't any good evidence that any type of Christianity is true.  Just like there isn't any good evidence that Santa Claus lives on the North Pole.  Do you think it would be reasonable to require a specific proof that Santa Claus does not live on the North Pole before rejecting the belief?  Do you approach other questions that way, that you believe everything until it is proven false?  If so, you must also be a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, etc., until you encounter specific proofs against them.


The idea of an afterlife is silly because your mind is pretty well known to be some processes of your brain or the result of some processes of your brain.  (This is known through a variety of things, such as the study of brain-damaged people.  It also explains why it is that your mind gets drunk when sufficient alcohol is introduced into your brain.)  When your brain stops its processes, your mind is gone and so you are gone.  So there is no possibility of an afterlife.

Sorry, I meant to say that one of the beliefs about how the universe works must be true, whether that belief be one of the 4,200 religions, or atheism. I mean, I suppose it's possible that there's another possibility outside the realm of all those religions and atheism, I just can't think of what that might be (we're all living in the Matrix?).

As for the specifics of my religion, I'm a protestant, but my denomination within Christianity doesn't get more specific than that. The church I go to takes the Bible as the Word of God, divinely inspired. I'm fairly certain that the majority are creationists.

Not all of that matters to me though. I guess a lot of what matters to me is first of all whether Jesus existed, that books about him (the New Testament) weren't changed due to the politics of the church throughout the centuries (I guess changes in grammar and minor spelling mistakes would be fine, but changing its mind in issues like some sort of politician would be unacceptable). I suppose the events in the Old Testament actually happening... Honestly, a lot of the stuff that Aractus mentions in his post below (which I still need to reply to).

I guess more important than anything else would be internal consistency. If the Bible contradicts itself, then why believe any of it (on the other hand, some historical documents contradict each other, so that gets complicated fast)? So I guess if I could find something concrete in that, it would at least make Christianity much more unlikely.

Sorry, I know this isn't a complete list of what beliefs I hold to be important by any stretch of the imagination.

As for how I'm going about this, attempting to disprove it without proving it first, well... I recognize that how I'm doing this is kinda absurd. I certainly couldn't go about treating other religions this way (like I said before... 4,200). I guess I'm treating Christianity differently because it's what I was brought up in, and I'm hesitant to throw it away without having very clear reasons to show. As it is, I'm sorta stuck in this nebulous state of not quite being agnostic because I believe in God but at the same time not having solid reasons for that belief... I guess I'd just feel a lot better if I had something to stand on.

As for the existence of an afterlife... I think that's as hard to prove or disprove as proving or disproving the existence of a deity. To say that there is no possibility of an afterlife is a rather bold claim. I'm not sure how you can discount that for sure (though I can definitely understand doubting it). I guess a person reaching one would depend on them having something more than a brain that could survive (e.g. a soul), but a soul is such a nebulous thing that I'm not sure there would be a point in debating about it.

(September 22, 2015 at 10:24 pm)Aractus Wrote: Here: http://atheistforums.org/thread-36296.html

All the proof you need.

Or pick one of these topics and I'll explain it to you:

1. God lies to Abraham about the covenant he makes with him. Then he lies to Moses, Joshua, and David too.
2. God is a misogynist: Women are property, only men can get divorced, and adultary means sleeping with a married woman (married men are allowed to sleep with sex slaves, prostitutes, other wives they own, and unmarried women).
3. There is no morality in the Old Testament that isn't reflective of the conventional wisdom of the age.
4. There was no Exodus.
5. There was no conquest of Canaan.
6. The Pentateuch wasn't written until the 7th century BC at the earliest - that's 6-8 centuries after the mythical Exodus.
7. While there's very good evidence that Jesus was crucified, there's almost no evidence for his supposed bodily resurrection and ascension which forms the cornerstone of modern Christianity. Paul never mentions it, James and Jude and Peter never mention it, the author of Hebrews doesn't mention it, and Mark doesn't mention it either. Mark does say that Jesus ascended, and he does say Jesus will appear to people - but that's it - there isn't any mention of a bodily resurrection or an ascension. Matt 28:17 says that "some who saw the resurrected Jesus doubted" - so by the own admission of the gospel writer there were people who saw the supposed resurrected Jesus and said "that's not him". So what makes the people who did believe right and those that didn't wrong? We have no objective way to determine that other than to ask the question "who are the ones that are religiously biased"? So the gospel writer is basing the account on religiously-biased hearsay - that's hardly convincing evidence.
8. God is not faithful to his followers: Jesus is crucified, John the Baptist is beheaded, Judas Iscariot hangs himself, Herod has James the son of Zebedee killed by the sword, Simeon and James the Just are stoned to death, Peter is crucified, Paul is executed by the Romans, Nero persecutes the Christians from 64-68AD, and in 70AD the Jerusalem Church is completely destroyed (along with the rest of Jerusalem) as far as anyone can tell. BUT Jesus promised that the Son of Man would come before they finish going through all the towns of Israel (Matt 10:23).

Thanks Aractus, would it be alright if I ask you about individual parts a bit later, after I've had time to go over all of this?

I picked out the same verse as Pyrrho without realizing it, but here it is anyway:

Quote:The world is filled with thousands of religions and beliefs (roughly 4,200, if google is correct), one of which is probably true. Most of these have some idea of what the afterlife is.

I doubt one is probably true; they’re all stories made up by man. They all sound like bullshit, and there’s no halfway decent reason to believe in any of them. Humans invented a nice afterlife, because they can’t handle the thought of them dying. They invented the horrible afterlife to keep the masses in line.

Just a general thought.. do you think any of the miracles in the koran are true? Do you believe in the gods of hinduism? I'm sure you answered, NO. Why? Because you weren't raised that way. When you see these you can't help but shake your head or laugh. You have been so indoctrinated that you may believe that people have lived to 900+ years old, snakes and donkeys can talk, a man walked on water, a man turned water into wine, and god needed to have a son in order to forgive people that he supposedly created in the first place, knowing how they would turn out. If you can completely wipe your brain clean, and truly look at the stories of the bible, you should be able to get yourself to the point of laughter. It should be hilarious to you that people can actually believe such fucking moronic stories on no evidence whatsoever (except that they're written in a book.. which is not evidence). There are many things written in books that aren't true. It's a good start that you're at least willing to listen to opposing views because you have some doubts. It sounds like you even went further and are saying that you fear god, or even still believe because of fear. That's what religion was designed to do. It's supposed to make you feel guilty over your natural sexual instincts, and it's designed to make you fear consequences of such victimless crimes. Do you think god actually condones slavery and misogyny like it says in the bible? Ask yourself questions like that, and you should find that none of it makes sense, if your mind is open enough. It may take awhile because of the fear you have, but try not to worry, it's totally man-made poisonous dogshit.

Also, you shouldn't be looking for reasons to just give up your religion. You should be looking at it objectively and skeptically, like all things, and deciding from there. My goal isn't to de-convert people that want to be de-converted, but to try to get people to actually learn to think for themselves, and not let others do it for them.. especially through the means of idiotic primitive stories that are meant to instill fear in order to keep people believing in them.

(September 22, 2015 at 8:51 pm)Beccs Wrote: Can't disprove your religion.

Christians exist therefore Christianity exists.

Exactly.  Christianity most certainly does exist.  Now, for a grade of excellent, explain why as robustly as you can.  Avoid the low lying fruit and any straw men you might find lying about.  Good luck!

My advice: Read your Bible for yourself. Take the ten commands as an example, the tenth commandment is "thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neighbour" or specifically:

"You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour." (Ex 20:17)

Christians try to claim this means don't think of you neighbour's wife lustfully - however the 7th commandment is "You shall not commit adultery" (even though adultery hasn't even yet been defined - it gets defined in Leviticus 18 for the first time in the Bible) - and Jesus says "'You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matt 5:27-28). And that means that "means don't think of you neighbour's wife lustfully" is covered in the seventh commandment not the tenth commandment. And anyway the tenth command ends with "or anything that belongs to your neighbour" - so it's clearly talking about property, and wives are listed as property.

Besides adultery, Exodus does not talk about sexual immorality. There is no mention of sexual immorality other than bestiality until Leviticus. This is one reason why Sodom and Gomorrah can't be guilty of homosexual acts for example - God never said in Genesis that any specific sexual act is wrong.

As mentioned, at no time in Genesis or Exodus does God or anyone else define "adultery". So Moses can't possibly know at that time what the seventh commandment even means. It's not until Leviticus 18 that it gets defined, and if you blink you literally miss it:

Lev 18:19-23: "19 You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. 20 You shall not have sexual relations with your kinsman’s wife, and defile yourself with her. 21 You shall not give any of your offspring to sacrifice them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. 22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. 23 You shall not have sexual relations with any animal and defile yourself with it, nor shall any woman give herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it: it is perversion."

That's a very narrow definition of adultery - it simply means any man who sleeps with another's man's wife. Married men are allowed to sleep with concubines (sex slaves), any wife that they own, unmarried women, and prostitutes. There is no law against any of that - and it happens quite a lot in the Old Testament. Most Christians do not know the correct Biblical definition of adultery and when they look at Matt 5:27-28 they take an erroneous definition of adultery based on the contemporary secular definition and not the ancient Jewish definition that applied in the first century, or the one that can be derived from Leviticus 18 and the rest of the Old Testament. The bible does NOT ever say that "extramarital sex is adultery" - it's only adultery if it is the wife that does it, and both parties are guilty.

Note that even Jesus himself was specific enough to say "a man who looks at a woman with lust" (Matt 5), and he does the same thing when he talks about divorce. Divorce is permitted only for men in ancient Israel (Exodus 23), and when Jesus talks about divorce in Matt 5 & 19 he affirms this: "“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." (Matt 5:31-32). See, nothing to do with unfaithful men or women who want to divorce their husbands. If he though they should be more progressive like Egypt and give women equal rights then he would have said so.

Numbers 5 spends the entire chapter starting from verse 11 on what to do about an "unfaithful wife". There is nothing in Numbers that discusses what to do about an "unfaithful husband" because as far as the Pentateuch is concerned, husbands can't be "unfaithful". They can be guilty of adultery if they sleep with a married woman, but that's not even seen as being "unfaithful".

It is quite funny that Christians today (except for hardcore fundamentalists) believe that their god is not a misogynist.

Exodus 22:18 "You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live."

Funny though that the Magi the "wise men" are the ones to "worship the king of the Jews". Had they been women they likely would have been stoned to death.

I know a Christian who believes the Bible is full of errors. He believers the over all message is inspired, but, not that it's absolute word of God.

So given you can have that view, how would one disprove Christianity?

I'm obviously too late to jump in on any serious basis, since others have done an excellent job of laying more than enough to chew and digest, on your intellectual "plate". I won't add too many more "you should consider" elements.

What got me out of religion was being lied to by my church leaders (and the books they handed me, when I inquired about it) about the nature of science, what we know through science about life and the universe, and some of the fundamental social teachings about humanity and our history. I wound up going to school to become a biologist, so if there are questions you wish you ask in the field of Creationism/Evolution, you're welcome to PM me if I don't respond to a question posted, in here or elsewhere.

The only thing I'll leave you to consider is this. You have already been threatened with hellfire (oh, so politely, but nevertheless threats) by the Christians here who responded to your questions. And yet, all the atheists have done is answered questions you asked. At no point will one of us say we'd be upset if you stayed a Christian, nor will we try to tell you there's some reason you must become an atheist. All we want is to see people asking good questions and learning how to rigorously think about those questions using logic (recognizing and avoiding fallacious thinking) and well-sourced information to form their premises (since logic operating on false premises can still reach false conclusions). Our opinion of you will not change based on what you end up deciding for yourself, provided you arrive at your conclusions by honest means, do not blind yourself to uncomfortable facts or those that disagree with your presuppositions, and treat nonbelievers as fairly and kindly as you have done so far.

The majority of atheists on this site went through the process of deconversion (as we call it), and we know how stressful and confusing it can be. Just keep trusting in your own power to reason, and I think you will find that, whatever you choose in the future, adherence to a rational mindset is very emotionally satisfying in the long run. It's more work, true, since you won't have any pre-digested answers, but that's part of what makes it so satisfying.

Good luck in your journey.

(September 23, 2015 at 1:10 am)Aractus Wrote: My advice: Read your Bible for yourself. Take the ten commands as an example, the tenth commandment is "thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neighbour" or specifically:

"You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour." (Ex 20:17)

---

Christians try to claim this means don't think of you neighbour's wife lustfully - however the 7th commandment is "You shall not commit adultery" (even though adultery hasn't even yet been defined - it gets defined in Leviticus 18 for the first time in the Bible) - and Jesus says "'You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matt 5:27-28). And that means that "means don't think of you neighbour's wife lustfully" is covered in the seventh commandment not the tenth commandment. And anyway the tenth command ends with "or anything that belongs to your neighbour" - so it's clearly talking about property, and wives are listed as property.

Besides adultery, Exodus does not talk about sexual immorality. There is no mention of sexual immorality other than bestiality until Leviticus. This is one reason why Sodom and Gomorrah can't be guilty of homosexual acts for example - God never said in Genesis that any specific sexual act is wrong.

As mentioned, at no time in Genesis or Exodus does God or anyone else define "adultery". So Moses can't possibly know at that time what the seventh commandment even means. It's not until Leviticus 18 that it gets defined, and if you blink you literally miss it:

Lev 18:19-23: "19 You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. 20 You shall not have sexual relations with your kinsman’s wife, and defile yourself with her. 21 You shall not give any of your offspring to sacrifice them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. 22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. 23 You shall not have sexual relations with any animal and defile yourself with it, nor shall any woman give herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it: it is perversion."

That's a very narrow definition of adultery - it simply means any man who sleeps with another's man's wife. Married men are allowed to sleep with concubines (sex slaves), any wife that they own, unmarried women, and prostitutes. There is no law against any of that - and it happens quite a lot in the Old Testament. Most Christians do not know the correct Biblical definition of adultery and when they look at Matt 5:27-28 they take an erroneous definition of adultery based on the contemporary secular definition and not the ancient Jewish definition that applied in the first century, or the one that can be derived from Leviticus 18 and the rest of the Old Testament. The bible does NOT ever say that "extramarital sex is adultery" - it's only adultery if it is the wife that does it, and both parties are guilty.

Note that even Jesus himself was specific enough to say "a man who looks at a woman with lust" (Matt 5), and he does the same thing when he talks about divorce. Divorce is permitted only for men in ancient Israel (Exodus 23), and when Jesus talks about divorce in Matt 5 & 19 he affirms this: "“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." (Matt 5:31-32). See, nothing to do with unfaithful men or women who want to divorce their husbands. If he though they should be more progressive like Egypt and give women equal rights then he would have said so.

Numbers 5 spends the entire chapter starting from verse 11 on what to do about an "unfaithful wife". There is nothing in Numbers that discusses what to do about an "unfaithful husband" because as far as the Pentateuch is concerned, husbands can't be "unfaithful". They can be guilty of adultery if they sleep with a married woman, but that's not even seen as being "unfaithful".

It is quite funny that Christians today (except for hardcore fundamentalists) believe that their god is not a misogynist.

Exodus 22:18 "You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live."

Funny though that the Magi the "wise men" are the ones to "worship the king of the Jews". Had they been women they likely would have been stoned to death.

---

For goodness sake!  If you had been paying attention you would know that that's not the 10th Commandment.  The 10th Commandment is not to boil a young goat in its mother's milk = Exodus 34:25

(September 22, 2015 at 11:05 pm)Godschild Wrote: If you're looking to jump ship let me say this, you want like, it if you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit will be convicting you at many turns, as I believe He is doing now. If conviction is what you are going through then wouldn't that mean there's a Holy Spirit and if that's true then there must be a God since He is part of the God Head, and if He's convicting you what is He convicting you about, to love and serve God or salvation. Go ask God and find your answer, He want's a personal relationship with you, one that's centered in love, not fear of Him and hell.