It's not that these things don't need evidence, it's that there can't ever be any evidence for or against them because they are untestable/unfalsifiable. That's exactly how religion gets away with all this. As soon as it tries to step into the realm of the testable, it fails immediately.

(May 18, 2018 at 5:30 am)robvalue Wrote: Saved us from damnation by whom? Himself, I imagine.

Death was his own invention. If he wanted us to live forever he could have just done that to begin with! Heaven seems like Earth 2.0 where God corrects all his mistakes.

God gave us free will and we sinned so much that he didn't want to see us in his Kingdom ... and this is eternal damnation ... inability to enter the Kingdom of God!!
... but God has mercy on us and he sent his son to help us saved .. but we still have free will and we still can choose but now we keep chances in spite of our bad choices ... then we were without a chance ... or the kingdom or not..
I don't think so that God corrects his mistakes ... I think that from the beginning He wanted to show us at some point of existence of humanity that despite our bad choices, very bad choices he still has mercy for us ... and if he did it right away ... maybe already we would have forgotten it ... maybe he will reveal his mercy to us again to remind us about His mercy..????
Maybe we theists are wrong or you atheists are wrong, or maybe we are all wrong ...Who knows... But this is my faith.. not science, not a fairy tale...just my Faith!

(May 18, 2018 at 5:52 am)KittyAnn Wrote:

(May 18, 2018 at 5:30 am)robvalue Wrote: Saved us from damnation by whom? Himself, I imagine.

Death was his own invention. If he wanted us to live forever he could have just done that to begin with! Heaven seems like Earth 2.0 where God corrects all his mistakes.

God gave us free will and we sinned so much that he didn't want to see us in his Kingdom ... and this is eternal damnation ... inability to enter the Kingdom of God!!
... but God has mercy on us and he sent his son to help us saved .. but we still have free will and we still can choose but now we keep chances in spite of our bad choices ... then we were without a chance ... or the kingdom or not..
I don't think so that God corrects his mistakes ... I think that from the beginning He wanted to show us at some point of existence of humanity that despite our bad choices, very bad choices he still has mercy for us ... and if he did it right away ... maybe already we would have forgotten it ... maybe he will reveal his mercy to us again to remind us about His mercy..????
Maybe we theists are wrong or you atheists are wrong, or maybe we are all wrong ...Who knows... But this is my faith.. not science, not a fairy tale...just my Faith!

Fair enough

This all sounds very much to me like God putting obstacles in his own way, then removing them, and expecting thanks.

What bad choices did I make? If God chooses to blame me for things other people have done, that's his problem, and if he has to go through some strange procedures in order to like me again, that's also his problem. He just seems like a weird dude!

Of course I have made bad choices, everyone has, but that's inevitable and so he set himself up to fail there if that's all it takes for him to dislike us. But then he does a load of stuff and likes us again anyway... it seems like pointless theatre which ends up exactly where it started.

Just my take on it I'm not trying to attack you, just calling it all as I see it. It makes no sense to me at all. I guess I'm not going to be forgiven either because I don't want to be a Christian.

---

PS: I wouldn't want to spend any time with this crazy God character anyway so I'd prefer him to just let me die when I die. If he wants to torture me for that, there's not much I can do about that. It would just reaffirm my belief that it's crazy.

(May 18, 2018 at 6:13 am)robvalue Wrote:

(May 18, 2018 at 5:52 am)KittyAnn Wrote: God gave us free will and we sinned so much that he didn't want to see us in his Kingdom ... and this is eternal damnation ... inability to enter the Kingdom of God!!
... but God has mercy on us and he sent his son to help us saved .. but we still have free will and we still can choose but now we keep chances in spite of our bad choices ... then we were without a chance ... or the kingdom or not..
I don't think so that God corrects his mistakes ... I think that from the beginning He wanted to show us at some point of existence of humanity that despite our bad choices, very bad choices he still has mercy for us ... and if he did it right away ... maybe already we would have forgotten it ... maybe he will reveal his mercy to us again to remind us about His mercy..????
Maybe we theists are wrong or you atheists are wrong, or maybe we are all wrong ...Who knows... But this is my faith.. not science, not a fairy tale...just my Faith!

Fair enough

This all sounds very much to me like God putting obstacles in his own way, then removing them, and expecting thanks.

What bad choices did I make? If God chooses to blame me for things other people have done, that's his problem, and if he has to go through some strange procedures in order to like me again, that's also his problem. He just seems like a weird dude!

Of course I have made bad choices, everyone has, but that's inevitable and so he set himself up to fail there if that's all it takes for him to dislike us. But then he does a load of stuff and likes us again anyway... it seems like pointless theatre which ends up exactly where it started.

Just my take on it I'm not trying to attack you, just calling it all as I see it. It makes no sense to me at all. I guess I'm not going to be forgiven either because I don't want to be a Christian.

---

PS: I wouldn't want to spend any time with this crazy God character anyway so I'd prefer him to just let me die when I die. If he wants to torture me for that, there's not much I can do about that. It would just reaffirm my belief that it's crazy.

It's ok...I don't feel attacked..c'est la vie ..and i don't think so you're not going to be forgiven ... nobody knows, and this is beautiful!
and I wish you a beautiful life!!!

I wish you the same too

The story sounds to me like an abusive relationship. I get kicked out the house because I've apparently broken some rules, or someone else broke some rules, without the abuser actually talking to me about what I've supposedly done.

The abuser then agrees to "forgive" me, and "save" me from having to live on the street, if I then adopt certain beliefs/rituals. I still don't even get to talk to them; I get cryptic messages sent to me, several in fact, from which I'm meant to decipher the real message and meaning.

The same guy is holding all the cards, while making it seem like there's actually some sort of reason why things can't be done in a straightforward way.

We trust that sitting on a chair will work because we've done it many times before, and it has worked. It had the chance to fail, and it didn't. We use information about the past to make useful predictions about the future; that's the essence of science. It's a scientific prediction.

This is very different to "having faith" in things that we have no possible way of testing; especially those that involve concepts not demonstrated to be real.

I'll shut up and leave you alone now!

(May 18, 2018 at 6:41 am)robvalue Wrote: I wish you the same too

The story sounds to me like an abusive relationship. I get kicked out the house because I've apparently broken some rules, or someone else broke some rules, without the abuser actually talking to me about what I've supposedly done.

The abuser then agrees to "forgive" me, and "save" me from having to live on the street, if I then adopt certain beliefs/rituals. I still don't even get to talk to them; I get cryptic messages sent to me, several in fact, from which I'm meant to decipher the real message and meaning.

The same guy is holding all the cards, while making it seem like there's actually some sort of reason why things can't be done in a straightforward way.

It's not that you did something wrong, you broken the rules or you didn't do anything ... or someone else did it ... and you were kicked out of the house... God can not choose only one and forgive him, He must do so with all ... or all of his creation or nobody ... but He can forgive all mankind only because of "one just" and it is beautiful!! didn't you want mom to forgive you when you did something wrong? .....even if you have't done anything wrong and for some reason your parents were angry at you, you wanted them to forgive you, right? and you knew it that parents love all children equally well despite the time you didn't feel this... tese are almost the same relationships .... but God loves us more.. unbelievably stronger ... because the earthly father can fail but the heavenly Father never!... even if you don't believe ?....
beautiful life and all the best!!!

I appreciate your kind wishes. But if I am god's child, he doesn't love me. He allows me to suffer extremely to the point where I've wanted to die for the last 10 years. If that's love, I wouldn't want to know what hate was.

Analogies with humans don't work because humans are fallible, have limited power and resources, can't see the future and didn't create the very fabric of reality and the rules by which it operates. The buck stops with god as far as I'm concerned. The only way to defend him is to paint him as much less than all-powerful. I made a video about this recently:



My lack of belief in God has nothing to do with being miserable, of course. Even if I did believe in him, I'd have no desire to join any religion. Sensible discourse I would always be open to, but there has been none from him.