Final installment:

(February 15, 2012 at 6:51 am)brotherlylove Wrote: The barrier to sinning is how much you love God and trust in Him.

Hm. By that measure, it seems many Christians love God and trust in Him less than many nonChristians.

(February 15, 2012 at 6:51 am)brotherlylove Wrote: I try to avoid labels. I think stereotypes make you stereotypical. I love everyone, even the ones who hate me, even the ones who are outwardly despicable.

It's good to avoid painting with too broad a brush.

(February 15, 2012 at 6:51 am)brotherlylove Wrote: The church is apostate, and thus, it is looking more and more like the world every day.

I think the truly pious are always a minority in any religion. Most people are who they are at their core no matter the veneer of their beliefs.

(February 15, 2012 at 6:51 am)brotherlylove Wrote: You don't realize the spiritual nature of all things, especially beliefs. It's entirely possible for people to come to illegitimate conclusions about their own beliefs, because most people don't understand the nature of their own beliefs. You take that as evidence that they have no actual reason for their beliefs beyond some delusion they are experiencing. For those who do not know God, they are experiencing a delusion, but a carefully engineered delusion.

I'll give you my theory on it. God controls everything, and that includes access to truth. That knowing truth is actually a priviledge. Your particular access will determine who you meet and what experiences you will have, and what you take from those experiences. You will find an entire Universe of meaning there, and so you won't notice that your access is actually tightly controlled. What determines your access level is your openness to truth. Inherently, what keeps you closed to truth are positions you take which you rationalize as being intellectual but are actually predicated on things like: what you hate, what you lust for, what you lie about it, what you hide, your many sins, etc..all of your unreasonable emotionally laden baggage, guilt, and secret sins you carry around from life. The evil you have done compromises your ability to reason and know truth.

God is always giving you opportunities to attain a higher access level and get closer to the ultimate truth (that Jesus is Lord), opportunities which test your character and inherent fairness and balance towards truth. He gives you access to real truth, but if you reject it, you are conversely left with nothing but lies, and these seem as truth. You also have temptations, and the more you succumb to them, the more the deluded you become; the more you sin the less able you are to reason and attain to truth. Sin literally makes you a moron.

That's just a general thought, not meant to be theology. It actually supports your theory in some ways and explains confirmation bias, but not for any reason you speculate.

Sounds unfalsifiable in principle; which means there's no way to tell if it's really true or not through evidence and reason.

(February 15, 2012 at 6:51 am)brotherlylove Wrote: The evidence will come when you believe, and it will come, in my case, before I believed. The question is, where is it coming from. You think belief ends in the brain, but it is spiritual and extends into the spiritual realms. Regardless of what you're saying, the apostles had lunch with the resurrected Jesus on the beach, so either it's made up or they were with Him.

Or mistaken about Jesus being dead. Even Jesus wouldn't be in a position to know he'd only been in a coma. But made-up does sound more plausible than actually having lunch with someone who was really dead but got better.

I seem to be in a Catch 22. I won't believe in disembodied spirits and the supernatural without evidence for them; but I don't get the evidence unless I believe first. I won't convince myself for you, because I believe I'm fully capable of convincing myself that something false is true if I put down my rubbish filters first. If it makes you feel any better, my rubbish filters have also kept me from trying out Hare Krishna, Scientology, homeopathy, Wicca, and Mormonism from the inside.

PS: Apologies for messing up one of the quotes in my previous post, too much time has passed for me to fix it.

(February 16, 2012 at 4:46 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: Final installment:

(February 15, 2012 at 6:51 am)brotherlylove Wrote: The barrier to sinning is how much you love God and trust in Him.

Hm. By that measure, it seems many Christians love God and trust in Him less than many nonChristians.

(February 15, 2012 at 6:51 am)brotherlylove Wrote: I try to avoid labels. I think stereotypes make you stereotypical. I love everyone, even the ones who hate me, even the ones who are outwardly despicable.

It's good to avoid painting with too broad a brush.

(February 15, 2012 at 6:51 am)brotherlylove Wrote: The church is apostate, and thus, it is looking more and more like the world every day.

I think the truly pious are always a minority in any religion. Most people are who they are at their core no matter the veneer of their beliefs.

(February 15, 2012 at 6:51 am)brotherlylove Wrote: You don't realize the spiritual nature of all things, especially beliefs. It's entirely possible for people to come to illegitimate conclusions about their own beliefs, because most people don't understand the nature of their own beliefs. You take that as evidence that they have no actual reason for their beliefs beyond some delusion they are experiencing. For those who do not know God, they are experiencing a delusion, but a carefully engineered delusion.

I'll give you my theory on it. God controls everything, and that includes access to truth. That knowing truth is actually a priviledge. Your particular access will determine who you meet and what experiences you will have, and what you take from those experiences. You will find an entire Universe of meaning there, and so you won't notice that your access is actually tightly controlled. What determines your access level is your openness to truth. Inherently, what keeps you closed to truth are positions you take which you rationalize as being intellectual but are actually predicated on things like: what you hate, what you lust for, what you lie about it, what you hide, your many sins, etc..all of your unreasonable emotionally laden baggage, guilt, and secret sins you carry around from life. The evil you have done compromises your ability to reason and know truth.

God is always giving you opportunities to attain a higher access level and get closer to the ultimate truth (that Jesus is Lord), opportunities which test your character and inherent fairness and balance towards truth. He gives you access to real truth, but if you reject it, you are conversely left with nothing but lies, and these seem as truth. You also have temptations, and the more you succumb to them, the more the deluded you become; the more you sin the less able you are to reason and attain to truth. Sin literally makes you a moron.

That's just a general thought, not meant to be theology. It actually supports your theory in some ways and explains confirmation bias, but not for any reason you speculate.

Sounds unfalsifiable in principle; which means there's no way to tell if it's really true or not through evidence and reason.

(February 15, 2012 at 6:51 am)brotherlylove Wrote: The evidence will come when you believe, and it will come, in my case, before I believed. The question is, where is it coming from. You think belief ends in the brain, but it is spiritual and extends into the spiritual realms. Regardless of what you're saying, the apostles had lunch with the resurrected Jesus on the beach, so either it's made up or they were with Him.

Or mistaken about Jesus being dead. Even Jesus wouldn't be in a position to know he'd only been in a coma. But made-up does sound more plausible than actually having lunch with someone who was really dead but got better.

I seem to be in a Catch 22. I won't believe in disembodied spirits and the supernatural without evidence for them; but I don't get the evidence unless I believe first. I won't convince myself for you, because I believe I'm fully capable of convincing myself that something false is true if I put down my rubbish filters first. If it makes you feel any better, my rubbish filters have also kept me from trying out Hare Krishna, Scientology, homeopathy, Wicca, and Mormonism from the inside.

PS: Apologies for messing up one of the quotes in my previous post, too much time has passed for me to fix it.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I was not trying to outdo you; your last reply to me was quite lengthy, and I was just trying to answer everything you asked of me. We are simultaneously speaking about many different subjects, some which are quite deep. I too must budget my time so I will answer all of this in the next couple of days. I have enjoyed our discussion and I appreciate the effort you have put into it.

---

(February 15, 2012 at 9:49 am)Rhythm Wrote: Did you manage to find either of those words in the texts you imagined them to be in yet BL? I see you've spent plenty of time on responses. I'm feeling left out. Have we progressed to the drive-by claims and quote mining portion of our adventure already?

I apologize but I lost track of what we were talking about Rhythm. Correct me if I am wrong though, but isn't your position "God isn't there, the end"? There doesn't seem to be much room for a conversation there. Let me ask you this; if Christianity were true, would you be a Christian?

(February 16, 2012 at 7:28 pm)brotherlylove Wrote: Let me ask you this; if Christianity were true, would you be a Christian?

If there was hard evidence that Christianity were true, then I would believe it; however, you CHOOSE to worship a mean unjust asshole of a god that favors rape, violence, human sacrifice, slavery, etc, etc. Which is a choice I can't justify.

(February 16, 2012 at 7:46 pm)Nebuloso Wrote:

(February 16, 2012 at 7:28 pm)brotherlylove Wrote: Let me ask you this; if Christianity were true, would you be a Christian?

If there was hard evidence that Christianity were true, then I would believe it; however, you CHOOSE to worship a mean unjust asshole of a god that favors rape, violence, human sacrifice, slavery, etc, etc. Which is a choice I can't justify.

I wouldn't worship such a God either. I worship a God that is loving and merciful, and does not delight in the death of the wicked. I choose to worship Him because He is worthy of worship, and I am very grateful to Him for my life and for His love.

I admit, there are things which are difficult to understand in the Old Testament. Actions that God took, which, on their face, may seem to paint God as cruel and unjust. I think though that you miss the entire narrative. Did you not notice the wickedness of the people God brought His judgement against? The warnings that God gave before hand? Much of what is happening in the Old Testament is a narrative about mans rebellion against God. Sometimes He would give nations hundreds of years to repent before He did anything. The caananites, for example, sacrificed their children to baal, and practiced canibalism and He gave them 400 years.

You also miss everything Jesus Christ said or did. I think when you're considering Christianity you must consider, foremost, the words and deeds of Jesus Christ. The question is, was He God? Did He die for the sin of the world or was He simply misguided? Is He risen? These are the questions that are relevant to Christianity. Atheists only seem to want to talk about what they find in the Old Testament, when there are explanations for those things, but when it comes to the obvious love and perfection of Jesus, they are universally silent. It only seems to be about excuses not to believe instead of the substance of Jesus Christ, and who He really is.

Difficult to understand!?!?!?! How wicked is a rape victim? So wicked for being raped that they must be put to death? The man must die here too but only because it was someones wife. Otherwise, its okay.

From Deuteronomy:

22:23 If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;
22:24 Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.

And all your new testament is, is just another person putting a modern twist on the religion because human morals had evolved and the book was still the same. Which is in fact, the same thing that is still being done today and the same thing that you are trying to do here.

Looks like someone thinks an argument from verbosity has any validity. Guess he never heard of an Argumentum Verbosium or what is more commonly known as a Gish Gallop. This always is a last ditch effort to save face before mental capitulation.

(February 16, 2012 at 8:40 pm)Nebuloso Wrote: Difficult to understand!?!?!?! How wicked is a rape victim? So wicked for being raped that they must be put to death? The man must die here too but only because it was someones wife. Otherwise, its okay.

From Deuteronomy:

22:23 If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;
22:24 Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.

And all your new testament is, is just another person putting a modern twist on the religion because human morals had evolved and the book was still the same. Which is in fact, the same thing that is still being done today and the same thing that you are trying to do here.

What that is describing is consensual sex..they are both adulterers. That's fairly obvious, especially when you consider the very next verses:

Deuteronomy 22:25-26

But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die:

But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:

Have you read the bible, at least the new testament all the way through? Jesus Christ was not putting a modern spin on anything, He fulfilled prophecy and said He was God incarnate. It's not a reinterpretation of the Old Testament, it is Gods revelation to the world.

(February 16, 2012 at 10:37 pm)brotherlylove Wrote: What that is describing is consensual sex..they are both adulterers. That's fairly obvious, especially when you consider the very next verses:

Deuteronomy 22:25-26

But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die:

But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:

Have you read the bible, at least the new testament all the way through? Jesus Christ was not putting a modern spin on anything, He fulfilled prophecy and said He was God incarnate. It's not a reinterpretation of the Old Testament, it is Gods revelation to the world.

And if you keep reading it says that if you rape a girl you have to pay her 50 bucks and marry her.

We can play this game all day and get nowhere. You already admitted that the OT is ugly. I admit its my fault for bringing a bible verse to argument.

As far as the NT goes, yes, I have read it and aside from human sacrifice, I will admit there are some good lessons but they are not lessons that can't be learned without reading them or even knowing of Jesus. Therefore, that gives them no justification.

Bottom line is there is no good reason to worship your god and no good reason to believe that any of it is true.