(August 24, 2013 at 4:19 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: I think Christianity has the strongest evidence for it, particularly the resurrection and empty tomb which will of course had to be based on something.

What evidence? Number of followers? Your use of the word think is adorable, especially as you claim strong evidence for the necromancy of zombie godson, failed messiah. (Sounds like a TV show...one of them works of fiction played up as a biography.)

And why not....sure, it 'of course' was based on something. Myth? Legend? Wishful thinking? Depraved imagination? Political agenda? Shall i continue, or are your fingers already in your ears?

Bah.

Damn, I went to bed and when I come back this thread has grown three pages. Well, I still have things to say here...

(August 23, 2013 at 2:29 pm)Sword of Christ Wrote: Monotheism may well have been the driving force behind it as it proposed a rationally understandable natural order purpose made by God.

Science then proceeded to point out all the flaws in that system. Oh, and you're wrong anyway, because it wasn't just the christian cultures that developed scientific discoveries. Remember how everyone keeps pointing you to the east? Yeah.

Quote:That was advice for people being owned as slaves for the secular/pagan powers that be not an endorsement of slavery in general. It's clear that Christs message was very much against it.

Oh my, I believe Christ himself might have something to say about that...

Quote:Jesus was very much down with the downtrodden masses, the poor and the oppressed. He wasn't someone who supported the establishment, the rich or the elite. We have to be clear on his stance. Yes he spoke in parables to make certain hard to understand points.

I love the dishonest seeding of the ground, talking about parables. But here's a fairly direct quote from Jesus, where he endorses the beating of slaves, even if they aren't aware of whatever infraction they caused: "The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. "But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given." (Luke 12:47-48 NLT)

(August 24, 2013 at 5:01 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: You can compare it to a romantic relationship...

The biblical god isn't a romantic. He's a bully who pounds on his 'love' one day, and gives flowers the next as consolation. Stupid 'lovers' just keep hoping that every day is a flower day. With enough flinching, they may muddle through without too many beatdowns.

Welcome to the battered wives' club.

Quote:You will find God in the other religions....

Good luck with that.

(August 24, 2013 at 4:19 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: Atheism/naturalism would be the delusion if God exists and the evidence for God is right there in the universe and present in our lives. It's essentially hidden in plain sight, if you want to see it you can and if you don't you will claim God is a "self delusion" as you just did there. You don't necessarily just get to claim your opinion of something and then it's true though, you will need to back this claim up with something.

You're right! And in that spirit, since you are the one making the positive claim, and therefore have the burden of proof, why don't you present some evidence?

Quote:Yes people have direct contact with God through the Holy Spirit. I'd argue that atheists have the exact same contact, certainly as they seem to place great importance on morality and they share the same awe at the universe.

Okay, you need to can that. Do you own slaves? Do you advocate selling raped women to their rapists? Are you a murderer of gays and witches and anyone who worships a different god? No? Then you don't have biblical morality, any more than the rest of us do. You're just picking and choosing the things you like and scrapping the rest. This snaffling up of every positive thing in the world is really disgustingly arrogant.

Quote:Pffft may as well say you were "indoctrinated" into atheism as a child. But we live in a Christian culture here, Christian/Christs values are our values.

Especially the part about giving your slaves wives so they stay with you forever, right?

Quote:I think Christianity has the strongest evidence for it, particularly the resurrection and empty tomb which will of course had to be based on something.

Why did they have to be based on something? Because they were written down in a book you like? Fiction writers can pull this shit too, you know.

Quote:You can say it was some kind of mass hallucination or conspiracy if you like but it's still better than anything the other religions have.

You mean you want it to be true more, right? Because I'd expect if your reasoning actually had any content to it, you wouldn't have stopped at "better."

Quote: I also think Christianity based on the true teachings of Christ has had the most influence and has done the most good. I'm also impressed by the philosophical and scientific arguments for God as a designer and arguments for morality and human freewill.

Please present them so I can dissect them, if you would be so kind.

Quote:I think Christianity has the strongest evidence for it, particularly the resurrection and empty tomb which will of course had to be based on something.

You can't reject the resurrection quite as easily as say you would reject Mohammed claim that he flew up to heaven on a winged horse or Joesph Smiths translation of golden tablets only he could read through magical stones inside a hat. So if you believe in God to begin with for other reasons and you're interested to know which of the religions is the most likely to have derived from God then the resurrection and the empty tomb is as good as it's going to get. You can still argue against it but you have to explain why people started to claim they had witnessed Christ after his death and explain why someone didn't just point to his body if it was still where it was meant to be.

Quote:What evidence? Number of followers? Your use of the word think is adorable, especially as you claim strong evidence for the necromancy of zombie godson, failed messiah. (Sounds like a TV show...one of them works of fiction played up as a biography.)

As an atheist/non-believer you have to work a bit harder at explaining what this event was based on and what it was people apparently experienced. You can still do it of course but you need to put some more effort into this one.

Quote:And why not....sure, it 'of course' was based on something. Myth? Legend? Wishful thinking? Depraved imagination? Political agenda? Shall i continue, or are your fingers already in your ears?

If you think God is a ridiculous concept with no real chance of existing then you will just have to explain away the resurrection and the empty tomb as some kind of hysteria. It's a little different if you're convinced that God must exist to begin with, evidence from human experience, philosophy, science and so on.

(August 24, 2013 at 5:01 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: You will find God in the other religions I just think you will find more of God in Christianity. What Jesus taught was certainly very very close to the Eastern Masters. Islam is a close cousin to Christianity though I would see it as a slight corruption of what it ought to be, it's focus is more on worldly state controlled authoritarian rule. Jesus never taught anything of that sort.

Did you just pull that out of your ass? Buddhism and the big Chinese philosophers predate Christianity by hundreds of years. If there are similarities, Christianity stole from it.

---

(August 24, 2013 at 5:46 am)Sword of Christ Wrote:

Quote:I think Christianity has the strongest evidence for it, particularly the resurrection and empty tomb which will of course had to be based on something.

You can't reject the resurrection quite as easily as say you would reject Mohammed claim that he flew up to heaven on a winged horse or Joesph Smiths translation of golden tablets only he could read through magical stones inside a hat. So if you believe in God to begin with for other reasons and you're interested to know which of the religions is the most likely to have derived from God then the resurrection and the empty tomb is as good as it's going to get. You can still argue against it but you have to explain why people started to claim they had witnessed Christ after his death and explain why someone didn't just point to his body if it was still where it was meant to be.

Oh yes I can. They're equally ridiculous. Virgin birth, you kidding me? Why do Christians always claim to know so much about the resurrection when there is no evidence for it? You can't even prove it happened so all you can say is, why else would people say it happened. That doesn't deserve an answer.

Quote:

Quote:What evidence? Number of followers? Your use of the word think is adorable, especially as you claim strong evidence for the necromancy of zombie godson, failed messiah. (Sounds like a TV show...one of them works of fiction played up as a biography.)

As an atheist/non-believer you have to work a bit harder at explaining what this event was based on and what it was people apparently experienced. You can still do it of course but you need to put some more effort into this one.

No, you have the burden of proof.

Quote:

Quote:And why not....sure, it 'of course' was based on something. Myth? Legend? Wishful thinking? Depraved imagination? Political agenda? Shall i continue, or are your fingers already in your ears?

If you think God is a ridiculous concept with no real chance of existing then you will just have to explain away the resurrection and the empty tomb as some kind of hysteria. It's a little different if you're convinced that God must exist to begin with, evidence from human experience, philosophy, science and so on.

Quote:And why not....sure, it 'of course' was based on something. Myth? Legend? Wishful thinking? Depraved imagination? Political agenda? Shall i continue, or are your fingers already in your ears?

Stop bringing science into it unless you're willing to back up that claim.

This may come out strange because I'm on my phone, but here goes!

(August 24, 2013 at 4:19 am)Sword of Christ Wrote:

Quote:

Quote:Evidence wise there you go you can see it for yourself.

See what, where?
Are you aware that many people have looked their entire lives... they have honestly looked.... and found nothing??

They will find something if they want to find it.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." Matthew 7:7

Abraham didn't ask..and yet wad asked to kill his own son.
Moses didn't ask, and yet got a few stone tablets with writing on them.
If we accept god does such things, then why settle for crapy confirmation bias and self delusions?

Quote:

Quote:Many people are looking right now and finding nothing.
Many people are looking and finding some spiritual thing... what we, in the know, like to call, a self-delusion.

Atheism/naturalism would be the delusion if God exists and the evidence for God is right there in the universe and present in our lives. It's essentially hidden in plain sight, if you want to see it you can and if you don't you will claim God is a "self delusion" as you just did there. You don't necessarily just get to claim your opinion of something and then it's true though, you will need to back this claim up with something.

If the evidence is there, then god is doing a bang up job hiding it from us.
Did it lose its ability to write on stone tablets?

Quote:

Quote:Nowadays, no one has direct contact with any god, as it is claimed to have happened in the tales of holy books, sometime in the past.
People claim some psychological connection, but that's indistinguishable from self-delusion... and then you have Occam flashing his Razor...

Yes people have direct contact with God through the Holy Spirit. I'd argue that atheists have the exact same contact, certainly as they seem to place great importance on morality and they share the same awe at the universe.

There he goes with the morality thing again...
People had morals before JC came into the picture. Christianity is the one that adopted pre-existing morals.
Awe at the universe... research: China, 6th century BC.

Quote:

Quote:How can you tell if you really are deluded?
Well, first figure out if you were indoctrinated as a child... that indoctrination, on some people, makes them accept any claim from authoritative figures... as these people grow up, those claims are never challenged and, even if some outside entity does challenge them, such challenge is automatically dismissed as fallacious, and your brain works in overtime attempting to come up with some cop out of that particular challenge.

Pffft may as well say you were "indoctrinated" into atheism as a child. But we live in a Christian culture here, Christian/Christs values are our values. If you want your child to be 100% free from all religion/belief then raise them chained in a basement without talking to them for 18 years.

That's the thing...you don't grow indoctrinated into atheism. You grow immersed in the culture of the country where you live... in the western world, this culture had been greatly influenced by Christianity and, more recently, by science, technology and economics.
So, the most common path is one where you learn about the god of the bible or the Qur'an, the adults tell you it's true and tout live happy with that information... Until you grow, think a bit, and go either the atheist way, or become like you.
Typically(from what I have observed in this forum - not a good source for stats, I know), the people who become atheist have a more analytical mind, while the ones who become theists tend to be more emotional.

Quote:

Quote:Can you recognize yourself in any of this description?

I wasn't any more indoctrinated into anything than you were. Unless you had the chained in a basement treatment. But you seem to be able to speak English so I assume you weren't.

Then you're not in this group of people.

Quote:

Quote:Ah, but no... you were not indoctrinated... your parents didn't make you go to church on Sundays...

Well they didn't, they never went to church or had any real interest in it. I come from a thoroughly secular family. They will go to church for funeral or to have a look around but that's about it.

They're like mine. :p

Quote:

Quote: They just had a few crosses lying around the house, the world around you hinted heavily on the notion of J.C. and god and the ghost thing... Something happens in your life that you can't explain away and.... you take the easy way... goddidit.

Pffft there were a couple of Buddha figures laying around the house nothing that had anything to do with Christianity at all. No I came to the truth through my own reason. Yes so I'm from a Christian/Western culture like yourself but I think we have the best world culture and we achieved the most, this I would use as evidence that there is something more in it than superstition. It's still a very flawed culture but we can put that down to the nature of human sin.

You're from a western culture hence you find Christianity as the "truth". Had you been born in the middle east, you'd probably claim Islam to be the truth...same for India, Indonesia, south America, and anywhere on this planet...you tend to embrace the local mythology.

Quote:

Quote: Still don't recognize yourself?

Well no not really, I am a freethinker even if I came to the other conclusion based on the evidence. I am open to other religions as well as I recognize the common strands in there that I would say will come from the Holy Spirit. I'm fairly keen on the Eastern religions and philosophies and see parallels between those found in Christianity and Jesus teachings.

Quote:Well, then, do tell us how you came to be aware of the existence of a god. And then, how you got the impression that a particular god was the real one.

I think Christianity has the strongest evidence for it, particularly the resurrection and empty tomb which will of course had to be based on something. You can say it was some kind of mass hallucination or conspiracy if you like but it's still better than anything the other religions have. I also think Christianity based on the true teachings of Christ has had the most influence and has done the most good. I'm also impressed by the philosophical and scientific arguments for God as a designer and arguments for morality and human freewill.

Christianity has no evidence.
Here's a bit of it: in the years or decades after this alleged resurrection, Jerusalem remained a Jew city.most of the people there remained Jews, or Romans. It was only elsewhere that people came to believe such tales about JC, as three resurrection, turning water to wine, walking on water, etc.
Then Muslims walked into the city and turned it into a Muslim center.
Christianity has always been a minority in the place where the man actually came back to life!! How's that possible, unless there's no evidence for such occurrence and, even at the time when it supposedly happened, there was no evidence for it?

Quote:Science then proceeded to point out all the flaws in that system. Oh, and you're wrong anyway, because it wasn't just the christian cultures that developed scientific discoveries. Remember how everyone keeps pointing you to the east? Yeah.

I think you will find the scientific and industrial revolution happened here in the West not the East. You can point to the East all you like but it didn't happen over there. Christianity did incorporate much of the learning from the pagan classical world, Aristotle and Plato and that kind of thing the foundations of the scientific world was a strand that goes all the way back through history into the pre-Christian era. But certainly Christianity isn't "anti-science" it may even be the foundation of modern science. We likely wouldn't have developed scientifically if we thought thunder storms were controlled by Thor or something.

Quote:Oh my, I believe Christ himself might have something to say about that...

Jesus just didn't support oppression of the poor by the wealthy elite and slavery fits snugly into that bracket. I'm sorry about this that's just how he rolled.

Quote:I love the dishonest seeding of the ground, talking about parables. But here's a fairly direct quote from Jesus, where he endorses the beating of slaves, even if they aren't aware of whatever infraction they caused: "The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. "But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given." (Luke 12:47-48 NLT)

No it's a parable, what he's saying is that if someone like yourself doesn't actually believe in God you will only have a slight chastisement for wayward sinful nature but if you genuinely believe yet willfully ignore it your chastisement will be far greater. If you don't believe and do a little good you will have a small reward and if you believe and do a little good you will get a greater reward from God. Jesus spoke in parables that his audience could understand. In a way you ought to like this because he's saying atheists are ok, they just aren't aware of God.

(August 24, 2013 at 5:46 am)Sword of Christ Wrote: If you think God is a ridiculous concept with no real chance of existing then you will just have to explain away the resurrection and the empty tomb as some kind of hysteria. It's a little different if you're convinced that God must exist to begin with, evidence from human experience, philosophy, science and so on.

Or- and please, try to follow me on this one- it was made up. Or it was embellished after the fact. Or the witnesses were fabricated, or their stories were twisted by their perception of events, or any number of other things.

You are assuming, from the outset, that what was described in the story is literally true, and then challenging the atheist to come up with a way for this real and true event to have happened without a miracle. You can't do that, because we have no confirmation that the event actually occurred at all, just an old storybook.

Sword of Christ, you are making the assumption that eyewitness testimonies are infallible. They are infallible, and because they were written into a book, they must have happened.

Allow me to demonstrate why eyewitness testimony is completely unreliable, even when it comes from personal source.

Please view the following in full-screen. Play close attention to the players in white shirts and how many times they pass the ball. You must keep careful count, or else your very own eyewitness capabilities are worthless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...JG698U2Mvo

QED.