Ahah. Ahahahah! Ahahah. Yeah, I don't want to believe.

Damn right, I don't want to believe in fairy tails for adults. To do so would require me to alter my brain chemistry so I can't separate reality from fantasy. Why would I want to do that?

What I want to believe is what is true, and I don't want to believe what isn't true. We have to have mechanisms with which to tell the difference, you see. They are called reason and evidence. Otherwise, you just have to accept as true anything anyone tells you. That's not so good.

The request for evidence is not unreasonable. Theists themselves do it every single day they're presented with a claim that they don't believe without it (I have a ball in my right hand behind my back).

But as soon it comes to their un-evidenced sky fairy they immediately default to "Well you've got to have faith!" Well I'm sorry, but for the same reason you ask for evidence of the ball, I ask for evidence of your version of whatever god it is you worship. It's not complicated. The default 'I don't believe you' is the only valid position to take when confronted with a supernatural claim. If others want to believe it, then fine, that's their choice. But I'm not going to kowtow to threats or indoctrination just because someone says I should.

That's right. They do, unless they are actually crazy. They just can't seem to notice that we're asking exactly the same things they usually ask.

I mean, if I claim that I have the ultra-bible which precedes and trumps the bible, will they believe me? Or ask for evidence? Or ignore me, dismissing the claim as ridiculous as I am not offering evidence?

If you want me to believe your nonsense on no evidence, you have to believe mine too. And as I just said, mine wins. So?

I think there's some truth to it, I know that one of the things I felt when I finally let go of religion was a sense of freedom. Of course, for the JWs even growing a beard is a sin, so my desire to sin might not be atheistic enough for the theists here. But once you cut through the rationalizations you need to construct and see god as he is represented in the Bible, you shouldn't want to believe in him; he's terrifying. I guess that's why the other thing I felt was relief.

GC, see how easily the atheists prove my point. I mention how they prefer clinging to false caricatures of Christianity so they can easily dismiss them and they come up with more make-believe theological controversies to hallucinate about.

(December 16, 2014 at 6:02 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: I mention how they prefer clinging to false caricatures of Christianity.

Remove your rose-colored glasses and you will see who has been clinging to the falsities.

(December 16, 2014 at 6:02 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: GC, see how easily the atheists prove my point. I mention how they prefer clinging to false caricatures of Christianity so they can easily dismiss them and they come up with more make-believe theological controversies to hallucinate about.

Ok, Mortimer Adler, why don't you give us some examples of real theological controversies -- like, for instance, how well your Swedenborgian views line up with those of Southern Baptists, at least when you're not holding G_C's hand to score your own cheap rhetorical points.

(December 16, 2014 at 6:02 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: GC, see how easily the atheists prove my point. I mention how they prefer clinging to false caricatures of Christianity so they can easily dismiss them and they come up with more make-believe theological controversies to hallucinate about.

Our perceptions of Christians and Christianity comes only from those who are themselves Christians or follow one of the many myriad of sects of Christianity.

Some of us even were Christians before shedding the shackles of faith.

Are you really going to go ahead and start talking about 'make-believe' in conjunction with theology? the 'academic' discipline which is itself based entirely on the beliefs of those who profess to espouse it and which has nothing beyond those beliefs to back it up?

I agree with Crossless above. Why not examine Baptist theology vis Swedenborgian and start tallying off the inconsistencies and contradictory view points? I'm sure there'll be some agreements (A 'christian' Jewish deity, Jesus, resurrection etc), but what of the disagreements? What do we do with those?

"You just don't want to believe" indeed.

(December 16, 2014 at 6:02 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: .. they come up with more make-believe theological controversies ..

All theological controversies are make believe!!

(December 10, 2014 at 8:50 pm)Brakeman Wrote: Since Heaven and Hell are not temporal, and given the fact that we are a massively multicellular organism that refreshes its cellular make-up by cell die-off and replacement every 7 years or so, could it not be that the old cellular body that I once had as a christian will go to heaven, but the cellular body that I have now, as an atheist, will go to hell? Why would god punish the old dead me for the actions of the later current me?

Your brain cells live a lifetime and as your brain is effectively you, a new body will still have the old brain.

Better luck next time.