Debate: God Exists

[The Industrial Atheist]

Again, same problem. Every religion claims to be directed towards spiritual needs. They all claim that they have interactions with deities (worship). None of it is evidence of the truth of it. If you expect a person to accept a religion, there must be rational grounds for accepting it.

Really?!?!?

Have you actually studied religion?

Of the top 10 I've actively studied 6, of those Only Christianity claims to put the average person in direct contact with God.

That is not to say other religions 'gods' don't contact people, but when they do there is something special about them which makes them prophets or emissaries, or whatever, or they are used as pawns. Christianity is the only religion that gives you one on one time with it's God. Other religions offer rewards for alliance/obedience. for those followers those 'spiritual rewards' are the reason for their obedience. Christianity offers audience with God, eternally.

If this is appealing or at the very least you want to know if what I said is true then simply A/S/K as outlined in Luke 11 and Allow Him to work with you.

---

2000 years of relentless schisming doesn't inspire in me the confidence Drich seems to garner from it . . . .

So what, are you saying as we collectively understand God on a greater level, or as some of us fall back we are not allowed to seperate from each other and worship God to the best of our abilities?

The fact that we are all mostly pointed in the same direction speaks to a singular unifying point that keep us all worshiping towards the same point. How we do it was meant from the beginning as different as we are different on an individual level

Jesus gives you one-on-one time? Well I said a lot to him, but I never got a response. I was pretty devout.

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[Drich]

So.. you are saying you are not apart of Humanity? God left instruction directing all of Humanity to seek Him in a very specific way through the bible. Unless you are not apart of Humanity considered yourself told by an official messenger.

The thing is, Drich, that you cannot claim for certain that the bible (nor any other so-called holy book) is a set of instructions by god itself.

Uh, yes I can and did!

All we know is that some people wrote the books currently found in the Bible.

Selective ignorance.
You can be as ignorant as you like with the bible. In that way it is a two edged sword. It's real simple sport try and keep up:
1) Jesus Says if you A, B, C The Father will send the Holy Spirit (God) to Help you.
2) So if one does the A,B,C GtS says do in the bible, and GtF in this current day, Sends GtHS Then what GtS/God-The-Son says can be identified as instructions from God.

Even if those people were being honest when setting those words on paper, we cannot be certain that they were not being influenced by other people.... let alone be certain that they were being influenced by a god.

Again selective ignorance approach. Meaning your looking to vet instructions by trying to determine what was going on in someone's head 2000+ years ago.

How stupid is that?

If you got a 3000 year old cake recipe, would you honestly debate what was going through the baker's head when he wrote it down to classify the the cake as a cake or as a sweet bread? Wouldn't it be easier to simply follow the recipe and taste it for yourself??? Or are you saying the receip does not work unless you first know how a 3000 year old baker thought?

But we do know that many people write falsehoods...

Again here's the thing sport. With instruction the way to vet them (to prove them true or false is to follow said instructions) is to follow them. Not to debate on what could be or maybe or what the guy who wrote them was thinking.

Instructions are a or b. They work or they don't.

even if they are rooted in the desire to help others, that doesn't make them any less false.... even if they, at first glance, seem true.
One famous example of such falsehood is the Geocentric model for the Solar System. When it was adopted, it accounted for the motion of most celestial objects well enough... it was a well-intentioned mistake.

How can we make sure that a holy book is not such a mistake?

IDK maybe someone study them see what they promise take up and see if a promise is a fit for you, if so see it though or here's a thought talk to someone who honestly has!

[Nonpareil]

Instructions are a or b. They work or they don't.

And, in the case of the Bible, they don't.

Anyone who claims that the Bible has given them a personal relationship with God is deluded. If they weren't, they could show a difference between their belief and simple delusion.

But there isn't any.

So they can't.

[pocaracas]

Again, same problem. Every religion claims to be directed towards spiritual needs. They all claim that they have interactions with deities (worship). None of it is evidence of the truth of it. If you expect a person to accept a religion, there must be rational grounds for accepting it.

Really?!?!?

Have you actually studied religion?

Of the top 10 I've actively studied 6, of those Only Christianity claims to put the average person in direct contact with God.

That is not to say other religions 'gods' don't contact people, but when they do there is something special about them which makes them prophets or emissaries, or whatever, or they are used as pawns. Christianity is the only religion that gives you one on one time with it's God. Other religions offer rewards for alliance/obedience. for those followers those 'spiritual rewards' are the reason for their obedience. Christianity offers audience with God, eternally.

If this is appealing or at the very least you want to know if what I said is true then simply A/S/K as outlined in Luke 11 and Allow Him to work with you.

Drich, my boy... that's not how it's supposed to work.
It saddens me that you fail to see that for yourself.

You don't go through the claims and pick the one that fits with your perception.... that's how you pick a political party, or an economic doctrine.

You look at the world and come to your own conclusions. It's how you said before that you got there...made some wrong choices, got help, turned to whichever god you were acquainted with and found some sort of inner peace... or do I remember incorrectly?

From my POV, turning to god like you did would work regardless of the god you turned to... as long as it was some god of peace or something like that.
And it would work because that god, whichever it would be, would be in your head, in your mind. It's a placebo.

The problem with placebos is that they're not really the promised cure. Sure, they work. And it's been established that they may even work when people are fully aware that they are placebos!! But they're psychological tricks.
Our minds are too complex for us to understand exactly how these placebos work, but statistics show them to work.

Statistics also show that some people are unaffected by placebos. Knowing it's a placebo, for those people, destroys their efficiency. That's how religions are to me.

---

The thing is, Drich, that you cannot claim for certain that the bible (nor any other so-called holy book) is a set of instructions by god itself.

Uh, yes I can and did!

All we know is that some people wrote the books currently found in the Bible.

Selective ignorance.
You can be as ignorant as you like with the bible. In that way it is a two edged sword. It's real simple sport try and keep up:
1) Jesus Says if you A, B, C The Father will send the Holy Spirit (God) to Help you.
2) So if one does the A,B,C GtS says do in the bible, and GtF in this current day, Sends GtHS Then what GtS/God-The-Son says can be identified as instructions from God.

Even if those people were being honest when setting those words on paper, we cannot be certain that they were not being influenced by other people.... let alone be certain that they were being influenced by a god.

Again selective ignorance approach. Meaning your looking to vet instructions by trying to determine what was going on in someone's head 2000+ years ago.

How stupid is that?

If you got a 3000 year old cake recipe, would you honestly debate what was going through the baker's head when he wrote it down to classify the the cake as a cake or as a sweet bread? Wouldn't it be easier to simply follow the recipe and taste it for yourself??? Or are you saying the receip does not work unless you first know how a 3000 year old baker thought?

But we do know that many people write falsehoods...

Again here's the thing sport. With instruction the way to vet them (to prove them true or false is to follow said instructions) is to follow them. Not to debate on what could be or maybe or what the guy who wrote them was thinking.

Instructions are a or b. They work or they don't.

even if they are rooted in the desire to help others, that doesn't make them any less false.... even if they, at first glance, seem true.
One famous example of such falsehood is the Geocentric model for the Solar System. When it was adopted, it accounted for the motion of most celestial objects well enough... it was a well-intentioned mistake.

How can we make sure that a holy book is not such a mistake?

IDK maybe someone study them see what they promise take up and see if a promise is a fit for you, if so see it though or here's a thought talk to someone who honestly has!

Remember that placebo thing I just mentioned?
That's how those instructions look.

I'm sure you can find tons of people who have followed them and got the desired result.
And I'm sure we can also find tons of people who have followed those instructions to the letter and got no such result.

That alone tells you that the instructions are not correct.
Add to the mix the nature of the human mind and the well known power of suggestion, and your instructions are automatically nothing more than a cheap illusion.

[Drich]

Really?!?!?

Have you actually studied religion?

Of the top 10 I've actively studied 6, of those Only Christianity claims to put the average person in direct contact with God.

That is not to say other religions 'gods' don't contact people, but when they do there is something special about them which makes them prophets or emissaries, or whatever, or they are used as pawns. Christianity is the only religion that gives you one on one time with it's God. Other religions offer rewards for alliance/obedience. for those followers those 'spiritual rewards' are the reason for their obedience. Christianity offers audience with God, eternally.

If this is appealing or at the very least you want to know if what I said is true then simply A/S/K as outlined in Luke 11 and Allow Him to work with you.

---

So what, are you saying as we collectively understand God on a greater level, or as some of us fall back we are not allowed to seperate from each other and worship God to the best of our abilities?

The fact that we are all mostly pointed in the same direction speaks to a singular unifying point that keep us all worshiping towards the same point. How we do it was meant from the beginning as different as we are different on an individual level

Jesus gives you one-on-one time? Well I said a lot to him, but I never got a response. I was pretty devout.

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devout or not we will all have a moment before Christ.. That said.. That's not what I said. I said God gives you one on one time.

That aside, what does being 'devout' or rather what should being devout buy you? What if you were devout not to God Himself, but to his cousin Chris.. (meaning who you think God to be, his attributes Strength etc.) were not of God, but of a creation of your religion? Would God then be obligated to see your prayers answered the way you want make sure such and such went to prom with you, that you got the Iroc Z you wanted, that you mullet came in like Macgyvers ect?? What if the God of the bible, wasn't the God you were being faithful to? what if their were some key differences between the God you were worshiping and the God the bible describes? Would then the God of the bible be required to full fill the wishes you made to your God? If He did who would you thank the God of the bible or your God?

Are you familar with the parable of the wise and foolish builders what does that story mean to you, how does it apply to what I just said?

---

Instructions are a or b. They work or they don't.

And, in the case of the Bible, they don't.

Anyone who claims that the Bible has given them a personal relationship with God is deluded. If they weren't, they could show a difference between their belief and simple delusion.

But there isn't any.

So they can't.

Like how? God does not work the same way with everyone. For some he has given them wisdom and understanding. To other He has given the ability to teach or to even love. Not in the way the you or someone off the street could teach or love more than another random person, but to degrees unknown to others all together. And even so you all are so easy to dismiss these examples even when the people setting the examples attribute what they did to God.

Which in of itself is a great irony that people who judge the works of other will find themselves being judged by.

I think The book of Eli with denzel illustrates this in a way you can understand/more readily accept. In the Movie Denzel's character Eli was a pretty big bad ass proficient in killing in 100's of different ways, all in efforts to save or preserve God's word. Not unlike a navy seal or some other proficient elite troop. But here's the thing most of you don't get. God did not use a seal to carry his book. He used a K-mart employ even after He was blinded inorder to full fill a role a seal team would find near impossible to carry out.

And depending on how you look at some of us here (christians in this forums) we too have stood as lions in sheeps clothing. I have seen one or two of us run and shut down entire threads where we act as one small voice against many, and as the days and even weeks click by we remain stead fast and answer our detractors line by line. while the opposition drop like flies. We being made to answer literally 100's of negitive questions that goes on for weeks while the best of you may exchange fire a couple dozen times.

Times how many subjects over how many years???

Again not to say you all can't argue the finner points, It's just I've yet to ever see one of you truly go the distance before you are tagged out by a buddy's counter point and you just fade away while the topic lives on.

Now put all of that on someone who couldn't read or write out of high school, then send in the diversity in the crowds of people over 10+ years of doing this, and am still here doing the same thing???

[Harry Nevis]

The thing is, Drich, that you cannot claim for certain that the bible (nor any other so-called holy book) is a set of instructions by god itself.

Uh, yes I can and did!

Well, you can't do it without evidence without looking like a fool.

All we know is that some people wrote the books currently found in the Bible.

Selective ignorance.
You can be as ignorant as you like with the bible. In that way it is a two edged sword. It's real simple sport try and keep up:
1) Jesus Says if you A, B, C The Father will send the Holy Spirit (God) to Help you.
2) So if one does the A,B,C GtS says do in the bible, and GtF in this current day, Sends GtHS Then what GtS/God-The-Son says can be identified as instructions from God.

1) Somebody said jesus said....If you can't see the difference, you're a fool.  But you showed that above.
2) Incoherent babble.

Even if those people were being honest when setting those words on paper, we cannot be certain that they were not being influenced by other people.... let alone be certain that they were being influenced by a god.

Again selective ignorance approach. Meaning your looking to vet instructions by trying to determine what was going on in someone's head 2000+ years ago.

How stupid is that?

If you got a 3000 year old cake recipe, would you honestly debate what was going through the baker's head when he wrote it down to classify the the cake as a cake or as a sweet bread? Wouldn't it be easier to simply follow the recipe and taste it for yourself??? Or are you saying the receip does not work unless you first know how a 3000 year old baker thought?

You can follow the recipe and have the result. We can prove that cake exists. Comparing a recipe to the bible?!  How stupid is that?

But we do know that many people write falsehoods...

Again here's the thing sport. With instruction the way to vet them (to prove them true or false is to follow said instructions) is to follow them. Not
to debate on what could be or maybe or what the guy who wrote them was thinking.

Instructions are a or b. They work or they don't.

Here's the thing, moron.  How can you prove instructions true or false if you can't see the result?

even if they are rooted in the desire to help others, that doesn't make them any less false.... even if they, at first glance, seem true.
One famous example of such falsehood is the Geocentric model for the Solar System. When it was adopted, it accounted for the motion of most celestial objects well enough... it was a well-intentioned mistake.

How can we make sure that a holy book is not such a mistake?

IDK maybe someone study them see what they promise take up and see if a promise is a fit for you, if so see it though or here's a thought talk to someone who honestly has!

But we try to talk to someone who has, but most are dicks like you.

[Nonpareil]

Anyone who claims that the Bible has given them a personal relationship with God is deluded. If they weren't, they could show a difference between their belief and simple delusion.

Like how?

That's the point, yes.

If you can't even imagine a way in which God's presence in your life is actually demonstrable, then it isn't there. You're just kidding yourself.

[Drich]

Drich, my boy... that's not how it's supposed to work.
It saddens me that you fail to see that for yourself.

You don't go through the claims and pick the one that fits with your perception.... that's how you pick a political party, or an economic doctrine.

That is the way I did it. That is the way any not 'born an atheist' or born into their religion did it. What are you talking about?

You look at the world and come to your own conclusions. It's how you said before that you got there...made some wrong choices, got help, turned to whichever god you were acquainted with and found some sort of inner peace... or do I remember incorrectly?

Got me cnfused with someone else. i started out buddhist-ish

From my POV, turning to god like you did would work regardless of the god you turned to...

That's funny as that is not how I remembered it happening. Again did the budda thing first, mom changed religion turned to korean jesus next, nothing from him, went metaphysical hippy BS with my dad for a while, then it all came crashing down hard then went a-holeist for a few years. Then demanded a chance to spit in God's eye if there ever was one. Started beating christians so as to have them send a message to their God for me. God showed up, or rather I showed up at my judgement. Got to look Jesus in the eye did not spit.

as long as it was some god of peace or something like that.
And it would work because that god, whichever it would be, would be in your head, in your mind. It's a placebo.

then why did hippy God work? he let me do anything so long as I did not hurt other people?

The problem with placebos is that they're not really the promised cure. Sure, they work. And it's been established that they may even work when people are fully aware that they are placebos!! But they're psychological tricks.
Our minds are too complex for us to understand exactly how these placebos work, but statistics show them to work.

The problem with people who have it in their heart not to believe don't actually address specifics only situation. which makes them look lke a douche bag when they get caught mixing specifics with situation, so they generally double down and pretend what they are saying is true anyway even though their whole philosophy has been outed as being bunk

Statistics also show that some people are unaffected by placebos. Knowing it's a placebo, for those people, destroys their efficiency. That's how religions are to me.

That's ironic.. That is how I feel about you after outting your failed placebo theory.

Remember that placebo thing I just mentioned?
That's how those instructions look.

It Completely depends on how narrow your world view is and if you are trying to make everything you do not believe under a "placebo" theory or not.
I say that not to be mean, but to point out that you yourself said placebo does not work that way, and now you are saying it would. But, again (i'm saying) it only would IF you think the whole word outside of your small world view worked the way you think it does.

I'm sure you can find tons of people who have followed them and got the desired result.
And I'm sure we can also find tons of people who have followed those instructions to the letter and got no such result.

In all my time doing this I have failed to find one person who followed God's instructions to the letter and did not find what was promised. Now that said I know people who found what was promised but were not happy with the idea of eternal service to God, even if service meant to live as a King.

All I've ever known of those who found nothing were the disillusioned, the proud, the self centered and the rest of the now generation. Then beyond that the perceptually broken, and the 2 out of 3ers.

That alone tells you that the instructions are not correct.

If there are those who find what is promised the instructions are correct.

However they may not be complete for everyone. Which is apart of what they are supposed to do. Sift the worth from the unworth. Meaning if pride has such a grip on you that you can not see fit to ask for help or if pride points foolishness, then know the instructions has eliminated the proud. There isn't any room for the proud.

Add to the mix the nature of the human mind and the well known power of suggestion, and your instructions are automatically nothing more than a cheap illusion.

Indeed, kinda like how the mind tends to close itself around what it feels comfortable with, and will disregard anything else!

---

Like how?

That's the point, yes.

If you can't even imagine a way in which God's presence in your life is actually demonstrable, then it isn't there. You're just kidding yourself.

...And you are intellectually dishonest if you think my response to you ended with that singular rhetorical question that I further explain. (you know the bit you seem fearful to actually address/Everything else besides what you cherry picked)

[The Industrial Atheist]

Drich, I'm confused. You talk about believing in the bible and say a lot of things that are similar to it, then say when I was a Christian the biblical god must have been the wrong god.

Are you or are you not talking about the god of the Christian Bible?

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[Nonpareil]

That's the point, yes.

If you can't even imagine a way in which God's presence in your life is actually demonstrable, then it isn't there. You're just kidding yourself.

...And you are intellectually dishonest if you think my response to you ended with that singular rhetorical question that I further explain. (you know the bit you seem fearful to actually address/Everything else besides what you cherry picked)

I am not cherry-picking, Drich. Neither am I "fearful to address it". It simply doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with the point I am making. Therefore, it was ignored.

It doesn't matter if God interacts with each person differently. This interaction is still either real, in which case you can demonstrate it, or not, in which case you can't. You can't, so it isn't real.

The rest of your incoherent ramble about The Book of Eli and being "lions in sheep's clothing" is so completely pointless that I can't even imagine what you thought it had to do with my post, but I really don't care.