Christianity; the World's Most Violently Persecuted Religion

[Deesse23]

Like people who doom themselves to being murdered, or beaten up, when they don't pay protection. It's their fault, not the scumbag deity...sorry criminal, who actually commits the crime.

Not at all; rather it would be more akin to those who choose to violate the legal codes of their country, insult and disrespect their family until they are disowned and disinherited, and continues to blame everyone else for their consequences of their behavior.

Still they dont send themselves to prison, society does. They are responsible for their deeds (murder), but its society being responsible for deciding the consequences (prison). Likewise, its your god who sends people (who dont believe  he exists) to the hell he made, and likewise god is responsible for hell being an eternal consequence because he made it.

Fuck, there should be a license for voting or so, like we have for driving cars. People like you lack the basics of human decency (and intellect) to even determine who is responsible for what with regard to basic interpersonal interaction. No wonder that elections with millions of fools like you result in what we all are currently witnessing. You are simply too stupid to be human.

[Sheldon]

TheWhiteMarten 

...this is a misunderstanding of Christian doctrine - God is not "damning" us anymore than a judge "damns" a criminal to prison; while it's not an entirely wrong word to use it seems to almost entirely fundamentally miss the mechanic at action and place some blame of the judge and not the criminal.

Another false equivalence, since a) we are able to objectively verify the laws of the land, and in this instance the "judge" is objectively real. We have no such evidence for any deity. One could also point out that people are damned for who they are in the bible, gay people for example, don't choose to be gay but were born that way, or you would say created. 

This is not a failure to understand Christian doctrine, it is a valid criticism of it. In that (hypothetically) if a deity existed, and created everything, it could not reasonably be excused all culpability for the result. Even leaving aside the question of how much autonomy humans really have, they demonstrably would have less than this hypothetical deity. Thus it would have to be more culpable for the result than the "pets" it's created in this hypothetical experiment.

[Paleophyte]

Do you think the amount of culpability a being or entity has would increased, diminish or stay the same, as it's autonomy of choice increased? This is a pretty simple question, that addresses @TheWhiteMarten's original claim.

No, I'm not interested in discussing the kind of anthropomorphic god that you're arguing about.

Well, that's pretty clearly the god that most Christians envision, including the OP. That god is very personal and hates all the same people that they do. If you want to argue some other deity then you should probably start another thread rather than derailing this one. Not that derailing this thread wouldn't vastly improve it.

[Sheldon]

Not a bad place to be in, since you couldn't objectively prove anything and would reject objectivity in favor of divine relativism even if you could.

yes, otherwise it is a nice place to be in - one that keeps me open to new information rather than closing it off if it clashes with my pre-conceived notions

Leaving aside the irony overload for a moment, what would convince you to withhold belief from the existence of a deity, if it is not the dearth of any objective evidence it exists, or is even possible? Yours is a position based on uncritical adherence to doctrine and dogma, your every post demonstrates this, a more closed minded position than religious faith is hard to imagine.

[Thumpalumpacus]

But please address my point: if your choice is made under threat, are you really exercising free will?

What you choose to perceive as a threat does not make it so.

Holding one's eternal soul hostage is a threat by any normal standard -- assuming for the sake of argument that said soul exists, which is itself highly doubtful.

If your choice is made with a prior warning, are you really exercising free will? I think everyone would answer, "Yes - obviously."

Nice that you deny that hell is a threat, yet you use the word "warning" -- which is advance notification of a danger. You can't eat your cake and have it too.

Anyway, the advance warning actually reduces the free will, because the more in advance the warning comes, the more time it has to play upon the mind of the soon-to-be victim. No warning at all would mean that decisions will be made in the absence of any knowledge of consequences, and thus give the most play to free will.

The bottom line is this: you worship a god who feels the need to compel your worship by threatening you with an eternity in hell. You use free will in order to exonerate this god from its evil-doing, and deny any compulsory aspect of hell as a consequence of not worshipping this monster. I feel sorry for you. You've rented your mind out to others who do not have your interests at heart.

[Paleophyte]

case in point, the statement that God dooms people to hell rather than it being a result of their choices.

God dooms people to hell by creating a reality where hell is a necessary feature. Seriously, what sort of deity builds hell into the universe as if it were a cool add-on? You are arguing for a sane and competent deity here, yes?

[Sheldon]

Now, @TheWhiteMarten, I have asked several times, can you demonstrate anything approaching any objective evidence for any deity or anything supernatural, or that these ideas are even possible?

My apologies, mostly just skim - no, no more than I can provide objective evidence that plate tectonics is an accurate model to describe the process of how our Earth has come to geologically be figured the way it is.

Except plate tectonics is supported by objective evidence? That aside I wonder then what your criteria for disbelief is if it not a dearth of any objective evidence, you don't after all believe in any of the deities atheists disbelieve are real, except this one. 

 like many things we can never objectively prove it to be the truth. 

Yet there are objective facts, where it would be wholly unreasonable to deny them given the amount of objective evidence that supports them. The fact that all living things evolved slowly over time for example, or the rotundity of the earth. 

Try this then, what is the most compelling reason you think demonstrates a deity exists or is even possible?

[Thumpalumpacus]

2. As mentioned a few posts ago, this is a misunderstanding of Christian doctrine - God is not "damning" us anymore than a judge "damns" a criminal to prison; while it's not an entirely wrong word to use it seems to almost entirely fundamentally miss the mechanic at action and place some blame of the judge and not the criminal.

The reason your analogy is a failure is that the human judge doesn't create the criminal knowing fully well at the moment of creation that the criminal will be such. The human judge also lacks the power to correct ab initio the character flaws that lead to criminality.

On the other hand, your god is claimed to be all-knowing, all-powerful, and the creator of everything -- including evil. He possesses the power to make humans want to be good, yet look at how imperfect we are. Your own faith proclaims that humans are inherently and unchangeably flawed, and that we receive grace only through faith, and that without that, we are doomed to hell. Your god made the rules. Your god rigged the game.

That is a far cry from a human judge enforcing agree-upon laws. Typical slip-shod apologist thinking.

[Sheldon]

2. As mentioned a few posts ago, this is a misunderstanding of Christian doctrine - God is not "damning" us anymore than a judge "damns" a criminal to prison; while it's not an entirely wrong word to use it seems to almost entirely fundamentally miss the mechanic at action and place some blame of the judge and not the criminal.

The reason your analogy is a failure is that the human judge doesn't create the criminal knowing fully well at the moment of creation that the criminal will be such. The human judge also lacks the power to correct ab initio the character flaws that lead to criminality.

On the other hand, your god is claimed to be all-knowing, all-powerful, and the creator of everything -- including evil. He possesses the power to make humans want to be good, yet look at how imperfect we are. Your own faith proclaims that humans are inherently and unchangeably flawed, and that we receive grace only through faith, and that without that, we are doomed to hell. Your god made the rules. Your god rigged the game.

That is a far cry from a human judge enforcing agree-upon laws. Typical slip-shod apologist thinking.

A good summation of why his analogy was a false equivalence, and of course were a human judge to condemn someone to torture, would we really deem this ever to be acceptable, let alone represent perfect morality? Note I don't say torture forever, can anyone deem this to be a fit punishment? Let alone when disbelief is demonstrably beyond the control of most humans who have ever lived, Christianity after all is a very recent creation.

[The Grand Nudger]

Not a bad place to be in, since you couldn't objectively prove anything and would reject objectivity in favor of divine relativism even if you could.

No, I wouldn't - I would be a proponent of divine objectivism. Just because the human mind is incapable of understanding a concept does not make the concept inherently incapable to be understood, and with the right perspective we would gain that ability as well.

But yes, otherwise it is a nice place to be in - one that keeps me open to new information rather than closing it off if it clashes with my pre-conceived notions and keeps my mind engaged and thinking rather than stagnant and eroding.

Can't complain all in all.

Divine objectivity is an oxymoron.  Things are either objective or not.  If a gods opinions are the truthmaker rather than facts of a matter we're dealing with subjectivity or relativity. If facts of the matter are the truthmaker then a gods opinions and existence are irrelevant to the same. See what I mean about your compulsion to immediately reject objectivity?