Scripture for Trinitarians

[lucent]

I seem to remember some flimsy rationalization in the story behind this claim but I must have washed it out of my mind. I'm feeling adventurous so would you run it by me again? I'm prepared to be underwhelmed.

It's personal testimony which is apparently of no interest to you.

Adding shifting the burden of proof to your list of arguments, huh? You see, it was you who suggested something was happening (God is helping) and I said "really, can you cite any examples". That "thud" was the burden of proof landing in your back yard. "Well, how do you know it doesn't happen" is an appeal to ignorance.

My original statement is that conjoined twins haven't been abandoned by God, despite their condition. Your original reply was, how many conjoined twins have been separated by prayer, as if this is the only measure of help they could receive. I rejected that premise, and I continue to reject it. I didn't say how do you know it isn't happening, I said even if it isn't happening, it doesn't prove anything.

Except when they're not.

No, they're never not separate people, but they are One God.

Because bleeding on a cross was the only way that he could convince himself to change a rule that he made in the first place and forgive us for being sinful beings which we are because an ancestor of ours who was made from a rib ate a magic fruit after speaking with a talking snake.

I guess you think this is clever, but really it is just revealing an ignorance of Christian theology. I would like to believe this sort of thing is beneath you.

He died on the cross to break the power of death. He didn't "convince himself to change a rule". He took on human nature, lived a perfect live and fulfilled the law, and through His atonement He united the human nature with the divine nature, bringing humanity back into the possibility of the relationship we had with God before the fall. Read a little bit about redemptive history and maybe we can discuss this like adults.

Imaginary benefits are easy to make claims about, aren't they?

Right, billions of people who experience a qualitative improvement in their lives are just imagining those benefits.

History tells us precisely what he didn't do.

Catholic Church: Inquisitions
Jesus: Nothing
Protestants in Mass: Witch burnings
Jesus: Nothing
Catholic Church: Crusades
Jesus: Nothing

History tells us what we did, not what He didn't do. You have no idea what God did or didn't do. Again, human beings have free will to do evil, and Christian are human beings.

Even if we buy into the flimsy free will defense for general acts of evil, natural disasters and horrid diseases, a personal god should at least take ownership of his personal foot soldiers on this world. The actions of priests and appointed pastors and what they do in his name, for his glory, are a reflection on him. We hold generals to no less of a standard and they are not omniscient.

I am presuming you have never created your own Universe before, so it is difficult to see where you're going to be able to chime in here on what God should be doing. He is the ruler over life and death, and sovereign King over creation. The issue is a bit deeper than commanding troops.

People do plenty of things in the name of the Lord but aren't actually following His commands. Plenty of people call themselves Christian but are really unregenerated and worldly. You couldn't even tell the difference; none of that activity was sanctioned in the bible.

The fact is Christianity is the worst disaster to fall upon humanity (its only rival being Islam). It has not only promoted bloodshed, hatred and torture but at the best of times, it has brought intellectual stagnation and reactionary policies in matters of social progress. If Christianity is any indication of the nature of Jesus, and I see no way it can't be since he is personally involved, your Jesus is as evil as the organization he spawned.

That is absolutely indefensible statement, right off the bat. This is the kind of ignorance that you expect to hear on the internet, but you actually claim to be some kind of student of knowledge and reason, so you have no excuse.

Western civilization owes quite a bit to Christianity. The myriad ways that Christ has impacted western culture for the better are endless, from government, law, science, education, ethics, to health care and treatment of women, the countless humanitarian movements including freeing the slaves, the building of schools, hospitals, orphanages, drinking wells, charities, etc, etc, etc.

Educate yourself:

http://www.amazon.com/Christianity-Chang...0310264499

http://www.amazon.com/WHAT-JESUS-NEVER-B...UTF8&qid=1 319510226&sr=1-1

I would also say that any evil that has been perpetrated by Christians in the last 2000 years has been completely outdone by the evils perpetrated by atheistic regimes in the 20th century. You see the fact is, evil people do evil things, and they will find an excuse to do evil no matter what they claim to believe.

Somewhere in the world, a little girl has been kidnapped, will be raped and then murdered. Crime statistics sadly tell us this much. She may have parents who pray for her safe return. Their friends may do as much. I'm sure it will comfort them all that God couldn't give the scumbag a heart attack or stroke at just the right moment to save her from a torturous death.

No matter how many ways you frame this same argument about evil, especially with your fallacious appeal to emotion, it is still refuted by my prior arguments about free will. No mattter how many times you rephrase and repeat it, I am going to give you the same answer until you actually advance the conversation.

My grandmother died of Alzheimer's. My mother and father of cancer. How about heart attacks and strokes to provide a quick death instead of a lingering monstrous living death (particularly my mother after the cancer ravaged her brain)?

I'm sorry to hear about all that. Do you think it served no purpose? Perhaps lives were changed in ways you do not or have not perceived.

And if God were to ever contact me and ask for feedback, I'd be able to give him a few constructive suggestions. How about women get wider pelvises in order that the miracle of childbirth might not be so dangerous and painful? Maybe the lower spine could be reinforced so that now that we've evolved to walk upright (that was a good step forward, God, we can use our hands for tool making) it can support our upper body properly? Another boon for women, the vagina doesn't open unless she's aroused so rape is impossible? And for parents everywhere, we don't come of age until 20 so teen pregnancy is impossible. Just a few obvious suggestions that a personal god would surely pay attention to.

You can contact God yourself at any time and let Him know what you think. If you pray to Jesus something like this: "Jesus if you're real, I want to know about it. If you're God, please come into my life and I will turn it over to you" and meant those words, He would reveal Himself. You can let Him know how you feel.

He created the monster called "Christianity" and set it loose on the world like a rapid dog. A pet owner is held responsible more than you hold your omnipotent god to.

Yeah, that Christianity, always so ruthlessly inspiring countless people to give up their anger and forgive, to give up their lifelong addictions, do good in their communities, give to charities and donate their time to the poor, to improve the quality of life for people all over the world, it's just horrible isn't it?

What do I need a defense for? Maybe an atheist has a case to use the argument from evil against Nature's God. You have no leg to stand on.

I have a plausible explanation for the problem of evil, you have nothing. Your argument is that your God is too stupid to do anything about it and if I don't like it I should kill myself. If you want to concede that your God is a moral monster, and that your belief system is so improverished for legitimacy that you can't even mount a real defense against a sound objection, that's up to you.

WTF are you even talking about? Are you speculating, as some Christians do, that I refuse to "acknowledge" God's authority because I'm living some sort of debauched sinful lifestyle? I'm drug free. I don't smoke or drink. I'm happily married and faithful to my wife. I'm a law abiding citizen and an honest businessman. When I can pay all my bills and have much leftover, I look for worthy charities. My business helps the homeless by providing free services. What sins do you imagine I'm enjoying too much?

I think it's quite obvious that you have a gigantic chip on your shoulder, since you've called Jesus evil and Christianity the worse thing to ever happen. You're in rebellion for some reason, and I am sure if you cut through all of this pretense, you'll come to an emotional core which is hot with anger. I'm sure you're a great guy off the internet, but God knows your heart, and good deeds don't cut it. If you hate someone, you've murdered them in your heart. If you look at someone at lust, you've committed adultery. Even if you only sin 5 times a day, by the time you're 70 you'll have committed over one hundred thousand sins. On the scales of justices, your life isn't going to weigh out. Jesus already paid the price for those sins, but if you don't want to accept His pardon, then you'll have to face God on your own merits.

No, it's called a definition.

No, it's called your faith in your metaphysical theory about the mind.

OK, pay attention, here are a few basic points of credulity:

1. ECREE (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence). If I tell you I had lunch with my friend today, you accept that claim at face value. If I tell you I had lunch with my deceased father who was back from the dead, you'd need to see some solid evidence and even then you'd be skeptical, right?
2. Testimony is weighed in terms of its credibility. In legal terms, it's called "consider the source". Historians do this too. If an accused murderer claims he's innocent, that's one thing. If his friend testifies that he's innocent, that's a little more credible. If a cop who was on the scene saw the one who did it and testified that the murderer was two feet shorter and female, that's really credible.

Clear?

Sure, yet you dismiss the testimony of billions of people which I think is sufficient weight for the consideration of whether a claim is credible, incredible or not.

When you come down to it, you must be one of the most clever and intelligent people on the planet. You've got it over every single religion, the atheists, the agnostics, even some of your fellow deists. I mean you must actually believe that almost everyone else in the world is deluded except you. That's your standard for credibility in a nutshell. That you're right and nearly 7 billion people are wrong.

No, when you held up Pat Robertson and a transparently obvious staged propaganda piece as an authority, you lost the debate. I didn't run away. I declared victory.

You declared victory by acknowledging defeat, and the people I spoke to saw it as a cop-out. I held up the video as an example of powerful testimony and invited you to debunk it. What you did was use it as a weak premise to excuse yourself from the argument. It is not "a transparently obvious staged propaganda piece". Perhaps you can point out where in the video you feel the man is lying or being disingenuous?:

Ah, they're separate except that they're not. Glad you cleared that up. And no, the video didn't help your case.

It's obvious you're not even trying to understand it. I can't argue with a brick wall.

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We've been together for too long for me to criticize, D-P so I'll just observe that you bring some of this on yourself by encouraging the morons to think that you might be persuaded to believe in their god because you are open to the possibility of a god.

Sometimes, it's just better to slam the door on their fucking fingers, amigo.

exactly why I walked away from my debate with him. I spent so much time arguing with someone who thinks that the bible is proof of the bible and that god revealed himself in dreams. Rationality, Logic, Justice, Evidence: All words that are exclusively defined by him alone. I got tired of chasing him in his own circle and let him declare himself the winner ... which as you have just read ... he would have anyway.


It's a waste of time. The consolation for us: knowing that the only people that agree with him on this site are the other three or four imbeciles that think talking snakes, virgin births, and cyclical arguments are honest intellectual pursuits. He didn't provide a legitimate answer for a single one of your points DP.

The debate is there for everyone to see. Fact is, your performance in the debate was fairly weak and you were pretty vulnerable towards the end of it. You shut it down after you started to flounder, and not only that, but you were a gentleman about it and took the last word so you could slander me uncontested. Now you're here to finally try to justify yourself in front of me and everyone else. Pretty lame, I have to say.