My Defense of Christianity.

[pocaracas]

Oooooo! I don't know that much about the Kalevala Kayenneh!

Fascinating stuff...... *Kichi goes off into Kalevala land ..... still reading. I do love myths and legends.

I assume you've read the Silmarillion's account of how the world began. Quite a piece of literary art.


as for the OP,

#1 The world doesn’t make sense without God.

As was pointed out before: god of the gaps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps

How did we come to exist?

big bang -> universe cools down and forms protons and electrons -> atoms gather and form nebulae -> nebula contracts due to gravity and kick starts the fusion process, igniting a star -> stars gather forming galaxies (the order may not be entirely this).
The fusion process inside stars causes protons to join, forming a number of nuclei of what we call elements adn someone kindly ordered them in a table for us: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table
During the lifespan of one such star, the most comon fusion reaction just turns single protons into helium nuclei. But, at the end of that star's lifetime it contracts further and fusion goes on forming other elements, the most common going up in atomic number until iron (check the periodic table). Higher atomic numbers are much less likely, but they do occur. Eventually the fusion reactions overcome the gravitation effect of the mass and the star is said to die.
In time, the materials which this star generated come in contact with some nebula of protons which is still in the process of gathering and forming a new star. Due to centrifugal force, these heavier elements tend to remain on the outskirts of the nebula and, in time, they too clump up forming what we call planets.
On our solar system, there was a planet where water was allowed to exist in the liquid state, the size of this planet was just right to generate a protective layer of gas (the atmosphere) and life eventually came out of some ooze. Amino-acids clumped together to form proteins which then clumped together to form single celled organisms. These clumped together to form multi-celled organisms which then evolved (new word for "clumped together") into different organisms while adapting to different habitats on this planet.
On of these organisms turned out to be us.

I hope that very short version of the history of the universe is sufficient. If not, start reading:
http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Three-Mi...roduct_top
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time...roduct_top
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=orig...CBsQgQMwAA
http://www.amazon.com/On-Origin-Species-...roduct_top

Why did everything that ever existed ever exist?

Why do you need a reason for that?
What if there's no reason? It's just the way it is.

Why are we here?

We evolved here. Had we evolved somewhere else, you'd be asking the same question (but concerning that other place) and be getting the same answer.

Why wasn’t there nothing?

Clearly, there's something. No matter how unlikely it may have been.

Science points to a beginning of the universe. Science can’t explain why we’re here. But Christianity offers a very straight-forward solution, God created it. Pretty easy to understand right?

Not easy to understand at all. Like so many before me asked: if you claim some god created the universe, then where does god come from? who created god? (let's call these god creators supra-gods) Why is there only one god? How many gods can there be? How many supra-gods are there? Who created the supra-gods? (lets call these ultra-gods) How many ultra-gods are there? Who created the ultra-gods? (lets call these mega-gods) Who created the mega-gods?

I think you begin to see how this can just go on forever, no?

Now assuming the universe did somehow exist, how did life appear? By chance? Practically impossible. All the complex code and cells and whatever, all point to an intelligent creator.

I hinted at that earlier and directed you to a nice book about it.
Chance may have had a good deal in the actual origin of life. Going from amino-acids to single-celled organisms must have been something extremely unlikely, requiring just the right conditions. Well, guess what, the planet had millions and millions of years to get there. And once it happened, it's done, no going back, unless the organisms don't survive... Here, on this planet, they survived.
The complex life came much later. The process of evolution is a very very slow one. It works by tinkering with little details of the organisms eventually giving them the advantage to survive. A lot of the tinkering is inconsequential, but some of it (whether it comes from some genetic anomaly or as a direct influence of the external environment) causes noticeable changes. And then, some of these changes are beneficial and some (I'd wager most) are not.
The process is so slow that the organisms can't handle abrupt changes to their environment and mass extinctions occur (you ever heard of the dinosaurs? before them, there was at least one more mass extinction and that put the world life count at less than 10%).

Okay I do realize this type of evidence isn’t really hard and just suggests it should of happened like that but no real hard evidence of it. Still, it’s hard to imagine this all happened by chance.

Completely predetermined chance. Wrap your brain around that one.

#2 Near Death Experiences

Can I bash you too?
"near death" is a bit different from "death". I've never heard of anyone actually dying and coming back to life and tell us how it went (except for the J.C. myth, but I'll put it down as myth because of all the bias in this society).
In near death, the brain is still working. Dreams and the like are still happening. The reoccurring theme of the light at the end of the tunnel might very well be the visual cortex shutting down to conserve energy for more vital parts of the brain. Then everything turns back on [False alarm, brain!] and the person wakes up. Knowing what's going on around them isn't hard. The ears are still working, the brain can then fill in the details and you get a pretty accurate mental picture of what was going on around you, while almost dead.
Isn't this a bit more realistic than "gods and souls"?
Of course, some people then use all their prior knowledge to associate whatever they think they experienced with something they can relate. And the god myth is very well positioned for that.

#3 Bible Prophecies

I once looked into a book called something like "the bible code", or something.
Reading it, you get any number of prophecies. Heck, you could probably even see there the number pi up to the thousandth decimal place.... you just need to use the right code.
In the end, they sound a lot like the prophecies of the lady in Fátima. They're only revealed by the priesthood after they are fulfilled. Mighty suspicious, no?

And, if it was possible to know the future, then the world would be completely predetermined. Isn't that a bit against what you'd expect from a world created by a god?

And in the end, if you really are Christian, you know you’re going to Heaven, a better place than Earth, so why worry about your life here?
Some people especially dislike just submitting to God and doing his will. Well frankly he created you, so he didn’t even have to give you Heaven in the first place. But he chose to let us put our faith in him. So you can have a happy life and a happy afterlife. Whatever happens in Heaven, it will make you happy. You cannot know what happens in Heaven, to people who think they do, it’s incomprehensible. Jusut know that God has prepared it and you’ll happy forever.

And if you're a classical helenic (that's greek) you know you'll go to mount Olympus and join the other gods. If you're scandinavian (as in viking time) you know you'll go to Valhalla.
And if you believe in any other mythology, you know you're going to the special place that the divinity of that mythology created just for you and all that have done right according to him/them.

Who's right?
Who's wrong?
Why would one mythogoly be more correct than another?

Misconceptions
#1 Religion =/= Faith in Jesus

If you have faith, you don't necessarily belong to any religion. But if you believe that J.C. did all what is written in the NT and have faith in him, then you're a Christian. Maybe not a Catholic, not an evangelical, not any other of the countless sects which are part of christianity, but you're still a christian.
Given all these sects, we can argue whether Christianity is a religion.
The Catholic religion is a religion. Christianity encompasses way too many different ways of worshiping the same deity that I don't know if we can call it a proper religion.

#2 Christians are idiotic jerks

Some of them tend to.
Some Hindus tend to be the same.
Some muslims too.
And some atheists.
Well, let's face it, there's a part of human-kind that is composed of idiotic jerks and that part is independent of the religion that each individual follows.

#3 Christians discourage sex

At least the Catholic church does. I don't about the others.
The claim is that sex is a means of reproduction, nothing else.
Marriage is a form of guaranteeing that the child has a father figure... notice my lack of claim that the child is son/daughter of that father
In light of the view that sex must be performed in the context of marriage and procreation, why on earth would you want to use a condom?! Makes no sense. It's a waste of money and decreases your overall pleasure of the act of sex.
They then abolish the use of condoms.
And throw these rules on a population known to have sex outside of matrimony and where STDs are rampant. Am I the only one who sees this attitude as... strange?

Pretty much cleared up here. Hope you guys don’t yell at me.
One thing, actually counter argue my points. Don’t just take one sentence, refute it, and leave at that. Cause guess what? That didn’t defeat my argument. You’re just trying to play it off. So please actually give sufficient reason when you’re going to argue.

I hope I did that. If it was insufficient, lets try round 2!