Abusive Theology 101

[MindForgedManacle]

I can answer that from a Biblical perspective, but in a forum post, that would be circular reasoning, without listing full-blown evidence for the Bible's validity outside of itself.

If you actually had that - or if such evidence actually existed - we wouldn't need religious apologists to defend it against scientific, historical and philosophical issues.

I could answer it by trying to define God, but without understanding the validity of Scripture, there's really no foundation to do that with.

If you can define God, the only use the Bible is, is support that your view of God is somewhat like some parts of the Bible imply. And there is quite literally no way you could move from the Bible being right in the sparse areas it is, to therefore it portrays God correctly. Otherwise, you'd have to accept the Koran and become a Muslim, seeing as it and the prophet Mohammed are more historically evidenced than much of the Bible and Jesus.

Everything outside of my undocumented experiences that I could show you would come from Scripture, and since you haven't experienced my life, anything I say there can be disregarded as relative...

That really is more or less an admission (as far as I can tell) that the evidence for God is personal experience and the Bible, both of which have major issues.

Except of course nature! But that can be refuted with scientific fact to describe every facet, as even Scripture tells us God works in processes.

It also shows that God working via miracles, and we don't see them.

And clearly, if God is real, then He would of made the systems of science that we use for discovery. If that is the case, then the Bible should not go against the laws of nature, but compliment them instead. In consideration of that, I would encourage you to do what every great scientist has done - take your theory (in this case, the Bible) and test it in the world around you.

Okay, no. If God exists and works through Nature, that wouldn't have made him create science. Science is a man-made enterprise of discovery and prediction about nature.

The Bible's descriptions of nature haven't done well. From claiming rabbits chew cud (they don't) to claiming the Earth is a disc and that the sky is a firmament (dome). Now, you can ad hoc explanations of those clear falsehoods, but all such 'explanations' that I've seen are insanely deceptive.

After all, faith - according to the Bible - is not a delusional emotional feeling, but a response to evidence. The evidence will be found by putting the Bible to the test when it says, if you do this, then this will happen. Take Jeremiah 29:13, for example.

You see, one can play that same game in the opposite direction. There is a bit in Hebrews that claims that faith is "hope in the things unseen". Not to mention verses which specifically say "Test not the Lord your God".

Actually, this is the exact way so many devout scientists became completely convinced of God's existence - by honest questioning, and putting everything to the test. Examples would include Einstein, Darwin, Newton, Faraday, and Bohr, to name a few.

Okay, no. Darwin is somewhat ambiguous, but it is known (from his own writings) that he became what I like to call a strict agnostic. Einstein - NO. Einstein was, at best, only akin to a pantheist and stated multiple times (when questioned) that he neither believed in a god, nor found belief in an interventionist deity interested in the trivial affairs of man or wanting of worship, to be anything more than childish.

One of the most terrible things someone could do is become a theist without thoroughly analyzing the evidence. Unfortunately, it's exceedingly common - I'd say at least 99.9% of theists. When a certain person asked Jesus what he had to do to make it to heaven, Jesus told him to love the Lord with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind.

Not to mention accepting him as savior, otherwise they get Hell.

And if you don't want to do it? Well.. at least we know you weren't sincerely asking.

Complete bull. Why would debasing yourself before and praising God be of any importance to a perfect and eternal being?

EDIT: I actually sincerely don't understand why torture would be considered bad without God in the picture, so I ask again. Why is torture bad?

I was going to retort that if you don't understand why torture is bad, regardless if God exists, then you're bananas, but I'll go further. People tend to find harm done to another being as what is meant by 'bad'. Torture is harm done to another sentient being. So people tend to think torture is bad, even if it is deemed temporarily necessary to further some goal. And if God is to sentence non-true-Christians to infinite torture, then he's done the worst possible evil.