Indoctrination & Mental Gymnastics

[orangebox21]

Her: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KGlx11BxF24
Me: Great propaganda. They really try hard to make you feel like you're doing something wrong, pulling all those existential strings.
To your perception, God sacrificed himself, to himself, to save' us, from himself.

Perhaps a bit oversimplified, but I agree with you in that God sacrificed Himself, to Himself, so save believers from Himself. It would be more accurate to state that: God the son willingly gave up Himself to the will of the Father, to save the believer from the wrath of the Father.

"Worship me so I can save you from what I'm going to do if you don't worship me."

This is a misrepresentation of the Christian position. Our worship of God is not what saves us but rather a response to it. Your statement also implies that God needs me to worship Him so that He can save me. His salvation is not contingent upon my works.

The first four commandments all relate to Yahweh's gigantic ego. Those four would have been better used for commandments like "thou shalt not rape" "thou shall not have slaves" "thou shall not harm children" and "thou shall treat everyone as equals" Imagine what things would be like if the writers had made him less egocentric. Selflessness is a value the abrahamic deity lacks.

If a person followed all 10 commandments perfectly would they rape? Have slaves? Harm their children? etc. Christ taught that all of the law is summed up in two commandments: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and secondly to love your neighbor as yourself.

Her: To save us from himself? No he's trying to save us from Satan. But the choice is ours if we want to be saved or not.
Me: Lucifer? The guy that killed 10 people in the bible? Or do you mean Yahweh? The guy that killed 2,821,364 people in the bible? Oh, so you're telling me that the other 5 billion living people on the planet will all go to hell because they believed in the wrong God? All the Islamic, Buddhistic, and Hinduistic children? All of the kind people who care for others...and aren't Christian?

It is from the wrath of God that we are saved. If a person dies, not believing in the gospel, then yes they spend eternity in hell. Kindness cannot repay a person's sin debt. Only the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross can repay a person's sin debt.

Her: I'm saying if people have the chance to accept Christ and they do then they're saved. But if they reject him then they're not... But if they never had the chance to know Him then they probably aren't condemned because they had no way of knowing.
Me: So rejecting your specific deity equates to agonizing torture in the fiery pits of hell for all eternity? Sounds fair. Out of the world's 4,200 active religions and the hundreds of thousands of gods and goddesses, you expect them to pick Yahweh? It's a needle in the haystack and it's likely everyone else feels that their own deity is the right one. Your an atheist for every god created by humanity except for that one. If you were born in the Middle East you would be Islamic and claim that Allah is the one true God. If you were born in classical Greece you would believe in Zeus. If you were born in India you would believe in Vishnu. You had no choice in choosing a religion or God, your parents did that for you.

I'm a bit confused as to what argument you are trying to make. Because picking the right God is as difficult as picking a needle out of a haystack, it is therefore.... untrue? not fair? something else? Please help me to understand.

Your argument falls prey to the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy is where a conclusion is stated soley based upon someone's or something's origin rather than on it's current meaning or context. Showing how a person's belief originated (place of birth) does not invalidate said belief.

Her: There simply are no other gods besides the One True God. If you're worshipping something else you're living a lie. None of the other gods can heal, or speak directly to people, or help guide people's lives, because they're simply not real, because they were made up by people.
Me: You're performing some serious mental gymnastics to avoid rationality. Everyone believes that their God is the real God, everyone believes that their God affects the world and no one else's. Your God is as real as all the other Gods. It's subjective and determined by your culture. I know you're smarter than this, think outside of your perspective, consider why others believe in their gods and the look back at why you do.

If your cousin is reasoning from the premise that God exists, and there is only one God, then her conclusion that people who believe in other god's are believing in a lie would be a rational conclusion. Please explain how she is avoiding rationality.

Your counter argument that: because other people believe in other god's it is therefore true that your cousin is being irrational" is not a sound argument.

Furthermore, a person's perception or beliefs do not validate the truth. If God exists, a person's belief or disbelief in Him would be irrelevant to His existence.

Her: I don't understand why people believe in false gods. Probably because it's all they know if they've never had a chance to meet the one true God. I know why I believe in my God. Because He is the one true God. I have seen him move directly in my life. I've seen Him do amazing things. There's no other proof I need.
Me: Where your born has a greater impact on what God you'll believe in than anything else. If you were born in a non-Christian region, you would not believe in the God you do now. If Yahweh is so omnipotent, why has there yet to be a child born with the foreknowledge of Yahweh's supposed existence? Why were you taught about this God at a young and impressionable age, rather than inheriting the information?

Your argument here is more of the genetic fallacy. Furthermore it is not true that if you were born in a non-Christian region you be a non-Christian. There are atheists with Christian parents and Christian children with atheist parents. There are Christians who were born in Muslim countries and Buddhists born in Christian ones. You've made a non-sequitur argument here, namely that: the religion of the region where a person is born necessitates the person's religious beliefs.

Her: Because it's our job to spread that knowledge and share the good news. You can live a missional life in your own town, or in another country, according to where you're called.
Me: That's an absurdly convoluted plan for a God. Look at how convinced you are of your own God's existence, now imagine how others may feel about their own. The God you worship is as real to you as their God is to them. You may find that they are as convinced as you are in their reasoning. Try to convert them, seriously attempt to convert a Hindu, Buddhist, Islamist, or Jew to Christianity. Grab every evangelical Christian you can find and attempt to convert the other 4.8 billion people in the world. It's been tried in the past, erupting nothing more than conflict.

Is your argument here that because some, maybe even most, people don't convert, therefore God doesn't exist?

Her: If God puts someone of a different religion in my life than I shall. I won't get anywhere trying to do it alone, just to prove something. God must work in their heart to help them see the truth.
Me: So, God is powerless without someone to speak for him?
Her: No He's not. He has a plan. Like I said, He speaks through people. And to people if they will listen. People don't speak for Him. He speaks through people.
Me: God's plan? That sounds like a feeble attempt to explain natural disasters killing millions. If the concept of God's plan is true, you have to accept that it's in God's plan for us to abort children. If God is both omnipresent and omnipotent, you must accept that God willfully allows the murder of innocent people and permits rape to take place. Epicurus says it best. "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence comets evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"

To better understand the Christian position, study the difference between God's prescriptive and descriptive wills. Then establish God's 'moral obligation'.

As for Epicurus, only with the assumption that God permits unnecessay evil events do the conclusions follow.