(July 7, 2015 at 5:12 pm)Randy Carson Wrote: No, you have enough information. What you lack is the guts to make the decision to accept Jesus.
Lol. When did you get all stingy preachy?
Quote:The problem is this: you know there is evidence supporting the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You know that that evidence has been in existence for 2,000 years.
Nope. You're trying to provide historical facts as evidence for a biological phenomenon that could not have possibly taken place. I cannot accept that as evidence. There has not been one documented case of a human being dying and then coming back to life after three days.
What you have is an old book full of hearsay. That is nowhere near enough to accept the virtually impossible as truth.
Quote: You know that there are over 2 billion people in the world today who accept it. And if you stop and think about it, mathematically, the odds are that not all of them are less intelligent than you are.
So, yes, you have to come up with some explanation for the existence of a large, robust Christian community which (despite recent news reports) isn't going away anytime within your lifetime.
Some of the members of that Church are actually smarter than you are.
Some of the members of that Church have actually studied the issue more carefully than you have.
Some of the members of that Church have personally experienced God in their lives.
And there aren't just a few who fit those descriptions. There are thousands. Maybe tens of thousands who fit those criteria. And you know this.
You want to get mathematical, Randy?
There are 21 major religious groups in existence today, with the smallest one of the size of 500,000 people.
Christianity is only one of them, covering 1/3 of the population.
It has 44,000 denominations, mosty of them excluding all others as heretics.
Source: religions by adherents
They cannot possibly all be right, but it is entirely possible that they are all wrong.
If indoctrination of children were to stop, religious population would drastically drop. Ot already is in the US-the comforting statistics of christianity being on the rise come from third world developing countries.
All that aside, argument from popularity, really? That's low. Like, really low.
Quote:So, you have to come up with an explanation which you tell yourself to deal with the dissonance, and you hang out in this forum where a small gathering of others will continually reinforce one another's lack of faith.
It's group therapy.
"Hi, I'm Larry, and I'm an atheist."
- "Hi, Larry."
I don't suffer from cognitive dissonance. I fully understand the roots and origins of religion and why people believe. I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to change their mind. I don't care. I'm here to discuss, and to be a part of a community. I don't know a single atheist IRL so it's nice to talk to some like minded people. But my lack of faith doesn't depend on being here.
What's gotten into you? Bad day?
