Hell, or rather my brief experience of it.

[Gambit]

This 'proof' was for me alone.

So you keep saying and sorry, no it's not.

Maybe if we lived thousands of years ago where people thought dreams were signs from the gods, you might be excused for having such irrationally superstitious convictions. As it stands now, claiming that something so easily explained as a bad dream as evidence for anything, even personal evidence for personally held beliefs, is, at best, childish.

That this thread has gone on for 17 pages is a testament only to the patience of atheists trying to reason with you.

Funny you should mention patience in this thread, because mine ran out by page 15. I have just used the ignore function for the first time on this, or any other site.

[The Grand Nudger]

And we keep tracing spirals.
-Did you follow the map?
-Yes, and I didn't reach the destination that it said I would.
-Then you didn't follow the map.
-Of course I did, how could you know that I didn't?
-Because you didn't reach the destination it said you would.

This would be like telling a person who used a 16th century map that the reason they failed to find the US precisely where the map stated it was is because they didn't correctly follow the maps directions. Garbage. Your map is clearly insufficient. The only thing you seem to be capable of finding by following the example presented in Luke is your own asshole Drich.

[Drich]

Self preservation demands that I do not grovel. Maybe yours demands that you do, but that says more about your "self" than my "self"..now don't it? I've had opportunities, none of which involved ghosts, and I'm satisfied with the type of person I am, thanks.

Maybe you should nail your pamphlets to a door somewhere, eh?

(you won't be winning any converts amongst people who are satisfied with themselves with this sad shit Drich, refine your approach and shoot for something a little higher than the lowest common denominator?)

---

Speaking of your missionary efforts. I've noticed that you -have- become a great deal more overt with your sermons and pleas of late. Can I take this to mean that you have reached the frayed ends of the product you had to offer and this is the endgame?

(I applaud your longevity btw, little surprised you're still here, not surprised that you would stick around mind you...just astonished that you haven't been banned yet. I mean look at this thread title for ffs. Boils down to "Hey guys, lemme tell you about hell" - with which you follow - "seek the lord and be saved"...lol )

What I have noticed more and more is a very strong tendancy to not address the topics I bring up on point. The majority either appeal to preaching (in hopes that a mod wins the arguement for you on the grounds of me breaking the forum rules) Or it becomes an out and out personal attack (Spelling and grammar is brought up)

In the end, if you want to have a religious discussion with a person of a given faith, then you will have to accept that 'preaching' or something you can call preaching will occour. Why? Because the person of faith does not share your beliefs, and any place where our beliefs do not match up can be called preaching. Your only solution is to either accept that you will be preached to on occasion or create an atmosphere (atheist forums dot com) where the other side of the arguement is not completely repersented. If your 'faith in facts' is as strong as you say it is then why are you worried about alittle 'preaching?' Why not simply combat faith in God with faith in facts if it is so effective?

[Cyberman]

What I have noticed more and more is a very strong tendancy to not address the topics I bring up on point.

Yes, I've noticed that myself. I wish you'd stop doing it.

The majority either appeal to preaching (in hopes that a mod wins the arguement for you on the grounds of me breaking the forum rules)

Only a fallacious appeal if it's groundless. If you stop trying to preach at us, you'll take away that particular objection. I don't know about you but personally, I'd stop handing out free ammunition and make my 'opponents' work harder.

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL, You -can- have a conversation about your beliefs without preaching Drich. You may not wish to (your reasons for being here are pretty transparent by now, I think)....but it is possible. Nevertheless, I don't mind getting preached at, I was raised with it, and I'm never the guy that reports that kind of stuff. Personally, I think the preachiest bits are the most amusing bits.

Now that we have that hammered out, I have to ask..what argument are we having? I called bs. You don't have anything to show for this pulp sermon shit, and so no argument can proceed. What topic do you feel has not been addressed on point Drich? I've been following the thread.......and I have to admit you're going to have to be a little more specific because I'm not really seeing any grounds for this claim. Looks to me like many people took a crack at addressing your various statements (to be fair just as many if not more made light of them). What kind of conversation are you hoping to extract from "I had a dream once" - followed by a "so what, we all have dreams". Kind of ends there doesn't it?

[Faith No More]

My favorite part of the story is that the atheist Drich gets angry at god and wants to spit in his eye, because he didn't get the tail he was chasing. Yet this petty and shallow desire was enough for god to say, "Hey, I'm real!"

Oh, and I love the brazen condescension with which he simply dismisses anyone else's attempts to find god as not having done it correctly.

If Drich's god is up there, he must be infuriated at the pisspoor job his messenger is doing.

---

Why not simply combat faith in God with faith in facts if it is so effective?

Because people such as yourself are so entrenched in their delusions that facts become meaningless.

[downbeatplumb]

[Darkstar]

[Angrboda]

Why would you be bitter at something you didn't believe existed, and why would such a being [briefly] send you to hell when you were seeking him?

I was mad or bitter at the whole christian process. I wanted to know if their was indeed a God. By then My mother found him and I was hearing stories about how he had touched other lives. I went through the motions and found nothing, so that made me mad. Mad at everyone for BSing me because at that point. I knew their could Not be a real God because i had done everything they had done and I got nothing out of it.

What made it worse is the girl i went to church for left me for some guy (who looked like me but had a new [at the time new] Corvette) I had made a "deal" with her and her 'God', that If I could live happily ever after, i would do all the church stuff get baptized the confess the whole nine yards.. Even though I did not believe God was a real thing (simply nothing to say to me He was) I knew she was and she believed so at the time it was enough for me.

It took the break up of the girl for me to truly seek out God. I sought God for a selfish reason, but an honest one. In doing so I did activly follow the promise Christ out lines in Luke 11. I earnestly Ask, Sought, and knocked or rather kicked at the 'door,' and DEMANDED to be let in. So I was. Just like the persistent neighbor was given what I wanted. I was given EXACTLY what I wanted. (an oppertunity to spit in the eye of God.) I also got to experience what my efforts merrited.

(emphasis added)

This actually squares quite well with what we know of cognitive dissonance. You're obviously a person who does not take well to feeling they have been wrong or that they don't know what they're doing. So when this girl spit in your eye and you still couldn't find god, your mind was faced with the quandary of realizing what a fool you'd been, and how much time and effort you'd wasted, side by side with your self-image which is incompatible with the idea that you do foolish things for no good reason. Tavris and Aronson detailed many examples of cognitive dissonance and the psychology of it in their recent book. Cognitive dissonance, quite literally can make us see white when we're actually seeing black. One thing Tavris and Aronson discuss is how the more confident and sure of themselves a person is, the more powerful the effect to warp the individual's view of reality. But then, we know you're the humble and tentative sort, not given to excessive confidence and surety in himself and his opinions, so that wouldn't apply to you.

Beyond that, I see the typical trappings of ordinary cognitive bias working in someone who is ignorant of their effects and his own vulnerability to such effects.

You didn't see Jesus in a dream. You saw your own mind doing what it could to shield you from a painful reality. I'd say your mind won that round.


Oh, and in the interest of fairness, I didn't examine the full record, but Drich appears to be right in asserting that all he ever claimed was that Cinjin's reasoning "resembled" Nazi propaganda; not that Cinjin behaved like a Nazi or was a Nazi. If that's all he's claiming, then fine. That's an incredibly weak and inconsequential claim, but I will grant him his correction. (Which I stipulated in my earlier responses, so if you're including me in those 3-4 times you've been misunderstood, you've miscounted.)

[Justtristo]

Given the character of Yahweh which is portrayed in the New Testament especially. I can easily conceive that Yahweh would set up such a place like Hell, which would be unimaginably awful. So if I believed such an entity existed, I would be terrified of it.

However a lot of people who consider themselves Christians, don't believe that their deity is essentially a sadist of that magnatune. Because they have preconceived ideas what such a entity like Yahweh should be, rather than what the bible states about the character of Yahweh. So they need to ask if the entity they believe would create such a place where wrongdoers were punished infinitely.