Is it strange that I want there to be a God ?

[Tonus]

O wow, might makes right argument now.

It's accurate, though. He may not like where it leads, but on a practical level, might does make right.

[pocaracas]

Why is it all done in such a way that, were the stories man-made/imagined, nothing would be required to change in the physical world we have around us?
Why must I delude myself that god exists before I have any experience of this god?
Why are all current "experiences" of the divine so camouflaged and mental that the only rational explanation for them is "man-made/imagined"?
Why, if god presented itself to some humans, can't it present itself to all humans?
Why, if god presented itself to some humans in one way (J.C, for example), did it present itself to other humans in a different way (e.g. Mohamed), giving rise to different religions and all the hardship and war those have brought on the world?

The reason why I responded the way that I did was because you are asking a whole lot of questions that each have good answers to them, but you aren't arguing your points, you are just stacking up question after question. Do you know how to argue?

Why should any of these be seen as obstacles to Christian belief? Can you put any of these in language that shows why they are actually contradictory with Christianity, as opposed to things that you don't like? I could come up with my own list of questions, for instance:

Why did God make winter long?
Why does winter suck so bad?
If God is a nice person, why doesn't God give me a nicer house?

Etc. Where does the contradiction lie in your questions? What is it that you are trying to show that is actually contradictory or demonstrates Christianity is untrue, versus it doesn't seem plausible from your perspective.

I already answered one of them about Christianity and Islam. If you just put 100 vaguely defined contradictions between what you want and Christianity, as soon as I type 200-300 pages and somesay "LOL LOOK AT THAT MORON", the thread will end. Where is the contradiction? Can you put it in formal logic?

Had you read the questions and understood them, you'd realize there is a very clear conductive thread: all gods are man-made.
Plus, you'd notice I don't care about demonstrating christianity as untrue.... I do it for all religions and god-beliefs at once. They're all the same... man-made.... christianity is just one of the latest.
Now answer all the questions, based on that.

[CleanShavenJesus]

Why? Because this means that there is a deity, but not the one that Muslims think exists and not the one that Christianity thinks exists. The God of the Bible and the Allah of the Quoran are two VERY different deities.

If you think that there is some sort of God that Christianity and Islam are both on to...then how could it be the same one? Both religions has a very different definition of their God.

I'm sounding redundant here, mostly because there's nothing more to explain from my previous post.


Did you get A's in your "Irony" class as well as your philosophy one?

What if one is a corruption of the other and the significant differences are from significant corruption, but they have a common root and a common tie through spiritual laws that govern each (e.g. God exalts nations that follow God to one degree or another and gives them power over the ones that do not follow God). An interesting question: why are Christian and Muslim nations the most powerful and other nations and religions not powerful? Why has Christianity and Islam been able to survive for hundreds of years and have control over so many and Communism and animism has failed and has basically not had any longevity?

Your point argues the existence of God - NOT the validity of Christianity and Islam. The idea of there being a god and the idea that Christianity/Islam is true are two very different ideas.

And to answer your last sentence there, you're comparing global religions to forms of government. Not a fair comparison, especially since communism doesn't even work. And watch it, there are currently over a billion animists in the world (counting religions that are animist in themselves)

[The Grand Nudger]

An interesting question: why are Christian and Muslim nations the most powerful and other nations and religions not powerful?

Brutal and effective expansions, oppression, subjugation, and exploitation of other nations and cultures. Often leveraging advanced tech or tactics relative to the cultures at the business end of their sticks. Which part of that is the godly part, the part where the almighty reached in and lent his hand? All of this ignoring the fact that "christian nations" aren't powerful at all, nor are muslim nations, at the moment, nor were they powerful for very long relative to the total time-span referenced.....

[Creed of Heresy]

Yeah, the Egyptian empire wasn't a Christian empire yet it was one of the first civilizations and first "superpowers" for, what, five centuries or so? That's about the same amount of time that the Church was a dominant force in Europe, and even then it wasn't a unified force that long, it split several ways with different motives and goals and agendas and they all accused one another of being heretics, so they rarely worked in concert, if ever. The Byzantine Empire comes to mind there. In fact, consider the Romans. 500 years as a republic, 500 years or so as an empire. About 1,000 years of cultural domination, right? Funny thing was, they never had a problem with religions; they accepted all religions so there was no religious competition, like there is for *cough* monotheisms. But then after Christianity took hold, they split in half, and fell apart and eventually disappeared entirely as they got caught up in the monotheisms' bloody "holy wars." The Romans held a position of cultural and military power longer than the church did, with FAR less religious conflict and with FAR more liberties and freedoms afforded the average citizens...something the church can NEVER claim to have held to. Those polytheistic bastards, if only they had known of the ONE TRUE GOD™, they could've done nothing different and ended up with the same gains and influences! Probably less, though, given that Christian influence exists only because it used brute-force methods to resist any and all advancements in science that threatened them. Had personal liberty and freedom of ideas and their open spread been allowed by the church, it would've fallen apart before the Holy Wars even began.

As far the as the moo-slum nations go...well, I call them "moo-slums" because that's exactly what they are; slums. What islamic nation is really that powerful or influential solely because of its Islamism? Pakistan's power comes from the fact it has nukes, and by the way, they bought most of the information from the Soviets, decades after the secular world had discovered the secrets of the atom and its power UNDER ITS OWN, NOT-GOD-INSPIRED INITIATIVE. Saudi Arabia is powerful not because it's a muslim nation but because it has oil. Iran? Same thing. Iraq? We know of it because of American interests, and, why were we interested? Oh, look, the same reasons that Iran and Arabia have any influence; OIL. Take away the oil and they'd fucking all fall apart overnight and become about as important to the global community as fucking Indonesia or Chad or any of these nations:



Seriously. Name THREE of these countries outside the ones I just named. By the way, you also have to narrow it down because cyan and teal colored nations are basically optional for islamic law (for personal determination or less according to Wikipedia, as in, not Islam-run nations). No using a globe or map to cheat, either. Know why it's so hard to list those countries? Because they don't fucking do anything. They're useless, just like the savage bullshit system of superstition and bigotry that runs them. Go figure, when your governing system is useless, so are you and the rest of your nation!

By the way, fun fact: Christians in the Roman Empire were considered to be certain forms of atheists by the Roman Empire's government and non-monotheistic citizenry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_empire#Religion

In the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion had adapted to support the new regime of the emperors. As the first Roman emperor, Augustus justified the novelty of one-man rule with a vast program of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows formerly made for the security of the republic now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called "emperor worship" expanded on a grand scale the traditional Roman veneration of the ancestral dead and of the Genius, the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (divus) by vote of the Senate. Imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity and loyalty throughout the Empire. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as the Augustan military settlement at Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason against the emperor. This was the context for Rome's conflict with Christianity, which Romans variously regarded as a form of atheism and novel superstitio.

Just think about that for a second, Strodel. The guys who started your religion used to be considered atheists by the superpower of the time...

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

And really, what Christian nations are we discussing, Toaster Strudel? America? Hate to say it, but by the definition of its Constitution [that which defines the US as a nation, by the way, just as a constitution defines almost every other sovereign nation in existence that isn't under some bullshit religious law], the US is a secular nation, in that it does not have a state-sponsored religion. It may have a majority of Christians who constitute it but then, if you define America as a "Christian Nation," then you're stuck with the undeniably daunting task of saying WHAT KIND of Christian nation. Is it a Protestant Christian nation? By majority, sure, but which kind? Calvinism? Methodism? Baptism? Presbyterianism, Lutheran, Christian "Scientism," Reformism, Congregationalism? Which of these is the Christian America? And then, if you choose only one, you must deny the others their control, and then you are stuck with stating that only the largest Protestant denomination is the dominant force, and when you do, you notice hat it's actually NOT representing the majority at all, it's more like 20% or something of the population with the other 80% divided among others.

This is not the only reason why America is not a "Christian nation" but fuck me if it isn't one of the biggest ones; because you guys can't get your shit straight with one another. And so, America is a secular nation where all religions are accepted yet none represent the American nation. Even if atheism was the majority, we atheists couldn't claim America to be an atheistic nation because we, too, are divided so much (this seems to be a recurring theme with human beings, and even religion, supposedly the "most powerful unifying force," as I've heard it called many times before, can't seem to over-ride it. So much for divine direction.) that we'd never be able to specify much else other than the vague "non-belief" label...and EVEN THEN, were we all united in one single idea as atheists, the fact would remain that we would not be representing the religious minorities, and thus, the topic of religion (to reiterate one last time) does NOT define the United States of America! *stands proudly with an American flag flapping in the background and a bald eagle flying overhead*

The only "christian nation" I can think of in existence, as in a nation run by the bible, is Vatican City and...yeah. WHAT ENORMOUS POWER AND INFLUENCE THOSE GUYS WIELD. Lol.

Also if someone would just quote all of this for me so Strodel can see it because I know the poor butthurt little guy has me on ignore. I want to see what he has to say about this.

[jstrodel]

Christianity is the most important historical force, unquestionably, the most significant influence on the modern world. Does anyone want to dispute that?

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL, No one has to dispute it, you still don't understand how this works eh? Your baby, do work.

[Creed of Heresy]

Christianity is the most important historical force, unquestionably, the most significant influence on the modern world. Does anyone want to dispute that?

Uh, no, actually, that honor belongs to the Greeks. Ever wonder why the Capitol, the White House, and the various monuments throughout DC, as well as many political buildings in the US, have those unusual columns on them? Those are Greek columns. We display them in homage to the fact that the Greeks gave us the most significant and important and influential aspect of the world: Democracy. Christianity has given us nothing. It actively tried to prevent most of what we now consider to be among the most important discoveries in the world from being made public. Galileo, anyone? The earth revolving around the sun? Shall we speak of the thousands of books the Church burned in its mad attempt to prevent knowledge from being shared so that it could maintain its juggernaut-grip on political power in the dark ages of Europe?

Christianity has brought nothing to the table. It will die as it lived; pointless, purposeless, useless, irrelevant.

[pocaracas]

Christianity is the most important historical force, unquestionably, the most significant influence on the modern world. Does anyone want to dispute that?

Actually.... Fat Man

[junkyardboy]

it is appointed for man once to die, and then the judgment.
judgment for all awaits.

So I guess you're done arguing then? You've just given up?

Let me ask you this: what happens to the murderer or the rapist who repents and gets saved?

And in the reverse, what happens to the kind hearted, charity minded atheist who doesn't?

Godly sorrow leads to repentance
does the murder/rapist have Godly sorrow?
thats between the sinner and God.