Couple of arguements

[Zen Badger]

Hmmmmm Bacon

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Yumm.

[Severan]

LOL you guys are missing the point of this whole thread xD

[Jackalope]

Do you think those arguments are ones we haven't beaten to death a thousand times already?

We have.

Ergo, bacon.

[jstrodel]

Hello Severan. Here is the understanding the I have come to, I am sure there are better ways to approach some of these arguments, but these answers are what I believe to be true.

1. A loving god would not send sinners and unbelievers to hell.

God sends people to hell because He is a God of justice. God does not predestine anyone to hell. He gives each person in the world a fair chance to go to heaven. The people that choose to live a life of sin, God sends to hell. Jesus talks about how there is proportional punishment for different sins and different levels of knowledge.

Only a loving God would send people to hell. If God were not loving, if God did not love the victims of murders and rapes and all the horrible atrocities that have been committed in human history. He would not be a God of love. It is God's inner disposition to hate sin and constantly direct God's actions away from sin that make God a God of love. What is love? Is it love when you give a cigarette to someone? No, love means that you know what is good and you give it to people. Love is always intertwined with justice. Real love involved knowing the nature of things and knowing what the correct way to respond to them, this is different from simply yielding to evil.

God is a repaying God, and God will repay sinners for what sins they do. God does this because God is a God of love, all of Gods actions are directed towards love. It is the love of a soldier serving his country, or a police officer or a judge. There may be lives lost, but the actions come out of love, and integrity, and a response to evil.

2. A god who has enough power, and wants people to believe, would certainly appear in a solid form in front of our eyes if asked to prove it's existence.

God does reveal himself to those who seek God on God's own terms. The LORD says in Isaiah "Surely You are a God who hides himself". God hides himself from sinners. I know that personally I have seen many miracles and had many powerful encounters with God. But these came when I sought God and denied myself and gave up sin. "If I cherished iniquity in my heart, the LORD would not have heard me". It is true, if you want to meet God, stop sinning. God won't the LORD to sinners.

3. The Bible is very inconsistent. Here's one example. "When moses came down from the mountain, carrying the ten commandments, he saw his people worshipping the Golden Calf. God said unto him to take up his sword and kill the 3,000 unbelievers" wait wait wait. Do you see an inconsistency? One minute we have two big rocks supposedly carved by god saying "Thou shalt not kill" and then all of a sudden, there are 3000 people lying dead on the ground. At the hands of God. God and Moses (with a few others) just disobeyed the rule recently created.

This, like all your other objections to scripture, is based on an extremely shallow and ideological view of what the Bible teaches. You are replicating all the criticisms that atheists make of Christians, that Christians can't think for them-self, that Christians are just dumb sheep when you post things like this that prove you havn't spend more than a few hours in your life really digging into the Bible. A propagandist is not really an honorable trade to be in, and that is what the trade you are in. A real intellectual would consult the other side.

The Hebrew word in the 10 commandments does not mean "kill" it means "murder". God does judge people in the Bible, and kills many people, as the law prescribes the death penalty for many offenses. Your lack of ability to distinguish between killing and murder shows that you are not a serious student of the Old Testament and merely an atheist propagandist.

4. Prayer is an Illusion. Here's how: Christians say that when you pray, the answer from God is yes, or no. Pretty simple right? I just pray to God for a raise, and he will either say yes or no. Wrong. I can pray to God for that raise, and I will probably get it in a few months, therefore, God exists. If that doesn't happen, then God decided that it wasn't for the best. I can do the same thing with a dollar bill. I will pray to the dollar bill. After a week, I get a raise, therefore, the dollar bill created the universe. I pray to the Greek God, Zeus. I get a raise, maybe 4 months later, therefore, Zeus exists. If they both don't happen, then I say, the dollar bill, or Zeus, thought it wasn't for the best. Do we worship Zeus or dollar bills? No.

You are using a made up example to refute prayer. You may not know any body that has a really deep walk with God. I have known many people in my life. Not everyone prays like religious fools who pray for their team to win the super bowl or something like that.

I have notebooks filled with thousands of answered prayers with things like "I prayed and asked God if I should change my name from Jay to Joseph and two days later a prophet prayed for me, who didn't know my name and said "your name is Joseph". Then another person, who didn't know anything about this walked up to me and said that they had recieved that same name of Joseph for me. I have had this sort of thing happen to me over and over and over again. Prayer is real, because you have never taken the time to seek it out doesn't mean that it isn't real.

5. Most christians say that all complex things need a creator. Who created the (complex) creator? That would be infinite regress.

I think that the terminology is insufficiently clear to see any argument here. What can people actually know about God's existence? People have no perception of what it means for God to exist outside of time. In the philosophy world, metaphysical speculation is often seen as being suspect because it doesn't lead anywhere. I think this is a good case of that.

Can you explain exactly how cosmological physics interacts with time, and how that relates to quantum physics? No, you can't, because no one knows that. Does that mean that matter doesn't exist, or time doesn't exist because you can't explain that. Of course not.

You can see a difference between finite things, such as a table. A table does not have the ability to exist outside of time or in some sort of completely contrary experience to the way we commonly understand physics and cosmology and things like that. God is different from a table. There are different varieties of arguments for a first cause.

I do not think that your argument really holds up. It is not necessary to say what created a being that has the potential to exist outside of time and in a way that is very different from our physical and cosmological understanding. It is necessary to say that there is some cause that existed prior to each thing that we observe, going back at least as far until some sort of principle that interacts with the universe changes.

Science used to think that the universe was eternal. Now people believe that it is finite and the big bang created the universe. There is no reason to think the nature of the particles and life the subsequently emerged after the big bang would have to take the same shape as whatever existed casually prior to the big bang.

6. Can God create someone more powerful than himself?

I don't know, I don't see what the relevance is. This doesn't even seem like a serious question. God is a serious topic, human morality and the fate of Western Civilization hinges on what people believe about God. Why not ask serious questions if you are going to ask questions?

7. God is a lunatic. Here's how: Most christians believe that God answers daily prayers, such as getting rid of a stain on an expensive shirt. If so, than this is what's going through God's mind "Oh look at those small children starving in Ethiopia, Exellent! Look at that woman praying to me right now while she is being raped and murdered, Great! Look at that church, where people are worshipping me, and a terrorist is planning to suicide bomb the place, Can't wait! Aww, look at poor Sally, praying to me so I can get rid of her pimple for tomorrow's date with Chad. Let me help her out." See where I'm going? Why would God answer silly prayers while he isn't helping those who need him most. What kind of "loving" God would do that. He certainly has the power to heal the whole world in one instant, so why not? Because there is no God.

There is no argument here. You are playing on peoples cultural prejudices against inequality. There is nothing inherently wrong with God helping people in one place and not helping them in another place. God does not base his moral judgements on human suffering. That said, God helps people all around the world. The Christian nations historically have been among the most prosperous that the world has ever seen. But I know people from Africa who are Christians and they pray and I believe that God answers their prayers. If you are foolish enough to to think that everyone who does not have exactly the same Western standard of living is somehow deserving of pity, there is really nothing I can do to help you. Your eyes are closed to reason, you cannot see clearly. But if you realize that God is working around the world, and in my experience, Africans are even more spiritual a lot of the time than Westerners, that God answers prayers, and that not all African people have the pathetic looking impatient spiritual immaturity that people that accuse God the way that you do have. Perhaps that is because they have really actually prayed while you are just using atheism as a tool to aid your adolescent? rebellion and justify ignoring a standard of morality that binds you to a higher level.

I hope you change your mind. It is sad to see that you left God. I became an atheist when I was a young person and had many hard times and went through many bad experiences. I would urge you to consider carefully what you really believe and whether you believe what you do because you really believe that is the case or if you believe what you do simply because you are looking for sin and a way to do what you are want. If you are deliberately set on evil, I cannot help you, but if you seriously want to know whether there are strong objections to Christianity, I can tell you if your objections hold water. The ones you have posted do not.

[paulpablo]

Arguements AGAINST God

Here are a few arguements against God. Nothing much, but they are okay arguements
1. A loving god would not send sinners and unbelievers to hell.
2. A god who has enough power, and wants people to believe, would certainly appear in a solid form in front of our eyes if asked to prove it's existence.
3. The Bible is very inconsistent. Here's one example. "When moses came down from the mountain, carrying the ten commandments, he saw his people worshipping the Golden Calf. God said unto him to take up his sword and kill the 3,000 unbelievers" wait wait wait. Do you see an inconsistency? One minute we have two big rocks supposedly carved by god saying "Thou shalt not kill" and then all of a sudden, there are 3000 people lying dead on the ground. At the hands of God. God and Moses (with a few others) just disobeyed the rule recently created.
4. Prayer is an [b]Illusion. Here's how: Christians say that when you pray, the answer from God is yes, or no. Pretty simple right? I just pray to God for a raise, and he will either say yes or no. Wrong. I can pray to God for that raise, and I will probably get it in a few months, therefore, God exists. If that doesn't happen, then God decided that it wasn't for the best. I can do the same thing with a dollar bill. I will pray to the dollar bill. After a week, I get a raise, therefore, the dollar bill created the universe. I pray to the Greek God, Zeus. I get a raise, maybe 4 months later, therefore, Zeus exists. If they both don't happen, then I say, the dollar bill, or Zeus, thought it wasn't for the best. Do we worship Zeus or dollar bills? No.
5. Most christians say that all complex things need a creator. Who created the (complex) creator? That would be infinite regress.
6. Can God create someone more powerful than himself?
7. God is a lunatic. Here's how: Most christians believe that God answers daily prayers, such as getting rid of a stain on an expensive shirt. If so, than this is what's going through God's mind "Oh look at those small children starving in Ethiopia, Exellent! Look at that woman praying to me right now while she is being raped and murdered, Great! Look at that church, where people are worshipping me, and a terrorist is planning to suicide bomb the place, Can't wait! Aww, look at poor Sally, praying to me so I can get rid of her pimple for tomorrow's date with Chad. Let me help her out." See where I'm going? Why would God answer silly prayers while he isn't helping those who need him most. What kind of "loving" God would do that. He certainly has the power to heal the whole world in one instant, so why not? Because there is no God.
These are some of the things that converted me. It worked for me, but did it further convince you?

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Sorry about the size format stuff that got messed up. I'm new to this kind of software

I'm going to try and guess what i would write if i believed in god.

1 god loves us that's why he gives us a message to help us not go to hell.

2 Can't argue against that because that's sort of the argument I use aswell.

3The good old context argument will come up here, it's not the book that's wrong you just aren't reading it properly, the language it's using is just a story being told like a poem (it doesn't need to make sense).

4 God works in mysterious ways (actually this could be used for all arguments)

5 that thought gives me a headache so i will just not think about it.

6 yep but he doesn't

7 god works in mysterious ways.

[Mystic]

1. A loving god would not send sinners and unbelievers to hell.

Unless it loved good people but didn't love evil people and unbelievers were evil for disbelieving. Then it would be a loving God, but not an ALL-loving God.

2. A god who has enough power, and wants people to believe, would certainly appear in a solid form in front of our eyes if asked to prove it's existence.

I don't think is true. If God exists - then I think if he appeared in front of our eyes, we would expect it to have a relationship with us....but this relationship would destroy a lot of relationshipx. Our parents would not need to raise us, we would not need to learn anything from any human, we could just ask God and God would teach us....we wouldn't have doctors or fireman and we wouldn't be able to struggle with ideas but just have to submit without questioning to his authority.

Further more, we would not come to recognize him through recognition of the self, and vision power, which means we would miss an honorable struggle.

3. The Bible is very inconsistent. Here's one example. "When moses came down from the mountain, carrying the ten commandments, he saw his people worshipping the Golden Calf. God said unto him to take up his sword and kill the 3,000 unbelievers" wait wait wait. Do you see an0 people lying dead on the ground. At the hands of God. God and Moses (with a few others) just disobeyed the rule recently created. inconsistency? One minute we have two big rocks supposedly carved by god saying "Thou shalt not kill" and then all of a sudden, there are 300

Agreed.

4. Prayer is an Illusion. Here's how: Christians say that when you pray, the answer from God is yes, or no. Pretty simple right? I just pray to God for a raise, and he will either say yes or no. Wrong. I can pray to God for that raise, and I will probably get it in a few months, therefore, God exists. If that doesn't happen, then God decided that it wasn't for the best. I can do the same thing with a dollar bill. I will pray to the dollar bill. After a week, I get a raise, therefore, the dollar bill created the universe. I pray to the Greek God, Zeus. I get a raise, maybe 4 months later, therefore, Zeus exists. If they both don't happen, then I say, the dollar bill, or Zeus, thought it wasn't for the best. Do we worship Zeus or dollar bills? No

I think perhaps prayer is possible to be in the form of spiritual help. Although we need our own will power, it can be that in times of weakness, we can seek the help of the Creator, in that he will help us with a boost of spiritual energy or will.

It doesn't mean he has to, otherwise this would be a demand. You know for sure however if you asked a dollar bill, it won't spiritually help you.

The same is not true of spiritual help of the Creator.

5. Most christians say that all complex things need a creator. Who created the (complex) creator? That would be infinite regress.

Except God is believed to be simple (one indivisible entity).

6. Can God create someone more powerful than himself?

Nope.

I agree with point 7. The real thing is that the world is natural ruled by cause and effect, and I think the only place where prayer is applicable is spiritual help, but not spiritual control of you.

[Severan]

Thanks for your views on these, theists

[jstrodel]

Thanks for your views on these, theists

Thank you for reading them with an open mind. When you engage yourself with the strongest objections to your views, you prove that you are different from the average atheist who just repeats propaganda and uses mocking to make points he is unable to make through logic.