Lets compile a list of everything wrong with christ-insanity

[Bad Writer]

I will live by the law of love, you can live by whatever it is you choose. I will let my words and my actions speak for me.

The "law of love". Please, continue to make an ass out of yourself.

[xpastor]

What the hell is the "law of love," what Captain Planet taught The Planeteers?

What a ridiculous Twinkie Defense of an argument. "I believe a bunch of irrational things because my brain is hard-wired to believe irrational things I doubt are true." What?

I think he was trying to imply, not very clearly, that if atheism is true, then we are all predetermined to hold the beliefs which we adopt. i.e., mechanistic universe leads to deterministic causality. He would presumably claim that it is different if his theory is true, that God gave us all the "gift" of free will.

It isn't so nice and cut and dried as he thinks. Evolution certainly can produce animals which learn from experience and reason about it. Maybe that means there is free will. I'm not 100% sure.

However, if there is a God who is omniscient and omnipotent, that rules out free will. Then Calvinism is the only logical form of Christianity: from all eternity God predestined some to be damned (probably the majority) and some to be saved. There is a certain amount of support in the bible for this notion of predestination. God hardened Pharaoh's heart and then kicked his ass for being such a hard-hearted bastard. Then there are other passages, somewhere in Romans I think, about God being like a potter and having the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common purposes, and the next verse goes on to talk about God choosing to show his wrath against the objects prepared for destruction.

In short, you have to be confused or sick or blind to remain a Christian. For myself, "I once was blind, but now I see."

[*Deidre*]

Oh gosh, discipulus. This is so sad, what you replied to shep here. How condescending. And don't say this is what you feel your 'duty' is as a Christian to 'warn' shep of. You are not in a position to condemn anyone to anywhere. As if you know there is a hell to begin with ...with certainty, and as if you know who will be there. I'm actually worried for YOU, discipulus.

Personally, you can believe what you want to. The choice is yours.

If atheists are right, then when we die we cease to exist so there is no hell.

In addition, if atheists are right then all of our beliefs (including the belief in God or lack thereof) are simply the by-products of socio-biological processes taking place within our grey matter (brains).

So if the atheists are right, then my beliefs as well as their beliefs are determined not by choice, but by our genetic and physiological makeup. IOW, I believe what I believe because I am hard-wired in a particular way and atheists believe what they believe because they are hard-wired a particular way. Both them and I are simply by-products of natural processes acting on matter. We, like the maggot or slug exist to reproduce and when our life cycle is up, we die and become compost.

This is metaphysical naturalism.

If you all think that is something worth believing in then more power to you.

I will live by the law of love, you can live by whatever it is you choose. I will let my words and my actions speak for me.

You can live however you wish, discipulus. The point of my comment was it isn't for you to judge/condemn shep, or anyone who doesn't follow the same line of thinking as you. Perhaps you should reread the passage where Jesus asked the people who were attempting to stone the woman 'caught in adultery' to death, and he asked out loud, if anyone is without sin, throw the first stone.

Perhaps you should follow your own faith, before trying to tell us to.

---

And no one is 'hard wired' to believe in a god. lol That is LEARNED behavior, discipulus.

[Mudhammam]

What the hell is the "law of love," what Captain Planet taught The Planeteers?

What a ridiculous Twinkie Defense of an argument. "I believe a bunch of irrational things because my brain is hard-wired to believe irrational things I doubt are true." What?

I think he was trying to imply, not very clearly, that if atheism is true, then we are all predetermined to hold the beliefs which we adopt. i.e., mechanistic universe leads to deterministic causality. He would presumably claim that it is different if his theory is true, that God gave us all the "gift" of free will.

It isn't so nice and cut and dried as he thinks. Evolution certainly can produce animals which learn from experience and reason about it. Maybe that means there is free will. I'm not 100% sure.

However, if there is a God who is omniscient and omnipotent, that rules out free will. Then Calvinism is the only logical form of Christianity: from all eternity God predestined some to be damned (probably the majority) and some to be saved. There is a certain amount of support in the bible for this notion of predestination. God hardened Pharaoh's heart and then kicked his ass for being such a hard-hearted bastard. Then there are other passages, somewhere in Romans I think, about God being like a potter and having the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common purposes, and the next verse goes on to talk about God choosing to show his wrath against the objects prepared for destruction.

In short, you have to be confused or sick or blind to remain a Christian. For myself, "I once was blind, but now I see."

You're gonna confuse Disc. He needs it to be spoon fed in simplistic terms.

Man = bad.
GOD = good.
Free will = believing in Jesus zombie-man-god.

Don't confuse him.

That's the kind of mindset he's enslaved to.

[Faith No More]

If you all think that is something worth believing in then more power to you.

And therein lies the rub. It's not about what is worth believing in. It's about determining what is true, and no matter how much you complain about how destitute you believe atheism to be, it does nothing to bolster your own beliefs. In fact, it only fosters the image that Christians believe based upon emotion and not reason and facts.

Now, if Christianity has helped you put your life together(I'm skeptical of this simply because this is the favorite apologetic lie), more power to you. But the problem is you're making all kinds of self-righteous claims in this thread, and focusing on how you perceive a conflicting worldview to be gets you no closer to validating these claims and creates the appearance of deflection and avoidance.

All you've been doing is making one big appeal to consequence.

[Bad Writer]

Now, if Christianity has helped you put your life together(I'm skeptical of this simply because this is the favorite apologetic lie), more power to you.

If he's as afraid of pre-marital sex and homosexuality as he seems to be, then his life is anything but together.

[Mudhammam]

Now, if Christianity has helped you put your life together(I'm skeptical of this simply because this is the favorite apologetic lie), more power to you.

If he's as afraid of pre-marital sex and homosexuality as he seems to be, then his life is anything but together.

At least he's not banging hookers and blowing coke off their asses anymore though. Praise Jesus!

[*Deidre*]

Don't be mean, guys.
He's not afraid of homosexuality and pre-marital sex. He's afraid of ''hell''.
It's just sad how religion causes a person to view life in terms of being worthy of heaven, or condemned to hell.

[Jackalope]

At least he's not banging hookers and blowing coke off their asses anymore though.

Wait, what? Are we not supposed to do that?

[Mudhammam]

In fact, it only fosters the image that Christians believe based upon emotion and not reason and facts.

I wouldn't say Christianity is any more than "an image of emotional appeal" that it has going for it....I mean seriously, what else is there?

Discipulus laid his cards on the table. It came down to:
1) Jesus gave me the self-confidence I lacked.
2) Atheism makes life appear too scary so I'd rather pick a religion out of a hat.
3) The Gospels are historical biographies.

I'd say that image is all Christianity really amounts to: It is an image of things that aren't real and at bottom people know they don't believe them for intellectual reasons. There's literally nothing else that many of these people would accept on the terms that they accept Christianity on, like um.. every other single religion or conspiracy. (Okay, I wouldn't underestimate too much here). They believe in "deepities," made up words and ideas that sound deep and yet there's no substance to any of them. They're nothing more. Nothing less.