Hi, I'm a Christian. Help Me Disprove My Religion!

[Pyrrho]

Why exactly do you need horrible pain as an option to have free will? We clearly don't have totally free do-whatever will, do we? We're in fact incredibly restricted. We can't even barely move away from this tiny planet without huge effort.

We can still have free will, actually way more than we have now, just without any horrible painful options. And really, getting a disease isn't part of "free will" is it? People get born with horrific painful things. Blaming them for what previous humans have done is disgusting.

So this always happens; free will is brought up, I point out that you can have plenty of free will without the possibility of harm and hurt. Then it's something about "you can't appreciate being happy without there being sadness" and I say "if so, that's an arbitrary decision by the designer too, quit making excuses".

I can imagine, very easily, a happy, wonderful world with nothing negative in it, but which everyone has a brilliant time. With plenty of free will. Is my imagination more potent than God? How cruel to let me imagine a world more wonderful than he is able/willing to give us!

"What awesome thing do you choose to do today?"

"Oh well, I'd like bone cancer please."

"What's the matter with you? We don't have bone cancer here. You can have a short simulation of how horrible it is to have bone cancer if you really want, just press the button to return here when you've had enough of it and you'll be back and unharmed."

Then the conversation dies down, gets ignored... and repeats itself right from the start a few days later. Please quit making excuses for God. If there's pain and hurt, it's because he wants it here, by definition.

"Free will" is a total bullshit excuse that morons bring up.  They are fucking retarded who do that.

[Edwardo Piet]

[Reforged]

Read the Bible. Cover to cover, not just the bits you're told to read or feel like reading.
Prepare some kleenex, alot of parts get steamy. Especially the part after Sodom.
I've dubbed that part "Whos yo Daddy?"

[ApeNotKillApe]

[Aractus]

[Rhondazvous]

Libertarian free will defies all logic anyway. So if God exists, and he created us, then he couldn't have created us with free will.

Also, even if free will was logical, God clearly didn't give us complete freedom to do all sorts of things, so he would still be a "dictator".

Right. And if we had free will, god could not promise anything, not eternal lie, not blessings or protection n this life, because he couldn't control what the people around us do and he wouldn't be be able to control what we do in the afterlife.

Let's look at this. It's clear god (Allah, Yahweh or whoever) doesn't control what people do because his followers are subject to the same horrors as everyone else. Yes this clearly isn't because we have absolute free will. Logical conclusion: god either lacks the power/inclination to acheive goodness in a world full of people with freewill or he simply doesn't exist.

[Jackie]

And to the atheists claiming the man named Jesus existed, no, there is no evidence of that individual. Jesus was a common name and crucifixion was a common torture, but would have been done with a capital "T" and not the cross we see as as the religious symbol today. There certainly was an influence that sparked the splinter Jewish sect, but it none of the Gosples were written during the alleged time of the Character. Jesus was concocted after the fact, likely based on a Jew our group of Jews painting themselves as persecuted. The motif of the underdog has an emotional appeal. The myth was based on desires and exaggerations of splinter Jews wanting to usher a savoir in their lifetime.

Brian, everything you say is pure conjecture because you never back it up with anything from a qualified scholar or relevant expert.

If Jesus was "concocted after the fact" then how does James the Just make at least 16 direct references to the Sermon on the Mount well before any of the gospels are written?

Don't give a flying fuck what or who he concocted and repeated that story. There is no such thing as magic babies or magic men.

You can see the city of New York in Superman movies, but that doesn't mean Superman is real.

Repeating bullshit does not make bullshit true. The Gospels were not first hand accounts anymore than Egyptian hieroglyphics made their sun god Ra real.

They were written by scientifically ignorant men who wanted a super hero to save them back then. It is mythology, regardless of how badly they wanted it to be true. Some con man did inspire that myth just like we also know the Hebrews were never slaves in Egypt.

[Rhondazvous]

The crucified SUN is a common symbol in paganism and astrology. In fact, just about everything the church teaches about Jesus has roots in astrology.

[pocaracas]

[Mr Greene]

The crucified SUN is a common symbol in paganism and astrology. In fact, just about everything the church teaches about Jesus has roots in astrology.

Why would northern hemisphere astrology/mythology reference constellations only visible in the southern hemisphere? I'm not aware of the Southern Cross appearing in any ancient astrological source.