What Major Intellectual Issue Most Keeps You From Accepting The Christian Narrative?

[The Valkyrie]

For a start, anything that requires apologetics is fundamentally flawed.

[KevinM1]

That sin is an actual thing, and that can only be cleansed by believing in salvation via proxy blood sacrifice.

[Anomalocaris]

Hi Friends 

I hope this is the right sub-forum. I'm currently in a Christian apologetics class, and I have been assigned a project. I need to find a non or "ex" Christian and ask them what the most significant intellectual issue they find in the Christian narrative. Would anyone be willing to help me out with this? 

You would simply state the most important issue that discredits Christianity as a rational position, whatever it might be, and then I will prepare a Christian response to whatever objection you raise and send it to you. You would then read it and send me back a short paragraph or so (or more) detailing your response to whatever I've written. If you are willing to do this, then either post your issue below or pm me. It would be much appreciated. 

Thanks!

It’s bullshit.

[The Valkyrie]

That sin is an actual thing, and that can only be cleansed by believing in salvation via proxy blood sacrifice.

And that a god who knew everything wouldn't know that a "serpent" snuck into it's secret gard3n and corrupted it's playthings.

That a god that could create the entire universe would put the tree with the only thing that was banned to it's playthings in the garden where they lived.

That a loving god would mot just punish their playthings, but also all of their descendents for it's own cock up.

[Foxaèr]

My biggest issue is with the (religious) faith concept. Clearly, since there is no empirical evidence to support the belief, faith is required to dupe the mind through amazing mental gymnastics and awesome cognitive dissonance to accept something as real that logically goes against reason.

[FFaith]

There is no need for a designer, which is something Christians agree with. Who designed the designer?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Divine hiddenness ...

Sounds legit.

[sdelsolray]

Hi Friends 

I hope this is the right sub-forum. I'm currently in a Christian apologetics class, and I have been assigned a project. I need to find a non or "ex" Christian and ask them what the most significant intellectual issue they find in the Christian narrative. Would anyone be willing to help me out with this? 

You would simply state the most important issue that discredits Christianity as a rational position, whatever it might be, and then I will prepare a Christian response to whatever objection you raise and send it to you. You would then read it and send me back a short paragraph or so (or more) detailing your response to whatever I've written. If you are willing to do this, then either post your issue below or pm me. It would be much appreciated. 

Thanks!

I prefer to keep any discussion on the forum and not communicate through pm.

I can list many significant intellectual issues in the Christian narrative, tradition, practice, dogma, etc.

So I'll start with one:  Religious faith.  Those that hold or practice it tend to avoid rational thinking, evidence based research, logic and honest skepticism, among other things.  Of course, virtually all sects within the Christian religion (as well as some other religions) promote this and pretend it is a virtue.

Yes, let's start with this.

[CapnAwesome]

For me it's the concept of God. Although I was raised as a Christian, I don't have particular objections to it, in fact when it comes to the truth of something, I start there and all the little details afterwards aren't really relevant. So I have no more or less objection to Christianity than Islam, or Hinduism or Zoroastrianism or anything else that starts with a God concept. Christianity is untrue, at it's core, because it's theistic. I have a lot if reasons for not believing in God, but my main one is this: I can see no reason at all, whatsoever, in the least, that this God being would pretend to not exisit, ie why isn't God just walking around with us? Why doesn't God just directly communicate with everyone? Why doesn't God read a weather report from a voice in the sky every morning? None of that makes any sense and if you could give me a satisfying explanation, I'd be shocked. Even more disturbing is the idea of prophets and such. You can come up with a ton of good secular reasons someone would claim to be able to speak to God. I.e power, influence, to promote their own ideas, madness, etc but I can't think of a valid reason why if God was willing to speak to a select group of people, that he wouldn't be willing to just tell us all what he wanted and instead fill the world with different people claiming to be able to understand God with different ideas of what God wants, says, etc. So I don't view Christianity as particularly special in this aspect. I don't see any claim they make about theism or the bible or anything that other religions dont make about theism etc. So stuff like the resurrection and so forth is all meaningless to me, because I don't believe in God or the supernatural to start with. Curious as to your reply, so I will also pm this.

[Astreja]

Hi Friends 

I hope this is the right sub-forum. I'm currently in a Christian apologetics class, and I have been assigned a project. I need to find a non or "ex" Christian and ask them what the most significant intellectual issue they find in the Christian narrative.

There are probably a dozen non-starters for me -- Substitutionary atonement, original sin, hell, the disconnect between the gospels and Paul's writings, faith being valued over works, and various other things -- but the #1 reason is that I never found the story believable and am simply unable to trust it.  It's been a myth in my eyes for over 50 years, and no amount of apologetics can fix that.