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

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I have a deep, intellectual struggle with Christian children asking me to do their schoolwork for them.  I never get that shyte from Buddhist kids.

Boru

[DLJ]

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,
...

Hmmm, that's tricky.

First you'd have to state the christian position (rational or otherwise).  I've found, in my many years of travel, that no two christians hold the exact same positions.  Hence I conclude that ...



In the Philippines, for example, I meet people who are not even aware that Jesus was deified by vote, Roman-style (they have no knowledge of Nicaea), there are some who think he was real human and others who think he actually created everything.

Honestly, it makes your head spin.      

And then please explain to me the purpose of an "apologetics class" as we don't have them where I live.  Is that where you are taught to apologise for the ills caused by christianity?

But if I had to pick one thing that troubles me most, I guess it's the antisemitism that led to the pogroms, purges and holocaust.

Why hate the Jews when the figurehead (or prototype, to use Kant's term) was a Jew?  

This is so pervasive that christians don't even realise that "New Testament" is a deliberately designed insult to us Jews.  

Instead of OT and NT, please try to persuade your class members to refer to The Tanakh and The Fake News Testament respectively.

Thank you.  

---

I have a deep, intellectual struggle with Christian children asking me to do their schoolwork for them.  I never get that shyte from Buddhist kids.

Boru

Oops, my bad. As I was reading that I thought it was going to be... "I have a deep, intellectual struggle with Christian children asking me why their priest raped them."

Sorry about that.

[pocaracas]

Hi Friends 

You're new here... not friend.
But it's alright... we can be friends if you want...

I hope this is the right sub-forum. I'm currently in a Christian apologetics class, and I have been assigned a project.

Christian apologetics class?
There are classes for that?!
Why do you need classes for that?

Ohhh... 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? 

I see many in here are willing.
Lucky you!






"the most significant intellectual issue they find in the Christian narrative"?
Wow.... that's a toughie...

Well, it all starts with the existence of a god, doesn't it?
At best, one can get to the god of the philosophers, but even that one runs into trouble, as the philosophers who developed that god (Aquinas) failed to account for many possibilities, instead focusing on their own goals.
They also assumed that the intellect has some component that operates apart from the substrate, the brain... That's a far fetched assumption. Their reasoning goes along the lines of our intellect being able to perceive completely abstract concepts, like perfect circularity, hence it can't be composed of real material thing as real material things are not like the abstract concepts they embody. So, intellect must have an abstract non-material component. From here, they bring forth a soul. Again, failing to account for the fact that yes abstract notions can be represented on a material substrate, even if the material substrate is not itself an abstract construct.


Concerning the Christian narrative in particular, the RCC has managed to build up a coherent whole.... if you accept that the god of the philosophers does exist and that it's the one that Jews ended up believing after leaving the Babylonian polytheism...
Speaking of... useless trivia time:
- In Babylonian theology, one finds several gods, 3 of them being the most important ones. 3! Get it? One of them is called An (or Anu) and is the father of the other gods. God the father, remind you of something?
- An had a consort called Asherath, the goddess of the Earth, or something like that.
- Curiously, Asherath also shows up as consort of another god, Yahweh, also a "god the father".
- Yahweh, then becomes the only god of Israel, where he becomes indistinguishable from El - El meaning God. At the time, the region had many els, but the area around Jerusalem ended up adopting a single one, El, god the father.
- Several groups develop around the cult of this one El, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and a fourth group that is unnamed.
- The Essenes were preaching a message very similar to Jesus', some 2 centuries before Jesus is claimed to have been around - helping the poor, shedding your worldly possessions, living in communities of "brothers", peace to the world, that kind of stuff... I'm sure they became popular with the common folk.
[here trivia gives way to speculation...]
- A roaming preacher baptizes a guy who goes on to preach those ideals himself, providing a more human side to the interpretations of the old laws.
- Preacher is silenced by the elites and becomes a martyr
- Tales of wonder develop, borrowing symbolism from many traditions, the Teacher, the God the father, the Three-headed divine governing body

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.

Oooohhh.... you got your work cut out for you!
I don't envy your position.... but you did get yourself involved in that apologetics class... it's your fault!
I'm not sure how you can expect to counter history nor the faults in classical philosophy, but go for it.

[Fake Messiah]

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

1. Pick any god besides your own.

2. Give reasons why you don't belive in it.

3. Apply now same reasons to your own god.

[Pat Mustard]

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!

There are many things that have soured me to christianity but the biggest thing is the impossibility of your god's existence. He is described as both omniscient and omnipotent. There is no way a being can be both. Being all knowing necessarily constrains your power, being all powerful constrains your knowledge.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Main objection:

No possible scientifically plausible definition of what a god could be.

[GrandizerII]

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

1. Pick any god besides your own.

2. Give reasons why you don't belive in it.

3. Apply now same reasons to your own god.

That's if the reasons in 2 match the reasons we don't generally believe in any god.

[Joods]

Hi Friends 

I hope this is the right sub-forum. I'm currently in a Christian apologetics class,  

<SNIP>

Thanks!

Looks like we found the problem.

[chimp3]

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!

Ha! Calling anything associated with the Christian fairy tale "intellectual" is laughable. That is like asking "What major intellectual issue keeps you from accepting the Talking Frog Narrative?"

[Cyberman]

Primarily, it's shit like this...



However, that's only the superficial tip of the much larger iceberg. The entire proposal of surrendering one's intellect and accountability for one's actions to an insultingly stone-age system of superstition that is increasingly out of touch with reality in return for pie after you die is problematic, to be polite.

Historically, religion has always been used for oppression, and for the suppression of revolt by the masses. They had no choice but to work themselves into the grave, keeping their ruling élite in the manner in which they demanded. It didn't take those rulers particularly long to notice that they were vastly outnumbered by disenfranchised people carrying uncomfortably sharp and pointy farming implements. Keeping them too exhausted with drudgery to do anything other than eat and sleep of an evening won't work forever; what if a couple of them got it into their heads to ask about their share of the fine wine, meat, silks, women etc? What's needed is a big eye in the sky to frighten the peasantry into obedience. Make envy of the luxurious living of the rich a punishable offence - not in front of the plebs, we don't want to go out of our way to foment a rebellion. After death, then. Give them promises of a next life, wherein the shittiness of their life here and now will be rewarded with riches beyond anything on Earth; but only if they behave. The carrot and the stick - infinite reward for obedience, infinite punishment for rebellion.

We have had the tools to shuck off the religious straitjacket for only a couple of centuries. Now, in this twenty-first century, it's distressing to say the least that so many people seem to feel the need to enchain themselves, willingly and gleefully, with something so insidiously anti-human that it has held back human progress by at least a thousand years; and which now has the potential to wipe out humanity altogether.

Basically that.