Senate Christianity Discussion Thread

Incorrect. The primary reason for most atheists is because of the lack of evidence. And it's not just rejecting Christianity, either. We reject Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and any other religion you can name. I also reject vampires, werewolves, leprechauns and unicorns. In short, I reject anything which cannot be shown to be true. If you want to convince me, you need to provide evidence.

 

Correct so far; on to the next...

Correct again; moving on...

This is where you're wrong. Intelligent people can disagree with Jesus' message, but that rejection is more often done from emotional offense than logic or reason. Many atheists love to trumpet themselves as "enlightened" or something similar, but they reject all possibility of anything beyond their natural senses from square one. This is called naturalism, which defeats itself because we're all aware of certain things like love, justice, and compassion which don't originate in the material world. Therefore, something has to exist that's beyond our natural senses. Those who disagree say that love and justice are just imaginary concepts invented by our brains, but they don't bother explaining how. This concept is also self-defeating, because if our own thoughts are just a result of mixing electrical surges, how can we trust them about anything, including atheism?

Where is your evidence for this?

They'd still need something to gain within their mortal lifetime, to serve as an incentive for making it all up.

No offense intended to Darth Guy or anyone else, but this falls apart when you automatically assume that first-century Jewish people routinely wrote false stories about their peers, knowing others were still alive who would've easily refuted them. For example, the Sanhedrin never denied Jesus' tomb was empty, or that the tomb itself was built for a Jewish burial. They didn't even deny that it was Jesus' body that was placed in the tomb, in spite of the hatred they felt toward Him for claiming to be God (a heresy by their standards). People in that era also believed that anyone crucified was under God's curse, so they'd never include that in a fictional tale about a Savior for the Jews. Jesus was accused of being a liar, drunk, and demon-possessed by His own people; His own mother and brothers came to fetch Him from the temple at one point, and He called Peter "Satan" when the apostle refused to believe Him. Why would any writer knowingly creating a false religion include things like that, unless they were true? Sane people don't write fictional accounts full of embarrassing details, because they know doing so would reduce their credibility.

Just because a message is compelling, that doesn't make it true. As I've said many times, truth isn't determined by belief, but by how accurately it corresponds to its referent.

 

I have provided evidence, but I can't force you or anyone else to accept it. That's the difference between "prove it" in a general sense versus "prove it to me".

 

Well, no, you haven't provided evidence because if you could, then it wouldn't be a faith based proposition. Since you have my on ignore, which makes no sense but I guess whatever you need to do to get through the day, I'm happy to give you a pointer here - you're trying to barter in a currency that you're weak in. You don't need proof of God to have faith in God; so why you or Christians in general try is beyond me. You just end up looking stupid with concepts like "intelligent design".

 

What evidence have you provided? Bible quotes aren't evidence.

The kind of evidence I'm talking about is the exact same sort of evidence you would need to convince me of anything. I want to see hard data derived under controlled conditions, and falsifiable experiments.

 

You talk about "refutation" as though it was 1. some sort of quasi-academic process, which it wasn't and 2. that refutation was possible. Mark was written c. 70, when most eyewitnesses to the events in Jesus' life would have been dead or elderly-- and who knows if the person actually met any of them? Information often spread slowly, most people were illiterate, etc. The author wrote in Greek to convey the message to gentiles, not the Jewish community.

 

what. of course love, justice and compassion originate in the material world. Why wouldn't they? Where else do they originate? god isn't an answer.

Love isn't an imaginary concept but it IS within our brains. It is essentially brain chemistry. I'm sure you could google it if you really wanted to get an explanation, but it strikes me that you probably don't actually want to know. You seem to be suspicious about brain activity but just look at people who suffer head trauma and how it affects such things as personality -- what makes them 'them'. This shows how much the brain plays a part and that includes love.

 

Josephus and Tacitus both wrote about Jesus and His apostles, confirming details found in the New Testament. Neither of them were Christians, but they felt in necessary to accurately record historical events, in spite of their personal feelings. Others who wrote similar accounts include Suetonius and the Roman governor called Pliny the Younger.

As for the Biblical authors, throwing all their documents out just because you disagree isn't a scientific or historical method. Luke was a doctor and assistant to Peter, for example. Does this sound like the writings of someone who doesn't know their own history?

"In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene—during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness." ~Luke 3:1-2~

You're describing scientific parameters, which aren't the same as historical analysis. We can't control the conditions of the past, and you've already decided to reject anything from the Bible itself, plus anything that agrees with it. Oxford historian A.N. Sherwin-White concluded that it takes a minimum of 80 years for historical records to become tainted by legendary elements, but the earliest third-generation copies we have of the New Testament date to 110 A.D. This means the originals were written many years earlier, possibly around 50-60 A.D. How likely is it that a legend could arise in under 20 years, while the writers of that legend are still surrounded by tons of people capable of discrediting them?

 

Dammit, I was wrong, this is William Lane Craig. A really boringly on-script version of Craig, even.

Somebody page Rogue_Ten, I owe him a beer.

 

Mental trauma can affect things like memory and muscle response, but it doesn't change who the person is. Think about mind-altering agents like alcohol, which simply reduce inhibitions. Does the core of that person's being permanently change? Of course not, because we are more than gray matter and electricity.

 

Brain damage can irrevocably alter who a person is. I dare you to look at a stroke victim and tell them that their personality hasn't changed. This is proof that our brains are what determine who we are. There is nothing at our "core" which remains undamaged. That's why we don't go anywhere upon death. When our brains die, it is akin to a computer being shut off.

Yes, love is just brain chemistry. Every single emotion, thought, feeling and action comes from the brain.

 

Enjoy

This page appears to be a tad unkept so some of the links lead nowehere.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage#First-hand_reports_of_mental_changes

 

"Doesn't change who the person is"

In fact it does. Personality change is something that happens after significant brain trauma.

 

That's appreciated. Disagreements exist and they're often very basic and fundamental, but I try to do two things that a lot of people don't: I try to speak only for myself (not other Christians, not atheists and not God); and I strive to genuinely understand the perspectives (which are even more important than the arguments) of the people on the other side of the debate. There's not a debate in existence that wouldn't be massively improved if everyone would do that.

Although I'm not perfect at it; it's a goal to strive for- Lord knows I've done my share of being stupid in arguments around here.

What I really try to do is just be transparent about how and why Christianity works for me. I'm not trying to convince or convert anybody or prove or disprove anything. I just try to demonstrate why Christianity is the philosophy that best explains life for me and also explore the ways in which I have come to understand my faith in a way that, hopefully, both maintains the important moral and spiritual principles that I believe most define Christianity, and yet also moves away from the more troubling elements that have come to define Christianity for all too many people. It's a hard balance; it would be easier to just be a hardliner on one side or the other. But faith was never supposed to be easy; "Work out your own salvation" and all that.

And I should definitely point out that there are lots of non-Christians around here who do a very, very good job at what I talked about in the first paragraph. You guys make sense too. anakinfansince1983, harpua, Jedi Merkurian, SuperWatto (though he's not around anymore) and others as well. Then there are those on both sides who are just a bit too antagonistic. And then there are those on both sides who are completely bonkers. It's a full spectrum. It takes a village or something.

 

Man, I wonder if I'm in the bonkers camp. That'd be fun. I could be like the Franklin Sherman of atheism.

 

YEAH THANKS FOR CALLING ME BONKERS AND PERSECUTING ME JERKS


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

It's okay, Prenn, we can be bonkers buddies. We can have a secret handshake and maybe even secret decoder rings.

 

If you have the good sense to wonder if you're one of the bonkers ones, then you aren't.

 

Yeah, that's Catch 22.

 

I love the sentiment, but do I really have to invite Elizabeth Arden to my party?

 

timmoishere said:

So the moral of this story is that murder is OK as long as God is doing it, or it's being done in God's name. Gotcha. Thank you for affirming my belief that Christianity is one of the most depraved, sick and twisted religions out there.​

If God destroys a people it is not murder, why.. because he created the people in the first place. If God is God, then he is just and everything he decides to do is with impunity and cannot be considered unlawful by his creation. It is alright for a mother to decide to abort a fetus or six month child in the womb in the culture of these times, but if God decides to destroy a people it is wrong? I think that be a double standard.

 

so is it a "loving god" or isnt it? or is he just "loving" in the sense that he says hes loving and therefore he must be loving because circular logic?

also what state allows you to abort a sixth month old child? taht sounds like a pretty metal state