Villain

Why don't you provide a reference and then we can discuss your grievances. I will say that you are not a child.

Christianity is based on the teachings of Christ. If a religious view is not based on the teachings of Christ, then it is not Christianity (and no, this is not a no true Scotsman assertion). I have little interest in what these people or those people did that formed your view of religion, you don't sound like the kind of person who would accept anything other than the source, so I am confused by the above. Masturbating is not seen as a religious act, but I'm sure you knew that already.

It contradicts this: I don't expect them to, that is why I try to refrain from discussing it here, but when someone claims that they know and understand religion and then presents ideas about the religion that contradict what the religion is based on, I feel the need to point out their errors. Sure his statement was made about religion as a whole but if certain religions don't subscribe to that generalisation (and I'm sure Christianity is not the only one to have such an outlook) then making a generalisation is flawed. Yes, except no one is asking you to abandon your children or your job and you are not forced so slavery is the incorrect term. Man condemns himself, if he had not rejected God he would not need to be saved. Also considering that God has sacrificed Himself for man but does not ask the same of man (God stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac), He merely asks man to love Him and his fellow men, something that man is completely capable of doing if he is not concerned with his will but rather the will of the Father.

How does one communicate with someone who thinks repeating the words 'horse feathers' is a constructive form of argument or opinion? How is insisting that religion is only horse feathers suppose to convey a knowledge of religion. You assert that you have read the Bible a whopping four times but then make statements like the one that religion is meant to give man authority over other men. Matthew 22:37-39 completely contradicts what you posted earlier, yet we are suppose to accept you knowledge of religion as being sound.

I was thinking the exact same thing a few hours after my previous post. We are clearly arguing from different perspectives and therefore cannot come to a conclusion. If you have made an emotion free choice on religion then I respect that decision and wish you all the best.

@ iNow response to the first section of post #682: I understand that your knowledge of religion might lead you to think these things, but applying a one size fits all attitude to the billions of people that partake in religion is a little naive. I will agree that my experience of life is part of the reason why I believe but that is true to every belief that I hold. I think everyone here is capable of realising that when starting with two different premises, you come to different reasons for the same process. I thought that it seemed obvious that I was not from North America, but apparently picking up on things that aren't literally spelt (yes I have used the word spelt on purpose to distinguish my language from what you might call 'American') out to you is a problem. There is no wonder left in my mind as to why you are no longer religious, a house built on sand is never going to whether a storm. Aside: before you get offended I might highlight your gross generalisation of how religious people all get 'indoctrinated' by some voodoo artist posing as a priest. second section: It is broken to those that don't understand. third section: Why would I make up an assertion that is clearly speculative, do you think that I think that I will fool you? I will concede that I have know idea how MOST people are raised, I will concede that people often exhibit public persona's and live very different private lives but I will not claim to know how MOST of 7 billion people are brought up. I will however reflect on the thread and come to the same realisation that the most vocal atheists are ex theist's. Fourth section: Not really anything to comment on. Fifth section: Except that a logical person would not invest time in debating belief in the tooth fairy if they were under the impression that such tooth fairy didn't exist. Would you rather I just conclude that you are illogical and move onto someone who is capable of logical thinking? Why do you take such a huge amount of offence if it has no bearing on you? Why not just dismiss my comments?

Obviously you don't get it, but yet you constantly feel 'insulted' when others assume you know nothing of religion, which by your above statement is clearly the case. @iNow and Tar, I will respond when I have a little more time.

You are completely correct there is nothing that asks such a proposition and yet, I, a man who manages to put his pants on every morning, can find an understanding and acceptance of such a proposition and that is exactly why I must be broken (mentally retarded, flawed, incapable of logical thought, incapable of solving puzzles or problems....). If you are under the impression that I am those things then by all means label me broken, but if I am not then what answer can you offer me. Exactly why is it that so many capable people ignore their need for empirical proof, waste their time serving an imaginary being who commands them to let go of their possessions and follow them, something which is completely counter intuitive to the world that we live in. I believe the best explaination so far is that we are broken, not broken in every other aspect of our lives but only in this. While we are at it, why is it that the most vocal atheist tend to be ex theist's? It surely isn't because they have known God at some stage in their lives and know exactly what the theist's are talking about. They seem to have a constant need to reconfirm that atheism is not a mistake. You say you understand the human psyche, what might your subconscious mind be trying to tell you? How many atheist were affected by traumatic events before they became atheist's? Do you really think that atheism is the default position of the intellectual mind? I will openly say that it is far more apparent to me to be the default of the emotionally stunted or weak, the kid that throws a tantrum when they don't get what they think they deserve, the proud. When did you choose to be born, when did you choose the skills that you have or the mind that you possess? The world is constantly brainwashing us to be god's onto ourselves and what have we ever done to deserve such accolades? It is quite obvious to those that are not emotionally sucked into this delusion, there is only one source that teaches a truth that man is not of his own doings. The source also does not subscribe to the character of man by possessing the very essence of the empiricism that man clings to. It is the strangest of concept that man present only empiricism as a way of evidence, as if he is of the impression that nothing outside of empiricism exists. Do you believe in mathematics or language or many other form of higher intellect? Do we go about communicating by showing people that you have arms? How do cells evolve along billions of years into beings with fully functioning brains purely by accident? It seems rather obvious that man had to use all of his creativity to produce such a tale in order to not have to accept God, but then again the motivation of the Ego is a powerful thing.

1. I have already dealt with this. It is quite a simple truth. If you don't have the possibility of a god existing then no evidence will ever be possible. Are you of the opinion that I cannot objectively review my subjective nature? Do you think that I am religious because it feels good? Who is the one that cannot separate their emotion from the decision? Your outbursts about genital mutilation and the oppression of homosexuality, the influence of religion on politics etc. etc. These are not logical reasons to decided whether a god exists or not. They are not separating the subjectivity and the objectivity of the religion, no they are placing subjectivity into it. You constantly project emotion onto the decision at hand, but yet I am apparently the subjective, irrational and incapable being when it comes to the objectiveness of a religious decision. I cannot follow your logic in this regard, perhaps I am broken. 2. Study unfortunately does not mean understanding, but then this is closely tied into the idea that if a god cannot exist then there will be no evidence of a god. A servant cannot have two masters and the Ego finds it hard to let go of it's own will. The fulfilment of the soul by living as per God's will is more evidence than any honest man or woman will ever need, but it is our nature to want more than we need and therefore reject this fulfilment and replace it with the emptiness of human greed (when have you truly fulfilled yourself?). Edited:spelling

In relation to a god there can only be two choices 1. god exists and the believer is correct in not applying the stringent criteria that they apply to the rest of their life or 2. god does not exist and they are making a mistake (broken) because they didn't apply the same stringent criteria as the rest of their lives. Evolution/whatever other reason as to why they might believe in a god falsely, all point to brokenness and are irrelevant in the two choices. Seek an ye shall find. Knock and the door will be opened. It takes faith to be offered the opportunity to discover evidence, once you have done that the evidence will present itself. Try starting with religious text and that will open your understanding to how a god might reveal themselves. How can you find something if you don't know what you are looking for? I am not God or a god.

I guess there are two obvious answers: 1. Religious people are in deed broken or 2. There is a God that exists and has given people an ability to know them without the need for constant empirical evidence. So....there are a number of gods who work under a single god or godhead, is my understanding correct and how is this not ultimately monotheism?

If an event of possible importance happened in history, we have to make do with what is available to us. The evidence being weak or strong doesn't change the actual event, but only our possible understanding of the event. If the Bible is true and the events occurred as stated in it, then those that refuse to try and make sense of it are only denying themselves understanding. I have no need to convince anyone, we are all responsible for our own actions.

You must be joking to state that language is abused because it doesn't conform to your idea of it. Continually asserting that evidence must conform to the scientific idea of evidence is a abuse of language not the other way around.

I have never claimed that the evidence was scientific evidence, the term evidence does not only apply to science, evidence in the context of law can be a statement from a witness, as an example.

Ok, so you have been able to differentiate between scientific faith and unicorn faith. Yet you keep asserting that faith in unicorns and faith that a god exists and is knowable are the same thing. Religious faith is not based purely on thought experiments, the faith that a Christian has that the Bible is not a falsified set of books (or whatever over religion for that matter) is not the same as the proposition that a teapot is on the other side of the moon. The Bible offers the user a way of concluding as to whether or not the statements it makes are plausible. It offers a moral code which the reader can question....so on and so on. Science has the luxury of studying objects that surround us and obviously the evidence for such things is extremely high. History doesn't have that option, but that doesn't mean that history didn't occur, the further back you go the less 'fact' there is. Evolution gets this pass from the science community (and I am not here to debate it), it has a lot of holes that people accept, but God must adhere to man and present Themselves on a platter in order for us to even consider a creator. Which leaves us with human motivation (that is why I have highlighted this during the thread). If God exists then the individual becomes responsible to a higher power. The fat cat can no longer pretend that he has earned his wealth, the individual can no longer lay claim to it's own brilliance. The problem with God existing is that everything that man and society has given value to becomes worthless. The individual becomes responsible to something other than society.

I'm saying that at some point all systems require faith and you might as well say that if faith can be used to validate any system then it can be used to validate unicorns. I have previously stated that religion is not based on no evidence, it is just not based on the system of science. I think this is good advice for anyone wanting to study the Bible or any historical text from a neutral-bias. We often forget that it was not written in our mother tongues and that translation from any language doesn't always capture the complete meaning.

No I'm suggesting that it is the equivalent of unicorns.

even the axioms of science?

@ moontanman #321 This is a follow-on from a number of posts discussing the idea and should be read with the previous posts in order to make sense. The brain wash part is a little dramatic, I'm not much of a humanist but would give people more credit than what you are suggesting. People might be unwilling to question things but are not incapable of doing so.

I got a little lost in the italic section, would you mind trying to word it again. I'm not sure what is meant by empirical world, virtual world, real world, real empirical world. I assume that agnostic faith would be faith that a god exists but that we are unable to personally know said god.

1. I think you have miss understood my concept of free choice. If they were not able to choose whether or not I existed then they would be forced to know me. Which would mean that they would have to be insane not to do as I told them and where does freedom come into all this? Only my letting them choose to find me and giving them the ability to find me if they wished to do so, do I allow them free choice in this regard. This is why love is talked about in religion, it is a desire to know the creator. What would be the point of making a program that had to submit to me? You are assuming there is no knowledge but you are looking in the wrong place, as I have already mentioned science cannot prove a creator or god. 2. The real question is: are we smart enough to understand the way in which a god might communicate with us? What is the difference with written word and spoken word? Do you judge the content of someone by the sound of their voice? Or do you try to understand the truth of their words, be they written or spoken. 3. This ties in with the above answers in so much as 'miracles' should not be necessary and would be hard to actually define as a miracle. 4. If you think people make the decision to believe and that's that then you are mistaken. We are not robots.

I could only guarantee my 'knowness' if I did not afford them the ability of free choice. With free choice the program can choose how to interpret the information that is presented to it as proof of me. I could appear in a 'dream', but the program would have to choose whether the subject of the dream was real or not. I could appear fully in it's reality but the program would have to assign 'creator' to me even if I tell it that I am and do all sorts of 'miracles' to prove it. Once you understand that choice is the biggest problem with it recognising you as creator or not, the need to present evidence to the program subsides. What kind of 'miracles' could ever prove creation and not just different? That is why I have said that there is no evidence that can prove the creator's existence to those that choose or believe that the creator doesn't exist.

1. In order to investigate ......we must assume. If the creator was not willing or able to be found then we would never find them. 2. I don't understand what you mean by replicable. 3. What is your point, are or are they not assumptions? 4. This is meant in reference to something else ie. a tree would be as much evidence of a creator as a planet would. Science as we know it, would not find anything that would serve as evidence for or against the creator.

The point of life implies that there is a point. If you are religious then your religion would probably give you a point to life. Otherwise Franz Kafka is quoted as saying (or perhaps romanticising): 'The meaning of life is that it ends'.

It seems everyone understands the concept of a creator, so in order to investigate the possibility that we were created we must assume that said creator would make themselves known to us, enter theology. Since there is no proof that we were not created it is not broken to believe in finding the creator. And let me point out that even science operates off of assumptions. For those that might insist that there is no evidence to suggest that we were created, go and ask your parents how you were conceived. If the creator created everything known to man how would anything specific suggest that a creator exists (John Cuthber et al)? This is why I say that to someone who believes (and it is a belief because there is no evidence that the assumption of no creation is correct) that a god does not exist, there will never be evidence of a god.