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originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: Stormdancer777
Christianity is the only religion that preaches Hell and damnation to everyone who doesn't believe what they do...
The problem with this is that there are so many variations of Christianity that it means everyone is going to hell according to Christianity because Christians can't even figure out what is correct in the first place...
IF Christians didn't preach hell and hatred... it wouldn't be thrown back in their faces...
Christianity Is the cause of Atheism... IF Christians kept their beliefs to themselves... Atheism wouldn't have been a problem for their religion in the first place
But even the gross misinterpretations of the bible from cults are valid. They make good reasonable points from the bible, and who is to say that their interpretation of things isn't correct? God nor Jesus have shown up to clarify that they are doing it wrong. You employ the no true Scotsman fallacy if you try to claim that these people aren't really Christians.
Ignore the Are we alone? part and just focus on the scales of these objects. Answer me why a god or gods that created the universe would even begin to care about that small blue speck in the vast void of space.
I just want to be clear here. (Stormdancer777 take note too) I think that a god is ENTIRELY possible. I just think that if it exists, it is indifferent to our actions here. It may even value life, but if that is the case it values ALL life, not just human life (which would make humans' actions against the environment sinful). But in the end, this god understands that no matter what you or I or ANYONE else does on this planet does, given enough time, will not only not matter, but be forgotten about. It's all insignificant.
originally posted by: Myollinir
a reply to: Krazysh0t
Haha... ah yes the terrible realm of uncertainty. Well hopefully quantum mechanics can break that barrier for us where people are too scared of uncertainty.
I'm sorry, but invoking this fallacy is not sufficient to debate this very important problem. You KNOW people take the bible, and deliberate add verses/words/paragraphs in order to twist it to their wants. And THESE people call themselves "Christian". I suppose to avoid this easily vague fallacy here, we would have to define what a "Christian" is. I would say this is probably a difficult thing to do in our age, because everyone believes everyone who says they are "christian" is a christian... Yes I'm a scientist because I did sand experiments in the box in my backyard as well though. Now whether you reveal the correct results or not - that would have to discredit your validity in the realm of science though, would it not?
So it's true for these folk who take away from the original scripts. We can also go into the argument of who has the original scripts... but there's always a common thread through determining what is truth in the books. Perhaps it's confusing to people who aren't seeking a relationship with God because "this is revealed to me". I don't want to say that in any derogatory way... it would be my only argument as to why I would have this knowledge apart from others. Many people don't even care about personally leading themselves in christianity - they only go to church and sit. Then they leave and feel they've been absolved. Woohoo I believe Jesus is real, so I get to have a free ticket to heaven. Unfortunately, scripture doesn't argue that... it argues that not everyone who calls God "Lord" will even get into heaven... Wouldn't this verse already get you thinking about christianity itself?
I would probably ask to have a private, in-person conversation to go through my confidence in determining the bad fruits from the good fruits, but I know that any cult could do the same thing with you. And who could possibly convince you which book is right? If you're still in the realm of agnosticism, do you actively seek any of the gods described by all religions? Or do you just sit and wait on science? The only way to get closer to truth in Jesus is to seek. And you already have an open mind - this is the strongest weapon possible to anyone alive today. I could help by letting you know which translations are accurate and which ones have been deliberately constructed by cults. But then again, can you believe me?
Why would God leave books to other species on Earth? Perhaps God knows we would never make contact in our whole life? So would that matter to us specifically? Perhaps it would hinder our relationship?
Why does belittling our existence make any relevance towards there being Jesus? I don't follow this at all, because every person on the earth believes they are special. This is the scientific reasoning of what people argue against christianity, that everyone is sinful (insignificant) or worthless.
What if God cared about us so much that God created an asston of objects to study to make us feel as great as we do while discovering it all? Could've just made it a little box, boring and completely white. Why not that? I don't understand how seeing an infinte universe would belittle the love of ANY god who created it all. What if it all was necessary to have each of these instances of life come to being? Or just ours? Science makes people think they know everything, but all it should really do is build appreciation for life and a love for it. And if you believe in God, it would create respect toward the immensity of creation.... the possibility of anything. Why would we want a boring god?
Yes, but properly defining what a Christian is and isn't is impossible. Disregarding the people who add to the bible to create cults, there are people who just interpret the bible to mean awful things who also create cults. These people may not necessarily add anything to the text. They just read it and interpret it in a way that is abhorrent, but who are we to say that their interpretation is wrong? It's not like you or I have a clear idea of what the bible is supposed to be saying. This brings us back to the topic the OP brought up. If you can interpret the bible like this, is it truly a work of good?
Those very same people come onto forums or go into public debates all offended because some non-Christian wants God removed from money or the pledge or they create intellectually devoid debates about evolution being untrue (all fallacious) and schools should teach YEC as well. Gives ya'll a bad name.
That is the crux of the problem isn't it? The believability of someone. That is why I always default to the hard evidence. Facts don't lie, they just are. If the evidence you are providing (like what are and aren't the accurate translations of the bible) you can always supplement this information with addition evidence that corroborates your claims.
But the bible says that the universe was made for us. The way it comes across is that we are alone and the pinnacle of his creations. This is untrue. We aren't even close to galacticly relevant let alone universally relevant. So why is there a holy book that sets us up as the greatest thing in the universe? To me this just reads as the traditional arrogance of humans that has existed with us since forever.
But we are worthless. Everything you or I do has virtually no impact on the universe at large. The only thing we can effect is our planet and (currently) a small bit of our local solar system. There is so much going on in the universe any number of which could eradicate us before you or anyone else has a chance to process that we are in danger. We are at the mercy of the universe at large, yet are so arrogant that we believe that we are somehow more special than ALL of it.
That idea that god would create all that JUST so we can observe it is nonsensical. All he'd have to do was just create one galaxy and there would be more than enough for us to study for the entirety of human existence, but no, we have a universe that we can't even see the ends of.
Heck for all we know, maybe the universe is just one giant science experiment to see how life evolves and develops given different events throughout the universe and our god is just some scientist who is standing back and watching everything occur.
originally posted by: Myollinir
a reply to: Krazysh0t
Technically, I could take the works of science and interpret them in a way to control people. Does this mean science is good? I can look at the evidence that matter doesn't exactly exist apart from observation, and postulate cosmic consciousness, and this could be harmful were it not the actual truth. I would say this is a far-fetched alley to go down, stating one book can be misinterpreted and added to so is it truly good. You can use this about absolutely everything in existence... This all boils down to moral subjectivity anyways, and no truth can actually exist in this realm. It's all relative, so where does the "good" or "truth" come from?
Haha, indeed it does. Because if we really look at scripture, that stuff isn't supposed to be forced upon people. We agree we are born free, to an extent. Why would that be okay to shove christianity down an unwilling throat? It isn't. I don't believe government has anything to do with christianity, or religion. It has to do with making sure we're all not dumbasses, but as we can see, humans unfortunately are in the government so this is unavoidable. I'm skating down the libertarian trail when it comes to politics - nobody should be forced against something that is victimless - choosing who wants to sleep with who isn't something the government has liberty to force upon someone. Money is a whole other topic, lmao... If only people would learn from what they read. The only reason I'm on the forums/debates is because of the bad wrap going around now. I want to bring the philosophy back, and let people know open-mindedness should be supported in following Jesus, because he was the first of all to do things like that...
To be honest, this is why the bible says to seek God directly, through Jesus. Not through man. Does this make more sense now? The only downside to science is, there are facts we hold as truth that can be disproved in the future. So here we are, believing Newton, and then you know who strolls along. How can you be completely confident? If you're ever bored and actually care about Jesus, just try asking how he said to ask... Not another human. A human being will never be able to empirically prove God to you, that's just how it is. All I can say is, there's the story - check it out.
I'm sorry, but can you quote that from scripture for me? The universe is made for us? It may state that God made the universe, but I don't believe it says the reason. It may say the reason God made HUMANS, but it doesn't say the meaning of the universe is man. Now you are being grossly deceived by whomever you heard that from. The creation story is a beautiful story about all of creation, but then it settles in on humans, because perhaps the bible is very relationship based on a human level. We interact with each other much more than I interact with my dog and cat. This arrogance is coming from humans, not God, nor the bible.
But our part in consciously observing the possibility waves actively creates matter in a position rather than a superposition - isn't that pretty cool and significant? I'm going to go ahead and state that this is largely your opinion, and you are causing yourself to think this way. Perhaps you are "worthless" to some distant galaxy, and hell maybe the earth, but are you worthless to your friends? To yourself? I agree that we are arrogant in the sense of "the universe being created for us", but in no way does that cancel out our worth relatively on this planet. It seems like the universe raises our worth in part of discovery and reception of common man to those discoveries if I could make any argument towards "worth" and the universe at large.
Yet we postulate more universes than there are atoms in our own universe - and this isn't nonsensical? This is becoming the only popular theory apart from God as to why the universe has such specific values floating about it. Occam's razor would make me believe a God existed before infinite universes did.
The whole universe could just be the effect of a compile button on some 'computer' as well
All I know is, I'm able to perceive a whole different perception of reality while walking this path over here... and people aren't correctly translating what that is.
The difference here being that science doesn't claim to be good. The bible does claim to be good. So saying that science can be used for evil isn't really an issue since it doesn't hold a position in one way or another.
Libertarian agnostic here. I also don't like Keynesian economics and think that Austrian economics is better, but that is another discussion.
The bible is ONE source though. That is how my believability is lacking. If it can be shown from multiple sources how to reach the SAME god, then I would believe. Until then it's just a fanciful idea in my mind.
That may be catholic dogma leaking into my head, it can be hard to separate them when I start thinking about the bible sorry, it's just a product of my upbringing (yes I used to be Catholic and therefore a Christian, and therefore a believer)
That paragraph wasn't meant to convey depression or a sad state of affairs. I was just trying to convey that if you zoom out far enough in any direction, our actions become insignificant. There is so much more going on in the universe for a supposed god to worry about, why care about one measly rock? That is like, out of the ENTIRE world, a human picking up one particular grain of sand and caring for all the tiny microscopic animals that may be living on it.
Actually Occam's Razor would side with the infinite universes, given how everything in our universe works. Every object seems to make up the body of a larger object. We have atoms making up molecules making up matter making up planets and suns making up solar systems making up galaxies making up galaxy clusters making up super clusters making up the universe. And that isn't even discussing that there are smaller things that make up atoms (with even smaller things making up them). So Occam's Razor actually supports the infinite universes theory. But since we don't have proof of said universes, it is still just conjecture (which you even admitted).