Religious debate (split from main board)

[IPorange]

Could you point me in the direction of the rational argument or mathematical evidence?

 

[shootermcgavin7]

If you are searching for a rational argument to support the existence of God, they are out there.

No they aren't.

Actually, let me rephrase. There is no logical argument that supports the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent deity.

I could easily believe in a God which is one but not the other. I could easily believe in a God which created everything and then sat back to watch. However, such a God would not give a crap about people's private sexual lives, whether you went to a church on Sunday, whom you married, how short your dress is, whether you drink alcohol, (and on and on and on)....................in other words, modern religion does not immediately follow from an "argument from impossibility".

 

[IPorange]

what IP is referring to is also known as Calvinism: which goes something like "well, since God is all knowing and all powerful, He knows who will choose Him and who won't". This is flawed b/c if you read the Bible you read that "God is love" and "Love is patient, and Love is Kind" so.....God is patient and Kind. That can be deduced. Well He set up Adam and Eve in paradise, yet they still chose sin and condemned man to that sin. To truly be loved, God knew that He'd have to give man free will, with the risk of man rejecting Him-which obviously many do. God didn't create us as robots to love and worship Him out of compulsion. I believe that the patient, kind, loving God waits for us to choose Him (patiently-lol) and pulls on our heartstrings many times throughout our lives. We, as humans, either choose Him or choose hell-quite the opposite of calvinism.

This doesn't hold up, as I have pointed out that not everyone gets a choice, and certainly some get more of an opportunity than others.

 

[OrangeU]

Could you point me in the direction of the rational argument or mathematical evidence?

josh mcdowell and lee strobel. both take both rational and scientific approaches. not so sure about the mathematical part. I do know most early scientists, including newton and aristotle sought to prove the Bible using math and science. Quite the opposite of today's scientists.

 

[OrangeU]

This doesn't hold up, as I have pointed out that not everyone gets a choice, and certainly some get more of an opportunity than others.

elaborate for me. are you referring to "the ends of the earth" or an "age of innocence" when referring to those who don't have a choice or better opp?

 

[IPorange]

elaborate for me. are you referring to "the ends of the earth" or an "age of innocence" when referring to those who don't have a choice or better opp?

As I have stated in this thread twice, I am referring to remote and isolated cultures, that clearly have or had no monotheistic, let alone Christian, concepts or knowledge.

 

[OrangeU]

Romans 1:20 NIV
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Harsh? absolutely, but again i refer to the Bible b/c thats the only way I know to answer. That's why, as I've stated, we're commisioned to go to the ends of the earth. There's also a parable of the watchman and watch tower that goes something like : the watchman in the tower is to alert the king's court when the enemy is approaching, and if he "falls asleep" on his duty, the blood of those slain is on the watchman's hands. If we, as believers, KNOW there are remote places (and we do, believe me with all the money, time, lives devoted to mission here and abroad) where the Gospel hasn't been preached, then, according to the parable, the blood of those slain is on our hands. and i apply that to the guy next door, the guy in the next city, the guy in the next state as well. that's what Jesus meant when he said (Acts 1:8 NIV)
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem(your city), and in all Judea(your state) and Samaria(your country), and to the ends of the earth."


i will challenge you with this too, IP, if that burdens your heart then you'd be a helluva missionary.

 

[Snakes on a Wii]

josh mcdowell and lee strobel. both take both rational and scientific approaches. not so sure about the mathematical part. I do know most early scientists, including newton and aristotle sought to prove the Bible using math and science. Quite the opposite of today's scientists.

Are you kidding me? Aristotle was not a Christian, and Isaac Newton was a nutjob in the realm of theology. I believe he was on the record as saying something to the effect of "The Trinity is the worst lie ever conceived". He also was an alchemist and refused to accept the evidence for the wave model of light.

And you've had quite an insight with your last sentence, though I doubt you've realized the implications of it. Science progresses towards the truth, by looking at the evidence and shaping our view of the world to conform to the evidence, not the other way around. This is how we KNOW that the earth is billions of years old, and how man evolved from primate ancestors, and how some of the events described in the bible, such as the Flood, are fictional.

 

[PowerT83]

Don't be childish. Water marks on the Pyramids indicate some sort of great flood a couple thousand years ago.

 

[Snakes on a Wii]

Don't be childish. Water marks on the Pyramids indicate some sort of great flood a couple thousand years ago.

Is this some kind of a joke? I don't even know where to start with the Flood. It's the most ridiculous story in the Bible.

You could start by reading here.

 

[PowerT83]

How advanced where they back then

 

[Maverick1921]

If evolution is true as some suggest, then why aren't monkeys still changing into people??? Did the process just stop???

 

[turambar85]

If evolution is true as some suggest, then why aren't monkeys still changing into people??? Did the process just stop???

Please, surely you jest?

See, this is the problem. People have absolutely no understanding of the science they try to criticize. Monkeys have not been said to have evolved into people. We share a common ancestor. That means that from that common ancestor, we had evolutionary divergences. The reasons for this are largely environmental.

Not every species (or many species) would be benefited by the human brain. For one, it would be largely wasted on quadrupeds and beings without opposable thumbs. Imagine the benefits of our thought processes in a worm...

Anyway, the human brain is a huge resource drain, and is only viable if the benefits it gives are themselves huge. The possibility of reaping these rewards depends upon the environment in which you live, and the genetic toolbox that you have to work with.

Again, a chimpanzee has never evolved into a person, and never will. We don't stand on any evolutionary pinnacle. It wasn't 'trying' to get to us.

 

[OrangeU]

Are you kidding me? Aristotle was not a Christian, and Isaac Newton was a nutjob in the realm of theology. I believe he was on the record as saying something to the effect of "The Trinity is the worst lie ever conceived". He also was an alchemist and refused to accept the evidence for the wave model of light.

And you've had quite an insight with your last sentence, though I doubt you've realized the implications of it. Science progresses towards the truth, by looking at the evidence and shaping our view of the world to conform to the evidence, not the other way around. This is how we KNOW that the earth is billions of years old, and how man evolved from primate ancestors, and how some of the events described in the bible, such as the Flood, are fictional.

while i admit i was lazy last night, i probably should've worded aristotle and newton differently to say "disprove"and done more research, so I apologize and hope that doesn't discredit everything I've said. however i was drawing that statement from a few classes I took in college and thought i remembered early christianity accepting a lot of what aristotle theorized so i looked it up and here's what i found:

History
Preserved by Aristotle's followers in the Peripatetic school, and elaborated by other ancient commentators on Aristotle, Aristotelianism began its modern history with its reception by Islamic, Jewish and Christian philosophers. The most famous of these philosophers are Averroes, Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas. Averroism was particularly influential in reconciling Aristotelianism with the Islamic and Jewish faiths, while Aquinas argued that the truth in Aristotle’s philosophy is complemented and completed by the truth revealed in the Christian tradition. Aquinas further established the foundations of metaphysics by offering an account of key issues surrounding existence which were not addressed fully by his predecessors. The Roman Catholic Church has reasserted a Thomistic Aristotelianism since the 1870s.


in response to your last statement, i assert that we are created in His image and while many may feel they are descended from primates or a shared organism, I bare the image of my Creator. "I ain't from no ape". lol. I do, however, believe in direct adaptation to environment and have studied/read multiple examples of adaptation/evolution of animal and man(most notably those human beings living in extreme climates).
What's more far fetched? We are all evolved, by accident, from a singular organism with a "master genetic code". OR We were intelligently designed by One Creator who knew EXACTLY what He was doing?

I'll also admit the Flood does seem far fetched, but so does One Man fulfilling hundreds of prophecies foretold, in some cases, thousands of years before. If you don't believe Jesus did all that, then the Flood absolutely seems like a fable. I've seen God do some crazy sounding things in my life and in those around me, though. Those moments (and especially those in the Bible) are supposed to prove that ONLY God could do such a thing.

 

[turambar85]

I figured this was the appropriate place for this. It was a little letter I wrote for my curious family (they wanted to know what I believed, but got too mad to talk about it whenever I mentioned it). I wrote it very quickly, so it probably has a lot of errors. Also, I didn't mean for it to be very philosophical; it was largely and exegesis of my personal beliefs and the path I took to them. :geek:

I, as you know, was raised a Christian. It wasn’t just that I grew up in a Christian home - I lived the faith. My Christianity defined me for much of my life. Now, primarily because of my environment, it seems that my atheism defines me. Because of this, and due to all of the questions that are asked (and even more importantly for the questions that you want to ask), I have decided to put forward my beliefs as clearly as I can.

I reject Christianity (on the basis of the problem of belief acquisition, translation difficulties, Biblical inconsistencies, and the Christian conception of God). I reject religion (because faith is a crutch that stunts growth, because faith is morally problematic, and because the cornerstone of religion, the miracle, is meaningless). I also reject the idea of God (on the basis of the problem of defining God in any legitimate way, the complete lack of proof, and the existence of meaningful explanations by science). I know that this is going to be offensive, and I apologize. It is uncomfortable living in a society in which your basic belief structure will be an innate offense to most people that you know. But, this is a large part of who I am. I don’t go to church, I don’t pray, and I don’t believe in God. My beliefs are not directed at anybody reading this; they are just the result of my reflections on religion.


The first problem that I faced regarding Christianity was not the natural question of how evil can exist with a good God, but was the question of why I believe what I believe. Anybody can look at a map and see the disproportionate correlation of belief to country. I was born in the United States, and particularly the south, so it isn’t much of a surprise to learn that I was raised to believe in Christianity. This belief system was thrust upon me prior to any conscious reflection; it was a birthright. The same is true of the religious beliefs of almost everybody in the world. If you look at where somebody is raised, you can ascertain with a good level of success the likelihood of their at least being brought up in a certain religion. Not only did this lead me to believe religious belief to be more a product of social convention than divine revelation (why would God only reveal the truth to you if you live in a certain place on the globe?), but it also gave me second thoughts about the moral implications of Christianity.

If Christianity, at least the Christianity I grew up believing, teaches salvation by faith, then Christianity teaches salvation primarily by birthright. That means that God condemns billions based on the accidental circumstances of their birth. This is neither loving nor just. Now, I know that Christianity also teaches that good Christians should go and spread the truth, but the fact is that birth still gives you an immense psychological predisposition towards one faith. The likelihood of a Muslim dying a Muslim is inordinately high. The same goes for a Christian, a Hindu, and an atheist. Sociologists in Britain have found that only one in twelve children break away from the religious beliefs of their parents. This is despite Britain being considerably less religious than the United States. So, even if every Christian or Muslim does his or her job and spreads the gospel across the mountains and seas, the truth is that it will fall on deaf ears. Birth condemns the majority of the Earth to everlasting torment in Hell. The loving God of Christianity and Islam condemns the majority of the Earth to everlasting torment in Hell. This was the first crack in the armor of my faith.
I also had trouble understanding how a holy book could be expected to survive the centuries of despotic control by the Kings and Popes of the past centuries. From the basic problem surrounding the translation of texts, often without a master text to guide the efforts, to the Council of Nicea, the hope of having a pure, unsullied Bible is infinitesimal. The Bible, whatever you say about it, was written by people, translated by people, and controlled by people. At each step of the way lies extraordinary risk for error or actual changing of text. And regardless of what I thought about the translations made, the actual copy that we have contains more inconsistencies and errors than any other translated text that I know of. Just one particular problem of interest is the repeated contradictory messages attributed to God regarding temptation. In multiple verses, God claims to tempt and test believers, yet in others it is said to be something ‘he’ would never do.

Another problem came when I started to think about the horrible nature of the Christian conception of God. We are taught that God is all loving. This is a key to most forms of Christianity. However, we also see that God is jealous, selfish, and demands worship. These are pitiable traits even in people. We see that God, an omniscient and omnipotent God, created Earth knowing that the majority of its inhabitants would go to Hell and that a great majority would suffer immensely while on Earth. Here are a small sampling of God’s evils: destroying 99.999% of all humans and animals in a flood, hardening Pharaoh’s heart before sending deadly plaques to Egypt, sending bears to maim and kill children for laughing at Elisha’s bald head, sending the Israelites to pillage and destroy towns, and the list continues. In the Old Testament, the sins of parents lead to the brutal punishment of their great grandchildren. I couldn’t bring myself to worship the Old Testament God. I can remember thinking years ago that I would, if wrong, sooner go to Hell than sit at the feet of a moral monster.

Now, I know that things changed in the New Testament. The coming of Christ altered and destroyed many of the moral precepts of the past. However, this didn’t help me any; it just showed the inconsistencies in the Bible. God is perfect; God is unchanging; yet we have the New Testament erasing his Machiavellian dictates of the Old Testament. Did God change his mind? What happened to turn the God of Sodom into the meek, turn the other cheek Christ of Nazareth? This didn’t sit well with me, and it screamed fiction even then.

After becoming comfortable with my rejection of Christianity, I started thinking more about religion in general. My reasoning behind dismissing religion is that faith and miracles are empty, meaningless concepts that can be used to justify anything with no regard for truth. Faith, for example, is supposed to be divorced from reason. Faith is, after all, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. But, without reason, how does one decide which propositions to assent to? The answer, to me, is that you simply cry faith when all other justificatory endeavors fail. Faith is the last great unquestionable defense against skepticism. When pressed about religious beliefs, the first move is always to justify or otherwise explain your beliefs. You point to proofs of God, you point to miracles, and you point to whatever scientific evidence seems to provide some support for your position. However, at some point this evidence always fell short (at least in my experience with my own beliefs, and my encounters with the beliefs of others), and at that point the plea of faith came into the picture.


But, as the question continually haunted me, if faith is non-rational, what do I attach it to? Why do I put my faith in Christian dogma? And, even further yet, why do I put my faith in a particular branch of Christian doctrine? The only three possible answers were: 1) you attach faith to a particular belief based on reason, 2) you attach faith to a belief based on faith, or 3) you unquestioningly attach faith to a belief based on your upbringing. The second one was immediately disregarded, as it led to an infinite regress of faith-based beliefs. The third option did nothing to lead to truth, as I would be a Muslim, Indian, Buddhist, Atheist, or Christian depending on where I was born using this method of belief. And the first option didn’t fare any better. If faith is grounded in reason, where do we derive the reason for faith to begin with, and for aiming our ‘leap’ in any particular direction? After all, scientific inquiry seems to have a monopoly on reason.

I can’t help but feel that arbitrarily assigned faith is morally problematic, and this is the only part of this exposition that I believe may have been influenced by something that I have read – William Clifford’s “The Ethic’s of Belief”. This is an important work that talks about how, given the effects of belief on action, and the way this affects other people around us, we have a moral obligation to form only justified beliefs. However, I’m not entirely sure that I didn’t have a predisposition to holding this to be the case anyway, and regardless it immediately struck me as right (though I have backpedaled some on Clifford lately). The point, though, is that faith is not something that I am comfortable with, not just on an intellectual level, but on a moral level as well.

Yet another problem that I have with religion is that it is, to a great degree, built around the miracle. I don’t see how religion can survive without the miracle, and I don’t see how the concept of the miracle can be explicated in any meaningful way. The miracle is an empty concept. Under the guise of miracles, anything can be explained away or justified without any work done whatsoever. It is a miracle when somebody survives a car crash, it is a miracle when somebody finds their dream house, it is a miracle when you hit a home run and it is a miracle when somebody isn’t among his or her companies’ layoffs. The attempt to discover the true meaning behind these events is avoided. People look for miracles, people expect miracles, and people build miracles. Whenever something amazing happened to me, for example, I thought it was a miracle; I thought that God was directly intervening in my life for my benefit. However, there is a real explanation ready at hand for most of these events, and even for the more mysterious, it says nothing for the possibility of an explanation in the future. Our ignorance of the inner-workings of the body, or physics, or of science in general does not alter the truth, nor does it make the physical miraculous.

The larger problem with miracles, though, is that they often do either one of two things: 1) they thank God for removing an evil that “He” caused or allowed, or 2) they thank God for helping you at the expense of somebody else. Examples of the first type are when God ‘cures’ us from a terrible illness or ‘helps’ you survive a car crash. Why would I credit God for saving me from something that “He” had control over to begin with? And, further still, why should I praise God for saving me from something that kills thousands to millions of other people all of the time – often better people than myself? Examples of the second type are God ‘helping’ my team win a game, or ‘making sure’ that I am not laid off in the recent mass firings at work. Some of these are trivial, and it is obscene to imagine God caring in the least for your mundane day-to-day activities. Others, though, are very important, and are examples of God ‘miraculously’ giving you the edge in a zero sum game. If God saved you, did “He” condemn the other person? These examples show, in part, my problem with the miracle.

Now, finally, I come to God. I have many problems with the idea of God, but I will focus on three: 1) the problem of defining God, 2) the problem of proving God’s existence, and 3) the problem of the insurmountable proof piling up against the idea of God.

The first problem has several questions: A) why one God B) why an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God, and C) how does an all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful God allow evil? As for question A, it doesn’t make any sense to prefer the idea of monotheism to polytheism, nor does it make sense to prefer God to Allah or Zeus. Even if, assuming the creationist arguments are in the least bit valid, it doesn’t show any particular God, or even that there is only one God to specify. This may be a trivial concern, but it is one that has come up nonetheless. Question B is an extension of A, and points that the facts that a being creating the universe doesn’t demand the characteristics of the Christian conception of God exist in the creator. This doesn’t really merit any more discussion. Question C is a bit more important, though also worn out in discussion. But, it is also the most damning of the idea of God, and can be phrased as follows: how, if I am forced to grant the Christian conception of God, does evil exist? How is this universe the masterpiece of all-powerful God? How does an all-loving God allow evil to come about that “He” knows about? Theology has yet to present a satisfying theodicy, and it won’t as long as it tries to maintain each of the three salient characteristics of God.

The second problem is based on the fact that theists must prove the existence of God, not sit around and demand that atheists disprove the hypothesis. If this weren’t the case, then the entire global history of God’s would also have to be proven false by the theists – an impossible feat – and I would be able to posit the existence of unicorns and demand that they be proven nonexistent! However, God cannot be shown to exist. The history of theology has not presented us with a single argument of merit. The best are plays on words and sophistry. One interesting argument says that God must exist because there had to be something to cause the existence of the world. But how, pray, does adding a more complicated entity solve this problem? I can’t imagine the frame of mind that I was in when I was persuaded that God must exist because everything must have a cause – what caused God? I have no reason to believe in God other than pure blind faith, and the previous few pages show why this is not a viable alternative for me.

The third problem is the proof against God’s existence and the Biblical creation story. This is mainly in the form of Darwin’s arguments for evolution by natural selection. The beautiful simplicity in this argument is more amazing than any creation story that I have seen (as many of them as there are). Darwin’s theory shows that increasingly incredible levels of complexity can arise over time given the existence of simply base replicators and an environment that leads to certain replicators not surviving to replicate. The fossil record provides evidence for Darwin’s hypothesis, and it shows that the world we see around us could have come about without the need of positing a creator. Other scientific problems are arising all of the time, including research surrounding the mind and our mental processes that are continually erasing any room for the soul or spirit. The world around us is beginning to be understood, and because of that I don’t have the need to try to explain it by appealing to the supernatural.

Other philosophical arguments against the existence of God exist, and have been alluded to above. One in particular is the problem of evil. This argument shows, pretty strongly, that at least the Christian conception of God cannot exist. The reason being, again, that the immense suffering in the world is not compatible with the existence of an all-loving/knowing/powerful God.

Another argument is a twist on William Paley’s “Watchmaker” argument. Paley tried to argue for the existence of God by claiming that the amazing things that we see around us must have been designed. He says that we look at a watch and know that there must have been a watchmaker. You can then look at a watchmaker and realize that she must have been designed by something even more amazing. This argument was, obviously, made before Darwinian natural selection took hold. If it hadn’t been, Paley would have seen that a legitimate explanation for complexity exists, and we don’t have to resort to metaphysical bootstrapping for understanding. Interestingly enough, however, Paley’s argument turns out to be a strong argument against the existence of God! This is because of two things: 1) we now can understand these processes through natural selection, and 2) Paley posited God as a necessary fact given the complexity of the watchmaker, but all he has done is given us a more complicated entity that takes the design requirement a step further back.

God is an example of, to use Daniel Dennet’s language, a sky-hook. A sky-hook is a free-floating structure imagined in science fiction that lifts objects without having been properly grounded itself. A sky-hook is a crane without a base, floating in the sky. A sky-hook is an absurd idea, especially when we can do the lifting with cranes! Natural selection is a crane, one that would have helped solve Paley’s dilemma. I’m reminded here of the old story of the Earth resting on the back of a turtle, which rests on the back of another turtle, which rests on the back of an elephant. God is our elephant, and I don’t see why either elephant holds more explanatory power.

 

[T-TownVol]

Bottom line here.......If God does not exist and Jesus did not come to this earth and die and be raised from the dead for our sins......then what I believe makes me a FOOL
The question is........are you willing to bet your eterinty on it?

 

[turambar85]

Bottom line here.......If God does not exist and Jesus did not come to this earth and die and be raised from the dead for our sins......then what I believe makes me a FOOL
The question is........are you willing to bet your eterinty on it?

Pascal's Wager is empty philosophy. First, to try to believe something simply for the benefits you might accrue if it is true is psychologically dubious at best. Second, don't you think that an omniscient God might possibly know that the origin of your belief was an attempt at gaining eternal life?

As an aside, the truth of falsity of your belief doesn't make you a fool. The likelihood and evidence for your belief does (not to say you are a fool, I'm just speaking generally).

 

[T-TownVol]

Pascal's Wager is empty philosophy. First, to try to believe something simply for the benefits you might accrue if it is true is psychologically dubious at best. Second, don't you think that an omniscient God might possibly know that the origin of your belief was an attempt at gaining eternal life?

As an aside, the truth of falsity of your belief doesn't make you a fool. The likelihood and evidence for your belief does (not to say you are a fool, I'm just speaking generally).

words, just words.......you have made your choice, I have made mine........good luck with yours, I loose NOTHING with mine

 

[turambar85]

words, just words.......you have made your choice, I have made mine........good luck with yours, I loose NOTHING with mine

The fact that you claim those to be just words shows your narrow-mindedness, and justifies your use of the word 'fool'.

Your choice, as a gamble, is not safe. To begin with, there could be a god, but god could reward intellectual honesty and decency instead of puerile subservience. God could reward people who put forth an honest effort to reach truth rather than those who just blindly believe whatever they were told. Also, any number of the thousand of other gods in the world's history could exist, dooming you and your singular choice. Finally, there could be no god at all, and you could have spent your entire life dedicated to a falsehood, wasting your time, energy and love on an imaginary figure that lived only in your head. I think that is a loss.

 

[T-TownVol]

The fact that you claim those to be just words shows your narrow-mindedness, and justifies your use of the word 'fool'.

Your choice, as a gamble, is not safe. To begin with, there could be a god, but god could reward intellectual honesty and decency instead of puerile subservience. God could reward people who put forth an honest effort to reach truth rather than those who just blindly believe whatever they were told. Also, any number of the thousand of other gods in the world's history could exist, dooming you and your singular choice. Finally, there could be no god at all, and you could have spent your entire life dedicated to a falsehood, wasting your time, energy and love on an imaginary figure that lived only in your head. I think that is a loss.

Wow......feel better?

 

[turambar85]

Wow......feel better?

Just showing you that your choice isn't as 'safe' as you think it is. That's all.

 

[T-TownVol]

Just showing you that your choice isn't as 'safe' as you think it is. That's all.

OK, thanks.
God Bless!

 

[IPorange]

Romans 1:20 NIV
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Harsh? absolutely, but again i refer to the Bible b/c thats the only way I know to answer. That's why, as I've stated, we're commisioned to go to the ends of the earth. There's also a parable of the watchman and watch tower that goes something like : the watchman in the tower is to alert the king's court when the enemy is approaching, and if he "falls asleep" on his duty, the blood of those slain is on the watchman's hands. If we, as believers, KNOW there are remote places (and we do, believe me with all the money, time, lives devoted to mission here and abroad) where the Gospel hasn't been preached, then, according to the parable, the blood of those slain is on our hands. and i apply that to the guy next door, the guy in the next city, the guy in the next state as well. that's what Jesus meant when he said (Acts 1:8 NIV)
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem(your city), and in all Judea(your state) and Samaria(your country), and to the ends of the earth."


i will challenge you with this too, IP, if that burdens your heart then you'd be a helluva missionary.

This issue for me arose after a mission trip to Haiti, actually. Many people there think they are Christians, but are actually African traditionalists/Voodooists. They can't grasp the difference because Catholicism has become so intertwined that the words one uses to talk about Christianity now have double meanings. Your answer is the same one I have gotten in this thread before and the one I have always gotten, and as I have said before it doesn't really address the question to say "God is mysterious, he works in his own way." Especially when you admit it is a raw deal.

 

[BeecherVol]

The fact that you claim those to be just words shows your narrow-mindedness, and justifies your use of the word 'fool'.

Your choice, as a gamble, is not safe. To begin with, there could be a god, but god could reward intellectual honesty and decency instead of puerile subservience. God could reward people who put forth an honest effort to reach truth rather than those who just blindly believe whatever they were told. Also, any number of the thousand of other gods in the world's history could exist, dooming you and your singular choice. Finally, there could be no god at all, and you could have spent your entire life dedicated to a falsehood, wasting your time, energy and love on an imaginary figure that lived only in your head. I think that is a loss.

Your description of a "loss" or "wasted time", is your opinion. The same could be said about your stance.

My wife thinks that watching a 3 hr. football game, is a waste of time. She wonders why you can't just watch the last 5 mins., because the final score, is not gonna change, even if you watch the whole game. While she is correct about the outcome, I don't see it as a loss, or waste of time, that I watched it in its entirety. Thats her opinion, of what is important to her, and mine as well.

 

[IPorange]

Very interesting post, turambar.