Christianity - True or Not?

rockpie wrote:

heya guys. i've been away all weekend so i'm not quite sure where we are in the debate... could somebody please sum up what's happened or just give a title to the current area of discussion? thanks.

rockpie- I find your post very interesting, and telling. If you have been gone for some time, IMO, it is incumbent for YOU to read through the posts, and get an idea of where the discussion has gone while you were away.

It is no one else's responsibility to do the work that you need to do. Is THAT the way you run your life in general? Do you like things predigested, and spoon fed to you? Think about it!!!

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"There are two dangerous extremes. To exclude reason, and to admit reason only."

-Blaise Pascal

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rockpie wrote:

heya guys. i've been away all weekend so i'm not quite sure where we are in the debate... could somebody please sum up what's happened or just give a title to the current area of discussion? thanks.

Simple, real life has just lost another point to neo. Nothin' much besides that Laughing

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neo - well i'm glad your getting something from this.

phoenix - are you always that harsh? you could have just said ''y don't you read it?''

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Quote:

phoenix - are you always that harsh? you could have just said ''y don't you read it?''

rockpie- No, I am not usually that harsh, as the people on this site know from years of experience with dealing with me. I think that when I read your post, a "light bulb" lit over my head, and all of a sudden I believe that I understood where you were coming from.

I really think that you need to think through your own motivations for coming to the conclusions that you have, at so young an age. You appear to be a very bright person. It is a big, wide world out there, with many different ways of perceiving it. I think that you would benefit greatly by keeping an open mind, and exploring the various schools of thought, before you become so tightly enmeshed in a system that is not terribly intellectually creative.

For the record, in my middle twenties, I had become involved in a philosophy, and was about as adamant as you in "spreading the word". I learned very quickly that people are turned off by rigorous proselytizing, and I backed off. In the meantime, I learned not to assume the mantle of a school of thought lock, stock, and barrel, and to think for myself.

I think that I was seeing myself as a younger person in you, and it pissed me off. Maybe it's because I care!

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neologist wrote:

Welcome to the forum, rockpie. You will find much to benefit here. Many a2kers have considerable experience in logic and rhetoric.

For your first homework assignment, I suggest you Google the term 'pascal's wager'.

One of the first things you'll learn by doing such an assignment is the inherent flaw in this wager.

Pascal makes the baseless assumption that the Theory of Christianity's god is the one true god.

To completely follow Pascal's logic to it's conclusion, you'd have to believe that every religion is the true religion and believe in each one (which in many religions would be the same as believing in none). Otherwise you risk following the Theory of Christianity straight to Islamic hell.

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maporsche wrote:

neologist wrote:
Welcome to the forum, rockpie. You will find much to benefit here. Many a2kers have considerable experience in logic and rhetoric.

For your first homework assignment, I suggest you Google the term 'pascal's wager'.

One of the first things you'll learn by doing such an assignment is the inherent flaw in this wager.

Pascal makes the baseless assumption that the Theory of Christianity's god is the one true god.

To completely follow Pascal's logic to it's conclusion, you'd have to believe that every religion is the true religion and believe in each one (which in many religions would be the same as believing in none). Otherwise you risk following the Theory of Christianity straight to Islamic hell.

That is correct. Another possibility is to believe in the religion that describes the worst punishment. From what I've heard through the grapevine, there is some fierce competition among the gods to create the worst punishments.

I think the biggest flaw in the argument is that it assumes belief is what the god would want of its creation. One must ask, why do unbelievers not believe? The most obvious answer is that they have not been presented with the evidence that would justify such a belief. What if the lack of evidence is part of the god's design? How do you know this god isn't beta-testing our ability to reason? The Universe we exist in could be nothing more god's diagnostic software that is designed to test us. The believers in this case would be like calculaters that do not multiply properly. They could be the undesirables, the broken machinery that gets sent to the molten junk heap below. The unbelievers, on the other hand, would pass the diagnostics test by not jumping to conclusions. They could be the desirables, rewarded for functioning properly. When viewed from both perspectives, it is equally possible that this god would reward the believers and punish the unbelievers as it is that the god would reward the unbelievers and punish the believers.

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Yep, Pascals wager.....putting everything you've got on "red 14". How could you lose?

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ok Phoenix i'll take your word for it, and i do have an open mind, i've said before i always take into account what everybody has to say, but my belief is my belief and to me at this moment in time, it's what i live for. now if that changes in the future... only time will tell but until then i can't see how God cannot exist.

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Apoligies if this has already been said,but I often find people who argue about the existence of God assume that only the God described in the Bible can be 'God'.

I think what peopl call 'God' is actually the energy in the universe,the 'creator and preserver of all things seen sand unseen' , a force we need to keep in harmony with, hence the development of religions and the need to imagine God as a king and Judge.Such a concept seems obsolete to menow. But it does not mean that 'God' does not exist. 'God' is simply a way of imagining the overall drive and motion of life.

And it does not invalidate the Christian ethic, renewing your life, seeking fulfilment by replacing selfishness with selfless love.

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well, the only God in the Bible is God, just as in the Qu'ran and all other religious scripture only refer to the God they believe to exist, i think your right that there is an energy in the universe, and to me it's God, he created eveything, as i've said everything is too ordered and precise to have just been a cosmic accident.

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rockpie wrote:

ok Phoenix i'll take your word for it, and i do have an open mind, i've said before i always take into account what everybody has to say, but my belief is my belief and to me at this moment in time, it's what i live for. now if that changes in the future... only time will tell but until then i can't see how God cannot exist.

Ok, you can't see how God cannot exist. I'll give you that one. But can you see how it's possible that the Theory of Christianity is NOT the right path to that God?

There are 30+ religions that claim to know the true path to God. How do you know that the Theory of Christianity is the only true religion?

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maporsche wrote:

... How do you know that the Theory of Christianity is the only true religion?

That one's easy; its 'cause a favored translation of a particular version of one of numerous canonized assemblages of ancient scriptural writings says so.

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timberlandko wrote:

maporsche wrote:
... How do you know that the Theory of Christianity is the only true religion?

That one's easy; its 'cause a favored translation of a particular version of one of numerous canonized assemblages of ancient scriptural writings says so.

That makes sense............sort of!

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timberlandko wrote:

maporsche wrote:
... How do you know that the Theory of Christianity is the only true religion?

That one's easy; its 'cause a favored translation of a particular version of one of numerous canonized assemblages of ancient scriptural writings says so.

Oh, how obvious..... :wink:

I spent many years believing exactly what you posted Timberlandko (of course I never thought of it in those terms), before I woke up to the rest of the world and saw my delusions for what they really were. I'm still on the fence about God (God in the most general, non-specific, non-religious of terms) and it's existence. I'm sure that I will never know the answer to that question, and I doubt that I'm supposed or expected to. But I do have questions about the beginning of spacetime and the of course many of the same questions that are still unanswered by modern science.

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rockpie wrote:

i can't see how God cannot exist.

Why the hell not?

More importantly, how can you see that a particular god does exist?

The fact that you don't understand something doesn't prove it false, it merely proves your lack of understanding.

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Eorl wrote:

rockpie wrote:
i can't see how God cannot exist.

Why the hell not?

More importantly, how can you see that a particular god does exist?

The fact that you don't understand something doesn't prove it false, it merely proves your lack of understanding.

Like God?

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Bartikus wrote:

Eorl wrote:
rockpie wrote:
i can't see how God cannot exist.

Why the hell not?

More importantly, how can you see that a particular god does exist?

The fact that you don't understand something doesn't prove it false, it merely proves your lack of understanding.

Like God?

Since you seem to be interested in this topic.

Assuming you're a follower of the Theory of Christianity, how did you come to choose that religion over the dozens of equally valid religions?

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maporsche wrote:

Bartikus wrote:
Eorl wrote:
rockpie wrote:
i can't see how God cannot exist.

Why the hell not?

More importantly, how can you see that a particular god does exist?

The fact that you don't understand something doesn't prove it false, it merely proves your lack of understanding.

Like God?

Since you seem to be interested in this topic.

Assuming you're a follower of the Theory of Christianity, how did you come to choose that religion over the dozens of equally valid religions?

I follow no such theory. What are the dozens of equally valid religions you speak of and why are they equally valid?

What criteria have you used to establish the measure of a particular religion's validity?

Do you even know enough about dozens of other religions to determine their equal validity or do you simply believe that it is so?(faith)

What is the reason for such a belief?

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i chose Christianity because it's the only faith that can show an empty tomb. because Jesus is alive today and because it's the most relevant to everything i live for. how do i know that God exists? look around you, everything is too precise, i mean for life to be sustained on earth, gravity has to be as precise as me standing as the bottom of the ocean and shooting a bullet to the farthest stretches of the universe and hitting a 5 pence coin smack-bang in the middle. now if that was a result of some accident or just caused by chance, it is so improbable that the existence of a God is more likely to be true, in my opinion.

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Christianity - True or Not?

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