I don't care if it offends you. Really, I don't. Perhaps if you're offended by it, you'll take it more seriously. I don't know. Different approaches work on different people. In the end, I'd rather you seriously consider the fact that worshiping a being that has the power to stop immense amounts of suffering and does nothing with it, is inherently bad. Half the problem with Christians is that they lead with their emotions instead of their brains. They don't know how to temper their emotions with reason and logic. They think with their gut and that gets them in trouble.
I would never follow someone that does not care if they offend someone or not. Especially if I thought it would make me mean. I temper my emotions just fine thank you. You really don't know me at all. If you did you would know that yes I once was Atheist, now I am not. I am not Christian, Apologetic, or any of the rest of that stuff, I am own my own, I call it Spiritual. I know there is a spirit that lives within me, I can feel it trapped inside walls of flesh. That is the part of me that God wants. The inside.
It's fine to believe that, but can you prove it? If I said I had faith in the ability of the unicorn in my garage to keep my tires from going flat, what would you think of me? I feel the same way about someone who says 'through my faith I believe there is a purpose for your revelation'. Your faith is absolutely useless. Just as you would say mine is with the unicorn in my garage.
Not a good comparison. Creation is my definition of how we came to be, our purpose for surviving this life. Unicorns don't offer any answers to our existence, if they do I certainly have not heard that one but I wouldn't bite unless the argument that unicorns created man and earth made some sense. I believe in intelligent Creation, not some freak explosion or evolving apes. So far after 100,000 years on the planet or so creation is still the most plausible to me.
Arguments that invoke the beliefs of the masses are fallacious and should not weigh in on the discussion. A long time ago, most people believed the world was flat, that demons caused disease, that lightning was divine anger, etc. The masses are often very, very wrong. You, personally, are probably not dumb. But your belief in the Christian God is dumb. It doesn't matter that you share that problem with lots and lots of people. You all could really be wrong. And I'm quite sure you are.
No, I doubt that. You were handed one side of a very 2 sided argument and the very core of that argument is what you've held to. I was handed one side (as you) and looked at the other side myself in an honest attempt at learning what the truth was. How much atheist literature have you read, Junebug? How much do you know about how the bible came to be? How much do you know about the authors? How much do you know about the historians during the time of Jesus? How many books have you read about the other gospels that didn't make it into the cannon?
I've read the bible. I've visited countless religious websites. I've read 4 different apologetics books and somewhere near 10 books on atheism. I've been on this website for several years now, listening to people like you present argument after horrible argument and there is only one possible conclusion. The Christian God isn't real. Can you say you've honestly given the other side a fair shot? I doubt you can.
You would be wrong. I was an atheist for 10 years thank you very much.
My path uses reason, yours uses faith. In every other area of your life, which of those 2, do you think, is more likely to lead to truth? Now explain to me why it's different with religion.
My path uses reason and faith.
I wasn't searching for the non-existence of God. I don't even know what the hell that means. I wanted to know whether God existed or didn't exist, and I listened to both sides intently, then made my conclusion.
That doesn't make any sense to me. You don't know what the non-existence of God means and your atheist
Sometimes being hateful just don't make sense.
You found God because you were looking for God. I found the truth because I wasn't looking to confirm what I'd been told. I was looking for truth.
I found God because I was searching for truth, the reason I am here etc.. Evolution offers no such answer, so therefor I revisited the idea of Creation by intelligence, by God, and through much study and soul searching I found Him and it wasn't in any church.
I live in the bible belt. Do you really think its comfortable to be an atheist here? If I were looking for comfort, I'd be a sheep like the rest of you. My comfort lies in knowing I gave an equal ear to both sides before making my decision.
No I know it isn't, I live in the bible belt too,NC, and it's just as "not easy" to be a lesbian here.
Because you don't really believe that. You don't. How do I know that? Simple. If God came down, right now, and fed 30,000 starving children and brought them all back to good health, would you think of that as a good thing or a bad thing? If you have a shred of decency, you'd think it was a good thing. You know you'd think it was good. You KNOW it. What you are trying to say, however, is that if God did that, HELPING the children would actually be doing something that would NOT be in the interest of the whole human race, and you'd be forced to condemn the action. You said God doing nothing is what's best for the human race, so that means God helping the human race would be awful. Do you really, really believe that? No, you don't.
Of course I would, but what happens when God goes back to His place of being God? I feel like it will get worse because the ones out there that are doing this will not have to bother with a conscience because they would know that God will save whomever they hurt.
Truth be told, helping out might not be in the best interest of humanity in every case, but childhood starvation? Good luck with that one.
God does help starving children, you just can't see it because of your disbelief.
If your son was starving to death, would you feed him, or would you let him die? God lets them die.
Do you think dying is a bad thing to God. Man fears death not God, God is the cure for death, those children aren't dead they are somewhere else much more glorious than here. Saved from this world of GREED. They are with God.
As far as your question I would feed my son, yes I would. If my son was being starved to death by another son I don't know what I would do. I would probably feed the hungry one, but I'm afraid of what I might do to the other one.
Bullshit. If God got your son of pills with the snap of his fingers, would you be angry with him for not allowing your son to struggle with it? What of those who continue to take the pills and DIE from them? That happens all the time! Is it really better for God to NOT step in and help those people that he knows are going to die?
God did help my son off drugs. He helps many people get off drugs. I don't recall ever saying I would be angry with God for helping, I am saying I see a bigger picture than you and I understand why He doesn't do more.
It's like you have this mantra running through your mind... God is good, God is good, God is good, anything that contradicts that is false, or just a mystery... STOP doing that. Use your head. It is ALRIGHT to admit that if God helped your son, it would be a good thing. It is ALRIGHT to admit that if God helped starving children, that would be a good thing. It is also, ALRIGHT to admit that because he doesn't, he's either not interested in helping, not powerful enough to do it, or better yet, that he's not actually there in the first place.
God is good and anything that contradicts that is not the truth so far as I am concerned. And yes you are right it's okay to believe what you want, so I'll keep on believing, thanks.
And what of those who die of starvation before they achieve the rightful age at which they can earn such a promise? What of the babies who die from AIDS every day?
There is no such thing as a rightful age to achieve such a promise of heaven, I've heard of the age of accountability, which means that you have to be old enough to understand God to be judged, children of any religion I have studied get a free pass right into the pearly gates. That makes perfect sense to me.
And can you prove that heaven exists? No? Then it's just a claim. One that needs to be analyzed for truth versus rhetoric. Heaven might not exist.
You know I can not prove this, no more than you can prove it does not. Do you believe in evolution? If so where is the proof of that. It is only a theory without tests and pictures, but you believe that. There have been lots and lots of people that have seen a glimpse by way of the near death experience. Not many have come back to say there is nothing there, I just didn't exist anywhere for those 2 minutes I was dead.
Answer the question... IF God wasn't real, would that explain why God doesn't help starving children? PLEASE answer that.
If God wasn't real there would be a lot more starvation in this world!
I can't help but wonder what goes through your mind when you say stuff like this. Would you really be all that upset with God if he came down and fed the children? It sounds like you would be upset by it. Is that the person you really are?
I'm sorry, but if God was real, and he came down and fed all the starving children, I'd be happy about it. You'd think it was bad for the world if God did that. Your religion has done that to you. It sounds pretty evil to me.
And yet, in the same breath, you say you want people to feed the hungry children instead, as if it would be a good thing. Why is it good if people do it but bad if God does it? Because we learn something? Guess what, Junebug. We haven't learned anything from it. Kids are still dying. They've been dying for centuries. If you are basing the entire process of 'earning the promise of heaven' on humanity's ability to feed the poor, then we're all going to hell. It seems like people, as a whole, aren't getting what you think they should get. But in the end, whether God helps or people help, the children aren't starving anymore, right? Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me that the deaths of millions of children every year is the wages we have to pay to... consistently fail at taking care of ourselves?
In truth, this whole thing is nothing more than you trying to deflect the focus away from God's ineptitude and capriciousness and onto humanity, but you should stop trying to do that and really look at what we're saying.
Good and evil are adjectives used to describe an individual's perceptions of actions, deeds, etc. Good as a 'thing' does not exist, and neither does 'evil'. But I can describe actions as good or evil.
It's not the wording I would use, but it's close enough. I would say the first part of your sentence is correct, but saying you have no responsibility over your thoughts and actions is debatable. And it gets into the discussion of free will, which... if I were you... I'd stay clear of.
People are not inherently good or evil. Their actions can be good or evil as described by other people's perceptions of those actions. Even the most horrible people in the world did some good things too. So calling them 'evil' to describe them as a whole is wrong.
Why do you think your disapproval of what you've said changes anything about the truth of it? I disapprove of the fact that eating ice cream makes me fat, but you don't see me eating it anyway in hopes that I'll get thin. The truth doesn't care what I think; nor does it care what you think.
I would be happy to see the children fed and if it costs me my life and the world as we know it, so be it.
I don't think I have disapproved of myself here.
