Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James Cox on April 25, 2014 at 4:22pm

Don't know if I really ever did 'believe', but I did 'fake it' for a long time.

Points of divergence:

a) Classical 'proofs' for the existence of 'god'. All logical 'false'.

b) Theists as examples of 'good people'. On balance they are just people, with nuttiness about like anyone else.

c) 'Nature'. Much more wonderful, mysterious, and interesting than any 'book' of theology.

d) I only hear 'people' talking about 'god', I have never seen/heard 'god' say anything. 'God' is a human cultural concept, not an actual being in the world with us.

e) While I think the concept of the 'sacred' is worth adding to our list of concerns, 'god' does not need to part of it. The 'sacred' could be part of our 'relationship' with the world and each other, so we do not lose sight of what is important.  

 

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Permalink Reply by Toby Briggs on April 25, 2014 at 6:33pm

i defo did believe 100%! some really good points there! amazing how different everyone is! hope more people comment so i can the range of points and views from around the globe!

Take care James.

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Permalink Reply by Toby Briggs on April 26, 2014 at 5:58am

Thanks for your response. I can relate to so much that! Soon I as you look into it your self you soon realise how ridiculous it all is

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Permalink Reply by Joshua D. on May 29, 2014 at 10:23pm

I'm not proselytizing per se, I enjoy discussion. I just wanted to respond to your points.

"Create a world full of sickness and disease and pain. my old christian response was because we separated from god BUT god would have known we would reject him thus god knowingly created all that is bad in this world. An all powerful and all loving god would not do this.
~It says god created each and everyone of us and has plans for our lives. Now if we reject god we go to hell for eternity. So why would god create you knowing that your going to reject him. He is essentially making you just to go to hell.. would a loving god do this?"

The answer I seem to gather from the bible is comparison. In romans 9 it describes vessels made for destruction in order to make known the the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy. Hot cold light dark you can't know one without the other. In terms of the loving god question god is love but also hate. For example I love children therefore I hate pedophiles. God loves those he has chosen to be his own and hates those who's hearts he hardens. God handles the natural response to this idea when he says ( same chapter) has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump vessels for honorable use and vessels for dishonorable use.

"if gods word never changes why is he so different from the Old and new testament it just makes no sense unless god is bi polar or something!?"

I don't believe He is any different. Can you cite examples?

My mind is going to the two covenants and that may be where your disconnect lies.
There is the law of sin (death) and the law of grace (life). The mosaic covenant was a picture of the law of sin an death and the abrahamic covenant (faith) is a picture of the law of grace. Grace fulfilled the law of sin. Gods laws still stand but grace frees us from the punishment.

"why does god order murders for working on the sabbath (exodus. 35:2), kill your teenagers if they are disobedient (Deuteronomy21:18-21). Girls who are not virgins when they marry(Deuteronomy 22:12-21) endorse slavery and the beating of them(Exodus 21:20-21) yet in the new testament jesus is the total opposite e.g stopping the stoning of the lady."

See above. Under the new covenant the punishment for those sins has already been given to Christ on the cross.

Twice in the bible God shows himself. e.g to thomas and peter. why no one since? why should they get the evidence they wanted to save them but god chooses no one else to since then!?

It sure would make it easier to believe. I don't have a good answer I guess but Jesus said blessed are those that believe without seeing. He does seem to have a heart for skeptics, see doubting Thomas, which comforts my skeptical heart. There is a verse in Matthew I believe where it talks about Jesus going into a town that didn't believe. It says he could do no miracles while he was there. Kind a tough verse to compute but I think that Jesus understood that if he did do something it would have done more harm than good. Paul needed to be blinded, peter needed to see a whole mess of fish get caught. Different strokes for different folks.
Why are amputees never healed!?
There is an interesting story of a blind man that encountered Jesus. The people asked Jesus what sin he had done to be blind or what sin his parents had done. Jesus replied that sin did not cause it but that the man was made blind so the the glory of God might be shown in him. I don't know why except for the answer I gave here and the answer to your first set of questions.

I don't have all the answers but there are answers out there to questions like these.

What's interesting is the statement you made "if there was a god, I wouldn't want to follow him"

That is the stance the bible says you will have in regards to God. I would argue that even if you were there with Jesus when he rose from the dead you would still not believe because you are your own God and there is no more room for deities within you. At least that's the idea the bible presents. If you are his though no amount of evidence would convert you. The bible says in order to understand these things God must grant you wisdom. Not that you are incapable in your own self but God blinds you from the truth. Like in Luke when Jesus hid himself while walking with two believers on the road to emmaus. They did not know who he was until he revealed himself to them.

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Permalink Reply by Toby Briggs on June 1, 2014 at 4:27pm

Hi Thanks for your reply. I don't no if you read my testimony but I use to be a hard core christian and give the very responses you have given me.

For your first point... Where this argument falls to me... Why would god need to have people he made out of love suffer ect so that we could 'understand bad/good'. Surely an all powerful god could have created a world with out this... because god is all powerful and has no boundaries. Because yes i wouldnt no what hot was if i didnt have cold to compare it to. But thats only because god created the world and our understanding of it like that. An all powerful god could create a world where it would not work like that but we would simply know. I just dont think an all loving god and all the suffering in this world can co exist. Your essentially saying God created some people to go to Hell so others could go to heaven... thats Crazy. 

Secondly... Well in the old testament god would have you stoned for being a disobedient child yes in the new testament jesus stops a woman getting stoned for being adulterous. That is two entirely different responses. Now even if your two covenants theory were true... I dont see why god would wait so long to deliver the second... All those people that were killed because god decided he didnt want to for thousands of years. Again this doesnt sound like a loving or all powerful god!?

Thirdly... your point of the blind man would be great if everyone christian who had something like that was healed through the glory of god. This is another thing that i couldnt understand. People think god answers there prays for things like job promotion (like my dad recently) but then still allows all the starving and children born with horrendous things to keep on suffering.

And I guess lastly to your point about my rejection of god ect... As i deconverted i dont see it as fully relevant as i use to believe in the 'truth' so its not the fact i dont have the capacity or god is hiding. I just know that there is no god hiding.  

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Permalink Reply by Diane on June 2, 2014 at 7:13am

So why, then, has God not granted us wisdom to understand whatever it is we need to understand in order to believe in Him without evidence?  That makes no sense.  It is because we need to ask for the wisdom specifically, in addition to willingness to believe?  Good grief!  What a game your God plays!  Being a God, I guess He can play whatever game He wants. It's good to be a God, I imagine.

I agree with you that we are our own Gods, but I think we are interpreting that differently.  I am one small being in an infinitely huge cosmos - I am actually in control of very little of my tiny part of existence.  In my sphere of influence, though, my thoughts and actions matter. I have to do my part to determine my path through life, and my response to it.  If I want to foster my own belief in a god, I can.  I think this is totally separate from whether or not a god exists.  "God" is a psychological construct.

I have met Christians who have tried to get me to build on these thoughts to learn more about Christianity, so that, in their way of thinking about it, I will see the Light.  However, that is as far as I am willing to go towards that line of mind-screwing myself, or letting others do it.  

I will, however, remain open to whatever actual evidence I see about existence.  I read your Bible, and I saw no evidence.  Zip, Nada.  Granted, my mind was not primed to see the evidence, but I was as open-minded as I would allow myself to be.  As far as I'm concerned, the Bible is Christianity's second most unconvincing aspect of the religion:  Christians are the first.

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Permalink Reply by James Brooks on May 30, 2014 at 8:42am

I was a devout Catholic as a child. The church paid for me to attend a private Catholic school, and then I went to a Catholic University. I stopped believing because my education included a heavy dose of Bible study. The more I studied, the more questions I had. When I would ask these questions in school, they would be brushed off by my teachers or I would be punished for asking them.

For example, I heard someone ask once if God could create a rock so heavy heavy that even he couldn't lift it. I don't remember where I first heard it. All I remember is that thinking about that question kept me up all night. The next day, I asked the question to my first period teacher. His reply was "God can do anything". We went round and round with this question for about ten minutes until he got frustrated with me and sent me to the administrative office for disrupting class. The headmaster gave me a week of detention for being "unruly" This was the beginning of my doubtfulness.

One of my biggest interests as a child was cosmology. It still is a huge interest. I am by no means an expert, but I am fairly well read on the subject. Beginning when I was a young child I devoured any book about cosmology I could get my hands on. The more I learned about how the universe works, the less I saw room for any gods.

During my late teens I considered myself a deist. My idea was that if there was some being powerful enough to create this vast and wonderful universe I had been reading about, He wouldn't fit in any book. I wouldn't say I became a full blown atheist until my early 20's (late 90's early 00's). It was then that I started reading books on atheism by people like Christopher Hitchens.

It was extremely hard for me to admit to myself that I was an atheist. I live in a small town in southwestern PA, which is about as close as one can come to the bible belt north of The Mason-Dixon Line. I resisted my atheism for about 3 or 4 years. It eventually came to a point where I just couldn't twist logic any further.  I had no choice but to stop believing.

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Permalink Reply by Dustin on June 1, 2014 at 8:58pm

" The next day, I asked the question to my first period teacher. His reply was "God can do anything". We went round and round with this question for about ten minutes until he got frustrated with me and sent me to the administrative office for disrupting class. The headmaster gave me a week of detention for being "unruly" This was the beginning of my doubtfulness."

LOL. I don't know why but I thought this story was funny as hell.  I could just imagine a little kid asking questions over and over to their teacher and then their teacher, without being able to give a satisfying answer, uses the "You're disrupting my class" card.  

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Permalink Reply by James Brooks on June 2, 2014 at 7:24am

I'll never forget that day. I was in seventh grade so I was about twelve. I asked my teacher, "Can God create a rock so heavy that even he can't lift it?" his reply was "God can do anything."

Then I said, "So he can create a rock so big that he can't lift it." Father Maxwell replied again, God can do anything."

My reply was, "So he should be able to lift any rock he creates." Again his reply was "God can do anything.

After going round and round for about ten minutes, I said, "Either you don't know the answer, or you're refusing to answer. That was when I was sent to the administrative office.

The funny thin was that my parents thought the story was funny too. They weren't even upset about the detention. If anything, they were kind of proud.

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Permalink Reply by Toby Briggs on June 2, 2014 at 5:43pm

That is awsome! what a great simple question!

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Permalink Reply by James Cox on June 3, 2014 at 8:53pm

For me it seemed, early on, that they did not really like people that read 'outside' the mandated reading list, or feeling put upon needing to do the 'fill in the blanks' take home 'study'.

I think the last straw might have been being sent home for saying 'bull-shit', loud enough for someone to hear, or getting up to receive communion when I was 5, and being lifted up by my arm pits, by two nuns, then taken to the back of the room to sit between four of them! That same day another 'student' found a very big and wonderful bull snake in the yard and all the guys got to look at it. I thought it was the best part of that day!

I started to wonder about the logic of the teachings rather early on. I remember asking, 'so can god make four equal five?' I think I was meet with dump stares, I think. for that one.

At my sister's funeral(she died at 6 years old), I remember asking why we were celebrating her death, and why I was asked to be a 'good little soldier'. I guess 'stuffing it' is a major part of the ideology. Over time this has become a major issue with me, it appears that 'the self lie' or 'cognitive denial', can be an ugly way to live and die.  

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Permalink Reply by James Brooks on June 5, 2014 at 7:23am

"Can God make four equal five?"  I like that even more than my question about the rock. I can't wait to try that one out!

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