Disproving Christianity?

[ElanJo]

There's no point in discussing it with you because you've forfeited reason. You've created your own religion in your head, based on nothing at all, and mixed it in with an existing religion. You say that it is your view that God exists and yet you freely admit that this view is not based on anything. You're just believing something because you feel like it. You like the idea of something so therefore it is true. With respect, it is childish. I wish I could come up with a word that didn't seem so insulting.. but I'm afraid I can't :(

Thats ok, I dont mind. Each to their own and all.

Interested what you mean by this though.

I mean you have this idea of the afterlife, such as choosing where you go, that is not part of the Christian doctrine (from which you take most/all of the other beliefs, you've posted about on here, from)

 

[ElanJo]

I don't know what you expect christians to say to some of this, I'm just waiting for the anti-jew, muslim and buddha threads to appear, but they wont.

I expect them to either refute or accept the premises (steps 1-5) - which are based on Christian doctrine.

 

[JoeMercer'sWay]

I don't know what you expect christians to say to some of this, I'm just waiting for the anti-jew, muslim and buddha threads to appear, but they wont.

I expect them to either refute or accept the premises (steps 1-5) - which are based on Christian doctrine.

Can I say there are fundamentalist christians who believe the bible word for word and a LOT more liberal christians who take the spiritual meaning of it and don't necessarily believe the actual stories in it, more the meaning of them.

 

[ElanJo]

As demonstrated by your previous post in this thread, you didn't even understand the structure of the argument so you thinking that it was a loaded OP is baseless. I asked for refutations and only Damocles has attempted to but I can only presume that, since he didn't follow up on it, he was satisfied with my answer. My argument is genuine.

You and levets can continue insulting me but that won't refute the argument (which I'd be perfectly fine with having successfully refuted - it's not a massive deal, I just think that it is quite compelling).

Prove that he doesn't exist.

I think I can prove that the Christian God doesn't exist as described by Christians and/or that the Christian God is evil (which ammounts to the same thing) This is why I started the thread.

I can't prove that there isn't a God nor can I prove that a flying multicoloured space unicorn, that flies from planet to planet shitting out rocks as it goes, doesn't exist.

Please refute my OP argument. Unlike your question it is logically possible to do so.

 

[ElanJo]

I expect them to either refute or accept the premises (steps 1-5) - which are based on Christian doctrine.

Can I say there are fundamentalist christians who believe the bible word for word and a LOT more liberal christians who take the spiritual meaning of it and don't necessarily believe the actual stories in it, more the meaning of them.

Then refute my premises directly with that line of thinking. Thanks

 

[JoeMercer'sWay]

So the "what opinions do you have that people love to hate" thread got me thinking again about religion (yes, yes I know that a good portion of the threads I start are religion centric) and the whole debate as to whether a God can be disproved. So here's a little effort of mine to disprove the Christians one.
The Christian God is a dictator. However, it is possible to have a somewhat loving or benign dictatorship. A classroom is one, a parent - child relationship is another.
According to Christian doctrine God is an all loving dictator.

I beg to differ.

1. He creates us (limited as we are)
2. He wants us to a)acknowledge him and b) to accept and worship him
i) If you do a) and b) you will be rewarded.
ii) If you do not do a) and b) you will be sent to Hell (or in a state of Hell - either way, it's everlasting torment)
3. To be able to do b) you must first do a)
4. God hides himself from us and gives no reason whatsoever to believe this scripture( in this case the Bible) over another. ***
5. It's already established that the Christian God is a dictator
6. Thus the Christian God is fictitious or, at the very least, evil (ie. a bad dictator/tyrant)

*** I sense an objection here so i will preempt it. If he revealed himself to us in some way as to make it pretty obvious that he existed this would not impede on our Free Will. We'd still have choice whether to follow him or not.

Is this line of thinking justified or not? If not, why not?

First of all God is not a dictator, he is a creator.

1) He created the possibility for our existence. To me, he didn't sit there and handcraft us, he set off the Big Bang or something similar and everything that was created from it has formed the ways that the Universe has developed, and in turn, our development in a tiny part of this.

2) Seeing as he has lead to our existence, then you'd fully expect "him" to expect recognition. He wants our praise and thanks for what he has done, and The Bible has been written by people using it to their advantage. The fact we still use this out of date is something that I struggle to accept and in my opinion it only shows the very basis of his and Jesus existence and nothing more.
i & ii) I believe this whole Heaven & Hell thing is scaremongering by people who wanted to control the masses, create fear, and nothing more. I find the Old Testament very unrealistic and it's no surprise that the majority of the Church's teaching comes from the New Testament.

3) Irrelevant. I believe in the Afterlife, as if God can create this then there's no reason why he can't create other things, like an afterlife. However I believe only the truly evil people do not get to experience this, and I believe that whatever you believe, God accepts we are not perfect and accepts us all, as we are human and not him.

4) God has no need to come out and please little insignificant beings like us, there's an entire universe, with I believe a lot of other life out there, plus he sent us Jesus. And if you believe Genesis, this may well be the 7th day, where God "rests".

5) It's not established his is a Dictator, in fact, unless you specifically believe the entire Old Testament, then there isn't. And I think a lot of the Old Testament is unbelievable.

6) The other 5 points prove this isn't the case.

It's our free will, we choose whether to believe in him or not, if he appeared, you would all believe in him, hence taking away your free will.

 

[Ally.P]

Thats ok, I dont mind. Each to their own and all.

Interested what you mean by this though.

I mean you have this idea of the afterlife, such as choosing where you go, that is not part of the Christian doctrine (from which you take most/all of the other beliefs, you've posted about on here, from)

Well I go to a small dominational church called New Jerusalem Church, which is based not just on the Old and New Testaments but is a Swedenborgian church, using the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg explaining the ‘inner’ or ‘spiritual’ meaning of the Testaments. My beliefs in the afterlife stem from those Writings. Im not saying they are right, but personally its what I believe.


"Thus, the story of Creation tells of the development of the human soul, from the darkness and void at the beginning, signifying the state of ignorance, to the creation of man in the image of God, a process that Swedenborg calls ‘regeneration’, or being ‘born again’, not an instantaneous conversion experience as evangelical Christians sometimes describe it, but a lifelong process and one that very few achieve."

 

[ElanJo]

So the "what opinions do you have that people love to hate" thread got me thinking again about religion (yes, yes I know that a good portion of the threads I start are religion centric) and the whole debate as to whether a God can be disproved. So here's a little effort of mine to disprove the Christians one.
The Christian God is a dictator. However, it is possible to have a somewhat loving or benign dictatorship. A classroom is one, a parent - child relationship is another.
According to Christian doctrine God is an all loving dictator.

I beg to differ.

1. He creates us (limited as we are)
2. He wants us to a)acknowledge him and b) to accept and worship him
i) If you do a) and b) you will be rewarded.
ii) If you do not do a) and b) you will be sent to Hell (or in a state of Hell - either way, it's everlasting torment)
3. To be able to do b) you must first do a)
4. God hides himself from us and gives no reason whatsoever to believe this scripture( in this case the Bible) over another. ***
5. It's already established that the Christian God is a dictator
6. Thus the Christian God is fictitious or, at the very least, evil (ie. a bad dictator/tyrant)

*** I sense an objection here so i will preempt it. If he revealed himself to us in some way as to make it pretty obvious that he existed this would not impede on our Free Will. We'd still have choice whether to follow him or not.

Is this line of thinking justified or not? If not, why not?

First of all God is not a dictator, he is a creator.

1) He created the possibility for our existence. To me, he didn't sit there and handcraft us, he set off the Big Bang or something similar and everything that was created from it has formed the ways that the Universe has developed, and in turn, our development in a tiny part of this.


2) Seeing as he has lead to our existence, then you'd fully expect "him" to expect recognition. He wants our praise and thanks for what he has done, and The Bible has been written by people using it to their advantage. The fact we still use this out of date is something that I struggle to accept and in my opinion it only shows the very basis of his and Jesus existence and nothing more.



i & ii) I believe this whole Heaven & Hell thing is scaremongering by people who wanted to control the masses, create fear, and nothing more. I find the Old Testament very unrealistic and it's no surprise that the majority of the Church's teaching comes from the New Testament.




3) Irrelevant. I believe in the Afterlife, as if God can create this then there's no reason why he can't create other things, like an afterlife. However I believe only the truly evil people do not get to experience this, and I believe that whatever you believe, God accepts we are not perfect and accepts us all, as we are human and not him.



4) God has no need to come out and please little insignificant beings like us, there's an entire universe, with I believe a lot of other life out there, plus he sent us Jesus. And if you believe Genesis, this may well be the 7th day, where God "rests".




5) It's not established his is a Dictator, in fact, unless you specifically believe the entire Old Testament, then there isn't. And I think a lot of the Old Testament is unbelievable.


6) The other 5 points prove this isn't the case.



It's our free will, we choose whether to believe in him or not, if he appeared, you would all believe in him, hence taking away your free will.

"First of all God is not a dictator, he is a creator."

I don't see an either-or relationship there. You can be both.
Also, see 5 below.

1.
Well I don't necessarily mean he crafted us out of clay etc, but it works either way. Are you saying that he created the universe but would have been surprised as anyone to find that homosapiens had evolved on Earth? In other words, God is not omniscient?

And, on a side note, what does this say in your view about souls? Does everything have a soul? Does nothing have a soul? Did God put a soul in us when we evolved to a certain point?

Either way, he created us, directly or indirectly, with limited (compared to him) capabilities (eg. reliant on external stimuli to negotiate our existence)

2.
So you agree with the main premise of 2 (that he wants us to acknowledge that he exists and praise him for what he did.)

i and ii) Do you agree with i) (if you recognise God and praise him you will be rewarded) or is this praise and thanks completely irrelevant to whether you get the reward or the punishment?
EDIT: It seems that after reading your objection to 3 your answer to this is "yes"

3.
So you think it is irrelevant because the reward and punishment is based solely on whether you're evil or not, right?
Either way, you accept the premise that to praise something you first have to acknowledge that it exists?

4.
He sent himself/Jesus to a small area of the world 2000 years ago, and spent a couple of decades there which amounts to the tiniest fraction of a percentage of human existence and human lives lived. Furthermore there is nothing special about the Bible to suggest that this book is the one to believe over any other scripture from all the false religion and Gods. Is this not correct?

5.
I think you're being put off by the word "dictator" because it conjures up images of Hitler etc. You can be a loving dictator (eg.Parent - Child relationship) The point here is that he is in total control. He sets the rules in every conceivable way and in the end decides your future. You agree?

"It's our free will, we choose whether to believe in him or not, if he appeared, you would all believe in him, hence taking away your free will."

This is illogical. If he was to create us as robots that loved him and thus followed him then he'd take our Free Will away. Free Will is not touched upon in the slightest if he was to show us all that he existed and left us in no doubt which God he actually was. We'd still have the Free Will to follow him or not. According to the Bible his own Angels chose not to follow him and they obviously knew that he existed and which God he was. Free Will means the ability to choose free of coercion. It is not the free choice to believe whether something exists or not (not that choice is in any way relevant to believing something to be real or not)


I'd write about how I struggle to come to terms with how you justify your belief in Jesus/Yahweh when you distrust almost all of the Bible but I don't want to muddy the waters.... and I'm about ready to collapse on my keyboard.

 

[ElanJo]

I mean you have this idea of the afterlife, such as choosing where you go, that is not part of the Christian doctrine (from which you take most/all of the other beliefs, you've posted about on here, from)

Well I go to a small dominational church called New Jerusalem Church, which is based not just on the Old and New Testaments but is a Swedenborgian church, using the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg explaining the ‘inner’ or ‘spiritual’ meaning of the Testaments. My beliefs in the afterlife stem from those Writings. Im not saying they are right, but personally its what I believe.


"Thus, the story of Creation tells of the development of the human soul, from the darkness and void at the beginning, signifying the state of ignorance, to the creation of man in the image of God, a process that Swedenborg calls ‘regeneration’, or being ‘born again’, not an instantaneous conversion experience as evangelical Christians sometimes describe it, but a lifelong process and one that very few achieve."

Ok, I will have a look into this Swedenborg and see if it is relevant to my argument.

My beliefs in the afterlife stem from those Writings. Im not saying they are right, but personally its what I believe

.

You must think they are right otherwise you wouldn't believe them to be right. :/

 

[mackenzie]

Elanjo

How old are you and do you have any hobbies?

;-) xx