Disproving Christianity?

[ElanJo]

Elanjo

How old are you and do you have any hobbies?

;-) xx

LOL, I'm 29 and i have quite a few hobbies!
One of which is philosophy (which includes looking at religion), granted. But I do have more normal hobbies aswell. For example, I write/record music... I'd let you listen to some of it had not you not just been a woman!! ;) :P

 

[Citizen of Ottawa]

I do not follow any religion. What you do with your life is just that. It's what you do with your life. It wont help you out int he end, as when the end comes you are simply gone. All thought and consciousness are gone, and your body will just disintegrate and go away.

As far as God goes. I think there is a God, and we have all seen God. God is whatever you want it to be. Whatever brings you happiness is your God. I love music. It helps me get through anything and everything. It can make me rowdy and it can make calm, it can make me happy and it can make me sad. Music is my God because it's what I turn to whenever I need a lift. Your God could be a rock if that rock brings you nothing but pure happiness. Hell! You could very well be someone else's God!!

 

[tonea2003]

i find blind faith astonishing and it only applies to religion. if i was to say something crazy would you blindly have faith and believe me?

I think 99% of my support of City has been blind faith. Little to no rational basis for belief. Doesn't mean it isn't true.

yes you might have faith in city but it isn't blind, it is proven to be a existing entity as you well know.
you need to do better than that

 

[tonea2003]

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.

none of my posts are anti-anything as if some kind of attack is going on, if believers of any faith make a claim that i happen to find unbelieveable, i will ask that person to prove that to me.
don't see anything wrong with that
not having much success with the replies!!

 

[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.

none of my posts are anti-anything as if some kind of attack is going on, if believers of any faith make a claim that i happen to find unbelieveable, i will ask that person to prove that to me.
don't see anything wrong with that
not having much success with the replies!!

Well go and put a muslim thread up asking why they believe in the dictator allah, and why some of their fellow so-called muslims feel the need to blow themselves up around others.

 

[tonea2003]

none of my posts are anti-anything as if some kind of attack is going on, if believers of any faith make a claim that i happen to find unbelieveable, i will ask that person to prove that to me.
don't see anything wrong with that
not having much success with the replies!!

Well go and put a muslim thread up asking why they believe in the dictator allah, and why some of their fellow so-called muslims feel the need to blow themselves up around others.

as i have said earlier in the thread my question is open to all faiths
allah/god/buddah/zeus/odin/ its all one and the same, they all believe in a higher being with no proof
unless you can provide it to me that is

by the way i don't have to disprove because i ain't making the claim it is you saying it does

maybe elanjo should have opened up to all and not just christianity

 

[JoeMercer'sWay]

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.

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

I'm not saying it's an either/or relationship, I'm just saying he is not a dictator.

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)

I'm not saying that. He knows life exists, he knows we exist or he wouldn't have sent Jesus. And I'm not sure about the soul thing, to me it doesn't make sense why we'd be so highly valued over any other species in the Universe when we are as you say so limited. Again to me this stems from problems with The Bible, it causes conflicts in belief.

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?

From my perspective God is all-loving and all-caring, so he will forgive us, unless your Hitler. If you believe something exists, you can praise it, though that sounds odd. Like I said I don't believe specifically in Heaven or Hell, I believe in solely an afterlife, and that the descriptions of Hell were there purely to put the fear into the people in the Middle Ages, like I said, I believe there are quite a few problems with The Bible, this being one of them

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?

Yes but remember how tiny we are compared to the Universe. The bible I believe in it's fundamental state is true and that God exists and Jesus is the Son of God, I believe some of the stories are correct, and I believe some of the stories are just created to explain the true meaning of the message of what God or Jesus wants us to know.

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?

No. He created the universe, but everything living has free will. He won't restrict nature, he set the 10 commandments, but they are now basic human laws the majority of them, so really he was just helping our development. He doesn't decide our future on this Earth, but he does decide whether or not to take us into the afterlife, how you act and behave in life dictates whether or not you get that opportunity in my opinion. He is not in total control otherwise we wouldn't have Free Will, do you not understand that?

"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.[/quote]

Yes it is touched upon, because we are limited and if you saw him you would believe in him, and if you believed in him you would obey him, hence your free will is gone. We are not angels, so you can't use the comparison.

 

[Ducado]

You can't logically dispute a beliefs system. But you can dispute the idea of a religious deity as common sense is pretty clear that there is no after life.

Although the demise of Religion in this country has been part of it's downfall IMO. The fear that religion creates causes fear in society, and of course back then there was no science to disprove it.

This is where I agree with what the Vatican did about using fear to control the masses, because lets be honest, with them in charge people were less rowdy weren't they.

Plus you can't use the Bible as proof of God's existence. It's like using Lord of the Rings to prove Orcs or The Balrog exists.

There you go again with your common sense argument, whose common sense are we talking about here, you seem to have dumped one dogma in favour of another dogma. Does your new dogma not use fear as a means of control take the governments own chief medical officer and his doom laden Swine Flu predictions (to date 26 people have died a little short of the 200,000 he predicted).

All that I am seeing is one dogma been replaced with another dogma and the supporters are just the same as they have always been, the Science world is full of dammed data, that will never see the light of day because it goes against the grain of current scientific thinking, people have had there lives ruined because of it.

Rather than rule anything in or out, perhaps you should take the approach of Charles Fort,

 

[mackenzie]

Elanjo

How old are you and do you have any hobbies?

;-) xx

LOL, I'm 29 and i have quite a few hobbies!
One of which is philosophy (which includes looking at religion), granted. But I do have more normal hobbies aswell. For example, I write/record music... I'd let you listen to some of it had not you not just been a woman!! ;) :P

;-)
Seriously though, it wasn't asked unkindly.

It's just that many years ago the cousin of a friend of mine committed suicide. He had been reading about religious matters in a very intense way for months, trying to see both sides of the debate, until eventually his rather fragile mind was tipped over the edge. He was only 19 though but I guess your own mind is more reasoned and developed.

Sorry if my remark came across as glib, it wasn't meant to.

 

[bluemoonchick]

Firstly, apologies for long post – you don’t have to read it!

I shouldn't really admit to being Catholic because ElanJo is going to tear me to pieces, but I have an open mind and I admit there are lots of holes in my religion, questions that need answering. I also find it fascinating that so many anti-religious people spend so much time trying to prove God doesn’t exist. Are they also proving Aliens don't exist or is it just God they pick on?

I grew up Catholic which can only be described as mild brainwashing. Not quite the brainwashing that would have led me to strap a bomb to my chest and blow up a train because I’d been taught "God wanted me to". I have my own mind and will interpret my Catholics teachings in my own way. I spent my childhood believing in one thing, but then when i studied religion at A’ Level i learnt so much more about the Catholic faith (some of which i didn't want to believe, some of it contradicted everything I’d already been taught) so this started a process of "questioning" for me. I stopped going to Church because i believed that a true God would know that in your heart you believed in him, without having to prove it? Surely, if someone prays God can hear it just as well if you are in your bedroom?

Then at 17 my Granddad died and I hated God. Why would God do that? Take such a wonderful person out of my life? It was during the grieving of this that a friend of my mum’s suggested she visit a Spiritualist. I went along as moral support but was quite stubborn to the poor woman. Whilst still in my “hating god” phase I was determined nothing she could say would prove a) God was real, b) there was an afterlife or c) she could speak to the dead. I was wrong. The woman, with some amazing words, proved to me without a shadow of a doubt that it was my granddad sending me messages.

I now consider myself to be a spiritual person rather than a religious person. I have been to a Spiritualist several times now and I do believe there is an afterlife.

I believe the information within the Bible is sketchy at best. There are some good messages within the Bible but there are more questions than answers. The main problem is how those messages have been interpreted over the years. Also, as a woman I find it very hard to believe in such anti-feminine views. Did God really say only men could be priests? What kind of God is that? I thought God was all loving – and yet if you read the Bible, women are not important.

What really annoys me though is the Catholic Church’s interpretation of the Bible. I used to joke that being Catholic was fun because there are so many sins it gives you such variety to rebel against. But its so true its not funny. The Catholic Church sees Abortion as a sin. So it’s better to give life to a child that isn’t wanted, that won’t be cared for? They say contraception is a sin? So Catholic families end up with 15 kids that they can’t afford to feed and they all grow up in poverty with no prospects for the future. What kind of life is this Catholic Church trying to promote? Are the teachings the Catholic Church are portraying, really the messages God wanted to tell us? I think not.

I think the problem with religion is that you get some people who believe what they are taught and take it literally. They do not interpret the hidden messages of the teachings. These radicals that blow up planes in the name of Allah make me sick – get your own mind, you weaklings, and question what you are taught!

However, to all those who want proof that God does exist, to quote a famous phrase “you can’t handle the truth”. People today only believe want they want to believe. If God suddenly appeared to you and said hello you’d think you were dreaming, you’d had too much to drink, or you were going crazy. Anything out of the ordinary is rejected.

There will be people who question my belief in the Spiritualist; they’ll tell me she could have said anything and I chose to make it mean something to me. How can people expect to get proof God exists if they question everything and don’t want to believe? We joke about things like ghosts but what if ghosts are signs from God that there is an afterlife? If people talk about things like ghosts, aliens etc they are laughed at and called crazy. But what if they’re not crazy? What if they are actually seeing things, hearing things that the rest of us can’t? Should we dismiss it and laugh at it? Or should we start to be more open-minded and consider that perhaps these things are real?

I believe people need something to believe in, whether it’s God, Science, Music, our very own City - it doesn’t matter what works for you as long as you have something to get you through life. Otherwise the thought of being born, then dying and life having no meaning, seems very empty and pointless.

I also find the Science versus Religion debate very interesting. For some reason people argue it has to be one or the other. What if God created Science to give us the answers we seek? What if, in time, our science proves the Big Bang was created by God? What if Science does eventually prove God exists?

Now that would cause a stir…

(if you got this far, thanks for reading)

ElanJo – go easy on me ;-)