Why My Religion or Nonreligion?

[JoeyKnothead]

Why did you choose or accept your religious position over others?

[GentleDove]

You are running into a couple issues that frequently come up that I would like to point out.

First, God gave you reason, and people use this reason to understand things. Yet their understanding is so corrupt and horrible that we would call something blatantly and horrible evil, which is actually something good(why would he give us such useless reason?). Yet your reason and faculties are sufficient to rely on to determine that you follow the correct God, and that it really is God, and that you aren't insane(I don't mean that you actually are, just that if your own reason cannot be trusted at all, then you cannot judge that you aren't insane, because that takes reason).

I think you're attributing more to reason that it actually does. Conscience, will, mind, logic, purity, righteousness, motives, presuppositions, sanity, intellectual ability, moral faculty, and senses are all being subsumed under the heading "Reason." Reason--by which I mean logic and intellectual ability, and to a certain extent, the senses--is useful and kinda works, but it's corrupted by sin. That's all I'm saying.

second, your last paragraph boils down to God is just and fair becasue he is omnipotent and says so.

Kind of. I'm also saying that justice doesn't exist apart from God. Even the fact that we have a sense of justice comes from God. He's not only actually just, but the standard of justice.

See, what we, or anybody else thinks is blatantly unfair(to condemn one person to an eternity of torture(which, sorry, is evil) and give another eternity in paradise, by other than their own worth or merit), is fair becasue he made the rules that way.

God hates evil, and calling God, or His standard, "evil" doesn't fool Him one bit. Of course, people can reject God, but I would urge them not to. I would urge them not to think so highly of themselves and so lowly of God. I would urge them to "implore the mercy of [their] Judge" because there is no one higher than God to "umpire between [them]." Job had this controversy with God in the Bible.

So torturing someone for eternity becasue he grew up in a remote tribe in south America and never heard of you is just - becasue God decided that it is.

God doesn't send people to hell because they grew up in a remote tribe and never heard the gospel.

[FinalEnigma]

You are running into a couple issues that frequently come up that I would like to point out.

First, God gave you reason, and people use this reason to understand things. Yet their understanding is so corrupt and horrible that we would call something blatantly and horrible evil, which is actually something good(why would he give us such useless reason?). Yet your reason and faculties are sufficient to rely on to determine that you follow the correct God, and that it really is God, and that you aren't insane(I don't mean that you actually are, just that if your own reason cannot be trusted at all, then you cannot judge that you aren't insane, because that takes reason).

I think you're attributing more to reason that it actually does. Conscience, will, mind, logic, purity, righteousness, motives, presuppositions, sanity, intellectual ability, moral faculty, and senses are all being subsumed under the heading "Reason." Reason--by which I mean logic and intellectual ability, and to a certain extent, the senses--is useful and kinda works, but it's corrupted by sin. That's all I'm saying.

You can't know that - your reason is corrupt and untrustworthy.

If your reason is corrupted by sin(how?) then how can you trust it to judge anything?

second, your last paragraph boils down to God is just and fair becasue he is omnipotent and says so.

Kind of. I'm also saying that justice doesn't exist apart from God. Even the fact that we have a sense of justice comes from God. He's not only actually just, but the standard of justice.

if our sense of justice is from god then it is utterly senseless for our sense of justice to disagree with his, or for his to be some kind of strange justice that we can't comprehend.
And where do monkeys get their sense of justice and fairness? from God? You do realize that they have a sense of justice?

See, what we, or anybody else thinks is blatantly unfair(to condemn one person to an eternity of torture(which, sorry, is evil) and give another eternity in paradise, by other than their own worth or merit), is fair becasue he made the rules that way.

God hates evil, and calling God, or His standard, "evil" doesn't fool Him one bit. Of course, people can reject God, but I would urge them not to. I would urge them not to think so highly of themselves and so lowly of God. I would urge them to "implore the mercy of [their] Judge" because there is no one higher than God to "umpire between [them]." Job had this controversy with God in the Bible.

Actually I'm not saying even close to what you're hearing. I'm not rejecting God. Im not calling God evil. I'm calling this thing that you have created out of the bible and called God not real.

So torturing someone for eternity becasue he grew up in a remote tribe in south America and never heard of you is just - becasue God decided that it is.

God doesn't send people to hell because they grew up in a remote tribe and never heard the gospel.

Really? I thought the only way to god was through Jesus, and/or the only way to the kingdom of heaven was to confess that Jesus is your lord - at least in the NT. and what if these tribesmen worship other Gods, which they almost inevitably do?

[BwhoUR]

That about sums it up,

Religious people spend their whole lives worshipping, obeying and talking about god, because in return they want eternal life. There's nothing meek about that desire and it helps no one but yourself. What if, hypothetically, god said, "there is no afterlife, no heaven and no hell, but I made you and you must worship me. Would you spend your life worshipping him then? Seriously, think about that.

How does god use his obedient servants to solve problems and what problems have they solved? Again, please use evidence so that I can evaluate it clearly.

It is loving people to honor them not murder them: No for one, you must stone adulterers. THEY SHALL BE STONED WITH STONES, THEIR BLOOD SHALL BE UPON THEM leviticus 20:27 And what about witch burning, that was done in the name of god to thousands. That is the reality of people trying to define the bible, of good-hearted people trying to follow god's word. There was a chronicle of those who were consumed by fire in 1598 here is a small exerpt (from Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World):

The stewart of the senate named Gering; old Mrs. Kanzler; the tailor's fat wife; the woman cook of Mr. Mengerdorf; a stranger; a strange woman; Baunach, a senator, the fattest citizen in Wurtzburg; the old smith of the court; an old woman; a little girl, nine or ten years old; a younger girl; her little sister; the mother of the two aforementioned girls; Liebler's daughter; Goebel's child; the most beautiful girl in Wurtzburg; a student who knew many languages; two boys from the Minster, each twelve years old; Stepper's little daughter; the woman who kept the bridge gate; an old woman; the little son of the town council bailiff; the wife of Knertz; the butcher; the infant daughter of Dr. Schulz; a little girl...

It's murderous and sick, and you can't justify it or explain it away, that is the truth of the history of the bible, and these are people just like you, who think they know what's good for everyone else, who think they figured it out where other people haven't. You can read the bible, but by your own definition, you can't think you understand it. How can you ignore what the bible has produced and not just once, but again and again and again and again.

Bind their wounds when they've been hurt: How about taking them to the doctor? Many many people take this to mean no doctor. Hundreds of children have suffered needlessly and died painful deaths because of thinking like this. So you can be cruel to them but not say cruel things?

I may have time to tackle the rest, but hopefully you can understand why I think this way. You see, if god's definition's are skewed and his justice isn't the kind of justice that makes sense to a reasonable person, that doesn't speak to me of a benevolent, omniscient, omnipotent being, it speaks to me of a being with limitations, an incompetent god; not a god at all, a vividly mortal, vividly misguided, vividly flawed person or people. And that's the truth.

[McCulloch]

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[BwhoUR]

[quote="GentleDove"] God Himself chose to sacrifice Himself for our sins. I'm not sure what you mean by "sacrifice in reverse," but maybe (hopefully) I inadvertently answered it?

You didn't answer it so I'll give it another go:
Okay, so god sacrificed himself. But he's still around, right? Who did he sacrifice himself to? A sacrifice is the act of offering the life of a person, animal or object in propitiation of or homage to a deity. Who was the deity god sacrificed himself to? I know you say it was FOR us, but to WHOM was the sacrifice made? And what was the sacrifice? What did god give up if he's still here?

[Cathar1950]

God Himself chose to sacrifice Himself for our sins. I'm not sure what you mean by "sacrifice in reverse," but maybe (hopefully) I inadvertently answered it?

You didn't answer it so I'll give it another go:
Okay, so god sacrificed himself. But he's still around, right? Who did he sacrifice himself to? A sacrifice is the act of offering the life of a person, animal or object in propitiation of or homage to a deity. Who was the deity god sacrificed himself to? I know you say it was FOR us, but to WHOM was the sacrifice made? And what was the sacrifice? What did god give up if he's still here?

The use of the word “sacrifice� seems to play an emotional role attached to all kinds of ideas. If I were an apologist for Pauline Christianity I might defend the traditional ideas of sacrifice, ransom and such notions as non-Pauline and a later development as we might see in the Gospel of John where Jesus is being purposely depicted as the sacrificial lamb at Passover in opposition to the other gospels. The unknown author of John used an ancient metaphor used for the sun at dusk, The lamb that takes away the sins of the world�.

Part if not much of sacrifice was celebration and where the participants sacrificed and ate with the gods they became part of the life of the gods and they became part of your life. It was an at one-ment and union with the gods.
I think this is more in line with Paul and seems to make perfect sense in a mystery religion and even Jesus cults. Sacrifice here is more focused on celebration and union.
But that hardly seems what Evangelical Bible Believers and others seem to mean.
Sacrifice here is more ransom, price paid, magic blood (questionable as to what to who) and so on.

The history of child sacrifice is interesting and the motifs are all through both the Christian OT and NT. Yet they didn't seem to draw upon them until later where before Jesus seems to be more of a Maccabean Martyr. Later Jesus becomes some literal sacrifice to God or Satan.
I find this idea as repugnant as I do child sacrifice which believers think is somehow required by God just like those that sacrificed their children to Yahweh.

[McCulloch]

However, just for clarity, I am not urging anyone to "believe in God and have your best, most fulfilling life now." Even the fulfillment is on God's terms and not human terms. And, as I have stated, no one can "choose" for without Him changing his heart.

I guess I'll just have to wait to find out if God has picked me as the spiritual lottery winner. If God decides to choose me, I will have a change of heart and believe. If God does not decide to choose me, I am damned to hell. It sounds fair to me.

Yes, salvation is a Christian theological term for what I think humanists are trying to achieve by their own efforts, on their own terms, without God.

No. We don't believe in a kind of unchanging utopia. We simply want to make things better than they are, using what we have. Yes, we do things on our own terms. So does everyone else. God is simply a projection of the collective values of a group. You, of course, disagree. I realize that. You feel that God is objectively true, that God is somehow active, that God has made promises and has kept them. But from where I am sitting, it looks a lot like wishful thinking.

Of course, I think the other way around: Humanism doesn't deliver on its proponents' promises; but God does deliver on His promises.

What are the promises of Humanism? What are the promises of God? That's a whole nother debate.

That's hardly fair is it? God has granted you his grace to choose him yet God must have also withheld his grace from those who do not choose him.

It's not fair according to humans, but it is fair according to God.

Yes, I hear you. It does not make any sense to you either. Thanks.