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 Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:40pm On Nov 07, 2019 |
WHAT ARE YOU? You are molecules. Some of them stay with you for life but most do not. They spend a few minutes, hours, years or decades as part of you and then move on to flow in a river, float in a cloud or take a turn in another living thing--maybe a microbe, an ant or your spouse. Some molecules are passengers, just along for the ride and some really are you--they help you stand or breath or think. But the passengers are useful too--some even sacrifice themselves for you. They enter you as one molecule, your body tears them apart and they leave you as a different molecule, or as several. Our naked eyes cannot see molecules. We can't see small enough or fast enough. Instead, we see illusions formed by trillions and trillions of them. The illusions look robust but they are not. Reality is a bubbling, boiling brew of tiny, moving particles spaced far apart in a great expanse of nothing. Nature paints the most minimalist caricatures of things and we turn them into solid rocks, tables, people and everything else. We are nature perceiving itself. Reality. It takes your breath away; extraordinary, moving and inspiring. When we have all this, who needs Genesis? 1 Like |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 8:19pm On Oct 28, 2019 |
Tosin Adeoti wrote: The Nigerian god is fiendish. How many times have you heard his worshipers say, "My neighbors may live in want, what does it matter? The important thing is that I'm cool and my family is well-provisioned through his grace." You know, something about thousands falling at your side and the plague not nearing your kith and kin. . The Nigerian god doesn't care how much fuel is sold, it only matters to him that his worshipers earn well and are able to afford it. . The nation might be going to 'hell' but as long as they are 'favored' by the Nigerian god, the worshipers could care less. . The most important thing to the Nigerian god is money and the more you give to him through his peddlers (givers in foreign currencies are personal favorites), the more he MUST bless you. . The god that rejoices when thieves drop seeds on the altar; that does not punish disobedience except it concerns tithes and offerings. He does not reckon any sin against you except the sin of disobeying his anointed peddlers. . The Nigerian god is the greatest fraud this country has ever known. . The Nigerian god...corruption personified! 3 Likes 3 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 9:54am On Oct 28, 2019 |
TALES FROM THE CREATOR We should be grateful that the creator of the universe took the time to tell us about his creation--how he did it and what he made. But I've been reading the Bible and the Qur'an and he seems to have missed quite a few important things that he made. For example, he didn't mention: Black holes Dark energy Dark Matter Galaxies Pulsars Quasars Solar systems Supernovae The cosmic microwave background White dwarf stars He didn't even mention gravity! The really weird thing is he mentioned several things he didn't make, like a firmament and windows to let the rain in. I wonder why he ONLY described things the people he spoke to already knew about (or thought they knew about but didn't)? It's almost as if ignorant people made the whole thing up. Surely not! 3 Likes 1 Share |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:09pm On Oct 27, 2019 |
Jekwu Ozoemene wrote: On his page earlier today, my bro Osasu Arasomwan asked which should come first in the arena of marriage, Love by the husband or submission by the wife? My response to him was as follows. "Love is a dual carriageway so to talk about love from the husband without corresponding love from the wife implies that there could be unrequited love at play. That would be disastrous in the context of marriage. Submission implies that the husband (man) is superior to the wife (female). In this context, submission is better suited when dealing with your domestic pet, slave (in the era of slave trade) or sexual partner if you are into role play or BDSM (but I know you are a man of God so that cannot be the case). In my opinion, mutual respect trumps all, without which the marriage is living on borrowed time." To this, someone on the thread noted that unless I am rejecting the bible, submission by a wife to her husband has already been defined therein. My response to that was as follows. "Ikponmwosa Oghogho submission as preached in Ephesians 5:21-25 and Colossians 3:18-24 turns wives into pets, slaves, punching bags and sex objects. Is it not ironic that Colossians 3:22 was what the colonialists used to justify selling our ancestors into slavery and we are using it to justify submission by our wives? 3.22 "slaves, obey your early masters in everything, and do it, not only when their eye is on you to curry favour, but with sincerity of heart and reverence of the Lord". Haven't you since rejected this part of the bible or are you still a slave? And of course, if we must obey all the admonishments for women and submission in the bible then we should not cherry-pick. Why not 1 Corinthians 14:34 so that your wife is not allowed to speak in Church? Why not Titus 2:5 and only marry a stay at home housewife?" In conclusion, I am not one to advocate for people to reject their Holy Books, be it the Bible or the Koran, both of which I have read. I however believe we should keep in mind that Biblical patriarchy is a reflection of the period in which the Christian faith evolved. In fact, all the Abrahamic faiths are patriarchal, some much more than others. Without a doubt, biblical patriarchy views demean women and view them as property and imply that women cannot be trusted as decision makers. This is not unique to the Bible or the Christian faith. Study the world's history, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, women in the ancient world were considered property -- valuable property, but property nonetheless. So if we agree that our religious books are a people/cultures codified morality, and that morality is a snapshot of the way a people have chosen to live at a point in their history, then we will be perpetually stuck in the dark ages if we do not constantly interrogate some of these moralities we inherited from ancient times. For crying out loud, this was from an era when an unmarried woman could be compelled to marry her rapist, as long as the rapist could pay the standard bride price and the woman's father was comfortable with the marriage (Deuteronomy 22:28-29; Exodus 22:16-17). Women who argue in favour of "submission" should study the history of the church and how it pushed against the female vote in the US. These same Biblical texts were used to accuse suffragists of being immoral, and it was even said that Eve's subservience to Adam in Genesis was divinely ordained, thus it was a man's responsibility to vote on behalf of the family. Any woman who argues for this Biblical patriarchy submission should have all her hard fought rights clawed back; She should be stripped of the right to vote, sold into slavery, be treated as a man's property or a commodity that can be traded, not be allowed to speak in Church, not allowed to work, and can only find salvation by bearing a child for her husband. 3 Likes 1 Share |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 4:16pm On Oct 25, 2019 |
ATHEISM IN THREE SENTENCES 1. I don't believe in fairies because there is no evidence they exist. 2. I don't believe in God for the exact same reason. If statement (1) is rational, then statement (2) must be rational too. Honestly, this is so simple that almost everyone should be able to understand it. And God believers hear this and think I'm crazy. Should they? 6 Likes 4 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 2:37pm On Oct 24, 2019 |
Charles Jaja-Sackey wrote: I often wonder why the Theory of Evolution provokes staunch objections, whereas nobody seems to care about something like the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics. How come Covenant University and similar academic institutions owned and operated by fundamentalist religious bodies don’t ask that their students not be exposed to alternative theories about matter, energy, space and time? If you think about it, the theory of evolution rests on the principle of the survival of the fittest, which is a clear and simple to everyone. In contrast, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics argue that you can twist time and space, and that something like a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time. Clearly, this makes a mockery of our common sense, yet nobody seeks to protect innocent schoolchildren from these scandalous ideas. Do you know why? It’s simply because it doesn’t contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don’t care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. “If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well, be my guest. Go ahead and bend them. What do I care?” they’ll say. In contrast however, the Theory of Evolution threatens humans of their concept of “souls”, something that is central to the belief system we have developed. If you really understand the theory of evolution, you will understand that there is no soul. Coming to terms with this reality is a terrifying thought not only to devout Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who may not hold any clear religious dogma but nevertheless want to believe that each human possesses an eternal individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life, and can survive even death intact. Those people who often say “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual”. You see, Evolution means change, and therefore it is incapable of producing everlasting entities. From an evolutionary perspective, the closest thing we have to a human essence is our DNA, and the DNA molecule is the vehicle of mutation (changing and adapting) rather than being constant forever; a seat of eternity of some sort. This terrifies large numbers of people, who prefer to reject the theory of evolution rather than give up their souls. And herein lies most of the theist’s argument against the theory of evolution. 6 Likes 3 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 10:20am On Oct 23, 2019 |
You can't prove a non-existent god exists. The god of the Bible has never been proven to exist. Could these two facts be related? |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 9:16am On Oct 18, 2019 |
WELL DONE BELIEVERS! If you are a god-believer and you read my atheist posts with a nagging feeling there's something wrong--something I misunderstand, or facts I am unaware of, or fault-lines in my logic that you can't quite put your finger on... then I say, well done! Well done because you have passed the stage of rage. Well done because you keep reading and you don't allow tired and flawed apologetics to satisfy you anymore. Well done because you have reached the stage of wonder. You wonder about many things. Especially you wonder if you could be wrong and if Joseph1013 could be right. You wonder if there is another way of making sense of your life's experiences? You can't see your way through it yet but you realise you are on a journey and one-day things will start to slot into place in a new, more positive and more satisfying way. So well done. Don't stop now. Keep travelling and keep thinking. It will be so worth it. 4 Likes 2 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 5:59pm On Oct 17, 2019 |
PSALM 14 "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." For some reason, Christians love quoting this verse to me. Evidently, they see no irony when grown-ups, who believe in invisible beings, magic, monsters, and eternal life--all without a shred of evidence, say the fools are those who look for logically coherent reasons and validated evidence before they believe anything! These people also lack logic. A cursory review of this psalm would show it is a lie. The very next sentence says, "They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is NONE that doeth good." [My emphasis.] So, you need only find ONE non-believer who has done good and you have PROVEN the psalm a lie. Well, here are two: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. They are the two most generous philanthropists alive and they are both atheists. Buffett has pledged to give 99% of his wealth to charity and Gates has donated over $26 billion so far. How hard was that? Too hard apparently for logic-challenged Christians, who lack a sense of irony. 8 Likes 4 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 8:15am On Oct 16, 2019 |
The problem with praying to an imaginary god is believing someone infinitely smarter than you is answering. 2 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 12:33pm On Oct 14, 2019 |
ARE ATHEISTS' MINDS CLOSED? I've lost count of the number of times I've heard theists write off atheists as close-minded. Of course, this is not an argument for theism, nor is an argument against atheism. It is not an argument at all--it is an attempt to discredit atheists as people rather than show why the atheist's position is mistaken. Worse still, it is not even true. In fact, it is the complete opposite of the truth! Atheists are not all the same but many, including me, would believe there is a god if there was a good reason to believe it. All we need is evidence and sound arguments and we will change our minds. What drives many of us is the wish to believe things that are true, and not to believe things that are false. That forces us to be as open-minded as humans can be. But how open-minded are theists? How open-minded can you be if your beliefs are based on faith? No supporting evidence is necessary to form a faith-based belief, and no contrary evidence is sufficient to change it. Faith is independent of, and impervious to, evidence. That's about as close-minded as you can be. Famously, Ken Ham said nothing could change his mind and many theists would echo that. That is the very definition of close-minded. If you are a theist who believes there must be a god because you conclude that's the only reasonable explanation for the existence of the universe, or for the 'fine-tuned' laws of physics that make life possible, or for the existence of DNA, or whatever, then I have a question for you. Are you open-minded to the idea that it took an army of gods to create the universe rather than one? Are you open-minded to the idea that a long-forgotten god created the universe, or one who has never revealed itself to us? Are you open-minded to the idea that your family god; Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, or whoever, was invented by humans for human purposes? If you are a typical theist, I don't think you are open to any of these possibilities. I think you are about as close-minded as a human can be. It is wise for all of us to remember that our most cherished and strongly held beliefs could be dead wrong. I always think about that, do you? 4 Likes 3 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: Jaruma's Products: What do Atheists/ Agnostics Have to Say? by joseph1013: 10:15am On Oct 11, 2019 |
MrSix:You don't need charm to trap men with s.ex. They call for it. It's placebo. 1 Like |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 8:19am On Oct 11, 2019 |
THE GENESIS OF WISDOM 1. In the beginning, he created scepticism. 2. Now beliefs were formless and void. 3, And he said, "Let there be evidence" and the evidence formed light. 4. He saw it was good. 5. He called the light "enlightenment" and the darkness "ignorance". And this was the first day. 6. And he said, let there be logic to separate the true from the false. 7. So he made logic and it was so. 8. He called the truth "wisdom" and this was the second day. Wouldn't this have been a better way to start everything? 6 Likes 2 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 1:10pm On Oct 09, 2019 |
Know why we have stars? God created them to give light to the earth. Genesis 1:15 2 Likes 1 Share |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 11:43am On Oct 08, 2019 |
Did you see how that #SexForMark Pastor prayed for a "17" year old "admission seeker" before he proceeded to sexually harass her? Why do Pastors use Jesus to shortchange those who trust them, yet behave noble in the outside? I have never seen a more pretentious group like pastors. They invite you into their room, call upon Jesus for you, then outrightly abuse you. There have been many occasions when pastors use religion to swingle their members. In the market you'll hear something like "Brother Alfred, this trouser is 5k but because you're my member just pay 4k" But the sharp guy has swindled you with 2k! Until the people are wise enough not to give their trust to religious leaders they will always remain victims of their Pastor's hypocrisy. And if you come hear to play "No True Scotsman Fallacy" by claiming that "he is not a true pastor" I will 'pray' for you. 5 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:38am On Oct 07, 2019 |
HOW TO FIND GOD Silently talk to yourself until you become convinced it's not you talking. 9 Likes 6 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:53pm On Oct 03, 2019 |
THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE If you think the idea of God sacrificing his son to forgive our sins is bizarre, you should remember one thing; when this story was written, and for several thousand years before it, ritual sacrifice of animals and, sometimes humans, was an accepted way to win favour with gods and, the bigger the sacrifice, the more favour it would bring. The idea was a deeply-ingrained part of Iron Age culture--the Bible talks about it extensively. In those days it must have seemed as obvious to them, as it is obvious to us, that cars need fuel. The novel twist the Christians brought was the idea of an ultimate sacrifice--a sacrifice so magnificent that it would bring incalculable benefits to mankind. What animal or human could be the ultimate sacrifice? Surely, the ultimate sacrifice is God himself. When looked at like this, it kind-of makes sense. But, of course, if you think the very idea that ritual killing can improve the world is insane, you won't see it in the same way that Iron Age folk did. The real mystery is why there are still people in the 21st century, who believe ritual sacrifice to win favour with God makes perfect sense. That really is a tough one. 7 Likes 2 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:01pm On Sep 30, 2019 |
GOD, ATHEISM AND SET THEORY Logically, every god must be a member of one of two sets: Set 1. The set of "Imaginary Deities", or Set 2. The set of "Deities that exist or have existed" You should assume any god you hear about is a member of Set 1, which is the default set. A god can only be elevated to Set 2 when it can be shown to exist or have existed. As of today, Set 2 is a null set--it has no members. Therefore it is proper to assume no gods exist until it can be shown otherwise (don't hold your breath). This is set theory, but it is also common sense. It is known as atheism. 2 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:01pm On Sep 30, 2019 |
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| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 8:33am On Sep 27, 2019 |
REBOOTING YOUR BRAIN I'm sure all atheists think Christian theology is eye-wateringly, head-shakingly, jaw-droppingly, foot-stompingly bonkers. The whole mess from original sin to God killing himself to forgive sin; from the return of Christ, to heaven and fiery hell is like a story told by Donald Trump after a long evening of spliffs and strong whiskey. But it's not just sceptical atheists who think this. The gullible people who follow other religions think pretty much the same thing. How do you get from being a sensible, functioning accountant, office manager, architect or shop assistant to being a person, who not only thinks Christian theology is plausible, but is actually 100% certain it's true? And all without a scrap of evidence! Furthermore, I can confidently predict that some Christians will turn up here, or in heir minds, to defend this implausible theology. They may say, if you understand it properly, it makes perfect sense, or they may resort to the 'spiritually blind people cannot perceive matters of the spirit' line. Otherwise sensible people will turn somersaults to assure us that black is white and hot is cold. I've puzzled over this conundrum for years. One way I've come to understand it is to liken humans to computers. At the heart of every computer is a program that is etched into silicon called the BIOS. The BIOS looks after the basic functions of the machine like managing the computer's memory, processing inputs and outputs, and deciding what programs to load to get everything started. The BIOS is small but critical--the computer can't run without it. Once you have the BIOS in place you can add an operating system (such as Windows) and applications such as word processing, graphics, and email. The applications do the clever stuff but they need the BIOS to be able to work. In humans, early learning is like the BIOS in computers. It gives us basic capabilities like how to feed ourselves, understanding relationships and roles, language, toilet training, basic beliefs about the world and so on. The ideas that are programmed at this stage are the substrate that later learning builds on--think maths, science, accounting, drawing, house-building or whatever. Bugs in a computer's BIOS don't necessarily cause catastrophic failure--they usually just cause strange things to happen from time-to-time. So it is with early learning. A person can usually function perfectly well most of the time when burdened with false beliefs, but occasionally they make bad decisions, or just sound bonkers... Fortunately, a computer's BIOS can be updated and so can a person's early learning but it's not as straightforward as updating your email client. In humans, it's a journey that is often stressful and emotional. It takes time and much reflection to think through the implications the change will have on everything that relies on those early learning beliefs. It's like rebooting your brain. But ask those who have done the upgrade, it's well worth the effort. 16 Likes 4 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:39am On Sep 25, 2019 |
Germane Reminder You're not a Christian because you found the truth. You're a Christian because the people who raped, plundered, exploited and enslaved your ancestors told them that christianity was the best religion for them. If the Chinese had gotten to Africa first, all of you will be declaring today that Buddhism is the only true religion. It's that simple. 14 Likes 7 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 1:12pm On Sep 21, 2019 |
WHAT CHRISTIANS FORGET We are all horrified when we hear about parents sending their children on suicide missions. It happens but it's hard to imagine anything more despicable. But what Christians forget is their own God may have been the very first father to send his son on a suicide mission. Actually, God went one ghastly step further than any modern fanatical parents--his son was expressly conceived for one purpose; so God could have him killed. Isn't that even more despicable? 5 Likes 3 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 5:15pm On Sep 20, 2019 |
OUR SURREAL SPECIES Honestly, this is completely surreal to me. I speak to superficially sane adults and find they truly believe there is an invisible and undetectable superman who loves every one of us and monitors everything we do and think. When we die he will restore each of us to life, and decide whether to torture us forever or grant us a life of bliss that will never end. By most accounts, the great majority of the superman's beloved humans will be consigned to the eternal torture option. How do the sane adults discover these incredible things? In every case, a family member, a friend or a teacher TELLS them stories, without offering a shred of evidence, and they just BELIEVE them. (Almost always this happens whilst the sane adults are still children.) As far as I know, no other animals believe stories like these. Apparently, you have to be a very smart animal indeed to be capable of believing such crazy stories. 7 Likes 3 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 11:32am On Sep 19, 2019 |
WHY I LOVE CREATIONISTS... AND WHY I DON'T Creationists believe a certain explanation for the origin of life, especially for the origin of human life. The thing I love about creationists is how hyper-sceptical they are. That's brilliant. My motto is don't take anyone's word for anything significant. Demand validated evidence for every explanation--your beliefs are too important to waste on things that are not true. It's just a pity, after all that excellent scepticism, creationists let themselves down by credulously believing a far-fetched, magical explanation from the Iron Age. There is not a SHRED of evidence that this explanation is correct, and much evidence casts fatal doubt on it. I don't get it. Creationists are hyper-sceptical about an explanation that is supported by an immense weight of evidence but swallow whole another that comes with no evidence a all. Come on, a little consistency would be nice guys. 3 Likes 1 Share |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 12:34pm On Sep 18, 2019 |
THE PERFECT ARGUMENT AGAINST BLASPHEMY LAWS? God either exists or he doesn't. If he doesn't exist, it is unnecessary, unjust and crass to punish people for speaking against a storybook character. If God does exist, humans should leave him free to decide whether a person has blasphemed, whether that person should be punished, and in what way. It is presumptuous, overreaching and disrespectful for humans to take that judgment away from God. Despite this simple logic, many countries do punish blasphemers. Sometimes, especially in Islamic countries, the punishments are extremely harsh and may include beheading or other forms of execution. How can this be justified? Some people say these laws are not there to protect God but to protect believers from being offended, but this makes no sense. No one has a right to not be offended. No country has a law that would throw me in jail for telling someone I don't like their shoes or their hairstyle. No, these laws only relate to gods and religions. These laws exist to protect gods and religions. And that raises another question. Why do gods and religions uniquely need protection from criticism? We do not have laws to protect physics, astronomy or any other branch of learning from criticism--indeed, in these fields, criticism is welcomed and valued. If your aim is to seek the truth, blasphemy laws make no sense--truth-seekers encourage criticism. Blasphemy laws only make sense if your aim is to force people to believe things that cannot be shown to be true and are therefore vulnerable to criticism. Things like gods and religions. 9 Likes 4 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 8:14am On Sep 13, 2019 |
WE ARE ON OUR OWN We live on an unstable giant rock hurtling around a humongous nuclear-powered furnace at 67,000 miles per hour. The rock is simultaneously spinning on its own axis so we are all subject to rotational velocities up to 1,000 miles per hour. The rock itself has a thin crust of solid matter resting on a molten core of rock, iron and other metals that are always in motion and at temperatures up to 6,000° Celsius (that's hotter than the surface of the sun). The rock is surrounded by a 300-mile deep layer of gasses constantly being heated by the nuclear furnace and cooled when facing away from it. This causes the gasses to move continuously. Evaporation from large bodies of water means the gases contain some 40,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water. The surprising thing is how tranquil this raging, dynamic system feels to us most of the time. But the tranquility is punctuated at intervals by enormous violence. It comes in the form of floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and more. When these events occur some of us may perish, sometimes thousands of us will perish. These deaths are not meted out by God, but by physics. We cannot stop these events by holding our hands together and praying--there are no gods able to cause these disasters and none able to prevent them. The Earth kills Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and atheists with equal indifference. What we can do, is learn how to predict when such horrors will occur and find a way to escape them. We are already quite good at predicting the course of hurricanes and can often give reasonable warning of tsunamis. But there is a lot more to learn. For as long as we live on this planet, we will be at its mercy. The best we can do is learn enough to keep ourselves safe. We are on our own. It is much better to accept that, and work on the problem than to imagine we have an invisible friend who can magically keep us safe. His track record speaks for itself. 13 Likes 5 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 12:39pm On Sep 11, 2019 |
HI GUYS, JESUS HERE Howdy all. I'm Jesus. Accepting me as your Lord and saviour is the most important thing you will ever do in your entire life. But you MUST have faith so I didn't want to make it too easy for you. All religions need faith, right? So I worked in a few diversions to put you off track. First, of course, was the old virgin birth chestnut followed by the "died and was resurrected" finale. Several fake gods used these story-lines before me, so I added them just to plant a grain of doubt. Worked a treat. These stories made me authentic to some people, and suspicious to others, perfect! Hahaha. It would have been a no-brainer if I'd written my own scripture, so I came up with a better idea. First, I decided not to write a thing, not a single word, and I would have all the stories about me written in a foreign language so no locals understood them. But it needed to be a bit trickier, so I made sure NOTHING was written about me at all until I'd been dead for 50 years. I used four different authors that couldn't be identified so no smart-arsed historians could work out if the authors actually knew me (which they didn't!) LMAO. They were the basic diversions but I put in a lot more snippets for the doubters to grab hold of. I put in a few really dumb things that no god would do, like cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit, wait for it, out of season! MUAHA I realised I needed something to give people doubts thousands of years later. Took me a while to figure this one out but I did it and it was brill. I just told the locals that I'd return before they all died. The locals didn't twig it of course because they were dead but a couple of thousand years later, anyone could figure it out! ROTFLMFAO. I've gotta shoot off now but remember, with faith, you can believe anything! Hahahaha, oh Dad, I think I'm having a heart attack! 4 Likes 3 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 3:39pm On Sep 10, 2019 |
THE PROMISE OF HEAVEN: CAN YAHWEH BE TRUSTED? It is a mark of commonsense that when someone makes an important promise to you, you look at the person's antecedents with regards to keeping promises. If the person is known to be faithful to his words you take his promise serious otherwise you ignore it. Millions today are spending their lives preparing for heaven which they have been promised in a 2,000 years old book said to have been inspired by Yahweh, the God of the Judeo-Christianity religions. In fact, many are so heavenly conscious that they have become earthy useless. Let us ignore the fact that there is no one - dead or alive - who is known to have been to that place called "heaven." Let us also ignore the fact that no one knows the location of this heaven. We further have to ignore the fact that there is no non-biblical evidence of the existence of this Judeo-Christianity's heaven. These are not the interests of this write-up. The focus is on the reliability of Yahweh with respect to keeping promises. If we by miracle live by the commandments and rules in the bible, will we go to heaven when our lives here end? Reading the bible, I discovered that Yahweh scarcely keep his promises. Below are some of his failed promises: 1. Adam and Eve were promised eternal life but omniscient Yahweh foiled the eternal life project and turned around to blame naive and ignorant Adam and Eve. 2. Yahweh promised to take the 'delivered' Israelites from Egypt to the "Promised land" but had the corpses of all but two of those who left Egypt littered in the wilderness. 3. Yahweh promised to drive out the Cannanites from the "Promised land" so that the Israelites may have hitch free settlement in Palestine but he didn't. 4. Himself or his son promised to revisit the earth but that promise is overdue by 2,000 years. 5. "Where two or more are gathered in my name, I am there", Yahweh promised his worshipers. The thousands of worshipers who have over the centuries, perished right inside churches, by the swords, gunshots, bombing, earthquakes, or when church buildings collapsed on them, are testimonies of the failure of Yahweh's promise. 6. Yahweh promised to always be with the Israelites and fight for them. The destruction of Jerusalem (70AD), and the Masada mass suicides that followed (73AD); the killings of Jews in the wake of the Bubonic plague of the 13th century; and, the holocaust of the 1940s, are some of the tragic chapters in the history of the Jews, and there was no supernatural intervention by Yahweh as promised. 7. Believers are promised that they can trample on snakes, scorpions, and undertake other risky things with faith in Yahweh and no harm will come to them. Many of those who took this promise serious did not live to tell the tale. With all these failed promises why would any sane person take the promise of heaven serious? Also, Yahweh said he is a jealous God. A jealous being is emotional unstable; he can abort the heaven's project unexpectedly and blame believers for everything as he did in Eden to Adam, Eve, and the talking snake. 15 Likes 8 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:56pm On Sep 08, 2019 |
budaatum:Ha! You didn't understand the post.  1 Like 1 Share |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 1:56pm On Sep 08, 2019 |
"Do you believe in God?" Define God. "The God that created everything, a personal God not a concept of nature, but a God that has a personality." Does it make sense to you that something can create everything? Something is a subset of everything. Isn't it? "That's human thinking. We want to define God by our own limited reasoning..." But you are a human, and you just defined God above. 2 Likes 1 Share |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 10:14am On Sep 06, 2019 |
14 WORDS THAT DESTROY CERTAINTY Consider proposition (1): "It is POSSIBLE that the Bible was written entirely by superstitious men imagining God." Can you deny this proposition? Can you prove it wrong? Feel free to try but I don't think you can. If the Bible WAS written by men imagining God then the God of the Bible is invented. This leads to two conclusions: (a) God is fictional. (b) The Bible is not evidence for the existence of God. Of course, these are not startling conclusions—atheists, agnostics, and followers of other religions have thought this for years. But, if you believe in the God of the Bible and cannot prove proposition (1) false, you too must accept conclusions (a) and (b) are POSSIBLE. Where does that leave you? It means you cannot be 100% sure God exists unless you have solid evidence outside of the Bible. No-one has ever found such evidence—all the evidence and all the arguments ever offered are inconclusive at best and clearly fallacious at worst. So, if you cannot prove proposition (1) false, you have to accept that you cannot be completely SURE God exists. You can only hope. 6 Likes 3 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:34pm On Sep 04, 2019*. Modified: 10:00am On Sep 05, 2019 |
budaatum:And what does this prove? Evidently, Isaac Newton's believe about the world ending, some belief in 2060, according to Biblical prophecies is credited to have helped his focus on developing calculus. Should we then accept armageddon as a core doctrine? I can list many others, including those who claim slavery was important to the development of civilization. Should we accept slavery on account of that? Should we start asking what the world would have become without slavery? You don't apply a lot of logic to these discussions? 5 Likes 2 Shares |
