Christianity is Morally Bankrupt

All that they market is that One must accept God in communion. Initially, we accepted the knowledge of good and evil. That led to us determining for ourselves what good was and what evil was. We became as gods, knowing both. The apologists try and sell the belief that we actually know neither ultimate good nor ultimate evil and are incapable of learning. They market the solution. What seems to bug you is the idea that we get saved rather than having to figure it out for ourselves.What bugs me about your position as I understand it is that folks simply need to help each other to the best of our ability and that no other change in attitude, belief, or behavior is necessary. God will simply let everyone into the party who at least tried to avoid evil (as they understood it) seek to do good(as they understood it) and love all people the best that we can in an unselfish manner.You put the whole responsibility of the transformation on us. Romans 12:2 clearly says not to conform, be transformed rather than trying to do your best in order to transform yourself through works.

No one but the conmen even claim that there is some ultimate good or ultimate evil. The market both the problem as well as the alleged solution but there is zero evidence that the product they market works or even exists. Yes, that is correct. Stop taking pieces parts out of Romans. Read the whole letter. No one but you can change you.

'To see?' He doesn't know? Ok so he's not the god you believe in then?So this god that is no longer all-knowing, creates an experiment that tortures and destroys 100% of his creation - trillions of creatures - just to see if some of them can get through it. He's a fucking psycopath. Because he's the evil. Why did god need to create a universe at all??? Why do people need to grow or fail to grow for the entertainment of your god? It's imbecilic. If god wants company to populate his heaven he can fill it with 'fully grown' people. Why torture trillion? Why? Yeh, right back up your own fundament. The stuff that is self-evident to you is plainly ridiculous. It makes no sense at all. The whole thing is totally redundant, there's can be no reason why a loving god tortures and kills his creation in order to let a few of them into a life that he could have given them from the start. It's patently crazy.

No, that's what the evidence shows. The mind can be altered by chemicals, therefore it is physical - and there is certainly no evidence of anything spooky altering the mind. So you have to go back before there was any evidence to ignore the evidence. Sure, it's possible to make a conscious choice to do the wrong thing. That's a weak plank to build your position on. A remember you objecting to me equating your God with the Tooth Fairy. You can object all you like but facts is facts. I'm not going to cover them up in the name of civility.

You've never been able to explain why He wouldn't. And you've also never been able to explain why Christians are no different from non-Christians. It seems pretty obvious that He is letting both you and me "be the way we are now".

We stole the knowledge of good and evil, against God's will. Compare with Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. A lot of religions have humans in contention with the gods - i.e growing up.

If they would read the Bible they might even come across the origin of the name "Israel", AkA Jacob. It's significant but another thing modern Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity & the CCoI does not teach.

Once again, you focus on the suffering and I can hardly deny that it exists. However there is also considerable joy in this world. Think of the joy a parent has when he/she first holds their new born. They aren't lamenting the fact that they have brought a new life into this miserable world.As to the point of it all I can only surmise, but I would suggest that God wanted to bring about a society of beings that would be able to form a new society where the love of others is the norm. Pf course it knows that it exists and it can also theorize about how it evolved but that doesn't address the issue of whether it is a part of a plan from intelligence or from mindlessness. It can be if that was the only way to ultimately bring about a world where those things don't exist. I don't know if He created heaven or not. I simply see it as God's universe/dimension.One other thought on that. I realize that the Bible talks about God creating all things. However, I also don't have a problem with acknowledging that God is responsible for life but not necessarily the universe. I do hold the view that our universe is an (quoting someone but can't remember who), "emergent property of a greater reality" which I think is fairly consistent with much of the theorizing of modern physics.If this is true then it could be that God brought life to this 4 dimensional part of the total reality. The decay and entropy that we experience my just be an inherent aspect of this universe.An absolute answer is well beyond my pay grade so I think that is about the best I can do.May Brexit end happily.

The working of the brain can be altered by chemicals but that doesn't require an altering of the mind. The evidence you offer though is theoretical and you choose the theory that is consistent with your desired outcome. Even is science can show how it originates from the brain then it again has simply shown how it evolved in the same way that evolution explains as best it can how we evolved physically.It still wouldn't address the iissue of why it exists at all and whthere it now its root cause is from intelligence or mindlessness.
Here is an interesting article from a psychological POV. Does Consciousness Exist Outside of the Brain?It seems to me that if you have to resort to ridicule to make your point, then maybe your point isn't very strong.

I wonder why you can't see that this is totally irrelevant? That's because it's also irrelevant. It's empathy and it's just another evolved trait. We don't put anger down to the devil or opposable thumbs down to the holy ghost either. But take this elsewhere, it's got no place here. Please, please, ask yourself why god needs to run a cruel test that only a few can pass in order to get them into a place he could put them directly into without needing to torture and kill everything he's created. WHY DO IT AT ALL? Sheesh, anything will do. I know you don't have any problem at all simply making stuff up so that whatever you need to believe isn't compromised. Faith does it too but at least her rubbish is biblical. All you actually know about your belief is written in your bible - none of this stuff has anything to do with it. And your favourite 'still small voice' is still unanswered. You'll now go away and forget about it and pretend that it doesn't matter that your god has removed his voice from millions of people.

The debate/discussion continues... CS Lewis touches on this change in humanity briefly in his book, Mere Christianity , specifically in the section 11: The New Men.

quote:

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In the last chapter I compared Christ's work of making New Men to the process of turning a horse into a winged creature. I used that extreme example in order to emphasize the point that it is not a mere improvement but Transformation.(...)
people often wonder "What is the next step? When is the thing beyond man going to appear?" Imaginative writers try sometimes to picture this next stepthe "Superman" as they call him; but they usually only succeed in picturing someone a good deal nastier than man as we know him and then try to make up for that by sticking on extra legs or arms. But supposing the next step was to be something even more different from the earlier steps than they ever dreamed of? (...)
Now it seems to me that most of the popular guesses at the Next Step are making just the same sort of mistake. People see (or at any rate they think they see) men developing greater brains and getting greater mastery over nature. (...)I cannot help thinking that the Next Step will be really new; it will go off in a direction you could never have dreamed of. It would hardly be worth calling a New Step unless it did. I should expect not merely difference but a new kind of difference. I should expect not merely change but a new method of producing the change... I should expect the next stage in Evolution not to be a stage in Evolution at all: should expect the Evolution itself as a method of producing change, will be superseded. And finally, I should not be surprised if, when the thing happened, very few people noticed that it was happening.

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The Christian view is precisely that the Next Step has already appeared. And it is really new. It is not a change from brainy men to brainier men: it is a change that goes off in a totally different directiona change from being creatures of God to being sons of God. The first instance appeared in Palestine two thousand years ago. In a sense, the change is not "Evolution" at all, because it is not something arising out of the natural process of events but something coming into nature from outside...

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To become new men means losing what we now call "ourselves." Out of ourselves, into Christ, we must go. His will is to become ours and we are to think His thoughts, to "have the mind of Christ" as the Bible says. And if Christ is one, and if He is thus to be "in" us all, shall we not be exactly the same? It certainly sounds like it, but in fact, it is not so.
The more we get what we now call "ourselves" out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of "little Christs," all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He inventedas an author invents characters in a novelall the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense, our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to "be myself" without Him.

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The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call "Myself" becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call "My wishes" become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men's thoughts or even suggested to me by devils. Eggs and alcohol and a good night's sleep will be the real origins of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite to me in the railway carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideals, I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call "me" can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own. At the beginning, I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else.
Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most "natural" men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.
But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away "blindly" so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange?
Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

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Lewis explains the transformation better than I could. The difference is subtle. We are works in progress. Some things became clear from Day One, while other things take time to let go of. And I might add that unlike jars assertion, Christians are not simply Christians because they say they are. They are Christians because Christ came into them and they died to self. It is a slow process, for we don't all die at once. Many parts of our personality are hard to let go of.[/qs] God does not force us to change. Lewis also explains this. Thus, while jar tells us to throw God away and throw Christ away, Lewis exhorts us to throw Self away.Yes, ringo---God does not simply accept us as we are in current attitude. No drunks allowed at this gathering. Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

You expect God to make conditions pleasant for you. He expects you to be transformed enough to make conditions pleasant for others. And there is no evidence that He is responsible for our human suffering. You just have taken the position that if God is all-powerful, we need not suffer. Did it ever occur to you that suffering is a part of the plan? Because if you premake someone's environment and character for them, they become like zombies. The purpose is for us to accomplish much despite suffering. The point is that just as muscles grow larger after being broken down and torn, so do humans.And I might add that you have no clue as to God's actual character until you are in communion. You claim that some are punished for not being able to hear the still small voice...or the indwelling presence. Might I suggest that it is your own mind's habit of rejecting non- evidenced events that sets a block on this process initially? But I don't believe He will punish you simply for being slow to comprehend unevidenced spirituality. The God I believe in is not simply limited to descriptions in the book.Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.

I'm an atheist Phat, remember? God doesn't exist, I expect nothing of him. I'm trying - and failing - to get you to think beyond your indoctrination. He made it, he's responsible. Who else? Of course it occurs to me, that's why I say that the god you've conjured up is a fucking psychopath. He has created at least two zombie worlds, the Garden of Eden and Heaven. He apparently thought that they they were a good idea. That's just crap. I know a murdering, evil psychopath when I see one. By his deeds you will know him. That's not a claim, it's a fact and you haven't explained it away yet - even to yourself. Quit telling us what you believe, it's a waste of electrons. Please answer the questions. Why does your god need to torture and kill trillions of people in order to put a few people into heaven? Why not just put them straight into heaven?

Did he, though? Thus you would not expect a still small voice even if one existed. Yet you charge Him hypothetically denying the voice to you. Get your argument straight. Either He doesn't exist--in which case, there is no still small voice...or you refuse to hear such a voice because you are an atheist. You can't dictate that He must force It upon you. That's not a fair argument. You've been reading too much Richard Dawkins. You believe that crap that he taught about the cruel God. You know what I am talking about.

According to you and GDR, yes. This has got nothing to do with me! I'm playing your arguments back to you and showing you why they're dumb. Get a grip Phat, I'm trying to show that your god - not mine - can't be a loving god if he tortures and kills his creation and that he doesn't need this experiment at all. you're avoiding answering the questions. Again. Why does god remove the conscience from the psychopath? I haven't read Dawkins for years, stop spinning - answer the question, why is your god so cruel.