Is christianity, or religion in general, a belief of convinience?

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Heroin, a very strong narcotic depressant, completely destroys the users ability to reason.

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And this would be different from many Creationists, or fundamentalist bonbers, how, exactly?I mean this only a little bit as a joke.

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To Mike_King:
Thank you for your reply.

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Reply to your post:

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You seem to be knowledgable in the realms of Christian doctrines, so I hope that you would be able to elaborate on your answers to my questions - to be read with reference to your post:

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1) So...we're going to leave it at that? No one knows. Period? That's not very thought-provoking...

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2) Why is science finding out how God made the universe as opposed to finding out how the universe materialised or came into existence? If we can find out how God made the universe, can't we then in turn find out how God was "made"?

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3) Not so. God being omniscience must have foreseen the rebellion of Satan when He made Lucifer. This implies that God created Lucifer with Satan in mind.

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4) These are...claims? Assertions? Where did you get this from?

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5) Noooo...what about origninal sin?

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6) Your explanation is a non-sequitur to my question.

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7) But God's omniscience must have foreseen man's fall into the abyss of wickedness PRIOR to the creation of humanity. Sounds to me like God made human just so that He can kill them.

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8) Again, a non-sequitur to my question.

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I am happy for your mother's "miraculous recovery" (pun intended), but your answers disappoint me. Some of them fail to address the question, while others imply an inconsistent Christian God.

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Patiently awaiting your reply.

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1 How could one answer that, eexcept by having a complete grasp of infinity and what we know from the bible!2. God was never 'Made', he was always there. Gen 1 In the beginning, God...3. You are right, God must have forknew what was going to happen. God had mankind in mind to freely love him.4. These are not claims, but more likely possibilities where Heaven would be. The bible talks about 'Hevenly realms'. How would one travel to there? I don't think so!5 'Original sin' is relevant, but Jesus' death on the cross has made mercy,forgiveness and justification possible even for the innocents. God is not a big ogre!6 How do you mean?7 God made mankind for a relationship with him. Thats why God sent his son Jesus to die and rise again for us. John 3 16 ..for God so loved the world..8. We are in a fallen world. But death is part of life itself.

Forgive me if my response was unclear. And NO I did not prove Yaro's point. I only proved that you lack poise and manners.You did raise a some legitimate questions, but to go to a pastor and start spouting off all of those questions indicates you have no interest actually learning anything, but only want to be a selfish ass and waste his time by giving YOU attention when you have no intention of learning anything anyways. I do not go to a biology professor and start spouting off questions about evolutionary theory when I've already rejected it. If I want to learn more I can study it like everyone else and ask thoughtful questions. If you REALLY are interested in learning, then you should sit in the pew like everyone else day after day and learn as the pastor (hopefully) teaches doctrine line up on line precept upon precept and eventually all the questions you mentioned will be answered. My pastor has answered all of them in the course of his studies and teachings. If your curiosity cannot be contained, it would be acceptable to have a discussion with your pastor about these issues, but not a debate. As you may have noticed from participating in this forum, almost never does anyone accept the other's viewpoint in a debate. No... obviously you have devised other purposes in life. I was attempting to humorously and cynically portray the stupidity of your statement.This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 07-19-2004 08:51 PM

*blink*did you just prove my point again? Just because you don't belive in god dosn't mean life has no purpose. Life has the purpose that you give it, its a rare and wonderfull thing to be alive and its a waste to squander it. I personaly find my life more fullfilled since I left christianity long ago. One thing I learned is that "I" can do anything I set my mind to, and I don't need faith in anything other than my own abilities to accomplish it.Its helped me get thrugh some tough times. I had to suck up the troubles, and keep on trucking. Taught me alot, and I didn't need a god for it.

What did I prove? I simply said that wasting a person's time with an antagonistic line of questioning with the irrevocable preconcieved notion that whatever the other person says is wrong is being an ass. We do that here all the time, but its all in good fun. Perhaps you will want to read message 124 which is a response to your post. It had more substance to it before SD tried to make me look like an ass with his silly lines of questioning. Sigh... that's NOT what I was saying. SD said death was truly meaningful because it reallocates resources to other organisms... nevermind... That's funny... I keep realizing the opposite... anyways please read my other post if you get the chance.

All right, what if you did not want to debate, but ask the said question in a meaningful way to hear the answer. Still an ass? After all, he is a pastor, and his job is to promote his god, and if that means explaining said god...So you are saying that both Yaro (And I completely agree with her, i've done it too) and you accomplish things. She and I didn't ask (for her, presumably) for help, you did. We all accomplished what we wanted. What's this prove? To me, it's that I could attribut my accomplishments to my toaster, so long as I had previously asked it.EDIT to fix spellingThis message has been edited by Justin Horne, 07-20-2004 02:14 AM

To Schrafinator:Hahahahahaha....well, the correlation is clearly there, but we just can't conclude causation at this point in time. ^_^Thanks for your post.

To Mike_King:Thank you for your reply.Reply to your post: The point here is not so much you don't know, but why you didn't think about it? THIS is the point of Christianity inhibiting critical thinking - you're putting things off as "we can't know" or "it's not for us to know" or "it's beyond our understanding" and chose instead to adhere to dogma unquestioningly. You are willing to accept the notion that an all-powerful, all-knowing being that has no consistent physical form has "always existed", but you are unwilling to accept the notion that the universe around us that HAS physical form and had left physical evidence of its history has "always existed"?In layman's terms, instead of assuming that an eternal creator created the universe, isn't it far more logical to just assume that the universe itself is eternal in the first place? This fails to address my point: the apparent contradiction between God's omnibenevolence and His creation of Lucifer. This is a non-sequitur. And where did you obtain these "likely possibilities" from? The bible never went into the details of where heaven is, so I guess you just made up the assertion that it is in another dimension. Original sin dictates that all human are deemed "unclean" in the face of God, so that in theory, anyone who has not had the chance to accept Jesus as their saviours will fry in sunny hell. This includes stillborns and anyone who has not heard of the bible. Sounds to me like you're not familiar with your faith. Non-sequitur means that what you have answered does not address what I have asked. For example, if I asked you if an apple is sweet, and you answered that the sky is blue, then it would be a non sequitur. And you can reconcile this with the mass murder in the flood incident...how? Again, this fails to answer the question. The question is simple: Why did God create cancer?Patiently awaiting your reply.

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"Respect is like money, it can only be earned. When it is given, it becomes pittance"

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It is the physical effects (last point in bold) and not the social effects that I am using to draw the parallel between the topic we are discussing (religion inhibiting critical reasoning/thinking) and opiates.

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Thats fine. But its an inapropriate usage of Marx' quote, then. He was specifically referring to sociological phenomenon.

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Can you please elaborate on this point. I don't follow.

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I submit that religion is a distress signal; its an expression that the real world is so dire all we can do is hope (in vain) for a better afterlife.

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Question: What makes you so sure that you're the "real" and "sane" one here?

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The scientific method.This message has been edited by contracycle, 07-20-2004 07:07 AM

To Hangdawg13:Thank you for your reply.Reply to your post: Challenging and questioning a notion because of curiosity and doubt is rude (lack poise and manners) and discouraged? Isn't this a textbook definition of "inhibiting critical thinking"? How can this be any more obvious? Questions are usually asked in the aims to learn something. If you are not allowed to ask questions when you feel the need to know something, how can you truly call that learning?Every university/education institution has a feedback system for students to ask their teachers questions if they have doubts. Teachers are generally discouraged from NOT answering the student, as long as the question pertains to the topics being taught. What I've just described here is education. But you can. If you've paid (tuition fees) for the knowledge, and you've booked the appointments, the professor is your private source of knowledge and wisdom within that time slot, regardless of your intentions. Are you dictating how learning MUST occur? Can't we learn by asking questions? Does asking questions lead to no learning? And I would like to know, why not a debate?In the academic realm, if I choose to make a fool out of myself, I can very much invite a professor of any faculty to debate with me.Buddhist monks have been holding regular debates in the last thousand years to sharpen their intellect and expand their knowledge. Are you claiming that this is a pointless venture? So? The point of debates is mutual learning. I learnt plenty when I debate with others, hopefully you did too. You have a very shallow understanding of what debates are and what philosophy entails. How's this for hypocritical?You asked me what I believe to be a meaningful concept. I state it, along with an explanation (unrefuted so far) of why I believe it to be meaningful.Without ANY intellectual feedback to support your stance, you set about "cynically portraying" the "stupidity" of my statement.How's this for a textbook example of "lacking poise and manners"?Patiently awaiting your reply.

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"Respect is like money, it can only be earned. When it is given, it becomes pittance"

To contracycle:Thank you for your reply.Reply to your post: Oh I see. In that case I stand corrected. Thank you for pointing that out. Do you mean it "is" one, or "could be" one? Some people use religion to augment their lifestyle in the hope of pursuing meaning from a spiritual perspective. This process can take place with or without the assumption of an afterlife. Well, I would have to disagree strongly with this one. For one thing, science does not deal with truth (the "true" face of reality) because it neglects anything that cannot be physically measured or identified. This restriction means that we cannot define "real" with the scientific method.Furthermore, sanity is a qualitative concept whose definition may differ from time to time and from culture to culture. Behaviours considered "reasonable" and "sane" in one culture and time would be deemed "insane" in another. Science DEFINITELY can't help us with that.(Note: given the appropriate measures of sanity, science can be used to assess how "sane" someone is. However, your point seem to suggest that the scientific method can DEFINE sanity, and this is simply not true.)Patiently awaiting your reply.

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"Respect is like money, it can only be earned. When it is given, it becomes pittance"

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What did I prove? I simply said that wasting a person's time with an antagonistic line of questioning with the irrevocable preconcieved notion that whatever the other person says is wrong is being an ass.

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Why on earth would you see those questions as antagonistic?Why can you not imagine them to be sincere, because they have all been asked and considered quite sincerely by many, many people, including myself, in my journey through life?They are the "big questions" that are the natural result of critical thinking.It is very telling that you and your religion sees them as "antagonistic", because I see them as perfectly normal and natural things to wonder about.

It's fairly easy to read a person's intentions. If a person came stomping up to me and began spouting off this line of questioning, it would be obvious to me that they have already rejected whatever I am going to say in response. I would probably say, "Whoa.. slow down there. Let's take this one question at a time." and then I'd probably ask them some questions and attempt to fully explain each question. More than likely they would either lose patience or continue creating new lines of antagonistic questions, and in the end I would have only wasted my time with them because they would still be as bitterly opposed to God as before.It is the context of the questions that makes them antagonistic or not. In SD's context, they were antagonistic and asked with the intent of demonstrating a pastor's stupidity and inability to think critically rather than for trying to learn.Any one of the questions mentioned is legitimate if asked with the sincere desire to understand the other person's viewpoint. Sigh... you see what you want to see in what I say...Just forget it!

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To Mike_King:
Thank you for your reply.

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Reply to your post:

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1 How could one answer that, eexcept by having a complete grasp of infinity and what we know from the bible!

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The point here is not so much you don't know, but why you didn't think about it? THIS is the point of Christianity inhibiting critical thinking - you're putting things off as "we can't know" or "it's not for us to know" or "it's beyond our understanding" and chose instead to adhere to dogma unquestioningly.

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God was never 'Made', he was always there. Gen 1 In the beginning, God...

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You are willing to accept the notion that an all-powerful, all-knowing being that has no consistent physical form has "always existed", but you are unwilling to accept the notion that the universe around us that HAS physical form and had left physical evidence of its history has "always existed"?

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In layman's terms, instead of assuming that an eternal creator created the universe, isn't it far more logical to just assume that the universe itself is eternal in the first place?

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3. You are right, God must have forknew what was going to happen. God had mankind in mind to freely love him.

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This fails to address my point: the apparent contradiction between God's omnibenevolence and His creation of Lucifer. This is a non-sequitur.

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4. These are not claims, but more likely possibilities where Heaven would be. The bible talks about 'Hevenly realms'. How would one travel to there? I don't think so!

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And where did you obtain these "likely possibilities" from? The bible never went into the details of where heaven is, so I guess you just made up the assertion that it is in another dimension.

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5 'Original sin' is relevant, but Jesus' death on the cross has made mercy,forgiveness and justification possible even for the innocents. God is not a big ogre!

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Original sin dictates that all human are deemed "unclean" in the face of God, so that in theory, anyone who has not had the chance to accept Jesus as their saviours will fry in sunny hell. This includes stillborns and anyone who has not heard of the bible. Sounds to me like you're not familiar with your faith.

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6 How do you mean?

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Non-sequitur means that what you have answered does not address what I have asked. For example, if I asked you if an apple is sweet, and you answered that the sky is blue, then it would be a non sequitur.

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7 God made mankind for a relationship with him. Thats why God sent his son Jesus to die and rise again for us. John 3 16 ..for God so loved the world..

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And you can reconcile this with the mass murder in the flood incident...how?

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8. We are in a fallen world. But death is part of life itself.

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Again, this fails to answer the question. The question is simple: Why did God create cancer?

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Patiently awaiting your reply.

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Hi,
I am not sure if you really want the answers you are looking for or if you would change your mind if you ever got a satifactory answer (from your point of view)I have no problems with objections to Christianity, honest questions deserve answers and when I don't elaborate (because of time pressure, 10 week old baby and I moderate 2 carnivorous plant forums plus day job)1 I can only say from what the bible teaches about God. God is Spirit, he has no physical form. He had no beginning. The universe has not always existed and is about 15 billion years old. His 'mark' is like what Stephen Hawking described with the mathematical patterns in the universe and now we have free thought, conscience and love from a a highly complicated design. I was never unwilling to accept the universe had always existed. The universe is not eternal. It had a beginning contrary to what you stated and it can be observed. Latest research shows that the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate3. Lucifer rebelled against God, that was his choice, but like I stated earlier, the bible is clear on how God feels about mankind. What kind of difference does that make to you whether God foreknew what Lucifer was going to do?4. Likely possibilities, well do you have a better explanation of where heaven could be? It was not an suumption, but I am sure you are scientifically minded to realise Heaven is not a place one can jump into a starship and travel to! The bible is God's book of life, it was never meant to be a science book. That is why the bible probably does not detail these matters to a 21st century mind such as yours.Original sin: Man is unclean and Jesus taught its what ccomes out of a man's heart what makes them unclean. Still borns, cot death, children losing their lives before they could 'decide for God'
Jesus summed up children in the Gospels. Mark 10 13-16, Matthew 19 13-15 and luke 18 15-17 "..Do not hinder them, to such belongs the kingdom of God.truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the Knigdom of God like a child shall not enter it. And he took them in his arms and blessed them.The operative word is belong. The paradox you mentioned is original sin and then there is the innocent child. Jesus was saying by implication that Children stand within the Kingdom of God until that child chooses otherwise and we all have choices.7 The flood was judgement for the evil mankind was doing. It was not mass murder. its interesting to note the parallel to Baptism with full water immersion when one becomes a Christian as jesus took on the punishment we deserve.8 God did not 'Create cancer', but a lot of the causes of disease a to a large extent man made. EG the link between smoking and lung cancer, skin cancer from too much UV light as we have damaged the ozone layer. These are some of the most common cancers.My favourite rock band is Rush. They had a good lyric for this in a song called 'Natural Science' (This band maybe quite appealing for a deep thinker such as yourself, definately not a Christian band, but pretty existential by outlook)...Our causes can't see their effects..

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Some people use religion to augment their lifestyle in the hope of pursuing meaning from a spiritual perspective. This process can take place with or without the assumption of an afterlife.

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Hmm, I'll give you that. it can indeed be a "search for meaning", rather than a dream of an afterlife; but the afterlife is not strictly nevcessary for my claim. Dreaming that all problems will be solved by some mighty hero who descends from the clouds is just as much an expression of helplessness; any resort to supernaturalism counts, IMO.

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Well, I would have to disagree strongly with this one. For one thing, science does not deal with truth (the "true" face of reality) because it neglects anything that cannot be physically measured or identified.

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Thats exactly what gives the method its power. Your intangible "truth" is not mine. But it most certainly does describe reality. It is precisley because it restricts itself to the demonstrable and the physical that it is so powerful a tool.

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This restriction means that we cannot define "real" with the scientific method.

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Thats special pleading; it requires I agree with your prejudice toward mythical entities. I don't; its up to you to demonstrate that to me. Thats why the method is so useful - if you can DEMONSTRATE your argument to me, then I have to accept it whether I want to or not.

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However, your point seem to suggest that the scientific method can DEFINE sanity, and this is simply not true.)

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Well, what does DEFINE mean in this context? Define where, in a dictionary? In the akashic record? We use the method to IDENTIFY and DESCRIBE sanity, not to define it.