Many Christians Lack Responsibility

I would maybe suggest that the relationship with God has multiple aspects, and although the parent/child analogy would perfectly represent one or more of these aspects, it would not represent others.There could be as many analogies as there are aspects of the relationship

That is a very interesting verse, and I will surely study it a bit when I find the time. But I just wanted to say that it didn't really support your claim that 'God is evil', since the verse rather says that God created evil.Now you could argue that it is evil to create evil, which is a rather profound philosophical question: Is God evil by creating evil ?Theologicaly, was he evil to give Adam the option to disobey him, knowing that Bibically, it is evil to disobey God ?Could God give us free-will without creating evil ?Personnally I don't think so, since if you create good, than automatically you create evil (ie the opposite of good).

We know that they at least knew not to eat from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Did they recognize this act as evil ? Probably not, because as you said, before eating it, they could not know.This could be analogous to me telling a hypothetical kid I would have not to touch the hot stove. He would probably not know that doing this is 'bad' until he touches it.Another option is that any knowledge they could have pre-fall of what is good and what is evil would come from God (God telling them: this is good, this is evil). After the fall, they would have gained the ability to decide by themself, without God, what is Good and what is Evil.I would guess positions would be defendable. Yeah well if we're talking theologically and biblically, we have free will, which is the way to go if you are talking about the biblical God. Of course, we could be just playing out the dream of a fat man in the sky (similar to some hindu beliefs I think), but then it would not be the God of the Bible. This comes back i would guess to the usual answer: God wanted humans to have the choice. Now I mean, he could have built an electric fence around the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and then say: don't eat it!. But then, even if they would have wanted to eat it, they couldn't have.Reading your comments, I have the impression that your opinion stems from Dawkins book 'the God delusion'. If this is the case, I would suggest to watch 'The God delusion debate' betweens Professor Dawkins and Dr. John Lennox. I found it pretty good.

dunno if it is on the net, I had to buy it. But I consider that it was worth it, since it is rare to have two highly qualified debaters such as these two.EDIT: http://www.dawkinslennoxdebate.com/it seems to have the integral videoEdited by slevesque, : No reason given.

In 'the God Delusion' Dawkins pretty much portrays the biblical God as an evil being, responsible for mass murder etc. So reading your opinion I linked that maybe you had read the book and adopted his approach.You should have written a book about this point of view before dawkins, you would have made a lot of money hehe. I still recommend 'the God Delusion debate' though, since if I remember correctly this is one of the points being debated.

Wow lol, this discussion is heavy even for me haha.I don't know how you deal with things in your churchs down in the states, but over here Phat, my pastor has said numerous times to doubt everything he says, and always rely on the Bible, which I believe is the innerrant Word of God (personnal opinion, so I don't want anyone saying 'prove it' please ).Also, remember that the greek origin of the word 'faith', as used by Paul, is 'evidence based' and not 'blind faith' (as Mike seems to be proposing, -). So in any case, it is very 'biblical' to doubt things. Some people will need very little evidence to believe, while others (such as me) will need more evidence.In both cases, doubting is never a bad thing. As I would suggest that atheist do the same.On another note, did you like the debate with prof. Dawkins ?

As a christian you rely on the Bible, and this is what my pastor teaches. He does not go in front of the church and tell people to doubt the Bible, because he himself does not doubt it.But if, for example, I come up to him and display any doubts I have, he won't discourage them by saying ''you cannot doubt the Bible!'', he'll rather offer explanations, both from reality and from other texts in the Bible.And so although he does not encourage his church to doubt the Bible, he won't discourage any doubting of it, but will rather answer using apologetics etc.

Yeah, that'S basically what I meant to say (don't trust me and look it up for yourself).In regards to why I would need his opinion in the first place, I would consider that it is because his opinion is equally as valid as mine. And so two opinions is better then one. (aside from the fact that he has more knowledge on the Bible then I can have, a pastor usually has a broader picture of a verse,etc. then I can have.) Well this is how knowledge is obtained, and so I do not see this as undermining christianity or any religions.Before I learned about the mechanisms of evolution in natural selection and mutation, I was being told that I had a monkey for cousin. There is nothing wrong in being told the conclusion before the steps that lead to this conclusion. This is how knowledge of anything and everything is obtained during childhood. (The mechanism of learning changes as you become an adult)Although you have to, at some point in the future, learn the steps if you want to be able to defend the conclusions you were taught while younger. Some people do not pursue to understand why they believe what they believe, and they have the right to do so if they wish. But I'm not really like that. I believe atheist usually end up so because they doubt religions and their claims, and so finding no sufficient truth's in these, they turn to atheism as the other option.But I think that if atheists doubted materialism, then they would probably would not turn back to any religion, but would rather become theists. (This is in fact what Anthony Flew did a couple of years ago)

Of course I agree. But I'm not in the Bible Belt, so i get exposed more often then not to conflicting ideologies. Quebec is pretty much atheist country. Hum, I think you lost me here haha.I'll use an analogy though: a pastor's interpretation of scriptures is similar to a scientist's interpretation of data. [/qs]And while I agree with you that that is how knowledge is obtained, we have to remember that when speaking of things like "evolution," we are talking about something that brings with it an extensive amount of objective evidence. The problem with religious studies is that we are usually either studying someone elses subjective interpretation of scriptures, or for those lone believers who don't follow any 1 particular religion, their own subjective interpretation.It's like studying Astrology from a "master Astrologist," where in that equation is someone actually studying something with confirmed objective evidence?[/qs]My answer here will relate to my previous analogy. A verse in the Bible is objective; in the sense that is says what it says, and the person who wrote it meant to convey a specific idea. Now the interpretation I make of it will be subjective, and it may not be the one the author meant. My subjective idea can change over time, since other verses can contradict it (or other verses can support it).In the same way, in science, facts are objective. But, they are also subject to subjective interpretations, and these can in time be confirmed by other evidence or contradicted. So in science, the same piece of evidence can at one point in time support a specific theory, and then later on support another theory, sometimes very different from the previous one. This concept of course originates from Karl Popper's book ''the logic of scientific discovery''. Yeah, Stiles had a better way to put it then me: I meant that 'they are left with atheism'. But I still think that, for an atheist who doubts materialism, the origin of life can be seen as supportive of an external deity. Materialism rejects this option A priori, but if someone doubts it, then I suppose it becomes at least a possibility. And for Anthony Flew, after seeing years of scientific research (and billions of dollars) to try and confirm that abiogenesis is possible, he saw it as, not just a possibility, but a certainty. That is a good question, are children born atheists ??I know only of one research that would relate to this, and it was about that japanese children believed in a 'creator God' even if it is not part of the japanese culture.

Weren't we talking about how knowledge is acquired through the Bible ? In no way was I 'proving' that the knowledge obtained in the Bible was reality. I was describing the mechanism of obtaining 'biblical knowledge' Of course, it was an analogy. In it, the original meaning of a verse was analog to a scientific fact. I am not equaling the two, since it is an analogy, again to discuss how knowledge of the Bible is obtained. I would add some other questions: How many theories of 'who was Lucy'? How many theories of the cambrian explosion? How many theories of the moons origin ? How many theories of the relationship between dinosaurs and birds ?There are scientific theories where there is a concencus agreement, as there are some verses where there is agreement by everyone. And there are other scientific facts who have many competing theories to explain it, as some verses have different competing interpretations to it.I want to restate that I am not equalling science and religion, But am rather making an analogy of how biblical knowledge can be optained. Don't people with a scientific mind like questions ? Unless you unlike consider questions which you can answer through the scientific method In any case, I would have to suggest Anthony flews book: 'There is a God: How The World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind'. Of course, but the fact is we don't know if a baby is born atheist or not. Unless you have a scientific paper on this.The only research I knew of was that one about the japanese (and british) children. The results from both cultures were the same; both had a concept of a creator God. The intrigue is that in the Japanese culture, there exists no creator God. So no influencing towards this option could have been made on the children. And yet, they had the same results as British children which where influenced by a culture where there is a creator God.

Sorry I didn't continue this discussion. I've been busy lately. For the cambrian explosion, for example, there are at least 5 identifiable theories. (increase in oxygen level, snowball earth, end-endiacrian mass extinction, evolution of eyes, arms race between predators and prey). I agree everyone have connections with the theory of evolution, but they are still independant theories. There is one most popular theory (colision theory) but there are at least 4 that I know of: fission theory, capture theory, condensation theory, and collision theory. Of course, the last one is by far the most popular, but their are still some rare proponents of the others. The most popular view is that birds came from therapod dinosaurs. But there are other theories. Some argue that birds came from tree-dwelling dinosaurs (such as Alan Fanecca). And some think that birds and dinosaurs shared a common ancestor (similar to humans and modern chimps). Again, different theories.This was just to point out that even if for some htings in science there is one concensus theory, in some others there are competing theories, all with valuable arguments for themselves and against the others. Of course, I agree that science is much more objective than any reading of a book such as the Bible.Still, I do think that the Bible is not totally subjective. It makes multiple statements about events in the past that you should be able to verify historically.I'll just as an example probably the most well-known: the ressurection of Jesus Christ. Not only is it a statement about a past event, but it is about a miracle. I always found it interesting that this subject is rarely debated, even if it is probably the biggest evidence of a miracle happening as you can get.Anthony Flew debated this with Gary Habermas back in 1985, in front of a crowd of 3000 people. Flew was at the top of his career, having published many notable books against miracles, and deities-gods. Regardless of this, 4 out of the five philosophy-judges panel (who judged the content of the debate) ruled in favor of Habermas, while the other called it a draw. There were also 5 professional debate judges who were asked to judge the quality of the arguments, in which 3 voted for habermas. Comments from two of the judges:

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‘I am of the position that the affirmative speaker [Habermas] has a very significant burden of proof in order to establish his claims. The various historical sources convinced me to adopt the arguments of the affirmative speaker. Dr Flew, on the other hand, failed, particularly in the rebuttal period and the head-to-head session, to introduce significant supporters of his position. Dr Habermas placed a heavy burden on Dr Flew to refute very specific issues. As the rebuttals progressed, I felt that Dr Flew tried to skirt the charges.’
‘I conclude that the historical evidence, though flawed, is strong enough to lead reasonable minds to conclude that Christ did indeed rise from the dead. Habermas has already won the debate. By defeating the Hume-inspired skeptical critique on miracles in general offered by Flew and by demonstrating the strength of some of the historical evidence, Habermas does end up providing highly probably evidence for the historicity of the resurrection with no plausible naturalistic evidence against it. Habermas, therefore, in my opinion, wins the debate.’

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I wanna buy the transcript of the debate. Religion Today, , November 2, 1999Can't find an internet version unforntunately, it seems to not be in their archives. :S

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A baby's brain functions are very well known. They are incapable of 'believing' anything. They are atheistic by default, because they have no means to make such a choice...until they begin to learn language and understand words. By this time they are capable of being influenced by their parents., thus indoctrinated into a belief system.

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I just found this:404(PS thr research I was talking about was 10 years old already, done by Olivera Petrovich)

Well the main point is juste the title: Children are born believers in God academic claims