I - an atheist - have an objective standard for Good

[Sparko]

Is it possible that you could be in error?

So, you admit that it's possible for you to be wrong? Do you think Allah would be just for punishing you due to your honest disbelief?



Do you mean to tell me that Allah is more just and less petty than Jesus?

No, because Allah doesn't forgive your sins, he just judges you for them. And in an arbitrary manner, by weighing them on a scale. As long as you are 51% good, you get into heaven. At least if you are a person of "the book" (bible) - I am not sure what happens to atheists in Islam. I think they might just go straight to hell, do not stop, do not collect 72 virgins.

[Sparko]

Not unintentionally.



I'll ask him about that if it turns out he was right. More likely, he was blowing smoke. Also not unintentional.



Pick the right villages.



It bears repeating that most Christians don't elevate the Bible into an object of faith. Catholics, I understand, go even further, making acceptance of the Bible contingent on the choices of the Church.

Most of the rest is hopelessly anachronistic. We don't do kings or thrones anymore, well, most of us don't, anyway, and the rest see the position as mostly ceremonial. Our social contracts are instead based, ideally, on compromises between equals. Right and wrong are based on principles of harm. Makes it a lot easier to argue for agreement that way.

The argument that something's right or wrong based on the Bible needlessly excludes the vast majority of humanity, not to mention a majority of Christianity itself. It's not defensible, even in principle. What's objectively right, or objectively wrong, can't depend on the authority of any book. Arguments from authority are informal fallacies.

The need to invoke that informal fallacy is an argument against your personal God, just by the way. You'd be better off sticking with the principles of Christianity that can be rationally defended, in my opinion. As an argument, the gift of faith works for Jesus. Stick with that. The gift of faith doesn't work for the Bible, though, because, well, the Bible makes mistakes, and even if it didn't, mistakes are inevitable absent an inerrant interpreter.



I tell the kids to pick up their calculators, press the inverse button, then the ln key, then 1, then equals, and write down what's displayed, the base of the natural log, e, according to their calculators.

Then I have them subtract the number they've written down. Most displays give e as 2.718281828 and a difference between the stored value and the display of 4.59 EE -10. That's not right, because e is irrational, and in fact it's transcendental. But in either case, as a decimal it goes on well past the 15 digits stored in the calculator.

The calculator gives the wrong answer for the difference because nothing you can hold in your hand is infinite, so eventually, it runs out of memory to store things.

Humans are finite. Eternity isn't. Eventually, if you're finite, you'd have to start shedding experiences.

Don't confuse the infinite with the all-encompassing, though. There are an infinite number of fractions, but none of them are equal to e.



I don't know how that would work, either, but I'm entirely sure you'd eventually run out of memory, if your comprehension remained finite.

Well it wouldn't be infinite, just everlasting. A potential infinite. As far as retaining your experiences, I don't have an answer, I just have to trust there is one. Maybe we will offload our memories onto digital storage or something

Believing in a God you can't see.

Seems an odd entry requirement to me, unless, well, ya know ... you never do get a chance to see Him.

That's why Jesus came to us. He wasn't invisible.

[Sparko]

For several centuries’ slavery was considered socially acceptable by entire communities. Christian slave owners justified it by scripture, e.g. Colossians 3:22 “Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord”. NIV.



You are being inconsistent. You have already acknowledged that if a person (Christian or non-Christian) commits a sin without realizing it was a sin then they can’t be held accountable.



There’s no moral difference. There is just as much excuse for “my sins” as there is for Christians who do something wrong without understanding it is wrong.



I don't advocate prayers of any sort. But, supposedly, your omniscient deity can read your heart.



EVIDENCE? You jest.



You assume that your particular deity exists, I do not.

Looks like we are at the point in the discussion where you just ignore everything I say and keep repeating the same thing over and over. It is clear you aren't reading my posts. I will answer one more time then I am done.

1. The bible says that those who do not have the law will be judged by their own law, the law written on their conscience, which will either condemn them or defend them on their actions.

2. Christians will be forgiven for all of their sins.

3. This doesn't mean that someone can just become a Christian with a magical prayer and live a life of sin, it is an actual commitment to follow God, even if you mess up along the way. God is interested in your heart and whose "side" you choose to be on. Your own, or his.

4. If you are not a Christian (see #1) you will stand in judgment for your sins. Unless you are sinless, you will end up in hell. The only sinless person who ever lived is Jesus. There are things you have done which you KNOW were wrong and you did them anyway. Your own conscience will condemn you for those actions when you face God. You know you did wrong. So you will face judgment for those actions.

[JimL]

No, because Allah doesn't forgive your sins, he just judges you for them. And in an arbitrary manner, by weighing them on a scale. As long as you are 51% good, you get into heaven. At least if you are a person of "the book" (bible) - I am not sure what happens to atheists in Islam. I think they might just go straight to hell, do not stop, do not collect 72 virgins.

Right, so Allah is more just and less petty than Jesus, he judges the sinfulness of a person not whether they believe in him or not. Why do you think an omniscient god would be so petty as to require human beings, imperfect in knowledge, to believe he exist and is god in order to show mercy? If you put yourself in gods shoes and think about that I think you'd find that to be both unjust and petty as well.,

[Sparko]

Right, so Allah is more just and less petty than Jesus, he judges the sinfulness of a person not whether they believe in him or not. Why do you think an omniscient god would be so petty as to require human beings, imperfect in knowledge, to believe he exist and is god in order to show mercy? If you put yourself in gods shoes and think about that I think you'd find that to be both unjust and petty as well.,

You just want to believe any God that doesn't let you get away with everything you want to do without holding you accountable is "petty"

I am sure you can make up a perfect God to believe in. You can name him, JimL, and worship him in the mirror. He will judge you to be flawless and require nothing in return.

[JimL]

You just want to believe any God that doesn't let you get away with everything you want to do without holding you accountable is "petty"

I am sure you can make up a perfect God to believe in. You can name him, JimL, and worship him in the mirror. He will judge you to be flawless and require nothing in return.

I don't believe in a god at all, Sparko. There may or may not be an actual god, though we've created many of them in our own image, but even if there be an actual god I know nothing of him/her/it so don't concern myself with it. That you do is fine, but had you grown up in Islam there's little doubt that you'd be a believer in Allah, not Jesus/YHWY.

[Electric Skeptic]

No it isn't. You're an idiot. Faith is trust. And trust is built on evidence. What you are describing is BLIND Faith, and that isn't biblical faith.

Blind faith is redundant. All faith is blind; that's why it's faith, rather than belief.

And it's hardly surprising to see a Christian resort to insult and attack when they are confronted with someone who refuses to agree with them.

derp. It wasn't wrong because it wasn't trying to be scientific. If I say the sun rose at 7AM this morning, am I wrong? I know it didn't actually move, the Earth did. But I am speaking colloquially. So does the bible.

So when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds, he's not wrong (even though he was wrong) because he wasn't trying to be scientific?

All you are doing is giving yourself an out when confronted by the errors you deny exist.

perhaps. It was a miracle.

lol...right.

I am speaking of things that can be checked. Like finding confirmations in other historic writings, finding coins with people's names on it from the time and area, finding archeological evidence that confirms the descriptions in the bible showing the authors were indeed there and so on.

None of which give the slightest confirmation of or even the evidence for the religious/spiritual/miraculous claims of the bible.

No because the people Joseph Smith fooled never saw the angel or the book or any evidence. We have their own word on that.

Just like the people who wrote the gospels never saw Jesus.

No, wrong.

Nope, still correct.

Go for it. Start a thread.

Why? All I'm doing is noting the fact that the evidence against Christianity is comparable with the evidence against all the other religious you disdain.

Archeology can just support inanimate claims like buildings, people existing (statues, coins, etc), it take writings to document events and occurances. And we have those. The archeology just supports that.

None of which give the slightest confirmation of or even the evidence for the religious/spiritual/miraculous claims of the bible.

Yes, they are. We have evidence that the writers were trustworthy and told the truth about the things we can check out. Smith for example invents an entire civilization that we have never found any evidence of whatsoever. And again,

We have zero evidence that the writers were trustworthy in any of their religious/spiritual/miraculous claims. Many of Dickens' stories were set in London; does that mean they are all true because we can verify London's existence?

Yes, they would have known. It was a pretty small community. Jesus was known to everyone in the area. His death was a public spectacle. He resurrected and ran around showing himself to everyone for 40 days.

lol completely unsupported.

Then he rose in view of everyone into the sky.

Similarly unsupported.

If someone tried to make that all up and spread a new religion there in Jerusalem, it would never have gotten off the ground. It would be just a bunch of liars telling lies that everyone there would know was lies. And they could just go to his grave and show his body. The Sanhedron could have just stopped this cult by opening the grave and displaying Jesus' corpse in the public square. Yet instead they spent decades chasing down the believers.

You have zero evidence of any of that. What we actually know is that we have no record by anybody until at least 20 years after Jesus' death, and we have no idea who actually wrote the records we have. To claim they are in some way better evidence for Christianity than are Joseph Smith's claims for Mormonism is absurd.

[Sparko]

I don't believe in a god at all, Sparko. There may or may not be an actual god, though we've created many of them in our own image, but even if there be an actual god I know nothing of him/her/it so don't concern myself with it. That you do is fine, but had you grown up in Islam there's little doubt that you'd be a believer in Allah, not Jesus/YHWY.

Sure you have a God. Yourself. Anything less than letting yourself off scot-free for your sins, is being "petty."

And you know what? If I grew up and became a muslim, whether here or in the middle east, the result would be the same, I would be wrong and unless I accepted Jesus, I would stand before God on Judgement Day and be judged for my sins. I would hope that some Christian would find me and tell me the gospel. If I am the same person otherwise, I know I would listen and examine the evidence and become a Christian just as I did in this life.

What's your excuse?

[Sparko]

Blind faith is redundant. All faith is blind; that's why it's faith, rather than belief.

That's just wrong. What do you think "belief" is I wonder? This will be good.

And it's hardly surprising to see a Christian resort to insult and attack when they are confronted with someone who refuses to agree with them.

Then don't say stupid stuff.

So when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds, he's not wrong (even though he was wrong) because he wasn't trying to be scientific?

It is a figure of speech translated into english from greek after being spoken aramaic. What it says literally is:

WH – ως κοκκω σιναπεως ος οταν σπαρη (5652) επι της γης μικροτερον ον (5723) παντων των σπερματων των επι της γης
It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the soil, though it is smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil

Just like the people who wrote the gospels never saw Jesus.

Sure they did.

Why? All I'm doing is noting the fact that the evidence against Christianity is comparable with the evidence against all the other religious you disdain.

And yet you have shown none.

None of which give the slightest confirmation of or even the evidence for the religious/spiritual/miraculous claims of the bible.

Archeology doesn't record any events, that is what documents do. And the gospels are documents.

We have zero evidence that the writers were trustworthy in any of their religious/spiritual/miraculous claims. Many of Dickens' stories were set in London; does that mean they are all true because we can verify London's existence?

It means that the writers were there and accurately described the surroundings. If the gospels were written hundreds of years later, the writers would not have known such things. As we find in the many apocrypha writing from 200+ years out.

lol completely unsupported.

It is supported. You think a nobody that no-one noticed ended up becoming the most famous person in the history of the world? LOL. That's a miracle right there.

Similarly unsupported.

It is supported by documents written by eye witnesses.

You have zero evidence of any of that. What we actually know is that we have no record by anybody until at least 20 years after Jesus' death, and we have no idea who actually wrote the records we have. To claim they are in some way better evidence for Christianity than are Joseph Smith's claims for Mormonism is absurd.

You can deny it all you want, but any serious biblical scholar and archeologist believes the documents are genuine, written by Jesus' followers, and contain accurate information. The fact that you don't want to believe doesn't change that. You are welcome to your own opinion, but that opinion is based on ignorance.

[JimL]

Sure you have a God. Yourself. Anything less than letting yourself off scot-free for your sins, is being "petty."

Now you're just being silly again.

And you know what? If I grew up and became a muslim, whether here or in the middle east, the result would be the same, I would be wrong and unless I accepted Jesus, I would stand before God on Judgement Day and be judged for my sins.

No you wouldn't. You're contradicting yourself again. If you didn't accept Jesus you wouldn't be judged for your sins, you'd simply go to hell. Nobody according to your belief is judged for their sins, they either believe in Jesus and so go to heaven, or don't believe and so go to hell.

I would hope that some Christian would find me and tell me the gospel. If I am the same person otherwise, I know I would listen and examine the evidence and become a Christian just as I did in this life.

So, it's all a matter of luck to you. If you're lucky enough someone will tell you. Besides, you wouldn't really listen. The poison already poured into the porches of your ears is a strong defense against objective reason.

What's your excuse?

My imperfect mind I suppose.

[Electric Skeptic]

That's just wrong. What do you think "belief" is I wonder? This will be good.

Merriam Webster
Definition of belief
:
2: something that is accepted, considered to be true, or held as an opinion : something believed
:


Definition of faith
:
b(1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof
:

Then don't say stupid stuff.

I haven't. I may have said some things that you consider to be stupid; just as you have said some things that I consider stupid. The difference is that I am polite enough (or, if you like, not rude enough) to not call you an idiot for it.

It is a figure of speech translated into english from greek after being spoken aramaic. What it says literally is:


WH – ως κοκκω σιναπεως ος οταν σπαρη (5652) επι της γης μικροτερον ον (5723) παντων των σπερματων των επι της γης
It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the soil, though it is smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil

So...it's wrong. Another instance where the bible is wrong - and this is God actually speaking. And you want to let it slide because it's a 'figure of speech'. Not a figure of speech anybody else has ever used, mind you.

Sure they did.

There is zero evidence that the authors of the gospels ever saw Jesus.

And yet you have shown none.

Because this isn't the thread for it.

Archeology doesn't record any events, that is what documents do. And the gospels are documents.

Which is precisely why I say that you have no support for the gospels' claims.

It means that the writers were there and accurately described the surroundings. If the gospels were written hundreds of years later, the writers would not have known such things. As we find in the many apocrypha writing from 200+ years out.

Just as Dickens was actually in London and accurately described the surroundings. That doesn't make Great Expectations real.

It is supported. You think a nobody that no-one noticed ended up becoming the most famous person in the history of the world? LOL. That's a miracle right there.

No, it is not supported. And no, it's not a miracle.

It is supported by documents written by eye witnesses.

That claim, also, is unsupported.

You can deny it all you want, but any serious biblical scholar and archeologist believes the documents are genuine, written by Jesus' followers, and contain accurate information.

That's just false. Very few serious biblical scholars believe the documents were written by Jesus followers and virtually nobody agrees that they were written by the apostles whose names they share.


And no amount of scholarship can verify that the religious/spiritual/miraculous claims they make are accurate.

The fact that you don't want to believe doesn't change that.

The fact that you want to believe doesn't change that.

You are welcome to your own opinion, but that opinion is based on ignorance.

You are welcome to your own opinion, but that opinion is based on wishful thinking and faith (i.e., belief despite the lack of evidence).


See? I can ad hominem you just as well as you can, me. Or we can both stick to the issues instead of attacking each other. Your call (although I guess your repeated insults have shown you've already made your call).

[Electric Skeptic]

And you know what? If I grew up and became a muslim, whether here or in the middle east, the result would be the same, I would be wrong and unless I accepted Jesus, I would stand before God on Judgement Day and be judged for my sins. I would hope that some Christian would find me and tell me the gospel. If I am the same person otherwise, I know I would listen and examine the evidence and become a Christian just as I did in this life.

If you grew up and became a muslim, you would think anyone who accepted Jesus was wrong, and be just as sure of it as you now are that anyone who does not do so is wrong. And if some Christian found you and told me the gospel, you would dismiss it just as you now dismiss every other religion.

[Diogenes]

If you grew up and became a muslim, you would think anyone who accepted Jesus was wrong, and be just as sure of it as you now are that anyone who does not do so is wrong. And if some Christian found you and told me the gospel, you would dismiss it just as you now dismiss every other religion.

Because no Muslim ever converted to Christianity.

[Electric Skeptic]

Because no Muslim ever converted to Christianity.

On the contrary. A number have. Just like a number of Christians have converted to Islam. The odds are heavily against it.

[Tassman]

You just want to believe any God that doesn't let you get away with everything you want to do without holding you accountable is "petty"

What exactly doesn’t God want you to get away with? Do you know? Christians have a long record of making the bible reinforce what the society of the day believes at any given period of history – whether owning slaves, maintaining Jim Crow Laws, conducting Inquisitions, subjugating women, embarking on crusades, or killing witches et al. All have received God’s endorsement at one time or another according to his followers, with scriptural quotes to prove it.

I am sure you can make up a perfect God to believe in. You can name him, JimL, and worship him in the mirror. He will judge you to be flawless and require nothing in return.

It is you that needs a mirror.