Atheism As A REJECTION OF--Not Disbelief In--An Evil God (hell, Mormons, myths)
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And I would guess that since very roughly half of christians don't believe Adam & Eve to be factual...the dogma is questionable.
I disagree, as Truth is not subject to popular opinion. If everyone in the world agreed that Brawndo's got what plants crave, that wouldn't change the fact that plants need water (yes, like from the toilet) as opposed to electrolytes.
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Originally Posted by phetaroi
Dogma isn't worth much at all unless the sheep follow it.
Practically speaking that may be true, but not ontologically speaking.
P.S. I hope someone reading this has seen Idiocracy...
That’s an interesting take on Adam and Eve.
I’d always regarded the Original Sin as pretty trivial in nature anyway.
No different to a child being scalded for being caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
But Christians will always argue that sin is sin, no matter what it is.
And of course that we cannot compare God’s nature, to that of ourselves.
I’ve argued with other Christians about the 2nd Commandment, that God being “a jealous God” is breaking his own rules book? (the Catholic and Protestant 10 commandments are not the same)
But God not having our nature, and being all powerful, doesn’t have to “lead by example” in this instance.
Yes, there are Christians who I wouldn't hesitate to describe as wingnuts though a more polite term might be deranged who argue that a single bite of an apple by Eve was enough to cause the ENTIRE universe to be tainted by sin and thus in need of Jesus' sacrifice (I kid you not--I mean think of the quadrillions of galaxies out there completely untouched by humans). So Jesus had to have died not only for man but for aliens hundreds of billions of light years away at the edge of the known galaxy! I have found debating with such people is pointless because experience has taught me that the more wacky a Christian's beliefs are, the greater the degree of impossibility it is to just present evidence to him that he might be wrong--much less get him to even consider that he might be wrong. William Lane Craig once said that no evidence presented to him could convince him the gospels are not historically reliable but that he willing to listen to such evidence! I mean the opponent has lost the debate going out the gate. Yet Craig wants his opponent to accept HIS position which automatically assumes the existence of the Biblical god at the commencement of the debate!!! I mean what do you do with these kinds of irrational people?
I disagree, as Truth is not subject to popular opinion. If everyone in the world agreed that Brawndo's got what plants crave, that wouldn't change the fact that plants need water (yes, like from the toilet) as opposed to electrolytes.
Practically speaking that may be true, but not ontologically speaking.
P.S. I hope someone reading this has seen Idiocracy...
I guess what is happening is that you are subservient to authority and I'm not. I won't believe something just because I'm told I have to. And that was always one of the main issues between me and christianity.
I guess what is happening is that you are subservient to authority and I'm not. I won't believe something just because I'm told I have to. And that was always one of the main issues between me and christianity.
This is fair, except that I would posit that you are subservient to authority as well; you just don't recognize or acknowledge it.
Faith is virtuous in and of itself; and when the source is trustworthy, that faith becomes eminently reasonable.
Yes, farcical. You asked a trick question. There's no answer to your question, and your premise is nonsensical. I can't even really tell what you're getting at.
Which scenario do you think even equates with the Edenic one?
Adam was not presented with either of the scenarios you laid out, and he did have free will.
Oh, well now I know you're just trying to be ridiculous and insulting. There's nothing tricky about it. It presents two equal but diametrically opposed scenarios. Everyone, except Christians who are forced by their Christian dogma to take the position on free will you take, everyone knows that when the Christian pagan god Yahweh says "You can choose to do evil but be prepared to accept the consequences if you do"--that person is not being given a true freewill choice. IF I am offered an opportunity to accept Jesus and I don't want him but I know that I will suffer horribly for eternity if I don't, of course I am going to choose Jesus--out of fear of him, certainly not out of any kind of love for him. It's not possible to love a person who offers such a selfish choice. If God really loved us and wanted what made us happy he'd let us choose to either accept Jesus or reject him and not hold a gun to our heads if we chose the latter. But this kind of Hobson's Choice God offers us is exactly why it was devised by the early church leaders: it forced pagans to accept Jesus with the threat that if they didn't accept Jesus they would burn for eternity in hell. Of course these dumb-as-a-post illiterate uneducated pagans chose Jesus. And that played right into the early church's hands because the church leaders realized the pagans didn't have the intelligence to discern they were being set up.
That's exactly what was offered to Adam:
‘For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die’. Genesis 2:17
All that is is "Sure Adam, I"ll let you choose whether to eat the apple or not, but if you do choose to eat it I am going to kill you."
Now calling that a free will choice is what's truly farcical.
Last edited by thrillobyte; 05-23-2022 at 11:34 AM..
Oh, well now I know you're just trying to be ridiculous and insulting. There's nothing tricky about it. It presents two equal but diametrically opposed scenarios. Everyone, except Christians who are forced by their Christian dogma to take the position on free will you take, everyone knows that when the Christian pagan god Yahweh says "You can choose to do evil but be prepared to accept the consequences if you do"--that person is not being given a true freewill choice. IF I am offered an opportunity to accept Jesus and I don't want him but I know that I will suffer horribly for eternity if I don't, of course I am going to choose Jesus--out of fear of him, certainly not out of any kind of love for him. It's not possible to love a person who offers such a selfish choice. If God really loved us and wanted what made us happy he'd let us choose to either accept Jesus or reject him and not hold a gun to our heads if we chose the latter. But this kind of Hobson's Choice God offers us is exactly why it was devised by the early church leaders: it forced pagans to accept Jesus with the treat that if they didn't accept Jesus they would burn for eternity in hell. Of course these dumb-as-a-post illiterate uneducated pagans chose Jesus. They didn't have the intelligence to discern they were being set up.
That's exactly what was offered to Adam:
‘For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die’. Genesis 2:17
All that is is "Sure Adam, I"ll let you choose whether to eat the apple or not, but if you do choose to eat it I am going to kill you."
Now calling that a free will choice is what's truly farcical.
Are you moving the goalposts now? God said to Adam "you will surely die". He didn't say anything about an eternity in hell.
You're twisting yourself into knots in order to explain yourself out of something that is really very simple.
Suffering and death are all around you. You will die. I will die. That has become the default state. God has made a way for us to have life. It's as simple as that.
An eternity of death (which is what you believe) or an eternity of life.
Our wills are corrupted by sin, so we are not as free as Adam was. We are slaves to our passions, yet God has given us the means to conquer our passions and no longer be slaves.
Are you moving the goalposts now? God said to Adam "you will surely die". He didn't say anything about an eternity in hell.
You're twisting yourself into knots in order to explain yourself out of something that is really very simple.
Suffering and death are all around you. You will die. I will die. That has become the default state. God has made a way for us to have life. It's as simple as that.
An eternity of death (which is what you believe) or an eternity of life.
Our wills are corrupted by sin, so we are not as free as Adam was. We are slaves to our passions, yet God has given us the means to conquer our passions and no longer be slaves.
What in the heck? Am I talking to gldn all of a sudden????? Well, I did say earlier in a post:
Quote:
Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Yes, there are Christians who I wouldn't hesitate to describe as wingnuts though a more polite term might be deranged....I have found debating with such people is pointless because experience has taught me that the more wacky a Christian's beliefs are, the greater the degree of impossibility it is to just present evidence to him that he might be wrong--much less get him to even consider that he might be wrong. William Lane Craig once said that no evidence presented to him could convince him the gospels are not historically reliable but that he willing to listen to such evidence! I mean the opponent has lost the debate going out the gate. Yet Craig wants his opponent to accept HIS position which automatically assumes the existence of the Biblical god at the commencement of the debate!!! I mean what do you do with these kinds of irrational people?
Yes, farcical. You asked a trick question. There's no answer to your question, and your premise is nonsensical. I can't even really tell what you're getting at.
Which scenario do you think even equates with the Edenic one?
Adam was not presented with either of the scenarios you laid out, and he did have free will.
There can be no understanding and reconciliation between the physical-minded literalists and those who seek spiritual-minded understanding. The trope that the Bible is to be understood spiritually is more than a suggestion. Spirit refers to the "REAL" us created within an evolved animal body (dust of the earth). It was NOT a physical body created. God is Spirit and we are created in His image which is Spirit, period.
All you physical-minded believers are simply misguided and wrong. There will be no physical body after our death. Spirit exists at a much higher energy level than the physical. Our spiritual interface will probably see it in the physical terms we are used to but it will not actually be physical (nothing spiritual is, think Shallow Hal).
Not going to quote the whole tome @Shirina, but some points:
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Again, I won't speak for Mordant - I suspect people do that for a lot of different reasons. For me, pure and simple, it was desperation. I wasn't getting any help from humanity so I directed my attention to the only place left.
I think this is an important point that doesn't get said enough. The reason many people WANT there to be a God is expressed right here. We want to believe that there is a somebody or a something that we can call on to help us when there are no other resources, and in fact, Christianity promises that there is! If we just open our hearts and call out to God, he is going to come and make known the existence of this God who loves us and cares for us. But then some of us find out that this doesn't actually happen, even if others claim that it happens for them.
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The last time I was here, some random Christian poster I had never seen before started whining and boo-hooing about homosexuals, gay marriage, the unraveling of society and all the rest of that crap - and not one single person outside of the atheist community criticized said poster. In other words, here's this poster STILL complaining about gays some 12 years after same-sex marriage has been made legal - and no one is telling THAT person, "Hey, ya know? Maybe you don't need to keep bashing gays ..."
I don't know who you're talking about, but your implication here that no one speaks up is simply not true, given that the longest-running thread (three consecutive threads, actually) EVER on the R&S forum is on the topic of Christianity and the LGBT community, and the participants who have been loudly and repeatedly saying what I underlined above consist of both atheists and practicing Christians who do support Q (CD asterisked out my word, lol) people and their rights to marriage, ordination, and all the other goodies that cisgender people enjoy.
I mean, some of us have repeatedly written carefully-thought-out posts almost as long as your own to try to get through to Bible literalists why their special verses they use to condemn LGBTQ people might be invalid, hoping against hope that we'll get through. Our resident transgender person, who inexplicably remains Christian despite the fact that other Christians drove her to suicide attempts has courageously shared her story using her real name in order to try to reach others. Hell only knows if any progress has been made in the hearts of the most die-hard Bible literalists, but please don't dismiss those efforts as non-existent.
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I have found debating with such people is pointless because experience has taught me that the more wacky a Christian's beliefs are, the greater the degree of impossibility it is to just present evidence to him that he might be wrong--much less get him to even consider that he might be wrong. William Lane Craig once said that no evidence presented to him could convince him the gospels are not historically reliable but that he willing to listen to such evidence! 
