Debate God

Hmmm, your friends are quite strange I would have to say. I don't believe that Jesus was the direct son of God as that is somewhat ludicrous. I do believe there is most likely a creator, whether or not he is the Christian God or not. So, in a sense I am an undefineable religion, as far as the major organized religions are considered; and would most likely be considered agnostic by most. However, when it comes to education, I shoot for as much as possible; if you are on this planet why not try to better yourself in everyway possible. I want to know everything there is to know, so that I can understand what brought meaning to my life; as this is the real question that matters... did my life mean anything?

 

Something that has always escaped my understanding is how that exactly took our sin away (or some of it). Also, I don't believe your description is quite right, since everyone can agree we all sin now. Anyway, if there is an explanation for this event, I would appreciate hearing it.

I agree with Zergling. Give us a source for this definition, and end the shenanigans!

Colleges like to see hard coursework through your high school years, so my senior year I will be taking three APs. Needless to say, I'm no longer Catholic, so your belief that religion makes people servile is not quite right. Hard work is also what gets you through life and your job; then you relax once you make a lot of money and stuff.

I'm just going to say this: I don't give a damn about Heaven and Hell (no offense). I'm going to live my life helping people and trying to make my life better as well. Whatever happens after I die doesn't matter as long as I do what I want to do. Like what Grif said. What I think the afterlife is sometimes is having your life fully exposed to everyone; that way, they know what you did right and wrong. If you did many bad things, everyone knows and you live in "Hell". And vice versa.

 

I would like to see this evidence, especially facts supporting it.

 

So you're saying that the only reason you're a christian is in case there actually is a heaven? You don't have any special connection with God or anything, you're just scared of going to hell. That's what I'm getting out of that sentence.

If you live a good "Christian" life, in my opinion you will have to refrain from doing things that you would want to do. You can't drink, you can't have sex before you're married, you can't do drugs, and (I heard this somewhere and it made me laugh) apparently it isn't "Christian" to break the laws that we as humans have set up. I'm pretty sure that it didn't say anywhere in the Bible that we can't drive our car over the speed limit, but I've been hearing more and more often that things like getting a ticket are a sin.

 

The "Christian" Life

The message you quoted was written by someone with a misunderstanding. Believing something that can put analogized to insurance is false belief.

What you say is also kind of a misunderstanding. God says to respect our elders and authorities, and, duh, himself. This means obeying the morally correct laws our authorities have given us, and God's rules given from himself.

About living a good life to get to heaven, it's a load of bull. If you sin, that makes you sinful, just as bad as the sin. A sinful being cannot redeem himself, his only way out is to be replaced, for someone holy to sacrifice himself in his place. Sin is hard to understand to one who does not know God, but that is the way it is.

 

Evidence

I could go on, and on, and on.

For example, take when archeologists found stone tablets inscribed "Kind David" where the Bible described his kingdom was. It isn't big, but it was the first reference to Biblical characters from the old testament from anything besides the Bible. That assures the Bible is at least talking about real people. This is a big step in the Bible's steps to becoming fact.

Then think of this analogy:

The universe is like your eyes. Anything outside is like a new color. Our brain is like life in the Universe, unable to know of, or describe anything it has not been exposed to. Unless something outside the universe is revealed to the life of the universe it will never be able to describe the actions of, characteristics of, any other part of, something outside, unless it is revealed to that life. But people can conceptualize something outside this universe, saying it exists, it did this, that, is like this, that. This could be either labeling, or knowing. Only one religion has an intense focus on having a relationship with, and being the subject of revelation of, that "new color."

Judaic Christianity [Old and New Covenants]

 

Still no evidence. So because the bible accurately described people and places of the time, everything it says must be right? There really isn't any correlation between the existence of kingdoms with archaeological evidence and a 'creator' who has not a single scrap of evidence. The bible is not evidence. It is a book, and nothing else.

In response to your last paragraph - again, this also proves the existence of Hogwarts and Middle Earth. Christianity claiming that god has has a personal relationship is not evidence.

By evidence, we mean physical proof or a requirement. By show me evidence, I mean show me some event, action, situation, or reproducible effect that can ONLY be caused by the Christian god and have no other possible explanations. There is no such thing.

 

Earlier you asked for examples of your ignorance. Here it is presented twice.

What about the 66 miracles that one guy posted? Is that not irrefutable evidence? Or are you going to give me that "placebo effect" argument. The placebo effect can be minorly changed to give a definition of a miracle. Now when we did we discover the placebo effect, and when did we start witnessing miracles.

Oh, and about your last paragraph. Really, it doesn't matter how much evidence we give you, you will ALWAYS refute it (whether you agree with me on that or not). I always hear this "God of the gaps" crap too. To me, lots of things science says just repeats things the Bible states and labels it a new name because people who aren't Christian will believe it. Let me show you what I mean:

Placebo effect : tweaked definition but can easily relate to a miracle. The definition of the placebo effect "The placebo effect is a medical phenomenon where the results of a medical treatment are affected by the patient's ideas about how effective the treatment is." Now the Bible tells us that if we believe God can truly heal us, and we have faith it will happen, it will happen. This relates too easily to the placebo effect. Just tweaked so you guys will believe it.

Golden rule : "Love thy neighbor as thyself" - from the Bible

Karma : "You reap what you sow" - from the Bible

Also, another point I bring up: What gave us sentience? Did we evolve to have sentience? We just adapted into sentience? Right...

Where does objective morality come from? Answering this with "conscious" or "sentience" does not work. If you use either, you must tell me what gave us that.

 

You are forgetting that we also showed that those 66 miracles, even if they all occurred at Lourdes, were still statistically less than there should have been. So even if there is a god, this is powerful evidence that it is not the Christian one.
We didn't need to change the placebo effect or even know about it for 'miracles' to happen. Some miracles can definitely be traced back to believing that you will get better, scientific studies have shown this countless times. The rest are all just chance events. Hell, with so many people getting sick with certain diseases there's at least a small population that will somehow fight back against them.

I'm sorry if this is blunt, but I can't think of a better way to say it. The reason that you are unable to provide me with sufficient evidence is that there isn't any. Yes, I will always refute it, because anything you may present me is simply chance or other related phenomena. I don't really see any kind of scientific idea that is just a repeat of the Bible. The difference between the two is that scientific fact requires evidence, which it has.

I constantly fear that I am looking at things from a biased viewpoint- just yesterday I started back at the beginning and re-examined a lot of the points I have made in the past few weeks. I look at each one from a purely logical standpoint and saw that what I said was, as far as I could tell, free of bias. (I am defining bias as an urge or willing for something to be true that encourages you to act away from logic). I hope that everything I have said has evidence and logic to support it. If not, I'm sorry- tell me, and I will explain exactly what I mean and why I mean it.

You are looking at it backwards. Belief in god is a placebo effect. Of course, if you truly believe that you are going to be cured by god then you are being affected by the placebo effect.
If you don't believe that the effect exists, take a look at scientific tests. Many patients are put on placebos so the doctors can establish a baseline, and know exactly how many are being cured by their own bodies.

We evolved into sentience, and also evolved to become social. The reason we have our morals is the same. If our entire society was constantly fighting and stealing, we would die off, wouldn't we? So instead, it became an evolutionary advantage to be nice to people around us, and thus be treated kindly by them.

 

1. How is it powerful evidence? It is STILL evidence, and catholics DO believe in the Christian God.

2. Placebo.

3. Bias = directly one sided. Your ignorance (I've shown it earlier) is bias opinion.

4. Placebo effect believes in the power of medicine, miracles are believing in the power of God.

5. I'll touch on this later. Gotta get home right now.

 

1. My point was that the statistics pretty much proves that miracles mean nothing.
The second half of the counter-argument, where I said that it helps to disprove the Christian god, was because if you actually DO believe that miracles occur (not from scientific processes), Christianity is only explaining a small portion of them, and there are many more that can only be explained by a different god.

2. Yes, the placebo effect and belief and god are related. I already told you why- belief in god IS a placebo effect. This doesn't help to prove god, it just explains how 'miracles' occur.

3. I really hope that I have not been ignorant. I try to research on any topic before I post about it. If I have not, please show me where and I will try to change it.
No, I have not read the bible, but I really don't see the point. I have already shown that the bible is in no way proof of god, and may not be anything other that stories. The argument that I am ignorant towards your religion is unnecessary- unless you can show me some proof that the bible is actually the word of god, the information that it contains can simply be dismissed as fictitious. Any claims that it makes are without merit, and you must first prove the bible is true before it can go on to make extensive claims about God.

 

....

Okay, that first one appears like so, it was a within religion debate.

Second...nice debate point, wish I thought of it myself.

 

All I claimed with the uncovering of David's name was that we now know that the Bible at least deals with real people, and doesn't make them up. That is all I said. Your response made it seem like I claimed the Bible was fact based on that little thing.

There are no objective evidences for us, nor any other theory. [That includes God's non-existence, or evolution.] Why do cling to those so well without the evidence that you would demand to believe us?

 

1. So because statistics have ACCURATELY recorded only 66 miracles it doesn't count? Oh, and please show me these other gods performing miracles.

2. God is not medicine. I hope you're catching onto what i'm saying. Placebo = belief of medicine being powerful. Miracle = belief of God being powerful.

3. As do I research topics.

However, what is the point of arguing the Christian God, with someone that does not bother to read what we believe in? I myself take plenty of time on wikipedia just learning more about evolution and the big bang. This is a debate about God's existence, I don't have to prove him to be able to debate. And if you really want answers, it'd be wise to read the book you're arguing against. How can you know if something is completely wrong if you've never read it? That's bias right there.

 

Ah, well. Anyway:

You were disobeying ForgeHub's authorities by double-posting. Does that count?

 

I don't know if anybody has explained this yet, but here it is. Back in Bible times for a person (or family, not sure which) to be forgiven of their sins, they had to sacrifice one animal every month (I think) to cover their sins for the price for sin is death. The animial had to be a perfect male and Jesus was later the sacrifice. He lived a perfect life and was a male. He took on our sin just like the animal would have and the only thing we have to do is to accept him as our Lord and Savior and that he died for us.

Because us Christians have already asked for forgivness of our sins, we no longer need to do it, but we still do anyways. Why? I'm not sure, but we do. I guess we feel guilty. Anyways, we've already been forgiven for ALL our sins. Non Christians however, haven't (technically yes, but they haven't accepted it yet). No longer will sacrificing an animal do the job since Jesus already sacrificed himself and took the place of the animal.

I hope this cleared it up.

 

So how exactly does a death make up for a sin? Why kill an innocent to cover up your own mistake? "Oh crud, I just stole something. Ah, I'll just kill this innocent duckling! All better." I get that "the price for sin is death", but why... and how exactly did that help? (And why did this practice end with Jesus? Will other ways of being forgiven end once some miracle occurs in that manner?)

Also, don't people of other religions ask for forgiveness as well? Oh wait, are they praying to the "wrong god"?

 

I'll label your points.

1. Let's use an analogy here. Say you have a dirty table. The perfect sacrifice for it would be a napkin. The napkin won't get the job done unless it is clean. After the cleaning, the table is clean, and the napkin is dirty. Every time you eat you will have to clean the table.

Now. The table is you, the napkin is the sacrifice, the cleaning is forgiveness, the dirtiness is sin, and eating is sinning. Pretty simple from there.

Then eventually the table gets so dirty the napkins can't clean it. Then shamwow comes along. Shamwow cleans that thing perfectly, and never runs out. (Shamwow represents Jesus)

2. Above example.

3. Mhmm.