This is all in response to Kalar cu Ruric:

As Daganev pointed out, there are many names for God. Some people say all three religions follow the same God, some say that they don't - in the end it's all semantics. All three religions trace their roots back to Abraham, but the way Muslims might describe their God would be very different from the way Christians would describe their God. I believe Jews and Christians would agree on a lot of points, with some differences between them.



There are a lot of people in the world who call themselves Christians, but really are not. There are also a lot of true Christians who do a lot of stupid things. It is not necessarily related to Jews being God's chosen people - persecution of anyone is equally wrong.

I believe that God would know about such attempts. Satan intervenes only when God allows it (see Job for an example) - there are some areas that God simply does not allow Satan to interfere. Of course, you might say that Satan interfered and botched up the entire Bible...in that case, it would be a step of faith (in combination with Occam's Razor) to believe that the Bible is what it claims to be.



This has been one of my criticisms of Christians for quite awhile. If you do not truly know what you believe, then you cannot say you believe it. If people are Christians solely because their parents were, they will most likely fall away when they're challenged. I believe in studying - if I'm wrong, I want to know it. So far, I have not found anything to convince me that I am.



It's not so much that the question is important, but sometimes the answer is vital. If nobody pondered over questions like that, we would not be anywhere near as advanced as we are today - a good deal of science, technology, and philosophy stems from seemingly meaningless and unimportant questions.

Next to Murphy (always a pleasure, by the way):

I believe I would have to agree with Aiakon on this one - Christians have done a lot of cruel and twisted things, but that is more a reflection of human nature than of Christianity itself. I don't believe Christians as a whole persecute pagans; we do, of course, point out that we believe they're wrong, but I don't know of many examples of outright cruelty toward other religions. Also, I do not disregard knowledge or life - in fact, the entire point of this conversation is my respect for knowledge. I believe that, all things considered (that is, all of the knowledge available) when considered lead to Christianity.



I could easily turn this question around, which would contribute more to this conversation: what specifically would cause someone of moderate intelligence not to believe in the Bible?

Unfortunately, I have to agree with this. The majority of Christians do not know much of what the Bible truly teaches, and those who do (myself included) do not follow it perfectly. Gandhi himself said that if Christians truly followed the Sermon on the Mount, even he would be a Christian. The problem is that you are judging the truth of an ideal by its followers. I know a lot of scientists whom I don't like; they may do all kinds of horrible and attrocious things. Still, that doesn't inherently discount their discoveries.



I'm not sure where you're going here. My guess is that you're presupposing that because I believe the Bible to be infallible, I obviously am not logically considering anything. If that's the case, I would challenge you to logically show me why you believe the Bible is not true - and, of course, simply saying it sounds unlikely won't quite cut it.

If you disagree with anything I'm saying (about religion, science, etc.) feel free to logically contradict my points. To this point, it seems that you are settling with ad hominem, which (while effective in some circles) doesn't really contribute much.



I'm not following what exactly your definition of "preach" is. Does it refer to all discussions of religion? I believe most of this thread has focused on facts and only dipped into spiritual discussion in response to spiritual questions. I'm happy to logically discuss science, philosophy, mathematics, history, or whatever other applicable fields - even though I don't know much about some of them, I'm always up for discussion.

This is all in response to Exarius:

I can appreciate where you're coming from here. Actually, though, I disagree in that I believe that linguistic conversations can help us learn quite a bit. Xeno wrote several paradoxes, mostly aimed at Pythagoras and his followers, all of which sparked a great deal of study. The result of the paradox you're mentioning were that people came to believe that space could not be infinitely divisible (i.e. there must be a 'smallest' unit of space that could not be divided anymore). This then led to the believe that space could not be infinite, which led to plenty of other theories.

Of course, Calculus has provided a possible way to resolve Xeno's paradox (infinite regressions which add up to 1), but even that doesn't completely satisfy everyone. Xeno's paradoxes, while they never actually proved anything, had a huge impact on our undersatnding of the universe.



This is an interesting thought. The problem is, most religions are mutually exclusive - either one is right and the others are not, or they are all wrong. So, for most people, if God shows up and says that everything they believe about Him is wrong, they will not be in a good place.

Next for Shiri...I have to say, it makes me nervous that the Shiri-bot is getting in on the discussion. I already can't keep up, but having the bot doing a few thousand posts a day will make it even more fun!

I believe the suggestion is not necessarily that we have an 'inbuilt religion,' but that we are born with the need to have faith in something. We might choose religion, science, humanism, or something else, but unless we have faith in something, we're miserable.



This line of logic has always been interesting to me. It actually makes a lot of sense - people will accept something much more readily if it makes them feel better. However, to apply it to religion is to commit a fallacy.

The common argument is to say that religion makes people feel better, so they accept it as an escape from reality. However, this begs the question that the given religion is not reality.

For example, let's say for the sake of argument that Christianity is correct. There is a God, and all of the Bible is true. If this were the case, then the argument would be just the opposite - I could say that people reject religion because it makes them feel better; they like the feeling of power when they don't have to accept the reality of a higher power.

So, either those who DO believe in a higher power are deluding themselves for comfort, or those who DON'T believe in a higher power are deluding themselves for comfort. The only way to know which is to know which is correct.



There are other people who comfort us. What does religion really accomplish in this regard? The interesting thing about Christianity is that there are no promises that everything will go well. There are some people (Joel Ostein comes to mind) who teach the 'prosperity gospel,' but that is nowhere in the Bible. God doesn't promise to keep us from struggling through hard times, and doesn't directly intervene in any physical way to comfort us during those times. While I do believe He intervenes spiritually to encourage us, but that presupposes that God exists. What do you suppose it is about faith in God that comforts people so much?

Next in line is Xavius (I'm almost done with evil back-to-back posting, I promise!)



Actually, what you're saying makes perfect sense - basically, unless you presuppose religion, there is no why.

Then, you have to wonder...why do people seem to have the inherent desire to wonder why? Throughout history, every major culture has tried to answer the 'why' questions. Ironically enough, I have to wonder why we all have a desire to know why.

Finally, last but not least, to Daganev:



These verses clearly regulate that no man can ever add to God's word. The New Testament (Luke 16:17, for example) goes on to say that no part of God's word can ever fall away.

This regulation does not, however, prohibit God from adding to his own word. After all, the Neviim and Ketuvim came after God gave these commands, but they are bound together as part of God's word.

The real question, then, is whether the New Testament is truly God's word, or whether it was an attempt by man to add to God's true word. If it is the latter, then this verse is absolutely applicable, and meny men (myself included) have fallen victim and failed God's test. If, however, it is truly God adding to His own word (as He did through the prophets), then we are just as wrong in ignoring it.

The prophets never added or took away from G-d's word actually. What they do is give new ways of doing the same old stuff.

I would not consider things such as "don't pay lipseverice, do real service" as adding or subtracting. I would however consider saying something along the lines of , "You no longer have to do X" as a direct subtraction.

The prophets are also not G-d, or G-d's word, if they were, there could never be the case of a false prophet, which is defined by a suggestion that the words are changed.

I did an interesting search on wiki and saw about 10 different religions where are still around which are founded on false prophets, (i.e. they made a positive prediction, and it did not come true)... interestingly enough, of the few false prophets/false messiahs that I know of in Jewish history, none of those movements lasted after the death of the leader or after the prophecy never came true. Just something I thought was interesting. (sort of a cosmic slippery slope argument)

What evidence for God? Every time someone tries to "prove" God exists, they present some convoluted Rethoric which goes something like this:

1) The Universe presents some behaviour A.
2) A cannot be explained by science.
3) Therefore, God exists.

Or, the slightly more educated:

1) The Universe presents some feature B.
2) B necessitates a personal god.
3) Therefore, God exists.

Neither of which are particularly convincing. Where is real, live, tangible evidence? "I saw an angel" is not evidence, by the way, and neither is the Bible.
How can an universe be nondeterministic and allow for an omniscient personal entity that can see into the future? Additionally, what the hell is the One Force, and how does it indicate the Universe is nondeterministic?

Do you seriously believe you can go a lifetime without making mistakes?
How can you say you can go all your life without sinning, and then turn around and say if we tried to be perfect, we'd fail?

Those are just to expose how generally nonsensical the whole story really is. God didn't make things right from the start; it seems as though Jesus was there to clean up God's mess (The blame falls on the humans, of course, but God must be viciously stupid not to have had the foresight that this would happen anyway).

If Jesus came back to life, how was what he did a sacrifice? "Oh, I'm going to spend three days down there, and we'll pretend this is a sacrifice of cosmic proportions". On the other hand, why is a sacrifice needed at all?
If that is the case, then how come the only monotheistic religions that exist today are Abrahamic (And zoroastrianism, which comes from much of the same source?) Why doesn't God talk to illiterate people today?

People who die when they're young because of a natural disaster are not given the same chance to redeem and find Jesus as the people who are allowed to die of old age. How is that fair? How does that fit in with benevolence? Some people get 80 years to redeem themselves, and don't. Some people die when they're 21 and just robbed their first liquor store, in a freak accident which didn't involve anyone, just a natural, random event. How exactly is that fair, or benevolent, or right?
The Bible seems uniquely tailored to the pastoral life of those people. It says numerous things which are relevant to them. Also, I find it highly unlikely that a people living in some way distinct from the way described in the Bible would suddenly change their whole lifestyle to adapt to the Bible, specially seeing that most tribes of the region had the same way of life (Either partially nomadic or wholly sedentary tribes subsisting mostly out of cattle and/or grain farming, if I recall correctly) and worshipped a myriad different deities.

Because Koresh was stupid, or not concerned with the long-term survivability of his cult. On the other hand, Baha'i survived its founders, and Scientology is giving every sign of outliving Hubbard. Some sets of memes have what it takes to survive; some don't.

Going back to WWII again, lots of Frenchmen who'd never have thought of owning or using a gun suddenly became partisan guerillas during the German occupation. Christianity achieved its critical mass by spreading through the Empire's lower classes; it was often associated with a message of resistance to the Romans. Eventually there were so many Christians they started to encroach on Rome itself, Christianity was made a state religion, and the Dark Ages happened.

It sounds to me Verithrax that you have a very juvenile view of how "god should be."

I know of 4 books that I have read about how "god should be" that to me, all from very different points of view explain in great detail and with straightforward logic their view. Two books in English that are very simple and very short are "If you were god" and "The Secret life of god"

"If you were god" is a book written for high school students who ask "If god is perfect, why are his creations so imperfect", and "Secret life of god" is a more advanced book, and I would only ever suggest it to someone who thinks everything they have been told before is nonsense. A quick reading of either of those books, might help you see why those questions often go unanswered on the internet, and are generally ignored.

Most arguments against the well known "proofs" of god are not really honest disproofs. The very fact that so many people say "You are fooling yourself" or "its an illusion" or "that can be explained without god" doesn't disprove anything. The only thing it does is prove that human understanding and self knowledge is both unreliable, and the only thing we have. And that doesn't tell you anything about anything outside of humans.

Except the vast majority of sermons are more about whatever the preacher wants to say this week than about the Bible.
Except, the Bible has lots of parts which are easy to point to and quote and use as instruments for instituting your own morals and social control.

Additionally, whole large swathes of the Bible are nothing but "Do this, don't do that"; Leviticus, say.

You're massively exaggerating the persecution against early Christians. There are very few records of the era between Christ himself (If he existed; evidence of his existence is dodgy at best) and Christianity having sufficient numbers to be "respectable". If you don't take the Bible to be perfectly accurate (It isn't; the New Testament was written a long long time after the period of time it portrays) then Christians were viewed with suspicion until Nero, who instituted persecution of them by blaming them for the Fire of Rome. It was perfectly possible for early Christians to not die as martyrs.
It is extremely reasonable to believe so. People predisposed to random acts of extreme charity were at a disadvantage, as were people predisposed to random acts of extreme violence. People who were capable of self-defense and at the same time capable of significant, but not dangerous amounts of charity and altruism had a significant advantage.

It's neither, and I didn't say it is. Quanta behave as waves under certain conditions, and behave as particles under certain conditions; in reality, they are difficult to think about in ways which are analog to the behaviour of the macroscopic world. Science is built on two things: Logic and evidence. The evidence shows that if you look at quanta one way, they act as though they're waves; if you look at them another way, they seem to be particles. Therefore, they are either both, or something different which behaves as though it was both things when observed in the right ways.
Give a proper example, instead of vague assumptions. What you're saying is basically that "The universe is very complicated so it must be inconsistent and magical".

Some questions are simply meaningless. "Why is the Universe the way it is" can be answered by a chain of causality and understanding of the interactions between the different things that exist in the Universe. We don't really now the barest fundamental inner workings of the Universe. Again, making up magical fairies doesn't help. It's perfectly possible that the way the Universe works is ultimately internally consistent in a way in which the Universe's existence and features can be explained scientifically; if the Universe "just is the way it is" for seemingly arbitrary reasons, then that doesn't mean it was created, or anything of the sort. Particularly, questions about "meaning" and "purpose" are silly. Meaning and purpose aren't built into things; we attribute meaning and purpose to things. Why should the Universe be any different?

I am coming from four presuppositions about God which, to mainstream Christianity, are true:

1) God is omnipotent.
2) God is omniscient.
3) God is respectful of free will.
4) God is benevolent, and at the very least "wants" us to be saved.

And pushing those to a breaking point. Virtually any attempt at explaining how God thinks or works basically comes down to "God works in mysterious ways" or "You cannot know the mind of God". If there's another proper argument your oh-so-enlightened self can provide, then please go ahead.

And yes, I am aware it's not possible to disprove God (In the words of Stephen Colbert, "There's always a little bit of him left") but then again, you can also not disprove Thor and his hammer, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or cosmic teapots, or the Invisible Pink Unicorn. The burden of proof is on theists, who are making the claim that God exists.

Ok first of all, if there were any statements about Thor an his hammer, or the flying spaghetiit monster, than you could disprove them, but there aren't. And if the statments are just the same one used about G-d then all you have done is switched names around.

Secondly, you can quickly and easily look up the books I mentioned, excerpts and full reviews of them on are the web.

You assume answers to your questions, which are not the answers given.

Lets just take the question of Omnicesnse and Freewill. I would suggest looking up on Google a phrase called "point of bechira"

Honestly, those 4 points are things people argue about or have questions about in highschool. They are the least complicated of theological questions in my opinion.


Your biggest problem with looking at generic Christain sites and debates on these issues is that 1. Everyone's defintion of a Christain changes, and thier theological answers differ widley. And 2. I am pretty certain that most congregational pastors, think of these as "non issues" because they really have no impact on a person's day to day life.

I just read something interesting where the religious belief in free will, is an argument of why society can't work without it, is the exact same/opposite of the athiest belief in the lack of a divine being. Defintily something worth investigating further.

Basically the Athiest argument is: If G-d knows everything and has full control of the universe, how can you punish people for the crimes they commit?

The relgious argument is: If people are just the outcome of their environment, and genetics(nature/nurture) then how can you punish people for the crimes they commit?

I smell an unsubstantiated generalisation. Reference please.

In any case, from my not insignificant experience of sermons, I must disagree with you.

You're right, it's an unsubstantiated generalisation coming from my particular experience with sermons, and I'm sorry.

I haven't made this argument, nor do I know of any real athiests who have. Or atheists, for that matter.

Atheism does not necessitate the view that people have no free will or are merely the outcome of their environment, so the relgious person making the argument is putting up a straw man.

Really now?

Atheism != science; most atheists do take a naturalistic view of the universe which assumes no free will. As for the atheist blogger, good for him; I'm not obligated to defend his view.

What was this ranting and raving you were going on about being grounded in reality again? Having proofs and things being falisfiable?

Though I must admire your ability to take something which as an attempt to bridge a gap and use it to turn into something divisive.

Just because you don't want to say certain things, doesn't mean that there isn't a slew of people who do say those things.

But now that I think about it, it seems to be a trend on the internet. Take your own stereotypes, pick a new enemy and stick those stereotypes on them. I say the internet, because I haven't met anybody in real life yet who does these things, but then I live a nice sheltered life surrounded by pleasant people.

How would the statements about Thor or anyone else be more fallible than ones about the Biblical god? Isn't the point that these beings are all as of yet unknowable in scientific measurable terms? Whether we believe in them doesn't matter (unless you're going to pull out the interesting argument from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" that faith created gods in a real sense and lack of faith can destroy them), it's whether we can justify that belief in rational terms.

I fully accept I have no proof that the gods I believe in exist and that's fine by me. I enjoy the idea that I might be speaking to myself and I don't think my gods will be offended by my doubts.