Religion

[newboy]

Yup. God/Jesus can do anything, so there's nothing to say he didn't do all of that.

He/they can do anything, but choose to standby while terrible terrible suffering happens?

Does God want to hurt people? No. People sin and people are hurt because we live in a fallen world thanks to the original humans (Adam and Eve) turning their back on God by eating the apple from the forbidden tree. I'm not saying natural disasters affect people because of the sins they have committed, don't get me wrong. Everything is somehow part of God's plan, and I don't really know the answers. Suffering is a terrible thing, and something hard to understand. However, all I know is that God/Jesus knows what suffering feels like.

I don't think that explains anything. You say that people are hurt because they sin or because of what happened 5000 years ago. That's a long time to hold a grudge. So if a child gets raped by a bishop in 2010 or a little kid dies of cancer or a village of people get wiped out by and earthquake you think that's God's justice for Adam and Eve eating an apple 5000 years ago?

Are you willing to have faith in the being that does that?

You should have read the answers on the bbc news site to "Why did God let Haiti happen". It ranged from 'suffering makes us learn' through to 'The haitians were evil'. It just exposed once again a complete inability for those of faith to explain why their Gods are either powerless or evil and don't intervene in tragedy. You'd think that this basic question would be easily answerable but it's not.

Given all that the only possible answers are:

- God is evil

- God is powerless

- God doesn't exist

Which one do you want to choose?

Without the possibility of evil and without the possibility of 'bad' things happening, then we cannot really experience what love is - how powerful God's love is for us. We need opposites to experience each pole of the spectrum if you see what I mean. Everything is in God's plan, but yet we do have free will to make decisions, to sin etc. It's a difficult paradigm to understand - that God knows everything that is going to happen, yet us still having free will. It comes down to the fact that we have no idea what God has planned for us, so we make decisions as normal. We make the decisions, but God already knows - but we don't know what he knows. It does make sense in time when you read more about it, honest!

So once again how come innocent babies die. Is that to make us sinners know love and happiness? It makes no sense whatsoever. How can that be part of a plan? What kind of pathetic plan is that?! Where is the free will in bad things happening to good people? Where is God's justice in people who do great harm coming to no harm themselves?

Do you think we'd be unable to experience sorrow and loss without God? How can that be true?

However, it must be noted that not everything in either testament is meant to be literal - the differences between what is supposed to be taken literally and what isn't is more obvious in the original writing language of Greek, not English. Lots of our words are not really accurate to describe what the Greek words were getting at. For example, there is still debate among Christians whether the '7 days' of creation are literally 7 days or 7 periods of time. It's pretty irrelevant overall, but it shows that not everything is black and white. The key message (i.e. what Jesus' death and resurrection means for us) clear, however.

You say not black and white, I say a load of tripe. It's vitally important that the bible states which bits are parable and which bits are literal. Originally people believed in the whole lot and as more and more was disproven the cop-out answer was "this bit's just parable, but the rest is literal, honest". If it's not clear which bits are metaphor then you would have to assume that the whole lot is metaphor and that God was just a made up being. This is meant to be the definitive word of God remember.

Do you find it a bit disconcerting that many people live their lives literally by the bible when it was written, edited and translated by fellow, infallible man?

I'm not sure about these 'omitted' books. However, I'm guessing that the people constructing it felt they were not needed.

That's one hell of a responsibility. If stuff was left out, do you think it can still be described as the word of God?

There's the common mistake I feel people make. God is in everything. He hasn't disappeared.

Guilty as charged. Please enlighten me and show me how God is in everything. Everything? The smile on baby's faces? The joy of spring? The wonders of the sun setting over a golden lake? Larvae that make kids go blind? Parasites? Chlymidia? Gonorrhea? Drought that wipes out villages and herds? Rapists? Paedophiles? Earthquakes?

Given all that, he can be seen as neutral at best wouldn't you agree. And if that's the case, what's the point?

thanks to the original humans (Adam and Eve) turning their back on God by eating the apple from the forbidden tree

Wouldn't we all be inbred by now? I'm pretty sure science has shown that congenital defects would have wiped out humanity by now if we were all descended from just 2 people. And were Adam and Eve black or white or asian? 5000 years is not enough to justify the variations in race we see nowadays.

If God just stopped it all then we would not learn from our mistakes and try to earnestly seek a relationship with him. Faith helps a lot of suffering people through a lot of things. Take Haiti - yes there was a lot of voodoo and demonology going on, but I also saw people praying to Jesus and taking comfort from that. The book of Jeremiah featured God promising that everything that happens to his believers is, in the end, for their own good. In adversity I think people often see their relationship with God grow - because in all actuality, no bad thing can upset us permanently, as we will be with him in Heaven one day. That hope is so comforting through bad times.

That's one hell of a punishment and an expensive lesson. As a parent if I had either caused or watched on whilst my children died so that my other kids would learn a lesson and even after 5000 years they'd not changed then I'd change tactics. God is clearly a really retarded parent if he isn't spotting that the lessons aren't working.

And once again not intervening in preventable tragedies (but a superhero like God) to innocent people isn't really helping is it? Where is there evidence that we are learning? What exactly should we be learning from it? That God is spiteful? That God won't help? Please spell this one out as much as you can or you're just spouting meaningless rhetoric.

You keep on saying that things are complex but make no effort to explain the complete contradictions and massive holes in logic going on here. We can't just dismiss these flaws because they're allegedly beyond us.

The Bible says that God will answer every prayer - but we must understand that he's the all-powerful one, not us. As I explained above, He will do things that are, in the end, in our best interests. He always answers our prayer, just not always in the way we mortals would actually like him to at the time!

Please explain exactly how God answered the prayers for a small child who has cancer and died. Please explain how it was for her best interests.

This is just one example. How about the mother who is starving and prays to God for food for her family?

They may have 'evidence' to back things up like Christians do, but their theologies don't make any sense. I don't think Muslims believe Jesus was crucified, yet there is evidence for that. (Please feel free to correct me). They also believe that you can work your way to paradise/heaven by doing good things. If that were the case , we'd have to meet the perfect standards which God (and Jesus as the only sinless man to walk this earth) by his nature sets. We could never do that - we all know it if we honestly look at ourselves and our lives. Only by his grace, his generosity in offering us a place in Heaven which we don't deserve, can we get it. Only through believing this is the case through what Jesus came to earth to do.

Why did you put evidence in inverted commas for Muslims and Scientologists, but not for the stuff you read in the bible?

As for theology making sense RuralDean summarised it beautifully.

Of course things can be passed down inaccurately by word of mouth - ala Chinese Whispers. However, I think the writers wrote things down pretty soon afterwards. Superstition was rife - the Bible mentions demon and idol-worshipping peoples surrounding the Israelites and later the early Christian communities. It warns not to entertain their beliefs, though. The difference between what Jesus did and what others could magic up (mostly through demons - I think the devil can still make things happen today to fool us and turn us away from God who does more than just glorified magic tricks) is that he did something noone else could do - rise himself - and others such as Lazarus - from the dead.

Another similar story is in the OT. Moses wants the Pharoah to set his people free in Egypt. God gives Moses the power to perform all these miracles and plagues. Up to a certain point, the Pharoah's magicians can replicate Moses' tricks. Up until a point - they can't copy the splitting of the red sea or the nile turning into blood. God > evil magicians.

How did humanity forget to do magic tricks? Obviously not super magic like God, but just replication of Moses' tricks.

My personal experience with God daily shows me he is all-powerful and is with me every step of the way. I therefore cannot believe that God isn't all powerful.

Please explain what you mean by this. God isn't with me at all and I lead a happy moderately successful life.

[Philip Belgrave]

Not much of debate though is it? You're right in that in real life I'd wouldn't stand there and challenge people's beliefs - as we've both said each to their own. But this is a forum post on religion so it would be a bit rubbish if we all just came on here, made a statement and then didn't expect a response wouldn't it?

You've posted a scenario where religion was causing people to be happy in a harmless way. That's great. But if we just took these isolated incidences and didn't put it in the context of the world-wide damage religion is doing and has been doing for thousands of years we'd just be looking at one side of the argument. And it's that kind of blinkered approach that fuels religion in the first place.

Indeed, but then your response was quite predictable and all we really seem to be doing is regurgitating arguments that been used time -and-time again.

Now ,if you'd come back with a:

"GLORY HALLELUJAH, BROTHER -I'VE SEEN THE LIGHT "

that would have stimulated the discussion.

[newboy]

Indeed, but then your response was quite predictable and all we really seem to be doing is regurgitating arguments that been used time -and-time again.

Now ,if you'd come back with a:

"GLORY HALLELUJAH, BROTHER -I'VE SEEN THE LIGHT "

that would have stimulated the discussion.

Yeah. I agree that until swji came along it was getting stale. From my perspective I'd spent an unhealthy amount of time asking a whole bunch of questions and points and the religious lot would ignore them or just come up with vapid responses. As such arguments are being regurgitated because there's no proper response back.

It's like a continuous loop of:

"them: Remark."

"me: Reponse. Some attempt at reasoning using logic and facts. Some attempt to engage a more meaningful discussion through some conclusions and more questions."

...silence....

"them: Same remark again."

Sound of me banging head on wall.

I always thought Dawkins was a bit of an overbearing pillock for being so contemptuous of religous people and by being so derogatory rather than conciliatory he was missing the point. But after spending more than enough time on this post I can sort of see where he's coming from and can recognise that I'm slowly turning into him. As an adult I'm staggered that other adults can think stuff such as morality only coming from religion and literal belief of the whacky stuff and that's not healthy for me to be so dismissive.

So Amen brother I have seen the light - I'm largely wasting my time on this. It's been interesting and I've learnt a fair whack how other people think, but the biggest thing I've learned is that you simply can't attempt to use rationalilty with people who have an irrational belief. There's no point. So you end up either playing to a religious crowd who won't use rationale (or a very shallow one at best) or to an atheist crowd who nod their head furiously because they already believe the same as you. There's very little new coming out of it and no-one's moving ground or really conceding points. It's a classic impasse.

IMHO the closest we had to a believer concurring that increasing amounts of the Bible and classic religous thinking was rubbish as the debates went on was Gater2. But in a final post where we finally got the crux of why he believed I challenged him on some nitty gritty stuff. He just seems to have walked away and not wanted to repond to those questions. I'm hoping it's just because he was busy with his wedding, but fear that it's because he didn't want to challenge his deeply-held beliefs. That's pretty scary if true and implies that people need to believe more than they want to challenge that belief. Or in any other language denial. Gater2 - if you're reading this I sincerely hope that I'm wrong about the disapparance and that the wedding went ok.

Obviously some sad git such as me typing on a football forum is going to have very little impact on the ridiculously powerful and indoctrinated global institution that is religion, but I hope that at least some people have challenged their beliefs as a result of reading the atheist-orginated posts and looked at it a little differently. Or at least agreed that you don't need God to be happy, moral and feel love. Hookers can do that instead.

Hallelujah!

[ruraldean]

...and Amen newboy.

I echo all newboy has said. Many posts ago I asked for one objective religious experience to be quoted here. So far the silence is deafening.

I may have sometimes appeared unnecessarily aggressive in some of my posts, particularly the recent "simple theology" one, for which I apologise. Sometimes I get irked by those who arrive at the later stages of a debate and clearly haven't read the argument as it's developed and my frustration shows.

I've said before that as a de facto atheist I would welcome some real evidence of an interventionist God. Like a lot of people I would like to be a believer, but can't be one without evidence. I can't promise to withdraw entirely from this post but as it has died from lack of reasoned input from the faith-driven side I'll just wait until my single question is answered.

To those who have genuinely tried to debate goes a big "Thank You". It's been a blast.