Simple question?

Quote: FrGamble

What breaks the chain of thought to where you are going is that the teaching of Christ is very clear. You can't claim to hate and kill sinners based upon the teachings of a man who went out of His way to eat with them and focus on their goodness. You can't blame the Jews for the death of someone who Himself was a Jew and all of whose first disciples were Jews as well.



I'm not sure I follow you. If I buy a cat can I say I was inspired by those who told me to buy a dog?



The ones in hell knew that they were not doing God's will.



Again I think you are blaming something that is only tenuously connected. If I said that I was inspired to run red lights because I really like coffee you wouldn't blame my love of coffee for my actions that have nothing to do with each other.

Your analogies are terrible.

My statement is very simple - there has been a lot of violence and killing in the name of religion. You can't make that go away by saying they weren't true Christians or whatever religion they were, nor can you make that go away by saying that the non-religous have killed too.

Quote: Dalex64

You know you can't prove that God exists, and the absence of proof that he does not exist also does not prove that he exists.

I can show you many arguments and point to lots of evidence that God exists. I also believe that just by using logic and reason you can show the necessity of a higher power or ultimate cause of the universe that also necessarily shares many of the attributes we commonly attribute to a personal God. However, we all live our lives by faith and making the best decisions we can based on the evidence, logic, and our own personal experiences so I would never say that I can prove to you Jesus Christ is the Incarnate Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity who has died for your sins and was raised from the dead so that you might live forever in peace and happiness.

The problem you or anyone still won't address is that for any sane person to hold definitively that there is no God you should at least have a logical argument or some type of evidence that supports your belief. I'm not asking for proof, I already know there is none. What I'm just asking for is a whisper of a reason.

Quote: Dalex64

Your analogies are terrible.

sorry.

Quote:

My statement is very simple - there has been a lot of violence and killing in the name of religion. You can't make that go away by saying they weren't true Christians or whatever religion they were, nor can you make that go away by saying that the non-religous have killed too.

My response is very simple - people claiming to be religious are not always so and are motivated by other worldly things. You can't make anyone who claims to be religious into a shining representative of whatever religion they claim to be. How would you feel if I claimed that because there has been the most deaths and bloodshed in history during this last century by people who are not religious; therefore it is obvious that the non-religious people have a huge problem.

I believe I have addressed it many times. My reason is simple: we don't know. That means not filling in whatever we like and accepting it as truth.

Logic and reason alone cannot prove anything. It didn't prove geocentrism, and it doesn't prove string theory. It doesn't prove that a higher power is necessary. It just shows that it is one of the possibilities.

If you can't disprove any of the other alternative theories for the origins of everything, then they must remain as possibilities.

Until one of them is proven to be true, or all but one are proven to be false and we are certain that there are no other possible explainations, you can't settle on one of them as the truth.

Because of "we don't know" you can't even assign meaningful probabilities of how likely each of them are to be true.

Quote: FrGamble

sorry.



My response is very simple - people claiming to be religious are not always so and are motivated by other worldly things. You can't make anyone who claims to be religious into a shining representative of whatever religion they claim to be. How would you feel if I claimed that because there has been the most deaths and bloodshed in history during this last century by people who are not religious; therefore it is obvious that the non-religious people have a huge problem.

Again you are ignoring the effect of technology on how effective and devastating war has become. So it is entirely not obvious.

Religion has failed badly as a source of world peace. Even within the umbrella of Christianity they have been at war with each other. They also fail at delivering the message to their own flock, because again, if the message was delivered there would be no such wars.

If there were no religious wars, and then the atheists came along and started fighting and killing, then you might have a valid point.

Oh and you are one again attempting to disassociate unsavory members of a religion from the group.

It is obvious that there are many non-shining examples of religious people, and that is my point. If there weren't, then no members of the religion will have sinned, and we already established that Christians are sinners.

You are somehow trying to absolve these religions of the evil actions of some of their members, and that just doesn't fly. A religion is not free of responsibility for the actions if it's members. There are some cases where it is, but you are trying to say that in all cases they are not.

Quote: Dalex64

I believe I have addressed it many times. My reason is simple: we don't know. That means not filling in whatever we like and accepting it as truth..

600 years ago there were all kinds of
books. On history, math, geography,
medicine, religion. How many of
those books do we use today. Almost
none of them, except the religious
books, we use all of those.

This is because everything else advances,
the basics of religion do not. How
can it, it's not based on anything real.
It cannot be proved false or true so how
can it advance. Organized religions are
a trap. They shut off a critical part of the
thinking process and why would anybody
willingly want that.

Quote: FrGamble

Christianity led to the downfall of slavery around the world, even though sadly it still exists.

And being the great moral force you claim it is, it took only 1,850 years to do so. In the meantime it found time to impose slavery for over 400 years in the Americas.

Quote:

As you pointed out it was the Biblical texts that brought it down.

I didn't point that out because it's not true. i pointed out the Bible was used to argue for and against slavery. A book claiming to moral authority, is worthless when it cannot be clear in such a fundamental aspect of morality.

Quote:

It is completely reasonable and in accord with our nature to have children with one woman and to raise those children together.

But is this lunacy of your own making or does it come from your imaginary friends?

Rick and Morty managed to do an anti-religion episode using the Devil :)

SPOILERS follow for ep "Something Ricked This Way Comes."

The premise is that Summer gets a job at an antique store called "Needful Things," run by an odd man named Mr. Needful. Rick drives her to work one day and quickly determines who this guy is and that all items in the store are cursed. He takes one item, a microscope, studies it, and determines it would lower his IQ if he used it. Based on that he develops a means for detecting and removing the curses. First he drives all customers out, then he sets up a shop to remove curses (Curse Purge Plus: Don't pay for cool items with your soul. Pay with your money.)

In a funny bit, Mr. Needful, aka The Devil, seeing Rick's shop, says something like "F---g diabolical bastard!"

Anyway, Needful tries to kill himself, but Summer saves him. He closes the store, whereupon Rick gets bored and torches his own shop ("Ok. I'm bored now. Everyone out.") Summer stays with her boss, and together they take the shop digital as "n33dful.com" and get bought buy Google. Then Needful tosses Summer out.

She bands up with Rick, they work out and use steroids to grow strong, and beat the crap out of the Devil at a tech event. When he asks why, Summer tells him: Because sometimes it's someone else who needs to pay a terrible price.

I'd call this a parable on how science does away with religion, but, as Londo Mollari would say, the metaphor is laid on too thick. It's effing obvious the whole time.

Lovely episode.

Oh, there's a B story about Morty and his dad and a science project...

Quote: FrGamble

The problem you or anyone still won't address is that for any sane person to hold definitively that there is no God you should at least have a logical argument or some type of evidence that supports your belief.

I've yet to see your proof the one true god Athena is not real.

Going by your logic, you should be offering sacrifices to Her.

This in itself would be harmless. But can you prove the god Baal doesn't exist? You know what kind of sacrifices he prefers, don't you?