Shifting more towards atheism

[F1fan]

are you claiming that Christians have some special powers whereby they are immune from sin, from morality?

Christians are like anyone else, and no more moral than any other religious person, or atheists. What we don;t see is how Christian dogma is an advantage for those who claim to be Christian. Frankly if these people actually followed the simple teachings of Jesus they would be better people as a category. But many are the antithesis of what Jesus taught, and I find that a curiosity. How does that happen?

How do you come to that conclusion exactly because i do not see any evidence of such a thing anywhere in the bible and in fact the bible preaches the exact opposite:

The bible specifically says in Matthew 7:15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

And look at all the disagreements among Christians, and thousands of different sects that range from liberal to oderate to conservative to extremist. I see a lot of false prophets because they all can't be right.

And I notice you have no explanation for the most serious crimes against humanity that Christians have done. Why evade the hard questions?

It's good advice to beware of false prophets because that is what creationists are, yet you believe in creationism and reject science. So you can post a Bible quote, but when we observe you showing signs of being duped by creationist fraud the advice does you no good. This is the ongoing weakness of the Bible, it only serves those who are already pretty wise and rational.

Those who claim to be Christians but are cruel, mean, divisive, greedy, selish, and rigid in their belief are the very wolves we are wary of. Sheep and wolves who are honest know what they are. Those sheep who don't realize they are wolves are among the most dangerous.

 

[shunyadragon]

You clearly don't know what is true and what isn't.

In terms of subjective religious beliefs it is rar to variable, inconsistent and contradictory to be consistently true. Ancient religious beliefs most often will not change when new information becomes available.

I have more reliance on science as an evolving body of knowledge based on consistent objective verifiable evidence that is willing to change when new information becomes available, The problem remains that many Christians and Muslims reject science,

 

[F1fan]

an atheist does not believe in God...

And those who do do so on very limited evidence, and are likely mistaken. And there are thousands of gods, all but one you don't believe in.

so who then does the atheist blame for the murder of a child or the rape of a women?

The killer or rapist. But Christians have to inevitably blame God since God created everything and knows all, including the murder of innocent women and children. Your God stands by and does nothing. Unless it lacks the power to intervene then it is complicit.

By what evolutionary means do you subscribe such actions?

Biology is not perfect. There are mental illnesses and disorders that affect many in society. And others are disadvantaged due to the hierarchy of a competitive society and they turn to crime as a means to survive.

(you cannot blame Christianity and its "pulpit preaching"...you don't believe in that) Therefore an atheist is left with no alternative but to accept that naturalism includes evolutionary social conditioning outside of biblical morality (ie the 10 commandments).

Because of facts and serious investigation for truth. Christianity has justified killing witched. It's justified slavery. It justifies lying about creationism. Christians committed the Holocaust. So that is the track record your religion has, and you can learn from it or ignore it happened.

That means the murder of a child or rape of women is a natural evolutionary process brought about by the survival of the fittest mentality (which is also where racism comes from)

It doesn't work that way. The explanation is available for free on the internet, but for some reason you believe some false claim. Why did you believe them?

 

[AdamjEdgar]

And look at all the disagreements among Christians, and thousands of different sects that range from liberal to oderate to conservative to extremist. I see a lot of false prophets because they all can't be right.

And I notice you have no explanation for the most serious crimes against humanity that Christians have done. Why evade the hard questions?

I have already answered your question using the most authoritative source that Christianity has...

Mathew states "by their fruits you shall know them"

This clearly means that individuals who willingly engage in crimes against humanity and do not turn away from that behaviour and actions, are not going to be saved...they are condemned. They are certainly not Christian and their claims to be Christian are false.

 

[AdamjEdgar]

Because of facts and serious investigation for truth. Christianity has justified killing witched. It's justified slavery. It justifies lying about creationism. Christians committed the Holocaust. So that is the track record your religion has, and you can learn from it or ignore it happened.

You know that Abraham Lincoln was a Christian right and that it was his aim to abolish slavery?

During his 1846 run for the House of Representatives, in order to dispel accusations concerning his religious beliefs, Lincoln issued a handbill stating that he had "never denied the truth of the Scriptures".[7] He seemed to believe in an all-powerful God, who shaped events and, by 1865, was expressing those beliefs in major speeches​

​

"Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty." (a line from Lincolns First Innarguration speech)​

​

I do not believe a word of it. It could not have been true of him while here, for I have had frequent and intimate conversations with him on the subject of the Bible and the Christian religion, when he could have had no motive to deceive me, and I considered him sound not only on the truth of the Christian religion but on all its fundamental doctrines and teaching. And more than that: in the latter days of his chastened and weary life, after the death of his son Willie, and his visit to the battle-field of Gettysburg, he said, with tears in his eyes, that he had lost confidence in everything but God, and that he now believed his heart was changed, and that he loved the Saviour, and, if he was not deceived in himself, it was his intention soon to make a profession of religion (Reverand James Armstrong Reed)​

Religious views of Abraham Lincoln - Wikipedia

Your history is up the ****ter there my friend and so is your Bible knowledge regarding the origins of human slavery!

 

[F1fan]

I have already answered your question using the most authoritative source that Christianity has...

The weakness of the Bible is the careless minds interpreting it poorly.

Mathew states "by their fruits you shall know them"

This clearly means that individuals who willingly engage in crimes against humanity and do not turn away from that behaviour and actions, are not going to be saved...they are condemned. They are certainly not Christian and their claims to be Christian are false.

Yet for some reason these Christians were oblivious. How oblivious could you be?

 

[AdamjEdgar]

Yet for some reason these Christians were oblivious. How oblivious could you be?

who did you say were oblivious? You have not bothered to actually read the passage in Matthew. I will quote it again...

"by their fruits you shall know them"

can i make this any clearer to you?

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Christians are like anyone else, and no more moral than any other religious person, or atheists. What we don;t see is how Christian dogma is an advantage for those who claim to be Christian. Frankly if these people actually followed the simple teachings of Jesus they would be better people as a category. But many are the antithesis of what Jesus taught, and I find that a curiosity. How does that happen?

I agree that Christians aren't any more moral than anyone else. They can be decent, morally upright people if they choose to be, or they can lie, steal, cheat, cuss, get drunk, take drugs, commit adultery, divorce, remarry, lust, and be promiscuous before marriage, just like non-Christians. There are many Christians who have committed crimes, even heinous crimes such as murder. I know that some pious Christians try to use the No True Scotsman fallacy to discredit other Christians, but I don't accept it as a valid argument. In fact, I think it's a lousy excuse. In my experience, the vast majority of the Christians I know are so hypocritical because they arrogantly judge other people's moral flaws while purposely ignoring their own. I think that if these Christians were more concerned about the plank in their own eye, they'd have less time to focus on the speck of dust in someone else's' eye. They will reap what they sow.

 

[F1fan]

who did you say were oblivious? You have not bothered to actually read the passage in Matthew. I will quote it again...

"by their fruits you shall know them"

View attachment 90286

can i make this any clearer to you?

You're the one in the middle. And you think you're a sheep.

 

[F1fan]

I agree that Christians aren't any more moral than anyone else. They can be decent, morally upright people if they choose to be, or they can lie, steal, cheat, cuss, get drunk, take drugs, commit adultery, divorce, remarry, lust, and be promiscuous before marriage, just like non-Christians. There are many Christians who have committed crimes, even heinous crimes such as murder. I know that some Christians try to use the No True Scotsman fallacy to discredit other Christians, but I don't accept it as a valid argument. In fact, I think it's a lousy excuse. In my experience, the vast majority of the Christians I know are hypocritical because they arrogantly judge other people's moral flaws while purposely ignoring their own. I think that if these Christians were more concerned about the plank in their own eye, they would have less time to focus on the speck of dust in someone else's' eye.

Good people make good Christians, and bad people make bad Christians. But Christianity can't make bad people good.

In my experience with many Christians the more the believer seeks an absolute truth the less moral they tend to be. They aren't seeking the truth in their own moral sense, they are seeking excuses for their immorality.

 

[shunyadragon]

All this says is that you know nothing about "the Bible". THERE IS NO ORIGINAL BIBLE!!! The Bibles that we have are translations from sources that are incomplete. Because of that, there are various interpretations, resulting in different translations. Consider yourself schooled.

Nobody could be schooled based on the above. You continually cite scripture, and declare some sort of 'truth' based on scripture. The above is contradictory to what you have posted before

If you do not consider the Bible as so unreliable: "What is the basis for your claims of understanding the truth or what is true?"

. . . and why should you read the Bible more carefully if it so unreliable to understand?

 

[ChristineM]

According to Guinness World Records, as of 1995, the Bible is the best selling book of all time with an estimated 5 billion copies sold and distributed.

So you are totally wrong!

Have you got anything from this century?

 

[1213]

It's simple. The hard crust floats on a river of moving, molten rock, which moves the crustal plates resulting in a variety of phenomena including volcanoes, fumaroles, earthquakes, mountain building, reshaping oceans and continents, ocean trenches, and archipelagoes.

And you believe all that because someone says so?

 

[1213]

Yes it does. The orogenic mountains are still forming slowly by the same processes,

Orogenic mountains and volcanoes are not formed the same way.

Limestones can only form over millions of years by formation of carbonate minerals.

I don't believe that.

The internal heat of the earth causing plate techronics has been documented throughout earth's history as well as billions of years of related volcanism.

 

[1213]

Actually, it does as I linked you to dealing with the science on this, which it appears you totally have ignored, as plate tectonics causes rifts.

Volcanic activity is possible, even without the modern tectonic plate theory.

 

[1213]

I could, but I don't have time to write up a Remedial Earth and Planetary Sciences primer on a Monday morning. Do you? What's wrong with what I provided you?

I asked, What observation do you mean? An observation can be for example a rock, fossil, mountain... ...can you name any evidence in such way?

The problem with what you gave is, it is basically just an opinion that some people have made on basis of some observations.

 

[Mock Turtle]

an atheist does not believe in God...so who then does the atheist blame for the murder of a child or the rape of a women?

The perpetrator of course, given whatever we might feel as to free will or not, the perpetrator, if proven to have so acted, is the guilty party.

By what evolutionary means do you subscribe such actions? (you cannot blame Christianity and its "pulpit preaching"...you don't believe in that)

The evolution of humans as a whole, and as to the spectrum of individuals being not exactly the same, hence why we often tend to act differently from each other. Not noticed this? But those who act because they have certain beliefs can often be seen to be guided or controlled by such - like religious beliefs perhaps - and towards homosexuals which their religion might condemn.

Therefore an atheist is left with no alternative but to accept that naturalism includes evolutionary social conditioning outside of biblical morality (ie the 10 commandments).

Well, I think that the evolving of morality is likely to have come about from our social nature, and especially so when we compare ourselves with other non-human social creatures - these often developing the rudiments of moral codes but several million years behind us in many ways.

That means the murder of a child or rape of women is a natural evolutionary process brought about by the survival of the fittest mentality (which is also where racism comes from)

Tut, tut! That we evolved from earlier lifeforms, and where our motivations to survive were greater than our motivations to cooperate perhaps indicates why we still maintain our revenge or retributive attitudes to wrong-doers (in our eyes), but somehow we have basically come to a consensus view as to such being crimes, in most parts of the world, unless such is not so according to some particular religious dogma. So which system has become the better - the religious ones, where discrimination is often still the norm, or the ones that acknowledge our history and work towards a more equal life and with more appreciation of where our differences do actually come from?

 

[metis]

Volcanic activity is possible, even without the modern tectonic plate theory.

Of course, but the issue is the elevation of the sea floor so it can be above the sea surface, and we well know that this happens.

 

[metis]

And your source for this is ..?

You are correct as I was basing it on decreasing church attendance.

 

[jimb]

Nobody could be schooled based on the above. You continually cite scripture, and declare some sort of 'truth' based on scripture. The above is contradictory to what you have posted before

If you do not consider the Bible as so unreliable: "What is the basis for your claims of understanding the truth or what is true?"

. . . and why should you read the Bible more carefully if it so unreliable to understand?

I did not say that the Bible is unreliable. That is an intentional misrepresentation of what I wrote. If you don't understand that there are various translations, all of which state God's truth in various forms, then you need to educate yourself.