the right religion

[Meeka_S]

Everyone really don`t know what is right religion, they all believe in their religion.

 

[1robin]

I would suggest that, whether one is a theist or not, we are the solution. We have to deal with what we're dealt and not expect a god or gods to bail us out. To me, the value of prayer is that it gives us the opportunity to contemplate the best and most moral path of action.

What do we have to make up for the destruction we have caused. Jesus could pay the price because he was perfect. We are not. Even if we one day wised up and acted perfect from that point on (which is impossible) it would not rectify what we had done prior to that point. We have zero capacity to fix the mess we created. Prayer is an appeal for intervention not a philosophical sabbatical. We literally have nothing to offer to bridge an infinite gap between us and God. God and God alone can cross an infinite. If you hope lies in man you will be disappointed.

 

[metis]

If you hope lies in man you will be disappointed.

If there's no hope us humans can deal with our problems successfully, we're doomed in the long haul, and I'm not too terribly optimistic that there's going to be enough people with enough of a concern and plan. We are making a mess of Planet Earth in various ways, and our general selfishness is in the way of actually doing that which might be effective.

 

[1robin]

If there's no hope us humans can deal with our problems successfully, we're doomed in the long haul, and I'm not too terribly optimistic that there's going to be enough people with enough of a concern and plan. We are making a mess of Planet Earth in various ways, and our general selfishness is in the way of actually doing that which might be effective.

Did you not claim this " we are the solution"? I am confused. I thought you claimed we were the solution and then here you seem to believe we can't be. What is going on?

 

[metis]

Did you not claim this " we are the solution"? I am confused. I thought you claimed we were the solution and then here you seem to believe we can't be. What is going on?

We can only be the solution if we choose to take appropriate actions to do so, and I'm not certain we have the will to do that universally or even nationally.

BTW, did you ever hear the story of a man caught on top of his house during a flood whereas others come to rescue him but he refuses to go with them, waiting for God to rescue him instead?

If you didn't, the man dies waiting, and when he gets to heaven he sees God and is angry, and asks "Hey Lord, I was stranded on a house during a flood and You didn't come to save me. Why?!".

God responded "I didn't ignore you, and I sent you a boat, a helicopter, a ...".

 

[1robin]

We can only be the solution if we choose to take appropriate actions to do so, and I'm not certain we have the will to do that universally or even nationally.

Nothing in human history suggest we have this capacity. All modern trends are in the opposite direction. If no hope exists for an external solution then no hope exists. I keep waiting for the atheist superman to be born that the Godless philosophers have predicted but he must have been aborted.

BTW, did you ever hear the story of a man caught on top of his house during a flood whereas others come to rescue him but he refuses to go with them, waiting for God to rescue him instead?

Yes. However man does have solutions at times to floods. We do not have the solution to sin within us.

If you didn't, the man dies waiting, and when he gets to heaven he sees God and is angry, and asks "Hey Lord, I was stranded on a house during a flood and You didn't come to save me. Why?!".

The man died anyway. The boat would not have helped after that inevitable point and he nor the entirety of humankind has any solution for the final problem.

God responded "I didn't ignore you, and I sent you a boat, a helicopter, a ...".

He sent boats for floods and Christ for sin.

 

[1robin]

And I said that "logically, if powerful supernatural beings exist, there is no way that puny, imperfect, fallible humans could determine which supernatural beings are good, and which are evil, or even that any good supernatural beings exist."

They can not objectively prove it but they can satisfy their personal requirements for this, which is what Christianity was designed to accomplish. Why do I have a burden for the former?

You against a powerful, evil supernatural being would be no contest at all. Such a being would easily be able to deceive you unless a more powerful good supernatural being prevented him from doing it, and you cannot provide any credible evidence that such a being exists.

Again that is why I do not spend much time proving God is good. I only prove why your sides constant claims that he is evil are foundationless. I can only decide if there I sufficient evidence to BELIEVE that he is good. Humankind values self sacrifice above all else. God provided the ultimate example of that. That plus a thousand other lines of evidence is more than sufficient for faith. If you reject the logic then that same standard used to do so would reject just about all of reality as we know it.

You are merely appealing to your emotional self-interest. The Bible appeals to many people primarily because of their emotional self-interest. If there were ten Gospels instead of four, and they all said that God will send everyone to hell for eternity without parole, few people would believe the claim, certainly nowhere near the number of Christians that are in the world today, and most people would try to discredit the claim, and would hope that it is wrong. That proves that William Lane Craig's "multiple, independent attestations" argument is not valid.

No, God's moral dictates are against self interest many times. Why would I emotionally want to serve anything, help anyone that would not reciprocate, be absolutely accountable to perfection. There is little self serving teachings in the Bible. The apostles sure did not gain earthly reward or comfort. Speculating about a hypothetical reaction to a hypothetical claim is not meaningful.

Today, if a powerful being showed up, and claimed that he was God, but not the God of the Bible, and demonstrated that he had vast powers, and instantly created a large building, would you believe his claim that he is God? If not, why not? What evidence reasonably proves that a being is God?

Why don't we just watch star wars if fiction is the primary context? I have already given the context or what justifies belief in God's being God. You are only confusing things, which is the opposite direction anyone should rationally head in? If reality is no boundary condition I could hopelessly complicate any claim of any kind, but why would I? Why do you?

 

[1robin]

You have definitely said that many fulfilled prophecies indicate that a God inspired the Bible. Why can't evil supernatural beings accurately predict the future as a means of deceiving many people? Paul says that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, and deceives many people. How could Paul have distinguished good supernatural beings from evil supernatural beings?

Only God knows the future in perfection. All other beings are less than omniscient. The Bible says they can know the future in a fragmentary way but only God has perfect foreknowledge.

No test would be reliable if evil supernatural beings are more powerful than good supernatural beings are. You have not reasonably proven that any good supernatural beings exists, let alone good ones.

Once you get your if then you can have what is dependent on it. You are using one of the oldest and transparent tactics of atheism in history. Your are setting the standard so high to reliably know anything that virtually all of accessible knowledge would fail. You are basically saying that if reliable methods for establishing a likely truth produce an inconvenient truth then keep raising the standard until nothing can be reliably known. That is not productive. The supernatural is almost a logical necessity, my beliefs about specific supernatural beings meet the burden they carry and exceed the burdens even science fails to meet much of the time. If you wish to be a hyperbolic minimalist then do so consistently. If so all we know is that we think and debate is meaningless. It is I see, convenient truth or no truth. Greenleaf, Craig, Aquinas, etc claim the exact opposite from what you have here.

 

[1robin]

But easily millions of non-Christians who live in countries that are not predominantly Christian have had substantial contact with Christian missionaries, have watched Christian television, have listened to Christian radio, or have read Christian literature, have Christian friends, and Christian relatives, and have rejected Christianity. Such extensive contact with Christianity, which as you said "is the most universal theology in human history," easily qualifies as being evangelized, and easily qualifies as being accountable.

Well that is strange. Being exposed to the truth before it was believed is proof that it is not true.

South Korea is one of the most heavily evangelized countries in the world. It has excellent education, and excellent media, and has the largest single Christian church in the world by far. About 29% of South Koreans are Christians. A much higher percentage of Americans are Christians, which proves that geography sometimes determines what people believe. From a Christian perspective, few non-Christians living in South Korea would not be accountable for their unbelief. There are not any doubts whatsoever that some of those non-Christians would have become Christians if they had been raised in the U.S.

You must prove God is contradicting himself by allowing these conditions to exist once you prove they are true. If three people existed and two decided to leave God's teaching and do their own thing. Three nations existed a hundred years later is it logical that they would all have the same rate of Christian's. God judges individually and corporately. If parents chose no God for their children God must allow that. Largest Church by far (do you mean a single church or a national church).

Surely the Apostle Paul gave up proselytizing to many people who knew far less about the Bible than many South Korean non-Christians do, and believed that those stubborn people were accountable for their unbelief even if they had died on the same day that he left them.

Before you can say what Paul did you would need evidence he actually did it. If you notice, far more miracles took place when far less textual evidence existed. However you must have a standard if you claim insufficiency. How many miracles must God do? How many sons must he send? How many peoples freewill must he violate to do as you ask? How do you know? Where is this magic line that you know of that God is obligated to reach?

Equal opportunity is one of the hallmarks of democracy, love, and fairness, and is intuitive for most humans. Few people would approve of a Texas holdem card playing competition where everyone did not start with the same number of chips.

Yet the entire basis (100%) of equality, rights, and the value of human life cease to exist if God does. At this time humanity is left to destroy even that which it values. You have no basis for demanding a garden of Eden to exist even if God does, and no basis for demanding the slightest moral right if he does not.

The Bible shows that many people accepted Jesus partly because of the miracles that he performed. If that is true, if those same people had been transported at birth to the future, had been raised in the U.S. by Christian parents, and did not see God perform any miracles like the miracles that Jesus performed, it is probable that at least some of them would not have become Christians. Different circumstances often produce different results for the same people. That is just plain old common sense.

At some point speculations ceases to have any value. There is no truth you hold I can't invent a scenario that would nullify it nor any reason I should think doing so is meaningful. I operate within the best possible explanations not the denial of anything that is not 100% proven (which would annihilate everything). Why only concerning God do you not do so?

The NIV basically says in the book of Acts that the disciples went about performing miracles in order to confirm the Gospel message. Now that was after the Holy Spirit had come to the church, and after Jesus had performed many miracles in many places, including "throughout all of Syria" according to the book of Matthew, and there were thousands of still-living, firsthand eyewitnesses still around, but God still provided additional evidence of tangible miracles in order to help people become saved. There are not any good reasons why a loving God would want to change a system that worked quite well to get his church started.

As the written text became established then miraculous events were reduced. I nor you have no way to demand any certain ratio occur. You must produce an objective standard to claim God's deficiency to meet it.

Today, people who reject Christianity and would accept it if they had the same evidence that Jesus provided back then are not rejecting ?God, they are rejecting a lack of sufficient evidence of the same kind that God already provided for many other people.

Yet many of those that had the most evidence denied him and those with the least have accepted him. You God give you a promise as to the miraculous quota he would provide. Is there any reason to suggest we should have more? How do you know?

How do you know that God could not achieve any fair, worthy, and just goal if he gave everyone enough food to eat? If hurricanes are necessary in order to God to achieve some of his goals, what goals are those, or do you not have any idea what God's goals are? If hurricanes are beneficial for people, why do people try to avoid them? AIDS would not exist if God had not created a virus that infected primates, and the virus was probably accidentally transferred by a doctor via a vaccine to some gay men who had hepatitis. Animals have transferred a number of viruses to humans.

Humans have freewill, If I can not chose to deny fairness then I have no freewill at all. However the entire concept has no meaning or foundation unless God exists. You are climbing into his lap to slap his face. The presence of moral truth has no other explanation.

If God is ultimately in control of everything, you should be very happy since homosexuality, abortion, atheism, and everything else that you do not like will one day not be problems. After all, Paul said that the cares of this world are nothing as compared with the benefits that will come in the next life. How can you have much joy when you spend so much of your life attacking things?

His direct supervision was rejected by us. However in his future kingdom these things will no longer continue to plague man and no longer will anyone defend the indefensible.

You have criticized homosexuality, and atheism a lot, but if the Bible is true, the majority of people who will not have eternal life will be heterosexual theists, so if you convinced some atheist homosexuals to give up homosexuality, and atheism, from a Christian perspective, they will ultimately not be any better off if they do not become Christians. Your time would be much better spent if you did not discuss homosexuality, and atheism, and spent that time promoting the Bible since acceptance of the Bible would be much more effective at reducing homosexuality, and atheism, than reducing homosexuality, and atheism would be at convincing people to become Christians. Attacking people, or attacking what people do, is a very poor means of promoting Christianity, and turns lot of people off, and is largely considered to be judgmental whether it is or not. Very few people give up smoking cigarettes because people attack them, or their habit. Rather, they respond best when they are provided with better alternatives. However, I approve of your current approach since it is good for skepticism.

Truth is still true even if I would like it another way. What the sexual practices of those who reject God is not relevant to any thing I claimed. You have assigned a false optimality to God and now are doing so to a self admitting faulty and imperfect person. Why? What I do will never be a maximum. Claiming anything about what people like is effectively countered by God himself:

If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. John 15:18
http://www.nyu.edu/clubs/newman/biblequotes.html

In fact many of your claims are defeated in the crib if that verse has a divine origin.

 

[Chalant]

Why can't there be more than one right religion? For example there are infinite answers to the question 'addition of what two rational numbers is five?'

Back to topic, people!

 

[psychoslice]

There isn't such thing as the right religion, religion is an inner transformation, it is not an organization, as long as you feel you need to be in an organization you will never truly know religion.

 

[metis]

Logically, there could only be a "right religion" if we knew with certainty there is a god or gods and that we knew with certainty what this god or gads wanted. "Belief" is not the same as "certainty", and "belief" actually can prohibit enlightenment because it tends to close the mind off.

 

[1robin]

Why can't there be more than one right religion? For example there are infinite answers to the question 'addition of what two rational numbers is five?'

Back to topic, people!

There theoretically can be. However most of the religion we actually have are mutually exclusive. Two or more claims to mutually exclusive truth have 1 or zero that can possibly be correct. It is impossible for Islam's claim that Christ was not crucified and Christianity's claim he was, to both be true for example.

 

[1robin]

There isn't such thing as the right religion, religion is an inner transformation, it is not an organization, as long as you feel you need to be in an organization you will never truly know religion.

I believe I have subjective personal proof there is only one right religion. However it is impossible to prove there is only one, more than one, or any similar claim and that is why I don't claim (what you have here) even though I am virtually certain. I do not claim what I can't possibly know (or more importantly demonstrate) to be true is certainly true and I would not recommend it for you. Truth is an exclusive and minimalistic concept in general. There are usually infinitely more things that are not true than are. I can't prove it is true but an exclusive single revelation of divine truth is more logical than many and more likely to be true.

 

[psychoslice]

I believe I have subjective personal proof there is only one right religion. However it is impossible to prove there is only one, more than one, or any similar claim and that is why I don't claim (what you have here) even though I am virtually certain. I do not claim what I can't possibly know (or more importantly demonstrate) to be true is certainly true and I would not recommend it for you. Truth is an exclusive and minimalistic concept in general. There are usually infinitely more things that are not true than are. I can't prove it is true but an exclusive single revelation of divine truth is more logical than many and more likely to be true.

As long as you believe you have the right religion, in all truth you don't. Truth isn't found in any religion, or in a church or book, in fact when one experiences truth for one's self, all these things such as scripture and religion are then dropped, we put away the toys that we have been playing with, for now we are matured in spirit, now we have resoned in Consciousness, or Christ Consciousness, we now take up our bed and walk away from the beliefs that kept us crippled.

 

[1robin]

Logically, there could only be a "right religion" if we knew with certainty there is a god or gods and that we knew with certainty what this god or gads wanted. "Belief" is not the same as "certainty", and "belief" actually can prohibit enlightenment because it tends to close the mind off.

A religion can be right without any dependence on our perception or ability to prove a single thing it claims or even be aware of it. God would be true even if every man be found a liar. A religions truth is independent of our ability to access it. Makes for a short discussion yet is perfectly valid. What you claimed only concerns what can be shown, apprehended, or proven in an argument (not what is logically true). Christianity provides subjective proof but it is only available to the one who was born again. We know, yet have to act as if we actually do not, in order to relate to others who have no had access to God. A single revelation is the most logically sound form of true religion regardless is anyone in the universe had access to it or not. Might be a bad or useless religion but would still be true. In short perception and truth are independent. Hopefully they line up buy they do not have to.

 

[1robin]

As long as you believe you have the right religion, in all truth you don't.

How in the world do you proof this out. Christians claim to have used a roadmap found in the Gospels. We claim to have used it to arrive at it's promised destination and have found God there in person. You must show that we are all either crazy (billions of us) or that if we are telling the truth, how meeting God is not arriving at truth.

You seem to be just asserting metaphysical claims that you have no access to.

In comparative religion I will except as reasonable any claim that is based on reasonable evidence even if I believe it perfectly wrong. The one thing I consider completely invalid is metaphysical speculation.

Truth isn't found in any religion, or in a church or book, in fact when one experiences truth for one's self, all these things such as scripture and religion are then dropped, we put away the toys that we have been playing with, for now we are matured in spirit, now we have resoned in Consciousness, or Christ Consciousness, we now take up our bed and walk away from the beliefs that kept us crippled.

Before I can take anything here serious enough to debate it will have to rise about mere assertion. How do you know a single thing you claim here? These are no claims to anything you have the access to know. You mentioned Christ for some reason. Do you know him? On what basis do you claim to? If not then how do you know about him in the first place. I deal in what justifies a claim almost exclusively. What justifies any thing you claimed here? How do you know any of it?

 

[metis]

A religion can be right without any dependence on our perception or ability to prove a single thing it claims or even be aware of it. God would be true even if every man be found a liar. A religions truth is independent of our ability to access it. Makes for a short discussion yet is perfectly valid. What you claimed only concerns what can be shown, apprehended, or proven in an argument (not what is logically true). Christianity provides subjective proof but it is only available to the one who was born again. We know, yet have to act as if we actually do not, in order to relate to others who have no had access to God. A single revelation is the most logically sound form of true religion regardless is anyone in the universe had access to it or not. Might be a bad or useless religion but would still be true. In short perception and truth are independent. Hopefully they line up buy they do not have to.

The above is so full of holes and so illogical that there's simply no reason for me to comment any further beyond this post because I do believe these holes are pretty apparent to most here, including your fellow Christians. I'm quite positive that most Christian theologians would assert that belief in not based on evidence but on faith, and I have seen many of them use somewhat similar words to that effect.

There simply is no logical way in which anyone can actually provide objective evidence enough to convince an unbiased jury that any one specific religion is the only right one. What may convince one person will often not convince another.

 

[psychoslice]

Originally Posted by psychoslice View Post
As long as you believe you have the right religion, in all truth you don't.

1robin :How in the world do you proof this out. Christians claim to have used a roadmap found in the Gospels. We claim to have used it to arrive at it's promised destination and have found God there in person. You must show that we are all either crazy (billions of us) or that if we are telling the truth, how meeting God is not arriving at truth.

You seem to be just asserting metaphysical claims that you have no access to.

In comparative religion I will except as reasonable any claim that is based on reasonable evidence even if I believe it perfectly wrong. The one thing I consider completely invalid is metaphysical speculation.

How can you say, "The one thing I consider completely invalid is metaphysical speculation" when you yourself believe in a man who can walk on water, turn water into wine and so on, and believe you yourself don't believe in metaphysics ?.

There maybe billions of you but that doesn't mean you are right, usually the majority are wrong, there is no proof of any religion being the true religion, so there is no argument, until you truly have proof, if not its just like arguing if the Easter bunny rabbit is true or not.

 

[Chalant]

How in the world do you proof this out. Christians claim to have used a roadmap found in the Gospels. We claim to have used it to arrive at it's promised destination and have found God there in person. You must show that we are all either crazy (billions of us) or that if we are telling the truth, how meeting God is not arriving at truth.

Can you explain this? I didn't understand what do you mean by roadmap.

Btw, im sure 'billions' of christians have found no such roadmap.