Why does my God allow children to die? Is he evil?

[kjw47]

When did Satan meet Eve?

You know it was he who spoke through the serpent.

 

[SkepticThinker]

That is the absolute fact of the matter. Unless a transcendent standard exists then everyone's opinion is equally valid. What I am not saying is that in the absence of God would there be any other choice. It is a terribly inconsistent, self contradictory, and arbitrary system but the only option left without God. Without a moral law giver there is no moral law, without a moral law there is no known moral truth, without any known moral truth there is only equally valid arbitrary opinions that almost always coincide with self interest.

Okay, so without a dictator, us humans couldn’t possibly know right from wrong? From where I’m standing, following orders means you are not exercising morality. Not only that, but it is arbitrary in that it’s based on the whims of the boss: If the boss says that murder is moral, then it just is, despite what we may think about it.

We can demonstrate that certain things are good and bad based on the results they produce. That is what I’m saying. So yeah, everybody’s got their opinion, but they aren’t all equally valid. For example, if you are of the opinion that drinking battery acid is good for one’s health, but it can be demonstrated that drinking battery acid usually results in death, we can say that the opinion that it’s not bad for your health is invalid. So there are objective values to be found, we aren’t just flailing around completely in the dark here.

1. I never said we cannot come to some semi-consensus that murder is wrong.

You are saying that any conclusion we can make is invalid unless it comes directly from the boss man.

2. I said we can never know if that statement was true, without God. No molecule, combination of atoms, natural law, person, or natural being of any kind would ever know or could ever make murder actually wrong without God. Morality simply becomes an arbitrary contrivance or illusion as Ruse said so well. You side may not but my side wishes to know the moral truth about something before we take a life or make a law. There are few issues as self evident as this one.

Morality is about making distinctions between good and bad behavior. How can we exercise morality without employing reason to make such distinctions? There is nothing arbitrary in employing reason, empirical evidence and observation to draw conclusions in order to make distinctions between good and bad behavior. We are the only ones who actually can do this because we’re the only ones experiencing what it’s like to be us.

I make moral decisions every day of my life, just as you do. You can’t escape the fact that you, me and everyone else are using our own cognitive abilities and our own judgments in making such determinations. Even if you are indeed getting your orders directly from god, you’re still viewing it through the lens of your own reasoning, judgment and experience. Just like everyone else.

It certainly would with out God.

It does even with god, as noted above.

Your side has a peculiar tendency that renders a debate problematic. You think what is true of your experience binds reality.

Says the guy claiming that billions of people experience god in the exact same way that he does thereby binds that to reality.

You are right about the only pathetically inferior methodology left to create moral rules without God. I can grant that because I can understand your views because I have held them. Your side thinks that because you have not experienced God or discovered moral facts they can't be included in any model and do not exist. It is exactly what I would expect from the doctrine of spiritual blindness. I can clearly see both sides. You literally can't see mine.

There is no methodology to the morality you are talking about (from god). You just take orders and follow them.

Don’t give me this spiritual blindness garbage. There’s nothing pathetic in arriving at morality via reasoning and observation.

1. With God moral truths are grounded in moral reality (or potentially can be).

With god, moral truths are grounded in whatever that god feels like today. The Bible seems to be a really god example of the arbitrary nature of the god you believe in.

2. Without God man can reason out some illusory rules about morals that have no corroboration with actual truths. It is a self contradictory, unjust, arbitrary, and dysfunctional methodology that cannot find justification of any kind within for what is thought to be morally right and wrong within it. Yet that is the best that can be done without God.

But they can have corroboration with actual truths, as explained above with the battery acid example.

Actually I am talking about what is a virtually necessity for any explanation of reality. I however did not attempt to prove it. WE are discussing what is morally true with God and what is left without him. I must assume God to make the experiment. You know very well I can supply many arguments for his existence but to do so in combination with a moral argument is impractical. Witches are a concept. We can certainly discuss may be true if witches existed and if they do not without having to at the same time prove the existence of witches. As always the real question is whether God exists. What that means is pretty obvious? Since you wish to (and I would as well) get away from morality without God into God's existence I will add a point about that at the bottom.

Yes, you must assume god to make god the arbiter of moral truths. Big deal. That doesn’t make it reality.

The god of the Bible apparently says witches exist and they should be killed. You cannot question this, because it comes from the boss man and what he says is the truth. People who followed this Bible spent many centuries murdering people they thought were witches. So is the Bible just wrong about witches? Was god wrong about witches? Is it moral to kill witches? Why don’t people still kill witches? I’ll tell you why. Because human beings finally discovered via their own reasoning , logic and observation, that witches do not, in fact exist and therefore killing people for being a thing that doesn’t exist is bad (wrong) because the person hasn’t actually done anything wrong.
If you were to follow your “everything god says is moral truth” then you should still be murdering witches.

Prove anything you have seen felt or touched is reliable. Prove you are not a brain in a vat being given sensory inputs that did not actually occur. Prove that your sensory inputs are reliable. Prove the mechanism that interprets those signals is interpreting them truthfully. Actually do not waste your time. You can't. Almost all beliefs of all types are faith based to some extant. I think the only conclusions possibly are most likely or best fits. Sciences running around acting like the arbiter of al truth is simply self contradictory.

Even if we’re all brains in vats being given sensory inputs that don’t actually occur, then the reality we all experience is still reality.

I can demonstrate that my sensory inputs are reliable by comparing and contrasting them to other peoples’ sensory inputs. For example, if everyone else sees green and I see red, that’s a good reason to start questioning my own sensory inputs. It doesn’t necessarily mean my sensory inputs are wrong, but it’s good reason to question them and continue investigating from there. Of course this is one small part of it. Also, you must be forgetting the fact that we have tools and instruments to help us determine what reality consists of. There are many ways to investigate truth claims beyond just taking someone’s word for it.

On God's existence and best fits let me restate what I have no seen answered yet.
1. The world has around 6 billion people in it.

Okay.

2. Currently 1 - 2 billion people claim to have met a risen Christ (God) and most exhibit evidence the experience changed their lives.

No they don’t. They claim to be Christian. That is all.

3. 2 - maybe 3 billion claim to have never met him but to have enough evidence to justify believing a form of God exists.
4. Less than one billon claim that both they have not met God nor is there any reason to conclude he exists.

You’ve pulled these numbers out of nowhere and you can’t back up these claims you’re making. You have no idea why 2-3 billion claim to believe in god.

Which group is in the best position to know?
What conclusion (God probably exists or probably does not) is the best fit for the data?

I see where you’re trying to go with this, but I think you’re making claims you can’t back up.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I do not remember them. I think you supplied the irrelevant but true information that some of the data sets ended in the 90's (irrelevant because the 90 - 2013 stats ended worse than they began anyway and far more of them included 90 -2000's anyway). There may have been a source or two issue raised but I thought that was for another claim. Beyond that I do not remember any.

Many of the 90-2013 stats ended better than they began. And overall, crime rates have been on the decline over the long term.

I also objected to the fact that many of your links were dead ends, or that they didn't say what you thought they did.

There were myriad of objections. Maybe read the thread over again to refresh your memory.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I do not know. It would be interesting to look them up. I do know that liberalism (which is closely associated with secularism) has ruined most of their economies and health care programs.

How do you know that?

The US healthcare system has been a disaster for about 30 years now. How does that speak to your point? (I don't know what that has to do with morality anyway.)

However moral statistics specifically has not been investigated by me. I would think the best possible data set would be from a nation with the greatest extreme in swings. I do not know another country that has had a more radical change from Christian to secular (at least policy or political) swing than the US.

Well, maybe if you're making claims such as the ones you're making, this is something you ought to check out before continuing to make said claims.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

You know it was he who spoke through the serpent.

That is never confirmed in the Bible.

Rather the Bible makes it clear that the serpent was among the craftiest of Gods creations. Meaning the action of the serpent was its own choice. Indeed even Eve accuses the serpent and the curse is given to the serpent. Not the devil.

Unless you are saying animals also have free will and morals?

 

[CG Didymus]

That is never confirmed in the Bible.

Rather the Bible makes it clear that the serpent was among the craftiest of Gods creations. Meaning the action of the serpent was its own choice. Indeed even Eve accuses the serpent and the curse is given to the serpent. Not the devil.

Unless you are saying animals also have free will and morals?

Christians, not Jews, make that claim of the devil being the "serpent of old." But Christians are stuck interpreting the curse. What do they do with the crawling on your belly and eating dirt? If we are going to really try and be literal, I'd say you are right, it's a serpent, not some evil spirit being. However, to make the NT true, and the supposed words of Jesus true, then we must have a devil retrofitted into the Jewish Scriptures. But, then again, who is in control? Who allowed Eve to be deceived? Who created The Adversary or The Deceiver? It has to have been the Christian God's plan all along. He made the tree and the fruit and made the serpent or the devil, either one, to beguile Eve. It's a nice religious story, but it is the real truth then God is playing games with us.

 

[CG Didymus]

...For example, if you are of the opinion that drinking battery acid is good for one’s health, but it can be demonstrated that drinking battery acid usually results in death, we can say that the opinion that it’s not bad for your health is invalid. So there are objective values to be found, we aren’t just flailing around completely in the dark here.

No, you are wrong. Jesus said in Mark 16:18 that his people could drink deadly poison and not be harmed. And to prove it, some have actually survived. Obviously they are the true believers. The ones pretending to be believers died. So right there, you have a good "objective" test on who really, I mean really, believes in His Word.

You are saying that any conclusion we can make is invalid unless it comes directly from the boss man.

Who knows what it was like in the beginning, except Christians of course. The rest of us are too blind. But, you know, it seems that there's always been "boss men." We always had military, political and religious types of leaders. No doubt they made rules that they expected people to follow, some were probably good and some bad. Some of those "boss men" must have claimed that they talked directly to God. Maybe in their minds they did. Maybe it was people that went before them past on rules of behavior for the group and then said it came from God. So, not wanting to offend the gods of their fathers, the new leaders carried on the tradition.

So how would we know if these rules of behavior were truly from The God? Or just a bunch of rules that seemed good at the time but are no longer of any use? People would change them. Those rules would become obsolete. After all, God rules would never change, right? But we do have rule changes. Rules like not eating lobsters and pork. Rules like not touching women on their periods. Rules like stoning people for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. They worked for a time and for a people, but they are not universal. And why don't we follow these rules? Because we used are brains and questioned them. But you know we'll always have religious conservatives telling the people, "No, God's Word is unchanging. It is the same yesterday, today and forever. We must follow it and not question it." Yet, how many Christians know or care about Bible Law? And yet they wonder why people like you and me question them on their "objective" moral truths? Strange.

Morality is about making distinctions between good and bad behavior. How can we exercise morality without employing reason to make such distinctions?

How many bad, cultist Christian movements have there been? Somebody had to use their heads and stop them. Even the dominant Christian group had to be questioned. Without people questioning the practices and beliefs of the Catholics where would we be today. The world changed and even Catholics changed.

I know, I know what he's going to say, we're the blind ones. Even though most have us have been there. We grew up Christian or gave it a try. But, we used our brains and reasoning and found modern Christianity to have some flaws. To bad they can't seem to see that.

Thanks, keep being a Skeptic Thinker and being a voice of reason. CG

 

[kjw47]

That is never confirmed in the Bible.

Rather the Bible makes it clear that the serpent was among the craftiest of Gods creations. Meaning the action of the serpent was its own choice. Indeed even Eve accuses the serpent and the curse is given to the serpent. Not the devil.

Unless you are saying animals also have free will and morals?

rev 12:9, rev 20:2-- both say the dragon( satan) was the original serpent. It was basically just ventrilliquism-- the being who became called satan and devil and dragon--spoke through the serpent.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

rev 12:9, rev 20:2-- both say the dragon( satan) was the original serpent. It was basically just ventrilliquism-- the being who became called satan and devil and dragon--spoke through the serpent.

Because it says that "ancient serpent"?

Read Genesis Chapter 3 again and tell me where it says that it is the devil.

 

[1robin]

I wouldn't be so sure of your claim here.
Alexander the Great comes to mind ...

I knew that would happen. I am either going to have to start to disqualify random objections up front or just quit caring. I typed modern history but mangled the word and simply erased modern from the picture. Since we are discussing Christianity I did not think it necessary to make sure only contemporary nations were addressed. Of course Alexander could not be said to have been hostile to Christianity because it did not exist. Since Alexander's efforts are only concerning 30 years or so and were definitely not in the top 20 evil empires in history it is irrelevant anyway. He was very brutal at times in battle but ruled fairly justly and to the enormous benefit of eastern cultures. He is one of those guys that if he was aiming at me I would surrender. Everything would improve and if resisted he would make an example out of defeating me. I would hate to be annihilated in an effort to keep out a better economy, better military protection, better administration, better education, etc...... He usually did not even try and replace a cultures theology.

 

[1robin]

I find claims like this to be completely bizarre. So if Qatar is the wealthiest country in the world, does that mean god is happy with their devotion to his word? Because if that's the case, you might be in trouble, given that the majority of the population there practices Islam.

I do not know much about Qatar. I did not say every blessing is a result of Christian devotion nor that every hardship is the result of Christian oppression. I said that God promised to protect and bless nations that did his will. I think there is exactly the amount of evidence I would expect if that is true. He also said that it will rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. The end result that we should see is cultures who practice Christian values should be blessed but will not escape unscathed from life.

Here is an interesting example to illustrate this principle. It is a little bit different analogy so I am heading off what I know will be the reply about Judaism versus Christianity up front. If the interpretations are correct God guaranteed that when Israel returned from the diaspora he would never allow them to be evicted from their homeland again. Since 1948 they have whipped every nation (sometimes all at one time) even thought outnumbered 20-1 at times. They did so the first time with 3 tanks, no organized army, and no air force of any kind. There are also promises of agricultural success and economic abundance. Israel sets the standard in middle eastern agriculture. Even though they have no oil to speak of and must spend more per person on military protection their economy surpasses most of the middle east combined.

I see exactly what I expect to see if the Bible is true. It is a waste of time to distort a claim about blessings for obedience into some generalized only Christian nations succeed statement. There even warnings against Christian nations turning into secular nations. He said moral ambiguity would prevail, terrible judges (politicians and legal) would arise, economies would weaken and eventually collapse. What do you know this is exactly what is occurring in the US. These only apply to Christian cultures. The others are covered under a more complex and generalized system which would produce random effects not necessarily connected to their faith.

 

[1robin]

Okay, so without a dictator, us humans couldn’t possibly know right from wrong? From where I’m standing, following orders means you are not exercising morality. Not only that, but it is arbitrary in that it’s based on the whims of the boss: If the boss says that murder is moral, then it just is, despite what we may think about it.

You are always good for a laugh. Labeling the being more associated with freedom, love, benevolence, charity, and morality as a dictator is proof of everything I find wrong with your position and arguments. Dictators dictate they do not request and allow freedom to choose. This is so transparent it is just appalling. Instead of propaganda lets use appropriate terminology.

1. If I perceive or believe in a realm of right and wrong as almost everyone does.
2. I must have an objective (at least from our perspective) and transcendent moral law by which to distinguish, know, or even have moral truths to begin with.
3. Humans cannot produce the law or standard. We can only mandate ethics and call them morals and we even do this so inconsistently that it is meaningless.
4. Nature cannot produce moral truths.
5. Only a transcendent personal being (like God) can produce actual moral truth to begin with.

So without God existing morals have no relationship to truth. They are simply opinion based contrivances used to do a bad job filling a whole where actual morality should be. Since we have thoroughly covered this obvious fact I can only assume you will not let go because you (emotionally) do not like the conclusion.

We can demonstrate that certain things are good and bad based on the results they produce. That is what I’m saying. So yeah, everybody’s got their opinion, but they aren’t all equally valid. For example, if you are of the opinion that drinking battery acid is good for one’s health, but it can be demonstrated that drinking battery acid usually results in death, we can say that the opinion that it’s not bad for your health is invalid. So there are objective values to be found, we aren’t just flailing around completely in the dark here.

No we can not. We can contrive what good means (usually by self interest or speciesm) and see if the results produce more of it. What we cannot do is know that happiness, human flourishing, or whatever else is arbitrarily coughed up without any possible way to know if it is true reflects anything actual or true. They are equally valid unless on group decides to make their opinion the standard. No matter what label you assign your position in the end it will be morality mandated by popularity and/or might makes right. No matter what label you apply to God (for pure effect) morality, if he exists can be factual and common systems made on the basis of a brother hood of man, equality of man, dignity and sanctity of human life, the existence of the soul, actually exists and can united those wiling under actual truth.

You are saying that any conclusion we can make is invalid unless it comes directly from the boss man.

So the only possible objective foundation for morality has been reduced to a plantation owner through terminology who's sole goal is effect. No I am not debating against preference and desire at all. I do not care whether a single person on earth knew one moral fact or not. It still remains true that only with God does moral truth even exist at all. You get rid of God and moral truth is impossible regardless of constant appeals to epistemology in a ontological debate. I never said an atheist cannot perceive moral truth. I said they have no means to ever know it was true. I believe that all men have a God given conscience that enables apprehension. My foundation is consistent with my world view. Your does not exist at all.

Morality is about making distinctions between good and bad behavior. How can we exercise morality without employing reason to make such distinctions? There is nothing arbitrary in employing reason, empirical evidence and observation to draw conclusions in order to make distinctions between good and bad behavior. We are the only ones who actually can do this because we’re the only ones experiencing what it’s like to be us.

Morality comes in two flavors. Ethics and crimes against truth. You can generate ethics (by fiat), you do not have any method to develop moral truths without God. You can produce a system of Mallum prohibitum that is known to be a contrivance for convenience sake, you cannot found anything concerning mallum in se' (which is truth based). Before I bomb a nation, take out millions of human lives in the womb, or restrict a billion peoples actions I need a foundation your system just does not possess.

I make moral decisions every day of my life, just as you do. You can’t escape the fact that you, me and everyone else are using our own cognitive abilities and our own judgments in making such determinations. Even if you are indeed getting your orders directly from god, you’re still viewing it through the lens of your own reasoning, judgment and experience. Just like everyone else.

I use judgment, revelation, a God given conscience, and reason to interpret revelation and things comprehended about an objective moral realm my world view includes. You do the exact same thing concerning moral truths your system annihilates. Of course reason is involved but I am reasoning about truth, your reasoning within a system that can't produce it.

1. With God murder without justification is actually wrong. I must use reason to establish what could or could not justify killing using a world view that includes that possibility.
2. You must invent a basis for claiming murder is actually wrong (usually by simply redefining morality as being equal to an arbitrary goal). You must then evaluate a contrived wrong by contriving even more unjustifiable rules concerning justifications.

What we need here is:
1. A reasonable foundation for establishing actual human value. I have it, you do not.
2. We need reasons like the soul and a foundation for the sanctity of life. I have it, you do not.
3. We need a reason to suggest slaughtering pigs is ok but slaughtering human sis wrong. I have it, you must use speciesm and in addition simply assert that human life has sanctity without any justification for claiming so.
4. We need a transcendent code which makes murder actually wrong. I have it, you do not.
5. If we both claimed murder was wrong we were both right. However I do so with justification and you did so without it. Before I sentenced a man to death I would desire the former and resent the latter.

It does even with god, as noted above.

Well this is just completely wrong. Here was the original statement.

Our ultimate moral judgment comes from ourselves, and from others. I don't see how it doesn't.

With God morality potentially comes directly from him. In Christianity if the Bible is correct morality is not only revealed by mandate and with the foundations that establish it but it is also planted into every human's conscience. IOW if God exists (and theistic God) then we potentially have direct access to moral truth. The fact some people without an actual God claim to speak for him does not have any ability to counter it.

Says the guy claiming that billions of people experience god in the exact same way that he does thereby binds that to reality.

I did not say that. I said in fact much that was the opposite. I said Christians which comprise the vast majority of those that make claims to experiencing God have a similar core to their claims but many different secondary details. I never said anything about my experience defining reality in any way.

Continued below:

 

[1robin]

There is no methodology to the morality you are talking about (from god). You just take orders and follow them.

My method is the most efficient possible. I take mandates from the creator of moral truth straight from the source. Complex methodologies are only necessary when truth is not accessible or you wish to hide preference in procedure. My system if God exists is massively superior to yours. I could even argue that it is much better than yours even if God did not exist.

Don’t give me this spiritual blindness garbage. There’s nothing pathetic in arriving at morality via reasoning and observation.

I will type what my conscience justifies me typing. My judge has quite a bit higher office than you hold. Like it or not debates about God validate comments about spirituality. There is something apparently pathetic about using the reasoning if you simply look at what it has produced. 300 years of peace in the last 5000 is pathetic. You are basically like a child pretending that parents do not exist and insisting child produced morality (Lord of the flies) is just fine.

With god, moral truths are grounded in whatever that god feels like today. The Bible seems to be a really god example of the arbitrary nature of the god you believe in.

No wonder you do not like God. You have no idea who he is. The God of the Bible does not change morality daily. Morality is grounded in his unchanging nature. Murder was wrong in the Garden of Eden and just as wrong today. Let me head off the next distortion here. Some (non generalized) moral instructions did change based on the purpose he had at the time. They were made by the same unchanging nature but adapted to suite a purpose. The exact same unchanging moral source would make different rules for a child or a group of men in time of war then he would for an adult or a peaceful civilian group of men. Both we and God have and should have done exactly that. Yet we are so erratic we will march in the streets to save a convicted felon but also march in the streets for the right to kill a child in the womb. That is a good example.

Before I made laws about when or if a human lives could be extinguished for convenience I would require that I knew the actually truth concerning it (or at least had a reasonable methodology to think I did). You do not have and methodology to arrive at the truth here, apparently you do not even care because you have arrived at your conclusion to allow the practice without it. The inherent theoretical disparity between the two world views is very evident here. Won't make any difference except to satisfy me that I have made a sufficient case.

But they can have corroboration with actual truths, as explained above with the battery acid example.

Tell me how a human derived belief that murder is wrong is corroborated with the actual objective truth that murder is wrong. The best you can do is say murder is not an accepted social convention. Well again before I put anyone to death I want to know they are actually wrong, not that at best they have acted unfashionably.

Yes, you must assume god to make god the arbiter of moral truths. Big deal. That doesn’t make it reality.

No, God's existence (or the case for it) is established in thousands of other ways. Once we establish that his existence is the best conclusion or as faith's burden suggests God's existence does not defy known fact then we have a basis for including morally true morality.

The god of the Bible apparently says witches exist and they should be killed. You cannot question this, because it comes from the boss man and what he says is the truth. People who followed this Bible spent many centuries murdering people they thought were witches. So is the Bible just wrong about witches? Was god wrong about witches? Is it moral to kill witches? Why don’t people still kill witches? I’ll tell you why. Because human beings finally discovered via their own reasoning , logic and observation, that witches do not, in fact exist and therefore killing people for being a thing that doesn’t exist is bad (wrong) because the person hasn’t actually done anything wrong.
If you were to follow your “everything god says is moral truth” then you should still be murdering witches.

I can question anything I wish and do so constantly. The Bible was written by men and has about 5% error. Before I made any decisions I would conduct quite an investigation into whether any error is concerned with witch versus. You however have nothing to check at all yet would still make decisions anyway. BTW witches do exist. They may not have pointed hats and fly on brooms but millions of claims to cult like supernatural practices exist. In Christianity both sides have power. Witches simply work for the wrong side and will loose. Those laws also only applied to Israel for a certain time frame anyway. Secular police officers incarcerate thousands of innocent people per year, is the justice system wrong about crimes existing. There are so many mistakes and assumptions in what you said it would take forever to list them all and is impractical.

Even if we’re all brains in vats being given sensory inputs that don’t actually occur, then the reality we all experience is still reality.

What? So if software was written to program your brain into believing you fell out of a jet at mach 10 then you really did so? Wow.

I can demonstrate that my sensory inputs are reliable by comparing and contrasting them to other peoples’ sensory inputs. For example, if everyone else sees green and I see red, that’s a good reason to start questioning my own sensory inputs. It doesn’t necessarily mean my sensory inputs are wrong, but it’s good reason to question them and continue investigating from there. Of course this is one small part of it. Also, you must be forgetting the fact that we have tools and instruments to help us determine what reality consists of. There are many ways to investigate truth claims beyond just taking someone’s word for it.

No you can't, because if we were all brains in a vat we could all be getting the same false information. This is simply acknowledged and shelved as unassailable by the scholarly community. Are you dusting it off and trying to overcome what can't because it allows you to contest me. I know of no worse claim to contend for you to do so, but have at it. So far it was a dud. Did you not see the Matrix? It was Descartes unavoidable logic on the silver screen.

Okay.

No they don’t. They claim to be Christian. That is all.

What the heck are you talking about and even if you were right how would you know? I have had the experience, I have counseled many people over the years and know about at least what the protestant ratio concerning experience is, Heck I even supplied the data from sites in some recent post and I was pretty close, the Bible mandates the experience, Christ in particular mandated it, the Apostles mandated it and recorded their own, the Bible in general is full of them, even the internet has sites devoted to discussing them from personal posts. You are just making it up as you go along aren't you. There are more than 2 billion people alive that claim they are Christians, plus a few billion more from the past. I made a very conservative estimate and said 50% were lying, your making an irrational, unjustifiable, and an inconsistent with the data claim they are all lying. Who is biased again?

You’ve pulled these numbers out of nowhere and you can’t back up these claims you’re making. You have no idea why 2-3 billion claim to believe in god.

I did no such thing. I gave me methodology and even included data from surveys. I think I was about 10% higher than they were but unless both I and the data is off by factors of ten it is of no help to you.

I see where you’re trying to go with this, but I think you’re making claims you can’t back up.

They come mainly from constant experience with hundreds of Christians and an obsession with this particular event above all else. It is corroborated by polling data. When I created my scenarios about which group is in the best position to judge and what is the best explanation I thought they were pretty good. It has been confirmed by a dozen attempts being unanswered.

These posts are growing too large and are unproductive. Let me summarize in the most generous way possible and see if you can agree. If not it is because you can't or won't and evidence like the misapplication of terminology for impacts sake alone is proof.

1. There are far too many people that claim a supernatural experience of a Christian nature to permit denial of them without extremely good reasons. Whether billions (which is true) or hundreds of millions will make no difference.
2. Without God man is forced to assume the role (because the role is necessary) and he can produce ethics which may or may not correspond to moral truth. His methodology is not derived and is incapable of comparing what he says is true with what is actually true. This is completely independent of perception and would be true regardless of revelation.
3. The methodology used by different cultures produces different results of extremes. The only way you can act against another's conclusion is to violate your own methodology.

They are very generous claims. Can you agree?

 

[1robin]

Many of the 90-2013 stats ended better than they began. And overall, crime rates have been on the decline over the long term.

I also objected to the fact that many of your links were dead ends, or that they didn't say what you thought they did.

There were myriad of objections. Maybe read the thread over again to refresh your memory.

Not one single stat you selected for complaint did I find ended better than it began. I do not doubt that quite a few stats may do that very thing. I am sure a few even got better since Christianity was supplanted by secularism (this would occur by coincidence a few times, even if for no other reason), but one the whole there is an unavoidable and obviously severe trend. The only choice you have to attempt to account for it by something other than I have. I gave links to hundreds and hundreds of them and every link worked. With that many I am sure some of the internal links did not work. This is expected but far more that enough is left to base what I claimed on many times over. This is simply an effort to dismiss inconvenient data.

I do not have time to find and review old posts. If you provide a problem I will investigate it. Otherwise I am far too busy. Please only supply complaints if being true they have the capacity to overturn my general claim. I have no need to justify every stat in every claim in order to make my claims in general more than justifiable.

 

[1robin]

How do you know that?

It is really impractical to debate someone that will not acknowledge obvious facts of any kind if inconvenient. You can avoid any argument by yelling prove it for everything claimed.

The US healthcare system has been a disaster for about 30 years now. How does that speak to your point? (I don't know what that has to do with morality anyway.)

Not sure what to do here. Disaster compared to what? It is the envy of the world, or has been. We have the best doctors and best care on earth. We produce more breakthroughs than anyone in history. When those that can afford to choose where to get care they choose the US more than any other. We have done all this while also never turning anyone away that needs care. We have done al this while making a profit and being at least affordable. It has certainly not been a perfect system, just the best or among the best ever. The two major problems with it have been Tort reform issues and the lack of competition across state lines concerning insurance companies. If only those two were corrected it would be as perfect a system as reasonably could be expected. BTW those two things were not only not corrected but were in fact amplified and protected by the trial attorney loving liberals. As far a Europe goes. I know that within the last five years England has officially declared it's socialized medical system an abject failure. Attempts are being made to return it to private hands but politicians relinquish even what they destroy slowly. Greece and Spain are basket cases in general economically and so is their health care system. I know several people who moved here from Canada specifically because their health care sucked. Russians entire economy collapsed under statists, China might be bright picture to you but I hear reports everyday that suggest it is anything but a medical care mecca. This is going to be far too general to be productive. To start with why don't you back up your claims about or medical system with evidence and we can clear it up first. To date has the government take over been better or worse?

Well, maybe if you're making claims such as the ones you're making, this is something you ought to check out before continuing to make said claims.

Unless the US and every other nation on earth function in opposite directions I have no need. What is true of the US would be true in general. That is why I suggested we get into European statistics (which by the way was not the original subject). I feel absolutely certain (for very many reasons) that socialism, liberalism, state-ism, whatever you wish to call it has had the same effect as here. It certainly has not worked out well for the USSR, France, Greece, and Spain in general. China is your one hope so we can use it if you want.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

I thought the Czech Republic was doing rather well and they are among the most non-believing countries in the world when it comes to religion. They also have free healthcare...and I think Switzerlands healthcare system is doing rather well, and Germany has a rather interesting combination of private/public insurance and is a rather liberal as well.

And here I thought that an issue of America's decline was our investment more into our defense in military than internally like in schools, our issues with an immigration system that does not benefit those who come in to allow them to practice their careers...I would have sworn that many of our "greats" were also from other countries. Shrug IDK.

 

[CG Didymus]

...I must have an objective (at least from our perspective) and transcendent moral law by which to distinguish, know, or even have moral truths to begin with.
...Humans cannot produce the law or standard. We can only mandate ethics and call them morals and we even do this so inconsistently that it is meaningless.

So without God existing morals have no relationship to truth.

So do Hindu's, Buddhists and people from other religions and other cultures have moral "truths"? Of course they do. Where did they come from? Considering only the Christian God can give actual moral truths? Since the Christian God didn't give it to them, then did the religious leaders of those cultures make them up?

Again, what are the "objective" moral truths you've found in the Bible? Do not lie? Do not murder? Do not steal? Other people and religions have those too. Did the real God give morals to those people but forgot to tell them the truth about salvation? He let them continue to try and find him through good deeds and meditation knowing full well they'd never succeed?

And then there is always the problem. If God is real. If Jesus is real, then why don't all Christians believe the same thing about God and Jesus and obey what they say? Could it be because understanding God and Jesus, as described in the Bible, is too ambiguous and therefore subjective?

So who doesn't think being kind and loving is a better way to live then being angry and cruel? Christians might say that they never knew how to love others until they met Jesus. But why can't a Hindu say the same thing? That they didn't know what life and love was until they read the "Gita" and let it fill their souls. The Christian might then say that he/she is going to heaven because they "believe." But I'm sure a Hindu believes that if he/she does good and follows the morality spelled out in their Scriptures that they are going to some special place too.

And that brings us back to the OP, if God let thousands of years go by and didn't tell other people the "truth" about himself and Jesus then he is cruel. Or, all people and all cultures have expressed their understanding of what spiritual truth is, and it doesn't necessarily match what others believe.

I know I sound like you're my worst enemy, but I do appreciate your answers.

 

[johnhanks]

[US healthcare] is the envy of the world, or has been ...

Odd, then, that in 2011 the USA ranked 33rd in the WHO's world life expectancy table, well below, say, Slovenia. The UN's listings for 2005-2010 placed the USA 40th, somewhat below Cuba. US infant mortality for the same period (according to the CIA World Factbook) was 5.4 per 1000 live births - more than Cuba's or Croatia's, and 34th in world ranking. I can assure you the world's envy is well contained.

I know that within the last five years England has officially declared it's socialized medical system an abject failure.

Could you cite this "official declaration" for us? I seem to have missed it. Lacking your omniscience (or is it just access to Fox News?), I can base my views only on the NHS having saved my eyesight and two of my children's lives. Nor am I alone:

The NHS beat both the monarchy and the Olympics to take gold in the patriotism stakes, as Ipsos-Mori's polling for British Future's new State of the Nation 2013 report, published today, shows ... The NHS was most popular with Britons from all backgrounds, being top for both white and non-white Britons, and across social classes, though the oldest segment of the population put the monarchy first, and the under-24s the army.

 

[Ingledsva]

Killing innocent babies, and dumb animals, is evil.

Says the abortion supporter and the defender of any culture no matter how cruel because if it's a culture it is immune to judgment, unless it is a Christian culture. Prove anything you said above is actually true.

What are you smoking dude?


I've never said anything like that.


Quit trying to twist the meaning of what I say.

Which one?

1. Abortion? I believe you have defended it quite exhaustively.
2. Cultural immunity? So far you have defended the Aztec culture, American Indian culture, Alaskan Culture, and cultures in general from any outside influence. I do not need to distort your position to show it's faults. They come built in. I will let you restate your position if you wish. However it must comply with both your moral foundations (reason and opinion) and your previous defense of cultures for no other reasons than that they antedate others or are labeled cultures. I have a moral foundation that can judge other cultures like the Aztecs, you do not.

Yep I'm sure you would be right there murdering other civilizations for your God, using the false premise that you and your religion are superior to them, - so it is OK!


What I have said all along is that religions do not have the right to destroy cultures.


The idea that the religions that did this had some moral right, or were superior, is ludicrous. They were torturing, murdering, raping. They were no better then the cultures they attacked, and often worse.


You said Alaska native children that were kidnapped from their parents, forced into Government Christian boarding schools, beaten if they used their language - or non Christian names - or their own religion, - were better off.


This speaks volumes.


Alaska natives were not fighting anyone when this atrocious kidnapping, abuse, and purposeful destroying of their ancient culture took place.


*

 

[CG Didymus]

Alaska natives were not fighting anyone when this atrocious kidnapping, abuse, and purposeful destroying of their ancient culture took place.

But they were worshiping a false god. Now at least they have heard about the love of Jesus and his Father and have a chance to live in heaven with him forever. Isn't that wonderful.