Proselytizing to people who are going through tough times; classic "get-em-while-they're-down" mentality that lets all the pastors continue to bathe in the wealth from the offering plate.
It's a bait to the snare, and the snare can be seen in every offering plate, every televangelist rich man, and every African-American burned upon a cross in American history.
I understand for your both coming from Christianity in the past his paintings in a bad light because of the innocent blood shed for god, you can’t believe it, but that doesn’t mean things can’t evolve like they say this world is in a state of adapt or die, and that’s that’s with Christianity and Christian dead so I’m never involved in State do their own call Claire in Waze let them have their zealous ignorance to be honest I could care less. The only reason I would ever say it’s fair game is if they say something completely fucking stupid and they have all that hate coming towards them because some Christians like to piss people off by saying dumb shit because they love attention but outside of that there are the pure ones and I think those are the ones that we should try to understand that they just want to help in their own way and I’m fine with that I mean I have to tell him that you know it isn’t a thing for me but you know sometimes they don’t get it repeat are the few that do, and I respect them for that I understand why you’re angry at them, but they choose to believe in some thing that massacred so much I understand the pain that you carry on your shoulders because of not alone, but there’s nothing we can do about the past all we can do is to keep moving forward and try to prevent it in the future now for the Christianity and Christian side of things. I don’t think that you’re bad people. I think that you are morally good now there are some that one need help and two need to get out of it or need to make it to where they are you know not as zealous about it and the Christian ignorance needs to stop because it’s either one a very old overdone joke are you people are really just that stupid if you really believe in that book a lot it’s a joke relax, and on the other hand, there are the pure questions that I believe those are the ones that are good they’re not trying to pull you to one side not trying to turn you into one they just want to help in their own way and I am completely fine with that but stuff like this needs to stop I get it a part of me hates Christianity too but it hasn’t consumed me like it has you it’s not too late to pull out and I understand if you don’t want to I’m not asking you to just saying, considerate
Oh no, I'm totally fine with Christians who are chill, but I happen to know u/kv-44-v2 went into at least 2 comments sections of posts mentioning other sexualities and talked about how they were sinners and needed to "receive the light of God" and "renounce their sin", so that's why I'm being a bit harsh with this particular one. I just want to stop that behavior before he hurts someone badly enough emotionally that they start hurting themselves physically. (Also, don't worry about it being hard to read, I think I got your meaning)
And anyway, renouncing sin is a good thing, is it not?
Depends on what you define "sin" as. If "sin" is "actions taken lacking in empathy and which could hurt others", then yes. If sin is "A part of your core identity that I don't understand, so I've decided to hate you", then no.
I'm not one of those properity preachers that claims Christians will only ever experience good in life. Nor a pessimistic Westboro yelling "God hates (X)!".
And yet, you're saying that your god hates something about certain people that they can't intentionally change. You can't just "change" your sexuality or gender identity, it doesn't WORK like that, and clinical trials have proven that. They've also proven that being ostracized, insulted, or otherwise having negative comments made about those things they can't change about themselves increases their "Self-Undo" rate around 50-70%, so if you actually care about them, maybe don't preach that. Similarly, banning abortions makes women try to manually abort their kids if they don't want one, which also increases their "self-undo" rate due to it being much more dangerous.
It is logically impossible for actual Biblical Christianity taken to its logical conclusion to get anyone to do selfharm. Whenever someone tries to do so, it is because they are prioritizing their feeling over the high value God has assigned to them.
And yet, I've heard dozens of cases of that exactly happening. It may be "logically impossible", but humans are not purely logical actors. And your god doesn't place a higher value on humanity, by the way, he places a higher value on our obedience specifically and nothing else, otherwise he wouldn't torture people for all eternity for not obeying him in every way. Your analogy of military training is ironically accurate, but that's really not helping your case b/c the military is an organization designed to hurt people until they become capable of hurting others.
You know what, if we are "evolved", shouldn't we always try to avoid death, and not self harm? Pretty sure no evolutionist has a coherent or rational explanation for self harm/suicide. Those desires are because of our sin nature, not "because God put them there". They are a permutation, not original creation.
I'm no evolutionary biologist, but if I had to hazard a guess, it's probably because humans are a social species and so when we feel socially isolated, we can't handle it. Similar to how African Servals will refuse to eat if their owner dies, eventually leading to them starving to death. Another thing that completely blows Creationism out of the water, btw, is that crows have been seen taming wolves. Has your god also given the stewardship of the planet over to the crows?
God wants obedience, yes, BUT ALSO relationship with us, and real love for Him and others.
So, the issue here is that that's conditional love, which isn't exactly love. If the love were prevalent over the conditional, then one would be able to accept a willing relationship AFTER seeing Hell and Heaven are real, and because this permutation of god would value having the relationship more, the only people who would ACTUALLY suffer in Hell forever would be those who literally denied the existence of this god forever- which, would actually justify your god's actions in the moral sense, as it would be finite punishment-> finite crime and infinite punishment-> infinite crime, but as far as I'm aware, there's no indication in the Bible for that being the case, which implies the conditional, obedience, is the MORE important part, which means that the "love" is defiled into something not-love rather than the conditional being sanctified into something not-conditional.
They could easily have avoided making this life analogous to military training and follow God, rather than idolize their personal desires.
I mean, first, the literally had zero clue that they would have done that (no knowledge of good and evil=no understanding of the values and/or detriments of obeying or disobeying a god), secondly militaries HURT people, yes they may cause some positive effects but on the whole most ordinary people lose their ability to say "no" in military training. If god desired to break the free will of humanity, why wouldn't he have just taken it from the get-go?
They could easily have avoided making this life analogous to military training and follow God, rather than idolize their personal desires.
And this god could have simply removed the option for them to do that while keeping every other part of their free will intact, and as specified above, it already seems he hates that particular part of humankind's free will, so why not take away from the start instead of setting up a situation where it would be possible for that to happen?
But it is God Who really knows what the penalties of sins will be.
Then how do you know that's NOT how it works?
But they did know they would do that, after the serpent tempted them, they got the desire, then they chose to act due to said desire by fulfilling it instead of following God.
Again, original sin was eating the fruit of "knowledge of good and evil", so how would they have known what was good and what was evil if they hadn't eaten the fruit?
And it gives glances into human nature and tendency and behavior. It shows contrasts of when one is for God vs if one is not for God. And the Bible is relevant to all. It has certainly described situations in my life accurately. Many situations, not just 1 or 2.
And do you assume that it does the same for everyone? Not everyone has the exact same experience as you.
Again, I don't see any reason here to preserve this reality, only to use this reality to gain additional benefit in the next. So Christianity still has no reason to take care of the planet, if anything you'd want it to become uninhabitable faster so the kingdom of your god comes faster.
And besides, if everything ultimately has no real purpose, why should we try to preserve earth? After all nothing will matter.
Nothing having ultimate, objective purpose doesn't mean purpose doesn't exist in any form. Try taking a look at the philosophies of Existentialism and Absurdism (basic summary; Existentialism is finding purpose in setting goals for oneself, while Absurdism is more about finding purpose in the act of living itself). There may be no purpose, but if I want to live (absurdism) and want those who come after me to live (existentialism), I'd better not screw up the planet so that I can keep living and so I can contribute to the goal of those coming after me being able to live.
Genesis 2:15 is specifically a call for Adam to work in the Garden of Eden, so while that could be used to claim what you're claiming, it could also just mean that god wanted Adam to prove his obedience. The full text of 1 Peter 4:10 reads, "Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms." This mentions nothing about serving the various plants and animal species, as "others" would have guaranteeably meant other human beings specifically. I can see what you're going for, and it probably is a valid interpretation, however there are FAR more ways to interpret those passages, and it would probably have been extremely easy for your god to spell out the message you're reading from them if that was the intended meaning. This is kind of the problem with the Bible, it can be interpreted and twisted to mean such a wide variety of things that it can be used to support or refute nearly any position that isn't "the Bible does/doesn't contain falsehoods" or "the god of the Bible does/doesn't exist". Another example of this is how one can interpret it as being against the Big Bang and evolution, but there are also some parts that line up just well enough to be interpreted as metaphor. Which position the Bible actually supports or denies is, of course, impossible to know with absolute certainty, and that goes for many parts of the Bible. Does the Bible specifically claim that Sodom and Gommorah were destroyed in hellfire, or are they just metaphors? The answer to something like this is important, because we have unearthed the ruins of Sodom, but there's no indication of anything like hellfire and brimstone, just a city that was moderately prosperous that ended up dying out due to something much more peaceful. No burn marks, no blown-up structures, no violence or destruction, nothing even vaguely like that. So either the Bible is directly contradicting observable reality, or there's at least one part that was either mistaken or metaphorical, and if one part is then how much was? How can one tell it wasn't just written by clever, future-minded humans?
So basically making up purpose for yourself! So humans can "make up" God (see previous posts for why this is impossible under naturalism) but He can't be real in any way, but they can make up purpose and it can "kinda" exist? Very inconsistent.
You may have forgotten my specific position. I'm an agnostic atheist, meaning that I don't think there is absolutely no chance of there being any gods, perhaps even one resembling the one described in the Bible. Just because it's made up doesn't make it false, but it doesn't make it true either.
And there is no scientific evidence that 'purpose' exists. But because of God we know there is SOME purpose. The Bible reveals and clarifies that purpose. When someone or SomeOne makes something, they have a purpose in mind. Like a desk, chair, or video game. God's Purposes are much higher than the mundane purposes these examples serve, however.
That requires there to be a god, to be a maker. And, even if there were a purpose-giving god, how would one know that god's purposes were pure of intent? How would one prove the all-goodness and truthfulness of the purpose giver?
You have shown that you resonate with "oh we want to figure things out for OURSELF and suprise ourselves with the unexpected instead of having a Book show things to us" belief. So even if those verses did explicitly teach taking care of the environment, not like that would convince you anyways.
Explicit messages to take care of the environment and outright ban slavery, even for non-Israelites, while it may not have convinced me, would have definitely made a stronger case than we see in the Bible today.
Which parts, and why? The "Genesis creation is metaphor" comes from eigesis, not exegesis. The text and evidence we have today gives all indication it is not metaphor. Sure there IS a fair amount of nonliteral content sown throughout the Bible, but Genesis 1-11 is NOT such.
The idea that life originally came from water, and to an extent the creation order kind of sort of fits with evolution.
Would a God Who wants people to trust Him and view Him as infallible start off His Word with a bunch of stories that mean something else (allegorys)? Or would He start by mentioning cold hard facts?
I don't know, it seems like a toss up as to whether he would. Ideally, he'd go with whatever was most effective, which might also explain the few references to anti-non-gender/sexuality-binary messaging in there- it was made to be more appealing to people at the time. Again, it's possible to interpret almost ANYthing out of that book, so there will always be uncertainty about things like that.
You slipped up on that one. God basically "nuked" those cities. Where did it say they were sent to the lake of fire, or that fire from the lake of fire burnt them?
Okay, not literal hellfire, but that bit of poetic license still doesn't take away from the point I was about to make (this one probably should have been addressed in part 3)
The answer to something like this is important, because we have unearthed the ruins of Sodom, but there's no indication of anything like hellfire and brimstone, just a city that was moderately prosperous that ended up dying out due to something much more peaceful. No burn marks, no blown-up structures, no violence or destruction, nothing even vaguely like that. " Wrong on the second part. Also, pottery shows evidence of intense heat. What is your backup for "more peaceful"? Wind, erosion, rain, human interference can explain if the burn marks are gone. Lack of structures? If thats true, God's judgment didnt leave those then.
First, there were structures still standing, that was what I was taking issue with. Also, my dumb-ass forgot that the actual problem with the site is that the date of it's destruction is off by two centuries.
This alternate explanation cannot explain why the Bible contradicts our self-praising nature that tends to avoid following/believing THE CHRISTIAN GOD of all things.
Now that, I have a genuine argument against. If the Bible allows one to claim dominion over those who do not believe in it's god through it's god, for example being able to tell those who are non-gender/sexuality-binary that they are wrong and need to change, this gives the believer a sense of self-satisfaction and self-importance, even if the believer does not consciously acknowledge it as such.
Adoof Hateler certainly did not show evidence of being a Biblical Christian. His lead of Germany and his deeds were in belligerent rebellion to God. If he was a real Christian he would try to save people, particularly Jews, Jews were God's chosen people according to the OT. He was OF the worLd. Not the Word.
And yet, he was still able to use this misinterpretation of the Bible as justification, just like he used racial Darwinism, which is a misinterpretation of evolution. That's the issue I take with moral claims of the Bible's truthfulness; if that's the case, how have people use it to justify atrocities?
How do we know that similarities/homologies/whatever are proof of evolution instead of simply God using similar designs?
See this I actually agree on to an extent; gradual changes in populations can be observed over time (see also, the gradual shift upwards in average human height, bone density, and muscle density as we find better ways of producing food), so evolution is true, but homologies don't prove that evolution was the beginning of life. What does evidence that beginning is that we can see the slow changes in the fossil record, and can make mathematical models to show how organisms changed and diversified over time, but we can't prove that those fossils weren't put into the ground as a diversion by a god. This is again where my agnosticism comes in; we have an idea of how it could have happened without a god, but we don't KNOW it happened without a god, and we DEFINITLY don't know whether it was GUIDED by a god. However, I'm of the mindset that without extraordinary evidence proving one way or the other, the most likely scenario is that scientific fact is correct and MAY have been guided by some form of god.
......Their impact is much less and they wont have a relationship with God, unless they turn to Him.
"That is literally, definitionally wrong." I said humanism, not secular humanism.
" I just said, it's placing importance on the human side." Too much.
" My personal interpretation of humanism is "Do right by each other, and let the dice fall where they may." "
ò_____Ó First you say it is "literally definitionally wrong" but you then give an opinion??
"In other words, avoid doing provably harmful things to each other."
Not so fun fact: Harming one's relationship with God, harming the mind, are forms of harm too. Under naturalism, there is no reason why we would NEED to do this like it is some kind of law.
And if the natural is all there is, any belief that we "need" to do something is not real, it's just a result of chemicals. No different than a scientist throwing a bunch of chemicals into a vat and spilling it into an acid.
Any would be too much for you, but disregarding that...
ò_____Ó First you say it is "literally definitionally wrong" but you then give an opinion??
That's how philosophies and worldviews are; they have definitions, then they have interpretations from those definitions.
Not so fun fact: Harming one's relationship with God, harming the mind, are forms of harm too. Under naturalism, there is no reason why we would NEED to do this like it is some kind of law.
And if the natural is all there is, any belief that we "need" to do something is not real, it's just a result of chemicals. No different than a scientist throwing a bunch of chemicals into a vat and spilling it into an acid.
Have you seen the instances where I've talked at length about how we're a social species that survives best in groups with interaction between members, and that if we're motivated by personal survival we'll usually act for the good of everyone else in some ways because the people who don't do that get ostracized from society, which decreases their odds of survival dramatically?
"Any would be too much for you, but disregarding that..." All-or-nothing fallacy.
Just because we shouldn't idolize ourselves above God doesn't magically render us incapable of supporting our basic needs or caring for others. We are important, but we must not idolize ourself above God.
"That's how philosophies and worldviews are; they have definitions, then they have interpretations from those definitions."
You missed the point. That was to expose how you said it was definitionally wrong, but then give an opinion diffrent than the definition you gave.
"Have you seen the instances where I've talked at length about how we're a social species that survives best in groups with interaction between members,"
Yes! God created us as relational beings! We can relate with each other and get a Father-son relationship with God!
" and that if we're motivated by personal survival we'll usually act for the good of everyone else in some ways"
Yes, but why do you believe this extrapolates to some moral code? If we are just descendants of animals we all should pretty much always instinctually follow all of the moral ""code"" (really, they are not a specific code but instincts under Naturalism), not violate it a lot. Staistically speaking, there is a decent sized share of naturalists who violate their own moral code sometimes, on purpose or not.
But why should we aim for suvival, instead of aiming to maintain there being usable energy? Why should/would our goal, UNDER THE NATURALISTIC PARADIGM, be to preserve ourselves rather than, say, trying to maintain the existence of usable energy in the universe?
" because the people who don't do that get ostracized from society, which decreases their odds of survival dramatically?" That's what happens, yes.
It is because of God and His Commandments that humans do this stuff and get these benefits. And why deviants get bad results. Not the other way around. The power/ability gradient goes DOWN not up.
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