Are any of the esteemed athiests here interested in a religious discussion?
Sure, thatâs the whole point of Debate Room. What would you like to discuss?
The problem with Christianity is that outsiders improperly gauge the ideal by the imperfect disciples.
The problem with christianity is that its followers base their entire belief system on something for which there is no evidence.
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Can I reply directly from my email and it show up here?
Spiritual evidence is what weâre talking about here. God has deliberately prevented physical proofs because he wants us to develop implicit faith in him.
According to your book, your god hadnât always deliberately prevented physical proofs. Why is it different today than it was in the past?
That seems like a cop-out to me. âWe have no evidence, so why donât we claim that âgodâ doesnât want anyone to know the truth.â Yeah, seems legit⌠NOT.
The problem with faith is that you can believe literally anything on faith. I can, for example, believe that the universe was created last Tuesday by Harvey, a six-foot tall invisible purple bunnyâall on faith. I donât have any evidence for Harvey, but neither do you have any evidence that Harvey doesnât exist or that he didnât create the universe.
Why does your god, as you claim, want us to âdevelop implicit faith in himâ? Why not just reveal himself to everyone and remove all doubt and all need for faith? Is it conceit, or something else, that prevents him/her/it from doing so?
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It is because faith is the principle of all progress and action. It is faith in oneâs ability to build a skyscraper that drives you to do everything that ultimately creates it. Until it is done, there is no physical proof that you can do it. There is, however, spiritual proof. If we sit around waiting for physical proof, weâd all be bumps on logs.
I donât see that physically proving Godâs existence was ever a thing in the Bible. Physical evidence, yes, but thatâs not the same as âproof.â
Faith is just a cop-out when you have no evidence.
Do you have any evidence for the existence of any god(s) or that one is even possible?
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which imperfect disciplines are you talking about?
If I draw you a map to get to my house, you have to put faith in me and my map for it to work. Without that faith, you will not get to my house. If I deliberately draw you a wrong map, and you faithfully follow it, you will learn that it is a bad map. There would be no point in the map in the first place if you already knew how to get there. God wants our faith in him so he can instruct us on how to succeed.
Disciples (followers), not disciplines (fields of inquiry).
So, we need to distinguish between true faith and false faith. As in the map example, your faith in my good map would turn out to be true. Your faith in my bad map would turn out to be false. People can have correct and/or incorrect ideas about God. When you apply faith to an idea, you will soon determine its truthfulness.
Can you explain how an outsider like myself improperly gauge the ideal by the imperfect disciples? This phrase still makes no sense to me.
Itâs like a quote by Ghandi, âItâs not Christ have a problem with, itâs Christians.â Followers of Jesus will do fool things in his name, which in reality are not true to Jesus. Outsiders will say, thatâs foolish (correctly), and ascribe the behavior to Jesus.
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Define what you mean by proof, please.
If you claim to have a brother, you can point out that there are two bicycles in the garage and that they are both clearly recently used. That is âevidence,â but not conclusive proof. If you produce said brother for examination, parentsâ vouching the fact, an assemblage of further evidences, i would call that âproof.â
So, if I can provide evidence that the critter that lives in @Tin-Man âs garage wrote the book that you call the bible, then it holds equal weight to the evidence you put forward for your god? If not, what makes one body of evidence weigh more than another?