You would ask for evidence of course, however I think even christians look for evidense when choosing what they believe. At the same time while you would ask for evidence you could not logical disregard the claim when your only basis for doing so is that you personally have not witnessed it.
Huh? What? I can logically disreguard the claim! My only basis is NOT that I have not personally witnessed it. I believe in history, I did not personally witness those events. My basis for non-belief is the weakness of the evidence.
So what's your point? The fact that someone has to change their lifestyle does not make the religion exlclusive to selective individuals as you were first suggesting.
The point of his analogy was to show how it's cool for christianity to reject the people of other religions. It fails because the other religions are very similiar to christianity in that they are not exclusive to selective individuals.
I don't think you understand what I was 'at first suggesting'.
I doubt that any person including God wanted to go through the pain of being crucified. If there is any sense of want it is because he it was neccessary in order to allow forgiveness.
Er how is it necessary to allow forgiveness? GOD MADE THE RULES OF WHAT IS NECESSARY, he can decide to allow forgiveness WITHOUT sacrafice.
Lets take another example, if I were to sacrifce my life in the place of another person would you suggest that I want to die?
That's a terrible analogy, I really can't believe you would write/think this way. If you were to sacrafice your life, in the place of another person that you essentially were going to have killed, yourself, instead of just not killing them - I'd say you wanted to die.
Of course I don't, but I value the life of the person I am saving more than my own and therefore am willing to do even when I would prefer not to.
AGAIN, that's a situation where you have some lack of control, god has NO lack of control. He is omnipotent, he doesn't HAVE to sacrafice himself.
Why not? I don't see how it would make a being imperfect to have anything "bad" done to them.
The event/situation that led to him having something 'bad' done to him must have been an afront to his power, something he could not stop. It would make him imperfect. Why you can't see this, who knows?
This does not make sense, you may come to an understanding of what you believe sick to but you agree that it may not be the same for everyone else. How can you justify that your sickening though makes it impossible for a forgiven rapist to exist in heaven?
It doesn't mean it's 'impossible', that's just silly. The rules of heaven is something I'm not willing to debate, it's ludacris and beyond what any serious person should discuss. I was merely saying that I, from my limited little relative imperfect moral position, feel that it is wrong for god to allow rapists into heaven with their victims. The answer 'well god knows better than you' doesn't fix it for me, so while of course it's a satisfactory explanation in so far as challenging the existance of god, that's all good and all, but the real issue people have with it is an emotional/moral one based on their own idea of what is right/wrong.
You don't have to care in this case what God says since by your own logic you have shown that your own perpective that says that they have done more wrong than their victim counts for nothing.
What the hell? I don't even know what you're on about.
I did address the questoin properly, just not directly. No we are not robots since those who have entered heaven have done so via their own will.
Oh so once you go to heaven free will ceases to exist?
If there is no good evidence for aethiesm other than the questions raised in regard to the nature of God then I see no reason to make the emotional jump to aethiesm.
Good for you, but it's not just questions about 'the nature of god', it is (at least my version of atheism is) a total non-belief in everything supernatural. There is no evidence for tooth-fairy atheism other than the questions raised against the idea that a tooth-fairy could exist, but ALOT of people can make the jump to tooth-fairy atheism.
There is far more suggesting evidence (not proof) that a God exists rather than Santa Clause.
That DOESN'T matter. There is no suggesting evidence of a supernatural entity, there can be no evidence. What you essentially seem to be saying in reality, is that because heaps more people believe in the christian god and so much has been written about it, that it's more likely to be true than santa claus is. I'm sorry, but you have absolutely NO way to qualify that statement. See this is all you say, to show that comparing belief in santa claus and god is different in this respect and it's just terrible. IMO the analogy stands as I said it.
And while you can attempt to prove that the claims of his existance are wrong I think those claims are more complications, rather then logical proofs of why it cannot happen (In regard to God here)
Grats to you. I think most of the proof against claims of a christian god are logical proofs against that previous claim, this does not mean that it isn't also a 'complication', of course theists will generally come up with some confabulation to justify their belief when presented with the argument, but the previous argument was logically refuted by the atheist. Furthermore, while I think you can attempt to prove that the claims of santa claus's existance are wrong (such as saying 'oh there's not as much SUGGESTIVE evidence for santa claus') that will just lead to more complications with someone whom chooses to vehemently believe in santa.
Which ones are those dribble that you refer to? Does it include all because some prohecies in the bible seem pretty to the point to me.
Give me an example of a prophesy in the bible that you think validates it and i'll explain to you why I think it's silly. Basically tho, all that I've ever been presented with are generally discovered 'after the fact' or were already known at the time/guessed at the time.
dont even bring santa claus into the equation
Yea, you don't like that one do you. There is no logical difference between a 'magical, supernatural santa claus' and 'god' when it comes to proving their existance.
for starters, a coke ad campaign, combined with various poems written by others, created the magical image of santa claus.
How are we to not know that the coke campaign was divinely inspired by santa to spread the word to all boys and girls?
its a bit like scientology, both were invented by man so how could they be true, with out proper divine intervention?
How do we know they had no divine inspiration? We can't, it's a supernatural imaginary concept that we can't test. Thus all supernatural hypothesis's have equal value.
dont even begin to compare the 'existence' of santa claus to God's.
Sorry, I did and I stand by it.
