Could A Good God Permit So Much Suffering?
- Thread starter Hume
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It's generally a white male of European descent who believes miracles and transcendent experiences are impossible. Billions of brown, black, and Asian people are convinced there are miracles and a transcendent reality. I'm not going to be the great European colonialist and tell them their ideas are idiotic.
Atheists believe in miracles too. The miracle that something can come from nothing, that order and design can come from chaos.
All ancient literature contains hyperbole, metaphor, exaggeration, misinformation.
That includes Herodotus, Thucydides, and the New Testament. They did not have the same understanding of analytical history and biography that we do.
The only things you really need to believe in to be Christian is:
1) There was an itinerant Jewish rabbi and healer named Jesus who taught in and around Galilee.
2) Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate.
3) The followers of Jesus came to genuinely believe they saw him after his crucifixion.
Even the great atheist biblical scholar Bart Ehrman agrees these three beliefs are based on reliable witness testimony. The only question remaining is if the disciples were all hallucinating, or not.
If you can't use inanimate materialism to offer a better explanation for the order, design, and creation of the universe, then you are telling me either you are agnostic, or that you can't give any convincing arguments that would undermine the theist lines of reasoning.
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Yes, why Europe surpassed all those civilizations with science and rationality.
I don't tend to believe in miracles as I have never seen or heard of a legitimate miracle.
Argumentum ad populum.
"Idiotic" is a bit strong. I see you are trying to make a point by painting my position as nothing but hatred for religion. I wish we didn't have to debate the topic like that.
No they don't.
Is that a "belief" atheists have? I know I don't.
TECHNICALLY that's wrong. Speaking as someone who spent decades as a Christian I can solidly point out to you that the only thing you have to believe is that Jesus died for your sins and to accept that that sacrifice was necessary on your behalf. Which means yeah you would believe all three of the things you list but that is NOT what makes you a Christian. In fact just believing those things doesn't mean one is a Christian at all.
I would say that any European or American, even if they didn't go to church, who had direct contact with a Judeo-Christian culture knows instinctively what they are without even asking.
And more than just instinctively knowing it, they almost universally broadly agree with the overall New Testament ethos.
So, guilt before a Judging God.
So you feel you are superior to Chinese, Indians, Africans?
Odd inference.
The resurrection is the overarching key belief in Christianity. Without the resurrection there is no Christianity.
I didn't think it was necessary to spend time and ink on the theological reasons used to explain the meaning of resurrection.
Atheists don't offer any explanations. They usually just offer complaints about Christianity. I've spent the last 20 years trying to debunk theism, but I find the logical arguments of CS Lewis and Francis Collins hard to debunk, and what Richard Dawkins and Steven Hawking have written about religion is almost painfully superficial.
Whole things seems absurd and uninteresting.
You are just a believer. I will never understand why you get hysterical on these issues. Be happy with what you decided.
I tried to shed my cloak of European colonial superiority.
There have been Muslims, Hindus, and Jews who have won Nobel prizes in physics.
I decided a while back I am not going to call people of spiritual beliefs from the global south idiots.
I do not give a shit about spirituality.
Well, it is.
Then definitely Go with God. You have found your faith and that's cool.
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Dutch Uncle
* Tertia Optio * Defend the Constitution
Exactly. None of which can currently be proven. Ergo, all are equally right or wrong. I don't have a problem with it. Do you?
Without evidence, neither. OTOH, which is more positive and which is more negative? I lean toward the positive.
But seriously, you don't feel you know what the outlines and categories of sin are in a western Judeo-Christian civilization?
The reason well all talk about how immoral Trump is is because we intuitively know what constitutes sin based on our 2,000 direct contact with the New Testament ethos.
I'm saying that theism in general, and Christianity in particular has a rational basis based in reason and logical inference. Anyone who is aware of Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and CS Lewis surely must be aware of this.
I understand many atheists just really want to be able to say Christianity is really as irrational and unreasonable as believing in pink invisible leprechauns.
I really don't think that claim holds up under scrutiny.
I am still skeptical about a lot of things. I think it's possible Jesus did not die on the cross. I can't categorically rule out that quarks and electrons are the only true reality, and that we are just a cosmic accident, and that nothing ultimately matters in the end.
I think the disjunct comes from the fact we all started off talking about this deistic type of God who is the author of the universe but not much more detail than that and now we are somehow talking about the God of Abraham specifically.
I thought maybe you had a definition of sin that didn't require one have a specific religious belief system. I had failed to take into account that we were now talking about Yahweh.
This is very interesting. You seem to be defending Christianity as rational and reasonable and clearly the version of God you are defending here. But I'm curious why if you follow it up with saying you are thinking it is possible Jesus didn't die on the cross.
So why would you defend a religion whose core concept you seem to either not be certain of or which you understand somewhat incompletely?
If Christianity is a rational belief system one must be absolutely 100% certain of the death on the cross. The sacrifice is what makes the religion.