It’s not a contradiction to believe that places have good people and bad people. In any place you go, whether it may be a church or a school, there is going to be bad people. Unlike you, I chose to value the good that I got out of the church, such as the genuine friendships I made and the good people that I met along the way. So yes, there are greedy pastors and pastors that practice grooming. I saw them first hand. I’ve also seen pastors that built up their churches from bricks with visions of a future that are genuinely beautiful. It’s not a contradiction, it’s a fact of life that you can’t seem to get over.
And if you think that those questions make me sound like an atheist, then I know that you didn’t read my original post, where I explicitly explained how I am agnostic, and with that I already know that you have no interest in conversation; you just want to prove me wrong. And asking valid questions don’t make me an atheist, they are a sign of curiosity. And you know what, since you don’t like my questions, how about I ask a few more?
How can a all good, all powerful, all knowing God make his doctrine confusing in the first place? Why should God set the record straight instead of delivering a clear message in the first place? If the Devil is feeding false information, then how is it my fault that his ‘false information’ makes more sense than years of childhood indoctrination has ever done? If God wants me to believe in Him, why can’t He just show himself to me, or make his doctrine make more sense than the devils for chrissakes. It’s not that hard to change my mind, as long as there’s proper evidence, and God knows this. I’m not confused. In fact, I think this is the first time in my life that things are finally starting to make sense.
Also, twisting the truth isn’t a trial lmfao. If an all benevolent god that wants to be known by everyone is purposefully allowing his word to be twisted, then that’s being purposefully deceitful.
And my questions in accordance to your testimony isn’t me being presumptuous, it’s me trying to find proper evidence. All I can tell from your testimony is that you felt a certain type of way, then you didn’t, and you attributed that change to god, and not just any god, but the Christian God. Guess what? There are Buddhists, Muslims, Taoist, Jews, Sikhs, and so much more who can attribute their changes in attitude, behavior, addictions, etc. as a miracle of their god or gods. Can it be that all of these gods are just as real as the christian god? Or can it be that none of these gods are real and the miraculous change they and yourself experienced can be explained by natural means?
"I would like to ask further, what life experiences did you have that demonstrate you were born again like you said? Or how did you know you were born again?"
I don’t have to answer that because it’s irrelevant to the conversation, unless you’re implying that I couldn’t have been a real Christian before I became agnostic. If that’s the case, then that is so incredibly fallacious and insulting. All you need to know that if you were to ask me a few years ago where I was going after I died, I would’ve definitely told you that I was going to heaven. I had accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and I was even making moves to try and become a pastor or teacher to spread his word. Miss me with that “No-true-scotsman” bs.
Also, the only reason why I highlighted the fact that I was willing to die for my faith was because I wanted to illustrate just how deep in the faith I was. I obviously didn’t brag or boast about my willingness to die, that would be ridiculous. But looking back, it scares me how, if my parents had the money to send me on missions trips, I would’ve really died overseas for a religion that I no longer believe in.
And like everyone, I used to blame God for things that happened. What I didn’t add was that I would repent later on like how Christians are supposed to. And if you read the rest of the sentence, you would see that I don’t blame God now because I don’t believe he exists. How can you blame or hate something that doesn’t exist? You don’t. That’s what I was saying in that sentence you so graciously cherry picked.
I’ll save the topic of morality for another time, but the bottom line is that you don’t hurt people because the Bible says so, and I don’t hurt people because my sense of right and wrong, which was built up by society, my schooling, and my upbringing, says so. And you say that you’re decision making is independent of the Bible, and maybe it is. Maybe you think that gay people should be able to get married, or that a person should be allowed to divorce her spouse, or that a woman should be able to live her life without having kids without being judged, or should have an abortion if need be, but who am I to assume what you believe?
"If you mean that the Bible condones slavery because it is recorded in the Scriptures without any disagreement about it then it’s faulty reasoning. The Bible is a record of HISTORY as well as prophecy, just because something is recorded in there as historical events do not represent God’s tacit approval of the events per se."
The Bible literally gives you step by step instructions on how to obtain your slave and treat them. And regardless of whether it’s history or a sonnet, that doesn’t change the fact that people use the Bible to justify themselves. And if the Bible is meant to be taken as a historical document, then the things that are in the bible should be considered outdated. Those verses that talk about how being gay is an abomination? Throw them out. I mean, they’re so outdated, so why not allow two men to get married in a church?
You can’t just pick and choose which passages are history and which aren’t and continue to follow other passages that you’re more comfortable with as gospel.
So the blame should have been on the pastors who preach falsehood, yet you’ve laid the blame on God. It’s like blaming your parents (God) for what you (pastors) did simply because they gave birth to you (created them) and are your overseers, what kind of person lays blame like this?
And this is a false analogy. If I grew up with my parents telling me that it’s okay to beat my slave an inch from it’s life and that slaves aren’t and shouldn’t be considered people, then yeah, I’m definitely going to blame my parents for teaching me that. But the difference between my parents and God is that I can just chalk up my parent’s teachings as their own ignorance. God is supposed to know better, and if God is going to give explicit instructions on how to treat your slaves in both the old and new testament, then that isn’t evidence of an all knowing and/or an all benevolent God, and I shouldn’t have to bow down to that.
"What’s ridiculous is the level of double standards I’ve seen in every argument from God haters. When I say tolerance, I mean God has not punished people immediately for their disobedience. It shows a heart of forgiveness because God wants people to learn from their mistakes and repent."
H-have you read the Bible? I’m genuinely curious. Maybe it’s a mistranslation, but I explicitly recall God repeatedly punishing the Jews throughout Judges, killing the Israelites whenever they complained throughout Exodus and Numbers with snakes or diseases, like I-
"Besides, regarding slavery, much of the immorality of slavery was done by Egyptians, a bunch of people who never believed in God in the first place. So why would such people be moral and forsake slavery? In that generation, God’s people were a minority in a world of unbelievers, and slavery was a common practice of heathens. The only reason God’s people owned slaves at that time was because people were poor and some families have to sell themselves and/or their children to wealthier families. Even so, under the Mosaic law, slaves were not to be mistreated or abused like they were by God haters. Now, before you start pointing your fingers at God again, people were poor because the unbelievers who hated God were the ones who became rich at the expense of the poor."
My god… So you’re saying that it was wrong for the Egyptians to enslave the Israelites, but it was okay for the Israelites to have their own slaves from foreign nations? Are you actually kidding me? I want you to read Exodus 21, like, actually read it, then try to tell me that “much of the immorality of slavery was done in Egypt”. Unbelievable.
Also, taking into account that the God literally instructs the Israelites certain guidelines for slavery, and you yourself admit that slavery was immoral, are you therefore saying that God’s stance on slavery is immoral? If not, then you just contradicted yourself. And there is definitely a difference between indentured servitude and slavery.
Exodus 21:1-2: “Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.” This is indentured servitude.
Leviticus 25: 39-40: “If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee.” This is, once again, Indentured servitude.
Leviticus 25: 44-46: As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly.” This is Slavery.
And if you’re saying that God merely tolerated slavery, then you’re forgetting that God literally told the Israelites how to keep slaves. Why would God give the Israelites explicit guidelines on how to have slaves and tell the Israelites that he can treat their slaves like property if He didn’t want them to? He had no problem telling the Israelites what He liked and didn’t like, so why is this any different? If you look at the last sentence in Lev. 25:46, you can see that God didn’t mind if the Israelites treated other nations ruthlessly or made foreigners slaves forever, so try again.
"So don’t attempt to blame God for poverty and the resulting slavery which was the only means for many to survive when the majority of the world at that time were in rebellion to God’s law, abusing the poor out of greed and disregard for God except for Abraham and his descendants. If God truly condoned slavery or immorality like God-haters falsely accuse Him of He would have started slavery or immorality right from the time of Adam and Eve, yet that never happened. Human rebellion against God started the cycle of slavery and immorality, I don’t know how deceived a person can be to fail to see that."
Are you saying that the Israelites were poor? Are you actually kidding me? Yeah, they were so poor that they didn’t know what to do with all of the gold that they took from Egypt so they made a golden calf to worship, and used the resources the took from Egypt to build an elaborate tabernacle and ark for worship, and had hundred upon thousands of cattle for sacrifices.
“If God truly condoned slavery or immorality like God-haters falsely accuse Him of He would have started slavery or immorality right from the time of Adam and Eve”. Yeah. God totally didn’t establish a hierarchy in Genesis.
Genesis 3:16
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.”
You sound like you’re making excuses, and you honestly need to stop. The bottom line is that slavery was openly condoned in the Bible in both the Old and New Testament, and you can’t handle the fact that when it comes down to it, you’re more moral than the Bible that you’re holding onto so tightly.
Also, stop calling me or anyone who disagrees with you a ‘God hater’. I don’t hate God, because God doesn’t exist.
And no, I’m not going to repent, because I have nothing to repent for. If I have to repent for asking basic, valid questions, or demand concrete evidence that God seems more than happy to give to others and to people in the Bible, then I’ll never repent.
As for flooding the entire globe, it was clear that God had no choice but to do so because the earth was filled with violence and the survival of the only righteous family of Noah was at stake. In fact, Noah preached repentance to his generation for 120 years before the flood came while the ark was being built, so those who refused to repent of their evil had no excuse and no escape from destruction. Compared to Noah’s generation, Jonah also preached repentance to the city of Nineveh and when they all repented from the king to the civilians not a single one perished. So humans have only themselves to blame for their destruction when they engage in evil and refuse to stop.
“I was the one that made him angry. He wouldn’t have hurt me/let his friends hurt me if I had just obeyed him and did what he said. He actually loves me a lot and wants what’s best for me. He knows better than I do. I should’ve just listened… ”
“It was our fault that God was angry. He wouldn’t have flooded the Earth/let us become slaves to foreign nations if we had just obeyed him and followed his word. He actually loves us and wants what’s best for us. He knows better than us. We should’ve just listened when we had the chance to change.”
It’s sickening how close that whole argument sounds like an abused wife, and you don’t even see it. It was our fault that God got angry with us? No, God should’ve checked his emotions instead of flooding the earth like a child with an anthill. And the last time a ruler tried to wipe out a bunch of people because they didn’t align with what he wanted, he called him a dictator and the world spun into WW2, so don’t even try to compare. And guess what, Noah and his family was so righteous that the first thing Noah did when they got off the ark was get drunk and his son did something to him (the Bible never specified what). So what was the point? Might as well flooded everything and started again from scratch.
"This condition of the heart is one of selfishness, rebellion and ungrateful-ness. People with this heart condition cares about their own interests above all else, so they want to live lives however they-"
And I’m going to have to stop you there. I didn’t turn away from God because I wanted to live in sin. If you truly think this, then, and idgaf if you used to be an atheist, you have zero understanding of what it means to be a nonbeliever. Not only that, but I can turn around and throw this argument right back to you. How do I know that you refuse to believe in the Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva? The only reason why you don’t believe in the Hindu gods is because you don’t want to believe, and you just want to live your life in the depravity of sin.
Not only is this argument totally presumptuous, it’s flat out wrong.
As an agnostic, I don’t hate God, I just don’t believe that He exists. After asking questions and analyzing arguments, I came to the conclusion that God doesn’t exists. And if He does exist, then he’s the universe’s greatest in hide and seek champion. And I’m not biased to the evidence, it’s just that you have no evidence. If you show me the evidence, then you could collect your nobel prize knowing that you were right and the non-believers were wrong. It’s not selfish to want evidence, it’s called being rational.
The laws and order of the universe all point to the necessity of an intelligent Creator, for laws and rules cannot create themselves and comes by design. Even every snowflake is unique in its design, and the intricate information stored in DNA is a striking example of how only design can bring about life. These God-haters know this somewhere in their conscience, but they still reject the truth of God’s work.
People have a bad habit of thinking that just because this world is habitable, it must be designed. Well, it’s not. And even if the universe was designed, how do you know for certain if it was Yahweh or Brahma or Gaia? You can’t. Science, however, can explain how the universe came about, from the big bang to evolution, but religion doesn’t like to talk about that. I’m not a biologist or an astrophysicist, so I can’t explain in detail how science explains the origins of life. But I can say from my surface knowledge that the universe didn’t need a god to start it, and the laws of nature can, in fact, create themselves.
Scientists have found two identical snowflakes, and twins exist. Just because something seems remarkable or unexplainable, or just because you don’t understand something, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a natural explanation. By that logic, you’re no different from the ancient Norse who believed that thunder and lightning had to come from Thor, or from ancient Greeks who attributed the changing of the seasons to Persephone. This is the God of the Gaps argument, and it’s fallacious.
And this...
"In a further and more desperate attempt to sooth their disturbed consciences, they use the same arguments you did, pointing fingers at God for every evil that happened, accusing Him as the perpetrator simply because He did not stop evil from happening. Why? So by calling God evil they give themselves a reason not to believe Him. In their minds, they believe God owes everyone and thus they shake their fists at Him for not stopping evil, yet they believe God should excuse their evil or even that God should not exist so their evil will never be punished. In truth, they could care less about the suffering of their fellow homo sapiens, they just want an argument to discredit and deny God. If they truly cared so much about injustice and evil they would have done something about it, or at least lived their own lives in a way that promotes justice and good."
...is a straw man fallacy. You’re, again, building up this image of what you think a non believer thinks or feels, all the while missing the most important factor about nonbeliever, that is that they don't believe that God exists. Who are you to tell me what I'm thinking and what I feel about God. You don't even know me. But if you want to talk about the problem of evil, then I'd be more than happy to talk about it.
If God is all powerful (Luke 1:37), all loving (Psalm 86:15/Isaiah 40:28), and all knowing (1 John 3:20), then how is there evil in the world? Evil is defined in two ways, Natural Evil and and Moral Evil, Moral evil being the harm done by people like murder, and Natural evil being harm done by nature via tsunami, hurricanes, etc. If God is all loving, then surely he wouldn't want his creation to get hurt, and if he is all powerful, He would definitely be able to protect us without infringing on our freewill, and if he is all knowing, then He should know just how to do that, and yet evil persists, why? If God wants to prevent evil but can't, then he's not all powerful. If he is able to stop evil but doesn't want to, then he can't be all loving. If he can and is willing, then why is there evil in the world. And if god is all knowing, then there is no free will. No matter what he decide to do, God already knows what we're going to do and the decisions we're going to make, so all long as god is all knowing, there can't be free will, and that is the problem of evil.
And I don't care if God acts like a genie or a tooth fairy or a mermaid. If he wants to give me whatever I want, his omniscient self will know what I want without me having to ask and he'll know ahead of time if he gives it to me or not. And I don't even want much. Just give, me, evidence. That's literally all I'm and many other non-believers are asking. And do you want to hear a real double standard?
Let's say my dog is sick and I pray to God to heal him. If God heals my dog, praise God! If my dog dies regardless of my prayers, then it was all God's will. No, we're not allowed to hold God accountable for the bad, only for all the good. That is a double standard.
And I'm not grateful to God because, once again, I don't believe he exists. In fact, this whole conversation about slavery and the blatant contradictions in God's character are painting God in a more negative light. Why on earth would I worship that? Because he created a universe in which none of it is habitable? Because he created the Earth in which only .3% of the water is drinkable, and even then can still be dirty from parasites and germs unless we boil it? Because he created a world that is constantly trying to kill us through harsh weather conditions (which, btw, we adapted to handle), tsunami's hurricanes, our own sun. Yeah, okay. If my parents raised me in an environment that was constantly trying to kill me and sentenced me to an eternity of flames and torment for questioning their benevolence and asking questions... yeah, I wouldn't feel too grateful for them, either.
So ask yourself, why are you becoming more and more like them after you’ve claimed to have been a born again Christian?
If you want to know, it's because I started asking basic questions like "how reliable is the Bible?" and "is the Bible's teachings relevant today?" and a few other questions, read my Bible straight through, found contradictions that didn't add up to the Bible's divinity and infallibility, did some more research into apologetics, found those arguments to be fallacious, and tada, here I am.
And I'm not going to bother replying to your last post, partly because it doesn't make sense to me, and partly because what I do understand I already explained morality and I don't have a faith, so it's irrelevant to me.
That being said, I hope you have a nice day, and props to you if you actually read everything.
