Barr125 wrote: » But it's OK for guys like Festus to say that Atheism and science is quote ''rubbish''?
Benny_Cake wrote: » If someone doesn't believe in God, then surely matters such as transubstantion, original sin, the resurrection and so on are profoundly irrelevant to them?
Festus wrote: » never said science was rubbish. Only atheism is rubbish.
Barr125 wrote: » Alright. The point still stands however. And did you read my response to your last points? http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=77615564&postcount=3180
Festus wrote: » Yes
Barr125 wrote: » None, yet you have no evidence other than a 2000 year old Holy Book written by Bronze Age farmers about a magic man who created everything, and his supposedly magical Son to believe in God, so have some faith.
Festus wrote: » Perhaps you would care to provide an example of an element of religion that does not make sense to you.
himnextdoor wrote: » Judging by the number of people that turnout for Star Trek conventions, by your logic, Star Trek is a true story.
tommy2bad wrote: » Festus, are you hard of thinking? The bit an atheist finds nonsensical is the God bit. They use the other bits to show how inconsistent the evidence is. An atheist dose not believe in the existence of God. They don't have to agree or disagree with the moral teachings to be atheist just the existence of God, god, gods.
Barr125 wrote: » No rebuttal?
Festus wrote: » They are relevant in this forum
ISAW wrote: » It is not reasonable to declare all of theology nonsense!
Fanny Cradock wrote: » I'm not sure that is a definition of faith that the writers of the NT would have recognised.
Barr125 wrote: » Alright. The point still stands however.
Festus wrote: » What about... Actually I do know what atheism actually is but the atheists are in denial.
Zombrex wrote: » Which bits of Christian theology still make sense if God doesn't exist?
ISAW wrote: » It would still not be reasonable to declare theology nonsense! Theology is an academic field. huge developments have come about because of it. In relation the Christianity missiology would have relevance even to an atheist. As might theodicy or Christian anthropology;
Benny_Cake wrote: » Leaving aside the fact that transubstantiation is a specifically Catholic belief and this is the Christianity forum - the purpose of this thread is to debate the existence or non-existence of God. If someone doesn't believe in God, there is very little point in asking someone who doesn't believe in God to disprove all the minutae of Catholic theology and teaching.
Festus wrote: » Presumably then if you believe atheism to be right then you can prove all of the teachings of the Catholic Church to be wrong. Perhaps you would care to provide an example of an element of religion that does not make sense to you.
ISAW wrote: » It would still not be reasonable to declare theology nonsense! Theology is an academic field. huge developments have come about because of it.
ISAW wrote: » In relation the Christianity missiology would have relevance even to an atheist. As might theodicy or Christian anthropology;
Zombrex wrote: » The idea that seems some what popular on this forum that faith is simply the act of assessing evidence and coming to the most rational and reasonable conclusion is not a definition of faith that the NT writers would recognized, nor one used through most of humanity. If it was statements such as "have faith things will be ok" and "faith is a virtue" would be meaningless.
Roughly speaking, the word faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply belief--accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people--at least it used to puzzle me--is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. I used to ask how on Earth it can be a virtue--what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence, that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid. Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then--and a good many people do not see still--was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith; on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other..... Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of evidence is against it. That is not the point at which faith comes in. But supposing a man's reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair; some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments where a mere mood rises up against it. Now faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why faith is such a necessary virtue; unless you teach your moods "where they get off" you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of faith.
Penn wrote: » As others have said, religion is the one which is making the claim that X happened or that Y is right. The onus is on religion to prove itself to be correct. But in the interest of debate, I'd like to discuss one element of Christianity. I've raise it before, but I don't think it was answered (I tend to drift in and out of this thread, and some days it moves very fast so if it was answered, I missed it) The Temptation of Christ, where after being baptised Jesus went into the desert for forty days and nights. While alone in the desert, Jesus was tempted three times by the Devil. Each time, he resisted temptation, and afterwards he was helped and received nourishment from angels. Now from what I understand, it may or may not have been forty days (rather 40 a number chosen to demonstrate that it was an extended period of time) and that Jesus may not have been fully fasting (rather eating what he could find in the desert, which would be less than normal). That's not the issue I have with it though. Jesus went into the desert for however long, and was tempted by the devil, was helped by the angels, then he returned to civilisation. So how do we know the story of the temptation of Christ? Nobody else was there, so we only have Jesus's word that it really happened. The only way it could have been written into the Bible is if Jesus told his followers that it happened, and they then told others who either wrote it in the Bible or told others who then wrote it in the Bible etc. So the only proof we have that this happened is that Jesus said it did. No one else was there. No other proof is available. So how can we know it happened? Sure, it's in the Bible, but if Jesus lied about it or embellished certain facts, or if those he told 'spiced up' the story a bit, it would still have ended up in the Bible because the people who wrote the Bible were writing stories of Jesus's life, and that's the story they were told.
Festus wrote: » New question Penn, do you only believe in things that exist?
Penn wrote: » Sorry, but I can't predict the future. I think it will, and I believe it will, and all the scientific evidence we have tells us that it will, but I can't absolutely 100% definitely know that it will because that requires personal omniscience, and that would be impossible, wouldn't it?
Penn wrote: » So again, do you know God exists (personal omniscience (which is impossible)), or do you believe he exists (faith)?
Zombrex wrote: » How does reading your quote again answer my question?
Zombrex wrote: » Do you personally agree with this, or is this a Well it must be just because it is God and anything he does is by definition just argument.
Zombrex wrote: » For example, do you believe that anyone who commits a crime, say shop lifting, if they do not repent (ie admit guilt and apologise) they should be sentenced to the harshest punishment one can physically sentence another human to, such as life imprisonment with hard labour (which should be pointed out is still infinitely less time than eternity suffering in hell)?
