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**Official Religious Debate Thread**


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This is without question the most civil thread discussing religion/god/etc. I've ever seen on the intertoobz.

 

I consider myself a Noachide, adhering to the 7 laws of Noah (Wiki) What's great about this belief is that it provides the basis for the social norms that create a civil society while providing no requirement to acknowledge a deity. Sure, you can't have any Idols before God, but if I worship nothing, I am in compliance. You get all the benefit of religion without the burden.

 

I'm a Pastafarianist.

;)

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I consider myself a Noachide, adhering to the 7 laws of Noah (Wiki) What's great about this belief is that it provides the basis for the social norms that create a civil society while providing no requirement to acknowledge a deity.

 

except for that pesky first law:

Prohibition of Idolatry- You shall not have any idols before God.

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Hmmm..... Did you just quit reading my post right there?

 

Hahaha, I must have. Sorry, I was skimming most of these posts.

Although, I think purists would say you need to worship the god that gave these tablets to Noah in the story. Because without that part of the story, we wouldn't have those laws.

Of course, there's too many religious undertones in the laws anyway for me to make a compromise for.

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I think it is funny that the OP has yet to chime in other then to post the original question, a follow up question (which was basically a play of the first question) 10 minutes later and then bolt. <_<

 

Carry on.

Apologies. When I started the thread, I got a tid bit busy. Here is my opinion. Recently I have started to question my faith in Christianity...posing the very same points as the non believers in this thread. Like if we do have free will and God knows exactly what is going to happen, then logically we do not have free will or God doesn't know what is going to happen. I will say that the verse that really got me thinking was Ephesians 5:21-6:9.

 

"22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

 

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Ephesians 6

Children and Parents

1Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2"Honor your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3"that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."[c] 4Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Slaves and Masters

5Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

 

9And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him."

 

This really makes me think...if God truly is a loving creator, then why would he advocate a something as terrible as slavery?

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This really makes me think...if God truly is a loving creator, then why would he advocate a something as terrible as slavery?

 

that's the problem with discussions like these. Most base their beliefs and discourse off of a book...usually the Hebrew/Christian bible (purely because it's the most readily accessible and used book). I'm more apt to believe in a supreme being as long as it's not the god that's portrayed throughout that book. If we're going to have a discussion over whether or not (any) god exists, we need to stray from the texts found in the Bible. It was a book written by man many years ago that contradicts itself in numerous passages and is used by too many people today to justify actions of hate and the judgmental.

 

 

 

Now, in your search for your own belief...the way I see it you need to ask yourself a few questions (and not necessarily in this order):

Do you believe in a supreme being?

Do you believe he created us?

Do you agree with the religious teachings of a certain faith (ie. do you agree with organized religion)

Do you believe in an afterlife?

 

 

You can have different answers to all of the above. Don't assume you have to use the god found in The Bible just because he's the more popular one.

 

 

 

btw, I just noticed I'm over 2000 posts now!! WOOT!

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I think it is funny that the OP has yet to chime in other then to post the original question, a follow up question (which was basically a play of the first question) 10 minutes later and then bolt. <_<

 

Carry on.

Apologies. When I started the thread, I got a tid bit busy. Here is my opinion. Recently I have started to question my faith in Christianity...posing the very same points as the non believers in this thread. Like if we do have free will and God knows exactly what is going to happen, then logically we do not have free will or God doesn't know what is going to happen. I will say that the verse that really got me thinking was Ephesians 5:21-6:9.

 

"22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

 

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Ephesians 6

Children and Parents

1Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2"Honor your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3"that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."[c] 4Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Slaves and Masters

5Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

 

9And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him."

 

This really makes me think...if God truly is a loving creator, then why would he advocate a something as terrible as slavery?

 

 

Slavery back then wasn't the way that we view it. If a person was unable to provide for themself, they could become a slave for someone, and do whatever that person ordered in exchange for food and shelter.

 

 

Edit: More to come later :P

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I think it is funny that the OP has yet to chime in other then to post the original question, a follow up question (which was basically a play of the first question) 10 minutes later and then bolt. <_<

 

Carry on.

Apologies. When I started the thread, I got a tid bit busy. Here is my opinion. Recently I have started to question my faith in Christianity...posing the very same points as the non believers in this thread. Like if we do have free will and God knows exactly what is going to happen, then logically we do not have free will or God doesn't know what is going to happen. I will say that the verse that really got me thinking was Ephesians 5:21-6:9.

 

"22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

 

25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Ephesians 6

Children and Parents

1Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2"Honor your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3"that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."[c] 4Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Slaves and Masters

5Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

 

9And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him."

 

This really makes me think...if God truly is a loving creator, then why would he advocate a something as terrible as slavery?

 

 

Slavery back then wasn't the way that we view it. If a person was unable to provide for themself, they could become a slave for someone, and do whatever that person ordered in exchange for food and shelter.

In certain scenarios, yes. Indentured servants were common, but the Bible does not say indentured servants, it says slaves. To say anything else would be an opinion or an inference.

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In certain scenarios, yes. Indentured servants were common, but the Bible does not say indentured servants, it says slaves. To say anything else would be an opinion or an inference.

 

You're going to need to define "slave" first. The Romans commonly had slaves, but many of them were less like the slaves of America's past and more like modern employees. They were nearly part of the family, or at least good friends, in many cases. In other cases their existence was almost directly corollary to the slaves of America - indentured servants treated little better than animals. Often people would intentionally sell themselves into slavery, especially Greeks looking to make money (Greece during the first century B.C. was economically depressed in a big way) and get an introduction into Roman society. So not all slaves are the same, nor is it necessarily a knock on God because slaves existed in Israel/Judah.

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The thing is, things aren't moving along the way God had planned (or hopes). If it had been, there would have never been a fall, and we would all live our lives in harmony with God in a perfect world.

 

I'm not sure why you think that God knowing what will happen instantly eliminates the choice in life, unless it's because you're lumping God into your "only one set of rules for how things work", in which case why are you even posting in this thread, it's obvious that God, or at least the idea of a benevolent creator, would be outside of the way things work in our universe, if He did in fact exist.

This is why people stop believing.

 

Are you actually saying that an omnipotent, omniscient God created the universe "and it was good" , yet was not good? Things aren't going his way? If things were perfect, by the way, there is no world. The entire population is predicated on the fact that there was a fall. So, if you think about it really, there was no free will involved in that fall. If we were what God planned, then he planned the fall (where we live in so called sin and misery because God is a sick bastard). If we weren't what God planned, then God didn't plan the fall, and he's not omnipotent.

 

"only one set of rules for how things work"

Do you mean logic and reason? So yes, there is only one set of rules for how things work. If God is outside of these rules, then I have no reason to deal with him because he's outside of this universe. If he intervenes in this universe, then he is subject to logic and reason.

 

...it's obvious that God, or at least the idea of a benevolent creator, would be outside of the way things work in our universe, if He did in fact exist.

 

If it's so obvious, why do you still believe in it? You just laid out how the God of the Judeo/Christian bible is completely illogical through the riddle of Epicurus, but you still defend it?

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This is why people stop believing.

 

Are you actually saying that an omnipotent, omniscient God created the universe "and it was good" , yet was not good? Things aren't going his way? If things were perfect, by the way, there is no world. The entire population is predicated on the fact that there was a fall. So, if you think about it really, there was no free will involved in that fall. If we were what God planned, then he planned the fall (where we live in so called sin and misery because God is a sick bastard). If we weren't what God planned, then God didn't plan the fall, and he's not omnipotent.

 

In my opinion, God did not want humans to sin, and did not plan for us to fall, but that doesn't prove his lack of omnipotence. Omnipotence is defined as a deity being able to do ____________, with the key word being able. God could have prevented us from sinning, but the only way that is possible is to take away free will, but since the primary reason we were created was because of love, God chose not to make us "slaves" of his desire, so to speak, but gave us the ability to choose our ways for ourselves. Free will, even though it makes evil possible, is the only way that there can be any worthwhile love or goodness in the world. The happiness God designed for us is the happiness of being voluntarily united to Him and to each other. Of course God knew that with this free will things could go wrong, and we could choose ourselves and not God, but apparently He thought it was worth the risk. The thing is you can't really disagree with that, because God is the reason that you are able to disagree in the first place, so we can't be correct and He wrong, it would be like cutting off the branch that you are sitting on.

 

The most popular argument I have heard against God/religion is the problem of God knowing all in conjunction with having free will. The difficulty in this is thinking that God progresses along the timeline with us, or in other words, that God has a past, present and future, but that He can "see ahead" on the timeline. If that were true, if God foresaw our actions, then you would be right, there would be no true freedom in the universe. But suppose God is outside of time. In that case, what we call 'tomorrow' is visible to Him much the same way that 'today' is visible. Every moment in time is 'now' to God, so he doesn't see you doing things yesterday, he simply sees you doing them, because even though you have lost yesterday (meaning it no longer exists for you), He has not. You never suppose that your actions at this very moment are any "less" free than future actions because God knows what you are doing right now, well He knows tomorrow's actions the exact same way that he knows your actions right now. Another way of putting it is that God doesn't know your actions until you have done them, but that in the moment you acted (although it was a certain place in time for you) it was right now to God.

 

"only one set of rules for how things work"

Do you mean logic and reason? So yes, there is only one set of rules for how things work. If God is outside of these rules, then I have no reason to deal with him because he's outside of this universe. If he intervenes in this universe, then he is subject to logic and reason.

 

God does deal within the boundaries of logic and reason, yes, but that's not really the set of rules that the other poster was talking about, and he only operates inside of logic and reason because he chooses to, not becuse he has to. He is (we will assume he exists for the sake of the argument), obviously, outside of our universe, and does just as obviously intervene, but that doesn't make him subject to universal law, although he can choose to be. It would be impossible, even for an omnipotent being, to create a society of free souls without also creating a relativey independent and 'inexorable' Nature. I like to think of it as an author writing a book. He can create characters, a story, locations, etc., he can even finish the entire thing and then go back in and change it later, but at no point does he have to operate under the parameters of the story. Another imperfect analogy, and please don't use this against me telling me that I am saying God is writing out our actions, I merely use it to demonstrate how God can have a hand in things and be a creator yet not have to follow the same rules as us, nothing more.

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I find it a bit difficult to argue over things like "If God is perfect, then why do things go so badly?" or "If he knows everything, how can there be free will?" Why couldn't He have created us and simply let us loose to do as we will. Just because you have the power to change everything or see everything doesn't mean you do it. If all our actions in the future are seen through some divine window, what if He simply chooses not to look? It's just such a hard topic no matter what you believe in. You can see evidence of evolution and that we simply are because we arose from some primordial soup, but there are so many things we will never understand no matter how far we progress in science. How can we ever know what it was like before the universe/big bang? Everything we study to find out about the universe - radiation, gravity, electromagnetic spectrum, strong/weak forces - they didn't exist before the big bang, so how can we ever know?

 

And then you get into thoughts of multiple universes, or what if our universe is some infinitesimal "atom" that makes up a "tree" that is apart of another universe? Despite the doubts we have about God, sometimes, for me at least, it all seems so complex and so immense that it seems hard to believe it wasn't created by something. I still struggle with the question of where the "universe" and everything in it, hydrogen, etc., came from. How could it just be?

 

I really wish I'd stop thinking about all this sometimes, it can really consume you if you let it.

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I really wish I'd stop thinking about all this sometimes, it can really consume you if you let it.

 

Try being the kind of person who is prone to pondering such things, and having insomnia. It's a real hoot. :blink:

 

I've been a life-long Christian, but I question my faith daily. Dogmatic belief in anything is a waste of life. I forget who said it up there about everyone really really being shades of agnostic, and I think there's some truth to that.

 

My pursuit of Truth has led in all kinds of directions, like studying Islam and Buddhism, physics, atheism (which isn't all that much of a study, really) and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. The science behind the Big Bang is absolutely fascinating. If you haven't read up on this stuff, you gotta. It's crazy how complex the universe is. The size is incomprehensible. The fury out there in space, while we're tucked in our safe little outlier of a safe little galaxy is terrifying.

 

I've never found Truth. Probably I never will, since mine isn't a unique pursuit. I know that, without animosity (which is a human trait, not a religious trait), we can all get along, whether we are atheist, agnostic or faithed. I'm comfortable with my Judeo-Christian faith. It's not damaging to me or you, and it has some pretty nice things for me to do to my friends and neighbors, and even my enemies. I can tell you this - if all people everywhere really followed the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, this would be one heck of a peaceful planet. But we don't, and likely we can't on a macro level.

 

More's the pity.

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