This isn’t original, but perhaps Timo hasn’t heard it. It is not flippant, but absolutely serious.
I don’t believe in the Christian God for the same reason I don’t believe in unicorns, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus or Mother Goose.
True, but it’s one of the benefits of doing so. In a way, the question arises whether you’re going to risk the consequences. What’s the harm in believing?
if you’re living a peaceful life and you don’t need a God- which can be a deceiving life to live because everything is temporary. In a way, don’t you think that Satan has a great strategy to keep people concentrated and distracted with earthly things, to make them believe that they don’t need God in their lives, and when those people die, it’s too late to regret. Not saying that you can’t live a peaceful life with God, or a richly life, King David and King Samuel did, but why wouldn’t you want both?
Maybe this would help, I’m not saying all celebrities take drugs or are live unhealthy or terrible lifestyles, but some do. Some celebrities who have the money, the fame, the huge houses, still turn to drugs. Why? I don’t know. But, in a way, it makes me think that some of those who did weren’t satisfied.
Here’s a short analogy. God is to us humans as a hand is to a glove. It’s a perfect fit, it’ll quench this feeling of wanting more in life, maybe of emptiness.
If you aren’t brought up with it, it just seems insane. How would you react if I told you that, say, you had an invisible spirit-animal companion, and your life as you knew it was flawed and incomplete without building a relationship with this invisible beast that couldn’t communicate with you?
There’s nothing missing from my life that mythology would provide.
How convenient. A God that refuses to show himself and how dare you even ask, you evil adulterer!
If, hypothetically, Jesus were a big fat fibber and didn’t actually have any supernatural power, how would you be able to tell he was lying?
You’re asking people to love and have a relationship with something you admit you can’t even establish the existence of. Take a step back and get some perspective here. You are, with a straight face, literally telling people to do something that is straight-up, no-shit, diagnosable craziness.
Right, but I’m adding to the fact that there are those who call themselves Christians but truly are not. I think I watched a documentary of a person, or serial killer, who was a priest, or something of that sort, who molested boys and then killed them, and this was in a place of destitution. Outwardly he was a so called “good man” but he was the exact opposite.
I also think labeling oneself as Christian can be misleading. Because who knows if you truly are one. If they don’t want to be labeled as Christians because of those that are corrupt, that’s fine. It’s just a label. But yeah, the label of Christianity does mean that Christ died for your sins and that you believe in the Trinity.
1 John 4:1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
See post 40. You might be guaranteeing your own eternal damnation by believing.
Because all evidence and all logic is against there being gods of any kind.
First, what you or I want is irrelevant; either there are gods (and why do you assume there’s just one?) or there aren’t, regardless of our desires. And second, God as is typical described is a monster; I’d be more interested in killing it that following it. And I have no desire at all to worship anything.
And yet another reason to dislike the idea of God: it’s anti-human. Belief in God is strongly associated with hatred and contempt for humanity, with the claim that humanity are all monsters.
And yet another reason to condemn Christianity and its god; a god of torture, that condemns finite beings to infinite torture.
No, but I don’t torture them either. And the Christian god is supposed to condemn people for all sorts of other reasons than murder, such as insufficient groveling to him.
So he condemns billions of people to suffering because he has a twisted desire for unsupported, unearned love. You are describing a god that’s evil or psychotic.
No he won’t. He doesn’t exist, he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t do any of the things actual human beings do.
On the contrary, they become much less impressive and much more horrible. All the cruelty and suffering in nature suddenly becomes the deliberate design of some uncaring or sadistic god.
Haha , yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.
I think the quote of the evil adulterous generation may have been the wrong verse to use…
I’m just saying that I, myself, will never be able to prove physically that God is real. It’s more of an internal experience between you and God.
Read the book of Psalms. What those people felt back then, is how many people who love the Lord feel now. It can’t be a coincidence. It’s the Holy Spirit.
That’s silly, of course the Tooth Fairy exists, I have the quarters from under my pillow to prove it. 
Your turn Timo, what proof do you have that your fairy exists?
There is no reported revelation by such a deity (while there have been supposed revelations of deities who will put Christians in Hell such as the Koran, the deity in question would also put atheists, agnostics, Jews etc. in Hell also) and it seems logical to me that a deity must have a revelation of some sort by this point.
To the OP, while as a fellow Christian I appreciate your attempts at witnessing (although online witnessing usually is futile), there are two theological errors IMO: 1) that God allows us to choose or reject His offer of salvation and 2) that there will be a literal Antichrist at the End Times.
Why do you think people who don’t believe are “bad”? Priests molesting boys seems pretty “bad”. Pastors living in mansions while asking pensioners to give them more money seems pretty “bad”. Clergy sleeping with prostitutes will condemning them to hell seems pretty “bad”.
I grew up in a christian, fundamentalist church and school. Most of the bad people I know are christian.
Because believing in faerie tails leads to this kind of critical thinking skills in order to justify it.
If there is a God then he has already limited our free will in many ways. I am not able to jump over my house no matter how much I will it. Nor am I able to fly like a bird, live underwater as a fish does, punch though a steel girder with my bare hand. He could have easily limited our ability to cause harm to others and have us think it just as natural as not being able to levitate ourselves. I think that if there is a God then we can still easily and fairly attribute much of the evil in the world to him.
What other holy books have you read? What other religions did you try? Why do you reject other gods?
The ways of Umar The Unwound are even more mysterious than that of the the Christian god, in that He didn’t write anything down, and He refuses to communicate with mortals until after they die and meet Him in The Aluminum Fields Of Plentherth. If blind faith is the only path, then He is truly the God you should worship.
Tsunami
Earthquakes (striking the very Catholic people of Haiti)…
The reality that humans lived for many thousands of years in nasty, brutish, and short conditions before any of the events in the Abrahamic religions are purported to have occurred. For all of that time, apparently “god” watched with indifference before deciding to get involved, and even then not appearing to the Chinese, who already had writing and math. No, “god” appeared to the most inbred, ignorant, brutish people in a part of the world filled with stones.
Forget that nonsense.
Oh, here’s another one: Smallpox, which struck Joseph Stalin at age 7. He later grew his facial hair in a style that would cover the scars. I think about that whenever religious types start in with the “Stalin was an atheist too” crap.
We are god’s glove-puppets?! :eek:
Well, that adds a horrifying new twist to the idea of being “filled with the Holy Spirit”.
“Now show me on the doll where the bad deity touched you…”
Seriously though, and flipping your analogy around, one might equally suggest that god is the glove, and you are standing there amazed at just how well the glove fits the hand when the reason is simply that the hand made the glove.
Humans created all of the gods and used them to help explain who we are, and where we came from, and why, of all the animals, we can anticipate and fear our deaths. That doesn’t make any of the gods real, though it does perhaps tell us something about ourselves.
It occurred to me recently that people do not have faith in ‘god’ They have faith in what other people tell them about ‘god’
I’m just curious. Is this ‘Jesus wants a relationship with you’ thing even supported by the Bible?
To put it in more distinctly Biblical language God is the potter and we are the clay.
I’m not knowledgeable in like… evolution and ideas like that which supposedly disprove God. However I do think that you should provide some insight in the statements that do such. This is what I think. God made this blue-ish liquidy thing on earth, and people called it water. God made the fluffy, white stuff in the sky, and people called those clouds. God made tiny things in our body, and people called those atoms. (I’m not well versed in science either) In a way, I look at the world as though God made everything, and we’re just trying to figure it all out. We’re constantly trying to discover the world, and we’re also trying to use it to disprove God. Which, to me, in my opinion, will never work. In my opinion, I think God made science, or at least what we call science.
Because I’m a Christian so I believe there is only one. Maybe the word I used as why there are so much evil in the world was a bit strong. Maybe like…sinful. If worship isn’t the right word for you, then go with loving.
“And yet another reason to condemn Christianity and its god; a god of torture, that condemns finite beings to infinite torture.” -
If you only knew how sinful humans can be. Would you like Hitler to be in Heaven with you? Would you like criminals to be in Heaven? I can see what you’re saying though, eternal pain is a bit much. However, God sees all and he’s a just God. When Cain killed Abel, whom God loved, God didn’t kill Cain immediately. When God told Cain to leave the land as a punishment, Cain couldn’t handle it. Even though Cain killed Abel, God still told Cain that he would protect him.
Don’t risk and make yourself one of those people who refuse, it’s not worth it. Think about it this way. If a person killed a brother of yours, or sister, or mother, or father, or child, or friend, and was not regretful. Would you not be angry? Would you not want eternal punishment or curse them for it? Would you not want to be revengeful? Would you want to invite that person into your house for eternity? Maybe that may shine a light on a lessen horror to eternity in hell. To us, we are God’s children, and when he sees another killer others, especially innocents, He’s furious. Yet, he can forgive, if you have a willing heart, and he knows when you’re willing.
Rom. 10:12-15 "For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him; 13 for “WHOEVER WILL CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD will be saved.” - Just a quote I found interesting
Genesis 4: 10-16
10 The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. 11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”
13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
15 But the Lord said to him, “Not so[e]; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 16 So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod,[f] east of Eden
1 Tim. 2:5-6, “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony borne at the proper time.” - Also ironically ran into this verse while searching for verses online
Romans 1:20
20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, nhave been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,7 in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.