[PERMANENTLY CLOSED] When should we change our reasoning / beliefs?

[bhsmte]

If one admits when they're wrong and admits when they've done wrong and realizes who it is they've actually wronged and asks for forgiveness. You can continue to do wrong in the eyes of men and in end your wrongs will not matter, but you cannot continue to do wrong in the eyes of God, eventually if you're wise you will ask for forgiveness and accept the gift of eternal life made possible by sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ or you won't.

I'm not trying to preach to you, you asked and I'm answering based on what I believe to be true.

Are you then able to personally determine, if someone is a true Christian or not?

 

[bhsmte]

No.

Since you believe it is impossible for you to be wrong, how do you think this impacts how you view new information and knowledge that may contradict your belief?

 

[Chriliman]

Are you then able to personally determine, if someone is a true Christian or not?

If someone claims to be Christian but then does something that isn't inline with the teachings of Jesus, I then have reason to question them and determine where their heart truly is. I can then use the Bible and wisdom from the Holy Spirit to correct them.

 

[bhsmte]

If someone claims to be Christian but then does something that isn't inline with the teachings of Jesus, I then have reason to question them and determine where their heart truly is. I can then use the Bible and wisdom from the Holy Spirit to correct them.

In other words, you have the ability to determine if someone is a true Christian? Is that correct?

 

[bhsmte]

Here is wisdom:

Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.

24Put away from you a deceitful mouth
And put devious speech far from you.

25Let your eyes look directly ahead
And let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you.

26Watch the path of your feet
And all your ways will be established.

27Do not turn to the right nor to the left;
Turn your foot from evil.


Somewhere along the way, you failed to do this. You did not watch over your heart and allowed the enemy to sow seeds of doubt in you. I am sure you are familiar with the parable of the sower.

Now you who once were a Christian are standing on the other side. Something happened to you, something took place in your life. It might have been something you read, a thought that came to you one day, something you heard or saw that caused you to start doubting and caused you to start looking for a reason not to believe anymore.

Yes, I do insulate and protect my beliefs because there are those that would have me doubt them and give them up. Satan is a liar and a deceiver and he is very clever.

This is just preaching.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Here is wisdom:

Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.

24Put away from you a deceitful mouth
And put devious speech far from you.

25Let your eyes look directly ahead
And let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you.

26Watch the path of your feet
And all your ways will be established.

27Do not turn to the right nor to the left;
Turn your foot from evil.


Somewhere along the way, you failed to do this. You did not watch over your heart and allowed the enemy to sow seeds of doubt in you. I am sure you are familiar with the parable of the sower.

The fact that you've descended into preaching suggests to me that you have nothing worthwhile left to say.

Now you who once were a Christian are standing on the other side. Something happened to you, something took place in your life. It might have been something you read, a thought that came to you one day, something you heard or saw that caused you to start doubting and caused you to start looking for a reason not to believe anymore.

I've noticed that many believers have great difficulty accepting that a person could honestly examine Christianity and come away no longer believing. They assume that there must be something wrong with the person, rather than with the religion itself. The religion is assumed to be faultless, so the fault must lie within the person who no longer believes. This is a way of deflecting blame. You are trying to pin my deconversion on some personal flaw, rather than considering the possibility that it was the religion I left behind that was flawed.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

This is just preaching.

It's what always happens when they run out of arguments. They start preaching.

 

[bhsmte]

It's what always happens when they run out of arguments. They start preaching.

Indeed.

 

[Chriliman]

In other words, you have the ability to determine if someone is a true Christian? Is that correct?

Yes, if a reason to think someone is not a true Christian is presented to me, I would then ask that person some honest questions and get down the heart of the problem and offer them truth from the scripture or from my own experience that might help them get back inline with the truth of Jesus.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

I freely admit I could be wrong about my lack of belief in Gods.

What about you, is there any chance you could be wrong about your belief in God?

No.

We finally have the answer to the questions I posed to you earlier:

Hey @anonymous person, I'm still waiting for you to address these posts:

We are open to be convinced.

Convince us.

Go.

Shoot.

Have at it.

Why is Jesus not God incarnate?

Why are we wrong about the universe being created by God?

Why should we adopt your beliefs and abandon ours.

We are all ears.

Hang on, are you open to be convinced? As I recall, you indicated that you know your beliefs to be true primarily because of the "inner witness of the holy spirit." If you are like Craig, then you regard this "inner witness" as incontrovertible, in which case nothing I could say would ever be enough to prompt you to reconsider your religious beliefs.

Pretend I didn't say that.

Pretend you didn't say that? But you did say that. To pretend otherwise would be disingenuous. Don't tell me that you are open to be convinced when you are really hiding an "intrinsic defeater-defeater" up your sleeve. You're essentially asking me to pretend that you're not going to cheat by playing your "inner witness" card.

When should atheists change their beliefs...

The subject of the OP ties into the question above.

Each person determines what it would take to change their own beliefs.

I think that's the answer.

It's interesting how you worded the question to exclude theists. When should theists change their beliefs?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

So when you said that you were "open to be convinced," were you trying to deceive us?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Since you believe it is impossible for you to be wrong, how do you think this impacts how you view new information and knowledge that may contradict your belief?

He challenged us to convince him, knowing the entire time that he would never be convinced, no matter what we presented. In other words, his challenge was made in bad faith.

 

[bhsmte]

He challenged us to convince him, knowing the entire time that he would never be convinced, no matter what we presented. In other words, his challenge was made in bad faith.

It certainly seems to be that way.

 

[Chriliman]

So when you said that you were "open to be convinced," were you trying to deceive us?

Did anonymous person claim to be a perfect human? If not then why are you holding him to such a high standard of perfection? Are you implying that anonymous person is the most perfect person you've ever come across, that would cause you to scrutinize him so much in order to find the flaws? And when you can't find flaws you simply move on to the next imperfect person in order to find flaws?

 

[bhsmte]

Did anonymous person claim to be a perfect human? If not then why are you holding him to such a high standard of perfection? Are you implying that anonymous person is the most perfect person you've ever come across, that would cause you to scrutinize him so much in order to find the flaws? And when you can't find flaws you simply move on to the next imperfect person in order to find flaws?

This poster stated he was opened to be convinced and then stated; he could never be wrong.

How do you go about convincing someone, who claims there is zero percent chance they are wrong?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Did anonymous person claim to be a perfect human? If not then why are you holding him to such a high standard of perfection?

I'm not holding him to a perfect standard; I'm holding him to his own words!

 

[Chriliman]

It kinda seems pointless to me to scrutinize tirelessly in order to find flaws in something that isn't perfect to begin with. We're all flawed and we're all trying to get to a point where we can honestly say we've done everything we can to reach perfect, but then we realize we still fall short. Its only when you start to scrutinize something perfect like God that you realize God is all you can rely on for perfection.

 

[asherahSamaria]

God is eternal. That means He had no beginning, and will have no end.
You can have a problem with that or not, as you choose. I have a problem with the idea that drawing random chance out over periods of millions of years makes it no longer random.

My choice to believe in the God Yahweh over the other gods came down to my belief that this is the most reasonable God to believe in. I would prefer to believe in a God who is unfathomable to our minds because of His absolute power, knowledge, love, goodness, etc. than in dozens of gods who get in petty quarrels and use humans as their instruments to fight with each other.

And actually, you say "no such witness exists" because it is only recorded by "one person," but there are actually 5 separate accounts of at least 12 people seeing Him after His resurrection, even if there is only one written record of the thousands of others. And we have the ongoing witness of the church that came about as a result of the word that was spread by these thousands of witnesses.

Random elements are all over the place, unless you expect me to believe that there is some natural order that drives the universe toward self-creating life. You cite things like "adaptation" and "natural selection," but there's absolutely nothing for the first cells that ever came into being to adapt to, and just the circumstances that would be required for a first cell to exist at all are so extraordinarily improbable as to make any reasonable person incredulous (unless they had already accepted that this was the only reasonable explanation).

There's order in just about everything in life. Especially radioactive decay. Do you know what a "half-life" is? How does it not represent order that the radioactive decay occurs at a rate that is measurably orderly?

And the way that the ecosystem on earth works. Do you know what a symbiotic relationship is? There are hundreds - even thousands of those on the planet. Two separate entities that depend on each other for life and sustenance.

The way cells are copied and replicated is also very orderly. And all signs point to this process deteriorating over time, which would seem really weird from the point of view that it didn't start out from a better state than it's in now.

And to reply to Archaeopteryx, it makes sense of the all of the order and structure that is present in the world and how it came into being that way.

It has been shown many times that DNA mutations - upon which the entire theories of abiogenesis and evolution of all beings from single celled organisms are constructed - are completely random. And overwhelmingly negative.

You can have a problem with that or not, as you choose. I don't have a problem with it at all - it's special pleading so can be rejected out of hand. Pretty much all the rest of your argument falls at that point.

"I have a problem with the idea that drawing random chance out over periods of millions of years makes it no longer random." So would I if that is what I said - but it isn't.

"I would prefer to believe in a God who is unfathomable to our minds because of His absolute power, knowledge, love, goodness" That is a very strange mindset. You want to believe something that is unfathomable. I find that just weird. As far as the goodness goes - well, I've read the Bible.

"How does it not represent order that the radioactive decay occurs at a rate that is measurably orderly?" - Because it's not possible to determine which atom within the radioactive substance will decay. Only that the half life decay will occur over a certain time frame. The actual decaying atom is chaotic.

"And actually, you say "no such witness exists" because it is only recorded by "one person," but there are actually 5 separate accounts of at least 12 people seeing Him after His resurrection, even if there is only one written record of the thousands of others. And we have the ongoing witness of the church that came about as a result of the word that was spread by these thousands of witnesses." No - there is the unknown author of Mark's account, copied and embellished by the unknown authors of the other Gospels. Even there, no original exists only edited copies. That's it. If that was the source material for any other belief system you'd laugh at it.

Do you know what a symbiotic relationship is? Yes I do - what's the point?

"The way cells are copied and replicated is also very orderly" Except when it goes wrong - eg cancer.

It has been shown many times that DNA mutations - upon which the entire theories of abiogenesis and evolution of all beings from single celled organisms are constructed - are completely random. And overwhelmingly negative Abiogenesis concerns how biology evolved from chemistry - DNA mutations don't come into it so that's false. Many mutations bring about negative consequences that's true - but so what? Only the positive mutations will likely survive to begat (a Biblicial word there) further offspring. Only the positive ones will last. It doesn't matter if 1,000 are negative and only one is positive, that's all it takes.

I'm still wondering how you ruled out those inter-dimensional aliens.

 

[bhsmte]

It kinda seems pointless to me to scrutinize tirelessly in order to find flaws in something that isn't perfect to begin with. We're all flawed and we're all trying to get to a point where we can honestly say we've done everything we can to reach perfect, but then we realize we still fall short. Its only when you start to scrutinize something perfect like God that you realize God is all you can rely on for perfection.

Some fall short in more obvious ways and more often than others.

 

[Chriliman]

This poster stated he was opened to be convinced and then stated; he could never be wrong.

How do you go about convincing someone, who claims there is zero percent chance they are wrong?

The better question is, what are you trying to convince this person of? If your trying to convince us there is no God, you're doing a really lousy job. You forget that we're claiming God is perfect, therefore, for you to convince us He's not real, you'd have to be perfect just like God, thereby making you God, thus proving God is perfect.