Question to all Christian

[DonkDat]

Well, I am a former Christian. Last year, in grade 10, I realized that Christianity was not for me. Why? Because it is both illogical and based entirely on faith. I do not like faith, because it is the absense of reason.

My question: How do you manage to believe in something that is completely unreasonable? God asks you to love him, yet he gives us no reason to love him. God tells us to not kill people, yet he single handily wiped out every living creature when he flooded the world. Jesus tells us to love our neighbour. What if our neighbour is a murderer/rapist?

 

[ebia]

Well, I am a former Christian. Last year, in grade 10, I realized that Christianity was not for me. Why? Because it is both illogical and based entirely on faith. I do not like faith, because it is the absense of reason.

You seem to be operating on a serious misunderstanding of what faith means as piece of Christian technical jargon.

My question: How do you manage to believe in something that is completely unreasonable?

I don't.

God isn't provable by reason, but that's not the same thing.

God asks you to love him, yet he gives us no reason to love him.

He gives me plenty of reason to love him.

God tells us to not kill people, yet he single handily wiped out every living creature when he flooded the world.

It's a story that attempts to explain something - a global flood never actually took place.

Jesus tells us to love our neighbour. What if our neighbour is a murderer/rapist?

Then one should still love him/her. Difficult? - certainly. Impossible? - perhaps. But Jesus never said that following him would be easy.

 

[MethodMan]

Well, I am a former Christian. Last year, in grade 10, I realized that Christianity was not for me. Why? Because it is both illogical and based entirely on faith. I do not like faith, because it is the absense of reason.

That might be a good definition of blind faith, but we are not asked for that, are we? No. We have been give ample evidence. Whether you choose to accept it is what is up to you.

My question: How do you manage to believe in something that is completely unreasonable? God asks you to love him, yet he gives us no reason to love him. God tells us to not kill people, yet he single handily wiped out every living creature when he flooded the world. Jesus tells us to love our neighbour. What if our neighbour is a murderer/rapist?

You love him.

 

[ebia]

I understand that faith = lack of reason.
Faith means that you have no solid proof/evidence that something will happen.

That's not generally how Christians use the word, so if that's how you interpret it you won't be correctly understanding what they are saying. Of course that is at least as much our fault as yours, but there it is.

Why do you think religions is refered to as "Faith"?

When Christians use the word "faith" they mean something they have good reason for believing. Faith (in the Christian sense) is about trusting God, not about believing something without good reason.

So what is God provable by? Lack of reason? You are defending God by using reason, why seems kind of contradictory to me.

God isn't provable at all.

Virtually nothing outside Maths is provable by pure reason. Even there most of us have neither the time nor ability to check the proof for ourselves.

The reality of life is that virtually everything anybody believes we take on a mix of reason, trust, experience, expert witness, and a whole heap of other things.

Such as?

Start with the fact that I exist. I won't bother you with my whole life story.

Really? All the Christians that I know, including several pastors, all agree that it really did happen.

Then you are not talking to a representative selection of the world's Christians.

Cherry picking.

Not at all. Genesis isn't literal history. It was written thousands of years before the genre we know as 'history' was invented. To treat is as literal history is a modernist mistake, one made much less commonly outside the United States.

Then your love is not really worth much, no offence. If you love everyone, then it is not worth anything.

Love is not a zero-sum game.

Anyone can go up to you, and say "Love me" and you will have to love them. Love should never be worthless. But by loving everyone, you have made it so.

Either you don't understand what love is, or you don't understand its value.

On a side note, after reading this thread:
http://www.christianforums.com/t308...pdated-rules-questions-by-non-christians.html
I realize that this should be moved to to General apologetics. Sorry for any inconvienence.

Ok. I don't post there - posters on both sides show too little respect for each other or for intellectual honesty.

 

[Zeena]

Funny..

I reason with God all day long!

Isaiah 1:18
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

 

[Zeena]

God isn't provable at all.

Virtually nothing outside Maths is provable by pure reason. Even there most of us have neither the time nor ability to check the proof for ourselves.


The reality of life is that virtually everything anybody believes we take on a mix of reason, trust, experience, expert witness, and a whole heap of other things..

Our universe is indeed orderly, and in precisely the way necessary for it to serve as a suitable habitat for life. The wonderful internal ordering of the cosmos is matched only by its extraordinary economy. Each one of the fundamental laws of nature is essential to life itself. A universe lacking any of the laws would almost certainly be a universe without life. Many modern scientists, like the mathematicians centuries before them, have been awestruck by the evidence for intelligent design implicit in nature's mathematical harmony and the internal consistency of the laws of nature. Australian astrophysicist Paul Davies declares:

All the evidence so far indicates that many complex structures depend most delicately on the existing form of these laws. It is tempting to believe, therefore, that a complex universe will emerge only if the laws of physics are very close to what they are....The laws, which enable the universe to come into being spontaneously, seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design. If physics is the product of design, the universe must have a purpose, and the evidence of modern physics suggests strongly to me that the purpose includes us.​

British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle likewise comments,

I do not believe that any scientist who examines the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars. If this is so, then my apparently random quirks have become part of a deep-laid scheme. If not then we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents.​

Nobel laureates Eugene Wigner and Albert Einstein have respectfully evoked "mystery" or "eternal mystery" in their meditations upon the brilliant mathematical encoding of nature's deep structures. But as Kepler, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Davies, and Hoyle and many others have noted, the mysterious coherency of the mathematical forms underlying the cosmos is solved if we recognize these forms to be the creative intentionality of an intelligent creator who has purposefully designed our cosmos as an ideal habitat for us.

 

[Key]

My question: How do you manage to believe in something that is completely unreasonable?

I have no idea what you mean by this.

This might stem from not fully grasping what the Bible teaches and what the message is.

God asks you to love him, yet he gives us no reason to love him.

3 nails, and a wood cross, I would say is quite a powerful argument regarding Gods love for us.

God tells us to not kill people, yet he single handily wiped out every living creature when he flooded the world.

We are not to Murder.

Jesus tells us to love our neighbour. What if our neighbour is a murderer/rapist?

Then we report them, and have them locked away as per the justice system, and they serve their time and punishment as is proper as per our legal system.

But we do so, because that is the Just and right thing to do, not because we have deep feelings of hate towards them, and want to "Get them" but because we are to uphold the law and protect our brothers and sisters.

And while they are in prison, or other facility, we are to pray for them, that they may receive salvation and find the love of Christ.

I think this issue is also comes from a failure to grasp what Jesus talked about.

God Bless

Key

 

[jasper123]

Well, I am a former Christian. Last year, in grade 10, I realized that Christianity was not for me. Why? Because it is both illogical and based entirely on faith. I do not like faith, because it is the absense of reason.

My question: How do you manage to believe in something that is completely unreasonable? God asks you to love him, yet he gives us no reason to love him. God tells us to not kill people, yet he single handily wiped out every living creature when he flooded the world. Jesus tells us to love our neighbour. What if our neighbour is a murderer/rapist?

Your in a Catholic area, I can tell you Catholics use
both faith and reason. Reason is something that never
changes. Our faith is also embedded in reason. If
you can look up St. Thomas's Dumma Theologica its
on the web.
Ron

 

[limited10]

Hi,

Let me see if I can help answer some of your questions. 1st off though let me say I can understand where you are coming from. When I was in High School and your age I thought people who went to church and claimed to love a God they had never seen or heard from were silly to put it nicely. I'm 27 now (so not much older then you). I would be interested to know if something traumatic happened to you in the last year or so? Did a family member die or were you or someone you love harmed in some way?

On to answering your question let’s start with Faith. This Faith thing is no small request from God. God gives you many signs in the Bible and your everyday life that he is real so that you don’t have to go on just faith but you just have to be open to seeing them and learning about the signs in the bible. Faith is the foundation for your relationship with God. If you can’t have faith that he exists how can the two of you have a relationship?

As for loving God he gives me reason everyday. For example God will forgive me of my sins even though I sin over and over again. He loves me and shows me via answers to my prayers. He even shows me when he doesn’t answer my prayers. You have to remember that God has a plan and we may not understand what is best for us or why some horrible thing has happened to us but you should understand that God will never give you more of a challenge then you can handle. Think about this you are saying well God tells us not to murder but he then kills right? He is God, he knows better then we do. Let me ask you is it always a sin to kill? The short answer to that is No. Murder though is always a sin. There is a battle going on between good (God) and evil (the devil) we as humans can not understand that battle. But let’s be real does what happened 5000 years ago make a difference to you today or is it an excuse to not believe? Let me also ask you this how would your world be different is God hadn’t said told people not to murder? As for the love thy neighbor question, basically Jesus is trying to give us a roadmap to live our lives by. Neighbor does not mean just the people who live on either side of your house it is referring to all the people you come in contact with. If we don’t love our neighbors (basically be nice to other people) this would be one sad world. As for a murderer or rapist Jesus does not expect you to go hang out with him or be there friend but he doesn’t expect you to kill them or beat them either. A sinner of any sorts will have one of two fates. He/She will be forgiven of there sins or they will go to hell.

Understand that part of having faith is knowing you are not going to have all the correct answers about why God did something.

Normally people in your situation say stuff like well my God wouldn’t kill everyone on Earth in a flood or let some bad thing happen to me or my family. Let me leave you with this question and answer. Did you choose your parents? Through out your life have you always agreed with or understood why your parents did something? It’s the same for God. You don’t choose God just like you don’t choose your family. You will never understand everything God does but then again you are not suppose to. You are called to believe in him not called to Monday morning quarterback him.

Shaun

 

[JohnLocke]

DonkDat,

Um... right. My name sake once wrote a book entitled "The Reasonableness of Christianity" it is a decent read, if not the best in my opinion.

You raise good points, that I have struggled with, I would add the problem of the Garden of Eden. I mean what depravedly reckless parent puts an item in the children's playground that would damn all of humanity without so much as putting up a fence?

Some folks might even try to argue that the best way to "love your neighbor" who is a murderer and a rapist is to kill them, and thereby limit the taint upon their souls. (Not that I buy it, but I've heard it used.)

Faith, to me, is inherently a logical, meaning that at its most logical it still requires a conceptual leap to be "reasonable." Soren Kierkegaard used to call it something like "a leap of faith." But don't quote me, my Kierkegaard is a little rusty.

Faith, in my observation, seems to be more "imposed by the grace of God" similar to the way I interpret John Calvin, than arising out of anything "human."

My question is so what do you have? One of the things that you might like about John Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity, is despite the left-handed way he gets to it, he does ultimately come to an understanding that the difference in ethics (i.e. rules to govern behavior) that Christianity provides and that Reason compels are largely compatible.

Christ may have said, "Love they neighbor as your self" and Reason may provide "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" But they're awfully similar, even in the fine points.

But all that is by the by. It seems to me, that by even posting the question, you are in fact searching for something. Perhaps you are looking for some argument which would render your ethics somehow more noble than an arbitrary set of behaviors? I don't know, perhaps I presume too much, in which case I apologize.

My advise to you, unsolicited of course, is to read and live and learn, and to endeavor to grow those things which bring you peace and contentment.

Cheers!

 

[Zeena]

Why assume He's depravidly reckless?
You have an assumption in there, therefor your hypothesis is tainted!

 

[Zeena]

What you do not realize..

Is that this forum is not intended for debate!

Take this analogy. A single grain of sand, poping into existence, would be stupifying. Matter from nothing. Non complex matter.

Romans 2:19-24
19And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness,
20An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.
21Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?
22Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?
23Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? 24For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.

Now, for a God, infinitely complex matter, to pop into existence is impossible.

Genesis 1:3
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Genesis 1:6
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
Genesis 1:9
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
Genesis 1:11
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Genesis 1:14
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
Genesis 1:20
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
Genesis 1:24
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Genesis 1:26
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Genesis 1:28
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 3:1
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Genesis 3:13
And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Genesis 3:14
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
Genesis 3:22
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
Luke 12:20
But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?

Just because it seems highly improbable, doesn't mean we need to invent various ficitional stories to explain it away.

What is 'highly improbable' is that this universe would simply 'pop' into existance without a mind in control, that being God! =P

 

[DonkDat]

Is that this forum is not intended for debate!

Indeed. Which is why after reading this thread:
http://www.christianforums.com/t308...pdated-rules-questions-by-non-christians.html
I have asked it to be moved! Thank you kindly for bringing it up again!

Romans 2:19-24
19And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness,
20An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.
21Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?
22Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?
23Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? 24For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.

Does not answer my point.

Genesis 1:3
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Genesis 1:6
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
Genesis 1:9
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
Genesis 1:11
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Genesis 1:14
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
Genesis 1:20
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
Genesis 1:24
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Genesis 1:26
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Genesis 1:28
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 3:1
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
Genesis 3:13
And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Genesis 3:14
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
Genesis 3:22
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
Luke 12:20
But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?

The Flying Spaghetti Monster said
"Let no proof of my existence exists"
and it came true. There is no proof that he exists.

What is 'highly improbable' is that this universe would simply 'pop' into existance without a mind in control, that being God! =P

If you understand anything about the "Big Bang" theory then you will know that it didnt "pop". To give you an estimation on how close we are to solving this mystery, we are closing in on the beginning of the Big Bang. I heard my physics teacher said that we are within the last few seconds. Perhaps in 20-50 years, I can give you a solid answer on what really happened.

 

[DonkDat]

Really?

Im sorry, but I am laughing right now. It seems that you are telling me that the people here don't want others to poke holes into their belief. If my thinking is wrong, I welcome change. I always do, because I do not want to believe a lie. But religious people do not want people to poke holes into their thinking. Thus they are limiting their thinking to something less than the truth.

 

[Zeena]

THESE http://www.christianforums.com/f9-discussion-debate.html are the debate forums..

If you chose to debate a matter bring it there please!
This way we can ALL get in on the action..

As it stands, you are distracting me from the actual debates being discussed in these topics! =P

Oh, and by the way..

I can EASILY refute every word you've said! =P
[Though I chose not to get into the same trouble you'll be in]

 

[PhilosopherD]

Well, I am a former Christian. Last year, in grade 10, I realized that Christianity was not for me. Why? Because it is both illogical and based entirely on faith. I do not like faith, because it is the absense of reason.

My question: How do you manage to believe in something that is completely unreasonable? God asks you to love him, yet he gives us no reason to love him. God tells us to not kill people, yet he single handily wiped out every living creature when he flooded the world. Jesus tells us to love our neighbour. What if our neighbour is a murderer/rapist?

DonkDat,

Faith and reason are not opposed. The problem is that reason does not necessarily take all factors into consideration. What is apparently logical is not automatically valid. Deductive logic is often tautological, and Inductive logic is often too general.

Christianity is reasonable. Another problem is that when people say reasonable, they really mean 'provable.' There is evidence, but there is not necessarily proof.

It looks like you are hung up on the ethical implications of God's actions. God does give us reason to love Him. We have Jesus as our example, and as our Saviour from destruction. Ultimately, the issue of eternal life is vastly more important than whether or not we have a quality of life in the here and now. God/Jesus suffered, and we as Christians may very well too. That's the norm.

Yes, God told the Israelites to kill people. There was a reason. Those people did what was wrong, and sometimes, when people do wrong long enough, and intensely enough, they get the death penalty. God has a right to give life, and He has the right to take it away. Why? Because He knows all the factors going on in our lives... We however, as human beings, do not. That is why it is wrong for us to 'act' like God. The command, do not murder, means 'we do not have the right to take other person's life just because we want to.'

People, however, can lose the right to live if God sees that they are becoming too corrupted. He prefers to give people time to get things right. But sometimes, some people rebel too often, too intensely, and for too long. Those people get the death penaly. Sometimes the death penalty comes down upon those who are not God's people, just as they did in the O.T., and also it comes down on those who claim to be God's people, also as it happened to the Jews in the O.T. under Assyria and Babylon, and as it happened to the Jews in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, when many of them rejected Jesus as the Messiah.

God is just, and because He has perfect knowledge of our motives, He also has the right to judge.

It all makes sense.

 

[solarwave]

Well, I am a former Christian. Last year, in grade 10, I realized that Christianity was not for me. Why? Because it is both illogical and based entirely on faith. I do not like faith, because it is the absense of reason.

My question: How do you manage to believe in something that is completely unreasonable? God asks you to love him, yet he gives us no reason to love him. God tells us to not kill people, yet he single handily wiped out every living creature when he flooded the world. Jesus tells us to love our neighbour. What if our neighbour is a murderer/rapist?

*Crys for a sceond*

Ok anyway, um, no offence but christianity is logical and you just don't know what your talking about. Sorry but I say that truthfuly. See someone healed then tell me it is illogical to belive in God, cos I have seen God heal. The things you used as your argument agaist christianity arn't exactly unexplainable, the others probally have explained them all(as I havnt read the whole thread). Soz again for the strength in post this is, but it just anoys me when people argue arguments that have had little thought put into it thinking on if He is real.

Hope you find your way.

 

[Zeena]

Or Loving!

Amen!

 

[ebia]

Our universe is indeed orderly, and in precisely the way necessary for it to serve as a suitable habitat for life. The wonderful internal ordering of the cosmos is matched only by its extraordinary economy. Each one of the fundamental laws of nature is essential to life itself. A universe lacking any of the laws would almost certainly be a universe without life. Many modern scientists, like the mathematicians centuries before them, have been awestruck by the evidence for intelligent design implicit in nature's mathematical harmony and the internal consistency of the laws of nature. Australian astrophysicist Paul Davies declares:

All the evidence so far indicates that many complex structures depend most delicately on the existing form of these laws. It is tempting to believe, therefore, that a complex universe will emerge only if the laws of physics are very close to what they are....The laws, which enable the universe to come into being spontaneously, seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design. If physics is the product of design, the universe must have a purpose, and the evidence of modern physics suggests strongly to me that the purpose includes us.​

British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle likewise comments,

I do not believe that any scientist who examines the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars. If this is so, then my apparently random quirks have become part of a deep-laid scheme. If not then we are back again at a monstrous sequence of accidents.​

Nobel laureates Eugene Wigner and Albert Einstein have respectfully evoked "mystery" or "eternal mystery" in their meditations upon the brilliant mathematical encoding of nature's deep structures. But as Kepler, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Davies, and Hoyle and many others have noted, the mysterious coherency of the mathematical forms underlying the cosmos is solved if we recognize these forms to be the creative intentionality of an intelligent creator who has purposefully designed our cosmos as an ideal habitat for us.

The rules of this forum restrict one to responding to the OP. This is not a place for Christians to debate.

 

[Zeena]

Yes of course, I'm sorry