The existence of God and the efficacy of prayer

You'll have to be more specific.

The only message that matters is the saving grace through Jesus Christ. ;)

To both non believers and those of other religions, that is meaningless.
One must also ask, as a skeptic, what evidence you have for your claim?
 
Not really if you have an open heart towards God. It's normally meaningless to those hostile to a creator.

There are millions of people who had some sort of special experience. As skeptics, many of us have studied personal experiences. The evidence shows that hey are unreliable.

The Bible, do you need more?

A Mormon might say "The Book of Mormon." A Hindu might say the "Bhagavad Gita."

There are lots of religious texts and somebody says that they are something divinely inspired. I am pretty sure that you do not accept them as divinely inspired.

You are putting the bible though into this special category. A good skeptic will ask why yours should be in this special category.
 
Not really if you have an open heart towards God. It's normally meaningless to those hostile to a creator.

The Bible, do you need more?

Here we have the "you hate God" theme that theists say time after time, ignoring the simple fact that atheists can't hate something they don't believe exists.

You also touch on a favorite topic of mine when you say "you have to open your heart towards God". Now how am I supposed to do this if I don't believe in him?

I have a born again nephew who keeps on saying this over and over because he just doesn't get it. You have to have faith already if you are going to ask your god to reveal himself.
 
Not really if you have an open heart towards God. It's normally meaningless to those hostile to a creator.

The Bible, do you need more?

Are you hostile to the Raven trixter that created man and the world?

Surely you are familiar with the Aboriginal story.
Yes or no, are you hostile towards the Raven?
 
To both non believers and those of other religions, that is meaningless.

Not really if you have an open heart towards God. It's normally meaningless to those hostile to a creator.
So one has to accept the sky fairy exists before you can accept the sky fairy exists. How circular.
One must also ask, as a skeptic, what evidence you have for your claim?
The Bible, do you need more?
Yup. The incoherent fantasies of primitive goat herders simply do not cut the mustard as any kind of evidence except as evidence for the fact that snake oil salesmen still exist as do their marks.
 
So one has to accept the sky fairy exists before you can accept the sky fairy exists. How circular.
Not really.
If you were God, would you pursue you?

Yup. The incoherent fantasies of primitive goat herders simply do not cut the mustard as any kind of evidence except as evidence for the fact that snake oil salesmen still exist as do their marks.

The meek shall inherit the Earth.
 
Here we have the "you hate God" theme that theists say time after time, ignoring the simple fact that atheists can't hate something they don't believe exists.

And that is my problem how exactly?
Your unbelief will not save you, besides you have me here to tell you about God. ;)
You also touch on a favorite topic of mine when you say "you have to open your heart towards God". Now how am I supposed to do this if I don't believe in him?

I was the same way, though, without hostility. I found out years later I had a very dear lady that was praying for me for awhile. But once you get to the stage of hostile disbelief, it is incredibly difficult, you're not in a good spot at all!
I have a born again nephew who keeps on saying this over and over because he just doesn't get it. You have to have faith already if you are going to ask your god to reveal himself.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, could you clarify?
 
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Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Agatha
 
You asked the question, so I answered with a question and you decided to dodge it.

I asked on the 24th of May at 10:35 why a person should consider the Christian bible more significant than other holy texts which also claim divine inspiration? You never answered.
 
I asked on the 24th of May at 10:35 why a person should consider the Christian bible more significant than other holy texts which also claim divine inspiration? You never answered.

Because I've personally seen lives change as has my own. The others not so much.
 
You asked the question, so I answered with a question and you decided to dodge it.

Fine. Were I the imaginary sky fairy, I wouldn't pursue anyone, nor make irrational demands, nor commit genocide, nor demand human sacrifice, nor condemn anyone to hell, nor butcher my own progeny, nor murder people for picking up sticks and the list goes on.

Do you know why? It is because I have morals and ethics and the god of the bible has none. As described, he/she/it/cat/horse is nothing more than a petulant child.

Does that answer your question sufficiently?
 
Here we have the "you hate God" theme that theists say time after time, ignoring the simple fact that atheists can't hate something they don't believe exists.
And that is my problem how exactly?
Thor 2 didn't say it was "your problem"; only that it doesn't make sense. Maybe not everybody has a "problem" with saying stuff that doesn't make sense, but, whether they do or not, it still doesn't.

You also touch on a favorite topic of mine when you say "you have to open your heart towards God". Now how am I supposed to do this if I don't believe in him?
Your unbelief will not save you
Your belief will not magically conjure up a problem for us to be saved from.

I know I have heard both Mormons and followers of Islam say exactly the same thing.
Ditto with Buddhism for me... more so than others, in fact. Some forms of Buddhism that don't involve the gods & stories & rituals can even be defined as just a self-help & life-improvement method, instead of being a religion full of unrelated religiony stuff just also trying to claim life improvement as a side effect for PR.
 
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what evidence you have for your claim?
The Bible, do you need more?
Surely this can't have been a serious question; you must have already known that the Bible doesn't count as evidence to most people here. So the "question" must have really been something else in disguise. Irony? But then irony for what purpose?

Anyway... it continued...

You are putting the bible though into this special category. A good skeptic will ask why yours should be in this special category.
Because I've personally seen lives change as has my own. The others not so much.
No. That has not happened by reading the Bible. I know what's in it, and there's just simply no chance that anybody's life was changed by reading that. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

What can happen and could have happened would be someone's life getting changed by help from other people in their lives, who were Christians... maybe charitable help for an unlucky/downtrodden person, maybe help by example or by wise advice to cause a change in a self-defeated person's own behavior, maybe help through membership in a group for someone who had nobody to turn to before... but human help, in any case. And that help might even have largely taken religious forms or been, to one extent or another, religion-inspired. But then, those helpful Christians would not have been doing it because of the Bible; most of modern Christianity, particularly the benevolent parts, is not at all based on the Bible and has little contact with it at all. It's a bit mysterious why they even still talk about that book at all when they clearly have almost nothing to do with, nor anything in common with, its contents, in any way at all.

BUT let's just skip all of that for the moment...

Even if we were talking about a book that could seriously change someone's life because (s)he read it... that still would not mean that it was a useful source of accurate facts about reality. A book can be inspiring or contain good advice or such and still make in accurate claims about the world.
 
The problem is of course who is considered innocent.
For example, are people who are gay innocent?
Are those of other faiths (or no faith) who disagree innocent?

In addition, William Lane Craig defends the killing of the Canaanites, including their children.
Granted, historically all of the evidence seems to be that it never happened. Instead it appears as if the Canaanites slowly evolved into the Proto-Isrealites.

Hmm, I have just looked up William Lane Craig on wikipedia.

His arguments seem to have rather a few holes in them.

In The Kalām Cosmological Argument, he formulates the argument in the following manner:
  1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
  2. The universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence

There is no reason to suppose 1 is true- quantum mechanics involves acausal events.

The other ones look like fun too.
 

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