It's not my answer, it is the answer of the man Thomas Jefferson said gave us the greatest system of morality the world has ever known. It is the answer of the religion Benjamin Franklin said is the greatest religion that ever was or will be.
This same man, Christ, the main focus of the world's most populous religion said "You do the will of the Father and ye shall have eternal life". I believe it and in my 500 or so posts in this thread I given you some reasons why you should believe Christ came, he died, and rose from the dead, just like the greatest selling book in the history of the world said He did. But God also gave you free will. Christ said go to people's homes and teach the gospel, but he also said if the people don't accept it, shake the dust off your feet when you leave. The choice is yours. If you believe atheism is the answer so be it, it's your choice. Communist Russia made its choice about atheism in 1905. Things didn't work out so good though.
It's a choice I am forced to make by because of logic and reason. And if you could examine all the evidence in an unbiased way, you'd be forced to come to the same conclusion as me. But you can't... your emotional needs won't let you do that.
Instead, you tell me about Jefferson and Communist Russia. These are logical fallacies, Jefferson may be a respected man but he can still be wrong, you are using the fallacy "argument from authority," and besides which you may even be taking something he said out of context, I'm not sure. And with Communist Russia, correlation does not always equal causation, so it's easily possible that how things worked out had nothing to do with atheism. (Probably had a lot to do with Communism.)
So, your logic doesn't hold up. But you don't care if it doesn't hold up... because ultimately, your beliefs are not based on logic, they are based on emotion. So again, I ask you... please stop pretending to care about logic and reason, if you are going to use them, use them correctly. If you aren't going to use them correctly, then just abandon them, be honest with yourself and admit that the ultimate reason you are religious is because of your emotional needs. That is the truth.
If God offers eternal life as he does in the words of Christ, I'm surely not going to turn it down. Even Paul says, if Christ is not risen, our faith is in vain. Which means without eternal life Christianity is meaningless. But the evidence was there for intellectual Paul and the former coward Peter and the former doubting Thomas which was why they and many others risked their lives preaching the risen Christ. And evidence for the Resurrection was not only available for Paul and Peter and Thomas but its available to us also.
Hmm, you made two posts just to respond to my single post? It's probably more efficient just to put all your thoughts in a single post. If you think of something new later, you can always edit your post with the "ETA" thing.
"Eternal life" is a story you choose to believe in. I don't, because the facts don't support it. The "evidence" does not hold up under unbiased scrutiny, it only holds up when you examine it through desire-colored glasses. You don't really care what the facts support... you only pretend to care about facts, but what you really care about is satisfying your emotional needs. Am I making myself pretty clear?
I have nothing against you personally, DOC. You're probably a really nice guy, and I'm sure we'd get along outside this forum. You can believe whatever you want, just stop pretending like your reasons for doing so are logical. They are emotional. Be a little more honest with yourself, huh?
