Why You Should Be A Christian. Response to Richard Carrier Pt 4/6

A well-written essay is on the internet called, "Why I am Not Christian" by Richard Carrier (on the left). It's long, respectful, and well written. It compels a response. His criticisms of Christians are well founded but his charges against God are mistaken and unfounded. The essay was written in 2006 and is divided into six parts. I'm going to interact with his responses and divide my essay also into six parts. His words will be in black and mine will be red. His Top four reasons for rejecting Christianity are: 1. God is Silent. 2. God is inert. 3. Inadequate evidence for God. 4. Christianity predicts a different universe. Here is my refutation of point 3.

3. The Evidence is Inadequate

Besides all that, another reason I am not a Christian is the sheer lack of evidence. Right from the start, Christians can offer no evidence for their most important claim, that faith in Jesus Christ procures eternal life. Christians can't point to a single proven case of this prediction coming true. They cannot show a single believer in Jesus actually enjoying eternal life, nor can they demonstrate the probability of such a fortunate outcome arising from any choice we make today. Even if they could prove God exists and created the universe, it still would not follow that belief in Jesus saves us. Even if they could prove Jesus performed miracles, claimed to speak for God, and rose from the dead, it still would not follow that belief in Jesus saves us.

We have the Bible. We have evidence that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. One major point of evidence is that the Bible is infalliable. It has no errors in it (Not talking about Translations). We know what the original texts say as they were written. The Bible tells us Jesus saves us. We also have the lives of people Jesus changed....including myself.

Therefore, such a claim must itself be proven. Christians have yet to do that. We simply have no evidence that any believer ever has or ever will enjoy eternal life, or even that any unbeliever won't. And most Christians agree. As many a good Christian will tell you, only God knows who will receive his grace. So the Christian cannot claim to know whether it's true that "faith in Christ procures eternal life." They have to admit there is no guarantee a believer will be saved, or that an unbeliever won't. God will do whatever he wants. And no one really knows what that is. At best, they propose that faith in Christ will "up your chances," but they have no evidence of even that.

There is no proof that conscious existence ends at the death - ceasing of bodily functions.

Now, this could change. It is theoretically possible to build a strong circumstantial case that God exists, that he has the means to grant us eternal life, that he never lies, and that he actually did promise to save us if we pledge allegiance to the right holy minion. But that's a lot of extraordinary claims to prove, requiring a lot of extraordinary evidence. Christians simply don't come close to proving them. Of course, Christianity could be reduced to a trivial tautology like "Christ is just an idea, whatever idea brings humankind closer to paradise," but that is certainly not what C.S. Lewis would have accepted, nor is it what most Christians mean today. When we stick with what Christianity usually means, there is simply not enough evidence to support believing it. This holds for the more generic elements of the theory (like the existence of God and the supernatural), as well as the very specific elements (like the divinity and resurrection of Jesus). We shall treat these in order, after digressing on some essential points regarding method.

A Digression on Method[3] Long ago, people could make up any theories they wanted. As long as their theory fit the evidence, it was thought credible. But an infinite number of incompatible theories can fit the evidence. We can design a zillion religions that fit all the evidence, yet entail Christianity is false. And we can design a zillion secular worldviews that do the same. We could all be brains in a vat. Buddha could have been right. Allah may be the One True God. And so on, ad infinitum. But since only one of these countless theories can be true, it follows that the odds are effectively infinity to one against any theory being true that is merely compatible with the evidence. In other words, not a chance in hell. Therefore, we cannot believe a theory simply because it can be made to fit all the evidence. To do so would effectively guarantee our belief will be false. Fortunately, people came up with what we now call the scientific method, a way to isolate some of these theories compatible with all the evidence and demonstrate that they are more likely to be true than any of the others. The method works like this (and this is very important): first we come up with a hypothesis that explains everything we have so far observed (and this could be nothing more than a creative guess or even a divine revelation--it doesn't matter where a hypothesis comes from); then we deduce what else would have to be observed, and what could never be observed, if that hypothesis really were true (the most crucial step of all); and then we go and look to see if our predictions are fulfilled in practice. The more they are fulfilled, and the more different ways they are fulfilled, the more likely our hypothesis is true. But that isn't the end of it. To make sure our theories are more likely the true ones (as any old theory can be twisted to fit even this new evidence), they have to be cumulative--compatible with each other--and every element of a theory has to be in evidence. We can't just "make up" anything. Whatever we make up has to be found in the evidence. For example, when Newton explained the organization of the solar system, he knew he was restricted to theories that built on already proven hypotheses. Every element of his theory of the solar system was proved somewhere, somehow: the law of gravity had an independent demonstration, the actual courses of the planets were well observed and charted, and so on. Nothing in his theory was simply "made up" out of whole cloth. He knew the data on planetary behavior had been multiply confirmed. He knew there was gravity acting at a distance. The rest followed as a matter of course. Consider a different analogy. Suppose a man is on trial for murder and, in his own defense, proposes the theory that his fingerprints ended up on the murder weapon because a devious engineer found a way to copy and paste his fingerprints, and did so to satisfy a grudge against him. No one on the jury would accept this theory, nor should anyone ever believe it--unless and until the defendant can confirm in evidence every element of the theory. He must present independent evidence that there really is an engineer who really does have the ability to do this sort of thing. He must present independent evidence that this engineer really does hold a grudge against him. And he must present independent evidence that this engineer had the access and opportunity to accomplish this particular trick when and where it had to have happened. Only then does the defendant's theory become even remotely believable--believable enough to create a reasonable doubt that the defendant's fingerprints got there because he touched the weapon. But to go beyond that, to actually convict this engineer of fixing the evidence like this, even more evidence would be necessary--such as independent evidence that he has or had the equipment necessary to pull off this trick, and had used that equipment at or around the time of the crime, and so on. That's how it works. That the "devious engineer's fingerprint trick" fits all the immediate evidence at hand (the existence of the fingerprints on the weapon) is not even a remotely sufficient reason to believe it is true. Rather, every element of the theory must be proved with evidence that is independent from the evidence being explained. In other words, the mere existence of the fingerprints on the weapon is not enough evidence that the devious engineer put them there. Now imagine the defendant argued that the fingerprints were placed there by an angel from God. Just think of what kind of evidence he would have to present to prove that theory. No less would be required to prove any other claim about God's motives and activities, right down to and including the claim that God created the universe or raised Jesus from the dead. This standard is hard to meet precisely because meeting a hard standard is the only way to know you probably have the truth. Otherwise, you are far more likely to be wrong than right. Therefore, even if it could be contrived to fit all the facts--even the incredible facts of God's absolute silence and complete inactivity--the Christian theory is still no better than any other unproven hypothesis in which belief is unwarranted. Belief in Newton's theory would have been unwarranted without evidence supporting the law of gravity, and belief in the "devious engineer's fingerprint trick" would be unwarranted without any of the required supporting evidence. And Christianity will rightly remain no more credible than this "devious engineer's fingerprint trick" until such time as every required element of that theory has been independently confirmed by empirical evidence. For example, the Christian theory requires that God has a loving character. Therefore, we need at least as much evidence of that entity as we would expect in order to establish the existence of a human being with a loving character. I may tell you there is a man named Michael who is a very good man. But if I build any theory on that premise--like "You should do what Michael says," "Your neighbor could not have been the one who robbed your house, because Michael is your neighbor and he is a very good man," or "Don't worry about losing your job, because there is this man who lives near you named Michael and he is a very good man"--I must first establish that the premise is true: that there is such a man, and that he is in fact very good. Whatever evidence would convince anyone of this fact, will also be sufficient to convince them that there is this guy named God who is a very good person. But the case must still be made. The underlying premise must still be proven. We must have evidence of the existence of this Michael or this God, and evidence that their character is indeed really good, before we can believe any theory that requires this particular claim to be true. If I added further premises, like "Michael has supernatural powers and can conjure gold to support your family," I would have to prove them, too. This goes for God, as well. "He is everywhere." "He is invisible." "He can save your soul." And so on. I cannot credibly assert these things if I cannot prove them from real and reliable evidence. This is a serious problem for the Christian religion as an actual theory capable of testing and therefore of warranted belief. None of these things have ever been observed. No one has observed a real act of God, or any real evidence of his inhabiting or observing the universe. So no one has really seen any evidence that he is good, or even exists. Therefore, even after every possible excuse is made for it, the Christian theory is just like all those other theories that merely fit the evidence but have no evidential support, and so is almost certainly as false as all those other theories. In truth, it is even worse for Christianity, since that is not like the proposed "devious engineer's fingerprint trick" but more like the "angel from God forged the fingerprints" theory. And that is a far more serious problem--because the evidence required for that kind of claim is far greater than for any other. This, too, is an inescapable point of logic. If I say I own a car, I don't have to present very much evidence to prove it, because you have already observed mountains of evidence that people like me own cars. All of that evidence, for the general proposition "people like him own cars," provides so much support for the particular proposition, "he owns a car," that only minimal evidence is needed to confirm the particular proposition. But if I say I own a nuclear missile, we are in different territory. You have just as large a mountain of evidence, from your own study as well as direct observation, that "people like him own nuclear missiles" is not true. Therefore, I need much more evidence to prove that particular claim--in fact, I need about as much evidence (in quantity and quality) as would be required to prove the general proposition "people like him own nuclear missiles." I don't mean I would have to prove that proposition, but that normally the weight of evidence needed to prove that proposition would in turn provide the needed background support for the particular proposition that "I own a nuclear missile," just as it does in the case of "I own a car." So lacking that support, I need to build at least as much support directly for the particular proposition "I own a nuclear missile," which means as much support in kind and degree as would be required to otherwise prove the general proposition "people like him own nuclear missiles." And that requires a lot of very strong evidence--just as for any general proposition. We all know this, even if we haven't thought about it or often don't see reason--because this is how we all live our lives. Every time we accept a claim on very little evidence in everyday life, it is usually because we already have a mountain of evidence for one or more of the general propositions that support it. And every time we are skeptical, it is usually because we lack that same kind of evidence for the general propositions that would support the claim. And to replace that missing evidence is a considerable challenge. This is the logical basis of the principle that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." A simple example is a lottery. The odds of winning a lottery are very low, so you might think it would be an extraordinary claim for me to assert "I won a lottery." But that is not a correct analysis. For lotteries are routinely won. We have observed countless lotteries being won and have tons of evidence that people win lotteries. Therefore, the general proposition "people like him win lotteries" is already well-confirmed, and so I normally don't need very much evidence to convince you that I won a lottery. Of course, I would usually need more evidence than I need to prove "I own a car," simply because the number of people who own cars is much greater than the number who win lotteries. But still, the general proposition that "people win lotteries" is amply confirmed. Therefore, "I won a lottery" is not an extraordinary claim. It is, rather, a fairly routine claim--even if not as routine as owning a car. In contrast, "I own a nuclear missile" would be an extraordinary claim. Yet, even then, you still have a large amount of evidence that nuclear missiles exist, and that at least some people do have access to them. Yet the Department of Homeland Security would still need a lot of evidence before it stormed my house looking for one. Now suppose I told you "I own an interstellar spacecraft." That would be an even more extraordinary claim--because there is no general proposition supporting it that is even remotely confirmed. Not only do you have very good evidence that "people like him own interstellar spacecraft" is not true, you also have no evidence that this has ever been true for anyone--unlike the nuclear missile. You don't even have reliable evidence that interstellar spacecraft exist, much less reside on earth. Therefore, the burden of evidence I would have to bear here is enormous. Just think of what it would take for you to believe me, and you will see what I mean. Once we appeal to common sense like this, everyone concedes that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And Christianity quite clearly makes very extraordinary claims: that there is a disembodied, universally present being with magical powers; that this superbeing actually conjured and fabricated the present universe from nothing; that we have souls that survive the death of our bodies (or that our bodies will be rebuilt in the distant future by this invisible superbeing); and that this being possessed the body of Jesus two thousand years ago, who then performed supernatural deeds before miraculously rising from the grave to chat with his friends, and then flew up into outer space. Not a single one of these claims has any proven general proposition to support it. We have never observed any evidence for any "disembodied being" or any person who was present "everywhere." We have never observed anyone who had magical powers, or any evidence that such powers even exist in principle (at least, what stories we do have of such people are always too dubious to trust). We have no good evidence that we have souls or that anyone can or will resurrect our bodies. We have never confirmed that anyone was ever possessed by God. We have never observed anyone performing anything confirmed to be miraculous, much less rising from graves or any comparable ability. Supposed claims of psychic powers, astrological prediction, biblical prophecy, and so on, have all turned out to be unprovable or outright bunk. Therefore, these are without doubt extraordinary claims every bit as much as "I own an interstellar spacecraft," and indeed are even more extraordinary than that. For we already have tons of evidence confirming the elements of the general proposition that "there can be an interstellar spacecraft." We could probably build one today with present technology. But we have no evidence whatsoever confirming the general propositions "there can be a disembodied superbeing," "there can be disembodied souls," "there can be genuine miracles," and so on. I do not mean these things are not logically possible. What I mean is that we have no evidence they are physically possible, much less real, in the way we know an interstellar spacecraft is physically possible or that a nuclear missile is real. Therefore, Christianity entails many of the most extraordinary claims conceivable. It therefore requires the most extraordinary amount of evidence to believe it, even more evidence than would be needed to believe that I own an interstellar spacecraft. And Christianity simply doesn't come even remotely close to meeting this standard. It could--just as I am sure I could prove to you I owned an interstellar spacecraft, if I actually had one. So I am sure I could prove to you that Christianity is true... if it actually were.

That's the proper way to get at the truth. Now back to the point...

Consider the generic claims that God exists, God is good, and God created this universe. What evidence do we have for any of these particular propositions? The only evidence ever offered for the "existence" of God essentially boils down to two things: "The universe exists, therefore God exists" and "I feel God exists, therefore he does." Otherwise, we can't prove anyone has ever really seen God--seen him act, speak, or do anything. Even if we could prove a single genuine miracle had ever really happened, we still would not have evidence that God caused that miracle, rather than a misunderstood human power over the supernatural, or the work of spirits, or sorcery, and so on. To confirm God as their cause would require yet more evidence, of which (again) we have none.

As for those who claim to have "seen" or "spoken" to God, it turns out on close examination (when we even have the required access to find out) that they are lying, insane, or only imagining what they saw or heard. Even believers concede that this is most often the case--because they must in order to explain all the non-Christian visions and divine communications pervading human history and contemporary world cultures. These always turn out to be subjective experiences "in their minds," and they are rarely consistent with each other. Rather, we find a plethora of contradictory experiences which seem more attenuated to cultural and personal expectations than to anything universally true.

This why God gave us an objective standard: the Bible.

So, too, for the "feeling" that God exists. This is no different than the "feeling" I once had that the Tao governs the universe, or the "feeling" others have had that aliens visit them, the spirits of the dead talk to them, or several gods and nature spirits live all around them. People have "felt" the existence of so many contradictory things that we know "feeling" something is the poorest possible evidence we can have. Most people "feel" something completely different than we do, and since there is no way to tell whether your feeling is correct and theirs is wrong, it is just as likely that theirs is correct and yours is wrong. And since there are a million completely different "feelings" and only one can be true, it follows that the odds are worse than a million to one against your feeling being true. So "feeling" that God exists fails to meet even a minimal standard of evidence, much less an extraordinary standard. The same goes even for more profound religious experiences involving the actual appearances or voices of supposedly supernatural beings.[4]

Carrier has to be kidding. It is more than just a feeling. If you look at the structure and existence of a car wouldn't you assume that someone made it? That it just didn't happen. Why would you assume otherwise with things even more complex like our own bodies. Or the distance of the earth from the sun.

Other than that, people offer the existence of the universe as "proof" that God exists. Some propose that there would be no universe if there wasn't a god, but this is not a logical conclusion. A theory like "nature just exists" is by itself no less likely than "a god just exists." Others propose that since the universe had a beginning, a god must have started it, but this fails both empirically and logically. Empirically, a beginning of time and space became suspect when examination of the quantum theory of gravity led to the realization that a beginning of space-time at a dimensionless point called a singularity is actually physically impossible. So now most cosmologists believe there was probably something around before the Big Bang--and probably quite a lot of things (we shall examine this point more later). As a result, we can no longer prove the universe had a beginning.[5] And logically, even if the universe had a beginning, this does not entail or even imply that an intelligent being preceded it. If God can exist before the existence of time or space, so could the nature of the universe (as many cosmologists argue, all we would need is a fairly simple quantum state to get everything else going). In short, the appearance of time and space may have simply been an inevitable outcome of the nature of things, just as Christians must believe that God's nature and existence is inevitable.

The universe is not inevitable. Why would would it be? Think about what He's saying.

The most popular--and really, the only evidence people have for God's existence and role as Creator--is the apparent "fine tuning" of the universe to produce life. That's at least something remarkable, requiring an explanation better than blind chance. As it turns out, there are godless explanations that make more sense of the actual universe we find ourselves in than Christianity does--but we shall examine this point later on. For now, it is enough to point out that "intelligent design" is not the only logically possible explanation for the organization of the universe, and so we would need empirical evidence for it. Just as scientists needed copious amounts of evidence before justifying a belief that the present cosmos was the inevitable physical outcome of the Big Bang, so do Christians need copious amounts of evidence before justifying a belief that the organization that arose from the Big Bang came from an intelligent engineer. Again, the mere possibility is not enough--we need actual evidence that an intelligent engineer was the cause and not something else. And Christians don't have that. Or anything like it.

Okay, what is another good explanation for the fine-tuning of the Universe other than an Intelligent Designer?

Finally, to prove "God is good" we have essentially nothing at all. Since God is a totally silent do-nothing, we don't have anything to judge his character by, except an utter lack of any clear or consistent action on his part--which we saw earlier is sufficient to demonstrate that if there is a God, he is almost certainly not good (and therefore Christianity is false). Christians do try to offer evidence of God's goodness anyway, but what they come up with is always circular or far too weak to meet any reasonable burden.

Um, I've already answered this. It's not true God is silent. You are not listening.

For example, some argue "God gave us life" as evidence he is good, but that presupposes God is our creator, and so is generally a circular argument. But it also fails to follow from the known facts, since a mindless natural process can also give us life, and even an evil or ambivalent God could have sufficient reason to give us life. Moreover, the harsh kind of life we were given agrees more with those possibilities than with the designs of a good God, especially since there is as much bad in life as good, and no particular sense of merit in how it gets distributed. In fact, the evidence is even worse for Christianity on this score, since if the universe was intelligently designed, it appears to have been designed for a purpose other than us--but, again, we shall examine this point later.

I agree the universe is designed with a purpose in mind. That purpose is more than us...more than you as an individual. The Bible is clear on that.

Other Christians try to argue that God is probably good because "God gave his one and only son to save us," but that is again circular--for it already presumes that Jesus was his son, that God let him die, and that God did this to accomplish something good for us. Until each one of those propositions is confirmed by independent evidence, there is no way to use this "theory" as if it were "evidence" that God existed or was good. Indeed, that "God gave his one and only son to save us" still fails to follow from the known facts because the same deed could have been performed just as readily for different motives, motives that were not so good.

No, God tells us why He did it. For our good. And Carrier fails to see this because he thinks God is silent and he does not think that God intervenes and interacts in the universe. If it's true that God did this then it's the best rebuttal to Carrier's assertion that God is inactive. God is not inactive because He chooses to behave and act in ways inconsistent with what Carrier or one thinks is consistent or good.

For example, early Christians tried to explain away the existence of pre-Christian resurrection cults by accusing the Devil of fabricating them to fool mankind and lead us astray. That is a coherent theory that could just as easily explain the entire Christian religion. In other words, Christianity may simply be just one more clever scheme to give a devious God a good laugh. And considering all the evil, misery, and torment that has been caused by the Christian religion--and the fact that God, if he exists, quite obviously gave, or allowed to be given, contradictory and mutually hostile messages to Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Hindus with the inevitable and predictable consequence of furthering human conflict and misery--the theory that "God gave his one and only son to screw us" has even more to commend it than the Christian alternative.[6]

c

So the supposed evidence that Christians try to offer for God's existence, creative activity, or goodness simply doesn't cut it. It turns out not to be evidence, but theories about otherwise ambiguous evidence, theories that themselves remain unproven, and often barely plausible when compared with more obvious alternatives that more readily explain the full range of evidence we have. Therefore, the Christian theory has insufficient support to justify believing it. And this would be so even if Christianity was true. For even if it is true, we still don't have enough evidence to know it is true. By analogy, even if it were true that Julius Caesar survived an arrow wound to his left thigh in the summer of 49 B.C., the fact that we have no evidence of any such wound entails that we have no reason to believe it occurred. We can only believe what we have evidence enough to prove. And there are plenty of true things that don't make that cut.

If there are many true things that don't have enough evidence, they why do you believe them to be true? Think about what he said.

So much for the general propositions. Now we get to the more specific propositions that Jesus performed miracles and rose from the dead. Many Christians really do offer the miracles and resurrection of Jesus as evidence that God exists and that the Christian theory is true. We will set aside the problem that even doing such things would not prove Jesus was God, since other supernatural powers or agencies could have arranged the same result. More problematic for Christianity is that we have insufficient evidence any of these things really happened. To understand why, let's consider an imaginary alternative:

Hero Savior of Vietnam Suppose I told you there was a soldier in the Vietnam War named "Hero Savior" who miraculously calmed storms, healed wounds, conjured food and water out of thin air, and then was blown up by artillery, but appeared again whole and alive three days later, giving instructions to his buddies before flying up into outer space right before their very eyes. Would you believe me? Certainly not. You would ask me to prove it. So I would give you all the evidence I have. But all I have are some vague war letters by a guy who never really met Hero Savior in person, and a handful of stories written over thirty years later by some guys named Bill, Bob, Carl, and Joe. I don't know for sure who these guys are. I don't even know their last names. There are only unconfirmed rumors that they were or knew some of the war buddies of Hero Savior. They might have written earlier than we think, or later, but no one really knows. No one can find any earlier documentation to confirm their stories, either, or their service during the war, or even find these guys to interview them. So we don't know if they really are who others claim, and we're not even sure these are the guys who actually wrote the stories. You see, the undated pamphlets circulating under their names don't say "by Bill" or "by Bob," but "as told by Bill" and "as told by Bob." Besides all that, we also can't find any record of a Hero Savior serving in the war. He might have been a native guide whose name never made it into official records, but still, none of the historians of the war ever mention him, or his amazing deeds, or even the reports of them that surely would have spread far and wide. Besides the dubious evidence of these late, uncorroborated, unsourced, and suspicious stories, the best thing I can give you is that war correspondence I mentioned, some letters by an army sergeant actually from the war, who claims he was a skeptic who changed his mind. But he never met or saw Hero in life, and never mentions any of the miracles that Bob, Bill, Carl, and Joe talk about. In fact, the only thing this sergeant ever mentions is "seeing" Hero after his death, though not "in flesh and blood," but in a "revelation." That's it. This sergeant also claims the spirit of Hero Savior now enables him and some others to "speak in tongues" and "prophecy" and heal some illnesses, but none of this has been confirmed or observed by anyone else on record, and none of it sounds any different than what thousands of other cults and gurus have claimed. So, too, for some unconfirmed reports that some of these believers, even this army sergeant, endured persecution or even died for believing they "saw Hero in a revelation"--a fact no more incredible than the Buddhists who set themselves on fire to protest the Vietnam War, certain they would be reincarnated, or the hundreds of people who voluntarily killed themselves at Jonestown, certain their leader was sent by God. Okay. I've given you all that evidence. Would you believe me then? Certainly not. No one trusts documents that come decades after the fact by unknown authors, and hardly anyone believes the hundreds of gurus today who claim to see and speak to the spirits of the dead, heal, and predict the future. Every reasonable person expects and requires extensive corroboration by contemporary documents and confirmed eyewitness accounts. Everyone would expect here at least as much evidence as I'd need to prove I owned a nuclear missile, yet the standard required is actually that of proving I own an interstellar spacecraft--for these are clearly very extraordinary claims, and as we saw above, such claims require extraordinary evidence, as much as would be needed, for example, to convince the United Nations that I had an interstellar spacecraft on my lawn. Yet what we have for this Hero Savior doesn't even count as ordinary evidence, much less the extraordinary evidence we really need. To complete the analogy, many other things would rightly bother us. Little is remarkable about the stories told of Hero Savior, for similar stories apparently have been told of numerous Vietnamese sorcerers and heroes throughout history--and no one believes them, so why should we make an exception for Hero? The documents we have from Bob, Bill, Carl, and Joe have also been tampered with--we've found some cases of forgery and editing in each of their stories by parties unknown, and we aren't sure we've caught it all. Apparently, their stories were used by several different cults to support their causes, and these cults all squabble over the exact details of the right cause, and so tell different stories or interpret the stories differently to serve their own particular agenda. And the earliest version, the one told by Bob, which both Bill and Joe clearly copied, added to, and edited (which Carl might have done, too, perhaps by borrowing loosely from Joe), appears to have been almost entirely constructed out of passages from an ancient Vietnamese poem, arranged and altered to tell a story full of symbolic and moral meaning. These and many other problems plague the evidence, leaving it even more suspect than normal. This Hero Savior analogy entirely parallels the situation for Jesus.[7] Every reason we would have not to believe these Hero Savior stories applies to the stories of Jesus with all the same force. So if you agree there would be no good reason to believe these Hero Savior stories, you must also agree there is insufficient reason to believe the Jesus Christ stories. Hence I am not a Christian because the evidence is not good enough. For it is no better than the evidence proposed for Hero Savior, and that falls far short of the burden that would have to be met to confirm the very extraordinary claims surrounding him.

That's the problem.

Things could have been different. For example, if miracle working was still so routine in the Church that scientists could prove that devout Christians alone could genuinely perform miracles--restoring lost limbs, raising the dead, predicting tsunamis and earthquakes (and actually saving thousands with their timely warnings)--then we would have a well-confirmed generalization that would lend a great deal of support to the Gospel stories, reducing the burden on the Christian to prove those stories true. Likewise, if we had credible documents from educated Roman and Jewish eyewitnesses to the miracles and resurrection of Jesus, and if we had simultaneous records even from China recording appearances of this Jesus to spread the Gospel there just days after his death in Palestine, then the Christian would surely have some solid ground to stand on. And the two together--current proof of regular miracles in the Church, and abundant first-hand documentation from reliable observers among the Jews, Romans, and Chinese--would truly be sufficient evidence to believe the claim that Jesus really did perform miracles and rise from the dead, or at least something comparably remarkable.

But that is not what we have. Not even close. Therefore, I do not have enough evidence to justify believing in Christianity. Again, this could easily be changed, even without the evidence above. If Jesus appeared to me now and answered some of my questions, I would believe. If he often spoke to me and I could perform miracles through his overt blessing, I would believe. If everyone all over the world and throughout history, myself included, had the same religious experience, witnessing no other supernatural being--no other god, no other spirit--other than Jesus, and hearing no other message than the Gospel, I would believe. If we got to observe who makes it into Heaven and who doesn't, and thus could confirm the consequences of belief and unbelief, with the same kind and quantity of evidence as we have for the consequences of driving drunk, I would believe. But we get none of these things, or anything like them.

This is a state of evidence that a "loving" God, who "wanted" us to accept the Gospel and set things right, would not allow. Therefore, the absence of this evidence not only leaves Christianity without sufficient evidence to warrant our believing it, but outright refutes Christianity, which predicts that God would provide enough evidence to save us, to let us make an informed decision. Since this prediction fails, the theory fails. A loving God would not hide the life preserver he supposedly threw to me, nor would he toss it into a fog, but near to me, where it was plain to see, and he would help me accomplish whatever I needed to reach it and be saved. For that is what I would do for anyone else. And no Christian can believe I am more fair and loving than their God.

That is not a correct analogy. Paul did not just see a vision. He said he saw Jesus himself. He didn't believe in Jesus. He was not trying to believe, but instead was actively persecuting the church. Why would he all of a sudden on his own start believing? It's like Hitler working the the antidefimation league. No, Paul literally encountered the living Christ. Carrier obviously has done no research on what textual criticism or he would know why scholars, even unbelievers, will admit that we have the best manuscript evidence relative to any ancient document! We really know what the books of the New Testament say. In addition, the best evidence we have say that the books of the New Testament were all written during the lifetime of people who could have disputed it. Carrier's analogy fails because it does not accurately represent the evidence for the New Testament.

What Hollywood Believes: Debbie Reynolds

"My faith in the fact that I believe God's looking after me and I'm herte because I have a purpose, and I feel that I should fight hard to try to survive and to try to do good for others as well as myself and my family. I live by the Ten Commandments and I believe in them, and I try to stay right with that."

Iy's interesting how she said nothing about Jesus. Without Jesus there is no hope to keeping the ten commandments. If you break one, you break them all.

What Hollywood Believes - Charlton Heston

"Ever since playing Moses in The Ten Commandments I've felt a deep, personal connection with the Bible which remains as vivid and vital today as when it was told around campfires centuries before there was any written language."

I like the quote, but it says nothing about what Heston believed about Jesus or if he believed that we should apply the Bible to our lives.

Answering Askegg via Twitter part 5

Well Andrew, aka Askegg, has responded to my previous post from last week. I appreciate him taking the time to give a whole blog entry to our discussion. I will do so in kind. My response will again be in red and his original post to which I am responding can be read here.

…and around we go.

// July 13th, 2009 // Blog

Once again Marcus has responded, but seems to miss the point of my arguments so far. In typical deluded theist fashion he has once again failed to give me an adequate explanation for the arguments put forward, and quotes the Bible as if it’s some kind of authoritative source.

The Bible is an authorative source especially when you take it out of context and say it says something it does not say. I understand your arguments and find them wanting.

Marcus raises a few points which I cannot help respond to, but not for the reasons you might think. There are statements in his latest reply which really underline the fact that no amount of evidence or rational, logical constructions will convince him otherwise. He has made up his mind, and nothing will convince him otherwise.

It's not about me being right. God is right.

So this will be my last reply to Marcus, but not because I think he has won or I am painted into a corner. I am slowly learning that people need to come to their senses in their own time, in their own way. My hope with these conversations has always to be to drop that one gem of doubt and questioning into someone’s mind – as happened to me. I realise now that this is largely a pointless exercise. These people are sent for our amusement, and should not be engaged in meaningful debate unless you have countless hours to waste.

Conversing about such things is important. A viewpoint that fails to stand up to scrutiny is not worth defending let-alone believing. Biblical Christianity stands no matter what you or I think. It's only pointless if you do not think about both sides. If you look at our conversations as a waste of time, I'm sorry. I don't. I truly care about you and don't want to see you miss a great opportunity - to know God for yourself. I can't argue into it. That's not my goal. Your assertion is that there is no good reason or evidence to put your faith in the God of the Bible - the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The one who spoke our reality into existence. This is plainly not true. I can't allow you to say that without challenging you with the truth.

As usual, Marcus’s responses are quoted below, with my comments underneath.

Yes, Jesus knew He was going to die. And He knew it was going to hurt. He also knew He did not deserve it. He know You and I deserve it. A sacrifice means giving up something that you don’t have to give up. He chose to give up His life and pay for our sins. He paid the penalty of sin for us. That does not mean that He had to stay dead.

It’s the “did not deserve it” part that bothers me here. As I have outlined previously, we are lead to believe that Jesus is God, and therefor he is responsible for the creation of the universe (according to the awful arguments from design, and ignorance). An omniscient being could not help but foresee and predict ever consequence of ever action, ever. God, knowing who would sin first and his punishment, would have also known billions of others since he came to Earth to kill himself would reject him and be sent to Hell. For this we are meant to praise him? Fuck that.

In addition, who says the price of sin is death? Who sets the penalty? Can the penalties be changed? What would an all loving being do – forgive us anyway?

Sin is a tresspass against God himself. He sets the bar and the penalty. Who is any of us to argue that He is wrong. Think about that. If someone steals something from you, don't you have the right demand restitution? Doesn't justice demand it? I have stated that I understand your point about God's omniscience and that He has set all this up. I just disagree with how you have chosen to respond to this. Think about it. Really, think about what you are saying. You are saying that the one who gave you life, the one you owe everything to...everything you are or ever will be is not worthy of your love or worship. If God lowered the standard and gave everyone a pass, how is that justice? How is that fair? A loving God must also be just. A loving God must also be merciful. God chooses to show mercy by saving those who put their faith in Jesus. Setting aside the question on how we come to choose Jesus for a minute...the bottom line is that if we do we are saved. You are consciously and on purpose choosing to reject Jesus and then complain about getting what you deserve. How rational is that? It is not.

Who says you are free now? We are in bondage to sin. You feel it. You know that. You look at the standard in the Bible for what Holiness looks like and you know you can never meet that. Jesus came to free us from our inability to live up to that. He didn’t come to free us from that standard. Is there free will in Heaven? I don’t know. What i do now it’s gonna be better than what we got now.

You are obviously talking about a different kind of free will to the one I am referring to. I have been talking about the freedom to choose as you please. For example: Are you free to eat when you please, or is this an irresistible urge driven by your bodies need for fuel? Are you free to chose what you want to eat, or is that the eventual result of what happens to be available at the time and a incredibly complex series of biochemical reactions in your brain and body?

Is there any decision we could make that would surprise God? If God is all knowing, then the answer must be “no”. We only have the apparent illusion of free will. We think we are free to choose, but it has all been designed, conceived, and set into play by an all knowing being to fulfil some grand divine plan.

I have understood and completely have been using the same definition of "Free Will" you have. And I have stated that we don't have free will because we don't have the ability to completely choose never to sin. That is why we need a savior. This is why we need Jesus. And I agree Jesus is never surprised by any decision we make and I'd argue that sometimes we make descisions that He himself determines - whenever we do somthing "good". And we agree God has a plan to fulfill and there is nothing you can do to mess it up.

The Bible promises that on Judgement day we will see what complete justice and mercy looks like. No one will have any excuse. Everyone will know that God is right in everything He has done. The Bible also promises no tears and no suffering for those who are spending eternitiy with Him that means that we won’t be witnessing the suffering of those who are in Hell. This isn’t conjecture this is what the Bible teaches. If you want take issue with, you have to take it up with God. I didn’t write it. Another thing is true repentence comes from responding to the love of God not from the fear of hell and eternal punishiment.

A little bit of unfounded Biblical assertion as truth, mixed with some Pascal’s wager, and a dash of “nobody knows, but I’m sure she’ll be right mate.”

I didn't say "nobody knows". What I said and you said is that from my Worldview that God knows exactly everything. The best answer I can give is what the Bible says. Thanks for agreeing that I correctly gave a Biblical argument. Coming from you, that makes me feel good. Do you have a better answer? Let me guess because the only answer atheism can offer is that none of imatter because we cease exist when we die and life has no purpose other than what we give it. How is that better? How does that make sense? How do you prove that? You can't. You have no objective proof of the atheistic conclusion.

You still havern’t proved that God does not exist.

You can’t prove a negative.

Marcus, let me try to illustrate. You have not proved Allah does not exist. By your own argument, he therefore must exist. You can’t prove I do not have a diamond the size of a refrigerator in my backyard, but that says nothing about the truth of my claim I do. It’s a stupid fucking argument.

Andrew, the only way you can prove that God, as I understand him, does not exist is to prove that the Bible is a lie. You can't. The Bible and Koran conflict. They both can't be true. Therefore if the Bible is true and the Koran is not, then by definition Allah does not exist. The burden of proof that the Bible is false is on you. As far as the analogy you used we can confirm if you have a diamond the size of a refrigerator in your backyard it can be confirmed by looking in your yard. The Bible's validity can be tested on many points. We've been over this over and over again. You've brought up thing where it's wrong and I've answered each one and showed why the Bible is true and you are misinformed and you have provided no counter. The stupid argument is yours.

God can do whatever He wants to do. He will have mercy on whom He willl have mercy. Read Romans 9.

And those God does not “choose to have mercy on”? What about them?

Another big fuck up here is apparently everything God does is totally moral, just, and perfect. He can (and has) murdered millions, yet his hands are clean. For some reason, God’s morality is not the same as ours (to spite being made in his image). We have built a society where murderers are isolated from the general population, and in some cases removed from the gene pool altogether. Yet, this judgement on God for exactly the same (and worse) atrocities is not allowed. Amazing.

By living and breathing, and not sending you to hell right now, God is having mercy on you. God's morality is not the same as ours. You said it yourself when you admitted that the moral standards and precepts defined in the Bible are higher than anyone could possibly meet. God knows what He's doing and you don't know what He's doing. Again can the clay pot call the potter who made it to the carpet to answer to the design decisions that the potter made? Nope! Read Issiah 55 (by the way, I will continue to use the Bible as an authority since you refuse to refute my refutations on Biblical validity).

No where does God say that anyone, who has the opportunity to accept/reject Christ, get a free pass to heaven. The truth is i have been given too much information…too much light….to get a free pass. He isn’t going to give me a free pass. I’m going to have to live the way He says because I belong to Him. Jesus paid a high price and being aware of that and accepting that brings consequences just as rejecting if bring awful consequences. I’m getting this from the Bible which you can’t prove to be false.

It is trivial to prove the Bible wrong, but centuries of apologetics and a dim mind lets any excuse pass as a rational explanation for the obvious flaws.

If it's so trivial to prove the Bible wrong, why haven't you. You provided many things that you thought were problems in the Bible and I have answered them. If there were points that you thought that I didn't answer why not bring them back up and we can deal with them. Otherwise you stand refutted.

Also interesting that neither of them are supported in the Bible either. Could God had somehow intervened to maskes sure those ideas were squashed? Yes He did.

Oh I see – God suppressed the incorrect religions of the world, but somehow managed to miss Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Scientology, Catholicism, and all other others. He just picked on a few slightly different versions of Christianity that happened to be conflicting with your at one point in history. Riiiiight.

That is not what I said. The two incorret "-isms" you listed were flavors of Christianity, not separate religions. Judgement begins at the house. God is correcting all the false imaginations and religions of the world. He's just not doing it in the way you think He should. But it's not about you or me. He really is in control and doing as He sees fit. You are just rejecting the truth because you don't like it.

Okay, that is similar to how I look at it…almost. The future is not something that God just knows about. It’s something that he controls and guides.

Preciously. So tell me how we escape his control and guidance? The morality God has placed in me judges him to be a complete bastard, and I want nothing to do with him. Thank Christ he does not exist!

What does your morality say about you? If you would damned God, then that means you will surely damn youself and see no redeeming quality in yourself. You would see that you deserve hell. You are no different than anyone of us. I am the worse sinner that I know. You are worse sinner that you know. If you want to be free, you will go to Jesus. If not, you are responsible for your sins.

Yes, Hell will suck and I’m not going because Jesus paid for my sins on the cross so I don’t has to go. Now, I’d be way more worried about these verses if I were you.

First you say that Hell is not described in the Bible, so I show you some verses that do. Now you’re admitting it’s a scary place and I should be worried about it. Pascal’s wager again? Seriously?

I did not say that Hell is not described in the Bible. I said that how you described hell was not in the Bible. You said that in hell that "white hot pokers shoved into their eyes and their intestines gnawed by rats". That is not Bible.

You don’t actively interfere in everyone of your daughters decisions even if you know that sometimes it will cause them pain. If you did, they would never learn from failure. They would never grow. God does the same with us.

So God builds a universal system to inflict pain to teach us a lesson. If you don’t learn that lesson you will suffer in the most unimaginable pain for ever more. Nice guy.

Who's fault is it that don't learn it? It's not God's fault. It's your fault.

There is plenty evidence that the gospel account is the best explanation for the facts that we know.

Hahahahaaaa.

I provided evidence. You never refuted it. Laughing is not a defense.

There are hundreds of supposed events that are not supported by any evidence at all, but you believe what you want.

All you have to do is prove the Bible false and my who arguement collapases. This you have failed to do.

No – you have failed to listen and think.

I did listen. I made refutations. And you have offered nothing in rebuttal. You failed not then Bible.

You know nothing. The Bible says Eve was tricked. Adam was not tricked. He knew what he was doing. Eve thought that she was doing the right thing. Adam damned us. It wasn’t on Eve.

Adam was tricked by Eve. Douche.

Name-calling is the refuge of those who have no argument. Where does the Bible say that Adam was tricked? It doesn't. "Through one man, sin entered the world." (Romans 5:12) and 1 Timothy 2:14 says "And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner."

You are right. That is not how you get a good number. I only used that number because It seems to me that the Old Testament only covers that amount not that it is the age of the earth. The Bible does not claim that the geneologies in Genesis give the names and ages of everyone. Remember what I tweeted earlier: hebrew geneologies are not exhaustive. They only hit the high points.

So the Earth is not 6,000 years old? I wonder if your estimation is anywhere near the scientific one of 4.54 billion years, which is verified by independent and mutually supporting lines of inquiry? That’s one large magnitude of error, but of course the Bible is correct regardless of any evidence to the contrary – right?

If your claim that “they only hit the high points” is correct, then a notable person does not come along that often. Your error is 756,666 times OFF the actual estimate! So what are we lead to believed happened? Adam started a book and wrote his name in it, then every one worthy afterwards did the same? Or was is that some drugged up goat herder was inspired by the holy spirit to write down a few names? You seriously consider these kind of explanations plausible? No wonder you will believe any old crap told to you.

It's not my estimate. I never claimed to know the age of the earth or universe. The Bible does not give us that information. It's not a Bible error. It's yours. When I was in college I worked out a physics calculation of the age of the earth. You may find it useful Mathematic and Theology - The Age of the Earth.

If this bothers you..the fault is in how people have used the Bible not in the Bible itself.

…and poof! Any error found in the Bible are not errors after all. They are just our misunderstandings of the Bible. The Bible is perfect except where we have shown it is not, in which case the Bible is perfect and we are still wrong.

Idiotic.

"Denial" is not just a river in Africa. You have not proven the Bible is false. You have nothing.

Sunday Quote: Anthony Flew on the Resurrection - Apologetics 315

Again another great quote from Apologetics 315. This time from philosopher Anthony Flew.

“The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It's outstandingly different in quality and quantity.”

- Antony Flew

Why is this important? Anthony Flew is one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century and until very recently was an avowed atheist. He changed his mind and has become a theist in his old age because of the evidence of science coming to light during the recent decades. He has not become a Christian but he agrees that there is a God who created the universe he just doesn't believe the Bible or the Koran correctly describes this deity. I disagree with his conclusion about Christianity, but at least Flew also recognizes that the resurrection has good evidence although he rejects it because of the implications implied by Jesus' resurrection if it were true. This change is a major one. The man has for decades said and taught that there was no good evidence for God and now realizes that he wrong. Hopefully he'll come the whole way to becoming a Christian before he dies.

Sunday Quote: Anthony Flew on the Resurrection - Apologetics 315

Richard Dawkins - 'Why?' questions

Here is a video in which Richard Dawkins explains why he thinks certain questions are meaningless.





The question being asked is about the meaning of life. Dawkins said he thinks that it is a silly question. He equates it to asking what color is Jealousy? I disagree. I does not make sense to to equate the two. There are some questions that don't make sense. For example: What does a four-sided triangle look like? There are no four-sided triangles. By definition, they do not exist. Applying the same logic to the meaning of life - the purpose of life is presupposing that there is no purpose...no meaning. That is dangerous because no once could really honestly say that there is no purpose just because you don't know what it is. It's giving a non-answer to a legitmate question.

Is Calvinism Biblical

James White vs Dave Hunt

Why You Should Be A Christian. Response to Richard Carrier Pt 3/6

A well-written essay is on the internet called, "Why I am Not Christian" by Richard Carrier (on the left). It's long, respectful, and well written. It compels a response. His criticisms of Christians are well founded but his charges against God are mistaken and unfounded. The essay was written in 2006 and is divided into six parts. I'm going to interact with his responses and divide my essay also into six parts. His words will be in black and mine will be red. His Top four reasons for rejecting Christianity are: 1. God is Silent. 2. God is inert. 3. Inadequate evidence for God. 4. Christianity predicts a different universe. Here is my refutation of point 2.

2. God is Inert

The God proposed by the Christian hypothesis is not a disembodied, powerless voice whose only means of achieving his desires is speaking to people, teaching them to do what's right. The Christian God is an Almighty Creator, capable of creating or destroying anything, capable of suspending or rewriting the laws of nature, capable of anything we can imagine. He can certainly do any and every moral thing you or I can do, and certainly much more than that, being so much bigger and stronger and better than we are in every way. All this follows necessarily from the definition of mere Christianity, and therefore cannot be denied without denying Christianity itself.

I think any Bible believing Christian would agree with the above paragraph.

It's a simple fact of direct observation that if I had the means and the power, and could not be harmed for my efforts, I would immediately alleviate all needless suffering in the universe. All guns and bombs would turn to flowers. All garbage dumps would become gardens. There would be adequate resources for everyone. There would be no more children conceived than the community and the environment could support. There would be no need of fatal or debilitating diseases or birth defects, no destructive Acts of God. And whenever men and women seemed near to violence, I would intervene and kindly endeavor to help them peacefully resolve their differences. That's what any loving person would do. Yet I cannot be more loving, more benevolent than the Christian God. Therefore, the fact that the Christian God does none of these things--in fact, nothing of any sort whatsoever--is proof positive that there is no Christian God.

This argument assumes that if God is good, He is obligated to stop pain and suffering. Why? This is not rational. If God did not allow suffering we would not be able to become better that what we are. No one likes it. But for everything that happens that seems bad to us God has a purpose!

¹Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. ³Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. -Romans 5:1-5

If God at least did something, however much we might still argue about what that action meant about his ability, character, and desires, we would at least have evidence (and therefore reason to believe) that a God existed, maybe even the Christian God. And there are many things any god could do. He could make all true bibles indestructible, unalterable, and self-translating. He could make miraculous healing or other supernatural powers so common an attribute of the virtuous believer that they would be scientifically studied and confirmed as surely as any other medicine or technology. He could, as I've already explained, speak to all of us in the same voice, saying the same things. He could send angels to appear to us on a regular basis, performing all manner of divine deeds and communications--exactly as the earliest Christians thought he did.

God did do something!

⁶You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. ⁸But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ⁹Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! ¹⁰For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! ¹¹Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation - Romans 5:6-11

God saved us, personally and completely. You can't get mad at God for not saving us the way you think He should have.

The possible evidences a God could provide are endless, though none might be sufficient to prove we have the Christian God. To prove that, this evident God would have to act as the Christian hypothesis predicts. For example, only those who believe in the true Christian Gospel would be granted the supernatural powers that could be confirmed by science; only true Christian Bibles would be indestructible, unalterable, and self-translating; and the Divine Voice would consistently convey to everyone the will and desires of the Christian message alone. But God does none of these things--nothing at all.

God chose not to validate His existence the way you suggest. God has an answer as to why He doesn't do it that way.

¹ If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, ² and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, "Let us follow other gods" (gods you have not known) "and let us worship them," ³ you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. ⁴ It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. - Deuteronomy 13:1-4

A Christian can rightly claim he is unable to predict exactly what things his God would choose to do. But the Christian hypothesis still entails that God would do something. Therefore, the fact that God does nothing is a decisive refutation of the Christian hypothesis. Once again, a prediction is made that consistently fails to pan out. Instead, we observe the exact opposite: a dumb, mechanical universe that blindly treats everyone with the same random fortune and tragedy regardless of merit or purpose. But that's a fact we'll examine later. For now, it is enough to note that we do not observe God doing good deeds, therefore there is no God who can or wants to do good deeds--which means Christianity is false.

I completely disagree, everything that happens for a reason. Just because things don't go the way you think they should, why assume that God does nothing?!

Excuses won't fly here, either, because a loving being by definition acts like a loving being. It is a direct contradiction to claim that someone is loving yet never does what a loving person does--because the name refers to the behavior. To be loving literally means to be loving. You can't be heartless and claim to be loving. As Christ himself is supposed to have said, "it is by their fruits that shall ye know them." The only possible exception here is when a loving person is incapable of acting as he desires--either lacking the ability or facing too great a risk to himself or others--but this exception never applies to a God, who is all-powerful and immune to all harm. This exception also never applies to any human so absolutely that she can never act loving. Even the most limited and constrained person there is can at least do something that expresses their loving nature. Indeed, if it were ever truly possible to completely prevent this, a truly loving person would probably prefer death to such a horrible existence. And a loving God would be no different. Failing to act in a loving way would be unbearable for a loving being. From having the desire and the means to act in a loving way, it follows necessarily that God would so act. But he doesn't. Therefore, again, the Christian God does not exist.

What gives us the right as created humans to suggest that we should know how God should act. What He should do. Makes no sense. How do you know that what you think is the most loving actions are truly the best decisions for all concerned? You can't because you don't know what the big picture truly is.

Think about it. A man approaches a school with a loaded assault rifle, intent on mass slaughter. A loving person speaks to him, attempts to help him resolve his problems or to persuade him to stop, and failing that, punches him right in the kisser, and takes away his gun. And a loving person with godlike powers could simply turn his bullets into popcorn as they left the gun, or heal with a touch whatever insanity or madness (or by teaching him cure whatever ignorance) led the man to contemplate the crime. But God does nothing. Therefore, a loving God does not exist. A tsunami approaches and will soon devastate the lives of millions. A loving person warns them, and tells them how best to protect themselves and their children. And a loving person with godlike powers could simply calm the sea, or grant everyone's bodies the power to resist serious injury, so the only tragedy they must come together to overcome is temporary pain and the loss of worldly goods. We would have done these things, if we could--and God can. Therefore, either God would have done them, too--or God is worse than us. Far worse. Either way, Christianity is false.

The logic of this is, again, unassailable. So Christians feel compelled to contrive more "ad hoc" excuses to explain away the evidence--more speculations about free will, "mysterious plans," a desire to test us or increase opportunities for us to do good, and stuff like that. And, yet again, Christians have no evidence any of these excuses are actually true. They simply "make them up" in order to explain away the failure of their theory. But once again, even putting that serious problem aside, these ad hoc elements still fail. For there is no getting around the conjunction of facts entailed by the Christian theory. God cannot possibly struggle under any limitations greater than the limitations upon us (if anything, he must surely have fewer limitations than we do), and God loves love--and is therefore a loving being, which means he desires to act like one. These two terms of the hypothesis entail observations, and nothing can explain away the fact that these observations are never made--unless we contradict and therefore reject either of these two essential terms of the theory. So the Christian theory is either empirically false, or self-contradictory and therefore logically false.

In fact, all the "ad hoc" excuses for God's total and utter inaction amount to the same thing: claiming that different rules apply to God than to us. But this is not allowed by the terms of the theory, which hold that God is good--which must necessarily mean that God is "good" in the same sense that God expects us to be good. Otherwise, calling God "good" means something different than calling anyone else "good," and therefore calling God "good" is essentially meaningless. If God can legitimately be called "good," this must mean exactly the same thing when you or I are called "good." And the fact that God is predicted by the Christian theory to "love love and hate hatred" confirms this conclusion, since "loving love and hating hatred" is exactly what it means to call you or I "good." To be good is to be loving and not hateful. And that entails a certain behavior.

This rant is simply wrong. I responded earlier

"Love your neighbor as yourself" is universally agreed to mean giving your neighbor what he needs, helping him when he is hurt or in trouble, giving him what he has earned, and taking nothing from him that he has not given you. It means giving water to the thirsty, protecting children from harm, healing infirmities. Jesus himself said so. He did or said all these things, we are told, and the Christian surely must believe this. Therefore, for God to be "good" entails that God must have the desire to do all these things--and there is no possible doubt whether he lacks the means to do all these things. And anyone with the means and the desire to act, will act. Therefore, that God does none of these things entails either that he lacks the means or the desire. Either way, Christianity is false.

Loving your neighbor as yourself is more that just keeping harm from befalling others. Sometimes love has to correct and rebuke. Sometime love requires chastening.

This conclusion follows because there cannot be any limitation on God greater than the limitations upon us. So God must necessarily desire and have the unimpeded means to do everything you and I can do, and therefore the Christian God would at least do everything you and I do. The fact that he doesn't proves he doesn't exist. Therefore, all the excuses invented for God simply don't work. Because it does not matter what plans God may have, he still could not restrain himself from doing good any more than we can, because that is what it means to be good. He would be moved by his goodness to act, to do what's right, just as we are. God would not make excuses, for nothing could ever thwart his doing what is morally right.

Hence anything God would refrain from doing can be no different than what any other good people refrain from. Children must learn, often the hard way. But that never in a million years means letting them get hit by a car so they can learn not to cross the road without looking. People must know struggle, so they feel they have earned and learned what matters. But that never in a million years means letting them be tortured or decimated or wracked with debilitating disease so they can appreciate being healthy or living in peace. No loving person could ever bear using such cruel methods of teaching, or ever imagine any purpose justifying them. Indeed, a loving person would suffer miserably if he could do nothing to stop such things... or worse, if he actually caused them!

Conversely, any excuse that could ever be imagined for God's inaction must necessarily apply to us as well. If there is a good reason for God to do nothing, then it will be just as good a reason for us to do nothing. The same moral rules that are supposed to apply to us must apply to every good person--and that necessarily includes the Christian God. God cannot have more reasons to do nothing than we do--to the contrary, it must be the other way around: only we have limitations on our abilities, creating more legitimate reasons for inaction than can ever apply to God. So if it is good for me to alleviate suffering, it is good for God to do so in those same circumstances. And if it is good for God to refrain from acting, it is good for me to do so in those same circumstances.

Nor can it be argued that God must sit back to give us the chance to do good. For that is not how good people act. Therefore, a "good" God can never have such an excuse. Imagine it. You can heal someone of AIDS. You have the perfect cure sitting in your closet. And you know it. But you do nothing, simply to allow scientists the chance to figure out a cure by themselves--even if it takes so long that billions of people must suffer miserably and die before they get it right. In what world would that ever be the right thing to do? In no world at all. When we have every means safely at our disposal, we can only tolerate sitting back to let others do good when others are actually doing good. In other words, if misery is already being alleviated, perhaps even at our very urging, then obviously we have nothing left to do ourselves. But it would be unbearable, unconscionable, outright immoral to hide the cure for AIDS just to teach everyone a lesson. That is not how a good person could or would ever behave.

This same conclusion follows in many ways. As a friend, I would think it shameful if I didn't give clear, honest advice to my friends when asked, or offer comfort when they are in misery or misfortune. I loan them money when they need it, help them move, keep them company when they are lonely, introduce them to new things I think they'll like, and look out for them. God does none of these things for anyone. Thus he is a friend to none. A man who calls himself a friend but who never speaks plainly to you and is never around when you need him is no friend at all.

And it won't do to say God's with "some" people--speaking to, comforting, and helping them out--because this means he doesn't really love all beings, and is therefore not all-loving. This would make him less decent than even many humans I know. And it's sickeningly patronizing to say, in the midst of misery, loneliness, or need, that "God's with you in spirit," that he pats you on the head and says "There! There!" (though not even in so many words as that). A friend who did so little for us, despite having every resource and ability to do more, and nothing to lose by using them, would be ridiculing us with his disdain. Thus, we cannot rescue the idea of God as Friend to All. The evidence flatly refutes the existence of any such creature. It therefore flatly refutes Christianity.

Likewise, as a loving parent, I would think it a horrible failure on my part if I didn't educate my children well, and supervise them kindly, teaching them how to live safe and well, and warning them of unknown or unexpected dangers. If they asked me to butt out I might. But if they didn't, it would be unconscionable to ignore them, to offer them no comfort, protection, or advice. Indeed, society would deem me fit for prison if I did. It would be felony criminal neglect. Yet that is God: An absentee mom--who lets kids get kidnapped and murdered or run over by cars, who does nothing to teach them what they need to know, who never sits down like a loving parent to have an honest chat with them, and who would let them starve if someone else didn't intervene. As this is unconscionable, almost any idea of a god that fits the actual evidence of the world is unconscionable. And any such deity could never be the Christian God.

I am going to respond by merely pointing out that it makes no sense to say that God is not acting simply because You don't like what He did. God is better than us because he has no compunctions to do evil. We do. You can't pat yourself on the back for being able to act towards others without compassion because we can do this only because God created us in his image. Furthermore, we often don't act that way because of our own desires and lusts. Bottom line: Carrier does not understand the who God is because he has no relationship with God.

Tesla - A Genius

Here is a documentary on the life of Nikola Tesla




Some Electromechanical devices and principles developed by Tesla:

* various devices that use rotating magnetic fields (1882)
* induction motor and high frequency alternator
* means for increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations
* alternating current long-distance electrical transmission system (1888)
* Tesla coil
* bladeless turbine
* bifilar coil
* Telegeodynamics
* systems for wireless communication (prior art for the invention of radio) and radio frequency oscillators
* robotics and the "AND" logic gate
* X-rays Tubes using the bremsstrahlung process
* devices for ionized gases
* devices for high field emission
* devices for charged particle beams
* methods for providing extremely low level of resistance to the passage of electrical current
* voltage multiplication circuitry
* devices for high voltage discharges
* devices for lightning protection
* Magnifying Transmitter
* VTOL aircraft
* Dynamic theory of gravity
* concepts for electric vehicles

What Hollywood Believes - Halle Berry

Halle Berry is quoted as saying:

"I know that there is a God - the God within me that's always present and will protect me. I'm not afraid to climb a mountain, because I know that I'm protected. Even if I fall and die, I'm still protected. My faith is on that level.

I meditate and pray all the time. The faith and respect that I have in the power of God in my life is what I've used to keep myself grounded, and it has allowed me to move past the storms that were in my life. I'm still a work in progress, but I know as long as I stay close to God I'll be alright."

This was encouraging because at least Halle Berry recognizes a power higher than herself. Is her faith in the God of the Bible or in faith itself? I'm not sure. She does realize however God has brought her through a lot. I'm just glad God is working on her just like He is working on all of us.

Pictures Can Lie

A picture has been published showing Obama appearing to stare at behind of a young woman as she walked passed him. People were quick to think sexual harassment and then quickly moved to something even more horrible when it came out that the young woman is only a girl of 17. This event was in Italy at a Summit earlier this week. I posted the offending picture on the left. The thing is just taken by itself it does look like Obama is checking her out in a sexual matter. The press has dubbed it "rumpgate". Fortunately MSNBC has posted a video exonerating Obama because He was just helping a woman navigate the steps they were standing on. The video is below. As for the other man in the picture,Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, i don't know what his excuse was. This just goes to show that photographs still need context to understand reality.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Answering Askegg via Twitter part 3

Askegg has responded to my response. Read that at blog. I thought that I would take the time to respond back. Again, my current words are in red.

After my last blog post to Marcus, he has responded:

For the past few days I have been…um…dialoguing with a person on twitter about the nature of God, evidence for his existence, and human free will. He felt compelled to write a full blog post in response to the discussion. I feel honored. He obviously put a lot of thought into it. I’ve decided to respond in kind. In addition this essay is a lot more respectful and articulate that some his tweets. My words will be in red and his will be in black.

I am not sure I put that much effort into it – it was essentially a stream of consciousness, which I did not even re-read once complete. Nevertheless, I appreciate the full blog post in response and will respond to your comments in turn.

I think for the purposes of our discussion we will continue to leave the Trinity out of the discussion and save it for some other time. This guy is the one who misunderstands. The son willingly gave himself for us as the propitiation for our sins and no one deserves it.

Many bright minds have delved the depths contained in the mystery of the trinity, and none have really come up with a definition or rational explanation. The essence of most modern Christian theology is that God, Jesus, and something called the “Holy Ghost” form three parts of the same god – something like ice, water, and steam are different representations of water.

On the surface, this explanation of the trinity seems to solve the riddle, that is until you remember that one part of god cursed us for all time for the horrendous crime of disobeying him, while the other died to pay the price of this transgression (although he came back to life, so it’s unclear what kind of sacrifice it really was).

This is basic one-o-one: there are not three gods. I'm not going to sit here and assert that I understand all of it, but that much you should know had you ever been a Christian. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not 3 Gods. There is only one God. One Being. One Essence. Father, Son, And Holy Spirit are three personalities in the one being. Here is an example. Would you answer the question "What Are You?" with the same answer as "Who ARE YOU?" God is one What - one BEING. God is three WHOs - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Read The Forgotten Trinity by James White. After re-reading this paragraph, I've decided to change it. Askegg did not say that the Trinity means 3 gods. However it's more than like, ice - water - and vapor. The truth is humans lack the neccessary tools to completely describe what God is. The Bible answers the question "who?" "What?" is still very much beyond us.

Let’s leave all that rubbish behind us because there is no solution to the conundrums it creates.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. – Hebrew 12:2

The other point is that Jesus did not die and stay dead He is alive. He rose.

So again I ask, what kind of sacrifice did Jesus make. He certainly did not lay down his life for us since, as you point out, “he is alive”. When you add in the dimension of omniscience, Jesus also knew he was going to die, and be risen again – so even entering into the whole sordid affair was just playing things out.

Yes, Jesus knew He was going to die. And He knew it was going to hurt. He also knew He did not deserve it. He know You and I deserve it. A sacrifice means giving up something that you don't have to give up. He chose to give up His life and pay for our sins. He paid the penalty of sin for us. That does not mean that He had to stay dead.

But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. – Acts 2:24

I’m not ignoring the fact that many people are going to spend eternity in Hell. It bothers me. I don’t want anyone to go to Hell. That is why I want to tell everyone I can that God has provided us a way to escape the fate that will befall us without God’s intervention. God does not take joy in people going to hell.

God may not take joy in sending people to Hell, but he does it anyway. As I pointed out, there may have been an infinite ways to create a universe where people had free will and did NOT choose to rebel against God. Answer this simple question: “Is there free will in Heaven?”

If the answer is “yes”, then free will is not required for obedience or absolute happiness. If the answer is “no” then I submit that being turned into robotic automatons is not many people’s idea of Heaven.

Who says you are free now? We are in bondage to sin. You feel it. You know that. You look at the standard in the Bible for what Holiness looks like and you know you can never meet that. Jesus came to free us from our inability to live up to that. He didn't come to free us from that standard. Is there free will in Heaven? I don't know. What i do now it's gonna be better than what we got now.

I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” – Luke 5:32

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. – 2 Peter 3:9

In heaven there is no reason to think that those in heaven will be able to see or know anything about the torture in Hell. Where is that in the Bible, just an appeal to emotion…no substance to the argument.

Hello Pot, this is Kettle.

You have spent a great deal of time detailing what will happen to me if I choose to reject Jesus and God – I will be pointed straight to hell. This is a clear appeal to emotion. Oh, I am scared of Hell so I better do as you say.

Unfortunately, Christians are not the only ones to use this bizarre tactic of al all loving God. Islam is the prime modern example who employ exactly the same low brow method of conversion. They also use appeals to incredulity, arguments from design, and just as many straw men. Ironically, these are all arguments for deist Gods, and not for one in-particular.

It’s nice to think that you will not have a few of Hell from your pearly seats in the Heavens. While it is true that the Bible does not answer these questions in any way (it answers precious few in reality), it does not rule out the possibility. Will you remember that billions will be living for eternity without God’s grace? Will God change your character so you won’t remember? If so, in what way will your soul still be you? If you can witness the suffering, doesn’t this detract from the joy you might feel?

Once again, the Bible is hopelessly inadequate to answer such questions, and you are just guessing if you try.

The Bible promises that on Judgement day we will see what complete justice and mercy looks like. No one will have any excuse. Everyone will know that God is right in everything He has done. The Bible also promises no tears and no suffering for those who are spending eternitiy with Him that means that we won't be witnessing the suffering of those who are in Hell. This isn't conjecture this is what the Bible teaches. If you want take issue with, you have to take it up with God. I didn't write it. Another thing is true repentence comes from responding to the love of God not from the fear of hell and eternal punishiment.

Andrew, you are missing one very important point. How would you know that any of us would exist if God had not allowed this kind of universe, neither you nor your children would exist as you exist now.

This is irrelevant. A God could well have chosen not to create anything, thereby eliminating the need for anyone to suffer at all.

If he had created nothing then there would be no us to wonder about these things so it is relevent. Saying it's not dodges the point I made...insufficiently

God has a purpose in choosing this universe rather than another. I don’t know what it is.

So the question remains – what kind of divine plan requires the eternal suffering of a good portion of his creation? I am sure you believe there is some ultimate plan which mandates God ignoring many of his children, but I fail to see how an all loving deity could inflict such pain when there may have been numerous alternatives open to him.

I don't know...and no one can answer that, The Bible teaches that God ignores no one. If God ignore someone they'd cease to exist. Good thing He doesn't blink. He chose to create this way. to complain and argue about it is like a clay pot arguing with the sculpturer that made it.

However, I do know that God has only good intentions for His creation and not one of us knows enough of what’s going on to challenge the decisions He has made. How do you know that things would not have been worse had God not allowed another universe? We don’t.

I agree – we don’t know things would not have been worse, or better for that matter. On the spectrum of possible universes I am sure there are a great number of universes worse than this one, and a great number much better. I do not need to provide evidence that this is actually the case, but the mere suggestion is enough to raise the possibility. It seems logical that an omnipotent being would be able to choose from an infinite number of possible realities – perhaps he has actually created them all through the power of his thought alone? Who knows?

Judging from what the Bible actually says there was no better universe. That doesn't mean there could not have been a universe that you or I would have liked better but this is the oine we have.

That’s what being a Christian is about. Trusting God even if we don’t know what the whole masterpiece looks like.

Well that’s great, but you have no idea if you are actually trusting an entity who exists outside of space and time, or a mere figment of your imagination.

You still havern't proved that God does not exist.

Another attempt to use emotion rather than logic. This analogy does not fit where humanity is spiritually before coming to Christ. People who end up in hell are not Children of God (Joun1;1 John 3).

Fancy footwork and playing with words does not alter the fact that, according to your antiquated theology, we are ALL children of God. Some he has preordained to spend the rest of their days without his love. Who does that?

God can do whatever He wants to do. He will have mercy on whom He willl have mercy. Read Romans 9.

The other things asking why would God not lower the price of sin to something less severe is a silly idea. Lowering the bar for righteousness is not Justice. It’s about the character of God that sets the bar. Righteous is who He is. To lower the standard would be going against himself. Even our own secular wisdom says: “To your own self be true”. Why shouldn’t God do the same? As for disease and pain and suffering God has a purpose and I don’t know what it all is yet, but God promises in His Word that.

Who says? Who are you to decide what is justice? Apparently God decides what is just and what is not, and I am sure he could decide to grace us all with his love should he choose. You may not think this is fair because you have tried to live a good Christian life (whatever that means) and tried to do all the right things. How could it be fair that someone who has lead a life of hedonistic pleasure be granted a free pass into Heaven – they have not controlled themselves. You have denied yourself pleasure in this life to attain the promise of pleasure in some afterlife for which there is no evidence.

No where does God say that anyone, who has the opportunity to accept/reject Christ, get a free pass to heaven. The truth is i have been given too much information...too much light....to get a free pass. He isn't going to give me a free pass. I'm going to have to live the way He says because I belong to Him. Jesus paid a high price and being aware of that and accepting that brings consequences just as rejecting if bring awful consequences. I'm getting this from the Bible which you can't prove to be false.

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,

Actually, this line of thinking is only prevalent because the Emperor of Rome backed the Pauline position that Jesus was both human and divine, then proceeded to suppress the two main competing views.

Um no, This was written well before the Nicea Council. Show me how how I have misconstrued what the Bible says.

The Marcionites believed that Jesus was purely divine and not human at all – his humanity was an illusion, a phantasm. They believed Jehovah created this world as detailed in the Old Testament, and the One True God was so disgusted with his behaviour that he sent part of his soul (Jesus) to pay for the souls of those Jehovah tortured in Hell, thus saving them.

The Adoptionists believed that Jesus was fully human, but adopted by the Biblical God at his baptism (hence the name). Jesus’s soul escaped his human body at the crucifixion. Mohammed seized upon this idea and claimed himself to be adopted by God to preach his word, thus founding the religion of Islam.

Gnosticism sure sucks

Both were almost completely wiped out when the Romans used their military might to squash opposing views. These are a matter of historical record.

Also interesting that neither of them are supported in the Bible either. Could God had somehow intervened to maskes sure those ideas were squashed? Yes He did.

and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Ahhh…. what?

No, I never said that Free Will comes into this at all. I’m not suggesting that our will trumps God’s at all. I reject that humans have free will in that God must do anything according to our will.

I was not saying that either. I do not hold that our “free will” could trump God’s, or that an omniscient creator must somehow bend to our will. What I proposed it that God would have known our all of our decisions at the beginning of time. He can foresee the future stretching out before him like a well known movie. He knows all the characters moves, their motivations. He knows each frame of the movie in intricate detail. The characters in the movie (us) believe we have free will, but it’s an illusion. God knows exactly how it is going to end, and how the whole series will play out.

Okay, that is similar to how I look at it...almost. The future is not something that God just knows about. It's something that he controls and guides.

We do have will. We do have desires but they are subject to God’s ultimate will. And don’t forget we all go to Hell by default until we turn to God. Now how does that happen? How does God do that? Why doesn’t He do that for everyone? No man can say…least of all me. All I know is if you haven’t turned to God in total submisson and obedience you do not belong to Him.

Sigh. And God created me not to belong to him. How does that fit with the notion of “all loving”?

No where in the Bible does it say that God created anyone to not believe in Him. The Bible says we all know, some of us deny it. Look at Romans 1 and see if you do not see western society being described.

Sorry to break it to you. We do choose, but not because of anything in us or from us. Read Romans 9. However the conclusion you draw is stupid. You are not free from sin and death until you come to God. Before that you are in slavery to sin. If you want to be free you got to go to Jesus. That is what the Bible teaches.

I am well aware of what the Bible teaches. It says we are born sick and commanded to be well. We were created with the capacity for sin and tempted by a talking snake, then every descendant was cursed by your all loving god to live miserable lives until God came back to Earth to kill himself to pay for the sin he created in the first place. It’s totally crazy, but you believe whatever floats your boat.

Would you rather pay for your sins? And God is not responsible for Adam disobeying. We curse ourselves leading to death. When God cursed Adam it had nothing to do with hell. Instead God promised Adam that God was going to redeem humanity. This is what Jesus did and does.

Complaining about the fact that God has selects whom he has mercy on is silly. If you want to be saved then God has called you to be saved. If you don’t then He didn’t and you don’t want to be saved anyway.

That’s one of my main points – you can worship a being who would have known which individuals would “chose” to reject him (after all, he created us this way), then turn around and say it was somehow a choice of free will.

I never said that God says that it's a free will choice. You keep putting free will in where it does not belong.

For the last time – free will is an illusion to an omniscient being. If you know the results of your actions, and the subsequent results extending forever into the future, then you are completely paralysed. There is no “choice” God could make in which he did not know the outcome – indeed you would have to ask the question what drives a being to do anything, especially when you consider his apparent unlimited power.

You are arguing a point that I never made.

Andrew, why do you think that is what Hell will be like. Nothing in the Bible talks about the torture you describe. Stick to the text please.

Better read your Bible again, mate.

Where does it say that "white hot pokers shoved into their eyes and their intestines gnawed by rats"? What Book, chapter, and verse? Sounds like you are confusing Dante's Divine Comedy with the Bible.

The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth – Matthew 13:41-42

If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. – Matthew 18:8

Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. – Matthew 22:13

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. … And these shall go away into everlasting punishment. – Matthew 25:41, 46

into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. – Mark 9:43-48

The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. – John 5:28

In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction. – 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever. – Revelations 14:10

And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever – Revelations 20:10

And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. – Revelation 20:14-15

Care to comment on those?

Yes, Hell will suck and I'm not going because Jesus paid for my sins on the cross so I don't has to go. Now, I'd be way more worried about these verses if I were you.

You cannot interfere with your children’s free will, but God can and does. He is in complete control of everything. Sometime he restrains what we do and sometimes He doesn’t. For reasons and purpose we don’t fully understand He works out the reality we experience. Your analogy fails because it attempts to explain something so infinite in finite terms that cannot possibly measure up.

So just like God I can decide when to interfere with my daughters “free will” and when not too. When they are in clear danger and I chose not to act, what does that make me? What does it make your God when he choses not to act?

You don't actively interfere in everyone of your daughters decisions even if you know that sometimes it will cause them pain. If you did, they would never learn from failure. They would never grow. God does the same with us.

Jesus substantiated that claim when He walked out of that tomb with all power in His hand.

There is no credible evidence that this ever happened. You have the stories of less than a handful of people written decades after to supposed event. It’s no more believable than “Jack and the Beanstalk”.

There is plenty evidence that the gospel account is the best explanation for the facts that we know.

We’ve been through this in Twitter. I’ve presented links to you for evidence for the resurrection and yet you haven’t provided a shred of rebuttal for rejecting the fact that Jesus is what He said. All other religions deny this. Every single one of them. Hell is not a scare tactic. I serve God not because I’m afraid of goint to hell but because I love Him because He first loved me.

So your not in the least bit scared of Hell?

No, I'm not. i'm not going to hell because i put my faith in Christ. If you are sacare of helll you need to go to God and repent. He will save you too.

I’m not better than anyone else. He has done nothing but show me love and kindness my whole life. Why would I not serve Him? He deserves it. Even if he had never done a thing for me other than allow my birth, I owe Him everything. You owe Him also. It’s irrational to avoid the evidence just because you don’t like where it points.

I agree with this – let the evidence speak for itself. So far, you certainly have not shown any evidence there was actually a resurrection – no one ever has, because there is none. Zero. Not a damn thing. You have given vague Biblical quotes without first providing evidence the Bible is even true. Geez, even if parts of the Bible are true does not make it all true. “Gone with the Wind” is not a true story just because there was a civil war.

All you have to do is prove the Bible false and my who arguement collapases. This you have failed to do.

You agreed with me that the standards God asks us to meet according to the Bible are too high for any person to attain.

Can you control your thoughts? If you have ever lusted after someone you have committed adultery in your heart, which is expressly forbidden in the 10 commandments (which are the first of a list of around 60). The standards are impossible.

That is why we need Jesus.

I agree. That is why Jesus came. He made up the difference for us. He lived the life we can’t. Just like Adam damned us all through His disobedience, Jesus saves us through His obedience, life, sacrifice, and resurrection. All we have to do is accept it. IF you can’t accept it, it isn’t because God rejected you. It is because you have rejected Him

Eve was tricked first – why do I know more about your religion than you do?

You know nothing. The Bible says Eve was tricked. Adam was not tricked. He knew what he was doing. Eve thought that she was doing the right thing. Adam damned us. It wasn't on Eve.

Dude, It’s been 2000 years (5000 yrs or more if you count the Old Testament) …

You know how they calculated that fucked up number of a 6,000 year old Earth? They added the ages of the people in the Bible together. That’s it. That’s all they did. How scientific and reliable is that? I mean really?

You are right. That is not how you get a good number. I only used that number because It seems to me that the Old Testament only covers that amount not that it is the age of the earth. The Bible does not claim that the geneologies in Genesis give the names and ages of everyone. Remember what I tweeted earlier: hebrew geneologies are not exhaustive. They only hit the high points. If this bothers you..the fault is in how people have used the Bible not in the Bible itself.

… and Christianity is sitll growing and people are still coming to Jesus.

People are still flocking to Islam, so what? Even more people are shedding their superstitious believes and living full, happy, lives.

The point os that you tried to assert that Christianity and all religions will die out, but I countereed you. Glad you agree with me.

God loves you and desire a relationship with you. Seek Him and be truly free. As a parting point, I’m not suggesting that Babies go to hell and that a person would need to absolutely know about Jesus to be saved. I was talking about people who are alive now and have an opportunity to know who Jesus is. Babies go back to God automatically if they die (see 2 Samuel 12:22-24 for an example of what happens when a Baby dies).

You have no way of knowing this is true.

If 2 Samuel 12:22-24 is true then I know it's true. Prove it isn't.

I think what is more important is the realization that there were a lot of people who lived and died and yet we believe they are in heaven and did not have access to the the same knowledge of Jesus as we do now (see Hebrews 11). These men and women just followed after God with what they knew at the time. Jesus also said that all those who seek him would find him. I believe that this is true no matter what. So that anwers the problem of those who aren’t born into Christianity or were born before Christ came. I’m sure that there were billions of people born before Christ will also be in heaven.

Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one gets to the Father except through me.” Seem to me that all those before he appeared on the scene are doomed since they did not have a chance to know Jesus.

No, not according to the Bible. The patriarchs and all the heroes and heroines of the Old Testament are saved the same way we are today: trusting in what God has made known to us. We just have a fuller picture than they did.

In any case, if these billions of people before Jesus appeared do automatically get into Heaven, then how is that fair to the billions who came afterwards? How come babies get a free pass before they even have a chance to form a coherent thought? Earlier you were talking about a God of justice, yet here we have examples of him metering out celestial justice in grossly unfair ways.

I still maintain your God, if he existed, would be a total monster and not worthy of any worship.

God can do what ever he wants. He can give mercy however He wants to give it. The point is that if you want to get that mercy you have an opportunity because you know about Jesus. What you do with that is what you will be accountable for to God.