I need one argument

[Aibao]

I haven't been here for a long time. I needed a break from religious and even atheistic stuff. However, it does not make it any better that I pretended that the problem did not exist and told myself that I was fine, I made up my mind and I  thought I wasn't traumatized and maybe I was exaggerating. I don't know, I've lost my confidence already.

 

I recently met a couple of homeless people and started talking to them. I found out that these people are Pentecostal like me (I was surprised, especially since the church offered its homeless faithful a little help). This is not the first time I meet Christians. Suddenly it turns out that someone is a believer and talks to me about God. I started seriously wondering today, does God exist? Is it a coincidence that I meet people who are believers? I moved out of my town and still meet such people wherever I go, once I even met believers in Germany - why never atheists? Why always believing? That's why I'm wondering what's going on here, because maybe there are no coincidences in life? Maybe God is sending me such people to return to faith? It scares me.

 

Therefore, my question to you, to anyone who had a similar situation, but was able to solve it logically:

 

How to test faith to unequivocally determine whether it is true or not? (I mean, e.g. you don't believe anymore, but suddenly you find yourself in a situation like mine - you meet believers everywhere and you start to doubt - or maybe I'm wrong about the non-existence of God, if such a thing happened to me? Or suddenly you start to in a situation and you think - what is going on? That's impossible, is it God who is improving my lot? For example, it is known that intuition in these matters or circumstances cannot always be trusted, nor can one say that there are no accidents. for prayer, on this basis it is impossible (at least it seems to me) to determine the existence or non-existence of God, because it may be that God exists because he listened to prayer, but it may also be that he did not listen and also exists because there are reasons why he didn't listen (puts us to the test or other reasons).

 

More precisely, I mean is there one, just one argument that would undermine the whole of Christianity.

 

If I have already asked a similar question, I apologize and please delete this post. I can't remember if I'm repeating myself or not. 

[Astreja]

Aibao, you've probably met lots of atheists.  We generally don't go around saying "Hi, I'm an atheist!" any more than we would say "Hi, I just folded my laundry!" or  "Hi, I spent $2.47 on a loaf of bread last Tuesday!"

 

What are the religious demographics in your country?  What percentage of people are believers?  The higher the percentage, the greater the chances that you'll encounter a believer.  (Believers are also much more likely to tell you their beliefs than a non-believer.)

[Wertbag]

There are a couple of billion Christians in the world, so running into them anywhere is statistically likely, nothing should be read into such a thing.

 

For me the one question that underlays all of it is divine hiddenness.  The claim that God wants us to know Him, and yet has failed to get what He wants.  He is all-powerful but can't even make Himself known.  He doesn't appear, doesn't communicate and doesn't make His wishes known...  exactly as if He didn't exist.  If He existed and wanted what is claimed, then everyone would know and there wouldn't be any doubt.  He is all-powerful, so nothing could stop Him from getting want He wanted.

This whole idea of "He's real but is too shy to say hello" is just ridiculous.  He was never afraid to make Himself known according to the OT, or to send angels or give his followers magical powers, none of which happen in the real world.

[walterpthefirst]

3 hours ago, Aibao said:

I haven't been here for a long time. I needed a break from religious and even atheistic stuff. However, it does not make it any better that I pretended that the problem did not exist and told myself that I was fine, I made up my mind and I  thought I wasn't traumatized and maybe I was exaggerating. I don't know, I've lost my confidence already.

 

I recently met a couple of homeless people and started talking to them. I found out that these people are Pentecostal like me (I was surprised, especially since the church offered its homeless faithful a little help). This is not the first time I meet Christians. Suddenly it turns out that someone is a believer and talks to me about God. I started seriously wondering today, does God exist? Is it a coincidence that I meet people who are believers? I moved out of my town and still meet such people wherever I go, once I even met believers in Germany - why never atheists? Why always believing? That's why I'm wondering what's going on here, because maybe there are no coincidences in life? Maybe God is sending me such people to return to faith? It scares me.

 

Therefore, my question to you, to anyone who had a similar situation, but was able to solve it logically:

 

How to test faith to unequivocally determine whether it is true or not? (I mean, e.g. you don't believe anymore, but suddenly you find yourself in a situation like mine - you meet believers everywhere and you start to doubt - or maybe I'm wrong about the non-existence of God, if such a thing happened to me? Or suddenly you start to in a situation and you think - what is going on? That's impossible, is it God who is improving my lot? For example, it is known that intuition in these matters or circumstances cannot always be trusted, nor can one say that there are no accidents. for prayer, on this basis it is impossible (at least it seems to me) to determine the existence or non-existence of God, because it may be that God exists because he listened to prayer, but it may also be that he did not listen and also exists because there are reasons why he didn't listen (puts us to the test or other reasons).

 

More precisely, I mean is there one, just one argument that would undermine the whole of Christianity.

 

If I have already asked a similar question, I apologize and please delete this post. I can't remember if I'm repeating myself or not. 

 

It's a question of choice, Aibao.

 

If you choose to think logically about the likelihood of meeting people with the same beliefs as you, then you will do as Wertbag suggests.  You will see nothing unusual or meaningful in these chance meetings.  You will draw no supernatural conclusions and simply put it down to statistics.  These things just happen and there is no greater plan or wider meaning to them.  Furthermore, if you are thinking logically, then your emotions will not read any greater significance to these things than simple statistics.

 

However, if you choose to think emotionally and not logically about these meetings, then things are very different indeed.  Your emotional biases, needs and desires will see all kinds of patterns and meanings in these chance encounters.  You will read a great significance into them.  And if your emotions are very strong then you will probably see the hand of god at work in what are just a series of unconnected and random events. 

 

Sadly, when people strongly want something to be true they will 'make' it true by the process of Confirmation Bias.

 

https://www.simplypsychology.org/confirmation-bias.html

 

 

Now to your question.  How to test faith to unequivocally determine whether it is true or not?  If you meant, how to test faith unequivocally and logically to determine whether it is true or not, then my answer is this.

 

Logic will always destroy faith because faith is caused by emotion and logic is the absence of emotion.  Logic tells us that seven loaves and two fishes cannot feed five thousand people.  But faith tells us that they can.  Faith doesn't tell us how this can happen, but because faith is a product of our emotions, if we want to believe that seven loaves and two fish can feed five thousand people - then we will.  In defiance of logic, reason and rationality.

 

And the same goes for believing that every human descended from a man made of mud and woman made from his rib.  That the Red Sea can draw apart and stand up like a wall to allow the Israelites to walk across without getting their feet wet.  That the Sun can be made to stand still in the sky for hours so that the Israelites could carry on slaughtering their enemies by daylight.  And finally, that the dead can be raised back to life.  All of these can be believed by faith, if your emotional need for them to be true is strong enough.

 

So, as I said Aibao, it's a question of choice.  In this case, your choice.  You could stop believing right now and kill your faith stone dead, never to rise again - if you choose to think logically and not to think emotionally.   But if your emotions want to believe then there is no 'killer' argument that will work for you.  There is no test that will unequivocally determine whether the bible is true or not.  You are asking the wrong question and looking for an answer in the wrong place.

 

The ultimate test and the final answer for you can't be found by looking anywhere else but in yourself.  If you truly want to be kill your faith stop looking outside and elsewhere and start looking inside yourself.  Using logic, try to find out why you still want to believe.  Be ruthless with yourself.  Stop at nothing to try and understand yourself. 

 

Remember!  The answer to your question doesn't lie in any particular bible translation or commentary, any biblical contradiction or any scientific fact.  The answer lies within you.  Your emotions will go to any lengths to keep you believing.  So what lengths are you prepared to go to stop believing?  Only you can answer that question.

 

Thank you,

 

Walter.

 

[pantheory]

On 2/19/2023 at 1:20 PM, Aibao said:

I haven't been here for a long time. I needed a break from religious and even atheistic stuff. However, it does not make it any better that I pretended that the problem did not exist and told myself that I was fine, I made up my mind and I  thought I wasn't traumatized and maybe I was exaggerating. I don't know, I've lost my confidence already.

 

I recently met a couple of homeless people and started talking to them. I found out that these people are Pentecostal like me (I was surprised, especially since the church offered its homeless faithful a little help). This is not the first time I meet Christians. Suddenly it turns out that someone is a believer and talks to me about God. I started seriously wondering today, does God exist? Is it a coincidence that I meet people who are believers? I moved out of my town and still meet such people wherever I go, once I even met believers in Germany - why never atheists? Why always believing? That's why I'm wondering what's going on here, because maybe there are no coincidences in life? Maybe God is sending me such people to return to faith? It scares me.

 

Therefore, my question to you, to anyone who had a similar situation, but was able to solve it logically:

 

How to test faith to unequivocally determine whether it is true or not? (I mean, e.g. you don't believe anymore, but suddenly you find yourself in a situation like mine - you meet believers everywhere and you start to doubt - or maybe I'm wrong about the non-existence of God, if such a thing happened to me? Or suddenly you start to in a situation and you think - what is going on? That's impossible, is it God who is improving my lot? For example, it is known that intuition in these matters or circumstances cannot always be trusted, nor can one say that there are no accidents. for prayer, on this basis it is impossible (at least it seems to me) to determine the existence or non-existence of God, because it may be that God exists because he listened to prayer, but it may also be that he did not listen and also exists because there are reasons why he didn't listen (puts us to the test or other reasons).

 

More precisely, I mean is there one, just one argument that would undermine the whole of Christianity.

 

If I have already asked a similar question, I apologize and please delete this post. I can't remember if I'm repeating myself or not. 

 

Hi Albao,

 

Nice to see you posting again. We all have different experiences concerning religious faith, or lack of it, concerning homeless folk. Maybe 80-90 percent of the people posting here live in the US. You live in Poland, so I expect your experiences in this matter would be somewhat different from most of us here in the US.

 

I have had many experiences with homeless folk. I became an atheist as a teenager. Following the world depression in the 1930's there were a great many homeless folk which we called Hobo's. After WWII in the 1950's there was a partly homeless movement by choice called the Beatniks, before the Hippies. I think I always knew that what was popular at the time was probably wrong, like the ideas of the Nazis, for instance.  To answer your question:  to anyone who had a similar situation ( or experiences), but was able to solve it logically:

 

During the late 1940's and 1950's there was a cultural movement around the word mostly starting from the US. In the English language they were called Beatniks. They were often college students who had dropped out of mainstream society and were interested in intellectual writings, primarily poetry. They were generally philosophical, and their religious bendings were toward eastern religions such as Buddhism. They had intellectual discussions in coffee shops, and in such settings they mostly read known, or their own poetry.  Many had little money and no job, and therefore were sloppy looking. Talking with one of them about religion one could find an intellectual conversation, but little concerning Christianity. Soon after them, within less than a decade, another much bigger movement began in the US and in England, similar to the Beatniks. Most were more common folk with less intellectual bendings. We called them Hippies. The band group the Beatles became an example of them after a while.

 

Among college students many followed the beliefs of the college professor Timothy Leary. His famous quote was "tune in and drop out," meaning to drop out of college, our society, and from organized religions. But within this movement there was another group called the Jesus movement, and those within it were sometimes called Jesus freaks. They professed living the life of Jesus, with abstinence of a material life, but instead a life with drugs and a lot of sex, called "free love." These primarily young people were familiar with,  and could talk of Christianity with enthusiasm. They brought about new clothing styles, the "natural" look, and an unkempt appearance was somewhat popular. 

 

Following the Hippies there was the "born again" Christian movement in the US and in the world, that became popular and well-known, starting in the 1970's and 80's and thereafter in the US. It was a Christian movement around the world that ascribed to being re-baptized, but this time to take Christianity seriously. Many here in our forum got involved in this movement, jumping in with both feet.

 

Your quote:

"More precisely, I mean is there one, just one argument that would undermine the whole of Christianity."

 

As you know from our previous discussions, faith in God and Christianity is subjective, meaning that it is based upon experiences unrelated to objective reality or evidence. No one can prove the non-existence of God, Leprechauns, or unicorns, but there's also no objective evidence to support any of them either IMHO. To really "know" that God does not exist one must seriously study Natural Selection, Evolution theory, Geology, Archaeology, Paleontology, Anthropology, etc.  for at least 6 months of continuous readings IMO, otherwise non belief is simply based upon logic alone -- in that many parts of the Bible and religion are not logical at all in the light of elementary-school science, such as the books of Genesis and Revelation -- which are also easily contradicted by both science and logic IMO.

 

 

 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

On 2/19/2023 at 3:20 PM, Aibao said:

 

More precisely, I mean is there one, just one argument that would undermine the whole of Christianity.

 

 

Looks like the answer is "no".  There is not one simple argument that would undermine christianity.  It is an abstract concept that is held in the brain and there are millions of ideas about what it is.

[walterpthefirst]

Here's something for you to think about, Aibao.

 

Luke 16 : 19 - 31

 

19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 

20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 

21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 

23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 

24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 

26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 

28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

 

Do you see how you and the rich man are thinking along the same lines?

 

He wanted to save his five brothers from the same fate as himself and he thought that if only his brothers could be warned in the exactly the right way, they would be saved from Hades.  If only Lazarus warns them, they will be saved.  And you are thinking in the same way, but in the opposite direction - not trying to get someone else to believe but trying to get yourself to stop believing.  And like the rich man you think that there's an exactly right way in which this can be done.  One irrefutable argument or one undeniable piece of evidence that will sweep your faith away for good.

 

But, as this parable shows, faith doesn't work like that.  The rich man's five brothers could save themselves from Hades by choosing to believe in Moses and the Prophets.  It's their choice to believe or not believe just as it's your choice to believe or not to believe.  The quality or quantity of the evidence or the persuasiveness of an argument is irrelevant.  This point is hammered home by Abraham's final words.  Even if they were to see someone rise from the dead they would still not believe.  Even undeniable evidence like this will be denied by some if they so choose.  

 

We can even see this in action in the world around us, today.  There are people who deny that the world is a sphere, claiming that it is flat.  Others deny the moon landings and others deny that JFK was shot by just one man.  And so on.  They refuse to believe these things, despite the evidence.   Nor is there an irrefutable argument that is guaranteed to persuade them.  They are unpersuadable by evidence.  They are unpersuadable by argument.  They choose not to believe and that is that.

 

But when it comes to you Aibao, the reverse of this is also true.  There is no ultimate argument or piece of undeniable evidence that can stop you from believing.  There is a wealth of evidence and many persuasive arguments that should have already persuaded you that Christianity is not true.  If you haven't heeded these things then you are  just like the rich man's five brothers.  They had Moses and the Prophets in which to believe in, but chose not to.  Belief is a matter of choice.

 

You have plenty of evidence and arguments to help you not believe, but so far you have chosen not to heed them.  Therefore, your continued belief has nothing to do with this evidence and these arguments and everything to do with your choice.  Do you see that now?  

 

I hope that you haven't been upset by me taking this tough line with you, but I'd like to think that I'm doing so for your best interests.

 

Thank you,

 

Walter.

 

 

[TABA]

On 2/19/2023 at 4:20 PM, Aibao said:

More precisely, I mean is there one, just one argument that would undermine the whole of Christianity.

Aibao, I do think there is one very strong argument that undermines the Christian claims: the existence and continuance of suffering in this world.  
 

Humans and animals suffer due to both natural forces - earthquakes, volcanoes, fires and floods - and the actions of other animals and humans.  The free-will argument is often used to explain why God does nothing to stop humans from doing harm.  But in the book of Genesis we are told that humans had become so wicked that God regretted creating them and decided to eradicate them all, except for the righteous Noah and his family.  It’s not clear why God thought that the descendants of Noah would turn out to be less wicked than the descendants of Adam, but I suppose this god was an optimist.  
 

Needless to say, wars and slaughter and suffering quickly resumed after the Flood, right up to the present, the main change being the development of ever more powerful weapons.  In the modern era we had the Great War of 1914-1918, with unprecedented death and suffering.  But this god apparently decided the time was not yet right to bring a stop to it.  Then the Second World War, the Nazi Holocaust and Stalin’s genocides.  Nope, not yet time for God to end the suffering and the evil.  
 

And so it continues, century after century, millennium after millennium, and the suffering is allowed to continue.  Revelation makes it clear that God can put an end to evil and suffering, he just hasn’t done it yet.  So what is he waiting for? How much suffering is enough for him?  
 

Or maybe this kind of god  doesn’t exist!  That would be a far better explanation than the contortions you have to go through to explain why a loving, all-powerful god can exist in the presence of so much suffering.  

[Joshpantera]

On 2/19/2023 at 4:20 PM, Aibao said:

More precisely, I mean is there one, just one argument that would undermine the whole of Christianity.

 

The argument for non-duality undermines all dualistic christian concept of a God separate from nature and humanity. 

 

It's wrong, by way of dualistic concepts of reality itself being based on faulty assumptions about the way in which things appear. The idea is that two things exist - one this thing called "spirit" and this other, separate thing, called material. 

 

The simplest explanation, of course, is that only One things exists, not two or more separate things. 

 

We were just walking a christian apologist, of sorts, through this very thing. An "omnipresent" God, for instance, can't be two separate things without contradicting the meaning of omnipresence. One, singular, unitary presence is what is required to literally be "all-present." Anything less would be partial, but not full, total, and complete, "all-presence." 

 

The simplest explanation is that what exists is a unitary Reality of some type. It can have the properties of Awareness. It can be Awareness itself. Which is a non-dual direction. Thereby undermining christianities dualistic reasoning. And this means that the unitary reality itself is what interaction actually is, at it's core. The good, the bad, and the ugly. 

 

 

 

[Moonobserver]

 I myself am intrigued by the occurrence of synchronistic phenomena. Still, the best way to test any religious system is by examining its claims and tenets, especially if they're set down as scripture, for internal consistency and reliability in relation to other sources of knowledge.

[older]

To me, Taba's response is the most succinct answer to your basic question. When you look at the suffering and horrors inflicted upon humanity by whatever forces or circumstances, the only conclusion one can come to is that the god described by Christians cannot exist. There is no way a god possessing the characteristics ascribed to the Christian god would allow these things to happen. Therefore, that god cannot exist. If there is a god, it is an evil, narcissistic, selfish s.o.b. who does not deserve one iota of worship or respect. And in such a case, humans would be better off to fight against such a god with everything at their disposal.