“You are right in that Jesus said He did not know the day and the hour – as a physical being on earth, He didn’t. But His origin is that he is also God, and as God in Heaven, trust me, Jesus knows when He is coming back and He will come back no matter whether or not a person believes He is coming back.”

Funny, I was always taught that Jesus was 100% god and 100% man. To say that he is somehow more god when he’s in heaven is to contradict the presumed degree of godship while he was on earth.
 
And yet, in order to show that He could live perfectly on earth, He fully was human on earth, subject to all the things we humans experience. That way He could show that the law could be perfectly kept.

“I guess you are operating under the assumption that rationalists think rationally?”

More so that faith causes irrationality through the rejection of reason. This is one reason why I and others like myself are hostile.

Faith is not irrational – it is not the rejection of reason at all. You exercise faith daily without realizing it. Do you examine every chair you sit on to make sure it is structurally sound? If you get a notice from the post office that there is a parcel there for you of something you ordered, do you not go to the post office to retrieve the parcel even though all you have is a piece of paper, not the parcel in your hand? These are faith actions. I think it takes more faith to trust what the rationalists claim. Look at scientific studies. At one point scientists believed that the earth was the center of the solar system and the sun revolved around the earth. Day after day scientific paradigms are being disproved. And it is coming out that with some of the sacred beliefs of scientists, scientists have fudged the information, yet every day science is confirming the facts of the Bible, finding artifacts that prove the truth of the assertions.

“For a rationalist to mock something, there has to be something worth mocking. So they are, by their mocking God, admitting that God exists.”

Whoaa, BIG jump off the stupid tree. You assume that if someone is mocking you, they are mocking god, so they must believe that god exists? Maybe, just maybe, they’re mocking *your belief in god*, and their anger isn’t directed *at* god, per se, but at your own stupidity, at the stupidity of the concept of god.

So are you saying that you believe that God exists, and yet you are mocking my belief in God. If you are mocking my belief in a God who exists then why, for He exists and my belief is based on fact? If God exists it is rational to believe in Him and why would you mock. I have to draw the conclusion that you are trying to convince yourself that God does not exist. Or if He exists, to pretend that He doesn’t so why not mock a believer? I think your logic is flawed here.

“Their very protesting about the Bible tells me that there is truth there.”

What a quaint little Christian deduction. Please cite why lambasting something for its stupidity somehow makes it true.

I have found that people strongly protest something that they believe is true. Or they protest something that they wish wasn’t true. But the loudest protests usually occur because there is a belief that something is worth protesting. To be worth protesting, the protester has to believe that there is some truth in what they are protesting – or why make such a strong protest.

“The more they protest, the more they are indicating to me that they have to work very hard to try and deny the truth.”

Kind of like how you externally indoctrinate people to refuse any and all evidence that god doesn’t exist (on faith)? And this is done via making faith out to be moral, or holy; higher than reason. This way you can paint doubt and suspicion as immoral, reason as not being as powerful as faith, so that a Christian has a clean conscience when choosing to be ignorant to opposing arguments. You may have devised *some* reasons along the way for your beliefs, but whenever those are dispelled the Christian always resorts to faith as an emergency exit. Always.

Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” From my point of view faith is reasonable. You are the one trying to make faith devoid of reason. You have faith for many things yourself. If you have a job you have faith that your employer will pay you. I have seen people “reason” using wrong information and end up with a wrong conclusion. People do that daily which is why there are so many misunderstandings. In order for reason to be accurate, it has to be based on truth.

“If the rationalists got their way and did what they “felt” was so important to do, we would soon be reduced to anarchy.”

A dubious claim. Please cite why the use of reason automatically enforces one particular economic doctrine.

Anarchy is not an economic doctrine, anarchy is chaos and disorder.

“People tend to be rather self-serving and wanting what they want.”

Your preference of democracy to anarchy represents that same selfishness; you only endorse it because you have your own best interests at heart.
Ie- “In a society were each person was self-governed, what would prevent one person from deciding that it was in their best interests to take something of yours?”

Actually I am not talking about democracy at all but theocracy – rule by God’s Word. And yes, it has my own best interests at heart because God knows what is best for us. Not only by material possessions which I used as an example, but all of our lifestyle. Even though you may not admit it, without the Judeo-Christian values of our society, you would not be so free to share your opinion. Go to another country and speak out against the god of their country, and see if you are even allowed to live and speak so freely.

Your entire endorsement of anti-self-government is the dictum that people should be protected from themselves.
 
We are fallible people, and do not have a track record of lovingkindness to each other. A check of history will show that.
 
Maybe you should learn a thing or two about anarchy before you declare that it is immoral. They entire Christian method of billing this or that as true isn’t necessarily after taking into consideration “Is it really true?” because that isn’t something faith is capable of. Rather, it’s after considering what serves you best, and what feels good to believe, what is moral. “Blessed are those who believe, and yet have not seen.” BLESSED. Not true, not closer to the truth than those who do not. Blessed: a moral term, in contrast to cursed or [eternally] damned. So it doesn’t make much sense for you to argue that anarchy is wrong because it would allow people to be self-serving; you are a Christian because you are self-serving. You want rules and laws to protect *you* from other people, you take into consideration your own benefit before advocating democracy just as much as a thief does when he is considering stealing from you. They are both acts of self-preservation.

Ok, this reasoning is flawed, so rather than discuss the above point by point I want to point out that your argument that what Christians believe isn’t true shows me that somewhere you are comparing that to a standard of truth as you understand it. Since we are dealing with truth – we have to assume that somewhere, somehow there is ABSOLUTE TRUTH. And if there is absolute truth, there is an absolute truth giver. To state that something is or isn’t true has to be made with such a standard in mind. Something cannot be true and false at the same time. If atheists say that there is no God, and Christians say that God is God. Both statements cannot be true simultaneously – one is true and one is false. It is logical to assume that if there is an absolute truth then there has to be some absolute truth giver. No human has never made a mistake in their life – so I have to assume that there is a higher being that is the absolute truth giver – and for me that is God.

“Your arguments, the two times you have come to my site and left comments, imply that you want to be self-goverened, not governed by any rules and regulations.”

You are completely pulling that out of your ass. Atheism does not advocate any political or economic doctrine. I never mentioned anything about government or self-rule in either of my previous comments.

Atheism does not advocate anything – it is rather stark. As one gravestone over an atheist’s grave said, “All dressed up and nowhere to go.” I suspect that you are not atheistic, but rather agnostic. Since an atheist does not believe in God, why would they want to argue so passionately that there is no God. In order to do that, they have to have some belief in God to have to carry out that sort of an argument.

“Rationalists operate on this earth, in a three dimensional environment.”

Observant.

“They are subject to their senses, to time and space. Our senses play tricks on us.”

Wow, do you realize how utterly imprudent and doltish your statement is? Our senses have it out for us, and are subsequently are employing their best efforts to deceive us, then? Sensory information is the axiom of all acquirable knowledge. You cannot logically devalue sensory evidence and reason, because it requires reason to do just that; you disarm yourself as soon as you begin. Nice try.

LOL, sensory evidence has been proven to not be accurate. It is based on the observer, and our observations are often flawed or in error. One experiment that I once took part in involved three containers of water – one was very hot, one was lukewarm, and one was ice cubes in water. The person in the experiment was blindfolded and did not know about the lukewarm water. First the person’s hand was put into the hot water, and then put into the lukewarm water – the water was reported as very cool. Then the person had their hand put into icewater – and then into the same lukewarm water (same temperature as before) but they reported the lukewarm water as hot or warm. The lukewarm water was constant, but the senses of the person detected different temperatures due to the ice or hot water. People have different thresholds of pain, people perceive colors differently, people’s hearing varies – there is no constant in the senses. It is rather dubious to believe that our senses give accurate information or consistent information.

“Any of the rationalist philosphers have problems with their theories. Bound by unreliable senses, they tend to get lost in a quagmire of contradictions.”

It’s not that the senses are unreliable you–oh my god, I don’t even know why I’m bothering. “There is only perspective seeing, only perspective knowing.” Philosophers and rationalists disagree on many things because they come from different schools of thought that originate through different perspectives on the world. This is the same thing that leads to sectorial splits and disputes within Christianity.

Then whose perspective is the truth if we are only perspective seeing and perspective knowing? If there is an absolute standard of truth, then we can judge the truth or error of a statement by how it lines up with the absolute standard of truth. It seems rational to me to compare any thought process to truth. If we just rely on our own perspective there is room for distortion. You are right there are disputes within Christianity, as there are in any religion. But Christians do have much in common – Christians believe that Jesus is God, that Jesus came to earth, died for our sins, and rose. They know that the tomb is empty and that our sins are forgiven if we accept this awesome gift.

“God operates on a plane far above our three dimensional world, and while we may say we can’t see Him with our senses, that does not mean that He is not there.”

That also means that you have no evidence to prove he exists and therefore no business claiming he does, you dits. I would just as well be justified in saying that there is a magical elf on my head, who is invisible, but you should believe he exists because he does, just beyond the structure of the physical universe. Every time you see a rainbow, you’re seeing my elf in action; what more proof could you want? The last question that should be asked is whether or not my elf exists, rather, one should only ask my elf what his will for their lives is. Because my elf isn’t a mechanism for control.

All of creation proves that there is a creator – things did not spring up by randomness. Try smashing your computer and putting it into a paperbag (I will give you all the elements of the computer – not making you create them from nothingness) try shaking them up and see if they randomly come together to make a computer. Something as intricate as a computer has to have a maker, why not so our earth which is far more intricate than a computer.  There are too many interconnections among life, too many intricacies to deny a creator. So for me, creation is enough evidence that there is God. Our life is another evidence. I bet that for one whole day you cannot remind yourself to breath in, breath out every second of the day, or for that matter for the week without stopping or being distracted. And that doesn’t include all the other bodily processes that operate in our lives (heart, liver, kindneys, brain, etc). To deny God and a creator takes far more faith for me than to believe God created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is therein.

“ … sent His Son, Jesus, to earth as an ultimate sacrifice for our sins. His loving sacrifice makes it possible for us who accept this great gift, to have access to God, something we couldn’t do as sinful …”

Blah blah blah.

You mention later on that you were raised a Southern Baptist for 18 years. Kind of goes to show you that just being in church doesn’t make one a Christian any more than being in a garage for 18 years makes one a car. You are given the freedom to choose to accept Christ’s gift of salvation or not. If you choose not to accept His gift He will not force it on you – you are free to be an atheist/agnostic or whatever. But whatever choice you make has eternal repercussions, and you will be accountable for your choice. Before you give up on this choice, I strongly suggest that you reconsider. You, in 18 years have heard enough of God’s Word to not be able to claim ignorance of His word.

“And a bonus benefit of obeying God is that our lives operate so much more smoothly and we know a joy that passes all understanding.”

To a Christian, everything is beyond understanding.

I have to be honest with you, I am glad that God, who has greater understanding than me, is in charge of the world. If I relied on my own limited understanding, I would be subject to way too many errors. I will not pretend that I have perfect understanding, but Praise God, I have a God who suprasses all.

“I am also curious what your religious background is, and why you feel so strongly against Christians.”

You’re wondering how acquainted I am with your priestly tricks? Raised in a southern Baptist church for 18 years, Sunday after Sunday. I still attend church semi-regularly.

I am hoping that your bring some of your discussion to the attention of your pastor our youth minister. I bet they would also have good input. And I pray you keep attending church, and listen. If you ever want to, read my testimony – I mirrored much of your thinking -for I rejected God for 40 years before I knew Him. I so regret that mistake on my part, but God restores what is lost. I pray that you find Him, and realize that He is God and that He loves you and wants a relationship with you.

Heather

Dear Yohsiph -

ok, so you call creation “existence.” Well then all of existence had to have an origin, a creator.

Perhaps you should spend some time “educating” your “ignorant” pastors and youth workers. I bet you could spend some lively time discussing things with them.

For that mattter, you cannot devalue absolute truth with absolute truth, the argument is circular. For if you state that there is no absolute truth, you are judging that by a standard, and to assert that there isn’t absolute truth you have to have some idea of absolute truth.

Try as you may, but it is impossible for you to reduce faith in science to the same superficiality as faith in god. Scientists must allow their findings to be published in a scientific journal and pass the scrutiny of their colleagues and peers, and after much suspicion, experimentation, and adverse tests, what was discovered is finally allowed to be called scientific theory or fact. Faith in god on the other hand, is believing in something that does not exists. I have faith in scientific authority because their findings have been tested empirically and are personally verifiable. I do not have faith in the authority of god because that’s not even something you can prove exists–or do you just not understand that?

First of all there are many “scientific” theories that have been replaced by further information. Things that were once assumed to be true have been disproved. And these so-called “facts” are later shown to be inaccurate. A good look at a scientific journal will show you that. And I can prove God exists. Look at creation – without a creator, creation would not occur. Something had to start that creation -and don’t use “big bang theory” for in order to have that big bang theory there had to still be a source. It isn’t logical to deny God. In proverbs it says that a fool claims that there is no God.

First of all you seem to be confusing faith in God with religion. Yes, Christians have made mistakes in the name of God, all people sin and hurt others. If you think Christians are so bad, check out the genocide in Muslim nations. People do do stupid things, and they will answer to God for that.

What you seem to neglect is that when you die and stand before God in judgment, you will have to answer to Him for what you did or didn’t do. He is not going to grade on a scale, He is not going to say, “Ok your life is fine, you didn’t participate in the crusades.” He is going to look with absolute justice at what you have done with your life, your sins and your good works. It will not be a sliding scale. You have one way, and one way alone to pass Judgment, and that involves your relationship with Jesus Christ – do you accept His gift of salvation and forgiveness of sins or not.

Scientists in the early periods of science believed in spontaneous generation and used maggots to prove that it happened. It wasn’t until later that it was discovered that fly eggs turned into maggots. Darwin fudged data, scientists are not reliable, for they have a vested interest in getting their theories accepted.

But all this is moot – for the real issue, the only issue is, Will you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior or not.

Heather

Yohsiph, I will pray for you. I spent 40 years feeling the same about God as you, harboring anger at God and feeling that Christians were hopeless fools. I pray that you find someone in your life that will help you to see that you are missing out on a wonderful relationship with God. Actually I never had hope until I accepted Jesus in my life. I still encourage you to read my testimony.

Heather