I really hope that we can keep this thread civil. Disagreements are fine, but please try to be reasonable and logical with your disagreements. And if possible, please stick to the subject matter at hand, this isn't a discussion about every verse in the Bible. Let's try to calmly and logically discuss the statements and observations made in these videos.

The creator of these videos is attempting to do three different things.

1. Prove that theism is reasonable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vi-FsaEb3Q

2. Prove that it is reasonable that the creator is personal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjHschcUIQE

3. Prove that Christianity is reasonable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpVVczuWqtc

This doesn't mean that Christianity is proven, but what he does is prove that Christianity is reasonable. In other words, that Christianity does make sense and can be thought about in a logic manner.

Reasonable http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reasonable


Sorry everyone with dial-up. I didn't create these videos and I don't have time to transcribe them. They are all excellent and thought provoking, so I suggest that you try to watch them if you can.

well unless there better apologies than what C.S. Lewis wrote, they would do me know good, but thnx anyway spidey. i think that for those who believe it is reasonable.i'll leave it at that.

No, his reasoning is actually pretty retarded. The dollar bill isn't a living organism. You can't compare how living organisms came to be with how a man made object came to be.

sorry, Giovinetta,
i did nt watch the yutube post, imreally not interested, i'll let you or others comment.

Oh, it's okay. I wasn't commenting on your post specifically, just the video. Sorry.

It's called an analogy.

He was comparing a dollar bill, which contains information to a living creature, which contains information. DNA is incredibly complex. What scientists used to call "junk" DNA is turning out to be necessary to life. They have also discovered that DNA compresses information. So one sequence of DNA actually carries information for more than one genetic expression. DNA is far more complex than we ever realized and science is currently proving that one experiment at a time. Have you ever seen a cloned cat or dog? They look nothing like the original. Different color, size, personality, etc. DNA isn't a simple ACGT = blue eyes. Nope, sorry. That information is encoded with other aspects of the creature. So if you change some DNA to make a creature's eyes blue, that might work, but you might also make it deaf or bald or non-viable.

So...what is "stupid" about that analogy? Why shouldn't the information in DNA be considered information? Why should we accept that the information in DNA could have been compressed, using an algorithm that we might never decipher, on accident?

Also, I think it would behoove you to not use the word "retarded" to mean stupid. The two words have very different meanings and you can easily offend people with special needs children by using that word flippantly.

Sorry about using "retarded" inappropriately. I honestly didn't think about it.

I know it's an analogy. What I'm saying is that using a dollar bill is misleading. He says an option is that the dollar "formed from other more primitive pieces of paper". This is obviously an attempt to make evolution look silly and back up his need for a creator (the guy who put the dollar in the wallet/made it). If this wasn't an obviously man-made object it wouldn't be nearly as absurd to say that.

His analogy wouldn't be as solid if he had used living organisms instead of non-living.

I guess I should have used "misleading". His analogy is misleading.

As you know I am on dial-up and can't watch the videos. None the less I have coments to make on the following assertion. And it really doesn't matter what the man said in the video because there's no way that he could counter what I'm about to say. I'm about to speak the truth about the Bible and the truth cannot be denied.



It is being asserted that Christianity makes sense and can be thought about in a logical manner.

Clearly this is already a subjective statement because everyone may disagree on what they feel makes "sense".

However, I will give the following argument which I believe to be infallible by any sensible person.

It is given as a premise that the biblical God is unchanging. This is an absolutely necessary premise for the biblical God. Why is it absolutely necessary? Well for two main reasons:

First off, the biblical God is a Judgmental God who makes laws that must be adhered to. And these laws are extremely important because to violate these laws can determine the eternal fate of a human soul. This is nothing to be taken lightly. A Judgmental God who makes laws and demands that they be obeyed had better be consistent. Otherwise he would be an untrustworthy God. You can't trust a Judgmental God who is constantly changing his mind of what he wants from us. If he changes his mind even once, then how can he be trusted not to change it again? So it's of utmost importance that a Judgmental God be consistent in persona.

The second reason is pretty simple. A supposedly all-perfect, all-wise, all-knowing, supreme being has no reason to be changing his mind. To change his mind implies that he doesn't know what he's doing. It implies that is confused, or has learned something new and therefore cannot have been all-knowing, or all-wise, or all-perfect in the first place.

This religion is a religion that wants to have it's cake and eat it too. It wants to claim that God is all-perfect and infallible, yet it demands in the stories of it's doctrines that this God cannot possible be all-perfect and infallible.

And therefore as a religion it is unreasonable and does not make sense.

The contradictions in the Bible should be obvious to any reasonable person. However many religious people must clearly be unreasonable. They are so concerned about wanting the stories to be true, that they ignore the fact that the stories are unreasonable.

Allow me to give just one example, however, there are many examples that can be given of why the Bible is unreasonable.

And example of why the Bible is unreasonable

In the Old Testament God commanded people to stone sinners to death. I hold that this is unreasonable in and of itself just in principle. However, as I will show, it's even more unreasonable because God changes his mind on this one which is a no-no based on what I had previously described about why a Judgmental God must be unchanging.

First, let me explain why it's unreasonable in absolute terms:

When God asked people to stone sinners to death he was also necessarily asking them to judge people to be sinners. God was asking people do his Judgmental Job. He was asking people to play God against their neighbors.

I ask you, is this reasonable in an absolute sense? Personally I don't believe it is.

I personally feel that it is unreasonable to believe that an all-perfect, all-wise, all-knowing God would ask mere mortal men to judge each other and stone each other to death as sinners.

I personally feel that it is unreasonable for the supreme creator of this universe to ask people to do this.

However, I put to you that it is Perfectly Reasonable that mortal men who made up these stories would ask their readers to stone sinners to death. It's reasonable in this context because the men who wrote these stories knew they weren't going to be there to keep people in line, so they ask their readers and followers to do their dirty work for them. That makes Perfect Sense.

So here we have a very Strong Reason to believe that the Bible was written by mortal men who had an agenda rather than being the Holy Word of any supreme all-powerful God. A God who could know who's naughty and nice and delve out his own punishments accordingly. Such a God would have no need to ask mere mortal men to do his judging and executions for him.

So I hold that the Biblical picture of God is already unreasonable just in absolute terms.

However, we don't stop here. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Bible goes on to claim that God sends his only begotten Son to earth to teach people how to live and to become a sacrificial lamb to be sacrificed to pay for their sins. (in fact this whole sacrificial lamb thing is a completely separate contraction in terms in its own right, but let's just stick with one concept at a time and focus on God having asked people to judge their neighbors and stone the sinners to death).

We know that in Jesus day the Jews were indeed still stoning sinners to death just like the God of Abraham had commanded them to do. However, Jesus did not approve of this action and asked them to stop stoning sinners to death by using a clever trick of telling them that only a sinless person should cast the first stone. Well, there was nothing in God's original commandment about that. Moreover, if all men are sinners, and God already knew that then why would God have asked people to stone sinners to death in the first place. The fact that Jesus was clever doesn't remove the unreasonable absurdity that God would have asked people to stone sinners to death in the first place.

There's no getting around it. The whole idea is unreasonable. It's unreasonable that God would have asked people to stone sinners to death in the first place. It's unreasonable that a supposedly unchanging Judgmental God would then later change his mind about wanting people to do this.

Therefore, I've just given a very clear-cut specific example of why the biblical picture of God is unreasonable.

~~~

I could give many more examples.

I already mentioned the sacrificial lamb of Jesus. I can show why this is unreasonable for an all-wise, all-knowing, all-perfect God to have done as well. It also represents a God who changes the way he does things because the First Time that God was upset with the behavior of humans he killed them all with a Great Flood, yet this second time he sends his own son as a sacrificial lamb to save them?

That's an inconsistent God. Not an unchanging God. Period. Therefore theses stories are unreasonable

It's also unreasonable that an all-powerful God would be at war with a fallen angel.

That's unreasonable.

It's unreasonable that the an all-perfect creator would lose the vast majority of souls he creates to this fallen angel. Yet according to the Bible that's precisely what's happening. The first time around Satan won the vast majority of humanity when God flushed the sinners to hell in the Great Flood. He certainly didn't swoop these people up to heaven!

In the New Testament Jesus is quoted as supposedly having said that the path to the kingdom of God is straight and the gate is narrow and few will make it. Well, if the words of Jesus can be trusted this means that the vast majority of people are not going to make it into the kingdom of God, therefore they must be going to the other place. The domain of the fallen angel.

Therefore according the Bible's own proclamations God loses the vast majority of the souls he creates.

This is a picture of a creator who loose the bulk of what he creates to a fallen angel.

Is that reasonable to you? It's not reasonable to me.

Final Comment:

As a personal spiritually can Christianity work for an individual? I believe it can.

How so? Well, I believe in the power of belief.

It's that simple.

If someone wants to believe in Jesus as their God and they ignore all the horrid things in the Bible and just romanticize the idea that Jesus died to save their soul. Then they can view Jesus as God and that will work for them.

The bottom line is that it doesn't matter how you view God. A mere belief in God is all that's required. It doesn't matter what form that belief takes. Therefore if someone wants to believe that Jesus is God and they believe it strong enough then miracles will happen for them. Because what is truly important for a miracle is simply a belief that it is possible. Period.

"If you have the faith of a mustard see you can move mountains"

Faith in God is all that is necessary. NOT faith in the biblical story.

You can perform miracles via a believe in Jesus, Zeus, Satan Claus, faeries, leprechauns, the law of attraction, magick.

Whatever you truly BELIEVE in will work.

In this way Christians who truly believe in Jesus and ignore all the unreasonable inconsistencies in the Bible will indeed have access to magick (to miracles). So for them Jesus is real! Because they make him real.

So can a belief in Jesus work as a spirituality? Sure it can.

But is the biblical picture of God reasonable? No, it most certainly is not.

Spider,

I hope this was 'civil' enough for you. You said that disagreements are fine.

I couldn't watch the videos, but I can't imagine them conflicting with the information I gave above. Everything I stated above is the truth with resepct to what is stated in the bible.

I hold that the Bible is unreasonable. An no video is going to change that.

It looks like I didn't miss much by not being able to watch these videos anyway. It sounds like he's just trying to justify things using abstract analogies anyway.

If he doesn't justify the actual contraditions in the biblical stories then he's just avoiding the issues with a lot of unrelated hoopla anyway.

I wish I had DSL, I would actually like to see the video. I have a feeling that I could totally blow away his actual arguments.

Abracadabra,



Now this is both true and false.

True, God's character doesn't change. God doesn't age, need food, produce waste, grow tired, grow weak, etc.

False, God can change his mind. God was convinced to change him mind on several occasions.



It can be argued that God's plan all along was that man shouldn't be under the law. But that's beside the point, because God is shown changing his mind in the Bible. To then claim that the God of the Bible cannot change his mind is a fallacy. God is unchanging, but you have taken that to mean completely unchanging. God is not an impersonal force, but a person. A being with a mind and a will and the ability to change. Therefore this line of argumentation is without merit.



This is categorically untrue. God is a thinking being with emotions. When God is described as changing his mind in the Bible, it's always because of the love he feels towards a particular individual or group of people.

You cannot premise your arguments on the fact that the Biblical God cannot change his mind, when the Bible describes him doing just that on several occasions. Therefore your arguments are fallacious.

The analogy isn't perfect, but it gets his point across.

To try to figure out how the dollar got into the wallet without looking outside of the wallet means that any answer you come to will be wrong. His argument is that the same can be said of this universe. If you try to determine how the universe was created, but you cannot look outside of the universe for answers, then you might be ignoring the correct answer. Gottfried Leibniz (famous mathematician and the first person to discover Calculus) agreed with this logic. Many philosophers and scientists have agreed with this logic.

This is unreasonable Spider.

You can't have as supposedly all-knowing, all-wise, all-perfect God who has a master plan changing his mind based on new information.

You've got to give up something.

If you want to allow for a God who can change his mind, then you must also allow that God is not all-knowing, all-wise, all-perfect God who has a master plan.

That's fine. No problem.

But then you have to confess that the biblical God is not all-knowing, all-wise, and all-perfect. Nor can he carry out a master plan.

I'll buy that. But now you've got a picture of a flawed imperfect God who is quickly becoming as frail as a mortal human.

This was Albert Einstein's objection to the Biblical picture of God. Einstein clearly stated that the Biblical picture of God demans that God be every bit as frail and vulnerable as a mere mortal human.

It reduces to a God that is just an as frail and confused as a mortal human and is just experimenting with pets in a terrarium call Planet Earth.

He tries differnet things using trial and error to see what works best.

You can't have your cake and eat it too Spider. Either God is perfect, or he's flawed. Make up your mind.



No. That's not a reasonable argument at all. That would imply that God was naive and unprepared for the fall of man from grace and was caught off guard by it.

Nope. That's not a reasonable argument at all.




Such a God would be just as frail as a mortal human. You're actually suggesting an immature God who is still growing in his own spirituality.

That's just another unreasonable grasp at straws on your part in total desperation to try to justify the story.

And for what purpose Spider?

Why are you so anxious to justify a story that claims that all humanity fell from grace from God, and that God had to sacrifice his only son to save mankind, and that the only way to get back in good with God is to accept that you are responsible for Christ having to be nailed to a pole?

What do you even WANT that to be true?

What's so great about this story that you are so desperate that it be true?

I have asked you this question for over a year now and you have NEVER answered it.

Why are you so anxious to support an unfounded mythology that claims that we are at odds with our creator?

A mythology that is clearly full of holes too boot?

Why is it so important to you to beleive on pure faith that we are a disgrace to our creator and have failed him?

Can you answer that?

Why are you so anxious to believe this horrid story?

Wouldn't it be the greatest thing you can imagine if the biblical story was false?

That would mean that we aren't guilting of failing God and that God never had to sacrifice his own son to pay for our disgracful failures and rebellious attitudes.

That would be a reason to CELEBRATE!

Don't you think?

If the Bible is false that's the greatest news anyone can imagine!

Yet here you are trying to support it and justify it at all cost.

Why?

Why are you so obscessed in wanting this horrible story to be true?

It says that we have failed our creator. All of us without exception!

It even claims that there is nothing we can do to earn redemption on our own merit!

Sounds like a brainwashing trap to me Spider.

If we can't even redeem ourselves via our own actions then who's fault is that? It appears we were placed into a hopless situation which means that we aren't even responsible for it!

That is unreasonable in itself!

All men are sinners? Whether they choose to be or not?

You're damned without a chance.

Who's fault is that?

You can't have a God claiming that man's at fault and then simultaneously proclaim that all men are sinners whether they like it or not.

This is clearly the unscruplous brainwashing of men to make the masses feel guilty and under control of the church.

No genuine God would have ever been this unreasonable.

But please answer my question.

Why are you so anxious for this horrid story to be true?

Why are you so anxious to believe that you are unworthy of your creator on pure faith?

Why do you want to place your faith in such a negative picture of both God and man?

The argument that the universe needs an intelligent creator doesn't support or justify the biblical verion of God one iota.

The idea that the universe requires an intelligent creator supports all religious philosophies equally.

That would include Islam, Judaism, all forms of Christianity. But it would also include all of the pagan and pantheistic religions too. It ever supports animism.

It could also be used to support Greek Mythology and all the other Mediterranean mythologies.

The idea that some supernatural force is responsible for this universe doesn't support the bible or even remotely suggest that the biblical story of God is reasonable.

So if this was the argument given in that video than it's a totally moot argument with respect to offering any support that the bible might be "reasonable".

The biblical story of God is unreasonable.

Period.

That doesn't mean that no God or spiritual beings exist. It just means that the Bible has nothing to do with God.

That's all.

Abra,

There are three videos. The one discussing the dollar and wallet pertains to proving the idea of theism as possible. You apparently agree with the videos point.

You seem to believe that the Biblical God supposedly just knows everything. I believe that God's omniscience is due to God's ability to observe everything. Since God exists outside of time and observes everything that occurs in time, God knows everything that has, is or will happen. This means that God wouldn't know what Moses would say unless Moses had a chance to say it. God changed his mind because his beloved servant asked him to, not because he learned some new information.



No, it would imply that God is limited to knowing what has, is or will happen. If God hadn't tried to gently lead people, then he couldn't know if it would have worked or not. You have to remember that while time is linear to humans, it's instantaneous to God who exists outside of time. Jesus is called "The Lamb Slain from the foundation of the World", because Jesus' crucifixion took place at the same time as the creation of the world, from outside of time.



A God who can think and experience emotion is frail? What logic do you base that on?



Don't you think you are interpreting a little bit through your own lens here? Who says I must "WANT" it to be true, couldn't it be that I believe it to be true? I honestly believe in the God of the Bible. Not because I feel I must or because I hope to get something in exchange for my worship, but because I think it's true.

You're absolutely correct Spider.

I am viewing this through my own personal lens of experience and intuition.

I don't believe I'm at odds with my creator.

So why should I believe a story of a God that claims that I am?

I don't believe that God would ever ask people to slaughter animals to appease it for their bad behavior.

I think that's an asburd thing for a God to do.

So why should I believe a story that claims that God is like that?

I don't believe that God would ask people to judge each other and stone their brothers to death for acts they believe to be sinful.

So why should I believe a story that claims that God is like that?

I don't believe that I have failed my creator to the point where he had to send his only begotten son to be slaughtered on a pole for my sake.

I have never done anything in my entire life that would warrant such a horrific act.

So why should I believe a story that claims that God had to do that because of me?

You're absolutely right Spider. I definitely view this from my perspective.

I see absolutely no reason to believe that God could be as dismal as the biblical stories suggest.


I see no logical reason why I should be at odds with my creator, nor do I feel at odds with my creator intuitively.

So why should I believe a story that claims that I should feel this way?

It's absurd.

I've found a beautiful picture of God in a pantheistic religion.

A picture of God that says that I have no reason to be out of grace with God unless I truly chose to be.

This makes much more sense to me.

This is a picture of God where all God expects from me is to do as I will and harm none.

No there's wisdom!

No need for a horrid tale of long lists of commandments and how other men broke them. Just do as you will and harm none.

That's true wisdom Spider.

There's a picture of a God who is so wise She can sum everything up in one brief statement.

She doesn't ask people for blood sacrifices. She doesn't tell people to stone each other to death. And she has no need to send Her only begotten daughter to die for the sin of man, because She gives men the grace to save themselves.

She's no idiot.

Now that's a picture of a wise God.

It fits with my experience, my intuition, and my understanding of what a truly wise God should be.

So yes, of course I'm going to believe what feels right for me.

If you are intuitively drawn to the negativity of having failed a blood thirsty God who lusts for blood sacrifices. Then more power to you.

But don't try to claim that your belief is reasonable.

From my perspective, it's totally unreasonable.

From my perspective, to choose to beleive such a picure of God on pure faith appear to me to be the act of an emotional masochist.

No offense intended. I'm just describing what it appears to be to me. It's a clearly a picture that states that you have fallen from grace from your God to the point where he had to sacrifice his own Son to save you from your own horrid rebellion against him.

That's what the story says.

I don't feel that I have ever rebelled against my creator. Thus the story seem utterly asburd to me.

It also seems totally unreasonable, in my mind, concerning what a surpreme being should be like.

But I confess, of course this is my view.

But then again, I'm not trying to argue that such a negative picture of God and Mankind is "reasonable".

Personally I think it's the most absurdly unreasonable story ever told. I also hold that on a purely intellectual level it is also riddled with self-contradictions and logical inconsistencies.

JMO.

Wow, all of that and you didn't come close to addressing my question.



I already know you don't believe in Christianity, but why do you assume that I don't believe in Christianity, but I want to? Why can't it be that I truly believe in Christianity? Isn't that a possibility?

Unless you're claiming that you have no free will, I hold that you are indeed choosing to believe in it on pure faith.

You never answered my question of why you choose to believe in such a negative picture of God on pure faith.

From what you appear to be saying you have no choice but to believe it.

So I guess you have no free will then.

That's all I can surmise from that.