Excidium Planetis wrote:Risottia wrote:
No, you're actually paying a price for a negligible hope of an infinite reward.
How do you know you're worshipping the right deity/ies?
Hence, it's not even logical. It's mere bullshit.
Finally, something on topic and fairly interesting.
What price are Christians paying?
If the way that you believe that you should act according to the bible precisely matches how you would act otherwise, then none (but it's irrelevant). If it changes your behaviour in any way, then there's your cost.
Better to have at least one base covered than none, I would think. After all, of all the deities ever imagined by humans, at least two (if not more) would accept Christians into paradise afterlife, and none to my knowledge would accept Atheists (actually, the Christian God might, but that's an unsettled debate).
Any god worth worshipping would reward critical thought, not punish it.
Excidium Planetis wrote:Mavorpen wrote:I don't think you understand the ramifications of that statement. If you're truly counting all deities ever imagined, that includes ALL of them. Including one that only accepts Atheists. Including one that accepts EVERYONE. Including one that accepts everyone except Christians. Ad nauseum.
And what deity is that? I meant all deities seriously considered by humans, and I've heard of no deity who Atheists believe in, or any deity that people believe in who only accepts Atheists.
Why the hell would we restrict to only popular human conceptions? In all the vastness of the universe, why would you limit your thinking to just a subset of those deities thought up by one group of primates living on one planet orbiting one of hundreds of billions of stars in one of countless galaxies?
Excidium Planetis wrote:The Rich Port wrote:
Oh, that's rich.
So now the Christian God is "seriously" considered?
The consideration for the Christian God is about as serious as the consideration for Princess Celestia, if not less.
Princess Celestia has a lot of followers, but I don't think over a billion people sincerely think she exists. And there certainly isn't historical evidence that anyone claiming to be Celestia lived and died and rose from the dead.
I'd be very surprised to hear that even 10% of the people listed as Christian internationally actually believe in it.
Excidium Planetis wrote:Mavorpen wrote:I don' think I want you considering atheism if you are seriously requesting this.
Well, then if there is no proof such a deity exists, why would that even remotely factor in to the wager? If there is a 0% chance X God exists, then it is a much safer bet to worship a deity who actually might conceivably exist.
The odds of such a deity existing are precisely the same as the odds of the Christian god existing. Actually, they're noticeably better, since this deity doesn't have any internal logical contradictions.
Yes. Note that the existence of a preacher who fits some of the patterns described in the bible is in no way related to the existence of any deity. If you want gods that actually keep their promises, start with Odin.
Excidium Planetis wrote:The Rich Port wrote:
There are plenty of karmic practices Christians don't engage in, and therefore would not have too much of it, good deeds taken into account.
Christians do not practice bhakti, or the veneration of Deva and the words of Deva, which is dissimilar to the Christian God. Christians also do not pursue jnana, or enlightenment through meditation and study, because Christians believe Heaven is a place where individual souls can live eternally.
They also believe in sin, and sin is an illusion of free will. As a Hindu, you must achieve enlightenment to reach Nirvana, not purge yourself of sin, because sin is an excuse for bad behavior. There is no salvation from God. You must make your own salvation. That is what it is to be enlightened.
Also, for all of this backpedaling in Christian apologetics to try to distance the evidence of God from physical reality, Hinduism was never about the absolutism of God as recorded in scripture. The Vedas are merely texts of example, to follow the paths of enlightenment; they're not necessarily the word of Deva, rather a guidebook to return to Deva, to escape the illusion of this world. Some say "God" wrote the Vedas, when really it was "gods", or what some call the spirits, who wrote the Vedas.
Some think they're gods, others think they're not, and that's where things can start becoming syncretic.
And you would have me believe there are Atheists who follow the words of Deva?
Yes.
No. Decades later, some other people claimed it.
That's not evidence.
2) We know these translations are accurate and have remained almost completely unchanged since they were written.
They aren't even consistent with each other. And that's before we even look at any of the other gospels that were cut from the final version of the bible centuries later.
3) We know these Gospels were written shortly after the life of Jesus, when eyewitnesses were still around.
4) We know the Gospels claim to be eyewitness testimony.
Eyewitness testimony is famously unreliable.
5) We know that these accounts were taken seriously by some at the time, even though eyewitnesses could have contradicted the Gospels if they were false.
No we don't.
6) We know contemporary accounts record that early followers of the Gospels were willing to die rather than say they were false.
Not evidence of anything.
7) We know contemporary historical accounts record that Jesus really lived and was crucified.
I can't be bothered to argue the technicalities of this right now, so I'll give you that one.
8 ) We know that Jesus could not have survived crucifixion.
True.
9) We know that dozens of Jesus' followers claimed to have seen him alive after he died.
False. We know that several decades later, some other people claimed that some people had claimed to have seen him alive after he died.
10) We know were willing to die for these beliefs, even though they had a way of knowing with certainty whether it was false or not.
No we don't, considering the significant chronological and geographical distance between these two events.
11) We know despite the ability of Jewish leaders to produce a body if Jesus really was dead, they did not.
No we don't.
12) We know the Jews had compelling reasons to discredit Christianity, but even Jewish accounts record Jesus performed miracles (through sorcery, they say)
Judaism has a long history of ignoring things like this.
13) We know Jesus could not have performed miracles or resurrected except by supernatural power
14) We know Jesus claimed he had this power because he was the Son of God.
These two are true, but irrelevant, since we have no evidence that either miracles or resurrection happened.
Obviously, Jesus could only have been God, or everyone in all of ancient Judea had a mass hallucination.
This doesn't follow in any way. See scientology.
The Venderlands wrote:Sun Wukong wrote:Your argument reduces to, "we don't know, therefore we know."
It is a logical way of thinking. Because something can't come from nothing, the Universe has to of come from something. Therefore, a singularity points to intentional design, on the highlighted basis stated above. In context, the "Big Bang" must of been caused by some superior to chance, that being one in Quintilian. At that rate, creation ex-nelo is logically absurd.
Your first assumption is wrong. Your third sentence is a lie. You utterly fail to explain where this "god" of yours came from.
The Venderlands wrote:Mavorpen wrote:This doesn't refute anything posted. Eyewitness testimony is indeed powerful. It isn't RELIABLE.
But..you do realize that Exodus is bullshit, right?
Actually, Exodus is not ********. This is because without the Exodus, the nation of Israel would of never of been formed, due to the movement of these people from Egypt to Israel. Also, there really is no other alternative as to how Israel could of formed without concurrence with these events.
Exodus is one of the parts that's most easily confirmed as wrong, and that's saying something.
Excidium Planetis wrote:Neutraligon wrote:
The presence of a dead body is considered a source of ritual impurity. For this reason, a kohein may not be in the presence of a corpse. People who have been in the presence of a body wash their hands before entering a home. This is done to symbolically remove spiritual impurity, not physical uncleanness: it applies regardless of whether you have physically touched the body.
...
The body is never displayed at funerals; open casket ceremonies are forbidden by Jewish law. According to Jewish law, exposing a body is considered disrespectful, because it allows not only friends, but also enemies to view the dead, mocking their helpless state.
http://www.jewfaq.org/death.htm
It's pretty hard to move a corpse you can't see.
The Jews didn't even point to the tomb, and even they claimed they didn't have the body.
Furthermore, they didn't consider Jesus a Jew, they considered him a heretic, and his disciples were heretics. I'm sure showing a heretic's body to heretics is alright.
You are horribly mis-stating the Jewish view of the various sects that emerged within it at the time. This whole "if you think even slightly differently to me, you're an evil heretic" thing is mostly a Christian invention.
The Venderlands wrote:Neutraligon wrote: Prove this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_creation
http://http://www.icr.org
http://www.icr.org/article/6630/
Matter is energy. The net energy of the universe is zero. You linked to an article that shows one method of creating matter out of nothing, and one that utterly fails to understand particle physics.
The Venderlands wrote:Sun Wukong wrote:And yet pairs of virtual particles create and destroy themselves in vacuum conditions.
This happens all the time. It actually accounts for something like 90% of your mass.
Particles cannot be destroyed according to the Law of the Conservation of Matter. Obviously, matter has to of had some logical beginning, that matter cannot just pop up out of thin air. Creation ex-nihilo however says the opposite, but, then again, why do we see this small exception at the beginning of time, where a deity is absolutely necessary. Again, matter is not capable of creating itself out of thin air, where the need of a transcendent being is needed at the singularity.
Conservation of matter isn't a thing. Conservation of energy is a thing. The net energy content of the universe is zero, consistent with it having emerged from nothing.
Excidium Planetis wrote:Mavorpen wrote:Not that it matters because none of these people claimed to have been eyewitnesses.
You do realize that those aren't their real names, right? They were written anonymously.
They were written anonymously. But there is literally no one else who claimed to have written them, it was nearly unanimous in the Early Church that those were the ones who wrote them. Among Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the people they are attributed to is unexpected: Luke and Mark probably wouldn't be known to most Christians had they not written the Gospels, as they were unimportant. And Matthew is not only not a very important disciple, he was a tax collector!
Secondly, Luke explicitly claims that his account is based on eyewitness testimony!
"Based on eyewitness testimony" means "I spoke to somebody who claimed to be there". It is not a sign of reliability. Mostly, it's a sign that something is, at the very least, horribly exaggerated.
Then we have to note that the authors of the gospels were hardly neutral observers, not to mention that they couldn't even get their facts straight between them.
Excidium Planetis wrote:Neutraligon wrote:
Of course no one claimed to have written them? Why would they? Mark Matthew etc did not claim to write them either. The early church is often wrong...and?
The level of scepticism is pretty high here.
Luke claims to be an eyewitness, Paul (who actually does refer to himself and whose letters were written earlier than the Gospels) claims to be an eyewitness.
Furthermore, who would have written them if not Matthew, Mark, and Luke? Why would the church attribute them to two nobodies and the second least-liked Disciple, unless those were the real authors?
Because most of the other disciples were already taken. The other gospels just didn't make the final cut, centuries later. Largely because they disagreed with what the people putting the bible wanted people to believe.