Ask a Christian

Assassin,

You obviously believe that God

and you firmly do not believe in predestination. I certainly understand that position and that you actually do believe it to be true.

What’s interesting is that even though you have firmly stated a disbelief in predestination you actually used predestination as a reason in a comment to my question concerning amputees. You said

Obviously, according to you, this person losing his legs wasn’t a condition of anything other than a decision by God in regards to his ‘plan’. A belief in “God’s Plan” is used throughout multiple religious communities. Typically, it’s used in the same context as the one you used it in. Someone dies, or is injured, defeated, successful at something or perhaps they experienced some great injustice. Condolences are given to people saying “that was just God’s plan”. In other words, for example, it wasn’t your fault that your child died it was simply God’s plan. This is suppose to make the effected party feel better because “God’s Plan” means that it wasn’t their fault and that they had nothing to do with the catastrophic circumstances that occurred. Predestination is constantly being used in this regards yet these are the same people who vehemently profess that free will is the domain of mankind. Your statements are, obviously, directly in opposition to one another and you need to realize that using ‘convenient understanding’ rather than a real acknowledgement of truth is at work here. Convenient understanding is always an easier path to follow. After all, the truth can be a very frightening thing.

At this point, I would like to ask you to stop from time to time and examine what your particular religious institution is inciting you to believe. I’m not asking you to attack the institution, just to examine it and to not turn from, or be afraid of, facing the truths you may discover.

Finally, please, please read these quotes and think about them… Write them down and keep them in your wallet to reflect on from time to time. I truly hope they will help you throughout your life.

[INDENT]“People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.”
Robert J. Ringers[/SIZE][/INDENT]

[INDENT]“It’s not hard to find the truth. What is hard is not to run away from it once you have found it.”
unknown[/SIZE]
[/INDENT]

[align=center]The choice is now yours Assassin:

[COLOR=‘RoyalBlue’]THE BLUE PILL

or

[COLOR=‘Red’]THE RED PILL?[/align]

hah, things are absolutely not getting better
there is still only a tiny elite that is well off, just as it has always been

https://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
and thats only poverty

I still think it’s getting better. Is it good yet? No. It’s not as bad as it used to be, though.

If you guys won’t listen to me when I say that an all-mighty and all-loving God could never create a Hell, maybe you will listen to a Christian saying that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODUvw2McL8g

you still have chanse to hate those parasites.

are you shure? doesn’t strong use weak to become stronger and make others weaker? doesn’t we buy 80$ toys when other people starve? doing nothing is same as doing evil if you ask me.

yeah, you have traveled so much around the world and saw everything. you have the point.

more you will search for evidence the less chance you will find it

you know… you must be right, since you know everything. hey! maybe you are god?

The choice is now yours Assassin:

give me red… gulp …well now I see, that T-shirt was under the bed. thnx dude.

Assassin -

You’ve been put in the position to answer questions about your beliefs and you haven’t been able to do that. Your comments have mostly been smarmy lashes at the people that asked the questions or made comments for which you have no effective reply.

You’re the representative of Christianity and you represent it as being unintelligent and hateful.

Someone told you a bunch of lies and forced you to believe them. Now you come here and tell a bunch of lies and when you’re questioned about it, you respond by attacking those people for questioning them.

That’s resentment. You’ve been forced to believe a bunch of bullshit that controls you, your actions and your very thoughts. And you resent those of us that weren’t forced to submission by our parents, churches, and societies.

You can’t think for yourself or even make the most basic decisions for yourself. You think and do what you’re told. You can make some grand claims of superiority based on nothing if you really want, but we all recognize this as an expression of inferiority complex and low self-esteem.

You’d LOVE to be us. But you can’t break your own psychological chains - you were broken when you were very small. I’ll prove it to you:

Instead of spending your time and energy in a Temple built by or for God, you spend your time with a PC and on the internet - Temples built by Science and Technology. You’re not spending your life striving to do as Jesus taught, you’re playing PC games and whatever else you do with your PC. You’re not praying, you’re not helping the poor, you’re not discussing Jesus with a Priest, You’re spewing hate toward others on the internet.

You hate us because we can do all the things that YOU want to do but can’t - and we don’t feel guilty about it at all. And you want to tell yourself that this proves that you are superior to the rest of us because you abstain from all the fun things.

And don’t lie about it - if these weren’t things that you wanted, then they wouldn’t be referred to as temptations. You want them and can’t have them. And we can have them anytime and as often as we like with no guilt. We’re free to do these things, you aren’t. We don’t have to follow social rules and laws designed by and for bronze age people.

You can tell yourself that you know what you’re doing and that WE’RE the fools because you’ll go Heaven and we’ll go to Hell, but that’s just sour grapes. You have absolutely no idea about this.

And that’s why you don’t want to think about the questions - because if something of Christianity that is taught to be true turns out to be false, then how could you assume that anything else of it is true? No, you HAVE to take all of it as true.

The truth is that you’re someone whose parents raised you in the same way their parents raised them, and their parents raised them - to be an authoritarian - the base social psychology of the human animal.

And while many of us have advanced socially, culturally, and intellectually - Authoritarians retain the same social psychologies as those of the earliest civilizations - tribal, in-group/out-group, superior/inferior, dominant/subordinate, pyramidal, hierarchical social structure, power derived from an ultimate authority: God, ignorant, superstitious, subservient to authority - and resentful toward those that don’t also submit.

Believe what you want, man. It truly doesn’t matter to me. I think it’s pretty clear here that you can’t defend your beliefs - all you’re doing is lashing out at people because they weren’t raised to submit to authority or conform to the social and intellectual standards of a backward society.

:awesome:

Zen609,

Your statements are a little cruel aren’t they?

Don’t attack the person, attack the problem.

Assassin,

Don’t call me dude. Please?

Right, well, it might be cruel - but it wasn’t said from malice or spite.

I wasn’t exactly attacking Assassin - he’s just a convenient symbol. It’s not personal - I like him.

To me, this IS the real issue of Christianity, but not only Christianity, but all religion and any other organization of this social psychology.

All of our major cultural, socially, political, and international problems stem from this social psychology. Although, I’m not saying that this social psychology is necessarily the direct cause of all of these problems, it is a necessary element in the mechanics of the causes and retards or rejects effective solutions.

This social psychology is THE major theme of Western Civilization. It is and always has been THE struggle in our civilization. It was described by Plato in the Republic and in his writings of Socrates, to whom authoritarianism was the central theme. The problem was symbolized by the Greeks as ‘The Dual Nature of Man’, ‘The Lower Nature and Higher Nature of Man’, ‘The Enlightened and The Base’.

All political and social philosophy from the 18th Century on recognizes this social psychology, although it wasn’t referred to as the 'Authoritarian Personality". It was a central premise to John Stuart Mill and also to Edmund Burke, who based conservatism upon this social psychology, writing that it was hereditary.

But the point was that the REAL source of the debate isn’t theological or philosophical - it’s psychological. That’s why this debate exists and continues after all these centuries - not because it’s a difficult debate about some esoteric philosophical or theological point - but because one side of the debate is this social psychology.

The positions aren’t THEIR beliefs, they’re creeds. Religious beliefs (in the West) aren’t just personal beliefs, they’re organizational principles, social planks passed from one generation to the next. The children are indoctrinated early in life. It’s what defines a group or a society.

Assassin can NEVER agree with you no matter what argument you make and no matter what evidence you present. He would be betraying his family, his friends, his church, and his society - because these ideas of Christianity define those structures. It’s the organizational creed.

And that’s not to mention the massive cognitive dissonance that would be caused by the realization that everything you think about EVERYTHING is wrong. People have psychotic breaks from that kind of cognitive dissonance. He defines himself, the world, and everything and everyone in it with these ideas.

Ask him what his family or church would do if he told them he was gay or that he wanted to convert to Islam or Judaism. Or if his sister had an abortion. Or he said he thought there was no god and that Jesus wasn’t his son at dinner.

I don’t hate. Period.

Right. That’s exactly the same. :rolleyes:

Instead of insulting, can you provide the evidence I lack and have been unable to find after decades of research from thousands of people?

Wow, it amazes me how you are so filled with the love of God. I’ve never seen a more compassionate being.

What? I’m not the one who is making claims that no one can say to be wrong, I’m not the one who said to be sure about anything, and I’m certainly not the one judging the entire humanity as parasite as if I was the supreme judge of the human kind.

Well, who knows, looking at how the god of the bible was full of anger and desire for vengeance… maybe you are God!

Were you here since the beginning? I don’t think so. I get your point, but Zen609 is not really being cruel, he is being honest about what we all have seen about Assassin in this thread. I see it as Zen trying to say some harsh truths to help Assassin. People have done that to me before, and it hurts, but, in the end, it made me realize what I didn’t want to realize.

EDIT:

Sigh… Let’s just hope this changes with the Internet. Otherwise, the world might actually get to an end because of religion and specially intolerance

I appreciate your positive interpretation of my motives, but to be honest I can’t say that I was trying to help Assassin - but, I’m not trying to hurt him either.

I don’t have any intention of convincing or encouraging someone to abandon their Faith. I’m not offended by someone’s belief in God or Christianity, and I don’t disrespect them intellectually or assume that they are ignorant.

I don’t mind living with and among the religious, as long as they don’t mind living with and among the secular, like me. And here we have the problem.

I look at the absolute horror show that was the Middle Ages, this period between the Fall of Rome and The Age of Enlightenment, and I compare what we’ve accomplished in these few centuries since we threw off the yoke of The Church - Literacy, Education, Democracy, Medicine, Science, Technology, Industry, Infant Mortality Rate, Life Expectancy, Food, water, transportation, engineering, infrastructure, - I could go on and on and on and on.

We’ve gone from 1200 years of absolute darkness, ignorance, violence, and misery to what we have now in just a few hundred years. And I don’t want to go back.

In my own country, there is a large and growing movement of people that seek to install a Christian theocracy. These people aren’t the nice, compassionate Christians, they’re the Medieval, kill-em-all-n-let-Gawd-sort-em-out types. They’re complete Authoritarians with a lot of Hate, a love of war and violence, and they will NOT be the least bit kind to their enemies. They will subjugate everyone at the point of a gun and they don’t bother to pretend otherwise.

And the people of Islamic countries are certainly subjugated by their religion and societies, especially women, of course.

And as I said before, I DO NOT want to go back to theocracy. Assassin’s contempt for the non-christians was a reminder to me of this aspect of Christianity - it’s need to dominate. This is the kind of contempt and disrespect for The Other that we see from Authoritarians throughout the history of Christianity.

I have no idea how many people have been violently murdered in the name of God or Jesus, but my guess is that it is the greatest cause of violent death in our history. But I do know this kind of contempt and hatred of The Other from Authoritarians when I see it.

As I said, I don’t mind living among the religious, and have respect for their Right to their beliefs, but it seems that many of them do not have that respect for non-Christians. So, in the face of this kind of superiority trip and contempt from an authoritarian Christian - I thought it was appropriate to remind them of the reality of the situation.

The Christian rule of the Western World was a nightmare, and it’s not hard to see how very dramatically life has improved for all of us since the Secular Democracies. It’s very obvious which worldview is superior.

Have your personal beliefs. I WANT you to be happy and comfortable. But don’t think that those beliefs are superior and should be dominant in society, or that you, being a Christian, are superior to others and should be dominant in society, and ESPECIALLY don’t think that these beliefs should be enforced in a society. Those societies SUCK.

They’re personal beliefs. They’re YOUR beliefs. Apply them to yourself if you like, but don’t think that they must also apply to others because they are the “Truth”.

And if you hate and disrespect others because they violate YOUR personal beliefs, that doesn’t make you a good Christian, that makes you a good asshole.

So, to be clear, I don’t think a belief in God or Jesus is ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ or ‘ignorant’, I think that declaring that these beliefs are a Universal Truth and acting upon THAT idea is ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘ignorant’.

And the comment I made was a rhetorical response to what I perceived as THAT idea, which is abhorrent to me. It seemed an appropriate time to remind him that the world is bigger than Georgia, with a much greater diversity of ideas, beliefs, and lifestyles than he can imagine.

so, I didn’t exactly make the comment to help him or convert him, but neither did I make it as a personal attack or an insult (although it is insulting, but that wasn’t the intention). My comment was just a rhetorical expression of my reaction to his attitude and how I perceived it in a larger context.

no. I have explained that thausand times.

yes, I don’t spend time in tample and that has lots of reason and yes, one of them is lazyness not the bullshit you are saying.

you don’t know, you have no understanding how I live so please don’t make senseless statements

I pray(not too often but still)
I help the poor
I discuss the things in which I need understanding. but you must understand that priest is a human not super being and every christian must understand it himself.

… lol? i want to do things you do? and what you do? I think nothing important. what I want to do you will never understand or at least never agree. and no i don’t abstain lots of things. I am having fun whenever i have possibility. I go drink with friends(they are few but enough). I love extreme soprts and i do lots of things. and again you failed.

yeah and which fun is against christianity? well those are not few but not too many. and still there are lots of things which you can enjoy without going against religion but you know what? you think that every christian dreams to do something against his religion and does not do it becouse of gulity? you are wrong, at least about me.

I dont think that i will go to haven but I am shure that you will go to hell.

I don’t think about question because I don’t see answer to them usefull. and if even I answered those the answers would have been forgotten and there would be others to show how “christianity is wrong”.

and again you don’t know my parents. none of them. and you still are shure about that. my mother rarely goes to church but when she goes rarely with me. she has never been explaining to me what is religion and such things also in the times of hardship I used to live with my grandmother and grandfather(from the side of father). my grandmother was big beliver but she told me that she belives go with her reasons and when I grow up I will choose myself. and I choosed. my father. well when i was little he was abroad. after that we were far from each other cos well i was little afraid of him. the only lesson he tought me in my childhood was don’t bully and don’t be bullyed. he considers him not a much christian but I think that he is more christian than lot of people around me.

yeah… “advanced”. I dont thing that this one cuplet had any use.

want your pill back?

and what evidence should have I brought? he belives that hell doesn’t exists and can’t exist because it isn’t… logical? right? i dont understand what is so strange about hell.

no. I have explained that thausand times.

yes, I don’t spend time in tample and that has lots of reason and yes, one of them is lazyness not the bullshit you are saying.

you don’t know, you have no understanding how I live so please don’t make senseless statements

I pray(not too often but still)
I help the poor
I discuss the things in which I need understanding. but you must understand that priest is a human not super being and every christian must understand some things himself.

… lol? i want to do things you do? and what you do? I think nothing important. what I want to do you will never understand or at least never agree. and no i don’t abstain lots of things. I am having fun whenever i have possibility. I go drink with friends(they are few but enough). I love extreme soprts and i do lots of things. and again you failed.

yeah and which fun is against christianity? well those are not few but not too many. and still there are lots of things which you can enjoy without going against religion but you know what? you think that every christian dreams to do something against his religion and does not do it becouse of gulity? you are wrong, at least about me.

I dont think that i will go to haven but I am shure that you will go to hell.

I don’t think about question because I don’t see answer to them usefull. and if even I answered those the answers would have been forgotten and there would be others to show how “christianity is wrong”.

and again you don’t know my parents. none of them. and you still are shure about that. my mother rarely goes to church but when she goes rarely with me. she has never been explaining to me what is religion and such things also in the times of hardship I used to live with my grandmother and grandfather(from the side of father). my grandmother was big beliver but she told me that she belives go with her reasons and when I grow up I will choose myself. and I choosed. my father. well when i was little he was abroad. after that we were far from each other cos well i was little afraid of him. the only lesson he tought me in my childhood was don’t bully and don’t be bullyed. he considers him not a much christian but I think that he is more christian than lot of people around me.

yeah… “advanced”. I dont thing that this one cuplet had any use.

want your pill back?

and what evidence should have I brought? he belives that hell doesn’t exists and can’t exist because it isn’t… logical? right? i dont understand what is so strange about hell.

Evidence that what you believe is factual and not just a guess.

Actually, I think it’s a “He does NOT believe hell exists” kind of thing. “Not believe it exists” is not the same thing as “believe it doesn’t exist”.

As for me, I know that Hell does not exist anymore. How do I know this? Research.

I know the history of the “Hell” of the Bible. You can visit “Hell” today. You don’t have to die, either, to visit it. There are even photographs. Here’s one:

An ever-loving, ever-perfect God will cause you to suffer for all eternity because you act in a predetermined way?

whats difference? i think it’s same.

i clearly don’t see how it is possible to research hell…

history of hell? that is short one…
visit “hell”… and what “hell” is supposed to mean?
you clearly don’t understand what hell is.

he is not only loving but also strict. human has 100 years to work to get to heaven and it is more than enought but some people prefer doing whatever they want… well they can do whatever they want in hell.

“Believe” is action. “Not believe” is inaction. For example, driving a car is action. It’s something you physically do. Not driving a car is inaction. It’s something you don’t physically do.

Or, to put it another way, you’re not collecting stamps. That doesn’t mean that you’re collecting not stamps.

That much is clear. :slight_smile:

No, I actually do. “Hell” or the Valley of Hinnom/Gehenna, is a valley just outside Jerusalem that is a place where apostate Israelites, followers of Ba’al and Canaanite gods such as Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chronicles 28:3 and 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31 and 19:2-6). It was known as a place where the wicked go.

All references in the Bible to “Hell” refer to Gehenna/the Valley of Hinnom…which is a real valley.

What? Hell supposed to be (according to some Christians) a place of everlasting torment where you can’t do whatever you want because you’re too busy with being tortured everlasting.

Also, I am offended that you would suggest that atheists and other people are “doing whatever they want”. How dare you.

Of course we do know! All you have shown in this thread is hatred.

How do you know a tree? By its fruits, isn’t it what Jesus said? And the fruits you spread here are rot, completely filled with intolerance and rage.

So now you are surprised that someone say that you are a rotten tree? That is pretty clear.

YEAH. okey.

that in not enough proof.

oh rly? it wasn’t me who wrote this:

The Bible isn’t enough proof?!

And that doesn’t mean that we get to do whatever we want.

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