If theists were rational.

S.A.M. said:
How do you "observe" beliefs? Or test them?
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We could, for example, examine the universe to understand it's older than 6000 years, or could study the moon to understand that is wasn't recently split in half.

Could we test heaven and hell, gods and the rest of the supernatural mumbo-jumbo? Sure, why not.

Go ahead, demonstrate heaven, hell and your god exist.
 
(Q) said:
We could, for example, examine the universe to understand it's older than 6000 years, or could study the moon to understand that is wasn't recently split in half.

Could we test heaven and hell, gods and the rest of the supernatural mumbo-jumbo? Sure, why not.

Go ahead, demonstrate heaven, hell and your god exist.
Click to expand...

But those are not beliefs that you are testing. See the debate on ID as a reference.

How would you test heaven or hell or God /curious.
 
S.A.M. said:
But those are not beliefs that you are testing. See the debate on ID as a reference.

How would you test heaven or hell or God /curious.
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Perhaps under the same conditions those concepts were invented?:rolleyes:
 
Repo Man said:
Christian dogma is that a man can kill millions, ask for forgiveness on his deathbed and be saved and go to heaven; while a non-believer can live a good life, never harm anyone, and yet is condemned to spend an eternity being tortured after death because they offended god's vanity by not believing in him.
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It's not Christian dogma. It's the Bible. God's Word. You don't seem to understand that Heaven is for God's children. Not satan's. It doesn't matter if you are saved at age 13 or on your death bed. Once you accept Him, repent, and honestly desire to serve/live for Him, you go to Heaven. You are His. You belong to Him. You get to spend eternity with Him.
 
sandy said:
It's not Christian dogma. It's the Bible. God's Word. You don't seem to understand that Heaven is for God's children. Not satan's. It doesn't matter if you are saved at age 13 or on your death bed. Once you accept Him, repent, and honestly desire to serve/live for Him, you go to Heaven. You are His. You belong to Him. You get to spend eternity with Him.
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Well, thanks for clearing that up! And you consider this to be the action of a just deity? To reward a genocidal mass murderer with eternal happiness, and to punish the good hearted kind person with eternal torture? You are the living embodiment of the sort of Christian that Russell talked about in Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?

The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument. I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children's ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.
http://www.solstice.us/russell/religionciv.html

To believe that all of the pain and suffering in the world is part of a grand plan of a loving deity is pure madness.
 
define rational?

I can think of a few rational theist. Jefferson,Franklin, Paine,Voltaire.... a deist is a theist!
 
Repo Man said:
Well, thanks for clearing that up! And you consider this to be the action of a just deity? To reward a genocidal mass murderer with eternal happiness, and to punish the good hearted kind person with eternal torture? You are the living embodiment of the sort of Christian that Russell talked about in Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?

The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument. I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children's ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.
http://www.solstice.us/russell/religionciv.html

To believe that all of the pain and suffering in the world is part of a grand plan of a loving deity is pure madness.
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Dude, your mentality is very similar to mine, in the sense that we look at little things like that with two things that seem to elude theists; common sense and rationale. But, I think you will get further arguing with this
Ball-Stump.jpg

or this
BrickWall.jpg

than you will with any theist. Here is a 'discussion' that the creator of a website saying god doesn't exist had with a theist. Typical theist closed-mindedness.
http://www.godisimaginary.com/i32.htm
 
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S.A.M. said:
And how would you test the belief?
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Why do we still go on about testing beliefs such as god. Why is this god idea any different from any of a million other postulates made to explain things people don't understand.

Just because billions of people accept it? It's a fairytale sam! Come on! There's zero in human experience to suggest otherwise and plenty of anthropological reasoning to support it as such. All of the so-called experiences of people are unsubstantiated first person self-deception, delusions or outright lies. There's zero statistical corellation to anything real or actual.

And BTW, if you really cared about the "dignity" of people you'd decry the mental slavery of religion and become a free thinker like the rest of us atheists.
 
Repo Man said:
Well, thanks for clearing that up! And you consider this to be the action of a just deity? To reward a genocidal mass murderer with eternal happiness, and to punish the good hearted kind person with eternal torture? You are the living embodiment of the sort of Christian that Russell talked about in Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?

The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin. In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. The usual Christian argument is that the suffering in the world is a purification for sin and is therefore a good thing. This argument is, of course, only a rationalization of sadism; but in any case it is a very poor argument. I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children's ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy in himself all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.
http://www.solstice.us/russell/religionciv.html

To believe that all of the pain and suffering in the world is part of a grand plan of a loving deity is pure madness.
Click to expand...
THanks Repo. And I agree with mike's stump sentiment also.
 
sandy said:
It's not Christian dogma. It's the Bible. God's Word. You don't seem to understand that Heaven is for God's children. Not satan's. It doesn't matter if you are saved at age 13 or on your death bed. Once you accept Him, repent, and honestly desire to serve/live for Him, you go to Heaven. You are His. You belong to Him. You get to spend eternity with Him.
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if its the bible its christian dogma
 
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