So why believe in anything the bible says? It could mean anything you want.

Maybe think about what you said in the previous paragraph?

And how did he create his power? Right, THAT was always there of course...does this mean if we find out that the universe was always there (as in eternal), god ideas will be unnecessary? Why can gods create something from nothing by using their power, but not create more eternal beings using their power? It both seems to be equally nonsensical.
And why is dead and alive a change of state but eternal and not eternal isn't? You can't be more dead and alive at the same time than being a square and circle at the same time.

That is not what we do. We look at evidence. We have evidence that conmen use religion to scam people. We have no evidence for religions really being true. So it is rational to assume they aren't. Doesn't matter how much we like them, that is YOUR specialty, you like christianity better than other religions.

lol lol lol

Really and christianity hasn't? Oh that's right, anything that doesn't fit will be declared a metaphore. Why doesn't that work for mormonism?

Oh please, I can make up any number of religions right now and not tell you that I made them up, does that really make a difference? How do you even know the guy who told you that he made it up isn't lying, by command of his god to not tell anyone that its for real? Maybe Darth Vader is really out there and Goerge Lucas just lied when he says it's just a story?

I can relate to this, to the degree that you could just as easily be writing part of my biography as well as your own. I have always wanted to understand more about thing, and for a long time struggled to create a cogent framework to explain everything around me. But then things would occur that punched holes in that, and I would be faced with a "crisis of faith", of sorts. Over time this has evolved into an acceptance that the universe is too complex and unknowable for me to ever glimpse more than a fragment of the truth. Whether this is entirely a philosophy or also a reason-self-preservation response is up for debate.

I was raised nominally Christian but that proved insufficient for my intellectual appetites. I am not content with "just because" explanations, and I understand far too much about history, sociology, mythology, and the nature of language to believe that any aged tale of gods walking the Earth are the unquestionable truth of the matter. Religion does not allow me to escape the flaws in my logical system, it merely replaces that system with one that is closed and unbounded to reality. That is not a solution, that is an evasion.

Relevant.

I have long been aware of the insular nature of religion. Which makes sense, since religion originally was designed to bind small groups or clans together against others, in order to more effectively survive and compete for resources. Now this global span of knowledge threatens that insularity.

I am less optimistic than the author that this alone will be enough to bring humanity forward. The internet also excels at letting people find only what they want to find. So while it is bringing knowledge and freedom to some, it also continues to reinforce and self-isolate others.

Thanks for the link. And well written comment, especially the second paragraph.
Do do not wholly agree on the insular nature of ALL religions, but this is a specialty of the "book-religions".

I think animistic or natural religions are not insular since they touch something very basic and don't claim truth the way the book-religions do. I think older polytheistic religions also were less definite about "the truth". The Germanic/Nordic pantheon is very obviously a mix of multiple former pantheons that mixed in relatively friendly way (Vanir and Aesir and a this and that). The Greek pantheon is said to have been expanded several times to incorporate neigbouring deities which lead to a strong specialization of the responsibilities.

I think that polytheistic religions, where the deities are practically abstracted and anthropomorphous aspects of human life (war, love, fertility, nature's forces...) are inherently a lot less walled off. I could imagine an old german in Rome or Greece wanting to sacrifice to Freya simply going to Venus or Aphrodite. Or sailor wanting to thank Aegir, bringing his gift to Neptune.

I always loved the following lines from Conan:

I agree, and should have been more accurate in my terminology. When I said religion earlier, I meant organised religion in the modern sense. I distinguish this from pagan, animist, tribalist, naturalist, and syncretic faiths, which very much draw on the outer world and are inclusive of multiple viewpoints and beliefs. Those kinds of beliefs are enjoying something of a sub rosa renaissance at the moment. I include myself among those adherents, being of a syncretic and animist bent myself.

It is the enclave (or cathedralic) religions which are insular and which inculcate a siege mentality in their followers. And so it is, appropriately, they who find themselves now besieged by a large world grown close.

I totally agree. I just meant to clarify it a little, since very often, when people say "religion" they only mean either "Christian" or "Christian-Islamic-Judaic".

A: Are you religious?
B: Kind of.
A: Super! Let's read the Bible together sometime!
B: I'd rather not.
A: ???

But you put into words a lot nicer than I could. Have to work on my active vocabulary here ;-)

Does that mean you disagree with soyeong's assertion that something eternal can't have had a beginning? If you do, do you then grant that an eternal god may not have existed until after a specific time/event?

How do you define a soul, what properties does it have, and what do you base it on?

On what do you base the assumption that the lake of fire is oblivion? What makes the soul flamable? Would it even react to an exothermic reaction like fire?

To be more specific, things with an eternal past can't coherently be said to have a beginning. Hell is described both as fire and as darkness - both are metaphors.

I'll admit to having an unhealthy obsession of debunking the Bible debunkers, which keeps me away from my unhealthy obsession with beating the games in my backlog (So many good bundles are hard to pass up, I can't help myself *sob*).

So far I've linked one person who is quick to insult people who use poor arguments and/or use poor research, but he's usually pretty good at keeping that out of his articles. Sometimes people suffer from a severe case of the Dunning–Kruger effect and the only way to get through to them is to shame them, but usually people in this culture are more likely to return the insult than to pause to consider when they need to change, so it's generally better to avoid trying to do that. Many people think the Bible teaches that it is inerrant, but usually the Bible has been shown reliable through other means first. Other Christians disagree with that interpretation. However, there can still be an historical resurrection even if it turns out that the Bible has an error in a secondary detail. There was one person who used the vastness of the universe as evidence against God. I linked someone who argued that the size is necessary for the formation of stars and solar systems, which is necessary for the formation of life. This of course does not prove the existence of God, but it does give a reason that God could have for creating a universe of this size if God did exist, so that counters the claim that the vastness of the universe is evidence against God. Anonymous authors with unknown credentials writing articles that anyone can edit make Wikipedia one of the first places I would recommend avoiding if you’re interested in serious scholarship. Do you mean Erich von Däniken? Searching for "Butler, von Däniken" doesn't come up with much. You advised me to read some books about the initial formation of Christianity by non-Christian scholars. I will try looking more into these, but it doesn't answer my question. Jesus never traveled in his adult life outside of Judea, he never held political office, he did not fight in any major battles, and he died the death of a criminal by crucifixion. He was very much a dead nobody who was not worth mentioning as for as the Romans were concerned. Why would someone who was concerned with the political and economic situation of the Roman Empire bother to investigate a bunch of hearsay? He would dismiss it just like most people dismiss the claims of Benny Hinn without investigating him. The vast majority of things that we think are true have been taught to us by someone else who we consider to be an authority. *shrug* I think the Kalam and Aquinas's Five Ways show that the classical God of theism is a logically necessary being that can't not exist. This has nothing to do with what I can or can't imagine. There are good reasons to think that the Gospels are eyewitness, such as the depth of knowledge about the land that is consistently accurate, which means that we have generally reliable testimonies from people who participated in the events narrated. However, even if we only use those facts that the vast majority of both Christian and non-Christians scholars agree on and apply historical methodology used by professional historians to the various hypotheses, the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation for those facts.

A resurrection is next to impossible, so I still find it very difficult to believe, but I also find it very difficult to believe that Christianity would have survived its first decade if Jesus had not risen from the dead. So regardless of whether you believe that Jesus rose or not, you believe something that is next to impossible happened. Again, the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation when evaluated against other hypotheses. Huh? My own personal experience and the countless testimonies of others who lives were radically changed for the better after converting to Christianity. For instance, there was a Jewish girl who was taken to a concentration, where the rest of her family was killed. She survived, but the most of the rest of her life was consumed by bitterness to the point that it was making her sick. After she converted to Christianity, her health was restored and she was eventually able to visit her old concentration camp with one of her former guards, and forgive him. Interesting, but I think it still works with the analogy that sheep without a shepherd are prone to wander. Creation itself testifies of a creator and we all are given an innate sense of right and wrong, which indicates a lawgiver that we will be held accountable to. All people know about God, but they suppress the truth. People aren’t condemned for not hearing about Jesus, but because they have rejected the rule of God. I’m not guilty by default, but because I fail to live up to what I know to be right and wrong. Every Christians fails to life up to what is taught in Christianity, but that does not mean there are no real Christians or that I am any more or less of a Christian than the people who fail more or less than I do. So I didn’t excuse their actions or say they were no real Christians, but I question whether the motivation for their actions comes from a correct understanding of the Bible because you’re not going to find the command to kill your heathen neighbor in the Sermon on the Mount. Christians still have all sorts of influences and motivating factors other than the Bible, so it is wrong to say that everything a Christians does is because of what it teaches. Even good deeds can be done for the wrong reasons.

Furthermore, the things like the Crusades and the Inquisition are often blown of proportion to what actually happened. For instance, only around 5000 people were executed over the 300 years of the Spanish Inquisition. That’s still not a good number, but then you need to look the politics involved and reasons why they were killed, and the fact church courts were more lenient than secular courts. It like almost every time I see catholic priests mentioned in a secular forum, I get the impression that people think they are a bunch of pedophiles. I’m not excusing it, but it’s ridiculous to focus on that and ignore all of the charity work that priests have done over the centuries. And again, you’re not going to find the Bible encouraging pedophilia anywhere, so their actions were in spite of what the Bible teaches.

Okay then, the bible doesn't encourage pedophilia; what's your excuse for the Crusades.

And the Salem Witch Trials.

And The Inquisition.

True, but I'm still going to get ripped a new one for that post. :D

Are you aware of what started the Crusades or the Inquisition?

I have said a number of times that I'm not denying that they were Christians or that Christians have done bad things

It Is possible that God could have morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil in the world, and as long as that is possibly true, then it has not been show that there is a contradiction between God and evil. In Christian theism, God's purpose of human history is to bring the maximum number of people freely into His kingdom, to find salvation eternal life. How do we know that that wouldn't require a world that is suffused with natural and moral evil?

Could you be more specific about what you're asking? Money wasn't the subject of that passage. I think so. There was also a instance where someone had a dream where they were told to sell their house and give the money to people working with street children in Brazil. He did that and took a plane to Brazil where he asked around and was told to go to the base where the couple was staying. The other people there told him about the couple's work, so he left the money with them and left without actually meeting the couple. This happened right at a time where they were they needed to move to a bigger building and had a large financial need.