Question On Christianity

[flyingmoosestudios]

So I'm a christian, and spent the first 10 or so years of my life being raised asa christian and never asking myself why I believe or why I maybe should not believe in God and believe that he sent Jesus to earth, etc.

Then, of course, at that age I discovered the ability to think for myself! I then really began to question why I was a christian and put a lot of research into what grounds there are to believe that there is a God who created this earth and who loves every single person on it and sacrificed his son for every single one of them(which is a pretty big claim when you really think about it). There were a TONNE of arguments and debates that I came across which kept throwing me back and forth on the fence I had found myself sitting on.

There were two things that really stuck out to me and are the reason I still believe in God today

1. I watched a video of a man named Rob Bell giving a talk on the connection between christianity and the bible(it is called, "Everything is Spiritual") and that started me on the adventure of discovering many unbelievable scientific facts about how precise the earth's distance from the sun, and the levels of the atmosphere and etc which keep us alive and have kept us alive for so very very long. I decided that humans and the earth are too complicated to have been brought about by chance.

2. Someone presented me with a question that went something like this:
If we really are here solely by chance then how is it that our minds have come to establish the difference between right and wrong? How is it that we, as a species, know that stealing is bad along with murder and many other things? Granted, we are fed these rules by the government and have been fed the rules for decades and centuries, but who was the person who initiated these set rules which seem to be engraved into our minds naturally? How do we know virtue? Why is it that humanity is always striving to be good?(unless were psycho/sociopaths) Perhaps it is through the process of having it told to us so much throughout history, but it had to start somewhere, and how does one person who doesn't know the difference simply know the difference? Because the ability to think on a level as high as we do is only found in humans. How do we naturally know the difference between right and wrong?

So those are the two questions/reasons, debate away

[Lex]

All the somewhat decent arguments I hear for the correctness Christianity only point towards the existence of God. Not about Jesus, not about anything remotely "Christian", only arguments pointing towards the existence of God.

Anyway, in some parallel universe, evolved squids are debating that their race couldn't possibly be brought about by chance.

[Nakor]

Mar 30, 2010 18:21:51 GMT -5 flyingmoosestudios said:

1. I watched a video of a man named Rob Bell giving a talk on the connection between christianity and the bible(it is called, "Everything is Spiritual") and that started me on the adventure of discovering many unbelievable scientific facts about how precise the earth's distance from the sun, and the levels of the atmosphere and etc which keep us alive and have kept us alive for so very very long. I decided that humans and the earth are too complicated to have been brought about by chance.

This is a misconception of how chance works; it's taken from a subjective perspective. In the universe as a whole, there are so many planets and stars (suns) that odds are very high that some of them (not just one, but actually a lot) would be suited to life. Scientists theorize that the odds of us being the only life in the universe is actually incredibly low.

Because there are so many places where life could potentially start, the odds of it starting somewhere were high, and due to the nature of how evolution works, something as complex as we are was also similarly high. So while something exactly like us in exactly this place was unlikely (like winning the lottery is), something as complex as us existing somewhere in the galaxy was highly likely (as the lottery being won by someone is). So our occurrence is not at all as unlikely as the religious would have you believe.

2. Someone presented me with a question that went something like this:
If we really are here solely by chance then how is it that our minds have come to establish the difference between right and wrong? How is it that we, as a species, know that stealing is bad along with murder and many other things? Granted, we are fed these rules by the government and have been fed the rules for decades and centuries, but who was the person who initiated these set rules which seem to be engraved into our minds naturally? How do we know virtue? Why is it that humanity is always striving to be good?(unless were psycho/sociopaths) Perhaps it is through the process of having it told to us so much throughout history, but it had to start somewhere, and how does one person who doesn't know the difference simply know the difference? Because the ability to think on a level as high as we do is only found in humans. How do we naturally know the difference between right and wrong?

This actually came as a part of evolution. We are a social species and our ability to rely on each other and trust each other was vital to our survival, so it was a trait that remained in our evolutionary path. I suggest this video for more details:

[alwaysthinking]

We know this based on trial and error. It gets passed on each generation and we become more and more advanced, cave men had no problem stealing, it wasn't until the person they were stealing from killed them for stealing their food did they realize is was bad.

[Benyamin]

Great! another christian! ;D

[stephen5000]

Mar 30, 2010 18:21:51 GMT -5 flyingmoosestudios said:

1. I watched a video of a man named Rob Bell giving a talk on the connection between christianity and the bible(it is called, "Everything is Spiritual") and that started me on the adventure of discovering many unbelievable scientific facts about how precise the earth's distance from the sun, and the levels of the atmosphere and etc which keep us alive and have kept us alive for so very very long. I decided that humans and the earth are too complicated to have been brought about by chance.

This is basically what's called the fine-tuning argument. It's the idea that the specifics about Earth and the universe seem just perfect for our life, and that if they were slightly different, life as we know it couldn't exist.

I would counter this by saying that of course the physical conditions of Earth suit life as we know it. Only the type of life that would thrive given the existing physical conditions could exist. If the physical conditions were different enough that we couldn't exist, then we wouldn't and perhaps some other type of life would exist instead. Indeed different forms of life that couldn't exist on Earth might be found in other parts of the universe (or in other universes).

[alwaysthinking]

Mar 30, 2010 20:11:01 GMT -5 stephen5000 said:

Mar 30, 2010 18:21:51 GMT -5 flyingmoosestudios said:

1. I watched a video of a man named Rob Bell giving a talk on the connection between christianity and the bible(it is called, "Everything is Spiritual") and that started me on the adventure of discovering many unbelievable scientific facts about how precise the earth's distance from the sun, and the levels of the atmosphere and etc which keep us alive and have kept us alive for so very very long. I decided that humans and the earth are too complicated to have been brought about by chance.

This is basically what's called the fine-tuning argument. It's the idea that the specifics about Earth and the universe seem just perfect for our life, and that if they were slightly different, life as we know it couldn't exist.

I would counter this by saying that of course the physical conditions of Earth suit life as we know it. Only the type of life that would thrive given the existing physical conditions could exist. If the physical conditions were different enough that we couldn't exist, then we wouldn't and perhaps some other type of life would exist instead. Indeed different forms of life that couldn't exist on Earth might be found in other parts of the universe (or in other universes).

Exactly, if you figure the size of the universe, you could say that 1 in a million galaxies are similar to ours and 1 in a million of those has an earth and 1 in a million of those have suitable living condition and 1 in a million have life and 1 in a million of those have complex organisms like humans, we just happen to be that slight chance. Figure the odds of being a human in the first place, having to beat out millions of other sperm.

[flyingmoosestudios]

Mar 30, 2010 18:27:42 GMT -5 Nakor said:

Mar 30, 2010 18:21:51 GMT -5 flyingmoosestudios said:

1. I watched a video of a man named Rob Bell giving a talk on the connection between christianity and the bible(it is called, "Everything is Spiritual") and that started me on the adventure of discovering many unbelievable scientific facts about how precise the earth's distance from the sun, and the levels of the atmosphere and etc which keep us alive and have kept us alive for so very very long. I decided that humans and the earth are too complicated to have been brought about by chance.

This is a misconception of how chance works; it's taken from a subjective perspective. In the universe as a whole, there are so many planets and stars (suns) that odds are very high that some of them (not just one, but actually a lot) would be suited to life. Scientists theorize that the odds of us being the only life in the universe is actually incredibly low.

Because there are so many places where life could potentially start, the odds of it starting somewhere were high, and due to the nature of how evolution works, something as complex as we are was also similarly high. So while something exactly like us in exactly this place was unlikely (like winning the lottery is), something as complex as us existing somewhere in the galaxy was highly likely (as the lottery being won by someone is). So our occurrence is not at all as unlikely as the religious would have you believe.

You have a very good point, but the idea of everything being set so precise sort of branches off(not really, actually) into the studies in which scientists have actually have been discovering that substances and liquids such as water actually react and respond to human emotion. I watched a documentary on it. I cannot remember the name of it at the moment, but remind me to look for it

[flyingmoosestudios]

Mar 30, 2010 18:25:51 GMT -5 Lex said:

All the somewhat decent arguments I hear for the correctness Christianity only point towards the existence of God. Not about Jesus, not about anything remotely "Christian", only arguments pointing towards the existence of God.

You're right, they all point to the existence of God, which is the first step. If God exists, then that at least opens the door to religions having some truth in them. Of course, no one will ever know for sure until we die. Everything requires faith to some degree.

Except eating ice cream. Ice cream is always a yes answer.

[kear]

I, myself, am a Christian who gets SO frusterated when people don't make the connection between science and religion. Before I get into the big bang theory, I want to touch on Evolution in relation to the Creationist theory.
Many people think that a good majority of the bible, such as nearly all of Revelations, is a metephor and not to be taken literally. That being said, it doesn't say that God literally created us from dirt. 'Dirt' could very well have been defined as a lower-inteligence being, such as an ape. (No offense to apes.)
Now, I don't think that there will ever really be a fool-proof way of proving any religious theories or scientific theories on our creation. Yes, using the red shift, scientists can 'go back in time' and see the residual light from what they think is the big bang, but that can be countered with another simple question.
Where did all the light and dust come from in the first place? What created that unfathomably dense mass of energy?
Short of dying, asking God, and coming back to life, I don't think we'll ever really know. But hey, we're the Pogo Tribe. If anyone can do it, we can. ;D
As always, feel free to challenge all of my ideas.

[Nakor]

Mar 30, 2010 21:04:11 GMT -5 flyingmoosestudios said:

You have a very good point, but the idea of everything being set so precise sort of branches off(not really, actually) into the studies in which scientists have actually have been discovering that substances and liquids such as water actually react and respond to human emotion. I watched a documentary on it. I cannot remember the name of it at the moment, but remind me to look for it

I'm not quite sure I follow where you're going with this argument. First, I'd have to see something on that to believe water responds to human emotion. That doesn't make a terrible lot of sense. Second, it doesn't really say anything against my explanation even if it is true. Were it possible odds are there is a scientific explanation for it, so it doesn't really make an argument for a god.

Mar 30, 2010 22:59:24 GMT -5 kear said:

I, myself, am a Christian who gets SO frusterated when people don't make the connection between science and religion. Before I get into the big bang theory, I want to touch on Evolution in relation to the Creationist theory.
Many people think that a good majority of the bible, such as nearly all of Revelations, is a metephor and not to be taken literally. That being said, it doesn't say that God literally created us from dirt. 'Dirt' could very well have been defined as a lower-inteligence being, such as an ape. (No offense to apes.)
Now, I don't think that there will ever really be a fool-proof way of proving any religious theories or scientific theories on our creation. Yes, using the red shift, scientists can 'go back in time' and see the residual light from what they think is the big bang, but that can be countered with another simple question.
Where did all the light and dust come from in the first place? What created that unfathomably dense mass of energy?
Short of dying, asking God, and coming back to life, I don't think we'll ever really know. But hey, we're the Pogo Tribe. If anyone can do it, we can. ;D
As always, feel free to challenge all of my ideas.

I would introduce the thought that the correct answer to the question is "I don't know yet" because at least we know we're right about that. Inventing our own concepts such as "God" isn't going to make us very likely to be accurate, and as we all know, science is always learning more and more. It's rather likely IMO that we will eventually find out what really started the universe via scientific methods (and then the religious community will move God back a step, and state he caused that instead, and so forth in an endless cycle of science taking the place of faith).

[Linus]

Mar 30, 2010 18:21:51 GMT -5 flyingmoosestudios said:

2. Someone presented me with a question that went something like this:
If we really are here solely by chance then how is it that our minds have come to establish the difference between right and wrong? How is it that we, as a species, know that stealing is bad along with murder and many other things? Granted, we are fed these rules by the government and have been fed the rules for decades and centuries, but who was the person who initiated these set rules which seem to be engraved into our minds naturally? How do we know virtue? Why is it that humanity is always striving to be good?(unless were psycho/sociopaths) Perhaps it is through the process of having it told to us so much throughout history, but it had to start somewhere, and how does one person who doesn't know the difference simply know the difference? Because the ability to think on a level as high as we do is only found in humans. How do we naturally know the difference between right and wrong?

Right and wrong isn't universal laws or anything of the like. Right and wrong is something that is a part of society's way to enforce rules.

We humans are developed altruists. This means that we have a developed sense for what other individuals need, in relation to ourselves. One consequence of human altruism is what you call "the strive towards good". This is not something that is not only found in humans; in vampire bats, for example, we find reciprocal altruism, which is essentially a give-and-take "buddy" system (they give eachother food they don't need themselves, however this does exclude damaged and/or sick individuals, since these cannot return the favour). I'm saying this because I want to stress that this altruism in humans isn't really a "divine" feature. Our developed altruism although makes us more likely to help the ones like us, but it is in essence a way for us to survive easier.

Now, right and wrong is different depending on how you define it, and it depends on from what rules (and/or laws) you take that perception. Humans have all throughout history formed groups, and we have an instinct to create order. Social psychology also learns us that we constantly are striving towards indentifying ourselves with a group. The way you address virtue, right and wrong, makes it sound like they're some sort of common terms for all humans, whilst they aren't. Virtue is another thing that we know because of the society we're in; we're constantly affected by people around us. A toddler doesn't know virtue, or right or wrong, but it is something that it is learned throughout its upbringing. The ground for rules is that we essentially want to define what our group wants, this is both to make it easier for us to find peace within it, but also to strengthen the group as to achieve a higher level of shelter for ourselves and people around us.

It is essentially part of the basic will to survive.

[kear]

Mar 30, 2010 23:58:47 GMT -5 Nakor said:

I would introduce the thought that the correct answer to the question is "I don't know yet" because at least we know we're right about that. Inventing our own concepts such as "God" isn't going to make us very likely to be accurate, and as we all know, science is always learning more and more. It's rather likely IMO that we will eventually find out what really started the universe via scientific methods (and then the religious community will move God back a step, and state he caused that instead, and so forth in an endless cycle of science taking the place of faith).

Yes, I agree with that. I believe scientists will be able to go further and further back until we reach a point where there was nothing before it. And yeah, religious people are going to say that's when God created all the dust and gas, ect, that was to become the universe, but can you ever really disprove that? We know there's definatly no way to prove that God exists (at least not at the moment), but there's also no way to prove he doesn't (because we can't prove he does).
That begs the question though. If scientists aren't able to go any futher back than a single point of dust, gas, and energy, and assuming God didn't create us, then what did?
There's really only two possible answers for that. One, of course, that God created the universe, but the other is exactly what you said. We don't know. If we can't go any futher back, will we eventually hit a dead end?
And by the way, Nakor, thank you for providing me someone inteligent to talk to about religion. All the other people I've talked to in the past were either "There's no way God exists, so shut your trap" or "God exists and I don't want to listen to you." So thank you for that.

[Nakor]

If we can't go any futher back, will we eventually hit a dead end?

That makes for a very interesting question. Either there is a dead end -- something which nothing came before -- or there is not. If there is one, it means either that things can exist without a cause, or things can exist as their own cause. If there is not, well, science will never run out of new things to explore. Among the religious the general consensus tends to be that there is a starting point, and that point is God, but the reasoning (that everything needs a cause and God is that cause) seems to contradict the result. It's possible that God is the starting point, but even if that were true, it would mean that, in fact, things do not always need a cause (or can cause themselves). (This is what Occam's Razor attempts to show, but I always felt the Occam's Razor argument was both oversimplified and fails to really serve as a 'proof' of anything.) From a secular standpoint, whether or not there are things that are without any cause (or that cause themselves) is really up in the air. At this point we've never experienced something that we can say for certain has no determinable cause, but we always may. This is why I prefer to leave questions like this open, rather than assume we have answers to them.

And by the way, Nakor, thank you for providing me someone inteligent to talk to about religion. All the other people I've talked to in the past were either "There's no way God exists, so shut your trap" or "God exists and I don't want to listen to you." So thank you for that.

No problem. I read a book once called "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality" by André Comte-Sponville. He teaches that tolerance between the religious and atheists (and between the religions of course) is important, as neither side can really be defined as 'right.' Like me, he has reasons for his atheism that he explains in the book, but he also goes on to explain that religion does not need to be completely rejected; only those ideas and people that can be considered fanatical (such as terrorists, obscurantists or fundamentalists) really need to be fought against. Otherwise, while debate is welcome, it should come with tolerance. Under that philosophy, I tend to always argue points where facts are known (such as evolution), but leave philosophy to others so long as it doesn't contradict facts or common sense. (Unfortunately the third section of his book on atheist spirituality is a long, drawn-out new-agey verbosity on mysticism and such that frankly is tough to slog through and not terribly interesting; the first two sections, however, make for an excellent read.)

So I'm okay with people who believe in God, which is their choice; I simply try to even the table when arguments made for (or against) God are based on errors of fact or flawed logic.

[nowinterweather]

Mar 30, 2010 18:21:51 GMT -5 flyingmoosestudios said:

2. Someone presented me with a question that went something like this:
If we really are here solely by chance then how is it that our minds have come to establish the difference between right and wrong? How is it that we, as a species, know that stealing is bad along with murder and many other things? Granted, we are fed these rules by the government and have been fed the rules for decades and centuries, but who was the person who initiated these set rules which seem to be engraved into our minds naturally? How do we know virtue? Why is it that humanity is always striving to be good?(unless were psycho/sociopaths) Perhaps it is through the process of having it told to us so much throughout history, but it had to start somewhere, and how does one person who doesn't know the difference simply know the difference? Because the ability to think on a level as high as we do is only found in humans. How do we naturally know the difference between right and wrong?

So those are the two questions/reasons, debate away

\

sorry, this is one of my first posts, not sure how it works, if i screwed something up, forgive me

but i think, if these are your questions, then they are not about christianity. the definition of christianity is

a monotheistic system of beliefs and practices based on the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus as embodied in the New Testament

(http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=christianity)

now, if you read your questions, theyre not really asking about Christianity, just about god. there are many monotheistic religions referring to a "god," not just christianity.

so my point is, dont force yourself into being a zombie and believing in christanity just because of this argument -- believe in whatever you think makes the most sense.

[zAkAtAk]

Mar 30, 2010 18:21:51 GMT -5 flyingmoosestudios said:

2. Someone presented me with a question that went something like this:
If we really are here solely by chance then how is it that our minds have come to establish the difference between right and wrong? How is it that we, as a species, know that stealing is bad along with murder and many other things? Granted, we are fed these rules by the government and have been fed the rules for decades and centuries, but who was the person who initiated these set rules which seem to be engraved into our minds naturally? How do we know virtue? Why is it that humanity is always striving to be good?(unless were psycho/sociopaths) Perhaps it is through the process of having it told to us so much throughout history, but it had to start somewhere, and how does one person who doesn't know the difference simply know the difference? Because the ability to think on a level as high as we do is only found in humans. How do we naturally know the difference between right and wrong?

I wrote a reseach paper on this topic. I got an A. I can post it here if you want.

[Jake]

Apr 2, 2010 8:47:20 GMT -5 zAkAtAk said:

Mar 30, 2010 18:21:51 GMT -5 flyingmoosestudios said:

How do we naturally know the difference between right and wrong?

I wrote a reseach paper on this topic. I got an A. I can post it here if you want.

Please do! It sounds really interesting!
Sort of like a TED talk in a way...