Having only scanned through your last posts and glancing at the pascal’s wager part, about which i happened to read like 2 days ago, i which is interesting to involve, because it is a proposition seemingly working for believers, but it back…fires the following way:

the problem with the wager’s reasoning is that there are a myriad of gods people have worshiped throughout history, so essentially anyone who is/was religious can/could make the claims of the wager, this way it shows that all gods humans believe in are imaginary. believers in one specific god has not “lost nothing”, they simply commit themselves to a lifetime of delusion instead of reality.

the fact that there are so many gods proves that all of those gods are imaginary. this goes back to me asking you about how can it be known that your religion is the true one – there is no answer. if there was one and only one omniscient, omnipotent god, it would be obvious for everyone, and people would all agree on him being the only one god.

i’m off to sleep now, i’ll respond to your other points, which i have yet to read, tomorrow. good night!

The mere existence of religion in our modern world baffles me so much that i cannot even begin to describe.

anyone who doesn’t think the way i do is wrong? where do i say that? i say anyone who believes in anything… which is not supported by proof, and accepts it as fact is wrong, and that is not a stretch.

read this back: “you are clearly a very angry young man, which is evidenced by your discussion here of late, and you have been deeply hurt in life to have had to narrow your mind to the point of making rash judgements.”

me not being religious, or not having a relationship with god, and expressing that i strongly disagree with everything requiring faith is evidence that i’m deeply hurt? nope. my mind as i’ve said is totally open, but only for sensible arguments, devoid of any subjectivity. also, no rash judgements have been made on my part, but feel free to give an example of any judgements that i did not support with facts.

your cat: so if you take both the before and after diagnostics into the hospital and ask a non-religious medical professional, he will happily sign a paper that says “it is 100% sure that the cat was healed through a miracle by god, there is no other humanly possible explanation”? i highly doubt that. not having an explanation for something is not the same as having ready-made miracles. see, it is not enough to say “aha! you don’t know! it must be a miracle!”, but YOU are the one who should be able to prove it, because you’re making the claims. it’s called burden of proof.

example: (a widely-used example i might add) i believe that a teapot is orbiting the sun. will my belief become automatically validated if people cannot disprove it? of course not. it is me who should be able to prove it, because i’m the one making the claim. (needless to say, if i got many people to believe that the teapot was orbiting the sun, it would be called not delusion, but religion.)

bottom line: even if the doctors can’t tell why the cat’s kidney healed, it doesn’t automatically mean that it was a miracle. it should be proved that it was a miracle beyond the shadow of a doubt, because it is you who is saying that it is so.

limbs growing out: you couldn’t find medical evidence, because if it existed, medicine would be investigating those cases, and would finally come to some conclusion, which, yes, could be “miracle!”, but i have yet to see any of that, so the logical conclusion is that none of those cases you might find are sure to have been miracles, because they lack the needed objectivity for science to conclude that they were indeed that.

sorry for confusing religion with you relationship with god. still, it is you who makes arbitrary claims here. “[these deeds] were done by men under the influence of not God, even though they called it God…it was NOT of God” how. do. you. know? who told you? where is the evidence? anything of god bears good fruit? who told you that? it was either the bible, or you can feel it in yourself. neither of those are objective enough. it was the christian church, *the very representation of god on earth*, that did those things. you’re saying that the christian church is not following the true god, that it acted on behalf of some false one? so the christian church was simply wrong? elaborate on that please.

islam is a false religion. wow. just wow. millions believe in it, just as millions believe in christianity, or other religions. muslims think the same things about you as you think about them. they’re saying that people are turning away from other religions, and are starting to find the true one in allah. mohammed appears to christians in their dreams and commands them to follow him, for it is islam which is the true religion.
now i suppose you believe in the ten commandments of christianity. one of them is: you’re not supposed to have any gods other than me. you know what christians are supposed to do with people who don’t believe in god, according to the bible? oh yes, kill them. not even just kill, but STONE them to death. so christianity also has the “infidels must die” slogan, it just doesn’t call them infidels, and christians are not as keen on practicing it, but it is there.

now please pay close attention to the following bit:
i asked you the following question before, but i’ll ask it again, and if you stand by what you claim, you should have one hell of an answer in order not to contradict yourself.
can you name one experiment devoid of any subjectivity that will conclusively and objectively show that your religion is the true one, and the other ones are just lies and fabrications? a criteria: make it so that the experiment can be used towards proving the christian god and Jesus, but cannot be used towards proving other gods or prophets.

you can’t see it, can you. there is no such experiment. if there was, there would be no multiple religions. the very existence of multiple religions is the evidence (that’s the word i’m looking for in your arguments as well) that you simply cannot argue with religious people even with simple logic. believers will always, always come up with rationalizations to assure themselves that what they believe in is true, because if they didn’t, their decision of believing their own religion and not another one would make. no. sense. read that last sentence again, the logic is infallible. and that is not a selfish claim, it is *objectively* infallible.

One area where we do agree is this: you say that science is ever evolving and we may never know all the answers. God is the same way…not evolving, but rather He’s so HUGE and unfathomable, that with our limited minds, we cannot und…erstand Him fully, nor will we in this short lifetime we have on planet earth. That’s why we have eternity. Let me close this portion with this: Suppose you reach the end of your life and when you die, you discover that you were absolutely right. You go into oblivion or whatever…so, you have lost nothing, nor have you gained anything. Suppose I reach the end of my life and realize I’ve been living a complete delusion my entire life and I go into oblivion or whatever….I have lost nothing either. However, what have I gained? Love, joy, peace, relationships that have been meaningful and incredible beyond words, I’ve been able to travel the world, impact 1000s of young people through teaching and counseling them in their lives so that they get to live lives that are full of meaning and joy, etc. Now, let’s say I reach the end of my life and it turns out I’m “right” and everything I believe is true. I’ve gained everything listed above, which takes on even more meaning because it’s not simply about life on this earth, but for eternity as well, AND, I’ve gained eternal life with God. Back to you: you reach the end of your life and it turns out you are wrong. Not only have you lost eternity spent with God, but you have missed out on the fullness of life here on earth because you lived believing a lie. Because I believe that God is love, I also believe that an eternity separated from God is an eternity separated from any form of love whatsoever, and seeing as a human life-span is a small blip on the screen of eternity (even according to evolutionists time frames) an eternity spent separated from any sort of love is quite a long time. This argument I just presented is known as Pascal’s wager….the great mathemetician, so it is not my own. It is something worth considering though in light of all of our discussions up to this point.

Now, rightly so, you are critical of the actions done in the name of religion. Once again, I am NOT talking about religion. religion is very different than having a living relationship with a living God and the TRUE living God. You make ref…erence to the crusades….yes, that is the classic communistic mindset argument which you have bought into 100%. The crusades were HORRIBLE and never should have happened. They were done by men under the influence of not God, even though they called it God…it was NOT of God, clearly because of the FRUIT that was manifested in their behaviors. Anything OF GOD will bear GOOD FRUIT! So, you mentioning stoning women who commit adultery….that is of the muslim faith which is absolutely a false religion and yes, millions have been led astray. Today, all over the globe, Jesus Christ is showing up to Muslims in dreams and visions and they are giving their lives to HIM, and turning their backs on Allah, recognizing that they have believed a lie their entire lives. Look at the fruit of the muslim religion….all infidels must die. Never once did Jesus teach to kill your enemies…he said to love your enemies and do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you. Do all Christian believers do this? No. Not even I do this perfectly, because I’m not perfect. So, because I am not a perfect Christian I should throw the baby out with the bathwater and say my belief and faith is a delusion? That’s ridiculous!

I  have absolutely no problem with the idea of religion itself. people having their own little gods and worlds of delusion is okay with me. but. if religion, and its institution starts to interfere with science, going so far as to decla…re it outright wrong, then we have a problem.

imagine a world without religion, belief in the spiritual, transcendent, stuff like that: there would have been no hanging, burning, stoning, drowning, etc. of millions of innocent people throughout history in the name of religion; groundbreaking theories of the past would have been accepted and studied further instead of being declared as heresy, thus by now we would be hundreds of years more advanced; there would be no churches to influence matters WAAAY beyond their business in anti-science ways; all of humanity would THINK and ACT instead of trusting in an imaginary being, thus increasing productivity and the all-around standard of living. and. so. on. bottom line: if religion didn’t exist, humanity would benefit from it so greatly i cannot even begin to describe.

now let me ask you this: has science ever had any negative effects on all of humanity throughout history? has someone ever killed anyone because their scientific findings were different for example? i admit that science sometimes kills people too through experiments going bad for example – but for the greater good: the technological advancement of the human race; not out of stupid superstition and fear of losing influence, like the church did. deaths i think are acceptable for the greater good of our race, because without them, we could simply not advance or species. but these deaths are in no way comparable to the mass slaughter of heretics and people of other faiths, which all happened because of people having different delusions, and by no means because of a greater good.