There is a prevalent opinion in the dimmer recesses of society of american society. Not only American society, but that particular community certainly seems to be the most vocal. I do not think that the prevalence of a high degree of religious conviction in this same community is coincidence. I was recently reading a piece on a Christian website (sorry but I can't find it again for a link) where they attempt to build a case for homosexuality being a product of nurture rather than nature. The case was something along lines that most of you will have encountered before. Absent father, over protective or possesive mother combined with a "sensitive" young man etc. Interestingly, I would love to hear an explanation of what a "sensetive" young man is and how these people believe that this "sensetivity" came about. They are obviously presuming that all people are born having roughly the same starting nature. Presumably all boys start out insensitive, and somehow become sensitive. Boiling down the sexualisation of some young men to enviornmental and maybe psychological factors.
I have issues with this. As a hetrosexual male I am certain that I could not be socialied into being gay. I have absolutely no doubt about this. Most hetrosexual people have no doubt about their being hetrosexual. The sexual responce is for most people, men especially, very very strong. It is not ambiguous or vague and has nothing to do with how we characterise the opposite sex. For men usually, not liking a particular womans character does not alter her attractiveness. If you meet a real, gold plated, peer reviewed and confirmed bitch, she can still be really hot. In the case of women, their sexual attraction to men can be governed to a fair degree on their opinion of the guy as a person with psyical considerations being much less important. These ideas are generalisations or course.
The site goes on to talk some complete horseshit about how homosexuals who go out partying are really only looking for sex and conquest. Yeah! The majority of young hetrosexual men must then be going out to nightclubs and bars looking mainly for a deep and fulfilling human connection and the sex is only incidental.
This is the really really weak evidence for homosexuality being a result of nurture. I say nature here as I am not certain what particular aspect of nature is responsible, it could be genetic, it could a factor from fetal development a combination of these things, whatever. I think it is pretty obvious from the evidence that your sexuality is something you are born with.
Consider this. There are many physical conditions that people are born with which are related to their sexual assignment. Some people are born with a mixture of the sexual organs. penis and uterus, penis and vagina etc. These conditions are not thought of as being a reaction to psycological pressures. "My father was such a cold asshole, who was sooo absent that in addition to my penis I was also born with a uterus." No one questions this. If you are unlucky enough to be a person for whom the sexual assignment proplem occurs in your brain, well your in trouble. Brains can be male or female. There are actual differences in male and female brains. There would have to be, otherwise the sexes would exibit more or less the same traits. If you have a very predominately female brain and your body is male then you aren't gay. You are woman in a man's body. This is about as extreme as a gender identity condition can be. But it is not an all or nothing proposition. Every brain falls somewhere along a range of possibilities with entirely male and entirely female being on the polar ends. I suspect there are very few men who have entirely male brains and very few women with entirely female brains. It is also not so simple as a degree of male or female. We know from study of the brain that different people manifest different amounts of function in various parts of the brain. An example might be the left brian/ right brain idea where the left brain is believed to be the hemisphere for logic and reasoning and the right brain intuition and emotion. Your ability to speak comes from your left brain etc etc. Some people have very strong brain biases in certain areas. This can mean they have great talent at a particular thing or find a particular thing nearly impossible. Its seems reasonable to me then that peoples brain develop in a wide ranging variety of ways. Why do some people (who just so happen to be almost exclusively religious) think that the parts of the brain responsible for sexality and sexual attraction should be immune from this varience? If you can be born with a penis and a uterus, why can't you be born with a penis and brain that finds men attractive? Even the term homosexuality is broad and encompasses a wide range of more specific sexualities. For example, you will probably have met gay men or gay women who act entirely as you would generally expect for their gender and you have probably met gay men or women who act much more in accordance with what you would expect from the opposite sex. All of this varience and indeed homosexuality itself seems to me to be an utterly unmysterious thing. It is no more immoral to be gay than it is to like action movies, or being the sporty type. I think that religion is probably the only reason why western socitey even considers homosexual to still be a debatable topic. The religious can't recognise it as being inborn in people without their precious, ancient and horrible little faiths taking yet another knock. Sadly, this nasty little predujuce is probably going to be with us a while yet.
Incidentally, I think our emerging understanding of the brain is making it more and more difficult to believe in a "soul" and still maintain the illusion of rationality, but we'll leave that for another time.
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Monday, April 19, 2010
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Almighty 101
Let us for humour sake consider a possible God of the twenty-second century. “101 the almighty”, the software engineer and technological God who laid the foundations of quantum mechanical law, biology and UML and who created on a mountaintop somewhere a computer circuit that reveals the new rules by which humans were always supposed to live. What might 101’s "1010 Commandments" be and will there be updates available free online. Will he be an electronic God who distributes his “1010 Commandments 2.0” from a magical server some people say exists even though no one knows the IP address or has ever recived a message from it?
Electronic temples with free wifi might spring up all over the world where the prime-geek will declare in his fancy costume (baring religious symbols such as the binary ‘01’) in a loud voice (CAPS LOCK)
“LET US NOW SUBMIT OUR FEEDBACK FORMS TO SUPPORT”
To which the drone like congregation respond in unison
“Send!”
“LET US GIVE THANKS TO ALMIGHTY 101 FOR BLESSING US WITH 500Mbit BROADBAND”
“Thanks”
“AND THE 101 SAID ‘I AM THE ONE AND ZERO, THE BINARY AND HEX, I AM THE PC AND THE MAC, THE WINDOWS AND THE LINUX’”
“101 is trans-format an will plug into any port”
He might then recount the tale of how 101’s chief designer was send to earth to upgrade our telecommunications infrastructure and how he managed by 101’s magical compression algorithms to cram the entirety of wikipedia onto a 2gig USB memory stick.
101’s Commandments
0001: Don’t worship any other magical programmer/biologist/engineer (every other God uses this rule so there must be something to it - right?)
0010: Be careful with my name because that’s really important…I think, ok maybe not. Knock yourselves out.
0011: Remember to celebrate Bob’s day, which is Monday. It is the day that Bob was compiling the universe and he put his feet up and had a double mocha latte. It someone wants to go off and be a wet blanket though, let them, their loss!
0100: Your folks may not understand facebook but if not for them using their ZX spectrums, you would not have X-BOXs. So be nice to them.
0101: Don’t make computer viruses. It is not cool, it just makes you look like a bitter nerd.
0110: Don’t log on to someone else account. Doesn’t matter what kind of account or even if they are using it anymore. It’s not yours, leave it alone.
0111: Don’t pirate software…well not too often anyway and definitely not if it is being offered at a reasonable price. Same goes for music and movies.
1000: Don’t flame people just because you disagree with them.
1001: Don’t feed the trolls.
1010: Exercise common sense when it comes to everything else. You don’t need me to tell you that killing people isn’t nice. In short. Don’t be an asshole.
If the world lived by 101’s commandments rather than Yahweh’s, would it be much different?
Electronic temples with free wifi might spring up all over the world where the prime-geek will declare in his fancy costume (baring religious symbols such as the binary ‘01’) in a loud voice (CAPS LOCK)
“LET US NOW SUBMIT OUR FEEDBACK FORMS TO SUPPORT”
To which the drone like congregation respond in unison
“Send!”
“LET US GIVE THANKS TO ALMIGHTY 101 FOR BLESSING US WITH 500Mbit BROADBAND”
“Thanks”
“AND THE 101 SAID ‘I AM THE ONE AND ZERO, THE BINARY AND HEX, I AM THE PC AND THE MAC, THE WINDOWS AND THE LINUX’”
“101 is trans-format an will plug into any port”
He might then recount the tale of how 101’s chief designer was send to earth to upgrade our telecommunications infrastructure and how he managed by 101’s magical compression algorithms to cram the entirety of wikipedia onto a 2gig USB memory stick.
101’s Commandments
0001: Don’t worship any other magical programmer/biologist/engineer (every other God uses this rule so there must be something to it - right?)
0010: Be careful with my name because that’s really important…I think, ok maybe not. Knock yourselves out.
0011: Remember to celebrate Bob’s day, which is Monday. It is the day that Bob was compiling the universe and he put his feet up and had a double mocha latte. It someone wants to go off and be a wet blanket though, let them, their loss!
0100: Your folks may not understand facebook but if not for them using their ZX spectrums, you would not have X-BOXs. So be nice to them.
0101: Don’t make computer viruses. It is not cool, it just makes you look like a bitter nerd.
0110: Don’t log on to someone else account. Doesn’t matter what kind of account or even if they are using it anymore. It’s not yours, leave it alone.
0111: Don’t pirate software…well not too often anyway and definitely not if it is being offered at a reasonable price. Same goes for music and movies.
1000: Don’t flame people just because you disagree with them.
1001: Don’t feed the trolls.
1010: Exercise common sense when it comes to everything else. You don’t need me to tell you that killing people isn’t nice. In short. Don’t be an asshole.
If the world lived by 101’s commandments rather than Yahweh’s, would it be much different?
Why I think evolution theory is trouble for religion.
Throughout history there have been many scientific discoveries that have cast a long shadow on religious belief. From discovering the water cycle to heliocentricity. Of course, some people do still pray for rain. Undoubtedly these people would sneer at a tribal rain dance but think their own version is a serious and worthwhile undertaking. Some people just refuse to learn!
The one theory in modern science that really seems to make the religious uncomfortable is evolution. Evolution is an almost universally accepted theory amongst people who know anything about it. There are of course some dissenting voices in the scientific community but almost every theory has a few detractors. It is a reasonable statement to make that evolution is a proven theory is so far as any theory can be proven. There are libraries of evidence to support the idea. Infact, there is so much evidence that a lot of religious groups and organisations have been forced to accept it. They usually do so with some made up new idea that God started it off or something to that effect. In the modern world, educated people laugh at creationists. We laugh because they continue to believe something that has been shown to be false. They are sticking to their guns (and/or bibles as the case may be). The more reasonable theists out there are not quite so stubborn as to simply deny evolution. They know it happened so they instead try to go around it and pretend it doesn’t really matter to their faith. They decide that their reading of the bible as metaphor is more sophisticated that those silly creationists. This strikes me as one of the most intellectually dishonest things any large movement has ever done. They are claiming that the countless generations of people who came before them who were almost all creationist were wrong to read the bible literally. Silly creationists. The reasonable and honest conclusion would be that the bible is wrong and has been clearly shown to be. They can’t do that though. To acknowledge such massive errors in the bible would reduce its value to roughly what most atheists take it be already; for all but historical/mythological purposes: worthless. It would become much the same as a statue of Zeus. It may have some value as a cultural artefact but it has nothing to say about our reality. The standard tactic employed is to simply overlook the old testament. That is the part of the bible with all the really nasty bits where God acts like a complete asshole. If we can just overlook that half of the bible we can still hold on to the good stuff. Well, we will still pretend that the old testament stuff is still valuable but that it is written in a metaphorical way and you have to be really clever to understand it properly Lets pretend that instead of some ignorant babble written by a couple of ancient goat herders, it is actually really amazing and important insights into human behaviour! Cool.
So what about the New testament? That is surely immune to evolutionary attack. After all, it was only about 2000 years ago and evolution doesn’t have much to say about a time span that short. Right?…..well no, not quite.
We are apparently made in God’s image. People once thought that meant he looked human but the more modern evolution-friendly interpretation is that we are made in his image spiritually. Ah, right. We have souls you see, they are what make us like god and what elevate us above animals in the grand scheme of things. Uh-oh. Doesn’t evolution posit that we were once animals. Even worse, it suggests that we are still because evolution is a continuous process. We are still evolving. Maybe we are animal-like now in comparison to what we will become? If were animals in the past, did we still have souls back then? Could we commit crimes like murder? When a lion kills another males cubs in order to mate with the female, is he committing infanticide. Will God be angry with them? Was there some point in our evolution when God popped in and decided it was time for us to start having souls? That would have been an uncomfortable generation.
“Hey God, will I see my mommy in heaven when I die?”
“Nope sorry, your mother is an animal”
Evolutionary theory should and to the critical and unclogged mind does remove the notion of a soul and with it washes away most if not all religious belief.
Clinging to a concept long after it has been rendered obsolete is not the act of a rational mind. Neither for that matter is the belief in invisible people. We once believed in all manner fantastical creatures and happenings and powers, but all of these, every last one that has met the scrutiny of scientific investigation has fallen away. Most of the core doctrines of modern religions have also been shown to be false; the religious just refuse to notice. One day, Jesus Christ as the son of God will take his place along with Yahweh amongst the dead Gods who all lament those two powers they could not overcome. Reason and Science.
It is sad but I think almost inevitable that new religions will rise to replace those who that have fallen, making grand claims about the universe and all powerful entities who created and command it until the next wave of scientific progress washes away those fantasies with a torrent of fact and evidence. What form will these gods take? What will their miracles be in a technological society? Would you doubt for a second that the adherents of those religions will look back on the followers and Yahweh and Allah and shake their heads, wondering why people believed they were communicating with God? They might even ask their God about it.
The one theory in modern science that really seems to make the religious uncomfortable is evolution. Evolution is an almost universally accepted theory amongst people who know anything about it. There are of course some dissenting voices in the scientific community but almost every theory has a few detractors. It is a reasonable statement to make that evolution is a proven theory is so far as any theory can be proven. There are libraries of evidence to support the idea. Infact, there is so much evidence that a lot of religious groups and organisations have been forced to accept it. They usually do so with some made up new idea that God started it off or something to that effect. In the modern world, educated people laugh at creationists. We laugh because they continue to believe something that has been shown to be false. They are sticking to their guns (and/or bibles as the case may be). The more reasonable theists out there are not quite so stubborn as to simply deny evolution. They know it happened so they instead try to go around it and pretend it doesn’t really matter to their faith. They decide that their reading of the bible as metaphor is more sophisticated that those silly creationists. This strikes me as one of the most intellectually dishonest things any large movement has ever done. They are claiming that the countless generations of people who came before them who were almost all creationist were wrong to read the bible literally. Silly creationists. The reasonable and honest conclusion would be that the bible is wrong and has been clearly shown to be. They can’t do that though. To acknowledge such massive errors in the bible would reduce its value to roughly what most atheists take it be already; for all but historical/mythological purposes: worthless. It would become much the same as a statue of Zeus. It may have some value as a cultural artefact but it has nothing to say about our reality. The standard tactic employed is to simply overlook the old testament. That is the part of the bible with all the really nasty bits where God acts like a complete asshole. If we can just overlook that half of the bible we can still hold on to the good stuff. Well, we will still pretend that the old testament stuff is still valuable but that it is written in a metaphorical way and you have to be really clever to understand it properly Lets pretend that instead of some ignorant babble written by a couple of ancient goat herders, it is actually really amazing and important insights into human behaviour! Cool.
So what about the New testament? That is surely immune to evolutionary attack. After all, it was only about 2000 years ago and evolution doesn’t have much to say about a time span that short. Right?…..well no, not quite.
We are apparently made in God’s image. People once thought that meant he looked human but the more modern evolution-friendly interpretation is that we are made in his image spiritually. Ah, right. We have souls you see, they are what make us like god and what elevate us above animals in the grand scheme of things. Uh-oh. Doesn’t evolution posit that we were once animals. Even worse, it suggests that we are still because evolution is a continuous process. We are still evolving. Maybe we are animal-like now in comparison to what we will become? If were animals in the past, did we still have souls back then? Could we commit crimes like murder? When a lion kills another males cubs in order to mate with the female, is he committing infanticide. Will God be angry with them? Was there some point in our evolution when God popped in and decided it was time for us to start having souls? That would have been an uncomfortable generation.
“Hey God, will I see my mommy in heaven when I die?”
“Nope sorry, your mother is an animal”
Evolutionary theory should and to the critical and unclogged mind does remove the notion of a soul and with it washes away most if not all religious belief.
Clinging to a concept long after it has been rendered obsolete is not the act of a rational mind. Neither for that matter is the belief in invisible people. We once believed in all manner fantastical creatures and happenings and powers, but all of these, every last one that has met the scrutiny of scientific investigation has fallen away. Most of the core doctrines of modern religions have also been shown to be false; the religious just refuse to notice. One day, Jesus Christ as the son of God will take his place along with Yahweh amongst the dead Gods who all lament those two powers they could not overcome. Reason and Science.
It is sad but I think almost inevitable that new religions will rise to replace those who that have fallen, making grand claims about the universe and all powerful entities who created and command it until the next wave of scientific progress washes away those fantasies with a torrent of fact and evidence. What form will these gods take? What will their miracles be in a technological society? Would you doubt for a second that the adherents of those religions will look back on the followers and Yahweh and Allah and shake their heads, wondering why people believed they were communicating with God? They might even ask their God about it.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Questions for Moderate Christians.
Moderate Christians generally don’t like being pinned down about the specifics of their faith. My own opinion on the matter is that they just don’t want to shine too bright a light on their beliefs. Moderate Christians have a tendency to be people who just aren’t quite gullible or unreasonable enough to embrace their faith in full. Fundamentalism is really nothing more than believing everything your holy book tells you no matter how false to fact or ridiculous it may be. The moderate desperately wants to believe in their chosen faith but can’t quite bring themselves to believe that telling a single lie and not being sorry will see you literally roasting away in hell for eternity. In order to better convince themselves that it is reasonable to believe outlandish things (Jesus was the son of God etc. etc.) they engage in impressive amounts of “theology”. Theology might be well described as an academic attempt to make bullshit plausible. Speak vaguely enough, propose all kinds of insubstantial modes of communication and knowing and soon enough the existential possibilities are endless.
There are some bitter pills to swallow along the way though. The bible simply cannot be the inerrant word of God. It is way too full of holes for that claim to stand up. The moderate then will suggest all kinds of roles for the bible and how it is sort of from God but obviously influenced by the human authors. Another problem the bible presents is that it states a lot of stuff that the moderate finds distasteful so this requires that large sections of the bible be relegated to metaphor or an expression of a concept in the language of the time, etc. etc. It can be fairly solidly shown that the bible is not a reliable historical document. Most moderates will at the very least admit that it is not 100% reliable and some will go so far as to concede that it really is not all that reliable at all. They will often suggest though that historical accuracy was not the bible's purpose. It was written to convey a message and much of it is not intended to be factual, merely parable and metaphor to get the point across. Ok. Fair enough.
What bugs me about the moderate position is that after such admissions and concessions they will pipe up with a solid concrete statement such as “Jesus is the son of God”. This bouncing between a realistic acceptance of the bibles unreliability to a ridiculous belief that some guy knocking around two thousand years ago was some form of man/god is carried off not only like it is a reasonable move but with the insinuation that it rigorously thought through and intellectually robust. I don’t doubt that many a worthy mind has invested itself in the effort to make faith reasonable but this endeavour is simply not borne of a desire for truth but from a desire to make a comforting fantasy real.
Reality has many qualities that just don’t sit well with humans. It is not fair for example. Those who do wrong quite often get away with it completely. Many of the worst villains in history have never faced any kind of justice for what they did. They were arrogant, cruel, selfish, and vicious and served only their own desires and it worked out great for them. Our desire for things to be fair drives people to believe in all kinds of silliness. Karma, reincarnation (possibly with penalties), posthumous judgement and many more wonderful justice inducing cosmic guarantees.
Life ends. This is also something that doesn’t sit too well with most people. No problem, we’ll just pretend that death isn’t the end of life. Now comes the fun bit. Lets combine some of these ideas. There will be justice (not in this life of course, that would be too visible.), and you get to live forever. The real beauty of this combination is that you can start to control people’s behaviour by threatening them with undesirable posthumous punishment and at the same time reward good behaviour (or at least compliant behaviour) with paradise, no less!, beyond the grave. Throw into the mix the all too prevalent male desire to dominate women, all manner of social prejudice and a general desire for control and supremacy and viola!, you have religion.
Moderates are in general basically good people who want to believe God has got their back and is going to sort everything out. No harm in that right? Maybe, maybe not. I object in general to ignorance, be it mild or gross especially when wilfully indulged. I also think that most attitudes held by humans have a tendency to go through cycles. Moderate now may not be moderate tomorrow. A moderate teacher also does not guarantee moderate students. Moderate faith also lends a notion of reasonableness to more extreme versions. A religious moderate and a religious fundamentalist agree about many of the ridiculous ideas underlying their faith. The will of their common fictional overlord is where they differ.
Here are some questions then for moderate believers.
1. Do you think the bible is the inerrant word of God? If not, why not?
2. If you answered no to question 1, why do you think that it is reasonable to believe that a man wielded magical powers and rose from the dead and was a god and a man at the same time; I am assuming that you do not generally believe in these things. What is it about the Jesus case that is so compelling as to make believing the impossible reasonable?
3. Why does God command and condone evil acts in the bible (genocide, Rape, slavery etc.) if he is good?
4. Why is it not more reasonable to assume that God is evil given his rampage of destruction throughout the O.T?
5. In what way would an evil God have acted differently and can you imagine a way in which God might have acted more morally at any point in the O.T.?
6. Why is Jesus’ character so different from the God of the O.T. if they are (inexplicably) the same person?
8. Is it conceivable to you that Christianity might not actually be true (in the sense that Jesus might just have been an irregular Joe.)?
9. When considering the idea that there is no God, is your reaction one of distaste or disagreement and could you be happy living in a universe where there was no God?
10. Why do you think (assuming you do) that Mohammed was not in direct contact with God (Allah)? There is a holy book and many witnesses who profess he was. If you are willing to believe such things are possible, why do you not believe this?
There are many similar questions that could be asked but by now I’m sure you get the gist of it.
There are some bitter pills to swallow along the way though. The bible simply cannot be the inerrant word of God. It is way too full of holes for that claim to stand up. The moderate then will suggest all kinds of roles for the bible and how it is sort of from God but obviously influenced by the human authors. Another problem the bible presents is that it states a lot of stuff that the moderate finds distasteful so this requires that large sections of the bible be relegated to metaphor or an expression of a concept in the language of the time, etc. etc. It can be fairly solidly shown that the bible is not a reliable historical document. Most moderates will at the very least admit that it is not 100% reliable and some will go so far as to concede that it really is not all that reliable at all. They will often suggest though that historical accuracy was not the bible's purpose. It was written to convey a message and much of it is not intended to be factual, merely parable and metaphor to get the point across. Ok. Fair enough.
What bugs me about the moderate position is that after such admissions and concessions they will pipe up with a solid concrete statement such as “Jesus is the son of God”. This bouncing between a realistic acceptance of the bibles unreliability to a ridiculous belief that some guy knocking around two thousand years ago was some form of man/god is carried off not only like it is a reasonable move but with the insinuation that it rigorously thought through and intellectually robust. I don’t doubt that many a worthy mind has invested itself in the effort to make faith reasonable but this endeavour is simply not borne of a desire for truth but from a desire to make a comforting fantasy real.
Reality has many qualities that just don’t sit well with humans. It is not fair for example. Those who do wrong quite often get away with it completely. Many of the worst villains in history have never faced any kind of justice for what they did. They were arrogant, cruel, selfish, and vicious and served only their own desires and it worked out great for them. Our desire for things to be fair drives people to believe in all kinds of silliness. Karma, reincarnation (possibly with penalties), posthumous judgement and many more wonderful justice inducing cosmic guarantees.
Life ends. This is also something that doesn’t sit too well with most people. No problem, we’ll just pretend that death isn’t the end of life. Now comes the fun bit. Lets combine some of these ideas. There will be justice (not in this life of course, that would be too visible.), and you get to live forever. The real beauty of this combination is that you can start to control people’s behaviour by threatening them with undesirable posthumous punishment and at the same time reward good behaviour (or at least compliant behaviour) with paradise, no less!, beyond the grave. Throw into the mix the all too prevalent male desire to dominate women, all manner of social prejudice and a general desire for control and supremacy and viola!, you have religion.
Moderates are in general basically good people who want to believe God has got their back and is going to sort everything out. No harm in that right? Maybe, maybe not. I object in general to ignorance, be it mild or gross especially when wilfully indulged. I also think that most attitudes held by humans have a tendency to go through cycles. Moderate now may not be moderate tomorrow. A moderate teacher also does not guarantee moderate students. Moderate faith also lends a notion of reasonableness to more extreme versions. A religious moderate and a religious fundamentalist agree about many of the ridiculous ideas underlying their faith. The will of their common fictional overlord is where they differ.
Here are some questions then for moderate believers.
1. Do you think the bible is the inerrant word of God? If not, why not?
2. If you answered no to question 1, why do you think that it is reasonable to believe that a man wielded magical powers and rose from the dead and was a god and a man at the same time; I am assuming that you do not generally believe in these things. What is it about the Jesus case that is so compelling as to make believing the impossible reasonable?
3. Why does God command and condone evil acts in the bible (genocide, Rape, slavery etc.) if he is good?
4. Why is it not more reasonable to assume that God is evil given his rampage of destruction throughout the O.T?
5. In what way would an evil God have acted differently and can you imagine a way in which God might have acted more morally at any point in the O.T.?
6. Why is Jesus’ character so different from the God of the O.T. if they are (inexplicably) the same person?
8. Is it conceivable to you that Christianity might not actually be true (in the sense that Jesus might just have been an irregular Joe.)?
9. When considering the idea that there is no God, is your reaction one of distaste or disagreement and could you be happy living in a universe where there was no God?
10. Why do you think (assuming you do) that Mohammed was not in direct contact with God (Allah)? There is a holy book and many witnesses who profess he was. If you are willing to believe such things are possible, why do you not believe this?
There are many similar questions that could be asked but by now I’m sure you get the gist of it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
