Why did you turn away from God?

[YourMaster]

In other words you have no clue. And any explanation that I might try to give you is beyond your comprehension. What can I say? I know what I know. But it would seem you are not sure of anything you might think you know.

Sorry, but this argument sounds painfully pathetic.

It would again seem you are the one who doesn't know what he it talking about. How can I expect you to comprehend real empirical evidence of there being a God. (Psalm 19:1-4. Genesis 1:1, i.e. the visible universe.) The evidence is you don't accept the evidence. And if the primary evidence is rejected, it would seem it is not likely that any other evidence will help you.

Oy!

I have concluded that you seem to have a problem with truth.

The poor lost soul can't see what's right before his eyes, just like those spiritually blinded Jews (yeah, those Jews, translation, everyone else in Palestine besides the few mystics who claimed their resurrection vision).

And who today really believes in any of them? There are over 30,000 sects making claims to be Christian.

There's over a billion communists ... does that make communism right

Maybe. But faith in the genuine Christ is a relationship with the God you seem to deny. The Christian view of pure religion is not of the false religions of the world. (see James 1:27.)

Oh no .... the world is out to get me. Stock up on canned food, bottled water, and duck tape .... Jesus is coming

And you cannot distinguish between truth and error. To you anything supernatural cannot be true. And you are too vain to test what might be true. (see John 7:17 - reading all of John.) You cannot do what you do not know. Let alone believe what you do not comprehend.

Yeah I'm sure that's it.

I cannot disagree with this. And you are better than this? Right?

Yes I am!

[phaedrus]

Your critical thinking is broken.

Why is my question so easily dismissed? Your last few posts seem angry responses to the fact that several people don't think like you. If you find your faith useful, good for you. If you want to insist you have absolute truth you may join the long line of people in history who have made similar claims. Some people even feel so certain that they have absolute truth that they will fly planes into buildings convinced they will be rewarded in paradise. I'm simply asking why your claim deserves acceptance any more than theirs does.

[Tassman]

Yes, if in fact there is no God. It is irrelevant.

Correct!

And YM has what evidence that there is no God? Which means there is in fact evidence which rules out any kind of God. And that evidence is?

The burden of proof is on the person making the assertion. It is YOU asserting the existence of a deity. It is not up to YM or me to give reasons why such a deity doesn’t exist - or why any of the mythical figures that fertile human minds have devised over the millennia don’t exist if it comes to that.

[Tassman]

In other words you have no clue. And any explanation that I might try to give you is beyond your comprehension. What can I say? I know what I know. But it would seem you are not sure of anything you might think you know.

You do not “know what you know” if it cannot be supported by empirical evidence. Such knowledge is indistinguishable from personal delusion. Others with a similar cultural background may claim similar “knowledge” which reinforces yours but matching such cultural expectations is quite consistent with our understanding of group psychology.

The real trick would be if a Hindu in a remote Indian village had a personal experience of Jesus as personal friend and savior – especially if he was praying for a revelation from Krishna. My, what a surprise that would be! Or better, if you had a vision of Krishna in the midst of your daily chat with Jesus.

It would again seem you are the one who doesn't know what he it talking about. How can I expect you to comprehend real empirical evidence of there being a God. (Psalm 19:1-4. Genesis 1:1, i.e. the visible universe.) The evidence is you don't accept the evidence. And if the primary evidence is rejected, it would seem it is not likely that any other evidence will help you.

I have concluded that you seem to have a problem with truth.

Scripture is not evidence. It is the hand-book of your particular mythology and of no more worth than, say the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which sustained a great empire for much longer than Christianity has been around.

Your version of “truth” is purely subjective.

And who today really believes in any of them? There are over 30,000 sects making claims to be Christian.

30,000 Christian sects is proof positive that the “truth” of your sacred scriptures is entirely dependent on personal interpretation not objective truth. There cannot be 30,000 versions of the same truth.

Maybe. But faith in the genuine Christ is a relationship with the God you seem to deny. The Christian view of pure religion is not of the false religions of the world. (see James 1:27.)

So your holy book claims that it is the true religion and all other religions are false religions. Well “glory be” - who'd have thunk it?

Um, isn’t James the book Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism, referred to as the “epistle of straw”? Oh, you Christians – always bickering!

And you cannot distinguish between truth and error. To you anything supernatural cannot be true. And you are too vain to test what might be true. (see John 7:17 - reading all of John.) You cannot do what you do not know. Let alone believe what you do not comprehend.

Anything “supernatural”, while possible is highly improbable. There is no verified evidence of the supernatural.

As for “testing it”, why stick to Jesus? Are you too vain to test a few of the other gods to see what happens - e.g. the goddesses Demeter and Persephone, who might well be true? You never know until you've tried it. After all for two thousand years countless initiates had a mystical experience during the annual rites of the Eleusinian mysteries – until they were banned by Emperor Theodosius I at the end of the 2nd century. Couldn’t stand the competition, I expect.

I cannot disagree with this. And you are better than this? Right?

I would say so. Are you?

[little_monkey]

That which exists or has existed (such as an event) and will never be changed.

Your question only proves, that truth is your fundamental problem.

And how do you know what exists or has existed?

[seanD]

Attachment 62460

There are so many reasons why people do things, but when it comes to this, there are some very definite reasons, why a person might turn away from God.
If none of the answers in the poll, resonate with you, why not bring it on board. I don't claim to be the expert, but I know that there are many true believers on this site, who would love to either engage you here, or privately.
I am going to take a back seat, and let you vent/or other ...

Earnestly,
Eric.

I don't know if I qualify, but I began to seriously doubt when I read the book Holy Blood Holy Grail. It was at a time I knew absolutely nothing of apologetics and I was sustained mainly by "good feelings." I never denounced Christianity outrightly, because I stuck with in faith, but I was fighting disillusionment along the way and it was very tough and disheartening. This was before the internet, and I had a pastor that I trusted at the time who coincidentally read through the book a few months later and debunked aspects of it that were not factual. With a renewed vigor, I went on a mad quest to research Christian history myself from both sides of the argument. And here I am today. I discovered that most Christians generally hide the facts (other than places like this), while most skeptics twist the facts.

[little_monkey]

while most skeptics twist the facts.

And which facts would that be?

[little_monkey]

Originally posted by 37818
That which exists or has existed (such as an event) and will never be changed.

Your question only proves, that truth is your fundamental problem.

And how do you know what exists or has existed?

Still waiting for an answer...

[Jon_Day]

Nicely put Jesse.


Jesse,

I am glad I never took a thoroughly literal approach to the Christian 'sacred texts', and in particular the Genesis account.
There is a spirit / word revelation which under-girds the Christian 'sacred texts' -- refer our previous discussion on OT books and commentaries. ( Q for unbelievers & Q2 for unbelievers. )
Of course, the account taken literally, would mean they would be baboons / apes of some sort, but not taken literally the account of Creation follows the pattern of so many imaginative, primative accounts of why we are in the soup we're in, how it all began .... etcetera ...
Of course, removing the shroud of literalism opens up a question. If the Christian 'sacred text' was merely a text like any other, what is the purpose of sacred texts in general? I believe they were all pointing towards a single character that would emerge in space, time and dimension (refer 1 John 1) - which would bring all of the magic and fantasy to life, but more specifically the hope of a complete re-Genesis of our entire system. It is this hope to which we all cling. (Well, most of us) A better world, if you will, because of this one: Jesus.
From the hovering Spirit, ‘in the beginning’, to the one in whom we live and move and have our being, I think we can be most thankful to the scientific pioneers for whipping of the lid of literalism and shutting all the paths to no where, and exposing the residual area of knowledge.

Sincerely,
Eric J. Sawyer.

I'm confused as to how we can "quantify" suffering and think of it as something which "started", and can be "ended". To suffer is a wholly subjective notion. In addition, mankind is not the limit of suffering, as other animals and plants succomb to disease and starvation just as easily. We can see this plainly. We see that suffering clearly existed prior to man's existence, and therefore could not be something which "started" due to an action of man, or even in any connection to man. If anything, a "regenesis" would simply create the same, more of the same, or some other form of suffering...as it's pretty clear that "suffering" is simply an unfortunate byproduct of natural existence.

[Jon_Day]

As for my response to the OP...I'm not even sure that I started off believing in God and then turned away. I can't really recall a time when I felt certain there was a God or deity of some kind. At around the age of 10 or 11, I converted with my adoptive mother to Judaism. This, I think could be considered the "religious" portion of my life. Still, I was never really clear on whether there was a "God" or not. Even being in this environment didn't provide many answers, because often times the notion of God presented was not that of a "deity" but rather as a conceptual "force".

At any rate...if you're just trying to get down to brass tacks, and figure out why people do not believe in God. I have a multitude of reasons, but the most fundamental of which I think is the fact that we are but one small species on a planet filled with others. This planet is tiny, small and fits into a tiny little speck's worth of space in a vast collection of other planets, stars, etc. Both the Torah and the Bible, and the majority of other theological texts seek to set up "man and earth" as the "center of the universe". To me, this smacks of a "man made concept", as it fits in with almost all of our other literary traditions. In short...I came to the realization that our theological traditions more closely resemble myth than truth. The nature of religion matches up to what we would expect to find if it were a manmade mythology, written in a pre-science era. Many things make this obvious such as the lack of mentioning of any information obtained beyond the point where the text was written. As if...their knowledge cuts off right where you would expect it to...right in their own time. This would most likely be due to the fact that it was written with no knowledge outside of that which could be possessed by any human, and was not in fact divinely inspired.

[DuraGizer]

I wouldn't say I turned away from God. I turned away from the cultic lies of a conceited racist pig who raped his own daughter.

I'm all too willingly to embrace God if He is out there somewhere.

[YourMaster]

I wouldn't say I turned away from God. I turned away from the cultic lies of a conceited racist pig who raped his own daughter.

Ummmm, huh? Dude, I must of have missed a verse .... where does the "raped his daughter" bit come from?

[Tassman]

As for my response to the OP...I'm not even sure that I started off believing in God and then turned away. I can't really recall a time when I felt certain there was a God or deity of some kind. At around the age of 10 or 11, I converted with my adoptive mother to Judaism. This, I think could be considered the "religious" portion of my life. Still, I was never really clear on whether there was a "God" or not. Even being in this environment didn't provide many answers, because often times the notion of God presented was not that of a "deity" but rather as a conceptual "force".

At any rate...if you're just trying to get down to brass tacks, and figure out why people do not believe in God. I have a multitude of reasons, but the most fundamental of which I think is the fact that we are but one small species on a planet filled with others. This planet is tiny, small and fits into a tiny little speck's worth of space in a vast collection of other planets, stars, etc. Both the Torah and the Bible, and the majority of other theological texts seek to set up "man and earth" as the "center of the universe". To me, this smacks of a "man made concept", as it fits in with almost all of our other literary traditions. In short...I came to the realization that our theological traditions more closely resemble myth than truth. The nature of religion matches up to what we would expect to find if it were a manmade mythology, written in a pre-science era. Many things make this obvious such as the lack of mentioning of any information obtained beyond the point where the text was written. As if...their knowledge cuts off right where you would expect it to...right in their own time. This would most likely be due to the fact that it was written with no knowledge outside of that which could be possessed by any human, and was not in fact divinely inspired.

Re the bolded, I think this is precisely the point.

The view of man and his god, in relation to the universe about him, is just what one would expect from Bronze Age nomadic tribes in the pre-scientific era when knowledge of the universe’s functioning was extremely limited compared with today.

It is a tribal religion with its own tribal god who is but another member of the tribe, but bigger and stronger, perfectly suitable for the period but hopelessly inadequate for a complex society like ours given our understanding of the nature of the universe.

No way can such a petty-minded tribal god, with his jealousies and vanity, be reasonably viewed as the creator of our vast universe - where we now know the sun our planet orbits is merely a small yellow dwarf star on the outer edge of a galaxy, which contains billions of other suns, and which in turn is but one of billions of similar galaxies – and now with the possibility that our universe itself is but one of an infinite number of universes.

The bible god is pathetically small and belongs to a bygone age.

[RBerman]

The view of man and his god, in relation to the universe about him, is just what one would expect from Bronze Age nomadic tribes in the pre-scientific era when knowledge of the universe’s functioning was extremely limited compared with today. It is a tribal religion with its own tribal god who is but another member of the tribe, but bigger and stronger, perfectly suitable for the period but hopelessly inadequate for a complex society like ours given our understanding of the nature of the universe. No way can such a petty-minded tribal god, with his jealousies and vanity, be reasonably viewed as the creator of our vast universe - where we now know the sun our planet orbits is merely a small yellow dwarf star on the outer edge of a galaxy, which contains billions of other suns, and which in turn is but one of billions of similar galaxies – and now with the possibility that our universe itself is but one of an infinite number of universes. The bible god is pathetically small and belongs to a bygone age.

Really? I have just the opposite response. The more I learn about the universe, the more wonderful and big becomes God as described in the Bible. The heavens declare the glory of the Lord. The Bible hardly depicts God as just being a bigger, stronger member of the tribe. He made the tribe!

[YourMaster]

Really? I have just the opposite response. The more I learn about the universe, the more wonderful and big becomes God as described in the Bible. The heavens declare the glory of the Lord. The Bible hardly depicts God as just being a bigger, stronger member of the tribe. He made the tribe!

He made the tribe, killed it, resurrected it, ordered it to kill a bunch of others, slice open the wombs of pregnant women, stone people to death for mundane offenses, then got mad at the tribe again after they almost unanimously didn't believe his word into flesh routine .... oy!

We can see how this nonsense perverts human thinking. I flick on one channel, there's the protestant so called minister trying to provoke us into war (and I note, a gigantic fat slob who's never invaded anything besides Church's Chicken), or the Catholic channel, with the priest treating normal human sexual relations in the most bizarre way imaginable (no wonder why we see the most bizarre perversions of human sexuality coming from priests).

Then when we (secularists) note this nuttery, you guys claim that isn't real Christianity. Well, what is "real" Christianity? Of course, the version you believe in. I guess secularists should be pleased with that response (since it guarantees continual conflict among different religious groups), except that now the conflict is coming from Islam, and taking the form of terrorism. I suppose crazy Christians killing abortion doctors was bad enough, but now the parties of god are killing random innocents, in their fanatical rage that can only be described as mental illness.

What crap! There is nothing about revealed religion that could possibly describe an intelligent creator. It is the most unintelligent bunch of rubbish to ever waste the paper it was printed on.