Woodtopian, I wouldn't say that absolutely everything stated in the Bible is false, because there are some stories within that are verified through archeology.  However, there are things within the Bible that remain unverified.  Does this mean that they're not true?  Of course not, but that doesn't mean we should accept them either.
And I wouldnt say that fundamentalist Christians are blind to the truth as much as they're... oh, how should I put this... willfully ignorant.  They'll trust science as long as it doesn't cross the line, but once some scientist starts talking about evolution or millions and millions of years, then the fundies really start getting their panties in a wad.  Why is that?  Why is science perfectly trustable except for when it contradicts the Bible?

The Bible seems to weave in and out of reality.  It'll portray real places and events, but then it will go into la-la land, talking about demons and angels.  It tells stories that any logical person would at least question.  I mean, some of these are really pushing it when it comes to staying within the laws of physics.
The whole idea of a flood, for example, is so absurd that it's laughable that anyone would believe that such an event could have happened.  There isn't even that much water on the planet, and if there was, the atmosphere would be so oversaturated with water vapor that it would cause a run-away greenhouse effect that would turn the planet into an oven.

Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, by the way.

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God created all that water !

And what about the way religion hinders us ? I mean, wouldn't we be better off without the Church whining about abortion(sp?), condoms, cloning humans and such ? Not to mention the extreme sexism some cultures live in (coughMuslimscough), where religion states that women must not show their faces in public and that men can have any number of wives he wants (not that having more than one wife is a good thing, I mean, you gotta be rich to do so)  ?

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"Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo"
I will f*** you in the ass and mouth
Catullus, XVI

Things do sound more profound in Latin...

You know, I'm finding more and more that reason doesn't seem to work in these debates.  I could sit here for days pulling up information about geological history, physics, astronomy, and whatever else I have at my disposal, and fundamentalists will be committed to the idea that I'm wrong because the things that I'm trying to provide evidence for contradict the Bible.  There's no getting through.

I scarcely made it through a day of high school without someone coming up to me out of the blue and saying "I can't believe you're so stupid that you don't believe in the Bible."  And then I'd say something informed, and I'd get called stupid again.

Gotta love those awesome theological debate skills!

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I get the same thing from my "friends" at school... well, they don't mention the bible, but they do talk about god quite often... like: "Who do you think created you ? God did. Where are you going after you die?" Then I reply that we will decompose and since our thoughts come from bio-chemical-eletrical reactions in our brain (and not from a so-called "soul") our conscience will disappear as our body disappears... then they call me stupid...

Yep, you can't argue with the faithful...

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"Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo"
I will f*** you in the ass and mouth
Catullus, XVI

Things do sound more profound in Latin...

You can lead a fundamentalist to knowledge, but you can't make him think.

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Of course not... the idea of a god guiding your life and everything you do is so convinient... why to think when you can say that all is god's work ?

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"Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo"
I will f*** you in the ass and mouth
Catullus, XVI

Things do sound more profound in Latin...

I love the circular reasoning in my classmate's comments. Here's their combined input of what we have "discussed".

-Everything is controlled by God.

-God is all knowing and all powerful.

-God knows everything you are going to do in your life.

-You have to be good, so you can go to Heaven.

-God created you to do whatever it is you're going to do.

Um...right...now then, here's the natural assumptions that those arguments bring, if combined.

-God knows if you're going to do bad things, because he created you to do them.

-God controls everything, and makes people do what they were meant to do.

-GOD PUT PEOPLE ON EARTH TO DO BAD THINGS!!! THEN PUNISHES THEM FOR IT!!!

Everyone gets offended when I point that out, but that's the way their line of reasoning tends to go.

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Ah, I had that reasoning too. But then I also came upon the intellegence to talk with my pastor. (he has a lot of knowelegde yah know).

Basically, God gave (because we were created and we could just be worthless dolls) man (humanity in general) freewill. Our freewill is whatever we decide to do. He just makes us, we are the ones that act like idiots.

He could go ahead and control our every movement, he knows about it, but he loves (...for some reason it feels weird when I say that) us, and rather hope that we'd love him back. I mean, think seriously for a bit, would you like just playing with toys all of your life and making up your own love.

God created all things for a reason, he knows what's going to happen and weither the person he's going to create is going to do whatever. If it's no good, then it isn't his (or her's...or something's) fault. You screw yourself, you screw your children and you screw your family after that (that's why poverty and war exists). All problems are not at fault of God, it's at fault of Man.

...wow...my brain works...

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...wee?

You asked a pastor and that was the end of your philosophical questioning?  Surely you dug a little deeper than that rather than just settling at a point at which you were comfortable.

I find that the idea of God being all-powerful and all-knowing to be philosophically impossible.  Christians want us to believe that God knows everything.  He knows what we're doing and what we're going to do.  Essentially, God knows the future.
In order for God to know the future, the future would have to be fixed. But if the future is fixed, then free will doesn't exist. In fact, if God knew the future of what he was going to do, then God couldn't change that future, because if he could, then he wouldn't know the future.
You can't have it both ways.

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Silly Neil, of course I didn't stop there (I'm at the age in which I question everything that just seems a bit off), I just didn't say (I can't fix everything in one try).

Here's what I have (from me, because I sorted this out pretty easy)

Predestiny is a subject that basically killed me before. Now, I think I can answer it.

I shall try with a metaphor.

Roads, in front of us are roads. They are black and white. Sometimes our windshield is dirty and we can't tell. We make our turns and curves and choose whatever we think is best. Sometimes we choose black because it seems faster or easier, but we forget that these roads have spikes. We dogde or fail or just get lucky. Sometimes we choose white becuase it doesn't screw us over in the long run, but it's tough sometimes. God already placed our pitstops and God already placed our finish line.

Okay...that wasn't the best metaphor...(I can't fix everything in one try).

It's still our choice, though God may already know about, he let's us do it and just sets everything up with this knowlegde (ever have that feelin' like it was meant to be?...cha...just had it a week ago...although, it could just be me feeling all dreamy).

(note: the original post was waaaay better...damn thing logged me out before I posted and I lost it)

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...wee?

That's a very poor analogy.  It identifies the road as the path of destiny, but where's free will?  You don't have free will if you're following a path?  You're making it as if the only choices are A or B, when life is not like that at all.  You have tons of choices.  Some may not be logical so you rule them out, and you shorten your selection, but you don't have black and white paths that you can only follow.
What, are the crossroads and off-ramps free will?  Those are fixed too.  That's not free will if you can only decide this way or that way.  What if I pass a lake during my drive.  I don't have the free will to go to that lake?  What's stopping me?
You see, free will would be if I could throw the vehicle into 4-HIGH and go anywhere I wanted to go.  That would be free will.  And if I had that option, then the road would pretty much be worthless.  There might as well not even be a road.  It can't be the path to destiny, because I just left it with my free will fourwheel drive.
Either you have free will or you have a fixed fate.  You can't have it both ways.

And here's another problem with the idea that God knows everything.  There are three types of knowledge.  There's propositional knowledge, which is knowing if something is true or false.  There's skill knowledge, which is knowing how to do something beyond true or false... the non-black-and-white knowledge.  And then there is experiencial knowledge, which is being able to draw from experience to know something.
It's that third type of knowledge that is the problem.  You see, I have experiencial knowledge of what it's like to be an atheist, but God could not have that knowledge.  He could not possibly have experienced what it is to doubt his existence.  Therefore, I know something that God couldn't know.

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http://www.deviantart.com/view/5528364/

Nothing's stopping you, go ahead and go to that lake, go ahead and take the left over the right, sometimes you see the black and sometimes you feel that it's better to take the black, sometimes you see the white and sometimes you feel that it's better to take the white. He already know's the pitstops, you may think he doesn't, but whatever. Maybe our fixed fate is what our choices are. Dunno, only a kid...no college degree in theology...

But then what you are doubting is false knowelegde. Though it is an experience none the less. Maybe Jesus went through it...I wouldn't know...(Jesus was of human flesh, and Jesus and God are the same, and that's from the bible)...I need more knowelegde...

(hmmm...this thing is seeming a bit of "Everybody vs One kid" here...SOMEBODY GET MY BACK PLEASE!!! )

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...wee?

"But then what you are doubting is false knowelegde."

Um... no.  You're trying to muddle what I said my knowledge was.  I didn't say, "I know that God doesn't exist."  The example I gave you is that I know, from experience, what the act of being an atheist is like.  I mean, I sincerely hope you understand that saying "I know there is no God" and "I know what it's like to be an atheist" are two different principles expressing two completely different forms of knowledge, right?
It is not false knowledge to know what it's like to live my life as an atheist, because I'm doing it right now, whether he exists or not.  And that is the very knowledge that God can't have.  If he exists, then I know something that he doesn't, so therefore, he simply cannot be the all-knowing God that Christian fundamentalists assert him to be.
Interestingly enough, since you brought up false knowledge... I know from experience what it's like to have false knowledge.  Can God know what that's like?  No, he can't know what it's like to have false knowledge nor could he even have false knowledge, because then God would be wrong about something, which would make him less than perfect or all-knowing.  You want me to think that he's all-knowing.  Can God know from experience what it's like to make a mistake or to be imperfect?  No.  So I know things that God wouldn't know if he existed.

For the road analogy, you're using a lot of ifs and maybes, but you're not pointing to a reality here.  What's going on here is that you're trying to make assertions, but then you're stalling when your knowledge is limited.  If you lack knowledge, then why are you trying to debate with me?  You should be asserting from a basis of knowledge.  Are you instead committed to your argument without first having knowledge?  That leads me to believe that you have a bias toward something that you want to believe rather than something you know to be true.  You're debating from a stance of ignorance.  You basically admitted it when you said "I need more knowelegde..."
I get this a lot from theologians, where I ask them a question about what they're asserting and the reply I'm given is "I don't know" or "I'll get back to you" or "I need to confer with my friend".  And of course, if you give them time, they're always going to find something to say how their ideals work.  When given infinite time, anyone could come up with some contrived explanation to get out of a hard question, but it shows that the arguments that they're trying to make are really based on nothing, because they've drawn their conclusion from a lack of knowledge rather than knowing something.
Face it, if you knew some reality-based fact about God, you'd used it rather than trying to dazzle me with analogies. I'm not impressed by analogies. They can be used to better understand a truth, but they are not the truth in and of themselves.  We could go back and forth on analogies all day, and it goes nowhere.  You're still not providing me with any hard truth to make your assertions work.  All you have is the desire for your assertions to be right.
You want to say that the road is magically going to be there in front of me when I make a decision, and the problem there is that in the analogy, I can see the road.  In life, there is no path visible.  You can't see the future.  Your analogy just doesn't work.
And another problem with it is that if you're saying that there are off-ramps to choices that you make, then you're automatically eliminating the idea that there is a single, unchanging path of destiny.  You're embelishing on this concept so that there's kind of a find-your-fate principle, which still doesn't have room for free will.  In order for free will to work, you'd need an infinite scale of alternate routes and choices.  You would have to essentially pave every square inch of your analogical plain, in which case, where did the path go?

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From what I see here... it's like God is a mean kid playing with his toys... you can't have free will and fate at the same time. GOd knows everything I am going to do, so if I am going to do bad things, then why did he created me in first place ? So that I can do bad stuff and go for hell after that ? What kind of sadistic God is that ? And he still expects us to love him ?!

The idea of there being a God was created as a way for us to feel more special, meaningful... I tell you, it doesn't make my life any happier or more meaningful in living only as a toy, as a puppet to entertain God.

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"Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo"
I will f*** you in the ass and mouth
Catullus, XVI

Things do sound more profound in Latin...

That's another thing.  The fundamentalist angle on humanity is utterly insulting to human dignity.  The whole point idea that we're born sinners and that we should live our lives to please this master who is never satisfied.  We need to bow down and accept that we're slaves.  It really is demeaning to what it means to be human.
We are better than that.  We're nicer than that God.  I can live my life as a nice human being who cares very deeply about the people in my life without living to please this supernatural bully that Christians think is so great.  They like to wax on in this sagelike and poetic manner about how great it is to be unworthy servants to this tyrannical being.

That's not how I want to live my life.  I want to be happy.  I want to love the people I share my life with and not punish myself for these absolute rules in the Bible, when morally I've done nothing wrong.
And you know something?  If God wants to punish me for that, then let him do it.  Let him show me how much of a big man he is.  Let him send me to hell for doubting him and his big book of contradictions.  Would that make me respect him any more?  Would that be the actions of the fair, just, and merciful God?

No.

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