Oof... Salty loser... Spamming is not cool, mkay
(media.conspiracies.win)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (111)
sorted by:
Interestingly enough, that's the same way I feel about you wasting your life being in love with a fairy tale.
It's not my problem.
Talking about areas where people do agree is avoiding the question which was about the areas where they don't agree.
The question was is it a problem for the "bible only" approach to Christianity when people disagree on interpretations, or is it okay if every Christian has their own personalized version of it?
If you haven't figured out the answer, it's that it's not a problem to us.
There are sometimes disagreements on nonessentials, there are sometimes disagreements on essentials that get resolved over time, and there are sometimes disagreements on essentials that don't get resolved, in which case over time it becomes realized that one party was not pursuing truth. Sometimes it takes a very long time, but in every long serious disagreement there is either a historical resolution and agreement, an ongoing dialogue, or a disappearance of one of the parties from the debate, usually due to other demonstrable evidence of not pursuing truth in the same spirit.
This principle is also useful for atheists seeking interpretations of physical evidence, so I share it.
If by "fairy tale" you mean an interpretation lacking a full explanation or understanding, all good scientists admit that their theory of everything is a fairy tale by that definition. But what other definition could there be to distinguish between us two?
Yeah.... See, that's what I was getting at... You believe in a personalized version of god, which is going to have different requirements for his followers depending on who you ask.
In which case, either the rules for getting into heaven are pretty loose, or a hell of a lot of Christians are going to hell for believing the wrong things.
There are over 50,000 denominations of Christianity based on differing interpretations of the 900+ English versions of the bible.
It seems to me like you never resolve the disagreements, and instead just fracture into a separate branch and then claim the other side aren't real Christians.
Since all of you are asserting knowledge of the truth, and none of you are demonstrating a way to verify that knowledge, I think none of you are actually pursuing truth.
I mean you claim to believe a story chock-full of supernatural elements.... and yet you can't demonstrate the existence of anything supernatural in the slightest. That makes it a fairy tale as far as I'm concerned.
The difference is I don't go around professing faith and absolute belief in scientific theories, nor do I waste my time pouring over them thinking absolute truth is buried in there somewhere as long as I magically come to the correct interpretation of what it says.
Most all the 50,000 denominations agree on the essentials of following Jesus, and admit each other to be true followers. Most all the disagreements are about nonessentials (and politics), not about truth. The occasional exceptions are usually easily distinguished because of several marks of disunity with the core at the same time: that is, a so-called "denomination", that really does reject all others, that refuses other truth teachers than its selected leader, and that usually doesn't go Bible only, is easily recognized as a cult instead of as a denomination.
I just linked you demonstrated ways to verify knowledge of truth about these things. Most all denominations agree broadly with such elements in verifying such knowledge. Nobody professes absolute belief as if we are capable of doing anything absolutely; people profess that absolute truth exists and we can approximate it and apprehend it better over time. Logically, if you believe there is no absolute truth, there's no absolute standard by which your relative belief can be tested or held right or wrong; no belief would be better than any other. Rather, most atheists are just practical agnostics, they do have some things they believe to be more in harmony with some external standard than other things.
You did fall into a trap by changing my definition from "unexplained" to "supernatural". When you investigate what people mean by "supernatural" they always go back to "unexplained". Now let's make that a real test case. There are over a dozen scientific (usually atheistic) theories of the origin of the universe. Every one of them necessarily appeals to the unexplained somewhere or other. Further, most of them contradict each other in their technical descriptions. Should I reject all the atheistic theories as not pursuing truth because they contradict, and should I reject them as fairy tales because they don't explain everything and thus contain events that defy "natural" law ("supernatural" because unexplained by us)? No, that's no reason. Rather, the existence of competition indicates truth exists and people are seeking it. The existence of broad agreement in simpler facts of life indicates that agreement can be achieved in the harder facts too.
Do you wish to make good on your pursuit of truth by treating me as a person who can be persuaded to greater truth than I already have? If there's no god, I'd want to know that, wouldn't I? Is it possible that by finding areas we agree on there might be a basis for us to trust each other to dialogue about disagreements? There would be no point in it if we're just here to sound good to ourselves and to reassure ourselves in what we already believe; rather, exposure to alternate viewpoints is helpful in science in establishing which viewpoint is most in agreement with external reality (absolute truth). c/Atheist relies on the scientific method, but are you prepared to recognize how to use that method, and its natural limits?
Would Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Catholics say they are all true followers of the same Jesus?
Then how come you refused to verify anything when i asked?
Just because you WANT to know something doesn't mean you can. When someone makes an unfalsifiable claim with no way to ever verify it, I think the logical thing to do is disregard them.
The lack of evidence against their claim doesn't demonstrate anything other than that the claim is of such a baseless nature that it's impossible to gather even the slightest bit of evidence either way.
Just cause you want to know the nature of the universe doesn't mean you get to know. Just because you pretend to know doesn't mean you do.
I don't think I know the answers, But I've seen enough to disregard the one you are putting forward about a sentient magic supernatural being who created the universe for fun.
You believe in a god that literally supersedes nature, the universe, space and time, and the laws of physics, because you think he created all of that.
Refusing to own the label "supernatural" is to deny the very god you claim to worship.