So you will abandon your own personal beliefs to support your existence. This to me tells me you value your life more than you do your beliefs. The difference being I will die for what I believe in and have faith in.
That's not what I said. I said I have no problem lying about my own personal beliefs to support my existence. There's a difference.
If someone says to me "convert to Islam or I'll shoot you in the face", I'm more than happy to tell him that I've converted. It doesn't mean that I have. He can't see inside my head.
The same applies to a Christian "converting" to Islam. You can say the words, but unless you actually mean it then you haven't actually converted. You can do all the praying and other things required, but unless you're actually sincere it doesn't mean anything.
Somehow I think you don't quite get that nobody can
make you convert. No matter what you say or do, you have to choose to convert in your mind.
For me its a question if you have, or do not have faith in the belief you support. If indeed you have faith in a belief and have truly committed yourself to it then for that person I am sure it is seen as an honourable death. Survival instincts are indeed human, although I find nothing noble or self rewarding of living a life you are forced into neither. Especially one that you describe which does not give you freedom of choice or you do not believe in, just to continue living.
Apparently you find it more noble or self rewarding to die rather than continue to live a life in which your choices are limited.
How much do you think that perception comes from the knowledge that there's an afterlife? If you can just give up and die when the going gets hard, why does one not just kill oneself straight away?
Life is difficult, to varying degrees. I don't see how it follows that you can say that you should't kill yourself (or allow yourself to be killed) when you're walking through the mall eating ice cream, but it's OK to allow yourself to be killed when the going gets rough.
What proof have you that it achieves very little? You refer to Christian faith so perhaps for the Christian it actually achieves a lot. You want to live by facts then fact is you can not say what it achieves, we can only make differing statements based on our own differing beliefs.
What does dying for your faith achieve, then? Explain it to me.
Take down the machinery from the inside? Again you do not seem to understand faith in a GOD. A commitment to something greater than yourself. So do you then propose to wipe out every Muslim practising that faith or how do you convert them are they then not entering the same cycle they forced you into, the only difference being the belief varies and who is dictating it, so where does it end? I wont/cant convert you, faith does not come from the mind my friend, so how to you expect to convert others if they are true to their faith?
I'm not talking about converting my oppressor. If you're faced with someone who is offering you death or conversion, then that's a militant. I have no desire to convert them from their religion, but I will work to remove their ability to force theirs on others through force of violence.
That is taking down the machinery from the inside. That is me refusing to let them take my life, and instead me using it to make the world a better place for me, my family, my community, and hopefully humanity as a whole. If that requires me to lie about my beliefs, then so be it.
I find it interesting that you're willing to die, but you're not willing to lie about your beliefs in order to achieve something.
Curious though, do you ever wonder how deep is their love for you?
Not particularly. I'm not so insecure that I need to know exactly how much people love me. It's enough for me that they do.
If you asked these people, if they would suffer what Christ suffered to show you their love for you, would they do it. Our to put it another way, would you suffer the same for them?
Maybe some of them would do it, I'm sure that some wouldn't. I know that there are people and situations for which I would go through what Christ did, and others that I would not.
You will not like discussing this (he will be rolling his eyes by now)...
You know what I'm rolling my eyes at? You telling me what I will and will not like discussing. How about you leave off telling me what I think?
Curious however regarding your first comment. Would you abandon these loved ones in a situation that maintained your own survival but their death? Or would you sacrifice your life for the ones you love? What would they do for you?
It depends on the situation. Do I sacrifice my life for my elderly father who I love, but who is dying of cancer? Knowing that if I die, my wife and children will find it very difficult to survive?
There are no easy answers that I can give you. I will make the decision that I think at the time will give the best result for all concerned. However, I'm also aware that I'm human and that while I'm sitting here in my comfy chair I may say that, in the heat of the moment I may not think so clearly.
If you did give you life for their safety, I wonder would you still say you see nothing noble in it?
Where did I say that I saw nothing noble in someone giving their life to save another?
So if you have an understanding of love but you can not see it, you can not prove it, I am amused that you believe in it. That you or others can so easily with your intellect get offended by something (love) yet you do not have proof of it existing, nor how or where it comes from.
If you or others agree you believe in love, have experienced it then by right I could in fairness say you are being hypocrites, yes? So if their is no scientific proof of love can you please explain it.
Firstly, you can see the effects of love, just as you can see the effects of light, or heat, or gravity.
Secondly,
stop telling me what I think. I'm not offended by love, love is a wonderful thing.
Thirdly, I absolutely have proof of it existing. I feel love. I don't know exactly where it comes from, but I don't know where gravity comes from either. It doesn't stop it working.
You persist in this view that not understanding something is some sort of problem. It is not. If you think that I'm being a hypocrite, you're going to have to explain how because I'm not seeing it. I feel love for others, and I see others behave in a way that suggests that they feel the same about me. What's the problem here?
I would agree yes I need to lean more about it to understand more the way an atheist thinks.
Likewise perhaps you do not understand faith so much.
I don't understand
your faith, which is why I'm asking you about it.
With proper proof, faith would not exist their would be no need for it. If you agree on this then you should see the importance or value a person has to have to believe from faith alone.
Why is it important to believe? Why not simply wait until you know, or at least have some reasonable evidence from which to draw some inferences?
Believing is not always seeing, knowing, understanding.
On the contrary, believing is
never seeing, knowing or understanding. As you said above, if you know then you don't need to believe.
You believe that their are alternatives to creation, yet you have no proof otherwise that creation itself is correct. The point is you choose to refuse to accept it as one as their is not enough evidence to support such, nor enough evidence to dispel it. So the option is to seek alternatives.
I don't understand what you're trying to say.
Very good answer. May I say it is easy to label "atheists" all in one box but equally as easy to label "Christian" beliefs and not get mixed up between "Christian based religion" and true Christianity the truth in the original scriptures. Religion is man searching for God, Christianity is God searching for man.
Why does God need to search for man? He knows where man is and everything about him, God is omniscient.
The greatest minds of the planet never have had enough information. Yet to this day, knowledge/science has never proved (any god) does not exist neither.
Please read up on
Russell's Teapot. It will explain a lot to you.
So if you are a person looking for solutions/answers can you tell me why then do so many atheists attack scripture and you yourself seeing some of your responses to me clearly do not fully understand parts of it.
If I don't understand, then explain it to me. I'm not a religious scholar, although I try to be well read.
People take issue with scripture because it is often presented as fact, when that's really not true. I don't present a science textbook as proof that gravity exists, I ask you to drop a ball and observe what happens.
Is it the "religious" factor that gets peoples back up the most? You do not have data to prove we all live in the matrix neither (lol) but you wont go around mocking or hunting down to ridiculing people that do like that concept. The Christian has to put up with the constant mocking.
Ah, the Christian persecution complex. I don't go around mocking and hunting down anyone. People come to this forum where I happen to spend time, and I interact with them here. If someone comes in and says we're all in the Matrix, they will get far more derision and pointed questioning than you're getting. The hard version of the matrix idea is at least as unprovable of the hard version of God, probably more so.
So for the third time,
STOP telling me what I think or do. You do not know.
Again I agree. I suppose you and I will get the answer when when are dead.
The difference is (I might) have an insurance policy and pension, lol.
See, I happen to think that God, if he exists, is not an :censored:hole.
I think that if he sees someone who has lived a good life, tried to be a good person, and generally behaved well as a human, then he will respect that regardless of whether the person specifically spent his life worshiping him. I doubt that God is so insecure that he needs hordes of people praising his name.
However, if He wants to send me to Hell for the crime of using the brain that He gave me to try and accurately identify the world around me, then so be it. I probably couldn't live in Heaven with a God like that anyway.
So right away from this I can see you have passion. What you describe though, is it not love? Do you ever tell the people you love them or they love you? I expect you believe these emotions/actions to have value, you believe it has importance and something you not only enjoy sharing but experiencing from others, yes?
Why do you think that I don't accept that love exists? I haven't said it at any point, so it's telling us something about your perception that you've assumed it.
Can I ask did you learn to get all these emotions from books or studying? Are you sure it is not just something the mind generates and is based from chemicals/brainwaves or body functions. Seriously are you certain your feelings are genuine. I ask for proof can you give me the data or is it you cant explain scientifically why but you know, you feel its just their, it grew within you and it is part of what you are?
Of course I didn't learn my emotions from books. I learnt them by feeling them, the same way I learned what red was, or what cold was. I know my feelings are genuine in the same way that I know that the desk in front of me is genuine. It may not be, but the world makes a lot more sense and is way easier to deal with if I assume that it is. Likewise, emotions are a useful concept to explain my own sensations and behaviour, and those of others.
One can do brain scans and identify common patterns and chemicals associated with certain emotions, but that's not really much of an explanation. I don't know how or why emotions work the way they do. Maybe someone out there does. It makes little difference to me, I still have to deal with them. Just because I don't know how a bus works, doesn't make me any less dead if I get hit by one.
If its just chemical reactions then love itself does not exist neither, feelings/values that you hold important to you and you are defending may as well be binary data. If we only had memories but not actual feelings what value would the memories be? I ask then what is the point/value of life if life has no point/value? We just exist, we just die, the cycle just keeps going.
A game is just binary data, but it's also a game. The larger pattern does not become unimportant simply because it is composed of smaller patterns. Binary data is cool and all, but it's how it fits together to make a game that is really impressive.
It may be true that the underlying phenomena of emotions may only be chemical and electrical signals in the body, but that doesn't mean that they're pointless. The particular combination that evokes love, or joy, or sadness, are still wonderful things.
Perhaps the difference lies in the ability to appreciate things. I can appreciate a car, or a fine clock, or a jet engine. Even though they are purely mechanical and based largely on well known and understood phenomena, I still find them to be interesting and beautiful in their own way.
If humans and the universe are purely mechanical (which is not an idea which I propose because there is plenty of things that suggest that this is not the case) I would still be able to find beauty in that. If emotions were somehow purely mechanical, that doesn't decrease their value. Why would it?
If I suggested you try searching for where you love comes from and to test for yourself if you have a soul. Depends if you are willing to let go of reason beyond your brain and seek a new adventure.
How does one test that one has a soul? Break it down into simple steps for me.
