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Insanity : The Anti-Ciccu Mission Thread
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But if you believe that non-religious people go to hell/don't go to heaven, then surely you are failing horribly to be kind when you abandon us to this fate. I can't speak for you, but my impression is that many Christians dislike trying to convert others because they are subconsciously aware how fundamentally ludicrous their beliefs are. They therefore rationalize the problem away by pretending that it is more tolerant not to try and convert people. If you have the courage of your conviction, then get out there and preach. We shall see which world-view prevails in the end.
If you knew what the bible teaches, then you may understand a little better. It says that we (as christians) should make known the gospel to others. Once they know the message, it is the responsibility of the individual to make up their own mind. God doesnt want people who have been forced into belief. God wants people who choose to believe from their free will. Thats why harassment should never come into it.
toto8462
If you knew what the bible teaches, then you may understand a little better. It says that we (as christians) should make known the gospel to others. Once they know the message, it is the responsibility of the individual to make up their own mind. God doesnt want people who have been forced into belief. God wants people who choose to believe from their free will. Thats why harassment should never come into it.
You can't distinguish between harassment and converting people. To those who do not believe it will be harassment in any event (though of course it can be done in a more or less intrusive way). However, if I thought that people who did not believe in whatever fairy-tale I chose to adhere to would burn for all eternity, then I certainly would continue to try and make them understand that this was the case. How can you live with yourself knowing that you might have saved someone's soul, but chose not to because you were afraid of bothering them for 5 minutes?
Anyway, how can your 'benevolent' god condemn people for using their free will, if he created them in that way?
oldthrashbarg
But if you believe that non-religious people go to hell/don't go to heaven, then surely you are failing horribly to be kind when you abandon us to this fate. I can't speak for you, but my impression is that many Christians dislike trying to convert others because they are subconsciously aware how fundamentally ludicrous their beliefs are. They therefore rationalize the problem away by pretending that it is more tolerant not to try and convert people. If you have the courage of your conviction, then get out there and preach. We shall see which world-view prevails in the end.
The view of ISLAM is that good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell, the view of CHRISTIANITY is that we're all bad, but if you are truly sorry for our sins, you will go to heaven. The New Testament teaches of a beneveolent God.
Anyway, how can your 'benevolent' god condemn people for using their free will, if he created them in that way?
In God's eyes, they made the wrong choice. Google for a bible - Read Luke 16 v19-31
EDIT: A link... http://www.ibs.org/niv/passagesearch.php?passage_request=Luke%2016
A perfect parrable to illustrate this point of how God wants people to make up their own minds. I am conscious this is straying off topic, but if you want to start up a topic in discussion and debate, i am more than happy to carry on. This thread is about the activities of CICCU, not about teachings of Christianity.
What if people living in Greenland have never heard of "religion" and have never thought about worshipping anything? What choice do they have. I got some crass answer back when "grilling" a Christian evening took place where they said something like "they [Greenlanders] should look around at nature and see that it is perfect and should make the connection that "God" created it." I have never heard such tripe in my life. What a crass argument. Can you please explain better?
I went to a CICCU event this evening and had the interesting opportunity of having the chance to an epistemological debate with a CICCU member. Now, what did I find out from this debate. Firstly I apparently am way off because I believe that my knowledge is limited by my consciousness. I also apparently have no epistemology because my ideas leave room for me to be unsure/able to change my opinions. Apparently this makes me unsure about being unsure and hence certain (and apparently as bad as them). This is possibly the worst point I have ever seen in debate. The fact that I may not have direct knowledge of my situation does not negate what my situation is (surely?)
MB
MB
Firstly, i cannot speak for what people in the CU think or believe as i have never met anyone from the CU.
I understand your frustration in the argument, but as a Christian, creation itself is a masterpiece and for me, the sheer complexity of it points to a designer.
William Paley came up with the idea of a person coming across a watch. They have no conception of what a watch is, but by its sheer complexity and intricacy the aprreciate it must have ahd a designer.
If someone hasnt heard of Christianity, it is through the failing of Christians today as they are instructed "to go into all the nations" and spread the word.
I would prefer to explain your question in the following way...
Firstly, God is not unjust...
It is paramount to Christian teachings that God will always make the right decision.
Rom 1:19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
Rom 1:20 Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse;
I think this is probably what the Christians you "grilled" were refering to.
"Gentiles" refers to anyone who is not a Jew whether they have heard of God or not. The law refers to the 10 commandments, one of which is to believe in God (surprisingly!). The Bible suggests that our conscience "bear witness" to conflicting thoughts (this could be about a creator) and we can be acused or excused based on our own conclusions about this.
This finally is where the answer comes. In honest truth i believe it is built into our very nature to expect a designer (or 'God'). That is why even the most ancient cave paintings show illustrations of "God's" in control of the things of nature and why, in all probability that even the most remote tribes have their own kind of "Gods". The final verse basically means that if we approach the idea of God in an open minded fashion we will know that it adds up. If we approach with scepticism before you even consider God may be involved, your decision is biased and has already been made.
I must confess i don't think i know the bible enough to give a concrete answer as to where i stand on this. At the moment i maintain that God is just and will never make the wrong decision, it is not in Gods nature to throw as many people into hell as possible! I hope i have made this a little clearer, but if not, start a thread in "discussion and debate" and i will try a little harder to explain it to the best of my ability.
At this point i'm guessing i will probably get a lot of hatred for my thoughts on the matter, but try and keep it in context of the point at hand. I dont profess to believe what other Christians might believe on these matters as i am not a member of any denomination (e.g. Catholicisim) and i consciously stear clear from all institutions that tell you what to believe, i like to think things through by myself, so be gentle...
I understand your frustration in the argument, but as a Christian, creation itself is a masterpiece and for me, the sheer complexity of it points to a designer.
William Paley came up with the idea of a person coming across a watch. They have no conception of what a watch is, but by its sheer complexity and intricacy the aprreciate it must have ahd a designer.
If someone hasnt heard of Christianity, it is through the failing of Christians today as they are instructed "to go into all the nations" and spread the word.
I would prefer to explain your question in the following way...
Firstly, God is not unjust...
Gen 18:25 Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
It is paramount to Christian teachings that God will always make the right decision.
Rom 1:19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
Rom 1:20 Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse;
I think this is probably what the Christians you "grilled" were refering to.
Rom 2:15 They (Gentiles) show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them
"Gentiles" refers to anyone who is not a Jew whether they have heard of God or not. The law refers to the 10 commandments, one of which is to believe in God (surprisingly!). The Bible suggests that our conscience "bear witness" to conflicting thoughts (this could be about a creator) and we can be acused or excused based on our own conclusions about this.
Joh 7:17 if any man's will is to do his will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God
This finally is where the answer comes. In honest truth i believe it is built into our very nature to expect a designer (or 'God'). That is why even the most ancient cave paintings show illustrations of "God's" in control of the things of nature and why, in all probability that even the most remote tribes have their own kind of "Gods". The final verse basically means that if we approach the idea of God in an open minded fashion we will know that it adds up. If we approach with scepticism before you even consider God may be involved, your decision is biased and has already been made.
I must confess i don't think i know the bible enough to give a concrete answer as to where i stand on this. At the moment i maintain that God is just and will never make the wrong decision, it is not in Gods nature to throw as many people into hell as possible! I hope i have made this a little clearer, but if not, start a thread in "discussion and debate" and i will try a little harder to explain it to the best of my ability.
At this point i'm guessing i will probably get a lot of hatred for my thoughts on the matter, but try and keep it in context of the point at hand. I dont profess to believe what other Christians might believe on these matters as i am not a member of any denomination (e.g. Catholicisim) and i consciously stear clear from all institutions that tell you what to believe, i like to think things through by myself, so be gentle...
toto8462
I understand your frustration in the argument, but as a Christian, creation itself is a masterpiece and for me, the sheer complexity of it points to a designer.
William Paley came up with the idea of a person coming across a watch. They have no conception of what a watch is, but by its sheer complexity and intricacy the aprreciate it must have ahd a designer.
William Paley came up with the idea of a person coming across a watch. They have no conception of what a watch is, but by its sheer complexity and intricacy the aprreciate it must have ahd a designer.
Without wishing to get involved in the CICCU debate: if you read the Blind Watchmaker - and can manage to ignore the bits where he's just plain rude - Dawkins does refute this argument quite well.
I dunno, I consider myself a practicing Christian, but I really REALLY lloathe the Christian Unions with a vengeance. They keep bloody following me and ask me if I'm a Christian, to which I answer yes, and then they proceed to tell me about their crap. It's happened in Freshers week and the TCCU people keep cornering me and asking me if I'm interested. If they do so again I think I'm going to respond in an equally bizarre way "I belong to the One Holy Catholic Church and I have no time for your mickey-mouse tomfoolery.'**
**Disclaimer, I nicked that from someone's facebook. I'm not crazy - just VERY VERY irritated grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
**Disclaimer, I nicked that from someone's facebook. I'm not crazy - just VERY VERY irritated grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Reema
Forget Dawkins. Read David Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion". It's much more focused and argumentative, far shorter, a far more pleasant read, and summarily dismissed this argument 250 years before Dawkins touched it.
I love it
.
I love it
.Never read it! I'll get it out of the library today
I went to one of their talks yesterday for the free food. I had brought a book with me to read during the actual talk but annoyingly a girl I know was sat next to me and I didn't want to offend her so I pretended to listen intently.
Anyway, I thought that being in a church and with so many Christians around me, and with the fact that the talk was targetted at atheists like myself, might cause me to at least rethink my position a little. Not a bit of it, the guy's argument was basically "atheism is also a faith, and it is wrong because the bible says so". And then he let us in on the profound truth that "religions contradict one another, so they can't all be true".
What tripe. But. Free sandwiches!
Anyway, I thought that being in a church and with so many Christians around me, and with the fact that the talk was targetted at atheists like myself, might cause me to at least rethink my position a little. Not a bit of it, the guy's argument was basically "atheism is also a faith, and it is wrong because the bible says so". And then he let us in on the profound truth that "religions contradict one another, so they can't all be true".
What tripe. But. Free sandwiches!
Alewhey
the guy's argument was basically "atheism is also a faith, and it is wrong because the bible says so". And then he let us in on the profound truth that "religions contradict one another, so they can't all be true".
That's what I dislike about CICCU (and any Christian Union in general), they refuse to accept other religions, when at the end of the day the basic foundations of most religions are very similar. Most CU groups seem to be of the opinion that only their particular brnd of Christianity is acceptable to God.
MadNatSci
Without wishing to get involved in the CICCU debate: if you read the Blind Watchmaker - and can manage to ignore the bits where he's just plain rude - Dawkins does refute this argument quite well.
The main problem i have with most of what Dawkins says is that he implies if you know how it all works, there is no space for God and there is no need for Gods existence.
Thats like saying, i know exactly how a car works so there is no need for there to have been a designer. Perhaps its a bad analogy, for which i apologise, but the principle is true and undeniable. I personally dont believe the creation of the world is as the bible suggests, but to then argue that becasue of that God doesnt exist is both facile and rediculous.
Creation of the world is an argument that came from athiets. The bible spends one chapter talking about it (out of thousands) and it is certaily not a major issue. However, athiests seem to think if they can undermine the biblical account, the rest of christianity will fall with it. That idea is utter tripe.
I am probably wasting my time writing these answers as i am writing to an audience who has already made up their minds and understandably i just get a lot of scepticism thrown back at me.
Gen 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."
This verse makes science a very valuable persuit for a christian, i defy anyone to tell me that because you think you can explain creation/existance of the world in a more detailed and complex way than the bible uses, that it undermines the whole faith and proves it is wrong.
The reason we never get anywhere in these arguments, is because there is no answer to them. If there was, R. Dawkins would have published his book and then he would be out of his favourite hobby. It is all down to a matter of faith and oppinion, nobody can claim to have proved anything. I admit that because i am a christian, that makes me biased to the belief that God was involved in the creation of the world, but by the same logic, becasue you are athiests, that makes you biased against God being involved in creation. This argument is something we will never make any ground on and is probably quite futile...
toto8462
The main problem i have with most of what Dawkins says is that he implies if you know how it all works, there is no space for God and there is no need for Gods existence.
Thats like saying, i know exactly how a car works so there is no need for there to have been a designer. Perhaps its a bad analogy, for which i apologise, but the principle is true and undeniable.
Thats like saying, i know exactly how a car works so there is no need for there to have been a designer. Perhaps its a bad analogy, for which i apologise, but the principle is true and undeniable.
That's a dreadful analogy. The argument is more like "we have nigh-irrefutable evidence that the car was created without any designer, so there is no need for there to have been a designer." It's not saying there wasn't a designer, it's just making the designer unnecessary. It's a very simple argument. Anyone who has problems with it should probably try to figure out why they so desire this aspect of God to exist, or else stop using biology and physics to justify their own theology.
toto8462
The main problem i have with most of what Dawkins says is that he implies if you know how it all works, there is no space for God and there is no need for Gods existence.
Thats like saying, i know exactly how a car works so there is no need for there to have been a designer. Perhaps its a bad analogy, for which i apologise, but the principle is true and undeniable. I personally dont believe the creation of the world is as the bible suggests, but to then argue that becasue of that God doesnt exist is both facile and rediculous.
Creation of the world is an argument that came from athiets. The bible spends one chapter talking about it (out of thousands) and it is certaily not a major issue. However, athiests seem to think if they can undermine the biblical account, the rest of christianity will fall with it. That idea is utter tripe.
I am probably wasting my time writing these answers as i am writing to an audience who has already made up their minds and understandably i just get a lot of scepticism thrown back at me.
This verse makes science a very valuable persuit for a christian, i defy anyone to tell me that because you think you can explain creation/existance of the world in a more detailed and complex way than the bible uses, that it undermines the whole faith and proves it is wrong.
The reason we never get anywhere in these arguments, is because there is no answer to them. If there was, R. Dawkins would have published his book and then he would be out of his favourite hobby. It is all down to a matter of faith and oppinion, nobody can claim to have proved anything. I admit that because i am a christian, that makes me biased to the belief that God was involved in the creation of the world, but by the same logic, becasue you are athiests, that makes you biased against God being involved in creation. This argument is something we will never make any ground on and is probably quite futile...
Thats like saying, i know exactly how a car works so there is no need for there to have been a designer. Perhaps its a bad analogy, for which i apologise, but the principle is true and undeniable. I personally dont believe the creation of the world is as the bible suggests, but to then argue that becasue of that God doesnt exist is both facile and rediculous.
Creation of the world is an argument that came from athiets. The bible spends one chapter talking about it (out of thousands) and it is certaily not a major issue. However, athiests seem to think if they can undermine the biblical account, the rest of christianity will fall with it. That idea is utter tripe.
I am probably wasting my time writing these answers as i am writing to an audience who has already made up their minds and understandably i just get a lot of scepticism thrown back at me.
This verse makes science a very valuable persuit for a christian, i defy anyone to tell me that because you think you can explain creation/existance of the world in a more detailed and complex way than the bible uses, that it undermines the whole faith and proves it is wrong.
The reason we never get anywhere in these arguments, is because there is no answer to them. If there was, R. Dawkins would have published his book and then he would be out of his favourite hobby. It is all down to a matter of faith and oppinion, nobody can claim to have proved anything. I admit that because i am a christian, that makes me biased to the belief that God was involved in the creation of the world, but by the same logic, becasue you are athiests, that makes you biased against God being involved in creation. This argument is something we will never make any ground on and is probably quite futile...
Well, no. I wouldn't argue that God doesn't exist just because I think that the process of evolution is how organisms came to be the way they are. For a start, I'm an agnostic, not an atheist: I have no more evidence to say 'God doesn't exist' than I do to say he does and so I feel it would be foolish to take an absolute stance on it.
But the car analogy is very poor! We are not saying that we understand how the human body works and so it couldn't have been designed: we're saying that we have an understanding of how it can have come to be how it is, without a designer or a builder having to go near it. This is a very different argument. While you get frustrated with atheists for being blindly biased against any idea of God's involvement in creation, I have to say that I get equally frustrated with Christians who continually misinterpret what people are trying to say and change the argument to a different one! Neither one will ever believe the other because that's the thing with faith, and some atheists can be just as irritatingly blinded to argument as some Christians. But it would be nice if people would at least take part in the same arguments...!
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