If I am allowed to state my own opinion, I will take neither side in this debate. Supernatural claims can't be proven or disproven by their very nature and trying to do either is foolishness. The only thing we can do is to state what we believe, just bear in mind, just beacause we are ourselfs convinced of something doe not make that a fact, humans are capable of error. For example one thousand years ago people believed with certainty the earth was flat, however that was proven wrong. Regardless of how sure I am that, for example, Celestia does not exist, there is always that small chance that I will be proven wrong when she visits my bedroom to take me to Equestria. What I am saying is that we should always keep in mind that we could be wrong about something, regardless of how sure we are. This is what my christian stepdad told me. That being said, the question for me is not if their is a God, the question is for me, what is God? Is he a cosmic force? Reality itself? A personal creator? All three? Everything is possible. However, I can never believe a good God would ever inflict eternal torment on anything, that itself would be the blackest of sins. If Hell does exist is is more likely to be the doing of whatever evil power you believe in and not God. However, I am just human, I may be wrong. I must also say that I am convinced that if there is a Heaven, the bronies that abide by love and tolerance would all be in it's ranks. I have faith that we can keep this discussion civil, up to this point I am impressed and proud of you people.
This is why that, if religion is real, any religion should get you to God. The way I see it, all religions lead to the same goal. Whether this goal is Heaven or false belief, that's up to each of us to decide for ourselves.
Then again, it also depends on how one chooses to interpret the Bible. I know many Christians who use a lot of the teachings and stories in there and take the main idea (Be a good person, love your brother, etc) and just follow those, but can acknowledge when things shouldn't be taken literally.
I may have mentioned this before, but religious texts shouldn't be taken literally. If there really was a book that gave you the secret to eternal happiness, do you really think that it'd be that easy to understand? It requires thought and understanding to get the essence of the Bible.
Basically. Good people will use religion to help preserve human dignity, and bad people will use it to oppress others. Neither is usually wrong. The former tend to focus on the abstract morals of various religious stories, while the latter cling to legalistic interpretations of religious rules, primarily. How a person interprets their Christianity, for instance, really gives me a clear window into what kind of person they probably are.
I knew I shouldn't have come into this thread... Also, sorry to anypony I might have insulted. Like you, FoxNinja. I didn't mean to say that you were mocking me; I was merely speaking of one or two atheists I know in real life. I still think christianity is completely faith-based. You can't scientifically prove that God exists. But proving he exists and knowing that he exists are different things. I know he exists; I just can't prove it. Sometimes, as I am a human and I DO like things to be proven, as I am a very scientific person, I lose faith and start thinking, "But what if? What if Jesus was just a radical Jew? What if Christianity really isn't real? What if all this is in my imagination?" Those aren't good thoughts for me to have. Honestly, if someone were to come to me with conclusive proof that Christianity was false, I don't think I'd take it very well. Not that I would deny it's truth, you see, but I have lived my entire short life of 16 years under the beleif that God exists and sent his "Son", Jesus, to die for our sins. If that was suddenly proven false, well, then my whole life thus far would be a lie. I'd have no hope whatsoever, and I would honestly think about commiting suicide. Thankfully, there won't BE any conclusive proof, as you can't just locate an all-powerful omnipresent God, whether he exists or not. The only way you could possibly know he exists is if he "speaks" to you. And yeah, I know, cheesy cliche Christian thing, God "speaks" to us. It's not literal of course, at least not usually. Most of the time it's through events or things other people do, or possibly just "knowing" that you have to do something. It's really difficult to explain without making it sound supernatural, because it is supernatural, at least in my opinion. I've seen some weird stuff, though I'm only 16, and I could probably rationalize them down and say they were coincidences. I beleive in coincidences. But not the kind of coincidence where, for example, on a really hot summer day, you go downtown and find none of your friends where you planned on meeting up. So after waiting a half-hour, you start biking home. On the way, you see a man in a wheelchair in a remote church parking lot waving to you. You think at first he's just saying "hi", but he yells for you to come over there. Cautiously, you ride your bike over there, and he explains how his chair ran out of batteries in the middle of a sunny parking lot. Not many people go by that part of the parking lot, so it was "lucky" that you came by. You help him by pushing his wheelchair to an open door so he can get inside the church and recharge his chair. Except then it hits a rock and flips forward, and he wasn't wearing his seat belt. So he flies out of the chair and slams into the ground. So, with his direction, you use his cell phone to call 911, and wait there while help comes. Then, after they get there, you get back on your bike and you're about to ride home when your friend comes around the corner and tells you that they're headed to the meetup area and there are two other people there. Maybe it was just a chain of coincidences, but personally I don't feel like it was. The chances that I would be to our meeting place an hour early on accident, and then ride that particular way home because the other way was clogged with traffic because of a festival, and then go and help the dude, and then afterwards, that I'd run into one of my friends and still be able to hang out with them instead of going home??? That's not all that likely. You decide whether it was just being in the right place at the right time, or something bigger. Sorry to go off on a rand on this. I should probably avoid this thread from now on; I've had bad experiences with threads like these and I don't really want anything bad to happen between me and anypony else. I just wanted to share that, even though it probably makes very little difference in most of your beleifs.
I'm sorry that you feel that way. Maybe as things progress you'll find something to add. I certainly wasn't offended. Religion hardly ever offends me, it really just irks me for some reason. I admire you standing up for your beliefs as you did, as when I was a Christian by this point I would have given up or admitted I had nothing more to argue. Don't feel like you will be shunned from the thread should you decide to come back. And now that that's done, what else is there to discuss? :>
I agree with Legion here, there are things happening in our lives that we don't even notice, also freaky things like the leg thing that happened to my cousin, there is probably a way of proving them through science, but then we forget that it is god who makes the science happen. At least in my opinion. So for me, every little thing that happens in my life I believe it was God who caused them, because for me, he is with me everywhere I go so although coincidences DO happen, for me I believe that they are normally caused by God. That's my view
If you can argue good coincidences, you can argue bad coincidences. If I go to a meetup an hour early and while I'm gone, a truck runs into my house and sets fire to the home, and because I am absent, my pets, my grandma, and all my things, plus the truck driver, are burned to a crisp because I was not there to wake up grandma, open the door for the animals, put out the fire, or pull the truck driver out of the window, then what? That was really mean of you, God. But then of course, you can argue using the account of Job, so there's no way out of that logic.
God does things for specific reasons. Some things are to test your will, some to test your strength, some to test your faith. People who blame or thank God for everything that happens, however, are wrong. Some things happen that are out of anyone's control. For example, I don't thank God for letting me have food on my table. That is all stuff that is controlled by me, and nobody else. I do believe in coincidences, but I do believe that some things are destined to happen whether we like it or not.
So using Jonin's example, God would be killing animals and people close to you to test you? Well that was nice of him, involving others in this plan for you, especially killing them all agonizingly. I'm afraid I just can't respect something like that.
He hasnt really done that in a while though. I think he only tests prophets. And we havent had one of those in over 2000 years. Everything else is just random, unfortunate events.
That's how I feel about this whole debate over that, really. {I'm still waiting to see how long it'll take before this thread get's locked}
This thread doesn't need to be locked. It's the only real discussion on the site. What? Isn't he supposed to do everything for a reason. Everything includes everything. Like me, why did I hit a tree in my car. Was god testing my durability?
