Testing The Christian Apologists

Yet that is exactly the God described in Genesis 1.

Experience shapes everyone's belief - if you had no experience of Christianity you could not believe what you believe.That has no bearing on whether a god exists or otherwise. Nope, as I've said many times, I decided that there was no god because it became clear that the god I'd been taught to believe in was a pile of juvenile, made up crap. Total garbage. I'm just stateing the bleedin' obvious. Faith's views on the rapture are totally whacko. The superfluous comment is about belief not the existence of god. If - as GDR says - all that's necessary to get into heaven is to 'love thy neighbour', religion and belief is superfluous. People can do that anyway. In fact, we can't help ourselves mostly. Yeh, well Phat, as I've said before, this isn't about what *you* want or need; it's about what is.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Well, it isn't "only".But in any case, service that benefits the server as well as the servee is, if anything, better than one-way service. Service in a restaurant is better if the waitress gets paid. Better than slavery.

Hi Tangle
This was a reply to Phat but the quote was from Phat but you used GDR.

Well sure, but that isn't what we are talking about. That kind of service isn't about loving your neighbour or loving sacrificially. Knowing that your neighbour is struggling financially and then slipping a hundred dollar bill in his/her mail box anonymously is an act of sacrificial love.

Service is service. It's all about getting along together, cooperation.Love does not have to be "sacrificial". That's just an excuse to shoehorn Jesus' death into the equation. He may have sacrificed His life but He didn't actually accomplish anything by doing it. He would have shown more love by tipping the waitress at the Last Supper.

Fixed, thanks

We know we evolved physically but there are only unevidenced theories such as yours about the evolution of consciousness.
However my point has always been that even if consciousness can be shown to have evolved it doesn't change anything. Once again, it is like looking at an automobile and claiming that the assembly line is the sole reason for its existence. Once again the point of being a Christian is not to be on the right side of God when you die. The point is that as a Christian you have faith that God has given you life and loves you and your neighbour. It hopefully makes you more open to that God meme and gives you a heart that wants to live a life based on my signature.I can't find any stats on it, but I would bet that by far the most NGO aid that goes into the third world is from Christian organizations and individuals. The sponsors of Syrian, (usually Islamic by the way), refugees in this area were very nearly always Christian. This involved not just money but considerable time as well helping them get settled.God is in all of that which makes God anything but superfluous. It is the vocation that God calls us to as humans and it isn't that non-Christians can't fulfill that vocation but I suggest that it is pretty clear that the Christian response is far greater than the response from those of other faiths or non-faiths.

Aid to third world countries is not about co-operation it is about loving your neighbour sacrificially.

For the sake of this argument, I agree. It doesn't matter whether our consciousness evolved (huge amount of evidence) or whether god planted it in us individually (absolutely no evidence at all, and a very large problem with arguments of freewill if he did, but never mind).Given that we do have a conscience, however derived, and given that you claim that all that is asked of us by your god is for us to love each other, all the rest of your belief is redundant is it not? And I'm going to say yet again, so what? If I live a decent life, look after my neighbour etc, you say that's all that's required. I do not have to be a believing Christian to do all that - it's all totally unnecessary, and, incidentally a load of superstitious bunkum. Well that's one hell of an unsupported claim and is also irrelevant. Your argument now seems to be that christians are better at being nice people - an idea that is pretty disgusting and beneath you.

Foreign aid is only a tiny part of our international cooperation. We gain far more than we "sacrifice" by getting along with our fellow earthlings.

What I claimed was that the vast majority of NGO foreign aid is done by Christian organizations. I have never said that Christians are "nicer" than non-Christians. That is simply your term and not one I have ever used in this context.I am simply saying that Christians are more likely to offer foreign aid to unknown neighbours than non-Christians, and used the refugee case as an example.

..and just how well is that working out?Our relatively small church provides about 60% of the support to provide a shelter, food and education for young women in Kampala. The reminder of the support comes from another church. We provide nearly all of the support to keep a library going in Addis. We provide money to the hospital for care as well as for the education of others in Uganda. We have fund raisers to provide funds for local agencies such as the food bank and hospital in our community.
We send money to a fund set up by our national church that provides aid where needed all over the world.Frankly I don't see larger organizations such as the local service clubs doing anywhere near that and when they do they is usually a picture in the paper with them handing over a cheque to someone.Certainly international co-operation is a good thing but more often than not that co-operation is about providing arms and often winds up leaving those countries with huge amounts of debt.

Which is probably untrue and in any case irrelevant. That's exacly what your claim translates too. That's not a neutral statement, you're saying it in an attempt to show that Christians are nicer people than others.But this is all avoiding the core argument; even if it was actually true that christians were nicer people - or in your terms 'love more sacrificially' - it is still totally unnecessary to be one. Anyone can love others and behave decently to them. The god side of your proposition, particularly the christian god side, is redundant.

Sure, but if the Christian argument that all love is a result of God loving us is true, then God is anything but redundant.