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[EveryZig]

This doesn't make sense.  If Jesus were to pardon us of all sins forever that would equally leave murderers free to murder all they liked.

You know, funny thing about that. According to the version of Christianity I have heard from evangelists, hell is both eternal and uniform for all its occupants.
Which means that if you are a nonbeliever, no matter what crimes you commit in life or how little you regret them, god will never punish you for your misdeeds in any way, because you are already going to hell for a sin you never actually committed (original sin). Perfect justice at work!

[TheWetSheep]

The reason there are so many misconceptions about Christianity and so many conflicting views between Christians themselves is that it's the most misunderstood book ever written. There are thousands of ways to interpret it, and so there are all these denominations that disagree on certain things. So it's extremely easy to pick one of these groups whose ideas you disagree with, and extend your disagreement with them to all Christianity.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't know about anyone else, but my major disagreements with Christianity are fairly universal, foremost being a total lack of evidence to back up anything they claim.

[MrWiggles]

Yea, its not that I reject a form of Christianity or whatever religion you want, because once you figure out whats fallacious and ludicrous with one religion, you get pretty good idea whats wrong & fallacious with religion in general.

And the bible shouldnt be a document that can be misconstrued to begin with. The reason why it is so easy to find in the bible whatever you want, is because the bible is a self contradicting mess from a barbaric culture of desert nomads.

[Urist Imiknorris]

The reason why it is so easy to find in the bible whatever you want, is because the bible is a self contradicting mess from a barbaric culture of desert nomads.

It's also been translated multiple times.

[MrWiggles]

Translation doesn't help, but if the document is suppose to be other worldy design then how can man muddle it? IF the document is man made then why give it so much power?

[Eagle_eye]

Because it provides support for the ruling class and authoritarian rule in general? Can't have the serfs getting uppity...

[kaijyuu]

I don't know about anyone else, but my major disagreements with Christianity are fairly universal, foremost being a total lack of evidence to back up anything they claim.

The regular way around that is the faith gambit; something about the religion requires belief instead of knowledge.

I haven't a clue why though. Faith is something that helped killed my faith, heh.



Re: Christianity's muddled nature. The religion's been revised so many times over the years it's ridiculous. If one believes that it started out as a true religion, it's hard to argue any of the sects today resemble that original truth. That's why a bunch of the denominations claim they go back to the basics, or fix the problems introduced over time, etc etc. This is a big part of Mormonism, for example, as Joseph Smith rewrote small portions of the bible to remove ambiguity and of course introduced his supplement in order to remove even more ambiguity*. But of course, these denominations also change over time, kinda removing any legitimacy to their claim of objective truth.

So to any Christians, I really suggest you make your own interpretation instead of following any specific denomination's. They really have no better claim to being "right" than you, so pick what feels right to you.


*As a former Mormon, I will note that the changes to the Bible, though small, didn't really remove any ambiguity at all, and honestly seemed quite random. None of the changes were all that big, and you can still find conflicts with other portions. The BoM though was extremely blatant with little room for different interpretations, so that's a plus I guess?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't know about anyone else, but my major disagreements with Christianity are fairly universal, foremost being a total lack of evidence to back up anything they claim.

The regular way around that is the faith gambit; something about the religion requires belief instead of knowledge.

Thankfully, faith is a completely illegitimate concept.

[MrWiggles]

Faith is gullibility wrapped up in romantic notion.

[kaijyuu]

I'd label it as an excuse for circular arguments, myself.

"Why do you know/believe/have faith in this?"
"Because I do."



Consequences of that being gullibility, willful ignorance, fallicious claims of self evidence, all that fun stuff.

[Frumple]

I'd label it as an excuse for circular arguments, myself.

"Why do you know/believe/have faith in this?"
"Because it's impossible to function as a human being without making the assumption."

Little more accurate there. I have faith the world around me exists, ferex, even though I can't really justify that belief without resorting to fallacious or inadequate arguments. An unjustifiable or unjustified belief isn't anything unusual -- it can be called an axiom in the case of the former, hypothesis (or educated guess, if you'd prefer) in the case of the latter, but they're both examples of faith, or unjustified belief. It's kind of endemic even in the areligious. We as a species base pretty much everything around a baseline few, and then add more to taste or situation. Religious faith is just a particular sort that's got some old baggage that tends to cause problems. Also doesn't help that some of its general axioms tend to overlap with some other, not religiously based, axioms that we've been getting a lot more actual use from. Helps cause some of the issues, heh.

Though I'd agree with those last two fun things I get a lot of mileage out willful ignorance, primarily regarding existential or societal issues. Way too much that, if I didn't pointedly ignore, the only rational action would be suicide.

[kaijyuu]

That's still a circular argument. Taking a solipsist standpoint, "functioning as a human being" would be irrelevant to any useful purpose (except maybe existential ones, but let's ignore those). If you accept that possibility, your excuse doesn't hold weight.

That said, I'm... mostly fine with belief. Faith however, at least as I see it, takes it a bit further; still not claiming knowledge, but claiming it has equal (or more) weight to knowledge. So you'll have people denying empirical evidence against say, young earth creationism on the basis that it violates their faith. This is a Bad Thing.

If we started seeing glitches in the matrix, would you deny them on the basis of your faith that the world around you exists? If not, I don't think you have "faith" at all, but just regular 'ol belief, which is something that changes easily in the face of new evidence.

I get a lot of mileage out willful ignorance, primarily regarding existential or societal issues. Way too much that, if I didn't pointedly ignore, the only rational action would be suicide.

Total side note here: Honestly, I feel a big part of maturity is dealing with these issues without denying them. If your response to the world being shitty is to ignore the shittiness or give up entirely, instead of working to fix said shittiness to the best of your reasonable ability, you really need to grow up a bit. Sorry :X

[MrWiggles]

I've always hated that kind of thinking; how we can't really believe anything because reality itself is a faulty perception and there no real way to know what actual reality is.

Its the ultimate cop out. The ultimate right of way. A grand ability to be dismissive to everyone but appear to have an intellectual high grand.

I contend that it doesn't matter if this isn't actually reality, that even if there was something outside of our Plato Cave that it doesn't have any impact on us. We've devised a series of refutation and standard of evidence which have allowed us to greatly understand and exploit this shared perception of reality. And our means to understand our world have been proven to be quite sharp an innovative and if it so happens that our experiences are muted to the far grander world outside our limited cave, then we'll find that out to eventually.

But for now, its a useless rhetoric.

We have a firm understanding that we're on a planet and living here that is demonstrable and refutable. Our understanding holds true to scrunity and makes predictive results.

[kaijyuu]

I've always hated that kind of thinking; how we can't really believe anything because reality itself is a faulty perception and there no real way to know what actual reality is.

Its the ultimate cop out. The ultimate right of way. A grand ability to be dismissive to everyone but appear to have an intellectual high grand.

These arguments are pulled out in response to people being dismissive and claiming the ultimate high ground. When discussing unknowable things, lots of people dismiss all of it on the basis that it's unknowable... so the obvious response is to point out the one unknowable thing almost universally agreed upon, to point out their folly.


The rest of your post is a fine existential argument, but doesn't undermine the actual arguments being presented when people bring up solipsism.