Figuring Out Religion

[MachineGhost]

The defense rests!

[img width=800]http://i57.tinypic.com/2j6a72e.png[/img]

[MediumTex]

It has always surprised me how casual people are about the messy process that gave us today's Bible.

First, we are assuming that the original writers (whoever they were) transcribed God's message correctly.

Second, we are assuming that every single scribe who made copies of the original writers' works did it accurately and completely.

Finally, we are assuming that the people who chose which books would be in the Bible chose the correct ones, since a whole bunch apparently didn't make the cut.

I know that the normal response is that you have to have faith that God was guiding the people in the three different steps above, but WHY do you have to have faith in that?  Why isn't it okay to say that every other process like that in life always seems to generate errors, so this one is also likely to have generated errors?

Ultimately, it comes down to "you have to have faith."  I understand that; I just don't know what the limit is to that idea.  What if you think God wants you to kill your baby?  He's done it before with other people as a test of faith, so you can't say that it isn't in God's nature to do that sort of thing. 

[MachineGhost]

Ultimately, it comes down to "you have to have faith."  I understand that; I just don't know what the limit is to that idea.  What if you think God wants you to kill your baby?  He's done it before with other people as a test of faith, so you can't say that it isn't in God's nature to do that sort of thing.

It just occurred to me that with all the healthy active intervention of "God" in the OT and NT, where the hell (pun intended) is "God" today?  Even Christians aren't that deluded enough to make that claim that "God" is still around and actively intervening.  If so, where is the proof?  It should be readily self-evident like the Hand of God at the end of The Stand:

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[Greg]

It has always surprised me how casual people are about the messy process that gave us today's Bible.

First, we are assuming that the original writers (whoever they were) transcribed God's message correctly.

Second, we are assuming that every single scribe who made copies of the original writers' works did it accurately and completely.

Finally, we are assuming that the people who chose which books would be in the Bible chose the correct ones, since a whole bunch apparently didn't make the cut.

I know that the normal response is that you have to have faith that God was guiding the people in the three different steps above, but WHY do you have to have faith in that?  Why isn't it okay to say that every other process like that in life always seems to generate errors, so this one is also likely to have generated errors?

Ultimately, it comes down to "you have to have faith."  I understand that; I just don't know what the limit is to that idea.  What if you think God wants you to kill your baby?  He's done it before with other people as a test of faith, so you can't say that it isn't in God's nature to do that sort of thing.

Isn't this kinda like the thread we had on Abe Lincoln, where the person we think of is not necessarily who he was at the time? There seems to always be a bit of knowledge lost about people as the generations go on, entropy/chaos does that to us and messes with things. It's important whether or not we keep the overall themes of a story correct.

As for God killing my baby, I don't know why he would, and I might question my faith at the time, but ultimately there is a reason for it, even if as humans we don't understand it. (kinda a cop-out, but I wish I understood God better, even if he just wants me to have pure faith instead).

[Pointedstick]

As for God killing my baby, I don't know why he would, and I might question my faith at the time, but ultimately there is a reason for it, even if as humans we don't understand it. (kinda a cop-out, but I wish I understood God better, even if he just wants me to have pure faith instead).

If God came to me and told me to kill my child, how could I know it was him and not evidence of encroaching mental illness? The mentally ill claim stuff like that all the time. In fact, how do we know they're actually mentally ill and not divinely inspired? Is there any way to know?

[MediumTex]

As for God killing my baby, I don't know why he would, and I might question my faith at the time, but ultimately there is a reason for it, even if as humans we don't understand it. (kinda a cop-out, but I wish I understood God better, even if he just wants me to have pure faith instead).

If God came to me and told me to kill my child, how could I know it was him and not evidence of encroaching mental illness? The mentally ill claim stuff like that all the time. In fact, how do we know they're actually mentally ill and not divinely inspired? Is there any way to know?

I guess you just have to have faith.

The problem with saying that we don't know if it's God speaking is that if it's something that God has said before, then to me it would make it more likely that it was God saying it now.

Killing babies and children is a recurring theme throughout the Bible, and both God and the bad guys did it, so if a deep voice in a religious person's head said to kill their baby, on what basis would they refuse such an order?  What better way to get sent to Hell than to disobey a direct order from God?

The book Under the Banner of Heaven covers a case of baby killing in Utah by a couple of fundamentalist Mormons who had been told by God to kill the baby of a relative (I think it was a relative) who was apparently not following the appropriate religious standards.  (One of the killers almost certainly knew that God didn't order the hit on the baby, but the other guy appears to have thought he was just running a divine errand that happened to involve baby killing, but hey, it's the will of God, who are we to question it?)  Some of the expert testimony from the trials is recounted in the book, and it is interesting.  The issue was whether hearing voices in your head that told you to kill was, by itself, evidence of mental illness, which raised the larger issue of whether simply hearing voices at all was evidence of mental illness.  It was hard for them to go there, since that would suggest that many religious people are mentally ill because they claim to have discussions with God in their minds.  I believe where they left it was that if the voice in your head is God it's probably okay, but if it's any other voice it probably indicates mental illness, though it left unresolved the question of how you know if it's God speaking to you in the first place.

[Mountaineer]

There has been only one perfect person out of billions.  Why would you expect to find more than that?  If God can create the universe, do you not think he could assure his written Word is good enough for its purpose?  Where is God today?  I'd say all around you, in the Baptismal waters, in you, in the bread and wine, and in the proclaimed Word.  If God were not permitting us to live, we would be litrally gone.  If "something" told me to kill my son, I would think it to be a demonic spirit and not God - Jesus did say "it is finished" you know.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but you guys and gals do not apparently seem to be reading everything that has been written, or if you are, purposefully ignoring key points.  Of course I do understand the deflections and fun-makeing because if you do read and understand it - you would have to take a long hard look in the mirror and probably come to the conclusion if there is some really really small chance that those Christians are right - I'M SCREWED IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY.  If I were you, I'd probably be scared shitless if I mocked God,questioning  however is a different story!  My last thought for this post:  I detect a strong theme of your distaste for the wrathful God - well, me too, that is why the Gospel message is so freeing and I'm so thankful for God's grace.  Just remember, it is not God who will send you to hell. Regardless of what you think, it is YOU who will send you to hell, not God.  It was those unbelievers that screwed themselves in the First Testatment.  The impact of SIN was and continues to be huge.  It is actually a wonder that we are not all much worse messes than we are, it is amazing there are not more horrible messes in today's world.  Everything from disease, infidelity, murder, rape, war,, earthquakes,  and mocking humans is a result of SIN.  You really would benefit from reading the Bible with an open mind - I think you would see that there was a good reason for what happened to those SIN filled people, i.e. all of us, who were or deserve being zapped - they brought or bring it on themselves/ourselves.  God wants all and those who believe his promises are golden.  But, he will permit you to do it to yourself. 

I really am saddened when I read some of these posts as to what you are bringing upon yourself - I truly hope many of you will repent and go to where God has promised to be.  Maybe your ears will be opened; I hope so.

I'm looking forward to your comments and questions.  There are probably some real zingers out there. 

... Mountaineer

[moda0306]

Mountaineer,

Simply put, your "points" are not points at all.  You state certain truths that we have no way of knowing they are true.  There are only certain ways that humans can take in and process facts to try to determine likely truths, and the way you're suggesting we do that (by simply believing what was written in a horribly inconsistent book) is one of the WORST ways of determining truth in human history.  Nothing about our experience tells us that what you say is true, and we're not hearing the message from God... we're hearing it from YOU and other humans claiming that it is a message from God.

Perhaps there is a decent chance we're wrong and will go to hell.  There's a decent chance that you are wrong, and will go to the Islamic version of hell.  At least I can hold my head high and say I didn't ever fall for something that someone (a HUMAN... not God) simply told me was true. 

Perhaps it IS me that will "send me to hell."  Though, let's not forget, God designed the rules that way, given the Christian (human) assertion that he's all-powerful.  He also made it abundantly UNCLEAR to BILLIONS of people who he is, what he wants, etc.  How was there ever ANY way for non-Middle-Eastern folks to know about God without the Old Testament, or Jesus with the New Testament?  You never address these tough questions, and it's Christian's ability to NOT address tough questions and still spout axioms from the Bible as OBVIOUSLY true that makes us so skeptical.  I have NEVER met a Christian that was a) confident in his faith to near-certainty, and b) adequately addressed questions about that certainty in the context of all the assumptions made within and about the Bible and Christ.

Some Christians can admit their lack of certainty, but simply want to be good people, probably want to go to heaven, and value the community of good people at the church.  That is all fine, but it essentially wreaks of natural morality that most of us tend to have, engaging in Pascal's Wager, and social motivations, respectively, and lend no evidence to actual truth.

Much like Kshartle, you either don't state your points in the form of an actual argument, or you sort of do, but the premises are a combo of:

1) filled with poorly/inconsistently defined terms
2) the premises are not remotely proven, self-evident, or empirically evidenced
3) the conclusions do not logically follow the premises


This is why I have so LITTLE faith that Christians are correct.  They make horribly constructed arguments for their positions, are 100% certain of them, and after you poke a dozen holes in them, they change the subject to something completely irrelevant, like how risky it is to take a position that will send me to hell, or accusing me of thinking I'm God because I "trust myself, ultimately," or how lucky they/we are to have the opportunity to be saved from the very pit of hell God put into existence for us to fall into for eternity.

This is all moot rationalization to avoid actually having to make a well-structured inductive case for not just the existence of God, but his very nature, as well as that of Jesus, and what they want from us.

I'm going to have to do the same thing here as I did to Kshartle.  Respectfully ask that you present an inductive case for the existence of God (we can get to whether it's the Christian God and further details, later).  I didn't say PROVE.  Just please, premise-by-premise, lend us material inductive evidence that leads us to the conclusion that God exists.

If you can NOT do this, fine, but admit it.  If you can, then we can move on to whether it is the Christian God, and whether your interpretation of the Bible & what God wants from us is correct.


If you choose not to do this, then I guess I just have to remove myself from this conversation... or reengage when you want to provide more information on what the experience of Revelation is like (something you'v tried to do in the past, but didn't help much in my understanding of its uniqueness).

[dualstow]

If I were you, I'd probably be scared shitless if I mocked God
... Mountaineer

But then you wouldn't be us, would you? Not too many people believe in God and mock him.

This whole debate can be fun because it's interesting to see how different people think about the world, but ultimately, there is no place for faith in a logical argument. I totally respect that you and Greg are believers because neither of you are Luddites who are closed to the world. Quite the contrary.

But, just like the battle in Revelations, when the religious face the logicians, we already know the outcome from the beginning. It's shooting fish (pun intended) in a barrel. And to continue the logical side of things, when we know darn well it's not going to change your mind, it's either mental masturbation or a cruel kind of power play or ego trip. And on your side, you must feel like we're the pitiful characters in a C.S. Lewis novel. So, I'm not going to argue. 

Also, I may have mentioned this before but I once had a roommate who was a devout Christian and I did change his mind. I wore him down. He struggled for a while and then found a relgion again, but a different one this time. As a result, he's happy, but his Christian parents are not, and I saw it on their faces when he got married and I walked down the receiving line. So I felt clever for a while but all I achieved was a family schism, in someone else's family.

I guess they truly believe he's going to hell, thanks largely to me and my girlfriend at the time. Hmm, I wonder if God frowns on that, as it's kind of like what Satan did in the Garden of Eden. As far as I know, though, it's not a punishable sin.

[MediumTex]

I really am saddened when I read some of these posts as to what you are bringing upon yourself - I truly hope many of you will repent and go to where God has promised to be.  Maybe your ears will be opened; I hope so.

But your sadness presupposes that you are right in your beliefs, which may or may not be true.  That's the question we are trying to work through here.

If it's true to you, but it's not true to me, then that just means there is a question regarding what is true, it doesn't mean that I am necessarily wrong and you are necessarily right.

One method of testing a belief system is to take its dogma and see how well it works in extreme cases.  If it doesn't work in extreme cases, then that means it doesn't work.  If we are saying that we think any voice in our heads that says to kill a baby is wrong, then that opens the door to a discussion about whether it was wrong back in the Old Testament as well, and whether God killing babies himself might have been wrong, or perhaps evidence of a sadistic disposition.

If God is, as I suggested might be the case based on his recorded actions, actually a very sadistic being and we are all sort of like ants under his magnifying glass, why would it upset God for me to point this out?  If someone argues that he is not sadistic in nature, even though he seems to have done some pretty sadistic things (he killed every person on earth except that old drunk pervert Noah and his family), I would say that actions speak louder than words.

If you are telling me that I ought to be careful about doing things like suggesting that God might be a sadistic being, why should I be careful?  Should I be careful because I don't want God to send a lightning bolt through my head or curse my family or kill someone I love?  If I truly should be worried about those things, doesn't that tend to support the idea that maybe God is pretty sadistic?  Who kills a person's baby because he didn't like something that was said about him?

What is the best argument for God NOT being a sadistic being?  The fact that he made us and says he loves us doesn't tell us that much--the same thing is true of many abusive parents, and many men who murder their wives and girlfriends say they did it out of love.  I want to know how genocide, baby killing, rape, executing homosexuals, and sentencing people who don't hear the message to eternal suffering in a pit of fire can be characterized as anything but sadistic?  If you say that it is an unpleasant, but necessary, means to an end, isn't that something that Hitler might have said?  In fact, isn't what Hitler did to the Jews sort of a microcosm of what God has been doing to the Jews for 2,000 years, except when Hitler killed them their suffering ended, but what God has in store for Jews who don't recognize Jesus as the Messiah (which is pretty much all of them) is suffering that will NEVER end.  In 100 million years, those Jews will still be in Hell burning, wishing their souls could die, but knowing it will never end...they will just suffer...forever.  That is sadistic.

The good news is that I am only making these arguments to help loosen up our thinking about the nature of God based upon what the Bible tells us, and personally I am inclined to completely ignore the Old Testament God as a grumpy figment of the imagination of a primitive people who lived hard lives, and I think that the New Testament God can easily be interpreted in a slightly different way that does away with Hell as a literal place of eternal suffering.

What if Jesus's primary insight was that the Kingdom of God was inside of us?  We look to the clouds and the temples and the church leaders to tell us where God is, but what if he was inside each of us all along?  What would that mean?  It would mean that Heaven and Hell are places inside of us as well.  Heaven is where our spirit goes when we have understanding and enlightenment, and Hell is where our spirit goes when we commit evil acts based upon our own understanding of what evil is.  The two places represent the pinnacle of internal suffering and the pinnacle of internal happiness.

Evidence from the Old Testament supports my position.  In the Old Testament God was concerned with how his children lived in this life.  There was no afterlife.  It all happened here in this realm during the period a person was alive.  That's where existence is, which means that's where everything associated with existence must also be.

Does that mean it's okay to do whatever you want?  Of course not.  If I know that I will live in my own personal Hell for the rest of my life because of something I did, I will have one more good reason NOT to do it.

There was a high profile pastor from Oklahoma a few years back who started preaching basically that God's promises were not in the grave, but rather in this life and in each moment.  He was, of course, immediately thrown out of his church, but I applauded his courage to speak his heart.

When I read the words of Jesus, I don't read the words of a sadistic immortal being who turned himself into a hippy country preacher so that the people he created could kill him for telling them to be better people; rather, when I read the words of Jesus, I read the words of a Jew who saw the flaws in Judaism and assumed that the Messiah would be the one who fixed those flaws, the one who was able to speak the truth about the way humans can truly commune with the divinity that is in each of us without first running it through the smudged and distorted lens of institutional religion.  It was a revolutionary message, and those messages are usually the kind that get the messenger killed, and that's how it went with Jesus.

To me, though, to say that Jesus is the same entity as the guy in the Old Testament who favored killing the relatives of those he was unhappy with is too much for me to swallow.  I have too much respect for the Jesus I read about in the New Testament to associate him that closely with the cruel and sadistic being in the Old Testament that, on balance, seems to have delivered more misery to humanity than joy.

Sorry if any of that steps on any toes. 

[dualstow]

Just had a thought: What if Jesus, the bible, and a few carefully placed artifacts were planted by an alien intelligence in order to test us? Those of us who believe are those who fail the test and those of us who rise above it all are rewarded. It's like escaping North Korea and all of its propaganda.

[MediumTex]

To moda's point about making the case for God:

I think that the strongest case for the existence of God is simply the universe around us.  The existence of the world itself, to me, implies that there was some design on a drawing board before it was created, and God would be the one who drew those plans.  Even if it all appears to have been a massive trial and error effort, the existence of some First Cause is still strongly implied by the existence of the space we inhabit.

Naturally, we would probably not be able to grasp much about the nature of God as the First Cause, but I am not uncomfortable with the idea of such a being existing.

[moda0306]

MT,

It definitely lends existence to something we don't understand... but whether it's an all-powerful, all-knowing meta-physical being is another question.  So if we can redefine "God" as "anything we don't understand that consciously caused our existence," sure, our existence could lend some evidence to that.

I probably should have skipped that question, and moved to Christianity in-general.

For now, I'm willing to pre-suppose the existence of some conscious being that created us.  Now it's Christianity's turn to build an inductive argument for Christianity being the correct religion. 

[screwtape]

The best dismantling of the Christian religion in a few short pages that I think I have yet read....

http://www.biblicalnonsense.com/chapter16.html

If Jesus is the son of the one true God, why is his origin so pathetically unoriginal that we could have easily predicted it using a random religion generator that contained aspects of preceding superstitious myths?

I don't need to click the link --> Horus! 

Yes, he talked about Horus as the one most resembling Jesus though there were others. I had never heard of Horus before and I had no idea the stories had so much in common.

There is a lot more to that article than just similarities with other mythical figures however. It was a slow day at work and I actually read the whole book which is available for free online. Quite a devastating take-down of Christianity. I wish Mountaineer would read it but I doubt he will.

[MediumTex]

Just had a thought: What if Jesus, the bible, and a few carefully placed artifacts were planted by an alien intelligence in order to test us? Those of us who believe are those who fail the test and those of us who rise above it all are rewarded. It's like escaping North Korea and all of its propaganda.

I saw Christopher Hitchens speak at an event shortly before he died, and he compared Christianity to North Korea as well--i.e., in Christianity if you don't follow the Leader and what he says, no matter how absurd it may seem to you, you go to the labor camps.  In Christianity, you don't go to the labor camps, but Hell is probably just as bad (if not worse).

The whole thing just seems very coercive to me.  I would like to see a religion based upon persuasion rather than coercion.  I hate the feeling of being threatened with burning in a pit of fire forever if I don't put aside all of my beliefs and immediately start following a different belief system that someone told me is what God wants me to do.

If there weren't any Hell to scare people with, spreading the Word would be harder because it would become necessary to make persuasive arguments, rather than just implicit threats that are embedded in ideas like Pascal's Wager.

[MediumTex]

There is a lot more to that article than just similarities with other mythical figures however. It was a slow day at work and I actually read the whole book which is available for free online. Quite a devastating take-down of Christianity. I wish Mountaineer would read it but I doubt he will.

Thomas Paine's Age of Reason dismantles the Bible pretty effectively as well. 

Age of Reason is probably the reason Thomas Paine's face isn't on Mount Rushmore.  It's not overstating things to say that Thomas Paine did more to create the United States than the rest of the Founding Fathers combined.  Every important political act that Thomas Jefferson is credited with (principally the authorship of the Declaration of Independence) was basically Thomas Paine using Jefferson as a mouthpiece (they were friends and I don't think Jefferson minded because he recognized Paine's superior intellect). 

Age of Reason messed all of that up for Paine because people simply weren't ready for the ideas Paine discussed in the book (it's available free online if anyone wants to read it).  Paine's plan was to help create a society without "crowned ruffians" to interfere with people's pursuit of truth, happiness, etc.  Once he achieved that goal, I think that he then planned to do the same for France (which didn't turn out well at all), and after that he wanted to finally free humanity of its slavery to primitive superstitions reflected in religious beliefs, and that's where Age of Reason came from.  Like his adventures in France, the Age of Reason project was not even remotely successful.  Humanity may have wanted liberty, but it apparently wasn't quite ready for unvarnished reason.  He was probably about 100-150 years early with that message.

[screwtape]

I saw Christopher Hitchens speak at an event shortly before he died, and he compared Christianity to North Korea as well--i.e., in Christianity if you don't follow the Leader and what he says, no matter how absurd it may seem to you, you go to the labor camps.  In Christianity, you don't go to the labor camps, but Hell is probably just as bad (if not worse).

In the book I linked to which I read today at work, the author talks about the brainwashing techniques of Christianity in the first few chapters. As an ex-Christian this is something I understand very well and something that believers like Mountaineer aren't capable of seeing.

In the garden of Eden, the serpent deceived Eve by suggesting that the Word of God was not true and she listened to him and committed the sin that resulted in hell and death for the whole human race (it doesn't actually say hell, but it's translated to mean that in the Christian world).

So don't make the same mistake and ever doubt God's Word. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

That is the thinking, and like I said, I don't think Mountaineer sees the cult-like brainwashing involved.

[MediumTex]

That is the thinking, and like I said, I don't think Mountaineer sees the cult-like brainwashing involved.

You don't think that Mountaineer is going to suddenly realize that he is part of a cult that has brainwashed him? 

I hope the discussion doesn't seem to be losing its civility to anyone.  I am enjoying it immensely, so everyone please continue, especially Greg and Mountaineer.

[screwtape]

Thomas Paine's Age of Reason dismantles the Bible pretty effectively as well. 

Yes, I have read excerpts from that book and it was useful in helping me to finally see the light.

The author of "Biblical Nonsense" that I linked to obviously has a bigger arsenal of scientific and historical discovery to draw upon that Mr. Paine did not have.

His chapters on Science and the Bible were especially interesting. He makes the case over and over again that the God who supposedly inspired the Bible had plenty of opportunities to reveal himself as the creator by demonstrating superior knowledge of science to other religions but chose not to do it in a single instance, leaving us with a flat earth, an ocean in the sky, etcetera, etcetera...

[screwtape]

That is the thinking, and like I said, I don't think Mountaineer sees the cult-like brainwashing involved.

You don't think that Mountaineer is going to suddenly realize that he is part of a cult that has brainwashed him? 

I hope the discussion doesn't seem to be losing its civility to anyone.  I am enjoying it immensely, so everyone please continue, especially Greg and Mountaineer.

Yes, I hope Greg and Mountaineer continue also and I hope we can keep it civil. I won't hold it against them for asserting that I'm going to hell if they don't hold it against me for thinking they are brainwashed.

[MachineGhost]

For now, I'm willing to pre-suppose the existence of some conscious being that created us.  Now it's Christianity's turn to build an inductive argument for Christianity being the correct religion.

Not just Christianity, but the specific cult as well.  I suspect the Christians in here are all of different denominations.

Stripped away of all the Biblical hyperbole (miracles and all that stuff), what if Jesus was just an ordinary human like the rest of us but was a libertarian-anarchist?  Would that change the nature of his ministry?  I think a lot of believers would be all better off worshipping the message of the man rather than their fear-based church doctrine.

Anyway, it seems pretty clear to me that Christianity in terms of religion has completely lost its way.  Lets take a hypothetical and say that Jesus will be born again sometime in the future.  His new mission will be to start a new religion because Christianity is too hopelessly corrupt to be reformed and put back on the original track.  Will the Christian believers recognize what is staring them in their face, i.e. a new messiah?  I think we all know that answer to that.

[dualstow]

If there weren't any Hell to scare people with, spreading the Word would be harder because it would become necessary to make persuasive arguments, rather than just implicit threats that are embedded in ideas like Pascal's Wager.

That makes sense to me. Jews don't have Hell, and they don't proselytize.

[Greg]

That is the thinking, and like I said, I don't think Mountaineer sees the cult-like brainwashing involved.

You don't think that Mountaineer is going to suddenly realize that he is part of a cult that has brainwashed him? 

I hope the discussion doesn't seem to be losing its civility to anyone.  I am enjoying it immensely, so everyone please continue, especially Greg and Mountaineer.

Yes, I hope Greg and Mountaineer continue also and I hope we can keep it civil. I won't hold it against them for asserting that I'm going to hell if they don't hold it against me for thinking they are brainwashed.

For me I feel honored to be lumped into the same category as Mountaineer because he seems to be quite knowledgeable on the subject of Christianity.

As for me, I, like many of us, am just trying to get through life and to understand it the best we can. I grew up in a Christian home so it is also very easy for me to stay Christian based on my family-life. If I was born to a Muslim-family, I would have to have much more of a cost to leave that comfort and into in Christianity. I applaud those that make that switch because it takes real courage to do something like that.

There's also a lot of things that I would wish for in this world but I do not have. I would want no suffering, I would want absolute clarity on religion so that we can stop debate on it and just live and have a relationship with God, I would want to be financially fully independent so I can do whatever I want regardless of my expenses. Sadly, this is not the case, and I am to play the hand I've been dealt.

One of my fears, is that I will be in a casual conversation with someone, and the topic of religion comes up. The questions like "why do you believe what you believe", or "how do you prove God's existence", or "why is Christianity correct", or "how do you deal with inconsistencies in the Bible, or how are you supposed to read it" can scare me. Saying "I don't know, but I'll find out" works for many things such as in engineering when someone asks you a technical question, but with religion, if you say "I don't know, but I'll find out" just makes you look like you don't fully understand the product you're believing in, especially if you're trying to get other people to use this product.

This is one of the reasons why I think I'd have a lot of trouble as a missionary. I would have a lot of trouble currently answering these very deep questions, and it is hard to recommend a religion to someone if I can't say with absolute certainty that it is correct. All I can really say is "this is what I believe and it works for me, but I have no guaranteed warranties". That just seems like a falling flat argument and harder to convert others if you yourself seem on the fence about your own knowledge of what is "truth".

[Pointedstick]

One of my fears, is that I will be in a casual conversation with someone, and the topic of religion comes up. The questions like "why do you believe what you believe", or "how do you prove God's existence", or "why is Christianity correct", or "how do you deal with inconsistencies in the Bible, or how are you supposed to read it" can scare me. Saying "I don't know, but I'll find out" works for many things such as in engineering when someone asks you a technical question, but with religion, if you say "I don't know, but I'll find out" just makes you look like you don't fully understand the product you're believing in, especially if you're trying to get other people to use this product.

This is one of the reasons why I think I'd have a lot of trouble as a missionary. I would have a lot of trouble currently answering these very deep questions, and it is hard to recommend a religion to someone if I can't say with absolute certainty that it is correct. All I can really say is "this is what I believe and it works for me, but I have no guaranteed warranties". That just seems like a falling flat argument and harder to convert others if you yourself seem on the fence about your own knowledge of what is "truth".

Why do you have to be able to prove it, though? "What's wrong with just saying, "I don't know, but I believe it anyway. I have faith." Why even bother to try to convince others? Why not just be quietly content with your own beliefs?

[Greg]

For now, I'm willing to pre-suppose the existence of some conscious being that created us.  Now it's Christianity's turn to build an inductive argument for Christianity being the correct religion.

Not just Christianity, but the specific cult as well.  I suspect the Christians in here are all of different denominations.

This is one of the reasons I normally consider myself a non-denominational Protestant Christian (versus Orthodox or Catholic from Great Schism and Protestant Reformation respectively).

There's a lot of different people out there and different ways of worship suit different people. As long as the church is professing the same general themes, then arguing about the differences between us is less constructive. It's one of the reasons I like the Catholic church because they have more of a hierarchy but even that there are struggles for what is the "correct" approach.