Why critical thinking should be required!

do islams have no rights? can a free-willed human subject not have free-will? and how are you so sure that your relition is THE RELIGION. the story of our past is a story of tribes. and the story of our past is just that. a story. hearsay. were you there? im not bashing your religion at all. infact i do myself love got to the fullest extent. but i belive that the true path is a clean, spiratual..

..quest that is up to the beholder. i also belive that every relgion is saying “pick me or die with the rest” so i just try to be a good human being. also religion is like an antique store. collective and dusty. they prey on other religions and steal their dates and tatics and rename them to make transmutation easier. christmas, jesuses birthday? no way he wasnt born in december. december 25th..

is solstace. when the days get longer. its an egyptian holiday, egyptians worship the sun like nothing else. well thanks for making me think. have a good day

Reborn Christians should be put on lithium, maybe that will bring them back down to earth.

Boils down to: Islam isn’t true because it’s not Christianity.

Well, she starts out by trying to make an argument: “I believes Islam cannot be the true faith as it does not confess that Jesus christ is the Son of God…” But her (I’m assuming it’s a her) support, not to mention the argument itself, is based entirely on her ethnocentric perspective. That statement is just as pointless as saying “Bhuddism cannot be the true fath because it involves…”

“…reincarnation.” Ok, so what? There are no facts, statements, anything to disprove that reincarnation happens, or even that Christ is the saviour. Bible verses and proverbs only prove one thing: that you have read a book.

In re Yah: I tried lithium. It didn’t take. But seriously, the concept that is missing here is the conception of worldview. You can pick on Blue for prefering the Christian worldview and judging based upon it, but the standards you’d use are from YOUR worldview. Then we’re back to evaluating worldviews based on their claims and relative merit.

Blue’s first mistake was not saying, “I’m a Christian and I hold to the Christian worldview, and make my judgements of truth and value based on the Biblical perspectives,” before she stated it was absolutely true. Christians, including myself routinely believe in the doctrine that Blue espouses (perhaps a bit more succinctly put in my own case). That isn’t the issue.

Blue’s second mistake was trying to put all of Christian theology in bulleted points that would fit in 300 characters. There are good reasons to accept the Christian worldview besides just making it a necessary condition to be right. There are good, logical reasons to believe. They just can’t be explained clearly other than “just so” in 300 characters.

Interestingly, Islam DOES make significant statements about Jesus of Nazareth. It DOES claim he was a prophet with the power to raise the dead (a power not uniformly given to other prophets in the Quran). Because of the rigid monotheism of Islam (“There is no God but Allah and Muhammed is his prophet”), there is no place for the trinitarian view of monotheism espoused by orthodox Christianity.

Hi,thankyou for your note.I read your entry here.You have some good points.I guess you are much more intelligent than I.I didn’t even finish high school. I am just a simple person with simple beliefs and as my diary says, I just write about the world as I see it through my eyes. I may not disect every bit of information.i may not think on a high level as you do, but my simplicity gives me a

peaceful life. Instead of going through time arguements I would rather state the facts as they occur.The above author was right to say, that it is also difficult to write how one truely feels in just 300 characters. I love to write.If you went to my diary and read” “Prophecies of the saviour of mankind” and read it, you might see that.And you might have a different opinion of me.You might see

I when I have more than 300 characters I can be a bit more long winded and more technical with my observations. As for now, I have aready exceeded a few lines just trying to expalin this point. Enough about me now, what do you beleive? When you note me, explain as best you can in 300 characters.best wishes,

I love arguments like that. Come on! they’re the best!!! “paganism can’t be right because they don’t depend on the Bible!” “Jews are wrong because they don’t believe in Jesus the way I do!” Arguments based in “I’m right, so everyone else is wrong, even if I don’t have any factual basis for thinking I’m right!” are the most amusing to me. People who try to convince me by using bible …

… scripture actually make me laugh. Because their whole argument hinges on their belief that the bible is sacred. Which, obviously, I don’t share. So nothing they say makes any sense. hehe.

“but the standards you’d use are from YOUR worldview.” The point I’m trying to make is that her argument is flawed, not that her beliefs are incorrect. I could read Frank Baum’s the Wizard of Oz and assume that scarecrows come to life and no one could say with 100% certainty that I’m wrong. “I’ve never seen it,” or “I don’t agree with you,” don’t stand as solid support for an argument…

…against me. If they said, “scarecrows don’t come to life because they are made of straw and inanimate material, and in the past inanimate materials do not come to life” then I’d be more inclined to accept their statement as a valid. But arguments based solely on opinion and singular references aren’t strong arguments.

“Trying to work for your salvation by trying to be good doesnot mean anything to God, for he sees all our best intentions as filthy rags. ” So, I can kill, rape, torture, and persecute and still go to heaven as long as I accept Jesus. And on the other hand I can cure cancer, feed the poor, build safehouses, and bring world peace and still go to hell. WTF!

In re Femto: That would be true if claiming there was a God was the same as claiming that scarecrows come to life. There are significant differences in the claims. I’ve posited 10 basic, fundamental reasons for the existence of God in recent entries at my diary that have nothing to do with mystery, and everything to do with probability and explanatory power.

Then we’re back to evaluating worldviews based on their claims and relative merit. -StealthPudge18- So, you’re saying that we’re all incapable of evaluating worldviews because we always attempt to do it through our own worldview. The scientific method is meant to eliminate that, but you probably think the scientific method is just another worldview, or part of one, so it’s flawed, too.

I try to think in terms of conditional statements. But of course there’s the idea in my head that that is the best way to do things. Where did I get that idea? It’s probably a compromise from my desire to reconcile everyone and and everything.

StealthPudge18 – The argument was about why Christianity is the true faith, not about if God does or does not exist. I’m interested in your reasons though. I’ll get around to reading them one day sometime, if that’s ambiguous enough for you.

“There are good reasons to accept the Christian worldview….” – StealthPudge18 But of course there is no Christian worldview – there are hundreds of them (and maybe even as many as there are Christians). All of them can’t be right. Why should we believe even one of them is?

In re Julie: Worldview is not the same as opinion. There are at least some semi-objective tests we can subject a worldview to determine some basic things: internal consistency, the explanatory power to cover all the available data, adherence to basic foundational logical principles, and that sort of thing. I’m all for the scientific method, as long as it doesn’t carry naturalism with it.

In re AUUB: There is perhaps one or two Christian worldviews, at least on the basics. I would suggest that there is a orthodox way and then a postmodernist way. For all the church’s squabbles about doctrine, they don’t effect very much in the way we see things like ultimate truth and the existence of God, at least not until the advent of postmodernism.

In re Femto: Point taken. I’ve been busy trying to suggest that belief in any God at all is rationally defensible lately, and so I haven’t even gotten to why Christianity as opposed to other theist systems. Sorry for missing your point. I hope to tackle that question at my own diary soon.

StealthPudge18- I didn’t say anything about opinions. What is naturalism and why don’t you like it? I think a “worldview” is wrong if it makes assumptions. Is that part of my “worldview” and based on assumptions? I am restating my previous question because you did not answer it.

In re Julie: Your statement about assumptions and worldviews IS an assumption, so your statement isn’t internally consistent. 😉 Methodological naturalism is the belief that everything has a purely natural explanation that can be expressed for any given problem. My problem with it is that I don’t believe that it is a realistic way to view the world, it is too rigid and too inflexible.

stealth- you’re statement that my statement is an assumption is an assumption. Gah, you just stupid everything up by insisting that people are ignorant. I know we can’t be sure of anything and other people could have evolved different ways of thinking, and none or only one could be right.. but it’s just pointless bringing it up in discussions. How can the scientific method be faulty?

P.s. I just had something else to add. I was just wondering that since you are intelligent and are good at thinking things out, why you have’nt yet come to realise that God is real and alive and that he loves you more deeply than you can possibly imagine.He wants to give you a place in his heavenly home. I know God is there because He answers my prayers.Please read “An amazing tale to tell”

in my diary. It’s back towards the beginning so just follow the arrows. This will definitely give you something to think about since you do like to think…alot about things..bye for now,

blue bird- how can he reason out something that is “more than you can imagine”?

“imagination is more important than knowledge.” ~albert einstein

blue bird I read above mentioned entry, and yet see no proof for your claims. I do see coincedence, however.

Hi, I see you still have my words written up here for all to see. Thankyou so much!! You are helping others to get the truth even without trying!! If every one in the world could read this, we would all be better off.We would have a chance to find some love and joy in our lives.Others would treat us with love and respect too and life would seem worth living!!!

Thank you for your note. Just to point out though, Luke and Matthew actually do not contradict themselves. In Luke, the lineage shown is the lineage of Joseph Christ’s (supposed) father, which the text clearly states. It shows that Joseph was a decendant of David. However, in Matthew the text clearly states that it is the …

… lineage of Jesus Christ, to show that he is decended from David, which he must be to fill the prophecy. Joseph was not Christ’s actual fater, God was. So the lineage shown is the lineage of Mary, the mother of Christ. Mary must be a decendant of David for the prophecy to be upheld. The reason the end does go from Jacob to Joseph, is because Joseph was …

… the head of the household. It would not be uncommon to list the son in law as the son, because although Mary was the daughter of Jacob, and the mother of Christ, Joseph would be the head of the household. The rest of the lineage follows the same way, where the only women listed were those with stated relationships with God, such as Ruth.

I don’t think bluebird should be so bold.