Arguments for Jesus and Christianity were given a simple challenge by Terry- Isn't 2000 years enough time to wait for his Return. We got laughed at, and rightly so, for waiting 100 for Jesus to do something, 1914+, and nadda happened.
How Modern Christianity has failed Christians
by Christ Alone 277 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Christ Alone
Jesus foretold that people would give up because of the length of time it took for him to return. This wasn't unexpected. Remember the virgins with the oil lamps? He told us it was going to be a long wait himself. So it's strange that someone can then say exactly what he said they'd say. "Time's up, Jesus. We gave you long enough." Pretty much exactly what the virgins said and returned home without enough oil for their lamps. The wait just isn't unexpected.
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bohm
Christ alone: what is this string of big bangs you are talking about?
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cofty
CA - The pastor wasn't killed - he left his wife and kids and ran off with a woman he met on Facebook, but that wasn't until after my deconversion. I always thought he was a prick anyway.
A good friend who was an elder at the church died in a farming accident leaving behind 4 teenage children. It was not his death that shook my confidence. People die in accidents every day, why should their death be any less theologically challenging?
What troubled me was the reaction of the church members. They tied themselves in philosophical knots trying to deal with why it had happened. On the one hand they were committed theists who couldn't cop-out and say god didn't see it coming, but on the other hand their answers were totally vacuous. The man's widow concluded god had taken him so her fortitude could serve as a witness. Everybody agreed it was all part of god's plan in some strange way we couldn't grasp. All of it was well-meaning bullshit - whistling in the dark.
I began to realise that wen it came to difficult questions christians resort to the same kind of disingenuous mental gymnastics as JWs.
It was about a year later that the Boxing day Asian Tsunami happened and once again it was not the incident but the reaction of the world's best theological minds that convinced me the emperor had no clothes.
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Christ Alone
It's a theory that states that the current expansion of the universe is only the most recent in an eternally expanding and imploading universe. If you don't want to accept that theory, there are plenty of others. But if you don't, you are left with the unanswerable question (at least from an atheist position), that there was nothing before the singularity. Where did the singularity come from? How did nothing become something? What caused the effect? What effected the cause?
As far as I can see, those are the only options that atheism leaves you.
1. Something comes from nothing
2. The universe is eternal and there was "always" something
Both have inumerable problems.
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cofty
God-of-the-Gaps.
If science ever concluded that the big bang needed a banger, the universe would still be consistent with a one that blew himself up in the process. You still have all your work to do.
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bohm
Okay christ alone, so there are many theories and you are saying you have a way to say which one is correct?
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Christ Alone
Cofty, wow...I remembered it differently. Goes to show that we can't rely on our own memory.
So if the other church members would have reacted differently, say for example that it was merely an accident that God allowed to happen, then would that have affected you the same? It wasn't the act of this man dying that affected you, but their reaction to it? Would it have helped if they would have said, "We don't know why God lets things happen"?
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bohm
I think i need to go - care to discuss this argument at another thread?
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Christ Alone
It's not only something that science can't answer, cofty. I'm ok with that. But there are only a finite number of possibilities. And the only possibilities without God being involved are an eternal universe or something from nothing. Yes, there is a god of the gaps idea in that science can't answer it, therefore God. But as of this moment the BEST explanation for the universe is intelligence. The others (eternal universe and something from nothing) are nonsense. At least in my view.
So instead of acknowledging that they are not good explanations and that as of now an intelligence is the best explanation, atheists appeal to the god of the gaps argument.