Religion Debates and Discussions

Yeah, I don't think you know what survivorship bias is... lemme know if you wanna get back to me on that one

1. Yeah, but how do you know they were telling the truth when they told you that the Bible is the word of God? You just believed them, because you were young and gullible.

2. No, it's more like a spiderweb. If you tear off a piece of it, the other pieces still function, but it's all made of the same stuff. I'm not saying that we need an understanding of evolution in order to have the internet or other modern technology, just that it all comes from the same place, so to accept that stuff and reject evolution doesn't make any sense.

 

It's more like

Parents: 'child, if you drink this bleach I left on the floor, you'll die'

Child: 'was literally born yesterday and does not understand right from wrong'

Older child: 'hey drink this bleach they're lying to you'

Child: *drinks bleach*

Parents: 'oh our kid is dead well nothing we could do'

-----

You're ascribing a lot of responsibility to the two people who literally did not know what right and wrong were until they ate the apple God left in plain sight and drew their attention to.

If I were God, I would prevent sin by putting the apple 200 ft underground, or better yet I wouldn't make the apple.

Oh look I'm a better God than God! I stopped sin entirely!

 

@Gehenna_Beam, could you please answer my question?
Is there a reason, beyond God, that that God chose moral standards to be set a certain way?

 

Survivorship bias is when you come to an incorrect conclusion because you're looking at the evidence in such a way that some of the evidence is unavailable. It hasn't "survived" some selection process of which you are unaware.

Example 1:

Imagine you're just sitting in your house and you know nothing about the outside world and current events. You turn on the TV, flick through a few news channels, and all of them are showing horrible things happening. CNN is showing the war in Afghanistan, FOX is talking about the Charlottesville protests, etc. Based on this evidence, you conclude that the entire world is full of horrible sht and that everyone is violent. But you'd be incorrect because even though that's what the evidence points to, there's a lot of evidence that you're unaware of that didn't make it through a selection process. This process is CNN and FOX deciding not to show footage of good things happening because it's boring or not newsworthy. So you might think that the world has gone to sht based on what you see, but it won't be accurate because the TV channels have purposefully chosen not to show good things happening.

Example 2:

To put it in a Minecraft context, imagine that someone uploads a 30-minute episode of them playing WarZ and they do super well, they get a lot of awesome kills and generally dominate the server. Now this evidence would suggest that they're one of the best WarZ players but you're forgetting the selection process again; survivorship bias. In this case the selection process is the player deciding what footage to upload. They wouldn't upload footage of them playing terribly and dying all the time, right? So you incorrectly conclude that they're super good when actually they just had one really good day and deciding to upload it.

Application to creation debate:

Imagine that there's some super advanced aliens and they're looking at what happens to a trillion different planets, over time. All of them have the POSSIBILITY for life similar to humans to form, but for whatever reason, none of them do, except for the Earth. Now the aliens are super-intelligent and they have the technology to watch all these planets so when they see humans evolve on Earth they don't think "wow that was so amazing and unlikely, there must be some divine power involved", they think "that was statistically likely across a trillion planets; it was bound to happen". It's like if you flipped a coin 1 million times and you got a streak where you got heads 100 times in a row, you wouldn't think it was so amazing because you had to flip the coin 1 million times to get it.

So from our point of view, on Earth, it seems like there must be some cause to our existence, because of the vast improbability that life would form as it did. But when we think that, we're ignoring the trillion planets (it's actually a lot more than a trillion) where life didn't form. If we took those into account, then our existence doesn't seem so much like a purposeful thing caused by "God", but rather it's just something that was bound to happen. Our survivorship bias is that we didn't/don't think about the other planets where life didn't form. We're only experiencing the planet in which life did form.

Capiche?

1. Gehenna, what if those prophets were lying. How would you know? If you're gonna believe everything that's in the Bible, how can you know that the origins of the Bible are what they say they are? Just because someone or something tells you that they're trustworthy, doesn't mean they are. Just because the Bible says it was written by God, doesn't mean it's telling the truth. You can't say the Bible's true because it was written by God, because the only reason you think it was written by God is that it says so in the Bible! It's circular logic!

 

I have to say, I'm not fully familiar with the structure of the Bible, so tell me: the books are like "Exodus" and "Genesis", right?

A couple points on this:

1. Isn't the Book of Mormon supposed to be part of the Bible? At least, according to Mormons?
2. There aren't that many books in the Harry Potter series and they all link with each other, so is Harry Potter true? I think you're assessing the quality of the story rather than how accurate it actually is.

 

are you able to read?

he said put the Apple in the box, not the person...
literal

 

Okay, since I don't feel like reading all the comments made so far, how about you'll tell in short what you are and tell me what the current topic is so I can chime somewhere in.

As for me, I am a King James Bible believer: I believe that the King James Bible is God's pure and preserved word for us today as he promised to preserve his words in verses like Psalm 12:6-7 KJV, Matthew 24:35 KJV and others. I believe that all the modern versions are corrupt, because they remove verses and change false doctrine. The King James Bible is the source of a christian's faith (Romans 10:17 KJV). Those that deny God's word don't have faith (John 8:47 KJV).

As for salvation, I believe one is saved by faith alone apart from works (Ephesians 2:8-9 KJV, Romans 4:5 KJV, Romans 11:6 KJV); that the purpose of the law wasn't to justify us, but to show us that we are all guilty sinners (James 2:10 KJV, Romans 3:19-20 KJV, Galatians 3:24-25 KJV). So to be saved one has to repent, which is to change one's mind: to acknowledge one is a guilty sinner, who deserves hell (Revelation 21:8 KJV) and place their faith (trust) in how that Jesus, God in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16 KJV), died for their sins, was buried and rose again the third day (1 Corinthians 15:1-4 KJV) according to the scriptures (faith that comes from God's word - Romans 10:17 KJV) for the payment of sins, salvation from hell and eternal life (John 6:47 KJV). Once saved is always saved. ''Christians'' who believe they have to do works like: turning from sin, prayer, water baptism, etc. in order to get/stay saved are not saved, because they are trusting in their works to save them instead of the finished work of Christ. Matthew 7:21-23 KJV shows that those people are lost. They have placed themselves under the curse of the law (Galatians 3:10 KJV)

As for God, I believe he is a loving God, but also a holy, righteous and just God. God is a Godhead (trinity) as we can read in many verses, but the most obvious being 1 John 5:7 KJV (the modern ''Bible'' perversions remove that verse)

So I'm as a King James Bible believer, the King James Bible is my only authority. Not men like Luther, Calvin, Arminius, the pope, etc.

 

@Gehenna_Beam I'm still awaiting an answer to my questions about the origins of God's decisions about morality.
The way I see it, from a religious standpoint, there are only two options. Either morality comes entirely from God, or morality is created by God, but the reasons behind His decisions are exterior (not a part of God or the Bible). Of course, the atheist idea would be that morality does not come from God, but for the sake of argument, I'll ignore the atheist idea for now.

1. If morality comes entirely from God, then it is, by definition, arbitrary. It was done by the whim of God, and He could have made morals whatever he wanted. If morals were not arbitrary, then what was the reason they were decided to be a certain thing? Ultimately, the reason either has to be created by God, and thus arbitrary, or it has to have reasons outside of God, which leads to 2.
2. If the reasons for God's decisions come from outside of Himself, then is it unreasonable to say that the same morals would have come to be without a divine being? I've already described a process by which this would happen without a deity a while back.

 

The NASB? So you believe God can be deceived?

Psalm 78:36 NASB
36 But they deceived Him with their mouth And lied to Him with their tongue.

And yes, the NASB does leave out words and verses.

Compare:

1 John 5:7King James Version (KJV)
7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

1 John 5:7New American Standard Bible (NASB)
7 For there are three that testify:

 

oh you were home schooled

 

and his parents didn't teach him evolution

that should be illegal

 

Wow.
A home schooled Christian that is close minded to logic? NO WAY

 

lol but most people on this thread dont think the bible is true

yeah, let me go rob a bank but make sure not to shoot or harm any civilians in the process.
by your logic, i don't go to jail...
and earlier in the thread you said "if everyone thought like me the world would be peaceful"

quite the opposite, friend...

 

Things seem a bit tense here, so I thought I would post this wonderfully and masterfully written article (total sarcasm, enjoy!) to alleviate some of the tension. https://creationsciencestudy.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/mr-rogers-and-the-highway-to-hell/

Just as a note this is an example of a psychotic Christian, and no, very few Christians are actually like that xD