Gods that Christians Dont Believe in.....AND Gods that Atheists Dont Believe in

nah, I don't claim to hold the absolute truth. I claim that it's much much more likely there is no god than the existence of such a enthity.
But I'm pretty sure no religion ever got it right. No religion can justify how they are right while the others are wrong. It's just blind faith. You're most likely qa christian because the society you were born and live is mostly christian. If you were born in china you may have been a buddhist

 

My faith isn't blind--it is based on the way I feel when I'm in God's Love, but it is faith.

So, basically, you're not sure of anything? Don't you have faith that the earth is round? But all you have to base that faith on is the word of other men. Even if you went into outer space and saw it with your own eyes, how do you know that it's not an optical illusion? That is faith as well, in your own senses.

I have faith in these things too, just making a point.

 

You have faith that the earth is round? you can see it's round by looking at the shadow it casts on the moon. You can know it's round by understanding how GPS works. If the earth wasn't round GPS wouldn't work. You can know it's round by understanding how days and seasons work. You can know it's round by performing a simple experiment (note this experiment is done by CHILDREN. How does that make you feel?) using a friend located somewhere else and a stick. You can know it's round by learning how satellites stay in orbit

You may have "faith" that the earth is round and you may take other peoples word for it. But with even a basic understanding of maths you could prove it to yourself.

 

the word "faith" has more meanings. I used it as "strong belief in God or a particular religion" (cambridge dictionary) not as in "great trust or confidence in something or someone" (link)

 

So you have faith in math then? Yes or No?

 

No, I have confidence in maths. I know it works and can see it works. I don't need faith, I leave that for the people who believe shit that has nothing to support it.

 

Wow, you guys really have yourselves dug in deep. Oh well, I tried. Have a nice day.

 

What were you trying for ?
To convert the atheists here to the christian way of thinking ?

 

No, I was trying to show a couple different things that they were claiming about Christians are true about everyone in some way.

 

iul, SolutionX see that he couldn't get very far with nothing except his inability to understand simple science and his invisible friend so he thought he would try his luck with an equivocation fallacy. it's a common tactic of the intellectually dishonest.

 

I asked the following in another DP thread but never got an answer, so I'm going to try it here: Would one of you Christian fundamentalists tell me exactly where heaven is? Your bible says that Jesus (who may or may not really have existed) ascended there. Just about all references, popular and theological, indicate that heaven is in the sky, and that is of course where God is as well, "watching over us". Well, astronomy has imaged the universe both in time and space--no heaven found.

And where exactly is hell?. In almost all mythology in Christianity, it's pictured as the underworld. Well geology has pretty well taken care of that notion.

Please don't give me that nonsense about symbols or metaphors. That's the dodge that believers use when confronted with reason. The rest of the time they have no problem on insisting that the bible is the "literal" truth. word for word. Convenient, huh?

 

I'll answer this to the best of my ability and cite referenced material from publications that help:

The Hebrew sha·ma′yim (always in the plural), which is rendered “heaven(s),” seems to have the basic sense of that which is high or lofty. (Ps 103:11; Pr 25:3; Isa 55:9) The etymology of the Greek word for heaven (ou·ra·nos′) is uncertain.

Physical Heavens. The full scope of the physical heavens is embraced by the original-language term. The context usually provides sufficient information to determine which area of the physical heavens is meant.

Concerning the second creative period, or “day,” Genesis 1:6-8 states: “And God went on to say: ‘Let an expanse [Heb., ra·qi′a‛] come to be in between the waters and let a dividing occur between the waters and the waters.’ Then God proceeded to make the expanse and to make a division between the waters that should be beneath the expanse and the waters that should be above the expanse. And it came to be so. And God began to call the expanse Heaven.” Later the record speaks of luminaries appearing in “the expanse of the heavens,” and still later of flying creatures flying over the earth “upon the face of the expanse of the heavens.”—Ge 1:14, 15, 17, 20.

HELL

A word used in the King James Version (as well as in the Catholic Douay Version and most older translations) to translate the Hebrew she’ohl′ and the Greek hai′des. In the King James Version the word “hell” is rendered from she’ohl′ 31 times and from hai′des 10 times. This version is not consistent, however, since she’ohl′ is also translated 31 times “grave” and 3 times “pit.” In the Douay Version she’ohl′ is rendered “hell” 64 times, “pit” once, and “death” once.

In 1885, with the publication of the complete English Revised Version, the original word she’ohl′ was in many places transliterated into the English text of the Hebrew Scriptures, though, in most occurrences, “grave” and “pit” were used, and “hell” is found some 14 times. This was a point on which the American committee disagreed with the British revisers, and so, when producing the American Standard Version (1901) they transliterated she’ohl′ in all 65 of its appearances. Both versions transliterated hai′des in the Christian Greek Scriptures in all ten of its occurrences, though the Greek word Ge′en·na (English, “Gehenna”) is rendered “hell” throughout, as is true of many other modern translations.

Concerning this use of “hell” to translate these original words from the Hebrew and Greek, Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (1981, Vol. 2, p. 187) says: “HADES . . . It corresponds to ‘Sheol’ in the O.T. [Old Testament]. In the A.V. of the O.T. [Old Testament] and N.T. [New Testament], it has been unhappily rendered ‘Hell.’”

Collier’s Encyclopedia (1986, Vol. 12, p. 28) says concerning “Hell”: “First it stands for the Hebrew Sheol of the Old Testament and the Greek Hades of the Septuagint and New Testament. Since Sheol in Old Testament times referred simply to the abode of the dead and suggested no moral distinctions, the word ‘hell,’ as understood today, is not a happy translation.”

It is, in fact, because of the way that the word “hell” is understood today that it is such an unsatisfactory translation of these original Bible words. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, unabridged, under “Hell” says: “fr[om] . . . helan to conceal.” The word “hell” thus originally conveyed no thought of heat or torment but simply of a ‘covered over or concealed place.’ In the old English dialect the expression “helling potatoes” meant, not to roast them, but simply to place the potatoes in the ground or in a cellar.

The meaning given today to the word “hell” is that portrayed in Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost, which meaning is completely foreign to the original definition of the word. The idea of a “hell” of fiery torment, however, dates back long before Dante or Milton. The Grolier Universal Encyclopedia (1971, Vol. 9, p. 205) under “Hell” says: “Hindus and Buddhists regard hell as a place of spiritual cleansing and final restoration. Islamic tradition considers it as a place of everlasting punishment.” The idea of suffering after death is found among the pagan religious teachings of ancient peoples in Babylon and Egypt. Babylonian and Assyrian beliefs depicted the “nether world . . . as a place full of horrors, . . . presided over by gods and demons of great strength and fierceness.” Although ancient Egyptian religious texts do not teach that the burning of any individual victim would go on forever, they do portray the “Other World” as featuring “pits of fire” for “the damned.”—The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, by Morris Jastrow, Jr., 1898, p. 581; The Book of the Dead, with introduction by E. Wallis Budge, 1960, pp. 135, 144, 149, 151, 153, 161, 200.

“Hellfire” has been a basic teaching in Christendom for many centuries. It is understandable why The Encyclopedia Americana (1956, Vol. XIV, p. 81) said: “Much confusion and misunderstanding has been caused through the early translators of the Bible persistently rendering the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades and Gehenna by the word hell. The simple transliteration of these words by the translators of the revised editions of the Bible has not sufficed to appreciably clear up this confusion and misconception.” Nevertheless, such transliteration and consistent rendering does enable the Bible student to make an accurate comparison of the texts in which these original words appear and, with open mind, thereby to arrive at a correct understanding of their true significance.—See GEHENNA; GRAVE; HADES; SHEOL; TARTARUS.

 

If you think about it--we believe that it will be somewhere you go after your body is dead and will be eternal (and that the universe is not eternal), so it seems pretty clear to me that it's not something that you can see while you are alive.

Also, you may be getting confused by the fact that the english word heaven or heavens have a couple different meanings in the bible? They have different Greek or Hebrew words behind them, but in English they are the same word--different meaning. Sometimes it means Heaven, and sometimes it means the skies/stars/space.

 

Cheap SEO Services, thank you for your elaborate etymological explanation, but it still doesn't answer my query. Fundamentalists insist that the bible is true word for word as it was written, but you and they still provide no evidence for the existence of these places where god, angels (or devil) and all the souls reside.

SolutionX, If the universe is not eternal (which in a sense it isn't as it may either collapse or dissipate several billion years from now), than neither is its creator who would be out of a job without a universe to run.

Your response about the "somewhere" location tells me nothing. Don't the bible refer to heaven as having streets of gold? Gold is a physical substance, which means it has to be located in a physical place. So, once again, where is that place?

As for the translation problems, I thought the bible was divinely inspired, which should apply to interpreters as well. So there should be no the linguistic ambiguity. In fact the interchangeability of the word "heaven" and "heavens" proves my point. The ancients thought the world was flat and thought the two were one and the same.

And how about the bible referring to the sty as "firmament". Again, the writers of the bible thought the sky was a dome over the flat earth, which of course is just an illusion, just like religion itself.

 

The very size of that list SHOULD illustrate to any sane person how ridiculous the notion is that any one of these religions has it "right".

But then there's faith which in itself defies logic so why bother..... it's pointless to argue with the mentally impaired.

 

Im not a fundamentalist but i am a christian and from what i believe heaven and hell are probably dimensions.
Now i want an atheist like you to answer a question for me.
Show me how life and the laws of this universe can come about by random chance and try not to make me laugh in the process.
If you can show me what even the worlds top microbiologist couldnt prove themselves(and eventually came into the corner of intelligent design) then u will be up for a noble peace peace . Not one of you will take me up on this i bet.
god bless(and believe it or not its not blasphemous to say god bless lol)

 

Check your avatar, then recheck your post. Nuff said

Sorry, couldnt resist lol

 

Ill take something from the bible here. Blessed is he who has seen and believes but blessed more is he who doesnt see and still believes.
Now do you truely feel (with the proof that this universe was probably made through some sort of intelligent design) that you nor i know all of the secrets inside our universe and outside of it. Im not that bold lol, are you?

 

excuse me, but the word "proof" is not compatible with "probably" and "some sort of"

also, what proof? I missed that!

 

I can only ever answer from the Bible's teachings as it is the only real true teaching of "heaven". Also, I can only go by what I see, hear and feel what is around me and what my friends have experienced that defies human logic, that provides evidence (enough of) for me to have faith that heaven exists.

Billions have differing ideas about heaven and/or hell. However, the only way to find out if it exists is to find out it's true purpose and God's purpose for it to exist.

In no way I am saying :You got to believe because I believe". You have to find that out for yourself, just the same way I did.

I have enough evidence to feel very confident heaven exists. Yet, I know I am not going there if and when I die. Why? Because the Bible teaches me so and certainly from not man's teaching.

Col