re: If Gender Is Changeable, Why Not Race? Matt Walsh

Keep reasoning your way toward the truth

Keep eliminating the bad, fine, and don't jump to any conclusions

Jumping to conclusions is a mistake

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I'm aware that the man Jesus of Nazareth existed. However, I have never seen any concrete evidence of any of the miracles he was said to perform.

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Many serious historians (skeptics and atheists) even attest to the biblical narrative of the resurrection, from the empty tomb of Joseph of Arimathea to the witnesses of the resurrection to willingness for Jesus' apostles to die for their belief in His resurrection which they didn't actually believe at first, the issue boils down to theological or philosophical issues rather than historical ones.

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I also find it convenient that all the cool magical shite happened thousands of years ago so no way to prove it.

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What do you expect from events that purport to have happened in history when there wasn't a way to record it unless it was written down (like the Bible)? It's not a matter of convenience but inconvenience for you, who apparently want the miracles to be repeated for every generation throughout time so that everyone can see with their own eyes. The "cool magical" stuff happened in order to prove the authenticity of Christ's message as messiah. The eye-witness accounts are meant to be the very evidence to support the claims that weren't captured on youtube 2,000 years ago.

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Hearsay from a book written and re-written and re-translated numerous times over a 2k year period doesn't count from me personally unless there is a religion that is willing to include all the proper books of the bible.

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When the books of the New Testament were written, there were people still alive who could have disputed the claims. It's not like Christianity arose in a vacuum where no one knew what was being taught. These very things were taught to Jews in their very own synagogues by Christians in Israel. The Bible itself attests to the hundreds and thousands of witnesses to these things. In other words, the ministry of Christ and His apostles was public for everyone to see. It wasn't a private revelation (like with Joseph Smith) where everyone was asked to just trust that what was said to have happened without any way to verify the message. Even recording women as the first people to see Jesus after the resurrection lends credibility to the narrative since the testimony of women wasn't considered credible in a legal context back then; there was no reason to include that detail if the point was to convince people of a lie.

In terms of the the transmission and translation of the Bible, we have manuscript evidence of the authenticity of the Bible from within decades of when the events occurred. We have thousands of manuscripts that span the first couple hundred years giving incredible reliability to the texts. For comparison, there is little doubt that the works of Plato are preserved for us, yet the earliest extant manuscript we have comes nearly 1,000 years after when it was written. Even the most skeptical Bible scholars recognize that the Bible is incredibly intact and preserved. The differences in manuscripts that we do have show mostly minor differences, such as typographical errors (like teh instead of the), or changes in word order. Where substantial differences exist, they are typically included in footnotes in most major translations, and none change theological understanding.

The translations are not translations from translations, either. The manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic are what are used to create almost all modern translations. If you don't trust a particular translation, you can reference the original languages yourself, either by learning them or using countless tools to help with that task.

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I had an easier time believing in Santa and the Tooth Fairy as a kid because there was "evidence" presented to me (i still never do remember a time believing in 'magic'). God was just something my parents dragged me to so I could stare at my feet for an hour while some dude on stage talked about whateverthefrick. Bes day of my young life was confirmation when my parents declared they didn't have to make me go to Church any more.

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I'm sorry you were so woefully instructed in the faith but that doesn't mean your experience represents the reality of what's available.

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Don't get it mixed up here either. I want to believe, just haven't seen anything that would convince me that I'm not just wasting energy worrying over or praying to some being who ostensibly loves us endlessly, but won't stop letting sons stop dying for the sins of their fathers. If he exists, he doesn't care as much as we have been told, or a lot of dead innocents wouldn't be. Figured that part out at 14 carrying a 15year old family member to his resting place. God ain't gonna help you, we're on our own down here from what I can tell. If he exists, I didn't want to ever have anything to do with him. That feeling really hasn't changed.

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I'm sorry to say but what you believe about God as expressed in this statement is not what the Bible teaches about God. It seems you have a misunderstanding. You seem to think people are innocent before God and that God is some tyrant who forces those innocent people to disobey Him. We aren't innocent. Our natural state is enmity and rebellion against Him. Look at you: you have heard about this God and yet you still don't want to obey Him. Those who haven't heard of Him but have seen what He's done in creation create their own gods rather than worship Him. Many people make themselves a god and arbiter of truth rather than seek after the one, true God. Everyone rebels. Few repent.

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I have never felt his presence or whatever the hell real believers say, but I have buried a perfectly innocent child, and I still feel the presence of that pain every day. I learned all I needed to know about God pretty early in life, and the last 12-13 haven't really given me reason to change that attitude much while losing so much more.

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You feel the pain of loss for loved ones because you recognize their value and worth. You realize what God has told us: that people are made in His image and with value and worth that exist outside of what we personally think of someone. This value and worth do exist and it's natural for you to grieve the loss of those whom you love. Their deaths, as are the deaths of every person, are a reminder of our separation from God by sin and our need for redemption.

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Blame all tragedy on sin if you must, but consider the fact that God created sin just as easily as he created you. God created everything, which includes evil and sin. His all powerful omnipotence either has limits, or he sets limits to his own power. Letting a kid get raped and die of AIDS in africa being one of his cooler repeat tricks over the last few decades. He really plays the hits. I say all this in jest, but it does affect my ability to accept god. Pretty much I look at it like this: If god exists, he is kind of an a-hole.

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You seem to take responsibility away from the people who are doing this evil. Hell exists because sin exists. God did not create sin; He created the person who commits the sin and then punishes them for their rebellion against Him.

The problem with the problem of evil is that it's only a "problem" if God exists. If God does not exist, then evil doesn't exist, at least not objectively. What one purposeless homo sapien does to another is devoid of true meaning and judgment if there is no objective source of morality. When a child is raped or killed, that has meaning because the victims are image-bearers of God with value and those who do harm to that child have violated God's objective moral law. We have God's standard to identify sin and to condemn it as such, but if there is no God, there is no standard to identify what is truly good and truly evil, and we have no basis for condemning it as such.

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FooManChoo

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I like you. Offering different views. Makes me think.

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you, who apparently want the miracles to be repeated for every generation throughout time so that everyone can see with their own eyes.

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hell fricking yes. I want to know he is there, not have to defy the brain he gave me to believe he exists. Makes no fricking sense. He put us here to suffer and sin and rebel and die. He knew it would happen, being omnipotent/present and all, yet still sent you and me into the shite world that he allowed humanity to ruin, to suffer and die.

Why make the world? Boredom? Ego trip? Smoked some really good cosmic space dust?

If god exists, I'd have preferred he didn't bother making me, because I'd rather not exist than experience what I have on earth while still risking eternal pain. I'd rather take 'nothing but black empty' and never know any better.

The one real constant feeling I have had all my life, when it comes to god and the eternal is: I'd much rather not have been born because I did not choose to come here to be suffer and tempted in sin.

If I could go back to the almighty and just be "deleted" from existence I would happily do so. He could make it to where I never existed, so no one in my family would even be sad. I'd sign that paper in blood right now. No regrets if you don't exist. No pain of losing family because you never had them. Never watch a baby casket get lowered into the ground? Gotcha because neither of you existed in the first place.

I understand that my attitude in the above sentence can be seen as mentally ill. It is. I am. I am not suicidal as I run on responsibility, shame and spite of the being that created me. I have "put the gun down" many many times in my life because I have shite to do here and that fricker up there, if he exists, will have to wait a little longer to send me to hell for not following the rules with the lack of ability to believe that he gave me. I turn it all into motivation to spite the almighty just one more day, because to send me here with a fricked up brain that makes me hate myself then punish me for all eternity for ending it early? I relish that every day.

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That's a sin if the person is a priest or a catholic school teacher

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Organized religion

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I’m legitimately sorry organized religion has turned you so far from Christ.

Jesus literally spent his life fighting organized religion and then him and most of his friends were tortured to death for it.

I am a strong believer in Christ. Christ is not of any one organized religion.

I know more people driven away from Christ by the Catholic Church than brought to him by the same.

Please try to separate Christ and his mercy from the man made perversions of it.

I have no doubt at all that if Jesus were to show up today the Catholic Church would crucify him in the middle of the Vatican.

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Just because there are many wrong answers doesn't mean there isn't one right answer. Rejecting that 2+2=4 because there are an infinite number of other answers that aren't correct for that equation is silliness. "I'm just rejecting one more number than you".

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The difference, of course, being that I can physically take two of anything, add two more to it and see irrefutable proof that the result of the equation is 4. This is not an article of faith but a verifiable fact. God is not and anyone looking for or claiming verifiable proof is admitting an absence of faith when all that is required of them by their god is faith....it is much more difficult to believe in something than know a fact....far more admirable. It is much more human....it speaks to an intellectual capacity far superior to one based merely on fact and knowledge. Why Christians argue this point is painfully obvious...they lack the required faith....as only a logical, sane person could.

I always thought a God who demands that we all believe in him despite the fact that he purposely makes it impossible to verify his existence by any respectable standards, or else he will heartlessly condemn us to suffer eternal damnation, was a sadist, especially when we were given no choice whether to take part in this test. Basically a much less sophisticated and more narcissistic version of Jigsaw from the Saw movies.

But then I watched Jimmy Swaggart, a few years after he got busted with a prostitute for the second time (God told him it was none of our business). And just like that... I was SAVED.

I feel bad for the billions of people alive today, who will rightfully suffer eternal damnation for their failure to not listen to their molesting, er, nurturing priests. I especially feel bad for followers of other non-Christian religions in poor developing/third world countries, many of whom lived in poverty their entire existence, and mainly only had their faith to give them the strength to keep going, only to be granted with much harsher eternal poverty because they chose the wrong side. But, hey, they should’ve listened to their theology teachers when they went to private Catholic school.

Cool, I am changing my name to B Black Coc

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So there's about a billion Hindus going to hell by your logic here for example.

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Yes. The Hindus are going to Christian hell. They are also going to jew hell, Islam hell, hades, Norse hell, Roman hell, Ashur hell, Taoist hell, etc etc etc.

The Christian is going to Hindu hell. Islam hell. New hell. Hades. Norse hell, etc.

Etc etc etc.

Etc etc etc.

Etc etc etc.

No matter which way you cut it, we’re all going to multiple forms of hell and possibly one form of heaven.

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That is quite a lot of anger and hatred turned towards someone that you don’t think exists.

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You are right about the anger. If he exists, as I stated multiple times.

I don't know if he exists or not, because no one has ever told me or shown me anything to convince me that there is a god. However, I took 14 years of catholic school religion and understand how I am supposed to be in regards to religion. I just am not and thus far, have not been able to, feel the presence or see anything that might slightly convince me that god is just as likely to be a made up construct of human authoritarianism as he is to be real. There is equal amounts of evidence for both (read: none).

I am a non believer that wants to believe, I just can't. I have read the bible cover to cover thinking it might open up some spiritual awakening. Nope. I read through a book blessed by the last legitimate pope and I personally have known the priest that wrote it because he and a family member were roommates in college before he went to the seminary. Dude is like an uncle.

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God not stopping us from rebelling against Him so we can see our need for Him and His love for us through Jesus Christ His son is not the same thing as causing/forcing us to sin and making us live in a world of suffering we don’t deserve. You are rebelling against God right now yet you think you or anyone else doesn’t deserve what we experience? We all deserve suffering. What we don’t deserve is the mercy God provides.

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That's a lot of mental gymnastics to rationalize the loving idea of an all powerful and merciful maker vs the reality of being sent to earth, by him, as some kind of loyalty test? I mean the dude has committed mass genocide multiple times if we are to believe scripture.

So sin entered the world. Why didn't the all powerful being stop it? If he makes no mistake then sin, death and evil are intentional no? Sounds like punishing the sons for the sins of their fathers to me. Which If a god chooses to punish me because the first dude he made fricked it all up? Imagine the set you have to have to think that is 'merciful' somehow. In the great flood, god literally killed innocent babies, he turned people into pillars of salt, he tried to trick his own fricking sidekick into killing a son in god's as some sort of sadistic test. We are told not to test the lord, yet there are numerous examples of him testing us for what I can only assume is some sadistic ego trip.

Life is one cosmic amusement park ride I'd have rather not been put on. I've almost taken myself off the ride numerous times. I take my pills.

One thing this conversation has made me realize is how much I have not liked exiting for my whole life. I'm not gonna go off the deep end or anything, but nihilism is starting to sound like a decent alterative. All these creative ways god hurts you so that you love him just make me more angry, because he could stop it, yet chooses not to..

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God didn’t need us. He wasn’t lonely.

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I didn't hate existing til he made me exist. Wish he wouldn't have bothered with little old me. I didn't need him either.

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The human brain wasn’t created that way.

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Mine was. I did not suddenly develop mental illness. God made me this way, because he has power over sin and death/decay/sickness, but chose to let me suffer anyway. He knows all, so why make me when he knew my life would be mostly torment? Why make the kid who is born with AIDS? He could stop that and no one would ever know the difference. We already know he is selective with his power, so why not spare this being he supposedly loves so much? Again, he could stop it and chooses not to. That's at least the way I see it.