Now that I have some free time....
Originally Posted by epdawg62
I do not have blind faith in God because I have logical reasons believing in a God. First of all, I do not understand how consciousness can come out of the absence of consciousness. How could the human abilities of reasoning, intellect, love, fear, and memory emerge from the void of space? When a conscious, eternal God is put into the picture, something created from nothing makes sense.
Well, first off, you're assuming consciousness just sprang out of nowhere. You're also assuming that it is outside the evolutionary process...outside the brain. But now consider that consciousness is a not-yet-understood function or process of the brain. We do have evidence to support this...namely, accident victims and trauma patients. We can see rudimentary reasoning skills and conscious thought among our ancestors, such as chimpanzees. Our mental capacities are not hugely different from theirs...and ours have been honed by hundreds of thousands of years of further evolution. In this context, the need for a benevolent sky-god goes out the window.
Secondly, I believe that objective moral values are not products of evolution. Without a God giving us objective moral values, moral values are just a matter of personal taste (example "I don't enjoy torturing innocent children"). Also, immoral actions such as rape and murder are taboo not simply because they "aren't beneficial for the evolution of humans" but because they are WRONG and we all have a feeling deep down that they are wrong.
Your case for this is weak at best, baseless at worst. We have observed, time and again, that morality is relative. It varies greatly from culture to culture. Take the Manson Girls, for example. They were, at the time, 100% convinced that the horrible crimes they committed were totally moral. They showed no remorse, no regret, no guilt.
Thirdly, evil in the world and the existence of a God are not contradictory. God has given us free will so that we can choose to love him or not. Forcing us to love Him would be divine rape. God respects us so much that he lets us think for ourselves. God created the best possible world. A world with no war, disease and poverty and yet no free will would be worse than the world we live in.
Why couldn't he just wipe out even a tiny portion of the horrendous suffering and pain that billions of people experience every single day? Why would banishing suffering automatically create a lack of free will? If you think the best possible world includes millions dying from starvation every year, you need your head examined.
For the things that I don't understand yet I give God the benefit of the doubt and know because thats what faith is.
What's wrong with simply saying "I don't know, and I'm okay with that." ?
Please people, stop looking at the those who pollute Christianity but the people who are loving Christ followers and then judge Christianity.
Y'know, my beef isn't with the kindness or morality of the followers (assuming they're both), but with the level of delusion. Religious people are exactly as capable as nonreligious people, and vice versa, at being good, kind, moral do-gooders.
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