Castin

Is it really God-given when, according to the Bible, God did not give us knowledge of good and evil? We had to take it, against his wishes, and were misled into doing so by a bad actor.

Catholic teaching holds that God gifted humanity with free will from the very beginning, as shown by Adam and Eve’s capacity to make a real choice—obey or disobey God’s command. While the tree represented an experiential knowledge of good and evil that God wished to protect them from, it did not negate their pre-existing moral freedom. By succumbing to the serpent’s deception, Adam and Eve misused the very free will God bestowed on them—proving that the faculty to choose, for good or ill, was already theirs by divine design.

I hope this was clear. Let me know if you have any more questions!

Free will is the God-given ability of human beings to choose freely between good and evil, enabling them to act voluntarily according to their reason and conscience.

Maybe just an act of altruism to another person.

Berean Standard Bible

"And the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me."

https://biblehub.com/matthew/25-40.htm

What exactly kind of Christian are you?

Today, most games are just graphics without any gameplay value.

I took my nephew for a drive home yesterday, and the 1st thing he said "this doesn't look like a teacher's car"

:(

Who tf keeps liking Shila's posts?

You could ask the same of a few members here, Castin. 

I follow Harikrish’s advice to love your neighbour but also be likeable yourself. It seems to be working.

The number of times the great dragon has spoken to you confirms you have RFK's brain worms imo.

You are just jealous that the great dragon talks to me, but not to you.

WHO could have predicted this thread would turn into an airing of tired stereotypes and antisemitic grunting. WHO.

The number of negative stereotypes confirms the theory that Jews arent likeable.

Also, I'm not sure my values align with this more mercenary, transactional form of faith. If the gods are no different than mafiosos, what makes them divine?

Given how this world is designed, its creator cannot be much better. Thats simple truth.

No one ever claimed Gods were good, but its beneficial to pretend they are.

If the gods are bad, why worship them?

Money, power, rewards...

and for rejecting Jesus whom they asked the Romans to crucify.

The Jews raise questions about Christianity by rejecting the Gospel accounts in the New Testament upon which Christianity is based. This is a direct attack on Christianity and their God.

We see Gods creation everywhere whether we are wrong about its shape and size. We know there is a creator behind everything in existence. That creator can only be God because of the magnanimity of creation.

How about 2 billion Christians who believe in the Bible and that their God exists? In fact all religions and the majority of the worlds 7 billion people believe God exists.

Idk why people appeal to this argument. Before Christianity most of the world was polytheistic. Did that mean the polytheistic gods existed? If reality is whatever the majority of humans decide it is, then boy has reality undergone some fluctuations over the course of history.

Believing in one God or many God establishes the fact since the beginning of time the world believed in the supreme being or beings. Even today Christianity teaches the many manifestation of God in the Trinity.

Atheism is a religion because you ultimately have faith there is no God .

1. Coequal
   
2. Comaterial
   
3. Co-divine
   

John 10:30 I and my Father are one.

• John 17:20-23  My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
  

How about 2 billion Christians who believe in the Bible and that their God exists? In fact all religions and the majority of the worlds 7 billion people believe God exists.

• It's absent from the earliest Greek manuscripts. Even the later ones are inconsistent about how it's phrased.
  
• A good indication that a passage has been interpolated, or inserted into the original manuscript, is when it appears at the bottom, top, or sides of a text instead of in the text, as it appears in this image (that's the Johannine Comma at the bottom).
  
• There's academic debate about whether Cyprian was quoting the Comma, but in any case he was writing in the third century, when Trinitarian ideology was already developing. And consider that other pro-Trinitarian patriarchs, like Athanasius, or Origen, who had every reason to appeal to the passage if they were aware of it, never did.
  
• Jerome didn't like that it was translated faithfully in other manuscripts because accurate translations undermined church doctrine. "Indeed, it has come to our notice that in this letter some unfaithful translators have gone far astray from the truth of the faith, for in their edition they provide just the words for three [witnesses]—namely water, blood and spirit—and omit the testimony of the Father, the Word and the Spirit, by which the Catholic faith is especially strengthened--" Because if it doesn't strengthen Catholic dogma, it must be wrong, right?
  
• Nah there's no grammatical problems with the original Greek.
  
• The Council of Carthage was in the fifth century, when Trinitarian ideology was coming to a peak. The church had decided what it wanted to believe and canonized it, regardless of what the text explicitly states; it's been doing that ever since.
  

Just like they reduced God’s covenant to circumcision to limit God’s choices.

Whoever created this world is either insane either psychopath, and probably a liar too, and since Christian God fits all of those descriptions, one can conclude he is more likely to exist than some God who is actually good.

In this world, people get punished for sins of other people. People get punished and rewarded randomly. There is no karma. There is randomness. There is insanity.

Think about it, Hitler had a girlfriend while millions of children, who commited nothing as serious and as wrong as Hitler did, died from cancer and lived much shorter life than Hitler.

There is no justice. Some are born with disorders they did nothing to deserve, while some do plenty of evil and live a much better life than those who do no evil. Karma is fake news.

Karma doesnt exist because those who are victims of evil did nothing to deserve bad things which happen to them. So think about it.

The world is insane, filled with lies and injustice which pretends to be truth and justice, just as Christian God pretends to be good and lies about it in the Bible.

World is based on one being suffering so that other enjoys. One animal devouring another. One animal's joy is conditioned upon other being in pain. Total insanity. Its not just with humans. Its everywhere.

Christian God is perfect example of God who created this world: a lying insane psychopath!

Here is a verse that mentions all three being one and in heaven.

1 John 5:7

There are three in heaven who prove it is true. [They are the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. These three are one.]

Atheism is a religion.

Out of curiosity, what reasons are stopping you from adopting religion? Specifically, what is it about Christianity that deters you away?

1. There is too much in the Bible I dislike and heartily object to.
   
2. Christianity requires you to uncritically accept its doctrines -- that Jesus is the savior, that he rose from the dead -- and I'm just not capable of that, personally.
   
3. My political beliefs do not align with the vast majority of Christians' and I don't think I could ever be accepted among them as anything but an imposter.
   
4. Christianity has a long imperialist history of oppressing alternate beliefs and peoples; its historical baggage is kind of a turnoff.
   
5. Christians can be so hypocritical that it's probably the biggest turnoff of all -- they judge thoughtlessly, hate immigrants and foreigners, vote in people who help the rich and cut funding to the poor, push legislation that makes prayer public, tout their religion performatively "to be seen of men", exalt political figures to the point of idolatry, worship Ayn Rand (wtf? her and Jesus are like matter and antimatter?) and consistently fail to love their enemies or take the parable of the Samaritan to heart. Not trying to shoot too wide here -- I'm mostly talking about American evangelicals. But they're so loud where I'm from that I'm increasingly convinced that everything I thought Christianity was really "about" is just not what Christianity is "about" anymore. Turning the other cheek would be seen as weakness by modern Christians; the poor and homeless are seen as lazy freeloaders who deserve their misery if they cannot pull themselves out of it; rich men are worshiped instead of regarded as spiritually hobbled by their morbid wealth; sinners are voted in with enthusiasm rather than regarded as cautionary tales. I think everything I used to like about Christianity is dead.
   
6. I've never "felt" God's presence or had a real spiritual experience, and until I have, any claim to faith would be mere pretension. Plenty of people are merely imitating faith, but I have no interest in joining them.
   

What do all the atheists here base your morality on?

Bill Maher is the only good commentator of Islam. Everyone hates him because he made a career out of hate. But he's always right on the money.

We can start this off with the Trinity. Anybody can chime in.

So I was just normally meditating and offering my blood to the Dark Gods, when suddenly I hear this message speaking in my head:

"I am the God of Gods, creator and destroyer of worlds and stars. There is no Hell. There is no Heaven. There is Earth. There are humans. Earth is prison and punishment for humans. But it is punishment caused by humans themselves. It is humans who were given everything on Earth, but they turned Earth into their own hell. Expect nothing from the Gods if you are not worthy. Be careful not to harm people who have magic, for Gods will obey their call for revenge. The only way out of prison called Earth is to prove yourself and turn Earth into paradise. Do not think that Gods exist to serve you. Gods exist to serve themselves first. But you, humans, can become Gods by overcoming the limits you set on yourself, by pleasing Gods."

I'm just asking did he lie or not.

If you don't know, say so .