A challenage for you Apologetics

[Token Atheist]

Sorry, Logic does demand that Christ existed in the flesh for Christianity to exist.

For Christianity to exist and be correct then Christ must have existed.

For Christianity to exist and be incorrect then Christ may or may not have existed.

If you insist that Christ existed in the flesh for Christianity to have existed, do you also insist that the "Planet of the Elohim" must exist for Raelism to exist?

Please explain how sins are forgiven and Salvation wrought in these other world Religions?

"Sin" and "Salvation" are elements of the Christian faith - and as such they may or may not exist in other religions.

Your question makes no more sense than me asking you to explain to me how we reach Nirvana in religions other than Buddhism.

[Inti]

Before I share my thoughts with you, it's nice to meet you Inti.  I am Wayne and serve as a moderator here.  I pray that your intentions are good and that you are truly seeking TRUTH and not just trying to trip folks up.

Thats fair enough, I conceed the point into different denominations of Islam. I didn't look into that enough.

As for the Bible being "written history" that is a very debatable subject. It was certain written. But that doesn't mean it was factual. If you use it as your only source of information what happens when its wrong?

As for proving George Washington was at Trenton without using written testimony is a little silly. You are trying to compare two different types of data source.

If I had a newspaper, dated, with a photograph in it. Showing Washington at a famous Trenton landmark, how could you refute it?

The Bible is nothing like a modern day source of information, written or otherwise, its author(s) is/are unknown (please don't say Mathew Mark Luke and John number amoung them), its well known that it has had many different revisions and each revision will mean changes creep it.

When viewed objectivly the Bible is (im sorry to say this and I mean no offence) nothing more than an ancient story book.

(Home time, will post more in a few hours).

[Token Atheist]

Regarding Islam, you made the statement, "Islam is actually more popular than any of the different Christian denominations."  That's not entirely true since Islam has many different factions as well...call them "denominations".

Just in case anyone is interested...

"Denominations" is probably acceptable, but the general terms used are "Sects" (Shi'a, Sunni, etc. - corresponding in scale to the distinction between Catholics and Protestants) and "Schools" (corresponding in scale to the distinction between different types of Protestant).

So the nearest equivalent of a "Christian Denomination" is a "School of Islam".

[Pipit]

Lets see. Question: Why do Christians deem other religions as false? To answer that, we have to ask more questions, because each belief system has to both logically and consistently answer four questions to stand as valid, and the answers it gives must reflect reality and not be contradictory to the other answers it gives. It must answer the questions:

1)Where did we come from? (who or what created us, and is there purpose for life?)

2)Why are we in the state or condition we are in (ie: why is there 'sin' or 'suffering' or 'wrongness' in the world?)

3) Is there a solution to the problem or condition we are in? (is there salvation from our condition?)

4) Where are we going? Where is history leading? (is there something beyond life?)

So, lets start with Atheism. The religion of those who trust that science has the answers.

Firstly, most athiests don't agree on the same things. Some claim aliens started the human race, others say everything started with a big bang, and some just don't care. I'll answer the more common and scientifically accepted beliefs.

So, the Big Bang. The belief that long ago there was nothing then BANG, the universe exploded into existence. Of course, the realization that they were saying that something came of nothing had science throwing around theories such as the expand and collapse theory (the universe is in flux, with all matter expanding and collapsing, expanding and collapsing, and the Big bang was a result of it having collapsed and expanding again...but it does nothing to answer the origin of the universe). So there is the delima of answering the questions 1)where did matter come from and 2)why did it 'bang.' The question on matter has two answers: it always existed, or something created it. Regardless, it 'banged' (though we don't know why, and we don't know where the material came from to make it bang) and the universe was formed and eventually the gases coalesced into starts and planets (though science is baffled in regards to how... gravity is too weak of a force unless you have a really large mass, and it is difficult to think of any masses large enough any time after the Big bang that would stop matter from moving outward and start to clump together to form stars and galexies), and our earth was formed and things started to happen... life began to appear.

Atheism claims that we evolved with no creator or influence, but through a scientifically measurable and observable process, advancing from one life form to another. There are three basic flaws or problems for this. One is that science has not demonstrated that one spieces can evolve or transform into another. Yes, it has shown that there are variances within the same spieces, and that the manipulation or change of the environment can bring these variances, but these variances revolve around a norm and the spieces generally return back to the norm (for example, Darwin's finches. There beaks grow or shrink depending upon the climate of the island--dry seasons it was shorter, to eat harder seeds, rainy season it was longer, because the seeds were softer). Never within these variances is there genetic change which produces a new spieces. In fact, ask someone who breeds dogs or cows. Yes, they will tell you that breeding to healthy and large animals will produce a healthy and large animal, but you can only breed to a certain point before the you end up with a generation of animals you are breeding develop serious health issues (all those prefect traits seem to end in a mess). And if you stop forcing the excellent animals to breed, eventually, within a few generations, they would be back to a norm. No horses produced from your cow breeding, no new animal that never existed before pops out. Even within the fossel record there is no support for the evolutionary process. There is evidence that clearly shows that creatures existed that are now extinct. There is evidence that some of these creatures were terrific is size. There is no evidence to suggest or show that one creature transformed into another.

Even in science's efforts to reproduce the building blocks of life--protient--it has failed to show that it can successfully happen. Yes, Protiens have been successfully created by scientists who carefully mix and measure their amino acids and impecably control their experiment's environment, yet their method in itself shows how difficult it is to create the protients. It required a carefully controlled environment with a scientific mind behind it to produce the results. Such conditions are not found in a natural world, let alone one that is in chaos. Add to this that protients are either left handed or right handed and that DNA is made up of only one type of protient, either completely right handed or completely left handed. The protient produced by the experiments is both, all jumbled together.

Finally, there is little prupose to life. Science and athiesm must hold to the idea that we are merely living to do, and that life is nothing more then random chance with no meaning behind it. It faces difficulty is clearly answering the questions of 'where did we come from' and to have answers that conform to the reality around us.

There is much more to say about atheism and its problems answering the 'where did we come from' question. But as you can see, answering the questions takes much space. So, onto question two:

2)Why are we in the condition we are in?

Why is there evil in the world? Firstly, science really isn't equipped to give answers for moral questions. Good and evil in a random, meaningless world were things happen by chance and chemical reaction and stimuli means nothing, because its definition is nothing more then a product of that change and chemical reaction and stimuli. So the question of good and evil is hard to answer. Yet they still demand answers for it, and attempt to give answers. Marx believed evil existed because of the economic conditions and the class system--remove the class systems and make everyone equal and you will have a eutopia. Jean Jaque Rousseau believed that we are born good, but that society and institutes corrupt us--reform society and the system and you will have a eutopia (some of these hint towards question 3: What is the solution ). Others point to our genes and DNA and blame them as the culprit for evil.

Yet in blaming DNA, science suggests one of two things: DNA is able to 'think' and decide action, or that DNA is simply acting to the stimuli around it. The latter ties in nicely with the random meaningless chemical world science must claim we live in, yet it really doesn't answer why we think or deem things as evil--it fails to tell us why we say one thing is good and another bad. Evil and good thus go undefined and one really cannot proclaim things and evil and good (because their determination is nothing more then chemcial sparks in their brain). The second one creates DNA into a sort of demigod. Not that this is a problem for science to do, as in the way science preceives DNA as a building block for like, controling and mapping out and determining how cells come together and are structured and formed--kinda like a man building a deck. Yet does this idea of DNA line up with the scientific theory that ours is a world of chance, of action and reaction? And does it really address the evil issue?

What is the solution to evil?

Science itself is. Science will solve all our problems. We will reform our systems so that they create a social eutopia (but then, our DNA will mess it up, or some random spark in someone's mind will set off everything into a mess again). We will drug the body until everyone conforms to the same thought patterns. We will create test tube babies that will grow up thinking everything we want them to think (but since our DNA is firing off a random, can we really do that?). We will let evolution bring us to a higher level of intellegence and eventually we'll transcend into a greater level of awareness and conscienceness (but we still have the random chemcial reactions in our being that influence our thoughts and actions). Hmm... maybe we will continue to be stuck in a world where evil cannot be resolved or answered or addressed....

Where are we going?

Well, the answers are a)no where, as we live a meaningless randomly chanced life or b)evolving to a higher spieces, to live a meaningless randomly chanced life with a higher level or awareness...

I know these answers sound a bit trite and incomplete... but sadly, given space and time, its difficult to address them fully. Also, knowing that the answers i give will not be enough to really satisfy you anyways, even if I wrote a book with all the evidence showing it, you would still want more... its difficult to give you the answers you want to hear.

Next post... Islam....

[WayneB]

As for the Bible being "written history" that is a very debatable subject. It was certain written. But that doesn't mean it was factual. If you use it as your only source of information what happens when its wrong?

There is the problem with your approach Inti. It seems that you have assumed the Bible is unreliable without giving it an honest appraisal. Have you truly read it and studied it? Be honest now. Usually, those who start off and say, "Don't quote the Bible", say so because they do not know what it says and to them, it is just a book that threatens them.

John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, felt different. He wrote in a letter to his friend, Jedidiah Morse, on 28 Feb 1797:

It is to be regretted, but so I believe the fact to be, that except the Bible there is not a true history in the world. Whatever may be the virtue, discernment, and industry of the writers, I am persuaded that truth and error (though in different degrees) will imperceptibly become and remain mixed and blended until they shall be separated forever by the great and last refining fire.

As for proving George Washington was at Trenton without using written testimony is a little silly. You are trying to compare two different types of data source.

If I had a newspaper, dated, with a photograph in it. Showing Washington at a famous Trenton landmark, how could you refute it?

Come on now. You can't be serious. I saw a picture yesterday distributed through an e-mail that showed both George W. Bush and his father fishing with the ravaged New Orleans behind them. Just like John Jay wrote...

The Bible is nothing like a modern day source of information, written or otherwise, its author(s) is/are unknown (please don't say Mathew Mark Luke and John number amoung them), its well known that it has had many different revisions and each revision will mean changes creep it.

It is obvious that you do not know or understand the progression of translations and how the more reliable translations are from early manuscripts. Also, you wrongly state the the authors are unknown? Not true and saying it doesn't make it true.

When viewed objectivly the Bible is (im sorry to say this and I mean no offence) nothing more than an ancient story book.

No offense to me friend. Maybe you need to read and study this book of antiquity for yourself first before you judge its worth. Regardless, just because it is "ancient" does not mean it lacks truth or relevance. Actually, I'm siding with John Jay here and offer that ALL source of information regardless of age should be questioned and tested. Honestly, your comments regarding the Bible reflect a lack of knowledge...no offense intended.

[WayneB]

Regarding Islam, you made the statement, "Islam is actually more popular than any of the different Christian denominations."

[Pax]

Inti,

I commend you for asking this question and for searching. I will also tell you that faith is a gift and not everyone has that gift. The reason why is like many in things a mystery, but our freewill plays a big part in this. Some people flat out choose not to be open to God or the truth. Others are born into Islam, or other religions, and will never have the oppurtunity to learn about Christianity. You must remember that God will not just come bargining into ones life. You must invite him into your life.

Now if want to look at this in a totally logical sense. Lets compare Christianity to Islam. Where is most of the turmoil in the world. By turnoil I mean areas of the world that are in a constant state of war or anarchy. One doesn't have to look long before they realize that it is the middle east, Africa, and east Asia. Where is Islam the most dominant religion. Middle east, Africa (although certain areas are becomming more Christian), east asia (this area to is becomming more Christian, but there is still a very strong presence of Islam). Does Islam believe that Christians are infidels. By this I mean they think that christians are lower life forms and have no religion. Yes, and at any time Islam can declare holy jehad agaisnt the Christians. This is what we are constantly seeing in the middle east against Americans and Jews. We aslo have this going on in Africa, more specifically Sudan. Muslin are fighting against Christians.

Does Christianity teach that we should rise up against Muslim and kill them because they are a lower life form. No. This is the fundamental differnce between Islam and christianity. Is a all knowing, loving God going to teach people to go out and kill other poeple because they don't believe the same things as you. No and this totally goes against any logical thinking to prove that Islam is not teaching the fullness of the truth, although they might have elements of the truth. Hope this helps

[serotta]

We certainly have had an influx of atheists lately.

Welcome Inti.

I think Saved by Grace and Pax have given very good responses. I will only add that I am called to be a Witness for Christ Jesus, not necessarily a defense attorney. If you want to know the difference that Christ has made in my life, and the wonderful relief it is to have such a confidante, Savior, and big-brother, I would be more than willing to share with you. As far as your request for absolute physical proof of the existence of Christ, it's all around you, you need only open your eyes and your heart to see, so I will leave you to your own devices on that one.

Peace be with you.

[Inti]

Wow, I get home and I have 2 very big posts to reply to, I will address both Pipit's and Save by Graces replies. Pipit's especially so.

But now I have to run errands, eat my tea etc. Sorry for wasting thread space, just don't want it to die.

[yomotalking]

Grace to you,

How are Salvation wrought and sins forgiven in all of the above Religons of the world?

I want you to answer according to what you know of Christianity as well.

Also, you cannot negate the personhood of Jesus Christ nor His Word in your logic and reason. Simply because with no Christ. There is no Christianity. You must take His claims into account or logic begins to break down.

Peace,

Dave

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Good reply.

Ditto 4 me too.