Could an argument ever persuade/dissuade you from believing in God?

[GaryTaylor]

You certainly assert a lot with no evidence. Yes God is possible but the burden of proof is to prove His existence not assertion He does and why not believe all the other religions’ creation stories and gods based on assertion and faith.
The Christian God has a terrible track record to creating a new heaven and earth. First He couldn’t prevent prideful Satan and his demons from dropping out of God’s presence. He created Adam perfectly but with the ability to sin and blamed him and Us despite lacking the knowledge of good and evil since Adam did eat from the tree yet. Then He flooded and killed all humans, young, old and pregnant to wipe out sin but failed. He then commanded His chosen to go around killing everything associated against Him and eventually His chosen did the same by sinning. He then had to come down to sacrifice Himself to Himself because He kept failing to wipe out sin. Animal blood sacrifice wasn’t enough so a human sacrifice was needed, which to me is immoral. What evidence is there He won’t fail in our new heaven and earth besides assertion.
If He is a perfect God shouldn’t His creation be perfect and what makes you think the next universe will be perfect?
I’m not sure what you mean by there is too much perfection? Most of the universe and most of the areas on this planet are inhabitable. The squid has better eyes than us. We have defects such as hernias, ectopic pregnancies because of poor design, we don’t have separate food and breathing tubes like a dolphin thus risk choking, our appendix is useless and can rupture…order is due to chemistry, strong/weak forces, electromagnetism and gravity. Is a snowflake design God at work or based on physical properties inherent in our universe? To say God created these properties is a hypothesis with no evidence, thus assertion and faith is needed which I do not find as a passage to truth just like you don’t belief in fairies.

Your limited to scientific arguments, none of which attempt to explain mans purpose in the universe. Yet behind all your scientific arguments remains a cause which is a mystery.

Yet why wouldn’t you believe the statistical probability of Jesus Christ being exactly who he claimed to be. The odds of one man fulfilling 48 prophecies let alone over 150 are 1X10 to the 157 power.

To put this in perspective that’s about the same as building a BOX which you could fit the entire universe in, then filling it with copper BBs, and adding one which is silver, and then picking out the silver by random chance on the first attempt. This would be trillions times more likely than the odds of one person fulfilling all the prophecies that Christ fulfilled. No occurrence in history or physical science has been verified with a higher degree of statistical certainty that the fact Christ is exactly who he claimed to be.

No one in history has been more recognized in the arts than Jesus Christ, not literature, painting, poetry, non fiction writing. More words have been written about Christ than any other event or person in history.

No theologian or historian would dispute the fact that Jesus Christ was the single most influential figure ever to walk the face of the earth.

His actions, words, and miracles changed the course of history. He has inspired entire societies to incorporate compassion and mercy into their cultures. He redefined the standards of morality. He not only changed the course of nations. He bought an unexplainable measure of purpose, peace and joy into the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Historically and statistically speaking…there is no equal! This man named Jesus Christ had the ability to impart hope to those in despair, joy to those with broken hearts, and bought, taught and permeated a peace which is able to subdue even the most paralyzing fear. He transformed hating hearts to loving hearts, minds driven by greed to one overflowing with generosity, lives ruled by arrogance into one driven by the desire to serve others. He gave sight to the blind, delivered those in captivity, forgave the wrongdoer, and gave life to the dead.

I know of no other like this man, and that is because He is no man. He is exactly who He claimed to be…The Living God, and there certainly is every reason to believe He will come again.

Consider the facts

Born to a peasant couple in the middle of no-where.

Born in a country occupied by foreign conquerors

The only transportation he had was his legs.

No mass communication, he never left a 200 mile radius, he never wrote a word, and He only preached for 3-years. Three Years!

He was falsely accused and convicted in a rigged trail. He was sentenced to death by an individual who thought he was innocent.

He died the death of a criminal and died on a cross between two convicted criminals.

Only his mother and a few friends were present. Everyone else fled and hid. Only after he rose from the dead did his followers return. But they had no means to spread his story and teachings to a mass audience. There were no radios, televisions, printing press, in fact paper as we know was not even invented yet. Papyrus had to be painstakingly written by hand. And the only way to make a copy was to repeat the process and laboriously copy the original.

The idea of any individual but God actually accomplishing the above is in a word “laughable”

 

[PendingTheist]

Do you believe in a multiverse? Or infinite universes? In other universes is it possible that there are no flaws or inadequacies? What do you think about Leibniz’ assertion that this is the best of all possible worlds?

Truthfully, I haven’t studied it enough to give a gnostic answer but I know we don’t have all the answers and am OK saying WE don’t know YET. Regardless, if we did know how would this affect your belief? Does it make you feel better by giving you hope of a “perfect” universe?

 

[PendingTheist]

Your limited to scientific arguments, none of which attempt to explain mans purpose in the universe. Yet behind all your scientific arguments remains a cause which is a mystery.

Yet why wouldn’t you believe the statistical probability of Jesus Christ being exactly who he claimed to be. The odds of one man fulfilling 48 prophecies let alone over 150 are 1X10 to the 157 power.

His actions, words, and miracles changed the course of history. He has inspired entire societies to incorporate compassion and mercy into their cultures. He redefined the standards of morality. He not only changed the course of nations. He bought an unexplainable measure of purpose, peace and joy into the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

What’s wrong with a mystery saying I don’t know, yet? Why do you have faith in a book telling you your purpose? Find your own purpose. Jesus tells us to leave and hate our family to follow Him. I found purpose and meaning in my work and the love with my demonstrable family and friends rather that a non-evidential supernatural being.

Prophecy is a poor arguement. Just listen to Jews debate Christians on Jesus’ prophecy. The New Testament writers were familiar with the Old Testament, so it was pretty easy to “full fill the prophecy”.

Yes eventually Christianity was a belief that won out and influenced good and bad teachings, art, music and wars, but that doesn’t make it true!

Let’s look at the culture and context at the time Jesus was preaching. First of all, no historian of the first century wrote about Jesus, His miracles, Him walking around after His resurrection, King Herod’s baby killing spree, or dead saints walking around after the crucifixion. Josephus was not a contemporary and mentions the stoning of James, the brother of Jesus “the one they call Messiah.” With Jerusalem occupied by Romans, apocalyptic beliefs were common. It was common for people to wander in everyday declaring themselves as the messiah, just as resurrection was common in scripture as described when Elijah resurrected the son of Zarephath’s widow (1 Kings 17:17-24) and the great Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:35), a dead man came back to life when he touched Elisha’s bones (Kings13:21), Jesus resurrects the widow’s son at Nain (Luke 7:13-15), Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter (Matthew 9:25) and Lazarus from the dead (John 11:43-44), many saints are resurrected at Jesus’ crucifixion (Matthew 27:52-53), Peter raises a female disciple named Tabitha from the dead (Acts 9:36-42), Paul raises Eutychus from the dead (Acts 20:9-12), there is a strong possibility that Paul was raised from the dead (Acts 14:19-20) and of course Jesus (Matthew 28:5-7, Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24:1-11, and John 20:1-10). To the Romans, Jesus was no different than the other messiahs. Arriving in Jerusalem with his disciples, preaching of the coming Kingdom of God, throwing the money changers out of the Temple, these were the actions of an insurrectionist which led to his crucifixion on charges of treason. The central theme and unifying message of Jesus’ 3 year ministry was the promise of a Kingdom of God on Earth, one not under the rule of Rome or corrupt priests. This revolution was not peaceful as described in Mathew 10:34: “I came not to send peace, but a sword.” All of Jesus’ words and actions must be understood both within the political context of his time and within the religious context of Judaism. Gospel writers appear to have cleansed the Gospel with statements such as ‘love your enemies’ and ‘turn the other cheek’ from Jewish context and transform them into ethical principles for Rome.

What made Jesus stand out from the other prophets of his day is the resurrection which gave the Jews, still under Roman rule after His death, fresh hope. However, years after His crucifixion, there was a split amongst His followers. James stayed in Jerusalem preaching to converts Jesus’ teachings and Jewish tradition. The Hellenic group was living abroad and less bound to Jewish tradition. Paul was the most influential of this group. Where James wants followers to adhere to Mosaic Law, Paul drifts away from them. Jesus and James were not interested in creating a new religion but that’s exactly what Paul and the Gospel writers helped create. The same year the first gospel, Mark, is written the Romans destroy the Temple. In all contemporary histories, Pilate is a cruel Roman governor slaughtering Jews without a thought yet in Mark, Pilate tries to spare Jesus. Why would Mark tell a fictitious scene? Answer: Mark was not writing to a Jewish audience but rather to all of Rome. The Gospels along with Paul’s influence led to converts throughout the Roman Empire. Later in Matthew, Pilate washes his hands absolving Rome of Jesus’ death and placed blame on the Jews. This led to centuries of anti-Semitism. Everything Jesus said or did must be vetted by the incontrovertible fact He was an uneducated, illiterate Jewish peasant who was executed as a state criminal for a crime of sedition. Once you start with that fact, it’s easier to see which of His statements and/or actions are more likely. In his book, Mere Christianity, former atheist turned Christian apologists C.S. Lewis, states Jesus’ trilemma that He is a lunatic, liar or Lord. However, evidence seems to point He is legend.

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

You certainly assert a lot with no evidence. Yes God is possible but the burden of proof is to prove His existence not assertion He does and why not believe all the other religions’ creation stories and gods based on assertion and faith.

People assert a lot of things without a lot of evidence, but it is not confined to religion. For instance, there have been some references to science and such things as the laws of nature here and there on this thread, however, the idea that there are fixed laws of nature that have existed since the Big Bang actually asserts a lot based simply on the idea of a miracle that allows that laws governing complex compounds and their interactions with one another were fixed at a point wherein the elements they govern had not yet developed out of the high intensity heat of the event. I’m suggesting that if these laws were not present at the event, then they evolved later, and if they evolved later, then they are not fixed, but learned, and if they are learned, an underlying intelligence is implied, for which we as conscious beings are in ourselves ample evidence. Conversely, if such laws existed before the elements they govern came into being, that too points to an underlying intelligence that is implied by the blueprint that indicates the behavior of that which has not yet come into being.

Science neither proves or refutes what people of faith hold to be true. There are still too many questions on that front that have not been answered.

 

[CrossofChrist]

What made Jesus stand out from the other prophets of his day is the resurrection which gave the Jews, still under Roman rule after His death, fresh hope. However, years after His crucifixion, there was a split amongst His followers. James stayed in Jerusalem preaching to converts Jesus’ teachings and Jewish tradition. The Hellenic group was living abroad and less bound to Jewish tradition. Paul was the most influential of this group. Where James wants followers to adhere to Mosaic Law, Paul drifts away from them. Jesus and James were not interested in creating a new religion but that’s exactly what Paul and the Gospel writers helped create. The same year the first gospel, Mark, is written the Romans destroy the Temple. In all contemporary histories, Pilate is a cruel Roman governor slaughtering Jews without a thought yet in Mark, Pilate tries to spare Jesus. Why would Mark tell a fictitious scene? Answer: Mark was not writing to a Jewish audience but rather to all of Rome. The Gospels along with Paul’s influence led to converts throughout the Roman Empire. Later in Matthew, Pilate washes his hands absolving Rome of Jesus’ death and placed blame on the Jews. This led to centuries of anti-Semitism. Everything Jesus said or did must be vetted by the incontrovertible fact He was an uneducated, illiterate Jewish peasant who was executed as a state criminal for a crime of sedition. Once you start with that fact, it’s easier to see which of His statements and/or actions are more likely. In his book, Mere Christianity, former atheist turned Christian apologists C.S. Lewis, states Jesus’ trilemma that He is a lunatic, liar or Lord. However, evidence seems to point He is legend.

The rest of your post notwithstanding, there is no evidence that James and Paul were somehow opposed to each other. And even the radical skeptic Bart Ehrman thinks it’s absurd to say that Jesus was a legend.

 

[PendingTheist]

The rest of your post notwithstanding, there is no evidence that James and Paul were somehow opposed to each other. And even the radical skeptic Bart Ehrman thinks it’s absurd to say that Jesus was a legend.

I’m glad you read Bart Ehrman then you should be aware of all the Forgeries in the bible, including Paul contradicting himself or rather forgeries contradicting Paul’s authentic epistles.
Just to clarify, I’m not asserting Jesus didn’t exist as it appears He was made into a living legend of and after His time. Please note the definition of legend: 1. A traditional story sometimes popularly regarded as historical but unauthenticated. He may have existed but His miracles and divinity are unauthenticated outside the bible.
2.an extremely famous or notorious person, esp “the man was a living legend”.

 

[john330]

Truthfully, I haven’t studied it enough to give a gnostic answer but I know we don’t have all the answers and am OK saying WE don’t know YET. Regardless, if we did know how would this affect your belief? Does it make you feel better by giving you hope of a “perfect” universe?

Yes it would. If an there are infinite or multiple universes that would explain the inadequacies that exist within ours. Out of an infinite number of possible universes some, according to strict mathematics, would be required to have inadequacies. This is a universe with inadequacies. Sin, poverty, disease, death, and war are some of the inadequacies. It would say a lot about God (whose infinite mind creates all POSSIBLE worlds) if he were the type of God who would redeem one of his worlds from its inadequacies. He doesn’t create a world just for the heck of it according to this philosophy…our world is a predicate of his existence, one of the permutations of his creative mind and will. He doesn’t create just to satisfy his artistic fancy or because he’s a mad scientist, but because an infinite mind must think of all mathematically possible things. So yes, this would give meaning to my existence, if it is true. I, however, do not know the truth. I only believe.

 

[CrossofChrist]

You got banned, but I’ll respond for the heck of it.

I’m glad you read Bart Ehrman then you should be aware of all the Forgeries in the bible, including Paul contradicting himself or rather forgeries contradicting Paul’s authentic epistles.

So because Pope Benedict quotes Gerd Ludemann and Rudolf Bultmann in Jesus of Nazereth he accepts all they say? Not to say I’m anywhere near the caliber of Benedict, of course.

Just to clarify, I’m not asserting Jesus didn’t exist as it appears He was made into a living legend of and after His time.

Curiously (or maybe not) there is no evidence of this development in the early Church.

 

[tonyrey]

An ‘a’ is missing!

 

[ynotzap]

There are arguments that can persuade you to believe in God they are called metaphysical arguments. There at least five classical ones: Motion, Order, Necessity, Grades of Beings and Origin. Of course we can even reject them if our motives for desiring truth are not sincere and we are not capable of following the arguments. A biblical truth taken from St,Paul states that Gods existence can be proven by and through His creation. An added comment: The proof that Jesus is God-man will never be attained by reason,but by a gift called Faith Quote: It is by Faith in Jesus Christ salvation came, a gift of grace, so that no one can take the credit So I think , if you are looking for an answer to your questions you will be frustrated. One has to be disposed to receiving the truth, an open unpredjudiced and unbiased, and pure mind. By the way a very humble one too Being that you are pending you don’t have the advantage of this gift. Faith is believing in the unseen, the reward of Faith is seeing what you believe. (St. Augustine) a big sinner before his conversion. Only God converts. His mother prayed many years (28-32?) for his conversion. He had an encounter with Jesus. Any true convert has had a one on one encounter. Encounters come in many ways,and only God knows how to reach each soul. I don,t expect you to believe because you can’t give what you don’t have. If you are humble you can have it. Beware of an attitude of infallibility on your own judgements, and if you can’t understand it, pray for enlightenment, if you can.

 

[ynotzap]

For believers: And Jesus said "Who do you say I am. Peter said in reply “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” Jesus replied. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Heavenly Father.” Belief in Jesus God-man is a supernatural grace (the work of the Holy Spirit) that is freely given by the Father. No human reason will attain this truth, it is a gift from God.

For Pending Theist and those that may think like him, the Bible is prophetical, and an historical document. The prophesy of "Wars and rumors of wars…eg. Nation will rise against nation. Wolves will enter the fold and disrupt it, splits in the church etc. There are so many confirmations. Humanity is afflicted with ignorance, irrationality, corruption in so many forms. It continues through each generation. Corruption is endemic, our nature is held bondage and because many have not transcended the physical its solution remains a mystery to them. Secular humanism tries very hard to provide the answers but always fall short. We all need “Enlightenment” from the Source of Truth. Do I dare say it "God in His Son Jesus. " The world will continue to be confounded until it turns to the Source That’s a prophesy.

 

[crochet_lady]

ynotzap # 110 or so – Very good

 

[tonyrey]

For believers: And Jesus said "Who do you say I am. Peter said in reply “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” Jesus replied. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Heavenly Father.” Belief in Jesus God-man is a supernatural grace (the work of the Holy Spirit) that is freely given by the Father. No human reason will attain this truth, it is a gift from God.

For Pending Theist and those that may think like him, the Bible is prophetical, and an historical document. The prophesy of "Wars and rumors of wars…eg. Nation will rise against nation. Wolves will enter the fold and disrupt it, splits in the church etc. There are so many confirmations. Humanity is afflicted with ignorance, irrationality, corruption in so many forms. It continues through each generation. Corruption is endemic, our nature is held bondage and because many have not transcended the physical its solution remains a mystery to them. Secular humanism tries very hard to provide the answers but always fall short. We all need “Enlightenment” from the Source of Truth. Do I dare say it "God in His Son Jesus. " The world will continue to be confounded until it turns to the Source That’s a prophesy.

Even Richard Dawkins admits the moral teaching of Jesus was ahead of its time and is worthy of respect - without realising it is inseparable from His personality, life and death…

 

[ynotzap]

Yes an argument can persuade you from believing in God if it is an erroneous and subjective argument ( reality is what I think it is) and you believe it. If it is an objective one (consistent with reality) and you believe it it can make you believe in God (by His grace-thats the Enlightenment.)

 

[JamesCaruso]

Maybe an argument could persuade a person that there is a God. It all depends on where that person is mentally, emotionally and spiritually. So I would not want to say out of hand that no one can be convinced of the existence of God through argumentation. I do believe that prayer for that hypothetical person would go further that all the argumentation in the world, and in fact, may be the ingredient that allows the argument to bear fruit. I think it’s a good rule of thumb to spend more time praying for individuals whom we wish would come to believe in God than spending time trying to persuade them. Giving your concern for a person’s soul to Our Blessed Mother may be the best way of all to bring about another person’s conversion. I believe that it is. It’s liberating, too. Then, you can spend your time showing love to that person instead of arguing with him or her.