Do you believe in God?

My reply to your idiotic questioning about obvious devices (how did you know it was one in 10,000?) as literal is: What is your source that the god you believe in is more real than any of the others?

Thank you for confirming for me that you have no desire for an equitable conversation.

I'm encouraged by the fact that you seem to be the only poster than I've encountered so far with no interest in an honest dialogue.

Addendum:

According to Barna, approximately 3 of 10 professing Christians claim to read their Bible daily.

So, it's not a matter of taking your 1 in 10,000 literally; it's a matter of you literally having no clue what your're talking about and/or you being dishonest.

Yet another believer refuses to say anything meaningful in support of their beliefs, while apparently accepting that infanticide is more moral than wearing mixed fabrics. "It's in the good book and that's good enough for me" seems to be the epistemology.

No one can know or understand the ways of god. Yet complete obedience is demanded, and anything else is sin punishable by death/torture unless you get a magically sacrificial stand in. Right?

Even though you have shown yourself to be intellectually dishonest, or a troll, or emotionally disturbed or just really stupid, I will answer this important question for readers who really would like to me give an answer.

Since I don't believe in a "magically sacrificial stand in", the answer to your question is "No, that is not right."

Having said that, here is what I believe:

Sin is punishable by death and eternal damnation for anyone who has not had their sins forgiven through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary.

So when a man/god is tortured to death, his blood (that weird Old Testament god fetish with blood again, are you sure it isn't just barbaric people making up the blood stories?) hyperspaces with wine in the modern world providing an odd spiritual nourishment (that blood thing again), and the slaughter of this innocent is necessary for the forgiveness and redemption of sins (but this isn't a magical stand in).

I know what you believe: you believe any effing thing that is in that book, anything that is in the doctrine that you feel you have to believe to be in the "right" religion.

Religions are just religion clubs. Nothing more. As Michael Corleone might say: "Never mistake it for actual metaphysics."

Christianity is what you make it.

You have imprisoned yourself with your metaphysical beliefs, and then you make Christianity out to be an even worse prison to justify your complacency.

Oh thanks. Yeah, I'm the one complacent. Having exhaustively investigated the field and with true believers just sitting there, "Yeah, I believe the one they told me. How could it not be true? Since Sunday School its been obvious it is true. Look at the trees."

Brother, school is out. This isn’t some research assignment.

Just because you’re expending energy doesn’t mean you’re not procrastinating and being complacent.

Follow the dread. That’s where you need to go.

The true believer's epistemology is a glorification of stubborn dogmatism. Not adjusting their mind to reality, but insisting that what they wish to be true be reality ... is the bottom line of their thinking. Was Noah 900 + years old? "What do you mean? It says in the Bible ... yada, yada, yada."

Does "god parted the sea with a sneeze" sound suspiciously, conclusively, like a folk tale story, or is it historical reality? "Doesn't sound like a mythological story to me. Sounds like a historical event."

Does a character in a story getting incredible powers from their long, uncut hair sound like a tall tale superstitious story, or is it actually true? "Sounds reasonable to me. I believe it. It's part of my religion."

You run into a brick wall with the true believer's policy of wish fulfillment that his preferred story be true and never mind any standard of reality testing.

"Never mind reality, I have a belief system" ... is an evil thing. When one realizes and understands that respect for reality is the foundation of morality, it becomes clear that this kind of believing is an evil thing. And they just can't get it through their head, having been sold faith and belief as moral, that there is any problem except with those confounded skeptics.

There's some value and wisdom there, for sure. This is far from an strictly intellectual pursuit, metaphysics is, and the being side of the equation is far more important than the knowing side. And its far from being a "truth seeker." That's not what human beings are, in fact homosapien is the only species of liars. We have great trouble with truth/reality, and our response to that issue is a huge part of our character.

Fear and dread is indeed a fruitful place to investigate in the psyche. None more so than the person using canned religion and preposterous beliefs to camouflage their existential dread.

I forgot the "checkmate."

If you want to “level up” in your life, then the only actual way to do it is through the Son of Man.

He is the chosen one, entitled to God’s belongings.

Those who he is one with, the Christians, are God’s chosen people.

The SoM is associated with truth and goodness.

If you are one with the SoM, then you are one with truth and goodness.

What would it look like, how would you act, to do good and to tell the truth in every moment of your life?

First, recognize the standard and what it means to be in good standing as a chosen son, then allow yourself the space to consent to this life or not.

This is what it means to have a personal relationship with Christ and truly become Christian, beyond being socialized into Christianity.

The part of you with faith should affirm and encourage the rest of you which is drawn toward normalcy and worldly distractions.

Be patient and forgiving of yourself. Keep in mind, the rest of yourself must be given the space required of consent.

In this stage of evolving toward a personal Christianity, it can be beneficial to over correct against any socialized Christianity.

Give yourself permission to cease religious practices under the suspicion that you are only engaging in them due to social impulses and patterns.

It's the Biblical Christianity and the organized Christianity that is the problem. How you get around that I'm not quite sure.

I have pretty much interacted with God himself several times while offshore in my sailboat. I did not record the conversations but the outcomes to my lamentations were extremely favorable.

I feel much more agnostic when in my motor home here in Mexico but that may just be recency bias.

That's very interesting about the isolated, lamentations seemingly getting a response from god. That's kind of central to a lot of genuine religious experience when it isn't just basically, "They taught me in Sunday School ..."

But there are so many questions and sticking points. How did you know it was god? How did you know which god? How do you know the "replies" and feelings that come about are not from something or someone else, or from your own mind? How did you know it was a him (did he show you his dick, and even if he did wouldn't it be reasonable to think if we are made in his image that he has both sexes sex organs?)?

That last point might seem mocking, but it points up the massive presupposition going on in god takes. If one was exposed to a religion where the god was feminine (probably a much more reasonable idea), then when they got a seeming reply from the beyond in supposed god land, they would presume it was a she.

There is a great book about the power of prayer even if there is no deity. And it's right on.

Cool story bro.

I love that the god who tortures millions of children with fatal cancers every year took a small break to help you out, then went back to starving millions of children to death.

What did he smell like?

My guess is he's pretty ripe given he's running around constantly all day long fulfilling prayers in between causing natural disasters and killing infants.

The "socialization" of Christianity is why it spread. It needs followers who won't read the bible but accept spoon feeding of specific passages and creeds from church leaders. If you let followers read the whole bible and realize it describes god (and Jesus) as a vengeful, unjust, immoral monster it creates too many atheists.

Christianity isn’t completely dependent on the Bible.

It’s not Islam which is completely dependent on its holy book(s), since it claims there are no more prophets moving forward (useful short term strategy but fatal long term).

Right off the bat, not even close to true. Atheism is merely a lack of believe in the god claim, it says nothing about how you make sense of the world. Some atheists are flat-earthers or spiritualists in fact.

And no one chooses their beliefs. Their beliefs are merely the collection of things they've become convinced are true. Some people believe in Theism because it best agrees with their perception of an underlying agent or agents determining how the world is. Many arrived there through indoctrination from friends, family, church and society, not through any rigorous observations.

In this case, "the world makes sense" just means they want to cherry pick confirmation biases so they can believe the world matches an explanation they want desperately want to be true, despite having no reasonable evidence for it.

Atheists point out numerous problems with theistic world-views, the lack of any trace of physical evidence of a god, the lack of any reasonably evidence of a creator, the litany of contradictions and falsehoods that comprise the key claims of every religious text, etc.

As you wrote, Theists will "rethink" they way they express their theism because they aren't truth seekers, they are seeking only to confirm their indoctrinated beliefs. So if evidence can't be re-interpreted to support them, it must be discarded. If no empirical evidence can be found, then you must turn to unfalsifiable "spiritual woo" like revelation that comes to adherents of every faith from Judiasm to Christianity to Islam to Mormanism, where apparently feeling good during prayer confirms all of their gods are true.

I'm absolutely convinced I'm going to win 5 bracelets this year, doesn't mean it will happen just because "im convinced" actually means "i really really really want to believe".

And "accidental" carries a huge burden here, no one is arguing the world is "irrational" or "accidental". There is no reason to believe the universe hasn't always existed in one form or another since matter and energy have never been shown to be destroyed or created. There is no reason to claim the universe is an accident. It just is, so unless you can show it was created, and was created with intent by a creator, Occams Razor should clearly believe it wasn't.

If you cherry pick some creeds and lovely passages from the Bible, it might appear to. If you read the entire book, preferably in its original languages or in modern translations that best understand them, study its history and why it was constructed out of the books that were chosen (and why others weren't), and all of the Church teachings that came after Jesus that negate and twist what the bible claims were his teachings, it clearly doesn't.

This is just an assertion because again you are starting with a belief you want to be true, instead of searching for the actual truth to believe. Empirical study of the universe have given us all of the answers that we know are true, religions just give us answers we wish were true.

You prefer an almighty creator because someone once promised you eternal life and threatened you with eternal hellfire if you didn't believe. But while that was an incredible innovation of Christianity that aided it spread, that's not a reason to believe its true.

Again, wishing for a thing doesn't make it true. If god doesn't exist and this is our only life, spending it making worse decisions based on a mythical afterlife is likely to make your one life even worse. There are many meaningful things in a secular world, family, friends, happiness, prosperity and good health are all things I find meaningful.

IF. If the christian god cared to reveal himself there wouldn't be a billion muslims nor would there be atheists.

Word salad with a side of gibberish today, ma'am?

And all of them are burden shifting.

Again, none of these things are accidents, they are just how the world works. Rational evidence describes truth of how things comport with reality. Knowledge is just the things we have a justified belief in. Consciousness is merely a higher function of our brains, evidence is pretty clear it doesn't exist outside of a living creature or after life ends.

And morality is the list of rules we agree on as a society. Man succeeeded because we are the ultimate social animal, and like social animals before it (ants, bees, many mammals, primates, etc) we evolved behaviors to encourage social cooperation. The prime difference between us and Neandertals (who likely had more brain capacity) is that we developed much better communication skills that enabled us to work better in groups.

And nowhere was this an accident. Life evolved on this planet as air breathing because the great oxygenation event wiped out almost all of the non-air breathing life. Evolution isn't done by accident, its selection of the organisms best matched to whatever the current environment is. They obviously reproduce better and the worse fit organisms reproduce less, and over time the best fits replace the worst fits.