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- Only in the book written by people who never met Jesus says that Jesus was hated for his words. The Bible is so focused on glorifying Jesus in a hubris manner that it seems very likely if there was a man at the core of Christianity that he may have behaved horribly and the gospel authors chose not to record it or re-write what actually happened.
- Showing Ray as a victim does not give any credibility for Christianity. There are thousands of attempts by Christians who attack and harm preachers of different faiths. This is the danger of religion. Religion raises the stakes of human conflict much higher than tribalism, racism, or politics ever can, as it is the only form of in-group/out-group thinking that casts the differences between people in terms of eternal pathologies of human culture is the tendency to raise children to fear and demonize other human beings on the basis of religious faith. Religion sparks violence and discrimination.
- that salvation is just a delusion, and many ex-Christians have "left the ring" taken a look at their faith from an outsiders perspective and realized what a pointless and meaningless "fight" they were in.
- The second person has a valid point. If God does know everything and is the creator of all things, that includes sin and God knew sin would take place and we would exercise it eons before he created us. So if there is a god, then he deserves the blame.
- Only Saul says that he hated Christians so much, but he can be just selling a story, similarly to how Kirk Cameron likes to brag he was once a "devout atheist" now christian. The Bible says many things, and empirical proof for its claims is lacking. There is no evidence of Christian persecution. However, there is plenty of evidence to show that after the legalization of Christianity in the Roman empire, Christians were very quick to persecute others and denounce other practicing faiths, including destroying their places of worship.
What caused Paul to become christian? There are several explanations, perhaps he belonged to a cult of Hellenized Jews who were seeking the long awaited messiah to free them from Roman occupation and thus invented Jesus from old famous rabbis and parallels from Old Testament stories. Paul's conversion could be the result of temporal lobe epilepsy, since his description of his conversion matches that with symptoms of TLE, but there is no way to verify this.
- The atheist is correct, it is pointless to preach a sacred text to a person who does not believe it has any authenticity whatsoever, making the whole thing pointless. What the atheist demanded was actual empirical proof. When he asked Ray how does he know god is real, Ray said he knows God, but of course Ray is lying through his teeth or he simply does not understand what the word know really means. Every religion claims to believe as they do because of reason, education, or intelligence given by their god in revelation. But whether they admit it or not, all of them are assuming their preferred conclusions on faith, and this would still be true even if all of their gods exist. Believe as hard as you want to. But convincing yourself however firmly still can’t change the reality of things. Seeing is believing. But seeing isn’t knowing. Believing isn’t knowing. Subjective convictions are meaningless in science, and eyewitness testimony is the least reliable form of evidence.
For example, if I go into my front yard and I see a large sauropod walking down the middle of my street, I will of course be quite convinced of what I see. I may be even more satisfied when I follow the thing and find that I can touch it, maybe even ride it if I want to. When I gather sense enough to run back for my camcorder, I may not be able to find the beast again, because I don't know which way it went. But that doesn’t matter because I saw it, I heard it, felt it, smelt it and I remember all that clearly with a sober and rational mind. But somehow I'm the only one who ever noticed it, and of course no one believes me. Some other guy says he saw a dinosaur too, but his description was completely different, such that we can’t both be talking about the same thing. So it doesn't matter how convinced I am that it really happened. It might not have. When days go by and there are still no tracks, no excrement, no destruction, no sign of the beast at all, no other witnesses who’s testimony lends credence to mine, and no explanation for how a 20-meter long dinosaur could just disappear in the suburbs of a major metropolis, much less how it could have appeared there in the first place, -then it becomes much easier to explain how there could be only two witnesses who can’t agree on what they think they saw, than it is to explain all the impossibilities against that dinosaur ever really being there. Positive claims require positive evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that’s what I’d need –since what I propose isn’t just extraordinary; its impossible. But since there's not one fact I can show that anyone can measure or otherwise confirm, then my perspective is still subjective -and thus uncertain. Eventually, even I, the eyewitness, would have to admit that, although I did see it, I still don’t know if it was ever really there –regardless whether I still believe that it was.
It doesn’t matter how convinced you are; belief does not equal knowledge. The difference is that knowledge can always be tested for accuracy where mere beliefs often can not be. No matter how positively you think you know it, if you can’t show it, then you don’t know it, and you shouldn’t say that you do. Nor would you if you really cared about the truth. Knowledge is demonstrable, measurable. But faith is often a matter of pretending to know what you know you really don't know, and that no one even can know, and which you merely believe -often for no good reason at all.
- Is this what Ray told himself after being exposed for the banana argument?
- It would be more accurate that the world does not hate a group of people, but the world hates liars. What Kirk and Ray is doing is taking advice from a fictional character written two thousands years ago in a different time and different culture.
- Now Billy's behavior was harsh, but we are still unaware what was said before hand or how Easy approached Billy. We are also not wawre of billy' past or any various conditions to explain his behavior. Why would Billy say "This is my country" and "we have rights." The most likely scenario to fit this is perhaps that Easy was preaching to billy that transsexuals are sinners and live a wicked lifestyle. Billy, being happy of who he is, drills the point he is free and is protected by the laws of his home and will not stand for religious oppression. We do not what was said afterward, but it is clear that the message from Way of the Master is not welcome nor appreciated.
- As if Christians never talk over someone for great lengths of time and not allowing any comments or counterarguments. Many Christians go as far as censoring as much opposition as possible.
- So God is in control of everything. Then if a person does kill a person by shooting them point blank in the head, or a family dies in a tragic car accident, or a virus spreads across a small nation killing a significant portion of its population, then God controls it and yet does nothing to intervene and prevent it? Does this mean God is an enabler, that is does he just let things happen? Is God incapable of interfering, meaning he is not all-powerful or limited. Or is God simply evil? If God controls all things, then that includes Adam and Eve eating the apple, and thus dooming all of mankind. If God is in control of all life, then that means he is responsible for all murders, rapists, abortions, miscarriages, famines, disease, natural disasters, and all forms of suffering.
- Here, we only have to take Easy's word that he was chased around trying to protect his camera, but even if it did that does not provide any special credibility to Christianity. God's grace played no role in Easy's survival of that day.
- Using stories from the Bible to support the Bible is a circular argument. The book of Acts, as for the rest of the New testament only reveal what the authors choose to share, leaving out a lot and including their own biases. Not to mention the gospels have been meddled with, fabricated, forged, and such. Bear in mind, Kirk said "IF Paul was simply telling those people about god's grace...." We do not know exactly what Paul was saying and if the only thing he ever talked about to strangers was jesus. Since there is no external evidence that these events took place, such as imprisonment, there is no reason to accept that they ever happened. We can suppose that it did, but that alone does not give any credibility to Christianity. Many faiths have religious zealots who undertook many hardships while trying to spread their faith, but that alone does not mean their message is true.
- No, they do not fight. Who would win is anybody's guess.
- While there is no other independent source to show if he did talk that long or that Way of the Master altered the interview to make it seem long, we do not know if this was the bulk of the whole interview or if the man allowed Kirk to explain himself for twenty minutes before sharing his own thoughts. and it would also be interesting to know what the man said, but apparently the way of the Master decided not to share that with the audience. Reasons why is unclear, but if they were worried about time, this whole program is a series of patches of clips sown together to form a program. Perhaps they did not want to share the mans thoughts because they went too deep even for Ray and Kirk.
- Each of these scenes were from people who were already Christian and had a similar belief, so it is not surprising that they would go along and accept every word without giving it a second thought.
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