Oddbean

Hey look, I have a lot more questions than I do answers and I’m alright with that. I’m also alright with waking up in the middle of the night from time to time and feeling the sheer terror of the unknown. I don’t need some myth to dumb things down for me.

You wake up in the night in sheer terror and you think that is fine? Every human being is driven by something, fear, greed, family, bitcoin etc choose your idol! If you take this idol away it will crush you.

Text just makes it look more official. See it’s legit because it was written down thousands of years ago by god himself. No you can’t see him do it you just have to trust that it really was god.

Religion tells people what they can and can’t do. It tells people what is right and what is wrong. It determines punishments and rewards for people. Not very different from a government except it claims to be from god which they can’t prove. And if you ask for proof, they gaslight you by telling you that you need to pray harder and keep looking for arbitrary “signs from the universe” which are still not evidence.

Moral absolutism is the scam. A lot of the morals in the Bible are outdated and/or evil. Moral relativism allows for nuance and does not require one to subject himself to corruptible authorities like the church or the state.

Your opinion matters, at least for yourself and for the people you are responsible for. There is an authority on Moral, people think Moral evolved, look how degenerate and wicked the world is right now. The western world lives on an christian based standard it is in plain sight but people’s hearts are to hard to see it.

But why are you worried about my morals? Worry about your own life. This is another annoying thing about religious people. You guys can’t mind your own business lol also I don’t see how the western world is living on a Christian standard. Maybe America is loosely on a Christian standard but the rest of the western world is pretty agnostic. The state has separated government from the churches as well.

Under many circumstances killing a person can be just and necessary yet considered murder by someone else. Actually... I'd say the vast majority of murder victims are not so innocent and in the event that someone is liberally murdering they themselves would be murdered and natural selection(a theory that's backed up over and over by real science) would weed these people out. Sooo idk... Murder might not be wrong

Christianity is different compared to the ones you list. In christianity God reaches out to have a relationship with you and the rest it is about good deeds. You never know if you are saved. Imagine a kid has to do good deeds to be accepted by their parents how screwed up that child would be. No, in “cases” the parents give love and furthermore are gracious! Human need love like fish need water. Without love there is death.

There are several prominent scientists and mathematicians that have come to faith from what they call overwhelming evidence in their field that both punch holes in the theory of evolutuon and point toward a creator. C.S. Lewis is probably the most historic intellectual to do so and he wrote several books on the topic. For comtemporary examples, I'd suggest these: The founder of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, saw that as he dug deeper and deeper into the foundations of life that it only got more complicated and showed clear evidence of a designer. This lead him to conversion. Steven Meyer is a Mathematician. He runs through the probablilities involved with evolution creating anything useful without decaying. James Tour is a Chemist that has explored the extreme necessities of environment and resources to create foundational proteins needed for life, which cannot be created in cutting-edge laboratories, today. They all have several youtube videos discussing their cases at length. Frank Turek is a popular, modern Christian apologist that lectures and debates at universities. There are tons of videos of him, as well. This is not a cut and dry, simple issue. If you think it is, you haven't given it the due diligence and intellectual honesty it deserves.

I understand that the existence of a creator does not necessitate that the Bible is reliable and true. I think that most people aren't willing to entertain the latter until they have opened their mind to former through a review of the evidence on both sides of the argument. Leading Bible Scholars are a surprisingly good mix of believers, agnostics, and atheists. There are a lot of good lectures about how they have come to trust the Bible's authenticity to the original documents, as it is a common argument that it has been changed with time. Other topics to look into are their evidence from Roman documents (not religious texts) on the death of Jesus and the 500+ witnesses to The Resurrection.

That's silly. Of course no one is obligated to do anything. Anyone can be as ignorant as they choose to be. Due diligence in reviewing evidence is only required by those at the intersection of intellectually honesty and curiosity. Most of my reply (above) is discussing the findings of scientists on the topic of science, not "supernatural events." Even if you come away with a better understanding of the weaknesses of the prominent theories, that is a move in the right direction, truth. But, you are missing my whole point. My replies are giving evidence that the opposite of your claim is true. That religious people do make an attempt to verify, and that Christians encourage this over blind trust. It also seems you are saying something different than your original post. Instead of "Don't trust, verify" being applied to everything, you believe: Don't trust, verify... except religious texts, you should just NOT trust those.

Here is a good example of secular faith. Leading modwrn atheist, Richard Dawkins, says he's baffled by The Big Bang. That it is contrary to common sense and modern physics is mysterious. That human intuition cannot be used to understand such physics. He has to trust leading Physicists and take their word on how it works. Not even "trust me, bro" but "trust me because I trust them, bro." The whole video is just ok, but the above can be found around 7:00 for suirces. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuWRkRseF2c

Evidence that can be confirmed: Giant flood Israelites escape from Egypt Israel starting their kingdom Israel’s run of Kings starting with Saul and David Israel takeover by Babylonians Persians taking over Babylon and then Israel’s escape from Persian rule A man named Jesus who had a strong following and then was crucified Evidence that requires faith: Jesus as the Son of God and Messiah Either way there’s plenty of wisdom in the Bible (Old and New Testament) that’s valuable without the full faith in Jesus Christ.

“God created the Earth in a few days a couple thousand years ago, but my Bitcoin is totally safe because cryptography is unbreakable.” Losers. https://image.nostr.build/b9b394585e103ba367ba2fc81cc83f1dc2679eaa49e5618246441a9d299c898b.gif

Ill say this: I'm a very reluctant atheist. I'm jealous of people that have a god. Seems nice. I just can't pretend to believe in something that's very obviously not real, which is what many religious people are doing