Let's Talk! Spreading the good news of the Christian Gospel

Hello everyone,

I recently went through a spiritual awakening and would like to join with others to talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know there are many out there who may be confused about it and what it really means, especially with outside pressures distracting us (like DACA and jobs, for example).

It has come to my attention that the things of the world have been a major distraction for me and now have a clearer picture of what is going on. I thought it'd be a good idea to start a thread and discuss the good news of God's Kingdom here with fellow Christians and those who are curious on learning more about it in a neutral and respectful atmosphere.

Let the discussion begin!

We dont discuss religion here. People get mad and feelings get hurt.

I know my feeling get hurt here all the time

;_;

I'm usually the one doing the feeling hurting regarding religion, but it's mostly because I've seen religion physically hurt people first hand.

Abaddon, congrats on your spiritual awakening man. I share your enthusiasm for God’s love and message. There are a few words that I have to say in hopes of preventing the thread from going down a bad road before I share some of my thoughts on the matter.

For those of you that are of a different faith, including atheists:

Yes, we know that Christians have done some horrific things in the name of Christianity in the past. I am in complete agreement that such atrocities are disgusting and that Christians, specifically, need to find ways to never conduct themselves in such ways. However, the same is true of people who have held other worldviews (atheists, Muslims, ect). The fact of the matter is that people can be shit heads no matter what worldview they hold.

Having said this, I hope that people will be respectful in these discussions that are quite important to many of us. That is not to say that you need to agree with us, but that you should ask questions and voice your doubts with the same respect that you would do so in a university class, for example. This way, we can actually have a conversation.


Ok now on to the topic:

Again Abaddon, congrats. I’m a pretty liberal Christian; I’m a Catholic-Episcopalian. For example, I’m down with gay rights (we can discuss this in private if you want), I don’t go preaching “you’re going to hell,” and I love interfaith talks (with Atheists, Muslims, ect). I try to approach my faith with the same rigor that I use in philosophy and mathematics. As a matter of fact, I question my beliefs on a daily basis; I think every person should. It does not even matter what worldview one holds, unchecked beliefs can be dangerous. And to be honest, I think those Christians that go around telling people that they are going to hell are just as bad as those atheist that call people of faith idiots.

I thought I should share with you guys how I truly became to believe in Christianity. I was born into Christianity, but I didn’t always believe in it. Who would, it sounds like a faery tail until you analyze it. I was going through my Atheist stage of life and one day it occurred to me, “Why I’m I Atheist?” Actually, more than an Atheist, I had become a naturalist (i.e. we are just cells and then we die). So I wrote down a whole bunch of questions to try to answer them honestly and with philosophical rigor. Most of my questions started with the phrase “what evidence or logical argument do I have for…” That little exercise led me to realize that I was no better than those Christians out on the street telling people that they are going to hell. I was so embarrassed of myself.

At that point, the best thing that I could do was to do some research. I started with one of the most basic yet difficult questions, “What evidence or logical argument do we have for and against the existence of a God(s)?” Notice that at this point I was not even talking about any specific God (Christianity, ect). I just wanted to know if it was more likely that some self-aware entity was responsible for the universe. I didn’t even bring into the equation if this entity could be nice or a total ass. That comes later. As you can imagine, I looked into the Kalam cosmological argument and so on.

Once I was convinced that the universe could not have come out of nothing and that there must have been, to the best of my knowledge, some sort of entity responsible for such universe, I had to ask myself about the properties (characteristics) of that entity. It is at this stage where I asked myself, can it be possible that this entity be the same thing that Christians, Jews, Muslims, or other monotheistic religions talk about? And after a lot of damn reading it turned out, for me at least, that Christianity is a pretty close call. I can go into some specifics if anyone wants me to, but suffice it to say that it is quite logically convincing for me. This is not to say that I don’t question Christianity… I think I get into more arguments with Christians than I do with even Atheists lol. As a matter of fact, I read the bible quite a bit and I’m always questioning things in there that seem illogical or straight out cruel. However, in reading so, I keep in mind that much of the bible's content was meant for people of a specific time and place. Hence, I have to make sure to be careful in reading the bible within its context. Only then, do I analyze passages in that lovely book.

Anyways, that is how I came to be Christian.

My apologies for any grammatical errors. I had to write this response in a flash.

Thank you DrVenom and everyone else for posting. I agree that there is no reason why we should be insulting one another and calling on the offenses committed by people who misunderstood the message of the Gospel after it became a false religion adopted by the Roman empire.

Remember the mission of Jesus. Was it to persecute others? Not at all. For Jesus taught:

"However, I say to you: Continue to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you". Matthew 5:44

And a prime example of Paul, who became a disciple and spread the good news, also repeated what Jesus said:

"Bless them which persecute you: bless, and do not curse." Romans 12:14

Therefore, any denomination that persecutes and curses has misunderstood the message of Christ. Thus, when we discuss the subject, we should not bring to mind those who have persecuted and who have killed into the discussion since they are not true examples of the teachings of Christ.

If anything I consider myself to be more of an Agnostic, but it really bothers me how militant some Atheists can get online; you know the people who practically worship Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins (I think they are both Assholes). I mean, really, what good does it do to be bitching your beliefs online like it really is going to change someones mind..

Oh dude, that just struck accord with me. I admit that I can be completely wrong in my believe with Christianity, but at least I think it is a logical worldview. I don't even have an issue with atheism, but naturalism really bothers me. Well, not so much naturalism, but people like Harris and Dawkins..... Grrrr. lol. haha. Anyways, I feel you man. My brother is agnostic and I talk to him a lot to try to understand his worldview. I should probably write about it later since I'm a bit tipsy (wine) and I don't think my logical faculties are all there. lol. But, Agnosticism is cool.

I don't claim to have any answers and as such, I'm not going to make up fairy tales in order to take the easy way out and just believe what someone else tells me to believe. My feeling is that if we are reasonable, we can see that none of us has any special powers to know anything else about the universe other than what has been proven scientifically or based in scientific theory. What, you think that screaming, crying, condescending church guy on channel 67.3 yelling Cristo! Cristo!" knows any more about the meaning of existence than anybody else? Please. He wants you to send your money and recruit other gullible people who are lost and want an answer, any answer whether it's true or not. Those guys, OP, or nobody else knows anything more than anybody else and has no proof other than the book that the guy who calls himself a god wrote:

"I am god!"
"oh yeah, prove it!"
"It says so in this book"
"who wrote it?"
"I did!"
"Ok, I am sold. I'm going to protect this 'truth', kill anybody who disagrees with us, and recruit more and more people until it gets out of hand and generations and generations pass it on and in 2000 years, people will think you has special powers that they know they don't have. We'll be rich!"

Well regarding the killing part I have already addressed that a bit and there is no sense in me repeating myself.

To say that you don't make a claim is actually making a claim in this matter (you can read up on Russel and see what I mean). Now this fairy tail that you are talking about. If you mean religion as a social phenomena, then I agree with you. While I practice Catholicism, I sure don't think the pope communicates with god through some magical way that is more direct than the way I communicate with God through prayer. However, if you are talking about the existence of God, keep in mind that most serious scholars in philosophy agree that God's existence is independent of a religion being correct or incorrect.

Now being a scientist myself I can tell you that science is amazing, but only at small things. Certainly science can't tell you how we came to be (I hope you don't think Darwin's theory does that). And to be a scientist you have to take so many leaps of faith. For example, most hard sciences rely heavily on math. Yet, most mathematical proofs rely on a set of assumptions, namely the axioms of choice. Without these assumptions, you can kiss all of our beautiful theories goodbye. Yet, we believe these assumptions to be true because they "seem" to work. That is we have faith that they work.

But let me get to my point. Forget religion for a second. Let's just talk about God. I'm not saying that you or anyone should believe in God. That is never my objective. My objective is to arrive at a reasonable conclusion based on sound arguments (logic). And if you are saying that the hypothesis of a creator is a fairy tail, rather than a serious hypothesis, then my dear friend, I don't think you understand the arguments. Now if you are talking about religion rather than the existence of God, well I agree with you that there is a lot of stuff made up by religions just as there are a lot of stuff made up by or misrepresented by people in general (i.e. physicists saying that the universe was made of nothing, but that nothing is not the negation of something, rather it is the laws of physics, which are actually something.)

Hey, if you ever have some time, I have some videos I'd like to share with you on youtube. No they are not people saying cristo, cristo... They are scholastic debates between philosophers that are naturalist and theists. A lot of these debates take place in different universities like UCLA, Notre Dame, ect.