Pascal's Wager is brilliant!

Really going ad hom again. OK, you’re a whiny 35 year old who can’t get his own parents to respect him and thinks that getting pressured by parents to come to family events is a real world problem, talk about narcissism. You really think we should take seriously the psychological analysis of someone who goes online to complain about his parents expecting him to come to more family get-
togethers. Your posts are so Jesus like in spirit and so philosophical like this last one.

And, again, I’m not an atheist. If you meant not to include me, then figure out a way to post so you are clear.

I retract the respectful answer I made to your question in the other thread about you and your family. From my experience of you here, you’re probably presenting their behavior in ways that make you look like a victim.

Poor you.

You could learn from the people who responded here how to improve the arguments you made in the OP and later on in the thread. Those arguments were weak and based on a poor read of Pascal.

You’re wrong as per usual. Your insults are more evidence of your narcissism and inferior intellect.

Your pantheism is the same as atheism. Don’t try to deny what you are. I hope you will change.

Your post has been reported to the mods.

Please go find another forum to pollute.

Karpel is right that this is an ad hom, “because of your narcissistic egos” as a reason is by definition what he identified.

What would you say the meaning of life is?

And did my post explaining my views on life and death not resonate at all with you?

I think the meaning of life is to love God and love your neighbor so you live with God for eternity.

Your views on life and death represent atheism and that I don’t agree with.

Is it because they represent atheism that you don’t agree with them?

You mentioned you’d moved on from my “kind” of thinking - have you considered that you have emotional reasons to dismiss them?

Love is nice, if there’s anything that Christianity is good at, it’s persuading love. You don’t need Christianity for it, but if you have trouble with a lack of love, Christianity would probably help you.

Living socially is also good, other primates do it, so it makes sense that we will too with or without religion.

Again, it’s a kind of “sublimation” to project it through an external entity in order to validate it. You don’t need that, unless you do?

I don’t believe I have emotional reasons to dismiss atheism. I believe that logic and reason compels one to be a Christian because of the enormous benefits.

We do need Christianity to love fully. We need to love God in a community. He sent His son to the Earth to teach us how to love.

Okay, just thought I’d ask. It’s interesting that logic and reason led me away from them. Assuming we are both flawless logicians, for argument’s sake - that would only leave the emotional component to differentiate our respective directions.

Sending his son to Earth to teach us how to love by giving us a guilt trip seems manipulative. I know how to love anyway - I don’t need someone to make me feel bad to trick me into it.

How is Jesus a guilt trip? I don’t get your logic.

What is Jesus’s message?

Vicarious redemption: he deliberately got himself crucified “for your sins”. Any sin you may commit, “it’s okay”… because Jesus literally got tortured horribly to death in the ultimate sacrifice to take your sin upon himself and be punished on your behalf.

Oh it’s no biggie… no guilt trip.

Jesus’s message was to love God and love your neighbor as yourself.

Free spirit,

Oh my! Are we in a scripture war right now?

biblehub.com/luke/14-26.htm

I would posit this to you freespirit, you basically have 6 people from all walks of life and very different psychologies disagreeing with you.

Maybe this isn’t the right forum for you.

You have to take Scripture in context. You can’t just post a line or two. That verse is Jesus teaching that we must love Him more than we love our own family. That doesn’t mean we don’t love our family, just that we love Him the most.

This is an atheist forum and an atheist world, so I will always be outnumbered :slight_smile:

You, of all the millions of theologians and translators have the only different and correct version here.

That the word is not “hate” it’s just “love me more”

That’s what you’re going with?

You’re the only person on earth who reads Greek correctly?

That’s your big finish?

Yes, because it’s consistent with the rest of the Gospels and what Jesus said.

Atheists always take 1 verse out of context as if it proves their ignorance to be true.

I just want it to be let known, freespirit claims that he’s the only person who’s ever lived who understands Greek.

lol, no. Even the link you gave me had different language in it.

Just curious, what makes you a Biblical scholar?

Because in all the 100+ translations of the Bible, they all use the word “hate”. Not one of them uses “love me more”

Context is everything. Jesus said His followers would be hated for following him and that following him would divide families. We can see this today; Christians are hated by the world.

But this was just one of Jesus’s messages. If you read the Gospels, you will see that his main message was to love God and love your neighbor. He teaches about love dozens of times.

So read the Gospels and you will understand more.

Jesus didn’t say, “follow me and others will hate you”, which is rewriting the Bible …

Jesus said “hate everyone including yourself or you cannot be my disciple”

Yes, He did. Read the Gospel of Matthew.

Please stop pretending you are knowledgeable about the Bible.

“You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”

biblegateway.com/passage/?s … ersion=NIV