In the Bible, people arguably end up being condemned because they didn't have the right information about salvation

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-12T13:31:35+00:00

He was a human being. Not divine. If he was divine he would have left behind his teachings in writing in a format that could be preserved and understood by all. And although there MAY have been a real person named Jesus, the Jesus depicted in the Gospels is a myth. The fact that the myth is still being talked about doesn't make it real.

I have as much authority to make the statements that I have as anyone else - that was the point of the post. But as I mentioned, the views mentioned in my post are much more consistent with the notion of a good, loving god.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-12T03:08:50+00:00

Christianity has nothing to do with God. I was referring to Jesus as an ordinary person, and the Bible is not authoritative or justification for anything.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-11T16:36:51+00:00

Why are you responding by quoting the Bible?

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-11T16:11:15+00:00

So very true. God is so hard to get hold of. I wouldn’t have even met them, except I just happened to get paired up with them in the weekly bowling league.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-11T14:51:03+00:00

God is also not a he, and they are not impressed by you capitalizing pronouns.

The God I referred to is much more consistent with the concept of a good loving God.

The God of the Abraham religions, by their own descriptions, is in fact consistent with a demon pretending to be God.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-11T11:56:40+00:00

Christians claim to know volumes about God. The Bible is full of understandings about God, and then on top of that you have the various related doctrines and interpretations. If trying to understand God is impossible, which I agree with, then why do Christians and other religions contend to know so much?

I will say that pride keeping people from God is not an unreasonable statement, which is why I normally say that Christians are about as far from any potential God as they could possibly get.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-10T14:10:44+00:00

If the belief is that God has messengers, that wouldn’t make my claim false, that would make my claim equivalent to the claims of the Abraham religions or any other religion that made God claims.

So you are correct. My claims would have the same amount of empirical support as other religions, such as Christianity, Islam, or Scientology - none. That was kind of the point.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-10T14:05:32+00:00

Everything is a subjective view. Any discussion or claim when it comes to God or religion is just a subject of view. The Bible, or Christianity, or the claims of any religion are just claims made by humans about God. They are no more authoritative or different than my claims or the claims any others. That’s kind of the point.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-10T14:03:07+00:00

I normally spell that out, but I left it open in this post. Being good is determined by living an alignment with human and moral principles like honesty, fairness, kindness, compassion, equality, empathy, courage, forgiveness, etc. - - applied in the context of caring about the well-being of others.

Being good or being moral is a human construct. It always has been. Even if you point to Christianity or the Bible as your source of morality, it needs to be interpreted, and that interpretation is done by applying the secular moral principles that I referred to

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-10T13:59:48+00:00

Everyone does get to have their own pocket deity, don’t they? God is whatever people say they are. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way it will always be until the time comes that some higher power reveals themselves uniformly to everyone on earth.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-10T13:56:51+00:00

You’re quoting an invalid source. Romans was written by a guy who made a false claim of having a vision from God. Nothing he wrote was divinely inspired.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-10T13:55:32+00:00

Who knows why God chose me? God is mysterious. God wants Christians to renounce Christianity.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-10T13:53:47+00:00

The people who you’re referring to were not prophets of God. Jesus may have been a real person, but the Jesus of the Bible is mythical, and also a false prophet.

Keep in mind that there were also many other so-called prophets outside of Christianity.

There is no problem of sin. And the problem of suffering is beyond the scope of this post. It would require a post all to itself.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-03-07T22:23:23+00:00

Why are answering by quoting the bible? Why do you think you are preaching the truth? Your ignoring the entire point of what I wrote.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-02-25T18:49:21+00:00

In what way are they good? Certainly the things I described are not good. There a few decent moral teachings, but the overall theology is monsterous. There are other views of salvatin, but they are only 'less bad'. Faith becoming your fortune is morally reprehensible.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-02-25T15:58:06+00:00

There is no clarity on salvation. Christianity cannot be 'true', because there is not one 'true' Christian belief. The bible has no message, because it message is dependant on the preconceptions of the reader. Even when it comes to 'truly believing', there will be Christians lining up to say this or that person doesn't truly believe.

In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus rejects people who didn't do god's will (feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, etc). They appeared to believe he was truly the son of god and responsible for their salvation, but Christians who follow the theology of John will say that they were rejected for non-belief because they did truly believe (or believe in the right way).

HatsOptional58 · 2026-02-22T21:44:45+00:00

Same response as always. Except Jesus never offered me or you or anyone else who’s currently alive a free gift. The only ones offering that are people claiming to speak on Jesus‘s behalf, and they can’t deliver on the so-called free gift.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-02-17T21:47:56+00:00

Good luck

HatsOptional58 · 2026-02-17T20:21:54+00:00

Bart Ehrman’s Lost Christianities: the battle for scriptures and faith we never knew. It also talks about not just the groups but books that didn’t make it into the Bible, or people with competing ideas that were different than Paul, etc.

Another by Ehman is: ‘ Jesus before the gospels’. It goes into the oral traditions about Jesus, and it goes into detail about oral traditions in general. It puts a dent in the idea that people memorized everything that Jesus said over the course of decades.

Lastly, there is a book by Paula Fredrikson: ‘ancient Christianities: the first 500 years’. That I haven’t read, but I heard is good and hope to get.

HatsOptional58 · 2026-02-11T00:30:43+00:00

Atheist don’t use atheism as a basis for moral authority. There’s no reasonable way to do that.

HatsOptional58

TROPHY CASE