The apologetics game!

Originally posted by FMF
I have discussed these things in the past at various times in this forum. I don't wish to discuss it now. I am more interested in how you can take it upon yourself to declare almost three decades of life as a Christian as "never [having] believed in the existence of God"? I am interested in whether this suggestion by you is a product of you wanting to been seen ...[text shortened]... I am still thinking that it may have been 'banter' and that you now want to change the subject.

I'm basing my observations on your behavior... the behavior I've seen you demonstrate and are demonstrating right now.

And bringing up something that RJ did a year or so ago is telling me a lot about you right now. Are you sure you want to keep this up and continue proving to me what a worthless jackass you can be? What is wrong with you? Is your 'god' Satan the accuser?

Originally posted by lemon lime
What is the subject?

Basically, the nebulous cluster of assertions you made on page 5:

"Based only on your brief description here it sounds like you were simply going through the motions. However, aside from what you thought you should be doing as a Christian, what I really wanted to know is did you spend any time actually thinking about God? Did you really believe there is a God, or was your belief a sort of fuzzy acknowledgement of the possibility of God? Did you examine your belief the way you might examine anything else in your life, or to you does 'faith' simply mean you are supposed to believe without any evidence whatsoever? In other words, was your faith actually based on anything other than wishful thinking?

The reason I ask these questions is because your criticism of Christianity, and apparent agreement with atheists about the nature of God himself, sound suspiciously like any argument coming from a life long atheist who has never believed in the existence of God. It doesn't sound like you ever did believe in anything outside of the physical reality we can all touch taste smell see and hear. I'm also guessing that most of your attention (if not all of it) centered around other members of your church and/or Christian community, and not so much on God himself."

Originally posted by lemon lime
And bringing up something that RJ did a year or so ago is telling me a lot about you right now. Are you sure you want to keep this up and continue proving to me what a worthless jackass you can be? What is wrong with you? Is your 'god' Satan the accuser?

Quips about RJHinds' engine use are made all the time by numerous posters who followed the sage a year or two ago. wolfgang59 made a quip at the bottom of page 8 and I followed it with a quip about RJHinds' infamous remark about having "difficulty visualizing knight moves".

Originally posted by lemon lime
Is your 'god' Satan the accuser?

What do you mean? I am not a Christian; I don't believe there is a "Satan" figure.

Originally posted by lemon lime
Are you sure you want to keep this up and continue proving to me what a worthless jackass you can be?

I am more interested in what evidence you think you have that I "never believed in the existence of God"?

Originally posted by FMF
Basically, the nebulous cluster of assertions you made on page 5:

"Based only on your brief description here it sounds like you were simply going through the motions. However, aside from what you thought you should be doing as a Christian, what I really wanted to know is did you spend any time actually thinking about God? Did you really believe there is a God ...[text shortened]... around other members of your church and/or Christian community, and not so much on God himself."

Take a close look at what you are expecting me to believe...
For nearly 30 years you were a decent God fearing man, but then you decided you had enough of that and wanted to be something else.

This is basically the picture you have painted for me, so there is no reason for you to get all huffy if I don't happen to share your high opinion of yourself. I don't believe you made a complete 180 degree turn in your life (when rejecting your religion) and became an entirely different sort of person. I didn't know you then, but I'm getting to know you now, and if how you act now is not how you acted back when you were a "Christian", then I think that's what it was... an act.

Originally posted by lemon lime
For nearly 30 years you were a decent God fearing man, but then you decided you had enough of that and wanted to be something else.

I still live a decent, morally sound life to the best of my abilities but I lost confidence in the Bible as evidence to support the claims that Christians make about their God figure and about Jesus Christ. Once I no longer subscribed to the credibility of the Bible, my Christian faith was of course no longer tenable. So, rather than go through the motions, and be a 'nominal' or 'lapsed' Christian ~ or whether the labels are ~ I continued my spiritual path unequivocally as an ex-Christian or non-Christian.

Originally posted by lemon lime
...there is no reason for you to get all huffy if I don't happen to share your high opinion of yourself. I don't believe you made a complete 180 degree turn in your life (when rejecting your religion) and became an entirely different sort of person.

I am not huffy at all. You are misreading me. Nor do I have any more or less of a 'high opinion' of myself than you do, or anyone else here for that matter. Religionist dogma aside, in terms of my interaction with other people, my family, my neighbours, my colleagues and customers in my work, in terms of my priorities and moral standards in life, I have not "become an entirely different sort of person". My everyday life is still informed in some ways by my former years as a Christian, but there is no longer any superstition or belief in the supernatural affecting my spiritual path.

Originally posted by lemon lime
I didn't know you then [when you were a Christian], but I'm getting to know you now, and if how you act now is not how you acted back when you were a "Christian", then I think that's what it was... an act.

Are there any posters on this forum who identify themselves as Christians who you believe are putting on "an act" because of the way they post?

Originally posted by FMF
I still live a decent, morally sound life to the best of my abilities but I lost confidence in the Bible as evidence to support the claims that Christians make about their God figure and about Jesus Christ. Once I no longer subscribed to the credibility of the Bible, my Christian faith was of course no longer tenable. So, rather than go through the motions, and ...[text shortened]... he labels are ~ I continued my spiritual path unequivocally as an ex-Christian or non-Christian.

What are you going on about? The Bible is a book. But you keep saying you believed the Bible was evidence... evidence of God, or as you put it "their God figure".

I was an atheist at one time, so I have no problem recognizing how their spiel goes... how they form their arguments and what particular phrases and choice of words they use. So here you are claiming to have been a Christian at one time, but then seem to have very little knowledge of the Bible itself (seriously dude, you didn't know that Satan is called the accuser?). You tell me you aren't an atheist. But I used to be one, and you definitely seem to have a better grasp of what atheists believe (and their MO) than you do with what you are claiming to have once believed. So what am I supposed to do, am I supposed to just pretend I'm not seeing what I'm seeing here?

There is more evidence I could point to, but I'm getting weary of this... you keep shoveling contradictory evidence into my lap and expecting me to believe what you say about it. It's just been one dead end after another... so I'll say goodnight to you now, and you can post your last word on this matter.

Originally posted by lemon lime
What are you going on about? The Bible is a book. But you keep saying you believed the Bible was evidence... evidence of God, or as you put it "their God figure".

There is no Christian faith without the Bible.

Originally posted by lemon lime
So here you are claiming to have been a Christian at one time, but then seem to have very little knowledge of the Bible itself (seriously dude, you didn't know that Satan is called the accuser?).

As an ex-Christian, there is no onus on me whatsoever to demonstrate my knowledge of the Bible.

Originally posted by lemon lime
You tell me you aren't an atheist. But I used to be one, and you definitely seem to have a better grasp of what atheists believe (and their MO) than you do with what you are claiming to have once believed.

I have made no claims about "what atheists believe" so I have no idea what "better grasp" of it you are referring to, and I have made no claims about what I "once believed" other than that I believed in the God of the Bible and subscribed to the beliefs and claims about Jesus that Christians make.

Originally posted by lemon lime
There is more evidence I could point to, but I'm getting weary of this... you keep shoveling contradictory evidence into my lap and expecting me to believe what you say about it. It's just been one dead end after another...

I don't know what "contradictory evidence" you are talking about. I believe the things you say about yourself; it's common courtesy after all. I think you saying you don't believe what I have told you about my Christian past has got more to do with how you see yourself and your own faith than it does about me or my lost faith, which you seem to have misread. Your whole demeanour: you do seem to have difficulty sustaining a proper discourse with people who have different beliefs from you. I find it quite interesting.

Originally posted by lemon lime
I'll say goodnight to you now, and you can post your last word on this matter.

Sleep well. It's the middle of the afternoon where I am.