Christianity

[Gawen]

And I'm trying to help him...I mean...his friend....*RME*

[Tank]

Bombt. In creating a sock puppet you reveal a number of very unfortunate characteristics about yourself and your arguments

1) You are disingenuous
2) You will use your disingenuousness to further your cause
3) You reveal you doubt the validity of your own point of view by feeling the need to create a sock puppet
4) You are not trustworthy
5) Your arguments can not be trusted
6) You have an extremely un-christian attitude i.e. lying is acceptable
7) You are a disgrace to your purported religion
You will go to Hell on the basis of the above (assuming such a place exists and you seem to think it does)

Your credibility as a representative of the christian religion and interlocutor are now zero.

the louisyeah account is actually a friend of mine, he's trying to do a project, and happens to agree with me. I did NOT make this account nor did I force my friend to do so.

If that is true then I apologise wholeheartedly.

[Tank]

the louisyeah account is actually a friend of mine, he's trying to do a project, and happens to agree with me. I did NOT make this account nor did I force my friend to do so.

Ya...a friend of yours who happens to live in your house...  

My wife and I both post from the same house and on first glance we would appear sock puppets and frankly there is no easy way to tell we aren't when you get down to it.

[Whitney]

the louisyeah account is actually a friend of mine, he's trying to do a project, and happens to agree with me. I did NOT make this account nor did I force my friend to do so.

Ya...a friend of yours who happens to live in your house...  

My wife and I both post from the same house and on first glance we would appear sock puppets and frankly there is no easy way to tell we aren't when you get down to it.

Yes, but your wife didn't create an account just to give a two word agreement post then create a whole new thread that continued the same faulty line of thinking that has been promoted in this thread by bombt....if he had said his wife, sister, brother, friend etc had signed up to give him support instead of bs wording like "project" i would have been more inclined to believe him.

[Tank]

the louisyeah account is actually a friend of mine, he's trying to do a project, and happens to agree with me. I did NOT make this account nor did I force my friend to do so.

Ya...a friend of yours who happens to live in your house...  

My wife and I both post from the same house and on first glance we would appear sock puppets and frankly there is no easy way to tell we aren't when you get down to it.

Yes, but your wife didn't create an account just to give a two word agreement post then create a whole new thread that continued the same faulty line of thinking that has been promoted in this thread by bombt....if he had said his wife, sister, brother, friend etc had signed up to give him support instead of bs wording like "project" i would have been more inclined to believe him.

True. If it had been me I'd have PMed an admin explaining what was going on before hand. Isn't that in the rules somewhere?

Ah! Yes.

NO SOCK PUPPETS: To avoid confusion, each member is only allowed one account. If you are going to be sharing a computer/IP with a friend you must notify an admin upon sign up.

I assume you received no such notification?

[Whitney]

I assume you received no such notification?

That is correct.

Honestly the chances of a friend signing up for an account on the same forum without having been coerced in some way by the other friend is fairly low...there are a ton of forums out there.   While figuring out a sockpuppet isn't an exact science there are commonalities to look at and the first post of a user being in support of their "friend" is one of them.  

That said, an apology for not following the rules could have opened back up the "friends" account if bombt had chosen to go that route instead of making up an excuse.  With users who have been acting rationally I generally check with them via pm before issuing a sockpuppet warning...there has been at least one case where a level headed atheist and a crazy fundamentalist were logging on from the same library.

[Bombt]

I apologize for the trouble I caused,
this is my first time at a forum and I did not know how all of this worked.

[i_am_i]

I apologize for the trouble I caused,
this is my first time at a forum and I did not know how all of this worked.

Okay, but you do understand ethics, don't you? It seems to me that under the banner of Christianity you tried to pull a con and you failed, you were found out.

Look, everybody does stupid things. But don't be burdened by it, not at all. You're among friends here. You're among atheists.

[Whitney]

I apologize for the trouble I caused,
this is my first time at a forum and I did not know how all of this worked.

How about you go respond to this viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5041 and we'll call it even?

[Tank]

I apologize for the trouble I caused,
this is my first time at a forum and I did not know how all of this worked.

Well that explains a lot, in a good way. It's not so much a learning curve as a learning cliff when starting. Small points dealt with in detail are much more productive than huge swathes of text. You're one person facing a number of others and you'll end up swamped, pissed off and leave. In fact forget the points you want to make, it's rather too early in you posting career here to have much personal creditability. On a forum you have to have a measure of personal credibility before you'll get listened to. Your current postings have not helped your credibility here. No biggy, forums often have very short memories when it comes to new members. Let us get to know YOU and why you hold the world view that you do. Telling people what they think and what they think is wrong is a recipe for disaster.

Spend some time settling in, getting to know us and letting us get to know you.

[Dretlin]

I apologize for the trouble I caused,
this is my first time at a forum and I did not know how all of this worked.

Take a bit of time to think, if you feel you desire it. Come back, their is no reason to end this here!  

[Gawen]

There's a lot of reconciling to do, bombt. We've given you just the tip of the iceburg. When you can get through that tip, ask and we'll find something for you to dig farther on.

[AtheistBrit]

I apologise if this has already been said, but I'm offering my perspective as I see it.

1) Christianity's fundamental, central core is that God created us and loves us, and that because he loves us he wants us to be with him forever. But because the first female human disobeyed him (before she could even know that disobedience was bad, because she didn't yet have the knowledge of good and evil) God decided to curse us all with sin, which is what we need forgiveness from. So to absolve these sins (which he decided to inflict, remember), he decided to wait a couple of thousand years, then impregnate a woman so that she could give birth to his earthly form, then have himself sacrificed to himself in order that we might be "saved" from the disobedience of one woman two thousand years earlier. But (and this is the really ridiculous part), that still wasn't enough. We have to actually believe all this, based solely on a self-contradictory canon of books that was written quite a while after Jesus died (the New Testament I mean), then edited/translated multiple times and has hardly any extra-biblical evidence to back it up. If we choose not to believe it and accept Jesus as our personal saviour, then we're cast into eternal hellfire for ALL ETERNITY. No all-loving God would do that, because infinite punishment for finite crimes is absolutely and categorically immoral and ridiculous.

2) Following on from that, many (most, in fact) christians I've encountered always spout off the "free will" rubbish to justify this eternal punishment. "You have free will", they say, "you can choose to accept Jesus and be saved, or not accept him and go to hell. So if you choose to go to hell then you're putting yourself there! You can't blame God for it!" That's bunk. Let me give you an example of why it's bunk. Imagine you're walking down the street and a mugger comes up to you, holds a gun to your face and says "give me all your money or I'll shoot you in the face!" That's a choice you've been given; either give the guy all your money and live, or keep your money and get shot in the face. But who in their right mind would choose the latter? That's the problem I have with christianity. They're supposedly representing the ideals of a morally just, infinitely loving creator God, yet the central tenet of their belief system is that this God wants us to obey and worship him or be sent to hell for all eternity, and then they turn around and tell us that that's supposed to be a reasonable choice!

[Gawen]

I apologise if this has already been said, but I'm offering my perspective as I see it.

1) Christianity's fundamental, central core is that God created us and loves us, and that because he loves us he wants us to be with him forever. But because the first female human disobeyed him {1} [b](before she could even know that disobedience was bad, because she didn't yet have the knowledge of good and evil) [/b]God decided to curse us all with sin, which is what we need forgiveness from. So to absolve these sins (which he decided to inflict, remember), he decided to wait a couple of thousand years, then impregnate a woman so that she could give birth to his earthly form, then have himself sacrificed to himself in order that we might be "saved" from the disobedience of one woman two thousand years earlier. But (and this is the really ridiculous part), that still wasn't enough. We have to actually believe all this, based solely on a self-contradictory canon of books that was written quite a while after Jesus died (the New Testament I mean), then edited/translated multiple times and has {2}hardly any extra-biblical evidence to back it up. If we choose not to believe it and accept Jesus as our personal saviour, then we're cast into eternal hellfire for ALL ETERNITY. No all-loving God would do that, because infinite punishment for finite crimes is absolutely and categorically immoral and ridiculous.

{3}
2) Following on from that, many (most, in fact) christians I've encountered always spout off the "free will" rubbish to justify this eternal punishment. "You have free will", they say, "you can choose to accept Jesus and be saved, or not accept him and go to hell. So if you choose to go to hell then you're putting yourself there! You can't blame God for it!" That's bunk. Let me give you an example of why it's bunk. Imagine you're walking down the street and a mugger comes up to you, holds a gun to your face and says "give me all your money or I'll shoot you in the face!" That's a choice you've been given; either give the guy all your money and live, or keep your money and get shot in the face. But who in their right mind would choose the latter? That's the problem I have with christianity. They're supposedly representing the ideals of a morally just, infinitely loving creator God, yet the central tenet of their belief system is that this God wants us to obey and worship him or be sent to hell for all eternity, and then they turn around and tell us that that's supposed to be a reasonable choice![/quote]
{1} It is amazing that Christians can't seem to get around this one teeny tiny discrepency .

{2} No evidence worthy enough to be called "evidence".

{3} It is even more amazing that most Christians can't get over the 'no free will' with an omni-god. If god knows what you'll do, then no matter what choices you think you have, you'll always do what the omniscient god knows what you'll do. There is no free will. Only the illusion of it.

[Ultima22689]

wow. I don't even post in these threads anymore because I don't have to but I read every single one and talking and debating with them in real life is plain hilarious  and at the same time frustrating. Whenever you try to throw a modicum of data in the discussion it turns into a massive argument about semantics and whether you can trust any source or they try to use analogies that don't make any sense.