Reacting to an Apostasy Story

losing faith | my departure from theism
Theramin Trees | 5.VII.2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xqCkx6WQBE

I

12:52 Did you ever hear the argument, we believe Christianity to be true, because Christ who is God told it to the Apostles?

Christ proved to them He was God by:

• a) claiming so, careful to not use formulations the Pharisees could put down to blasphemy, but still very clearly;
• b) proving He was neither crook nor crank by rising from the dead after making this claim?

And also, by everything happening to Him and done by Him fitting the entire Old Testament, book by book, chapter by chapter, if not verse by verse, an exegesis which they did not confide in entirety to NT, but did confide in entirety to the Church they were the start of?

Did you hear the argument, we know this story is true, because this is the story there is a tradition of in this community called the Catholic Church?

Communities may tack on extra origins, like Freemasons tacking on (variously after taste) Templars or (always) King Solomon and Hiram Abiff, but they don't forget their actual origins, like Freemasons haven't forgotten about 1717?

And Catholicism has no later origin it recalls. Any origin its enemies tried to tack on, "no, it was not quite so it happened" (like Constantine or Nicaea or Gregory I being the first Pope or his successor being so or etc).

Did you ever hear this argument?

You didn't seem to enumerate it, if you did.

II

13:20 Numbers 6 was about a specific class of men, Nasirs, while I Corinthians was about men in general.

OT, Nasirs were an exception, NT royalty (Jesus on all icons, nearly) and poverty (St. John the baptist) and (according to Visigothic custom) an unfulfilled promise (or in general goal, but with El Cid it was a promise) are occasions for wearing hair long. Exceptions from first Corinthians (11:14, thanks for mentioning, I'm lousy at Bible quoting with chapter and verse, unless quoting from an online Bible after searching in it).

13:32 The love of God which is imperfect and which begins with fear goes before the love of God which is perfect and which drives out fear.

13:41 God wanted a sacrifice from Noah, to symbolise Christ's coming sacrifice. God wanted something else from King David, who had sinned and needed to repent. The OT sacrifices were not pleasing for their own sake, but for the heart with which they were given (when so) and for what they foreboded.

13:50 God punishes children for their parents' sins, if they go in their evil footsteps, or did in OT times among Israelites, but He doesn't intend human justice to do so.

Yep, Deuteronomy 24 is about human justice, about what God wanted Israelite society to be like.

Good point against some who think abortion is ok as punishment for the mother being "a slut." (I've actually seen this argument).

III

15:14 Judges 19, in fact there is no command from God to do the revenge. There is a common decision.

Onan, God hates "sin against nature" (modern terms, since "nature" has changed meaning since the term was coined, "sins against contraception") - not just man with man or woman with woman, but also man with woman in contraceptive ways : God used this once to show it clearly.

Elisha, the children were in fact not just mocking any bald man for being bald, but specifically mocking the bald man they knew to be a prophet, so they were mocking God. And God also hates blasphemy.

Any person killed by act of God, no person ever either lived or died unless God wanted it, so it is not murder, as with people taking God's decision on death in their hands.

15:27 If God hardens pharao's heart in Exodus 9:12, this is after giving him many chances.

The word simply means, God is no longer giving him a chance to become better, and it doesn't mean He is making him more disagreeable than he was.

Romans 9:18 means, some people God saves from their bad ways, and some He declines to save.

No, God is definitely not destroying anyone's free will by the procedure as outlined in Romans 9 or examplified in Exodus 9. As for those He has mercy on, He certainly does soften their hearts, usually.

15:53 So, what is your "better job" than letting a disagreeable man finally have his disagreeable way? Once in a while and not all of them?

What is your better job than hating blasphemy or contraception?

IV

16:07 Hell is certainly a reason to believe correctly, if you believe enough to believe in Hell.

Hardly one to believe, overall, if you don't.

Hell is a rational motive to keep the Christian faith inviolate, but unbelievers as in atheists are insensitive to it, by not believing in Hell.

If Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, later on even Mussolini had believed in Hell and tried to stay Orthodox or Catholic Christians, they would at some point probably have avoided making earth more like Hell for quite a few.

17:11 I think your "degrees" line of human morality is illusory.

One who goes to Heaven may to you seem more agreeable by only little, or even less agreeable, than one who goes to Hell - but you don't see their hearts as God does.

And someone's morality is not a question of moral score, but of moral aim.

Zelum habet optimum, qui Deum amat et proximum, said a Medieval rhyme.

I think each word is comprehensible for someone knowing English and it's foreign words, plus some parts of foreign languages, but just in case "as to zeal he hath the best who loveth God and also the next (neighbour)".

And you can't love what you don't know, so loving God means first of all believing, and you aren't loving what you aren't approaching, so loving God means also hoping in Him, and this before we speak of love properly.

Failing either one of the double loves, you go to Hell.

Yes, there may be two people separated by one single deed, namely two people having done the same sin, and one repenting correctly and the other not. Because that single deed of repentance does set love for God and neighbour burning again.

V

18:23 I believe you.

VI

19:19 God allowed the Sun to rise over you the morning you were going to do the video?

If He did, He has earned your love. So, the question is, did He, or was it something else that did so?

19:32 I don't know where you got it from that faith is without evidence; or a conviction without evidence.

19:44 Anyone's life involves evidence against a loved one's and against God's goodness to one.

Do you demand evidence of good intentions from people you love?

Well, so in the case of one's own life, yes, we should dismiss evidence against goodness of someone.

In the case of common theory, also known as faith, there are explanations, as I have tried to show.

20:18 Are you successfully married?

VII

25:55 You know, I am more or less up against atheists trying to rationalise my belief ... as something I'll get over.

I have spent fifteen years writing essays and entering debates, there is still a network waiting for the day when I'll "get over it" and accept their mentoring. Fifteen, sorry, that's how long I'm out of Sweden, actually 18. I started my internet presence in 2001, the year I turned 33.

VIII

26:34 Wait, your parents didn't respect Galileo's recantation, of which there is no doubt for his final year (he made one pro forma probably most to escape bonfire at too close hand, but last year he made one for real, in letters to ... perhaps it was his daughter, who was a nun)?

IX

27:12 "all because unbelievers are damned"

Not a valid reason to behave like a thug, which they did on your description.

28:01 We are different. Theism came to me as an answer, when I was thinking, provided by a loving mother.

28:47 Yeah, I have heard Oppenheimer's freedom argument, but as to faith stifling, well, "faith" in that sense is something I have seen in atheists.