Is Christianity Disadvantageous To An Individual?

I’ll try to avoid doing this.

Such as? I will respond to the ones you mentioned, but please let me know if you believe that there are more.

Nowhere in the Bible does it instruct Christians to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community. In fact, it tells us to do the opposite:

As for living as if you have all the time in the world, there is nothing in the Bible commanding this and no reason to do so, because we still must work to live a good life on this earth. I’ve never heard of a Christian living in the manner that you describe, and as you said, we are discussing how Christianity affects people on average.

Why wouldn’t you value your current life? You’ve given no reason for that. As to the bank account, you need one to live a good life today. As to respecting people, we must do that, one, because it is the right and nice thing to do, and two, because the Bible commands us to.

I could turn that logic around and say why have a bank account or respect others since we are all going to die anyway? It’s the same situation, and you really have given no reason for this situation to accurately apply to solely Christianity and all Christians.

This works if you use the assumption that Christianity is wrong, but you have yet to prove that. This is why I suggested that we operate from an agnostic view so that we don’t end up arguing whether Christianity is true or not and deviate from the topic of the debate.

Also, in the future, could you cite all scriptures? It’s annoying to have to find them myself.

I'm assuming that you mean Colossians 3:22. The context shows us that this is concerned with Christians having integrity and being obedient, not slavery. This has to do with discipleship.

Actually, I would like to add that Some Christians, especially watchtower, likes to refuse medical treatment.  That is HIGHLY disadvantageous. So thanks for giving me a chance to add that, sincerely. 

I'll tackle this with a simple joint question. 

A) Does The New Testament call homosexuals abominations by name?  Yes.

B) How does the Bible hand abominations?  With disgust. 

Depending on the degree of the disgust, this might affect the immorality of a specific Christian. However, At no time is it ever beneficial and at the very least, this will give the average Christian quite a low opinion of the homosexual.  Even Pro LGBT churches still think homosexuals are abominations, but simply choose to adhere to liberal standards (Which I'm cool with even if it is logically invalid to do so.  Because at least they're being more human.)

Really?  Because I've accounts of Christians being robbed and then praying that this was their time to join the lord.  The Bible clearly states at least three times to not want for this world.  Even without a direct bible quote.  It's quite clear that The New Covenant offers you eternal life and it necessarily follows that at least some of those people are going to take death more likely if they believe the story whole sale. 

Well I'm not quite spouting this off the top of my head.  Do keep in mind that not every Christian shares your exact tenants.  There are some sects that use the very same bible as you to justify giving away all of one's possessions. 

Jesus said this directly during the sermon on the mount.  Before you correct me, I am aware that Bible scholars don't agree that it was a direct commandment, but rather a lesson for that specific "type" of person

But nonetheless, people interpret it both of those ways and both of those ways leads to people emptying out there bank accounts. 

Well, that's not true because I don't have to go through life without tenants.  I can create my own tenants or adopt the tenants developed through evolution, which is what most of us do anyway.  Even without religious, I still get hungry and thirsty and other feelings as well and these give me motivation to live and have money.  You might not like that answer, but it's true.

I could turn this around and say that it only works for you if Christianity was true.  From a probability standpoint.  There are countless religions and the chances of picking the correct one are slim to nil.  So even becoming a Christian doesn't give one good odds of heaven because they might have picked the wrong sect.  Maybe the Mormons or the jews or the muslims or the brama are correct.  so yes, it's a frontloaded proposition.  One is only guaranteed the "starting happiness" and the rest is just chunks from the flesh. 

They were well known scriptures and half the voters read the bible regularly including the atheists.  I think we can give the crowd some credit here. 

Well here's the way I see it.  Jesus says verbatim "Slaves obey your masters".  There is really no context in which this is practical or moral unless the next words out of his mouth were something to the effect of "but not really" or "I was joking" or "unless they try to enslave you"  The only moral thing for Jesus to say about a slave is "Free yourself and all adjacent slaves as soon as humanly possible using reasonable violence if necessary"  But that is not remotely what he said.

Also, while we're on the jesus subject.  Jesus specifically stated that he came to fulfill The Old Covenant,  So that means that The Old Covenant is back on the table because I'm allowed to use The New Covenant as per the rules of this debate and that is contained within it. 

That's a very good one! It makes me mad when people do this. However, this is not supported by the Bible, so this is from their own opinions and presuppositions, not the Bible.

So, therefore, Christians by this logic must hate literally everyone, including themselves, because everyone is a sinner. God treats every sin equally, so if a Christian treats someone from the LGBTQ+ community any less than what a human should be treated like, they must treat themselves, their family, and everyone they know or meet the same way. However, that's obviously ludicrous.

Not wanting for this world is about not clinging on to worldly things. That isn't a command to be ready to let go of life. And about your last comment, it necessarily follows that some white people will use their skin color as justification to kill black people. Does that make being white disadvantageous? Of course not! Unless it is commanded, it does not make Christianity disadvantageous.

Where did Jesus say this in the sermon on the mount? I looked at it and I didn't see this. And as to interpretations, as I gave above, anybody can interpret anything in anyway which they want. Does that make the thing being interpreted bad or disadvantageous? No.

The same is true for Christians, which is why we still have motivation to have bank accounts and to respect others.

You're operating from a standpoint that the truth is random. If you say that evolution is true, then I could make up three different alternatives and then say that I have a 75% chance of being right while you have a 25% chance of being right. The number of options available don't make the truth more or less likely. In fact, I could say that atheists have an X percent of being right that religion is wrong because it is outnumbered. This is obviously not true.

Also, even if Christianity is wrong, what have Christians lost?

First of all, this was Peter speaking, not Jesus. Second, the Bible uses metaphors and figurative language all of the time. Jesus said that no one can follow him unless they hate their mother, father, and siblings. However, this is obviously not true literally, so context just shows us that we must esteem him more than our family. The same goes here. Context is everything.

How does Jesus saying that he came to fulfill the Old Covenant mean that everyone else must fulfill it as well? If anything, it means he was fulfilling it so that we don't have to. Galatians 5:14 says:

"For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

Well this would be a no true scottsman fallacy if you supported this idea.  I agree that The Bible may not necessarily reflect this view per se (If it does I'd be happy to know in the comments for future debates), but they are using the same Bible as you to reach that conclusion.

Like I said before, we can't judge this debate off of what we think a Christian SHOULD believe.  We have to look at how all Christians  behave.  So anybody who uses the Christian bible as their basis for their tenants applies to this conversation.  This includes many different sects with disadvantageous practices.

First of all, I'm glad we can agree that The Bible calls homosexuality an abomination.  That's good faith debating.  Thank you.  However, The Bible does not call every person an abomination.  So while The Bible might call everyone a sinner, it does not call everyone an abomination.  In fact, The Bible tells you to love all sinners as if they were your neighbor.  So going by your logic, this would be a contradiction because then they shouldn't be treating abominations with disgust and yet The Bible says to do that as well.  

This helps to support my point that being a Christian is disadvantageous.  It leads people to these confusing nonsensical beliefs.  While you can assert that you don't interpret The Bible this way, The Westboro Church would disagree with you because they love sinners but not homosexuals and they're Christians.  

Ahh!! But what if there was a holy book that said White people were better than Black people?  It would be disadvantageous then wouldn't it? 

The problem isn't merely that people do bad things.  The problem is that The Bible makes it easier to justify doing bad things.  Some people actually think that they are doing God's work when they commit moral acts and if they didn't believe in God, they wouldn't be able to say something like that. This might not be your beliefs, but it is the belief of many Christians. 

Oh it's definitely in there.  A man ask Jesus something to the effect of "how do I get salvation?" and Jesus answers to him directly that he should give away all of his possessions and wealth.  

Christians tend to interpret it one of two ways.  The "official" way if that word can even apply here is that Jesus was not speaking to all people but simply to what would help that specific man and I'm okay with that.  The second view is that it was a lesson for everyone to take and I think this is justifiable but flimsy and that it would probably depend on the person. 

Either way.  People interpret this the second way in some cases and that is disadvantageous. 

Even when they interpret it the first way, if they find themselves identifying with the character Jesus spoke with, they might still end up in the same bad scenario. 

It's true for some Christians, I'll agree with that.  But you realize that when a Christian does this, it's not their religion that is not advantageous here, but rather the fact they were smart enough to know their religion was potentially disadvantageous.  

The very fact that Christians have to do this helps to prove my point. 

As an Atheist, I don't have to "fight" my religious tenants, because I don't have any, so I'm free to find the absolute best values without holding me back, that puts Christians at a disadvantage to me because there tenants are set in stone and they can only evolve within the confines of their rigid systems. 

Never did I say the truth was random.  That's false attribution of my position.  I'll assume you misunderstood or you're wording it strangely.  It's not that the number of options changes the truth, it changes our chances of being correct.  The only way to know which is better is to weigh each option against the knowledge we have.  We know that religious contradict each other, so they can't all be right.  After that, we see how much evidence there is for each option. 

Atheism has the most proof behind it because science disproves many religious claims by showing them physical and historically impossible. 

Young Earth: Disproven by both evolution and distance of stars

Genesis Creation Account: Disproven because it's physically possible for things to be made in that order along with many many other scientific defeaters. 

Omnipotence:  Disproven logically scientifically 

other Omnis:  Disproven logically and scientifically

Global Flood:  Disproven by science. 

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  If we're HONESTLY ranking these claims by probability, atheism beats all of the other claims combined. 

Their lives.  The morality.  If God doesn't exist, that means her never gave any moral edicts and things like slavery and homophobia and circumcision, etc ,etc. 

All that would have been immoral and you spent your whole life living a lie.  Since a person only gets a very limited time on this earth, I would say that's a pretty big lost. 

Little math quiz. 

If I wanted to live my in way X but I force my self to live way Y for the sake of eternal life and I do this for half my life, what have I lost? 

The answer:  Half of everything I wanted in my life. 

You could get into semantics and say this isn't perfectly half

To which I would answer:  Approximately 33% of the things I wanted in my life. 

Still seems like a steep bet. 

So to be religious, I give up about 33% of everything I'll ever want in exchange for a 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001%(it's actually smaller but I got bored) chance of getting into heaven. 

Why is this chance so low you ask? 

BECAUSE WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT GOD ACTUALLY WANTS. 

God is just as likely to want atheism as he does Christianity. 

God might have religion as much as I do.  God might think it's silly for people to worship him when they know nothing about him.  Wouldn't you? 

If you were God, would you send people to hell for not being Christians?  I'm hoping the answer is no. 

If the answer is no, then doesn't mean you're more moral than The Christian God? 

If the answer is yes, then please explain how there can be any situation where it is moral to send someone to hell for not believing in something when you gave them no reason to believe in you.

Okay, I'm all for treating metaphors like metaphors, but there is no good metaphor for this.  It's not that I haven't considered the context.  I can tell by reading this that it's not a parable.

Also, while it might have been peter's account, it was peter's account OF Jesus. 

Furthermore, some Christians do actually view this as justification for indentured servitude which is just fancy slavery with more rules.  It's still telling slaves not to rise up against their masters and we can even look at this historically and verify that the politics of the time endorsed slavery and it was advantageous for them to have this verse be interpreted literally. 

I see no evidence of being a metaphor.  A metaphor say "X is Y" or simile says "X is like Y"  As a linguistics enthusiast, I can tell you that reading this plain off the page, this looks to me like the imperative mood which is a direct order.  Now that might not be the case, but people will and have read it that way. 

However, Jesus made it clear that they still had to follow The original mosaic code, which is why people still follow the ten commandments.  So at the very least, I can advocate for some of The Old Testament, So I will credit you by saying all sacrifices are off the table and a large chunk of deuterotomy.  Sorry if I spelled that wrong.  

Honestly I'm not sure it matters, I'm just trying to find a good line, most of what I'm saying here is still reflected in The New Testament anyway and ultimately this goes of how The Bible affect Christians so some Christians are going to read The New Testament.  There's all kinds of ways I can show how this is relevant to the argument. 

That's why I don't believe in restricting the opponents arguments.  Sometimes it's okay (Like Presupposing God existing to argue a theist topic)  But in this case, limiting how people interpret The Bible just ends up Being Goal Tending. 

The Bible does not count abominations as "neighbors"  Case a point, Westboro. 

First of all, I would like to make it clear that both I and my opponent are ignoring my first round because a counterclaim is unnecessary. I simply did not want to have a blank round. Please disregard that, voters.

This would not be a no true scottsman fallacy, because I am not making the claim that they aren't Christians. However, this debate is about Christianity, which is grounded in the Bible, and as you just said, this concept is not supported by the Bible, meaning that it is irrelevant.

The debate isn't whether Christians can be disadvantageous to themselves through certain interpretations of the Bible, it is whether believing in Christianity is disadvantageous.

The Bible never says to treat abominations with disgust.

By the way, some other abominations include lying, spreading mischief, and spreading strife, all of which are accomplished when one discriminates against the LGBTQ+ community. Do you see the hypocrisy? What I'm saying is that one cannot discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community without discriminating against themselves or being a hypocrite. This is clearly outlined in the Bible, and we are told not to discriminate or judge anyone. So again, this is caused by personal presuppositions and not the Bible.

Again, these people lead themselves to become hypocrites. Someone doesn't become racist because they were born white, they become racist because they are egotistical and narcissistic (spelled right on the first try, finally :D). Christianity does not cause this behavior.

Yes, but the Bible doesn't say this.

So if the Republican party didn't exist, people wouldn't have to be subject to possibly justifying something bad? Christianity is not accountable for the bad choices that people make. If it's not supported by the Bible, then it is simply that person's personal belief.

Jesus was showing the man that no one is perfect, and that everyone needs forgiveness in order to be saved. That was the lesson, and anything else is taken out of ignorance and is not the cause of Christianity.

No, it doesn't help you. You are saying that they are ignoring Christianity when they do those things, but nowhere in the Bible does it say to be disrespectful or not to have a bank account. They are just doing what is common sense, just like you, it is never refuted by the Bible or Christianity. They are not fighting any religious tenants.

You're essentially saying that every religion has an equal chance of being correct. That's not true. The evidence for Christianity completely overwhelms the others.

Atheism has the most proof behind it because science disproves many religious claims by showing them physical and historically impossible. 

Young Earth: Disproven by both evolution and distance of stars

Genesis Creation Account: Disproven because it's physically possible for things to be made in that order along with many many other scientific defeaters. 

Omnipotence:  Disproven logically scientifically 

other Omnis:  Disproven logically and scientifically

Global Flood:  Disproven by science. 

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  If we're HONESTLY ranking these claims by probability, atheism beats all of the other claims combined. 

You're ASSUMING all of those to be true, when in fact, they are not. You can't simply say they are.

None of those things apply to Christians.

What desires does one have to give up to be a Christian? If you're saying sinning, that's a GOOD thing. I don't see how someone would have to give up half of what they want, and you have not shown why.

We do know what God wants because the Bible says so. And God is not just as likely to want atheism as he does Christianity, that is just your personal opinion. We know stuff about God through the Bible. Christians form a relationship with him.

If you were God, would you send people to hell for not being Christians?  I'm hoping the answer is no. 

If the answer is no, then doesn't mean you're more moral than The Christian God? 

If the answer is yes, then please explain how there can be any situation where it is moral to send someone to hell for not believing in something when you gave them no reason to believe in you.

God sends people to hell for sinning, not for a lack of belief in him. However, this is not relevant to the topic of the debate anyway.

What you "can tell" is not proof of anything. The context, such as Peter condemning slavery in his various letters, shows us that this must mean something other than slavery.

No, it was not. This was a letter that Peter wrote to Colossians

It is not even remotely saying that. It is saying to have integrity when obeying the instructions of those in authority over us. I've shown this through context multiple times, and you've given no proof of your claim except "I read it as this." Context is everything, and context is what I used here.

All I said was that we were arguing about Christianity based in the New Covenant. I never said that you couldn't use the Old Testament. I also never said that the law was invalidated.

Where does the Bible say that abominations are not "neighbors?" Please point me to that scripture, because I've never read one saying so.

As to your Westboro example, Republicans never say that immigrants are equal to Americans. Case a point, Donald Trump. Do you see how ridiculous that is? You can't simply point to an outlier and say "This group believes this so the whole group of Christians must as well.

I already gave examples about how The Bible can lead to multiple interpretations.  You're misunderstanding my argument.  My point is that all of those people that you keep saying "aren't using The Bible" are actually using The Bible, just not in the way you agree with, so you have to count them.  If you don't, it's a no true scottsman fallacy.  There's not way around it.  If the title of the debate was "All catholics"  or "all JW's" then that would be a different story, but it's not.  It's "All Christians"  so you don't get to pick and choose who you subjectively consider to be a Christian based on your arbitrary standards. 

That's the same thing.  You're just rewording it turning it into a red herring.  If people believe in Christianity, then they're more likely to believe The Bible and then they're going to interpret it a certain way.  This is bordering on bad faith arguing here. You don't get to keep redefining Christianity the way you like when it suits your argument. 

This is false, there are multiple accounts of Jesus treating abominations with disgust and he is God in the flesh according to most interpretations besides The Mormons. 
The Bible is extremely clear about this.  This is even worse for you now because Jesus treats most sinners like their neighbors, so this contrast shows the consistency of the message. 

Decent rebuttal, but it doesn't work.  Jesus says "if your right hand betrays you then cut it off"  Now I know he's not literally saying to cut off your hand, although some Christians might think that but I won't count it because the number has to be extremely low on this one.  The reason I bring it up is because Jesus is telling you that if your hand is an abomination, that you should treat it with prejudice and do whatever is needed to get to heaven.  So he's not saying do it per se, but do what you got to do to get to heaven *wink wink*.  Btw, I'm using the scholarly interpretation here because I didn't want to go literal, it just seemed wrong to do it.

Anyway, this clearly shows that even if your hand or your words are the abomination, that you should still hate them.  Jesus has shown contempt for things like lies in The New Covenant.

You can't say that Christianity doesn't cause it because it's their sole justification for acting that way. People don't kill their kids and then say "I wanted to do it and I used the bible as an excuse"  They say "I wanted my kids to go to heaven" and they believed it whole heartedly. 

Oops, you fell into the wrong rabbit hole my friend.  It was analogy.  So you basically just admitted that people will do what a book tells them to in some cases.

The content of the book doesn't change the fact that people listen to it.  By the way, racism is in the bible.  The Bible makes multiple claims that the Israelites are god's chosen people and this has bred racism historically. 

I think you're forgetting what the topic is about.  It's is it disadvantageous.  It doesn't matter if people do bad things on their own.  What matters is that The Bible can amplify a person's ability to do bad things.  Doing bad things is disadvantageous because you then face consequences.

See, you're missing the point again.  What makes you think that everybody has to interpret things the same way as you to be a Christian.  You're just moving the goalpost. 

You:  "Not disadvantageous"
Me:  "what about this Christian?"
You: "that's not a christian"
Me:  "what about this Christian?"
You:  "that's not a Christian either"
Me: "So which ones ARE christians"
You: "The one who get advantages"

You see the problem here.  I'm not trying to pick on you.  But this is not healthy debating.  

I never said The Bible said those things.  I'm just telling you how people interpret it.  You can't deny that people interpret The Bible like this.  You might not call them Christians, but everyone in their church does so your subjective opinion about if they're a "true scottsman"  doesn't matter. 

Well, I didn't say they were equally correct.  I just said they're all less likely than atheism.   Honestly, If we're ranking them, I think Christianity gets stuck at the bottom with all abrahamic religions. Even Greek mythology is more likely to be correct than Christianity.  The strongest God claim would be The Deist God by a wide margin.

Atheism has the most proof behind it because science disproves many religious claims by showing them physical and historically impossible. 
I'm not assuming.  I'm using scientific consensus as a metric.  You could say I'm assuming science is true, but you'd be wrong again.  I base my epistemology on self evidence so there are no assumptions in my worldview.  You're confusing me with a traditional foundationalist. 

Special Pleading.  I'll make this easy.
If God was proven to be false, would you not have spent your life believing in things based on moral edicts that were not verified the way you think they were? 
The answer is yes, but I'll allow you to answer anyway in case you want to elaborate. 

Okay, this is bad faith arguing for sure.  I never said anything about sinning.  Sins are only sins because god says they're sins.  If god doesn't exist then sins aren't sins anymore so you're using circular logic. 

I would like you to answer the question honestly please. 
I'll repost it for you

Little math quiz. 

If I wanted to live my in way X but I force my self to live way Y for the sake of eternal life and I do this for half my life, what have I lost? 

The answer:  Half of everything I wanted in my life. 

You could get into semantics and say this isn't perfectly half

To which I would answer:  Approximately 33% of the things I wanted in my life. 

Still seems like a steep bet. 

So to be religious, I give up about 33% of everything I'll ever want in exchange for a 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001%(it's actually smaller but I got bored) chance of getting into heaven. 

That’s a presupposition.  There are countless holy books saying what god wants.

How do you know your book is correct?
How do you know that God wrote your book? 
How do you know God even likes your book? 
Because The Bible said so isn't a good argument for anything and you know that. 
Prove The Bible was written by God or it's nothing more than a bold assertion. 

You:  I know what God wants
Me: Why? 
You: Because The Bible
Me:  How do you know The Bible is correct. 
You:  Because God wrote it. 
Me: How do you know That God wrote it. 
You:  Because The Bible. 
Me:  *Walking away*

Dodging more questions I see.  Please answer properly. 

I'm not asking what god does to sinners, I've already read his manifesto on that. 

I'm asking what YOU Speedrace, would do if you were God. 

Please answer the question properly. 

Okay, I guess we're playing the solipsism game now.  Okay Mr. Smart Guy.  Please explain to me how this is a metaphor because it's your claim and you have to provide proof for that claim.

Since metaphors use a very specific grammar structure, this should be easy to prove.  Prove that Jesus's "Metaphor"  uses this format "X is Y"  or "X is like Y"

You can't because that's not what it says.  It uses the imperative mood and that is how a laymen will see it and this debate is about ALL Christians, including the layman ones. 

“Okay Dodgy McDodgerson.   It was a "letter that Peter wrote to the Colossians about his account of Jesus"  How many times do you intend to kick this can down the street?”

Okay, ignoring the fact that I've already told you that your subjective interpretation doesn't matter.  I'm going to also show you that even your interpretation is disadvantageous here. 
You're saying it's a lesson to listen to authority. 

What if we lived in North Korea? 

Or Nazi Germany? 

Or were slaves? 

Should we respect those authorities?  No. 

Thank you for demonstrating first hand why Christianity is disadvantageous. 

It doesn't say it outright like you just said.  But it gives different rules for them.  It tells you to be disgusted by abominations and to love all sinners as if they were your neighbors. You can't do both of those things at the same time. Disgust is not something you can do at the exact time as love is the subject of that thing is the same.  I might love my spouse, but if I'm disgusted by my spouse, I'm not showing love in those moments, I'm showing disgust and my love only returns once I've eschewed that disgust.  I guess that argument would only make sense to married people who also study logic, lol.  Small demographic. 

“I wouldn't quite call Wesboro an outlier per se.  But I see what you're getting at.  Nonetheless, since this is an argument about norms, we have to look at all of the possible norms that may be established.”

I never said that I was picking who is a Christian and who isn’t, and I definitely never said that these people aren’t Christians. What I did say is that their beliefs in that regard are based in their own opinion and presupposition, not the Bible. That means that they are being disadvantageous to themselves; Christianity is not being disadvantageous to them.

I never tried to redefine Christianity. What I was trying to say was that the personal opinions that one weakly tries to justify with the Bible are not the fault of Christianity. If one wants to incorrectly take something out of the scriptures, that is their DESIRE to, and they will believe that thing whether they are a Christian or not because it is their own opinion.

No, there are not any examples of jesus reacting abominations as such. You’ve not given a single example of this, and I don’t know of any. Also, even if he did, I originally said that the Bible never commanded US treat abominations with disgust, not that Jesus never did. However, I seriously doubt that he did and you have yet to point to a scripture where he did. You cannot make that claim without proof.

No, Jesus is saying that we need to remove all bad influences. How does “betray you” translate to abomination? It doesn’t. This is not about getting into heaven, it is about surrounding oneself with good influences and not bad ones.

That scripture never says “abomination,” and contempt and “cutting off” does not equate to hate.

No, it is not. The Bible clearly says not to kill, so someone who does this is doing it out of their own desires and simply using the Bible as an excuse. Nowhere in the Bible does it say to kill one’s children so they can go to heaven, it says not to kill. This is clearly outlined in the Ten Commandments. Someone who does that is purposefully operating in ignorance.

Oops, you fell into the wrong rabbit hole my friend.  It was analogy.  So you basically just admitted that people will do what a book tells them to in some cases.

I’ve never denied that fact.

The Israelites being God’s chosen people isn’t racism. God has shown multiple times in scripture that the Gentiles are entitled to salvation just as much as Israelites. The Israelites themselves were racist, yes, but God told them not to be, meaning that racism is not born out of the Bible.

Christianity is not disadvantageous because it can be used as an excuse; literally anything can be used as an excuse. This that claim is non-unique. It is the person making the excuses’ fault, not the thing he is using as an excuse. If a child uses a dog eating their homework as an excuse for not having it done, do you take away that dog? No, you teach the child not to make excuses, because it was their fault, not the dog’s

I never said that these people are not Christians. You’re putting words into my mouth. I said that their beliefs in this regard are born out of their own prejudice and not the Bible. That has nothing to do with their status as a Christian.

You’ve given no proof for this claim except your personal opinion.

Yes, but what is wrong with those moral edicts? You yourself just said that they are MORAL. I’m being told not to lie or kill, etc, which is a good thing. That’s not a waste.

You’re putting words into my mouth. I never claimed you said anything about sinning, I said “IF you mean sinning” because you were not clear about what you meant. I was simply responding to that in case it was what you meant.

Your question is what you lose in that scenario. What you lose depends on what Y is. If it’s Christianity, then no, you wouldn’t have wasted your life. One does not have to give up “half of everything they’ve ever wanted” to be a Christian. Nowhere in the Bible doesn’t it say to give up half of everything you ever wanted in life, unless half of what you ever wanted was to kill a lot of people or something like like that. We give up sin, not our desires. Besides, most people give that up anyway.

We’re arguing about Christianity, not any other religions. Besides that, the validity of the Bible is irrelevant.

Proving the Bible was written by God is completely irrelevant to this debate. It is about whether Christianity is disadvantageous, not whether Christianity is true. You’re deviating from the topic.

No, I would not send people to hell for not believing in me.

No, I would not be more moral than God, because he does not send people to hell for not believing in him either. 

Actually, the very fact that you’re saying this means that you’re saying that morality is objective.

When Jesus said to hate your family in order to follow him, that was written in the imperative mood. However, it was still figurative language, so that is not a reason to say that this isn’t. 

No, it is not. These were Peters words, not Jesus’. He was spreading the word of Jesus, but those were his own words that he personally said. I was not dodging anything.