The Christian religion is inherently rational

What is Christianity?

A Common Definition

One dictionary defines Christianity as “a monotheistic system of beliefs and practices based on the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus as embodied in the New Testament and emphasising the role of Jesus as saviour.” This is certainly a good definition, but we need to go further.

Even though Christianity relates to the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, the word Christian did not exist until after Christ’s time. Christians got their name based on being followers of Christ.

Doctrinal vs. Denominational

One of the important distinctions is between the doctrinal religion of Christianity and the denominational religions of Christianity. Once the canon was complete and the scriptures identified, the definition of doctrinal Christianity was based upon the literal interpretation of Scripture. One problem in the early church was that Scripture could not be easily duplicated so Christians did not really have direct access to the Scriptures. This gave the denominational Catholic Church the job of interpreting the Scriptures for the common folk. Although today everyone has access to the Scriptures, the fact is that individual denominations still interpret the scriptures for their parishioners.

Bible-Believing or Pick-and-Choosing?

During the very early apostolic period, the apostles had to continually clarify the Christian doctrine that seemed to get corrupted often. Today, even with our well-documented Scriptures that are accessible to all, the belief in true Christianity (the literal interpretation of the Bible) has been corrupted to an even greater extent. The current percent of Christians who believe in the literal interpretation of Scripture, and do not pick and choose Scriptures to their liking, is about nine percent (Barna).

Most of Christianity today has embraced many humanistic and anti-theistic beliefs. The Christian denominations have accepted many cultural ideas and blended them into their doctrine. Generally, many concepts of sin, judgement, and the wrath of God have been put aside in favour of a religion of love, unity, and tolerance. One example is the New Tolerance philosophy.

In many churches today, Christianity is a doctrinal buffet, including selections from both the biblical and secular menus.

2 [mass noun] The power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgements logically.

2.1 What is right, practical, or possible; common sense.

1

: ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous

: extremely silly or ridiculous

2

: having no rational or orderly relationship to human life : MEANINGLESS

also : lacking order or value

A metaphor is a comparison made between two or more things using figurative or descriptive language. Metaphors turn difficult ideas into simple concepts. Metaphors also infuse written text with vivid descriptions that make the text more vibrant and enjoyable to read.

Metaphor as a figure of speech is one of the most common literary devices, it can be found in almost any text, and The Bible is no exception. Some of the metaphors found in The Bible are alluded to and referenced in many other texts, so it pays to be familiar with them and understand what is being said. Let’s take a list of metaphor examples in The Bible.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional and often results in ignoring inconsistent information. Existing beliefs can include one’s expectations in a given situation and predictions about a particular outcome. People are especially likely to process information to support their own beliefs when the issue is highly important or self-relevant.

Biased:

:tending to yield one outcome more frequently than others in a statistical experiment

:having an expected value different from the quantity or parameter estimated

(1) Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence.

(2) The universe has a beginning of its existence.

To understand the theory better, grab your universal remote (that is, your remote that controls the universe), and hit Rewind. As scientists know now, the universe is constantly expanding. As you move backward in time, then, the universe contracts. Rewind far enough (about 13.8 billion years), and the entire universe shrinks to the size of a single atom, Hawking said.

This subatomic ball of everything is known as the singularity (not to be confused with the technological singularity during which artificial intelligence will overtake humans). Inside this extremely small, massively dense speck of heat and energy, the laws of physics and time as we know them cease to function. Put another way, time as we understand it literally did not exist before the universe started to expand. Rather, the arrow of time shrinks infinitely as the universe becomes smaller and smaller, never reaching a clear starting point.

According to TechTimes, Hawking says during the show that before the Big Bang, time was bent

It was always reaching closer to nothing but didn't become nothing,

according to the article. Essentially,

there was never a Big Bang that produced something from nothing. It just seemed that way from mankind's point of perspective.

In a lecture on the no-boundary proposal, Hawking wrote:

Events before the Big Bang are simply not defined, because there's no way one could measure what happened at them. Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang.

The general view of physicists is that time started at a specific point about 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang, when the entire universe suddenly expanded out of an infinitely hot, infinitely dense singularity, a point where the laws of physics as we understand them simply break down. This can be considered the “birth” of the universe, and the beginning of time as we know it. Before the Big Bang, there just was no space or time, and you cannot go further back in time than the Big Bang, in much the same way as you cannot go any further north than the North Pole.

The Bible says the following about God's age. He has no beginning and no ending, He is eternal, timeless and immortal (Revelation 4:8; 1 Timothy 1:17, 6:16).

Therefore, God has no age. The Bible states that God is, “The Alpha and the Omega,” “Who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8).

(3) The universe has a cause of its existence.

(4) If the universe has a cause of its existence then that cause is God.

Therefore:

(5) God exists.

Elsewhere (Rosh Hashanah 17a), the torments of Hell are said to be temporary for most sinners - but instead of ending in Heaven, they end in nonexistence.

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

4 God made everything with a place and purpose; even the wicked are included - but for judgment.

In the book of Genesis we read the story of Joseph, the favored son of Jacob. Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him and devised a scheme to get rid of him. They considered killing him, but ended up selling him as a slave to foreigners. God knew this was going to happen, and already had a plan in place. Through a series of events, Joseph went from slave to prisoner to Egyptian ruler. Years later he was able to use his authority and position to provide for his family during a famine in their homeland. How do you think Joseph felt when he and his brothers were reunited? Do you think he wanted revenge? No, he didn’t. He told them: “And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you (Genesis 45:5).” Joseph understood the omniscience of God; that the events in Joseph’s life had worked together for his family’s own good.

You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.

2. Christianity affirms Theism, which is a rational position.

4. Christianity does not face an existential crisis.

Theists who rely on this argument concede that not only does something which you can’t explain the origin of require a cause, if it ever began to exist, but that time is to be assumed to undeniably not have begun with the maximum of what we believe our reality physically is; the universe. The KCM forgets that by insisting that there is a ‘before’ the universe at all, and that time didn’t begin with it it,the very God of a religion such as Christianity necessitates time before its origin too.

Time not existing before something is not able to be brushed off as absurd by Theists because this is the very thing they are saying is true for God. The only difference KCM assumes and enables is to say that God has no ‘beginning’ of existence and thus requires no creator. The issue is that atheists (such as the aforementioned, well-renowned Stephen Hawking) consider the very universe itself (or at most multiverse if you wish to stretch that far) began with time in precisely the same way that Theists claim God did. Thus, the Big Bang doesn’t require a ‘before’ any more or any less than God itself does:

An error both KCM and PW make is to assume that if there is an original creator, it’s the Christian God but this is linked to a deeper issue; both are based on faulty axioms that then become confirmation-biased based tautologies. The Christian God is not a metaphor for ‘whatever the first ever thing was’, rather it is a very specific ideation (or culmination, if real) of the first, wisest and most powerful of all entities in existence with a moral code suited to the Bible.

For PW to even be true under the Christian God’s existence, it would mean that you genuinely do lose nothing by adhering to God’s way. The initial error of PW is that it suggests that you ever could fool yourself, let alone God, into believing something that you don’t actually believe. The second error (assuming the God that may exist may only be the Christian God) is to suggest that you lose nothing by adhering to the strict moral code of the Bible… Or is there a strict moral code at all?

Theists would have you assume God to be viable without time preceding him because they assert he has no beginning. Is it showing clear thought and reason to assume something is true because the believers in it say it’s true? No, it is not. On top of this, it is even more absurd to refuse to apply the same logic to the atheist’s reality and universe (or multiverse) simply because they concede that their ‘ultimate reality’ has a beginning and they believe that even if that beginning wasn’t the beginning of time, that there’s no way to conclude anything else unless the evidence unfurls more (and such has already begun, but so far no sign of the Christian God).

2. Christianity affirms Theism, which is a rational position.

3. Christianity affirms moral coherence. Which makes our ethical claims rational

The foundation of Christian anthropology is that we, as creations of God, are His image bearers.

Oh yes, perhaps the most horrifying element of the wishy-washy teachings is that underlying it all is the notion that no matter what you do, God will not only love you in the end but the wickedness was all part of the plan. After all, if you were to murder (or even legally kill, which would defy ‘thou shalt not kill’) humans who are… Wait for it… Good people, then you’d be helping ensure they get to heaven, right? You’d have guaranteed them to die good people, bound for heaven but guess what the real punchline is?

What would happen if you did evil things to evil people? Well, this is where it gets far more obscure. You’re entitled to judge people who are good, but are not entitled to use the very same judgement system to judge people who are not good. In fact, the ‘10 commandments’ were a social construct from a Bible book that had many more commandments and commandment 15 encourages one to judge fairly and by their own means of ascertaining truth on a person:

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

- 24

Despite this, Pro himself and many Christians like him adhere far more to a notion that judging is negative because it comes at the price of being judged back (which means you risk being deemed evil).25 One can only wonder how selfless and noble it would logically be to tarnish one’s own soul in order to get others to heaven by ‘killing the good’. It’s a terrifying thought and one of the most severe flaws of Christianity. After all, even then one need only go through enough and repent and all will be forgiven.

s there even such a thing as a ‘bad guy’ in a creation made by an all-powerful God that planned for the wickedness as part of it?

14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

- 26

4 God made everything with a place and purpose; even the wicked are included - but for judgment.

- 27

In the book of Genesis we read the story of Joseph, the favored son of Jacob. Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him and devised a scheme to get rid of him. They considered killing him, but ended up selling him as a slave to foreigners. God knew this was going to happen, and already had a plan in place. Through a series of events, Joseph went from slave to prisoner to Egyptian ruler. Years later he was able to use his authority and position to provide for his family during a famine in their homeland. How do you think Joseph felt when he and his brothers were reunited? Do you think he wanted revenge? No, he didn’t. He told them: “And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you (Genesis 45:5).” Joseph understood the omniscience of God; that the events in Joseph’s life had worked together for his family’s own good.

- 28,29

If God masterminds all evil, even family disputes and the rejection of someone who is rejected for the very purpose of returning to 'fairly' absolve them of guilt later on in a symbolic, heroic manner then there are actually no bad people. The evil help the good shine, after all if we were all good then no one would be better than anyone else at it or need to battle against anything to live happy in life, since we’d all care and share. It makes you wonder why all (every single) Christian nation was Capitalist and why this religion had to be challenged when introducing Communism to Russia (not that it worked well).30,31

If those who use and abuse to prosper in this life at the sake of their afterlife, are part of God’s grand plan, what is there left to speak against, act against or challenge? In the face of grotesque evil should one just refuse to judge the evildoer and forgive them? Should they judge them ‘fairly’ according to the less well-known 15th commandment? Christianity lacks clear thought and reason when it comes to the foundation of morality, let alone the specifics. Should you pay a father and marry his daughter after raping her? The Bible both suggests to do this and also not to do it in separate parts that highlight constant chaos and inconsistent teachings throughout (which defy inherent rationality as they are not clearly reasoned whatsoever).

Let us guess what the Christians will patch this issue with: when something is nonsensical it’s a metaphor and when it’s sensible and appealing it’s definitely the ‘real teaching’ to listen to. Of course, we should have used our ‘God-given’ brains!

You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.

- 32

 I am going to go ahead and concede this debate and congratulate my opponent on his win.