What have you changed your mind about?

He merits your faith whether he is compassionate or not. Even if he were evil, he would merit it. You are merely human and cannot possibly comprehend his morality in any sane way.

Hell is not a biblical concept,

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment

Matthew 25

I assume, you know how to get to heaven, but if you don't. Here you go

 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Amazing, isn't it, how one's political ideology reflects one's one's theology?

You are arguing that Christians should submit to evil. Let's assume that if the devil has any competence at all, you are already enlisted in his ranks.

-->@oromagi

I got ya IQ at 176.

Anyway.....

Your a Dumb Dumb.   For thinking straightforward

Also magi.

99 debates .  I don't like 99.

Hurry up Do one more or something.  

This site was my first exposure to logical critique of my fundamentalist religious views. 

Here is the first things that pop to my mind:

• I have rejected my certainty of Christianity being true, in fact, I now view every religion as meaningless speculation without evidence
  

• My view of abortion, animal rights and morality in general have become more nuanced as I understand kantian and utilitarian ethics
  

• The indoctrination of PragerU has been eradicated from my mind;
  

• Political and economic issues have been brought to my attention, as well as opposing ideas to the ones I already knew
  

• At the moment I think of unquestionable certainty as mostly an illusion and of science as the logical and mathematical route to becoming near-certain.
  

These are a lot of things I have changed my mind about. Now I have been on this site a year and am 17 so it has affected me quite a lot.

It's part of Norse myth. He doesn't have a hall in Germanic myth. There are several different afterlife places in Germanic and Norse mythology. The Viking were a small portion of worshipers. They also didn't go out and kill people for Odin. They hope to die in battle to go to Valhalla or Freya's Hall. She actually gets first pick of the war dead. They generally leave that out of all the movies.

And mainstream religion isn't weird?

Well no, not if you have a conditioned mindset.

A mindset that's prepared to accept old Middle Eastern folk tales as a reasonable hypothesis.

Whereas, it is clearly apparent that material development has moved on a tad since those days of ignorance,

But you just take this for granted, 

Yet you happily tap away at your device, when all that your omniscient saviours could achieve was tablets of stone.

And it's also clear that things are still developing, and therefore logical to suggest that material development will continue developing way way into the future,

Maybe with us, maybe without us.

And all this may or may not be purposeful....The jury is is still out, and will continue to be out for as long the appropriate knowledge remains undiscovered..

All that I do, is propose a reasonable purpose, which I refer to as the continuation of the universal sequence....Or the re-initiation of matter.

And the difference between you and I is,

I am a 21st century man trying to think ahead,

Whereas, you are a 21st century man who prefers to think backwards.

Of course there's still a 50/50 chance that everything is pointless.

We just don't know,

Which is probably just as well,

Otherwise the futility of internet religious forum arguments, wouldn't be quite so entertaining.

Sorry, but that's absurd.  So you think that when Paul says in the previous sentence "Love is patient, love is kind, it keeps no records of wrongs, etc" Paul is telling the Corinthians to be kind to God?  to keep no record of God's wrongs against them?  No, sorry.  One of the most essential Christian passages and you've completely missed the mark.

You are dodging by answering a question with a question. 

Answer the question:  explain the compassion to be discovered in the creation of eternal suffering.

Explain the compassion of creating eternal paradise as a prize for winning a cruel game show called THIS MORTAL COIL.

For example. The turning the other cheek I mentioned thinking it was a command to be a door mat. The speech was about how to commit a non violent revolution, like grand did. The Roman's would only be allowed to smack people with their left hand, so by presenting your other cheek, they were forced to smack you with the incorrect hand. 

The same speech he says, if your enemy asks you to carry their belongings one mile, carry them 2, because Roman law said romans were only allowed to have the community they were occupying carry stuff for one mile.

With the camel and the eye of the needle. Jesus did not make up the phrase. A lot of rabbis before him used it, so I looked at the context those rabbis said it in. The rabbis meant it was hard and used it as a way to just help get the message across. 

@Topic

I think my mind on Islam remains unchanged.

I suppose if I took the time every X amount of time,

To state my opinion on various subjects,

I could read it back, and see how my answers change over time,

But I don't and in the gradual process of my mind,

I often miss changes in it.

Of Islam though, I still don't know much,

But even with much,

Likely I'll view it as I do other religions, ways of life, philosophies, movements.

I predict that within 3 years some major Christian Televangelist is going to say that he has found that God is a myth and he is going to change his Church to service Humanism. And no, it won't be Jim Bakker.

- Any thing you're still struggling with or chose to not deal with it?

Why not a command for forbearance?

It makes more sense that the original Aramaic expression should translate to "fit a thick rope through the eye of a needle" rather than "fit a camel through the eye of a needle", just as its Arabic counterpart does.

About that debate though, any interest?

No, I don't like how the debate is framed. I am willing to consider debates titled things such as 

1. Muhammed was not a prophet

It's a difficult thing to argue argue refined absurdities though. You would have similar difficulty arguing against obsessed 9/11 truthers. 

I'd rather pick a topic topic the sits outside of both of our comfort zones. Do you ever talk about anything non Islam related? Like for example things relating to work or money etc.

I think of Islam as a religion which believes in the Abrahamic God,

The Religion is 'primarily in the Middle East

, which I view as 'currently 'overall having less Infrastructure/Tech/Modernization, than the West.

If people speak of individuals being stoned, then I view this as due to location, culture, more than Islam itself.

Only requires different time period, culture shift, for the West to stone people, Whether for Religion or Atheism.

Islam has various sects, adherents, thus it's more valuable for me to judge it on individual persons and individual group basis.

Same as other religions, or atheisms.

My position is driven by Truth, Nationalism, Tradition, Honor.

I prefer my own nation, my own tribe, people,

But that's no reason to deny the value of other's ideas.

No reason to dismiss their humanity, or one's obligation to other life forms.

I believe that there is no god/s,

No afterlife,

That life arose out of material existences workings, habits, chance and opportunity.

I believe that morality is a subjective construct, but that we are wired with preferences, These preferences are hard to deny, and as a game of chess already invested in, may as well follow one's creed.

-->@oromagi

- Maybe we can have a debate on the miracles of the beloved Prophet Muhammed (pbuh). Care to incur your second loss?

There is a lot more freedom of religion in the Middle East than in any western country.

There are major differences among regions as well as among countries when it comes to government restrictions on religion. On average, restrictions are highest in the Middle East North Africa, where the median score for the 20 countries (4.9) is considerably higher than for the 35 countries in the Americas (1.0), the region with the lowest median score. The 51 Asian and Pacific countries have a median score in the middle range (3.3), but this masks enormous variability within this large region. Several of the more populous Asian and Pacific countries have high levels of government restrictions. Indeed, the nearly 20 countries in the region with very high or high government restrictions on religion – including Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Vietnam and India – account for more than half of the world’s population. On the other hand, some of the least restrictive governments are also found in the Asia-Pacific region; these include Japan, Taiwan and Australia.

How about incurring your third loss in a debate about freedom of religion in Islam vs. Secularism?

- I don't have an opinion either way, I was referencing Biblical commentators.

- What replaced your belief in Evolution then?

- I was hoping you would tell me. I can't know what you believe!

I'm pretty familiar with Nordic & Germanic history. I want to know though why do you believe these are gods & what does 'god' exactly mean for you?

LOL, that isn't history it's mythology. The same reason you think your god is a god, because other people have told you that down through the years that when you work with this being it's a god.

Personally don't like the word god I prefer the word deity. People have work with these beings for centuries so the relationships, ideas and rituals are already established. 

Instead of expanding the subject, why not just present all of your hard, scientific evidence for the existence of winged horses in Seventh Century Arabia?

There are major differences among regions as well as among countries when it comes to government restrictions on religion. On average, restrictions are highest in the Middle East North Africa, where the median score for the 20 countries (4.9) is considerably higher than for the 35 countries in the Americas (1.0), the region with the lowest median score. The 51 Asian and Pacific countries have a median score in the middle range (3.3), but this masks enormous variability within this large region. Several of the more populous Asian and Pacific countries have high levels of government restrictions. Indeed, the nearly 20 countries in the region with very high or high government restrictions on religion – including Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Vietnam and India – account for more than half of the world’s population. On the other hand, some of the least restrictive governments are also found in the Asia-Pacific region; these include Japan, Taiwan and Australia.

Most objective analysis consistently ranks the Middle East as the least free region in the world for the practice of religion.

Christianity is an essentially humanist reaction to Old Testament Judaism- fewer giants and unicorns and burning bushes, more good Samaritans and golden rules.  Compare OT's  "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth [powers surpassing man's understanding] to John's "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.   [human language being a uniquely human ability- god reduced from universal superforce to the product of the human tongue].  More than any religion that preceded Jesus, Christianity was primarily concerned with how humans treated other humans and let stories of evil snakes and burning bushes recede to an older testament.

Likewise, I consider evil an entirely human artifact- there's no evidence of such corruption in the natural world.

I'd have to read more, to have a stronger opinion of 'claimed injustice.

I think it's difficult of Isms to stand apart from their practitioners,

If one speaks of a country, and it's practices, one speaks of generalities, percentages of 'more oftens,

A country of one generation, infrastructure, resources, is not the country of 'another generation, infrastructure, resources.

So the same,

Religion, or 'even individuals, if one separates their life into different pieces of time.

I think a country worth admiring by my own standards,

Would grant rights to individuals 'not of said country,

Human Rights/Privileges are valuable in my eyes, though artificial,

Due to the existence of empathy, logic.

That is not to say I think countries are wrong to prioritize their own people,

But to actively prey on, disregard any rights of 'other countries, comes off as monstrous.

My beliefs are driven by public records, facts, science, accounts, observation, logic, reason, as well as personal experiences.

Also reasons underlying and forgotten.

Though putting all these driving reasons together into a convincing document, is difficult without time and great effort.

I can speak casually about it,

But my casual talk will not be convincing, I think.

Casually,

I don't see God/s, the supernatural, evidence of anything after, or come from the after.

I see writings corrupted by individuals, time, and space.

Facts and claims that don't 'all stand up with time.

Of my claim of life coming from material and chance,

Science has records of life forms time way back,

Geography of tectonic plates and continents movements,

Higher than Heaven, one finds space, and the void.

Deeper than Hell, a molten core.

Though I use the phrasings Heaven and Hell to speak of shallow pop culture understandings, as they relate to religion.

Of morality, my view is tied to Nihilism, Existentialism.

"I consider evil an entirely human artifact- there's no evidence of such corruption in the natural world."