My most serious crisis of faith happened when I was 19 and started reading the Bible from a Calvinistic perspective. Nothing since, including a Ph.D philosophy education, has been so troublesome.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Christians who doubt
John Loftus has a nice roundup on Christians who've expressed their doubts in writing. It includes a book by a friend of John's which will hopefully come out soon. The comments thread also contains this gem from Vic Reppert:
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26 comments:
Yes, I though Vic's comment was insightful too. It just amazes me how many Calvinists are out here defending that belief system. it's morally bankrupt.
"Morally bankrupt"....
That coming from john loftus.
Well John, lets face it YOU are morally bankrupt. You got your ass handed to you by Frank Walton, Paul Mantana, J.P. Holding. I'd think the most honorable thing for you to do is prove there is no hell by killing yourself. To be honest, I won't shed a tear knowing you are in hell, because I revel in Gods perfect plan. Part of the plan of God and hell is as a soothing balmb to those of us who have been opressed by athiest scum such as yourselves. Knowing that justice has been done. And halq, I saw your picture in your profile, I can't tell wheter you are just in denial about losing your hair so early or if you are a professional Geddy Lee impersonator,but one things for sure YOU UGLY! I'll bet I could slap you to the floor with one swing. Wise up scumbag, there will come a day when Gods people will not tolerate your insolence toward Gods word. Someday we will bulldoze you and Loftus into a mass grave. Praise God!
"Part of the plan of God and hell is as a soothing balmb to those of us who have been opressed by athiest scum such as yourselves. Knowing that justice has been done."
A man employing the term "morally bankrupt" claims to take pleasure in the thought of sentient beings suffering eternally.
He also considers himself "oppressed", though if I attribute any rationality to him, I can only conclude that he has the wrong meaning in mind for this word. Oppressed by whom, Mark? Please tell of your long and heroic struggle against the bloggers and authors you are free to ignore, or better yet, reply to. (Do you "oppress" them in so replying?)
After opining about said "oppression", he reveals that, given the opportunity, he would violently cleanse the world of non-believers.
And as if a blatant falsehood, a presecution complex, and genocidal fantasies weren't enough, we are assured that Mark is pretty sure he could kick Chris's ass.
Is God proud of Mark? I shant insult God in this manner, lest it turns out he does exist.
Hey Tom,
The thing you fail to understand is we as Christians are at war, war with sin, war with Satan, war with the powers of evil. It's so very compfortable for you to sit around with your smug smirk on your face saying there is no God because you don't want to leave your life of sin, and at the same time trying very hard to DESTROY the faith of my brothers. Heaven and Hell may be inconsiquential to you but you will find you are wrong, probably too late. So what difference does it make if you are all wiped off the face of the earth if there is no God and we are all an accident?
God killed infidels in the Bible and made it quite clear that we are in a battle for souls. Just like Davids Mighty Men, we TRUE Christians must take up the mantle from those who have fallen.
Just wait till the United States becomes a CHRISTIAN nation again. We will get rid of public schools, put kids back in church schools the way it was at thye beggining of our nation. Abortion, Homosexuality,new-age mumbo jumbo, False Religions such as Mormons, Jehovahs witnesses, Catholics, Jews, Kawanza, Halloween, Satanic Music, will be all abolished when this nation once again becomes a Christian nation as it was intended. You just wait and see how we deal with filthy muslims then! And in the meantime God steps in every once in awhile like his sending Katrina to wipe out the filthy, debaucherous black communities who refused to repent. They mock God with "Fat Tuesday" a wild sin-fest right before Lent. Thay run around like monkeys, completely in sin, then when they were shipped to dallas, and places like that they made the crime rise considerably. If we were truly Christian we would go down there and shoot the rest of them. Praise God.
Holy crap! Maybe we should get rid of Christians if this is waht they really think. I'll bet you'd bring slavery back, you sound like a racist.
"God steps in every once in awhile like his sending Katrina to wipe out the filthy, debaucherous black communities who refused to repent...If we were truly Christian we would go down there and shoot the rest of them. "
This must be parody. I don't mean just this quote; the whole rant is precious. Thank you, Mark.
For the record, I'd reply if there were an argument to be found. I didn't realize just how batty Mark is when I posted the first comment.
Mark, and people like him, is/are at war all right...at war with sanity. At war with decency. At war with logic, reason, and humanity. This is the tyranny to which Jefferson swore "eternal enmity" and we would do well not to lose sight of what's at stake in the "culture war" in which we're all embroiled...
Sounds like Mark likes to smoke an occasional cock, I could be wrong though.
He's just trying to provoke you to get mad, and say horrible things back, in order to reinforce his perception of non-Christians as evil, and perhaps subhuman, so that he can reinforce his justification for treating us as subhuman.
Yes, I suspected as much. Don't worry, I'm not about to play that game.
Sorry, didn't like my typos. Let's try spell check this time lol.
Actually, the preceding comments are from an individual pretending to be me. This person has also done the same to Frank Walton. While I can be quite sarcastic in debate (John Loftus would know me as aikidoka on tweb) the above comments go very far beyond how I communicate.
It would be nice if people would actually bother to ask me about this first rather than assume that I would really say such things.
I think I like the fake Mark Sprengel better. The real one's a bit boring.
Mark,
Glad you found this to clear your name. I wondered if I might be looking at an impersonator, though my attempts to check IP addresses didn't yield any clear evidence of this.
I did comment that the earlier post "must be parody", though admittedly I meant it sarcastically.
"It would be nice if people would actually bother to ask me about this first rather than assume that I would really say such things."
I would be upset if this happened to me, too. But I for one can claim to have known nothing about you prior to this thread; although I did click on your blog, and was suprised to see it did not contain the sort of nuttiness found in the fake post, it would be odd indeed to expect people to contact strangers directly to ask if they really said what it seems they said.
Anyway, the anonymous shithead deserves condemnation from anyone who posts here, and you are owed an apology.
Tom, you said catholicism is false. Catholicism is Christianity too, so are you calling your own religion false?
Hallq,
FYI, the imposter's ip address is in Arizona with cox.net as the ISP. I'm near Chicago.
Tom,
I see your points. It's good though that you noticed the difference in tone from the imposter's comments and my blog. I can be quite sarcastic but I can't really tweak someone about their hair loss from what I see approaching in the mirror each day ;-)
If he keeps this up, I may make a link at the top of my blog with a post showing screen images of the fake's comments as well as the original messages where he threatened to do this very thing.
"Tom, you said catholicism is false. Catholicism is Christianity too, so are you calling your own religion false?"
Is this a spammer? What is he talking about?
"FYI, the imposter's ip address is in Arizona with cox.net as the ISP. I'm near Chicago."
Do you know that from past posts, or the present thread? I am in AZ, and Cox is my provider, and I assure you that I'm not the imposter in question.
I'm not sure how one even checks these things, and it might be a coincidence, but I thought it worth mentioning that you might be seeing the ISP from my posts.
Tom,
I can see the referring url and the ip address when someone visits my blog, as well as the ip address for specific comments so I can match them up.
I don't have any reason to think it's you, sorry if that was the implication. Of course everyone in Arizona are not suspects, I was just trying to give information to help Hallq and others distinguish between myself and this imposter.
Gotcha. I wasn't offended, and didn't see any pernicious implication; I was just trying to help out in straightening up (what I thought was) a potential factual error.
Regards,
Tom
P.S. Although I've never previously posted here, I do read every post, and I'm sad to see you go, Hallq.
Satan.
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