What are your reasons for believing whatever you may believe about Christianity?

[e-maxx]

tbh i kinda want to go to hell because i feel like heaven would have too many rules to follow all the time

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[Trogtor]

tbh i kinda want to go to hell because i feel like heaven would have too many rules to follow all the time

drinks are really expensive in hell tho man it ain't worth it

[Swholli]

Here's my take on it, and I'll do a point by point to the arguments in the OP.

-"Evolution is not supported by the fossil record."

I mean, this is really just a silly thing to say in general. A plethora of documentation exists detailing the exact specifics of why there absolutely are fossil records to support evolution. In fact, you don't even need to be atheist to believe in evolution. It's very possible to believe that God set in motion the system of evolution, though that would mean taking the holy book as metaphorical and not literal, but if he's a Christian Apologist, he might be willing to do that.

-"The intelligent design movement is based entirely on scientific evidence."

I can't either confirm or deny this, but I don't think this is an entirely off-base claim. I don't agree with the theory of intelligent design myself, but if the argument is just "it's based on scientific evidence" then, yeah, I'd assume it'd have to be in the modern world else it'd gain little to no traction as an actual possibility. So, cool.

-"The LGBT movement is not for marriage equality because they do not accept child enthusiasts marrying young teenage/pre-teenage kids. They have left those people out so far."

Ok here's where he says something really infuriating. It's a very tired brown townogy that many homophobic people make. Comparing homoloveuality to child enthusiasm, especially like this, is just a back-handed way to demean their lifestyle without outright say "ew, being gay is gross."

People who are homoloveual are just one way different from people who are heteroloveual and that is that they're attracted to people of the same love versus the opposite. It's really that simple and not some giant hedonistic conspiracy. child enthusiasts are not and never ever would be apart of the LGBT movement because what they are doing is unable to be considered consensual.

Being gay is completely respecting every party's autonomy and is uncomparable to child enthusiasm at all. The fact that homoloveuals even seek marriage is because of the legal benefits it grants them. Frankly most don't give a damn if a church will let them marry or not (there are Christian homoloveuals, though, so they're the ones who are gonna have to fight that) they only care that they can legally have a marriage contract so that they can spend their lives with their partners as any other couple would do.

-"The Crusades are not comparable to Islamic Terrorism because the Crusades are incompatible with Christian doctrine and teaching, while Islamic Terrorism is consistent with Islamic teaching and the example of the prophet Muhammad."

The crusades aren't comparable to Islamic Terrorism because they were a war over land and not a random, makeshift sprint for power via fear. However, the Bible has many ways to justify the crusades (at least the old testament) as clearly someone somewhere was able to justify those.

Religion is all about interpretation, and in the modern world it should be about focusing on the things that do the most good rather than everything it has to offer.

Just like people don't go around selling their daughters into slavery (Exodus 21:7) anymore, people of Islamic faith can choose to forget the more detrimental to society parts of the Quran.

-"The existence of evil is actually proof of God’s existence. Because evil exists, that means there is a transcendant standard upon which we can judge that something is good or evil. Otherwise, evil is relative and is just an opinion."

This is a very tired argument and one that is very flawed.

Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher, said this: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?"

If evil exists, then God created it. It's actually easier to believe that evil is a subjective motive of the free will of humans than it is to try and understand why an all-knowing God would choose to subject his world to such atrocities in the name of his "plan."

[Skig²]

I have been a Christian all my life and I think my main reason for constant faith is the seemingly unlimited amount of intricacy in our world. I seriously have no idea how the big bang theory and evolution make any sense at all. IMO, there is absolutely no way that the universe just accidently came into existence. Life didn't just happen. Even single-celled organisms have such complicated DNA  (just to name one piece of it) that no accident could've resulted in its creation.
Another reason (even though some people find contradictions or don't understand them) is the prophecies in the Bible that line up very well with historical facts and events. The prophet Isaiah even talks about the earth being a circle, which nobody had really recorded or considered as far as we know. There are also things like the great flood, which we can find evidence to form theories of how some of our surroundings were shaped by it. For example, the moon being marked up and having craters could be the result of water erupting out of the atmosphere. Sea fossils found in the middle of continents nowhere near the ocean does prove that the world was once covered by water. I also believe that Pangea may have existed. The great flood was supposed to have come partly from the ground when it "opened up". This could have been a separation of the continents.
Another thing, God supposedly gave us different languages and possibly altered our races in the Tower of Babel story. This for me is a sign that man didn't evolve from something else all across the world. But rather man was created and later tweaked by God to create our separate (although equal in almost every way) races.

I'm no scientist and most likely never will be. Those are just a few strong points of my faith that I wanted to share with you guys.

[Ipquarx]

There is simply no way that many christian beliefs that come straight from the bible such as creationism and geocentrism can exist, which leads me to believe that the rest of the bible is not to be trusted either. For example, there's the problem that light from 13 billion light years away would take, at minimum, 13 billion years to get here. That blows away the 6000 year figure, and there's absolutely no way to fix it. Literally any change in the known laws of physics and constants would lead to life not existing. That also debunks any "intelligent design" in the constants, because if it were any different we wouldn't exist at all and we wouldn't be here to discuss it. This is called a survivorship bias, you can only observe the one universe you're in, the one you're surviving in, all the other ones, if there are any, cannot be observed. The meter is also defined in terms of the speed of light, to be exact: 1 meter is the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

The bible was written by fallible men, just like you and me, with hundreds upon hundreds of different biases that could easily lead to any number of delusions. The simple fact is, there is no evidence for religion. It's unverifiable and unfalsifiable, and as Newton once said, if it can't be proven with evidence, it's not worth discussing.

[shitlord]

i was raised in a religious setting
i dont really have my faith anymore but i pray in times of need or for others

[Skig²]

For example, there's the problem that light from 13 billion light years away would take, at minimum, 13 billion years to get here. That blows away the 6000 year figure, and there's absolutely no way to fix it.

God created time and could have made that faraway light appear in an instant, without any intention of it ever reaching us. I'm not really on board with this one

[Ipquarx]

God created time and could have made that faraway light appear in an instant, without any intention of it ever reaching us. I'm not really on board with this one

What you've created is also known as the "5 minutes ago" theorem. It states that the entire universe, existing light and physical objects and memories all placed in your head 5 minutes ago. What you ate for breakfast? Just a memory placed in 5 minutes ago. Same with everything else. It's fundamentally equivalent to that, the only difference is the time span. You see how pointless it is? It's completely unprovable and not only that, holds absolutely no practical value. It's not even worth discussing in the first place.

[Skig²]

What you've created is also known as the "5 minutes ago" theorem. It states that the entire universe, existing light and physical objects and memories all placed in your head 5 minutes ago. What you ate for breakfast? Just a memory placed in 5 minutes ago. Same with everything else. It's fundamentally equivalent to that, the only difference is the time span. You see how pointless it is? It's completely unprovable and not only that, holds absolutely no practical value. It's not even worth discussing in the first place.

No, I don't remember saying anything close to this.

For example, there's the problem that light from 13 billion light years away would take, at minimum, 13 billion years to get here. That blows away the 6000 year figure

I'm not really understanding what you're saying here. Light was created on earth and throughout the universe. How does faraway light that isn't going to reach us mean anything? Are you saying that all light was created 13 billion light years away?

[Headcrab Zombie]

God created time and could have made that faraway light appear in an instant, without any intention of it ever reaching us. I'm not really on board with this one

You could also say that radiocarbon dating and fossils and all that stuff was made that way, that God made the earth to appear millions of years old. But then the question arises of "Why?" If God wants you to believe in him, why would he create ask these deliberation deceptions that counter the biblical claims? It's just desperate stuff claims people make to convince themselves that their beliefs aren't completely broken

No, I don't remember saying anything close to this.

It's called a comparison. What you stated is similar in concept

[shitlord]

what if the big bang was actually just a light that shined bright enough to bounce of all the stuff and create the known universe and the reason its expanding is cause the light is getting farther and farther away as it travels

[Skig²]

It's called a comparison. What you stated is similar in concept

No, he said,

What you've created is also known as the "5 minutes ago" theorem.

He didn't say "is similar to". He is saying that its the same thing as what I said.

[Kochieboy]

I mean, god can do whatever the hell he pleases, so if there is a god, he more than likely could've done all this stuff to get us here. I'm more of a Agnostic, but I still believe in the moral values that I was taught as a Christian.

[Ipquarx]

No, I don't remember saying anything close to this.

It's closer than you think. You seem to be saying that distant light was created instantly by a creator, along with Old Tjikko, the entire fossil record, and anything else scientifically proven to be more than 6000 years old. To test your faith, I suppose.

The exact same logic applies to the 5 minutes ago theorem. Everything was created, by the creator, 5 minutes ago. Memories in your head, light from distant galaxies placed near us, Old Tjikko and the fossil record and everything else placed there just to test your faith. The exact same logic applies, the only difference is how long ago it's supposedly made. The same exact properties apply as well, such as it being unverifiable. There is no way to prove that the universe was made 5 minutes ago, and there is no way to prove that the universe was made 6000 years ago. It's also unfalsifiable. Anything scientifically proven to be more than 5 minutes old can be hand-waved away by saying "Put there to test your faith" or "By the will of the creator." The purpose of it is to show that it's ultimately a pointless unprovable belief that's not worth discussing and has no practical value, which I am being a total hypocrit by discussing it in the first place.

And yes, it's been scientifically proven that the light is from 13 billion light years away. This is due to something called redshift. Basically how it works is as the universe expands as light travels through it, it causes the lights wavelength to get stretched out a tiny bit. Over 13 billion light years, it gets extremely redshifted, and you can calculate how far away it was (And hence how old it is) using how much it was redshifted from the original. You know what the original would have looked like because they use things with very predictable light output like quasars.

[Skig²]

It's closer than you think. You seem to be saying that distant light was created instantly by a creator, along with Old Tjikko, the entire fossil record, and anything else scientifically proven to be more than 6000 years old. To test your faith, I suppose.

The exact same logic applies to the 5 minutes ago theorem. Everything was created, by the creator, 5 minutes ago. Memories in your head, light from distant galaxies placed near us, Old Tjikko and the fossil record and everything else placed there just to test your faith. The exact same logic applies, the only difference is how long ago it's supposedly made. The same exact properties apply as well, such as it being unverifiable. There is no way to prove that the universe was made 5 minutes ago, and there is no way to prove that the universe was made 6000 years ago. It's also unfalsifiable. Anything scientifically proven to be more than 5 minutes old can be hand-waved away by saying "Put there to test your faith" or "By the will of the creator." The purpose of it is to show that it's ultimately a pointless unprovable belief that's not worth discussing and has no practical value, which I am being a total hypocrit by discussing it in the first place.

And yes, it's been scientifically proven that the light is from 13 billion light years away. This is due to something called redshift. Basically how it works is as the universe expands as light travels through it, it causes the lights wavelength to get stretched out a tiny bit. Over 13 billion light years, it gets extremely redshifted, and you can calculate how far away it was (And hence how old it is) using how much it was redshifted from the original. You know what the original would have looked like because they use things with very predictable light output like quasars.

I don't put all my trust in carbon dating. I have heard from numerous Christian scientists and some non that it is very unreliable. Any comebacks about how, "their opinion is biased because..." I don't really know how to answer, nor do I want to. You can fight bias with bias but it doesn't really get you anywhere. Yes, distant light, the fossil record, and old Tjikko were created. But I don't believe they are as old as people think.

I must say, you do seem to have a knack for science. I'm not looking to get into a heated argument or try to "convert" you. I'm just trying to have an intelligent discussion.