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strong theism is as absurd as strong atheism

it hasn't been proven to me yet, but I hope your right

>>944943580
You don't believe in our Lord and saviour anon? I feel sorry for you. Just look at the trees!

>>944943668
Yes, let us all look at trees O_O

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>>944943668
I think you are being insincere. You are likely an atheist and this is a false flag troll thread.

I have actually tried to talk and listen to trees.

What qualifies as objective proof for you that God exists, let alone Jesus Christ?

>>944943696
have you actually tried looking at a tree -.-

>>944943668
>>944943696
samefag

>>944943668
faith isn't blind belief

I'm still working on cultivating my own philosophy/theology

THE STRONGEST CASE AGAINST CHRISTIANITY
1. The Problem of Hiddenness

If Christianity is true, God wants a relationship with everyone, and salvation is the most important thing imaginable.
But the world is full of:

sincere seekers who never encounter Christianity, or
people who encounter it but find it unconvincing despite being open to God, or
people of other religions who genuinely feel divine presence elsewhere.

A perfectly loving being wanting no one to be lost should not allow non-resistant non-belief, yet such non-belief exists.
This is arguably the strongest philosophical argument against Christian theism.

2. The Problem of Evil

The tension:

God is omnipotent.
God is loving.
Evil is extreme, horrifying, and appears unnecessary (child suffering, natural disasters, parasitic diseases, etc.).

The standard Christian answers (“free will,” “mysterious plan,” “soul-making”) struggle when applied to:
natural evil predating humans,
unnecessary or pointless suffering,
the sheer scale of global cruelty.

A loving, all-powerful God could create a world with free will and far less horrific suffering.

3. Historical Issues in the Gospels

Even many Christian scholars agree:
The Gospels were written decades after Jesus by anonymous authors.
They sometimes contradict each other (genealogies, resurrection accounts, birth narratives).
The miraculous claims cannot be independently verified.
The earliest Gospel (Mark) lacks the virgin birth and has disputed endings.
The Gospel of John differs radically in style, theology, and chronology.
This weakens the argument that the New Testament is reliable historical documentation.

4. Lack of Contemporary Evidence for Key Events

For events as dramatic as:

a darkness covering the whole land for hours,
graves opening,
the resurrected Jesus appearing to crowds,
no Roman, Greek, or Jewish contemporary records mention any of this.

In a region crawling with historians and bureaucrats, this silence is suspicious.

5. The Resurrection as an Explanatory Model

The resurrection is the core Christian claim, but alternative explanations exist:

legendary development over decades,
visions or spiritual experiences interpreted literally,
cognitive dissonance after Jesus’ death,
theological creativity in a Jewish apocalyptic context.

Furthermore, dying-and-rising god motifs, while not identical, were common in the ancient Mediterranean.
Christianity might be unique in some aspects, but uniqueness alone doesn’t imply truth.

6. Internal Doctrinal Tensions
Even within Christianity, the doctrines have major philosophical problems:

A. The Trinity
The claim that God is one essence and three persons is logically difficult. Most explanations either:
collapse into tritheism (three gods),
modalism (one god wearing masks), or
incoherence (affirming contradictory properties).
B. Original Sin
The morality of punishing all humanity for a single ancestor’s mistake — even symbolically — is questionable.
C. Atonement
Why would an all-powerful God need blood sacrifice or the death of His own son to forgive?
Humans can forgive without requiring someone to die.
D. Hell
Eternal conscious torment for finite sins is morally indefensible.
And if God ultimately loses some souls forever, then God is not omnipotent in any meaningful moral sense.

7. Christianity’s Changing Doctrines

Across history, Christians have disagreed radically about:

salvation,
scripture,
morality,
church authority,
the nature of God.

If the Holy Spirit guides the church into all truth, the sheer fragmentation and evolution of doctrine is hard to explain.

8. Alternative Explanations for Religious Experience

People across all religions report:

profound encounters,
mystical states,
answered prayers,
presence of divine love.

If Christian experiences prove Christianity, then Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, and pagan experiences prove their religions too.
But they contradict each other.

A more parsimonious explanation: religious experience is a universal human phenomenon, not exclusive revelation.

THE SUMMARY IN ONE SENTENCE

Christianity makes bold historical and metaphysical claims that lack sufficient evidence, rely on documents with contradictions and legendary development, struggle with philosophical coherence (the Trinity, Hell, evil), and must explain religious diversity, divine hiddenness, and widespread sincere nonbelief — all of which are easier to explain under non-Christian models.

THE STEELMANNED CHRISTIAN RESPONSE
1. Response to the Problem of Hiddenness

Christian claim:
God is not trying to produce mere belief but transformative relationship.
If God revealed Himself with undeniable, overwhelming power:

people might assent but not freely love
relationship would be coerced by fear or awe
spiritual maturity would be impossible

So God hides just enough for freedom to remain intact.
He gives:

conscience
moral awareness
beauty
longing
rationality
the historical witness of Jesus

For Christianity, God reveals Himself sufficiently for seekers, but not coercively for the unwilling.
And many Christians argue:
Nonresistant nonbelief is rare — nearly everyone who sincerely seeks eventually encounters God in some form.

2. Response to the Problem of Evil

The strongest Christian theodicy blends two ideas:

A. A world with moral and spiritual growth requires genuine risk
Courage, compassion, forgiveness, love, and sacrifice only have meaning in a world where suffering is possible.

B. God permits only what can ultimately heal

In the Christian framework:

evil is permitted, not willed
the story is not finished
every tear will be wiped away
every instance of suffering will be redeemed, not trivialized

From this perspective:

Evil is real, horrific, and not minimized — but God uses even the darkest events to produce eternal goods that could not exist otherwise.
This is especially powerful in Christian Universalism, where God eventually heals all beings.

3. Response to Gospel Reliability Issues

Historical-critical Christian scholars argue:

Discrepancies reflect ancient biography conventions, not fabrication
The core narrative (Jesus’ ministry, crucifixion, resurrection experiences) is multiply attested
The early church had strong oral traditions preserving core teachings
Differences between Gospels show independence, not collusion
The resurrection narratives are “too embarrassing” and counterproductive to be inventions (e.g., women witnesses)

Most importantly:

Christianity doesn’t rest on inerrancy, but on the resurrection event itself, which they argue is supported by:

early creeds (1 Cor 15) dated within years of the crucifixion,
multiple independent witnesses,
transformation of disciples,
the explosive growth of the church under persecution.

4. Response to Lack of External Records

Christians counter:

Most ancient events have no contemporary records
Roman historians wrote about Judea rarely
Darkness, earthquakes, and tombs opening would have been localized and not necessarily recorded
The absence of evidence in sparse records is not evidence of absence

And more importantly:
Christianity does not claim the resurrection was a public spectacle seen by everyone, but a controlled revelation to specific disciples — which fits God’s pattern of relational rather than coercive revelation.

5. Response to Alternative Explanations for the Resurrection

The Christian steelman argues:

Hallucinations do not occur in groups
Jews were not expecting an individual resurrection before the end of time; this is the wrong kind of “myth”
Legend development requires generations, not a few years
The earliest disciples were willing to die for this claim, which is unlikely if they knew it was false
Competing hypotheses (hallucination, theft, legend) fail to explain the total transformation of a terrified, scattered group into fearless missionaries

The Christian position is that the resurrection best explains the data.

6. Response to Internal Doctrinal Tensions
A. The Trinity
The steelman argument:
God is one Being but three Persons, where “Person” does NOT mean “individual human-like consciousness.”
Rather:

The Father is the source,
The Son is the expression,
The Spirit is the shared love/energy/process between them.

This is not logical contradiction but metaphysical complexity, similar to how:

space-time is one fabric but has multiple dimensions
a human mind can have multiple faculties
quantum entities can appear particle/wave depending on perspective

Mystery is not contradiction.

B. Original Sin
The strongest argument reframes it:
Original sin is not inherited guilt
It is inherited brokenness, like trauma passed through generations
Humans are born into a disordered world and inevitably participate in that disorder

It is less about “punishment” and more about:
We are wounded and need healing. Jesus is the physician.

C. Atonement
Sophisticated Christian theologians reject crude “divine child abuse” interpretations. They say:
God does not need blood to forgive
The cross is God entering into the darkest human reality
Jesus suffers with us and for us
The resurrection is the defeat of death and evil

The cross is not a requirement for God — it is the path by which God heals humanity by taking on human brokenness.

D. Hell
The strongest Christian responses:
Hell is self-chosen separation from God, not externally imposed torture
Hell is purgative, not punitive (for Universalists)
God never stops loving, never stops pursuing

Under Christian Universalism:
Hell becomes a temporary state
All beings eventually return to God
Justice and mercy ultimately converge

This avoids the moral contradiction of eternal torture.

7. Response to Doctrinal Fragmentation

Christians argue:
Human communities are messy and fallible
Diversity of interpretations shows the richness of the tradition, not its falsity
The core beliefs (Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, divinity) have remained unchanged for 2000 years
Disagreements on secondary matters do not undermine the central truth-claims

Comparisons:
Physics has disagreement (string theory vs loop quantum gravity) but that doesn’t mean reality is incoherent
Christianity is exploring an infinite God — disagreement is expected

8. Response to Religious Experience Diversity

Christians argue:
All humans experience the divine because all humans are created in God’s image
Other religions grasp partial truths
Christianity is the “culmination,” not the negation, of universal spiritual experience
Jesus is the fullness of revelation, others are preparations

Alternatively:
Christian Universalists argue that Christ works within all religions, even if implicitly, drawing every soul toward divine love.

THE CHRISTIAN STEELMAN IN ONE SENTENCE
Christianity claims God manifests His love and presence in ways that maintain human freedom, allows suffering only because it produces eternal goods, revealed Himself decisively in Jesus whose resurrection best explains the historical data, addresses human brokenness through transformative union with divine love, and ultimately intends to heal and reconcile all things.

>>944944777
get: trips

Your fortune: Excellent Luck

>>944943498
There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of God

>>944943498
reminder that I fucked ops mom

>>944943498
Remind me to fuck the Holy Spirit up the ass
Fuck the Holy Spirit up the ass Christ shit
Fuck Jesus up the ass
Fuck your stupid retarded religion up the ass with a thousand fucking cocks