Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Categories
- All Categories 13.8K
- General Category 10.9K
- General Announcements 184
- Faith Issues 3.4K
- Coptic Orthodox Church 2.5K
- Personal Issues 1.4K
- Prayer Requests 423
- Random Issues 1.8K
- Introductions 294
- Non-Orthodox Inquiries 232
- Youth Corner 606
- Hymns 2.5K
- Hymns Discussion 2.5K
- Technicial Difficulties 368
- Technical Topics 368
Atheists Ramp Up Attack
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/13/9420141-atheists-ramp-up-message-for-the-holidays-humbug
This article demonstrates the growing atheist attack on Christendom. The recent years have shown an increase in literature and popular documentaries that attack the faith. It is time for us as a people to stand up and put our faith first, to stand up and act like Christians. Need I remind you of our history? The parabalani who defended Christians in Egypt. Our patriarchs who spoke boldly against heretics and jews. One of the greatest saints in the church, St Cyril, who removed the jews from Egypt and solidified Christianity in Egypt. We have become too liberal, I hear this excuse that what I say is "offensive" or not spoken in love. Allowing the faith to be trampled upon is a greater offense than saving someones precious feelings.
Keep in mind my book response to scientific atheism is available for free via email. If you wish to have a paperback copy, it is available on lulu.com and amazon.com just pm me your email.
This article demonstrates the growing atheist attack on Christendom. The recent years have shown an increase in literature and popular documentaries that attack the faith. It is time for us as a people to stand up and put our faith first, to stand up and act like Christians. Need I remind you of our history? The parabalani who defended Christians in Egypt. Our patriarchs who spoke boldly against heretics and jews. One of the greatest saints in the church, St Cyril, who removed the jews from Egypt and solidified Christianity in Egypt. We have become too liberal, I hear this excuse that what I say is "offensive" or not spoken in love. Allowing the faith to be trampled upon is a greater offense than saving someones precious feelings.
Keep in mind my book response to scientific atheism is available for free via email. If you wish to have a paperback copy, it is available on lulu.com and amazon.com just pm me your email.
Comments
All I can say is that when people resort to this level, you know something is wrong. They must trash Christianity to promote their Atheism because there is nothing appealing about Atheism in itself.
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
"The fool said in his heart there is no God." -King David, Psalm 14
We as Christians should not use their same mentality--meaning that we should not "trash" Atheism but take them in by love. I remember I had this friend years ago who was an atheist. She was confused and did not know where to go...all I told her was that there is a God and that Jesus loves her. That's all I ever said to her. A couple of weeks later she told me: "You are right. Jesus does love me."
I am not saying I converted her, and she moved the following year so I do not know what happened to her, but I know that if I had ever attacked her beliefs, she would have turned away from thinking about Christianity. Just as I can never think about Atheism because of their level as seen in the article.
God is love and please forgive me.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/13/9420141-atheists-ramp-up-message-for-the-holidays-humbug
This article demonstrates the growing atheist attack on Christendom. The recent years have shown an increase in literature and popular documentaries that attack the faith. It is time for us as a people to stand up and put our faith first, to stand up and act like Christians. Need I remind you of our history? The parabalani who defended Christians in Egypt. Our patriarchs who spoke boldly against heretics and jews. One of the greatest saints in the church, St Cyril, who removed the jews from Egypt and solidified Christianity in Egypt. We have become too liberal, I hear this excuse that what I say is "offensive" or not spoken in love. Allowing the faith to be trampled upon is a greater offense than saving someones precious feelings.
Keep in mind my book response to scientific atheism is available for free via email. If you wish to have a paperback copy, it is available on lulu.com and amazon.com just pm me your email.
The parabalani were heretics. They were also secular social workers and had nothing to do with the Church - their organization was led by the governors of the nominal Christian states in which they worked, and not by the Church.
[quote author=Ioannes link=topic=12687.msg149014#msg149014 date=1323818656]
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/13/9420141-atheists-ramp-up-message-for-the-holidays-humbug
This article demonstrates the growing atheist attack on Christendom. The recent years have shown an increase in literature and popular documentaries that attack the faith. It is time for us as a people to stand up and put our faith first, to stand up and act like Christians. Need I remind you of our history? The parabalani who defended Christians in Egypt. Our patriarchs who spoke boldly against heretics and jews. One of the greatest saints in the church, St Cyril, who removed the jews from Egypt and solidified Christianity in Egypt. We have become too liberal, I hear this excuse that what I say is "offensive" or not spoken in love. Allowing the faith to be trampled upon is a greater offense than saving someones precious feelings.
Keep in mind my book response to scientific atheism is available for free via email. If you wish to have a paperback copy, it is available on lulu.com and amazon.com just pm me your email.
The parabalani were heretics. They were also secular social workers and had nothing to do with the Church - their organization was led by the governors of the nominal Christian states in which they worked, and not by the Church.
The parabalani were not heretics, they were an independent group of clergy who mainly protected the patriarch, but other Christians as well. Give me your source that shows they were heretics.
We should be vocal towards atheists. They attack Christianity out of an insecurity. They say they believe no God, but attack Him anyways. We need to give a response to them and not be afraid to engage them, we cannot let them destroy the faith of unsuspecting and weaker individuals. I could care less for anyones "feelings" and just because what we say might seem harsh, does not mean it is not loving. I won't sugar coat truth, especially when certain atheists (Brian Flemming) deceive people into denial of the Holy Spirit by blatant lies.
Sorry I know this doesn't really belong here, but going along with the whole atheist concept, how do Christians explain vestigial organs? I was asked this before but all I could think of is that some of the functions of our body was lost because of the fall of man, just as the serpent lost the function of his legs and must now slither on his belly.
Can you please help? Thanks.
PeterA is correct. There is not always an answer for every question. Notice that we Orthodox embrace this humbly. The scientific atheists however seem to be able to explain everything.
Thank you so much.
ReturnOrthodoxy
Vestigial organs: it's a misnomer as most of them have some function(s) during the individual's life. Instead of this notion of a 'common ancestor', easily and rightly switch it to a common Designer one.
GBU
Ioannes is right, for ex. if you notice that someone is pushing another person at the edge of a dangerous pit that both could fall in, wouldn't you at least shout to warn them? They might be upset now, but later on they will understand and appreciate your protective action.
Vestigial organs: it's a misnomer as most of them have some function(s) during the individual's life. Instead of this notion of a 'common ancestor', easily and rightly switch it to a common Designer one.
GBU
Good one. I think there are too many passive people in the Coptic church. I am not saying we should go look for fights, I am saying we defend our beloved church as we defend it when someone physically attacks it.
1 Peter 3:14-16 (NKJV)
14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.”
15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;
16 having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.
GBU
GBU
Atheism is not necessarily a claim to knowledge nor a positive belief, in most cases its a rejection of a statement i.e. a non-belief. So you can't really disprove a non-belief -that doesn't make sense- what you want to do is present really good reasons for the claim that 'god exists' in order to convince them/us. I'm an atheist and I've yet to find a good reason to believe that a god exists, but I'm open to evidence and rational arguments :)
Evidence. For instance in science, if the evidence strongly infers the existence of, then it is accepted as the most probable.
There is certainly evidence for the existence of Christ. First, we look at the non-Christian sources for evidence that at the very least infers His existence. Then we can move into the Christian sources. Not many scholars, that I know of, deny the existence of Christ. Proving He is God is a matter of faith. However we can use a bit of logic to come to a sound conclusion. What was the motivation of Christ? What is the motivation for the Gospel writers? Were they lying? If we make a comparison to our modern day with those who have claimed to be God, we make a fairly stunning discovery. Anyone who has claimed to be God has done so for some type of gain or personal hidden agenda. Yet Christ and his followers gained nothing, in terms of worldly value. They lived meager and persecuted existences, and most of them martyred.
Unless we have a massive conspiracy, which is highly improbable. The reason this is improbable is simply because there is no collusion between the Gospel writers. This is very important. Detectives look for this in peoples stories to find out who is lying. They know that when several peoples story are exactly the same, that they at some point got together and hammered out a story. This is not so in the Gospels, which shows that each one wrote according to what they saw and how they perceived things. So the question is, why would a man claim to be God, gain literally nothing but torture and death? Was this man just crazy? Well, if Christ was just a crazy man, then why is there no record of this? Even the talmud attempts to explain Christ, it does not deny Him, and it does not simply write Him off. The talmud tries to explain away Christ as some magician. Even Mara Bar Sarapion, a jewish stoic, attests to Christ as being "very wise". How many crazy people are wise? There certainly are crazy people that are intelligent, but wisdom is the practical application of knowledge, its not just being intelligent.
If there was some sort of conspiracy, there would be some written evidence for this. The critics of Christ and Christianity surely would have pointed this out, yet none of them do. So the question is, if Christ is "just a man" what was his purpose? Sane people do not claim to be God, and when people DO claim to be God, we see a clear pattern of personal gain along with this. From Roman emperors to David Koresh, why would Christ be the only one to differ? Why do the jews explain Christ as a "magician" and not as a crazy person? Clearly to demean Christ and His miracles, for other jews who may be leaning towards this new "cult" and have been witness to the workings of Christ, this would be a logical way to explain Christ. Had Christ been a crazy, I am sure the talmud would have pointed this out. Had Christ been motivated by worldly gain, he would have become a Pharisee for sure, instead of going against them which garnered Him quite a bit of angst.
For more, check out my book "Reasonable Christianity: A Response to Scientific Atheism" on Amazon.com
And this is the kicker, why should an atheist, a non believer, someone who does not presuppose the validity of christianity just decide to take this religious claim on faith? or anything, rather? In fact its really difficult to. And I think this is where Joshua (and i think many people) mistake a reasonable standard of evidence for stubbornness.
While there may be good evidence to suggest that Jesus did exist and he was a wise teacher, this doesn't support the miracle claims written of Jesus in the bible. There aren't any contemporary sources that attested to any of his miracles. Even so, those sorts of claims require some kind observation not just people writing about them, at least for it to be convincing to people who require more than just text to be convinced of miracles.
I often see atheists being rather stubborn as well. Whenever a contemporary source does claim a miracle, it brushed off as invalidated, without a real effort to see that this is the case. One atheist I know even went as far as to say that believing in God is arrogant (his claim was that belief in God undermined our awe and perception of the universe around us. To me, if anything, this should strengthen one's belief in God).
The key is that the search must be for God. "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13). When a non-believer's the search is for something else, this what results in him being dumbfounded at the unrelenting faith of others.
"And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart", When a non-believer's the search is for something else, this what results in him being dumbfounded at the unrelenting faith of others."
I along with many non-believers are ex-believers because we've done just that and have not encountered God. Just FYI.
There is nothing and no-one more real than God. I am more sure of His presence and care than any other fact or reality. This is so for all others who have the gift of faith.
God will give this gift of His presence, but it is not cheap. If you are not willing to pay the cost then you will not receive the Pearl of Great Price.
With all due respect, I disagree. I have, on multiple occasions.
And if you want to argue that this desire and seeking are necessary preconditions to discover God, well it is clear that this is demonstrably false.
Three types of claimants (falsely):
1. The arrogant
2. The relayer of doom on God for misfortunes that have happened in a given life
3. The immoral; who thinks if he subtracts God, he will have an easy with with his immorality.
These fake claimants to Atheism are angry not with the believers, but with themselves. Their mind and mouth are at war with their heart and soul.
The heart and soul know exactly Who created them and the real Presence of God.
The truth be said: you did not seek God; you wanted God to do what you wanted Him to do. You want God to be a 'toy' for you.
Atheism is the non belief of God. Thats all.
"The truth be said: you did not seek God; you wanted God to do what you wanted Him to do. You want God to be a 'toy' for you."
More rubbish. I tell you I truly desired to seek God, and you tell me I didn't. And on top of that, you assert that your response is the truth of the matter. This is arrogance and irrationality at its finest.
"These fake claimants to Atheism are angry not with the believers, but with themselves. Their mind and mouth are at war with their heart and soul.
The heart and soul know exactly Who created them and the real Presence of God"
And I put it to you, unless you can demonstrate that a soul actually exists, you've just made a bare assertion.
Don't blame God.
Go look in a mirror.
I suspect you fit into all three categories by the way you talk and post.
I don't have to prove anything. Judgment Day will reveal everything.
I am placing my hope and bet on that Day.
I think you are placing your hopes on the worms and maggots that will eat the dead body of all human beings.
I'm not going to try to convince you of anything. God will do just fine on His Own.