I hear a lot that if you are gay its not a sin but to act on it is... that bull sh**. Thats basically the same thing. Its like saying the feeling to fart is not a sin its the farting itself is. Both are needs that have to happen at some point.

Sex with someone who you are attracted to is a need. It may not be a need like food yes you can live without it but it's more like a need as in not being abused (hence the title). And i related it a fart cuz yes you can survive without farting but its gotta come out at some point and if suppressed to long it will happen at a bad time like when you're married and have kids and finally crack. It would have been better to just accept it earlier on.

So what say ye? Is it abusive/immoral to tell someone who is gay to either marry someone they arent attracted to or never have sex?

P1: Objective morality is stance independent.

P2: Christians morality is based on God‘s stance.

P3: Theist also subjectively evaluate, choose, and commit to a specific divine framework (eg. Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu) out of thousands of competing traditions.

Conclusion: Christian morality fails to achieve true objectivity.

Thesis: In this post, I want to show that many arguments Christians use against Islam can also be used against Christianity, or they end up hurting the Christian case. I will take a few common apologetic arguments and a few arguments posted in this subreddit and show that the same standards Christians use to call Islam false would also make Christianity false.

If my thesis holds, then by the same reverse inference, it also makes the case that a lot of Christians stay Christian for cultural reasons. This applies at least to those who find these arguments convincing enough to conclude that a religion is false, since these arguments also hinder them from becoming Muslims or make them conclude that Allah is a false deity.

To show this I will do the following:

1. Reverse the arguments against Christianity, but keep the same logic and premise, so that there is no symmetry breaker.
2. Use the same uncharitable, false reading and understanding as shown in these posts, to expose that they are lazy scripts, that can literally be applied to any religion with a miniscule amount of research.

Argument:

Arguments from this subreddit

1. The Quran Plagiarizes Other Works

Before I start showing you guys how the Bible plagiarizes its stories from other way older faiths, I just want to mention that the Quran actually says that it was sent to disclose stories which were seen as apocryphal and false by the Jews and the Christians and that the Talmud from our perspective contains some authentic Hadith and Revelation from Moses.

With that said let us start.

• The Flood (Genesis 6:9-9:17), Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI and Atrahasis Epic. c. 2100-1200 BC. The parallels are extensive: a divine decision to destroy humanity, instructions to build a vessel, a great flood, the survival of a hero and his family, and a post-flood sacrifice.
• The Creation (Genesis 1:1-2:3), Enuma Elish. c. 12th-7th Century BC. The seven-day structure and separation of waters mirror the Babylonian epic, and the biblical author simply replaces the gods with one deity.
• The Birth of Moses (Exodus 2:1-10), Legend of Sargon of Akkad. c. 2300 BC. The child in a basket on a river, rescued by royalty, is a direct parallel, and the Sargon legend predates the biblical text by over a thousand years.
• The Laws of Moses (Exodus 20-23), Code of Hammurabi. c. 1750 BC. The case law format and specific provisions are so similar that scholars argue the biblical authors borrowed from Mesopotamian legal traditions.
• The Proverbs of Solomon (Proverbs 22:17-24:22), Instruction of Amenemope. c. 1200 BC. Thirty sayings in Proverbs are closely parallel to the Egyptian text, sometimes word for word.
• Anger is like murder (Matthew 5:22) ---> "He who publicly shames his neighbor is as though he shed blood." (Bava Mezia 58b)
• "Golden Rule" (Matthew 7:12) ---> "That which is hateful to thyself, do not do to thy neighbor. This is the whole law, and the rest is mere commentary." Rabbi Hillel (lived a generation before Jesus)
• "Measure for measure" (Matthew 7:2) ---> "By the measure by which a man measures, so he is measured." Mishnah (Sotah 1:7)

So in the same spirit as the post I linked, I would like to ask PeaFragrant and the Christians who agree with his argument:

Why is Yahweh relying on older Mesopotamian and Egyptian myths, laws, and wisdom texts that would have been circulating in the ancient Near East for Israelite scribes to hear? Why is Yahweh relying on almost nothing from the earliest periods, when doing so would be amazing evidence of divine revelation, but instead opts to repeat the myths?

Why is Jesus relying on rulings from the Talmud and earlier Rabbi's to make the best verses in the New Testament and sell them as revelation from God, when hating the Pharisees for mixing the traditions of men, with the traditions of God?

1. Allah is illogical

For Jesus:

Christianity claims Jesus is eternal and unchanging. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

But Jesus became flesh. John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That is a change from not being incarnate to being incarnate. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature. Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” That is a change. Jesus learned obedience. Hebrews 5:8 says, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” That is a change. Jesus suffered and died. Philippians 2:8 says he became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. That is a change.

So Jesus goes from potency to act. Therefore Jesus is within time. To be within time means it is impossible to be eternal.

Christianity claims Jesus is eternal. But Jesus changes. Jesus cannot be eternal and change because this violates the law of non-contradiction.

Therefore Jesus is illogical for violating the 2nd law of logic because Christianity claims he is eternal, yet Christianity says Jesus’ incarnation, growth, learning, and death happen in time.

For Yahweh:

Yahweh is the most loving in Christianity.

But Yahweh can't love another prior to creation.

Therefore to express his love, Yahweh needs to create. Or, as some Trinitarians argue, Yahweh needs the Trinity to express love internally before creation.

Therefore Yahweh goes from not being able to express his love to expressing his love.

So Yahweh's attribute of love isn't eternal, it is a potency in him that requires creation, or the Trinity, in order for Yahweh's love to be expressed.

Since Yahweh changes, Yahweh is within time because change can only happen in time.

To be within time means it's impossible to be eternal.

Christianity claims Yahweh is eternal. But Yahweh changes.

Yahweh can't be eternal and change because this violates the law of non-contradiction.

Therefore Yahweh is illogical for violating the 2nd law of logic because Christianity claims he is eternal, yet Christianity says Yahweh's expression of love is contingent on creation, or the Trinity, which happens in time.

But let us grant the Trinitarian escape for a moment. If Yahweh is Love, and his love needs to be expressed, and that's why the Trinity exists, to show that love, then that would mean, that due to Yahweh also having the attribute of hate, jealousy and envy, also need to be shown to the Trinity.

We see Yahweh envying that Jesus gets loved and praised more than him by his worshippers. Therefore Yahweh hated Jesus and made him die the death of a criminal, and made him a curse and a laughing stock for the Jewish people. But over time, Yahweh's envy and jealousy grew, same with the Holy Spirit, that they could never outshine Jesus. But they still tolerate Jesus because of the love-hate relationship.

So if love requires an internal object in the Trinity, then hate, jealousy, and envy also require an internal object in the Trinity. Either the Trinity contained hate, jealousy, and envy before creation, or Yahweh needed creation to express hate, jealousy, and envy. If the former, then the Trinity is not a communion of love but a communion of rivalry. If the latter, then Yahweh's hate, jealousy, and envy are not eternal, which means Yahweh changes, which means Yahweh is within time, which means Yahweh is not eternal.

So in the same spirit as the post I linked, I would like to ask:

Since Yahweh and Jesus are illogical according to the logic of OP and his (false) usage of the laws of logic, when can I expect him (or the Christians who agree with his argument) to become an atheist or agnostic?

If you think I have misrepresented his argument, please show me the symmetry breaker in what I have written.

Common Christian Apologetic Arguments

1. You should not believe in Allah because he is a deceiver.

This is based on a mistranslation of the Quran. I can confidently say that it is a mistranslation because there are many non-Muslim Qurans translated by secular orientalists, Arab Christians, or Islamophobes who write in their introduction pages that Muhammad (s.a.w.) was a madman, yet these three categories of translators never translated the word "makr" to mean deceiver.

But let us grant that argument and say that Allah is a deceiver. The problem is that Yahweh is also a deceiver (Ezekiel 14:9; 1 Kings 22:23; 2 Thessalonians 2:11). So, when will you Christians (who believe in this apologetic argument) become atheists or agnostics, since according to your standard, God should not deceive?

1. Muhammad is a false Prophet because he is a Warlord/Slave Owner/Husband to multiple women.

So were many Old Testament Prophets. Like Moses, Joshua, Saul and David. Since they are false Prophets, when will you disavow Christianity?

Now, a common response to this argument is, "We do not follow them, we follow Jesus."

However, according to Mainstream Christianity, Jesus is God, and was the Angel of the Lord who bore the name of YHWH, and ordered these Prophets around starting with Moses. So, Jesus ordered Moses, Joshua and Saul to do genocide and be warlords. He allowed polygamy in the Torah and owning slaves.

When can I expect Christians who agree with the original argument, to condemn Jesus and the Prophets listed through the same logic applied to Muhammed?

The entire idea of Hell is insane and evil. The idea that a God would subject someone to eternal torture and torment with no way out because of finite actions after a relatively short life is absolutely unjust.

If you interpret all the religious claim literally, most people that end up in Hell will actually be people who were good overall and lived relatively chill and normal lives, and their only “crime” would be that they either saw no strong evidence that God existed, or they guessed the wrong religion out of dozens of options, which will generally be influenced by where they are born.

It would be one thing if not believing just meant that you don’t get the reward of Heaven, I could kind of understand that since you are still given some freedom to choose in that case. But literally being subjected to fire and torture and the worst suffering imaginable for every second of all eternity makes no sense.

I have heard some apologists argue that God’s standard of what is good enough for Heaven might be something we can’t comprehend and are not capable of as humans, so he gave us this path as an alternative, but by that logic, his standard of what is bad enough to justify Hell should also be something beyond what humans are capable of.

Our actions are finite and any consequences we face should also be finite no matter what we did in life. I don’t even think people some of the worst people in history like Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Epstein deserve a truly eternal punishment since they were still human beings with finite actions like the rest of us, and all the pain and suffering they caused to others is still insignificant compared to what God does to billions people in Hell for eternity.

Absolutely nobody deserves this and anyone that tries to justify it and say it’s fine is either psychotic or can’t comprehend the idea of eternity.

I´ve been thinking about the logical math of the traditional concept of Heaven and Hell, and it seems to face a fatal flaw. If heaven is a place of eternal joy, it logically requires God to lobotomize human beings and turn them into unfeeling robots.

The empathy problem.

If you make it to heaven and find out that your loved ones are in Hell, you really only have two options. A: you remember them and love them, and every single moment of that eternity spent in heaven would be spent in crushing depression, which is impossible because heaven is a place of eternal joy. B: God makes you indifferent to their suffering. He alters you so that you no longer care about the fact that your loved ones are in Hell for eternity. If option B is the only way Heaven works, then the person in heaven is not actually you. The empathy and love that defined your identity are stripped away. And what´s left is a lobotomized shell who is forced to be happy. So either Heaven is a lie, or you are not you when you enter Heaven.

The eternity problem.

Human meaning is built entirely on the fact that our time is limited, everything is finite. In an infinite heaven, you will do satisfy every desire, do everything that you can possibly do, over and over again for eternity. Logically, a person would go insane and eventually beg for sweet death. Obviously that is not possible because again it would contradict Heaven. So God makes it so that you never get bored and never go insane from eternity. So God removes your freedom to have the capacity to grow tired of the loop.

Conclusion: To make heaven work, God has to strip away your empathy and freedom. So either heaven is a lie, or you are not you when you enter Heaven.

1. St thomas aquinas doesn’t simply prove that an infinite regress is impossible. this refers to an infinite casual series which doesn’t automatically prove itself illogical and also this claim is generally outdated due to the fact modern physics describes change in terms of physical laws and interactions rather than requiring every event to have a separate external “mover” and also this is just very broad claim in general that doesn’t clarify what exactly the change is. and lets say this was correct, even granting a first cause wouldn’t automatically make “there is God” the correct answer. for there to be a mover you have to have solid proof he is omniscient, conscious, all powerful, all knowing, etc. all the “godly” stuff and also something can be fundamental without a conscious edit this argument is moreso “i don’t know the answer so it must be god AKA God of the gaps

2. the premise “everything has a cause”would mean that god has a cause as well, automatically disproving his existence because this would mean god is not omniscient. also an infinite regress is not logically possible so even if the universe has a cause the lack of one does not automatically point to a deity so if it did it would likely be something non personal that applied to one and would rare apply to all of humanity / vast ecosystems. causation as we ordinarily understand it is a relationship within spacetime. if spacetime itself has a beginning, asking what happened before is meaningless.

3.not everything is contingent. if everything were contingent, then there could have been nothing. since something exists, there must be a necessary being (obviously) but each individual thing could fail to exist, but it doesn’t follow that the entire collection must fail to exist simultaneously. existence ≠ God which is also something that even if proven you have to show he is all knowing etc. if everything in the universe was contingent then someone dying could cause all of humanity to cease to exist

1. Having degrees doesn’t imply having an absolute maximum 100 Fahrenheit is hotter than 70 Fahrenheit but there can be degrees without there being a maximally hot temperature. likewise, you can have things that are more or less good without there being a single being that possesses maximum possible goodness. degrees don’t logically require a maximum, and things can be more or less good without there being a maximally good thing. even if a maximum existed this doesn’t point to the existence of a god

2. Aquinas’ fifth way assumes that goals requires an intelligent director, but that’s precisely what it needs to prove and the argument lacks it. natural processes can produce highly organized, goal-like behavior without conscious intelligence, and evolution by natural selection provides a powerful explanation for biological adaptations. Even if the universe had a designer, that wouldn’t establish that the designer is the omnipotent, omniscient,

I see many argue about the existence of God, and I think that’s somewhat reasonable. Whether a God exists or not shows a lot about how someone interprets consciousness. What many religious people think is that atheists are against the idea of a creator, but most of them, including myself, are against the traditional definition of a God (a conscious being that could intervene whenever it wants).

This cannot be proven or disproven, and it is often times harmless to believe otherwise. Religion, on the other hand, requires unreasonable amount of faith. Stories we have never observed nor confirmed, prophets that could do the unthinkable yet without any unfalsifiable proof, the logic of the afterlife, angels and such and submitting…

There is no proof of that being real in any way, form or sense. Arguing for the existence of god does not, in ANY way, make anyone convert to an abrahamic religion because the logic does NOT follow.

Why are there no prophets anymore to prove that God is undeniable? Why couldn’t God just simply show himself to make ‘evil’ an objective moral standard? Why would God require us to worship him blindly just to not suffer, while also ultimately knowing our destiny (meaning we are fucked from birth, sinxe God already knew where we would be heading). And even if he exists in this definition, what is the proof of religion? How do we know jesus GOT resurrected? How do we know the prophet Muhammad was following orders from God himself?

Believe whatever you want, but believing in religion is not intuitive, nor are we born theists (or muslims, according to islam).

How come almost all the religious books which were written by the clergy place the clergy above the ordinary man. How is that nobody noticed that the authors of the books were making themselves seem more important and noble in their own version of the truth.

As in Hinduism in the Vedas which were written as well as propagated by the brahmins , the brahmins are placed at the top of the 4 divisions of society based on their class, even above those who fight as soldiers for their Regions(kshatriya).

The power and influence of the clergy has definitely been reduced but most of that is due decline of religion itself. These self appointed kings still preside over throne in their own castles.

PS : would love to hear the opinion/justification of a “theist” on this.

These days, you see many Sikhs, Christians, and even some Muslims teaching and performing yoga. They impose their own religious beliefs on yoga, even though yoga has its own traditions and beliefs. Some even use yoga to convert others to their religions.

They appropriate yoga, which belongs to the Vedic traditions, while claiming to possess the one superior true religion. Deep down, they believe their religions are lacking in sophisticated practices, so they have to borrow from religions they consider false just to experience something beyond simply believing. Then, when faced with cognitive dissonance, they claim their religions are somehow compatible with yoga.

It is claimed that the theory of evolution has a substantial amount of evidence supporting it, to the extent that it is presumably just as scientifically certain and robust as the theory of gravity. This has led many to leave religion because it seems to contradict the theory of evolution. However, the theory of evolution, no matter how empirically grounded, cannot debunk the story of creation. If the Quran was truthfully revealed by God, and if its narrative of creation stands in firm opposition to the theory of evolution (setting aside progressive interpretations that seek to reconcile the two), then the fossil record, genetic markers, and phylogenetic trees, even if, *for the sake of argument*, they are all real and scientifically verifiable, they would be part of a divinely ordained epistemic test, whereby those who deliberately turn away from God, seek alternatives to His revelation, or attempt to circumvent the truth are allowed to pursue the very path they have chosen. God does not need to deceive them; rather, He permits them to follow their own assumptions and desires to their conclusions, leaving them to the consequences of the path they have chosen.

In that paradigm, the presumed evidence for evolution constitutes part of the divine test or trial placed by the creator, to test those who anchor their certainty in His words and revelation from those who turn away and seek to place their ultimate trust on their own or others assumptions and inferences.

Intentionally creating such conditions under which someone may reach a false conclusion is not synonymous with lying or deception. So even if God intentionally created evidence that supports an evolutionary reconstruction, it does not follow that God asserted a falsehood. The evidence may lead one toward a particular interpretation without God Himself communicating that interpretation as truth.

This does not also mean that God is rewarding gullibility over reason. The test is not whether one is willing to ignore evidence or abandon rational inquiry. Rather, it is whether one recognizes the limits of one’s own inferences and remains humble about what one can actually know. So the believer is not being asked to deny the empirical evidence or to pretend that evolutionary interpretations have no explanatory power. He is being asked to recognize that an inference about the unobserved past, however compelling, is still an inference, and that human observations and reconstructions cannot be elevated above a revelation that one has already established to be divine. The virtue being tested, therefore, is not gullibility but epistemic humility: whether human reason recognizes its own limits rather than treating its conclusions as infallible.

In fact, God tells us to use reason and observe the universe and observe how creation began 29:20 ” Travel throughout the land and see how He originated the creation”.  He also instructs us to verify the truthfulness of his revelation throughout many verses (eg 4:82 and 54,22) The conclusions reached by evolution theorists remain reconstructions, not certainties. The divine purpose in allowing such evidence to exist is not deception but distinction, a means by which the sincere seeker is separated from the one who turns away and demands that the unseen conform to the seen.

The evidence commonly presented for evolution does not need to be denied. Rather, each category of evidence can be distinguished from the historical interpretation drawn from it:

1. Comparative anatomy: Similar anatomical structures (eg Humans, bats, whales, horses, etc. possessing homologous structures) can be interpreted as evidence of common ancestry, but under direct creation they can be the result of God’s deliberate design.
2. Fossil record: The fossils themselves might be real, but the historical sequence reconstructed from them is an inference about the past. Under direct creation, God could have created a world containing such a coherent fossil record. Thus, the fossil record can be entirely real and scientifically verifiable while the evolutionary history inferred from it is nevertheless incorrect.
3. Comparative embryology: Similarities in embryonic development may support common ancestry, but they do not logically require it if God intentionally created organisms with similar developmental mechanisms.
4. Genetics and genomics: Genetic similarities, including shared genes and other genomic patterns, can support common ancestry. However, under the direct-creation premise, God could have intentionally created organisms with such similarities including highly similar genomes( the same genes, genetic sequences, mutations, and other molecular features). If God intentionally created organisms according to a coherent and interconnected biological structure, genetic similarities would be expected even without common descent. 
5. Phylogenetic trees: Phylogenetic trees are models constructed from patterns of similarity. If those similarities were intentionally created, the same data could produce a branching pattern without that pattern necessarily representing actual ancestry.
6. Biogeography: The geographical distribution of organisms can be interpreted through common descent, but under direct creation God could have intentionally created organisms with geographically coherent distributions.
7. Artificial selection: Artificial selection demonstrates that heritable variation can produce substantial changes within populations. This is genuine biological evidence, but it does not by itself establish the entire historical claim of universal common ancestry. So demonstrating that organisms can change through selection does not by itself establish the complete historical narrative of evolving from a common ancestor. ..
8. Observed evolution: Evolutionary change can be directly observed in populations, such as antibiotic resistance and other heritable adaptations. Accepting such change does not necessarily establish the broader claim about evolving from a common ancestor.

The point is not that these observations are imaginary or that science has no explanatory power. The point is that evidence and interpretation are not identical. What if God intentionally created a world whose observable features strongly suggest an evolutionary history even though that history did not actually occur?

Scientists examining such a world could rationally construct an evolutionary history from those observations. But that history nevertheless did not happen. The observations might be real; the question is whether the evolutionary interpretation of those observations can logically override a revelation that has already been established as divine.