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Indeed, your materialistic view Nacho is that nothing intangible can exist: hope, love, trust, happiness...

And its just silly to say that if you believe in God then you're somehow more likely to fall prey to scams: unless of course you're just making up unsubstantiated statements to try to win the argument.

I believe my wife and children love me. I believe that God exists. All I have for proof of either is personal experience. You may think that a God is extraordinary but if God has decided to only show himself by that experience you would thus be impossible to convince. You are thus closed-minded.

Do you believe that a person who does good works and is societally seen as a good human being/humanitarian/philanthropist but is not a christian can get into heaven?

Yes, that may be the case, although I think what would matter would be if God sees them as good, rather than society. Clearly most Christians would expect various Old Testament characters to be in heaven too: Jacob, David, Daniel, Elijah, etc. although many of these men were hugely flawed characters. God provided a mechanism for the Israelites to achieve forgiveness and he provided a mechanism for Christians to be forgiven, too. Perhaps there are others. Perhaps he is merciful. I'm sure he judges each person on his merits. However, Christianity allows me to be judged on Jesus's merits rather than my own, and I know he was without sin, so that's way preferable for me and for anyone else.

Hey perhaps, like the story of Jonah and the story of the workers, God will be more merciful than any fundamentalist or even myself expect. But only through Jesus is it certain.

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You specifically meant that "Christians, and only Christians are forgiven".

Did I? I wonder, then, why you bother asking me any questions if you know what I mean without me actually saying it.

Probably you'll use your mind-reading powers to somehow interpret this as "Andrew loves terrorists" or something.

How you get that from "Christians are forgiven" I'm really not sure. You sure do love your extrapolation.

Yes, Andrew, you repeteadly said (not in this thread) that the message of the new testament is that "we are forgiven".

I can read, and I can remember.

Perhaps neither, as I was saying that Christians are forgiven.

I mean, for SSH if you are good you are saved, no matter if you believe or not

Can you read? I didn't say that.

Are you really going so far as to say that non-believers should be in fear of hellfire?

No, I said that believers don't. I have no idea what hell is like. Some say annihilation, some say separation from god, some say fire and brimstone, some say Milton Keynes. And I also believe that God is a god of mercy, but I also believe that believers don't need to worry about that.

SSH: It's abuse in the sense that tales of hellfire instill a horrible, real fear in children, while tales of melting pole caps .... doesn't.

The thing is, global warming REALLY SHOULD SCARE YOU.

My kids aren't in fear of hellfire. They're believers, so why should they worry about that?

And that' s another thing religion is. Feeling superior to the ones who do not believe the same things you do.

You must be religious, then, Nacho. Or at least very bad at conveying that you don't feel superior to people who believe things you call stupid.

An even better example: raising a child religiously is child abuse. Nobody would label their child as being liberal or conservative, or as being pro-life or pro-abortion.

Funnily enough, I bet most fetuses are anti-abortion. Perhaps they change their mind when they pass through a cervix.

I do not abuse my kids, KhrisMUC. I find it offensive that you say I do. I raise them, telling them what I believe to be true. Funny how you were complaining about double standards: if I tell my 4 year old to turn off lights to save the planet is that child abuse even though many people don't believe in global warming? If I tell them not to watch too much TV because I believe its bad even though studies are ambiguous on this, is that child abuse? You have your own double standards.

Your "evidences" are the experiences you had with God? Okay. I can testify that there is people who had experiences with things that you wouldn't consider as divine, and the result on them is indistinguishable from a "relgious experience". You don' t believe my word? Okay... I don't believe yours.

But, I do believe that people in other religions have had such experiences. I don't deny that there is also evidence against the Christian god and evidence for other gods. I am persuaded most by the evidence for a Christian god and so that's what I believe. You are persuaded most by atheist evidence and so that's what you believe.

You still haven't answered the point about the validity of your extrapolation. Its this avoidance of yours that makes your assertions look suspicious, not the fact that they differ from my experience.  Oh, and while we're on silly extrapolations:

You want me to accept your beliefs giving me the same level of evidences you would consider insufficient if coming from me.

THAT, is RELIGION.

So you've extrapolated from your debate with me to billions of people of every religion. Hmmm.

In my country bananas phones are provided to everyone whether they want them or not and the money for them comes out of my taxes. Taxes are theft, so the whole concept of banana phones proves that God is a communist.

You want me to accept your beliefs giving me the same level of evidences you would consider insufficient if coming from me.

No, I'm saying that I've had a personal experience of God. That is evidence there is a God in the same way that one persons's testimony in court is evidence. You may not believe it but it is still evidence. It is not evidence that MANY people have had an experience of God but then I am not claiming that. 

You are claiming that a few experiences of believers describing motivation (which you seem VERY reluctant to confirm so you probably made it up anyway) extrapolates to applying to the whole world across diverse cultures. Your supposed experiences ARE evidence that there are people who believe for that reason, but then I wasn't disputing that.

You really should study about logic and debate because you spend your time knocking down strawmen, avoiding answering questions and completely missing the point.

My personal experience tells me that many believers believe just because of that.

So you're saying that you've had a few Spanish friends tell you that that's the reason they believe? And that you're extrapolating from that to over a billion Christians worldwide?

If you are right, your kids will live forever. If you do not, then it doesn't matter what they believed when they were alive after dying, they will be dead, and nothing else that dead.

So, let' s believe, a sure way to win!

It' s one of the main reasons why people belive, yes...

Please answer the question I've asked 3 times already and provide some, any, evidence for the last sentence you posted that I quote above. Anecdotes would prove that SOME SPANISH people believe for that reason, which hardly qualifies as a "main reason" out of over a billion Christians worldwide.

Yes, it' s an evidence. It' s full of things that are impossible from the point of view of physics.

But how is that evidence for people's motivation to believe, which is the statement you made that I'm asking you to provide evidence for?

It' s one of the main reasons why people belive, yes...

For someone so keen on people having evidence to back up your assertions you make a lot of statements with no evidence. Where is your evidence for this statement, please? I don't accept "Everyone I know" anecdotes here, by the way.

Happy birthday to CJ
You live in a zoo
You look like a software developer
and you smell like one too

If you're just going to mock my response rather than give a proper answer then why bother?

In what way is "the Bible is full of lies" evidence rather than an assertion? I'm not sure how that is evidence that any believers only believe as a back-up. And are you saying that a believer told you that he only believed for that reason? Would this be one of the believers that you yourself said wasn't really a believer but went to church because of the conventions in Spain?

Show me that evidences.

One different to "I believe it and I know it's true", please.

I asked for your evidence for you assertion first. Stop avoiding answering the difficult questions that people put to you.

But here's a taster: my personal experience of God, many other's personal experiences of God. Miracles. Healings. The Bible.

It' s one of the main reasons why people belive, yes...

For someone so keen on people having evidence to back up your assertions you make a lot of statements with no evidence. Where is your evidence for this statement, please? I don't accept "Everyone I know" anecdotes here, by the way.

Of course you should tell your children about your faith. But e.g telling them to go to church on every sunday is something terrible in my eyes.

My kids LIKE to go to church. We have a great church. I quite understand that some of you may find this harder to believe than the idea of a god, but some churches do exist that are fun for kids!

You should let your children decide if they're afraid of death by not being christian when they're old enough to decide for themselves. I don't like the idea of raising children in a religious way.

Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to deny my beliefs just to make you feel better. However, they have already looked at what other religions believe, so they're not ignorant of other religions and belief systems. I'm not trying to keep them in the dark.

And Nacho, there IS evidence (evidence, not proof), its just that you don't like it and dismiss it. That doesn't stop it being evidence. Have you ever attended a court? No evidence is 100% reliable: people's memories, documents, etc. can all be corrupted but these are quite rightly used to convict people of crimes. Why do you hold religion to a much higher standard?