The God Question

You are supposed to say 'Ramen' whenever you mention anything to do with the Great Noodliness.

Ramen.

 

i believe evolution is there only to a certain extent. not that we evolved from a single cell organism billions of years ago. since you are a christian, it makes explanation much easier. the Bible said very clearly that God formed man from dust and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. the Bible did not say God formed man from a single cell organism.

i believe in the 6000 year earth history.

okiex i will try to answer to the best of my ability.

you see for all christians we believe the human body is a container for our spirit.

going by your logic you are saying that the human body doesn't affect our ability (say logic) if we have a spirit that is in charge of it? but the human body is a medium through which our actions get manifested.

it is true drugs affect our reasoning, but it doesnt mean we dont have a soul. take it this way, if our head get chopped off, does it mean our spirit died? not in the christian faith, no. our flesh died, but our spirit which is in charge of the body is still intact. with the head gone, we cannot move anymore. but our soul is still around. if we take drugs, our brain cannot work, but it does not mean our spirit is not there. it is at that point in time, the body which is our medium is messed up.


i hope i explained it well.

 

I believe that you're all wrong until I say so

 

"One word: Dinosaurs." Bill Hicks.

 

i dont think this has anything to do with whether one believe in God or not.

but, as for my stand on a 6000 year earth history, i have no choice but to admit i have no proper argument to counter yours. seriously, for all the proofs and everything, i never believed in dinosaurs or the big bang. i only have the Bible and my faith. and of course, this is not a valid argument for you. i know.

 

Here you go:

"Eat of it," being the fruit of the tree. In the end the original sin is the one in which something created by god tried to become more like god after god had told them not to do so.

 

I choose not to argue anyone's faith, as it's their right, as a living being, to think what they wish.
I am not going to argue with the 6000 year history theory, that's for sure.


Pastafarianism, settles every known argument, known to religion.

Ramen.

 

I believe in dinosaurs. There's overwhelming evidence. You cannot argue that dinosaurs did not exist, because they did. I don't believe in the "world is 6000 years" theory. When the bible talks about years, it's not using the same amount of years we use. I believe that the creation story is just that, a story. But it reveals truth, how humans fell from grace by sinning against God. The Cain and Abel story could be two countries that went to war. No one was there; no one knows. I'm saying that there doesn't need to be a separation between science and God. God works through science, since he created it anyway. Why would God choose to create the laws of physics, and then defy them?

 

Part of this ridiculous argument is due to a mistranslation. A lot of the hebrew words for time periods in the old testament have been mistranslated. For example, the seven 'days' in Genesis were seven 'periods of time' in the original Hebrew.

The big bang theory: there was nothing, then there was something. For me, it calls to mind Genesis 1:3.

'Then God said "Let there be light"; and there was light.'

I realise a lot of people, on both sides of the divide, are going to disagree with me there, but that's just what has always made sense to me. I don't see why everyone has decided (for no apparant reason) that Christianity and science are mutually exclusive. If God created the universe, surely as the sovereign Lord of All Creation, he could have done it in any which way he wanted? And science hasn't disproved the potential truth of what is in the Bible, only that you cannot interpret the metaphors literally (which I always thought was a dumb approach anyway, but whatever...)

What it comes down to (in my opinion) is putting your faith in one set of principles (i.e. that there is a God), or another (i.e. that there isn't a God). Neither side can rationalise their decision particularly well outside of their own mind and understanding, because faith is a personal thing. To that end, I have no problem with people believing whatever they choose to believe. I'll tell people about my beliefs, but I'll never try and force those beliefs on anyone. And equally, it always fascinates me to hear what other people believe. Honestly, you can learn so much by just listening with an open mind, rather than drawing up battle lines over the subject...

But I've almost certainly upset someone with my views by now, so I'll be quiet.

 

There are several hypotheses, one of them states that there was a singularity (also knows as a cosmic egg, a single super-dense and concentrated point of energy), I think LoH suggested that before the big bang, because there was no universe but a singularity, laws of physics (which we assume are exclusive to our universe) didn't work/were different/didn't exist at all, thus negating causality (cause before effect). Another hypothesis is, as you say, divine interference.*

//Stop reading here if you dislike philosophical ranting.

A problem I do have with reality... Why does it exist? Even in terms of an omnipotent god. Shouldn't he already know how anything and everything turns out?

In any case, if he exists, being omniscient must be awfully depressing, not to mention boring. If I had omnipotence, first thing I'd do would be to limit my omniscience, make me capable of not knowing how something will turn out, give myself the ability to get surprised.

Why would he even exist? Was he created? Wouldn't he want to experience was it like not to exist?

This is all assuming the claim that he made us like him is possible. For all I know, god could be something not unlike Cthulhu, uncaring for what he created. A cosmic horror if you will. That reminds me, Cthulhu is awesome (and relevant):

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

-First paragraph of the Call of Cthultu, by H. P Lovecraft.
​

//sorry for going off-topic there for a second, just had this on my mind.

*If anyone cares, I support string theory (irrelevant, I know, I just thought someone out there might wanna mention that.

 

Dude! How do you get up in the morning if you don't believe in dinosaurs? The world would be, like, a million times less awesome without them!

 

My personal interest in this specific thread is on the logical as well as the philosophical level. Secondary to that is that even though I understand what it is people believe in, I’m interested in understanding why they believe it despite all the reasons not to.

On a second note, there are many threads in this lounge section that probably don’t contribute to anyone’s writing either I suppose.

Then…why carry on with the faith, therefore? What I mean is, if we use science as an example here, a hypothesis can be made, and then there are attempts to prove or disprove this hypothesis. If neither outcome happens it’s safe to relegate the hypothesis to the dustbin i.e. if there is a claim that god exists but he can’t be proven to exist or can’t be proven to not exist, it’s safe to assume then he simply doesn’t exist and do away with it from that point on. Why would anyone carry on with it therefore? This is where the accusation of irrational absurdity comes into it and many poke fun at this with all the “flying spaghetti monster” or “flying unicorns” jests. None of them can be proven and none of them can be disproved. That’s why no one bothers believing in them. So why bother believing in god? Having faith in him doesn’t seem to be accounted for.

But this is a major problem here because you haven’t accounted for “god” or “him”. If this thing called “god” or “him” is something that we cannot comprehend then how is it accounted for to know that he has manipulated anything to do with the world, or the universe, or of logic, or that he exists so far out of our comprehension? In this instance, how is faith in him, therefore, accounted for? The only way that any of this can be accounted for is to use the bible, and then you make yourself a victim of circular logic.

But what you don’t understand is that god has the power of omniscience. Regardless whether he told her to do something or not to do something, and what the consequence would be if she did do something that she was told not to do, matters little if he already knew beforehand that she was going to do it anyway. If she never had intended to eat from the tree then he would’ve known it and therefore would make it pointless to pre-warn her about something that she was never going to do. If she was going to eat from the tree, and she had no comprehension of the consequence (this meaning death) because she had yet to eat from it, then the intent was put into her by an already omniscient being. Like I said, consequential acts have consequential intents. This intent would have to have been put into her long before she was created. If it was never her intent, then it was an accident or blunder or just a mistake. And putting her to death as well as cursing mankind forever for a mistake is pretty much a poignant definition of evil.

If the argument is that it’s nothing to do with consciousness, nothing to do with evil and nothing to do with right or wrong, and if it is simply about god telling her to not eat from the tree, then why would god command them both to not do it if they did not possess the corresponding ability to obey along with the ability to disobey? Why indeed? Lol

If this is about free will, and the consequences of exercising one’s free will to doing something that they shouldn’t be doing, then by definition of being commanded not to do something is a direct violation of a person’s free will (god-given I’ll add).
Otherwise, if a person is commanded not to do something, then it’s probably because it’s wrong. And if it’s wrong then Eve would have to have already been made a wrongful person in the first place.

And why would God create an animal with the potential for malicious, manipulative intentions, and the know-how to carry through with those intentions, if neither Adam nor Eve were already created with intentions and/or ability to be tempted/tricked?

You’ve contradicted yourself here twice: your response itself and the way in which you use it as an example for the biblical account of original sin.

First, murder by definition is not an accident. Murder is a pre-meditated planning to end another’s life; thereby you do have to be evil, and have evil intentions, before you do evil. If it was an accident, then it was mistake or blunder, not a murder, and a mistake is not evil.
The second contradiction is that if a baby has committed such an act because it had no knowledge of its actions, it is despite the baby’s actions the same way as Eve’s actions being despite that she could not understand her own actions even though being told not to do it.
So if a baby cannot be held accountable for its actions then neither can Eve.

The punishment here is in direct proportion to the crime. We are being punished for something that was not our choosing. You’re using an example here of something that is considered to be wrong. Eve’s actions are not considered to be wrong, or evil, or sinful (until the act has been done), but that she simply “shouldn’t do it” for no other reason than she shouldn’t do it. Being put to death for it, and subsequently cursing mankind, is a punishment completely out of proportion and is therefore seriously unjust.

This is not a god worth worshipping.

And this is a benevolent god we’re talking about? lol

Would you agree to it that you should deal with the consequences of the actions of your parents even though they are not your actions? If your father committed homicide, should you be punished for it? And if so, do you really believe this to be fair?

The term I think you’re looking for is cognitive dissonance. An example would be holding two contradictory ideas in conjunction, such as 2 + 2 = both 4 and 5. Now people know that both can’t be both right, but people with CD do believe that it does. They may concede that there may be something wrong about it but the only thing that’s claimed to be wrong is our understanding because “such a thing is beyond our ‘finite logic’”. Lmfao

But what has Eve’s action got to do with me or you or anyone else?

But then what is “god”? Such an entity is not accounted for if our logic of such is limited. Even having “faith” of such an entity is not accounted for. The only flaw in the reasoning is not mine but those who claim that such an entity exists but there’s no accounting for it as an entity.
As an example, someone can say the universe exists. But unless we can somehow know the universe exists in some definite way, no matter how little or primitive, then there’s no accounting for such a claim. We know for definite that the universe does exist, so we have accounted for it. We have seriously limited logical understanding of the universe, but the universe has accounted for its own existence, and through it we have accounted for it for ourselves. Our so-called limited/finite logic may very well be a reason for why we cannot comprehend god, but then god will have to account for himself. God has not. Why? Does he not owe us this? Then we are irrelevant to him. If he owes us this, then we must await until we are appeased of our ignorance and finite logic before we can behave and think as if he exists.

For the very same reason why we’re in the middle of a financial crisis: capitalist greed over people.
I couldn’t possibly know for sure of that particular gentleman as only he can only be answerable for his actions within this specific case.

Sympathy is sometimes born from a psychological process called “raised consciousness”. As an example, many people have been brought up in an environment whereby certain specific actions and/or behaviours are deemed common. And people deem common things to be “normal”. Killing animals for food is common. But the ethics of such an action are hardly ever brought into the equation if someone happens to be brought up in a farm because it’s an everyday occurrence and are more than likely desensitised to what many others would be horrified with.
There are times when people go through life in this situation and never in their life do they question what they’re doing or thinking. However, when other people bring up the point about killing animals being unethical, and explain the case, then a process whereby understanding takes place. Some people plead ignorance to it, whereas others begin to understand. This is called having one’s consciousness raised.

It was also common for a patriarchal society to view women as lower than men. That is until feminists argued against such attitudes and made their case as to why they are and why they should be seen as equal to men. Anyone now who doesn’t abide by such a standard can generally be seen as maliciously ignorant, such as anti-feminists.

In the case about slave trading, this was common in its day, and just as with the feminists, people became more conscious about people being deemed as “lower races” as actually being nothing of the sort.

In the specific case about this man you mentioned, I have my suspicions that he, like many in this vile trade, new EXACTLY the evil behind such a business because what is so important to them is capital…not people. He’s using religion to escape the guilt of his ignorance. Just like when people profess to convert to a religion when they’re in prison. It is an excuse. That is my claim though, I have no facts to back this up with this specific man, but I am seriously doubtful his intention to have a religion was an honest one.

Ning, one cannot afford to be so naïve not to see the connection of dishonesty.

Are you sure you’ve actually studied that process thoroughly though? Or are you just making an empty claim?

That’s because a mass of cells do not have the capability of forming logic, they are capable of forming organ tissues which then form organs within an organ system that make up a complex organism. It is the brain organ which houses the ability to form thought in the way that the heart organ is formed to pump oxygenated blood around the organ system.
And the more complex the thoughts the more able it is able to have systems of thought called logic (amongst other cognitive abilities).

I don’t wish to sound rude here (it’s not my intent if it sounds that way) but are you saying that you believe in a god out of ignorance because you don’t possess informed knowledge of biology and evolution? Or are you saying that you believe in a god, and would believe in a god anyway, regardless of education?

There certainly is if you’re accounting for it that way! lmao

The missing link doesn’t alter that fact that we all come from a common primate ancestor before that link.

But you’re arguing this from faith not from fact. And it’s a circular logic, meaning that “X” is true because it’s written in the bible and because it’s written in the bible “X” is therefore true.

What he (she?) means is that the account in genesis says that the earth is around 6000 years old, whereas the evidence of the historical existence of dinosaurs directly contradicts that. It’s not directly about god.

Yes, why indeed?

Actually, by definition, the theory starts of with the event of the something happening first because “nothing” and “before” actually makes no intrinsic sense at the precise moment of the big bang. In other words, “nothing” and “before” obviously didn’t exist until the big bang.

It’s because they both actually do contradict each other. Someone previously mentioned prayer. There have been many controlled experiments whereby prayer hasn’t been proven to do anything. Bad things and good things always happen regardless whether they were prayed for or not. That’s just one of so many uncountable reasons why science and faith are incompatible, and that’s because religious claims are fantastic claims that can’t provide fantastic evidence whereas natural claims are proven or disproved with natural evidence. They will always be incompatible unless, as I mentioned somewhere previously, some very intellectually dishonest people attempt to bend science to fit the mould of religion.

Then this encourages a very important question: why is the universe the way it currently is instead of some other way? Why so specifically this way in its formation? (“It’s his will” is a claim that cannot be accounted for as an argument BTW.)

And that’s because it’s not the burden of science to do that. The burden is on the bible to prove itself seeing as the bible is the one making the claims that it is. Science doesn’t deal much with anything in greek mythology or norse mythology etc. And that’s because it doesn’t have to. Science accounts for science, but religion does not account for religion.

lol Sorry if I seem to be jumping on you here and picking apart your posts so insistently, but you provide so much meat to chew on! You are certainly providing me with a full course meal here, mate. Lol
But…the reason why non-believers do not believe is not because of faith. It is, by definition, because of a lack of it. It’s because of reason and evidence; there’s no real reason to have faith, and there’s no evidence for any of the religious claims. That’s it. That’s all there is to non-belief. I know the dictionary provides a definition of atheism as having a belief that there is no god, but that’s just getting mixed up with terminology and playing around with words.
Consider it this way: a philatelist is someone who collects stamps. But you would never call someone else an a-philatelist because they don’t. Such a term doesn’t require existence so you would never abide by it being a non-hobby. So an atheist is someone who has come to that decision not because of a decision of faith (not believing a god is not a faith).

But, DUDE! The world IS without them…now! lol

This thread is fun!

 

I refuse to believe that, thank you very much.

 

Wow Max, how long did it take to type out that post bro XD.

Irrelevant. Yes he cannot be proved or disproved but at the same time he ultimately is or is not. That's why I say we argue in circles. He can still exists and if he does it's a grave error to just do away with him because we can't ever really know. You either choose to believe or don't and after that further argument over his existence gets one no where. We're effectively going around the circle I've already described.

We are both victims of circular logic at this point cause we're still going in circles (which makes me wonder why I'm still here. Maybe it's cause I have nothing better to do at the moment XD).

You're arguing a moot point. We already know you don't need intent to commit a crime or to do wrong (there are even laws for it in most legal systems). I fail to see how god knowing or not knowing if she would do it has anything to do with intent. Furthermore you seem to have ignored my last point for the last two posts. IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE. This is true of nearly every human legal system. Killing or stealing, whether you intended to or not is still what it is and often still carries a consequence. There are crimes for receiving stolen property that people are convicted of all the time and it's part of said laws that they don't need to know it's stolen to be guilty of the crime. She was told not to eat the fruit but ate it anyway. I don't see how if god knew about it before hand puts him at fault at all or absolves Eve of disobeying him.

The argument you are making makes no sense what so ever and appears to be there for nothing more than the sake of argument.

He didn't do it because she ate a piece of fruit. He did it because the reason she did it was to be more like god with the knowledge of what good and evil was. Depending on how you look at it, it can be a very serious thing. She essentially was a creature that was just innocent and unable to really comprehend right or wrong and in a way could not commit them. But when she ate the fruit she became capable of understanding the difference which ultimately made her incapable of existing with god in the state she was in (and consequently Adam as well because he took a bite too).

Right and wrong isn't really the best way to describe it though (As Banzai said earlier, the bible as we have it is littered with translation problems for which I can give you an entire list. The main irony of which is I have no idea why you have to buy specially made bibles to find this out and why every bible doesn't mention it). It's just the way we are so use to looking at it. God is not a god of "good" he is a god of Order. Essentially for Christians Evil is just the absence of order which is "Chaos." By eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve became able to understand opposites. Order and Chaos, left and right, and life and death. Everything that happened to them was not a direct result of god but a result of eating the fruit which enabled them to understand the absence of things or the opposite of things. By comprehending these things they became subject to them and by that the whole relationship changed.

God really didn't do anything to them. By eating the fruit they did it to themselves. There was a relationship, and by eating the fruit they became incapable of participating in it in the state they were in and the cookie crumbles. The death was not like a death penalty, is was the change in human nature that took away our immortality and made us mortal. Eve would die as a result of eating the fruit, but she'd die of old age, disease etc, not because god would put her to death.

I get the feeling you are completely ignoring what I say. I said original sin. Before eating the fruit no human could comprehend the difference between good and evil. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit they became able to see differences and opposites and absences etc. This is something that passed on to every human. Once they were able to see it, all their children who would learn to live from them would also learn to see it and thus the problem is everyone's.

If you're dad murders someone the bible never says that's you're fault and you're going to be punished for it. The only father in that phrase is Adam, who by eating the fruit consequently passed the problem to everyone. Think of it like a baby. Babies don't get the world. It's about at the age of four or five that we just get this sudden realization of the world and that's because we observe others as children and slowly learn from them. We start out a lot like Adam and Eve would have been. We're just there living of simple thoughts and ideas like eat and sleep. It's later that we realize the potential for other things (like communication and friendship) and act on them. When they ate the fruit God knew that their children would develop the knowledge of good and evil like their parents, and thus the Original sin was passed on time and again.

Never in the bible is it stated outright that Adam and Eve by eating the fruit were bad in a human sense. In essence they did make a mistake and then had to deal with the consequences, and in the nature of that mistake so do their children. When they understood good and evil, the rest of us became capable of it as well as their children. That's the only thing that all humans carry and what the verse is referring too.

The typical explanation is that on it's own the snake was not capable but rather Satan took it's form and forced it to do so. Now personally, I've never found a spot in the bible where it says that. That comes from the Quaran where it is outright stated and most likely traveled into the Christian West during the Crusades, when the Turks were invading, or during and after the Reconquista.

I look at it as the snake (actually a lizard but serpent means snake these days so I run with it) did not have the intention to trick adam and eve but rather was looking at what god had told them and didn't see the problem. It stated it's opinion via free will and the story goes on.

It makes sense if you read my above explanation (at least it makes sense to me. I might not be able to adequetly explain it).

Eve's punishment was of her own making as an effect of her action (see above again). God didn't do anything really except ask them to leave which was a necessity as they could no longer exist in Eden as their nature had changed into one that would not have been compatible.

Sorry, I misread XD. Eve's action is an action that changed human nature and in the nature of the change effects every human.

I see your point and it makes perfect sense. But if he is god, well, he's god. He owes us nothing really but if he is as the bible says he is he seems to do something anyway simply because he wants too. I have no idea why. Maybe the "master plan" is part of some even bigger master plan, or maybe he's lonely, or bored, or something else I don't get. I have no idea why he would do what the bible claims he does and won't try to say I do. I figure if and when I go to heaven he'll tell me.

PS: Sorry if at parts there it seems like I change my opinion at a dime (which I think it looks like I did). It's been forever since I've read anything related to Genesis and it's coming back to me as I think about it. Darn those books for being so damn long XD. I swear there are four to five volume texts on interpreting these things and after reading them once it's so hard to remember it all off the top of my head.

 

i don't know hebrew. but i guess i will look into it for now, though that may take some time because well, hebrew is a language very few people know of now. still, i believe it is 7 days.

well i never believed them in the first place, so it made no difference to me. lol.

@max vantage: what a long post!

sorry everyone, i just realized i made a mistake in claiming that john henry newton gave up slave trading when he became a christian. he only gave up a few years later even when he was still a chrisitian. just for information, i quote wiki:

yes i have studied, not throughly enough to call myself an expert, but enough knowledge. i have studied the theory of single cell organisms which used to live in water slowly evolving into land creatures and more complex organisms. in fact i have studied about dinosaurs and their theory. even though i don't believe in them, i am interested. just like how you might treat a myth with interest but not belief.

may i ask, how then is an animal unable to form logic as complex as humans? their cells form tissues, organs and a system too. if animal cells can form a heart, kidneys, livers, organs that function, why can't they form a brain system that process logic? (sorry this might sound stupid, oh well i have never studied any other brains other than the human brains. erm in actual fact i have no idea how much difference is there from an animal brain and a human brain physically.)

dont worry i dont find it rude. we are still pretty civil around here. lolx.
i am a student of biology and i have studied evolution for a number of years. yet despite my knowledge, i still believe there is a God. it is faith. well even if you can prove to me with concrete proof that God never had a hand in all of creation i would still believe in God.

this reply was made to kratos, since he was a christian, i quote the Bible.
as for non-believers, yeapx i agree it is a circular logic which holds no water.

awww.....everybody is making extremely long threads!

 

Which is why I personally have never liked the christian god. He seems to value order over all else. While some order is good, in my opinion, chaos is also needed in order to our lives to have meaning. If everything was perfectly orderly then there would be nothing left for us to accomplish. Ambition is part of what makes a person human. The will to keep trying to learn more and accomplish more things but this seems to be in direct conflict with the order that the christain god wants.

Also, in my opinion, god seems to act more like a tyranical dictator then the loving deity that christians make him out to be. He gives us free will and then he throws temper tantrums (natural disasters, plagues, mass murder, etc) if we don't do what he says and how he says it.

 

there is enough chaos in the world now don't you think?
maybe you can see it htis way:
if you have a son, you do love him right? and you allow him free will because you believe in him that he will make the correct decisions. but when your son makes a mistake, it is then your duty to punish him. cane him, ground him, less allowance..etc. does it mean you don't love your son? of course you do love your son, but as a father it is your duty to punish him when he do wrong. as a father, when your son do wrong, will you be angry? of course you will feel angry. but you would still love him and forgive him, if he repent. am i not right?

 

But the difference is that god doesn't just punish the person responsible and he doesn't just do a simply grounding or caning. In the bible he has wiped out cities and kills people, including ones who didn't do anything wrong other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

Damn translation errors and the evolution of language. When the bible was written, Order as a concept simply meant to exist and to have purpose. Order is the nature of existing. It's absence, Chaos, is to not exist or is in essence nothing or lacking in purpose. This is why the Christian God is best described as Order. He is a god of creation and destruction. He will remove what exists and replace it with something else, and is basically against nothingness, or chaos. Everything he does has purpose and creates something new. It is not to say that he is all about neat and orderly OCD kind of order. He's against things that would bring disorder into life and that are detrimental to living.

EDIT: The need for ambition and the humanity you describe is a part of the original sin. We wouldn't need it at all had that not happened. In the nature in which we exist now though, learning and achieving are not in direct conflict with what he wants. The only things in conflict with what he wants are things that are detrimental to our existence and being with him which does not include such vague things as learning and achievement. You'd have to break it down into more specific cases to determine that. Example: God has no problem with us learning the fine points of human anatomy and then getting one hundred points on our tests in class. He might have a problem with us then abusing that anatomy by using LSD and then frying our brains into oblivion. Achievement does not upset him (rather he seems to be all for it for me). He's against things that would hinder our ability to live and achieve.

Order and Chaos since the time the bible was written and interpreted, have had their meaning changed several times. The current definitions are not compatible with what was intended in the writing, which is one of the first things I learned in Theology classes. Study of the bible cannot be done without a lot of dedicated time and study of history and the changes of time.

Biblically those would be extensions of human acts not acts of god. Once humans became capable of understanding good and evil (order and chaos) they could not exist in a world without both these factors. The whole point of life from the christian stand point is to overcome these things and get back what we lost in Eden.

Yeah, it's all coming back now. I never thought I'd need those many months of reading a thirty-two volume commentary on the bible again XD.

 

hmm...can you give me an example of how He killed the innocent together with the wicked?

if you are referring to sodom and gomorrah, He did send His angels to evacuate Lot and his family. if you are talking about Noah's flood, Noah was the only one who found favor in his eyes. the rest of humanity was evil.

 

Why?

If God can create the cosmos any way he liked, why should the fact that he chose this way mean that it's impossible? Sorry, I don't mean to sound combative, but it just seems to me that your argument (or this part of it, rather) is made up of bull**** and sticks. You can't discount a perfectly valid counter-argument, without giving a reason, just because it collapses your argument...

That's a nice analogy at the end there, I'm quite impressed with it.

I personally think that whatever conclusion you reach here is based on faith. Whatever conclusion you reach, you can't conclusively prove to the world that you're right (as much as some people like to think you can). Faith is not believing without proof, since if you believe it, you obviously have what constitutes proof to you. Instead, I think it's about believing without being able to prove to anyone else. Hence the personal issue.

Theists have faith that there is a God. Atheists have faith that there isn't. Both sides find comfort in their conclusion, and neither side, no matter how long or hard they argue, is going to be able to convince the other side on mass that they are wrong. Hence arguments over this subject are pointless. But they are fun

As nice as your analogy was, belief isn't a hobby (and if it is to anyone, then I have to say it isn't truly belief). You don't have a choice, you have to believe something, either way. The atheist argument that their side is based on proof has some slight merit, but fundamentally falls down with the scientific theories which they treat as fact. You won't ever find me disagreeing with the scientific facts of the world, but I'm a bit less eager to rush into the unproven theories. I should point out none of this is meant as an attack, just a rather poor attempt at explaining my position. I won't claim to understand exactly where you are coming from, but then I don't need to, and I will never be able to. That is personal to you.

There. I hope that wasn't too combative, and I hope I haven't gone to wide of the point you were trying to make, but as I keep trying to say, most of the misunderstandings in this subject come from poor vocalisation of something we personally understand so clearly that it's difficult (unnecessary, for us, even) to explain in words, and reciprocal misinterpretation of that explanation.

 

Wow, this thread jut gets longer and longer...

Ah, thankyou for bringing in the Satan thingy... Question, has anyone ever thought that maybe Satan doesn't exist. (dont answer athiests ) Persononally my version of the snake and the garden goes like this:

There never was a snake, its figurative language. Satan, the devil what ever you call it isn't who or what causes sin, original sin as its called came from humans own selves.
One quote to prove the non existance of another being making us sin:

'each person is tempted by his own desire' - james 1:14

But you are saying that there will be a new system... on both heaven and earth. All respects to your beliefs, but don't, according to your views, we already go to a heaven once we die. If this heaven is the eternal paradise what is the point of a new one?

rm

 

dont you think that debating about whether Satan exist or not is the same as debating whether God exist or not? if God exists then Satan exists because God says so. if God don't exist then by scientific proof Satan also do not exist.

yeapx we go to heaven when we die. of course the condition is you believe in Christ, the resurrection of the dead and truly repent from all your sins - in regards to the christian faith.
as to why there is a need for a new heaven and a new earth...well if at Jesus second coming everything here on earth will end, and when the judgement day comes... if the old is gone it wouldn't surprise me if there is a new one. according to the Bible the Holy City will come down from heaven and God will dwell with us. maybe when the passage say new it meant that. like i say, maybe. because no one knows how the new system will be like. so far up to now we can only guess, even for christians.

 

Not at all. On scientific terms maybe... yet among the religious (chritians) i think it is still valid as i believe in god but not satan the devil etc.

Will get back to you on the second part of your post. (as i am casting the inernet aside for a while, as i sleep eat etc)

 

sorry but i don't quite understand why you would think that way? i mean if you believe in God, then you would have believed what God said. and if God said Satan exists, then certainly it exists. Satan is a fallen angel who rebelled and was banished from heaven.
honestly, i would need you to explain your thinking a bit more before i can come up with a valid argument. have a good night's sleep.