You're confused over a basic tenet in Christianity. I do like the cutting response you made.
POLL: Is there a God ??
- Thread starter megablue
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What would you call your post? Non-judgmental? People are people. We should not have to apologize for that obvious fact just because we believe in a loving holy God.
Thank God you can identify something as good or bad. In the world of non-belief, those things truly are arbitrary and only opinions or social constructs. Because we can identify the truly good from the truly bad, we should contemplate that there are truths that are not bound by creation.
Meh.
I was raised Catholic. I had religion class every day of gradeschool and high school.
And meh... I don't need it. Believe what you want. I don't care
I was raised Catholic. I had religion class every day of gradeschool and high school.
And meh... I don't need it. Believe what you want. I don't care
When it comes to scripture, if you can for a moment imagine it as guided by God into existence, does it tell you that God will make everything perfect and only let people make good decisions? Is the “life will be easy” for the believer message found in the text or is that your creation for a god you need before you can believe?
If the latter, do you apply that standard to every belief? Do the gaps in evolution cause you to disbelieve? Do the holes in abiogenesis turn you away? The lack of understanding with regard to the Big Bang?
Or does your faith extend to those unknowns, but not for God? Because the unanswered questions about God that you are raising are of your own creation or something you have been told by culture and not by God’s word.
No I completely get it, just think it’s crap so I was explaining my expectation for what it should be. Sue me I guess
God doesn't pick anyone to hit home runs, fumble, etc. He does give us the gifts to utilize, and we are human....so there will be successes, and failures. We always give thanks and glorify him for allowing us to have the opportunities we are presented in all walks of life. We will fail more often than not, but that doesn't mean we weren't blessed.
If a god exists, he/she kind of does pick people to win home runs. Some people do not have gifts to utilize. Some have mental disabilities, physical disabilities or are in an environment that guarantee failure / misery for the entirety of life.
Take a young Palestinian born in Gaza for example. He/she didn't choose to be born into a bomb-riddled territory or thrown into a centuries old conflict. Many children, despite having no real decision-making power in the conflict, have already died.
If that reasoning is true, why would any of the above-described people believe in and worship God?
You don’t appear to be describing yourself, but rather appear to be describing those whom you think would be fully justified in denying God based upon their circumstances. So, why do many who live and die as you describe direct their faith toward God, rather than toward your beliefs?
Why would belief in a god justify its existence? Can I believe myself to unicorns being real? If I get 100 people to agree with me, does this make them more real?
But regardless of this argument, we aren’t talking about belief. We are talking about if God picks people to “win home runs”. And if God or gods exist and are all knowing and powerful, clearly this God or gods do either allow humans to live in misery or willfully choose them to.
Belief in God does not prove the existence of God anymore than the fact that their circumstances disproves the existence of God, which is the subject of this thread. You suggested the latter was true, but if that was in any way true, the very people subjected to evil and ugliness and hardship would be the ones to most grab your illogic. And, that is not the case.
Evil exists and God permits it, now. Some of the evil we readily recognized, some we do not. I thank God that we at least recognize some evil and for the opportunities He gives us in those moments to love others and glorify Him.
We have a God that permits us to reject Him, deny His existence, demean Him, and even combat Him. And, because we choose to do these things, there are ramifications. In a world were culture does not want to admit ramifications for bad decisions, the natural consequences of rejecting and denying God are bad things and evil having its way with people. In non-Biblical terms, one example is that survival of the fittest is permitted, even if lip service is given to its destruction, in addition to the evil that simply befalls us. We try to somewhat combat these things through government and social mores, but we are not committed to their destruction, because we are selfish.
If we truly loved and surrendered to God, bad things caused by people, the poverty, hatred, battery, rejection, war, and the rest, would not exist. We would follow His ways, loving Him with all we have and loving others as ourselves. The other harm that befalls us would be temporary, if we truly believed God’s promise.
We want to blame God for the ramifications of His loving us so much that He does not force us to return His love, even though He knows that surrender to His ways, and not our ways, would create the best for us.
The atheists here in this thread, for the most part, as well as many claimed agnostics, enjoy their recognition of evil in the world when it comes to a foundation for them to reject God. I hope they are combatting that evil with the same zealousness that they combat God here.
If we truly loved and surrendered to God, bad things caused by people, the poverty, hatred, battery, rejection, war, and the rest, would not exist. We would follow His ways, loving Him with all we have and loving others as ourselves. The other harm that befalls us would be temporary, if we truly believed God’s promise.
We want to blame God for the ramifications of His loving us so much that He does not force us to return His love, even though He knows that surrender to His ways, and not our ways, would create the best for us.
The atheists here in this thread, for the most part, as well as many claimed agnostics, enjoy their recognition of evil in the world when it comes to a foundation for them to reject God. I hope they are combatting that evil with the same zealousness that they combat God here.
This is an illogical fallacy. To reiterate, we were not debating the existence of a god, but whether a god determines the fate of humans. Furthermore, as already pointed out, belief does not make anything tangibly more real. So, no, faith does not prove the existence of God.
If God permits evil and God knows all then God must create humans knowing what evil they will be exposed to. However, we also say God gives free will. How can God know all while allowing free will?
Recheck the OP. And, there is nothing logical about saying that God permits evil, therefore God determines fate. If that were true, no one would be able to rise out of the mire. And, people do. All of the time.
If you are trying to agree on something, okay. But, faith in God is evidence of God. It does not prove God’s existence, but is evidence that He exists. You may not believe the evidence, but it is still evidence.
God delegated to humans the power to create. He permits creation into a fallen world. Agreed.
This has been discussed here repeatedly. In fact, I just answered within the past week.
God gives you free will. The fact that he is not time-bound, as we are (which makes sense because time did not exist before creation, or as some may call it “the Big Bang”), that does not mean he does not give you free will. Because I know what you will choose, that does not mean you did not get the choice.
Some easy examples. If you come to a break in the road where you can go right or left, the fact that God knows the choice you will make does not mean it was not your choice. If you watch a video of me making that same choice, the second time you watch it, you already know what choice I made. That does not mean you controlled my choice or that the choice was not mine.
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If only we had the power that God supposedly has (but chooses not to use) to stop this evil and maybe there would be less of it. Just a thought
My hope is that you are the answer to someone’s prayers to a God in which you don’t believe, rather than just a message board poster who wants to comment on evil in the world to justify your beliefs.
Stay mad.
Politics, politics, politics.
Must be boring to make your entire identity conservative politics.
Strong rational society = belief in a supreme space fairy.
If you can’t see that contradiction, I can’t help you. Back to Nwesmax for you, gramps.
Well that's a lovely thought. As much as I'm not a fan of your God, I'm really warming to you after our rocky past. If I believed in a God, I'd say God bless.
If God knows all then god already knows which decision you will make else God is not all knowing, but we are going in circles. Your beliefs are your beliefs, but I think the bottom line is that your faith requires illogical beliefs that do not lead to a cohesive belief structure and ultimately lead to admittance of “not being able to understand God.” This is why faith is required.
I could argue with you point by point but to what ends? I am merely explaining why religion is not for me.
There is absolutely nothing clear about free will. There’s a reason it’s been a topic of debate among both theologians and philosophers for thousands of years
Does God control all or doesn't he? Free will is a complicated topic even without the mention of a high power in the mix but if it's clear to you then more power to you.
Interesting that you require to “understand” the God who created the universe and everything in it. If you don’t understand the creation, how could you hope to understand the Creator?
What we understand is what he has revealed.
Religion and God are not synonymous.
Do you believe that an all powerful god has the power to limit his own powers?
Im a big fan of Einstein and design computer systems for a living. If you ask me what God is, I’d lean closer to God being X where X represents an unknown yet to be solved in any given question on existence.
What? It took you 6 days to come up with that lame reply?
I've never pushed any religious belief whether it be labeled conservative, "liberal", or whatever. You're the one who uses politics to make exceptions for the irrational. Then you attack me for not playing by your narrow-minded, politically biased rules.
That was my point. Thanks for proving it.
Sure but what's the point of praising a God who's just gonna pick and choose when to intervene in your life. In normal life, we ridicule dead beat parents.
Which is not what God is.
God doesn't just explain the things we don't understand, but equally explains the things we do. Understanding how something works has no bearing whatsoever to what God is, that He exists.
That doesn't mean it's a worthy debate.
It's a "debate" just like the one we are having; can't be proven either way through argument alone.
I doubt you fully appreciate the intellectual pricetag of your beliefs, which in my view, is most definitively an incohesive belief structure and illogical from the get-go. You are positing from nothing, came everything. You are saying nothing times noone equals everythhing.
And you are arguing in circles, not him. He gave you the answer: namely, God is not time dependent, like you and "your" question is.
Please show me where I posted that something came from nothing. Moreover, what you're insinuating is that the Big Bang Theory posits that something came from nothing. That is also an incorrect interpretation of the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory is a misnomer in some regards, but I'd describe it more accurately as a hypothesis stemming from observations of cosmic inflation and then reversing the inflation when moving backwards in time.
But this is also a scientific theory, which is just that, a theory. Even assuming the Big Bang Theory was 100% false, it would do nothing to further disprove or prove a deity.
Big Bang Theory necessitates a time t = 0, that time was created with space. Space and time were necessarily thus created ex nihilo.
OK.
Despite your comment below, you will likely pick and choose when you intervene into your children’s lives, because you know a lot more than them. And, if you knew that your plan was for them to live forever and not suffer a second death, you would likely not focus on death or injury, but on the condition of their spirit.
Your question only makes any sense if there is no God. If you knew God existed, you would never ask the question, because it would be ridiculous.
Normal life? What is “normal life” to you? I agree that dead best parents should not be praised. I do not agree with your analogy. It is not very sophisticated.
Big Bang Theory necessitates a time t = 0, that time was created with space. Space and time were thus created ex nihilo.
OK.
That's incorrect and at most would be a hypothetical assertion stemming from synthesized models. Stephen Hawking himself said:
"Events before the Big Bang are simply not defined, because there's no way one could measure what happened at them. Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang.""
In other words, this is reiterating what I am trying to explain to you. The Big Bang Theory makes no assertion to the causes or the "before" of inflation. It's more accurately the inverse of the observation that the universe is expanding, and that is supported through various observations and measurements.
Which is something I already understood, and it's not incorrect. I'm aware of the various speculations, like membrane theory or Krauss's Universe from Nothing, that were used to handwave explanations to this problem.
Hawking is just saying it doesn't even make sense to ask because there's no way to anser. It does.
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Okay, so if you understand that, why did you assert that I suggested something came from nothing? There is no definitive answer to "what caused the Big Bang" or what existed prior to it occurring. So, I guess Im confused on why you asserted this is my belief.
Hawking is just saying it doesn't even make sense to ask because there's no way to anwser. It does.
What we define as something is spacetime and energy. Nothing we can answer is effectively no different than nothing period. There's no material difference there.
What we define as something is spacetime and energy. Nothing we can answer is effectively no different than nothing period. There's no material difference there.
Question to believers: Did God create the universe and everything in it ... or did he just create some things in it and others evolved ?? My recollection from my religious education, formerly a practicing Catholic, is that we were taught that God created the world and everything in it.
We are dabbling a bit into word salad now, but to be clear, there is no consensus on what existed prior to the big bang. So, let's stop there.
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