Randolpin

 

Evidently.

 

Wonderful, isn't it?

 

How come mindless particles become intelligent and learn to love. Intelligence comes only from intelligence. The thought of the book you read is from the book but the one who make the thought of the book is intelligence. It is impossible letters arranged by themselves and eventually form thoughts.

 

If that is what you require to believe in love then so be it.

 

 

Why you have the ability to love if it is not from God? Does evolution make sense.. does inanimate particles combined and formed and ultimately it learns to have the ability to love?

 

We should depend only on ourselves and each other, because love builds strong foundations.

 

 

But love is useless without God because God is love. He is the One who gave us the ability to love ourselves and most importantly to love and glorify Him.

 

 

What? Overcomes all criticism? You have no concept of rational argument, do you?

 

The book or the bible is God's Word, heaven and earth shall pass away but His Words are not. From 2k years ago up until now, and to forever, His words will remain.

Says the book of fiction from 2K years ago.

 

It's not the age of the book but the truth which it speaks. It is the type of book which is best-selling, still stands and overcome all criticisms which also proves that it really speaks the truth.

 

Sounds good. No need for God.

 

We should depend only on God, because we owe our life from Him.

An alternative interpretation of the Christian creation myth is that the snake was liberating us from an overbearing patriarch; encouraging Humanity on a wonderful yet painful journey to the stars.

 

An interesting number of parallels to the Promethean myth except there the bringer of knowledge is considered a hero to Humanity by the ancient Greeks, while Christians regard the bringer of knowledge the very Devil. Says everything you need about the churches attitude to knowledge.

 

 

God is the Creator of all. After our first parents ate the apple, they become knowledgable of good and evil so we know the acts of right and wrong. The snake who is Satan, wants us to rebel also against God and became like God. This is the very reason why Satan became a fallen angel because He wants to be like God and proud of Himself. Like God in the sense that we don't depend on Him, instead we depend on ourselves, on our own knowledge and abilities.

He gave an order to two people who had been intentionally created, by him, to be incapable of understanding the difference between right and wrong, and then punished them for predictably failing to listen to him.

They are already warned by God..

 

I think you mean-God created us having free will. God created us having free will so that we are not like robots following only what is intended to do. In other words, if God did not created free willed beings, those beings will not experience God's glory in many aspects like His mercy, love, Greatness etc. We are like robots incapable of realizing God's greatness or we are not conscious about it. But if we are free willed beings, we are conscious of God's glory. We have consciousness or awareness on ourselves and the surroundings. When you are conscious, you are free on what you want to do unlike robots.

Yea - even when I was a Christian I used to think that just quoting John 3:16 at people was a pretty lame argument for the existence of God. It has nothing to do with it... but it is the big verse that all evangelists like to push as it 'supposedly' demonstrates Gods love... So, he allowed his son to murdered because he made us wrong? Yea, great.

 

"because we are all sinners".... I actually agree, but not because it is said in a 2000 year old book with many holes and errors and obvious falsehoods in it..

 

What are other reason why we are sinners?

 

I think you've fallen to preaching. This doesn't seem to be a legitimate response to why someone doesn't believe. Perhaps we're done here?

 

I'm just answering the question, justifying that we are all "evils" because we are all sinners.

 

There are good people out there who never want to hurt anyone and only tries to help people while there are others who purpously hurt others, those are evil, I am aware of that people make mistakes but to keep forgiving and forgiving when they do horrible crimes, thats irrational to forgive someone like that and let more people get hurt by that person. And it makes no sence to sacrifice his son, for it to matter humanity would have stopped sinning but no, so that sacrifice was for naught, So God did bad parenting by getting his son killed for a bunch of dumnuts.

 

Sorry but, HE? The word "he" stands for the male gender aka god is a THEY if it should be genderless, and men does not symbolize authority, there would be no father without a woman to give birth to the children, it takes two components to make a child and none is more important then the other, oldfashioned conservative bogus is all I see.

 

Brother/sister, we are all sinners from the start of our life in this world we live. It is a hereditary sin passed on generation to generation from our first parents. We are all unrighteous. Our sinful nature affected our physical/emotional nature ( mortality, physical limitations, bad attitudes) and spiritual nature-our relationship with the Almighty Creator. But because God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son to wash away our sins through His cleansing blood flowed in the cross and so we are being saved. Believe in Him as a personal saviour of your life.

My friend, Christianity is superior to other religion because it worships the true God.I know that Christianity is true because God Spirit lives in me and assures me that it is true and you can know that it is true too, because God is knocking on your heart.If you sincerely seek Him then He will give you the assurance that the gospel is true.Now to try to show you that it is true, I'll share with you some arguments and evidence that I really find convincing. But should my arguments seem weak and unconvincing, that's my fault, not God's. Whatever you think about my arguments, God still loves you and holds you accountable. I'll do my best to present good arguments to you. But ultimately, you have to deal not with arguments, but with God Himself.

 

 

I will provide my first evidences for Christianity: (Quoted from website:http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5221O.pdf in the Book Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig pages 29-35)

 

From the book I quote:

1. According to Augustine:

 

"We see that something is true by either physical perception or rational demonstration. We believe that something is true on the basis of the testimony of others. Hence, with regard to miracle and prophecy, Augustine says that the trustworthiness of reports of either past or future events must be believed, not known by the intelligence. Elsewhere he declares that one should believe in God because belief in him is taught in the books of men who have left their testimony in writing that they lived with the Son of God and saw things that could not have happened if there were no God. Then he concludes that one must believe before he can know. Since for Augustine the historical evidence for miracle and prophecy lay in the past, it was in the realm of authority, not reason. Today, on the other hand, we would say that such a procedure would be an attempt to provide a rational foundation for authority via historical apologetics.

 

Why accept the authority of the writers of the past, whether they be the classical writers or the authors of Scripture? Clearly, if Augustine is to avoid circular reasoning, he cannot say that we should accept the authority of the evangelists because of the authority of Scripture, for it is the evangelists’ testimony to miracle and prophecy that is supposed to make evident the authority of Scripture. So Augustine must either come up with some reason to accept the evangelists’ testimony as reliable or abandon this historically oriented approach. Since he lacked the historical method, the first alternative was not open to him. Therefore, he chose the second. He frankly admits that the books containing the story of Christ belong to an ancient history that anyone may refuse to believe. Therefore, he turns to the present miracle of the church as the basis for accepting the authority of Scripture. He saw the very existence of the mighty and universal church as an overwhelming sign that the Scriptures are true and divine."

 

2. According to Aquinas:

 

"Thomas’s procedure, may be summarized in three steps: (1) Fulfilled prophecies and miracles make it credible that the Scriptures taken together as a whole are a revelation from God. (2) As a revelation from God, Scripture is absolutely authoritative. (3) Therefore, those doctrines taught by Scripture that are neither demonstrably provable nor empirically evident may be accepted by faith on the authority of Scripture. Thus, Aquinas can say that an opponent may be convinced of the truths of faith on the basis of the authority of Scripture as confirmed by God with miracles.8

 

Again the question arises: How do we know that the purported miracles or fulfilled prophecies ever took place? The medieval thinkers, lacking the historical method, could not answer this question. They developed a philosophical framework in which the signs of credibility confirmed the truths of faith, but they had no way of proving the signs themselves. About the only argument was Augustine’s indirect proof from the miracle of the church. Thus, Thomas declares:

 

"Now such a wondrous conversion of the world to the Christian faith is a most indubitable proof that such signs did take place. . . . For it would be the most wondrous sign of all if without any wondrous signs the world were persuaded by simple and lowly men to believe things so arduous, to accomplish things so difficult, and to hope for things so sublime."

 

3. According to Locke:

 

"In his subsequent works The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) and Discourse on Miracles (1690), Locke argued that fulfilled prophecy and palpable miracles furnish proof of Christ’s divine mission. He set forth three criteria for discerning a genuine revelation. First, it must not be dishonoring to God or inconsistent with natural religion and the natural moral law. Second, it must not inform man of things indifferent, insignificant, or easily discovered by natural ability. Third, it must be confirmed by supernatural signs. For Locke, the chief of these signs was miracle. On the basis of Jesus’ miracles, we are justified in regarding him as the Messiah and his revelation from God as true."

 

And I added:

 

Mat. 24:14 of the scripture:

King James Version (KJV)

"And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come."

The Gospel shall be preached into the whole world which is actually happening now.. Missionaries go to and fro to preach the Gospel. Almost all the nations of the world know about Jesus Christ and His Gift of salvation. Christianity is the world's biggest religion.

As what we see, what is written in the bible is actually happening now.

 

 

So when people die in natural disasters, it is because they have been bad? And that is also true of children and infants?

 

How bad can a baby have been in a few months to deserve to be killed in a tsunami?

 

 

It's just because we are really a fallen world. The curse resulted from sin affected God's creation. It doesn't mean that babies are bad.

 

 

So when people die in natural disasters, it is because they have been bad? And that is also true of children and infants?

 

How bad can a baby have been in a few months to deserve to be killed in a tsunami?

 

 

It's just because we are really a fallen world. The curse resulted from sin affected God's creation. It doesn't mean that babies are bad.

 

I thought mostly of diseases and such, a god could also prevent evil people. So if there is a god that allows these things, doesn't sound like a good deal following this thing to end up in heaven.

 

If you want God to eradicate evil, you are demanding Him to eradicate us. But we all know God did not do it because God have a great mercy on us.

Salvation is His alternative for us rather than eradication. Instead of eradicating us, He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to save us from our sins. We see here that God really is an Omniscient Being because He knows what is the right thing to do for us, coupled by His great love and mercy on us.

 

So it is claimed. I am skeptical. It allegedly reveled itself to a small group of people ~2000 years ago.

 

Why did people believe in God before 2000 years ago?

 

And if God is not like us, why assign it the male gender?

 

 

That's baloney, but a topic for discussion elsewhere.

 

 

God has no gender because, He is spirit. The pronoun He only represents a Higher authority. In this worldy scenarios, men symbolizes authority, like father in the family.

I observed that all of us has the innate commonality of emotions. I observed particularly for example, is our ability to feel comfortably when we listen a comfortable song,delightful feeling of seeing the beauty of nature and many more. If someone neglect it, he still feel it.

 

What I really mean is that all of us has the common behavior but because of our intelligence, we question it..

 

Any response is very well invited to accumulate a fruitful discussion...

 

Thank you....

I confess that one thing I deplore is the arrogance of such missionaries to think that their totally irrational beliefs are superior to the totally irrational beliefs of others. Having such beliefs is one thing, but foisting them onto others using blackmailing threats of hell and damnation is despicable.

 

In what way is Christianity superior to any other religion? (Other than Islam, which to me is even worse) If you say that it is because it is true, then please provide some evidence.

My friend, Christianity is superior to other religion because it worships the true God.I know that Christianity is true because God Spirit lives in me and assures me that it is true and you can know that it is true too, because God is knocking on your heart.If you sincerely seek Him then He will give you the assurance that the gospel is true.Now to try to show you that it is true, I'll share with you some arguments and evidence that I really find convincing. But should my arguments seem weak and unconvincing, that's my fault, not God's. Whatever you think about my arguments, God still loves you and holds you accountable. I'll do my best to present good arguments to you. But ultimately, you have to deal not with arguments, but with God Himself.

But that does not explain why billions of people are damned for living in a country which does not know the bible, or do not have the extreme good fortune of meeting a missionary. Why would god be so discriminatory?

There are no hindrances when God revealed Himself to those who don't know Him. God will reveal to them personally.

Then why are Christians just as likely to die of malaria or in an earthquake?

 

God test those Christians on how great their faith is by letting evil on their lives. But we all know God is not the author of evil. He only let evil (since there is already evil in this world) as a diagnose of how great the faith of a Christian is. Amidst all this sufferings, the true Christian will flourished because of his great faith in God. By this,we see that all things work together for the good of a Christian. He proves himself that he is really a child of God.

 

We also experience evil or sufferings in our lives to let us remind that there is a God when there are times that we forgotten Him.

There are factors to be considered why they did not know the bible. It would be because of wrong choices or they did not accept the bible,

or because they born in a country with different religion- That is why there are Christian missionaries who go to dangerous, remote places to preach the word of God.

Do you

 

 

 

Do you think that the billions of people who follow Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto etc. are all misguided?

Yes, some of these known religions are classified us heathen religions.

But what is important is our relationship with Jesus Christ because if we have relationship with Jesus Christ , we will know the truth. And the truth will set us free.

If we believe in Jesus Christ as the One Who saves us from our sins and follow His will, we will be save.

 

In Him, I found myself.

Ok, so let's take an example: Angola's infant mortality rate is almost 1 in 5. Major killers are malaria and gastroenteritis compounded by starvation.

 

So we have two competing hypotheses as per above: either God created plasmodium and norovirus to make Angolans suffer and therefore turn to him, or he created them to punish us for the sins of Adam and Eve. Either circumstance is incompatible with omnibenevolence - and we're left with a deity who is not only OK with certain people suffering, but actually wishes it. As a result, I personally, do not have the ability to believe in an omnibenevolent Christian God.

 

To be clear - it's not a choice. When faced with the claims of the nature of God, and faced with the reality of the world I find them incompatible. It's like unicorns, or the Loch Ness monster. It's not that I choose not to believe in them, it's that if find the evidence uncompelling and am unable to accept their existence as plausible. Additional or different evidence may alter my ability to believe in the future, but currently that is not the case.

 

What we experience now- sufferings, famines is just the consequence of the disobedience of our first parents. After our first parents disobeyed the command, the whole creation became a fallen creation. Before the fall, the creation of God is a perfect creation but because our first parents rebelled against the Creator, there is a spiritual and physical death. The sin committed by our first parents, affect not only themselves but also the whole creation.That's why, we experience sufferings and famines. Again, God did not do it.

 

 

But here is the good news. Because God so love the world, he did not eradicate it, instead He gave His only begotten Son to save us from our sins. Thru Jesus Christ, there is assurance of salvation. God really is omnibenevolent God because He cares for us. He doesn't want us to go to hell and consumed by our sins.

Bible is the word of God.Thru reading the bible we can uncover the treasuries of knowledge and the truth about Him. Read the bible and you will prove it.

I myself can testify the genuineness of the bible.

It is useful for life guidance into Him that created us. For example, moral laws, proper behaviour, establishing relationship to Him etc. If you read and ponder upon it, it will change your life unto righteousness.

Read the bible to know Him and His plan for the whole humanity.

Disobeyed Him by eating an apple He told us would kill us if we touched it. Technically, He created evil first when he lied to Adam & Eve about the apple. Bearing false witness is one of the worst crimes, or at least in the top ten.

God never lied. It is spiritual death. Our spiritual relationship with God was cut.Physical death only follows as what humanity undergoes now.

So he is a terrorist, then?

Remember, we are the ones who created evil after we disobeyed Him in the garden of eden. If God eradicate evil, He eradicate us because we are the ones who committed evil. But because of the great love of God on us, instead of eradicating us, He redeem us from our sins through His begotten son, Jesus Christ. That's how great God's love is

What sort of sick god is that? Why does He want more glory for himself? Pathetic

Because He is God. He created everything.He is worthy to be glorified.

We ourselves are created to Glorify Him.

We should focus ourselves for his own glory. Focusing only on ourselves is the heart of idolatry.

And that's the kind of crap that helped turn me off from religion. It puts the onus on me. It's my flaw that I cannot see, rather than the fault of an omniscient being for convincing me. Why did God make me in a way that I can't accept her? Seems kind of cruel and devious.

 

 

We can do tests to see that radio waves exist.

 

God can't be seen because He is not like us. He revealed himself to us 2000 years ago.

 

With regards to the problem of evil, God let evil to be in this world so that we must seek Him and His glory,His love and mercy.

According to a book I quote: For God to plan a universe in which evil exists is a good thing if that evil will be used by God to bring greater Glory to Himself.

 

Evil is not a thing but a privation of good- this happen after the fall of mankind from the garden of Eden.

God allows evil to achieve a greater good.

 

 

From the same book I quote:

The Greatest example of Man's evil overruled by God's glory is the murder of Jesus which is the most wicked act perpetuated by a human being-deicide,-the killing of a God. Yet, in that same act, we see the salvation of the world,the defeat of Satan, and most importantly, the glory of God's justice displayed for all the cosmos to witness.

Some people did not believe because they did not see. Are their really sure what they can't see really don't exist?

Consider for example radio waves. You can't see but you know it exist.

 

 

Why should belief be the default?

I'm asking you what is the reason it is not the default?

I don't believe in god(s) for the same reason I don't believe in the tooth fairy or in santa claus. There's really no simpler way for me to explain it.

 

Do you ever listen to your own self when you are alone and solitary?