I don't have half the gumption to refute each and every one of the posts that actively try to prove to me that God and his existence is illogical. To be honest, I could give a rip. I don't care how the evidence supposedly stacks up. I won't be moved on this. You can call me closed minded or ignorant or whatever. The truly faithful have to suffer such things to reach the paradise at the end. God loves all his creation, but as the all-powerful manifestor of all that is, when he sets down rules, he expects them to be followed. He was quite prepared to send a 2nd flood, but instead his son offered to die for the sins of man so that we could have our sins forgiven of us so long as we are truly sorry for them. A man on the verge of death who asks forgiveness with his whole heart and truly believes that God is the almighty and that his son died for our sins can enter heaven. God is more than fair; there is no point of no return. We have our whole lives, and as long as we are faithful in the end, regardless of the past we will be rewarded for our faith.
One person said that they resent God for giving us free will and settings rules that we have to follow. Name one of the ten commandments that impedes upon your life unless you have the desire to do evil unto another person? God gave you life, he offers you paradise after 100 years or less of mortal living, and you have the nerve to resent him for doing this for you? God loves you unconditionally, but he is the father of all, and like any father, rewarding a misbehaving child for doing wrong is irresponsibility.
Yes, I believe God saved my father. What is so wrong with that? God intervenes in everybody's lives whether you see it or not. My father is by no means any more or less "special" than anybody else in God's eyes. Why do you take offense to the notion that something may exist that is too incredible for your mundane outlook on life? Why do you consider science as we know it now to be king? Because things make SENSE that way? Sorry to burst your bubble, but in terms of science, humans are generally far too arrogant in their assumptions of how the Universe works to realize that we don't really know anything in the grand scheme of things, and life has proven that science is not always right. Thomas Edison may have been the only one to really get it. He once said "We don't know one-millionth of one-percent about anything". In a hundred years, in our minds we've figured out a lot, but things are hardly different now from then, however proud mankind is of it's so-called mastery of the laws of physics.
In the end, what you have to ask yourself, is why is the Universe here? On all accounts, nothing should exist at all. Paliontologists admit when scientifically looking at how the Earth supposedly formed and how life supposedly evolved that the conditions on Earth were never suitable for life to evolve as is so widely accepted by the world. They say that life as we know it COULD NOT have evolved on our planet alone.
And considering the Universe itself? Why does matter or space exist? Wouldn't it "logically" make more sense for nothing to have ever existed? For there to be no void, no space, no time? Simple nonexistence? But even science agrees that the creation of the Universe had to be catalyzed by something.
You may disagree. You may say that nothing of what I say matters because in the end I can't prove anything. I accept that, because I CAN'T prove anything. In reality, neither can you; you just THINK you can. Your faith is in science, never questioning the physics books and the laws of Newton. I however, place my faith in something greater, something worth believeing in. I too live my life by a book, and by a few certain laws. In reality, you and I aren't as different as you think.
I'll leave it at that, and I wash my hands of this thread. Any more and the conversation will begin to break down. I sense it coming. God Bless.
Actually, your God promised not to flood the Earth ever again and gave Noah a rainbow to seal the deal. I would think you'd know that considering how devoted and faithful you are.
You took my words and completely distorted them. If you're going to take Genesis as the complete and utter truth, then the rest of the Old Testament must be completely true as well. In the Old Testament, in the antediluvian days, God and the Nephilim did nothing but screw around with humanity. They seem to have focused on punishing the most faithful of their followers (to test their faith, right? Yeah, ok). Why should I love such a God? Why should I love a God who tells me I have the freedom to choose between the life of a sheep or face eternal damnation in the fiery pits of hell? Because you say he gave me life? He didn't. My parents did. Even if your God existed, why would an omnipotent being proclaim himself to the be cosmic stork? If he is, then who's fault is it really that humanity had become so perverse and horrid?
Somehow, you've managed to live your entire life as a super Christian, and yet you don't even seem to know the basics of what the Old Testament God did to humanity. He was responsible for more deaths than man and satan combined! Time and time again, he just flat out murdered families and entire cities because they weren't pure or whatever the torah or bible claims. Should I love him because if I don't, I'm going to hell? Well, ****, at least if I choose hell I know that I didn't make my choice out of fear.
It is wrong that you believe God saved your father, because you're insinuating that your father was somehow chosen by God to be saved, and thus must be more worthy than the man who slips down a mountainside and dies, leaving behind a family who can only worry and hope that he might still be out there. The God of the New Testament hasn't singled anyone out in forever because the God of the New Testament takes the hands off approach and isn't the temperamental child of the Old Testament.
Science isn't about "We now know everything. Let's stop trying to learn." Religion is. God says "This is how it is, was, and will always be. Now worship me." Science says "Alright, we just learned this, but what if we're wrong? Let's keep studying it and learning about it and surely will discover either something new about this, or discover something completely new and unrelated." Learning is an ongoing process, and will never end. Every person on this planet knows that. What you're doing is projecting your values onto us, and science. You "know" for a fact that God exists, that Noah saved 2 of every animal in the world, that Jesus was the son of God (Because God has cosmic sperm; why bother bestowing powers on a human and guiding him when you can just knock up some 13 year old?), that the rapture will happen, that satan exists and is evil (although all he does, according to the bible, is whisper into people's ears and try to get them to allow their Id to take over), and that all the faithful people will zoom straight up to heaven. These are all facts to you. None of this can change. The bible knows everything about everything and can't be disputed. This is what you believe.
Nothing is supposed to exist on Earth? You seem to be using a really out-dated theory, because last I heard, it's quite possible that asteroids from other planets or star systems crashed into ours, giving our planet the juice it needed to create life, which of course evolved over time. And then you say life as we know could not have evolved on our planet alone. I completely agree. It's quite possible that life as we know it evolved elsewhere. It's quite possible that life that is completely alien to anything we've ever seen or studied has evolved elsewhere. If you truly believed in the awesomeness that is a supreme diety, you'd see the larger picture. What could be more amazing that a God saying "Bing bang zoom!" and creating the big bang, and allowing his initial creation to expand, and evolve and become more complex and spread throughout the Universe and to continue evolving? Why must everything be so completely simple? "LOlers occam's razor!1" No. The truth is always stranger than fiction.
I don't live my life by a science book, or by laws or rules other than the moral code I choose to live by. Do I believe in Jesus? I believe his existence is possible, perhaps even probable, but was he able to levitate and do all those crazy things? Probably not. I'm sure he was a great man, but sometimes people need more than just the story of a man to make them get up and demand change. Sometimes people need to believe in a super being, something larger than themselves, because all of their lives they've been taught how worthless they are. If they were to realize the potential every human on this planet has, if we realized our truth worth, we might not need religion at all.
The great Bill Hicks once said:
"...all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, we are all one conciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves."
And he's probably right.
Dinosaurs weren't wiped out during the flood the bible spoke of. How do we know this? While carbon dating may not be the most accurate means of determining a fossil's age, it usually gives us a ballpark figure. Dinosaurs pretty much died 65 million years ago, which is far older than the 8000 years the bible gives for the Earth's age. Did a worldwide flood exist? Probably not. The Epic of Gilgamesh talks about the a great flood, as well, and is far older than anything in the bible. In all probability, the flood only covered their region of the world. The Tigris and Euphrates might have overflowed at some point (according the story, Sumeria was already pretty old), maybe because of melting icecaps or something, and wiped out a great many cities and people. Was Noah involved? No. Did the guy in the Sumerian version save 2 of every animal in the world. No. Did it last 40 days and 40 nights? Nah, according to the story, it lasted a week.
http://history-world.org/sumerian_floor_story.htm
Good stuff.
