Please ignore me if I’m out of line but this looks like a good place to ask. If I have never been baptised and I do not accept Jesus Christ as my lord and saviour, am I destined for hell ? Where will I go otherwise. Is there an option that I can just die and have no afterlife ? Is this clearly addressed in the Bible or is all the talk of hell just a scare tactic ?
There is a monestary about thirty or so miles outside of Austin with a painting of the Virgin Mary that cries tears. It’s not just water, it’s been tested, and apparently has a high enough saline saturation that it is, by all standards, true tears. There is also no hole in the wall behind it through which water runs, and to my knowledge, the image has not been effected by the tears. I have a lot of friends who went and saw this, so I will ask them for more specifics, and if you feel like a road trip, you can visit it yourself. And it has not been “exposed as a fraud,” because no one knows why it happens.
No, because Paul McCartney is NOT dead. And niether is Elvis 
(those photographs of his dead body are fakes, damnit!)
There’s a huge difference between this and the existance of a ‘god.’ Paul and Elvis are both human beings who pretty much the entire world has seen first hand or through other media. God is a spiritual force which can’t be fully described, felt, understood, or comprehended. Whether it exists or not is one thing, but as to the true nature of such a being, who knows? That’s why there can exist such vast differences in world views of such a being. We know dinosaurs existed, but as to what they’re appearances and habits were, you can have several hundred different opinions. Just look at every movie, documentary, comic book, painting, sketch, book, anything about dinosaurs. Some give them feathers, some hair, some have them basic greens and browns, some have multicolor spots and wings,. But we know they exist. I admit, I digress to a bit of the same årgument you had, but hey, it helps me explain it, and hopefully you to understand it.
Who says He hasn’t? Who says people don’t get it? Who says people interrpret them correctly? I’m sure a lot of people have shut their eyes to what God’s revieled to them. I’m sure lots of people have mistaken what God’s shown them. I’m sure God just hasn’t shown some people anything, and why should he? He’s got other people to share their visions, and other things to do. Like RUN THE UNIVERSE!!!
Okay, I gave a definition of an agnostic, you gave one, and they’re both pretty different. If faith can exist without God, then what is the faith in? If Agnostics don’t believe in a God, how can they question the existance of one? The thing with Agnostics is THEY DON’T KNOW. Thus, they believe in something, they just don’t know what. That’s completely different from “not believing in a god.”
Could someone give us a proper definition of AGNOSTIC so as to help clear the air for future debates? And not just personal opinions, is there an actual definition somewhere?
El Elvis Rojo,
I recommend you do a search on agnostic (I opened one a year or so back, I think the topic was atheist vs. agnostic). You will find quite a few debates on the meaning of the word and in some depth. The topic will hijack this thread. Or, if you want to debate it anew, open a new thread. But, as an agnostic, your definition does not fit me, nor does it fit anyone else I know who describes themselves as agnostic.
I think that you will find that this issue has been discussed in quite a lot of detail in this thread - the OP is an agnostic (you don’t specify your beliefs in that regard)
Gp
Señor El Rojo, would you mind providing the name and location of this place? Thanks.
In response to “Why doesn’t God give everyone a personal vision?” . . .
He’s God, for cryin out loud. Why on earth would he provide a vision if he can’t ensure that the recipient will at least recognize it as a vision?
His eye is on the sparrow. Sorry, cap’n–the “he’s too busy” thing just doesn’t fly.
Again, the question of free will. Why is it God had to send several plagues onto Egypt before the Pharaoh let the Isrealites go? Wouldn’t turning all of the countries water into blood be sufficient enough a sign of his presence and power? Yet the Pharaoh didn’t believe, and more shit happened. God already tried the forced love bit on humanity, and we revolted (again, if you believe the creation story of the garden from Genesis). He gives us free will to choose to embrace Him because that’s the only true way of knowing one loves you. Ever tried to force a significant other to like you after “the magic’s gone”? It just doesn’t work.
God wants us to come to Him, not to be subjugated and follow under the binding suspicion of blind faith. Hence free will. He can present himself to us, and we can choose to ignore it and pass off his vision as bad pizza or part of a concussion one received as a child. He gave us the curiosity to question Him and the power to ignore Him so that when we do come to accept Him, it’s all that much more pure.
Oh, and as for the painting, it’s located in a Maranite monestary, which is part of the Orthodox Church. I’m still wainting to hear from my friends about the specifics, so hopefully I’ll have more by the end of today or tomorrow. But I’m sure others can find miracles such as this as well.
Well it would be more than a road trip, because I’m in the UK (and I can’t walk on water ).
But I would like some more details.
Do the monks claim it’s a miracle?
Who tested the water?
Why hasn’t the world descended on this place to witness the world’s first ever testable miracle? (I expect the Randi Foundation would be interested - the monastery might even get $1,000,000 from them).
But how do you know he’s not dead? There are about 20 years worth of claims that he is.
Also many people claim to have seen Elvis since his death.
Are you saying eye-witnesses are unreliable? :eek: That’s all the evidence of the Resurrection is based on.
Well we know dinosaurs existed because we have some physical evidence. Dinosaur experts agree on many things, but have theories where the evidence stops.
Religion doesn’t have any evidence - indeed there is a frequent claim that God is too ‘awesome’ for us to understand.
So God isn’t omnipotent then?
Doesn’t He know how to do clear visions?
Doesn’t He know what would satisfy each of us?
Concise Oxford dictionary:
Agnostic
- A person who believes that nothing is known, or can be known, of the or nature existence of God…
- A person who is uncertain or non-commital about a certain thing
No belief in anything there (unless you count believing you cannot know as a ‘belief in something’).
Faith
- Complete trust or confidence
- Firm belief, especially without logical proof
- System of religious belief
- Duty … (keep faith)
- Concerned with a supposed ability to cure by faith rather than by treatment
So it’s perfectly possible to have faith in something that doesn’t exist.
Wait a minute…are you saying that you can tell if something is not of God based on whether or not it is evil? In other words, if it is evil, it is not “of God,” but if it is good, it may or may not be?
To put it another way, kittens die because evil exists, evil exists because men have evil in their hearts, men have evil in their hearts because mankind defies God. God can be good or evil but by nature consistently chooses only to be good, so the absence of God must be the only realm under which evil can occur. So did God create evil, or did he create mankind which happened to be creative enough to create evil? God could have seen that one coming, but then “you” wouldn’t be “you,” would you? Then God couldn’t love…“you.” Aha.
phil:
I have the right to believe that a magical toad lives in my sock drawer. If I need that toad in order for my belief system to seem logical to me, I will probably believe. Certainly you have the right to believe in the doctrine of once saved always saved (OSAS), but if you wish for others to believe as you do (on this issue or any other), you’ll have to provide good reasons for them to do so.
No; it’s just as easy for me to say that I did “know Christ” as for you to say I didn’t. It’s just much easier for you to believe that I didn’t “know Christ”. Accepting the possibility that a person can stop being a “real” Christian would undermine your belief system. My friend Tina belonged to a church that denied the existence of dinosaurs. During the dinosaur film in science class, she covered her ears and softly chanted, “this isn’t real, this isn’t real”. It worked for her, too.
Mayor Quimby:
I just have to say that I think this is a brilliant analogy.
To extrapolate on it just a bit, I’ll add that if people who really love each other will never divorce, there is no way to know if you love your spouse until you slip into unconsciousness on your deathbed. The OSAS argument leads inevitably to this: Phil, you can believe you’re a “real” Christian, but you cannot know for certain unless you’re clairvoyant. I’m sure I’m not alone when I assert that when I was a Christian, I would never have believed that it was possible for me to be anything but that.
Elvis:
This is one of the reasons that I finally did start to doubt my faith. The Bible describes all miracles as being so obvious, yet eyewitnesses refused to believe by the thousands. God could give direct orders, in person, and still people disobeyed. I thought: how is it possible for people to be so stupid or arrogant to disbelieve when they personally saw the river turn to blood?
Gee… it’s much more plausible to conclude that those miracles never happened, or that ordinary events were exaggerated to give the appearance of miracles.
But no; I’m asked to believe that God did perform humongous miracles in the past to a credulous people (far more credulous than modern-day Americans, no doubt) but most chose not to believe then. This is presented as sort of an excuse for the absence of obvious miracles today: “He tried the miracle thing but nobody believed it, so because of those wicked people, you’re just SOL.” Or: “Miracles would interfere with your free will. It didn’t affect the free will of people who lived back then, but it would affect yours.”
So, I should believe blindly in anything that could possibly, remotely be a divine communication, no matter how dubious the evidence? What if the “revelation” would lead me to believe in magical toads? My cousin had a revelation in which God told him to gouge out his eyeballs with a table fork, so he did. Should we automatically assume that his revelation was authentic, or is the fact that he suffers from schizophrenia at all relevant?
I should first point out that I am a humanist as well and an agnostic, so I don’t necessarily hold the same views as a theist like the O.P. But I am arguing with a theist in the context of the ancient philosophical and theological Problem of Evil and thus the standard definitions of evil and so forth apply.
Examples of existential evil are fires and plane crashes and other non-natural disasters that were accidental in the sense that no one caused them. Thus, being uncaused by human action, such evil cannot be blamed on “free will” (whatever that is).
Examples of natural evil are tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanos, earthquakes, tsunamis, ice ages, planetary collisions, cancer, multiple sclerosis, spina bifida, polio, scarlet fever, influenza, AIDS, etcetera.
El Elvis Rojo,
David Hume answered your miraculous claims in his masterful essay, Of Miracles.
Did you know that 70 THOUSAND PEOPLE claimed to be firsthand witnesses of a miracle at Fatima? A “miracle” that couldn’t possibly have happened without it wreaking utter havoc on the Solar system?
Which is more plausible: That these people’s emotional fervor led some of them to experience a temporary psychosis or perceptual failure and the rest of them to merely delude themselves into believing it for purely emotional reasons,
-OR-
That the Solar System lies in ruins?
Here is the most accurate and concise philosophical definition I’ve seen, from the Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy:
The word “know” here must also be understood in its formal epistemological sense rather than relying on our everyday usage of the word. Briefly, knowledge is “justified, true belief”. A lengthier, more detailed definition is probably outside the scope of this thread. I suggest you follow Dangerosa’s advice if this is insufficient for you.
Here is a site that has investigated such claims:
http://www.csicop.org
In particular from this page: http://www.csicop.org/articles/19990121-audrey-santo/index.html
comes this excerpt:
‘Skepticism of miracle claims is often warranted. For example, newsmen from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation were able to borrow one of the Quebec effigies and to have it scientifically analyzed. The blood had been mixed with pork fat so that, when the room warmed from pilgrims’ body heat, the mixture would liquefy and run like tears. A more innocent explanation was afforded the tree-splotch “Virgin” in Los Angeles: A tree expert determined a fungus was responsible.’
Information on fatima:
Portuguese phenomena known as the Miracle of Fatima. For five months, three peasant children had been meeting with the Holy Mother once a month. The Lady promised that God would work a great miracle in October “so that all may believe.” The event was reported in newspapers around the world, and by 10/13/1917, there were more than 70,000 people gathered in the Cova da Iria, come to witness the miracle.
As the Lady was about to leave, she pointed to the sun. Lucy excitedly repeated the gesture, and the people looked into the sky. The rain had ceased, the clouds parted, and the sun shone forth, but not in its usual brilliance. Instead, it appeared like a silver disc, pale as the moon, at which all could gaze without straining their eyes. Suddenly, impelled by some mysterious force, the disc began to whirl in the sky, casting off great shafts of multicolored light. Red, green, blue, yellow, violet – the enormous rays shot across the sky at all angles, lighting up the entire countryside for many miles around, but particularly the upturned faces of those 70,000 spellbound people.
After a few moments the wonder stopped, but resumed again a second and a third time – three times in all – within about 12 minutes. It seemed that the whole world was on fire, with the sun spinning at a greater speed each time. Then a gasp of terror rose from the crowd, for the sun seemed to tear itself from the heavens and come crashing down upon the horrified multitude… Just when it seemed that the ball of fire would fall upon and destroy them, the miracle ceased, and the sun resumed its normal place in the sky, shining forth as peacefully as ever. When the people arose from the ground, cries of astonishment were heard on all sides. Their clothes, which had been soaking wet and muddy, now were clean and dry. Many of the sick and crippled had been cured of their afflictions.
This event has now become known as “the Miracle of the Sun” and has been justly characterized as the greatest supernatural occurrence of the 20th century. The Catholic Church has accepted this great miracle as an historic, physical event. It has officially endorsed the message as “worthy of belief” since 1930, through five successive popes. Many books, pamphlets, records, films and videos have been produced, probing the wonder of the miracle first seen by three children.
The Cova da Iria is in hilly country lined with cedar trees. It now appears as a huge, paved area which lies in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima. Since the apparitions of 1917, millions of pilgrims have come to Fatima with the largest crowds on the 13th of the month from May through October.
Could this have been an ergot [or some other hallucinatory adulterant] created hallucination of a rainbow?
Regarding the Miracle of Fatima, I found a few sites like this one that show how this particular miracle is proof not of the truth of the Catholic faith, but of UFOs. I also found a few Protestant sites that claim the miracle was really the work of Satan.
Also interesting to me is that Mary (and Joseph, and the infant Jesus) were only visible and audible to the girl, Lucia, and not to the crowd. The Head Honcho, except for his baby self, didn’t show; maybe it was a busy day. The girl was reported to be a very precocious, attention-seeking young lady; her own mother said that Lucia was pulling a hoax to deceive half the world.
I wonder how much of this actually happened and how much is due to embellishment and faulty memory over time. I wonder how much of the sun’s “dancing” was an optical illusion caused by staring directly at the sun. I can’t find any documentation on the healings that supposedly took place; I wonder if they were genuine. (Shoot, the church down the street from my house can drive out the demons that cause every illness from the common cold to alcoholism to cancer.)
In any case, if this miracle really did occur as stated, then we must all convert to Catholocism posthaste. Or maybe we should condemn the event as the work of Satan. Or make tinfoil hats to protect ourselves from alien mindbeams.
God did not create evil, God created choice. God allows us to do what we want - whether it’s what we think or what He says. According to the Bible, evil is something that goes against what God wants. Therefore, God creates an atmosphere where evil is permitted in order that we have the freedom to do what we want. God didnt make us to be puppets, God wants us to love and choose His ways, but he makes that an option. As a result, evil exists because it is the alternative to doing what God wants.
It’s like having a lightbulb to light a dark hall, it may be lit, but the state of being ‘on’ is optional because one may flip a switch. The architect intended for that light to be on so that you could find your way through the hall. The hall was not intended to be dark, but the option is available and by the user’s choice, the light can be off. The architect did not create the darkness in the hall, but he allowed it to exist by including a switch.
Any biblical reference to that?
I don’t see why God would want to make it an option any more than to have things set before time.
I still struggle about predestination myself, but even if we have free-will then it took God to at least create the concept of wrong choices. Whether or not you call that ‘evil’ is up to you. In light of Lib’s insightful comments I’m avoiding the term. Isaiah 45:7 is a point of interest, look at it and tell me what you think. Thanks for the reply Jepsnert.
Joshua 24:15 - But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
Personally, I hold a belief in the free-will. If predestination exists, then why did God go to all this trouble of making the world. I think that God set up an order, and built the whole system, but much like a simulator it operates freely within certain parameters. Also, what hope do we have if our future is set in stone, that takes the fun and excitement out. God created man as higher than other animals (cognative thought, a conscience, soul, etc) he has free will to experience the full capacity that he was created with. Where would our inventors, philosophers, and heros be without the freedom of choice.
Also of note:
John 6:35-40 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Clearly, God wants all of us to love Him and he offers the choice.
JepSnert,
I would most certainly tend to agree with you on free-will. But there are many verses that seem to indicate that we do not have it, John 15:16 “you did not choose me but I chose you” Romans 8:29 “for those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son” practically all of Romans 9 and Ephesians 1:4 “just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” I’d love to agree with you but the question remains to me…what do those verses mean? It seems that God gives us choise, but I just can’t say that he does with certainty with verses like that.