Cyrin, I think the problem is that you’re not using logic and good reasoning. If you were, you would never have made the OP.
Asking someone to believe in something until it’s categorically proven untrue is probably defined in the dictionary somewhere under the word gullible. Believe that until you go look it up
You say something Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent exists, that it created us and everything around us, and that it wants to be worshipped. That it can violate everything we know about physics, biology, and chemistry in the blink of an eye. That the proof it exists is that we exist.
Atheists say: Then why the hell aren’t the stars arranged in a constellation saying “Worship me” in every known language known to the reader simultaneously? (Heck, if some two-bit artist can make a drawing that looks like an old crone AND a young woman, that request should be easy for an omnipotent being.)
For some reason I feel compelled to quote a man I once met–everyone calls him the great Sanguine One.
“God’s not an answer. God’s a refusal to ask the question.”
I hate to get involved further, but that is not nonsense if you bother to understand the context. Which version of the Bible are you quoting from? I believe the Catholic New American Bible makes a wonderful explanation and a clearer translation.**
[quote]
I’m using the Young’s Literal text found on biola.edu.
**
I’ll argue that it is most certainly full of nonsense. Any prophetic claim is nonsense (lest that claim be something along the lines of, “ye shall nap some time in the next twenty years”). Any book suggesting those who do not believe an end of the world cult leader is the begotten son of God will be cast into a furnace of fire, is nonsense. Any book suggesting the consuming of a particular animal is an abomination against an invisible sky deity is nonsense. Any book suggesting a person’s sexual orientation is an abomination against God is nonsese… et alia… et cetera… et tu brute?
Let me specifically be specific about my use of the Hosea quote. So often is the atheist, and others, met with a quote of a single line from the bible which is supposed to clarify for them some encompassing principle wrought with the possibility of life change. However, when the shoe is on the other foot suddenly the quote cannot be taken out of context, yada yada…
The bible is full of nonsense… and some other shtuff…
Familiar with Mathew 24:34?
“Verily I say to you, this generation may not pass away till all these may come to pass.”
It pretty much tears down the whole argument for Christianity, unless, of course, we heathens are taking it out of context…
<laugh> I stand corrected. With so many messages, I missed the context. If you meant to say that Xians don’t bar ALL sex, only the stuff they disapprove of, then yes, we are not disagreeing at all. I will try to read more carefully in the future. My mistake.
QUOTE]*Originally posted by Barbarian * Atheists say: Then why the hell aren’t the stars arranged in a constellation saying “Worship me” in every known language known to the reader simultaneously?
[/QUOTE]
Ok, I think the problem here is that Atheists want God to jump out and say “Here I am!” and then they’ll believe. But seriously, I can bet that EVEN IF that happened. There would still be people who would say, “Oh ya that God guy who finally showed his face a few weeks ago, ya that was just some illusion, he doesn’t exist”… but that is besides the point.
I once saw an interaction between a pastor and an atheist at an event at my old church. The atheist just kept asking the pastor questions in order to trap him. Then one of the most eye opening things I have ever heard someone say was said to that atheist. The pastor was asked another “loaded” question, but instead of playing the childish and pointless game, he put it to the other man like this. “If I were to answer ALL your questions, to your full satisfaction, would you then believe in God?” and the atheist said “No”.
I made a rather LARGE mistake earlier by remarking that “atheists haven’t found God so they obviously haven’t looked”, well I really should have thought before I posted. I firmly believe that if you seek God he will pop out and say “here I am” but not in a physical way. I had this discussion with a close Christian friend of mine yesterday. He said “Describe your first experience with God” and while I can describe the circumstances, the feeling is indescribable, even to someone who has experienced the same thing. It’s not that people who haven’t found God haven’t looked, it is perhaps that they are looking around with the wrong attitude. If you expect God to reveal himself in some BIG obvious way right in front of your eyes, then your attitude is wrong. God doesn’t like being tested, he doesn’t appreciate being told, well your not doing enough so I won’t believe until you do more for me. God asks us to have an open heart and mind when we seek him and he will reveal himself then in his own way. Trust me, when you do experience “God’s Way” of revealing himself, you’ll be just as satisfied as if he were to write his name in the sky with the stars, you just have to be open to it first.
Barbarian has summed things up pretty well, but as I approve of ‘logic and sound reasoning’, I’ll try to use some.
Let’s try for some agreement first.
Do you think there is any physical evidence that God exists?
(If so, what is it?).
I accept that you have had a personal experience, which makes you believe in God. Do you accept that many of us replying to you here have not had such an experience?
Has God intervened in your life in any way? If so, how?
If there is no physical evidence, and God has not revealed himself to me, why should I believe in Him?
or perhaps, inferring about the inconceivable is itself an imposssibility. Hence, any meandering about the supposed actions, or lack thereof, of an inconceivalble God is by definition impossible and contradictory.
Well that was a stupid, stubborn atheist.
Most of us ask questions to find things out.
I have a true story too.
A bunch of fundamentalist Christians visited my School to raise money for charity. During the presentation, their leader said “If you don’t worship Christ every day, you will burn in Hell forever.”
This upset the pupils a lot.
Afterwards we had a discussion group. It turned out the fundamentalists were a pretty ignorant bunch.
They thought the Gospels were all written immediately after Jesus’ Resurrection.
They thought the Bible was literally God’s word, but didn’t know about things such as stoning adulterers to death in Leviticus.
They said if you heard a voice in your head, it was God’s will and you should obey it unhesitatingly.
I know that these are not typical Christians - why do you think your atheist was typical?
I was just reading a rant in the pit by Esprix. He was frustrated by the same thing you are. If you don’t believe in the Bible, what good is it for me to use quotes from it to try and convince you of anything. It simply won’t work.
We all got onto this side of the issue because I, quoted the bible in this thread and it went from there. However, I wasn’t quoting to try and finalize anything but to explain my point. I believe in something, I believe very strongly that the Bible is the Word of God, therefore I will quote from it ad nauseum (spelling? Not up on my Latin!) to defend my point of view. Not to convince anyone that I am right, but to defend against attacks on my personal convictions.
If you believe in some scientific principal, and we are having a discussion regarding it, and you make some definitive statement, I would only expect you to back it up with a reference to a scientific website or a published journal, and not just let me assume that you somehow came to these conclusions on your own. I may not agree with your reference, I may not even consider it to be a valid reference, but I hope that doesn’t stop you from being convicted in your beliefs.
Maybe you don’t believe in the Bible! So what? I do and when I am defending my position to you, that’s all that really matters. You can make fun of it all you like, but that makes you no better than the “brow beaters” who would just as soon try to punch holes in your scientific theory.
Cyrin, I know you are praying about this and trying to do God’s will by trying to convert people. And, so, as much as I’d love to laugh at you for calling me a Dragon ( Actually, I’m much more of a Frill Lizard! ), I won’t. But, your central hypothesis in the OP is that we can’t ABSOLUTELY prove God doesn’t exist, so we shouldn’t say that we have ABSOLUTE proof he doesn’t exist. Fine. And, you are right, people aren’t arguing with that.
People have tried to make this concept plain, using everything from Invisible Pink Unicorns, to Santa Clause, etc. I don’t expect you to buy it – after all, you KNOW God exists, and you KNOW that Santa Clause doesn’t. But, you SHOULD be able to acknowledge why WE see similarities between all three. If you can’t, it’s very hard for us to have a discussion, since apparently our words are completely incomprehensible to you.
Now, I know, as the Opener of a volitile thread, you are getting bombarded by people telling you things. So, yes, it feels like people aren’t addressing your central points, but instead just nitpicking on your little things. But, try to put yourself in our shoes. We can spend hours trying to explain how just because we don’t have PROOF of something doesn’t mean we can’t either A: have a hunch it exists or B: have a hunch it doesn’t exist. Essentially, we can have knowledge that isn’t PROOF. But, it’ll take us 100 posts before we get that concept plain, so we might as well have some fun while getting there.
(NOTE: Yes, please take this to mean that there are reasons why you might have a hunch about God. )
I mean, if I can’t laugh when I’m called the Anti-Christ ( waahoo! Twice this week ), when can I laugh? =:> ( I am taking some liberties with your “Dragon” comment – depending on your religion ( which hasn’t been made clear ), you might just have meant that I’m a heathen. )
I don’t really like to stereotype as much as the next guy, but it has been my experience thus far that atheists are close-minded to the ideas set forth by God and continually try and bring it down. There are exceptions to this. Absolutely. It’s just unfortunate that I so rarely come across said exceptions, that I tend to get my back up very quickly.
Maximum Override is a close friend of mine, he is also one of the most tolerant and open-minded atheists I know. I really enjoy having discussions on the topic with him because he is so tolerant. Maybe I did fly off the handle a bit earlier, for that I apologize to any atheists I may have offended (it’s what Jesus would do! {Apologize, that is}). So can we please make this a discussion instead of a continual attack on one another’s beliefs? I for one was really tired after a long day of posting yesterday and found the “heated discussion” to be rather draining. So how’s about we move to a “Great debate”? Any objections?
I just wanted to personally thank you Cyrin for apologizing. I wrote a bit of a criticism while you were writing this, and so to be fair, I must say, I’m impressed that you admitted when you were wrong.
As for the “looking for God with the correct spirit” – if that helps you get through the day, then fine, believe it. And, feel free to say, when I searched for 3 years, apparently I didn’t have the correct spirit, and so God doesn’t like to be judged, and he decided to say no.
But, for me, I know that I spent 3 years on my knees begging, and he never showed up. I could try to say “well, I went in with the wrong attitude” – but I gave 100% – I can’t give any more. God didn’t show himself then, and so there’s NOTHING more I can do. “Seek and ye shall find” didn’t work for me.
Fine.
If God wants me, he knows where to find me. Until he puts in 3 years worth of work though, I’m not losing any sleep waiting for him to phone.
Me’Corva, I’m Sorry!
I really don’t know you, and I’m sure you really are more of a frill lizard.
Listen, that last post has restored quite a bit of faith in me as to the intelligence and level-headedness of the Doping community, Thank you.
Your views and beliefs may be WAY off as far as I am concerned but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good discussion about it. I am as guilty as everyone for attacking your belief system. Heck my original post was fully intended to bring down the whole idea of atheism. What kind of a hypocrite am I? A big one!
You know it’s funny. I have learned more about my own faith in the last two days, pounding it out on this keyboard and being bombarded with criticism. And it’s great. I made a whole lot of mistakes, but I am quickly learning from them.
Oh and sorry about the Dragon comments, I mean I can see how you may have been offended, but personally, I think Dragons are pretty cool!
Nah. Atheists just think of 101 ways that life could be better without God, and see lots of flaws in whichever version of God you subscribe to (Christianity, Hindu, Islam etc…)
As an atheist, I can devoutly say there was a time in my life when I was hunting around for spirituality, when I needed some outside help, when I would have gladly sang hosannas to find some being more advanced than myself.
I never found anything but my own two feet to stand on.
Ya, it’s really silly when those same “brow beating” fundamentalist Christians Blow people up in the name of God because abortion is wrong… silly, silly, silly!
Lolo, they aren’t silly, they are misguided, perverters of the teachings of Christ. They go around condemning people in the name of Christ (the same guy who told them NOT to condemn people but to love them) and they somehow think they are doing the work of Christ! :eek:
You know what I think the biggest problem with Christianity is today (and I am fully guilty of this… see previous posts) all of Christ’s followers are sinners and hypocrites and they give Christ a bad name.
“If you Christians were more like your Christ, the world would be a better place”
So you believe the word of God is bigoted and contradictory?
You see, here is the problem. The ‘pick and choose’ method you employ is absurd.
You did exactly what I said Christians do. “Since you don’t believe, you don’t get it.”
Honestly, what difference does it make? the words don’t magically change, the dictionary doesn’t change b/c words mean anything other to you than they do to me. The only difference is your method of denial.
Tell me how my reading Mathew 24:34 “Verily I say to you, this generation may not pass away till all these may come to pass.” differs from yours?
tell me how this false prophecy is somehow NOT false in your mind. You’ll find that there is no difference, only rather than accept the passage you’ll say something like “we can’t know what God means” or “what does a generation mean to God”
Mm hm, and if my scientific journal constantly contradicted itself, condemned and falsely prophecized, why would I quote it?
I wouldn’t.
Very simply, you need to recognize the problems in your Word Of God and address them honestly.
Who’s trying to be better? That’s another problem. It’s YOUR bible. YOUR bible. YOUR bible has myriad holes and false prophecies, not my scientific journal. YOUR bible is the supposed word of an omniscient creator. If he/she knows everything, how could he/she contradict and, pardon my french, fuck up?
[asfarasi’mconcerned]Many Scientific Journals are full of false claims and false predictions (or Hypothesis, or inferences)[/asfarasi’mconcerned]
But you do.
You don’t think like I do, so you see holes in my “book”. I don’t think like you do, so I see holes in your “book”. Who is right? If you believe in science and the absence of God, then we have no purpose here so all our thoughts could very well just be random. What makes your “thought process” any better or more correct than mine. I really hope that you have done a lot of theological research into the Bible before you start nitpicking because I think you’ll find yourself a lot of evidence to the contrary if you look in the right places. (I apologize for not answering your questions myself, I can honestly say I don’t know, I haven’t really looked at the theology or the context of that verse.) By the by, if someone just turns and says in answer to your questioning the bible “We can’t understand how God works, or what he meant by that”. Hit them, hit them really , really hard, because they are just making it harder for those of us who are capable of understanding, to defend our beliefs. I don’t know teh answer, but if it were a pressing issue at the moment for me I sure as Heck would go find the answers. (And yes I have questioned the Bible before, I’ve searched outside it for back-up, and every time I have come away satisfied) Maybe that makes me ignorant to the truth in your mind, but I ask you, if there is no real purpose for our time here on earth, who is to say what’s right from what’s wrong? What is truth, what is fiction?
