But what makes them “absolute laws”? Apparently they can be broken by man and god.
Did the Patriarchs have faith in God’s existence - or did they talk to him frequently? Did Moses? Why did God appear during the Exodus? How about parting the Red Sea?
This faith stuff only started as we got closer to real history, as opposed to story, and God vanished. If some guy offers you an investment guaranteed to return 10% a year, and his response to you asking for details is to have faith, do you go through with it?
Outside religion faith is the sure sign of a con. And you should think that this holds inside religion also.
I’m Jewish and atheist, and if in either case I’m going to hell because I don’t believe in Jesus, and the answer to requests for evidence of Jesus is faith, all I can say is “Hasa Diga Eebowai.”
Shit, sorry. Missed the antecedent to your first two posts; thought all three were talking about the OP.
Snark withdrawn.
What do you mean by “actual good and evil”? Do you mean as an entity that exists apart from whether humans exist or not?
Imagine if we were a species of social insect. Our morality would be quite different since no individual life would be of any particular import, and the life of the queen would be of paramount import.
If I really did believe that there was a God responsible for all this I would feel it my absolute duty to lobby for an armed expedition to hunt him down and put him on trial for Crimes Against Humanity.
Talking to God is easy. Many people do it every day. It’s called prayer. 
To answer what you’re intending to ask: I think you’re assuming an interpretation of the Bible that is more literal than mine. But even so, I do not think that God has ever manifested his power in a scientifically verifiable way. Though I am open to examples of miracles that have been scientifically verified, if anyone has them.
The example I’d use: your spouse promising in the morning to pick up bread at the grocer and having faith that there’ll be bread to eat when you get home from work in the evening.
You’re welcome to your own assessments of what’s a con or not. I’ll have mine own, thanks.
When it comes to salvation, “belief” can be a distraction.
Luke 10:25-37:[spoiler]Now an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you understand it?” The expert answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
But the expert, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him up, and went off, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, but when he saw the injured man he passed by on the other side. So too a Levite, when he came up to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was traveling came to where the injured man was, and when he saw him, he felt compassion for him. He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever else you spend, I will repay you when I come back this way.’ Which of these three do you think became a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
The expert in religious law said, “The one who showed mercy to him.” So Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”[/spoiler]
Note that those who were supposedly the most religious failed the test. It was the stranger from another religion who passed the test. God doesn’t care about dogma or religion–he cares about doing the right thing.
Matthew 25:31-46[spoiler]“When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be assembled before him, and he will separate people one from another like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘I tell you the truth, just as you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels! For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not receive me as a guest, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
Then they too will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not give you whatever you needed?’ Then he will answer them, ‘I tell you the truth, just as you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for me.’ And these will depart into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”[/spoiler]
This reiterates the same point: it is not what you think, but what you do that matters.
I believe everyone will be judged by the same standard. It doesn’t matter what you “believe” (the things you think you believe), but what you believe (the things you compel yourself to do). An atheist Jew would not profess “belief” in Jesus of course, but could certainly demonstrate love and thus be saved despite their verbal denial.
This post shows exactly why we need to know exactly which “god” has supposedly been proven by the OP, and why “The Christian God” is far too vague a description.
It’s only vague to those who do not believe … if you are ardent in believing 2 + 2 = 4, how can I convince you sometimes 2 + 2 = 3 ?
But I do agree with you assessment of the OP’s proof … not sure at all what he’s trying to prove, and on the surface it does look like a miss. I’m afraid his upcoming rebuttal will rely on blind faith and nothing else, but we shall see.
By the way, there’s a youTube vid of Matt Dillahunty debating Sye Ten Bruggencate. Well worth watching.
If it were that easy, there would be one Christian church…but it ain’t(despite your fervent belief), and there aren’t.
By the standard definitions of the numbers and operations, 2+2=4 is true, and 2+2=3 is false. There isn’t any room for reasonable debate on the topic, and someone trying to claim that 2+2=3 is wrong, crazy, lying, or otherwise simply not correct. You simply can’t convince anyone who understands basic math that 2+2=3 under the normal definitions of the terms used. If you’re using a non-standard set of operations or meanings for numbers, then the burden is on you to explain what definition you’re using.
The OP, and just about everyone who tries to put foward some ‘proof’, refuse to actually define what the ‘God’ is that their proof is supposedly about. It’s like saying “2+2 = vexyplogmagon” and expecting people to go ‘ohh, everything we knew about math is wrong’ when you won’t explain what vexyplogmagon means.
I’m not sure that analogy works; if I ardently believe that 2+2=3, you can presumably convince me that 2+2=4 by getting me to count 2 things over here and 2 things right next to them – and then count them all together and, hey, 4! That’s weird; I was totally expecting to go 1,2,3, but I went 1,2,3,4! Let me try that again; 1,2 of the ones on the left; 1,2 for the ones on the right; 1,2,3,4! Huh!
Ditto. No worries.
When I talk with someone, it is two-way. You can also talk at someone.
Not at all. The point is not whether these things happened, it is what the Bible says about the importance of faith and whether God for some reason has a problem revealing his existence. In the beginning of the real Bible God has no such problems.
I’d only believe that if there is a string of evidence for it. If my wife was as unreliable in fulfilling promises as God has been, I’d have no such faith. And I’d call her or text her to remind her. Trust but verify.
People have pumped lots of money into churches, and have gotten out about what they got from Trump U. Maybe they felt better, but real gains?
The first part of what Jesus said is the Shma (don’t have the accent placed correctly) which is the most important prayer in Judaism, and is the thing that goes into mezzuzahs and tfilin. Your belief that Jesus thought this was good enough, though admirable, goes against 2000 years of Christianity. I’m reasonably sure every Jew forcibly converted or tortured (for our own good, of course) said this prayer every day.
The trouble with faith as opposed to logic or evidence is that the Inquisition had as much faith as you do, but came to a quite different conclusion. The Bible, being so full of contradictions, can by faith lead to almost anything - SSM is good, SSM is evil, for example.
Again, nice, but lots of Christians have spent a lot of money on missionaries for no reason then. As is usually the case in discussions around here, religious Dopers are much more tolerant than religious people on average. Kind of like there being a trivially small number of Christian creationists here also.
And I think there are a verse or two about salvation coming through Jesus somewhere in the Bible, no?
If someone says that 2 + 2 = 4 is correct by belief, then he will have a hard time explaining why your belief that 2 + 2 = 3 is less correct - even if he does not believe it.
If however he says that 2 + 2 = 4 is correct from experimental evidence, or from the axiomatic definition of mathematics, he can ask you to demonstrate 2 + 2 = 3 in a similar way. And you couldn’t.
You don’t bring belief to an evidence or proof fight.
Sometimes 2 + 2 does equal 3 … if I have 1.6 + 1.6 = 3.2 … rounded to the nearest whole number gives 2 + 2 = 3. Ah, but you are not convinced since you believe on faith that 2 + 2 always equals 4, and if your god says it is so, then please do not believe me.
I expressed my statement poorly by design, better to say 2(±0.5) + 2(±0.5) = 4(±1.0). Not what I said before is incorrect, rather it was incomplete. Similarly, many things said about God are not incorrect, just incomplete … we lack an agreed upon definition of God.
When I was in grad school my adviser had a project on interval arithmetic, which covers this precisely. And yes, if you ignore the intervals you can be way off. The Army Corps of Engineers was toting around millions of tons of dirt unnecessarily for this very reason.
So 2 + 2 = 3 for certain values of 2. And God exists for certain value of God - such as God is nature without consciousness.
It is through science that we see the complexities of creation that leads man to think that there must be a purpose
PROOF GOD EXISTS!
“God” here is defined as a three letter english word consisting of “g” and “o” and “d” and in that exact order.
Done.
Men of faith tell us that God is working his purpose out what ever that is. If this is true and his creation is not complete then we most certainly do need God