Either we both exist because of God or we dont so we both do or do not need God.
My reasoning is taken right out of the Bible from words written by people who had no idea that science would be able to explain so much of our surroundings.
Faith was required of them and it is required of me.
That is great and I am glad you do and I do not doubt you bit because I have a good friend who is an atheist and lives his life much the same way I do. He just has more free time on Sundays.
Some say there are no atheists in heaven and of course that will be true but I tend to believe that there will be some who were atheists till death.
At the very least you will make it ahead of some who pray for people to “make thier toes curl”
For one thing when the Bible uses the word fear it usually means respect it depends on the context. But some people do need that fear to start them on a better path but the Bible is very clear that if fear is all thats driving a person that person is in the wrong.
New Testament Christianty is all about internal motives. The outside actions are a result of that.
Darwin himself was a staunch Christian, almost became a clergyman and greatly admired the writings of Paley (the IF watch THEN watchmaker guy), although he ended his life a fairly conflicted agnostic.
So, got any proof as for why, even if humans were Created, despite literally all the evidence which is to the contrary, we should think it was the Christian God that did it and not Ahura Mazda?
Or just more vacuous insults designed to cover the fact that you aint got nuthin?
You said that trying to convince Creationists is a fool’s errand.
If there are some people in this thread who are trying to convince Creationists, and if your statement is true, then those people are on a fool’s errand.
But, if those people are not trying to convince Creationists, they must be doing something else.
So, please, tell me: When you are presenting your arguments to Creationists, are you trying to convince anyone?
Perhaps we are trying to convince lurkers? Perhaps we are trying to lay out the evidence for those who find this thread in a search? Or perhaps, given the large number of Americans who believe in this stuff, we are trying to find someone who can give a halfway logical argument for it. I’d be satisfied with a creationist who could at least describe what evolution says
I’d be satisfied if creationists kept their ideas out of our science classes.
Creationists can believe whatever they want. Really. What ever floats your boat is fine with me. Just don’t confuse it with science and critical thinking.
Actually, a fair number of invertebrate species exist (bed bugs among them) where the females actively avoid mating, due to the lovely practice of traumatic insemination, which is actively damaging, and can lead to premature death.
The species’ continutation relies entirely on the males’ sex drive, so only half the species has one.
I know that’s completely irrelevant, I just find it interesting.
Thats like asking my last post what it needs Jon for.
One thing that is nice about having God is the times when things are going so good and I just feel like thanking someone I have someone to thank.
And the times when things are going so bad I just want to unload on someone I have that too.
If I discarded my faith would I be a bad person? Uh…define bad.
I dont think I would be a terrible person. BTW I havent always been a “true believer” and many times I have doubts and most times I fall pretty short of what I think I should be.
I guess I would drink more, smoke some weed and go watch some porn.
Is that bad?
As I said before if proof were offered faith would not be required.
However we can and need to decide what is reasonable.
1 Thessalonians 5:21
Test all things; hold fast that which is good.
The Bible is not exempt from this testing note that in 1 Timothy 4:1 thru 3 it says
1 The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. 2 Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. 3 They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.
I think those words were written around 50 AD as do many scholars (I am not a scholar BTW) however there are some who push that back by 100 more years. But it was not till the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD that monks and nuns were indeed forbidden to marry and then another 600 or 700 years later that priests were added to that list.
Jesus was speaking to a specific group of people at that time. Paul told of the age of those kinds of miracles coming to end In 1 Corinthians Chapter 13.
Again He was speaking to a specific group and although we do not have a record of any of the apostles drinking poison we do have accounts of them healing the sick and handling snakes.
What exactly about the middle ages makes you think that people had a lot of faith?
I mean we have popes in that era running around behaving more like serial killers than anything else.
Your a bright person can you find any justification in the Bible for either the crusades or the inquisition?
And? Faith is irrational and destructive. You can’t demonstrate that your faith in god X is any better than the belief in god Y or Z. And once you start making decisions based on faith you can justify anything at all. There’s nothing admirable about faith.
In other words, they were acting like people motivated by faith. Like someone motivated by dogma and the drive to expand the faith, and ignoring the actual consequences to their victims and themselves. Genuine moral behavior is incompatible with faith; at best, the faithful go through the motions until their faith pushes them into doing something immoral; genuine morality requires judgment and perception, not mindless faith. Someone operating on faith is as incapable of being moral as some machine running on a program.
It is a direct consequence of the basic Christian worldview that Christianity is by nature inclined toward extreme aggression and tyranny. They have the one true faith; only those who agree will go to heaven; those who disagree burn forever; and they must spread the “good news”. Converting others does an infinite amount of good, as does preventing someone from spread un-Christian beleifs; it is a direct logical consequence that anything, anything at all is justified to spread the faith. Kill a million people and convert one survivor to Christianity, and you’ve done an infinite amount of good.
Christianity is omnimalignant, the enemy of everything. It seeks to replace everything with itself.
I disagree.
Ever took apart a gasoline combustion engine? For those who have answered no please do that sometime or take apart an old computer or tv unless you have been trained and know what you are looking at I am willing to bet you cannot spot the design flaws which do exist.
You know those who are capable can do amazing things with the human body these days at one point during my late grandads life he was having problems with his bladder and the surgeon told me he removed it and pushed it down into a container of water to see where the leak was. Thats the same thing you do with a tire intertube when you are trying to find the hole. That was quite a feat from my point of view and prob just another day at the office for him.
But until they can take a handfull of dirt and make a walking talking creature out of it I will still insist that there are things they dont understand.
Perhaps you will enjoy this and it is just a joke. I dont really believe in a literal genesis.
So the scientest says to God “I have finally done it…I have made a living breathing man from nothing more than a handfull of dirt”
God replies “The proof is in the pudding…lets see.”
Scientest “Let me see Your way while I prepare the lab”
God “OK” picks up a handfull of dirt and drops it and there stands a man.
Scientest “Wow that is something. My way is a bit more complicated but we get the same result in the end.” bends over to pick up some dirt.
