I didn’t see you there His4ever. Welcome to the SDMB! 
Welcome to the boards, and thanks for one of the best typos ever. That’s a classic.
Read the thread, though, His4Ever; as much as you’d like to think it’s as simple as your post made out, your point has been addressed several times from several different perspectives.
dreamer, if as an alcoholic in a 12-step program, I was approached by an outsider who claimed that the approach my program was taking was wrong, that it very well might not work as well as it said it did, and that it was hurting people, I’d at least hear them out. If they could back up their claims, I’d research their evidence thoroughly. In the end, I’d judge for myself.
It wouldn’t matter who brought me the evidence. What matters is the evidence. If I could verify the evidence, then all my friends who still believed might be being deceived, and I’d have a duty to try and convince them as well.
But only taking your facts from people who believe in what you do… that’s a very dangerous path. When you’ve got a society impervious to input from outside sources, you’ve got a society that’s easy to control. The first step in establishing a totalitarian government is to control the sources of information. If you deny yourself the chance to listen to people who believe differently than you do, you will never have a chance to evaluate your beliefs from another perspective, and you have denied yourself the opportunity to change. Where is your vaunted free will then?
People who only listen to one source for their beliefs make great tools. Are you sure you’re not being used?
Ahhh…the truth, and finally something we agree on MrVisible.
Thank God for the SDMB…and people like you and people like me
Well, I havent read all the posts yet, but what I understand about the rapture:
The earth will be going through ‘birth pangs’. Some fundementalists have taken this to mean increased demon activity therefore more ‘UFO’ sightings and they think the disappearence of belivers will be attributed to UFOs IE abductions. (Although for some reason ive always thought of the birth pangs as being the Earth Giving Birth IE martian or Lunar Colonies [or extra-stellar cols] and they’re fight for independance…After all, God showed abraham the stars and said his decendents will be greater than them, to me this means there will be Extra-Stellar colonies before God comes back.)
2nd of all there really isnt any direct evidence of the rapture in the Bible, most of the references could be taken as metaphorical…but thats a theology topic…
Anyway the non-belivers WILL NOT belive after the rapture because a disilusionment (that IS NOT the word I am looking for) in other words a cloud will come over the minds of all the world, which prevents them from beliving in that.
A little about me: I USED to be a True Beliver in all things christian, now I am an enlightened, opened minded person. I have no idea what I belive. I guess what I belive in is what can be proved logically or scientifically, although I still consider myself a christian. Ive been delving into science way too much and as almost anyone knows, science is an atheistic art…
-Blah
Well, Guinastasia is a (somewhat lapsed) Catholic.
“The Host is made of Soylent Green! You’ve got to tell them! The Host is Soylent Green!”
Dreamer said, “Obviously they would have to have a very reasonable explanation with whatever proof they could muster up to not only make me change my mind, but all the other committed Christians out there.”
I find it rather odd that you’re demanding “very reasonable explanation” to prove that god doesn’t exist, when you haven’t demanded that to prove that he DOES exist. Also, many more people DO NOT agree with the christian idea of god, yet you are looking for a majority concensus in order to conclude that he DOESN’T exist. 'Splain, please.
His4Ever, just for future reference, I am a former born-again Christian, and have read the Bible cover-to-cover. Please don’t simply quote Scripture at me as if it’s an argument of some sort, because it isn’t.
I’ll ask again: Can God choose to save someone, indeed to Rapture them away, even if they have never even heard of Jesus, or have heard and chose not to believe? (Like, say, nearly every Jew?) Or is God limited by what you, and a book written by his adherents, can conceive of or feel is fair? Who are you to place limits on the power and choices of God?
Daniel Withrow said, "And knowing YhWh, tricksy fellow that He is, it wouldn’t be straightforward.
More likely, all Christians that He liked would find themselves stricken with a terrible disease that killed them over the course of a week. The disease would look like something that had been genetically engineered, and scientists would race it back to a strain of bubonic plague that was developed by the Soviet Union."
Now why on earth would god want to trick people? Isn’t that what the devil is always attributed to doing? Why? Why? Why?
I very much appreciate the debates we get into here, and the opportunity to talk these things over in a civilized fashion with good people like yourself.
Would you care to address anything else in my post?
Have you thought of anything else that might prove to you that God might not be as your religion understands him? Is there any evidence that would make you change your beiliefs? Because if everybody in your religion holds to your same standard, that a majority of the religion has to change before they’ll consider changing, your religion cannot change.
Phil,
Theres a passage in Isaiah somewhere that says all of Israel will be saved so IMHO, no jews are going to Hell.
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
I left unstated an assumption: people who believe in a literal Rapture are, I’m assuming, likely to believe in a literal, Young-Earth Creation.
In order to believe in Young-Earth Creation, you have to believe in a sneaky, tricky, deceitful God who loves playing jokes on us humans: otherwise, why would he plant so much evidence pointing to an old Earth and to natural selection as a mechanism for evolution?
And if you believe he’s that sneaky, there’s no reason to believe that he’d do the Rapture as something straightforward.
I don’t know why he’d lie to us: for the same reason he’d lie to us about Creation, I guess. But I think it’d be out of character for that God to tell the truth.
Daniel
And you’re buying that?
I know already that there are many things I don’t understand about God. If there is evidence that would make me change my beliefs, I haven’t seen any so far.
I can’t speak for everybody in my religion having the same standards as I so I won’t go there. I’m sure as I grow older and begin to know God more on a personal level, things that I once believed will change. I can’t say my love for God will stop and I surely hope it never does. God says “your ways are not my ways” and I can understand that and have the hope that although I may be completely wrong on many things about God and Christianity, my hope lies in the salvation he offered to me through his son Jesus Christ.
Fenris, does the OP qualify as Fundie porn?
Esprix
Dreamer, again I ask: Why do you hold two different standards on whether to believe or not? You say you’d require a reasonable explanation as to the non-existence of god, yet you don’t require a reasonable explanation for his existence; your belief rides on faith. Also, you require a christian majority to make you think he no longer exists, when the majority of the people on this planet are NOT christian. Why the double standard?
Dreamer, again I ask: Why do you hold two different standards on whether to believe or not? You say you’d require a reasonable explanation as to the non-existence of god, yet you don’t require a reasonable explanation for his existence; your belief rides on faith. Also, you require a christian majority to make you think he no longer exists, when the majority of the people on this planet are NOT christian. Why the double standard?
Damn! Double post. Sorry.
EchoKitty, the reason is because I have a personal relationship with God. I cannot have a personal relationship with evolution or the talkorigins.com website or any kind of information you conlude as evidence.
I think I already answered your second question in another post.
Both your answers sound like cop-outs to me. You believe in god because you want to believe…not because you have proof. And you discount scientific proof as garbage because your christian friends don’t agree with it. You require majority rule…but only the “majority” you signed up with, which isn’t a majority at all. Do you realize how hypocritical this is? It totally destroys your credibility in this debate.
You are allowed your opinion EchoKitty, it does nothing to change any of my beliefs and you have proven nothing to me that would give me any reason too. I could say your beliefs sound like a “cop out” to me as well, but then we would just be re-hashing the evolution/creation debate and that’s for another thread and another day.