Evidence for God (4 Viewers)

[feoinfunroe]

I've read it and know the story well. I don't think their disobedience was a surprise to God. But if you know that story then I'm betting you know about the new testament as well. The part where god cut out the need for any man to follow a law and instead just have a relationship with him. Maybe he did that because of the exodus experience. Maybe he knew we'd still be very disobedient even when we did reach out in faith. Bottom line is believers are still disobedient today. They're just covered by grace.

Right. That's what I was trying to say...maybe God evolves??? :duckinglightningbolt:

Many stories in the Bible would tend to agree that He does...

...or maybe it's just us evolving. Maybe, much as a parent dealing with a toddler, God humors us in our misconceptions, and really enjoys it when someone amongst mankind takes that "next step".

If you look at God's "favorites" throughout the Bible (Old Testament, particularly), they weren't so much the folks that obeyed without question. They were usually the folks who dared to question Him.

 

[Lipstead Hock]

Right. That's what I was trying to say...maybe God evolves??? :duckinglightningbolt:

Many stories in the Bible would tend to agree that He does...

...or maybe it's just us evolving. Maybe, much as a parent dealing with a toddler, God humors us in our misconceptions, and really enjoys it when someone amongst mankind takes that "next step".

If you look at God's "favorites" throughout the Bible (Old Testament, particularly), they weren't so much the folks that obeyed without question. They were usually the folks who dared to question Him.

About God evolving... God's a relational God so he created us with free will. We have grown and advanced as humans and not that any of it is a surprise to God but He still responds to a sincere and earnest desire to know him. Just like humans do with other humans. The whole premise is that we're not his robots so obviously he would grow, adapt, evolve, whatever... with us. This doesn't conflict with "Jesus the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow" either. That speaks of his role as Diety. God responds to every human different based on thier individual needs. Moses and Abraham both questioned god about matters involving people and how it might affect them and consequently changed his mind on the subject. But I don't think most folks view God this way. They see him as some angry man who wants all the attention. Or they don't believe in him at all. Writing it off as some folklore that's been regurgitated since the beginning of mankind.

What I've discovered is a real being who wants to know me way more than I could ever want to know him. A supernatural relationship with a spiritual being. You can't put it under a microscope and I have zero tangible to show for it. I can't prove it. But it's as real as the chair I'm sitting in.

 

[Lipstead Hock]

it seems that an all knowing god that awards "free will" to his science project would understand that he might actually be questioned.....

so, why is this a problem??? he supposedly gives us the ability to think on our own.....but then he punishes us for not believing what other people tell us


the whole thing sounds fishy to me

No problem with questioning God. If there's no room for doubt, there's no room for us. Like I pointed out in my previous post, Moses and Abaraham both questioned God and in turn changed his mind on the subject.

The only prerequisite for knowing God is a sincere desire and effort to know him. From there your perspective might change a bit. It's bound to happen after being in the presence of your creator. But there's nothing you have to do or believe in order to know him other than "Seek Him with all your heart". I often explain it like this: We're created in his image. Spiritual image, not physical. So the way we do things is the same way he does things, he just does them perfectly. Take relationships for example. If someone wanted to build a relationship with you and only made a half hearted effort to do so, you might not respond to that. But if someone wanted to build a realtionship with you and made a sincere effort to do so, you're gonna respond to them. God's the same way. He will respond to someone who really wants to know him. There isn't any ritual or religious pratice or changes you have to make first. That's all deception. Get to know your creator and changes happen as a result of that relationship. Jesus even said this. When he was asked what the greatest commandment was you know the answer... Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and strength and love your neighbor as you love yourself. But it's the next verse we need to look closely at. He said, "This sums up all of the law". The church is full of folks thinking they have to keep laws or God won't love them but they're missing the point. Which is to love God with all you got and love eveyone else with all you got. That about sums it up.

 

[feoinfunroe]

About God evolving... God's a relational God so he created us with free will. We have grown and advanced as humans and not that any of it is a surprise to God but He still responds to a sincere and earnest desire to know him. Just like humans do with other humans. The whole premise is that we're not his robots so obviously he would grow, adapt, evolve, whatever... with us. This doesn't conflict with "Jesus the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow" either. That speaks of his role as Diety. God responds to every human different based on thier individual needs. Moses and Abraham both questioned god about matters involving people and how it might affect them and consequently changed his mind on the subject. But I don't think most folks view God this way. They see him as some angry man who wants all the attention. Or they don't believe in him at all. Writing it off as some folklore that's been regurgitated since the beginning of mankind.

What I've discovered is a real being who wants to know me way more than I could ever want to know him. A supernatural relationship with a spiritual being. You can't put it under a microscope and I have zero tangible to show for it. I can't prove it. But it's as real as the chair I'm sitting in.

See, that up there in bold was the point I was getting at...did they really change God's mind, or did God just let them think that they did, all-the-while being impressed that some "monkey" actually had the cojones to stand up to Him, and not just parrot the "party line"?

I think God likes "dissent". It keeps Him on His toes...

 

[Lipstead Hock]

See, that up there in bold was the point I was getting at...did they really change God's mind, or did God just let them think that they did, all-the-while being impressed that some "monkey" actually had the cojones to stand up to Him, and not just parrot the "party line"?

I think God likes "dissent". It keeps Him on His toes...

Interesting take. Could be.

Today we see in a mirror dimly...

 

[feoinfunroe]

Interesting take. Could be.

Today we see in a mirror dimly...

...as did they in Jesus' day.

There was no "homogeneous" interpretation of "The Law" back then, much as there isn't any now. The Sadducees and the Pharisees were pretty-much at each others' throats over their differences of their own interpretations of Mosaic Law...and that's what Jesus used to hang them up.

When questioned about it, Jesus would reply to them, "What did Moses tell you?". He never said, "What did God tell you?" or "What did I tell you?", it was always some point in what Moses had written that they would challenge Him on, and then He'd turn it around and show where Moses had "bent the law" by having to adapt it to the foolish hearts of men (e.g. bills of divorcement).
So, really, Jesus was trying to point out that "nobody got it right", and "Moses made some of it up"....but there I go leaning on my own understanding...

My take: God's Law is not written in a book, it's written in the heart. Either one has it or one doesn't. All the "book learning" in the World will not save one from one's own foolish heart. It's much why He left us with the "Comforter"...

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[dtc]

it seems that an all knowing god that awards "free will" to his science project would understand that he might actually be questioned.....

so, why is this a problem??? he supposedly gives us the ability to think on our own.....but then he punishes us for not believing what other people tell us


the whole thing sounds fishy to me

Fishy is such a nice word.

 

[dtc]

What I've discovered is a real being who wants to know me way more than I could ever want to know him. A supernatural relationship with a spiritual being. You can't put it under a microscope and I have zero tangible to show for it. I can't prove it. But it's as real as the chair I'm sitting in.

If you were to walk into the ER talking that stuff, House would give you thorazine.

 

[MLU]

I would think if Jesus had a website it would have flash animation or something.

Negative. Jesus has banned Flash from all of his devices in favor of the yet to be fully developed and widely used HTML5.

gmaw, I'm still waiting for you to respond to my post a few pages back.

Here you go: http://www.jstor.org/pss/188646?cookieSet=1

Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin of East Tennessee State University completed studies that showed complex systems argued by Behe can occur naturally as a result of self-organizing chemical processes. They also successfully argue that Behe's approach is overly simplistic and he cherry-picked certain features to make his argument, ignoring the entire picture and being selective in making his argument. There are also numerous computer simulations that show his argument to be extremely flawed.

An argument can be made that stone arches are also irreducibly complex. If you remove a single stone, the entire structure collapses. It seems that us stupid humans have mastered the stone arch easily enough, so the idea God was behind creation because of he appearance of overly complex systems is just silly.

It took me fives minutes to find a dozen studies that blow IC out of the water using science. You go digest that study and then get back to me...

Also, before you go off spouting Occam's Razor, you need to actually understand it and not it's popular misuse on message boards and SciFi re-runs. A more accurate paraphrase of it's meaning would be "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" and not "so simple, a caveman could do it".

Jesus was a real person. Now I know what you're going to say next, but that's just pure ignorance or stubbornness emitting from you.

Here's something fun to do: Go on YouTube, find a very hateful comment, and reply to it saying, "God bless you." 100% of the time the answer I have gotten back is something around, "**** your god. You're an ignorant piece of **** for believing all the bull crap!" Seriously, every single time that person has been either an atheist or agnostic. I'm not saying everyone that is an atheist or agnostic is always in a bad mood, but every time I've seen one on the internet they act like that and try to make themselves sound so smart by calling everyone else ignorant.

I think that it's very likely that Jesus was a real person or at the very least, based on a real person. So was Muhammad, Peter, etc. It's the "Son of God" part that I have a problem with. Jesus wasn't even the first Messiah, though and there is enough of his story that mirrors religions that pre-date him to bring the accuracy of his existence into question.

Atheists are just as much a thorn in the side of common sense as Evangelicals.

By definition, this is impossible. Evangelicals rely on faith, casting aside what can and cannot be proven. Atheists rely on logical reasoning, casting aside what is unseen and cannot be proven. There is nothing "common sense" to believing that someone walked on water, was born of a woman who never had sex, calmed stormy seas or turned water into wine.

 

[parlorcitysaint]

Okay. Bear with me. I'm kinda typin' while I'm tryin' to work this out. We were created "in the image" of God, right? As a species, over the generations, we've evolved, correct? Odds were good that my great great grandfather was much shorter than I am, true?. Heck, during the course of our own lifetimes, our physical appearance changes drastically, that much is evident, even to one as slow as I am. From infancy to adolescence to adulthood through the geriatric years, our bodies metamorphosize greatly, sometimes accompanied by great pain, signifying a rapid change.

Where am I going with all this? Who's to say that our creator even remotely resembles us any more? All the pictures that we see depict Jesus as a man very much like ourselves. The likelihood of that being the case is remote at best. The vast majority of the surviving icons were done more than a thousand years after His death. During the millenia since his crucifixion, mankind as a whole has changed drastically. During that same time period, who's to say that He hasn't grown himself? If we were designed to mimic him, then logically, he evolves as well, doesn't He? He could be a noncorporeal plasma, for all we know by this point.

Here's another possibility for you: We're still waiting for the second coming, true? How do we know that we didn't miss it? Maybe He returned during the middle ages, was burned as a heretic ("He said he was Jesus Christ? Stone him first, and then burn Him"). After that, can you blame Him for not wanting to come back? If he had returned anytime during the first half of the 20th century, he'd have been institutionalized, given shock treatments, and most likely lobotomized. (Yeah, that's a race that I want to help) Maybe He returned in the guise of an algonquin maiden, living in peace and harmony with the nature which He helped create. Yeah, they fared well.

I don't know, I'm just throwing ideas out there.....

 

[Severum]

gmaw, I'm still waiting for you to respond to my post a few pages back.

He can no longer participate in this thread.

 

[MLU]

I hope he at least thanked you for saving him from further embarrassment...

 

[Lipstead Hock]

If you were to walk into the ER talking that stuff, House would give you thorazine.

I understand man is most comfortable with here and now. What works, what is, and what makes sense. And He can base his life on that and it serve him well. I'm built to think this way too. But I can't deny my relationship with my creator. Hopefully House would respect my experience and not downplay it just because it makes no sense to him. But if not, I'll take the Thorazine.

 

[parlorcitysaint]

He can no longer participate in this thread.

No longer among us? Perhaps a vigil is in order.

 

[krazy9000]

No longer among us? Perhaps a vigil is in order.

may the gods have mercy on his soulbag.