why is it that you can put all your trust, faith, whole life in to a thing that might not even be real and i cant?"
what is it that made you decide wait a mintue yes now i think i will be christian?
if someone came out now a days and said ohh wait no this is the real god or went against what the bible says you and every single christian who say yeah right ya crackpot.
i mean why waste your life praying and going to church i mean for what?
back in the 1940 & 50's in Ireland children were scared into going to church they were told they would die and go to hell if they ever missed it what kinda crap is that?
why not wonder and become intrested in whats happening in space? our would the mystries around it why things happen? are the blackholes? how stars are born? or why the expolde.
If your God is the real one, why did he take so long to show up? Humans might have been around for potentially a million years before he showed up as the burning bush. And humans had been worshiping gods for several thousand years before yours showed up.
hmm....that's a good question, I've not thought about that much before. My honest answer is I don't know, but I do have some thoughts.
Firstly, I don't believe the fact that I don't know should affect my faith at all. God tells us what we need to know. If a boss wanted his employee to do a job, he wouldn't be expected to give a complete history of the business and a detailed description of the inner workings of the company before the employee can do his job. God provides us with enough evidence for us to trust him and to get our purpose on earth done....and If the employee was genuinely interested in the history of the company, I'm sure a good boss would find the time to eventually enlighten that employee, but it's not vital information.
Secondly, the bible is not the only way God can reveal himself to people. Is it possible that God was around and amongst human life before the bible was written? Yea, absolutely.
"since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" [Romans 1:19-20]
"Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. [Romans 2:14-15]
So I guess the question you have to answer is, when should God have shown up? At what stage of evolution would it become necessary for God to reveal himself in written text? When we were still apes? How about Neanderthals? Would they have benefited from Gods revelation if it were in the form of a book like the bible?
I believe God tells us what we need to know, and his revelation can come in many forms depending on who we are and at what time in history we happen to be living in.
Do you have any evidence that puts your God above the other ones that isn't just the Bible saying so?
Yes, the prophecies. Almost 1/3 of the bible is prophecy and it's claimed to be 100% accurate. Many of the prophecies are not vague but include specific names, places, events and times.
For example, in the book "science speaks", mathematician, Peter Stoner, works out the probability that any one man could fulfil just 8 of the over 300 prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, and they conservatively estimated it to be 1 in 10^17 [that's 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000].
Some say the prophecies must have been written after the time, but the Septuagint [the Greek translation of the old testament] is dated at 250BC.
Some say Jesus could have deliberately fulfilled the prophecies, but many were beyond his control, such as place of birth, time of birth, manner of birth, betrayal, manner of death, piercing, burial and people's reactions.
1 in 10^17, and this is just from 8 prophecies about Jesus. There are thousands of prophecies in the bible. In the same book Peter Stoner works out the odds of just 11 various old testament prophecies being fulfilled, and it comes to 1 in 5.76 x 10^59!
Coincidently he also examines the genesis account of creation and shows that the order of events matches perfectly with modern geological findings, and places the probability that Moses could've known this at 1 in 3.1 x 10^22.
the book is free to read here, and if it's evidence you're looking for, then I highly recommend you read this book.
sure, sorry, yes you did make some very good points...I just didn't want my posts to become too lengthy! I have a habit of babbling a bit sometimes!Can you acknowledge the other points I made? I think I made some good ones.
If God is the light, then by God not showing up, he left us in the dark for maybe a million years of us being humans.
You still aren't getting anywhere. To accept those prophecies as evidence of the Bible's validity, I'd already have to accept the Bible is an accurate record of the prophecies, and that the Bible is an accurate record of their fulfilment. So you're still saying the Bible is true because it says so. Other religions also claim fulfilled prophecies and have books that supposedly prove that. You need to find another way.
sure, sorry, yes you did make some very good points...I just didn't want my posts to become too lengthy! I have a habit of babbling a bit sometimes!
How do you know that God left us in the dark? He may have communicated to those people in ways that we don't know about. Giving a bible to a society of Neanderthals is unlikely to help them. They wouldn't understand it. According to Wikipedia, [history of communication], speech began around 200,000 years ago, symbols around 30,000, writing around 7000, and then the first alphabets emerged around 2000BC. Moses wrote the first books of the bible around 1500BC, so I'd say Gods revelation in written form came about on time.
But why do you care? God's provided us, today, with evidence in the form of the bible, so why not investigate that first, and worry about Neanderthals later?
No, the prophecies can be verified using sources outside of the Bible.
Take the Genesis account of creation. Peter Stoner [link] matches the order of events to modern geological findings to produce the figure 1 in 3.1 x 10^22.
Or take the prophecy of Tyre. You can look in any history book or encyclopedia and match up the events with the prophecy. The entire Bible is rooted in history, so you can accurately date when the prophecies were written then verify their fulfilment externally. I'd be happy to provide examples if you'd like to hear some.
I'm yet to find even one prophecy from another religion that comes close to the accuracy of biblical prophecy. The Prophecies in the Koran are seriously lame! [link] They're really vague. Whereas biblical prophecies often include specific names, places, times and events sometimes hundreds and thousands of years before their fulfilment.
p.s. let me know if I missed any questions out that you wanted answered?
I think this will probably degenerate quickly into atheist vs religious thing as forum topics often do. I don't think either side can prove anything and that is why it becomes a circular argument, round and round it goes.
Right. Philosophy has been dealing with seemingly unanswerable questions for centuries. Using your logic, we should destroy philosophy because it deals with complicated topics that are debated frequently.
What's so bad about discussing complicated topics?
And a circular argument is different from what you're talking about.
I didn't mean "circular argument" as in the phrase "circular reasoning" but just as what the two separate words mean. An argument that goes in a circle. Sometimes I hate that all these terms were invented when sometimes they interfere with the meaning of one word + another meant in another context. Perhaps it would have been better to say "closed circle argument" or unfalsifiable.
We aren't really being philosophical and having a civil discussion and expression of ideas here are we? We are playing the game of who is right and who is wrong. No one wins and it only gets hurtful.
How disheartening. Philosophy has been philosophizing on religion since day one. What do you think philosophy is? Two old farts with a long beard speaking Greek?
Unfalsifiable? God either exists or does not and if he does, he manifests in some way. That is not unfalsifiable.
Where are you coming from with this stuff? You sound so apathetic.
I've been on the internet long enough to know when something isn't going to be constructive in any way. Kind of like the back and forth with you right now. The arguments go no where because no one will be convinced. No one wants to be convinced they just want to be right.
So I have said my piece. Let's see where it goes then.
that's not what I said. I said "Giving a bible to a society of Neanderthals is unlikely to help them. They wouldn't understand it". This doesn't apply to us today. I happen to think that books are very good ways to convey knowledge.I agree with you-a book is a poor way for God to convey knowledge, it's confusing, boring, and an easily destroyed medium. God should some day think of learning to go beyond books.
Have you ever heard of the fallacy of the complex question? It's when a question is phrased in such a way as to assume something not yet granted. [i.e. I could ask someone, "So when are you going to stop beating your wife?!] Before I have to answer your question you need to show me how you know that God turned up late to the party. Personally I think any presumptions made about the spiritual lives of human beings before the Bible, in a period before the written word had even emerged, are only ever going to be guesses at best.I'd like you to try and explain why God would show up after many other gods and even after other monotheistic religions. Your God showed up late to the party. Why?
this depends on whether you take the Genesis account to be literal or parable. Bear in mind that the rise of modern science has only really emerged the last few hundred years. The vast majority of humans throughout history wouldn't know how to verify the Genesis account. So I don't think Genesis was written to satisfy the scientific curiosities of a few people in the 21st century. I believe it was written in a way the common man could understand.How does Eden fit in with World history and God not being around? When did Eden happen? Eden happened and then God dumped us off in Africa, dumb, violent and barely surviving, almost becoming extinct? Explain how this fits in with the historic record, the whole rib into woman thing.
noWhat if someone came to you about Scientology and then claimed they had a guy that 40 years ago fulfilled all of the prophecies of the messiah of Scientology and it says so in his book. Does that prove the book true and Scientology true?
no I'm not.That's what you're doing.
Can the reforming of an entire nation, to the very day, 2,500 years after the prediction, be self fulfilled? [Israel Rebirth in 1948, prophesied]You can't use prophecies as evidence. Why? Because if someone knows full well the prophecies for the messiah can then go and fulfil them or the book about him can say that he fulfilled them or even go so far as to write down prophecies in the very book that also claims their fulfilment. Any so called prophet can do that. It gets us nowhere and doesn't do anything to validate the Bible.
The prophecy about Tyre gets a lot more specific than that.Tyre being conquered in antiquity by a very powerful army? That isn't a prediction, that's an educated guess. I could make several prophecies about certain high risk nations in our time and many of them might come true and the ones where I am wrong can be swept under the rug. It's too easy.
that's not what I said. I said "Giving a bible to a society of Neanderthals is unlikely to help them. They wouldn't understand it". This doesn't apply to us today. I happen to think that books are very good ways to convey knowledge.
Have you ever heard of the fallacy of the complex question? It's when a question is phrased in such a way as to assume something not yet granted. [i.e. I could ask someone, "So when are you going to stop beating your wife?!] Before I have to answer your question you need to show me how you know that God turned up late to the party. Personally I think any presumptions made about the spiritual lives of human beings before the Bible, in a period before the written word had even emerged, are only ever going to be guesses at best.
Was God revealing himself to human beings before the bible? I believe he probably was. Does the fact that other religions were around at that time disprove the God of the Bible? I don't think so. Other religions are around today, despite God's revelation to us in the Bible. You need to show me how you know that God was not revealing himself to human beings before the Bible.
this depends on whether you take the Genesis account to be literal or parable. Bear in mind that the rise of modern science has only really emerged the last few hundred years. The vast majority of humans throughout history wouldn't know how to verify the Genesis account. So I don't think Genesis was written to satisfy the scientific curiosities of a few people in the 21st century. I believe it was written in a way the common man could understand.
Having said that, I still believe parables reveal truth, only in a different form. So, just as the order of events in creation from Genesis 1, matches with modern geological findings, I'd expect to find the story of Eden matching with history also. So when and where did Eden happen? Right now, I don't know, but I don't believe it needs to be a specific time. It could be metaphorical for a period of time in evolution.
no
no I'm not.
I said "the prophecies can be verified using sources outside of the Bible".
Can the reforming of an entire nation, to the very day, 2,500 years after the prediction, be self fulfilled? [Israel Rebirth in 1948, prophesied]
Can the rise and fall of every ruling empire from 600BC to present day be self fulfilled? [link]
Can a mans place, time and manner of birth be self fulfilled?
Can death by crucifixion be self fulfilled? Or more interestingly, would anybody WANT to self fulfil that prophecy?!
The prophecy about Tyre gets a lot more specific than that.
1. "...I am going to bring against Tyre, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses and chariots, with horsemen and a great army." [Ezekiel 26:7]
"Early in the sixth century B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, laid siege to the walled city for thirteen years. " [middleeast.com]
2. "and I will bring many nations against you, like the sea casting up its waves" [Ezekiel 26:4]
"In 332 BC, the city was conquered by Alexander the Great, after a siege of seven months" [wikipedia]
"In 315 BC, Alexander's former general Antigonus began his own siege of Tyre, taking the city a year later." [wikipedia]
3. "They will....throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea." [Ezekiel 26:12]
"They built a 70-m-wide, 1-km-long causeway using timber, stone, and debris of the abandoned mainland city, destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar 250 years earlier" [link]
4. "...and when I bring the ocean depths over you and its vast waters cover you..." [Ezekiel 26:19]
"A man can ascend the walls of New Tyre and see ancient Tyre, which the sea has now covered, lying at a stone’s throw from the new city."[mainland part of tyre - The Itinary of Benjamin of Tudela []
[island part of tyre - link]
5, 6 & 7. "I will make you a bare rock, and you will become a place to spread fishnets. You will never be rebuilt," [Ezekiel 26:14]
"Alexander the Great reduced Tyre to ruins in 332 B.C. Tyre recovered in a measure from this blow, but never regained the place she had previously held in the world. The larger part of the site of the once great city is now as bare as the top of a rock -- a place where the fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry" [Philip Myers - Textbook of History - link]
ok, fair enough....well, my honest answer is I don't know for sure what was going on 6000 years ago and beyond. But even if the Bible was written in the last 500 years, after thousands of other religions, I'd still be treating it exactly the same, purely because of the supernatural evidence it contains. Of course the question would emerge, why did God wait so long, but that's only after I've established that it's true. You may conclude from Gods timing that God is not good, but that doesn't mean that God does not exist.It's not a complex fallacy. You are making the claim that he did exist always, so asking why he showed up late, when there is no evidence that he always existed, is an entirely valid question. I don't need to show anything, because I'm not making any claim. The default position is disbelief, not belief. I'm asking "why aren't you beating your wife?"
The question you need to ask first is, does god exist? Because if he does then forming a woman from a part of a man is totally possible. If God can create the entire universe which defies all our best known psychical laws, creating a woman out of a rib is gonna be child's play.Science doesn't create scientific truth, science is the process of uncovering the truth. Factually wrong is wrong wrong wrong, whether you're a scientist or not. Woman from rib is the Bible proven wrong.
I didn't say "he wasn't trying to be factually right", I said "this depends on whether you take the Genesis account to be literal or parable". I still expect the truth in parables to align to reality, but I also expect there to be deeper, spiritual levels of truth revealed aswell, something that a purely literal transcription would miss out on.This should be good evidence for you that he doesn't exist, but when evidence that he's wrong shows up, you just say that he, in this instance, wasn't trying to be factually right. How convenient that whenever God is wrong, he didn't mean to be right.
I strongly disagree and I think my examples show this.The prophecy wasn't true at all, except to say that Tyre would be conquered one day.
ok, [without googling it! ], would you be able to know what this prediction is in reference to [this is supposedly one of his best predictions];Nostradamus can best God in many instances, if we're using such wishy washy prophecy fulfilment.