Zone1 No Wonder Why I Had Doubts In God's Existence Before

[ding]

Christianity requires acceptance of Jesus as the only way to salvation. Do that, and you're good to go. Don't do it, and you go to hell. It is the one defining requirement of Christianity.

What exactly does acceptance of Jesus mean in practical terms? Because Matthew 7:21-23 seems to be saying your simplistic interpretation of Christianity is wrong. In fact, doesn't Jesus explicitly state that entrance into the kingdom of heaven can only be achieved by doing the will of his father in heaven?

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’​

 

[Blues Man]

Of course each religion thinks theirs is the one true religion. My point was a little more focused. Within Christianity, Meryweather said there is disagrement on basic tenets. I fail to see how Christians can claim to be the one true religion if christians can't even agree on what it entails.

Yeah Christianity has more flavors than Baskin Robbins

 

[alang1216]

Evidence for a Creator and about a Creator. And it's not just the creation of reality. It's the evolution of reality as well. It's every single thing.

Evolution is the reaction to external forces. What are the forces that cause reality to evolve?

You like to jumble up the question of does God exist with who is God.

It is your assumption that they are the same. I see no such evidence.

You have some weird belief that religion and not creation is what you should be studying to determine who God is.

Who God is is defined by the various religions. Learning about creation tells us nothing about a possible Creator, only how he operates. We have learned an enormous amount about our creation and the structure of the universe. You connect the dots and see a supernatural intelligence behind it all. I do not connect the dots as you do. We can look at the same Rorschach image and see very different things. I can't say what you see is wrong, only that I don't see it. Doesn't make you stupid or me smart.

At the end of the day those are man's perceptions about a transcendent incorporeal being which is eternal and beyond comprehension.

An awful lot of assumptions packed into that one little sentence.

Of course there will be different perceptions. It would be odd if there weren't. So congratulations for outsmarting yourself with your cleverness in stating the obvious; different men have different perceptions of God and their perceptions have no bearing on God.

He could, of course, try to make his existence obvious but chooses not to. I wonder why.

Please tell me you aren't here to only bash the God of Christians.

Since it is generally presumed that there is only one God, I must 'bash' them all equally. Christianity is no better or worse than any other religion, they all have their good and bad points.

 

[Blues Man]

It's that assessment right there that tells me you have absolutely no understanding of what faith is, how it is used or the power it holds. None, zero, nada, zilch. If I believed as you do, I wouldn't believe in faith either. The problem is I have experienced the power of faith and know faith is real. So I can't believe as you do because I know better. Faith when practiced properly switches on all the learning centers of the mind.

All belief holds power over the believer.

Just look how scared children get of the Boogey man in the closet.

I never said faith isn't real I said it is belief without proof. What you have faith in might not be real though

And there are a hell of a lot of very intelligent people out there who don't believe in gods

 

[Blues Man]

You pose no ch

But I was talking to you. Don't be afraid of having your beliefs challenged. You do it to others all the time.

You pose no challenge to me

 

[ding]

Evolution is the reaction to external forces. What are the forces that cause reality to evolve?

Reality is space and time; the world or the state of things as they actually exist and evolves according to the laws of nature. I'm thinking you can't get past your narrow definition of evolution which you arbitrarily and capriciously limit to biology.

 

[Blues Man]

I know that you dismiss every aspect of your spiritual nature and that you look down on others that don't. I know that you are intentionally being disrespectful when you use the phrase "gods" in your posts. I know more about you than you think I do.

Spoken like a dualist.

The mind is the body the body is the mind.

And I'm not being disrespectful because not everyone believes in the god you worship. Why do you want to force your beliefs onto others?

You have no proof that there is only one god because that's one of those things you believe even though there is no proof.

I don't hold to your religion so I have no obligation to use its conventions when speaking of any gods.

 

[ding]

Yeah Christianity has more flavors than Baskin Robbins

Diversification is quite natural. You see it in nature. You see it in every religion. Your singling out Christianity speaks to your bias and nothing else.

 

[alang1216]

And yet what I have pointed out to you is real and was recanted in the gospels for a reason.

But you need to remember why we are discussing this in the first place. You made an incorrect deduction and this was offered up as proof your error.

We probably don't share the same view of the Gospels and scripture in general. To a believer the Gospels are the revealed word of God, I get that, but to me they are the works of man. They each have a unique history and evolution. They have been copied and recopied so many times that every bit of text we have from before Gutenberg, has errors in it and we have no complete picture of what they originally contained. Some errors were minor, some not. For example (from memory), the wonderful story of Jesus saying he who is without sin cast the first stone, was not originally in John but only appeared 1,000 years after he died.

 

[Blues Man]

Of course the universe is self aware. You are literally part of the universe. The matter in your body was created when space and time popped into existence. Ergo the universe became self aware of itself. It's just science.

No the universe has no awareness of me you or anything else just like you are not aware of the exchange of oxygen that occurs in your lungs. Or like the ocean is not aware of the waves that stem from it.

We are not aware of anything in the universe as all our information of it is literally billions of years old. We are not looking at the universe as it is but as it was a long time ago.

 

[Blues Man]

Diversification is quite natural. You see it in nature. You see it in every religion. Your singling out Christianity speaks to your bias and nothing else.

But religion is not of nature it is an imposed order by a supposedly all powerful being

 

[ding]

It is your assumption that they are the same. I see no such evidence.

You seem to have gone off on a tangent which happens when you parse things out of context. Like I said before... you can't discover who God is until you first believe a higher power exists in the first place. So your statement that I assumed discovering God exists and discovering who God is, are the same thing makes no sense because they are two different things. I too see no evidence that discovering God exists and discovering who God is are the same thing.

 

[alang1216]

Of course it was. It was only a matter of time and conditions. Given the numbers it most certainly was inevitable. It's just the statistics of a massive universe and the laws of nature which existed before space and time itself.

You could say the same about ANYTHING. Given an infinite universe and infinite time, Hamlet was inevitable. Doesn't mean the universe was created for Shakespeare.

 

[Blues Man]

Love God. Love one another. That is the message of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Yeah so is genocide and slavery

 

[ding]

Who God is is defined by the various religions. Learning about creation tells us nothing about a possible Creator, only how he operates. We have learned an enormous amount about our creation and the structure of the universe. You connect the dots and see a supernatural intelligence behind it all. I do not connect the dots as you do. We can look at the same Rorschach image and see very different things. I can't say what you see is wrong, only that I don't see it. Doesn't make you stupid or me smart.

No, it's not defined by various religions. The various religions are perceptions of who God is. God is. God is not defined by our perceptions. If you want to discover God or discover who God is your best bet is to objectively study what he created. But that's not really what you are after. You are more concerned with arguing about and subordinating religion than you are in discovering God.

 

[ding]

An awful lot of assumptions packed into that one little sentence.

It's just logic. It makes more sense when you don't try to parse it but read it in the entirety of its intended context.

 

[alang1216]

You seem to have gone off on a tangent which happens when you parse things out of context. Like I said before... you can't discover who God is until you first believe a higher power exists in the first place. So your statement that I assumed discovering God exists and discovering who God is, are the same thing makes no sense because they are two different things. I too see no evidence that discovering God exists and discovering who God is are the same thing.

You assume God exists, is described by Christianity, and work from there. I see no reason to make either assumption. How would your thinking be different if you first assumed God did not exist?

 

[ding]

He could, of course, try to make his existence obvious but chooses not to. I wonder why.

So you choose to not seek him out because of it. Thus blaming God for your failure. That's an external locus of control. I'm sure if you tried really hard you could come up with a number of reasonable and valid reasons why this is the case. Or you might even discover the spirit of God was inside you the whole time. But regardless of that, I've offered several explanations to you before so you are without excuse for not seeking God.

 

[alang1216]

No, it's not defined by various religions. The various religions are perceptions of who God is. God is. God is not defined by our perceptions. If you want to discover God or discover who God is your best bet is to objectively study what he created. But that's not really what you are after. You are more concerned with arguing about and subordinating religion than you are in discovering God.

I consider myself pretty well educated on the nature and structure of our universe. God may have been the Creator, I don't know, but I don't see a lot of evidence in our universe that it was created for us. That is something man, in his arrogance has always assumed, but I see no evidence of.

 

[ding]

Since it is generally presumed that there is only one God, I must 'bash' them all equally. Christianity is no better or worse than any other religion, they all have their good and bad points.

Must? I think that is your choice. Again... this is a textbook example of an external locus of control. You have no choice in bashing Christianity. It's Christianity's fault. SMH.