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We weren't capable (especially in more savage eras) of reaching the pure love that God is . . . but that doesn't mean we didn't have any ability to do so. After all . . . God did reach us through inspiration.
Fair enough.
Quote:
Perfection even unto death is another matter entirely.
By this you mean what exactly? (I think I know ... just wanting to clarify.) You think this is happening in the human race since Jesus?
Those who are familiar with me and my views know better than to jump to such erroneous conclusions. I was atheist for over 30 years . . . no brainwashing of soft brain involved. I spent the next 40+ years trying to explain what I encountered in deep meditation using science and every other available source of knowledge with a hard and educated brain.
If you had truly been exposed to purely rational scientific thought, it wouldn't have led you to God.
More commonly, those who were atheists and then turned to God late in life, did so to seek emotional comfort after some hard times (drug abuse, divorce, death of close person/illness of family member or self, etc.). Most people don't draw themselves to God while living a happy life as an atheist. Just doesn't make sense.
In other words, I feel like God as more often been a symptom of an illness than a logical conclusion.
I don't know why people keep saying this. What evidence? Like the rampant starvation and unspeakable suffering endured by people in the third world (by far the biggest chunk of the world population)? The incredibly hostile, unliveable climates that God supposedly created on our "perfect" planet? Our natural surroundings are not perfect. If a creator really "designed" everything, than he's probably worse than your mediocre contractor. The design flaws are everywhere, from the vast expanses of desert that are unliveable, to the huge chunks of ice that are not suitable for life. And let' snot forget the "creation" of human beings that seem bent on their own destruction. Not exactly what I'd call "design." You have to come to terms with the idea that your "god" is either incredibly inept, or extremely malevolent.
I am only interested in the evidence that affected me. the first being that I am even here after being close to death many times and at the last minute some odd coincidence just happened. the first was my first plane crash. When I got hit with ground fire one bullet shredded my leg. I took the plane upward and planned to try to get to Da Nang. Lost consciousness from blood loss. Yet the plane stayed up for nearly 200 miles and crashed in a belly landing instead of a nose dive as it should have. I went down almost on top of a Navy Ship and was pulled from the plane without even getting wet. Coincidence?
Pretty much no evidence could convince me of what you pose. As an earlier poster put it, there are too many variables we are asked to believe in first, before getting to the problem. That there is a god. That there can be a son of a god. And questions such as how to determine paternity, beyond some being just claiming it to be so. Etc.
If the question were instead, "what would it take for you to believe that Jesus had supernatural powers?" that would be easy - have Jesus appear and put on a show of "miracles". But miracles don't in themselves offer proof of a Trinity, or God, or Son of God, or heaven, or hell, or any of the things claimed in standard Christian theology.
If a character claiming to be Jesus appeared to me and performed miracles, there would still be questions.
Is this Jesus the same Jesus written about in the Bible?
Is this Jesus an extraterrestrial being with either inate abilities to do things humans can't, or scientific/technical know-how to do things we cannot - but still not the deity (or son of a deity) in the way described in the Bible?
Is the demonstration a hallucination?
And more.
By the way, the Bible is no more evidence of what it claims than the Odyssey is evidence of the prior existence of giant man-eating Cyclopes.
I am only interested in the evidence that affected me. the first being that I am even here after being close to death many times and at the last minute some odd coincidence just happened. the first was my first plane crash. When I got hit with ground fire one bullet shredded my leg. I took the plane upward and planned to try to get to Da Nang. Lost consciousness from blood loss. Yet the plane stayed up for nearly 200 miles and crashed in a belly landing instead of a nose dive as it should have. I went down almost on top of a Navy Ship and was pulled from the plane without even getting wet. Coincidence?
Yes. And I'll explain why: The people that felt perfectly safe in their beds and were killed by a crashing plane. Is this proof-positive that there is no God, only relatively random events? Or is it proof that God judges/hates them? By your logic, it should be.
But it's not. It's merely something that happened to a person, and we give a name to it: Bad luck.
The sheer scale and scope of accounting for the creation of life, the control ("laws") and constraints (processes) that enable all existence . . . and the consistency that enables our science, etc. etc . . . has traditionally and logically been assigned the label God. NOTHING else captures it.
And NOTHING in this labeling of "God" for the scale, scope, and consistency of physical laws of our world (which isn't consistent in all cases, btw), leads to the conclusion that "God" is intelligent, an individual being, caring, capable of forming relationships with humans, let alone intricately involved in early Middle Eastern history or a quasi-parent to a fellow named Jesus.
And NOTHING in this labeling of "God" for the scale, scope, and consistency of physical laws of our world (which isn't consistent in all cases, btw), leads to the conclusion that "God" is intelligent, an individual being, caring, capable of forming relationships with humans, let alone intricately involved in early Middle Eastern history or a quasi-parent to a fellow named Jesus.
It's just God of the gaps.
It is sufficiently God to foreclose all the nonsense that there is no evidence of the EXISTENCE of God. ALL the debates are over differing attributes. You prefer unintelligent, mindless, purposeless, random, chaotic, unconscious, lifeless, etc. etc. But those are all preferred "BELIEFS ABOUT" God and there is no scientific basis for any of them and they are logically contradicted by existing knowledge. What you can dispute are any ADDED attributes that we have not established scientifically . . . but you cannot assume your beliefs are the default as the basis for denying the existence of God.
Jesus would have to stand in front of a .50 cal machine gun while I put a thousand rounds through it. Then he would have to survive been driven over by a tank, then flame thrower time. Finally I would need to do a few passes in a A10 Warthog with a full arsenal. There would need to be lots of witnesses, as well as medical experts to watch for any trickery. If he passed these test, these would show to me that he was either magic, or had an unknown technology.
Stage 2 would consist of a guided tour of heaven and hell. Then I would need to be beamed back to all the big dates-Creation, the flood, crucification , etc
Stage 3 would consist of a series of test and evaluation to try and determine that I was of sound mind.
ALL of this would make me more open to the possibility that Jesus is real, but it still wouldn't be the most likely explanation to me.
We weren't capable (especially in more savage eras) of reaching the pure love that God is . . . but that doesn't mean we didn't have any ability to do so. After all . . . God did reach us through inspiration. Perfection even unto death is another matter entirely.
You confuse yourself into a bubbling froth with all your mythology and circular logic etc. For a god so full of love, he sure seems to have a lot of wrath.
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