For athesist and agnostics: What would constitute proof of God? (paranormal, believer)
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Multitudes of archaeological evidence disproves many parts of the Bible, i.e. Noah's flood, the Exodus, the story of Adam and Eve. However, as one part of a book being proved does not prove the entire book, neither does the disproof of one part of a book disprove the entire book.
I'm not aware of archaeological evidence disproving Noah's Flood or the Exodus. Can you provide an example? Note - lack of archaeological evidence doesn't equal no evidence. I agree that a single find doesn't prove the whole Bible or is even compelling evidence. It is the grand accumulation of evidence viewed as a whole that makes a compelling case.
I think you need to believe in the concept of Original Sin to "get it."
Everyone is born stained with sin and commits a zillion more during the course of their life. Believing in Christ as a saviour will expunge that/those sins and thereby spare the sinner from eternal torment in hell - which the Christian god invented because he loves us.
Or something like that.
Maybe I need to start a thread on it because I don't get it.
Basically to be able to use the phrase 'Jesus Christ is my saviour', what you are saying is that you need to believe that all of the following are true:
That you are born sinful.
That the simple act of believing Jesus Christ existed and died on a cross, will somehow save you from hell?
Also by association you need to believe in hell. A place you will go if.. (as above)
Don't you also have to believe that Jesus is still alive?
I still don't get it.
I think I need educating on this one.
As an agnostic, I asked myself that question this morning while I was out walking my dog, and I had to admit I was stumped. My first answer to myself was that I'd be convinced by a large-scale, old-fashioned, Biblical-style miracle: suspension of the law of gravity, the parting of the Red Sea, the raising of people who are dead beyond a doubt (i.e., beginning to decay), or an unequivocal message that everyone on the planet could hear in a language they could understand, and that they could later agree upon (at least as much as different human beings can agree on anything). But then I wondered, could we be sure that we weren't being fooled by some vastly technologically superior alien race that had decided to come to earth and was pretending to be God, for purposes unknown? As Arthur C. Clarke noted, any sufficiently advanced alien technology is indistinguishable from magic. I'd start asking lots of questions, such as, "Why have you been so ambiguous about your existence until now? And why have you appeared now? Why did you create a physical world, as opposed to creating souls and plunking us directly into the afterlife?" I suppose at some point it would either add up for me, or it wouldn't. If it did add up, I might consider the alien-hoax theory to be a remote possibliity, just as I now consider it to be a remote possibility that we're part of some Matrix-like virtual reality, or that there is an Abrahamic God.
How about others? What would convince you?
If the Cubs won the World Series, President Obama paid a sincere tribute to small business owners as the heart and soul of American prosperity, Karl Rove said nice things three days in a row about Democrats, and drug companies slashed medicine prices "because we already are making too much profit,"......I still wouldn't buy the God as popularly conceived.
God Himself speaking to everyone all at once at the same time, and everyone receiving the same message from Him at the same time. That's all He would have to do. Only communicating with some people, or only communicating to a select group of people, or only a certain person experiencing Him, doesn't suffice to me, because it's not fair. If God loves all then He should be fair to all, IMO.
God Himself speaking to everyone all at once at the same time, and everyone receiving the same message from Him at the same time. That's all He would have to do. Only communicating with some people, or only communicating to a select group of people, or only a certain person experiencing Him, doesn't suffice to me, because it's not fair. If God loves all then He should be fair to all, IMO.
Getting everyone to all agree as to what was said - that's another issue altogether.
Maybe I need to start a thread on it because I don't get it.
Basically to be able to use the phrase 'Jesus Christ is my saviour', what you are saying is that you need to believe that all of the following are true:
That you are born sinful.
That the simple act of believing Jesus Christ existed and died on a cross, will somehow save you from hell?
Also by association you need to believe in hell. A place you will go if.. (as above)
Don't you also have to believe that Jesus is still alive?
I still don't get it.
I think I need educating on this one.
Christians will never explain it in these terms, but it involves the fact that Jehovah is bloodthirsty. He is angry about sin. In Old Testament times the temple sacrifice system regularly sacrificed lambs, rams, bulls, goats, etc., to appease god and "cover for" the sins of the people. Why that as opposed to dancing on one foot and reciting poetry, or any other random thing? Well chalk that one up to the belief of the ancients that guilt demands the shedding of the guilty person's blood, e.g., their death. The temple sacrifices were simply made as a proxy to satisfy god's bloodlust concerning sin. (This made perfect sense back in the day, trust me).
The idea of Jesus being your savior is simply this: he was the ultimate sacrifice to cover for all people's sins for all time. The perfect sacrifice. The jobs is done. However, to make this efficacious for you personally, you have to have faith that this has been done for you, thus "accepting Jesus as your Savior", aka "having faith in the finished work of Christ". So saying "Jesus is my Savior" is a way of claiming this "free gift" for yourself.
Capiche? Perfectly muddy now? I feel so sheepish (pun slightly intended) explaining this to the uninitiated.
But that isn't limited to just Atheists. Every religion makes different god claims, so being a good Muslim will not help you at all, if Protestant Christianity is true. Likewise, worshipping Jesus as God is liable to get you in trouble with both the Jewish and Islamic concepts of God. And pretty much everyone is in trouble if H.P. Lovecraft stumbled upon the truth and the best we can hope for is that we are eaten first when the Great Old Ones awake...
So, in the face of countless God concepts, many of which are mutually exclusive, it is not an irrational position to withhold belief pending evidence, and hope that if there were a God, it would be ok with that. It is at least no worse a position than latching on to one God concept to the exclusion of all others with no evidence....
-NoCapo
Yep, and for that you decide to wait for evidence - in contrast to - not asking God to show you the true path, and then you start your search - judge each religion by it's book by openly studying it - and then see what talks to you?
Its kinda ironic that if u get sick you do a research to find the best doctor. If you decide to earn a degree, u do a lot of research to find the best college. When you decide to buy a home, u do an extensive research to find all about the area, history, size, price, condition, neighborhood and school district to find the best you can afford BUT when it comes to finding faith, you decide not to do any research as you would before buying a house, but instead u will wait for someone to come and convince you with evidence as if its a sale pitch. Nobody is going to come and convince you, and if they do u will keep dismissing the evidence. It doesn't work his way, you will need to get out and do your research to find what you feel is the best.
Well, what can I say? it's your call that your decide to "wait for evidence" that perhaps won't come to you and your life will meet it's end.
Last edited by ll0OoO0ll; 05-20-2014 at 09:17 PM..
Now if only the tiny nation of Israel had gone into the dustbins of society along with the other ancient civilizations then atheists could say that the Bible is false. But Israel thrives today as a major political player on the world stage.
The evidence you site only represents correlation, not evidence of causation. If I predict that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west tomorrow, and it does, is this compelling evidence that I control the sun? Of course not.
Just because some things in the Bible have materialized does not mean they were caused by god or that the entirety of the Bible is true. For as long as I can remember, people have been warning that 'the end times are near', and some have even provided a specific year, and it never happened.
Correlation is not necessarily indicative of causation, until causal evidence is found. Most things are simply correlational.
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