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I am not a Christian but how about you start off by telling us what did YOU do today for the planet in terms of helping people? May be you donated a penny to some charitable organization? Not even that. isn't it?
I don't know how that's relevant to what Texan asked. It's a non-explanation.
He/she wasn't stating their own authority to be worshipped and prayed to in exchange for consideration to not burn for eternity.
Again...if we humans can do all these things ourselves, and i agree we can and should...then there is no need for a god-explanation for that which requires no explanation.
The two posts above ^^^^ say it all. God gave men freewill. I often wonder if He feels that was a mistake although I understand the necessity of doing that. I often think he must be very sad because in granting that freewill, it is up to us, those that are given the gift of life, to do the "good".
Oh you know why an entity gave us freewill even though you have no way to show proof of this same entity? That seems awfully presumptive and arrogant to me.
Can anybody confirm for me what the God of the Bible did for the planet today in terms of helping people? Just wondering.
In 1994 a tornado hit the Biblically named town of Goshen Alabama. Among the buildings destroyed was the Goshen Methodist Church which was conducting it's Sunday service. The walls of the church collapsed and twenty people died including six children. A tornado is just a result of forces which occur naturally on our planet. It has no agenda of good or evil because it is not an intelligent force. Why would God allow the deaths of those in His own house of worship, including the most innocent among them who were there in the VERY ACT of worshiping him, when all He had to do was to prevent the walls from collapsing? A trifling act for an omnipotent god, surely?
The answer to that question of course, is the answer to the question presented by this string.
The problem is that when put to the test, we invariably observe that make believe is routinely unaffected by the harsh realities of real life. If a wall falls on you, or a mad man decides to shoot a classroom full of six year old children in the head, make believe does not serve as protection. Even for innocent children. Because in real life what we actually observe is that when the chips are down and devout faith is confronted by physical reality, physical reality will ALWAYS win out. When the chips are down and a Supreme Being would really REALLY come in handy God, invisible and silent but assumed to exist God will invariably act in exactly the same manner as a God who isn't actually there. A God who refuses to act even in the face of the ultimate crisis of life and death for the most innocent of His followers is a God who corresponds in every way to A GOD WHO NEVER EXISTED TO BEGIN WITH! This is as close to an empirical test for the actual existence of God as one might reasonably hope for. Experimentally in these sorts of make or break tests, the result for the question "Does God actually exist?" invariably corresponds in every way to a negative finding. Piedmont Journal - Tried by Deadly Tornado, An Anchor of Faith Holds - NYTimes.com
I am not a Christian but how about you start off by telling us what did YOU do today for the planet in terms of helping people? May be you donated a penny to some charitable organization? Not even that. isn't it?
Let's see, nothing specifically today but I have donated blood or it's various forms 100 times which probably helped 300 people I will never meet. I have also worked with dog rescue groups to place them in foster homes. I have worked for the Red Cross on flood relief work. These are just to name a few things. I will put that up against the God of the Bible who decides to have his followers kill innocent babies and children in war and oh I don't know flood the entire planet killing innocent animals who never hurt anybody. You know the opposite work I have done in helping helpless animals to be placed in good homes.
In 1994 a tornado hit the Biblically named town of Goshen Alabama. Among the buildings destroyed was the Goshen Methodist Church which was conducting it's Sunday service. The walls of the church collapsed and twenty people died including six children. A tornado is just a result of forces which occur naturally on our planet. It has no agenda of good or evil because it is not an intelligent force. Why would God allow the deaths of those in His own house of worship, including the most innocent among them who were there in the VERY ACT of worshiping him, when all He had to do was to prevent the walls from collapsing? A trifling act for an omnipotent god, surely?
The answer to that question of course, is the answer to the question presented by this string.
The problem is that when put to the test, we invariably observe that make believe is routinely unaffected by the harsh realities of real life. If a wall falls on you, or a mad man decides to shoot a classroom full of six year old children in the head, make believe does not serve as protection. Even for innocent children. Because in real life what we actually observe is that when the chips are down and devout faith is confronted by physical reality, physical reality will ALWAYS win out. When the chips are down and a Supreme Being would really REALLY come in handy God, invisible and silent but assumed to exist God will invariably act in exactly the same manner as a God who isn't actually there. A God who refuses to act even in the face of the ultimate crisis of life and death for the most innocent of His followers is a God who corresponds in every way to A GOD WHO NEVER EXISTED TO BEGIN WITH! This is as close to an empirical test for the actual existence of God as one might reasonably hope for. Experimentally in these sorts of make or break tests, the result for the question "Does God actually exist?" invariably corresponds in every way to a negative finding. Piedmont Journal - Tried by Deadly Tornado, An Anchor of Faith Holds - NYTimes.com
and every day the result is always a positive finding for those who know that God exists
it's not "believing" ..... it is "knowing"
and that is only verified each person for their own self, not taking someone else's word for anything
People have "known" thousands of Gods over the course of human history. They worshiped and adored them, and fully believed that these God's physically interacted with them in some manner. Virtually all of these "Gods" are now defunct, because they never actually existed to begin with. One thing that all of these Gods and yours have in common is, when the chips are really down and God is called on to openly and physically intervene, God inevitably reacts in exactly the same manner as a God who never existed to begin with. For every simple prayer that you believe that God has granted you, ask yourself, where was God when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings occurred? Why do terrible things happen to good, devout believing people? How is the fact that terrible things happen, even to innocent children, anything other than hard evidence that God is purely make believe and never existed to begin with? In what manner does the reality of the physical world in any way actually balance out your personal subscription to wish fulfillment?
For every simple prayer that you believe that God has granted you, ask yourself, where was God when the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings occurred? Why do terrible things happen to good, devout believing people? How is the fact that terrible things happen, even to innocent children, anything other than hard evidence that God is purely make believe and never existed to begin with? In what manner does the reality of the physical world in any way actually balance out your personal subscription to wish fulfillment?
those are really good questions. they are the very questions that people take to God in prayer, in study, in thought, in conversation. Open your eyes, open your ears, see where it takes you, see what shows up in your world. it will be utterly personal to you, utterly individual to you and your circumstances
the part of you that is even thinking those thoughts, that is asking those very good questions, is the part of you that is your soul crying out for some attention. the reason the voice and the questions are so persistent, is that god is not just "out there" but that god is also "in here" inside of you. The piece of God that is inside you is your own soul, and it is asking those questions.
if you were just a human who only cared about food and shelter and clothes and a job, you would not even be able to formulate those questions much less care about the answers with such passion. and yes there are answers but you have to receive them for yourself, or they will be just so much white noise.
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