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Why do you think 'faith' is something to be applauded?
Why not. The same old question, do you yourself have the evidence that black hole exists. 99% humans don't while they swallow it as a fact by faith!
That said, theologically God showed through Genesis that in order to live with Him in His forever realm humans need faith and obedience. Those are the 2 factors humans need in order to survive the eternity with a sin-incompatible God. However how so, that is, the detail knowledge why they are needed in an eternity belongs to the Tree of Life (life in eternity). The Tree of Life is blocked from the reach of today's humans.
The only thing (other than faith) for today's humans are the knowledge/intelligence (Tree of Knowledge) for them to judge whether life will continue after death. The warning however is, the day you choose to eat from it, the same day you shall surely die.
May I ask how you made the leap from realizing that the way God was portrayed in much of the bible, if true, would make God "not for me" (and I feel the same way) ... to deciding that meant there is no God (or no God worthy of your attention)? Was it the "age old question" that determined that for you?
Well, I should have clarified by saying, "the biblical" god. I don't find the other gods or versions of them appealing either.
Answering a question with a question is not answering the question. Why do you think that believing something when there is no evidence to support the belief or when there is contrary evidence is something to be applauded?
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The same old question, do you yourself have the evidence that black hole exists. 99% humans don't while they swallow it as a fact by faith!
That said, theologically God showed through Genesis that in order to live with Him in His forever realm humans need faith and obedience.
The people that wrote the Bible and were trying to get people to believe when there was no evidence said that.
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Those are the 2 factors humans need in order to survive the eternity with a sin-incompatible God. However how so, that is, the detail knowledge why they are needed in an eternity belongs to the Tree of Life (life in eternity). The Tree of Life is blocked from the reach of today's humans.
The only thing (other than faith) for today's humans are the knowledge/intelligence (Tree of Knowledge) for them to judge whether life will continue after death. The warning however is, the day you choose to eat from it, the same day you shall surely die.
So you are confused about what kinds of truth capable of being reached by what kinds of approaches.
Scientific truth happens to be a specific kind of truth which is detectable. Even so, humans choose not to detect but to believe.
And you seem to be confused with evidence vs faith. Believing something because it has evidence is not the same as believing something that does NOT have evidence.
Thrill, there is this saying that all that one needs to become an atheist is to read the bible. That was not the case with me, per se. What did it for me was reading a popular CHRISTIAN book. The book, "Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud" was written by popular Christian author Philip Yancey and it was written to tackle those tough secret questions so many Christians have but too afraid to ask or ask out loud:
Is God unfair?
Is he silent?
Is he hidden?
What was interesting was that I stumbled into the book while shopping for something to give to my best friends who had lost their mother to cancer. As is often the case with many of us, I had no what to say so I tried to find a card to sum up my feelings and express my condolences. Instead, I came across the book.
At first, I was afraid to even touch it because the "fundie" in me was taught to NEVER question God. It was a sign of spiritual weakness and questions and doubts were tools of the devil, but in seeking answers for my friends, I let my curiosity get the better of me so I began reading the book and could not put it down.
The book began with even questions I had, but what I did not know was that after actually buying the book in 1996 was that there was a part of the book that would give me a whole new perspective on a well known biblical story; one I am sure Mr. Yancey never intended readers to have.
The story about Job came up in the book, but it came up after a young seminarian sent Yancey his thesis on the book of Job which impressed the author. The young man simply wanted to get Yancey's blessing on it and to perhaps get it published. But while the thesis was still in Yancey's hands, the young man was going through some turmoil in his personal life that began at a tent meeting where there was s service of praises for God, supposedly sparing the lives of a few missionaries in an Amazon plane crash while the majority of them died. It disturbed the young man because he wondered about the others that died. Where was God in THEIR life and death moment?
That question began a series of events in his life and before Yancey could get back to him, he rushed to the author's door to ask him NOT to publish the thesis because he no longer believed in what he wrote. What the young man found out after looking a little closer at the story of Job was that the story, IF true, did not exactly paint God in a great light. It showed him as an egotistical maniac, who essentially waged a bet with his so-called enemy to see who could get the last praise out of Job. In other words, Job was a pawn in some cosmic game.
It was right there, I myself saw things with the story I never saw before. For years, all I heard was the story was about God's faithfulness to Job and Job's faithfulness to God, despite the odds. It was supposed to be a "feel good" story, but I noticed no one ever mentioned ow the whole saga got started and it was God who supposedly orchestrated the whole thing to squeeze some praise out of a human. From there, the wheels off my wagon to heaven started to fall off until I just called the BS for what it was and have NOT looked back since.
If the story of Job, to a former literalist like me, could be a sham OR more of a story about some sadistic God, then that God was not for me. I mean, I now know that the story NEVER happened in the way the author wrote (there could have been a man by the name of Job who suffered and recovered, yes), but the whole cosmic element is a pile of crock, as the author included the spiritual trappings to give human existence some kind of meaning ESPECIALLY when dealing with the age old question of why good people suffer or why there is evil in the world. This does not or did not make God any more real to me.
I came to a conclusion several years ago: former Christians, non-Christians, people of other faith, etc have so many legitimate arguments to put before God on the day of judgement (if there IS a day of judgement) about why they couldn't believe in Jesus and have faith in him, that if God has a shred of decency and morality about Him there is not a snowball's chance in hell He could judge them guilty and deserving of eternal punishment if they were given a proper chance to present their case in some sort of heavenly court of law. "Where were you?", "Why didn't you answer my prayers?," "Why is there no evidence of Jesus in ancient secular history books?" Why is the Bible so full of errors if it is divinely inspired?", Why did Jesus' life so closely resemble a hundred other dying/rising savior gods?" How can you expect me to have faith on bad evidence or no evidence at all?" The list of legitimate questions one could put before God is endless and in the end God would be made to look like a big fool to any clear-thinking rational person. I don't think God would allow Himself to be put in that position of embarrassment, and that is why I don't buy all this baloney of Him condemning people who made an honest effort to examine the evidence or lack of it and walk away believers that either He wasn't real or He was real but Jesus wasn't real, or if Jesus was real he was just another apocalyptic prophet who made a lot of bad prophetic call that never came to pass and was killed by Roman authorities as a troublemaker and died and rotted and that was that, and there was nothing divine about Jesus at all, least of all that he was the savior of all mankind and that you needed to believe in him in order to be saved from the fires of hell. The whole scenario is just so ridiculous and contrived that only rubes could fall for it, certainly no rational-minded person would if (s)he thought the whole thing though.
Appealing? -- I'm assuming you mean the versions or beliefs about God that others may hold don't conform to what makes sense to you?
Pretty much. None does. Used to read about all the OTHER gods, religions and religious beliefs I was supposed to debunk when I was a Christian. They did nothing for me then now now. There in no objective evidence that convinces and that "faith" thing seems more like a cop out. Perhaps there is some "higher power." It could be the universe's energy or a plant in the middle of the Amazon or even a block of ice on Ceres. It has not told me anything, instructed me on anything or asked me to worship it. Someone telling me they know it better than i could and telling me I need to believe in it this way or that is more repulsive than inviting.
But the answer is so obvious Thrill. They were ignorant, primitive savages who literally believed EVERYTHING that happened was done by God, including their OWN DECISIONS and ACTIONS. They were so completely clueless about reality they convinced themselves God was actually acting in response to them. They were FABLES, Thrill, reflecting the evolution of our species' understanding of God.
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Originally Posted by thrillobyte
Ohhhhh...okay. So you're saying that God never physically interacted with humans any differently then than He does now. That puts an entirely different slant on our conversation. I was under the impression that you believed as the fundamentalists do that everything God did in the Old Testament is 100% literal--that if the Bible says Jacob wrestled with an angel, then Jacob actually physically wrestled with a supernatural being. I apologize. I must have you confused with some else...and I just realized it is...AH! I can't remember his name but he is a fundamentalist fanatic.
No problem.It happens a lot here. Even I, the ME, get confused.
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Originally Posted by sanspeur
Actually they were so uneducated, ignorant and gullible that they were convinced that a deity actually existed.
This is the conclusion that is NOT warranted from the many absurd and ridiculous beliefs ABOUT God, sans. Human beliefs ABOUT God have no bearing on the existence of God which is self-evident in the reality that is responsible for our very existence. At the very least, that reality is our God.
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Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER
In many ways, Mystic and I agree that that the Bible is not reliable. It is the one time (he posted once) that he had been influenced by anything I had argued. But I gather he does believe in the Crucifixion as some form of Divine - engineered event. I don't. I just see it as a Roman execution of a troublemaker.
Not true about the crucifixion being Divinely-engineered, Arq. That was ALL human ignorance, barbarity and brutality in defense of barbaric beliefs about God. Christ's response to it was the ultimate demonstration of God's TRUE NATURE because Jesus was the embodiment of God's Spirit of agape love. It unambiguously revealed the "love even your enemies" part of Christ's Gospel. If there was ever any doubt that His Sermon on the Mount was a true representation of His teachings, His response to the crucifixion should have removed all doubt. Regrettably, the barbaric "blood sacrifice to appease God" meme that dominated relationships with God corrupted His demonstration and turned it into the ultimate blood sacrifice to appease God. It is a travesty of human perversity.
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I can't remember his name but he is a fundamentalist fanatic.
