Does God exist? (13 Viewers)

[ari89]

While in principle I agree with what you're saying, alot of people here are rationalist/secular humanist/atheist, so therefore might argue that there is no God, "truth" is a subjective concept and/or if there is a God, there is no reason to believe that he/she/it possesses "universal" truth. Trust me I tried to explain many times but the only "truth" they'll accept is that which can be logically deduced.

But then they would be saying there is no Allah and that is blasphemy

 

[Enteebee]

I'm only guessing, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think some of you are vehemently criticizing Christianity (not seeking to truly understand, as very few have done) because deep down, you secretly fear the repercussions of what it would mean if God were real. You hide behind your fragile logic and science to explain away all of the truly important questions which cause you to become restless and uncomfortable. Now tell me who's completely closeminded?

You're absolutely wrong. I want God to exist... really badly. There is nothing I would wish for more than for there to be a happy afterlife where my loved ones have gone/will go, truly nothing I would wish for more, if it is at all possible then it would be greater than the summation of everything I could possibly ask for in temporal worldly experience. I also have a 'love' for the truth, I find discovery of truth to be more beautiful/awe inspiring than any artwork I've ever seen.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

I'm only guessing, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think some of you are vehemently criticizing Christianity (not seeking to truly understand, as very few have done) because deep down, you secretly fear the repercussions of what it would mean if God were real. You hide behind your fragile logic and science to explain away all of the truly important questions which cause you to become restless and uncomfortable. Now tell me who's completely closeminded?

i'm pretty sure ntb and others have just spent the last 10 or 20 pages telling you exactly why christianity is being vehemently criticized, lol

 

[inasero]

If you need to place something outside of the realm of rational inquiry which mind you is where we can choose to believe in dragons if we so please then you have lost any sort of credibility for your beliefs.... It becomes basically "I believe because I believe" which I not only don't believe is true (I do believe you have some sort of flawed rationality behind your beliefs) and we have no mechanism by which to test the veracity of things.

You're right, if I merely believed in God for the sake of it, I would not be justified in believing that the Flying Sphagetti Monster is a completely ridiculous concept. I've explained that the proof for me is through God personally making the truth real to me, and confirming it through the Holy Scriptures and in the lives of others as they become more "Christ-like". I've investigated the claims of other religions and I'm totally 100% convinced that Christianity is the only belief which can explain everything. Which leaves two logical conclusions- either I'm a complete nutjob or there's some veracity to my claims. Like I said, I appreciate that this kind of reasoning might not cut it for you and that's understandable, it would be unreasonable of me to expect you to accept my beliefs. I think this might have to be one of the areas where we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[Kwayera]

I'm only guessing, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think some of you are vehemently criticizing Christianity (not seeking to truly understand, as very few have done) because deep down, you secretly fear the repercussions of what it would mean if God were real. You hide behind your fragile logic and science to explain away all of the truly important questions which cause you to become restless and uncomfortable. Now tell me who's completely closeminded?

I can't say I have ever been restless or uncomfortable when contemplating the existence of God (or lack thereof, which I do with some regularity). If God were real, it would not make much of a difference to my life (or, indeed, death - hell is defined as "without God", and given that I have happily lived my life as such, an afterlife of being "without God" wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing); it is not so much fearing the unknown, like you imply, because it would not ever make a difference to how I life my life if God did indeed exist.

Science is not something you can hide behind because it is not malleable or open to fallacious interpretation. Science is science, it is what is, and if you can't understand what that means then I have nothing more to say to you.

 

[Enteebee]

You don't actually believe that, do you? That it's either religion or science and no discussion of ethics or philosophy?

You call me closeminded when you link yourself purely to the Christian biblical tradition and pay no heed to the miracles claimed in the Quran or those claimed by the Roman Religions or those claimed by African religions, purely because of your geographical location.

You have attempted to reframe the debate so that it is no longer a debate about the likelihood of a creator or a god, to one of biblical quotations and appeals to absolutism. You have effectively attempted to shutter the debate down to a base form and then say that we can't debate it.

And you dare to call me closeminded? Pathetic. You claim to have the monopoly on truth and then call others closeminded? Despicable.

Close-minded is a really lame jibe from someone who believes in absolute truth without any rationality to it.... I mean, is it even possible to get any more dogmatic?

 

[Riet]

God can suck my fucking balls. If s/he's real why doesn't s/he strike me down? because she's a fucking pussy and I'd rape him/her like he/her raped mary.

 

[inasero]

You don't actually believe that, do you? That it's either religion or science and no discussion of ethics or philosophy?

You call me closeminded when you link yourself purely to the Christian biblical tradition and pay no heed to the miracles claimed in the Quran or those claimed by the Roman Religions or those claimed by African religions, purely because of your geographical location.

You have attempted to reframe the debate so that it is no longer a debate about the likelihood of a creator or a god, to one of biblical quotations and appeals to absolutism. You have effectively attempted to shutter the debate down to a base form and then say that we can't debate it.

And you dare to call me closeminded? Pathetic. You claim to have the monopoly on truth and then call others closeminded? Despicable.

I never claimed to have the monopoly on truth and I certainly never accused anyone of being closeminded. A case of the pot calling the kettle black no?

Furthemore, when I try to explain the Christian reasoning for faith that's "shuttering the debate to a base form" but when Christian's can't provide empirical evidence for the existence of God that's blind ignorance? C'mon mate fair go my beliefs are just as valid as yours and deserve a fair hearing, especially since the onus of proof is on me.

 

[Enteebee]

I've explained that the proof for me is through God personally making the truth real to me

You have no way of knowing it wasn't another God/Supernatural entity. No way at all. But if you just want to magically conjure up that God told you that he exists so it's basically "God exists because I believe he told me he exists" then that's fine... but your belief is still stuck in your head and it's little better than "God exists because I think so".

, and confirming it through the Holy Scriptures and in the lives of others as they become more "Christ-like".

Pass my test then. I want a heuristic which we can use to test the veracity of the bible which wouldn't give an equal pass to the koran i.e. If you use different translations, pick and choose etc then we can also do that with the koran.

Which leaves two logical conclusions- either I'm a complete nutjob or there's some veracity to my claims. Like I said, I appreciate that this kind of reasoning might not cut it for you and that's understandable, it would be unreasonable of me to expect you to accept my beliefs. I think this might have to be one of the areas where we'll just have to agree to disagree.

You're not nuts, you just don't really believe this stuff... If you did then you would indeed be nuts. Someone who claims to have had a personal experience with God has no greater claim to sanity than someone who has claimed a personal experience with Santa Claus. Unless you think there's something that separates the two?

 

[inasero]

God can suck my fucking balls. If s/he's real why doesn't s/he strike me down? because she's a fucking pussy and I'd rape him/her like he/her raped mary.

If I were you I'd seriously take that back...for your own sake. You do not know the God you're messing with.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

The first point of the Christian message is that God is in charge of the world. He is the ruler, the supreme president, the king. Unlike human rulers, however, God always does what is best for his subjects. He is the kind of king you’d like to be ruled by.

God rules the world because he made the world. Like a potter with his clay, God fashioned the world into just the shape he wished, with all its amazing details. He made it, and he owns it.

He also made us. God created people who were something like himself, and put them in charge of the world—to rule it, to care for it, to be responsible for it, and to enjoy all its beauty and goodness. He appointed humanity to supervise and look after the world, but always under his own authority, honouring him and obeying his directions.

You can see this represented in the illustration above: God is the ruler (the crown) and humanity is created to live in and rule God’s world under God’s loving authority.

It all sounds rather ideal—God in heaven, people ruling the world according to his directions, and everything right with the world. But everything is very obviously not right—with us or the world.

The sad truth is that, from the very beginning, men and women everywhere have rejected God by doing things their own way. We all do this. We don’t like someone telling us what to do or how to live—least of all God—and so we rebel against him in lots of different ways. We ignore him and just get on with our own lives; or we disobey his instructions for living in his world; or we shake our puny fists in his face and tell him to get lost.

How ever we do it, we are all rebels, because we don’t live God’s way. We prefer to follow our own desires, and to run things our own way, without God. This rebellious, self-sufficient attitude is what the Bible calls ‘sin’.

The trouble is, in rejecting God we make a mess not only of our own lives, but of our society and the world. The whole world is full of people bent on doing what suits them, and not following God’s ways. We all act like little gods, with our own crowns, competing with one another. The result is misery. The suffering and injustice that we see around us all go back to our basic rebellion against God.

By rebelling against God, we’ve made a terrible mess of things. The question is: what will God do about it?

God cares enough about humanity to take our rebellion seriously. He calls us to account for our actions, because it matters to him that we treat him, and other people, so poorly. In other words, he won’t let the rebellion go on forever.

The sentence God passes against us is entirely just, because he gives us exactly what we ask for. In rebelling against God, we are saying to him, “Go away. I don’t want you telling me what to do. Leave me alone.” And this is precisely what God does. His judgement on rebels is to withdraw from them, to cut them off from himself—permanently. But since God is the source of life and all good things, being cut off from him means death and hell. God’s judgement against rebels is an everlasting, God-less death.

This is a terrible thing, to fall under the sentence of God’s judgement. It is a prospect we all face, since we are all guilty of rebelling against God.

Is that it then? Are we all destined for death and everlasting ruin? If not for God’s own miraculous intervention, we would be.

Because of his great love and generosity, God did not leave us to suffer the consequences of our foolish rebellion. He did something to save us. He sent his own divine son into our world to become a man—Jesus of Nazareth.

Unlike us, Jesus didn’t rebel against God. He always lived under God’s rule. He always did what God said, and so did not deserve death or punishment. Yet Jesus did die. Although he had the power of God to heal the sick, walk on water and even raise the dead, Jesus allowed himself to be executed on a cross. Why?

The Bible rings with the incredible news that Jesus died as a substitute for rebels like us. The debt that we owed God, Jesus paid by dying in our place. He took the full force of God’s justice on himself, so that forgiveness and pardon might be available to us.

All this is quite undeserved by us. It is a generous gift, from start to finish.

God accepted Jesus’ death as payment in full for our sins, and raised him from the dead. The risen Jesus is now what humanity was always meant to be: God’s ruler of the world.

As God’s ruler, Jesus has also been appointed God’s judge of the world. The Bible promises that one day, he will return to call all of us to account for our actions.

In the meantime, Jesus offers us new life, both now and eternally. Now, our sins can be forgiven through Jesus’ death, and we can make a fresh start with God, no longer as rebels but as friends. In this new life, God himself comes to live within us by his Spirit. We can experience the joy of a new relationship with God.

What’s more, when we are pardoned through Jesus’ death, we can be quite sure that when Jesus does return to judge, we will be acceptable to him. The risen Jesus will give us eternal life, not because we have earned it, but because he has died in our place.

Well, where does all that leave us? It leaves us with a choice of only two ways to live.

We can continue in our rebellion against God, and try to run our lives our own way without him. Sadly, this is the option that many people persist in.

The end result is that God gives us what we ask for and deserve. He condemns us for our rejection of his rightful rule over our lives. We not only have to put up with the messy consequences of rejecting God here and now, but we face the dreadful prospect of an eternity of separation from him, without life or love or relationship.

For those of us who have realised that our situation is hopeless, there is a lifeline. If we turn back to God and appeal for mercy, trusting in Jesus’ death and resurrection, then everything changes.

For a start, God wipes our slate clean. He accepts Jesus’ death as payment for our sins, and freely and completely forgives us. He pours his own Spirit into our hearts and grants us a new life that stretches past death and into forever. We are no longer rebels, but part of God’s own family as his adopted sons and daughters. We now live with Jesus as our ruler.

The two ways to live could not be more different, and they present you, the reader, with some choices.

 

[Enteebee]

Yeah... he actually made me read that shit. I really don't see what I was supposed to get out of it.

 

[Kwayera]

If I were you I'd seriously take that back...for your own sake. You do not know the God you're messing with.

In ten thousand and more years of blasphemy, your God has never struck anyone down. So I don't know what you're complaining about. Are you insulted, or is God? Do you have the right to insinuate that He would be?

 

[inasero]

I can't say I have ever been restless or uncomfortable when contemplating the existence of God (or lack thereof, which I do with some regularity). If God were real, it would not make much of a difference to my life (or, indeed, death - hell is defined as "without God", and given that I have happily lived my life as such, an afterlife of being "without God" wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing); it is not so much fearing the unknown, like you imply, because it would not ever make a difference to how I life my life if God did indeed exist.

Science is not something you can hide behind because it is not malleable or open to fallacious interpretation. Science is science, it is what is, and if you can't understand what that means then I have nothing more to say to you.

Happily lived your life so you think that you'll be just as happy in the afterlife? All good things come from God, that includes laughter, joy, happiness, security, friends, health, family and so on- all the things you take for granted. I wouldn't want to imagine life without God.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

In ten thousand and more years of blasphemy, your God has never struck anyone down. So I don't know what you're complaining about. Are you insulted, or is God? Do you have the right to insinuate that He would be?

he did send bears to kill children one time

watch out for bears riet

 

[ari89]

You people do not understand. The Truth of God has already answered this question to us, " Who believe in the Unseen, are steadfast in prayer, and spend out of what We have provided for them;" (Sura 2:3). There are those of us who know and believe in Allah. We will be rewarded, "They are on (true) guidance, from their Lord, and it is these who will prosper." (Sura 2:5)

And then there are you. Is this not testament to Allah's existence that he knew that you people would exist today?
"As to those who reject Faith, it is the same to them whether thou warn them or do not warn them; they will not believe. Allah hath set a seal on their hearts and on their hearing, and on their eyes is a veil; great is the penalty they (incur)." (Sura 2:6-7)

Your heart is sealed and there is a penalty. Whereas we have seen the light, have faith and will prosper.

 

[inasero]

In ten thousand and more years of blasphemy, your God has never struck anyone down. So I don't know what you're complaining about. Are you insulted, or is God? Do you have the right to insinuate that He would be?

I wouldn't want to test God to find out, and much as I hate being a wet blanket with all this doom and gloom teaching I'm afraid to say Jesus will come back one day to judge the living and the dead and it will not be pretty for those who haven't repented of their sins.

 

[Enteebee]

I wouldn't want to test God to find out, and much as I hate being a wet blanket with all this doom and gloom teaching I'm afraid to say Jesus will come back one day to judge the living and the dead and it will not be pretty for those who haven't repented of their sins.

Well mate how lucky for you to have had God reveal himself to you, the rest of us haven't had such an experience. BTW Go back a page and respond, I've never had a theist actually deliver an acceptable heuristic which wouldn't also prove the veracity of the koran... but since you claim you've looked at other religions and found only the bible to be true let's see what you have to offer.

 

[Kwayera]

Happily lived your life so you think that you'll be just as happy in the afterlife? All good things come from God, that includes laughter, joy, happiness, security, friends, health, family and so on- all the things you take for granted. I wouldn't want to imagine life without God.

God gave me family, and friends, and laughter and joy?

No, biology did. There is no need for God in the equation, and people had these things long before God was a glimmer in the eye of some ambitious writer.

A life without God is one I live right now. You live that life yourself - you just don't realise it.

 

[*TRUE*]

This actually has me rather pissed off. I'm closeminded because I haven't accepted Christ?

Right. Rightio then. Righty righty right then. I don't know what it's like to be a believer? Do I fuck, I was a practising Catholic in an Irish Catholic family up until about age 16 when a light clicked on and I realised it was for the most part bullshit.

Do I still ignorantly lapse into some form of solipsistic belief in God from time to time? Sure. I then shake myself out of it because I realise how laughable the position is. It's just wish thinking on my behalf, it'd be a great comfort if it was true, and it is a comfort that I have fallen into in times of proper trouble, or when I've had issues in my life because it feels natural because that's how I've been conditioned over time.

It is a struggle to not give into blind faith because it's such an easy crutch to lean on. The absolute flaws of all the man made religions heavily snap me out of my religious funk whenever I fall into it. It just feels silly to be clinging to it, to lapse into childishness again.

I understand fully where your position comes from, and I understand faith completely, I realise how hard it is to leave it behind, but I do know that there is far more to life and ethics and morality than the bilious scribblings of insane men thousands of years ago, no matter how comforting absolutism may be.

Something about your post..means something to me.
I didnt just say that.