You can't blame God for what goes on in the world, just like you can't blame the police if some guy shoots you in the face. Sure, it's unfortunate, but it wasn't their fault.

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Moo.

When i was still religious, I prayed for my grandfather. I prayed three months long, three times a day. My grandfather died.

That's one ignorant old man in the clouds.

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Map-Review | Digital Core | The Matrix: Unplugged

Farewell, MaDaVentor. In our hearts, you'll always live on.

This is true.

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Superstition brings bad luck.
-Raymond Smullyan, 5000B.C.

Eh, just because he denies your request doesn't mean he wasn't listening.

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Do you have stairs in your house?

How do you scientifically verify a religion? It can't be done either way. You'll have to forgive me if I don't get it. I love how people blame God for the bad stuff. Bad stuff happens: "Hey, God did it." Good stuff happens: "Fantastic coincidence." *sigh*
People die. It's normal. The question is, why did you pray for your grandfather? Subconciously, you either wanted him to stay so others wouldn't get upset, or you didn't believe he was going to heaven.

There's no chance for God to satisfy people who think like Clan & GothicX. (No offense.) Because when something good happens, they don't see it as something God did. Apparently, God only does bad stuff.

------------------
"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." - Proverbs 27:17

Catalog of Electronic Components - Complete IC data sheets
National Electrical Code (NEC) Online - Don't do wiring without consulting it. OR ELSE!

[This message has been edited by DogSRoOL (edited February 28, 2004).]

You're close. But God didn't destroy the harvest, God told Satan he could do anything he wanted to Job except kill him, to test his faith. To tell the truth, I can't remember how he was speaking to God. If I'm not mistaken, Satan was not immediately cast out of heaven to Earth early on. But as I said, i could be mistaken. And God was not curious about the outcome, he knew Job was a strong believer, and he just wanted to show Satan how wrong he was

Personally, I wonder why people can follow tyhings so blindly. I mean, i have no problem with believing things against the evidence, but not without an open mind. People tend to quickly shut off the idea that perhaps there is no God. As was stated somewhere earlier in teh thread, nobody alive surely knows if there is really a God or not. God stopped 'talking to us' several millenia ago. What's to say that, if there is a God, we weren't abandoned for favor of a more perfect creature that God created elsewhere? You simply have to accept that there are millions of possibilities, and noen of us will know for sure until either God talks to us again, or we die.

And to whoever it was that said for non believers to get out, I don't know what your problem really is.

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Clarinetists, unite!

-writer of Bloodwing: Fallen Soldier
(no site up yet...)

[This message has been edited by GeneralRamos (edited February 28, 2004).]

Ironically, when I still believed, i thought the bad stuff was done by humanity, the good things by God. Do you really think, that if something unfair like that happens, I stick to my believe? No way. I've always been sceptical about God, no doubt, but that just entirely did it for me.

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Map-Review | Digital Core | The Matrix: Unplugged

Farewell, MaDaVentor. In our hearts, you'll always live on.

But surely if you've always been sceptical about God, then you never truly believed?

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Sweet irony...

I managed to think clear, and form my own opinion regardless of religion. If that isn't true belief, then I didn't believe, indeed.

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Map-Review | Digital Core | The Matrix: Unplugged

Farewell, MaDaVentor. In our hearts, you'll always live on.

The Satan with Job is Satanel, the Adversary of God. He works for God to test humanity, sort of like a prosecutor.

------------------
Superstition brings bad luck.
-Raymond Smullyan, 5000B.C.

Uh, humanity can do good things, too. They way i look at God, he's present, too be sure, and he does some little thing every now and again to let us know he still loves us. But he doesn't do big things all the time. He didn't cause Hitler, he didn't cause 9/11, he didn't make every good coincidence happen. but he's present in a few of these, just helping us get along, letting us know he's still there. As said in 'What Dreams may Come':

Robin Williams: "Where is God in all this?"
Cuba Gooding Jr: "He's looking down on us, yelling down that he loves us and wondering why we can't hear him."

------------------
"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW

I believe in God. It's the choice I've made. If I'm wrong, I've lost nothing from it. If someone makes the choice not to believe in God, and it turns out he really is there. What have they lost? Eternal life maybe? Just a thought....

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"The Oracle told me I would die with my boots on. I've worn tennis shoes ever since." - Axis

[This message has been edited by Axis (edited February 28, 2004).]

They ("we"?) haven't lost anything either. If you don't believe in something, you don't loose anything.

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Map-Review | Digital Core | The Matrix: Unplugged

Farewell, MaDaVentor. In our hearts, you'll always live on.

What about the eternal life bit he mentioned? I'd think that would be important, seeing as how its eternal and all.

------------------
"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW

Why is eternal life good?

------------------
"Music is the universal language and the
dialect we speak in is Hip Hop!" - King Solomon

Eternal life in a state of perfect bliss? how is that not good?

------------------
"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW

Would get boring, to me at least. Perfect life just wouldn't be fun.

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Map-Review | Digital Core | The Matrix: Unplugged

Farewell, MaDaVentor. In our hearts, you'll always live on.

Now that i think about it, it jsut about pointless to discuss the implications of eternal life. its not like we have any frame of reference. i'm just going with scripture that its good.

------------------
"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW

Believing or not believing changes nothing as to whether God exists or not. Assuming, of course, that God is boring.

------------------
"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." - Proverbs 27:17

Catalog of Electronic Components - Complete IC data sheets
National Electrical Code (NEC) Online - Don't do wiring without consulting it. OR ELSE!

I was talking about perfect life. If you'd be able to do everything you would, get everything you would, and think everything you would, without pain or stuff like that, it wouldn't be life.

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Map-Review | Digital Core | The Matrix: Unplugged

Farewell, MaDaVentor. In our hearts, you'll always live on.

?

So you like living with pain and discontent?

------------------
"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." - Proverbs 27:17

Catalog of Electronic Components - Complete IC data sheets
National Electrical Code (NEC) Online - Don't do wiring without consulting it. OR ELSE!

That does pose an interesting question: do we not define our lives by difficulties, be they overcome or not?

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"LC Tusken: the idiot is the person who follows the idiot and your not following me your insulting me your following the path of a idiot so that makes you the idiot"
NMGOH || Jack Chick preaches it

ExACTly

>>Here's something to ponder as I end my post: We're constantly asking ourselves and eachother if we know God exists or not, but why don't you ever hear anyone asking if God knows that we exist as individuals? What's saying God knows that I exist?<<

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about this in his book "God In Search of Man." Granted, it's from the Jewish concept of the chosen people, but it's still good for anyone interested in theology, Jew or Gentile.

------------------
Superstition brings bad luck.
-Raymond Smullyan, 5000B.C.

THe concept of eternal life has always kind of scared me. I mean, it's forever
That concept is pretty much impossible for mortals to comprehend, so whenever I think of living forever, I get worried.
Here on Earth, I can look ahead and say. Okay, I'm going to go to college, I'll probably get married, I have a job, I'll retire, and I'll probably die around this time. But with eternal life, it stays the same forever. Sure I'll be eternally happy because I'm with God (assuming a lot, of course) but it just seems... so...

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"With Great power comes great Responibility. Seems like the converse should be true as well. Now where the heck is my great Power?"

Life with no challenges?! That sucks. Infact, it seems by conventional view when we go to heaven, we get lobotomized, and are just happily floating around.

I mean hey, god didn't want us to have knowledge of good and evil, so what makes you think he changed his view? I just see a big ol' operating table at the entrance of heaven.

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http://www.4guys-1dragoon.cjb.net -No porn. We promise*

Since none of us really know what living with God is like, we can't really say anything definite about it.

I would assume that God would give us whatever we want. If you want a challenge, just say "Hey, God. Could you give me a challenge?" And there's some challenge.

And just because you'd live forever doesn't mean you'd know everything, right? There'd be lots of things left to ponder. But that's just my guess.

------------------
"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." - Proverbs 27:17

Catalog of Electronic Components - Complete IC data sheets
National Electrical Code (NEC) Online - Don't do wiring without consulting it. OR ELSE!

That's my question. I don't want to live forever. And while it's a nice thought, it's doesn't make a lot of sense. It'd be an oddity of nature, because obviously the animals and/or plants would have to die. And there'd have to be an ever increasing amoutn of food, as teh world population skyrockts. Eventually, if reproduction does not stop by some kind of 'miracle', we run into living space issues. Eventually, something's gotta give. And if we do become sterile and unable to produce, one day we will exaust experiencing everything new in teh world. And then what. Do we all become couch potatoes, watching 1000 year old episodes of Friends? And I guess you could also bring up the theory taht if we had eternal life, we wouldn't have to eat. Because, we cannot die, of course! We can stab ourselves continuously and never die from blood loss! We can compact our bodies into little cubes, and still live forever! I for one, do not wish to live in such a 'utopia'. There is no such thing as utopia. Anyhow, I kinda digressed. COntinue.

YES I want to live in a world with pain and suffering. A life without it is no life. It is no reality. Even in my dreams it is not without its pains.


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Clarinetists, unite!

-writer of Bloodwing: Fallen Soldier
(no site up yet...)

[This message has been edited by GeneralRamos (edited February 28, 2004).]

Perhaps your gandfather died and you felt that God abandoned you, but ptaying for someone to get better when it's their time to go might not be the right approarch. Prayers aren't necessarily answered literally. If you grandfather was a believer, your prayers for him to get well might have been answered in his death.

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

Just a random thought about weather god exists or not.. it's been said, but I think it still needs a little clarification.

IF Christians are right, there is a God, and the Bible is true, that would mean that anyone who doesn't believe would be going to hell, which is the place of eternal torment, pain, suffering blahblahblah. Those who do believe will be going to heaven, where, if you actually read about it in the Bible, we won't be sitting around playing harps; we will be serving God, doing what He tells us too (you wanted challenges?)... anyways

IF Christians are wrong, there is no God, and we are all accident of nature, have we really missed anything?

I think gothicx was saying something about that

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Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
OSC

Uh, you're assuming we stay human aftr our death, somehow. I believe that it is generaly accepted (by those that believe in an afterlife) that we exist as spirits afterwards. things like food and reproduction would have no meaning.

------------------
"No good can ever come from staying with normal people"
-Outlaw Star
"Some people play tennis. I erode the human soul"
-Tycho, Penny Arcade
"I'm a Cannabal-Vegitarian. I will BBQ an employee if there is no veggie option"
-DX:IW

Being Christian as a failsafe system doesn't exactly strike me as being very honest...

I think it's a moot point to debate what's in Heaven, outside of the fact that it's defined as "good," be it a lobotomy or a personal paradise.

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"LC Tusken: the idiot is the person who follows the idiot and your not following me your insulting me your following the path of a idiot so that makes you the idiot"
NMGOH || Jack Chick preaches it

if this post was to be closed simply because we're all passionately arguing, twould be pretty lame.

Let us argue, its a god given right (nice pun).

Basically, the main hiccup with the God theory is this. Hes supposed to be all knowing, all seeing, all powerful, and ALL GOOD!!!

Therefore, he CANNOT allow my cousin to suffer when it wasnt hs time. Because he is all good, meaning he doesnt want anyONE to suffer, ANd he's all knowing, so he DAMN WELL KNEW MY COUSIN WAS SUFFERING!!!

ANd then you can say "well god let him die to end his suffering".
Fair play...

Unfortuneatly he would forget taht the death of Jonathon hurt eberyone around hm, hs parents, his sister, anyone who knew him. SO yet again, people would suffer.

So, in conclusion,I'm not saying we should live in a perfect world without pain, that wouldnt be life, a constant blissful existance is not life, as my friend GothicX observed.
I'm just saying, such is the way of things, God, as you Christians believe, CANNOT exist. You can argue all you want, but you just end up contradicting yourself and making rather hollow excuses to try and win the arguement.

I look forward to the next statement.

------------------
"It was a slap in the face, how quickly I was replaced".
"Do you remember telling me you'd hold me until you died (until you died)... well you're still alive"

"I just love it when you stick your tongue in my brain, darling"

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

... And how do you, of all people, know if it was your cousins time or not? Because you said so? Riight.

Read some of -Fear-'s earlier posts. The payment for sin is death. Your cousin died, You will die, I will die, we'll all die, because we all have sinned. Saying that God doesn't exist because people die doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

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Moo.

[This message has been edited by A_Big_Fat_CoW (edited February 28, 2004).]

Erm... I don't think spirits eat food. WRONG! Serving God? Think about that. What can we do that God can't. That doesn't make sense. You couldn't possibly know when anyone's time is, so don't try to make that judgement call. And yet you complain about it anyway. I still don't get it. ...And neglected to state any reason as to why that would be true. Woah. You're trying to pass off your opinion as fact? In that case, you have just laid upon yourself the wonderful burden of proof. Start proving.

------------------
"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." - Proverbs 27:17

Catalog of Electronic Components - Complete IC data sheets
National Electrical Code (NEC) Online - Don't do wiring without consulting it. OR ELSE!

In all actuality, since we, as Christians, are making the positive statement, the burden of proof falls on us.

However, even if there were empirical evidence to support the existence of God or a god, ruthervain seems to be quite content in his bitterness toward organized religion. He seems much more comfortable to hate religion than to try and understand and tolerate it.

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"LC Tusken: the idiot is the person who follows the idiot and your not following me your insulting me your following the path of a idiot so that makes you the idiot"
NMGOH || Jack Chick preaches it

However, this is following the idea that somehow (I don't know how) Christians ended up believeing they were going to heaven. According to the bible, only 144,000 of us humans are boudn for heaven to be part of the heavenly government, while teh rest of us are reborn on a paradise on Earth. SO my comment remains. If you're believing you are a spirit in teh 'afterlife', then you're not following the bibl, you're following the traditions that have somehow mutated over the centuries

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Clarinetists, unite!

-writer of Bloodwing: Fallen Soldier
(no site up yet...)

[This message has been edited by GeneralRamos (edited February 28, 2004).]

12,000 from each of the 12 Judaic tribes will convert and be saved. Believers will be saved as well.

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"LC Tusken: the idiot is the person who follows the idiot and your not following me your insulting me your following the path of a idiot so that makes you the idiot"
NMGOH || Jack Chick preaches it

All right Tenshu, lets hit this up.




Wrong. It says that they spoke. It says nothing about the place. Satan was not in heaven - more likely taunting from the other side of the pearly gates.



Wrong. God was not curious. God knew the end results, and proved Satan wrong by proving his point - Job will always love God for who He is, not because what He has given Job.



God never guarentees to free us from the pain of life until we leave this mortal world. I can see your point if there was no hereafter, but the fact that there is one in the Judeo-Christian faith, that means this life isn't the only one we live - its just a tryout for the next, more eternal one. Nothing in this indicates God is fallible - He made the rules, and he gets to do what He wants - that is what being God is about: YOU get to make all the decisions, because you are the most powerful thing going. I wouldn't argue that with someone who can kill a man on a thought, or raise him from the dead on a thought.

I realize you might not believe in even half that, but if you are going to argue the Bible, then you have to meet the Bible on it's terms, not yours. Otherwise, it would be me arguing about how hard a car is to drive without ever even setting foot in a car myself - the argument ends up being empty and terribly uninformed.



He never encouraged it. But keep in mind you need to know the whole story. The only time in the Bible God commands his people to kill is when they take possession of the land of Israel. The thing you need to know about the communities living there at the time, is that they were child sacrificers, and also a very murderous and criminal lot. Plus, something not found in the Bible, God had sent prophets to them pre-Israelite to get them to stop their evil practices, and they did not, and instead killed the prophets. Thus, Judgement time. Being God means you get to decide who lives and dies by your own moral code.

Also, I'll ask the one's who made humans in the first place about 'human rights'...



Exactly, STATISTICS. Now follow ME here - IT IS MORE STATISTICALLY PROBABLE FOR AN ASTEROID TO HIT THE EARTH OR FOR YOU TO WIN THE LOTTERY THAN IT IS FOR YOU TO HAVE MORE THAN 10 RANDOM OCCURANCES IN YOUR LIFETIME.

STATISTICS - Gotta love it.



Sorry but that is ignorant. Are you really telling us that if something is shown to be so perfect that it is impossible that it evolved, we aren't allowed to believe it because evolution was proven first? Because whether you realize it or not, that is the argument you are making.

And look into the genome project - done by very SECULAR scientists - it got a ton of press until some of the scientists said once they got all the way to the root of it that things were so perfect and placed, that there was 0% statistical chance that it could have evolved. Then all of a sudden, no more press - hmm who would have thunk it?

Seriously, this is just another case of the scientific community being so ANTI religion, that they won't acknowledge anything as fact if it coinsides with religion. But hey, that's my opinion. Probably Galileo's too. But hey, we should ignore Galileo because he said the earth revolved around th sun, and we should go back to believing the sun revolves around the earth, because it came first, and everything revolves around us - right tenshu?



Major rule of science and logic - don't make assumptions. You just did about believers. How very illogical and unscientific of you.

Ok, on to:

Avenger!



Wrong. We believe they are one in the same. The God in the OT is hardly spiteful. But He was stricter. Why? Because the first Israelites out of Egypt knew next to NOTHING about God. So, most of the laws were to get them focused on God, his nature, and get them in the habit of being obedient to God. The israelites were horrible at being obedient, so God would give them a whack to get their attention, and then come to their rescue (spare the rod, spoil the child?).

Essentially the old law was in place and adhered to until the time and place was perfect for Jesus to come in, and fulfill the Old Law. Jesus was God's legal loophole at getting humanity reconciled with Himself, without him having to get medieval on us. If not for Jesus, he would be just as hard on us due to his holy nature. That said, I would say we as humankind do a much better job at punishing ourselves than God ever did in the old testament.

Now, time for clan -



With regards to your brother, God gave us all the freedom to choose for ourselves. The consequence is, that sin affects not only the one commiting it, but those innocent people around it. It's not God's fault. It's the fault of a sinful world. My question to you is this - if you do or don't believe in God, would what happened to your brother have happened anyway? Likely yes, in either case. My gf had something VERY horrible happen to her. Yet, as hard as it was, she moved on, forgave, and because of that, helps others get through who have been in similar situations. So good came out of it.

On your cousin, my condolances. But you do not know what would have happened had your cousin lived.

A for instance - say there is God. God causes your cousin to pass away, and join him in Heaven in eternal happiness. Had your cousin lived, not only would he have not accepted God, but he would have been molested at age 10, or may have been stricken with muscular dystrophy and lived half his life in pain and not in full control of his body? You do not know, and if you are going to approach the subject of a Judeo-christian God, then remember that there is an afterlife, and your cousin is happily with God in it.

To gothic X - everyone has a time to go, and no one lives for ever. But read what my last sentence was to Clan, and replace cousin with grandfather, and you get the picture.

To both Clan and GothicX:

If any of that you find offensive, I deeply apologize, especially given the sensitivity of the subject and the frankness of my reply. I realize it must be cold-comfort to you, but they are really things that need to be considered when going down this road.

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--------------------------------------
Fear is here, where's the beer?

[This message has been edited by -Fear- (edited February 28, 2004).]