rhutchin

This is a nice verse. If a person obeys the law perfectly, he can gain entry into heaven. What happens to us who fail to do that and cannot earn entry into heaven?

This is wrong. Pacal examined two positions -- Belief vs non-belief where belief would provide an escape from bad things that were alleged to happen after death and non-belief was a do nothing position. Pascal argued for belief (in God, but he could have equally argued for belief in a god) to escape punishment after death against a do-nothing position. No one has ever refuted the argument he presented. If it has been done, perhaps someone can start a new thread to explain how this was done.

The probability for God is 0 or 1, either God exists or He does not.

There is abundant evidence that God is who He claims to be -- The historical accounts collected in the Bible. So, Yes, I deny your point.

Very confused reasoning.

rhutchin

I agree. However, I have pointed out (either here or in another thread) that the other side of the coin is the free will thingy. JS argues one side of the coin (God's omniscience and omnipotence) but does so without wanting to acknowledge that God also gave people free will. If JS were a philosopher, he would be a universalist (free will is immaterial as a person can choose to do anything he desires and in the end, God saves him) as he uses reasoning similar to them.

hatsoff

Johnny is a determinist, as am I. Maybe I'm missing something, but you seem to be avoiding the topic: Is God omni-benevolent? If so, how do you prove it or show it to be probable? If not, why submit to him?

djrafikie

And what exactly do you think my faith IS Rutchin? From my arguments with you I have noted that you always take the tack with me that you take with atheists, which is why you end up getting confused.

No, I made a comment, the meaning of which was clear. However, due to your inability to comprehend punctuation you misunderstood it and made an extremely rude comment. How you could POSSIBLY think that I would be upset "for show" when you have publicly accused me of sexually molesting my little girl I do not know. I still await an apolology and unless you are going to offer one I would strongly suggest that you do not mention it again. EVER.

Incidentally, the comment was not counter to the discussion, It was only counter to your opinion. It is not possible to make a related comment which is counter to a discussion.

Johnny Skeptic

I had assumed that since you did not make one single post in the two recent threads on inerrancy that you would not participate in a third thread if I started one. If I start another thread on inerrancy, which I could easily do via some of Farrell Till's articles on inerrancy, will you participate in it?

Edit: Better yet, we can increase our audience, and have more arguments to discuss, by using a previous thread on inerrancy at this forum that is at http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=183634. How about it? Please be advised that I will not limit my arguments to quoting Farrell Till. The Secular Web has hundreds of articles on inerrancy, and Google might have thousands. I will tell you in advance that if God is perfect, and if the Bible is inerrant, there is no such thing as a minor error, or a minor contradiction. I already know that you are going to claim that minor errors and contradictions do not matter because you have done that before, but you will find out that that approach will not work.

Johnny Skeptic

I do not believe that free will exists, but even if it does, my arguments still work. A web definition for the world "universalism" is "The doctrine of universal salvation." I do not endorse universalism. Having many religions causes wars, hatred, and doubt. My position is that if the God of the Bible is the one and only true God, if he is loving, he would clearly reveal himself to everyone, and give everyone the same opportunity to become saved. He would not reveal himself to people who he knows would reject him, and refuse to reveal himself to people who he knows would accept him if he did all that he could to help them become saved. It is a matter of how much God wants everyone to become saved, and how much he wants to endorse favoritism. If you have children, if they were drowning, you would try to save all of them because you would not be willing that any of them perish. You would never accept any human father who stood idly by and allowed any of his children to perish.

Johnny Skeptic

There is no credible evidence that it is rational for a man to suppose that an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving deity exists. If there is, and you are rational, you would follow some religion, right? Rhutchin has said that if he believed that God told lies, he would not be able to love him, so your argument that "A rational-minded person need not know the methods and reasoning of a diety who is all-powerful and all-knowing, because odds are the God knows better than the man" is not valid. If your argument were valid, a rational man would be able to love a God no matter what the God did. Obviously, that would not be possible for any decent, rational man. I do not believe that accepting a God who is a hypocrite, who kills babies, who kills innocent animals, and who allows pepole to starve to death, is rational.

Regarding "A rational-minded person need not know the methods and reasoning of a diety who is all-powerful and all-knowing, because odds are the God knows better than the man", knows what better, and do you assume that an all-powerful and all-knowing God would have to be loving, and would have to tell the truth? If a God exists, and he knows what is best, best for whom, himself, for everyone else, or both?

Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: Will you please tell us why God discriminates against amputees, and why in the 1st century he discriminated against people who did not live within close proximity to Palestine? In the 1st century, foir some strange and unexplained reason, God did not want to choose any of the elect from distant regions of the world, or he does not exist. The latter is of course the best explanation. If God does not exist, it is to be expected that the Gospel message would have been spread entirely by human effort according to the prevailing means of communication, transportation, printing, and translation of any given century.

rhutchin

From OT times to the death of Christ, God established Israel as His people to reveal Himself to the world. The people of Israel elected not to do this choosing instead to do that which they wanted and not what God wanted. As a result Israel was rejected and God began to use all people, Jews and gentiles, to reveal himself to others. Some, like Johnny Skeptic, still choose not to reveal God to others.

God treats all people the same. Those who have sinned will be judged for their sin. God has always people from Noah after the flood until today for people to choose whether to tell others about God. If people, like Johnny Skeptic, choose not to tell others about God, then people suffer.

Julian

Please, do not attempt to use probability math in your arguments since you obviously have no understanding of it at all. What you are stating is not a probability, it is a basic tautology.

Julian