Wads4

I'm glad you ended up with the proposal that God does not exist,-I was beginning to wonder why someone who sounds to be an atheist would be presupposing the existence of God, and discussing his alleged attributes at all.

Wads4

"Originally Posted by Atheist_Forever
Witch brings up this question : Why did he create evil? Does he not care if we suffer?"

He didn't, because he isn't.

Wads4

It is not evidence, it is simply the common logical fallacy of "post hoc ergo propter hoc" (after this therefore because of this).. you prayed, you got better,-so you automatically assume it was your prayer that did it. What about self-limiting illnesses? What about the medical treatment you may perhaps have been getting? Speaking as a doctor I suggest that that which does not kill you allows you to recover, possibly damaged, possibly intact, often with the bonus of immunity to furthur attacks of that illness. Most people soon recover from simple food poisoning,-if that was what it was,--you don't say.So what precisely is preventing someone from re-building Babylon? Saddam was well on the way to doing it,-but he was interrupted. The obvious reason is that it is quite pointless to go and rebuid an ancient city whose time has long gone by, and which nobody needs, especially as there is a large modern city just up the road,-namely Baghdad. What would you have a property speculator do?--build a modern copy on the demolished base of the old one?--but that would be vandalising an ancient archaeological site. Try and stick together the crumbling mud bricks and make some more ( like Saddam did). Buy, borrow or steal the original Ishtar Gate back from the Berlin Museum?
Re-build the Ziggurat and the Temple of Marduk, whom nobody worships any more, (along with thousands of other ancient deities, not only Babylonian ones). Re-route the Euphrates river back to its original position? Try to find the descendants of ethnic semitic Babylonians and abolish their Islamic names and re-name them ones like Nebuchadrezzar Belshazzar, Nabonidus? --that would go down well with the Moslems wouldn't it.
And why stop at re-building Babylon ( and ancient Tyre),--why not rebuild Asshur and Nineveh and Nimrod and Khorsabad, and Ur and Uruk and Lachish. The our developer could go to Egypt and repair and reconstruct the pyramids, karnak, Thebes, Memphis, Abu-simbel etc; then just to show that God smit not only that lot, but also Israel and Judah,--our developer could rebuild samaria, the 1st and 2nd temples of Solomon. Need I go on? The obsessional desire to put the clock back to biblical times is quite pathological. If you are so keen to prove Babylon (and Tyre) cannot be re-built because some spooky Divine Force is physically preventing it why don't you have a go yourself and tell us how you get on. I suspect the reason you fail will be lack of funds because any sponsor would soon tire (Tyre?) of such a daft project.And you take this seriously?Does he not think that even ancient humans might think it a bit strange if the sun rose in the West one day, after thousands of years of their ancestors building astronomical observation temples, like Stonehenge, which were accurately aligned to sun rise in the East? Similarly all those Egyptian and other temples were built so that the rising sun would illuminate the far interior, as in the temple of Abu simbel,--what would Rameses II have done I wonder,- demolish his new temple and rebuild it the other way round?--but then what if another miracle happened and the sun rise went back to the east the next day?--O dear!

Wads4

""We know very little about prehistoric man, for the excellent reason that he is prehistoric" (G.K. Chesterton)"

How very profound. The terrible trio of C.S.Lewis, Hugh Ross and G.K. Chesterton seem to br vying with each other in lunatic pronouncements.

jackrabbit

Is that like Larry, Curly, and Moe?

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Though I also said that there may well be gaps in the genealogies, so then the time need not be by Bishop Ussher's calculations.

I tell you what I know, with links to the people if you would want to inquire further.

There is actually a report of a boy being raised from the dead, with a photo of the death certificate, and the address of the family, in "Only Love Can Make a Miracle" (Mahesh Chavda). And you may contact Peter Wagner if you wish, or the Anaheim Vineyard, and so forth...

If you were a person whose integrity I held in high esteem, that would also be required...

Actually, with the love of God in a person's heart, through his presence there, a person can fulfill the law, but not in their own ability, and not perfectly, but it can be done.

How do you know that, may I ask? Skeptics seem to almost claim omniscience, to virtually be God, in order to prove that he does not exist.

God is indeed holy, as well as loving. Do you demand justice? Would you like justice for all your deeds, strict and instantaneous? You might find it rather difficult.

Isaiah 33:14 The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: "Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?"

Yes, I believe he does care, through what he showed on the cross.

He lets me ask questions! And has very good answers, I must say.

Isaiah 1:18 "Come now, let us reason together," says the Lord...

Matthew 7:8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Yet not all the laws are at the boundary between sinning and not sinning:

Deuteronomy 23:15-16 If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master. Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him.

Though maybe he sought real relationship? For I believe people within the will of God can really choose, that his will is not a monorail. And if there was nothing to overcome, what would there be to reward?

Wads4 also is omniscient! Now we have two Gods, and this may present a problem.

Well, what happened in one instance is that I ate some questionable fish, and called in sick the next day at work, ate some more the next week, felt the same symptoms coming on, prayed, and though my stomach kept bubbling, otherwise I was fine, I went to work. Now this is not proof, but I would consider it evidence, and evidence that God cares, and is willing and able to help people.

Well right, just for the fun of it, yet Saddam and Alex both had the resources and the inclination to do it, and they both failed. That might give us pause.

I would consider rebuilding to be what the Bible describes in rebuilding Jerusalem in the books of Nehemiah etc. And reinhabiting need not be done by Babylonians! Any group of people dwelling there long enough to be called inhabitants (say 10 years) would do.

I would think the Muslims might be interested in such a plain overthrow of a passage in the Bible! Some skeptics too, especially just for reinhabiting, this would not require so much effort, I would think it cheap at the price. Why spend so much energy and effort to overthrow the Bible, if all you need is to get people to live in one old city site? So simple, so easy, yet apparently difficult, say Saddam and Alex...

Actually, I post this because I disbelieve it entirely!

Quite so, and so people didn't believe in miracles just because they didn't know any science.

Sometimes simple statements like this do need to be made, though. And I thought it was kind of cheerful humor, Chesterton is fun to quote.

Regards,
Lee

Jaggers

Okay, I think I got it. These ancient civilizations were plodding happily along, when all the sudden a flood comes, and kills everyone but Noah, right? Then, Noah's decendants come trotting along...however many yearsd later, and they see all these abandoned (if waterlogged) cities, and they just pick up right where these civilizations left off, just a long time later. Did I get all this right?

This kind of reasoning is so absurd, it's almost poetic. Seriously.

Lee, as maddening as your posts can be, I really do hope that someday you come to your senses and discard at least some of this nonsense. I know xtians are really good at partitioning off these weird beliefs from their "normal" life, and I don't know what kind of person you are in real life, but I just can't help thinking that believing this kind of fantastical nonsense can't be good for you.

Wads4

"Well right, just for the fun of it, yet Saddam and Alex both had the resources and the inclination to do it, and they both failed. That might give us pause."

People fail all the time, -- compare with new business enterprises. Besides it hardly helped Saddam that he was being invaded and bombed while trying to cast mud-bricks. Coluld you do it?

Wads4

"Quite so, and so people didn't believe in miracles just because they didn't know any science."

They were necessarily practical people, and their astronomy was directed to important agricultural questions of sowing and harvesting. I doubt if they had identifiable concepts like "miracle" or "science",--they just did what had to be done,-whether planting crops or appeasing their gods ( in the case of the Aztecs by mass human sacrifice).

Wads4

"Quote:
Wads4: you prayed, you got better,-so you automatically assume it was your prayer that did it.

Wads4 also is omniscient! Now we have two Gods, and this may present a problem."

No, I just draw conclusions based on what you have told us, as well as pointing out the logical fallacy of it--that merely requires a bit of research and detective-work--not omniscience.