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Really? Have you got his address? I've got a long list of problems with him that I'd like to hash out...

Johnny Skeptic

Message to achristianbeliever: You said that you do not require tangible evidence from God, and that is your right, but I do require tangible evidence from God, just like some skeptics in the Old Testmanent did and Jesus supposedly gave it to them, and that is my right. If you want to claim spiritual/emotional experiences as your only evidence that the Bible is true, that would be great. I always try to get Christians to exclude tangible evidence and claim spiritual/emotional experiences as their only evidence. That is because once a Christian has done that, he puts his spiritual/emotional experiences on an equal par with the spiritual/emotional experiences of the followers of other religions. Spiritual/emotional experiences are subjective. Tangible evidence is objective. If you have a sofa in your living room, you don't need faith to know that there is a sofa in your living room.

Ok, you said that I was getting off topic. In my opening post I said:

How do you interpret the verse?

Is it your position that if God had told everyone about the Gospel message, the Christian Church would be exactly the same size as it is today?

Johnny Skeptic

Message to achristianbeliever: I challenge you to start and new thread and tell us why you became a Christian. I predict that you won't do it.

Chili

Rome = home, and hence all roads lead to Rome . . . which means that whenever someone somewhere gets a hold of some truth it will lead him to Rome and drag him there if he insists on knowing more.

Johnny Skeptic

Hi Avatar,

Please be advised that Chili has admitted that he only makes posts in these forums for entertainment. He never posts any of the sources for his frequent assertions. His viewer profile says "Catholics are God's favorite people," but Roman Catholics disagree with much if not most of his theology. I doubt if he has been to a Catholic mass for years. He also has said that he likes Jews, but I doubt that he has been to a Jewish synagogue for years, if ever. If you want to have some fun, please watch how Chili answers the following questions:

Chili, do you believe in intelligent design? If so, why, and what do you believe is the specific identity of the designer? What do you believe happens to people after they die. Do you believe that after this life Christians and Jews will be better off than anyone else? How sure are you of your many assertions? Do you really care whether or not anyone believes what you say?

Chili

Now now Johnny, every Catholic believes that Rome is home and they all know that all roads lead to Rome. We have, after all, a Catholic publication called "Christ Among Us" and that does not say that he is 'all over' while we do know that he is not part of hell.

seebs

In dozens of ways. I don't; I generally feel that trying to interpret a single verse is foolhardy, and try to look at whole passages if I'm going to speculate on meanings.

I guess I don't even see the relevance of the preamble to the question. I mean, why not "Since salmon meat has a distinctive color, why is it important that anyone has heard the Gospel message?"

If the Gospel message is important, then it's important that people hear it, whether or not everyone hears it.

Since some people, even today, die of easily preventable medical conditions, why is it important that anyone gets decent medical care?

achristianbeliever

But your asking Christians to eliminate THEIR faith by asking them for concrete evidence. And I don't know why a Christian would ever want to completely eliminate faith. Christians today have a special blessing that the people of the New Testament didn't. John 20:29. In order for you to demand Christians give you tangible evidence you would have to ask them to give up their special blessing. So a Christian must give up their special simply for the sole fact that Johnny will believe God exists. But you've said before even if you knew God exists you wouldn't necessarily love him or worship him because of the stuff he did. So I'm suppose to give up my special blessing because you want to know God exists even though you don't really like that very God?

I already answered this.

I've answered this and explained why more than once in this thread.

ok let us recap. You asked the original question of this thread and I answered. Then you start to change the topic of the thread in the middle of it for whatever reason. When I call you on it you rehash earlier questions you already asked and I already answered. And then you ask a question about personal experiences if they were either tangible or emotional which have nothing to do with this thread. When I call you on it instead of abandoning the question you almost demand that I start another thread that gives my testimony claiming that if I don't that I'm what....chicken?

Either I'm gonna give you a testimony that involves emotional things like "getting off drugs" or whatever and as you said you'll simply compare that to other religions or I'll give a story of tangible evidence "God appeared to me in a room" and you'll either ask for some type of proof to convince you or you'll claim something natural happened even though you don't know me at all. Or I'll say I was raised in a Christian home and you'll equate that to other people raised in Muslim homes or atheist homes or I'll explain what in the Bible convinced me and you'll probably ask for outside documentary evidence.

So if I give you my testimony is my quote "challenge" accomoplished? Or am I required to respond to whatever analysis or criticism you or somebody else gives to my testimony? And do I even have any other motivation to make this thread other than your claim that you "predict I won't do it"?

Kosh

Your reasoning is ridiculous.

The desire would be to treat ALL people that we could. However, we being mortal, are constrained by various factors such as limited resources, reachability, etc. A hypothethical God who is omiscient and omnipotent would be not be contrained by any of this.

Your analogy falls flat on it's face. Unless you're saying that YHWH is limited?

seebs

I don't recall it being God spreading the Gospel. I recall it being people.

The question was not "why can't God spread the Gospel to everyone". It was "what does it matter that anyone has ever heard the Gospel". The analogy is precise.