Johnny Skeptic

Which experiences are those? As I said, "If God is evil, and if he is omnipotent, and omnipresent, [and wishes to deceive Christians] he could easily duplicate anything that it attributed to the God of the Bible.

But as I said:

Regarding "I saw a sense of purpose in following Jesus - to be part of something bigger than myself that asked me to sacrifice my personal comforts for a greater cause," first of all, what did God sacrifice? There is not any evidence at all that Jesus' shed blood and death remitted the sins of mankind, nor that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and never committed a sin. Second of all, surely you could sacrifice a lot more of your personal comforts than you have. Third of all, human effort could never even come close to meeting all of the needs of mankind. Only God could accomplish that, but he is more interested in creating natural disasters which kill people and destroy their property. When Christians get healed, many of them give God the credit, and when they get sick, they blame the Devil. However, Exodus 4:11 says "And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?" John 9:1-3 say "And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." Based upon those scriptures, why do Christians ask God to heal them?

So God didn't need to directly communicate with Abraham and Moses, and the prophets, right?

God has no business playing favorites. If he directly communicated with Abraham and Moses, then he needs to directly communicate without everyone else too. If he did, that would eliminate lots of wars, bitterness, and doubt. What would be wrong with that?

Helpmabob

Why do some Christians assume that the Bible is inerrant?

For me, it's not so much an assumtion as an experience. The Bible has never forced me to err, or encouraged me to desire to do evil. This suggests that it is in itself based on the best good around, and probably largely free from error. The rewards are by far the best when read with an openness to the the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Sven

Of course your experience is entirely contrary to all those millions of people who used the bible to justify slavery and wars. :wave:

Oh, I see. A handy excuse. Those who did the above simply were not open to the holy spirit. no-true-scotsman, anyone?

Have you ever thought about the possibility that you are a good person by yourself (because your genes, your eduaction, your environment) and simply read the good things into the bible instead of out of it?

Harry Bosch

Ray, please define a Darwinist! If I'm deluded enough to think that creation as defined by the bible is wrong, but I believe that Hindu creation is correct (world created a 100,000 yrs ago and etc) - then what am I?

Here is a separate question: assuming that the bible is 100% accurate why is there no outside collaboration of the facts? For example, when God stopped the sun from going around the earth, extending the day so that Joshua could continue his slaughter, why didn't anyone else on earth notice? I would think that the Chinese, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and etc would notice “facts� such as this. Ditto with the flood, why didn’t anyone else notice? People were pretty well spread out during the time of the flood. There are many flood tales. But they all appear to be local regional floods that did not correlate with the alleged date of the biblical flood. How can this be?

Johnny Skeptic

Has anyone said otherwise?

I do not understand what you mean. Please explain your position in greater detail.

You consider Christian Science to be a cult. I was raised as a Christian Scientist. At about age 20, I became a fundamentalist Christian. I can tell you from personal experience that Christian Scientists are on average far more moral than the typical fundamentalist Christian. I never saw a Christian smoke cigarettes, use profanity, or drink alcohol.

Why wouldn't Deism be free from error.

But the followers of many religions use spritual/emotional experiences as evidence. Such experiences are subjective. All that religious minded people are after is a comfortable eternal life, and they don't really care who gives it to them as long it is available. Why in the world do you believe that so many religions were dreamed up?

In the NIV, Acts 14:3 says "So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders." Do you not find it strange that confirmations were needed? After all, that was AFTER the Holy Spirit had come to the church, AFTER Jesus had performed miracles in front of many thousands of people, and AFTER between 500 and 600 had seen him after he rose from the dead.

What evidence do you have that God is not an evil God who is masquerading as a good God and plans to send everyone to hell? Why would you be surprised if such is the case? In the NIV, 2 Corinthians 11:14-15 say "And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve." In the NIV, Mark 13:22 says "For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect - if that were possible." Why do you believe that the elect cannot be deceived? If God is evil, and if he is omnipotent and omnisicient, he could easily duplicate anything that it attributed to the God of the Bible.

mdarus

The possibility of an action does not provide evidence that the action could occur or has occured. Since all actions are possible of an omni-God, the possibility of God acting in a certain way has no value whatsoever.

I will concede that there may be "inadequate evidence" for yourself and others but the Bible provides some evidence. I realize that you may not value that evidence.

Are you spying on me? You are more correct than you may have guessed. I try to celebrate the little successes in my life.

Right with you there. The odd thing is that God seems to chose to do most of it through people. When people do not cooperate less gets done.

The problem of evil is a big one. I do not agree that all natural disasters are "caused" by God. I agree that not all healing is miraculous. I also agree that not all sickness is from the devil.

I think you are right that Christians should not always assume that being healed is the best thing.

Sure. In one sense, God does not NEED to do anything. In another sense, since he did it, maybe he saw that there was a need for it.

Now you are into one of the most protracted debates among believers. The whole election thing is totally unfair. It is also unfair that not everyone is the same height on the basketball team. But I liked being four inches higher than everyone else in eighth grade. I would like to imagine a world where everything was fair. Everyone had the same opportunities, the same amount of money, the same abilities, the same amount of faith. However, when I imagine that world in detail, it is less idylic than I thought. We would all be robots forced to believe. I suspect we would call that world hell.

If the Old Testament and the Gospels are true, direct communication and daily miracles do not work as well as we think.

Helpmabob

Hi Johnny - The evidence of God on the cross, prepared to die for us whilst we were still sinners.No, the Holy Spirit is God.I don’t know what you mean exactly by a ‘fundamentalist christian’. I can only speak for myself when I say that I claim no righteousness but that which Christ graciously gives. Whether someone else’s morals are better or worse than mine therefore has no bearing on the important matter of my salvation.Interesting – I’ll need to look into that. It is funny that all of the people were not convinced of the message even in the sight of many miracles.

Johnny Skeptic

But if God is evil, he could easily duplicate anything that is attributed to the God of the Bible.

Why can't God be amoral? An amoral God would not necessarily be interested in sending anyone to heaven.

If intelligent design is a given, what evidence do you have that the uncaused first cause is the God of the Bible?

mdarus

OK, let's play your game.
1) If God were evil, he would appear to be good to attract followers.
2) God appears to be good.
3) Therefore God is evil

Let (1) be a given. Your biblical quotations that ascribe this behavior to Satan is sufficient to establish the premise. However, you could argue that if God were evil he might not care if he had followers. In that case, his motivation to appear to be good could be shear meaness to lead people along. But then you are back to this evil God caring whether people are fooled.

However, we have a lot of problems with (2). Goes does not seem to be consistent about this at all. Sometimes he does not appear to be good. He does not stop bad things from happening when he could. This site is full of biblical examples of God "behaving badly."

The usual problem with this idea is this: If there is a God, he is the one who defines morality. The only way to get to an amoral God is to have a God with no sense of right and wrong for his creation. This would be close to the evil God above who simply does not care. This type of apathy is much more likely in humans.

Intelligent design does not claim to point to the God of the Bible. However, it depends on what you mean by "evidence." If you mean "verifiable proof", there is little to go around. If you mean "indications", there are many that are quite satisfactory to lots of believers.

Watcher

Indications? Do humans need any indications to believe in most anything? I can point out humans that believe in an underground reptile super race that controls humans, to humans being a 'tube test' of aliens. They have all the indications needed to believe what they believe. Does that make them right?

But I agree that the only amoral thing a human can do in reference to the biblical 'god' is go against what he wants you to do. Which really makes the entire concept the more ridiculous the more you think about it.