wade-w

In that case, you should take a look at our Biblical Criticism & History forum. There are a lot of very knowlegable people that frequent that forum.

Pouye

I'm excited here! I see all the seeds of childlike faith in Jasmine. It's all there! You will not see those seeds in someone without the Holy Spirit living in them.

Here are the seeds: Loves God, has faith that He is true and loves people, believes His Word, longs to be with Him, enjoys worshipping Him, can't explain everything but has a relationship with Him non-the-less.

Jasmine, you sound so much like I did about 15 years ago. Do you want to know my favorite Christian author? Philip Yancey. If you get a chance, please read his books, "The Jesus I Never Knew" and "What's So Amazing About Grace?".

To my sis,
(I assume, Jasmine, you are a girl -- please forgive me if I am wrong)

Rock

Cipher Girl

Why would a "perfect being" be angry? He created something he is disappointed in? Why does he not fix it? And if he can't fix it, he is not perfect.

chongjasmine

Why will a perfect being NOT be angry?
Is being angru always a form of sin?
How about anger that comes from righteousness?
I mean, most of US het angry if we see a man raping dozens of young children, and killing them, will we not?
It is, and should be the same for God.
God, if he is real, is not an idea packed into a box to suit us as and when we want.
Is it possible for me, a person, not even God himself to say what he is, who he is?
No!
Which is why I hate to debate. God himself never even bother to come and debate. If God won't come, I won't too. Unless he speaks to me like he did Moses. I believe there is a reason why he didn't act in such an active way, now.
Now what you READ, I must TELL you is MY opinion about him. MY opinions can be wrong. So, I am FREE to accept that my opinions are WRONG.

Reasons WHY I believe God is perfect:

1) If there is a God, and he is not perfect, and when you died, he reveals himself to you that HE is NOT perfect, that despite him not being perfect, he wants you to worship him.

Will you, or will anyone worship him?

1) If you will, you are not me. I worship only a perfect God. I don't worship a box. God must show me he is a being capable of making perfect decisions, using Justice, Mercy, Love and Peace as his tool. Everyone I know so far either see God as all Love or see God as all Just. People make assumptions about things.
Like :"Assuming all other things remain constant, if God is love, why will he send sinners to hell?" In theory, this works. But in life? Can life be so simple that we can assume all other things remain constant?

Take a judge. He is just. He has love. But can you just see him as a just and not love, or just love and not just? Every theory I know in this world, is 2D in nature. 2D in the sense that when it is being explained, it takes only the part it wants to explain. Take for instance an argument against God.

If God is perfect, he will not say that those who commit adulteries will be cast to death in the past, and preach love and forgiveness for sinners, now. Either God has changed his mind, showing that his claim that he is unchanging is not true, or either he does not know the future, thus supposing that he make the old testament with no awareness of the future.

This is naive a thinking, and so simplistic. It makes life so simple. In real life, we know if a manager makes this decision, but later changes his mind, it does not say anything about the manager being a changed person or a different person than he was before. Just that, with his managing knowledge, he choose to apply this in this situation and that in that situation.
Hey, if God is real. God is smarter than the manager. Of course, he knows the future. Of course, he knows what will happen. But he also knows that decisions must be made and applied to situations, not fixed as a dead thing. When he created men, he foresee their rebellion. Instead of saying predestination, why not call it God's accurate prediction because of his intelligent? An all knowing God can predict the future, using his logical faculty. He reacts with people with that in mind. He decides with what he has, his prediction for the future and now, what he will do at each stage in life. He is still the same God, who hates sins, and loves righteousness, he is still the loving God but he choose to apply different aspects of himself at different time.

For instance, imagine you are God, and you are all perfect. You decide to create human and give them free-will. As you are perfect, you are responsible for what they do to themselves.
No1) Will you allow them to kill themselves and be cruel to each other?
No2) If you intervene in their lives, how much should you be intervening, without taking too much of the privacy you gives them?
No3) Should you treat all of them, equally?
No4) If you want to have a relationship with them, instead of just standing off at a far corner, what should you do?
No5) What can you let them know about you, and what must you not let them know for now?
No6) What about your enemies? How much should you intervene in their lives?

Solution:
Let them do what they want, completely.
But what about those who cried to you for justice? How should you respond to them?
Set laws for them to obey with a threat of punishment for their failures to obey.
But if that is so, everyone will be punished.
Set laws for them to obey, punish those who have nor regard to obey at all, but pardons those who know they ought to obey the laws, but in their weakness, failed to do so.
And this is still simplifying the decision God has to make. If like all of you said, there is a God.

My point?
God is perfect.
Basis?
No reason to believe in him, otherwise.
Proof?
If I can prove it, will I be here? And that "furthermore" is not even what I want to do.
Then, what I want to do?
Simple, teach everyone this simple fact that we all overlook: If there is a God, we won't know enough to tell each other about who he is. If there isn't one, all these times spent debating are wasted on nothing. No wonder the bible said only one word for those who debate on such issues, "Fool."

My stand: What the bible said I am. A "fool" for God. Fool in the eyes of the gentiles. And forget what it is in the eyes of the "religious". While other argue if he exists or if he does not, I just live my life believing he exists, living he exists, proving nothing with words, but much with life.
If God bothers to let us know who he is, the bible will spent the whole book on describing how God looks like, instead of showing how he deals with men. The bible contains more instructions on how to live, and what sorts of lives make God happy, than on who he is. As to who he is, he gave only very brief things. "I am." When Moses asked him who he is, he replied, "I am."
He never said "I am................. or I am..........................." He just said, "I am." He tells Moses more on what Moses should do than on who he is. When he looks at David, he said he choose a David because of his heart, and not his appearance.
If God see men by hearts more than appearance, then I should think the reason he doesn't speak much about his appearance is becacuse he prefers men to see him the same way. Heart over appearance. So, he is "I am." in appearance. He is God. He doesn't explain further. But he does use many things, do many things, interact in many ways with human to provide us with a hint of what his heart is like.
He never explains most of the times why we must follow this and that. In fact, a lot of time, he just said, "Be Holy for the lord your God is Holy." We said that he wants us to habe blind faith in him. But could it be that God also wants someone to know him, to see him beyond the word "God", beyond who he is as a "king", someone who dares to see the motive behind all the things he did, instead of just the actions only?
I am exploring God in this manner. I respect him as an intelligent being so when I look at his action, I look at them as I will an actual living person. I don't look at what he do, only. I look at what might be his reason behind it. I might be wrong. And in fact, I rely on a faith that he exists, and that he is perfect in order to do that. When I look at his deed, I tried to put myself in his shoes, as to why he did what he did. I make mistakes, and religious people don't like me. But at least, this way, if God exists, I can understand him FULLY for who he is, not for what people told me he is.

If I am a preacher, my sermon will be this: Let's learn together, because I am not qualified to be a teacher. Since I am a student, I can learn from everybody, even atheists. Can I not?
After all, my real teacher is God himself, and human teachers are the tutors he assigned to teach me. They are my classmates in life, too. They can be my teachers, and classmates, depending on what they want to be. But I, hopefully, (hopefully because I also know I, as a human have errors and thus, can self-impose as a teacher when I do not know it) will remain a student all my life, teacher of the words of God if that is what God called me to be
... but my real identity will be a student.

Bye. Oh, and God bless.

Your naive visitor,
Jasmine

chongjasmine

One more thing, how will God fix a person that disappoints him?
Take him by force and send him to an operation against his will, and consent?
Or maybe just like how we fixt a robot, God will just put this into us, that into us etc?
I mean, for us this sounds GOOD.
But have it ever occured to you that this might turn UP to be the most HORRIBLE thing in this world to do?

A perfect person, by the way is not all love, only.

Let say you know a friend. She is the kindest person in this world, but she is also the most unfair person in this world? Will she be perfect?
How about in a law suit, a judge is so kind that he allows all criminals to go free? Will he be perfect?

A judge is a judge in court. Even if he is kind outside of being a judge, in a courtroom, he is only JUST. Otherwise, he is corrupted.
God can be kind and just, and he can apply them at different circumstances, as the circumstances require.
In the courtroom, he is a judge. No room for exception.
In the private domain, the individual relationship between him and the criminal, he can be a friend that is understanding.
But he is still he.
Just that there are times for everything. Decision cannot be made without considering all the alternatives. Have you considered that what you thought of, God being infinitely wise, thought of, too? But out of so many alternative ways to create the world, he chose this ones.

Actually, Job questioned God the way you did, too.
I questioned him, 100% of my times, to the disappointment of my pastors and well meaning Christian friend.
But ultimately, I thought of what would I do if I am in his shoes? And that was when I was silenced.

I will make a world without disappointment. But how will I do it?
Reduce the amount of free-will men have? Stop the demons from being allowed to tempt men?
Then, that way, men will have no righteousness at all. How can a man claim to be righhteous unless he knows what is evil and choose to reject evil?
Even if I do all that, I will still be disappointed. The men I create are no different from what I have already created-animals.

Then, I will make a imperfect world, but I will not intervene.
More questions. Am I fair to those who choose to be good in a not perfect world? They cried to me for justice.

So many choices. So many decisions. What will you do if you are God? And can you honestly said that you will create a better world than God? If so, I don't see it. Not by what men create, anyway. The fact is, if we were allowed to be God, we will create a worst world than we see now. Because we are not God now, and yet we can make the world so bad.

My question is, I find no one in this world that qualifies to teach me about God. But I find many in this world that wants to teach me.

Who is God?
If you want to prove if God exists or not, you must first define who is the God you want to prove. Right now, I assume God exists, because I want to find out what does men meant when they said they believe or not believe in a God?

This is just like hoe can you claim to know if virtue is good or not, when you do not even know what virtue is? THe only hints you can get to know it is by studying what people claimed are virtues.
So, I am studying God in this way-- Who he is.
Who he is.
Who he is.

Then, maybe I can qualify to say more.
Again, I just ask questions without giving answers. Because this is the state I am in, now. Exploration.

Your Still Searching Visitor,
Jasmine

LittleGuy

We don't have a very good working definition of "perfect" here.
Typical atheist definitions of a "perfect" God tend to assume an indifferent being that transcends such flawed, human traits such as emotion.
Anger is a human emotion, associated with hostility, aggression.
The so-called "righteous anger" which you describe is similar to that felt by say... Hamas terrorists who must have been outraged at the maiming and deaths of dozens of young children from bombing.


This is what frustrates most atheists when they try and have a debate with Christians on the nature of God. If none can presume to know of this nature, then there is no real point in debating about it. On the other hand, it also give Christians themselves no real authority to make claims about God outside of the Bible.


That's good. Most of us are also free to accept that our own opinions may be wrong. However, we both know that there are certain beliefs on both sides that cannot really be substantially challenged on a forum. Our respective belief and disbelief in god(s), for example.


You raise a good point. Life is not simple.
This is why atheists find fault with the system:

No belief in Christian God = Eternal damnation in Hell
Belief in Christian God = Salvation in Heaven

According to this system, the same punishment should be administered to a person who merely lived a normal life without belief in God as well as to someone like Hitler.
In fact, according to this system, the same punishment would be administered to person who lived a good, charitable life without belief in God.

You state that God's decisions rest upon Justice, Mercy, Love and Peace. The perennial problem of atheists is our failure in comprehending these traits in the creator of such a system.

[Quote]Take a judge. He is just. He has love. But can you just see him as a just and not love, or just love and not just? Every theory I know in this world, is 2D in nature. 2D in the sense that when it is being explained, it takes only the part it wants to explain. Take for instance an argument against God.[Quote/]

To put it basically: judges punish based on the severity of the crime.



If we were to say that God predicts the future because of his intelligence, that he has the data and reasoning capacity to work out everything that will happen, then we are implying that this God is merely a passive observer who is not in control.

However, our concept of God includes that he has control over everything. If he has control over all things, if he has the power to work out that consequences of his every action, then we can only conclude that this omnipotence and omniscience allows him to not only foresee but control the future.

As a matter of fact, it would seem that he causes all things to happen.


You ought to know that, since we are assuming God to be perfect, and also that none can presume to know his mind, then none can presume to "imagine" themselves as God. Thus your "solution" cannot possible be valid one, and if it is, only one of a countless number of possible "solutions".


This is the reason why the label "Agnostic" was invented




This is all good, as long as you realise that different people come to different conclusions and have different opinions, and that each are only really right in their own eyes.
Thus, you come to the conclusion that God is an intelligent, considerate being.
Another just as easily sees that he is a cruel, capricious tyrant.


I'm sure many here will appreciate the genuine sentiment.