GenesisNemesis

In what way are the gospels credible? Because they contain accounts of miracles? That's hardly enough to convince me.

So I can see whether or not their claims are true.

I've read Revelation, and I can't understand this part:

That ol' dragon must have a long and sturdy tail to wipe out all of those gigantic thermonuclear reactors floating in space! Oh... wait. It means angels. Yeah, that makes more sense.

Biff the unclean

If God is eternal and unchanging then He cannot simply show up one day and change everything, one contradicts the other.
If the “believer” changes themselves then it is their own work that is saving them, that contradicts a basic precept of Christianity. Since those are the only 2 possibilities people changing is evidence against God.

Frankly I’m an old guy and in my time I’ve met tons of people claiming they were changed by Christ. I wouldn’t give you two cents for the personality of a single one of them. If they are examples of the wonderful change then no thank you, I’ll pass. I’m fine as I am already, I have no desire to be “one of those people” (shudder)

Gawen

The Book of Revelation communicates its message through symbolism. It is mystical. There are bizarre creatures, numerology, and allegory. Every aspect of the book is symbolic, including time periods, people, locations, animals, numbers, colors, clothing, and jewelry. Even the introduction identifies its symbolic nature beyond any doubt:
Revelation 1:1: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John”.

What surprises me is people take this jumbled mass of symbolism and take it for some sort of revelation. After 2000 years, we all still wait for something to happen and make sense of it.

Gawen

Let me paste this post about miracles taken from a current thread in this forum:
There are no miracles in the realm of science. No scholarly journal today would consider an author rational if he or she were to sprinkle reports of miracles throughout a treatise.

Vanity, delusion, greed, zealotry and ignorance have led to numerous ‘pious fraud’ supporting a holy and/or meritorious cause with gross embellishments and outright lies about witnessing miraculous events. If miracles were true, as a result, everything we perceive could be completely unrelated to what it appears to be. My backyard fence could be a guardian angel and likewise, I could have rolled my son into the ground thinking he was sod roll. Such a world would be unreasonable and unworthy of God and our own intelligence. If the senses can't be trusted in one case, they can't be trusted in any. To believe in transubstantiation/miracles is to abandon the basis of all knowledge: sense experience.

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of it, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. There must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event; otherwise the event would not merit that appellation.

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact, which it endeavors to establish (Hume).

Substances are always true to their natures and there are no exceptions. They have no caprices, no prejudices that can vary or control their action. They are "the same yesterday, today, and forever." In this constancy, the intelligent man has absolute confidence. It is useless to tell him that there was a time when fire would not consume wood or water would not flow with the direction of gravity. The laws of nature have not been established by occasional or frequent experiences of a similar kind, but of uniform experience.

According to the creeds based upon the Bible, Jesus rose from the dead, descended into hell, and ascended bodily into heaven. According to the gospels he stilled the storm, walked on the water and told Peter to do so and to find money in a fish's mouth and catch a large amount of fish. These and other miracles connected Jesus with God and were part of his theology. Every fair-minded person should re-read the gospels and refresh his memory regarding the theology of Jesus. Then a decision must be reached as to the correctness of the views expressed. Either, conditions on earth were different in the first century from those of today, or Jesus was mistaken in his conception of nature, God, heaven, hell, angels, devils and himself.

tonan22

They certainly do believe that. For centuries they have believed that such a day is "fast" approaching. Centuries.

aa5874

And just imagine all those Gods used to perform miracles, had their own heavens, created the world, used to answer prayers, had their prophets, and temples of worship and followers who prayed to them and became miraculously converted.

All Gods are basically the same, mythical. As far as I understand, Augustus should be in a heaven, with the other Caesars, made by the Greek Gods , and King 'Tut' of Egypt should be in another heaven, with the Pharoahs, made by the Egyptian Gods. So many Gods I can't count them. They are a dime a dozen.

Astreja

It was a glove, actually. The story is in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, in the chapter "Gylfaginning" (section XLV):

RAFH

I wonder who got the other glove?

Gawen

Michael Jackson

Malintent

You saw GOD do this? Or perhaps you mean you saw men do this through THEIR kindness, thoughtful words, etc...?

What, I think, perplexes me most about religionists is their inability to accept fault for their weaknesses and credit for their strengths.