(09-24-2014 10:24 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Have you ever contemplated if you were born on a different continent you wouldn't be a Christian?

Well, no one would be one, until they became one. It's like contemplating how if Jesus hadn't lived, no one would be a Christian. And it's also like contemplating that if you were born in another genus' womb you wouldn't be human. But of course, then you wouldn't be ABLE to contemplate it... So, we are what we are.

Regardless, the point of my OP remains; that it doesn't make logical sense for an Atheist, who wants to challenge religion's credibility based upon scientific reasoning, not to use the same scientific reasoning to conclude that an omnipotent being whose very existence would mean a "life" outside of the realm and boundaries of time, wouldn't need to have been created.

(09-24-2014 10:49 PM)G-Man Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 10:24 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Have you ever contemplated if you were born on a different continent you wouldn't be a Christian?

Well, no one would be one, until they became one. It's like contemplating how if Jesus hadn't lived, no one would be a Christian. And it's also like contemplating that if you were born in another genus' womb you wouldn't be human. But of course, then you wouldn't be ABLE to contemplate it... So, we are what we are.

Regardless, the point of my OP remains; that it doesn't make logical sense for an Atheist, who wants to challenge religion's credibility based upon scientific reasoning, not to use the same scientific reasoning to conclude that an omnipotent being whose very existence would mean a "life" outside of the realm and boundaries of time, wouldn't need to have been created.

Why does there have to be a creator? You are making a huge leap.

Ah, infallible, always consistent science.

Of course we could have evolved. We had billions of years to do so.

If we don't act now, though, global warming will kill us all in the next hundred years.

But, apparently we can assume the climate stayed agreeable for our billions of years of evolution.

Do you guys not realize the tiny little conflicts there?

Out of nothing, comes nothing.

Anything that exists is preceded by something that exists. Until we arrive at - The unmoved MOVER, The un-caused Cause.

(09-24-2014 08:48 PM)smn1256 Wrote:  As an atheist (oh, my conservative buds in this forum are going to fry me) who was raised Catholic, I've often thought about this very subject and many times it boiled down to was God always here or was the universe always here? I can see, touch, feel, and smell a small portion of the universe, but not so much with God. There are also contradictions and other things about religion that I just can't reconcile - like the Virgin Mary, the Burning Bush, the endless fish and loaves of bread, Adam and Eve, and so on. Why did all of these miracles occur before the invention of the television camera? One of my biggest concerns is how the Catholic religion "evolved" over time. How can a religion evolve? And one of the things that I always had concerns about were sins and being absolved of them. The Catholic church considers murder and missing church on Sunday sins that are equal, yet both can be purged through confession.

I don't believe in a supreme being, but I wouldn't mind being wrong about this. I respect religion and people who believe in it and, with the exception of Islam, I never ridicule it. You folks who believe have a sort of comfort us non believers don't enjoy. Salute.

I also have trouble with the hocus pocus stuff, to be honest, and I don't take the prehistoric stories in the old testament literally. I do believe in God, but do not see God as a tangible being that controls everyday life. Even the Bible is clear on free will.

It is also clear to me that there are good and evil spirits and beings that are possessed by evil spirits can find God and be overcome with good spirits. There are also a lot of evil spirits disguised as good spirits. Miracles do still happen. The Virgin Mary, the Burning Bush, the endless fish and loaves of bread require faith and cannot be proved. Mary and fish and bread were all related to Christ. The burning bush occurred about 1,500 years earlier so it isn't like these things happened all the time and all of the sudden stopped when cameras were invented. While I don't know if the burning bush literally happened (and the parting of the Red Sea) or if they are metaphors or myths and I admit it takes a leap of faith to believe it, the basic history in the Exodus story is solid. Egypt was real, the Israelites were slaves and suddenly no longer there at the time, and the arc of the covenant is an actual historical artifact.

The Catholic church does not consider murder and missing church on Sunday as sins that are equal. Yes, both can be purged through confession. While murder is the worst crime in humanity, once evil is not always evil. The Church is not against criminal justice, but one can reconcile with God. My penance for missing mass is likely going to be something like stopping by the church on the way home for the week and giving 10 minutes of silent prayer in the blessed sacrament room. My penance for killing my wife is likely going to be turning my @ss into the the police.

(09-24-2014 08:51 PM)ClairtonPanther Wrote:  Man created god in their image to tell others how to live their lives.

And when did man do this?

(09-24-2014 09:20 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 09:06 PM)john01992 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 09:05 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 08:54 PM)john01992 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 08:51 PM)ClairtonPanther Wrote:  Man created god in their image to tell others how to live their lives.

I think you just big time

Its child like posts like this that make people believe your are a 16 year old buried in pizza boxes, Cheetos dust and dried c.um tissues.

can't handle the heat eh???

When you grow up, you learn why this is childish behavior and anyone over 35 can spot teenagers a mile away.

just sayin

Posting topics like this one is childish behavior. You don't have to reach 35 to realize that.

(09-24-2014 09:08 PM)smn1256 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 08:58 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 08:48 PM)smn1256 Wrote:  As an atheist (oh, my conservative buds in this forum are going to fry me) who was raised Catholic, I've often thought about this very subject and many times it boiled down to was God always here or was the universe always here? I can see, touch, feel, and smell a small portion of the universe, but not so much with God. There are also contradictions and other things about religion that I just can't reconcile - like the Virgin Mary, the Burning Bush, the endless fish and loaves of bread, Adam and Eve, and so on. Why did all of these miracles occur before the invention of the television camera? One of my biggest concerns is how the Catholic religion "evolved" over time. How can a religion evolve? And one of the things that I always had concerns about were sins and being absolved of them. The Catholic church considers murder and missing church on Sunday sins that are equal, yet both can be purged through confession.

I don't believe in a supreme being, but I wouldn't mind being wrong about this. I respect religion and people who believe in it and, with the exception of Islam, I never ridicule it. You folks who believe have a sort of comfort us non believers don't enjoy. Salute.

So you are clearly saying you do not believe in the God Of Abraham.

But do you really believe the entire universe of time, space, matter, energy and all its unfathomable infinities of pure chance and "just rightness" just popped in to existence from nothingness?

[b]One of the two, God or the universe, popped into existence from nothingness[/b], I had to choose one and I chose the one I can see. I'm actually more of an agnostic than an atheist.

That's one possibility, but certainly not the only one. Believers claim that God always existed - that he had no beginning. If one can believe that to be possible, then it is equally possible that the universe always existed.

I think it's also safe to say that most people who believe in (capital G) God believe that he has some ongoing involvement with what happens in the universe. I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to posit the existence of some prime creator that has no such involvement. It's a lot easier to believe that a creator would practice benign neglect than that he would either permit or cause the chaos and arbitrary events and behaviors that we have observed and/or learned about the history of the universe.

My question has never been "who created god" but "if god has existed forever and ever, why did he just suddenly decide to create the universe?"

Did he just get bored some day? Were there previous civilizations before us that ended and we're just another iteration of mankind?

Surely he wasn't just sitting there twiddling his thumbs for eons before deciding to create something.

(09-25-2014 08:00 AM)EverRespect Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 08:48 PM)smn1256 Wrote:  As an atheist (oh, my conservative buds in this forum are going to fry me) who was raised Catholic, I've often thought about this very subject and many times it boiled down to was God always here or was the universe always here? I can see, touch, feel, and smell a small portion of the universe, but not so much with God. There are also contradictions and other things about religion that I just can't reconcile - like the Virgin Mary, the Burning Bush, the endless fish and loaves of bread, Adam and Eve, and so on. Why did all of these miracles occur before the invention of the television camera? One of my biggest concerns is how the Catholic religion "evolved" over time. How can a religion evolve? And one of the things that I always had concerns about were sins and being absolved of them. The Catholic church considers murder and missing church on Sunday sins that are equal, yet both can be purged through confession.

I don't believe in a supreme being, but I wouldn't mind being wrong about this. I respect religion and people who believe in it and, with the exception of Islam, I never ridicule it. You folks who believe have a sort of comfort us non believers don't enjoy. Salute.

I also have trouble with the hocus pocus stuff, to be honest, and I don't take the prehistoric stories in the old testament literally. I do believe in God, but do not see God as a tangible being that controls everyday life. Even the Bible is clear on free will.

It is also clear to me that there are good and evil spirits and beings that are possessed by evil spirits can find God and be overcome with good spirits. There are also a lot of evil spirits disguised as good spirits. Miracles do still happen. The Virgin Mary, the Burning Bush, the endless fish and loaves of bread require faith and cannot be proved. Mary and fish and bread were all related to Christ. The burning bush occurred about 1,500 years earlier so it isn't like these things happened all the time and all of the sudden stopped when cameras were invented. While I don't know if the burning bush literally happened (and the parting of the Red Sea) or if they are metaphors or myths and I admit it takes a leap of faith to believe it, the basic history in the Exodus story is solid. Egypt was real, the Israelites were slaves and suddenly no longer there at the time, and the arc of the covenant is an actual historical artifact.

The Catholic church does not consider murder and missing church on Sunday as sins that are equal. Yes, both can be purged through confession. While murder is the worst crime in humanity, once evil is not always evil. The Church is not against criminal justice, but one can reconcile with God. My penance for missing mass is likely going to be something like stopping by the church on the way home for the week and giving 10 minutes of silent prayer in the blessed sacrament room. My penance for killing my wife is likely going to be turning my @ss into the the police.

Except that there is no historic or archaeological evidence that the Exodus story is anything but fiction. Often, the absence of an historic record of ancient events can be attributed to the fact that few peoples bothered to record history. A clear exception to this is Egypt, which was scrupulous about documenting their history.

I doubt this story was made up out of whole cloth, but it's hard to believe that whatever may have taken place wasn't embellished to make it appear more heroic than it really was.

It's funny that us as mere mortals with a miniscule amount of brain power can think that we're above God. How great of us. Near the beginning of the twentieth century no one would ever believe that we could get radio signals which are invisible onto a little box and be able to listen to music or television for that matter. Many say that they can't believe in a God that can't be seen, but he shows His presence all the time, in miracles, in our faith. Who was it that said, "blessed are those that believe without seeing?" And He was talking to someone that witnessed all the miracles that Jesus performed, ol' "Thomas of little faith".
The problem I see is that we sometimes listen to man instead of to God's word the Holy Bible. I don't put my stock on people that have agendas (and trying to grow their numbers) by changing the Word of God. I used to be like Smn until I started learning what the Bible really said and not what a group of people that don't know what the Bible says but they sure do know what their "religion" says and teaches.

Mary? Mary was a good woman who was blessed by God to bring Jesus to the world. As for her being a "deity" she is not. No more than others like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Daniel, David, Paul, the apostles, etc.

We also have the saints which are beatified by the church. My question is, "how does the church know if those saints are really in heaven?" And why are we told that we can pray to them if they were mere mortals with sinful natures like us. Isn't this minimizing what Jesus did for us on the cross? We're putting mere mortals on the same level as He who took away the sins of the world. Jesus is our ONLY mediator between God and man. It says so in the Bible, and I believe it.

(09-25-2014 01:13 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 09:08 PM)smn1256 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 08:58 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 08:48 PM)smn1256 Wrote:  As an atheist (oh, my conservative buds in this forum are going to fry me) who was raised Catholic, I've often thought about this very subject and many times it boiled down to was God always here or was the universe always here? I can see, touch, feel, and smell a small portion of the universe, but not so much with God. There are also contradictions and other things about religion that I just can't reconcile - like the Virgin Mary, the Burning Bush, the endless fish and loaves of bread, Adam and Eve, and so on. Why did all of these miracles occur before the invention of the television camera? One of my biggest concerns is how the Catholic religion "evolved" over time. How can a religion evolve? And one of the things that I always had concerns about were sins and being absolved of them. The Catholic church considers murder and missing church on Sunday sins that are equal, yet both can be purged through confession.

I don't believe in a supreme being, but I wouldn't mind being wrong about this. I respect religion and people who believe in it and, with the exception of Islam, I never ridicule it. You folks who believe have a sort of comfort us non believers don't enjoy. Salute.

So you are clearly saying you do not believe in the God Of Abraham.

But do you really believe the entire universe of time, space, matter, energy and all its unfathomable infinities of pure chance and "just rightness" just popped in to existence from nothingness?

[b]One of the two, God or the universe, popped into existence from nothingness[/b], I had to choose one and I chose the one I can see. I'm actually more of an agnostic than an atheist.

That's one possibility, but certainly not the only one. Believers claim that God always existed - that he had no beginning. If one can believe that to be possible, then it is equally possible that the universe always existed.

I think it's also safe to say that most people who believe in (capital G) God believe that he has some ongoing involvement with what happens in the universe. I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to posit the existence of some prime creator that has no such involvement. It's a lot easier to believe that a creator would practice benign neglect than that he would either permit or cause the chaos and arbitrary events and behaviors that we have observed and/or learned about the history of the universe.

again, we are not capable of understanding the truth. We are not powerful enough. Time may not even apply to God.

(09-24-2014 08:54 PM)john01992 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 08:51 PM)ClairtonPanther Wrote:  Man created god in their image to tell others how to live their lives.

I think you just big time

In a lot of ways he's right. I am a Christian and I'll admit that there have been plenty of instances of this. Man manipulating scriptures into things it really doesn't say and basically making God something that he is not, making issues out of nothing (like alcohol for example) and driving wedges among His own. It does nothing to promote Christianity and does a lot more harm than good. It's actually really sad.

(09-25-2014 01:50 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  It's funny that us as mere mortals with a miniscule amount of brain power can think that we're above God. How great of us. Near the beginning of the twentieth century no one would ever believe that we could get radio signals which are invisible onto a little box and be able to listen to music or television for that matter. Many say that they can't believe in a God that can't be seen, but he shows His presence all the time, in miracles, in our faith. Who was it that said, "blessed are those that believe without seeing?" And He was talking to someone that witnessed all the miracles that Jesus performed, ol' "Thomas of little faith".

The problem I see is that we sometimes listen to man instead of to God's word the Holy Bible. I don't put my stock on people that have agendas (and trying to grow their numbers) by changing the Word of God. I used to be like Smn until I started learning what the Bible really said and not what a group of people that don't know what the Bible says but they sure do know what their "religion" says and teaches.

Mary? Mary was a good woman who was blessed by God to bring Jesus to the world. As for her being a "deity" she is not. No more than others like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Daniel, David, Paul, the apostles, etc.

We also have the saints which are beatified by the church. My question is, "how does the church know if those saints are really in heaven?" And why are we told that we can pray to them if they were mere mortals with sinful natures like us. Isn't this minimizing what Jesus did for us on the cross? We're putting mere mortals on the same level as He who took away the sins of the world. Jesus is our ONLY mediator between God and man. It says so in the Bible, and I believe it.

If any non-Christians read anything and take it seriously in this thread, the bold is it.

(09-24-2014 10:49 PM)G-Man Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 10:24 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Have you ever contemplated if you were born on a different continent you wouldn't be a Christian?

Well, no one would be one, until they became one. It's like contemplating how if Jesus hadn't lived, no one would be a Christian. And it's also like contemplating that if you were born in another genus' womb you wouldn't be human. But of course, then you wouldn't be ABLE to contemplate it... So, we are what we are.

Regardless, the point of my OP remains; that it doesn't make logical sense for an Atheist, who wants to challenge religion's credibility based upon scientific reasoning, not to use the same scientific reasoning to conclude that an omnipotent being whose very existence would mean a "life" outside of the realm and boundaries of time, wouldn't need to have been created.

It seems more likely to me that something relatively simple like energy or matter could have been created out of what is referred to as nothingness (or that it always existed) than that some all-powerful all-knowing being was created out of nothingness (or always existed).

There are just too many things about religion (at least, religion as taught to me as a child by the Catholic church) that I found illogical or contradictory and the only answer you ever get is the old "god works in mysterious ways" or some version of that.

(09-25-2014 01:57 PM)blunderbuss Wrote:  

(09-25-2014 01:50 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  The problem I see is that we sometimes listen to man instead of to God's word the Holy Bible. I don't put my stock on people that have agendas (and trying to grow their numbers) by changing the Word of God. I used to be like Smn until I started learning what the Bible really said and not what a group of people that don't know what the Bible says but they sure do know what their "religion" says and teaches.

We're putting mere mortals on the same level as He who took away the sins of the world. Jesus is our ONLY mediator between God and man. It says so in the Bible, and I believe it.

If any non-Christians read anything and take it seriously in this thread, the bold is it.

Talking snakes, the downfall of mankind because a woman literally ate a bad apple, the animals of the world jammed into a boat, God and the Devil playing games, flaming swords and burning bushes, all of humanity derived from incest (how did Adam and Eve's daughters get pregnant?), etc. And how do you explain just about anything in Leviticus? Am I supposed to throw out my couch to appease God because a friend was on her period last weekend and came over for dinner as per Leviticus 15:25 and 15:26?

I'll take the word of man over a book that says I have to throw out my couch.

(09-25-2014 01:53 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote:  

(09-25-2014 01:13 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 09:08 PM)smn1256 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 08:58 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 08:48 PM)smn1256 Wrote:  As an atheist (oh, my conservative buds in this forum are going to fry me) who was raised Catholic, I've often thought about this very subject and many times it boiled down to was God always here or was the universe always here? I can see, touch, feel, and smell a small portion of the universe, but not so much with God. There are also contradictions and other things about religion that I just can't reconcile - like the Virgin Mary, the Burning Bush, the endless fish and loaves of bread, Adam and Eve, and so on. Why did all of these miracles occur before the invention of the television camera? One of my biggest concerns is how the Catholic religion "evolved" over time. How can a religion evolve? And one of the things that I always had concerns about were sins and being absolved of them. The Catholic church considers murder and missing church on Sunday sins that are equal, yet both can be purged through confession.

I don't believe in a supreme being, but I wouldn't mind being wrong about this. I respect religion and people who believe in it and, with the exception of Islam, I never ridicule it. You folks who believe have a sort of comfort us non believers don't enjoy. Salute.

So you are clearly saying you do not believe in the God Of Abraham.

But do you really believe the entire universe of time, space, matter, energy and all its unfathomable infinities of pure chance and "just rightness" just popped in to existence from nothingness?

[b]One of the two, God or the universe, popped into existence from nothingness[/b], I had to choose one and I chose the one I can see. I'm actually more of an agnostic than an atheist.

That's one possibility, but certainly not the only one. Believers claim that God always existed - that he had no beginning. If one can believe that to be possible, then it is equally possible that the universe always existed.

I think it's also safe to say that most people who believe in (capital G) God believe that he has some ongoing involvement with what happens in the universe. I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to posit the existence of some prime creator that has no such involvement. It's a lot easier to believe that a creator would practice benign neglect than that he would either permit or cause the chaos and arbitrary events and behaviors that we have observed and/or learned about the history of the universe.

again, we are not capable of understanding the truth. We are not powerful enough. Time may not even apply to God.

Or to the universe.

(09-25-2014 02:51 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  

(09-25-2014 01:57 PM)blunderbuss Wrote:  

(09-25-2014 01:50 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  The problem I see is that we sometimes listen to man instead of to God's word the Holy Bible. I don't put my stock on people that have agendas (and trying to grow their numbers) by changing the Word of God. I used to be like Smn until I started learning what the Bible really said and not what a group of people that don't know what the Bible says but they sure do know what their "religion" says and teaches.

We're putting mere mortals on the same level as He who took away the sins of the world. Jesus is our ONLY mediator between God and man. It says so in the Bible, and I believe it.

If any non-Christians read anything and take it seriously in this thread, the bold is it.

Talking snakes, the downfall of mankind because a woman literally ate a bad apple, the animals of the world jammed into a boat, God and the Devil playing games, flaming swords and burning bushes, all of humanity derived from incest (how did Adam and Eve's daughters get pregnant?), etc. And how do you explain just about anything in Leviticus? Am I supposed to throw out my couch to appease God because a friend was on her period last weekend and came over for dinner as per Leviticus 15:25 and 15:26?

I'll take the word of man over a book that says I have to throw out my couch.

The choice isn't between the word of a man over the word of God. It's between the word of one man over another man. Just because one of them (several of them, actually, and we don't know who they are) wrote a few thousand years ago doesn't give him any more authority.

Talking snakes, the downfall of mankind because a woman literally ate a bad apple, the animals of the world jammed into a boat, God and the Devil playing games, flaming swords and burning bushes, all of humanity derived from incest (how did Adam and Eve's daughters get pregnant?), etc. And how do you explain just about anything in Leviticus? Am I supposed to throw out my couch to appease God because a friend was on her period last weekend and came over for dinner as per Leviticus 15:25 and 15:26?

I'll take the word of man over a book that says I have to throw out my couch.
[/quote]


Perhaps this will answer your question which is one that many of us even as Christians struggle with. But if we even as Christians tried to follow all the laws laid down in the Old Testament we would be hard pressed to consider ourselves worthy of eternity as there are more than 600 laws in the O.T.

Here 'tis: 36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" 37 Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Matthew 22:36-40

(09-25-2014 02:51 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  Talking snakes, the downfall of mankind because a woman literally ate a bad apple, the animals of the world jammed into a boat, God and the Devil playing games, flaming swords and burning bushes, all of humanity derived from incest (how did Adam and Eve's daughters get pregnant?), etc. And how do you explain just about anything in Leviticus? Am I supposed to throw out my couch to appease God because a friend was on her period last weekend and came over for dinner as per Leviticus 15:25 and 15:26?

I'll take the word of man over a book that says I have to throw out my couch.

This is a non sequitur.

And this question (or others like it) are just another of the "less intelligent questions I consistently hear most Atheists ask."

Do either you or I really get to determine who God is and how He would or wouldn't relate to us if He does exist, based upon your own "leap of faith" because of some scripture references from the Old Testament, proving Him to be something He is not, because you want to read it that way?

I mean seriously now, you really think the Christian God (if you understand what Jesus taught, and early Christianity was really about) would make you have to throw out your couch because of someone's menstruation?

Your example is either very immature thinking on your part, intellectual dishonesty, or _______. (You fill in the blank for me if it's not one of the first two things, okay?)